Organizations and Violence: The Child as Abject-Boundary in Ireland’s Industrial Schools

Abstract

What role do organizations play in the enactment of large-scale violence against a specific group of people? In this paper, I depart from existing literature that focuses on violence within organizations, and instead emphasize the influence of external actors. Specifically, I examine the ways in which supporting organizations can first legitimate, and then actively maintain, violence against a group of vulnerable people. Drawing upon a unique, recently-published archive of data, these ideas are developed through an analysis of a case study in which large-scale violence was carried out on a vulnerable group: Ireland’s industrial school children. I draw on Kristeva’s notion of abjection to show how an excluded, distasteful ‘other’ is discursively co-constructed such that violence is seen as acceptable, and then actively maintained in the abject position as a boundary object that encompasses shared meanings across different organizations. Contributions include a framework for understanding the role of organizations in the perpetration of large-scale violence, which highlights how violence can be legitimated via the construction of subjects as abject boundary objects in extreme cases, and how this abject position can be maintained through inter-organizational dynamics comprising excessive rules and regulation, the suppression of care, and active policing. Finally, scholarship on boundary objects is extended by this paper’s interrogation of the ‘dark side’ of this inter-group phenomenon, an area that is rarely studied.

Keywords

abjection boundary objects children industrial schools violence

Introduction

Throughout the last century, Irish children identified as being in need were placed in industrial schools. Although ostensibly set up to care for children, we now know that many were violent and neglectful institutions, with excessive beatings and sexual abuse commonplace.¹ These schools were staffed by clergy, but also by lay people, and were supported by an entire state system of police, lawyers, judges, doctors and politicians. Even so, abuse was allowed to continue in Ireland’s industrial schools, and was silently enabled by the people and the organizations that were in contact with them.

How could this have occurred? Given their location among communities, ordinary Irish people knew about the abuses that were taking place (Killian, 2015). Real human suffering was occurring within the walls of these institutions and surely this alone would have been enough to engender horror in the ordinary people that came in contact with the children, and compel them to try and prevent it. The question remains as to why it did not. We know from existing scholarship that organizations have a long history of involvement in violence, and so questions emerge as to the role played by organizations in this case.

A unique opportunity to explore these appears in the form of a recent study into what happened at Ireland’s industrial schools (Ryan, 2009a). Taking eight years to complete, the research was carried out by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. Evidence from over a thousand witnesses was gathered and a 2600-page report produced. Upon publication, its stark accounts of institutional cruelty shocked the world. Supported by detailed analysis and expert commentary, the report concludes with reasons why such horrific abuse was allowed to continue for 50 years; failures within the management of the system are, for example discussed at length. What is omitted, however, is the question of how external organizations, that were ostensibly supporting and governing the schools, allowed this to happen. This oversight is mirrored in organizational scholarship on the topic of large-scale violence, much of which focuses only on dynamics within organizations.

In contrast, in this paper I ask what role is played by external organizations in the perpetration of large-scale violence against a group of vulnerable people. Specifically, how were the relevant children perceived? Building upon studies of abjection in organizations (Fotaki, 2011, 2013; Höpfl, 2000; Phillips & Rippin, 2010; Rizq, 2013; Tyler, 2011), I present an extreme case in which industrial school children are discursively constructed as abject subjects and actively maintained as such, and show how they come to represent boundary objects that encompass understandings of a new national identity. Finally, I detail how the active maintenance of this construction can enable systemic and enduring violence.

In the context of this study, it is important that perceptions of childhood are not assumed to be absolute and universal. What childhood means in any particular place and time is socially constructed, and thus dependent on the social, economic and political perspectives that dominate (Walsh, 2004; Zelizer, 1985). Unfortunately very little is known about perceptions of Irish childhood during the time period being studied due to a ‘regrettable paucity of literature’ on the topic (Fallon, 2005, p. 5). What we do know, however, is that corporal punishment was more or less accepted in families and schools. There was little understanding of its harmful effects and the attitude that ‘a good beating never hurt anyone’ prevailed (Maguire & Cinneide, 2005, p. 635). Nonetheless, the Ryan Report concludes that in Ireland’s industrial schools, physical punishment was excessive and severe even by historical standards, and was used as a means to instill fear and to control. Sexual abuse was a ‘chronic’ problem in many schools while neglect and emotional abuse were ‘endemic’ (Ryan, 2009a). Based on this, the concept of violence used in this paper encompasses this excessive physical punishment along with sexual abuse and extreme neglect that took place in these schools.

The paper proceeds as follows. Beginning with an overview of organizational literature on violence, I outline the concept of abjection and discuss its use in organization studies. Scholarship on boundary objects is introduced. Following this, I detail the study’s methods, and move to present the findings. Here, two overarching phenomena are described: the construction of the child as abject in this extreme case, and the ongoing maintenance of the boundary that excludes the abject. Both contribute to the legitimating of violence against impoverished children housed in Ireland’s industrial schools. I note that dynamics of abjection do not pertain to all organizational settings in which violence occurs, but are contingent on particular features coalescing, as happened in this case. Finally, I propose an emergent theory of the role of organizations in the perpetration of large-scale violence, concluding with a discussion of potentially countervailing forces, and implications for practice.

Organizations and Violence

Organizations are central to the carrying out of violence; in the last 100 years many of the most horrific acts carried out by humans have involved significant projects of organization. In Ireland’s industrial schools, for example, excessive violence was so common as to be systemic. Normal, everyday actions were frequent occasions for beating, such as being last to leave the washrooms (Touher, 2007, p. 28), giving a wrong answer in class, or mere accidents including bed-wetting and soiling one’s underwear by young children. Survivors reported being continually in fear of the next attack (Ryan, 2009b, p. 153). In addition, children were frequently neglected and sexual abuse of children, including rape, by those charged with their care was a ‘chronic problem’ in a number of Schools (Ryan, 2009b, p. 190). These organizations were excessively violent places.

Studies into organizational violence have been relatively few (Clegg, 2006), with some exceptions (see Bergin & Westwood, 2003, for a useful overview). Issues include how people working in organizations can find themselves involved in violent behaviour (Arendt, 1994 [1963]; Bauman, 1989, p. 194; Stokes & Gabriel, 2010), and the features of organization that lead to this. Since the early psychoanalytic work of Tavistock School authors (see Hearn, 1994, for a discussion), the unconscious has emerged as an important concept. Simply being part of certain organizations can encourage ‘indifference to human feeling, [and] suffering’ (Gabriel, 2003, p. 169; see also Diamond, 1997; Garner & Evans, 2002; Schwartz, 1987; Wardhaugh & Wilding 1993). Related to this, a second and important trajectory involves the ways in which the gendered nature of organizations facilitates a suppression of the feminine and results in aggression and violence (Hearn, 1994; Linstead, 1997). Yet others examine organizations that can be classed as ‘total institutions’, and the violence that can result in these oppressive contexts (Clegg, 2006; Clegg, Pina e Cunha, & Rego, 2012), including violence against children in institutions such as industrial schools (Kavanagh, 2013).

