Abstract
Post-essentialist and poststructuralist conceptualizations of identities and social structures offer the theoretical potential for social change to emerge from actions and interactions among socially located actors. This ‘micro-emancipation’ approach suggests that changes negotiated in relations among actors can be scaled up or expanded beyond individual interactions to effect change in macro structures that sustain inequality. This micro approach contrasts sharply with binary, essentialist and structuralist approaches that implicitly suggest that hegemonic structures will undermine any incipient changes in social relations that emerge in interactions. What has been called ‘entryism’, i.e. the entry of marginalized actors into organizations, has often been viewed in an ambivalent light particularly by critical theorists who have questioned whether marginalized actors who join organizations can do so without becoming coopted. Does the entry of some actors from marginalized groups into organizations advance the opportunities for others or, as some have argued, do actors who succeed become coopted or even participants in the legitimization and reproduction of systems of exclusion? This article theorizes the role organizations play in contributing to the reproduction or disruption and transformation of regimes of inequality. Scholarship regarding the potential for micro-emancipatory actions to generate more substantial social change is at a crossroads. While research findings illustrate the binary of outsider/insider is transgressed and there is a sense that larger scale change is occurring as a result, existing theories have not enabled us to account for how this change is occurring – if it is. This article illustrates how postcolonial and new materialist theories offer distinctive conceptual insights that enable us to advance our understanding of how the entry of marginalized actors into organizations may contribute to destabilization and transformation of regimes of inequality.
Do workers from the margins who succeed in entering organizations simply advance their own careers? Does the success of some marginalized workers help or hinder opportunities for others? Early research in the field of diversity focused on ‘documenting persistent inequality along the lines of gender and racioethnicity in workplaces’ (Zanoni et al., 2010: 11) drawing on social psychological theories such as homophily (Kanter, 1977) to explain patterns of exclusion. Social psychological approaches conceptualize identities from an essentialist perspective and managers in organizations or government policymakers are seen as responsible for change while those who are marginalized are seen as relatively powerless victims. Critical management theorists have also been concerned with issues of inequality; however, many of these approaches have assumed differences in interests between privileged and marginalized groups are structural and therefore, suggest change to regimes of inequality could only occur through ‘emancipation’ whereby individuals and groups become reflexively aware of the social processes through which they are marginalized (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992) and actively resist.
Drawing on poststructuralist assumptions, critical diversity scholars have generated a body of empirical work that illustrates how some workers constructed as ‘different’ have used discursive tactics and ‘body work’ to negotiate their identities in ways that enable them to circumvent and/or minimize exclusion, i.e. to ‘micro-emancipate’ (Essers and Benschop, 2009; Pio and Essers, 2013; Van Laer and Janssens, 2014, 2017; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). While these empirical findings challenge the totalism and essentialism (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992) of social psychological and critical management theories of social change they also highlight that we still do not have a cogent way of theorizing if and/or how micro-emancipatory efforts translate into more substantive and sustained macro social change. Poststructuralists ‘portray the emancipatory idea not as one large, tightly integrated project’ but as ‘partial, temporary movements that break away from diverse forms of oppression’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992: 447); however, concerns about the potential for local micro projects to ‘leave virtually undisturbed the vital sources of oppression’ embedded in the macro-context were flagged by Alvesson and Willmott even as they coined the term micro-emancipation (1992: 449).
In this article I draw on postcolonial theories and new materialist conceptualizations of agency to begin to theorize processes through which micro-emancipatory projects may generate change in regimes of inequality. I explore the performative role the bodies of marginalized actors who have succeeded in securing positions in organizations may play in interrupting the reproduction of inequality regimes. Specifically, drawing on new materialist conceptualizations regarding the agency of matter (Barad, 2007), I theorize how the bodies of marginalized actors may make inequalities visible and thereby undermine the discursive legitimation of inequality in organizations over time. In addition, I move beyond the focus on marginalized actors to consider the ways in which privileged actors are implicated in producing inequality and how through visible acts of recognition they may become passive and/or active allies in changing inequality regimes. I also explore the role of time and how the experiences of marginalized actors who have succeeded in entering organizations may contribute to reflexivity and more strategic challenges to regimes of inequality. Finally, I discuss how organizations are not only sites for production of inequality but how they may also operate to destabilize regimes of inequality through a combination of bureaucracy, decorum and by offering relational spaces (Kellogg, 2011) where marginalized actors may compare notes and organize to more strategically challenge regimes of inequality.
I begin by summarizing the burgeoning empirical literature illustrating how some actors have navigated barriers to enter organizations and pursue successful careers despite their ‘difference’. Following this review, I discuss how theorists have drawn on Bourdieu and Butler’s approaches to theorize links between micro-emancipation and macro social change. I then introduce some concepts drawn from postcolonial and new materialist theories to theorize how actors working from marginal positions use mimicry to ‘make possible’ their invasion of spaces from which they were previously excluded, and how their entry at the same time ‘makes trouble’ – ‘exposing the ambivalence and contingency of [colonial 1 ] authority and assumptions of cultural supremacy’ (Kapoor, 2003: 567).
Outsiders on the inside: Collaborators or agents of change?
Post-essentialist and poststructuralist conceptualizations of identities and social structures offer the theoretical potential for social change to emerge from actions and interactions among socially located actors. While poststructuralist theorists appreciate how organizational and societal discursive and material structures place limits on how identities can be negotiated, they posit that structures are ambivalent and, therefore, unevenly and inconsistently produced in social interactions and hence, susceptible to change. I begin with a review of the empirical studies of micro-emancipation that show how actors from marginalized groups, despite their outsider status, can succeed in constructing a position for themselves as workers, entrepreneurs, professionals and managers, and then consider whether their participation can be understood as reproducing, reinforcing or disrupting inequality regimes (Acker, 2006).
