Category Archives: News

SCOS Update July 2017

July 28, 2017 Laura Mitchell

credit for the fabulous image above to Bea Acevedo #beatrizacevedoart

Hello SCOSsers!
It was fabulous to see so many of you at the conference in Rome recently! I hope those who were not able to attend are nonetheless enjoying the shared discussions, photographs, artistic sketches and general ramblings on the Facebook group. While many of you may be taking some well-deserved vacation time at present, if you are looking for things to inspire you there are plenty of very scossy items proposed here! As we have now launched the new SCOS website at scos.org, this message has been uploaded as a web update, and we hope that in future we will be able to send all member messages out in this way, allowing new people to find out more about all of our SCOSSy activities even if they have not yet signed up to the members mailing list. Please bear with us as we iron out any teething troubles with the mail system through the website.

CfP Culture & Organisation SI ‘Carne’ Deadline 31st May 2018
CfP LAEMOS Sub-Theme 06 Organisational Resilience and the Resilience of Corruption Deadline 30th September 2017
Expressions of interest – SCOS board vacancies from 2018
CfP Joint SCOS/ACSCOS conference ‘Wabi-Sabi’ in August 2018, Tokyo
SCOS scribbles: web content

Item 1: CfP Culture & Organisation ‘Carne’

CARNE – Flesh and Organization

Call for papers for a special issue of culture and organization
volume 25, issue 4, 2019

“Flesh, we believe – more than bodies – is at stake in our posthuman times, in the sense that it is flesh that is subject to increased control either in the laboratory or the marketplace and is caught up in processes of modification that seek to master and profit from it.” (Diamanti et al., 2009, 4)

This call for papers takes off from the longstanding use of the notion of flesh in academic investigations of the more or less porous boundaries between the self, others and the world around us. Flesh, these works suggest, is ontologically slippery and definitionally elusive. For Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964), flesh reconnects the viewing and the visible, the touching and the touched, the body and the world. Perception itself is a fleshly – auditory, visual, gustatory, haptic, olfactory – activity. Moreover, as Antonio Strati (2007) points out in his discussion of the connections between practice-based learning and ‘sensible knowledge’ in organizations, when we perceive others, we always perceive them as fundamentally corporeal. Equally, the world acts upon our flesh, so that what or whom we touch, see, smell, taste and hear may touch, see, smell, taste and hear us. Elsewhere, Michel Foucault locates modern western scientia sexualis as having its origins in the earliest years of Christianity and its confessional regime which seeks to unearth “the important secrets of the flesh” (1977, 154) as the deepest truths of the human subject. In this reading, flesh is the natural body, always and irrevocably bound to sin and to death.

Cherríe Moraga (2015, 19), on the other hand, identifies a theory in the flesh as “one where the physical realities of our lives – our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings – all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity”. In a very different feminist analysis, Judith Butler (1990, 96, 33) defines gender as the “styles of the flesh” which “congeal over time”; whereas Vicki Kirby (1997) takes her and other feminist poststructuralists to task in Telling Flesh for their overstatement of the cultural inscription of the body, and argues that “once you are seriously displacing the nature/language opposition, you have to be arguing that nature, far from being written on, and insofar as it cannot be said to ‘lack language’, ‘must be articulate’ (page 90).
Elspeth Probyn (2001), on the other hand, provides a dazzling array of ways to understand skin both materially, metonymically and metaphorically – it protects and is vulnerable, it can be bruised and breached, it is porous, it expands and retracts, it devours and is devoured, it has colour, texture and sensation.

