Men Do It Too
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Men Do It Too

Opting Out and In

Ingrid Biese

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eBook - ePub

Men Do It Too

Opting Out and In

Ingrid Biese

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About This Book

Men Do It Too: Opting Out and In offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of men leaving mainstream careers models, adding to current debates on opting out. The book investigates how globalization, individualization, and this age of high modernity, in addition to issues of masculinity and what it means to be a man in contemporary society and organizational contexts, affect decisions to opt out. Throughout the book, social theory and relevant debates are interwoven with the narratives of 15 men who have left successful careers and mainstream career models to live and work on their own terms: six from the United States, five from Finland, and four from the UK. The narratives help illustrate the issues presented, as well as providing an insight into the men's identity work throughout their opting out processes. In addition, Biese explores what organizations can learn from the knowledge gathered in her research on men (and women) opting out. This is important in order to create sustainable work environments that not only attract but also retain employees.

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Publisher
De Gruyter
Year
2021
ISBN
9783110725902

Chapter 1 Opting out in a globalized world

One of the things I have enjoyed most about studying opting out, is how engaged people have been in my topic. Most of the people I talk to about my research seem to have some sort of a relationship to the topic. Some know people who have opted out or perhaps they have opted out themselves. Most of the time it is something they dream of doing and tell me that they wished they could do it too. When I finished my PhD on women opting out, my research received quite a lot of media attention in my home country, Finland, and as a result, I found myself talking about opting out in the most unusual situations: at the doctor’s office, at the bank, in my kids’ school… I can tell you, it feels a bit unreal when you have a doctor’s appointment and your doctor starts talking about opting out. It makes you hope that you at least get your treatment first before they make any rash career decisions! I do enjoy every second, however. I love it when people want to share their opting out and in stories with me, and many have. It never gets old.
Why is it that so many people seem to like to talk and dream about opting out? One reason may be that pursuing one’s dreams and making drastic lifestyle changes has been romanticized in the media (see Biese, 2017). We see countless stories in the media of people who leave their jobs to do things like sail around the world, open a spa in Thailand or a hotel in Provence, or move to the countryside to live on a farm. These stories contain images of happy people living seemingly simpler lives. It invariably plays in, but there must also be something more to this longing for something else.
During the past decades, a phenomenon known as voluntary simplicity has steadily become increasingly popular (Etzioni, 2004). Voluntary simplicity describes how individuals choose to buy less consumer goods and instead cultivate other sources of satisfaction that are non-materialistic. Research has witnessed a growing search and desire for the authentic, and it has been argued that it is a result of globalization; because globalization is so prevalent and powerful, there is an equally forceful reaction against it (Liedtka, 2008; Boyle, 2003). According to Boyle (2003: 4), individuals today are just sick of living in an artificial world and many consumers therefore reject “the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced.”
The growing awareness of environmental issues and climate change also adds to the growing demand for natural, simple, and sustainable products. However, the search for the authentic has even deeper roots. If you walk into the self-help section of your local bookstore, you will see that there are countless books on how to live authentically, pursue your dream, finding the real you or plan B, down-sizing, down-shifting, or just simply being the best version of yourself. We live in a time of therapy culture where contemporary individuals act upon themselves through self-therapy and self-help (Rose, 1996). Through self-therapy, the self becomes “a site for endless improvement” (Elliott, 2013: 31) and self-help provides a promise that anyone can be anything they want to be (Foley, 2010). According to Elliott and Lemert (2006) reflexivity is essential in order to deal with the ambivalence and ambiguity of living in contemporary society. Individuals thus have no choice by to dig deeper into themselves and look for an authentic self that remains unaffected by the world around them.
Contemporary society fundamentally affects us as individuals, how we make sense of the world around us, and the decisions we make as we navigate our lives. In this chapter, I will explore what it is about living in contemporary society that seems to make so many people dream of opting out. I will also explore the specific reasons individuals may have for leaving, what they go through, and the effect this has on them and their lives. I consider how my findings from my research on men opting out compare to the results from my research on women opting out. I pinpoint similarities and differences, and consider how their opting out and in processes are affected by the society in which they live. In this chapter, I introduce the narratives of Kasper, Tom, and Kimi. Kasper and Kimi are from Finland and Tom is from the UK. I chose these three narratives for this chapter as they are particularly illustrative of the pattern and process that I have discerned in my research on opting out.

