The Other side of ‘us’: Alterity construction and identification work in the context of planned change

Abstract

How do we use the Other to make sense of who we are? A common assumption is that people positively affirm social identities by excluding an inferior Other. This article challenges that restricted notion by focusing on the variation and situational fluidity of alterity construction (othering) in identification work. Based on an ethnographic study of a change project in a public hospital, we examine how nurses, surgeons, medical secretaries, and external management consultants constructed Others/otherness. Depending on micro-situations, different actors reciprocally differentiated one another horizontally and/or vertically, and some also appropriated otherness in certain situations by either crossing boundaries or by collapsing them. The article contributes to theorizing on identification work and its consequences by offering a conceptualization of the variety of othering in everyday interaction. It further highlights relational agency in the co-construction of social identities/alterities. Through reciprocal othering, ‘self’ and ‘other’ mutually construct one another in interaction, enabled and constrained by structural contexts while simultaneously taking part in constituting them. As such, othering plays a key role in organizing processes that involve encounters and negotiations between different work- and occupational groups.

Precarity, Hospitality, and the Becoming of a Subject That Matters: A Study of Syrian Refugees in Lebanese Tented Settlements

“…Mobilized to strengthen identification with an 'us', such differentiation often involves constructing the 'I' as superior and the 'other' as inferior and less desirable (Skovgaard-Smith et al, 2020;Ybema et al, 2009;Ybema, Thomas, & Hardy, 2016), with such binary oppositions magnifying and dramatizing differences between active and 'smart' resistors and passive and 'poor' victims (Ybema et al, 2009(Ybema et al, , 2016. Recent research within organization studies (Harding et al, 2017;Knights & Clarke, 2017;Skovgaard-Smith et al, 2020;Ybema et al, 2016) and on refugees and displaced people in extreme precarity (Kallio, Häkli, & Pascucci, 2019;Krause & Schramm, 2011;Staeheli, 2008) emphasizes that this tendency to separate and foreground the agentive work of the 'I' and the emphasis on boundaries drawn to exclude and degrade the 'other' constrain us from developing a more nuanced understanding of the co-constitutive relationality of the 'I' and the 'other'. Here, we identify an opportunity to further develop relational approaches and vocabularies that allow us to foreground the ontologically entangled and interdependent relationships of the 'I' and the 'other', especially as co-constitutive relations of recognition and mattering (Butler, 2004(Butler, , 2009a(Butler, , 2009b.…”

“…From a more theoretical perspective, our research contributes by answering calls to foreground the multiplicity, contingency and ambiguity of the boundaries enacting and reproducing subject positions and their agentic possibilities in everyday organizing practices (Harding et al, 2017;Knights & Clarke, 2017;Mumby, 2005;Ybema et al, 2009Ybema et al, , 2016. Specifically, we build on recent research foregrounding the relational construction of 'others' as a key and routine aspect of how subjects constitute themselves (Cinque et al, 2020;Gagnon & Collinson, 2017;Harding et al, 2017;Skovgaard-Smith et al, 2020), and add to this research a conceptualization of subject positioning that even further emphasizes the entangled, interdependent and contingent nature of the 'I' and the 'other'. Indeed, the 'displaced subject' becomes placed through practices of inviting the 'other', and through this becomes relationally positioned; her recognition and becoming as a subject is dependent on this 'other's' continuous response.…”

It takes three to tango: An ethnography of triadic involvement of residents, families and nurses in long‐term dementia care

“…In response, individuals may, for example, reaffirm their own positioning of the self, 34 adjust the self to a group 35 or contrast the self to and reject others' positionings 33 . Second, by recognizing the inseparableness of ‘being’ and ‘doing’, 36 situational dynamics address identity as it emerges in moment‐to‐moment organizational activity 37 —which helps explain how identities shift and vary from one situation to another 38 . For instance, to simultaneously construct collaborative and competitive identities, 39 a professional may navigate between, on the one hand, belonging to a social group and, on the other hand, a sense of uniqueness 40 …”

¿Quiénes somos? Construyendo identidades desde la investigación para la paz

“…Ahora bien, este no sería poder en el sentido arendtiano del concepto, sino que formaría parte de la violencia. Por lo tanto, un poder, una identidad, que no permita o limite la capacidad de agencia (Brown, 2017;Currie et al, 2010;Skovgaard-Smith et al, 2019;Ybema et al, 2009) forma parte de la violencia.…”

“…Así las cosas, tiende a converger con el concepto bourdiano de habitus (Bourdieu, 1972, p. 178). Empero, desde estas páginas defenderé que la capacidad de agencia -aunque constreñida por condicionantes estructurales-también contribuye, o debería contribuir, a la configuración de las identidades (Brown, 2017;Currie et al, 2010;Skovgaard-Smith et al, 2019;Ybema et al, 2009). Las estructuras condicionan, pero permiten márgenes suficientes de acción.…”