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Apologies for cross-posting... Re-connecting 'big' and 'small' issues: CMS between class and identity politics The 8th International Critical Management Studies Conference Manchester 10-12 July 2013 Stream convenors: Alison Pullen, Swansea University Carl Rhodes, University of Leicester Torkild Thanem, Stockholm University Louise Wallenberg, Stockholm University Big changes surround us. With epochal élan we are warned of crises aplenty, upheavals, wars and revolutions. The McDonaldization of production and consumption, the immaterialization and aestheticization of labour and capital, and a cosmopolitan hybridization of culture herald warnings of a new globalized 'imperial form of sovereignty' (Hardt and Negri, 2000). Tales of these seismic shifts and radical alignments shape humanity and the regulatory and disciplinary instruments aimed at citizens and non-citizens alike. Within Critical Management Studies (CMS), as this very conference attests, there have been appeals to re-connect the study of management and organizations with big issues of global restructuring and political economy. In this stream we are concerned with such big issues - but our concern focuses on how they play out on a small scale. This scale relates to the relationship of the 'big issues' with organizational life as it is experienced by individuals within unique and locally specific contexts (Bauman, 2005) and where individuals are brought into close encounters with themselves as well as with strangers, others and outsiders who disrupt the hegemonic normalcy of everyday life. In other words, we wish to complement big picture issues with small picture issues, remembering that the small has the potential to disrupt, transform and contradict the big. It would be a mistake to posit a dichotomy between so-called big issues and small issues, as if the former were grand and the latter petty. Indeed, feminists and neo-Marxists alike have long acknowledged that the 'big' class politics of exploitation and the 'small' identity politics of oppression are closely intertwined (see e.g. Acker 1990, 2006; Young, 1997; Cornell, 2000; Heyes, 2000; Smith 2008). In some cases the big stories and the small stories do not follow the same logic. For example, in western countries that proclaim values such as tolerance for ethnic diversity, celebration of sexual diversity and equality between the sexes, discrimination continues: certain police forces continue to target non-westerners through ethnic profiling (Riley et al., 2009); transgendered people continue to experience impaired access to paid work and health care (Grant et al., 2011); the pay gap between women and men who occupy similar jobs persists (Statistics Sweden, 2010a, 2010b; Tijdens and Van Klaveren, 2012) as do pay gaps between age groups and ethnic groups (Arai et al., 2006; Longhi and Platt, 2008). At a global level, poverty, war and rape continue to exist as forms of individual suffering. In organizations, emphasis has ranged from the commodification of labour in sweatshops to the role that NGOs play. While CMS research has focused on specific identity categories such as gender and ethnicity as well as highlighting problems of identity oppression and expression, less attention has been paid to how this may be related to the functioning and dys-functioning of the global capitalist political economy (Odih, 2007) and its impact and implications for individuals. The 'new imperialism', after Harvey (2003), has changed the ways in which we come to articulate identities and subjectivities. Conversely, CMS attends to identity in general, highlighting how just about any mode of identity is increasingly disciplined and appropriated as an object of exploitation under neo-liberal capitalism. There is a danger here of sidelining how society, culture, economy and politics are played out in more specific terms, for example for people who are ethnically and sexually different from the idealized and taken for granted norm (Marchand and Runyan, 2011). With this stream we invite contributions that seek to re-connect the 'big' issues of class politics with the 'small' issues of identity politics as understood not through arm waving rhetoric but through individual lived experience. We invoke this term 'class' not just in terms of social class but more generally to all forms of social classification that posit a shared identification between people - this would include, inter alia, social class, gender, sexuality, sexual preference, ethnicity, race, culture, disability, religion, wealth and age. We note too the political ambivalence of these modes of identity - at once they might create a sense of community for the marginal and a privilege for the central while at the same time focus oppression through the typing of practices and identities. We welcome contributions that seek to draw connections between the lived organizational experience of individuals, the modes of identity they participate in (or are subjugated by) and the global changes and restructurings that affect humanity. In line with the general theme of the conference contributions might want to connect to issues of neo-liberal capitalism, the globalization of democracy, the global financial crisis, global corporate penetration, war, terror and economy, violence and migration, and the feminization of the proletariat. We are especially interested in theoretically informed conceptual and empirical engagements that problematize specific conditions of oppression and exploitation experienced by material others rather than populations, including those raced, sexed, classed and religious others who may be deemed as such, whether volunteers, migrants, unemployed, travellers, homeless or sex workers - or even just anyone who doesn't fit in. Some questions that might help inform potential contributions include, but are not limited to: - How do practices of oppression and exploitation in capitalist organizations and markets coalesce to impair conditions of work and life for specific identity groups and specific people? - In what ways is the promotion of workplace rights and human rights tied up with identity-based interests? - How are the politics of class and identity at work (or out of work) affected by the ongoing financial crisis and the discourse of austerity? - Given capitalism's self-renewing ability to exploit an expanding range of minor identities (and expand its range, its frontier, its limits), what possibilities of resistance and activism may be envisaged at the edge of class and identity politics? Indeed, are the limits of neo-liberal capitalism ungovernable, unmanageable and uncontainable? - What are the specific analytical tools that CMS may provide to scrutinize the borderlands of class politics and identity politics? - How do feminist analyses of global restructuring and the creation of 'new subjectivities' in settings of work and organization contribute to continued debates? - How may identity politics, and their intersectionalities, offer resistance to globalisation? Submission of Abstracts Please submit abstracts (max 1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font) to Alison Pullen: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> Deadline 31st January 2013 Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013 Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013 Your abstract should include: Title The focus, aims and objectives of the paper The research evidence base underpinning the paper How the paper will contribute to the theme We look forward to hearing from you, and any questions in the meantime should be addressed to Alison Pullen References Acker, J. (1990) 'Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations', Gender & Society 4(2): 139-158. Acker, J. (2006) 'Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations', Gender & Society 20(4): 441-464. Arai, M., Schröder, L., Skogman Thoursie, P. and Thoursie, A. (2006) Måste alla heta som Svensson? En empirisk studie av namnbyten och inkomster. Stockholm: LO och Integrationsverket. Bauman, Z. (2005) Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Cornell, D. (2000) Just Cause: Freedom, Identity, and Rights. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Grant, J.M., Moner, L.A., Tanis, J., Harrison, J., Herman, J.L. and Keisling, M. (2011) Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heyes, C.J. (2000) Line Drawings: Defining Women through Feminist Practice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Longhi, S. and Platt, L. (2008) Pay Gaps Across Equality Areas, Research Report No. 9. Manchester. Equality and Human Rights Commission. Marchand,M.H. and Runyan, A. Sisson (2011) Gender and Global Restructurings: Sightings, Sites and Resistances. London: Routledge. Odih, P. (2007) Gender and Work in Capitalist Economies. London: Open University Press. Riley,J., Cassidy, D. and Becker, J. (2009) Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System - 2007/8. London: Ministry of Justice. Smith, S. (2008) 'The politics of identity', ISR, issue 57, January-February. Tijdens, K.G. and Van Klaveren, M. (2012) Frozen in Time: Gender Pay Gap Unchanged for 10 Years, ITUC Report. Brussels: International Trade Union Confederation. Young, I.M. (1997) Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.