SCOS Update February
This month’s edition of the SCOS update contains four fabulous items, including:
1) Calls for contributions to Notework – a great way to share your ideas, comments and experiences with the SCOS community!
2) A fab workshop at the University of Bristol on Deleuze, Guattari and feminism: The relation between difference and identity
3) A brilliant symposium ‘Writing Organization: Disruption and Difference Through Experimental, Embodied and Non-Written Texts’ at the University of Bradford School of Management
4) A great CFP Call for Papers: ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns, International Conference – October 2014 – Karlshochschule International University, Karlsruhe, Germany
1) Calls for contributions to Notework – a great way to share your ideas, comments and experiences with the SCOS community!
2) A fab workshop at the University of Bristol on Deleuze, Guattari and feminism: The relation between difference and identity
3) A brilliant symposium ‘Writing Organization: Disruption and Difference Through Experimental, Embodied and Non-Written Texts’ at the University of Bradford School of Management
4) A great CFP Call for Papers: ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns, International Conference – October 2014 – Karlshochschule International University, Karlsruhe, Germany
Item 1:
SCOS 2014 in Utrecht
The 2014 SCOS Conference in Utrecht is fast approaching and we can’t wait to see you all there. Whether you will be able to join us or not, we'd like to invite contributions to the 2014 Notework issue (the 2013 issue is on our website for your reference). As you know, Notework is our informal SCOS publication where we share ideas, comments and experiences.
Inspired by some of the issues raised in the great presentations at the SCOS 2013 Conference, the theme for the next Notework issue will be 'Puzzles? Puzzled? Puzzling?'. We'd like to hear from you, whether this refers to organisational or academic puzzles, evokes puzzling issues and concerns, inspires artistic deconstruction, or simply prompts you to leave us puzzled.
Please send your contributions (no word limit, style or format restrictions) to iboncori@essex.ac.uk to contribute to our SCOS community.
Best,
Ilaria and Tom
Item 2:
ARCIO at the University of Bristol, Research centre for Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations
Deleuze, Guattari and feminism: The relation between difference and identity
A Workshop led by Dr Emma Jeanes, University of Exeter, April 9th 2014, 1.00-5.00pm
Hawthornes Brunel Room at the University of Bristol
Identity politics, broadly defined, is a fundamental concern for many feminist scholars. This can be seen in the tension between essentialism (whether biologically or socially constructed) and post-structuralist approaches. The risks associated with an essentialised subject or the potential loss of the subject in whose name we can speak remains at the heart of much philosophical debate and practical consideration. Identity (even if contingent and discursively produced) is often the starting point in feminist thinking, and questions of difference are often a matter of differences ‘between’ identities.
Deleuze questions what he sees as the common way of thinking, which he argues is betrayed by its focus on sameness and resemblance. This is the “image of thought” which he contends prevents us from thinking the true nature of difference. In short, the image of thought he challenges is that which is preoccupied with questions of identity. Deleuze argues that when thinking about difference we should not be thinking of difference between but difference–in-itself. Deleuze places difference prior to identity, and points to differences of nature rather than differences of degree. He builds on this work in partnership with Guattari, and difference-in-itself is fundamental to their conceptual development.
The work of Deleuze and Guattari has often received criticism from feminist scholars. In this workshop, we will re-examine the work of Deleuze and Guattari in relation to their understanding of philosophy and of difference, and in doing so we will discuss the implications of the relegation of identity for feminist politics. In order to do this, key readings will be selected from their work. Specifically “An Image of Thought” from Difference and Repetition (chapter 3) in which we explore Deleuze’s approach to philosophical thought (and difference), and “Bodies without Organs” (chapter 6) from A Thousand Plateaus in which we explore how this is manifest in one of Deleuze and Guattari’s well-known concepts, bringing together notions of difference and body.
The workshop will comprise an introduction to the ideas and the selected texts, and then the texts will be discussed in relation to feminist thought, and beyond. It is expected that participants read the two extracts prior to the meeting.
References (and reading):
G Deleuze and F Guattari (1987) “November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?”, chapter 6 in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans B Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (I will be using the 2004 Continuum edition).
G Deleuze (1994) “The image of thought”, chapter 3 in Difference and Repetition, trans P Patton, London: Continuum Publishing. (I will be using the 2004 Continuum edition).
Dr Emma Jeanes is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School and is affiliated to Lund University, Sweden. Emma’s research draws on sociology and philosophy. She co-edited the Wiley Handbook in Gender, Work and Organization (2011) with David Knights and Patricia Yancey Martin, and Men, Wage Work and Family (2012) with Paula McDonald. Emma has published work on Deleuze and creativity, and is currently writing on nomadology and organising.
