Reflexive dis/embedding: Personal narratives,empowerment and the emotional dynamics of interstitial events

Abstract

Reflexivity is required for institutional work, yet we know very little about the mechanisms for generating such understandings of the social world. We explore this gap through a case study of an interstitial event that aims to create a community of ‘change-makers’. The findings suggest that such events can generate reflexive dis/embedding through two complementary mechanisms. Specifically, personal narratives of injustice and action and individual-collective empowering generate emotional dynamics that disembed actors from their given attachments and embed them within new social bonds. Through these mechanisms, the event in the case study was able to challenge audience members’ conceptions of self and others and change their worldview. This research advances our understanding of how reflexivity can be developed by uncovering the emotional dynamics crucial to the dis/embedding of actors.

Keywords

emotions institutional work interstitial events reflexivity storytelling

Much of social life is routine and highly repetitive. Social actors appear to be either constrained by norms or driven by the pursuit of mundane self-interest.

(Ragin & Sedziaka, 2013)

#weday… Loved it, lived it, believed it and now feeling just completely inspired. Enough to even change the world. #love #peace #change ¹

(Twitter comment after Toronto 2012 We Day)

Reflexivity is required for institutional work, as it allows actors to understand the nature of their social world and the possibilities for change (Lawrence, Leca, & Zilber, 2013). Institutional work ‘refers primarily to reflexive forms of agency that are intended to affect institutions’ (Schussler, Dobusch, & Wessel, 2014, p. 419; emphasis added). There is a need to question the assumptions of and overcome emotional attachments to the given institutional structures. This is a process of cognitive and emotional disembedding (Creed, DeJordy, & Lok, 2010; Voronov & Yorks, 2015), and is critical for institutional work. In general, reflexivity is defined as a process whereby individuals, ‘as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of the sociohistorical reality which shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality’ (Freire, 1970a, p. 27), and it provides the ‘ability to overcome the reified, rule-like, taken-for-granted quality of social life’ (Suddaby, Viale, & Gendron, 2016). In the literature, reflexivity has been found to be critical in allowing marginalized actors to participate in the work required to fill an institutional void (Mair, Marti, & Ventresca, 2012), and in maintaining and enhancing the professional power of elites (Currie, Lockett, Finn, Martin, & Waring, 2012). In fact, it was found that when actors introduced a new hybrid logic into a field, the resulting hybrid was unsustainable because of the actors’ lack of reflexivity and continued attachment to old logics (Sharp & Zaidman, 2015).

Research has found that some actors do possess the reflexivity necessary to create radical institutional change (e.g., Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006; Seo & Creed, 2002; Smets & Jarzabkowski, 2013); however, people are not always able to disembed themselves in order to recognize the possibility and need for change (Voronov & Yorks, 2015). Structural factors, such as field position or institutional contradictions, do not necessarily result in this recognition (Emirbayer & Goldberg, 2005), and little research has examined the individual and meso-level mechanisms that might allow actors to engage in institutional work (Dorado, 2013). In a recent exception, Suddaby and co-authors (2016) articulated the individual-level elements of reflexivity – social position and social skill – that predicted who would be able to create institutional change. However, we still do not have an understanding of the mechanisms underpinning how reflexivity could be generated.

Notably, research from critical pedagogy and social movements has identified how particular forms of interactions, such as dialogue (Cunliffe, 2002; Freire, 1970b) and storytelling (Gorli, Nicolini, & Scaratti, 2015; Zembylas, 2013), can act as triggers for generating the reflexivity that allows actors to challenge practices and norms that govern their lives.² However, this research remains highly cognitive (Holmes, 2010; Zembylas, 2014); emotions are ignored or viewed as an impediment that holds in place existing understandings and thereby supports institutional structures (Burkitt, 2012). In this paper, we argue that unpacking the emotional dynamics underpinning how reflexivity can be generated is crucial for fully understanding the recursive influence between social structure and emotions, whereby emotions can also alter understandings and facilitate new structural arrangements (Voronov & Vince, 2012).

Events designed to bring together actors from diverse fields, with different experiences and perspectives, can facilitate potentially important interactions for the generation of reflexivity. These ‘interstitial’ spaces (Furnari, 2014; Glynn, 2008) take people out of their everyday lives and temporarily embed them in a new, purposefully designed set of interactions (Muller-Seitz & Schussler, 2013). The rise of benefit concerts and festivals such as Band Aid and Live Aid has raised awareness about national debt cancellation (Biccum, 2007), farm aid (Davis, 2010), and other structural issues by bringing actors together in a concert setting. However, while these events challenged the status quo through highly emotional interactions, research examining the impact on ‘consciousness raising’ found mixed results (e.g., Davis, 2010; Rojek, 2013). In order to address the question of whether such events can generate reflexivity and consider the overlooked role of emotions in the process, we examined We Day, a ‘rock concert for social change’ organized by the non-profit organization, Free The Children (FTC).

The findings suggest that reflexive dis/embedding occurred at this event through two complementary mechanisms. Specifically, personal narratives of injustice and action and individual-collective empowering generated emotional dynamics that disembedded actors from their ideological attachments and embedded them within the norms of a new community of actors. These findings make two important contributions to the literature. First, the specific mechanisms and dynamics of how actors were dis/embedded at this event may help to explain the mixed results that have been found in other event research (e.g., Davis, 2010; Rojek, 2013). Through personal narratives, the event turned attention to the often invisible arrangements that organize the social world, effectively disembedding the audience members from their existing environment. Through individual-collective empowering, the event embedded the audience within a new community of ‘change-makers’ that supported their newfound understanding. Second, this study helps shed light on the role of emotions in the generation of reflexivity. The emotional dynamics that emerged through event interactions suggest that emotions are not just an impediment to critical cognitive understanding (Burkitt, 2012) but are important in processes of generating reflexivity. As such, these findings complement prior literature that has identified field structures (Battilana, 2006; Friedland & Alford, 1991; Seo & Creed, 2002) and cognitive factors (Freire, 1970b; Nepstad, 2004) that enable the reflexivity required to undertake institutional work.

Institutional Processes and Reflexive Disembedding

Institutional theory’s main tenet is that ‘all action is embedded in institutional structures’ (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2011, p. 52). According to Bourdieu (1990), non-reflexive actors reproduce the social order through habitus, enacting the institutions within which they are embedded. Embeddedness is a situation of seeing oneself as part of the social context, a member of the group, whose actions are guided by the common norms, values, and bonds in the field. In order to engage in the creative or disruptive work of institutional change, actors must step outside the social order to see it in a new way (Freire, 1970b; Mair et al., 2012).³ Reflexivity, as an understanding and questioning of the underlying social order, is therefore a disembedding. We define reflexive disembedding as a process whereby actors free themselves from the constraints of embeddedness, detaching from the idea of fixed, objective social arrangements and becoming open to the possibility of change (Nepstad, 2004).

