Counterintuitive Effects of Individualistic Diversity Discourse on “Generation Bataclan”

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-500
Author(s):  
Tilemachos Iatridis
Keyword(s):  
Diversity Discourse

On "Diversity" as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies: A Critique

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David James Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Specific Exercise ◽  
Critical Information ◽  
Racial Formations ◽  
Library And Information Studies ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
Library Studies ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Diversity Discourse

Drawing on a range of critical race and anti-colonial writing, and focusing chiefly on Anglo-Western contexts of librarianship, this paper offers a broad critique of diversity as the dominant mode of anti-racism in LIS. After outlining diversity's core tenets, I examine the ways in which the paradigm's centering of inclusion as a core anti-racist strategy has tended to inhibit meaningful treatment of racism as a structural phenomenon. Situating LIS diversity as a liberal anti-racism, I then turn to diversity's tendency to privilege individualist narratives of (anti-)racism, particularly narratives of cultural competence, and the intersection of such individualism with broader structures of political-economic domination. Diversity's preoccupation with demographic inclusion and individual behavioural competence has, I contend, left little room in the field for substantive engagement with race as a historically contingent phenomenon: race is ultimately reified through LIS diversity discourse, effectively precluding exploration of the ways in which racial formations are differentially produced in the contextually-specific exercise of power itself. I argue that an LIS foregrounding of race as a historical construct - the assumption of its contingency - would enable deeper inquiry into the complex ways in which our field - and indeed the diversity paradigm specifically - aligns with the operations of contemporary regimes of racial subordination in the first place. I conclude with a reflection on the importance of the Journal of Critical Information and Library Studies as a potential site of critical exchange from which to articulate a sustained critique of race in and through our field.

Assessing Local “Diversity”: A Nationally Representative Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 232949652110216
Author(s):  
Neeraj Rajasekar ◽  
Evan Stewart ◽  
Joseph Gerteis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Local Diversity ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Diversity Discourse

The meanings and definition of “diversity” can change across different applications and contexts, but many such meanings have implications for racial difference and racial ideology in the United States. We provide a nationally representative analysis of how everyday Americans assess “diversity” in their own communities. We test how county-level racial, religious, economic, and political heterogeneity predict the view that one lives in a highly diverse locale; we also test how individual-level factors predict such a view. Among the four indicators of local difference, racial difference is most strongly and consistently associated with Americans’ assessments of local diversity. Individual-level factors do not weaken this relationship; rather, local context and individual-level factors conjointly predict assessments of local diversity. Despite the flexible, hyperinclusive nature of diversity discourse, local racial difference is salient in Americans’ assessments of “diversity” in their communities, and this pattern is not simply a product of individual-level factors. Our findings illustrate another dimension of the flexible-yet-racialized nature of diversity discourse in the United States. We also show that Americans are particularly aware of racial difference in their locale, which has implications for social and ideological responses to changing communities and a changing nation.

scholarly journals The Economization of Diversity

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-485
Author(s):  
James M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Economic Values ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
Flagship University ◽  
Diversity Discourse ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Diversity Metrics

Through a case study of an ongoing diversity initiative at Diversity University (DU), a public, flagship university in the U.S. South, the author’s research advances understanding of the discursive relationship between neoliberalism and contemporary racial ideology. As part of a larger ethnographic project, the author draws on more than ten years worth of diversity discourse at DU to illuminate diversity’s economization: the process whereby specific formations of economic values, practices, and metrics are extended toward diversity as justification for DU’s efforts. The analysis responds to three questions: (1) How is diversity economized by the organization? (2) How is this economization articulated through organizational discourse on diversity? and (3) How does the economization of diversity potentially reconfigure race and racial subjectivities? The findings reveal three interrelated processes that facilitate diversity’s economization: diversity as investment, diversity metrics, and diversity as affective labor. Together these processes congeal and convert multicultural principles and practices into economic ones. Consequently, diversity’s economization recasts nonwhite racial subjectivity as human capital for DU and its white publics, minimizing and entrenching existing racial inequality in the process.

Considering the Case for Diversity in Natural Resources

BioScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (8) ◽  
pp. 708-718
Author(s):  
Chelsea Batavia ◽  
Brooke E Penaluna ◽  
Thea Rose Lemberger ◽  
Michael Paul Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Clear Thinking ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Diversity Discourse ◽  
Qualitative Coding

Abstract Although there is widespread support for diversity in natural resources, diversity is valued for different reasons. It is important to understand and critically examine these reasons, to ensure diversity efforts express clear thinking and appropriate motivations. We compiled recent (2000–2019) diversity literature in fisheries, forestry, range, and wildlife, and used a qualitative coding procedure to identify reasons articulated in support of diversity. We developed a subset of these reasons into formal arguments to assess their underlying beliefs and assumptions. Our analysis reveals a high frequency of instrumental arguments emphasizing the benefits of diversity for natural resources. Drawing on the large body of interdisciplinary diversity scholarship outside natural resources, we discuss the challenges and potential risks of predicating the case for diversity largely on instrumental arguments. We encourage natural resources communities to expand the diversity discourse by engaging with themes developed in interdisciplinary diversity literatures, including equity, social justice, and intersectionality.

Regularities of diversity discourse: Address, categorization, and invitation

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Juul Christiansen ◽  
Sine Nørholm Just
Keyword(s):  
Diversity Management ◽  
Constitutive Rhetoric ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Diversity Discourse

AbstractManagerial discourses on diversity invoke goals of inclusion and emancipation of suppressed individuals and groups as well as objectives of creating benefits for organizations and society. Partially due to this two-fold emphasis, diversity discourses may, however, be as restricting as they are liberating to the subjects of which they speak. In this article we suggest that utterances pertaining to diversity discourse should be understood as constitutive rhetoric marked by three discursive regularities: address, categorization, and invitation. These regularities underlie and restrain the multiple discursive practices of the developing field of diversity management, and as researchers and practitioners alike continue to explore and enhance this field it is important to understand – and seek to broaden – its conditions of possibility. Emphasizing the theoretical argument about discursive regularities and their articulation, we provide an illustrative example of the how different discursive practices may reproduce common limitations by exploring contributions to Danish diversity discourse.

scholarly journals Organizational Diversity Commitment: A Web-Based Investigation

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 474-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anselmo Ferreira Vasconcelos
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Organizational Diversity ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Corporate Websites ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Diversity Discourse

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to examine organizational held values and beliefs related to diversity, particularly derived from the corporate websites of the best companies to work for in Brazil, that is, an annual edition published by Época magazine along with the Great Place to Work® Institute (GPTW). Therefore, this study focuses on how these companies are addressing the themes of diversity, inclusion, and discrimination through their organizational discourses. More specifically, it draws exclusively on the statements and corporative documents posted on their websites. Overall, findings indicated that barely 57 (43.8%) of the 130 companies awarded by GPTW-Época 2014’s list showed some interest in providing a discourse toward diversity/inclusion issues in their websites. Moreover, no more than 31 firms (54.4% of the sample) depicted a compelling or somewhat acceptable diversity discourse (i.e., an indication that this issue has been addressed, yet it requires additional measures). Taken as a whole, results suggest that diversity appears to be a topic of low status in the most of the best organizations to work for in Brazil. In general, multinational corporations tend to put aside desirable aspects on their statements, even so they enact better diversity, inclusion, and anti-discrimination discourses than Brazilian firms.

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