To reserve a place, contact Mary Phillips, mary.phillips@bristol.ac.uk
The workshop is free of charge and refreshments will be provided.
Item 3:
‘Writing Organization: Disruption and Difference Through Experimental, Embodied and Non-Written Texts’
A Symposium organised by Marianna Fotaki, Nancy Harding, Mary Phillips, Alison Pullen and Carl Rhodes
Location: University of Bradford School of Management
Date: Tuesday April 29th 2014
This symposium arises from conversations between the authors of two recently published papers appearing in leading journals in management and organization studies which address the embodied and gendered practices of writing organization using French feminist philosophy. Phillips, Pullen and Rhodes (2013) analyse Cixous’ concept of bisexual writing as applied to narrative methodologies in organization studies, while Fotaki, Metcalfe and Harding (forthcoming) apply Irigaray’s perspectives on writing on the body to rethink gendered organizations. To develop the conversation further, and to build feminist thinking in organization studies, we invite participants to contribute to this one-day symposium. We will bring together scholars interested in engaging with writing organization/s differently so as to invite others to participate in this conversation and together develop new practices. We will explore how to incorporate embodied and feminine forms of writing that contest the implicit but still present assumption of masculinity in the research and writing of management and organizational studies, as argued in the papers by Fotaki, Metcalfe and Harding (forthcoming) and Phillips, Pullen and Rhodes (2013), and also, earlier, by Pullen and Rhodes (2008) and Höpfl (2000). The symposium will explore how scholars can productively and creatively engage with writing that problematizes the inter-relations between gendered, sexed, raced and classed bodies normally constrained by writing rules and genres. We will include considerations of textual experimentation, embodied writing, and modes of representation that are beyond the written text.
The seminar is sponsored jointly by the journal Organization, Bradford School of Management, ARCIO* and the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law, University of Bristol. Numbers will be limited to 30 participants so as to allow for discussion and exploration of ideas. Speakers include: Marianna Fotaki, Nancy Harding, Mary Phillips, Alison Pullen, Carl Rhodes, Ann Rippin. The seminar is free, but a night’s accommodation at Bradford School of Management is available at a charge of £45 (plus £18.00 for dinner, if required. Please book directly with Heaton Mount (http://www.bradford.ac.uk/management/heatonmount).
For more details contact: Nancy Harding at n.h.harding@bradford.ac.uk
To register, contact Liz Brealey (e.brealey@bradford.ac.uk)
References
Fotaki, M., Metcalfe, B.D., and Harding, N. (forthcoming) Writing materiality into management and organization studies through and with Luce Irigaray. Human Relations
Höpfl, H. (2000) The suffering mother and the miserable son: organizing women and organizing women's writing. Gender. Work & Organization, 7(2), 98-105.
Phillips, M., Pullen, A., & Rhodes, C. (2013) Writing organization as gendered practice: Interrupting the libidinal economy. Organization Studies. [online first).
Pullen, A. and Rhodes, C. (2008) Dirty writing. Culture and Organization, 14(3), 241-259.* ARCIO (Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations) is a research centre in the University of Bristol.
Item 4:
Call for Papers: ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns
International Conference from Thursday 16th to Friday 17th October, 2014
Karlshochschule International University, Karlsruhe, Germany
Call for Papers
Management thinking and management practice are largely influenced by traditional economic approaches that seek to conceptualize the economy positivistically and functionalistically according to rational-objectivist principles. For a longer time and in light of present crises, there has been no lack of calls for fundamental reformations of the economics and management theory, to conceive them anew as part of the social sciences and humanities. Although initial attempts for such reorientation and reconceptualization are evident, they are still in their infancy and in need for further advancement and realisation. With the establishment of fields such as critical management studies (cf. Spicer, Alvesson and Kärreman 2009) or the cultural economy (cf. Grossberg 2010) in academia, new ways of thinking and approaches have developed that supplement and often go against mainstream management theory and practice. What these approaches have in common is that they all are trying, in very different ways, to open up management for cultural studies, the social sciences and the humanities and to promote, in a broad sense, an independent "cultural turn" both for corporate and management theory as well as for management practice.
The conference on "ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns" begins with these orientations and pursues the goal of initiating a systematic dialog between current core concepts of the social sciences, humanities and management theory and practice. Here, in the spirit of Bachmann-Medick (2010), we believe that "cultural turns" are to be conceived as a plurality today. Following the general orientation of the humanities and social sciences towards culturally relevant issues, the plural "cultural turns" represent current moves, or new orientations that cut across and go beyond the cultural sciences. Topics and concepts such as performance, materiality, embodiment, space, mediality, narration, and sense-making as well as translation, interculturality and transculturality, have moved more and more into the forefront in the last few decades.
"ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns" pursues the main idea that management theory is not to be understood as a sub-discipline of economic sciences, but rather as an inter- and trans-disciplinary field with a decidedly cultural perspective. In fact, the topics and concepts listed above, along with related issues, questions and methods, play an increasingly important role. Their relevance, potential, and influence both in management theory as well as in practice are the central foci of this conference.
With this call, we want to invite researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and fields who share the outlined understanding. They are called to present their ideas, models, theories or empirical findings or insights of different practices with regard to the topic of "ReThinking Management". In particular, we are looking for contributions that:
– understand the cultural perspective and the cultural turns as a bridge between management theory and practice,
– outline possibilities and experiences or cases of re-doing practices of management,
– open up boundaries between different (sub-)disciplines with the goal of genuine inter- and trans-disciplinary practices,
– replace the monolithic, methodological orientations with a pluralism of methods and an integral methodology,
– pursue the goal of overcoming traditional ways of thinking with their classical subject/object and other dichotomies and develop an understanding of management practice that is radically contextual and reflected through a cultural post-representational and critical perspective,
– discuss the role of responsibilities, applied ethics and sustainability for a culturally reflected re-thought understanding and practice of management.
Accordingly, research and practice contributions that are explicitly provocative, speculative, critical, and artistic are just as welcome as more theoretical and empirical proposals. Using an open format, the emphases and final contents of this conference and its different streams will be emerging, depending on the topics and specific contributions submitted for this open call and an ongoing preparatory online discussion on our website. To participate in the conference, please submit an abstract of 300 to 500 words to: rtm2014@karlshochschule.de
Submission deadline: Tuesday 15th April, 2014
Please note:
CfP submissions will be reviewed “on-the-flow”. You will receive feedback on your proposal shortly after submission. As the number of slots for speakers is limited, we highly recommend sending in your response to the call as early as possible.
General Information
The conference will be held in Karlsruhe, Germany, Thursday 16th to Friday 17th October, 2014.
Conference Language
The conference language is English.
Conference Organizer
The conference will be organized by Karlshochschule International University.
Conference Co-Chairs
Prof. Dr. Wendelin Küpers, Prof. Dr. Stephan Sonnenburg & Prof. Dr. Martin Zierold
Head of Project
David Sixt
For further information, please visit the conference website or e-mail the conference team:
Web: www.rethinkingmanagement.org
Mail: rtm2014@karlshochschule.de
Literature
Bachmann-Medick, D. (2009). Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, 3rd new rev. Ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Grossberg, L. (2010). Cultural studies in the future tense. Durham and London: Duke UP.
Spicer, A., Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D. (2009). Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical management studies. Human Relations, 62 (4): 537-560
SCOS 2014 in Utrecht
The 2014 SCOS Conference in Utrecht is fast approaching and we can’t wait to see you all there. Whether you will be able to join us or not, we'd like to invite contributions to the 2014 Notework issue (the 2013 issue is on our website for your reference). As you know, Notework is our informal SCOS publication where we share ideas, comments and experiences.
Inspired by some of the issues raised in the great presentations at the SCOS 2013 Conference, the theme for the next Notework issue will be 'Puzzles? Puzzled? Puzzling?'. We'd like to hear from you, whether this refers to organisational or academic puzzles, evokes puzzling issues and concerns, inspires artistic deconstruction, or simply prompts you to leave us puzzled.
Please send your contributions (no word limit, style or format restrictions) to iboncori@essex.ac.uk to contribute to our SCOS community.
Best,
Ilaria and Tom
Item 2:
ARCIO at the University of Bristol, Research centre for Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations
Deleuze, Guattari and feminism: The relation between difference and identity
A Workshop led by Dr Emma Jeanes, University of Exeter, April 9th 2014, 1.00-5.00pm
Hawthornes Brunel Room at the University of Bristol
Identity politics, broadly defined, is a fundamental concern for many feminist scholars. This can be seen in the tension between essentialism (whether biologically or socially constructed) and post-structuralist approaches. The risks associated with an essentialised subject or the potential loss of the subject in whose name we can speak remains at the heart of much philosophical debate and practical consideration. Identity (even if contingent and discursively produced) is often the starting point in feminist thinking, and questions of difference are often a matter of differences ‘between’ identities.
Deleuze questions what he sees as the common way of thinking, which he argues is betrayed by its focus on sameness and resemblance. This is the “image of thought” which he contends prevents us from thinking the true nature of difference. In short, the image of thought he challenges is that which is preoccupied with questions of identity. Deleuze argues that when thinking about difference we should not be thinking of difference between but difference–in-itself. Deleuze places difference prior to identity, and points to differences of nature rather than differences of degree. He builds on this work in partnership with Guattari, and difference-in-itself is fundamental to their conceptual development.