The bulk of existing work focuses on the enactment of violence within organizations. However, organizations do not exist in a vacuum, but rather are inevitably bound up in networks. Ireland’s industrial schools, for example, were run and staffed by various religious congregations. They were governed by the Department of Education, and were subject to the laws of the Irish government. Disputes within the school were often brought to the attention of the police force and the judiciary, and both civil society and media organizations played a role in informing the public of important issues. An entire, interlinked nexus of organizations was involved. The role of such parties is important (Hearn, 1994), albeit often overlooked. In this paper, I explore aspects of inter-organizational dynamics that facilitate organizational violence against particular groups of people. This echoes recent calls to examine in more detail what ‘the organizational conditions of violence’ might be, in specific situations (Clegg et al., 2012, p. 1735).

In answering this question, it is helpful to draw on scholars of organizational violence who have emphasized the importance of subject-formation. Violence can be legitimated when subjectivity and identity are constructed through processes of exclusion. The work of Mary Douglas (1966) is influential here; in Purity and Danger she describes how societies maintain a sense of purity through systematic separation and demarcation of those considered to be dirty or pollutant. The expulsion of the impure creates a sense of unity, as members cohere around a shared meaning (1966, p. 2). Organizations play a role in this; ex-prisoners and inmates of mental health institutions are examples of expelled groups that nonetheless remain at the margins of society, engendering fear because of the threat they pose (Douglas, 1966, p. 98). The idea that identity formation on the part of an individual subject, a group, or an organization is founded on the construction of difference and the isolation of a strange and threatening other has informed organization scholars (Cusack, Jack & Kavanagh, 2003; Gabriel, 2012; Pelzer, 2003; McKenna, 1992; Desmond & Kavanagh, 2003; Westwood, 2003), many of whom demonstrate how this dynamic can legitimize violence against the other (Stokes and Gabriel, 2010). In addition to Douglas’s work, a number of theoretical trajectories have been invoked to develop the concept, from Girard’s scapegoat and Foucault’s limit of civilization, to Derrida’s boundaries that inhere to language (Bergin & Westwood, 2003). In this paper I draw on Kristeva’s concept of maternal abjection, which offers a yet richer and more nuanced understanding of the emergence of violence (Linstead, 1997), and is particularly appropriate for understanding the case at hand.

Abjection

Building on the work of Freud (1919) and Klein (1946) as well as Douglas, for Kristeva (1982) abjection offers a way of understanding the formation of the subject. As a child develops she enters the world of language, or in psychoanalytic terms the symbolic order, in which the law of the father dominates (see also Rizq, 2013). The maternal remains outside the symbolic, beyond what is tolerable, and even what is thinkable, and must be repelled. For the developing subject, the abject maternal that lies within evokes feelings of disgust and repulsion, and the unconscious struggles to deal with this. In early childhood therefore, the child turns against the body of the mother in a process of abjection that remains taboo. Inspired by Douglas, Kristeva argues that the development of a sense of self, or identity, is largely based on such exclusions; the subject is defined by the boundary between self and the abject. Projecting this expulsion of toxicity and disgust onto other human beings is part of the process. Building on Kristeva’s ideas, Butler notes how these abjected others are relegated to a ‘zone of uninhabitability’, a space perceived with ‘dread’ by the subject (1993, p. 3). Not considered to be ‘valid’ subjects in and of themselves, they are nonetheless required in order to ‘form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject’ (Butler, 1993, p. 3).

The concept of abjection sheds light on the persistence of certain oppressive norms in society (Reay, 2005; Scharff, 2010), and in organizations (Kenny, 2010; Rizq, 2013; Tyler, 2011). Here, for example, the suppression of the feminine, particularly aspects of female sexuality that are embodied (Höpfl, 2000; Phillips and Rippin, 2010), can result in the elevation of ‘ideal’, masculine, identities constructed in opposition to the excluded other/feminine (Fotaki, 2011, 2013). Because the abject lies within the self, it can never be fully cast off. Perversely then, the subject experiences an ‘engaged preoccupation with what is most debased and defiled’ about itself (Butler, 1997, p. 50; Tyler, 2011); it is caught in a perpetual attempt to repel the abject that resides within (Kristeva, 1982).

Given that the process is ongoing, the rejected maternal body represents a constant threat to the paternal symbolic order. It does not respect the ‘borders, positions and rules’ within the symbolic (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4), and thus holds the potential for disruption and subversion. It must therefore continually be repressed and policed. In the context of contemporary organizations, scholars show how encroaching regimes of oppressive ‘regulation, surveillance and governance’ in, for example, UK mental health services (Rizq, 2013, p. 10), can be seen as ‘an attempt to gain mastery over feelings unconsciously deemed to be abject reminders of the body’ (Rizq, 2013, p. 1). Excessive attempts to suppress and control the abjected ‘feminine’ persist in today’s organizations (Linstead, 1997), often emerging in the form of strict adherence to rigid prescriptions and rules and a clear sense of order. In this way, scholars link the unconscious process of abjection with excessive instances of ‘policies, structures and practices’ that persist in some organizations and institutions (Rizq, 2013, p. 3).

Importantly in the context of this paper, Linstead (1997) finds a direct link between abjection in organizations and violence. Specifically, he describes the abjection of emotion in a case similar to the industrial schools described in this paper, a religious-run institution for young boys near Perth, Australia. Abjection facilitated violence in this school, and the experience remained with the boys throughout their lives. Linstead’s core argument, that the abjection of the semiotic and the feminine can legitimize aggression against a particular group of people, resonates with Butler’s illustration of the role played by abjection in justifying homophobic violence (1990), along with violence against imprisoned suspects in the US war on terror (2009). It echoes Hearn’s (1994) illustration of how organizations mask a foundational violence that is based on inherent exclusions of the feminine, through rigid rules, structures and processes (see also Pelzer, 2003). In summary, abjection involves the exclusion of that which is ‘distasteful, disgusting and frightening’, as part of the construction of a secure identity that promises to cover over a haunting anxiety that has been repressed. Even so, the abject continually threatens at the borders of the self, and this boundary must therefore be policed. Beyond scholarship on organizational violence, the issue of boundary maintenance has long been a focus for organization scholars. Within this body of work, the concept of the boundary object is key.

Boundary objects and marginalized groups

Emerging from literature on the sociology of science and technology, the boundary object acts as something of a bridge that facilitates knowledge-sharing across the divide between groups (Haraway, 1991; Knorr Cetina, 1999). Such objects are both ‘plastic enough to adapt to local needs’ and yet sufficiently robust to enable a ‘common identity’ across sites (Star & Griesemer, 1989, p. 393). Despite the different meanings they hold for different groups, they provide enough commonality to render them recognizable, representing a useful ‘means of translation’. Knorr Cetina’s study of groups of scientists at work, for example, showed how boundary objects enable partially shared meanings to arise, but remain sufficiently open to give space for the unfolding of new meanings. The boundary object is therefore epistemic rather than material in nature (Knorr Cetina, 1997), and is inherently incomplete and emergent. The concept has been influential in organization studies (Ewenstein & Whyte, 2009; Lainer-Vos, 2013), for example boundary objects play a role in the construction and negotiation of ‘identity and difference’ within and between groups (Simpson & Carroll, 2008). As yet, little work has been carried out on this aspect.

