Identity Work as an Event

Abstract

Depending on the dualisms of mind-body, subject-object, inside-outside, and so forth, most identity work studies in organization studies neglect the affective and material aspects of identity work. Drawing on an ethnographic study and practice theory, I analyze how the live-statue enacts her identity in the street. Her identity work can highlight the affective and material aspects of identity work beyond dualisms. Conceptualizing identity work as an event depending on existential feelings, I found that the live-statue's identity work depends on existential feelings of "submission to the street" that have both active and passive aspects, and which emerge from the process of to affect and to be affected. My study also highlights this process within situated interactions and material arrangements.

Artful Legitimacy: The Role of Materiality in Practices of Legitimation

“…While much of the literature on legitimation emphasises the importance of (discursively) connecting the actions under scrutiny with norms and other elements from which they borrow their legitimacy, our data indicate that art must also do just the opposite: it must disentangle itself from its surroundings to claim a normative space of its own. While such separation is counterintuitive for the literature on legitimacy, contemporary art is, in fact, largely defined by an unwritten rule that art is separated from the real world (Aslan, 2017). This is achieved in two ways.…”