Zanoni et al. argued that: ‘Unequal power relations can be bent, circumvented, strategically appropriated or countered . . . creating openings not only for alternative meanings but for micro-emancipatory projects’ (2010: 17). However, as Swan and Fox note: ‘Entryism has always possessed an ambivalent reputation with many critical theorists wondering whether “oppositional forces [can] enter . . . without becoming coopted? (Cooper, 1995:100)”’ (2010: 574). While recent empirical studies have illustrated that some marginalized actors have successfully navigated barriers to advance their careers, they also acknowledge that these ‘successes’ often appear to leave exclusionary structures relatively untouched and may even contribute to sustaining them (Boogaard and Roggeband, 2010; Puwar, 2004; Van Laer and Janssens, 2017). As Puwar states: ‘The arrival of women and racialized minorities in spaces from which they have been historically or conceptually excluded is an illuminating and intriguing paradox . . . what happens when those bodies not expected to occupy certain places do so?’ (2004: 1).
Studies have illustrated how those marginalized by their categorization as belonging to particular social identity groups (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, national origins) discursively manage or even leverage their ‘difference’ to generate opportunities for their careers (Boogaard and Roggeband, 2010; Essers and Benschop, 2009; Pio and Essers, 2013; Van Laer and Janssens, 2014, 2017; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007). These studies have illustrated how identities are plural and multi-faceted (Rodriguez et al., 2016) and structures are ambivalent, enabling those who ‘differ’ to employ bricolage, i.e. to draw from various aspects of their multiple identities to discursively negotiate a position of belonging in a particular organization or occupation. While these tactics may enable them to move from outside to inside, they may at the same time be inadvertently ‘fixing’ and reinforcing these systems of categorization.
While many studies of micro-emancipation illustrate instances of ‘micro resistance’ (Baines, 2010; Van Laer and Janssens, 2017; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007), workers from marginalized groups who gain entry to organizations still have to navigate systems dominated by discourses and structures that systematically disadvantage people ‘like them’. While those marked as others may penetrate into organizations, they continue to be judged against the ‘somatic norm’ (Puwar, 2004) or ideal worker (Ashcraft, 2013) and they are often found lacking. As critical diversity scholars have shown, the discourse of meritocracy and the standards which exemplify competence continue to be defined in ways that subtly imply that others are ‘less competent’ and deserve to occupy less central positions (Fotaki, 2013; Van den Brink and Benschop, 2011; Van Laer and Janssens, 2014).
Scholars examining the experiences of women who achieve managerial positions or racialized workers in off-shore call centres, for example, have tended to show that they often engage in identity work to manage stigmatization rather than challenging it. Managing stigmatization often means conforming rather than resisting, and workers from marginalized groups describe engaging in ‘body work’ (e.g. changing their personal grooming, dress, way of speaking) to become less visibly ‘different’ (Baines, 2010; Essers and Benschop, 2009; Mavin and Grandy, 2016; Mirchandani, 2015; Pio and Essers, 2013; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007), altering their routines to fit in and align with dominant groups’ preferences (Van Laer and Janssens, 2017) and working harder to meet ‘standards’ and legitimize their presence (Fotaki, 2013).
As a result, some scholars see ‘entryism’ as contributing to assimilation, as those who are ‘different’ engage in cloning in order to ‘get in, get on and get up’ (Swan and Fox, 2010: 586). By attempting to minimize or disguise their ‘difference’, many scholars have suggested that rather than changing social contexts, those who engage in mimicry make minimal, if any, contribution to changing power relations. ‘The rupture caused by mimicry . . . can be extremely disorienting to the natural state of affairs . . . however, it is not menacing enough since it does not problematize the assimilative pressure to mimic the hegemonic culture in the first place’ (Puwar, 2004: 151). Similarly, Prasad and Prasad have argued that those who appear coopted may engage in ‘routine resistance’ which ‘may not always result in metaphorically splitting the bars of the iron cage, it stretches it in ways that make a more habitable space for those for whom escape or exit is not a viable option’ (2000: 402). These findings suggest that by mimicking the majority, marginalized workers, even if they routinely resist, do not constitute a substantive threat to systems of domination.
In summary, the findings to date suggest that insiders may succeed in challenging some assumptions and negotiating some accommodations to practices that exclude or marginalize them; however, their status may be precarious. Broad societal discourses of colonialism and patriarchy are resilient and while some actors from marginalized groups are able to exploit ambivalent structures to enter organizations, their status may be fragile, precluding them from effectively challenging regimes of inequality. By mimicking, conforming and in some cases even ‘going along’, these actors may reinforce systems of exclusion rather than advancing emancipatory projects that could benefit others. The majority of these studies, however, look at a single point in time and therefore, scholars have been calling for studies that take a longer term view to assess whether ‘entryism’ has the potential to advance emancipatory projects (Van Laer and Janssens, 2014).
Theoretical challenges in scaling up micro-emancipation
While the foregoing review suggests that ‘entryism’ may do little to promote meaningful social change, as Swan and Fox argue: ‘sometimes it is difficult to tell whether particular strategies represent co-optation or resistance. Outcomes and effects are unpredictable and sometimes long range’ (2010: 585). In this section I outline how scholars have theorized the processes through which insider/outsiders may or may not precipitate broader social change. I briefly outline how theorists proceeding from post-essentialist, poststructuralist premises have drawn on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus and Butler’s performative perspective to theorize whether micro-emancipation by some marginalized actors may produce more substantive social change. While Bourdieu suggests that change is relatively unusual, his theory of praxis accepts that it is possible (Adams, 2006; Nentwich et al., 2015; Puwar, 2004). Similarly, while scholars have highlighted the challenges implicit in Butler’s performative view, some have suggested that subversive performances may yield change, again, under certain conditions (Nentwich et al., 2015). These scholars show how post-essentialist and poststructuralist approaches enable theorists to address the two central theoretical issues that have been seen as impeding progress toward understanding how micro change may generate macro change: first, how actors may become reflexively aware of inequalities and the need for change and secondly, how marginalized actors, who by definition have less ‘capital’ than dominant actors can nonetheless succeed in effecting change. I conclude the section by arguing that postcolonial and new materialist theories offer insights that suggest some additional ways in which outsiders who become insiders may effect change.
