Men on board: Actor-network theory, feminism and gendering the past

Abstract

In this paper we explore the relationship between current gendered practices and past conditions through the lens of actor-network theory (ANT). In particular we are interested in the viability of ANT as a lens for studying the past and in ways that can be reconciled with feminist thought. We argue that although there is some non-resonance between ANT and feminist theorizing, using ANT in a critically historicist way allows some of the barriers between ANT and feminism to be broken down. We synthesize an approach to study gendered organizational processes that exist in and over time, identifying and surfacing some of the actants (i.e. human and material factors that encourage people to act) that work together within networks to produce gendered effects such as ongoing discriminatory practices. We trace these effects using the history of Air Canada as an exemplar, in the process noting the conceptual and ontological differences between the past and history. Finally, the advantages of a critically historical ANT are discussed as a way to achieve a level of fusion between ANT and feminist thought.

Mess and method: Using ANT in tourism research

“…Tokens can therefore be seen as a form of password to understanding an actor-network, and are, as such, a significant focus for materials generation using different, and possibly mixed methods as noted above. This perspective crucially also enables us to trace informants as they perform through time, using a 'historically reflective ANT' (Corrigan and Mills, 2012) in which the past itself is an actant (the 'human and material factors that encourage people to act' (Corrigan and Mills, 2012: 251)). This approach suggests that we can only be in touch with the past through a combination of traces, so 'we are influenced by dominant versions of the past and our interaction with those versions' (Corrigan and Mills, 2012: 253).…”

The Gendered State of Business: Gender, Enterprises and State in Israeli Society

“…The use of historical data can reveal information otherwise unavailable to scholars (Booth and Rowlinson, ), such as loan allocation considerations in this paper. Such information provides a temporal dimension that can yield new insights concerning the origin and development process of current situations, leading to new explanations and theoretical observations (Corrigan and Mills, ). The qualitative data analysis took an inductive approach of recurrent cycles between the data and concepts (Miles and Huberman, ).…”

Controversies as method for ANTi-history: An inquiry into public administration practices

“…Reality with an appearance of unity can be full of disagreements and disassociations. Corrigan and Mills (2012) investigated gender discrimination and masculine dominance at Air Canada, demonstrating how actor-networks constructed a dominant version of history by silencing women’s voices. Deal et al (2019) addressed the corporate-sponsored history project at Pan American Airways, in which traces of the past allow inquiry into sotto voce socio-politics’ controversies in history’s construction.…”

“…The organizational present is produced in part through past events, analysis of which establishes how dominant versions of organizational reality come into being and are reproduced (Mills and Durepos, 2010). An ANTi-History approach (Corrigan and Mills, 2012; Durepos and Mills, 2017; Durepos et al, 2008) assumes that the past is never ontologically available to researchers other than through accounts (see Corrigan, 2016) the narratives of which always skew that which is being recounted. The stories of actors silenced or forgotten for the vast majority of human history remain unexplained because the actor-networks (see Latour, 2005) to fix them in dominant inscriptions were absent (Kivijarvi et al, 2018).…”