The work of Deleuze and Guattari has often received criticism from feminist scholars. In this workshop, we will re-examine the work of Deleuze and Guattari in relation to their understanding of philosophy and of difference, and in doing so we will discuss the implications of the relegation of identity for feminist politics. In order to do this, key readings will be selected from their work. Specifically “An Image of Thought” from Difference and Repetition (chapter 3) in which we explore Deleuze’s approach to philosophical thought (and difference), and “Bodies without Organs” (chapter 6) from A Thousand Plateaus in which we explore how this is manifest in one of Deleuze and Guattari’s well-known concepts, bringing together notions of difference and body.
The workshop will comprise an introduction to the ideas and the selected texts, and then the texts will be discussed in relation to feminist thought, and beyond. It is expected that participants read the two extracts prior to the meeting.
References (and reading):
G Deleuze and F Guattari (1987) “November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?”, chapter 6 in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans B Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (I will be using the 2004 Continuum edition).
G Deleuze (1994) “The image of thought”, chapter 3 in Difference and Repetition, trans P Patton, London: Continuum Publishing. (I will be using the 2004 Continuum edition).
Dr Emma Jeanes is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School and is affiliated to Lund University, Sweden. Emma’s research draws on sociology and philosophy. She co-edited the Wiley Handbook in Gender, Work and Organization (2011) with David Knights and Patricia Yancey Martin, and Men, Wage Work and Family (2012) with Paula McDonald. Emma has published work on Deleuze and creativity, and is currently writing on nomadology and organising.
To reserve a place, contact Mary Phillips, mary.phillips@bristol.ac.uk
The workshop is free of charge and refreshments will be provided.
Item 3:
‘Writing Organization: Disruption and Difference Through Experimental, Embodied and Non-Written Texts’
A Symposium organised by Marianna Fotaki, Nancy Harding, Mary Phillips, Alison Pullen and Carl Rhodes
Location: University of Bradford School of Management
Date: Tuesday April 29th 2014
This symposium arises from conversations between the authors of two recently published papers appearing in leading journals in management and organization studies which address the embodied and gendered practices of writing organization using French feminist philosophy. Phillips, Pullen and Rhodes (2013) analyse Cixous’ concept of bisexual writing as applied to narrative methodologies in organization studies, while Fotaki, Metcalfe and Harding (forthcoming) apply Irigaray’s perspectives on writing on the body to rethink gendered organizations. To develop the conversation further, and to build feminist thinking in organization studies, we invite participants to contribute to this one-day symposium. We will bring together scholars interested in engaging with writing organization/s differently so as to invite others to participate in this conversation and together develop new practices. We will explore how to incorporate embodied and feminine forms of writing that contest the implicit but still present assumption of masculinity in the research and writing of management and organizational studies, as argued in the papers by Fotaki, Metcalfe and Harding (forthcoming) and Phillips, Pullen and Rhodes (2013), and also, earlier, by Pullen and Rhodes (2008) and Höpfl (2000). The symposium will explore how scholars can productively and creatively engage with writing that problematizes the inter-relations between gendered, sexed, raced and classed bodies normally constrained by writing rules and genres. We will include considerations of textual experimentation, embodied writing, and modes of representation that are beyond the written text.
The seminar is sponsored jointly by the journal Organization, Bradford School of Management, ARCIO* and the Faculty of Social Sciences & Law, University of Bristol. Numbers will be limited to 30 participants so as to allow for discussion and exploration of ideas. Speakers include: Marianna Fotaki, Nancy Harding, Mary Phillips, Alison Pullen, Carl Rhodes, Ann Rippin. The seminar is free, but a night’s accommodation at Bradford School of Management is available at a charge of £45 (plus £18.00 for dinner, if required. Please book directly with Heaton Mount (http://www.bradford.ac.uk/management/heatonmount).
For more details contact: Nancy Harding at n.h.harding@bradford.ac.uk
To register, contact Liz Brealey (e.brealey@bradford.ac.uk)
References
Fotaki, M., Metcalfe, B.D., and Harding, N. (forthcoming) Writing materiality into management and organization studies through and with Luce Irigaray. Human Relations
Höpfl, H. (2000) The suffering mother and the miserable son: organizing women and organizing women's writing. Gender. Work & Organization, 7(2), 98-105.
Phillips, M., Pullen, A., & Rhodes, C. (2013) Writing organization as gendered practice: Interrupting the libidinal economy. Organization Studies. [online first).
