Dear Scossers
What a time to be thinking of sunny Rome and future heady debates among colleagues about meat and symbolism when faced with the wet bare branches of spring (or autumn if you’re in the antipodes) and the equally dreich global news updates every day! That said, the cherry trees are just coming into blossom here and promise joy to come. For those looking for some more joy in their academic pursuits there are a number of lovely items in today’s newsletter. I am a little sad, however, that I have not heard from many of our colleagues outside of the UK for items this month. If SCOSsers have any events or activities they would like to promote, in all parts of the world, please get in touch with details!
Best
Laura ?
Item 1: CfP What’s new in Visual Ethnography @ 12th Annual International Ethnography Symposium Deadline: 31st March
Item 2: Critical discriminations, critical oppressions … Critical MANagement Studies? VIDA event, Sunday 2nd July 2017
Item 3: Democratic Renewal in Civil Society Organisations Seminar at Nottingham Trent University 29th March 2017
Item 4: One day workshop “The Radical Rural: ‘peripheral’ geographies of migrant activism Exeter 5th July
Item 5: One Day Workshop “Organizing for the common good: revisiting performativity” 2st April, London
Item 6: Riding the Waves’ Future directions for feminism in management and business schools, 30th March 2017, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
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Item 1: What’s new in Visual Ethnography @ 12th Annual International Ethnography Symposium Manchester 29th August-1st Sept 2017
Conference Website: http://www.confercare.manchester.ac.uk/events/ethnography/
Full stream details: http://www.confercare.manchester.ac.uk/events/ethnography/streams/stream7/#d.en.513744
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Item 2
Critical discriminations, critical oppressions … Critical MANagement Studies?
An event organized by VIDA, the Critical Management Studies Women’s Association
FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4DQ, UK
Sunday 2nd July 2017, 3–6 pm
“[U]niversities are particularly hard institutions to do diversity and equality work [in] because academics tend to think of themselves as “critical subjects,” and thus tend not to see themselves as part of a problem” (Ahmed, 2013).
This event is being organized at a time when we know that many CMS academics from all over the world will be in Liverpool, but it is not a CMS2017 conference event and you do not need to be a CMS2017 delegate to attend. It is inspired by our experiences as a group of CMS academics – VIDA – who identify as women, non-binary or gender non-conforming.
On our Facebook page[1] we have been discussing many of these experiences. One collection of issues that keeps recurring includes:
- how cismen[2]who consider themselves CMS researchers all too often treat colleagues who are not cismen;
- the kinds of academic labour that are valued within CMS – and, more significantly, those that are not;
- manels[3]at CMS conferences and workshops; and
- gender-exclusive curricula, reading lists and citation practices in critical management pedagogy and research.
These behaviours, practices and processes take many guises and happen in many places and spaces. They are enacted and reproduced by CMS academics (including ciswomen) whose writing – even activism – critiques precisely such behaviours, practices and processes. For us, Sara Ahmed’s term ‘critical sexism’ captures this collection of things perfectly. She defines it as follows: “the sexism reproduced by those who think of themselves as too critical to reproduce sexism. Critical sexism is not that different to uncritical sexism, then.” (Ahmed, 2015: 11). An alternative, used elsewhere, is the notion of ‘brocialism’, which refers to men who are “so in love with [their] own progressiveness or radicalness [they are] convinced [they] can do no wrong. This extends to being a sexist jerk”.
Importantly, Ahmed (2012: 212) has also written on critical racism, which she describes as the “racism produced by critical subjects who do not see the reproduction because of their self-assumed criticality”. Similar sorts of oppressive and discriminatory reproductions seem to us to be at work in CMS around ageism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and colonialism, at minimum. And these discriminations and oppressions of course also intersect with and exacerbate each other.
We want to use the event as a space in which we can discuss experiences of these critical discriminations and oppressions in CMS. The format will be confirmed as we draw nearer to the event itself, but the preliminary format is as follows:
- A short welcome and introduction to the event, including contributions from VIDAmembers about their own experiences of critical discriminations and oppressions in CMS.
- Break-out discussions in small groups for more consideration.
- No one will be asked to share the names of the people they are talking about (or indeed to share their experiences at all if they feel uncomfortable in doing so).
- In the last part of the event we will come back together to discuss how we can tackle critical discriminations and oppressions in CMS as a collective.
- We will offer everyone the opportunity to contribute an anonymized record of their experiences afterwards, but this is entirely voluntary. As Sara Ahmed suggests,
“To name something as sexist is already to begin building an archive: we are gathering different events, situations, incidents together through using this word. We are picking things up. What are we gathering? An archive of sexism might be an ‘archive of feelings’ to borrow Ann Cvetkovich’s expression, we are building an archive from how we are affected by something.” (2015: 10)
- The discussion element of the event will take a maximum of two hours, followed by a social. Refreshments will be provided.