Importantly for the current paper, power is inherent to the construction of boundary objects (Burman, 2004). Certain vulnerable groups can, for example, occupy an anomalous status in society, effectively acting as boundary objects spanning different domains (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Research that highlights boundary objects of this nature can therefore shed light on dynamics of marginalization (Burman, 2004), as demonstrated in Star’s (1991) discussion of gender, sexuality and exclusion.

In what follows, I draw on the concept of abjection to examine the discursive co-construction of a vulnerable other, the industrial school child, by a group of related organizations. The concept of boundary object helps to make sense of this. The chosen setting of industrial school organizations is an extreme and somewhat unusual one (for exceptions see Kavanagh, 2013; Kenny, 2010; Linstead, 1997), but, as others have argued, it is important to examine how such dynamics play out at the extremes of organizational life, in order to better understand more familiar instances (Clegg et al, 2012).

Method

Public inquiries such as the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse represent important ceremonies (Gephart, 1978, in Brown, 2000) in an overall period of adjustment, during which society comes to terms with the implications of a disaster and tries to make sense of it (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010). The importance of studying inquiries and the reports that emanate from them is well established; they form a valuable resource for building theory from empirical evidence (Brown, 2000; Colville et al., 2013). It is widely accepted, however, that inquiries, and the reports that result, present particular versions of events, often from the perspective of dominant vested interests (Boudes & Laroche, 2009; Topal, 2009). They can, for example, depoliticize an issue, deflecting blame away from dominant institutions such as the state, the professions or large corporations. Public inquiries also serve the purpose of reducing societal anxiety, for example by reassuring the public that the original problem has been isolated and solved (Brown, 2000).

Even given this caveat, the vast archive created by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and its subsequent report (Ryan, 2009) offers a unique opportunity to explore the above question: what role is played by an interconnected nexus of external organizations, in the perpetration of large-scale violence against a group of vulnerable people? This is partly due to the dearth of evidence relating to these institutions available from other sources (Fallon, 2005).

During its eight years of work, the Commission gathered court and parliamentary transcripts and media articles, along with expert testimony from historians, structural engineers, financial accountants, and medical experts. It invited reports from over 2600 witnesses: children who attended the schools, members of the religious congregations, and others who had dealings with the schools, including police, lawyers, cleaners and cooks. This resulted in the publication in 2009 of a ‘harrowing’ report into the ‘incarceration, torture and slavery of thousands of Irish children in church-run, state-funded facilities’ (Kavanagh, 2013, p. 1490). The Ryan Report comprises five volumes and 58 chapters describing the industrial school system in depth, the abuses that were carried out and how these were ignored by key organizations. It reports on how members of the congregations continue today to deny the gravity of the witnesses’ accusations against them, and presents subsequent responses by government officials, concluding with authors’ recommendations for future changes to the care system.

I began by reviewing the report itself, published online. My interest was in the various constructions of the child by organizations involved in the schools, and certain chapters appeared central. Table 1 lists the sources of data drawn upon for this study, and these are referred to by alphabetic letter throughout (A, B, and so on). Volume 1 of the report gives detailed case studies on individual industrial schools, and rather than draw on all of these as a source of data, I focused on Artane [Chapter 7] because this was the largest institution, being four times the size of any other school. With the above limitations of public inquiry reports in mind, I augmented these sources with other studies and articles (Boland, 2010; Ferguson, 2007; McDonald, 2009).

Table 1.

Data sources from Commission report.

A	NSPCC (1949). National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Annual Report 1948–9. Dublin: NLI.
B	Dáil Debates (1959). Vol. 174, Col. 272, 9th April.
C	Scanlan, M. (2006). Culture and customs of Ireland. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
D	Ryan, S. (2009a). Executive summary. In: Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA). Dublin: The Stationery Office. Retrieved from: http://www.childabusecommission.ie
E	Morgan, D. (2009). Chapter 3: Society and the schools. In S. Ryan (Ed.), Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), Vol. 4 (pp. 201–244). Dublin: The Stationery Office. Retrieved from: http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL4-09.PDF
F	Ferriter, D. (2009). Ferriter report. In S. Ryan (Ed.), Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), Vol. 5 (pp. 1–37). Dublin: The Stationery Office. Retrieved from: http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs.
G	Ryan, S. (2009b). Chapter 7: St Joseph’s Industrial School, Artane (‘Artane’), 1870–1969. In S. Ryan (Ed.), Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), Vol. 4 (pp. 105–284). Dublin: The Stationery Office. Retrieved http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL1-07.PDF.
H	Dáil Debates (1942). Vol. 88, Col. 2273, 19 November.
I	NAI (1921). National Archives of Ireland, Dail Eireann Files, 2/84, 3 May.
J	Ryan, S. (2009c). Chapter 6: The Congregation of Christian Brothers. In S. Ryan (Ed.), Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), Vol. 1 (pp. 69–104). Dublin: The Stationery Office. Retrieved from: http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL1-06.PDF.

I used a discourse analysis methodology (Fairclough, 1995; Phillips & Hardy, 2002; Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy, 2004) and adopted an abductive, iterative approach to data analysis (Wodak, 2004). First, the selected data was examined and references to particular organizations noted (see Table 2). For each organization, all data was read through without annotation (Phillips & Hardy, 2002), which helped form a broad overview of the issues. Next, data for each source were examined carefully and references to the industrial school child noted. Here, an iterative approach was adopted as I used theoretical memos to develop initial themes. I then revisited each data set and noted conceptual memos that were informed by existing literature. Exploring commonalities and contradictions across the different data sources (Eisenhardt, 1989; Miles & Huberman, 1994), I developed a set of codes and, returning again to the literature, found the concept of abjection to be helpful for analysis. Based on these emergent codes, key excerpts were highlighted and collated into a data summary. At this point some themes were omitted, including for example the construction of the child as a ‘spiritual entity’ on behalf of the religious congregations.

Table 2.

The organizations involved.

Department of Education	Ireland’s Department of Education was legally responsible for all children committed to industrial schools since 1908. The department set the rules and regulations by which the school would be run and defined standards for treatment, conditions, diet, teaching, visits by family members and visits home.
Religious Congregations	Various religious orders were tasked with running the schools, including the Christian Brothers, mentioned in this paper. The ‘very significant deference’ shown by the Department of Education for the religious congregations was reported by the Department’s Secretary General at a recent public hearing (D, p. 16).
Irish Government	The Minister for Education at any time granted the certification necessary to admit a child to the schools. The parliament represented a space for the infrequent discussion of issues relating to industrial schools.
Civil Society	Ireland’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) had more than 30 branches in the 1930s. The organization attempted to raise awareness of violence in the industrial schools.
Supporting Organizations	The industrial school system existed amid a network of other organizations including hospitals, police forces, law firms and the judiciary.