Organization studies scholars have, nonetheless, perhaps been somewhat neglectful of flesh in our various endeavours; whilst for the last three decades or so we have paid a great deal of attention to the body, we have largely overlooked flesh. Yet, as our opening epigraph implies, flesh can be connected to organization/s and organizing in manifold different ways. Possible contributions to this special issue could therefore include but are certainly not limited to:

The pleasures of the flesh: carnality, sensuality, excess and indulgence in, of and as provided by organizations (and their opposites).
‘Fleshworkers’ – cosmetic surgeons, masseuses, cosmetic surgeons, tattooists, make-up artists, slaughterhouse workers, morticians, laboratory scientists etc. – and the markets for their services.
The resurging significance of the provenance of meat and fish in western eating habits and its cultural, symbolic and economic implications.
Vegetarianism, veganism, ‘clean’ and raw food diets, the markets around and commodification of these practices.
Researching the flesh, bodily, sensory, fleshly, aesthetic or sensible knowing and/ or methods, the ethics of fleshly research. Organizing (and researching) in meatspace and virtual space, ‘in the flesh’ and online.
Bodily changes, wounding, scarring and dysmorphia in organizations.
Flesh-eaters and the undead: cannibals, vampires and zombies as organizational metaphors.
The organization of organ donation and the global black market in body parts.
The global meat industry and its manifold discontents: eg, the certification and marketing of halal meat, the UK horse meat scandal.
(Re)incarnation and incorporation in and of organizations.
Pro-ana, pro-mia and fat acceptance organizations.
Organizational metaphors of the flesh: eg, the ‘lean organization’, a ‘meaty question’, ‘fleshing out an argument’, a ‘meat market’, ‘dead meat’ etc.
The use of animal skin for clothing and furnishings and the complex global differences of necessity versus excess.
The ethics and politics of organizing as understood through Agamben’s zoë (bare life) and bios (qualified life) … and so on.

This list is intended to be indicative only. Innovative interpretations of the call are encouraged. With its long tradition of inter-disciplinary approaches, C&O invites papers that draw insights and approaches from across a range of social sciences and humanities. In addition to scholars working in management and organization studies we welcome contributions from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, politics, art history, communication, film, gender and cultural studies. We also welcome papers from any disciplinary, paradigmatic or methodological perspective as long as they directly address the theme of flesh and organization.
Editorial team, submission and informal enquiries

The editorial team for this special issue are: Ilaria Boncori (University of Essex), Jo Brewis (University of Leicester), Luigi Maria Sicca (University of Naples) and Charlie Smith (University of Leicester).

Please ensure that all submissions to the special issue are made via the ScholarOne Culture and Organization site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gsco. You will have to sign up for an account before you are able to submit a manuscript. Please ensure when you do submit that you select the relevant special issue (Volume 25, Issue 4) to direct your submission appropriately. If you experience any problems, please contact the editors of this issue.

Style and other instructions on manuscript preparation can be found at the journal’s website: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gsco20/current. Manuscript length should not exceed 8000 words, including appendices and supporting materials. Please also be aware that any images used in your submission must be your own, or where they are not, you must already have permission to reproduce them in an academic journal. You should make this explicit in the submitted manuscript.

Manuscripts must be submitted by 31st May 2018.

Prospective authors are invited to discuss manuscript ideas for the special issue with the guest editors before the deadline for submissions. They can be reached via e-mail at: scosxxxv@gmail.com.

References

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Power and Sex.” Telos 32: 152-161.
Hart, Lynda. 1998. Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism. Columbia University Press: New York.
Kirby, Vicki. 1997. Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal. New York: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Moraga, Cherríe. 2015. “Introduction. Entering the Lives of Others: Theory in the Flesh.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, fourth edition, 19. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Probyn, Elspeth. 2001. “Eating Skin.” In Thinking Through the Skin, edited by Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, 87-103. London: Routledge.
Strati, Antonio. 2007. “Sensible Knowledge and Practice-Based Learning.”Management Learning 38 (1): 61-77.

Item 2: CfP LAEMOS 2018 IAE Business School Buenos Aires.

Sub-theme 06: Organizational Resilience and the Resilience of Corruption deadline for abstracts: September 30th 2017
Convenors:

David Arellano-Gault Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico. david.arellano@cide.edu
Lynne Baxter University of York, UK. lynne.baxter@york.ac.uk
Eric Breit Work Research Institute, Norway. Eric.Breit@afi.hioa.no
Thomas Taro Lennerfors Uppsala University, Sweden. lennerfors@gmail.com

Call for papers

Corruption, i.e. the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, is undoubtedly a central problem to handle for organizations. Among others, corruption has the unpleasant characteristic of disrupting any pursuit of goods, such as poverty alleviation, equality, inclusion, human rights, and environmental conservation. Hence, there is a need for organizations to be resilient against corruption in order to protect and preserve democratic social, political and organization institutions.