Scholars of emotion emphasize that reflexivity is not simply a cognitive disembedding, but also an emotional one (Burkitt, 2012; Holmes, 2010; Zembylas, 2014). Emotions are defined as the fleeting sensations and reactions to experience, moods, and the longer-term affective attachments that bond people to each other (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2004; Jasper, 1998). Reflexive disembedding involves an emotional disengagement from the system of values and relationships in the field, allowing actors to shed their existing commitments (Voronov & Vince, 2012).

Institutional research has uncovered the structural factors that, at times, have enabled actors to overcome the constraints of embedded action. By surfacing contradictions that cannot be satisfactorily explained, disruptions in the functioning of the system can lead to reflexivity (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Hoffman, 1999; Seo & Creed, 2002). Those in boundary-spanning positions are also less constrained by embeddedness in any one field (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010) while those who are marginalized are likely to be less committed to the status quo (Leblebici, Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991). However, outside of structural arrangements that may enable reflexive disembedding, institutional research provides little guidance for understanding how individuals gain the reflexivity required for institutional work (Dorado, 2013; Suddaby et al., 2016; Voronov & Yorks, 2015). The literatures on critical pedagogy and social movements, on the other hand, offer insight into how reflexive disembedding may be generated through various forms of interaction.

Triggering reflexive disembedding through interactions

Interactions have been found to drive the process of reflexive disembedding. Through dialogue between similarly marginalized actors, alternative visions of the future are able to form (Freire, 1970b), facilitating investment in oppositional activities (King, 2005). Stories also provide a powerful mechanism.⁴ Stories are defined as a language structure involving plots, with characters and social forces that attribute significance and meaning to actions (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Polkinghorne, 1988). Stories of successful change allow marginalized actors to question the taken-for-grantedness of existing social arrangements and show how alternatives have been created and implemented in the past (Davis, 2002).

Critical pedagogy research has shown how interactions between those from different social positions (Cunliffe, 2002; Raelin, 2001) may act as a ‘self-confrontation’ that can trigger reflexive disembedding (Holmes, 2010). Dialogue with those from different societal positions can allow individuals to see the subjective nature of the social world and accept others’ perspectives (Currie, 2007; Raelin, 2001). And shared stories of war have been found to help individuals accept the perspective of those who were on the other side, developing emotional reflexivity about war and ideas of the ‘Other’ (Zembylas, 2013). Shared narratives stimulate conversation that can lead to

… relating, which means establishing dialogue and negotiating meanings and mutual differences with others … reflexively questioning, which requires the collective exploration of practices and relationships … [and] positioning, that is, taking a stance on one’s reality, recognizing oneself in one’s work. (Gorli et al., 2015, p. 1369)

Resistance to reflexive disembedding

In considering the emotional nature of reflexivity (Burkitt, 2012; King, 2005), research has shown that the interactions and confrontations associated with reflexive disembedding, although cognitively persuasive, might be emotionally threatening. Even the idea that the given social arrangements are subjective and socially constructed can cause anxiety. For example, Garfinkel’s (1967) breaching experiments simulated reflexivity, and participant reactions

… were always intensely emotional … Sometimes it was depression, bewilderment, or anger at having been put in a situation where they constructed a reality they later discovered to be false. In short, when people have to recognize that they are tacitly constructing their social worlds, and in an arbitrary and conventional way, rather than simply reacting to a world that is objectively there, they show intense negative emotions. (Collins, 2004, p. 104)

For those who are not marginalized, there is an additional component of being confronted with their own privilege, which may be quite uncomfortable and result in disengagement rather than reflection (Kurasawa, 2011; Vince, 2010). Therefore, while dialogue and storytelling have been shown to confront actors with alternative perspectives of the world, this research focuses on the cognitive nature of the mechanisms generating reflexivity. Emotions are viewed as part of a non-reflexive embeddedness, acting as an impediment to reflexivity. But it is precisely the emotional nature of embeddedness and inhibition of reflexivity that mean emotions likely play a fundamental, understudied role in the process of generating reflexivity. We turn now to the event literatures in order to identify the structured interactions that take place in these temporally and spatially bounded arenas (Muller-Seitz & Schussler, 2013) that may trigger the emotions necessary to facilitate reflexive disembedding.

Interstitial Events as Sites of Interaction

The ‘interruptions’ necessary to generate reflexivity are argued to come from ‘the interstitial area’ (Linstead, 1994, p. 1327), the space that brings together different perspectives (Cunliffe, 2002). Recent attention has been given to interstitial spaces, the context in which actors from diverse fields come together around a common activity to interact in ways that can alter practices in their respective fields (e.g., Furnari, 2014). The diverse actors bring their own institutional understandings – the norms, values and practices in which they are embedded – to the shared activities (Furnari, 2014); yet the ‘free’ nature of the space allows actors to let go of the constraints of routine and potential social sanctioning, thereby facilitating experimentation and challenges to the status quo (Rao & Dutta, 2012; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). In more deliberate settings, such as international summits (Schussler, Ruling, & Wittneben, 2014) or mega-events like the Olympics (Glynn, 2008), these spaces can be considered events, designed and at least partially structured by hosting actors who aim to create particular experiences and outcomes. I define interstitial events as temporally and spatially bounded social settings that bring together actors from diverse fields around an organized, (partially) structured, and common activity. While the recent literature in this area focuses on field-level outcomes, little attention has been given to individual-level impacts, such as the potential for reflexivity.

Research on social movement events, festivals, and benefit concerts, on the other hand, has explored the individual-level impacts of bringing together diverse actors. The participatory, collective nature of social movement events make these sites particularly important in the consciousness-raising and empowerment that can mobilize groups (Hirsch, 1990; Taylor & Van Dyke, 2004). Events such as protests and rallies expose individuals to other activists and stories of oppressors. Because of this interaction, these events have more potential for raising consciousness than solitary forms of protest, such as boycotts and petitions (Davenport & Trivedi, 2013). These events also offer the opportunity for the formation of strong social bonds between protesters (Jasper, 1998) based on the collective experience of the protest (Juris, 2008). For example, Collins (2001) explained how the performance of protesting is a physical manifestation of emotion, such as anger, which is transformed by the performance itself into emotional energy or solidarity (Juris, 2008).

