Gender, Embodiment and Fluidity in Organization and Management

Robert McMurray, Alison Pullen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032239798
• eBook ISBN: 9781000753219
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination.

The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice.

Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

1  Introduction

Gender, embodiment and fluidity in organization and management

Robert McMurray and Alison Pullen

Where books 1 and 2 of the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series sought to problematize classic themes of managing and organizing (e.g. rationality, power and politics), the third volume in the series invites the reader to journey through classic, foundational, contemporary and, at times, radical themes surrounding gender, embodiment and fluidity. The writers in this book challenge rigid, simplistic and misplaced assumptions about what it is to manage and be organized. The suggestion that gendered identities are unitary, stable and fixed is questioned. They challenge tacit and explicit presumptions that organizations are either gender neutral or predominantly populated by men and they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge privileges rather than problematizes thought over embodied knowledge, thereby reinforcing the Cartesian divide between mind and body. Work and associated organizational regimes have long been understood to effect people as they discipline, regulation and control individual bodies. Understanding the diversity of bodies, the ways they are regulated and the extent of their agency is important as it raises questions around the ways and extent to which bodies can resist. Whilst the diversity of sexed, raced and classed bodies have been recognized, we need to ask whether the healthy able-bodied have been privileged. This includes disrupting the historically narrow focus of empirical research and organizational writing, where all too often there has been a presumption that working bodies are male bodies or gender-neutral bodies.

Studies of gender difference are well developed in the field of management and organization studies, starting with research that sought to highlight women’s different experiences in relation to men. In the field of gender work and organization, the ways in which gender-influenced industrial relations and the fabric of organizational structure, culture and identity has been attended to. Yet despite progress for women, we still witness vast inequalities regarding women’s access to equal pay, equality of institutional rights, organizational discrimination and everyday micro-aggressions. There is also much to be done in terms of understanding the ways in which the diversity of identity (and associated intersectional differences) enact inequality in relation to access to paid employment, precarious labour contracts, barriers to organizational progress and violence towards those who depart from the normative basis of the ‘ideal worker’ who is a white, male, middle-class member of the organization. Contemporary studies drawing on transdisciplinary scholarship, as testified in this book, further understanding of the ways in which gendered identities and practices, as well as sexuality, are not only multiplicities but also fluid in that we are constantly seeing identity as a performance that is in the process of being done and undone.

The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind/body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis, each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization. All the writers presented employ writing as political practice whether it is through philosophy, craft or film, and these contributions motivate social change and social justice.

Exploring the work of writers such as sociologist Joan Acker, we come to understand how the history of management and organization research has been constructed, and subsequently misread, by masculine rationality that either overlooks or takes little account of gender, of difference or of the power relations that reside therein. Consequently, despite their landmark contributions, ‘classic’ works such as the Hawthorne studies are myopic and partial. Reading gender into management and organization theory provide more than just an interesting historical footnote or post-hoc corrective. Rather, rewriting organization and management studies to acknowledge its masculine basis warns against the regurgitation of past ‘knowledge’, lest we reinforce the exclusion, discrimination, violence and mistakes of our past. While this does not call for the erasure of that which has gone before, it does petition for more inclusive re-reading if we are to prevent further sedimentation of outmoded ideas and unwanted biases that continue to violate those who deviate from the norm. This includes rolling back gender-based othering.

Continuing the focus on gender, writers such as Joan Acker, Marguerite Yourcenar and Simone de Beauvoir draw our attention to the ways in which organizational scholarship and practice has positioned women as ‘other’ who – relegated to the shadows due to the domination of phallocentric discourses – are ignored, marginalized and negated. We come to understand how the divisions wrought by thought and related discourses are social constructions designed to maintain the status quo. Through the work of Julia Kristeva, Jack Haberstam and Eve Sedgwick, the status quo is deconstructed and the permanence, fixity and immutability of identity are cast as political, ethical and aesthetical lived possibilities always in processual becoming. Bodies and their difference are fluid, and it is in this fluidity that marginal identities are freed from the normative ideologies that control them. Thus, static world views and dominant ideologies are disrupted as our writers challenge apparent organizing truths that threaten to forcibly define and constrain to our lives. What is at stake here is not just a reconceptualization of selves but of what it means to live, to organize and to succeed on one’s own terms. Taken together, the chapters in this book draw on what are often difficult accounts of marginalization and oppression to construct images of more positive – more human – alternatives to relating to self and other. In this sense, issues of body, gender and fluidity emerge as personal, political and organizational.