However, because of inherent traits of corruption which together constitute the resilience of corruption, such organizational resilience is not easy. Corruption is often invisible, by being deliberately obscured and hidden by its participants. Corruption may also be psychologically externalized to some distant place or types of actors, a process which contributes to sustain images of purity and absence of corruption. Furthermore, corruption may be so open and taken for granted that authorities or other actors fail to take notice of it – for instance by being normalized, socialized and institutionalized as accepted behaviour. In fact, some forms of corruption may even beneficial to the functioning of organizations or to reach legitimate ends – consider for instance the dilemmas facing emergency aid organizations when needing to bribe officials to gain access to specific areas or to cross borders. Finally, corruption may also span across organizational boundaries. These issues make corruption extremely difficult to detect and to combat, and thus contribute to its resilience against efforts to fight it.

Organizational resilience against corruption may be understood in different ways. One way is through protecting organizations and its members against corrupt practices. Organizations, spanning from supra-national organizations to state governments to businesses, are therefore required to participate in the struggle against corruption. Often, anti-corruption takes on standardized forms, being a natural part of codes of conduct created by companies, industry organizations, and professional organizations. There is now even an ISO standard for anti-corruption (ISO37000). Another way of understanding resilience is through recovery in the aftermath of corrupt incidents or even mediatized scandals. For instance, responses to exposed scandals may turn into large scale cleansing programs; not only with the expulsion of unwanted elements, but with also an exponential growth of compliance staff.

Such efforts of organizational resilience are often difficult to perform in practice, and there are few guarantees that they will successfully handle the problem. One issue is that they are often (too) rigid; introduced rules may be inherently difficult to interpret, which leads to some uncertainty of individuals who need to relate to the rules. A result is that rules artificially separate a complex reality – a large “grey area” of corruption – into black and white areas. Another issue is that anti-corruption measures focus too extensively on fighting petty corruption, but fail to address grand corruption – perhaps the most elusive and resilient form of corruption. A third issue is the often symbolic nature of anti-corruption, which after initial attention and focus with time becomes vague and bland. A fourth issue is that anti-corruption responses may themselves increase bureaucracy; indeed, organizations may even become less resilient and flexible due to anti-corruption measures. For instance, in some organizations, employees have had to devise tricks and break rules to promote organizational goods.

Hence, in line with the general call for papers for this conference, the dominant interpretation of resilience involves rather rigid understandings of and responses to corruption. But are there more flexible ways to deal with the issue? Can one create vague anti-corruption rules and rather rely on the common sense of organizational members? Can judgment and autonomy become the base of anti-corruption rather than standards and rules?

In this subtheme, we aim to discuss the development and implications of organizational resilience to corruption, both theoretically and empirically. We also want to discuss how the apparent resilience of corruption as a phenomenon impact organizations and their practices. Corruption is in itself “in the interstices” and we encourage theoretical engagement drawing on knowledge from different fields. We also encourage a wide range of empirical and geographical loci for studying corruption, especially empirical studies from Latin America, to subvert the Western-centric dominance of academic discussions.

We would welcome papers which:

Explore the resilience of both of corruption and of anti-corruption practices in various empirical contexts and cultures
Describe and explain resilience both of corruption and of anti-corruption theoretically
Explore effective and less effective ways of creating organizational resilience against corruption
Organizations responses and their discontents: hypocrisy, window-dressing, lack of enforcement, contradictory standards, absurdity
Power relations in anti-corruption, the interplay within the organizational hierarchy as well as between core and periphery
Individual and group responses to organization wide forms of anti-corruption
Recovering after a corruption scandal: the Big Bang and beyond
Dealing with the uncertainty of potential corruption: the underlying threat in everyday organizational life
The grand and the petty – is anti-corruption not ambitious enough?
The semiology of corruption, both in countries/regions and organizations
Empirical studies which have attempted to create innovative ways to study corruption or anti-corruption outcomes
Case studies of successful anti-corruption organizations (i.e. CICIG in Guatemala) or successful organizational efforts to tackle the resilience of corruption
Submit your abstract on the website here: https://www.laemos2018.com/