Research has explored festivals with a social purpose, combining leisure and social action into a form of ‘pleasure-politics’ (Sharpe, 2008). This research distinguishes between festivals and spectacles (Coleman, 1987), which each offer different opportunities for interaction. A festival is a highly relational event with extensive informal interaction that produces ‘sociality’ as the main outcome (Citroni, 2015). Through interactions, participants bond and develop an understanding of and emotional attachments to the people, places, and ideas associated with the festival. These events aim to generate positive energy for social action (Sharpe, 2008) and can empower collectives to fight for change (Rao & Dutta, 2012). A spectacle, on the other hand, has a distinct division between active performers and passive spectators, and is often seen as an event of non-reflexive embeddedness that ensures stability of the social order (Handelman, 1982). For example, religious events are often designed as spectacles that provide a physical experience for the audience, eliciting ‘emotional effervescence’ (Durkheim, 1965/1915) that sustains emotional ties to religious teachings (Roeland et al., 2012). Thus, similar to informal interactions between diverse actors in interstitial spaces (Furnari, 2014), the diversity and unstructured interaction at festivals has been linked to change, while the formal performance of a spectacle has been connected to institutional stability.

Benefit concerts are a kind of hybrid of festival and spectacle in that these events have the interactions of a spectacle, but the content is geared toward social change. Beginning in the 1980s with Band Aid and Live Aid, these spectacles aim to engage a diverse range of actors in social action (Edkins, 2000). These events typically use celebrity and musical performances in order to generate an emotional reaction. Some research has identified the creation of a ‘constituency of compassion’ (Edkins, 2000, p. 111) and the consciousness-raising possibility of such events (Biccum, 2007; Dayan & Katz, 1992), but other studies argue that ‘the concerts/consciousness-raising/political-economic configuration … diminish cultural capacities concerning reflexive, communal, and historicist ways of thinking’ (Compton & Comor, 2007, p. 30) and function solely to boost celebrity profiles (Davis, 2010). Research has therefore found mixed results emerging from these events and has not identified the interaction mechanisms that may allow some events to generate reflexivity. The present study thus addresses these issues, asking the following research question: How do the interactions at an interstitial event generate reflexivity?

Research Context: We Day as an Interstitial Event

We Day is a series of fourteen events that take place in Canada, the USA, and the UK each year with more than 200,000 people attending.⁵ Targeted at youth, We Day takes students out of their everyday school environment with a goal of ‘free(ing) children from the idea that they are powerless’ and mobilizing youth in the audience as ‘change-makers’ (We Day website, 2016). Similar to benefit concerts, We Day showcases celebrity musicians, such as the Jonas Brothers, Hedley, and Nelly Furtado, but also presents motivational speakers and activists, such as Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Dalai Lama, Martin Sheen, and the youth themselves. Stories range from the world-changing actions of leaders and famous activists to individual stories of life challenges. The stories are ideologically framed by key themes articulated at the beginning and end of the event and are interspersed with musical performances, strategically designed to create a powerful, cohesive impact (staff interview). Each six-hour event contains approximately 27 performances, usually about 14 speakers and 13 musical acts.

We Day is organized in partnership with school boards and schools. While it is primarily high schools that participate, a growing number of middle and elementary schools is involved. Teachers choose students who will attend with a group of 10 to 20 others from their school. Students make a commitment to complete one local and one global action during the school year and FTC requires that schools report on the students’ actions (We Day website, 2016). The organization continues to ‘re-ignite the energy of We Day’ with ongoing support to school groups throughout the year (We Day website, 2016). The event initially aimed to engage the audience in FTC’s international development work; however, it has expanded to a ‘cause-agnostic’ approach that encourages the audience to engage in work of their own choosing (staff interview). Since We Day began, students have raised CAD$79 million for 6,500 different causes and volunteered 27.6 million hours (We Day website, 2016). Of those attending We Day, 76% report that they fulfilled the commitment to take one local and one global action (email correspondence with staff). Many became involved in social justice groups within their schools or took on leadership roles in school groups, and others have changed career paths to focus on work related to social change (FTC Alumni Study, 2012).

Within this case study, the unit of analysis was the interactions at the events and the individual impact of these interactions. Interactions were conceptualized in two ways consistent with the participants’ descriptions, as recommended by John and Reve (1982): each performance at an event was considered a single interaction and each event as a whole was considered a series of interactions. The many performances at each event allowed for an embedded case design where multiple interactions could be examined within a single case study (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1994). While youth typically only attend a single event, the series of events across two and a half years provided useful variation for the researchers, as noting similar elements in different performances was helpful for theorizing mechanisms that drove particular outcomes. Additionally, the in situ analysis of multiple interactions avoided success bias – the event was observed as it unfolded, allowing for exploration of the more and the less impactful interactions.

Methods

Data collection

A wide range of data were collected for the case study. Data included participant observation and video, interviews, and social media in order to understand the event and audience members’ responses to the event. The Appendix summarizes the chronology of the research process.

Observation and video

This case study looked at 195 performances at seven events between 2011 and 2013. In situ observation allowed for first-hand experience of performances, the context of each performance, and audience members’ immediate reactions. Video footage was obtained for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 events and used to refer back to exact performances as needed.

Interviews

We conducted 53 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 45 participants. Theoretical sampling and snowballing techniques (Eisenhardt, 1989) aimed to include organizational employees involved in designing We Day (11 interviews) and a wide range of audience members (42 interviews). Snowballing continued until the sample included diversity of opinions and levels of follow-on engagement. Most interviews were completed in person, recorded, and transcribed. Where this was not possible, extensive notes were taken. Average interview length was 45 minutes. Seven youth interviews were conducted online through Twitter direct messaging and email (e.g., Mazmanian, 2013). Online interviews were compared with in-person interviews to ensure validity. Online interviews were shorter but similar in content and tone, confirming validity of the online medium as a complementary mode of connection, particularly relevant for engaging youth in research processes.

Organizational interviews focused on the intent of We Day, what makes for a good performance, and how We Day changed over time in order to understand the strategic design of the event. Audience interviews included youth, teachers, a school board trustee, and a non-profit education partner. Ten audience interviews took place immediately before participants attended an event, 20 were directly after, and 12 interviews were more than a year later. Audience interviews were designed to elicit personal responses about the impact of the event. Audience members were asked what they liked and did not like, what made a good performance, and what, if any, actions they took as a result. Audience members were not asked about particular performances. When performances were mentioned, we probed for the reasons the particular performance was impactful.

Social media

Social media data included Twitter comments (#WeDay), We Day Facebook comments, blog entries, and YouTube videos created by audience members. Approximately 34,800 Twitter comments, 2,875 We Day Facebook posts and 10,722 responses were gathered. Most comments referenced specific events or performers and were made during or immediately before or after the event, although some posts were made more than a year later. Social media allowed insight into participants’ spontaneous public response to the event. The majority of posts were positive, and content ranged from excitement about celebrities to quotes from motivational speakers and declarations of personal commitment.