Butler’s performative theory of social change has argued that marginalized actors may challenge discursive binaries that situate them in subordinate positions by performing their identities in ways that make these binaries visible, e.g. drag as a way of disturbing the gender binary. From this perspective, ‘micro’ performances by individual actors can effect ‘macro’ social change by destabilizing societal discourses that constrain actors’ freedom. A key critique of Butler’s argument that change can be achieved through subversive performances that ‘trouble’ a discursive binary is that audiences who are exposed to the performance may dismiss the actor as an outsider, therefore irrelevant, or the performance as flawed. Instead of being ‘troubled’, the audience may conclude that the actor is incompetent, undermining the potential for social change (Nentwich et al., 2015). From Bourdieu’s perspective, Butler’s approach to social change does not effectively address the ‘source of inspiration for the performance’ (Nentwich et al., 2015: 247) nor the resources an actor from outside the field would draw on to legitimate their performance. The majority of scholars drawing on Bourdieu’s theory have argued that while some marginalized actors may navigate barriers to assume positions as insiders, these invaders are unlikely to have the capacity to effect social change (Puwar, 2004) and may in fact be reinforcing regimes of inequality, e.g. by offering ‘evidence’ that ‘the best and brightest’ marginalized actors can succeed. From Bourdieu’s perspective habitus creates a paradox whereby insiders, due to their socialization, simply accept the ‘rules of the game’ and are unable to see the need for change; while outsiders by virtue of their distinct perspective may see the need for change but lack access to capitals embedded in the field that are necessary to effect change. As Puwar argued: ‘Lacking in class, whiteness or masculinity, [those from marginalized groups] will . . . “feel like a fish out of water”’ (Puwar, 2004: 153), likely seeing challenges to the status quo as too risky given their marginal positions.
While the vast majority of the theoretical and empirical literature has focused on how inequality regimes are reproduced, Nentwich et al. (2015) and Adams (2006) have each begun to explore how both Butler’s and Bourdieu’s theories may offer some insights into how instances of micro-emancipation may produce social change. Nentwich et al. (2015) for example illustrated that some actors are simultaneously insiders and outsiders, enabling them to be both reflexively aware of the need for change and perform their identities in ways that enable them to access the capitals needed to legitimate their subversive performances. Similarly, Adams (2006: 517) noted that Bourdieu recognized that reflexivity can emerge in ‘crisis situations’ and when moving across fields where a ‘lack of fit is always possible’. ‘As women enter the workforce, for example, it creates a dissonance and an awareness of “objective relations” in the sphere of work: the “lucidity of the excluded”, which can generate resistance and negotiation (e.g. the formal outlawing of sexual harassment)’ (Adams, 2006: 518, italics in original). Both Nentwich et al. (2015) and Adams (2006) however argue that from Bourdieu’s perspective social change is unlikely to be accomplished without some organized collective effort to legitimize subversive performances and challenges to the doxa of the field. For both Butler and Bourdieu macro social change can be understood to occur when the dominant symbols of a field lose their legitimacy or their meaning is changed in ways that enable new actors to been seen as legitimate.
Scholarship regarding the potential for micro-emancipatory actions to generate more substantial social change is at a crossroads. As Emirbayer and Desmond argued in their substantive review of the ‘racial order’: ‘Despite the outpouring of empirical research, there have been no comparable advances at the level of theoretical insight’ (2015: 3). In the next section I outline how by combining the insights from postcolonial and new materialist theories we can address some of the theoretical conundrums embedded in Butler and Bourdieu’s conceptualizations of social change. Postcolonial theorists conceptualize mimicry not simply as ‘copying’ or ‘cloning’ but as hybridity (Bhabha, 1994), i.e. as dual presence, the simultaneous material presence of insider-ness and outsider-ness that both implicitly challenges discursive binaries and, as I argue, persists over time and space. Combining the postcolonial concept of hybridity with new materialist conceptualizations of the agentic properties of ‘matter’ I theorize the performativity of the bodies of hybrid actors as ‘passive agents’ that instead of disappearing through mimicry, may act as persistent sources of potential disruption to the reproduction of regimes of inequality.
Slow motion revolution or assimilation?
Insights from postcolonial theories
Prasad and Prasad (2003) suggest that postcolonial theories offer new approaches that are particularly valuable in enhancing our capacity to see transgressions and resistance and to theorize the processes through which the co-presence of marginalized and privileged actors may effect broader social change. I discuss how the way agency is conceptualized in new materialist approaches (e.g. Barad, 2007) complements postcolonial concepts of mimicry and hybridity to highlight the performative potential of the bodies of marginalized actors as ‘passive’ agents of social change. Next, I consider how the visibility of recognition of hybrid actors in encounters with privileged actors may augment the capital available to marginalized actors, legitimizing hybridity and thereby potentially undermining the symbolic sources of dominance and marginalization. By considering time, I theorize how the ambivalent experiences of both marginalized and privileged actors may generate reflexivity (decolonizing one’s mind), affecting the subjectivity of both marginalized and privileged actors, and generating the potential for alliances and for more strategic social change. Finally, I theorize how organizations may play an important role in augmenting and extending each of the above processes.
While postcolonialism captures a wide range of distinct theoretical perspectives they share a commitment to ‘contesting and subverting the unquestioned sovereignty of Western categories . . . of “provincializing Europe”’ (Prasad, 2003: 7). While the ‘post’ is sometimes read as suggesting colonialism is in the past, postcolonial theory and criticism ‘is explicitly committed to developing a radical critique of colonialism/imperialism and neocolonialism’ (Prasad, 2003: 7), highlighting the persistence of colonial discourses and hierarchies despite the formal dismantling of colonial systems. Adopting a postcolonial lens enables us to see that identities are not ‘diverse’ in and of themselves, they become diverse in relation to an ideal that is contingent and shifting (Ashcraft, 2013; Martin, 2003) but is inherently Eurocentric. I use the terms ‘others’ and ‘othering’ consistent with postcolonial theories to refer to actors who are marginalized in comparison to those who are privileged and to highlight how the idea of diversity as it is generally used in the western academy reflects an Orientalist discourse (Prasad, 2006; Said, 1978). ‘Non-Western workers – as represented in the thinking of Western, white workers – are Othered; they are conceptualized negatively, as subordinate, with implication that Western ideas and practices are the ideal’ (Ulus, 2015: 891).
