Abstract
Recent studies on identity regulation emphasize the significance of the body in mediating individuals’ responses to cultural control within organizations. However, little is known about how such responses are concretely enacted by individuals through their bodies. Based on an ethnography of an activist organization, this study discusses the culture of self-sacrifice through which activists’ identity is regulated. It reveals the everyday tensions between passionate commitment and vulnerable bodies, exploring how body breakdowns lead activists to separate their passion for a cause from the organizational culture and ultimately make their exit. We thus aim to contribute to research on identity regulation by highlighting the precariousness of this process and demonstrating the political potential of bodies to resist controlling regimes. We interpret breakdowns as political events emerging at the interface between the docile enactment of a bodily norm and its concrete physical violence.
Introduction
It is well established that contemporary organizations use culture as part of a heterogeneous control system (Michel, 2011) to regulate members’ identity through discourse (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Recent research on identity regulation further highlights its complex nature and situated understanding (Paring, Pezé, & Huault, 2017), pointing to the particular significance of bodies in this process. Calling for an embodied understanding of identity (Knights & Clarke, 2017), numerous scholars emphasize the significance of somatic and corporeal aspects of identity regulation (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002) in diverse empirical settings. Some sample populations include combat soldiers (Kachtan & Wasserman, 2015), rugby players (Coupland, 2015) and corporate executives (Johansson, Tienari, & Valtonen, 2017).
In this regard, the body/identity nexus is now the object of an emergent stream of research that illuminates both new forms of self-control (Johansson et al., 2017) by disciplined bodies, and the potential agency of individuals to resist and transcend organizational control through their bodies (Courpasson & Monties, 2017; Michel, 2011, 2014; Murphy, 1998). Hence, bodies mediate individuals’ responses to cultural control within organizations. However, little remains known about how such responses are concretely enacted by individuals or how they may shift over time. This paper highlights the centrality of bodies in influencing how people respond to organizational control. Specifically, we analyse how weakening of the physical form – through injury or disease, for instance – can modify the subjective positioning of individuals in the face of identity regulation.
Such occurrence, which we refer to as body breakdown, is an underexplored phenomenon in organizational research. It is most easily visible in settings involving highly demanding physical tasks and/or extreme commitment, such as consultancy firms (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2004), investment banks (Michel, 2011), police (Courpasson & Monties, 2017), or activist organizations (Chen & Gorski, 2015). We argue that, in these settings, the process of identity regulation can be disrupted and eventually threatened by body breakdowns. In other words, body breakdowns trigger individuals to question and distance themselves from the organization. We further contend that body breakdowns constitute political events, materializing a physical ‘limit’ that forces people to take a stance; i.e. either sacrifice themselves and stay, or develop a critique through separating their passion for the cause from the organizational culture, and exit the organization.
This contention is important, we argue, because research on activist burnout, as an extreme case of body breakdown, has overlooked the political dimension of normative control within activist organizations. Indeed, this stream of research has shown how activists experience their work as part of their self-identity (Rettig, 2006), thereby making them particularly vulnerable to exhaustion and burnout within movement cultures (Chen & Gorski, 2015; Plyler, 2006) that demand devotion and endless commitment (Klandermans, 1997). Still, research is only beginning to recognize body breakdown as an organizational problem (Lester, Lamson, & Wollman, 1996) with deleterious effects on activist communities (Cox, 2011). As such, this kind of setting is relevant for analysing bodies as unstable instantiations of controlling processes of both organizational compliance and resistance. We thus conceptualize bodies in relation to identity as a mutual constitution of docility and resistance. We demonstrate how they mark boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within organizations, thereby conferring on bodies a political influence over identity regulation.
Hence, this paper proposes to examine the significance of the body in the process of identity regulation within an activist setting. First, we analyse how activists struggle to match their self-identity with a powerful culture of self-sacrifice based on the intensity of work, corporeal self-neglect and the ‘athletization’ of the body. Second, we show how this dynamic is associated with a strong self-identification vis-a-vis the co-founder and early members of the organization. Finally, we highlight how body breakdowns, by triggering awareness of their own and others’ vulnerabilities, help activists to establish a new relationship with their bodies, generating a progressive disconnection between activists and the organization.
Our contribution is twofold. First, we complement research on identity regulation by showing the precariousness of this process through body breakdowns. Indeed, we highlight the progressive disconnection between activists and the promoted organizational culture because of its dramatic effects on the physical realities of members. Second, we also contribute to research on the body/identity nexus by highlighting the political dimension of body breakdowns. In fact, everyday tensions between a passionate commitment and a vulnerable body eventually lead to a dramatic change in the relationship between activist and organization. In sum, our study offers a political explanation of the uncertain dynamics of identity regulation, by showing the precariousness of the control regimes based on bodily docility and demonstrating the political potential of bodies in resisting these regimes.
The paper is organized as follows. We begin by laying out the theoretical framing of our study. Next, we explain the research context and the methods employed. We follow this with our interpretation of the data, introducing our empirical findings. Finally, we draw out our main contributions in the discussion and conclusion sections.
Theory
Identity regulation beyond a discursive practice
Identity regulation has been investigated and understood primarily as a discursive practice (e.g. Ainsworth & Hardy, 2009; Kuhn, 2006; Musson & Duberley, 2007). In their seminal work, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) examined the role of discourse in identity regulation and managerial control, shedding light on the specific strategies targeting individuals.