Data analysis

Analysis unfolded in three stages. Similar to Hardy and Maguire (2010, p. 1371), we first created ‘discursive event histories’ for each event, outlining the content and sequence of performances. Performances took two main forms: speeches and musical acts. For each event history, we performed a within-case analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989), coding each performance and paying particular attention to dialogue, storytelling, and situational factors from the reflexivity and event literatures. For example, of the 16 speeches in the Toronto 2012 We Day, 12 were identified as stories, as they were predominantly narrative in structure: including a sequence of actions, characters, and a concluding message (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Polkinghorne, 1988). Stories were further analyzed by noting genre, plot, characters, and key message (Gabriel, 2000; Labov, 1972). The majority of stories told during the events were identified as personal narratives in which the narrator was the main character and events were presented as past lived experience (Riessman, 2013). In a few instances, performers told historical movement stories that told of past lived experiences of activists (Polletta, 1998).

Plots were inductively coded to capture common storylines such as ‘I have privileges that allowed me to help others’ or ‘I faced challenges, but overcame them and helped others.’ Distinctions between heroes and villains (Czarniawska, 1997) were used to classify the most relevant characteristics, such as the social positions of those in the stories (e.g., ‘marginalized youth’ or ‘youth just like the audience’). The message at the end of the story summed up the moral (Labov, 1972) and was often in the form of a metaphor or trope. Similar messages were present in speeches that did not contain stories, and these metaphors and tropes were also coded. The musical acts were coded for use of lights and sound, tempo and energy, and audience participation, included cheering, call and response, singing, and the We Day Dance.

In stage two, we explored audience interpretations. The participants explained how certain aspects of performances resulted in particular outcomes, focusing the researchers’ attention on particular elements in the design of the event. For example, participants explained how personal narratives helped them see the injustices faced by others and understand their own privilege. This outcome was considered a reflexive disembedding, letting go of the invisibility of given social positions to understand privilege and injustice. As such, people were disembedding from the social structures that define their own lives. At the same time, empowering individuals within the collective resulted in a reflexive form of embedding for those in the audience, as they invested themselves in the We Day culture. Metaphors and other tropes in the speeches were referenced as particularly powerful ways of bringing together the individual within the community, labelled ‘bonding of me and we’. Audience members also described the impact of the loud and bright/silent and dark in terms of the energy of being together, and this physical element was therefore labelled the ‘multisensory performance’.

In the third stage, we performed a between-case analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989) looking for similarities and differences between mechanisms and impacts. Exploring similarities and differences drew attention to emotional dynamics. For example, it was not just personal narratives that resulted in reflexive disembedding. Some personal narratives created an emotional connection between speaker and audience, while others were deemed unrelatable and therefore non-impactful. Audience interpretations were also compared based on impact versus a priori expectations. Because audience members chose to attend We Day, instances where the impact was not expected provided support that self-selection does not wholly explain reflexive outcomes. For example, some participants expected the event to greatly impact them because of their interest in social issues but it did not; some went to We Day for the musical acts but experienced reflexivity. Findings that countered expectations confirmed the importance of the mechanisms and emotional dynamics in generating reflexivity and place boundaries on its impact. In triangulating between data sources (Eisenhardt, 1989), we found striking similarities between sources, providing assurance of the validity of the emerging constructs (Miles & Huberman, 1994). It became clear through iterations with the literature that the impact of We Day lay in the particular forms of personal narratives and empowering activities, which generated the emotional dynamics that resulted in a reflexive disembedding and embedding.

Findings

Through the emotional dynamics of the event context, many audience members came to understand their relative privilege and the injustices faced by others, supported by investment in a new community of change-makers. First, personal narratives of injustice and action allowed the audience to relate to the storytellers. This emotional identification then allowed the audience to contrast their own lives with the storyteller’s, resulting in reflexive disembedding – a critical understanding of privilege and injustice that disembedded the audience from the norms, values, and practices of their everyday lives. Second, the individual-collective empowering at the event built emotional energy through the bonding of me and we and the multisensory performance. The emotional energy resulted in reflexive embedding – investment in a new community, which embedded the audience in the We Day culture. See Figure 1 for an overview of this process and Table 1 for representative quotations.

Figure 1.

The generation of reflexivity at an interstitial event.

Table 1.

Event mechanisms, emotional dynamics and reflexive outcomes at an interstitial event.

Event mechanisms	Emotional dynamics	Reflexive outcomes
Personal narratives of injustice and action 1. Personal narratives of everyday heroes Character: Youth just like the audience Plot: I have privileges that I can use to help others e.g., Sydney and Craig 2. Personal narratives of marginalized others Character: Marginalized youth and others Plot: I overcame immense challenges and helped others e.g., Molly, Michel and Spencer	Relating: Emotional identification Relating: to social position e.g., ‘It’s Craig, a 12-year-old boy from Richmond Hill, Thornhill, you know, just wanted to do something, like, just a regular young person you know…which allows young people to see themselves in that, in that, it’s accessible enough of a storyline, but at the same time, look at what they did, and “I can do that too”.’ Relating: to circumstances e.g., ‘It was emotional to hear the stories of people and what they had experienced (like the one girl who was blind). It was a feeling of empathy.’	Disembedding: Critical understanding of privilege and injustice e.g., ‘We are all worth so much more, and like Molly we have a voice to say what is wrong and what is right!’ and ‘I remember that I was just having a really hard time and it was kind of like a wakeup call to know that there are so many other people around the world – I feel like this sounds really cliché though – but to know that there are so many people around the world that have so much worse lives than me.’
Individual-collective empowering 1. Bonding of me and we e.g., tropes, such as: ‘I have a sense of I, but I cannot survive without we’ and metaphors 2. Multisensory performance e.g., silent/dark, loud/bright	Emotional energy e.g., ‘I learned firsthand today about the “Law of We” from 18,000 of Winnipeg and Manitoba’s youth #WeDay !!!!’ e.g., ‘it’s just a remarkable environment to be in, where you see people cheering for social change and the energy is electric, it’s contagious’ and ‘All of a sudden, 18,000+ kids in unison began to sing the words of Hallelujah back to her in a harmonic beauty and it literally took my breath away’	Embedding: Investing in a community e.g., ‘We don’t each have the power to stop a war, but together, we can bring about widespread peace in the world #weday #sjsdweday’ and ‘the larger people just reinforces how much we can do. If we all work together…’

Reflexive disembedding: A critical understanding of privilege and injustice

Imagine this is u sitting in a crowd full of people and there is this one person that has gone through hell and is telling u their life story, people that sat next to me were crying u can feel the energy and emotion in the room because u can connect. (youth K, online interview)

Reflexive disembedding resulted from personal narratives of injustice and action. Personal narratives of injustice and action are defined as the stories of the narrators’ lived experiences facing injustice in the world and how these actors worked to create social change through their actions. Two kinds of stories impacted the audience: the personal narratives of everyday heroes, youth just like the audience who witnessed injustice faced by others and are fighting for change; and personal narratives of marginalized others who overcame injustices faced in their own lives and are now fighting for change.

