Sub-theme 04: (SWG): Practices of Intersectionality in Organizations

Convenors:
Regine Bendl
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Sandra Fielden
University of Manchester
Saija Katila
University of Eastern Finland, Finland

Call for Papers


Contemporary organizations have become very heterogeneous in terms of employees but also more and more complex and temporary. Each merger, bankruptcy and reorganization reassembles the positions of different organizational members in multiple ways changing the processes of organizational inclusion and exclusion. We call for papers that focus on intersectional analysis of exclusion and subordination (e.g. Crenshaw, 1992; McCall, 2005) in organizations in historically specific contexts. Intersectional analysis involves concurrent analyses of multiple, intersecting and interacting sources of subordination like gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, class, etc.


We invite theoretical as well as empirical papers that focus on intra-, inter- and anticategorial approaches. In order to stimulate creative and innovative discussion that is aimed at theorizing and extending boundaries of intersectionality in organizations, we offer the following themes and pose the following corresponding question:

Intersectional practices of organizing and their consequences

  • How does the institutional order, distribution of power and political networks influence the reproduction of the different categories in organizations?
  • How do organization members and organizations negotiate boundaries of categories and what are their strategies? Shifting boundaries through expansion, contraction, inversion, repositioning or blurring?


Globalization and intersectionality

  • taking into account among other things class, gender and ethnic differences within the context of globalized labour markets and transnational organizations and migration movements.


Embodied intersectionality

  • how intersectionality influences the construction of normative, (de)valued, sexual and able bodies in organizations.


Conceptual and theoretical debates of intersectionality

  • What are endogenous and exogenous mechanisms of change towards anti-categorial approaches?
  • What role do organization studies scholars play in keeping up intra- and intercategorial research?


References

Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1992): Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour. Stanford Law Review, 43 (6), 1241-1299.
McCall, Leslie (2005): Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30 (3), 1771-1800.

 

Regine Bendl 
Sandra Fielden 
Saija Katila