Spaces that Matter: Gender Performativity and Organizational Space

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Tyler ◽  
Laurie Cohen

This paper examines the relationship between gender performativity and organizational space. Specifically, it focuses on some of the ways in which gender is materialized in and through workspace in accordance with the dominant gender norms shaping organizational life, a theme that has been relatively neglected within organization studies to date. Judith Butler’s (1988, 1993, 2000 [1990], 2004) performative analysis of gender draws critical attention to the body as a medium through which the gendered subject is brought into being, or made to ‘matter’, as she puts it. This paper seeks to extend Butler’s analysis of gender performativity, focusing on the evocation and materialization of these norms through the gendered inhabitation of organizational space. Inspired by a piece of work by contemporary video artist Sofia Hulten called Grey Area, it develops Butler’s analysis with reference to data generated in a series of focus groups and interviews with women working in diverse roles within a university setting. The analysis of the findings of this research links Butler’s work on ‘bodies that matter’ to Lefebvre’s (1991) concept of ‘representational spaces’, arguing that an important but relatively neglected aspect of the organizational materialization of the gendered self is the performance of ‘spaces that matter’.

Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parisa Dashtipour ◽  
Bénédicte Vidaillet

Psychoanalytic perspectives (such as the Kleinian/Bionian and Lacanian literature) have made significant contributions to the study of affect in organizations. While some have pointed out the affects involved in work tasks, most of this literature generally focuses on the affects linked to organizational life (such as learning, leadership, motivation, power, or change). The center of attention is not on affects associated with the work process itself. We draw from the French psychodynamic theory of Christophe Dejours—who is yet to be known in English language organization studies—to make the following contributions. First, we show the relationship between affect and working by discussing Dejours’ notions of affective suffering, the real of work, the significance of the body, and ‘ordinary sublimation’. Second, we advance critical research in organization studies by demonstrating the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject. Third, the article reinterprets Menzies’ well-known hospital case study to illustrate how Dejours’ theory extends existing psychoanalytical approaches, and especially to point to the significant role of the work collective in supporting workers to work well. We conclude by suggesting that if the centrality of work in the affective life of the subject is acknowledged, it follows that resistance strategies, and work collectives’ struggle for emancipation, should focus on reclaiming work.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110315
Author(s):  
Rob Cover ◽  
Rosslyn Prosser ◽  
Duc Dau

This article investigates the representation of male and trans drag performance in Australian film to interrogate drag’s continuing potential for gender subversion. We argue that while drag has become mundane through repetition and recognisability, attention to the disjuncture between the visual and the sound (or lip-synching’s non-sound) in drag opens new possibilities for film depictions to disrupt gender norms. We begin with an account of how lip-synching provides new critical ways to think about drag, identity and gender performativity, and then analyse how three Australian films represent drag performance in the context of sound. By showing how drag frames performance through layers of sound emanating from different corporeal sources (the body, the recording), we argue that contemporary drag subverts the cultural demand for the seamlessness of vocal sound and visual embodiment for authentic gender identity, thereby pointing to the precarity of gender normativity.


Author(s):  
Dana Hart

This study explores the relationship between gender and veganism through a critical analysis of food-based discourse on three vegan blogs. As many researchers note, there is a strong association between meat and masculinity in North American society (Nath, 2011; Rothgerber, 2013; Rozin, Hormes, Faith & Wansink, 2012; Ruby & Heine, 2011; Sumpter, 2015). While some researchers argue that the practice of veganism inherently challenges traditional gender norms (Adams, 2015; Potts and Parry, 2010), in these blog posts there is little room for alternative gender performativity. Drawing upon critical feminist and vegan studies literature, and previous discourse analysis of food blogs, this research examines the intersections of gender and food through the practice of veganism. Furthermore, it analyses how the association between meat and masculinity is applied in the gendering of vegan food. I argue that the gendered discourse of vegan food on these blogs reinforces, rather than challenges, traditional gender norms through the use of tropes describing “carnivorous men” and “manly meals” with hopes of satiating male appetites.


Paragraph ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-316
Author(s):  
Kayte Stokoe

Inspired by Judith Butler's conceptualization of drag as ‘gender parody’, I develop the conceptual frame of ‘textual drag’ in order to define and examine the relationship between parody, satire and gender. I test this frame by reading two seminal feminist works, Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) and Monique Wittig's Le Corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body) (1973). Both texts lend themselves particularly persuasively to analysis with this frame, as they each use parodic strategies to facilitate proto-queer satirical critiques of reductive gender norms. Orlando deploys an exaggerated nineteenth-century biographical style, which foregrounds the protagonist's gender fluidity and her developing critique of the norms and systems that surround her, while Le Corps lesbien rewrites canonical romance narratives from a lesbian perspective, challenging the heterosexism inherent in these narratives and providing new modes of thinking about gender, desire and sexual interaction.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147035722096141
Author(s):  
Carey Jewitt ◽  
Kerstin Leder Mackley ◽  
Sara Price