The event is free to attend, but you will need to pre-register as we have an upper limit of 40 people and we need to book refreshments in advance. Please contact Jo Brewis (j.brewis@le.ac.uk) and Sarah Gilmore (S.Gilmore2@exeter.ac.uk) to register or with any queries. Attendance is limited to those who identify as women and non-binary or gender non-conforming. The venue is a short walk from the Adelphi Hotel where CMS2017 is being held, and is easily accessible on foot from both Liverpool Central and Liverpool Lime Street train stations.
“Because after all to name something as sexist is not only to name something that happens as part of a wider system (to refuse to give what happens the status of an exceptional event), but it is also to give an account of that something as being wrong and unjustifiable. To name something as sexist is not only to modify a relation by modifying our understanding of that relation; it is also to insist that further modification is required. When we say ‘that’s sexist,’ we are saying ‘no’ to that, as well as ‘no’ to the world that renders such speech or behaviour permissible …” (Ahmed, 2015: 9)
Sponsored by the University of Leicester School of Business
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[1] Send a join request to https://www.facebook.com/groups/1727793390777869/
[2] People who were assigned a male sex at birth and define their gender as male.
[3] Panels consisting only of men.
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Item 3
Democratic Renewal in Civil Society Organizations
ESRC Seminar Four – Nottingham Trent University
‘Democracy at Work: Organizing democratically’
Wednesday 29th March, 2017, 10:30-5, Newton Building, Nottingham Trent University.
The event is free – please book here
Civil society organisations are often considered a good thing in and of themselves, contributing to making a more healthy and democratic society. Yet whilst attention is often focused on their external role, how they contribute to changing society, less attention is placed on their internal ways of organising. Indeed many civil society organisations are shaped by increase forms of business-like practices as they have to become more professional and managerial which can often result in them replicated many of the hierarchical practices that can leave them, at times, indistinguishable from their for-profit counter-parts.
This seminar will explore the possibilities of internal processes and practices through which civil society organisations arrange themselves in order to become more democratic. In particular it will look at different models and processes, which draw inspiration from anarchism and the alter-globalization movement through to political theory to examine not only why civil society organizations should consider working more democratically but also how to go about it.
Our confirmed speakers are:
Janet Dalziell, International People and Culture Director at Greenpeace International
Greenpeace International are one of the most innovative Civil Society Organizations combining activism with its public campaigning role. Over the last few years they have been through a fascinating restructuring programme designed to give more autonomy to local national and regional offices to be more responsive to their particular circumstances. Janet is a key architect of a major re-design of Greenpeace’s global operating model, focusing on the development of human capacity within the organization and aimed at making Greenpeace more effective in achieving just and sustainable global change to protect the environment.
Professor Ruth Kinna, and Dr Thomas Swann Loughborough University, will be discussing anarchism as a constitutional principle
Dr Ruth Yeoman, Research Fellow at the Saïd Business School and Kellogg College, University of Oxford, is an expert on mutuality and meaningfulness of work. Her book Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy: a philosophy of work and a politics of meaningfulness, is published by Palgrave Macmillan
Dr Matt Wilson, Activist and anarchist and the author of Rules without rulers: The possibilities and limits of anarchism
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Item 4:
The Radical Rural: ‘peripheral’ geographies of migrant activism
A one-day workshop to explore rural migrant activism
Organisers: Emma Marshall, Amanda Schmid-Scott, Jen Bagelman and Nick Gill
University of Exeter
Summary
There is a tendency for academics working across areas of migration, global justice and refugee activism to conduct fieldwork in ‘centralised’ geographical zones such as major cities and towns. Within academic debate, there is an overwhelming focus on migration hubs: prime dispersal sites for asylum seekers and refugees, or large cities where activist networks are well developed and include significant numbers of people. Thinking of our own position as scholar-activists based in Exeter, we hope to bring together a collective of academics and activists who see their work as taking place on the ‘margins’ and yet such spaces have gained political significance as “welcoming centres” (Mountz 2012; Coombs 2006). In this one day workshop we will examine what it means to be politically active in peripheral zones, how academic research might add to our understanding of the significance of seemingly ‘provincial’ (Chakrabarty, 2000) sites of study, and what it might mean to ‘activise’ – to energise towards activism – through the power of the provincial.
We welcome contributions in the form of 15 minute presentations that aim to explore how and why rural spaces are significant as sites from where state practices of border control can be contested, or where the politics of migration can be reshaped and reframed against negative mainstream discourse and anti-immigration rhetoric. We invite contributions from academics, activists or members of social movements that can help to identify what it means to work in marginal or peripheral spaces, or sites that may be referred to with terms such as ‘rural’, ‘provincial’ or ‘isolated’. We invite community groups, services or individuals to present on what they do and the significance of their work in these spaces. We also welcome academic contributions that draw on postcolonial, decolonial or feminist thought to reimagine what we think of as political spaces. We welcome contributions that take various forms: written papers, art, poetry, performance or film.
