Ecologies of Sustainable Concerns: Organization Theorizing for the Anthropocene

Abstract

What if we imagine we have been leaving the épistème of the age of ‘Man at the center of knowledge’, the epoch which has brought us to the brink of ecological disaster through discourses and practices of advanced market capitalism, and move on to imagine that we are entering the age of the Anthropocene, positing the need for radically reconceptualizing the relationship between humanity and nature? What discourses and practices would carry this? What kind of knowledge would be possible? Who would be the subject of such knowledge? Inspired by Braidotti's definition of cartography as a method and Latour's articulation of matters of fact and matters of concern, we bring together a variety of feminist ecological perspectives, materialist and new materialist, to eventually assemble a cartographic lens we label ecologies of sustainable concerns. Such a lens would facilitate reclaiming ‘sustainability’ in organization studies discourses and practices for living well and living with others in the Anthropocene. It is our expectation that in reclaiming ‘sustainability’ through the feminist literatures we are using, and their discursive variations, it would become clearer that there are options for an economy and ecology beyond what is permissible to say and do as knowledge in organization studies under advanced market capitalism.

Organizing in the Anthropocene

“…Recognizing that human activity has discernibly changed the Earth’s global functioning has revolutionary implications for our understanding of ourselves and the globally integrated, growth-based, fossil-fuelled organizations on which much of the world’s population relies. While organizational scholars have for some time focused on the natural world as a context for business activities (see, for example, Bansal and Hoffman, 2012), far fewer have sought to adopt a critical approach to the way in which changing Earth systems affect how we understand organizing and organizations (for exceptions, see Ergene et al, 2017; Gosling and Case, 2013; Whiteman et al, 2013; Wright and Nyberg, 2015). In this Special Issue of the journal Organization , we invited scholars to reflect on the huge and diverse implications that the Anthropocene brings to our understanding of organizations and organizing.…”

Reflections on Reflexive Theorizing: The Need for A Little More Conversation

“…(quoted in Hamann et al, 2020: 4) Indigenous research is now fueling the research agenda 'despite the fact that Indigenous voices and experiences were largely written out of theorizations prior to and during the twentieth century.' (Love, 2020: 6) Ford et al, 2010Holvino, 2010;Harding et al, 2012;Steyaert & Janssens, 2012;Pullen & Rhodes, 2015;Steyaert, 2015;Vachhani, 2015;Pullen et al, 2016;Rumens, 2016;Swan, 2017;Ergene et al, 2018;Bothello & Roulet, 2019;Belkhir et al, 2019;González-Morales, 2019;Spiller et al, 2020;Love, 2020;Yoshikawa, 2019;Hamann et al, 2020 Contextualizing Little or none…”

“…(Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2011: 273) 'Complex theorizing is conjunctive: it seeks to make connections between diverse elements of human experience through making those analytical distinctions that will enable the joining up of concepts normally used in a compartmentalized manner.' (Tsoukas, 2017: 132) Holvino, 2010; Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2011;Smith & Lewis, 2011;Learmonth et al, 2012;Hartman, 2014;Tsoukas, 2017;Ergene et al, 2018;Svejenova, 2019;Schwarz, 2020 Table A. (Continued)…”

(Re)moving blinders: Communication-as-constitutive theorizing as provocation to practice-based organization scholarship

“…For Braidotti (2017), the task of new materialist critical theory “is activating subjects to enter into new affective assemblages, to co-create alternative ethical forces and political codes” (p. 21). The aim is to conceive of possibilities for assemblages to embrace variety, freedom, and growth through communicative practice (Ergene et al, 2018; Guattari, 2000). Such possibilities could be provoked by unanticipated re-configurations of relations between the material and discursive (Mazmanian et al, 2014), narratives that contest existing logics of connection (Chia and MacKay, 2007), spectacles that expose the protective opaqueness of value chains (Flyverbom and Reinecke, 2017), or events that make new connections across assemblages (Ashcraft and Kuhn, 2018).…”