Contemporary society and (in)coherent narratives of the self

There is something about contemporary society that is different from anything we have ever experienced before. Although some will argue the opposite, that nothing of what we are seeing is, in fact, any different from previous time, what is new is the sheer intensity and speed by which we are experiencing globalization (see Lemert et al., 2010; Giddens, 1999; Held et al., 1999). Contemporary society is a globalized society that is driven by technology and the information age (Held and McGrew, 2007; Castells, 2006; Elliott and Lemert, 2006). The flow of information is instantaneous and knows no boundaries and there is a velocity and intensity to how people communicate with each other and how business is done (Curran, 2002). Due to an enabling and speeding up of communications and capital flows, organizations can function on a global scale. Interconnectedness and global networks drive globalization and transcend boundaries. They stretch across the globe and they are flexible, adaptive, and powerful, which is not only an advantage in the fast-changing and competitive contemporary climate, but probably also one of the causes of it (Held et al., 1999; Castells, 2006).
Globalization and the network economy extend to all corners of the globe and affect all of us even if it does not include all of us, nor does it affect all of us in the same way (Stiglitz, 2008; Giddens, 1994; Bauman, 2001). Technology is a driver of globalization on an organizational and societal level, but it has also had a great impact on an individual level, and has an effect on how we relate to ourselves and each other (Elliott and Lemert, 2009). Artificial intelligence (AI) has become part of our every-day lives and transforms our personal lives and our lifestyles, as well as our workplaces, our social systems, and our institutions (Elliott, 2019). AI changes the way we communicate and interact with each other and with machines, and the boundaries between humans and machines have to a certain degree been dissolved (Elliott, 2019). Although all this presents great possibilities and opportunities for how we go about our lives, for modern medicine, for businesses and innovation, just to a name a few, the long-term and possibly detrimental effect on our sensibilities, identities, and emotional well-being is still unknown (Elliott, 2021; see also Possati, 2020).
Mass media has a definitive influence on how we perceive the world. We can partake in events that happen as they happen all around the globe, which makes the world seem smaller, but also impacts our sense of risk. Two decades ago, Curran (2002) talked about how a new power center has emerged; that by controlling what information is spread and what is restricted, media can undermine the control of social knowledge. Bad news, spectacular events, crises, and conflicts sell better and therefore get broadcasted and spread to all the corners of the Earth. The result is a distorted world image and an overestimation of the risk of sudden and violent catastrophes as well as an underestimation of chronic risks, like environmental and health hazards (Greenberg et al., 1989; Robinson, 2007; Hamilton, 2003). Although this was something that concerned social theorists at the turn of the millennium, it is more pertinent than ever today with the ubiquity of social media. Anyone can broadcast news and spread information, anyone can be an influencer, and it has become difficult for people to navigate the internet and to know what information is reliable and real and what is not. Algorithms have a polarizing effect and since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, so-called fake news has been on everyone’s lips everywhere. Spread of unfounded ‘truths’ and false facts enables marginal groupings to gain global traction. Anyone can be a self-acclaimed expert and it becomes difficult to know what and what not to believe (Hämäläinen, 2019).
The heightened sense of risk is not only a question of perceived risk. While creating opportunities, the development and spread of technology is also responsible for actual risk in the form of environmental problems, or the more recent lowering of flock immunity due to more people choosing not to vaccinate. The rise of so-called anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists who question the reliability of the establishment are, at least in part, a result of living in a what Beck calls a risk society (see Werne, 2019; Beck, 1994). In fact, according to Beck, one of the main consequences of living in a risk society is the skepticism that arises in order to deal with the insecurities and hazards introduced and caused by modernity. Individuals may perceive a loss of sovereignty and power to decide which risks they subject themselves to. This, in turn, results in a loss of trust in authorities, scientists, and experts. As our knowledge evolves through scientific development, truth becomes something that is only to the best of our knowledge today, which potentially causes confusion and uncertainty. Risks are thus open to social construction, as they are no longer straight forward or set in stone (Beck, 1994).
