Privileging the feminine: a quiet revolution
Author(s)
Bissett, Ngaire
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2008
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper addresses gender politics aspects of organisational identity struggles displacing essentialised conceptions with relationally-determined embodied representations. A variety of qualitative studies are drawn on to interrogate 'identity work' power relations. Challenging conventional binary representations; an embodied, middle-ground locus is delineated which reveals identity formations to be fluid and unstable. Theoretically framing these alternative conceptions, as hybrid shifting experiential points on a continuum, is seen to enable the 'mutualist' practical aspirations of the acclaimed 'Enterprise' organisational ...
View more >This paper addresses gender politics aspects of organisational identity struggles displacing essentialised conceptions with relationally-determined embodied representations. A variety of qualitative studies are drawn on to interrogate 'identity work' power relations. Challenging conventional binary representations; an embodied, middle-ground locus is delineated which reveals identity formations to be fluid and unstable. Theoretically framing these alternative conceptions, as hybrid shifting experiential points on a continuum, is seen to enable the 'mutualist' practical aspirations of the acclaimed 'Enterprise' organisational project to be made realisable. Methodologically the author moves beyond excessive theoreticism and abstracted empiricism by occupying a parallel middle-ground 'prac-academic' identity positioning. A feminist adaptation of the Foucaultian notion of 'practical criticism' serves as a tactical device from which to resist negative aspects of organisational identity politics. To this end, the transition to an Enterprise context, though riddled with countervailing implications, is shown to allow relational modes of being to be made visible.
View less >
View more >This paper addresses gender politics aspects of organisational identity struggles displacing essentialised conceptions with relationally-determined embodied representations. A variety of qualitative studies are drawn on to interrogate 'identity work' power relations. Challenging conventional binary representations; an embodied, middle-ground locus is delineated which reveals identity formations to be fluid and unstable. Theoretically framing these alternative conceptions, as hybrid shifting experiential points on a continuum, is seen to enable the 'mutualist' practical aspirations of the acclaimed 'Enterprise' organisational project to be made realisable. Methodologically the author moves beyond excessive theoreticism and abstracted empiricism by occupying a parallel middle-ground 'prac-academic' identity positioning. A feminist adaptation of the Foucaultian notion of 'practical criticism' serves as a tactical device from which to resist negative aspects of organisational identity politics. To this end, the transition to an Enterprise context, though riddled with countervailing implications, is shown to allow relational modes of being to be made visible.
View less >
Conference Title
Privileging the feminine: a quiet revolution
Publisher URI
Subject
Human Resources Management