Sub-Plenary 1-3

Symbolic Violence and the Crafting of Bodies
in Organizations

When:  Thursday, July 7, 2022, 16:00–17:30 CEST
Where: TC.0.04 ---> WU interactive campus map

This sub-plenary will critically explore contemporary debates surrounding the implications of beauty and normative aesthetics standards on contemporary work practices. The rise of normative and ‘global’ consensus of physical attractiveness has subsequently been accorded individual, social, and institutional rewards within organizational domains. This increasingly leads to significant forms of body work in the form of cosmetic surgery or ‘beautification’ procedures.
 
To interrogate this rising turn further and explore its implications for organization studies, this sub-plenary draws on symbolic violence as a conceptual tool to understand how individuals are organized, subordinated, and dominated through their own “imperfect” bodies. It will explore how ideas and images about the ideal body and facial features circulate globally, and how these are also generated, received, and interpreted locally.

ORGANIZER:

Marie-Thérèse Claes

Professor & Head of Institute
WU – Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

ORGANIZER:

Andrea Romo Pérez

Assistant Professor
WU – Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

ORGANIZER:

Kathleen Riach

Professor
University of Glasgow, UK, & Monash University, Australia

Panelist:

Vijayta Doshi

Associate Professor
Indian Institute of Management Udaipur, India

Panelist:

Alvaro Jarrín

Associate Professor
College of the Holy Cross,
USA


Panelist:

Hyejung Park

South Korean activist
Seoul National University,
South Korea


Panelist:

Alison Pullen

Professor
Macquarie University,
Australia