Item 3: SCOS Board vacancies

At this year’s conference in Rome we reminded members that there are a number of vacancies that will become available on the board over the next year or two. While some great SCOSsers did let us know of their interest at the conference, this message is to make sure those who couldn’t make it to Rome can still nominate themselves! If any SCOSSers want to register interest in future vacancies on the board or request information about specific board positions, please contact the elections officer, Mary Phillips mary.phillips@bristol.ac.uk

Item 4: CfP Wabi-sabi (侘寂): Imperfection, incompleteness and
impermanence in Organisational Life

August 17-20 2018
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan.

Don’t imitate me
It’s as boring
As the two halves of a melon

Matsuo Basho

Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

Wabi-sabi is an approach to life based on accepting the transience and imperfection of the world. As a Japanese aesthetic derived from Buddhism, wabi-sabi embraces the wisdom that comes from perceiving beauty in impermanence and incompleteness. What might such advocacy of the harmony to found in the flawed, faulty, and weathered have to do with formal organisations, obsessed as they seemingly are with continually striving for perfection? The very ideal of perfection, as an antithesis of wabi-sabi, is embedded in managerial efforts as diverse as striving for continuous improvement, setting ‘stretch’ targets, managing the performance of ideal employees, promoting organizational cultures of excellence, and even the romanticized perfect bodies of employees. Is it then the case that the managerial aesthetic of organizations is the antinomy of wabi-sabi?

The idea for this conference is to explore how the wabi-sabi aesthetic can offer a counterpoint to the forms of idealization that dominate so much of managerial and organisational thinking. This is an exploration of how ideas from an ancient Eastern tradition might fruitfully be brought to bear on organisational issues, challenges and problems, especially as they are dominated by Western intellectual habits and foibles. Wabi-sabi as a theme explores the imperfect idea of a dividing crack between ‘the East’ and ‘the West’ that we hope conference participants will illuminate with the sort of effervescent creativity and fluid thinking that have characterised SCOS and ACSCOS conferences in the past.

We invite submissions that consider any of the possibilities through which principles of transience and imperfection are present in, or can be made relevant to, organisational life. Central to this is how organisations have long been exemplars of containment that wilfully defy any recognition of the importance of transience, flux, and fluidity. The edifice of knowledge and its insistence on the reduction of difference and undecideability can, however, have disastrous political and social effects. Undoing the desire of such rock solid certainty might just prove to be essential for developing ethical openness to others. Is it then possible that wabi-sabi’s emphasis on transience and imperfection offers a path appreciating ethical relations and challenging oppressive organizational regimes that violate humanity?

The 2018 SCOS/ACSCOS Conference is a joint conference. For the first time the annual SCOS conference will be combined with the ACSCOS conference which was last held in Sydney in 2015. There is also another first, that SCOS has never before been held in an Asian/Pacific country. Pursuing these new dimensions to SCOS will ensure that it is a memorable experience. As part of this the local hosts at Meiji University have arranged numerous activities that we can participate in which will help all delegates directly experience wabi-sabi during the conference.

Contributions may find inspiration from the following list of potential themes:

• The desire for perfection in organisations, careers, and lives
• Mindfulness, organising, managing, leadership, and followership
• Western philosophy’s engagement with Eastern philosophy though, for example, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Irigaray, as well as Eastern philosophy’s engagement with Western philosophy, for example Nishida, Watsuji, and Yuasa, and its implications for organisations
• The idealization of Japanese management practice in Western management theory, in for example kanban (lean just-in-time process), jidoka (stop everything!), babyoke (automated mistake proofing), poka yoke (mistake proofing)
• Imperfection as a new organizational ideal
• Undecidability and the ethics of not-knowing
• Living imperfect lives at work
• Imperfection as lack, critiques of patriarchal organisation
• Western preoccupations with completeness and totality
• An organisational aesthetics of im/perfection and transience
• Eastern and Western ideals of beauty and cultural perfection
• Symbols of imperfection, imperfect bodies, the monstrous
• The politics and ethics of failure
• Impermanence and organising
• Global transitions and transience
• Simplicity and/or quietness in organizations
• Enlightenment (satori)
• Desolation and solitude or liberation from the material world
• Inspiration for wabi-sabi expressed in the arts (music, flower arrangement, gardens, poetry, food ceremonies)