We open this third book in the series with a writer who prefigured the very field of gender work and organization: Joan Acker. Described by Yvonne Benschop as the scholar who interweaved the worlds of activism, theory and policy, Joan Acker’s reach was and continues to be global in scope. Acker’s writing and praxis advanced our understanding of hierarchies, power relations, sexism, identity, roles, (un)paid labour, job evaluation, control, neutrality, differential treatment, bodies, classificatory systems and the intersection of sex, class and race. Much of this work drew attention to the ways in which gender relations were implicitly ignored or actively written out organizational practice and management research. Indeed, we come to understand that the Hawthorne Studies would have looked very different if its analysis had included an account of sex, processes of power and control. Yvonne Benschop reminds us that, in the period in which Joan was writing, Acker was among a handful of people opening up these issues as matters of legitimate research and concern. Acker was creating the spaces within which the gendered nature of organized relations could (and should) by examined critically. She challenged society and the academy to confront their regimes of inequality arguing for new theories that would explain how gender, class, race, the body and sexuality are part of the processes of control, differentiation and exploitation in work organizations that are then (re)produced over time and geographies. Revised and revisited, Joan Acker’s groundbreaking work has developed the very discourse through which misogyny, inequality and abuse can be resisted, whether in the academy, shop floor, boardroom or Hollywood casting couch.

Philip Hancock and Melissa Tyler present Simone de Beauvoir in all of her richness and complexity. Chapter 3 revolves around a key question, namely, how is it that in a collectivity in which we all depend upon each other for mutual recognition of our subjectivity, women are perpetually rendered abject and ‘Other’? This is tackled through an account of de Beauvoir’s life and writing, paying particular attention to her best-known non-fiction books: The Second Sex, The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Coming of Age. Through Simone de Beauvoir we come to understand that women are in a relationship that is negated rather than reciprocated, insofar as they are defined in relation to men but neither recognized by men or viewed as that against which men are constituted. As Philip Hancock and Melissa Tyler go on to discuss, de Beauvoir is at pains to demonstrate that this positioning of women is no natural phenomenon – it is not a consequence of birth, but is instead a social, political, cultural and intellectual construct that is to be challenged. As with other writers in this series, de Beauvoir is a transgressive presence insofar as she disrupts social and intellectual norms. Her focus on women, on sex, on relations of power, freedom, embodiment and on writing differently all disrupt the status quo as does the very act/presence of her theorizing. Simone de Beauvoir’s account of subjectivity is an embedded, contextually rich account that talks to that which restrains freedom (and recognition) but which is nonetheless based on processual notions of becoming that speak to change, and with it the possibility of reconstructing what it means to be a subject – to be a woman. In concluding, it is noted that the impact of Simone de Beauvoir’s work on organization studies is considerable (if often indirect), while its everyday relevance is expertly demonstrated through a case study of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the coercive control of women’s bodies and identities at work.

From de Beauvoir we move to Marianna Fotaki’s consideration of the much-celebrated work of Julia Kristeva. Described as a philosopher, semiotician, literary critic and psychoanalyst, Kristeva’s ideas on the body, abjection, language and the other have had a profound influence on feminist thought. As Marianna Fotaki notes, while this work has been under-utilized in organization and management studies, it has the potential to reshape how we think about ourselves. We learn that Julia Kristeva’s work is deeply processual insofar as it rejects static or essentialist notions of the self, seeing the subject (along with languages and (un)consciousness) as emergent, flowing and always becoming. We come to understand that inherent in this becoming it the process of abjection rooted in the maternal and framed through and by patriarchy that leads to a rejection of the body. The body is rejected because it is associated with the maternal, feminine, impure and subordinate. The idea of abjection is important in organization studies insofar as it has underpinned the theorization of discrimination directed at women in the workplace and across society more broadly. Fotaki goes on to provide examples of the ways in which women are placed in a double bind, whereby they do not wish to collude in the maintenance of dominant patriarchal systems but see little opportunity to do otherwise (where acts of resistance and critique serve to reinforce the marginalized positions of women). As the chapter draws to a close, consideration is given to Kristeva’s suggestion that we might be strangers to ourselves. This opens up the possibility that we might all be other (foreigners) in some sense. It is perhaps in recognition of our own otherness – as part of Marianna Fotaki’s call for self-reflexivity – that connecting with those people/bodies around and beyond us might be realized. Perhaps then we might reduce the harm we inflict on others.

In Chapter 5, Chris Steyaert invites us to journey into the work and thought of Marguerite Yourcenar. The chapter opens with an acknowledgement that Marguerite Yourcenar is, for many, a surprising focus for a series on organization studies. Yourcenar is evoked for her ability to help us think beyond the immediate, obvious and material. Marguerite Yourcenar’s particular gift is for encouraging us to think about that which is not said: leaving space for silence and openness. Chris Steyaert suggests that this space is important insofar as it allows us to reflect on that which organization and management studies ignores, marginalizes or rejects. We learn how Marguerite not only wrote about such concerns but also embodied them. As the first woman to be inducted into the French Academy in its 350-year history, Yourcenar worked to point up the failure to recognize the contribution of women, mocked egotistical self-promotion and deconstructed her own being to represent it as toil and process. Marguerite Yourcenar’s work is important because it challenges the presumption of a masculine and heteronormative world (that might be said to characterize much management writing) to champion multiplicity, fluidity, queer theory and anti-normative thinking. Marguerite Yourcenar’s work is shown to speak to that of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Chapter 6) and to foreshadow Foucault’s concern with discipline, ethics and the self, such that it invites a reconsideration of power, politics and ethics in everyday organizing. In short, Marguerite Yourcenar’s work requires us to think about the embodied, sensual, queer and challenging in the very widest sense.