Personal narratives of everyday heroes

Stories of everyday heroes included the first story told at Toronto 2011 We Day by 12-year-old Sydney Brouillard-Coyle. She started by explaining her dream for the future: ‘I have a dream. In 30 years, I’ll be Prime Minister.’ As Prime Minister, she said she would end hunger and homelessness. The story then moved back in time to the moment she decided to act: when she was nine years old, Sydney saw a homeless man without ‘decent’ clothing, and it was this man who made her realize the injustice in the world and how much she had in her own life. The homeless man spurred her to action, fundraising and growing vegetables for a local women’s shelter. Later in the event, Craig Kielburger, co-founder of FTC, shared a personal narrative about how he started FTC when he was a youth just like the audience: ‘I started Free The Children when I was 12 years old. I was inspired reading about the life and death of a young child slave in Pakistan.’ The comparison between their lives impelled Craig to act, ‘but people said you’re too young. You’re one person. What difference can you make?’ When Craig shared the newspaper article with his class, 11 other students agreed to help him research child labor and write letters to political leaders. This group grew into FTC, ‘the world’s largest network of children helping children’. These stories explicitly positioned the main characters as youth just like the audience – similar in age and class, not marginalized or elite – who acted as everyday heroes.

Personal narratives of marginalized others

There were also personal narratives of marginalized actors presented in the middle of the event. Molly Burke told the story of being left alone in a forest after bullies broke her crutches, initially presenting herself as a youth just like the audience. She called for the lights to be turned off in the stadium of 20,000 people. There was silence as she explained, ‘You see, there is something I haven’t told you: this darkness is my reality. I am blind.’ She ends her story of being marginalized by stating, ‘I found my voice and my voice is strong. You have your voices too. United, we are one voice.’ Michel Chikwanine used signs to tell his story of becoming a child soldier being kidnapped, drugged, and forced to shoot his best friend. He told the audience how he escaped and now shares his story, working to prevent child soldiers around the world. Spencer West walked onstage on his hands and told the story of having his legs amputated at five years old. He was told he was useless, he was bullied, and felt lost. But he persevered and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for water projects in East Africa, to help others in the world. His story was dedicated to ‘every person who’s been bullied…everyone who’s ever felt lost’. He told the audience that there are ‘no can’ts, no won’ts, only how’. Together, these marginalized others had a common message of overcoming injustice and helping others.

How relating to personal narratives fostered reflexive disembedding

Through personal narratives, audience members related to the storytellers. This emotional identification then allowed the audience to contrast their own lives with the storytellers’ circumstances and social position. This resulted in an understanding of audience members’ relative privilege and the injustices faced by others. Listening to the everyday heroes, the audience related to the social position and being discouraged from taking social action that was then contrasted with the storyteller’s actions. As one youth explained,

You realize how much of a difference one person can make when they say the story of, like, [Craig Kielburger] was in sixth grade. It also makes you feel really unaccomplished [laughing]. Like, by 16 he had already founded his own organization and was successful and what did I do? I passed grade 11. (youth S, interview)

An event organizer explained, ‘It’s very empowering to feel connected to that’ (event organizer A, interview). A teacher noted that ‘kids could resonate with it. Like, my kids, who are 16 years, were, like, “holy shoot, [Sydney was] only nine!” Right? And I got the sense walking away from that like, “Wow, if she can do that, I can do that”’ (teacher K, interview).

For the stories of those who were marginalized, the audience connected to the speakers’ circumstances, yet contrasted with their social position. As this audience member explained, the impact was created by relating to the challenges faced and then contrasting with the marginalized position: ‘Spencer is so much more relatable. Because everyone’s been bullied. Like, it’s just done. And um, Spencer’s overcome so many challenges that like, Craig [co-founder] just has, and we all have – like legs, we have legs [laughing]’ (youth S, interview). Through relating and then contrasting with those who are marginalized, the audience came to understand their relatively privileged position: ‘I think it kind of enlightened me and put a lot of things in perspective for me’ (youth G, interview), and

[Molly] was telling everyone how she was bullied, and, just made me really sad for her, and all of a sudden she told us she was blind. And then, I just felt more inspired by her, like, with everything that she’s been doing…that just kind of like pushed me, seeing somebody who has less than I do. (youth R, interview)

The contrast highlighted opportunities afforded by the audience’s privilege:

I have things, so many things in life, like I was so lucky and like, you don’t really realize it until you hear other people’s stories straight from them. And I picture, we had the Maasai guy…the child soldier, and I was like, wow, he’s here and he’s talking about it. It doesn’t matter if he re-lives it, as long as he’s telling people about it. And I was like, that’s pretty strong. And so, I just sort of thought about how much I had in my life, and I thought about getting more involved…So it made me think about the things I had and the opportunities I should take advantage of. (youth L, interview)

In these stories, social position, which is often invisible in our daily lives, became the focus of attention. Audience members related to the storytellers but were simultaneously shocked by the contrast of the stories with their own lives.

Notably, some audience members did not relate to the personal narratives presented at We Day. Some participants were in their early 20s when they attended We Day, older than the target age. While the event is designed ‘especially for students in middle and high school’ (Impact Report), and particularly for ‘any kid in high school in Canada’ (event organizer R, interview), the older youth wanted to attend because of their extensive participation in social action. In the end, the event did not create an impact: ‘I think for our age group it’s not as effective, just because we’re already educated in that stuff’ (youth A, interview). An older blogger who had first seen the co-founder speak six years earlier wanted more depth to relate to, ‘The event lacked focus. No speaker had longer than a few minutes on stage. The message of some of the less dynamic speakers, and the potential impact they could have had, was lost.’ As such, there was no emotional identification for these audience members.

An event organizer emphasized how important it was to target the content to the audience, so that members were ‘learning about real issues that are happening in the world and they’re doing so through a lens that is applicable to them and makes them feel connected to what they’re learning’ (event organizer L, interview). Therefore, the organizer stated, any change in the audience would require a change in the content: ‘every degree of separation … is going to have a degree of change in We Day itself’. In other words, relating to the storytellers was a targeted emotional identification that could open up the possibility for contrasting with the personal narratives; this emotional dynamic then created a critical disjuncture that disembedded actors from their everyday lives. By drawing attention to the taken-for-granted role of social positions, the audience could come to see the injustices faced by others and their own relative privilege.

Reflexive embedding: Investment in a community

Empowerment is first and foremost an emotional experience. It’s about self-confidence. It’s about not feeling alone. (event organizer S, interview)

The disembedding was accompanied by reflexive embedding within a community of actors that supported their new understandings. Reflexive embedding resulted from the individual-collective empowering that took place at the event. Individual-collective empowering is defined as activities that make salient the power of individual actors within a group. Two kinds of activities impacted the audience: the bonding of me and we through metaphors and tropes that concretized the power of individuals within collectives; and the multisensory performance, which created an intense physical experience for those in the audience.