Convenors
The conference is hosted by Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan. The conference organizers are Masayasu Takahashi (Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan), Masato Yotsumoto (University of Nagasaki, Sasebo, Japan), Toshio Takagi (Showa Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan), Alison Pullen (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), Carl Rhodes (University of Technology Sydney, Australia), and Janet Sayers (Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand).

Abstracts
Abstracts of no more than 500 words, in pdf format, should be submitted as email attachments by December 1st 2017 to scos2018@gmail.com. You may also direct any queries to this address. If you need a refereed conference paper in order to satisfy funding requirements for your travel please make this clear on your submission.

There are a limited number of bursaries available to assist students to participate in the conference. Please indicate on your abstract proposal if you are a student and if you wish to apply for a bursary.

Open stream
SCOS/ACSCOS 2018 will also have an open stream, allowing for the presentation of general papers that do not fit this year’s conference theme but are of interest to the SCOS/ACSCOS communities. Please identify “open stream” on your abstract, as appropriate.

Workshops
We also welcome proposals for longer sessions run in a workshop format. Outlines of workshops should be the same length as a paper abstract and should give an indication of the resources needed, the number of participants, the time required, the approach to be taken and the session’s objectives. Please identify “workshop” on your abstract, as appropriate.

Item 5: Scribbling for SCOS

As part of the conference in Rome, Antonio Strati gave a fabulous keynote which included some detailed reflections on the emergence of SCOS and some of the early conferences. Some of the early publications he mentioned are now on the website in the ‘archives’, and we hope to encourage SCOSsers past and present to submit their own reflections for the website in future. Writing would not be restricted to any particular format and could include photographs or other media. If you have something you would like to submit or if you have an idea you would like to explore, please contact Scott Lawley on scott.lawley@ntu.ac.uk We would especially like to hear from new members or first-time attendees!

Newsletter

SCOS Update March 2017

March 10, 2017 Laura Mitchell

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 2^nd 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

[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 29^th 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

Newsletter

SCOS Update February 2017

January 24, 2017 Laura Mitchell

Dear Scossers,

based on a few items I missed out of the last update, and the tendency for most new items to have an end of January deadline, I thought I’d contact everyone with a bit of an intermediate update. January is so busy! If it was up to me there wouldn’t be any deadlines in January, but then everything would be due at the same time… in the holidays!

Item 1 – SCOS Rome Conference ‘Carne’ – Final call for abstracts!

Item 2 – CfP Politics and Ethnography in an Age of Uncertainty

Item 3 – Vernon Press is looking for reviewers

Item 4 – CfP CMS 2017 Stream 43: Critical Perspectives on International Development: New geographies of inequality and the reconfiguration of the ‘Global South’ and the ‘Global North’

Item 5 – Creative research methods for research and community engagement summer school for PhDs and ECRs

Best

Laura ?

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Item 1 SCOS 2017 in Rome ‘Carne’ – Final call for abstracts

With the usual apologies for cross-postings, please note our final call for abstracts due 30th January 2017. You can find the full Call for Papers here:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/conference/rome2017/call-for-papers

All conference enquiries can be addressed to scosxxxv@gmail.com

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Item 2 Politics and Ethnography in an Age of Uncertainty

The 12th Annual Ethnography Symposium

University of Manchester: 30th August – 1st September 2017

CfP: (What’s New in) Visual Ethnography

Convenors: Harriet Shortt Un. of West of England; Garance Maréchal Un. of Liverpool;

Samantha Warren Un. of Cardiff. Stephen Linstead Un. of York;

In anthropological film icon Jean Rouch’s centenary year, we might well ask “what else is there left to say about visual ethnography?” Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, his collaborator on Chronicle of a Summer (the origin of cinema verité), pioneered a form of film-making that intervened in the life it observed. But in the field of management and organization studies, despite a great deal of discussion of the visual, we have not yet seen a flood of published empirical work emerge – there are still only a handful of articles available. This is certainly the case with researcher/participant generated imagery such as photo-voice studies, for example. So our first invitation is to those researchers who are engaged in real, active projects – finished or unfinished – to talk about real, active projects and to share what’s happening empirically.

