Repoliticizing diversity work? Exploring the performative potentials of norm‐critical activism

Abstract

Diversity management efforts often turn diversity issues into a business case, thereby depoliticizing these issues and shying away from more political concerns of inequality and discriminating norms of difference. In this study, we explore the performative potential of activist practices to promote the repoliticization of organizational diversity work. To do so, we draw on interviews with three explicitly norm‐critical activists, discussing how insigths from their practices can inspire diversity work in formal organizational contexts. The three activists are (1) a twerk dancer, psychologist, radio host, and co‐founder of a popular fourth‐wave feminist group; (2) a project manager and co‐founder of a non‐governmental organization for minority ethnic lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender + people; and (3) an anarchist activist, gender educator, and founder of a gender network for educators. Showing how their norm‐critical practices work through discursive tensions of personal↔public issues, safe↔unsafe spaces, and creative↔conventional methods, we discuss how these practices may perform in organizational settings, enabling the repoliticization of diversity work in and as the constant negotiation and recognition of norms of difference.

Who and what are represented in the IPCC’s assessments? Institutional diversity and the politics of representation in global environmental assessments

“…Unlike similar organizations such as IPBES, which has built mechanisms of re exivity into its processes (White & Lidskog, 2023), the IPCC has a much stricter set of goals and thus priorities. A more radical politics of representation would signi cantly alter the relationship between participant and organization, making space for disobedience (Jackson, 2021), re exivity and critique (Lövbrand, et al, 2015), and becoming open to norm-critical actors and practices (Plotnikof et al, 2021).…”

“…Diversity is a necessary practice in research organizations and in climate knowledge production but when followed uncritically and unre exively it insu cient in the face of the challenges posed by the climate crisis, which require a multitude of knowledges, voices, ideas and values (Tchekwie Deranger, et al, 2022;Sultana, 2022;Pascual et al, 2023). What is needed, in this case, is a more active and ultimately more political concept that is implied by representation which centres less on organisational and institutional responses to unequal participation and instead focuses more on participants and climate experts themselves as agents of change (Celis, 2013;Plotnikof et al, 2021).…”