Overall therefore, the process involved significant iteration between data sources, codes and existing literature in order to develop a deeper understanding of the case. In Table 3, I provide a subsample of data excerpts along with the relevant codes emerging from the data.

Table 3.

Sample data excerpts – Constructions of the industrial school child.

Constructions	Data Excerpts and Relevant Organization
1. Constructing the abject child
Awareness: the child as vulnerable to violence	Letter from a former student, sent to the Department of Education in 1946:
Awareness: the child as vulnerable to violence	‘It is 11 yrs since I was in Artane and I dont forget one minute of it, neither do others, the injustices done to others and myself, I will see; wont happen to others: Boys beaten, under the Shower Baths by Staff Mr Byrne, Boys heads beaten on the Handball Alley Wall by Bro Acel. And a Drill Master who used say ‘do it where you Stand’ when a Boy ask to go to the W.C.’ (G, p. 117).
	A memorandum highlights how the department agreed to take no action in this case. On another occasion, a concerned parent complained by letter about a particularly cruel Brother, and was ignored (G, p. 129). ( Department of Education )
	‘It would be much better if we could avoid sending them (the children) to such institutions’ (NSPCC, Ireland’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1949)
	( Civil Society )
Silence: The vulnerable child as inconsequential	An account from a clerk working at the district court notes that he had heard about the sexual abuse of a child occurring at a school from a member of the Gardai (police) who had transported the child in question (E, p. 235). The clerk reports being unwilling to alert anyone, knowing that the protest would be ignored and that punishment might result.
	( Legal System )
	Sexual offences were noted and filed, but the files were rarely re-opened (J, p. 80).
	( Religious Congregations )
Distaste: The child as impoverished and hence a criminal	While he was a Minister, prior to his role as President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, WT Cosgrave expressed his sentiments about workhouse children in a private letter:
	‘People reared in workhouses, as you are aware, are no great acquisition to the community and they have no ideas whatever of civic responsibilities. As a rule their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. Consequently, it would be a decided gain if they all took it into their heads to emigrate’ (I).
	(Irish Government)
Exclusion: The child as impoverished and hence invisible	Letters and complaints detailing abuses were discussed but largely ignored (G, pp. 117, 129). ( Department of Education)
	The education correspondent for a leading daily newspaper noted that:
	‘We saw educational issues as involving middle class concerns like curriculum development or Church and State, not “the lesser breeds without the Law” in the Industrial Schools’ (E, p. 232).
	(Media Organizations)
2. Maintaining the boundary
The child as subject of excessive regulation	In 1947, Fr. Edward Flanagan, Irish American pioneer of welfare reform, described ‘the institutionalization of little children’ he encountered in these schools. These children were:
	‘… housed in great big factory-like places, where individuality has been, and is being, snuffed out with no development of the personality … and where little children became a great army of child slavery in workshops, making money for the institutions which gave them a little food, a little clothing, very little recreation and a doubtful education.’ (in Reilly and Werneke, 2008, p. 155)
The child as deprived of affection	At the recent enquiry, individual Brothers described the difficulties experienced during their years at Artane. Young Brothers were largely inexperienced and had been given minimum training in teaching, with none in care provision (G, p. 110). There was little or no support for these new appointees who were charged with running the institutions, day-to-day.
	‘It was for me a baptism of fire to go into that kind of situation. I had no experience much as a teacher … If I was severe, and I was severe, it was my way of coping, and, you know, to those boys that I punished severely, I am exceedingly sorry.’ (G, p. 141)
	Even former children attending the inquiry to report on abuse tell how they felt badly for these people, many of whom were doing their best in limited circumstances (F, p. 29).
	(Religious Congregations)
Active policing to protect the schools	Children were warned by Brothers at Artane not to ‘complain about us’, when visitors arrived (Touher, 2007, p. 64).
	(Religious Congregations)
	An example of the Irish government shielding the schools from potential attack occurred when the closure of a school was raised in government debates in 1959. The affected children had been dispersed to other industrial schools. Their parents had not been consulted, nor had they even been informed until after the move. Outraged, a deputy enquired of the Minister for Education, Jack Lynch (a future Taoiseach, or prime minister), whether he was aware of this. Lynch replied: ‘The conductors of the school did so for what they considered good and sufficient reason and there was no intention whatever to ignore parental rights. They did so in the best interest of the management and conduct of the school’ (B).
	(Irish Government)

Background: Poverty and Purity in 20th-Century Ireland

Despite successive Irish governments espousing a commitment to protect children (F, p. 11; C, p. 70), for much of the last century poor Irish children suffered neglect and exclusion. Poverty was prevalent (F, p. 13; see also O’Connell & Smyth, 2006, p. 285). The Catholic Church exerted significant influence on state policies, particularly those relating to ‘moral issues’ (C; see also Adshead, Kirby, & Millar, 2008; Kennedy, 1989, p. 15). Part of this influence saw the Irish government express reluctance to introduce welfare systems, with the first children’s allowance appearing in 1963 (Kennedy, 1989, p. 13), far later than in other European countries.

The children that came to Ireland’s industrial schools were overwhelmingly poor, from families with large numbers of children, or were orphans with no one to care for them (G). Others had a disability or mental illness, had been born to unmarried mothers or had been victims of parental cruelty. A small minority had committed a crime, invariably prompted by conditions of poverty (C, p. 72). Typically arriving when he or she was five years old, and staying for nine years, the idea was that the child would receive basic education, religious instruction, and be trained in specific trades for later employment (G, p. 106). Schools often ran enterprises such as commercial farms, staffed by these children (G, pp. 106, 202).

As educational institutions, the schools were technically under the charge of the Irish government; however, the state had long ceded responsibility to the Catholic Church for running them. Government ministers continually expressed gratitude for this work (E, p. 229). As noted above, other organizations involved included the Department of Education, the police force and the judiciary, along with civil society and media groups. In what follows, I present the findings in two overarching frames: ‘the construction of the abject child’, and ‘maintaining the boundary’.

Constructing the Abject Child

Examining the data for references to the ‘industrial school child’, it appears that the child was constructed in a variety of ways by the organizations involved in running and governing the schools. Four of these framings are outlined here, and theoretical and analytic observations are woven through the data.

Awareness: The child as vulnerable to violence

The child in the industrial school is constructed as someone who is vulnerable to violence. In short, those working in the nexus of organizations that operated and oversaw the system were quite aware of what was occurring. This is clear throughout the data, with details pertaining to different organizations provided in Table 2. In what follows, some examples are given.