We also want to ask “What makes visual ethnography visual?” (as opposed to just ethnography with still or moving images). Is it a matter of sensibility? Is the visual just a variety of sensuous ethnography? Is the idea of only five senses culturally bounded? How do senses like sound and vision combine in different media? What is the relation of the expressive power of the image to embodiment and affect? Can we “think” or theorise visually (Sinnerbrink 2011)? As JWT Mitchell (2007) provocatively tells us “there are no visual media” because it is a myth that it is only the eye that sees. Film philosophy following Bergson (1911) and Deleuze (1986,1989) has argued that visual understanding is cinematic, and this promotes the generation of a new kind of ethical relation – what Rob Sinnerbrink (2015) calls cinempathy – in which simultaneously seeing and feeling has moral consequences. Images and image sequences may reaffirm and/or resist dominant narratives, expose ideologies, and trigger the senses, engaging the violence, intensities, textures and rhythms of sensation. We are not merely disengaged producers and witnesses of these images, but are drawn into them and act as a result of them. Images both reveal and conceal, they also have political significance – they rarely only act as sources of evidence enabling the creation of documents accessing the ‘truth’ of social and organisational life. They can, for instance, to render visible the ‘invisibility’ of below the line production workers and other concealed labour within contemporary capitalist organisations. Is management and organization up to speed? What’s next?

Is visual ethnography defined by its use of augmented visual technologies? Carey Jewitt, Bella Dicks and Theo Van Leeuwen have argued for multimodal theorising (https://mode.ioe.ac.uk/). What role does the visual play when we have GPS tracking, GoPro POV cameras (see Noah Baumbach’s 2014 feature film While We’re Young for a fascinating take on the ethics involved), the ability to film and photograph through pens and spectacles and phones? We’re interested in the use of new forms of visual technology and digital media as method but also as a way of relating to lives and communities and new visually literate cultures of what Gregory Ulmer (2004) called videocy – forming and communicating through media such as Snapchat and instagram (that will probably be outdated by the time you read this!). There’s already a Selfies Research Network http://www.selfieresearchers.com/. Do new forms of visually-enabled ethnography contribute to or contest the fetishisation of research practice? Are they more democratic and participatory? Do we know how to relate to others through technology rather than with (or even despite) technology?

Turning the lens back on ourselves – and our problematic role as authors or producers of images, much visual research implicitly or explicitly perpetuates a realist ontology but how does it relate to the textual and non-representational turn in anthropology since the 80s? Or John Mullarkey’s (2009) argument that film refracts rather than reflects reality? Have we properly digested sophisticated approaches like those of Roland Barthes (1981) and Victor Burgin to analyse the images we and others produce, and the contexts of their production and consumption? How can a richer visual language be developed in organizational ethnography that isn’t just reproductive of the real but is also critical in rendering ‘visible’ key aspects of organizational life? What does this mean for our outputs in terms of narrative – as a means of creative non-fiction? Is it a matter of cultural performance, as Norm Denzin (2003) or Dwight Conquergood (2013) would advocate? If so, in what sense is image always political? How does visual authorship differ from textual authorship?

We will have facilities to show short films, stage exhibitions or include participative workshops as well as more traditional paper presentations. We invite any type of imaginative contribution that will help us to push back or even dissolve the boundaries of the understanding and practice of visual ethnography in the contested terrain of management and organization.

Barthes, R.(1981) Camera Lucida New York: Hill and Wang

Bergson, H. ((1998 [1911]).Creative Evolution, tr.,Arthur Mitchell, New York NY: Dover

Burgin, V. (1982) Thinking Photography, Victor Burgin (ed.), [Burgin: Introduction, three essays, bibliography], London:Macmillan Press Ltd.