This article examines how the use of emergent smart baby monitors re-mediates parent–baby touch, notions of connection, parental sensing and the interpretation of babies’ bodies, and contributes to the formation of subjectivities. Domestic baby monitors are a mid 20th-century phenomenon which normalizes parental anxieties. While baby monitoring is not new, the ‘next generation’ of wearable bio-sensing baby monitors offers a different relationship to the body via the physiological tracking of babies, and the sending of information or alerts to parents’ via connected mobile apps. These devices have been associated with creating unnecessary parental anxiety and the digital ‘replacement’ of parental touch, although little research exists on their use in the context of parent–infant interaction or touch. The authors present a qualitative case study of one such technology, Owlet, to explore how parents experienced, understood and negotiated the discourses of parent–infant touch that circulate around and through Owlet, with particular attention to the relationship between visual and tactile resources. The study focuses on both its multimodal design and take-up by parents through analysis of interviews with the Owlet designer, Owlet as a product, focus groups with parents and families’ home experiences of Owlet. Data is analysed through a tri-part lens, which first combines multimodal social semiotic and sensory ethnographic approaches, and then the analytical concept of governmentality. The findings are discussed in relation to four analytical themes: (1) creating a desire for digitally mediated touch; (2) spatiality of digitally mediated connection; (3) formulating the ‘right kind’ of touch; and (4) reconfiguring ‘knowing touch’. The authors discuss multimodal discourses pertinent to the shaping of parent–baby touch practices including: rationality and efficiency; individualism, autonomy and freedom; and self-improvement and empowerment. They conclude that the discourses that coalesce around Owlet contribute to the reconfiguration of parent–baby touch and the formation of neoliberal subjectivities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Andrés Barrios-Rubio

This article identifies the peculiarities of audio consumption (radio, music and podcast) by Colombian adolescents and youth on their screen devices, especially the smartphone. The irruption in the digital ecosystem of radio and sound platforms redefines the industry’s relationship with new audiences. The body of research, classified into three age groups (puberty –10 to 14 years–, middle –15 to 19 years–, and full –20 to 24 years–), is made up of students in basic secondary education and university students who were consulted through a quantitative methodology (700 surveys) and a qualitative one (8 focus groups with 48 participants), which made it possible to recognize the routines and the sound agenda of the subjects of study. The results of the research outline the profile of the Colombian audio consumer, whose habits of listening to the radio alternate times of attention to the broadcast on air with the consumption of apps, websites and music distribution platforms, which evidences their digital skills and the creation of a menu that combines music, sports and entertainment content. It is a media diet built on the mediation of technological devices and the influence of family and virtual communities. The sound component is the backbone of the relationship between industry and listener, but visual and iconographic elements are added to reinforce the bonds with brand, media and producer, regardless of where audio meets audience.


Author(s):  
Shirazu I. ◽  
Theophilus. A. Sackey ◽  
Elvis K. Tiburu ◽  
Mensah Y. B. ◽  
Forson A.

The relationship between body height and body weight has been described by using various terms. Notable among them is the body mass index, body surface area, body shape index and body surface index. In clinical setting the first descriptive parameter is the BMI scale, which provides information about whether an individual body weight is proportionate to the body height. Since the development of BMI, two other body parameters have been developed in an attempt to determine the relationship between body height and weight. These are the body surface area (BSA) and body surface index (BSI). Generally, these body parameters are described as clinical health indicators that described how healthy an individual body response to the other internal organs. The aim of the study is to discuss the use of BSI as a better clinical health indicator for preclinical assessment of body-organ/tissue relationship. Hence organ health condition as against other body composition. In addition the study is `also to determine the best body parameter the best predict other parameters for clinical application. The model parameters are presented as; modeled height and weight; modelled BSI and BSA, BSI and BMI and modeled BSA and BMI. The models are presented as clinical application software for comfortable working process and designed as GUI and CAD for use in clinical application.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Coats

Critical attention to children's poetry has been hampered by the lack of a clear sense of what a children's poem is and how children's poetry should be valued. Often, it is seen as a lesser genre in comparison to poetry written for adults. This essay explores the premises and contradictions that inform existing critical discourse on children's poetry and asserts that a more effective way of viewing children's poetry can be achieved through cognitive poetics rather than through comparisons with adult poetry. Arguing that children's poetry preserves the rhythms and pleasures of the body in language and facilitates emotional and physical attunement with others, the essay examines the crucial role children's poetry plays in creating a holding environment in language to help children manage their sensory environments, map and regulate their neurological functions, contain their existential anxieties, and participate in communal life.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Giles Whiteley

Walter Pater's late-nineteenth-century literary genre of the imaginary portrait has received relatively little critical attention. Conceived of as something of a continuum between his role as an art critic and his fictional pursuits, this essay probes the liminal space of the imaginary portraits, focusing on the role of the parergon, or frame, in his portraits. Guided by Pater's reading of Kant, who distinguishes between the work (ergon) and that which lies outside of the work (the parergon), between inside and outside, and contextualised alongside the analysis of Derrida, who shows how such distinctions have always already deconstructed themselves, I demonstrate a similar operation at work in the portraits. By closely analysing the parerga of two of Pater's portraits, ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold’ (1887) and ‘Apollo in Picardy’ (1893), focusing on his partial quotation of Goethe in the former, and his playful autocitation and impersonation of Heine in the latter, I argue that Pater's parerga seek to destabilise the relationship between text and context so that the parerga do not lie outside the text but are implicated throughout in their reading, changing the portraits constitutively. As such, the formal structure of the parergon in Pater's portraits is also a theoretical fulcrum in his aesthetic criticism and marks that space where the limits of, and distinctions between, art and life become blurred.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Ching Ching Wong

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is an effective technique in managing risk within an organization strategically and holistically. Risk culture relates to the general awareness, attitudes and behaviours towards risk management in an organisation. This paper presents a conceptual model that shows the relationship between risk culture and ERM implementation. The dependent variable is ERM implementation, which is measured by the four processes namely risk identification and risk assessment; risk treatment; monitor and consult; communicate and consult. The independent variables under risk culture are risk policy and risk appetite; key risk indicators; accountability; incentives; risk language and internal relationships. This study aims to empirically test the relationship between risk culture and ERM implementation among Malaysian construction public listed companies. Risk culture is expected to have direct effects and significantly influence ERM. This study contributes to enhance the body of knowledge in ERM especially in understanding significant of risk culture that influence its’ implementation from Malaysian perspective.


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