First, members of Ireland’s Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the NSPCC, noted that ‘it would be much better if we could avoid sending them (the children) to such institutions’ because of their reputation (A). Members of the Irish government expressed such awareness. Records show how political representatives often tried to intervene on behalf of their constituents, where parents knew that children were being maltreated (E).

Evidence gathered during the Commission’s study shows that supporting organizations also knew; doctors from the local community who attended children in the schools were aware of abuses, as were hospital nurses. The lawyers involved in abuse cases were similarly aware. As an example of this, each child entering the industrial school system was committed by a judge, often having been referred by government inspectors nicknamed the ‘cruelty police’ (C, p. 72). Court records show an exchange in 1963 between a solicitor and a judge, in which the solicitor requested that his clients be sent to prison for six months rather than the industrial school at Letterfrack for two years (E, p. 232). This shocking preference for prison over a school indicates that something deeper was prompting the plea.

This awareness extended to the Department of Education, responsible for overseeing the schools. Its authority was ostensibly upheld by a system of inspector visits. The Commission’s investigation showed that few inspections took place, and those that did were limited. When inspectors visited, the occasion was staged and the children coached so that the event would pass off without incident (D, p. 19). In addition, it is evident that departmental staff were quite aware that abuse of various kinds was occurring; unearthing official files shows that complaints about the appalling conditions and emaciated, dirty and miserable children at the schools had been received and filed away (C, p. 72). The Department received letters from former students and parents, such as the one presented in Table 2 that details ‘boys heads beaten on the Handball Alley Wall (sic.)’, by one of the Brothers in charge at Artane school (G, p. 117). From the government, to the overseeing department, to civil society, it appears that those working in supporting organizations knew about the violence that was taking place (F; see also Ferguson, 2007).

Silence: The vulnerable child as inconsequential

This awareness on the part of the organizations did not appear to give rise to any concern, let alone intervention. In the example above, a memorandum highlights how the Department had considered the letter from the former student, and agreed to take no action. Complaints from concerned parents were generally ignored, apart from some exceptions from wealthier parents, detailed further on.

Regarding the Irish government, despite some mentions, as noted above, successive representatives appeared to more or less ignore what was occurring. Records show that there were few discussions of industrial schools in the Dáil (parliament) or Seanad (senate), and those that occurred were brief, involving vague and isolated observations (E). Similarly, no efforts were made within the court system to raise concerns. As an example of this, an account from a clerk working at the district court notes that he had heard about the sexual abuse of a child occurring at a school from a member of the Gardaí (police) who had transported the child in question (E, p. 235). The clerk reports being unwilling to alert anyone, knowing that the protest would be ignored and that punishment might result. It appears that the clerk in this case knew that the vulnerability of the industrial school child was of no consequence to the organizations involved.

This general absence of concern is reflected in the silence exhibited by Irish media organizations. Reports of sexual abuse in the industrial schools by clergy were simply left out of the newspapers of the time, with some exceptions. What this shows us is that while individual workers in the various organizations – the Department, the justice system and the police – were aware of what was happening, the organizational response as a whole was one of silence (F). Here we see the construction of the industrial school child as both vulnerable and yet inconsequential.

Distaste: The child as impoverished and hence a criminal

A key aspect of the ways in which the child was perceived by various organizations involved the signifier of poverty. Successive statements highlight how it was assumed that children were placed in such schools because they were poor, and, as we saw above, this assumption was largely correct. However, examining the statements in some detail suggests that this impoverished status is frequently linked to one of criminality; poverty equates to crime in the construction of the industrial school child.

While mentions of industrial schools were rare in the Irish parliament, on one occasion a request to begin a system for complaints against these institutions was proposed by a deputy. In response, the Minister for Education stated that:

You have the situation that the child probably had been proved before a police court to be a notorious liar … Nevertheless some great abuse may have crept in. And you are in this dilemma. (H)

The child in this case was presumed to be dishonest, and this assumption negated the importance of dealing with abuse claims. Suspicions relating to the morality of the child are echoed by the religious congregations who oversaw the school. The Christian Brothers, for example, detailed the goal, or mission, of its industrial schools as follows:

To cater especially for neglected, orphaned and abandoned children, to safeguard them from developing criminal tendencies and to prepare them for industry. (J, p. 85)

Kavanagh (2013) notes that institutions such as industrial schools exemplify the ways in which organizations can exert control over the bodies of children, producing docile subjects ready for labour. Here it appears that, in the case of Ireland’s industrial schools, this can encompass a desire to prevent likely criminal tendencies from emerging. Overall, despite the fact that only a small percentage of children in industrial schools had been admitted because of crimes, for example, 9 per cent in the case of Artane admissions between 1940 and 1969, and the vast majority of these crimes were connected to extreme poverty (G, p. 106), the industrial school child was constructed as impoverished with criminal tendencies, by a variety of organizations charged with their supervision.

Exclusion: The child as impoverished and hence invisible

In addition to the construction of the impoverished industrial school child being linked to criminality, the poverty of the child is similarly associated with their entitlement to be represented. In other words, the invisibility of the child in public discourse is legitimated by their presumed poverty. For example, when asked about why few mentions were made in national newspapers of the violence and abuse that was taking place at the schools, the education correspondent for a leading daily newspaper noted that:

We saw educational issues as involving middle class concerns like curriculum development or Church and State, not ‘the lesser breeds without the Law’ in the Industrial Schools. (E, p. 232)

Clearly, visibility was connected to poverty in the way that this newspaper perceived different groups of children and their newsworthiness.

This linkage is reflected in other organizations’ construction of children. For example, the Department of Education generally declined to make official comment on the few occasions that news of violence within the industrial schools appeared in newspapers. An exception was made in a number of cases, and these were invariably when the child was from a ‘better-off’ family (F, p. 31). The same dynamic can be witnessed in the organizations responsible for running the schools: the religious congregations themselves. A study of the internal files within these organizations shows that abuse cases were noted and recorded, but very rarely escalated. One of the reasons given for paying attention and treating such a case seriously was because the violence had been carried out on ‘the son of a well-respected person in society’, for example a doctor.

As far back as the 1920s, government reports show senior ministers, including one future Taoiseach (prime minister), refer to impoverished and institutionalized children as follows: they are ‘no great acquisition to the community and they have no ideas whatever of civic responsibilities. As a rule their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. Consequently, it would be a decided gain if they all took it into their heads to emigrate’ (I). Again, we see the desire to render this group invisible, preferably absent.

What we see therefore is that poverty underscores the construction of the industrial school child within the nexus of organizations responsible, and here poverty equates to invisibility, particularly when it came to reporting incidents of violence.

Summarizing: Abject constructions

How can we make sense of these constructions: of the child perceived as at once the victim of excessive violence, in that people in the relevant organizations were clearly aware of it happening, but also as inconsequential, and that this violence was implicitly accepted, not seen as a cause for concern? Adding to this, we see something of a distaste emerging in constructions of the child; the impoverished child is a potential criminal and thus to be feared. Moreover, poverty renders the industrial child somewhat invisible, not even registering as an entity worthy of a voice.