Bonding of me and we

Metaphors and other tropes were used to symbolize the audience’s power by bringing together the individual and the collective. While the personal narratives of celebrities and world leaders did not have an impact on audience members, the metaphors and tropes used to present their messages were an important mechanism for building emotional energy, a solidarity with others in the audience. Many speakers juxtaposed the power of ‘me’ and ‘we’ in creating social change. To ideologically frame We Day, co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger explained the power of individuals and groups in the audience:

Craig: …like A.J., who raised money to build a school with his classroom in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Way to go A.J. [Video of A.J. smiling and waving from the audience]…

Marc: If we could point out every single one of you we would. [cheering]

Craig: That energy comes from a year’s worth of actions. 1.7 million volunteer hours logged. $5.4m raised for 500 different local, national and international causes. We Day isn’t just a day, We Day is a movement!

This trope, moving back and forth between the individual and collective, was used repeatedly by the co-founders to motivate the audience to come together. The empowering message was repeated by many speakers through metaphors that symbolized how a large group of people were able to create large-scale change but individual actions were critical for contributing to the whole. For example, Reverend Jesse Jackson declared after his story of activism, ‘I is a piece of straw. We can weave a basket and have collective power.’ Actor Martin Sheen shared a quote from Senator Robert Kennedy’s South African address in 1966 to explain how his actions combined with others:

Each time someone stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, they send forth a tiny ripple of hope. From a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a tide that could sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice!

These metaphors talked about the community of change-makers as a basket woven from many pieces of straw and as an ocean made up of many ‘ripples of hope’ to create a symbolic picture of the power of individuals within the group.

Multisensory performance

Audience members could also feel the power of those in the audience through the physicality of the ‘rock concert for social change’. The event was designed to excite and physically engage audience members through sensory overload, using lights, sound, dance, live speakers, and video to draw the audience in: ‘I think that’s really smart, how much they pump you up…it just attacks all your senses, it like, makes you totally feel like you’re in it’ (youth G, interview). Several parts of the event involved loud music and cheering, bright lights, and an audience that was on their feet dancing to the musical performances. The photographs in Figure 2 show the arena, lights, crowd, and performers during a typical We Day event.

Figure 2.

The rock concert for social change. (Left) Lights and crowd in the stadium, Toronto 2012 We Day. (Right) Marc Kielburger [co-founder] entering the arena, Toronto 2011 We Day.

However, energy was also built through the silence and stillness during the stories, in stark contrast to the lights and sounds of the music: ‘when she asked for silence, there was silence. Honestly the interaction that there is during this event is incredible!’ (youth I, email interview). The contrasting elements of the performances created a powerful energy in the stadium.

How emotional energy from empowering built investment in a community

The metaphors and tropes that bonded the ‘me’ and ‘we’ and the multisensory performances together concretized the abstract concept of the audience’s power, which translated into a feeling of emotional energy. The emotional energy allowed the audience to become invested in this new community. As the educational partner explained: ‘I think what We Day does…was basically, that there’s that kind of fire burning within, and people see other likeminded people, and other people who are inspired by a similar cause, and feel that network, and feel that support’ (school board partner, interview). Specifically, one youth articulated how the lights used in the One Drop acrobatic performance was a symbolic embodiment of the audience’s unity, the power of the collective:

My fav part was when there was a women dancing on the blanket, it was beautiful because everyone got a necklace that lit up during the performance, the lights were controlled by someone but everything just looked beautiful all together, it was my fav part because it was the one time in which everyone was united. (youth K, online interview)

Many members of the audience tweeted the metaphors that concretized their individual power as part of a larger group of actors. For example, ‘“We sometimes feel that what we do is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would b less because of that missing drop” Mother Teresa #WeDay’. Similarly, the educational partner noted that the metaphor conceptualizing the audience as a group of pencils was able to motivate people to work together as one group:

The next thing that got referenced most was the pencil analogy [told by Craig and Marc]. You break one, you can break two, but you can’t break twenty-four… Some students were saying, “you know, it helps me to realize that, you know, there’s this group of us, and we can work together, and as long as we stay supportive of each other, you know, there’s a lot we can accomplish and, you know, we can overcome resistance.”

These metaphors built emotional energy or a sense of solidarity by helping individuals feel like a necessary part of the group. As an organizer explained, ‘we want to ensure that every single person that attends feels like they’re the most important person’ (event organizer S, interview). A youth acknowledged this in a blog post: ‘We Day allows youth to come together as one, to celebrate the power of each individual to create change.’

Youth also commented on the physical experience of bringing together the audience as a whole, which generated another aspect of emotional energy. By using a rock concert context contrasted with moments of intense silence, the multisensory performances created emotional energy that translated into investment in this new community. Students commented that ‘there’s so many people willing to help’ (youth S, interview) and that ‘it just gets people engaged’ (youth L, interview). Additionally, ‘the thing that probably affected me most was that there’s so many people together, so excited together. And I remember I just felt so like, it made me actually feel, like it’s so motivational, like it actually pumps everybody up’ (youth G, interview). While it is easy to feel lost in a crowd, an insignificant member of a group, the bonding of me and we and the multisensory performances at We Day helped many in the audience feel like they were working together, an important part of this newly forming community.

Notably, not everyone became embedded within the group. Older attendees who did not relate to the personal narratives also perceived that they were part of a different social group: ‘I think maybe when you’re in, your twelve, and you’re just starting out, it’s a good way to get involved, but for me…’ (youth N, interview) and ‘I really enjoyed it, but I found I didn’t find it to be inspirational with a lot of speakers and the musicians, like…I think it centered more on, like more of a high school and elementary school…’ (youth J, interview). It can be seen that these audience members saw themselves as a distinct group, disconnected from others at We Day: ‘I mean, it is inspiring, maybe not to everyone, but I think the kids’ (youth M, interview). Reflexive embedding was also not engendered for those who predominantly connected to the rock concert elements of the multisensory performance without emotional energy from the metaphors and tropes of ‘me’ and ‘we’, as these tweets show: ‘got to see @lights and @phoebedykstra today. I can die happy now. #weday #makeachange’ and ‘ @DaRealSD love u! I saw u today at #WeDay I had a blast! U were great! Please follow me!!!’ Thus, these audience members did not experience the emotional energy that would embed them in the We Day culture.

In summary, personal narratives of injustice and action and individual-collective empowering resulted in emotional dynamics, relating and emotional energy. These emotional dynamics resulted in reflexivity for many:

My first impression of We Day in 2011 could not be explained by words, simply because didn’t have any way to explain what I felt. We Day inspired me more than anything else has. When I had the opportunity to go again in 2012 I was ecstatic! We Day has probably been one of the major factors that changed the way I think, act and speak. (youth M2, email interview)

Discussion

This study sought to shed light on how reflexivity can be generated through interactions structured into an organized, interstitial event. We found that specific forms of stories and empowering were important mechanisms for generating emotional dynamics that enabled reflexive dis/embedding.