However, media not only spreads information and news, fake and otherwise, it also shapes what we learn and how we learn it, what is considered important and what we talk about. Media affects the attitudes we adopt and what cultural beliefs, norms, and values we internalize (Ott and Mack, 2010). With digital technologies and smart phones, the internet and social media have become a constant in our lives. Not only are we consumers of media, we are co-creators – we participate in it and are a part of it (Ott and Mack, 2010). This means that while media conditions us and affects the ways in which we think and the lifestyles, values, practices, and beliefs we find natural and desirable, the effect is especially strong since we as co-creators are involved in spreading and embedding them in our consciousness. What this may mean for a phenomenon like opting out, is that since opting out and adopting alternative lifestyles has received so much positive attention in the media, we may invariably be affected by this and see opting out as something meaningful and desirable. The threshold to actually take the step and leave a career may be lower if opting out has been romanticized in the media. In other words, the media depiction of opting out and related issues must be considered when looking at what it is that drives people to take that step.
Social media has a great impact on our decisions and how we make sense of the world, as well as on identity, coherence, and well-being. Sherry Turkle (2011) has been a central figure in the debate of the adverse effects of social media. Having gone from being something of a fan of social media platforms just a few years earlier, Turkle started perceiving the adverse effect of social networks and virtual platforms on relationships and intimacy. In her earlier book Life On The Screen, Turkle (1996) writes about the internet, virtual worlds, and chat rooms in a positive light. She saw them as a creative way to experiment with and develop personal identity. When the virtual platform Second Life gained popularity in the early years of the new millennium, it was depicted in the media as an opportunity for, for example, individuals with physical disabilities to be more than they were as it enabled them to move around freely and live a life they could not live in real life (Boellstorff, 2008). It was ground breaking and made it possible for individuals to be whoever they wanted to be, regardless of class (Twenge, 2018). The internet and virtual worlds do provide new opportunities. The same is true for social media. It has the potential of connecting people just as promised and the possibility of raising awareness around important issues like climate change. For example, Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future initiative would not likely have gained the wide traction it did in such a short time had it not been for social media, nor would #MeToo, which became one of the most high-profile digital feminist activist movements (see Mendes, Ringrose and Killer, 2018). However, as the internet has developed and become accessible to anyone any time thanks to smartphones, there has also been a downside. Social media platforms, while designed to connect people, have been argued to actually make us lonelier. They have an effect on intimacy – suddenly we are not meeting people face-to-face anymore – and they also have a deep and defining effect on our emotional well-being and sense of self (Turkle, 2011).
On social media, we can create and project personas we want others to see. Pictures and updates typically get edited until they are just right. They are kept short and the messiness and contradictions that are part of what it is to be human are taken out. However, by keeping it short, sleek and edited, we get flattened and reduced to our profiles on social media. What may feel like identity is actually just performances of identity (Turkle, 2011). We give less of ourselves and, in turn, also expect less of others. When we communicate in brief sentences, abbreviations, and emoticons, we limit the possibility of real and complex dialogue, which is problematic because it is actually through dialogue that we learn about ourselves and form our identities. By not engaging in real dialogue with others, we restrict our capacity for self-reflection (Turkle, 2011), which, ironically, is argued to be crucial in order to navigate this fast-changing, post-traditional society in which we live (Elliott, 2021).
It is also ironic that while we use technology as a way to be in relationships with others, we also use it to protect ourselves from these very same relationships (Turkle, 2011). Technology blurs the boundaries between different areas of life and, as a result, time is simply in short supply. While technology is used to free up more time, it actually ties people up and creates a feeling of time accelerating. Turkle (2011) argues that when that is the case, relationships may feel like they just take up too much time, and social media allows us to take care of our relationships more effectively. We seek to simplify and diminish the complexity of communication and thus tend to prefer texting over talking. This gives us just the right amount of access to people, keeping them not too far, but not too close either, and we can nurture our relationships without the demands of intimacy (Turkle, 2011). However, Turkle goes on to explain that this form of connection can also lead to loneliness. We have many connections on social media platforms, nevertheless, despite being constantly connected, we are fearful of being disconnected and are thus denie...

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