Industrial school children are both within Irish society, in that organizations are clearly aware of them, and yet apart in that they do not register as entities worthy of protection from violence. Even more than this, it appears that their very poverty renders them invisible: excluded from what can and should be defended against harm. Moreover this entity, the industrial school child that lies within and yet without, is regarded as distasteful, criminal and feared. Violence against a shadowy ‘outside’ to the symbolic, that is already repelled and excluded, is easily accepted (Butler, 2009, Linstead, 1997).

It is useful to place this in context. The apparent distaste and abhorrence for poverty, and its role in Irish society, has a history. Specifically, Ireland as a republic is a relatively recent invention, with the country gaining its independence in 1922. When this happened, the process of constructing a new nation began, based on a desired identity founded on Catholic ideals including the primacy of the family, the cherishing of children, and the Irish citizen as devout and sexually pure. Successive governments worked hard to promote this identity, not least to distinguish it from its former occupier Britain (Smith, 2007).

Unfortunately however, this idealized Ireland was quite at odds with the lived experiences of many of its citizens who existed in poverty, and whose children were sent to industrial schools for this reason. Sexual purity was an equally tenacious construction, and again poverty played a role in this contradiction. Court records between the 1930s and 1the 960s (F, p. 19) show unusually high instances of paedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse in Ireland, which ‘far exceed normal standards’ (F, p. 19). This was overwhelmingly connected with impoverished living conditions in the overcrowded slum areas of Dublin and Cork, in which parents were not able to spend time with young children, along with poorer girls from rural areas working as domestic servants suffering sexual abuse by their employers (F, p. 18).

In addition to poverty forming a threat to the newly-constructed nation, the female body itself was a site of contention. The idealization of the feminine was inherently linked to Church-inspired images of ‘Mother Ireland’, with a primacy on female purity tied to the Virgin Mary (Meaney, 2014: 130; see also Höpfl, 2000). This elevation of the pure female body to iconic status in conceptions of nationhood resulted in the repression of actual women’s bodies, particularly in relation to sexual activity (Killian, 2015; Smith, 2007). Commentators note the banning of images of childbirth from film and television by the national censor, for example, and social taboos surrounding breastfeeding (Meaney, 2014, p. 131).

Taken together, we see strong echoes of what Kristeva describes as the construction of the abject. She describes the way societies establish boundaries between cleanliness and impurity, which are socially constructed and serve particular societal needs at a given point in time. We see here how the founding of the Irish republic, which had to do with a breaking away from relations with Britain, required a boundary. Constructing this via ideals drawn from Catholicism, ‘impure’ aspects were deemed imperfect and invulnerable parts of the self/nation, which then had to be abjected.

For this new nation, poverty but especially sexuality and the materiality of the feminine form represented a haunting threat (Smith, 2007). These aspects make Kristeva’s concept of abjection particularly apt in the case of Ireland’s Industrial Schools; we see the development of a new identity based on the expulsion of the other within. On the one hand, an Irish identity founded on concern for children and female sexual purity was being actively promoted in order to ideologically define and differentiate the fledgling nation. On the other, the experiences of impoverished children stood testimony to the precariousness of this construction; their very presence pointed to that which was most feared. This was nowhere clearer than in the case of industrial school children. It therefore appears that this group represented something of a haunting ‘other’, an entity that must be continually repelled. While the concept of abjection is helpful in understanding this case, it is important to note that this is an extreme and somewhat unusual situation. Abjection here is contingent on particular, and powerful, elements that coalesce to render these subjects in the abject position; the concept does not pertain to all cases of organizational violence.

This case offers an example of how abjection can play out in practice, and the role of poverty in underscoring the construction of the abject. Inhabitants of the industrial schools were not really seen as children; they were merely shadowy reflections of a dirty, abject part of Irish society: its poverty and its moral transgressions. In addition to representing the ‘moral dirt’ of Irish society (Ferguson, 2007), we have seen above how the perceived social status of industrial school children made a large difference to whether their complaints were heard and to the treatment received, suggesting that these children were also deemed ‘economic dirt’. That a group of children can be silenced and disregarded in this way is shocking. This case illustrates the power of abjection to legitimize violence against a category of person that is normally protected.

In addition, we see how organizations can play a role in this – the organizations involved in overseeing the industrial schools were mutually implicated in the ongoing construction of the industrial school child in this way. This child represents something of a ‘boundary object’ in that, despite the diversity of the groups involved, she enables translation between them in relation to a ‘common identity’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989), in this case a national one. She represents all that is antithetical to an emergent Irish identity.

This gives rise to a further question that remains unexplored in the literature: how can such abject constructions be continually upheld? As noted above, it is very difficult for us to understand how violence against poor children could effectively be tolerated over so many years. In the next section, I build upon these ideas to explore in more depth the ongoing construction of the abject child as boundary object. In particular, I focus on the dynamics of exclusion.

Maintaining the Boundary: The Role of Organizations

For over 50 years, silence accompanied the terrible violence taking place in Ireland’s industrial schools. Examining in more depth the ways in which the industrial school child was constructed by the organizations involved gives us a sense of how this persisted.

The child as subject of excessive regulation

Ireland’s industrial schools were highly regimented places, featuring excessive rules and regulations that were actively, often violently, enforced. In 1947, Fr. Edward Flanagan, Irish-American pioneer of welfare reform, described ‘the institutionalization of little children’ he encountered in these schools. These children were:

… housed in great big factory-like places, where individuality has been, and is being, snuffed out with no development of the personality … and where little children became a great army of child slavery in workshops. (Reilly & Werneke, 2008, p. 155)

Industrial schools were built to accommodate, feed and train a large number of people effectively, hence the ‘factory’ metaphor used by Fr. Flanagan. At Artane school, for example, single dormitories held up to 150 boys at one time, ‘sleeping in ordered rows of beds with no personal space’ (G, p. 106). Life in the schools was organized in a military fashion. Time was strictly regulated; between waking and sleeping children as young as five were marshalled from dormitory to washrooms, to classes and on to mealtimes, mostly in enforced silence. Moreover, the heavily regimented atmosphere frequently dampened any initiative or creativity in children. Many joined the army or searched for other settings in which they could live similarly institutionalized lives, continuing to follow orders. Others ended up in prison or in psychiatric institutions (J, p. 84).

Interestingly, it was not just the children housed in these institutions that were subject to excessive regulation; this was also experienced by those who worked in them every day. Younger members of the religious orders found themselves surrounded by a rigid and strictly hierarchical organizational structure, in which all power for change lay with one man, the resident manager. These men felt frustrated and helpless (G, p. 109). Moreover, in many cases they could not object to any part of the system because of the vows that they had taken, which insisted upon loyalty to the congregation (D).

