The Epistemic In-between: a Regime-based Model of Mediation in Sensemaking and Institutional Meaning
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Expanding on a wider conversation about the In-Between as both an ontological and cultural threshold, the article rather takes a more modest epistemic and organizational problematique. The study’s key question runs as follows: Which processes transform uncertain, diffuse, and polyvalent formations into a recognizable, legitimate, and actionable institutional object? The central tenet of the article is that institutions function not on events but on mediated versions of events. To this end, literatures on sensemaking, framing, institutional meaning and legitimacy, valuation and quantification, sociomateriality, expertise, and infrastructure are brought together on a common analytical ground. The study first defines the “epistemic In-Between” as a selective intermediate space spanning the gap between event and intelligibility; then distinguishes eight mediation regimes that operate within this in-between: categorical-naming, narrative-causality, authority-procedure, valuation-norm, evidence-epistemic authority, material-technical, affect-attention, and time-scale. The functioning of these regimes is explained through six fundamental mechanisms: cue selection, acceptability, translation to a common scale, anchoring, authorization, and reopening. The article also develops a process model ranging from dispersed signs to provisional closure and testable propositions; finally, it proposes a methodological and diagnostic framework in the form of episodic process research and mediation/object-formation control. Thus, the study conceptualizes the In-Between not merely as an ontological state or a space of cultural hybridity, but as an epistemic in-between where institutional meaning, decision-making objects, and possibilities for action are produced.
Source: Research
Institution: Vilnius Business College
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7159784261