Mimicry and hybridization
Bhabha (1994), one of the most influential postcolonial scholars, argued that ‘colonial discourse is characterized not by monolithic homogeneity and hegemonic fixity, but by ambivalence, fissure, and contradictions’ (Prasad, 2003: 20). While he certainly argued that colonial discourses situate actors in unequal positions, he emphasized the potential for relations to be negotiated differently in social interactions. Mimicry, from Bhabha’s (1994) perspective, represents an important potential tactic in generating change rather than a sign of submission on the part of marginalized actors. The inequality embedded in colonial discourses forces marginalized actors to make themselves legible to privileged actors by adjusting the way they perform their identities, e.g. using the colonizer’s language, copying their habits of dress and standards for evaluating merit. In so doing, however, Bhabha argued that mimicry emphasizes rather than obscures the colonial relationship as mimicry can never be perfect. ‘Hence, mimicry – sometimes camouflage, sometimes as mockery, parody and irony – constantly menaces the colonizing project’ (Prasad, 2003: 22). Therefore, like Butler, Bhabha suggests that the inherent ‘slippage’ between the mimic’s ‘marked’ body and the somatic ‘ideal’ (i.e. the colonizer) can make mimicry a subversive act that has the potential to generate reflexivity and hybridization of the ideal. Through mimicry, an actor appropriates and combines aspects of both colonized and colonizer in their performances, producing a ‘disturbing effect that is both familiar’ and unfamiliar. In so doing, Bhabha suggests, ‘the presence of power is revealed as something other than what the rules of recognition assert’ (1994: 160).
Mimicry, as conceptualized by Bhabha, therefore, introduces a new way of thinking about agency, one that works through the ‘subjection’ of ‘others’ in colonial discourses. By decentring and embodying actors, Bhabha shows how as ‘others’ engage in mimicry, i.e. copy colonizers’ habits and expressions while at the same time embodying ‘the other’, their actions make visible power relations. Kapoor uses the term ‘passive agency’ to capture the semiotic effect of this ‘dual presence’. He contrasts passive agency whereby those marginalized appear not to be intentionally ‘resisting’, with ‘expressive agency’. Extant critical management theories have focused on the need to make marginalized actors reflexively aware of unequal relations to encourage movement beyond acquiescence and stimulate intentional acts of resistance (expressive agency) and therefore generally see ‘entryism’ as counterproductive – signalling compliance rather than resistance. Bhabha’s poststructuralist conceptualization of agency shows how ‘others’, through mimicry, both ‘make possible’ their entry into spaces from which they have generally been excluded while at the same time ‘mak[ing] trouble’ (Kapoor, 2003: 567) – in Bhabha’s words, ‘menacing’ colonial discourses simply through their presence. While ‘passive agency’ represents an important potential way of moving beyond the theoretical conundrums that scholars proceeding from Bourdieu’s and Butler’s theories have highlighted, as Kapoor notes: ‘what Bhabha leaves unclear is the extent to which localized agency can and does bring about meaningful change at macro levels of power’ (2003: 576). In the next section I elaborate on Bhabha’s argument regarding mimicry and hybridity introducing new materialist approaches to agency (Barad, 2007) to theorize how, over time, mimicry may contribute to more ‘meaningful change at macro levels’.
Mimicry, iterative hybridization and changes to regimes of inequality
I build on Kapoor’s notion of passive agency, highlighting the crucial importance of re-embodying actors to appreciate the ‘disturbing’ effect ‘the other’ can have as they negotiate intermundane spaces. I theorize how ‘others’ who succeed in entering fields from which they were previously excluded may appear to have little immediate impact but, over time, these individual successes may begin to disrupt the discourses that naturalize exclusion of workers who ‘differ’ and the behaviours of dominant actors in relation to those ‘marked’ as others; interrupting the simple reproduction of the binary discourses and thereby facilitating entry into the field for other ‘others’. By interrupting the reproduction of the discursive foundations of the field, mimicry creates macro change as defined by previous theorists and, I argue, shifts in the distribution of resources at the field and societal levels by opening up access to positions from which ‘others’ have been historically excluded. As ‘others’ generate change through passive agency, they facilitate the entry of other ‘others’; the initial success of one entrant has the potential, as I outline below, to create a fissure through which other ‘others’ can enter, and over time this slow increase in access may generate its own momentum so that eventually the presence of ‘others’ may become normal and taken for granted.
Mimicry facilitates entry to organizations, forcing encounters between marginalized and privileged actors who, due to legacies of formal and ongoing informal processes of exclusion and segregation, often have had little exposure to ‘others’. By simply performing as competent members while embodying an identity that marks them as ‘others’, e.g. non-white, non-male, ‘others’ passively disrupt the binary structure of the ideal worker, i.e. ‘ideal’ and ‘others’. As Kapoor noted, the ‘dual presence’ of mimicry is a form of passive agency, ‘troubling’ the foundations of the binary discourse of insider/outsider. For example, a non-white woman who secures a position of accountant in an organization where white men are the norm disrupts the binary of ideal accountant and ‘other’. The simultaneous presence of her embodied otherness combined with her position in the organization as an accountant troubles the discursive foundations of the field. Paradoxically, while mimicry may subtly shift performances toward racialized and gendered ‘ideals’, as new materialist theories (Barad, 2007) note, ‘others’ are marked by their bodies and other indicators of difference such as the source of their credentials making invisibility impossible.