The child as deprived of affection

Related to the militaristic, excessive regime of regulations that pervaded industrial schools, care relationships and opportunities for affective connections had been organized out of the system. Pupils typically had little contact with their families (D, p. 13). While many were orphans, or the children of single mothers who were deemed ‘fallen’ and removed from society to institutions such as the Magdalen laundries, even children with parents at home often found it difficult to stay in contact. In addition, the schools were segregated on the basis of gender, so brothers and sisters were split up (D, p. 25).

Within the schools themselves, displays of kindness were forbidden. Members of the religious orders were not allowed to take on the role of ‘loco parentis’; relationships between staff members and children were not permitted, partly for fear of sexual abuse, but also because of the vows undertaken by the Brothers which mandated that one should ‘love everyone equally as God’s children’, rather than single out any child for special treatment (G, p. 199). Brothers reported being helpless to intervene when they saw a lonely or bullied child (G). Moreover, the rules in place ensured high levels of stress and overwork on the part of these Brothers (see Table 2). A heavy workload fell on the younger members; for example a mere 16 Brothers were almost solely responsible for caring for 600 children at Artane in the 1950s (G, p. 197). The young Brothers spent from 6am to 10pm with the boys, seven days a week, often sleeping in small rooms at the end of dormitories.

In this way the organizations involved in planning and running the industrial schools effectively contributed to the maintenance of an environment of excessive and extreme regulation, in order to manage and contain the industrial school child. This echoes Kristeva’s observations on society’s frequent obsession with regulating and policing the abject other in futile attempts to contain the ongoing threat that they pose. Particularly relevant here, organization scholars inspired by Kristeva have shown how excessive regulation and governance can be applied, via extreme forms of organization, to that which threatens the sense of order and mastery upon which a coherent identity is based (Linstead, 1997; Rizq, 2013; see also Hearn, 1994). The presence of these schools and their rigid regimes helped to fend off an anxiety that haunted the borders of an emergent Irish identity – the impoverished industrial school child.

Active policing to protect the schools

Such was the power of the Church at the time that people rarely spoke out about the abuses that were taking place. Where this did happen, they were carefully silenced. Perceived threats to the schools were repeatedly suppressed. This work was most obviously carried out by the religious congregations, but it was upheld and supported by other organizations.

Children at the schools who tried to complain about their mistreatment were actively silenced by those in charge, as outlined in Table 2. Another form of policing involved some religious congregations’ long-standing practice of keeping crimes of sexual abuse hidden both from police and from the courts (F, p. 22), a practice that some congregations continue to defend today (McDonald, 2009). Instead, abusers within the order were ostensibly dealt with internally; in the Christian Brothers, for example, members with histories of sexual abuse were frequently moved from institution to institution (G, pp. 80, 191), or in extreme cases, offered a dispensation from their vows so that they might quietly rejoin the lay community, as though they had simply lost their vocation or changed their minds (G, p. 153). The ongoing protection of such abusers appears to have been driven by the need to maintain the reputation of the order, and to negate any potential threat to it.

Policing this threat was not easy; the systemic nature of physical and sexual abuse in Ireland’s industrial schools naturally led to stories sometimes reaching newspaper journalists. However, as above, media organizations colluded with religious congregations and remained silent. This media deference had a long history in Ireland, where the Catholic Church was considered the country’s unquestioned ‘moral authority’ and actively discouraged public debate on what it considered to be issues of morality. In some cases, however, individual editors decided to break this code and publish some of the more horrific accounts. These instances represent the most strenuous policing efforts. For example, in the 1950s the editor of a leading paper was preparing to publish a story of a court case involving sexual abuse in one of the industrial schools. He describes how a Christian Brothers school manager burst into his office and angrily demanded that the scheduled story be dropped, which it was (E, p. 230).

In addition to media organizations, the government played a part in policing the threat posed by the news of industrial school children being abused. When Fr. Flanagan, mentioned above, publicly denounced the industrial schools system, he was quickly censored by Minister for Justice Gerry Boland, who reprimanded him for ‘offensive and intemperate language’ (C, p. 73). Such policing was mirrored in the Department of Education, with similarly dismissive language reserved for those family members who spoke out about what was happening in the schools, and were therefore perceived as a threat. In one example a child’s grandmother attempted to alert the Minister for Education about a beating that had occurred in her presence at Artane in 1963. Department staff ultimately rejected the complaint, taking their cue from the Christian Brothers congregation who advised that she was a ‘dangerous troublemaker whose complaints “have to be nailed”’ (G, p. 137). As we have seen, letters from parents and former pupils were likewise silenced by the Department, again reinforcing the wishes of those in charge of the schools.

A threat came from another corner in the 1940s, with Ireland’s NSPCC’s preparation of a series of case studies on the industrial schools and the terrible conditions within them. This civil society group openly and repeatedly criticized sending children to the schools throughout this decade (see Table 2). Their arguments were ignored by the Department and eventually, in 1956, the archbishop of Dublin assumed authority of the society. The next step in repressing this threat involved a removal of the damning case studies from the record and their replacement by ‘quaint and superficial stories’ of a child’s idyllic life within the industrial schools, each of which concluded happily (F, p. 25).

Attempts to openly criticize the fact that Ireland’s industrial school children were vulnerable to serious systemic abuse were rare. Where they did take place, whether by grandmothers, civil society organizations, or newspaper reporters, we see the active and engaged nature of policing that occurred. Moreover, we see how this was supported and upheld by the entire network of organizations involved. This relates to Kristeva’s observations that the abject represents a continued threat, and must be monitored (see also Douglas, 1966).

The industrial school child as continuous presence

Despite the active policing of the potential threat to the schools that the industrial school child posed, and despite the excessive institutional regulations that were put in place to contain this threat, the presence of the impoverished industrial school child loomed large in the background. The suppression described above was never fully successful.

This was clear in the evidence given by representatives of some of the organizations described here. For example, a rare exception to the silence surrounding industrial school violence involved a series of four articles published by Michael Viney in the Irish Times, a broadsheet daily, in the 1960s. They were based on a six-week study of the schools. Despite the shocking revelations, there were practically no response letters to the editor. Even so, this journalist described the strong sense of guilt he continued to feel, even 30 years later, for not having done more to pursue the issue through his writing. He talks about how he knew about the excessive physical violence taking place, and was suspicious that sexual abuse was similarly present, and yet did nothing (Boland, 2010). In addition, an editor of a national paper describes the ‘heavy burden’ that remains with him today as a result of knowing about the horrors of the industrial schools, and not reporting them (E, p. 230). Summing up a similar sense of guilt felt by many, shortly after the publication of the Commission report, the editor of the Irish Times noted that it mapped out the ‘dark hinterland of the State, a parallel country whose existence we have long known but never fully acknowledged’ (Irish Times, 2009).

The palpable sense of guilt regarding the impoverished, vulnerable child who was accorded no protection by these media organizations suggests that their presence remains. As Kristeva notes, the abject is that which continually haunts the boundary of the self. As is clear from this study, people knew what was happening; the implicit acceptance by Irish society of the abuse was a key factor in enabling its continuance. It also appears, however, that organizations played an important role in facilitating this.