Chapter 6 speaks to the life of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) – literary critic, poet, activist and social theorist, who stories her life through her academic activism, which also removes the boundary between our public and private lives. Her work evokes an embodied account of what it means to exist and make sense of our worlds, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s deconstructs the heteronormativity and performativity that underlie everyday life. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is lauded as a key writer in the development of queer theory. Yet despite this contribution, Sedgwick’s work has received limited attention in management and organization studies. Saara L. Taalas seeks to challenge this omission by considering the ways in which Eve’s writing, craft, storying and activism problematizes the relationship between text and the body. Her multi-layered texts destabilize taken for granted readings of what texts can do. Her embodied writing is political, and when we apply her linguistic writings to management and organization studies we are enriched, but this is not a simple process. Her writing, and Saara L. Taalas’s periperformative storying of her own material experiences, show what it is to write marginal, vulnerable and diverse lives that become catalysts for social change. This account queers the relationship between words, bodies and lives to disrupt the normalizing heteronormative arena of the modern business school. As the chapter unfolds, we appreciate the extent to which words come to perform acts that define relationships, particularly when witnessed by an institutional other. When the chapter comes to a close, Taalas alerts us to the ways in which Sedgwick’s concern with embodied understanding, relationality and affect suggest a form of knowledge construction that is fluid. This is important insofar as it goes beyond the static revelationary tendencies of much critical management scholarship to opening us up to the possibility of activism beyond the pages of a book. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s queer activism reminds us of not only looking forward to imagine new futures, but to learn from the past and the ways history writes itself on the skin. Eve and Saara bear witness to different realities.

In our final chapter, Nick Rumens introduces us to a cultural theorist who challenges the dominance of Western neo-liberal thought and the traditional boundaries that serve to define, limit and constrain us. In bringing J. Jack Halberstam to the attention of a wider organization studies audience, Nick Rumens presents a range of texts that outline possibilities for living gender and sexuality differently. We quickly learn that the reach of J. Jack Halberstam’s work is significant, spanning as it does film, literature, gender politics, queer theory, anarchy and anti-normativity. Self-identifying as gender ambiguous, J. Jack Halberstam invites us to embrace fluidity and unknowability while at the same time making space for naming selves in relation to others. The main body of the chapter draws our attention to three concepts: female masculinity, failure as queer negativity and gaga feminism. Here Halberstam’s work is described as disrupting taken for granted categories and associations – for example the conflation of men and masculinities – so that discourses that shape and bind us may in turn be challenged and reshaped to more positive effect. This includes considering how notions such as success, failure and collaboration might be reconstructed in the light of queer negativity, or how the play of the childish, avant-garde or anarchic embodied in gaga feminism can denote action that is simultaneously disruptive and co-operative. When the chapter draws to a close, attention turns to the research of organization studies scholars whose reading of Halberstam has led them to question what counts as ‘leadership’ or indeed ‘credible’ scholarship within a business school. The result is a chapter that offers considerable scope (and hope) to think again about what organizing and living might mean in radically diversifying world.

The themes considered in the above chapters are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, that their lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice in the ways in which we encounter organizations. This third book in the series therefore puts some of the most interesting and radical theorizing on organizing centre stage.

2 Joan Acker

Champion of feminist organization theory

Yvonne Benschop

American sociologist Joan Acker is amongst the most influential writers in and one of the founders of the field of gender, work and organization. In this collection of women writers in organization studies, she cannot be missed as her thinking about the place and meaning of gender, class and race inequalities in organizations is among the most cited in the field. Joan Elise Robinson Acker (1924–2016) was active as a feminist thinker and writer on issues of gender, class and social inequality in organizations long before there even was a field of gender, work and organization.

She started her academic career with a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College, obtained a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and received her PhD from the University of Oregon. Working as a sociologist at the University of Oregon from 1967 on, she was one of the founders and the CEO of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at that university in 1973 (Love, 2006), one of the first places dedicated to women studies within the academy. The late 1960s and 1970s were the high times of second-wave feminism, when the women’s movement successfully called attention to women’s liberation, violence against women, the body, reproductive rights and labour market inequalities. Joan Acker was a pioneer in bringing the topics from the women’s movement within the walls of the university. By translating activism into research, she built knowledge about women’s working lives and with that knowledge laid the groundwork for the development of academic strands of feminism. She used the feminist research findings to advocate policy changes within and outside the university, translating research back to activism again. One example is her participation in the Oregon State Task Force for Comparable Worth, in which she fought for raising the wages of women working low-wage jobs in the state system (Love, 2006). While m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series note
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Gender, embodiment and fluidity in organization and management
• 2 Joan Acker: Champion of feminist organization theory
• 3 When the shoe is on the Other foot: Simone de Beauvoir and organization theory
• 4 Julia Kristeva: Speaking of the body to understand the language of organizations
• 5 Marguerite Yourcenar: Anticipating the (queer) body (in organization studies)
• 6 Witnessing Eve: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• 7 J. Jack Halberstam
• Index