Earlier essentialist conceptualizations of identities and structures have argued that those from the margins needed to essentially forfeit their ‘authentic’ identities to cross into spaces from which they had traditionally been excluded, and implicitly suggested that once ‘others’ cross to the inside they have essentially transformed themselves, shedding their ‘otherness’ to ‘become one of them’. Bhabha’s (1994) performative theory challenges this dictum, arguing instead that mimicry results in a partial representation of the ideal, a ‘metonymy of presence’ that is simultaneously the same and different – a hybrid that does not conform to the duality of the discourse and whose presence implicitly challenges the authority of the system of mis/representation. Hybridity disrupts the authority of the system of representation as the dual presence of the hybrid actor’s simultaneous similarity to and difference from the ‘normal’ ideal worker generates a caesura or temporal break in social encounters between privileged and marginalized actors. Instead of unreflexively reproducing normal social relations of inclusion (colleague/accountant) or exclusion (non-white, woman), actors must somehow negotiate relations in a way that enables them to ‘go on’, re-ordering the system in some way to account for the hybrid’s presence. As Bhabha argued: ‘This is a moment of revisions’ (1994: 275). Bhabha is less clear about the process through which these interruptions may result in more systemic change although he suggests that hybridization is an iterative process rather than a cataclysmic moment of change.
Insights from new materialist theories
While Bhabha’s conceptualization of hybridity takes the material aspects of the hybrid actor into account, to theorize how the materiality of the hybrid’s presence effects macro change, or as Barad states ‘how matter matters’, we need to re-think agency (Calas and Smircich, 2014). Humanist accounts of agency conceptualize it as ‘aligned with human intentionality’ (Barad, 2007: 177). From Barad’s perspective, bodies are not inert nor are they the properties of individual actors; instead, bodies are ‘intra-actively co-constituted’ as people enact their worlds on an ongoing basis. Agency, then, is an iterative social process not ‘something that someone or something has’ (Barad, 2007: 214). Whether a hybrid actor’s embodied ‘otherness’ comes to ‘matter’ in any given intra-action is not pre-determined. As I outline below, a new materialist conceptualization of agency suggests that the materiality of the dual presence of hybrid actors can generate change by disrupting the simple reproduction of regimes of inequality as hybrid actors circulate and interact with other actors. At the same time, by emphasizing the role (and responsibility) of all actors in co-constituting how ‘matter matters’ in any given ‘intra-action’, new materialist approaches force us to consider not only the ‘agency’ of the hybrid actor but also how other actors are implicated in the process of reproducing or changing regimes of inequality.
By iteratively negotiating a variety of new relations through social interactions I argue that as ‘others’ occupy positions in organizations and occupational fields they gradually constitute a new hybrid identity that over time may become familiar and recognizable in the context. Taking the example of the accountant above, it is clear that there are an array of ways in which the ‘trouble’ in the social encounter can be negotiated; some resolutions however, may subtly reinforce unequal relations (e.g. actors may subtly note the ‘otherness’ of the hybrid but agree that this particular non-white woman is exceptional and therefore deserving of her unusual position) or subtly alter relations (e.g. where actors focus exclusively on professional identity of the accountant, ignoring the embodied ‘otherness’ of the hybrid actor). Whatever the mode of resolving the disturbance, the simple reproduction of the regime of inequality is interrupted. Further, it is likely that as the hybrid engages in a variety of interactions with different actors and under differing circumstances, the resolutions negotiated in interactions will vary. This variation, in and of itself, has the potential to generate ‘trouble’ as the lack of consistency and coherence undermines the implicit hegemony of the discursive binary, disrupting the taken-for-granted authority of the ‘rules for recognition’.
The context of organizations can augment and accelerate this process. As ‘others’ take on a familiar professional identity but perform it in a new skin, with a ‘different’ accent or clothed in distinctive dress, they gradually create a new hybrid identity that combines the embodied identity of the ‘other’ and the agency that comes with a position in the social structure of the organization or occupational field. Paradoxically, the formal ‘colourblindness’ implicit in bureaucracies that encourages actors to ignore rather than acknowledge ‘differences’ requires that marginalized actors who succeed in navigating barriers to entry are accorded the same rights as other members. By occupying formal positions in organizations, while at the same time being ‘different’, these actors create both precedents and paradoxes, disrupting the simple reproduction of rules and policies that had hitherto legitimatized their exclusion. This disturbance may be further exacerbated in contexts where formal laws and/or policies promoting diversity are present.
While formal organizations have been critiqued as simply ‘reifications’ (du Gay and Logdrup-Hjorth, 2016), positions in organizations still accord actors a degree of recognizable, legitimate authority that ‘others’ can draw upon to effect change within the purview of their roles. In some cases, e.g. professions, the authority that accompanies these positions includes a degree of legal accountability. As ‘others’ occupy positions in organizations, they may wield authority to hire directly or to shape rules and routines in ways that appear more natural to them, potentially facilitating access to organizations by other ‘others’. While they may not be reflexively resisting, by simply doing things in ways that are comfortable for them, they may subtly alter the rules of the game.
In addition to the role of formal organization, the informal rules that govern relations among members in organizations require a certain decorum (Goffman, 1959) be maintained in interactions among those formally recognized as members. Drawing on new materialisms, specifically agential realism (Barad, 2007), I suggest that by simply becoming a member of an organization, indicators of recognition are ‘elicited’ (Shotter, 2008) from other members in interactions, generating ambivalence and undermining the unreflexive reproduction of exclusion based on abstract categories. While decorum can be enacted in an insincere way, e.g. appearances may be maintained ‘frontstage’ while being contradicted ‘backstage’, even inconsistent or insincere recognition of ‘others’ interrupts the hegemony of historical relations of dominance and marginalization. While Goffman (1983) argued that decorum may also prevent ‘others’ from overtly resisting routines of marginalization, he, like Bhabha, conceded that this is not inevitable. To more fully appreciate how mimicry produces hybridity that repeats and circulates sufficiently to precipitate a renegotiation of the rules of engagement it is crucial to more clearly situate actors in their bodies and within organizations. By appreciating that identities are performed by bodies that are marked by visible differences such as skin colour, biological sex characteristics or dress, the caesura will be repeated and will extend into new spaces as the hybrid actor circulates in social interactions in the field and over time. In this way, the body of the hybrid actor passively exerts agency; it draws attention to itself, despite the intention of the actor who may actually be attempting the opposite, to fit in and not draw any attention to their ‘difference’. As the hybrid actor simply goes about their business over time, this becomes less shocking and the caesura, I suggest, gradually diminishes so that the hybrid position can be smoothly appropriated by similar ‘others’. As the symbolic foundations of the discourse are hybridized and the meanings widened to encompass a broader range of performances, access to the organization or occupation is similarly widened so that other ‘others’ become recognizable as potentially legitimate actors in the field.