Discussing the Case: The School as Boundary Container

This analysis deepens our understanding of the ‘organizational conditions’ (Clegg et al., 2012) that can coalesce in extreme cases to facilitate the enactment of violence on a vulnerable group, and it enables us to develop a set of concepts for understanding such conditions. Two aspects are key.

First, the distressing account of what was allowed to occur in Ireland’s industrial schools highlights the importance of examining, in-depth, the inter-organizational co-construction of victims. Specifically, despite a clear awareness of the child’s vulnerability to violence, a silence persisted that suggests the apparently inconsequential nature of this violence. In addition, a sense of distaste and suspicions of criminality accompanied perceptions of the industrial school child as impoverished, as did the active exclusion of this group of people. The poverty of these children appeared a key driver. We also saw how the industrial school child represented something of a boundary object that enabled disparate organizations to cohere around common understandings. This was linked to an emergent Irish national identity, with the child representing all that was despised. These constructions effectively isolated an unwanted other/within, and in doing so robbed the individuals involved of subjectivity. Such beings became a ‘dreaded zone of uninhabitability’, constituting the outside of the subject/nation (Butler, 1993, p. 3). This helps us to understand the longevity of these constructions and points to a paradox noted by Kristeva, Douglas and others: the cast-out, abject group must be kept close. The abject is needed because it is foundational for a sense of identity and therefore represents a ‘most treasured source of sustenance’ (Butler, 1997, p. 143). In this way, this study contributes to literature that focuses on the role of boundary objects in the construction of identities (Simpson & Carroll, 2008; Burman, 2004) by showing how this can occur. Moreover, the political dimension of boundary objects is highlighted here, echoing Star and Griesemer’s (1989) observations that vulnerable groups can occupy such positions in ways that point to wider structures of inequality and marginalization. Overall, therefore, existing understandings of abjection and violence in organizations can be extended to encompass, first, these aspects of co-construction; second, the importance of poverty in such constructions; and third, the relevance of the concept of boundary object for such studies.

A second aspect of the proposed framework involves the ongoing maintenance of the abject other. Through examining how systemic and widely-acknowledged abuse could have been allowed to continue over the period of 50 years covered by the Commission report, we can perceive the dynamics of abjection in practice. We see the active and engaged work that was needed to maintain the boundary that kept the impoverished industrial school child, the abject other, at bay. A group of supporting organizations engaged with and upheld the legitimacy of the religious congregations and their assumed authority over representations of the child. Without this support, the depth of abjection experienced would not have been possible. Specifically, excessive regulation, active policing and the suppression of care were key in this maintenance, and required the input of many interconnected organizations in order to be successful. The different institutions involved had diverse objectives and were not homogeneous in their responsibilities towards the issue of abuse, and yet all seem to have colluded, albeit perhaps unwittingly, in silencing it.

While industrial school children represented the unwanted aspects of Irish identity, the schools themselves – the organizations – represented the container that kept them at a distance. They were the institutionalized forms of an abject, distasteful part of Irish society, containing and hiding the threatening other; they formed part of Ireland’s ‘architecture of containment’ in which institutions, including Magdalen laundries and borstals, ensured the exclusion of unwelcome parts of Irish society (Killian, 2015; Smith, 2007). This paper shows how, by encompassing the constitutive mechanisms of the management of the abject including excessive rules and regulations, and the suppression of emotion, the school itself represents the instrument by which the excluded is maintained at a distance. This helps us to understand why the plight of the children was ignored; the school as container must be protected at all costs. For this reason, it is not surprising that the complaints of agents of these children, including the women’s council, fathers and grandmothers, that were targeted at the organizations themselves, were not heard – what status could have been afforded to these representatives of non-beings who sought to damage the very boundary that kept the repressed other at bay? Overall, therefore, this helps us to understand how such schools were able to continue; they were fundamentally needed. Just as the abject others were required for a strong sense of identity, as outlined above, so also were the schools required to keep this abject out of sight.

Despite its usefulness in understanding this specific and somewhat extreme case, abjection is not an inevitable phenomenon but rather can emerge when specific contextual features come together to construct abject subjects, as described here. Moreover, rather than being a somewhat totalitarian dynamic, forces running counter to abjection were continually present. These took the form of resistant organizations including the NSPCC, family members and journalists, all of whom attempted to construct these children differently. They are also seen in children’s first-hand accounts of life in the schools, in which other subjectivities founded on, for example, friendships and a love of music were present (Touher, 2007). If abjection is premised on a denial of subjectivity, then attempts by abject others to actively reclaim their position, as seem in the reclaiming of the term ‘Magdalenism’ by former inmates of Ireland’s mother-and-baby ‘Magdalen’ homes (Wecker, 2015), show that tendencies for abjection can be challenged, even in extreme cases as described here. These observations suggest fruitful avenues for further research. Perhaps, for example, new forms and methods of representation can help to ‘break apart’ existing frames (Benjamin, 1999; Butler, 2009), as some have attempted in relation to industrial school children (Kenny, 2013).

Concluding Remarks

In addition to contributing a framework for studies of organizational abjection and violence, the insights developed here can add to the conclusions and recommendations made by the authors of the Commission’s report. Its overall conclusion is that, in the context of Ireland’s industrial schools, the ‘system failed the children’ (D, p. 27). The authors then go on to list the reasons for this situation, before recommending changes that will prevent future failures of this nature. Many of these recommendations involve making adjustments to care organizations themselves: introducing tighter management controls, better reporting and so on. It appears, however, that the report is missing a vital step; before reasons are listed, and before recommendations are made, the idea that there were in fact ‘children’ attending the industrial schools, in the eyes of the people responsible for their care, must be questioned. As we see here, for people working in the different organizations involved, there were no children worthy of protection in Ireland’s industrial schools – there was only the shadowy, repulsive other that was a persistent blight on the national identity. Moreover, the schools that housed them represented a vital mechanism in the ongoing struggle to keep them away.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Senior Editor Yiannis Gabriel for his support and encouragement of this project, along with three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. I am grateful to Marianna Fotaki and Alison Pullen for providing thoughtful advice on drafts of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Kate Kenny is a Reader in Management at Queen’s University Belfast. She researches culture and identity in organisations and is interested in theories of affect, power and psychoanalysis. She holds a research fellowship at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, and is an Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow at Harvard University, 2013–2015. She is currently researching whistleblowing in organizations, with projects funded by ESRC, the British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust, ACCA and the Edmond J. Safra Lab at Harvard University. Dr Kenny’s work has been published in Organization Studies and Human Relations among other journals. She recently published Understanding Identity and Organizations (SAGE 2011, with A. Whittle and H. Willmott), and Affect at Work: The Psychosocial and Organization Studies (Palgrave 2014, with M. Fotaki).

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