Conquergood, D. (2013) Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Deleuze, G. (1986), Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (trs.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. (1989), Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (trs.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Denzin, N. K. (2003) Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture London: Sage

Mitchell, J.W.T. (2007). There are no visual media, in Grau, O. (ed.), Media Art Histories. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 395–406.

Mullarkey, J. (2009) Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image, Palgrave Macmillan,

Rouch, Jean. (2003) Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld. University of Minnesota Press,

Sinnerbrink, R. (2011) New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images London: Continuum

Sinnerbrink, R. (2015) Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film ondon Routledge

Ulmer, G. (2004) Teletheory : Grammatology in the Age of Video New York: Atropos Press; 2nd ed.

Please submit a 500 word abstract or proposal by Tuesday 28th February 2017 to geoff.pearson@manchester.ac.uk. Decisions on acceptance will be made by 30th March

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Vernon Press Call for reviewers

Do you enjoy reading books in economics, social science, humanities? Join our community of book reviewers!

To join you must be an expert in one of the areas we publish ( https://vernonpress.com/ ) and be prepared to review at least one book every two years:

Benefits of joining

* Get to read and keep carefully pre-selected works, including cutting-edge research.
* Help fellow scholars develop their work into high-standard, high-impact contributions and be acknowledged for it.
* Get advance notice of exciting publication opportunities, occasional competitions and prize draws.
* First-time reviewers receive a small honorarium ($50) and deep discount on other titles.
* Experienced scholars may propose new series and receive additional benefits for their role as Editors (subject to publisher approval).
* Young scholars receive support from the publisher and fellow community members and gain valuable experience in the process of peer review.

To join please send a brief message expressing interest to: reviewers.community@vernonpress.com. In your message please mention your full name, academic affiliation, area(s) of expertise, and provide either a paragraph-long biographical note (and/)or a list of publications.

( More detailed information on this call at: https://vernonpress.com/proposal?id=2&uid=a172342947d9d2be39937e1e90524c49 )

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CfP CMS 2017 Stream 43:

Critical perspectives on International Development: New geographies of inequality?

Fabian Frenzel1, University of Leicester

Peter Case, James Cook University and the University of the West of England

Arun Kumar, University of York

Mitchell W Sedgwick, London School of Economics and Political Science

In this stream we seek to build on Critical Management Studies’ (CMS) engagement with and

criticisms of international development, which we now know well, has been predicated on a

geographical schism. The ‘South’ has long been used as a shorthand term to describe ‘underdeveloped countries’2 ; that is, a global geography where those in need of development

resided. The ‘North’, on the other hand, is used to designate the developed nations or liberal

capitalist democracies. It has had, we are led to believe, the knowledge, history, resources,

and readily available templates on which the ‘Global South’ is expected to model its

‘development’. The geographical schism is also evident in CMS’ criticism of managerialism of

international development. Cooke, for example, terms management a ‘First World’ discipline

that in its morphed avatar of development management now functions in the ‘Third World’

as part of its development3. Of crucial importance here are constellations of meanings and

practices that revolve around the structural and discursive divisions between the so-called

‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’.

These divisions are now under challenge in a wide variety of ways. Living under neoliberal

capitalism in the aftermath of austerity, the so-called developed countries are witnessing

continuous and rising poverty, including in the USA, UK and, most notably of late, in

southern European nations (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal). This is evidenced from rising

childhood poverty, ‘rough sleepers’ existing cheek and jowl with City bankers, the on-going

diminishing of public services, and growing calls for reducing global development aid. At the

same time, the global refugee crisis has brought large-scale camps and urban ‘slums’ to the

‘North’ (at Calais for example). As such, the United Nations has had to refocus its rescue and

relief operations to parts of Mediterranean Europe. Meanwhile, growing private wealth in

parts of India and China, for example, has done little for the redistribution of wealth. The

persistence of poverty in the ‘South’ has not distracted its nation-states from collaborating

for the New Development Bank, which requires us to re-think prior and long-standing global

developmental hierarchies. The rise of emerging economies and their growing prominence

in international development is hardly an endorsement of international development. But its

nation-states are increasingly challenging the legitimacy of Western-liberal capitalist

developmentalism, its universalizing discourse of human rights, and its INGOs operating

variously through the rhetoric of national sovereignty, security and interest.

