and the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Toronto, Canada, 2000. We are thankful for comments received at these meetings and especially for the conversations with Julian Orr and Jean Lave during 2000. We would also like to thank the three referees for their instructive and supportive comments.

Should business school scholars engage in intellectual activism? This article explicates the origin, the intellectual tradition and politics of intellectual activism, making a case for why management scholars might want to become intellectual activists. Intellectual activism has been elaborated in Patricia Hill Collins’ contributions and the work of other black feminist intellectuals and activists such as Angela Davis. Together with the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Judith Butler, intellectual activism is reframed here as a particular type of critical performativity to help scholars make a difference in the world. This article invites scholars to answer the challenges posed by the crisis of neoliberalism, and to re-articulate the values of equality, freedom and solidarity by embodying an academic praxis that is progressive, intersectional, critical and concretely engaged in the service of social, economic and epistemic justice. The article also provides examples of intellectual activism by showcasing the activities of the critical management association, Vida.

This article is a critique of the broad ensemble which we identify as `learning discourse' and its pervasive ideological content which determines learning as a `good thing for all'. We consider how the signifier `learning' works as a nodal point which constitutes (legitimizes and sustains), yet glosses over, antagonistic and contradictory organizational and social practices. With our critique we endeavour to go beyond a simple rebuke or rebuttal. We, rather, point out the problematic nature of the truths engendered in `making the social' and constituting the promise of a learning society whose ambit encompasses learning in general, the learning organization and the political economy of the `knowledge economy'. By doing so we expose the political character of the learning discourse which, we argue, works as the surface of intelligibility pro-posing the reality of work, self-hood, citizenship and society. We antagonize its `no alternative' trope by questioning the equivalence it creates between social inclusion, competitiveness, employability, empowerment and personal development. Our critique makes explicit how it is possible, and why it is important, to be `against learning'.

Tensions and struggles are a usual occurrence when knowledge 'to get the job done' needs to be produced at the boundaries of different disciplines and skills. Yet, power struggles have been often overlooked, and a deeper understanding of power dynamics in, and between, communities of practice is needed. An ethnographic study of the work practices of a digital media agency is utilised as a basis for the conceptual work of addressing tensions and struggles evident in creative design work. The approach developed here reactivates the critical and relational perspectives of communities of practice theory rearticulating it with the insights of Laclau and Mouffe's site ontology. This study offers a transformative redefinition of communities of practice's existing theoretical kit. It also shows how creative abrasions are situated in the broader politics of management and organisation of creative design work.