This edited volume presents complex issues surrounding economic and cultural injustices in the global South and the social imaginaries articulated by vulnerable communities in these extractive zones. These organizations of struggle by disenfranchised members in the global South bring forth a collective of knowledge to decolonize organizational theory and think of organizing a more just world.
The essays in this volume critique and connect meanings of “organizations” in relation to neoliberalism, coloniality, and social justice. More specifically, scholars engage with ideas of resistance such as invisible histories in management theory, hybrid collective action, self-determination and indigenous sovereignty, and decolonizing institutions. The chapters also cover a wide range of locations including feminist movements in Latin America, the struggles of Palestinians in self-exile to connect with their homeland, and reproductive labor in Sri Lanka to the decolonial potential of Black Lives Matter in the US and insights into organizing resistance in parts of Asia and Africa.
For scholars and policymakers, this book presents emancipatory essays that interrogate the cultural, social, political, and historical issues pertaining to organizations in the context of the neoliberal economy.
Author(s): Mahuya Pal, Joëlle Cruz, Debashish Munshi
Series: New Perspectives in Organizational Communication
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 306
City: London
Acknowledgements
Praise for Organizing at the Margins
Contents
Notes on Contributors
1 Organizing Away from the Gaze: Local Knowledges, New Futures
Situating Ourselves
What Can We Learn from the Spaces of Extraction in the South?
Decolonizing Dominant Epistemologies
Dismantling Borders
Deconstructing Structures
Concluding Thoughts and Looking to the Future
References
Part I Decolonizing Dominant Epistemologies
2 Decolonizing Knowledge: Cultural Aspirations, Political Self-Determination, and Social Rights in Knowledge Making
Reference
3 For Another Democratic Language: Feminist Action in Latin America and the Reconstruction of the Political
Introduction
Feminist Struggles in Latin America: Contemporary Transformations
The Gender and Sexuality Agenda During the “Pink Tide”
Violences and New Political Grammars
Final Remarks
References
4 Hybrid Collective Action
The Forms of Hybrid Organizing
Hybrid Media
Hybrid Spaces
Hybrid Tactics
Hybrid Epistemologies
Contestation and Strategic Communication in Hybrid Societies
References
5 Alternative Economic Discourses from the Margins: Kenyan Migrant Women’s Informal Childcare Organizing as an Alternative Economic Discourse in the Contemporary U.S. Context
Capitalism in Organizational Communication Scholarship
Informal Childcare as an Alternative Organizing Practice
Utu Feminism as Global South Cultural Framework
Methods
Research Setting and Procedures
Researcher Positionality
Data Analysis
Findings
Alternative Communication Practices in Kenyan Migrant Women’s ICCO
Prayer
Preserving Culture by Talking and Teaching Children Involved in ICCO Kenyan Culture
Ethical Norms of the Women’s ICCO Discourse: Trust, Care, and Commitment
Discussion and Conclusions
References
6 Bound(less): Re-storying Entrepreneurship
My Research Journey
Bounded
Making the Shift
Bound(less): Re-storying Entrepreneurship
Embracing Everydayness
Rethinking Innovation
Rethinking Economic Growth
Conclusion
References
Part II Dismantling Borders
7 Reflexivity and Solidarity in Culture-Centered Research with Marginalized Populations
Considering Reflexivity as Research
A Rhetoric of Solidarity
Establishing Trust
Inside (Outsider)
Conclusion
References
8 The Imagined Freedom: Borders and Exile in the Global South
Introduction
Preparing for the Return
The Power of a Foreign Passport
The Imagined Freedom: Pay More or Suffer
The Dream of a New Sky
Memories Erased
Between Anger and Hopelessness: Youth in Gaza
Economy of Starvation
Gaza Between the Global South and the Global North
Conclusion
References
9 Border Struggle: Invisible [Hi]story of the Other in Management/Organization Studies
Saartje Baartman: A Product for Freak Management Shows
Rational Dehumanization and Racialized Scientific Management: Saartje Baartman’s and Ota Benga’s Legacy for Management/Organization [Hi]story
Concluding Thoughts
References
Part III Deconstructing Structures
10 Culture-Centered Organizing at the “Margins of the Margins”: Dismantling Structures, Decolonizing Futures
Colonialism, Capitalism, and Theft
Communicative Inequality and Disenfranchisement
Whiteness, Privatization, and Colonialism
Culture-Centered Organizing at the “Margins of the Margins”
Resistance Work as Interconnected
Voice in Organizing Processes
Knowledge in Organizing Struggle
Co-creating Voice Infrastructures
Sustaining Voice Infrastructures
Crafting Solidarities in Struggles
Challenging Repression
Activism Within the Academe
Conclusion
References
11 Emotional Communities in the Economy of Emotions: A Study of Discursive Muscularity in Networked Mobilization of Fan Groups in China
Introduction
Discursive Muscularity in the Digital Era
Emotional Leverage of Online Fan Groups and Discursive Muscularity
Online Fan Groups as Emotional Discursive Communities
Influence of Emotional Fan Discourse: Constitutive
Influence of Emotional Fan Discourse: Consumptive and Productive
Emotional Leverage in Fan Economy and the Impact on Discursive Muscularity
Emotional Leverage, Nationalistic Discourse, and Fan-Cotts
References
12 Black Lives Matter as Postcolonial Organizing
Introduction
Postcolonialism and Organizing
Commitment #1: Disrupting and Reimagining Organizing Spaces
Commitment #2: Resisting Colonialist Discourse and Rethinking Organizing Practices
Commitment #3: Decolonize Thought and Reconfigure Organizing Forms of Knowledge
Postcolonial Nature of BLM Organizing
BLM Commitment #1: Disrupting and Reimagining Organizing Spaces
BLM Commitment #2: Resisting Colonialist Discourse and Rethinking Organizing Practices
BLM Commitment #3: Decolonizing Thought and Reconfiguring Organizing Forms of Knowledge
Conclusion
Future Implications
Embracing Postcoloniality
Future Implications for Academics
Future Implications for Organizers
Afterword
References
13 Producing and (Re) Producing? An Ethnographic Narrative of Female Estate and Apparel Workers of Sri Lanka
A Preamble
Why the World Needs to Know Their Stories?
Of Colonial Plantations and (Post) Colonial Factories; A Brief Journey to the Past
Lives of ‘Coolies’ Under ‘Colonial Masters’
A Gendered View: Lives of Female Tea Pluckers
‘Girls’, Garments and Global Capital
On Theory and Methods
Theorizing Productive and Reproductive Labour
Of ‘Tea Pluckers’ and ‘Sewing Girls’: ‘Tales from the Field’
Lakshmini’s Productive, (Re)productive Labour
Dishanthi: Untying Reproductive from Productive Labour
Girls at Auntie Margaret’s Boarding House
Demystifying Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labour
Women at the Intersections of Gender, Class and Ethnicity
References
Index
