Gender, Work & Organization
12th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference, 24th-26thJune 2020
Transforming Contexts, Transforming Selves: Gender in New Times
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Call for Abstracts – Stream (1)
Troubling/Transforming Working Lives and Contexts:
Judith Butler, Gender, Work and Organization
Stream convenors:
Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney
Moya Lloyd, University of Essex
Kat Riach, Monash University/Glasgow University
Melissa Tyler, University of Essex
2020 will mark thirty years since the first publication of Judith Butler’s ground-breaking book, Gender Trouble. The three decades since have witnessed Butler become one of the most widely cited figures in contemporary feminist thinking. Her performative ontology of gender has led many to worship at the alter of ‘St Jude’ with a fanzine and now various social media groups devoted to her. In Buenos Aires in 2019, queues formed outside the hall where Butler was speaking over 7 hours before the scheduled start time, while in Brazil in 2017, she was burned in effigy by far-Right protestors who had interpreted her work as ‘anti-family’. Butler has been hailed as ‘a genius for insubordination’ (Fraser, 1995: 65) and has been celebrated as a public intellectual whose work reaches well beyond the confines of academia (Fischer, 2016; O’Hagan, 2019), yet she is also known for winning awards as a ‘bad writer’ (Butler, 1999), derided as a ‘professor of parody’ who is capable of little more than setting the feminist movement back through her ‘hip defeatism’ (Nussbaum, 1999: 37).
Responses to Butler’s work from within work and organization studies have tended to sit somewhere between these two extremes. A growing body of scholars, practitioners and activists have drawn on Butler’s ideas and developed her insights, often re-framing her thinking through an organizational lens where her writing, particularly her earlier work, has lacked this substantive focus. While much of this work has been concerned with management or leadership identity (Harding et al., 2017; Hodgson, 2005; Parker, 2002) and/or gender and sexuality (Pullen and Knights, 2007; Rumens, 2018), recent contributions have drawn on Butler’s writing to develop, for example, analyses of violence against workers, local communities and activists in rural India (Varman and Al-Amoudi, 2016), and accounts of those who speak up against wrongdoing in the global finance sector (Kenny, 2019). As Butler’s own thinking about organizational lives and contexts continues to transform, so too do the possibilities of her work speaking to work and organization studies, as well as the range of challenges and limitations of its application to organizational scholarship and practice.
With this in mind, the aim of this stream is both (i) to review, critically and reflexively, the impact that Butler’s ideas have had on the analysis of gender, work and organization, to evaluate the avenues it has opened up as well as the dead ends it may have led us down, and (ii) to consider where the field might go in future. The stream is as open to those who have been working with/on Butler’s ideas for some time and to those who have yet to engage with her writing, but whose curiosity has been piqued. All are warmly invited to be part of an open exchange of ideas and interests. Contributions from a wide range of geographical regions and disciplinary locations are particularly encouraged.
The stream has three inter-related objectives: (i) to consider the significance of Butler’s writing for work and organization studies, and its resonance with enduring as well as transforming interests of organizational scholars and activists, developing some of the theoretical and conceptual inroads that have been made in recent years, particularly in contributions to Gender, Work and Organization (see Pullen and Knights, 2007); (ii) to connect the critical evaluation of Butler’s work to contemporary organizational settings, relations and practices by considering the ways in which her writing has impacted on the field thus far, and to consider ways in which it might do so in future, and (iii) to draw from insights and experiences across a wide range of geographical and disciplinary ‘homes’ to consider ways in which Butler’s ideas might be mobilized, reinterpreted or challenged in transformative ways within organizational scholarship, activism and practice.
With these aims in mind, papers that are theoretically, conceptually, methodologically or empirically orientated are very welcome, as are single authored papers or collaborative contributions. We would encourage potential contributors to orientate papers with a particular focus on one of the following works and ideas in mind. However, papers that span two or more of the themes below, but seek to make clear connections across Butler’s works and concepts through an organizational lens, or which approach Butler’s thinking in a different way, are also very welcome. Proposals for thematic ‘round table’ type discussions are also invited.
- Making trouble: Gender, performativity and parody (Butler, 1988, 2000a [1990])
- Organizational mattering: Bodies, work and organization (Butler, 1993)
- Organizational hate, harm and injurious speech (Butler, 1995, 1997a, 1997b)
- Undoing gender, work and organization (Butler, 2004b)
- Accounting for oneself in/at work (Butler, 2005)
- Organizational/organized precarity and dispossession (Butler, 2004a, 2009; Butler and Athanasiou, 2013)
- (Re)assembling difference – organizing and/as assembly (Butler, 2015), and vulnerability in/as resistance, towards a non-violent ethics (Butler, 2016)
Stream organisers
Leanne Cutcher is a Professor of Management and Organisation Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research explores the relationship between organizational strategy and discourse and how it impacts on inclusion and innovation in organisations. Leanne is currently working on research projects exploring the relationship between age diverse workforces and innovation; role of reflexivity in social innovation; the impact of policy discourse on Indigenous business, and ethical recognition in feminist practice. Leanne’s collaborative research on applications to the Australian Stolen Wages Commissions, and on the gender politics of commemorative organizational spaces, draws on Butler’s writing on giving an account of oneself, and on the gendering of recognition.
Moya Lloyd is a Professor of Politics at the University of Essex. She has published mainly in the area of feminist and gender theory, and contemporary social and political thought. Her books include Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power and Politics (Sage 2005); Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics (Polity 2007); and the edited volumes The Politics of Radical Democracy (EUP 2009), with Adrian Little, and Butler and Ethics (EUP 2015).
Kathleen Riach is a Professor in Organization Studies at the University of Glasgow and a Professor in Management at Monash University. Her research focuses on ageing at work and the experience of growing up and older in and around the labour market. Kat’s current work draws on insights from Butler’s writing to explore some of the ways in which sexuality, the body and emotions intertwine with lived experiences of ageing in the workplace. Alongside colleagues from Monash and Melbourne University, Kat has recently launched MIPO (Menopause Information Pack for Organizations), a free, open access suite of resources to help manager’s introduce and embed best practice menopause support in the workplace: www.menopauseatwork.org
Melissa Tyler is a Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the University of Essex. Her research on gender, feminist theory and the body has been published in a range of edited collections, authored books and journal articles. Melissa’s current research draws on Butler’s writing on non-violent ethics and the politics of assembly to develop a critique of rhetorical commitments to inclusion. Her recent books include ‘Soho at Work: Pleasure and Place in Contemporary London’ (Cambridge University Press) and ‘Judith Butler and Organization Theory’ (Routledge).
Abstracts of approximately 500 words excluding references (ONE page, Word document NOT PDF, single spaced, no header, footers or track changes) are invited by Friday 1st November 2019 with decisions on acceptance to be emailed to first named authors by Monday 2ndDecember 2019. All abstracts will be peer reviewed.
Abstracts should be emailed to Melissa Tyler: mjtyler@essex.ac.uk Please include FULL contact details, including your name, department, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address.Please state the title of the stream for which you are submitting your abstract at the top of the abstract and in the subject header of your submission email: GWO 2020 Stream (1) - ‘Troubling/Transforming Working Lives and Contexts: Judith Butler, Gender, Work and Organization’.