Personal narratives were the mechanism for triggering reflexive disembedding, and they did so through the emotional dynamic of relating. Relating is an emotional identification (Polletta, 1998) that allows people to contrast their own lives with that of the storyteller. A story’s link to reflexivity lies in the social position of the storyteller as the main character relative to the audience; through stories, the audience can become reflexive about the effect of social positions on opportunities, and this impacted their understanding of their own relative privilege as well as the injustices faced by others. Bruner (1991) has argued that by relating to storytellers, the audience puts themselves into the story as protagonists, vicariously experiencing the action. In the case of We Day, the stories told onstage drew the audience into the stories to elicit personal comparisons. The stories at We Day offered successful examples of social change (Davis, 2002) told by everyday heroes and those who are marginalized, to which the audience could relate despite large differences in positions or actions.⁶

Resistance to reflexive thought was surprisingly absent at this event, and the relative social positions across the various stories were likely an important aspect in this absence. As Gray and Kish-Gephart argued, the middle class are most likely to refuse to acknowledge the impact of social structures on opportunities

because their position inherently represents the expected results of a functioning system in which hard work and rewards are a balanced equation. In addition, they are able to absolve themselves of blame by transferring it to the even more privileged elite. (Gray & Kish-Gephart, 2013, p. 680)

The We Day event navigated this potential resistance by balancing stories of people just like the audience with stories of those in very different positions, all within a context of solidarity and community bonds. Stories of everyday heroes may thus serve two purposes: offering examples of successful social change by those just like the audience and decreasing the threat of hearing stories from those less fortunate than oneself. We speculate that the ordering of stories, including hearing first and last from everyday heroes, allowed the audience to relate without feeling a threat to their sense of self, decreasing the likelihood of inducing guilt when hearing stories from those who are marginalized. Told together, these stories of injustice and action were an important mechanism for shaping new understandings of how positions relate to institutional structures and opportunities, disembedding actors from the taken-for-grantedness of social positions in their own lives.

Individual-collective empowering was the mechanism that triggered reflexive embedding, and it did so through the generation of emotional energy, an affective solidarity with the group (Collins, 2004; Juris, 2008). The metaphors moving from a part to a whole symbolically bonded together the individual and the group, and the audience became the physical embodiment of these metaphors through the multisensory performance. As Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argued, metaphors are organizing principles that express abstract concepts in more concrete terms. The metaphors at We Day were able to concretize the power of large groups while also emphasizing the contribution of each individual. Additionally, the physical experience of the power of the group generated what Durkheim (1965/1915) labelled ‘collective effervescence’, which can encourage participation in the group (Collins, 2004). Both of these elements of the event together generated emotional energy channeled into an investment in this new community, embedding actors in the We Day culture.

Those who did not experience a reflexive dis/embedding through the emotional dynamics of the event mechanisms highlight boundary conditions for interstitial events. Similar to Ochs and Capps (2001, p. 57) who argue that even personal narratives are ‘designed for a particular audience who apprehend and shape its meaning’, the We Day organizers created a highly tailored set of interactions for a particular target audience. In this case, We Day targeted youth in middle and high school, creating performances to which this social group could emotionally identify. The strong tailoring of performances meant that older audience members were not able to relate and did not feel like they belonged in the group. This does not mean that storytellers need be similar to the audience, as some of the most impactful stories were from people with very different lives from the audience, but that storytellers need to tell the story in a way that is relatable to the target audience despite vast differences in either circumstances or social position. Once the audience relates, they are then able to contrast the story with their own lives to create a powerful impact. The older audience members made suggestions for tailoring the event to their own age group, such as more in-depth content to which they could relate and different musical celebrities who would excite them, which may have better facilitated their emotional involvement and allowed for reflexive dis/embedding.

The reflexivity that did emerged for many in the audience was a disembedding from the objectivity and invisibility of social arrangements in their everyday lives. Interstitial events literally construct a separate space where actors are positioned outside everyday action (Dayan & Katz, 1992; Glynn, 2008) and thus can become observers of their own field (Collins, 2004). It is this outside perspective that allows actors to see that which is otherwise invisible. While research has conceptualized reflexivity as both an understanding of subjective systems of power (Freire, 1970b) and the role of self within those systems (Holmes, 2010), the reflexive disembedding at We Day was primarily self-focused. The nature of the system itself, although characterized as unjust, was left as a black box. Audience members thus remained focused on themselves, understanding their relatively privileged position and the suffering of those who are marginalized within the current system.

The reflexivity generated was also an embedding within a community that supported the audience’s new understandings. Embeddedness is defined as seeing oneself as part of a social group, guided by common norms, values, and practices. Here, the audience became invested in a new community of actors joined together by their desire to change the world. When the audience returned to their everyday lives, they remained invested in these new social bonds, possibly leading to multiple embeddedness that can emphasize different norms, values, and practices across communities (e.g., Fan & Zietsma, 2016; Sewell, 1992). In this way, the support of the new community can provide alternative social bonds that facilitate ongoing critique of the status quo.

Contributions and directions for future research

This research makes two main contributions to the existing literature on reflexivity and events. First, we show how the interactions structured through an interstitial event can generate individual-level impacts, extending research on the field-level outcomes of events (e.g., Furnari, 2014; Glynn, 2008) and addressing ambiguity in research on social movement events, festivals, and benefit concerts (Collins, 2004; Davis, 2010; Rojek, 2014). Closer examination of the storytelling and empowering activities found at We Day offers an explanation of how other events, such as Band Aid and Live 8, differed in ways that likely prevented reflexivity. Storytelling at benefit concerts often presents the ‘plight of starving African children and the words of their charismatic rock star champions’ (Compton & Comor, 2007, p. 39). Stories that had an impact at We Day, on the other hand, were those of the marginalized who overcame their own challenges and stories of those just like the audience who found ways to help. The focus was always on the narrator’s social position, which was far from elite, making a very personal contrast to show relative privilege and injustice. The role of celebrities at We Day was in providing metaphors that bonded the individual with the collective, generating emotional energy for embedding the audience in the community. Benefit concerts often generate emotional energy through a multisensory performance, but We Day also focused on symbolically embedding the individual within the community. While benefit concerts may represent the idea of strength in numbers, these events often place little emphasis on the balancing impact of individuals as important contributors to the group. The bonding at We Day successfully moved between the power of ‘me’ and ‘we’, in order to make the individual feel like a necessary contributor to the group.