Building capitals
In the previous section I theorized how ‘others’ may passively disrupt the reproduction of regimes of inequality; in this section I draw on the work of Fanon, another renowned postcolonial theorist, to theorize how acts of recognition and non-recognition affect the capitals available to ‘others’ and how recognition may also affect others’ capacity to effect change in regimes of inequality. Fanon drew on his personal experiences of ‘othering’ as he (a black 2 man from the Caribbean) migrated to France in the 1950s. Fanon argued that one of the ways relations of inequality are reproduced is through the mundane actions of privileged actors that express recognition or lack thereof in interactions with ‘others’. The concept of passive agency undermines regimes of inequality I argue, not only through the dual presence and circulation of mimics but also through the actions of privileged actors in interactions with ‘others’.
Fanon offers a particularly vivid portrait of ‘othering’ as he describes how, prior to leaving his home in Martinique, he never saw himself as ‘black’ but upon arriving in France he was ‘hailed’ based on his skin colour – ‘the Other 3 fixes me with his gaze, his gestures, his attitude, the way you fix a preparation of a dye’ (2008 [1952]: 89). In line with Butler and Bourdieu’s later arguments, Fanon’s accounts of his experiences illustrated how subjectivity and subjectivation are constituted in social interactions, through performance and recognition; and how actors constitute regimes of inequality by situating each other within discursive binaries. Fanon describes the experience of subjectivation, how he was recognized not simply as a person but as a ‘black’ man, an ‘other’ through the subtle gestures of French citizens in their social interactions with him. As Nentwich et al. (2015) note, Bourdieu’s and Butler’s views of the potential for social change to occur in interactions differ. Considering Fanon’s account a Bourdieusian may argue that the ‘othering’ experience is virtually inevitable as the French citizen’s habitus will result in their unreflexive positioning of actors as belonging in particular positions in the field and their position as citizens gives them the cultural capital to legitimize this positioning. An analysis drawing on Butler (or Bhabha), on the other hand, may see the outcome of this interaction as less predictable as actors simultaneously constitute each actor’s identities and the discursive binaries at the same time as they engage in the interaction. This second argument, I suggest, introduces the theoretical possibility for the capitals available to each actor to be negotiated along with their respective positions, and, therefore, the capitals each may access are contingent on the outcome of this negotiation rather than determined a priori.
The process through which identities are negotiated and constituted, and therefore the capitals they are able to access, is central to appreciating the potential for hybrid actors to execute the duties associated with their position in a given organization or profession but also to appreciating the potential for them to effect change to regimes of inequality in a given context. Diversity scholars have tended to focus on the actions of ‘others’ while the actions of privileged actors have received far less theoretical attention. However, following Fanon, Butler and Bhabha, I suggest that if we view interactions as consequential we must attend not only to the actions of the privileged and hybrid actors in the interaction but also to other co-participants (e.g. on-lookers) to fully appreciate the impact that indicators of recognition exchanged in an interaction can have on regimes of inequality. Simply securing a position in an organization constitutes an act of recognition that challenges the insider/outsider binary. As hybrid actors then go on to interact with privileged actors in the normal course of their work, subtle expressions of recognition (or lack thereof) will constitute their position in the organization and professional field and, therefore, the capitals they can access as they carry out their activities. As noted in the previous section, it is likely that the responses of privileged actors will vary and this variation means that any given actor’s capitals in a field are not fully known a priori but are negotiated and re-negotiated on an ongoing basis. In contrast then to approaches that have focused on the reproduction of regimes of inequality, this analysis suggests that hybrid actors are not inevitably lacking in capital and that, instead, they can acquire capital in encounters with privileged actors who recognize and thereby accord hybrid actors the same capital as ‘normal’ workers in their positions.
Further, the extent to which these acts of recognition and non-recognition may be visible (Goffman, 1971) has the potential to extend the impact of acts of recognition beyond a single moment of interaction. Goffman drew theoretical attention to the ‘public’ nature of social interactions and to the visibility of the subtle actions of each actor and their effects on the audience. Following this argument, I suggest that securing a position in an organization is a highly visible form of recognition and organizational contexts generally increase the visibility of interactions between privileged and hybrid actors, enhancing the semiotic effect of acts of recognition on the reproduction or disruption of regimes of inequality. The bureaucratic nature of organizations means that the actions of privileged actors may be interpreted by co-participants as ‘precedents’ encouraging imitation by others. Drawing on new materialisms, we can more fully appreciate the agential qualities of these acts of recognition. These visible acts of recognition may, extending the concept of passive agency, not only have a semiotic effect, they may also ‘summon’ (Shotter, 2008) specific actions from other organizational actors or others in the occupational field. As some actors recognize the membership of ‘others’ on more equal grounds they may unintentionally collaborate in destabilizing regimes of inequality. Securing organizational positions also addresses a key critique of Butler’s approach, i.e. that performances by ‘others’ can be dismissed as irrelevant. As recognized insiders, ‘others’ by definition have secured some legitimacy as well as access to some capitals.