Pullen, A. and Rhodes, C. (2008) Dirty writing. Culture and Organization, 14(3), 241-259.* ARCIO (Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations) is a research centre in the University of Bristol.
Item 4:
Call for Papers: ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns
International Conference from Thursday 16th to Friday 17th October, 2014
Karlshochschule International University, Karlsruhe, Germany
Call for Papers
Management thinking and management practice are largely influenced by traditional economic approaches that seek to conceptualize the economy positivistically and functionalistically according to rational-objectivist principles. For a longer time and in light of present crises, there has been no lack of calls for fundamental reformations of the economics and management theory, to conceive them anew as part of the social sciences and humanities. Although initial attempts for such reorientation and reconceptualization are evident, they are still in their infancy and in need for further advancement and realisation. With the establishment of fields such as critical management studies (cf. Spicer, Alvesson and Kärreman 2009) or the cultural economy (cf. Grossberg 2010) in academia, new ways of thinking and approaches have developed that supplement and often go against mainstream management theory and practice. What these approaches have in common is that they all are trying, in very different ways, to open up management for cultural studies, the social sciences and the humanities and to promote, in a broad sense, an independent "cultural turn" both for corporate and management theory as well as for management practice.
The conference on "ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns" begins with these orientations and pursues the goal of initiating a systematic dialog between current core concepts of the social sciences, humanities and management theory and practice. Here, in the spirit of Bachmann-Medick (2010), we believe that "cultural turns" are to be conceived as a plurality today. Following the general orientation of the humanities and social sciences towards culturally relevant issues, the plural "cultural turns" represent current moves, or new orientations that cut across and go beyond the cultural sciences. Topics and concepts such as performance, materiality, embodiment, space, mediality, narration, and sense-making as well as translation, interculturality and transculturality, have moved more and more into the forefront in the last few decades.
"ReThinking Management 2014: The Impact of Cultural Turns" pursues the main idea that management theory is not to be understood as a sub-discipline of economic sciences, but rather as an inter- and trans-disciplinary field with a decidedly cultural perspective. In fact, the topics and concepts listed above, along with related issues, questions and methods, play an increasingly important role. Their relevance, potential, and influence both in management theory as well as in practice are the central foci of this conference.
With this call, we want to invite researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and fields who share the outlined understanding. They are called to present their ideas, models, theories or empirical findings or insights of different practices with regard to the topic of "ReThinking Management". In particular, we are looking for contributions that:
– understand the cultural perspective and the cultural turns as a bridge between management theory and practice,
– outline possibilities and experiences or cases of re-doing practices of management,
– open up boundaries between different (sub-)disciplines with the goal of genuine inter- and trans-disciplinary practices,
– replace the monolithic, methodological orientations with a pluralism of methods and an integral methodology,
– pursue the goal of overcoming traditional ways of thinking with their classical subject/object and other dichotomies and develop an understanding of management practice that is radically contextual and reflected through a cultural post-representational and critical perspective,
– discuss the role of responsibilities, applied ethics and sustainability for a culturally reflected re-thought understanding and practice of management.
Accordingly, research and practice contributions that are explicitly provocative, speculative, critical, and artistic are just as welcome as more theoretical and empirical proposals. Using an open format, the emphases and final contents of this conference and its different streams will be emerging, depending on the topics and specific contributions submitted for this open call and an ongoing preparatory online discussion on our website. To participate in the conference, please submit an abstract of 300 to 500 words to: rtm2014@karlshochschule.de
Submission deadline: Tuesday 15th April, 2014
Please note:
CfP submissions will be reviewed “on-the-flow”. You will receive feedback on your proposal shortly after submission. As the number of slots for speakers is limited, we highly recommend sending in your response to the call as early as possible.
General Information
The conference will be held in Karlsruhe, Germany, Thursday 16th to Friday 17th October, 2014.
Conference Language
The conference language is English.
Conference Organizer
The conference will be organized by Karlshochschule International University.
Conference Co-Chairs
Prof. Dr. Wendelin Küpers, Prof. Dr. Stephan Sonnenburg & Prof. Dr. Martin Zierold
Head of Project
David Sixt
For further information, please visit the conference website or e-mail the conference team:
Web: www.rethinkingmanagement.org
Mail: rtm2014@karlshochschule.de
Literature
Bachmann-Medick, D. (2009). Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, 3rd new rev. Ed. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Grossberg, L. (2010). Cultural studies in the future tense. Durham and London: Duke UP.
Spicer, A., Alvesson, M. and Kärreman, D. (2009). Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical management studies. Human Relations, 62 (4): 537-560