It has been argued that emotional energy reinforces existing relational investments instead of supporting change (Collins, 2004). Indeed, the mechanism for embedding shares similarities with the charisma and rhetoric of evangelical appeals (e.g., Jones & Massa, 2013) and the solidarity embodied at religious festivals (Roeland et al., 2012). Embedding alone therefore has the potential to reinforce existing beliefs and suppress questioning. However, storytelling at We Day first disembedded the audience from taken-for-granted aspects of their own lives, prompting critical understandings of social arrangements along with solidarity. When coupled with disembedding, embedding within a community of actors can be important in building a sense of energy around challenging the status quo. While outside the scope of this study, We Day organizers also remained in contact with the new community to ‘re-ignite the energy’ after the audience returned home. Future research could explore how event organizers might sustain both the reflexive embedding and disembedding beyond event boundaries.

The second contribution of this study offers is the articulation of the emotional processes of fostering reflexivity. Research in institutional theory has recently argued for greater inclusion of the emotional components of social life (Creed, Hudson, Okhuysen, & Smith-Crowe, 2014; Voronov & Vince, 2012). Similar calls have been made in reflexivity research, which has primarily focused on the cognitive nature of triggering reflexive thought (Holmes, 2010; Zembylas, 2014). In the present study, it was the emotional dynamics emerging from the storytelling and empowering mechanisms that fostered reflexive dis/embedding. An understanding of relative social positions was achieved through the emotion of relating, an emotional identification that then allowed for contrasting with the storytellers. Emotional energy was used to invest in the new community. An important implication of this is that social position and individual and collective power are felt as much as they are cognitively understood – actors feel a connection to others based on similar or different social positions and circumstances, and they feel empowered to act as part of a group. Future research on the study of institutional processes should take seriously the emotional nature of how actors alter their understanding of the social world and their own roles.

Specific emotions were also found in the present research that warrant further attention. The need for change is often attached to difficult emotions, such as anger, betrayal (Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017), and shame (Creed et al., 2010). Research has identified compassion for the suffering of others in many social change efforts (Miller, Grimes, McMullen, & Vogus, 2012). However, here compassion was balanced by relating to the suffering of others and to their joy and hope. Instead of stories of helpless children that have been identified at some benefit concerts, the audience heard stories of children who overcame challenges and took action. While relating to others’ suffering and lack of success in social change can lead to ‘compassion fatigue’ (Figley, 1995), the positive energizing side of the storytelling at We Day was frequently mentioned by participants. An under-theorized element of engaging in the work of institutional change is the need for joy and hope (Branzei, 2012) to instigate action in the face of what can seem insurmountable. Additionally, anger was notably absent from the stories and reactions to the stories at the event. There was sadness but not anger. It is possible that anger is a more acceptable emotion within groups that have shared experiences of injustice as members of a marginalized group (Goodwin et al., 2004; Jasper, 1998). Sadness may be a more appropriate emotion when people are sharing their stories of injustice with those who have not experienced the same injustice. The balance of particular emotions was an important part of the event. Both potentially demoralizing emotions, such as shock and sadness, and uplifting emotions, such as joy and hope, worked together within the emotional dynamics of relating and emotional energy in order to facilitate reflexive dis/embedding.

In conclusion, this study addresses calls for research on the individual experiences that facilitate institutional work (Dorado, 2013; Suddaby et al., 2016), theorizing the source of cognitive and emotional ‘ruptures’ required to apprehend the possibility and need for change (Voronov & Yorks, 2015). We uncovered the event mechanisms, the particular types of personal narratives and empowering activities at an interstitial event, which were important for disembedding actors from the objectivity of everyday life and embedding them in a supportive community of actors. The present research highlights the emotional dynamics that form the basis of the interplay between performers and audiences that can trigger reflexive dis/embedding. By focusing on situated interactions underpinning broader field structures and the impact on individuals, the present study complements existing structure-based research, identifying individual-level impacts on embedded agency, which is a key ongoing concern for institutional research (e.g., Battilana & D’Aunno, 2009; Walker, Schlosser, & Deephouse, 2014).

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix.

Chronology of key events and research progress.

Year	Key Developments	Data Sources and Amounts
2006	Failed We Day attempt
Fall 2007	First successful We Day in Toronto
Fall 2008	Toronto We Day 2008
Fall 2009	Toronto We Day 2009, first Vancouver We Day
Sept 2010 – June, 2011	Toronto and Vancouver We Day 2010, first Waterloo and Montreal We Days
Sept 2011 – June, 2012	Toronto We Day 2011, Vancouver We Day 2011, Waterloo We Day 2012, first Manitoba and National We Days	Participant observation (6 hours) Toronto We Day 2011Access negotiations with FTC Participant observation (6 hours) National We Day 2012Social media (283 pages) Twitter comments before, during and after National We Day 2012
July–Aug 2012		Interviews (19 interviews, 321 pages of transcripts) 9 FTC employees, including 1 previous production partner 5 youth 2 teachers 1 school board partnerSocial media (556 pages) Twitter and Facebook comments 3 blogs and 12 YouTube vlogs + comments
Sept–Dec 2012	Toronto We Day 2012, Vancouver We Day 2012, Waterloo We Day 2012, Manitoba We Day 2012, first Alberta We Day	Participant observation (34 hours) Toronto We Day 2012 Alberta We Day 2012 Manitoba We Day 2012 Waterloo We Day 2012 2 sponsor events 1 youth school group eventInterviews (34 interviews, 241 pages of transcripts) 22 youth 5 teachers 1 educational partnerSocial media (7,021 pages) Twitter comments before, during and after each We Day 9 blogs
Sept 2013	Toronto We Day 2013	Participant observation (6 hours) Toronto We Day 2013

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Senior Editors Charlene Zietsma and Madeline Toubiana for their guidance throughout the review process, as well as the insightful and constructive feedback from the three anonymous reviewers. We also appreciate comments and advice on earlier drafts from Sean Buchanan, Maxim Voronov, Wes Helms and Nada Basir, as well as participants at the Institutions and Emotions Conference, Toronto 2014.

Funding

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

Notes

Author biographies

Trish Ruebottom is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Goodman School of Business, Brock University in St. Catharines, Canada. Her research interests lie at the intersection of social innovation and strategy, specifically exploring the ways we organize in order to create social change. Her work has been published in Human Relations, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Business Ethics and Sloan Management Review.

Ellen R. Auster is Professor of Strategic Management at the Schulich School of Business, York University. Prior to joining Schulich, she was on the faculty at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University and Visiting Faculty at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. She earned her BA from Colgate University and her PhD from Cornell University. Specializing in strategic change and strategic capability development, she has written several books including her latest, Stragility: Excelling at Strategic Changes, with Lisa Hillenbrand (Rotman UTP, 2016). She has also published widely in scholarly and practitioner journals including Academy of Management Review, Management Science, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management and Research Policy.

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