Even when those struggles are not our own: Storytelling and solidarity in a feminist social justice organization

104

In this article, as have many Black women scholars in the past, we again call for collective action against anti‐blackness and White supremacy in the academy. Drawing from black feminist theory, we discuss the long history of Black women academics' activism against anti‐black racism and introduce the current movement: Black Lives Matter (BLM). Although BLM is often construed as resisting anti‐black violence outside the academy, it is also relevant for within the academy wherein anti‐blackness is likely to be manifested as disdain, disregard, and disgust for Black faculty and students. We discuss some of the ways in which anti‐blackness and liberal White supremacy are manifested in the lives of Black faculty and students, and propose that non‐Black allies have key roles to play in resisting them. Like second‐hand cigarette smoke that harms everyone in proximity, anti‐blackness and White supremacy harm us all, and a shared movement is needed to dismantle them.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Making Black Lives Matter in academia: A Black feminist call for collective action against anti‐blackness in the academy

Bell

Berry

Leopold

et al. 2020

104

“…Whilst the meaning of ethnography can vary, for the purposes of this article I build on feminist and postmodern interpretations to understand it not so much as a method of data collection but as an attitude to knowing itself: a reflexive exercise that is the ‘result of textual collaboration’ (Bruni, 2006, p. 305) between the ethnographer and the participants, which seeks to counter the ‘epistemic violence’ (Weatherall, 2019, p. 474) with which ‘difference’ is known and studied in organizations, and which ultimately rejects the search for ‘objectivity’ in favour of a self‐reflexive approach to knowledge production. I used an ethnographic approach to look at how sexuality was enacted, shaped and organized by the ‘normalizing discourse governing dominant conceptualizations’ (Courtney, 2014, p. 386) of inclusion, and the manifold ways in ‘the[se] dominant taxonomies fail to capture the complexity of individual gender and sexual subjectivities and practices’ (Valocchi, 2005, p. 753).…”

Section: Methodsologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My involvement in the field resembled that of the 'participant-as-observer' (Weatherall, 2019), which meant that I was deeply involved in the labour required to run the campaign (reading documents, sending emails, drafting letters of objection, seeking legal advice on planning legislation and acting as a facilitator for some of the internal meetings) and that all the campaigners were aware of my research activities. I was also involved as a member of the LGBT community (I identify as a lesbian), and ultimately as a friend.…”

Section: Gentrification As Class Politics Of Inclusion: Straightenimentioning

confidence: 99%

‘There’s nowhere wonky left to go’: Gentrification, queerness and class politics of inclusion in (East) London

Burchiellaro

2020

This article explores the class politics of inclusion. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, I examine a community campaign organized to oppose the closure of a pub to make way for urban redevelopment and the local Council’s and property developers’ proposal to be ‘inclusive’ by planning a ‘replacement LGBT venue’ on its former site. Through this case study, the article shows the struggle surrounding the ‘norms of intelligibility’ imposed onto working‐class and ‘queer’ expressions of sexuality in the attempt to gentrify a disadvantaged urban space. The article contributes to extant critical discussions of inclusion by unveiling the struggle surrounding the classed normative conditions attached to it. It further adds to queer perspectives on organization by showing how inclusion is predicated on ‘straightening up’ the ‘wonkiness’ of ‘queer(ness)’ in the pursuit of profit.

“…AP/GZ: Relatedly, though perhaps not directly, and thinking now of themes with which the members of the Critical Management Studies community have been recently grappling, we’d like to talk with you about feminist solidarity (e.g., Vachhani & Pullen, 2019; Weatherall, 2020) — and, specifically, obstacles to solidarity. We’ve seen the deleterious outcomes of women not supporting each other when they encounter myriad forms of sex‐based harassment or discrimination (Fernando & Prasad, 2019; Ozkazanc‐Pan, 2019).…”

Section: Interviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resistance and praxis in the making of feminist solidarity: A conversation with Cynthia Enloe

Prasad

Zulfiqar

2020

activist and the plenary speaker for the Critical Management Studies division at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. The contents of the interview are presented in this article. The interview is based on an initial set of preliminary questions that Ajnesh and Ghazal posed to Cynthia over multiple email exchanges between 22 May and 3 June 2020 as well as a nearly three-hour interview on 9 June 2020, which was recorded and transcribed into verbatim text. As the three individuals involved were located in different parts of the world during the ongoing global pandemic -Cynthia was in Boston (United States), Ajnesh was in Victoria (Canada) and Ghazal was in Lahore (Pakistan)the interview was organized virtually using Zoom. The thought-provoking interview covers a wide range of topics, from current debates over race and COVID-19 to feminist solidarity-building among culturally disparate communities to the potential of management and organization studies scholars to mobilize their research and teaching in efforts to transform current configurations of gendered social relations.