The Bully-victim at work
Author(s)
McCarthy, Paul
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2000
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The purpose of this paper is to map the contours of knowledge and interest that make the conceptualisation of the bully-victim at work possible. While the rise of the syndrome bullying-atwork has been premised on the binarisation of the bully and victim, the bully-victim is identified as a new formation of meaning. The crossing-over of polarities of bully and victim in the bully-victim points to limits of meaning in the syndrome bullyingat- work. The polar opposition of bully and victim is traced to projective identity-formation, naming, blaming, and labelling. On the one side, the victim may be depicted as ...
View more >The purpose of this paper is to map the contours of knowledge and interest that make the conceptualisation of the bully-victim at work possible. While the rise of the syndrome bullying-atwork has been premised on the binarisation of the bully and victim, the bully-victim is identified as a new formation of meaning. The crossing-over of polarities of bully and victim in the bully-victim points to limits of meaning in the syndrome bullyingat- work. The polar opposition of bully and victim is traced to projective identity-formation, naming, blaming, and labelling. On the one side, the victim may be depicted as weaker, fallen, even blamed. And on the other, the bully may be the subject of witch-hunts and criminalisation. The emergence of the hybrid bully-victim signals the limits of these attributions, revealing them as unable to account for the complexities of bullying.
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View more >The purpose of this paper is to map the contours of knowledge and interest that make the conceptualisation of the bully-victim at work possible. While the rise of the syndrome bullying-atwork has been premised on the binarisation of the bully and victim, the bully-victim is identified as a new formation of meaning. The crossing-over of polarities of bully and victim in the bully-victim points to limits of meaning in the syndrome bullyingat- work. The polar opposition of bully and victim is traced to projective identity-formation, naming, blaming, and labelling. On the one side, the victim may be depicted as weaker, fallen, even blamed. And on the other, the bully may be the subject of witch-hunts and criminalisation. The emergence of the hybrid bully-victim signals the limits of these attributions, revealing them as unable to account for the complexities of bullying.
View less >
Conference Title
Transcending Boundaries: Integrating people, Processes and systems