Potential allies: ‘The other West’
Nandy, another important postcolonial theorist, suggested that ‘the colonized have an important ally in the ‘other West’ (Nandy, 1983: 48) or the ‘West’s other self’ (Nandy, 1983: xiii) (cf. Prasad, 2003: 19). While the preceding section argued that the responses of privileged actors in encounters with hybrid actors may not inevitably result in reproduction of regimes of inequality and, on the contrary, can contribute to destabilizing them, regardless of the actor’s intentions, in this section I consider more closely how privileged actors may move from ‘passive’ allies in interrupting the reproduction of regimes of inequality to reflexive, active allies. Nandy highlighted the ambivalent nature of ‘the West’, arguing that some in the West are likely to see the injustice of colonialism and its corrosive effect on the colonizer as well as those marginalized. Similarly, Ulus found ‘encountering the other can have wide implications that are not narrowly defined by negative, pre-determined outcomes’ (2015: 891).
In her study of recurrent interactions between those situated in unequal positions in the colonial hierarchy, Ulus (2015) found that these encounters can generate reflexivity among those who enjoy a privileged position, in some cases precipitating use of stereotypes as a form of psychic defence. Nandy, on the other hand, suggested these interactions may also help those in the West to ‘de-colonize their minds’, to become reflexively aware of the injustice of colonialism. While Nandy does not directly discuss how allies, ‘the other West’, may be translated into macro level change, I argue that this insight offers another way of addressing the second theoretical challenge, i.e. how marginalized actors who lack capitals may challenge dominant actors. By arguing that ‘the West’ is not homogeneous, Nandy’s insight suggests a process that has been lacking in extant theories which emphasize the role of marginalized actors in effecting social change but seem to presume, despite post-essentialist conceptualizations of identity, a hegemonic ‘whiteness’ that will undermine any changes that could destabilize white privilege.
Encounters between competent ‘others’ and privileged actors offer opportunities to ‘test’ the stereotypes of ‘others’ held by privileged actors. As hybrid actors, i.e. those who both belong and do not, circulate through interactions with an expanding network of privileged actors within the intermundane spaces of organizations and professional fields, they continue, simply through their presence, to disrupt systems of representation (Hall, 1997) – potentially generating reflexivity amongst a growing array of privileged actors who may come to question the legitimacy of discourses that rationalize inequality (decolonizing their minds) and becoming allies. Some privileged actors who become more reflexively aware and engage in emancipatory projects may add their capitals to strategic challenges to the logic and structures of exclusion; however, through even unreflexive acts of recognition, their capitals are passively implicated in micro-emancipatory projects.
Entryism and disenchantment of ‘others’
Nandy (1983) argued that while colonization may have originally been sustained through explicit and/or implicit use of violence, the most powerful way it is sustained, even in post-colonial contexts, 4 is the internalization of the colonizers’ discourses that ‘colonizes the mind’ of those constructed as ‘others’, ‘infiltrating their consciousness’. Infiltrated consciousness is a sense of inferiority whereby ‘others’ adopt the same ideals as colonizers and come to see themselves as inferior. Fanon referred to a similar phenomenon using the term ‘epidermalization of inferiority’ (2008 [1952]: 19) that he argued convinces ‘others’ that ‘there is but one destiny for the black man. And it is white’ (2008 [1952]: xiv).
Nandy argued that this feeling of inferiority and internalization of colonial ideals is what entices ‘others’ to mimic the colonizer. ‘Entryism’ therefore, may very well reflect cooptation. Nandy and Fanon, not unlike critical management theories, posit a process of ‘emancipation’ or ‘decolonizing the mind’ (Nandy, 1983) whereby ‘others’ must become reflexively aware of the processes through which they are being marginalized as a prerequisite for them to begin to intentionally resist. Those who mimic are, I expect, more likely to be selected for entry into ‘mainstream’ positions than ‘others’ who do not. By mimicking the ideal they appear to be complicit collaborators, advancing their own careers and potentially adding to pressures for assimilation by ‘going along’. However, this apparent compliance presumes that subjectivities and performances of identity are fixed and consistent over time. By taking a longer term perspective, I suggest that while the consciousness of marginalized actors may initially be infiltrated by the colonial ideal, as ‘others’ gain experience, developing competence and getting recognition from peers and superiors some may become ‘disenchanted’, proving to themselves that they belong.
Further, as ‘others’ become ‘insiders’ navigating a range of interactions, they are likely to become increasingly aware of the ambivalence of the social field, i.e. the variation in responses they receive in interactions with privileged actors – some of whom may recognize their professional identities and competence while other privileged actors may invoke stereotypes, focusing on ‘difference’ and refusing to negotiate more equal relations with them. By exploiting this ambivalence, ‘others’ may move beyond simple entry to advance their careers beyond the peripheral positions deemed appropriate for people ‘like them’.
By taking time into account, we can see how ‘others’ as they establish their membership in organizations gain insight into the ‘rules of the game’ and acquire capitals, potentially including more senior positions and allies that may enhance their capacity to effectively challenge structures such as recruitment strategies and rules for membership that disadvantage both them and other ‘others’. As ‘others’ decolonize their minds, they may also become both more willing and able to challenge unequal treatment in individual interactions.
One final way in which organizational contexts may augment and accelerate change to regimes of inequality is by serving as relational spaces (Kellogg, 2011), offering ‘others’ ‘backstage’ opportunities to share both success stories and ‘atrocity stories’ (Goffman, 1963) and to become reflexively aware of relations of inequality. Relational spaces may also offer opportunities for developing alliances amongst ‘others’ and/or with privileged actors to use expressive agency to more strategically challenge structures that facilitate reproduction of regimes of inequality.
Postcolonial and new materialist theories, I argue, are critical to advancing our understanding of how mimicry, rather than simply reinforcing categories of difference and promoting assimilation, can, over time, lead to hybridization of identities and potentially to a ‘strategic reversal of domination’, as Bhabha (1994) argued. I have theorized how ‘entryism’ has the capacity to disrupt unreflexive reproduction of the discourse and material structures of exclusion in organizations and professional fields, hybridizing the identity of the ideal worker and enabling other ‘others’ to access at least partial recognition of their professional identity more easily. As ‘others’ disrupt representational codes, other ‘others’ who enter through the fissures created may experience less entry shock and, drawing on early entrants as role models, as well as the precedents that may have been established, later generations of ‘others’ may be both more willing and able to contest practices they see as unfair.