We will consider applications which focus on themes of rurality and migration and/or rurality and activism, and will endeavour to keep an equal balance between community-activist and academic-activist contributions. Out of the workshop, one of our aims is to produce a handbook offering information and practical support which might enable local activism to flourish in different rural communities and contexts.
Possible themes for contributions:
- experiences of research with activist groups in peripheral zones (and the sites of study this might include e.g. rural spaces, immigration detention, remote/provincial/isolated places)
- activist movements in the South West of England or other peripheral zones, and their future(s)
- what it means to be politically active in peripheral zones/on the margins
- what research in peripheral zones can contribute to scholar-activism and activist philosophies
- how or why do peripheral zones of activism offer distinctive opportunities for broader social change
- what can academics do to recognise the significance of activist movements in rural/peripheral zones
- what might geographies of ‘radical rurality’ contribute to activist movements
- what does it mean to mobilise the clandestine of the rural?
Date: Wednesday 5th July 2017, 10:00 – 16:30
Location: Exeter (exact venue to be confirmed)
To register interest please email a short proposal for your contribution (approx. 200 words) to Amanda and Emma: radicalruralgeographies@gmail.com by 3rd April 2017.
Organisers:
Amanda Schmid-Scott (University of Exeter)
Emma Marshall (University of Exeter)
Professor Nick Gill (University of Exeter)
Dr. Jen Bagelman (University of Exeter)
With kind regards,
Amanda and Emma
Amanda Schmid-Scott | PhD Researcher Human Geography
Amory Building | University of Exeter | EX4 4RJ | Profile
Twitter: @amandargscott
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Item 5:
“Organizing for the common good: revisiting performativity”
We would like to invite you to submit a long abstract to our event at Cass Business School, City, University of London, on critical performativity.
Following the recent debate on Human relations and beyond, on April the 21st we are organizing a one-day workshop to foster the comprehension of the topic. The deadline for the event, called “Organizing for the common good: revisiting performativity”, is April the 1st.
The details of the event are available here: http://bit.ly/Cass21stApril
Following this link you can register at the event: https://cass.campusgroups.com/faculty/rsvp?club=faculty&id=300006365
Among the confirmed speakers, so far, there are Jean-Pascal Gond, Christopher Wickert and Hugh Willmott.
The event is free, and will cover the full afternoon.
I stay at your disposal for any further inquire.
—
Alessandro Niccolò TIRAPANI
MSc International management
MA International relations
PhD Candidate
Cass Business School
City, University of London
+447521092878
My work can be accessed on Academia.edu<https://city.academia.edu/AlessandroNTirapani>
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Item 6:
Riding the waves? Future directions for feminism in management and business schools
Jointly presented Anglia Ruskin University and Essex Business School’s Centre for Work, Organization and Society, with Prof Nancy Harding, University of Bradford
Anglia Ruskin University Rivermead Campus, PMI
CHELMSFORD, Essex, CM1 1SQ
Thursday 30 March 2017, 10.00am – 4.00pm
The aim of this event is to open up discussion about the future prospects and possibilities associated with feminism in management and business schools.
Building upon the success of the workshop held at Bradford University School of Management in September 2016*, which explored differences and continuities between generations of feminists or ‘waves’ of feminism, this workshop seeks to continue the discussion, underpinned by a commitment to think through what we can learn from each other, and how we can better support each other in the environments in which we work, think and act.
In an era in which feminist thinking seems, on the one hand, to be becoming more popular (through for instance, the publicity attached to the UN HeforShe movement, or the recent protest marches across the world), at the same time, world leaders are being elected on the back of sexist campaigns and speeches that demean women and their bodies, and discrimination against women in the workplace remains widespread.
– What are the prospects of feminism within these changing contexts and challenging circumstances?
– What are our priorities as we respond, collectively and individually, to the many challenges associated with being a feminist in a management or business environment?
– Finally, what are the risks attached to feminist thinking and activism being co-opted by instrumental, organizational agendas? And how might we work to raise awareness of, and respond to, the rhetorical gap that exists between what organizations espouse, and what we experience in our everyday working lives?
Through paper presentations, open discussions, and a theatre workshop, this one-day event will aim to provide a supportive, inspirational and vibrant forum in which participants with diverse interests and from a wide range of backgrounds can explore these pressing questions.
* While anyone who attended the seminar at Bradford will be very welcome, participation in the earlier event will not be assumed or expected.
This is a free workshop but participants need to register as numbers will be limited.
Please use Eventbrite to book a place: https://riding-the-waves.eventbrite.co.uk