Bureaucratic Discourse and the Goddess: Towards an Ecofeminist Critique and Rearticulation

Abstract

Describes and positions ecofeminism as a critical voice in postmodern organizational theory. Ecofeminism, because of its connections with spirituality, feminism, and ecology, provides an alternative critique of modernist organizational discourse. Specifically, positions ecofeminism as an antagonistic discourse which should help to define and display limits of bureaucratic discourse. Provides some ecofeminist change strategies.

Re‐Writing Corporate Environmentalism: Ecofeminism, Corporeality and the Language of Feeling

“…I am not claiming that the creation of poetry within or sponsored by organizations will on its own dispel the sense of apathy and inertia that seems to characterize corporate responses to the growing environmental crisis with which humanity is faced (Wittneben et al ., ). However, we need what Bullis and Glaser () have described as guerrilla tactics to intervene in and re‐texture organizational discourses and practices, tactics that will expand ways of knowing that include corporeal, visceral and emotional responses. Such tactics could articulate and frame corporate attitudes to nature differently.…”

Latest Scientific Discovery Drops Bombshell — ‘Mother Nature’ Is Biologically Male — Ruminations on the Value of Care as Sustainable Organizational Practice

“…The other is how to navigate the biological fact of woman's reproductive capacity without adding to the oppression and disproportionate responsibility for caring that this has ‘engendered’ within patriarchal organizations. Many second wave feminisms sought parity without sufficient realisation that the ‘environment’ in which we sought this was not just symbolically, but also literally, increasingly toxic (Bullis and Glaser, ). Ecofeminists have continually encouraged us to avoid anthropocentric feminisms, which in neglecting the material base represented by the earth and many of her non‐human inhabitants run the very great risk of continuing patterns of dominance that urgently need to be addressed (Gaard, ).…”

“…The earth, for example, is usually most notable by its absence in organizational analysis (Sullivan, ; Shrivastava, ). So that its life sustaining contributions and those of women working with and on it, particularly in the domestic or so‐called private realm, often fail to be properly accounted for in what some ecofeminist scholars refer to as ‘dominant international economic models’ (Bullis and Glaser, , p. 52; see also Marshall, ; Mies and Shiva, ). This situation is referred to elsewhere as the backgrounding of both women and nature, ‘to a dominant foreground sphere of recognized achievement or causation’ (Plumwood, , p. 21).…”

“…Such linkages may be observed in dominant organizational forms built on what one scholar describes as a necrocapitalism that propagates ‘the subjugation of life to the power of death’ (Banerjee, , p. 1548). Ecofeminism meantime, has long highlighted the gender dimensions of such forms and pointed out the interconnections between systematic eco‐destruction, global domination, various forms of oppressions and the potential for total annihilation inherent within patriarchy as an organizational system that devalues all those it has categorized as its ‘others’ (Bullis and Glaser, ; D'Eubonne, ; Glazebrook, ).…”

Contested rationalities, contested organizations

“…The discussion here is restricted to a selection of eco-feminist arguments that address economic and organizational activity and the Feminist and postmodernist visions ecologically disastrous course upon which hyper-modern production organizations are set. For these eco-feminists, notably Barbara Adam, wide discussion of ethics concerning all aspects of production organization activity is vital (Adam, 1996, Adam et al, 1997Beck, 1992;Bullis and Glaser, 1992;Casey, 2000;Lash et al, 1996;Mellor, 1997). Feminist ecologists argue that production organizations, constituted as rational economic institutions, are ineluctably intricated in the expansion of now incalculable risk of environmental and ecosystem destruction.…”