A cacophony of voices: Postcolonialist sensemaking and Hurricane Katrina
Anthony R. Yue, Saint Mary’s University
Jean Helms Mills, Saint Mary’s University
This paper introduces the concept of “postcolonial sensemaking” as a theoretical base for a discussion regarding Hurricane Katrina. Postcolonial sensemaking is conceptualized as an extension of sensemaking when used as both an epistemology and an organizational analysis heuristic. Building upon illustrations of cultural milieu as being sites of ideological indoctrination (e.g. Said, 1978), we examine how univocal organizational sensemaking accounts are or become (neo)colonialistic. Through suggesting that most organizational sensemaking is effectively univocal, we indicate that our socially constructed and shared notions of plausibility and identity constrain us through the construction of retrospective notions of events which effectively silence many other voices. Furthermore, this silencing of voices evidences itself in actions that may not only espouse but also replicate the colonization process. This is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which are instrumental, in that through this (neo)colonization, both the colonizer and the colonized are altered, often with unanticipated and unwanted ramifications.
The examples of the actions and rhetoric both during and post-Hurricane Katrina (e.g. governmental alteration of wage legislation, failure to address further wetlands destruction despite the need for protection of these ecosystems as hurricane buffers) illustrate how the continuing colonizing attitudes towards both people and the environment are detrimental to even the instrumental outcomes sought through such actions. This adverse effect upon instrumental environmental outcomes is especially ironic, given the “hegemony of pragmatics in the discourse of environmental management” (Prasad & Elmes, 2005), illustrating a contradiction which specifically highlights the “plausibility over accuracy” aspect of sensemaking (Weick, 1995). The stories of the media, the environment, the government, and the residents of New Orleans are nuanced, intersecting, and far from rationally coherent as a single storyline. Every actor involved is potentially both hero and villain. The combination of postcolonialism and sensemaking offers an opportunity to highlight the power relations encompassed in the intersection of dominant colonial/ neocolonial discourses and the making of sense, as meanings become re-institutionalized, this in part answering the call to examine power relations within a sensemaking perspective (Weick et al, 2005;Helms Mills, 2003).
Postcolonial sensemaking encourages us to hear the multitude of voices and to recognize the psychic prison formed through our colonialist notions and actions, which they themselves are often rendered plausible only in retrospection…
References
Helms Mills, J. (2003). Making sense of organizational change. London: Routledge.
Prasad, P., & Elmes, M. (2005). In the name of the practical: Unearthing the hegemony of pragmatics in the discourse of environmental management. Journal of Management Studies, 42(4), 845-867.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Random House.
Weick, K., E., Sutcliffe, K., M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409.
Weick, K., E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.