In this Stream, we invite submissions that represent explicitly critical perspectives (historical

and contemporary) on global and incipient geographies of inequalities; and its implications

for, and challenges to, our conceptions of development and managerialism. We would

welcome contributions that deepen or widen CMS’s engagement with Development Studies,

more generally.

Indicative topics might include:

– Deconstructing the South/North divide

– Poverty eradication and its discourses; and their differences in the North/South

– Emerging forms of inequalities in the North/South

– Development and sustainability: conceptions, conflicts and convergence

– International Development Policy and Global Governance

– Relevance of Global Governance Institutions (G8, G20, UN, IMF, World Bank)

– Emergent International Development Institutions and their roles

– Geographies of ‘Corruption’

– Critical analyses of international development discourse(s)

– International development and critical project management studies

– Subaltern studies and postcolonial criticisms of international development

– Global, regional, and national inequalities.

The convenors would also welcome creative interpretations which challenge the boundaries

set by this call for papers.

Abstracts of up to 500 words can be sent to ff48@le.ac.uk. Deadline for submission of

abstracts for inclusion in the stream is 31st January 2017. Decisions will be communicated by

the Stream Convenors by February 15, 2017.

Please feel free to circulate this call far and wide. We look forward to seeing you in

Liverpool!

https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/business/files/2016/11/43-CMS-2017-Stream-Proposal-Global-South-reconfigured-1.pdf

Notes

1 Lead Convenor, email: ff48@leicester.ac.uk

2 The convenors reject the implicit ideologies and agendas connoted by the terms ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ as they reproduce a ‘civilized/uncivilized’, ‘advanced/backward’, ‘modern/non-modern’ dualities which this stream is eager to challenge. Nonetheless, these concepts do form part of common parlance and it is important to acknowledge how, at a minimum, they align with the economics-language driven, neo-liberal discourse that drives international development in the contemporary world.

3 Cooke, B (2014) ‘Managing the (Third) World’, Organization 11(5): 603-629.

4 Formerly known as the BRICS Development Bank, where BRICS is an acronym standing for an association of so called ‘emerging economies’: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

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Item 5 Creative Methods for Research and Community Engagement Summer School

Creative Methods for Research and Community Engagement Summer School

6-8 July 2017, Keele University

PhD students and Early Career Researchers are welcome at this event organised by the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre (CASIC) at Keele University.

The Summer School will be held in central England at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme (6-7 July) and Keele University campus (8 July), where you will experience the KAVE (https://www.keele.ac.uk/pharmacy/digital/kave/) and our Makerspace facilities (https://www.keele.ac.uk/make/).

The facilitator will be Dr Helen Kara, author of Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Speakers will include:

Professor Mihaela Kelemen – CASIC Director
Dr Lindsay Hamilton – Keele Management School, Keele University
Véronique Jochum – Research Manager, National Council for Voluntary Organisations
Dr Emma Surman – Keele Management School, Keele University
Dr Ceri Morgan – School of Humanities, Keele University
Professor Rajmil Fischman – School of Music, Keele University
Sue Moffat – Director of New Vic Borderlines, New Vic Theatre

The Summer School will enlighten, inspire and guide ECRs and students at all stages of scholarly or professional doctorates. Each day will be packed with interactive hands-on sessions addressing six broad topics:

Arts-based research
Transformative research frameworks
Mixed-methods research
Knowledge co-production
Research using technology
Writing creatively for research

We are offering an “early bird” price of £230 for bookings received and paid by 21 April. After that date the price will be £270. The cost includes refreshments and lunches and a complimentary copy of Dr Kara’s book on creative research methods.

There will be a dinner and performance of ‘Around the world in 80 Days’ at the New Vic Theatre on July 6^th, at an extra cost of £20.

For more information go to https://www.keele.ac.uk/casic/summerschool2017/

Please follow #CRMSS17 on Twitter for pre-event updates.

SCOS for ‘Serious fun’