A postcolonial lens significantly alters the way in which we understand mimicry, illustrating how it is both compliance and resistance, affecting stereotypes held by both dominant and marginalized actors, operating through both semiotic and material processes. The analysis outlined extends the conceptualization of passive agency in several ways: first, I theorize how the hybridization of the identity of the ‘ideal worker’ precipitated by mimicry, over time, makes the identity more ‘habitable’ for similar ‘others’, who may then be able to appropriate it to enter ‘mainstream’ spaces in greater numbers; secondly, I theorize how the passive agency of privileged actors may also contribute to emancipatory projects, enhancing the capitals available to actors from the margins and thereby adding momentum to destabilization of regimes of inequality; and finally, I conceptualize ‘passive agency’ as operating not only through semiotic processes but also through agentic material processes. Passive agency refers to both the unreflexive, disruptive processes precipitated by the dual presence of hybrid actors as they negotiate intermundane spaces as well as the semiotic, symbolic and agential effects privileged actors may have on other organizational members as they engage in visible acts of recognition of marginalized actors.
Discussion
Do workers from the margins who succeed in entering organizations or professions from which they have historically been excluded contribute to social change or reinforce binaries that form the foundation of regimes of inequality? Postcolonial and new materialist approaches offer distinctive new insights that enable us to advance our understanding of the processes through which actors who ‘invade’ spaces from which they have been historically and conceptually excluded (Puwar, 2004) may disrupt the unreflexive reproduction of regimes of inequality. Postcolonial theorists draw our attention to how Eurocentrism (Said, 1978) interpellates the identity of ideal workers, creating ambivalent rather than hegemonic structures (Bhabha, 1994) that therefore can be navigated through mimicry. Further, the insights of Fanon (2008 [1952]) and Nandy (1983) enable us to see how encounters between marginalized and privileged actors may interrupt the simple reproduction of regimes of inequality, potentially generating reflexivity and/or engagement in change.
I contribute to current debates about whether and/or how regimes of inequality can be changed. Critical studies of diversity have shown that marginalized actors exercise agency using language and ‘body work’ to fashion professional identities that are habitable. While these ground-breaking studies have demonstrated that identities are not fixed and structures are not deterministic, the question of whether ‘entryism’ promotes social change or reinforces existing systems of exclusion remains a pressing theoretical challenge with important implications for practice and social justice. Scholars have yet to generate a viable theorization of how the entry of marginalized actors into spaces dominated by privileged actors, who have an interest in preserving the status quo, may generate significant social change. To date, agency has been conceptualized in humanist terms and theorists have therefore focused on the need to generate reflexivity among ‘others’ so they can actively resist the processes through which they are marginalized. New materialist conceptualizations of agency instead suggest that ‘otherness’ is co-constituted in ‘intra-actions’ highlighting how all actors, not just ‘others’, are implicated in bringing about social change. By combining postcolonial and new materialist insights I have suggested that mimicry cannot erase material bodily ‘differences’; however, whether and how these ‘differences’ come to ‘matter’ in situating actors as insiders or outsiders is not pre-determined. The embodied ‘otherness’ of hybrid actors, instead of inevitably resulting in their marginalization or ‘differential inclusion’ (Puwar, 2004), may instead serve to disrupt ‘intra-actions’ and stimulate social change. The bodies of hybrid actors are not only a ‘dual presence’, as Bhabha has argued, but they may actively ‘presence’ inequality in social interactions and in so doing, highlight the ethical responsibility all actors share in ‘revisioning’ how we relate to each other.
While critical management theorists have advocated intentional, organized resistance, Kapoor, drawing on Bhabha, cautions ‘those whose response to subjection is direct opposition’, suggesting that it may ‘result in the perpetuation of violence and the replacement of one domination by another’ (2003: 568). From this perspective then, ‘entryism’ may prove to be one of the most powerful levers available for promoting social change. Critical diversity theorists have drawn scholars’ attention to the tactics marginalized actors have used to navigate barriers to entry; however, relatively little research has investigated what happens after these boundaries are crossed. By mimicking, conforming and in some cases even ‘going along’, it has been implied that these actors may reinforce systems of exclusion rather than advancing emancipatory projects that could benefit others. I have outlined an alternative process whereby the ‘dual presence’ of ‘others’ as insiders may, over time, hybridize the identity of the ideal worker, and disrupt instead of ‘fix’ discursive binaries, facilitating rather than impeding the entry of other ‘others’ into organizations and occupational fields.
A key outstanding question relates to the role of reflexivity. The processes of change theorized rely extensively on ‘passive agency’ exerted as both marginalized and privileged actors go about their day-to-day activities in workplaces; however, we lack an understanding of the extent to which mimicry by ‘others’ and/or recognition by privileged actors – ‘the other West’ – is reflexive or unreflexive. How important is reflexivity for both marginalized and/or privileged actors? Is passive agency sufficient for generating change? The approach outlined also relies on ‘slippage’ between ‘others’ and the ‘ideal’ – how ‘different’ do ‘others’ need to be to precipitate change? Are there limits?
Clearly, neither becoming an insider nor interactions between privileged actors and ‘others’ inevitably leads to ‘decolonizing minds’ or social change; however, an exploration of the role passive agency may play in promoting change to regimes of inequality seems worthwhile. Importantly, while I have argued that ‘entryism’ may challenge binaries and initiate social change, it remains exceptional and gains made may be fragile and susceptible to projects by dominant actors who seek to undermine them. Also, in theorizing the role of insiders in effecting social change I am not suggesting that efforts by social movements and ‘outsiders’ to highlight inequality are in some way less relevant or effective; on the contrary, an important direction for additional research would be exploration of if and/or how insiders’ and outsiders’ efforts to effect change affect each other.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of the Special Issue and two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and valuable insights on the manuscript.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
