Realist studies of oppression, emancipation and resistance

O’Mahoney, Joseph; Vincent, Steve; Harley, Bill

doi:10.1177/1350508418789686

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The relative neglect of social structures in ANT has recently come under sustained criticism from scholars writing from a critical realist perspective (Dy et al, 2018;Elder-Vass, 2008Mutch, 2002;O'Mahoney, 2016;O'Mahoney et al, 2017O'Mahoney et al, , 2018. Whilst sympathetic to aspects of ANT, these critics have stressed the need to retain a strong emphasis on pre-existing, social structures as a basis for theorising what constrains and enables emancipation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modell

2019

AAAJ

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique centred on the neglect of social structures in the former perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper based on a critical reading of ANT inspired by CR.FindingsAlthough the author does not question the ability of ANT to be imbued with critical intent per se, the author is critical of its tendency to downplay the significance of pre-existing, social structures and the concomitant neglect of enduring and ubiquitous states of structural stability as an ontological possibility. This may lead to an overly optimistic view that naively valorises agency as a largely unfettered engine of emancipation. By contrast, CR offers a deeper and more nuanced ontological conception of how social structures constrain as well as enable emancipation. In contrast to the highly empiricist epistemology of ANT, it also provides an epistemological rationale for going beyond empirical descriptions of how social structures work to advance theoretically informed, explanatory critiques that are better suited for realising less easily observable opportunities for emancipation.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper advances the debate about how social structures should be examined in critical accounting research and the relative merits of doing so in advancing emancipatory projects.Originality/valueThe paper is an attempt to contrast ANT and CR as two distinct approaches to critical accounting research and thus extends the debate about what such research is and could be.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modell

2019

AAAJ

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“…In seeking to explain and understand freedom, oppression or resistance, reductive approaches (Jennings et al, 2016;Petergova et al, 2017) do not always provide multi-agent or multi-level analysis. Rather, such approaches tend to focus on what is local, immediate or measurable, resulting in 'thin' descriptions and weak explanations (Brannan et al, 2017;O'Mahoney et al, 2018).…”

Section: Entrepreneurship and Emancipationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer

Williams¹,

Pritchard²,

Miller

et al. 2020

International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurs

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This article contributes to critical discussions questioning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship by examining the experiences of men and women entrepreneurs who have recently become employers in South Wales, the United Kingdom. Our research uses a co-creative visual method based in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore transitions from entrepreneur to entrepreneur-employer in everyday contexts. Findings demonstrate how initial emancipatory experiences become increasingly bounded when becoming an entrepreneur-employer. This exposes a Catch-22 of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation as a symptom of neoliberal entrepreneurial discourses that constrain what entrepreneurs are encouraged to do: grow. We find a plurality of particular emancipations, but conclude that within a developed context entrepreneurship, and more specifically, becoming an entrepreneur-employer is a relational step through which perceived constraints become more readily experienced and emancipation never fully realised.

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“…Marx’s approach decisively shaped the discussion of emancipation is in modern political debate as well as in the social sciences (cf. Baron, 1971; O’Mahoney et al, 2018; Ritter, 1972). Eventually, this concept of emancipation made its way into management and organization theory by way of Critical Theory (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992a: 432, 1992b, 2003).…”

Section: A Brief Historical Entry Into ‘Emancipation In Mos’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Intellectual emancipation as minimal humanism – The relevance of Jacques Rancière in business school teaching

Kogut

Thaning

Birksted

2020

Management Learning

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How might emancipatory teaching practices look like in the context of the business school, when the meaning of the subject of emancipation, the human being, has become unsettled? Our philosophical essay addresses this question by excavating Jacques Rancière’s conception of intellectual emancipation and showing its practical relevance for experiments with emancipatory teaching in a business school environment. Speaking from within a tradition where the meaning of human is irrevocably unsettled, Rancière, remarkably, still insists on an essential link between emancipation and humanism – although in a minimal version. First, we show why and how Rancière’s analyses of emancipation are united by the common concern to affirm such a minimal humanism. Thereafter, we describe how three features sets intellectual emancipation apart from social and aesthetic emancipation and makes it pertinent to take intellectual emancipation to school: The possibility and intention to emancipate others, the acknowledgement of the constructive role of reason herein, and the significance of teacher authority in doing so. Lastly, we move beyond and problematize Rancière’s clear conceptual account of intellectual emancipation by extracting three heuristic pedagogical devices from it and by recounting their confrontation with the messy details of our teaching practice at the business school.

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Realist studies of oppression, emancipation and resistance

Cited by 12 publications

References 67 publications

For structure

For structure

Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer

Intellectual emancipation as minimal humanism – The relevance of Jacques Rancière in business school teaching

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