Answering the call to investigate how control is exercised through the ‘manufacture’ of subjectivity (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 622), Musson and Duberley (2007) highlight the relational, situational and multiple dimensions of identity construction. Narratives of self, they argue, result from an ongoing, ‘active and critical process’ (p. 147) of identity construction, and are often imbued with ambiguities (Collinson, 2003) and contradictions. Hence, identity regulation necessarily involves a struggle over subjectivity (Knights & McCabe, 2003) that transcends discourse. Indeed, Alvesson and Willmott (2002) have noted the potential significance of ‘somatic and tacit aspects of social interaction and human development’ (p. 639) that could impact the formation and transformation of self-identity. In fact, various ethnographies about organizational control have pointed to the role of material elements, such as artefacts and bodies, in identity regulation processes (e.g. Casey, 1996; Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian, & Samuel, 1998; Michel, 2011; Paring et al., 2017). Still, many identity scholars emphasize the lack of consideration for the material actualization of identity regulation (Bardon, Clegg, & Josserand, 2012; Iedema, 2007) – particularly its corporeal side (Paring et al., 2017). While the interest in subjective identities as a ‘disembodied phenomenon’ (Knights & Clarke, 2017, p. 340), ‘construed through discourse and other symbolic means’ (Brown, 2015, p. 21) has been dominant among organizational scholars, emergent research on the body-identity nexus has been challenging the underlying assumption separating body and mind (Knights & Clarke, 2017, p. 351). This paper thus emphasizes the relationship that individuals build with their body – a relationship that helps them to reconsider their subjective positioning within an organization as well as their life projects.
The body-identity nexus in the literature
In their review of the literature on identity in management and organization studies, Knights and Clarke (2017) criticize its prevailing neglect of the body in favour of ‘the dominant discursive, linguistic and often masculine narratives’ (p. 340). They have thus called for an embodied understanding of identity (p. 346) aimed at further exploring its relations with self at work (Johansson et al., 2017), as a resistance tool (Courpasson & Monties, 2017), or as corporate capital (Tyler & Abbott, 1998; Wolkowitz, 2006).
Increasing attention has been paid to the body-identity nexus in recent years. In relation to identity regulation, the role of the disciplined body has been highlighted in the reproduction of masculine identities (Kachtan & Wasserman, 2015) and among rugby players (Coupland, 2015). In a similar vein, Johansson et al. (2017) shed light on the gendered dimension inscribed in managerial athleticism and how it operates through specific norms implied in processes of bodily identity regulation. Also, the work of Paring et al. (2017) shows how employees, in order to regulate their identity, were required to internalize certain bodily gestures and postures that formed a new set of ‘bodily norms’ (p. 848) needed to perform new tasks and roles within the firm.
Hence, the body constitutes one of the most important signifiers of identity (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2009), in terms of both compliance and resistance. For example, in his 1998 study of flight attendants, Murphy analyses the embodied strategies used by female employees to resist a constraining culture imposed upon their bodies. Conversely, Courpasson and Monties (2017), in their ethnography on police work, show how police officers willingly embarked upon disciplinary bodily practices to resist institutional reforms that were imposing increasing judicial and clerical tasks, taking them off the streets. The authors thus emphasize bodies as resources for identity work, in which individuals place ‘tacit confidence’ (p. 51) in order to resist alternative visions of their work.
While constructed in discourse, the body is not confined to such. Michel (2011, 2014), in her nine-year ethnography on investment banks, shows how the identity of bankers was influenced by embodied cues of organizational controls. Examples include the constant presence of co-workers in the office, round-the-clock administrative support, free car services, meals, health clubs and dry-cleaning valets. These ‘homey bodily comforts’ (p. 18), perceived by workers as increasing their autonomy, were actually used by the banks as unobtrusive controls to enhance the bankers’ sense of well-being and – therefore – their work performance. Overall, research suggests that the passion that drives workers to mistreat their bodies to the point of sacrificing them points toward the power of contemporary organizations in diffusing new forms of self-control (Johansson et al., 2017) but also to the potential agency of individuals to transcend these (Michel, 2011).
Body politics and the significance of breakdowns
These recent studies show the centrality of the body in processes of identity regulation, as bodies seem to mediate employees’ responses to cultural control. Bodies can hence be used and understood as political instruments – of both compliance and resistance – that necessarily affect individual identities (Courpasson & Monties, 2017). For instance, conceptualizing the body as ‘the locus of cultural interpretation and the site at which the individual takes up, interprets, and possibly transforms a set of received interpretations’ (Trethewey, 1999, p. 447), post-structuralist feminist research has long established the political implications of embodied identities, notably investigating the positioning of women’s bodies within gendered discourses. However, while examining how professional women’s bodies are normalized, controlled and disciplined in organizational contexts, Trethewey (1999) suggests in her conclusion the potential emergence of ‘a new social Darwinism’ (p. 446) – i.e. a boundary between women with ‘fit enough bodies or personalities to survive corporate downsizing or to be promoted’ and the ‘unfit’ others (p. 446). The body is thus understood as an impediment when it cannot comply with the norm, as with aging women or disabled people in organizations. The underlying norm of discrimination is not used as a political instrument to transform the overarching normative culture.
We take a different view, arguing that body breakdowns can serve not as impediments but rather moments of realization when individuals move away from compliance toward critically questioning one’s identity. In fact, Deetz (1998) suggests that – as long as it can support work – the body is subject to self-surveillance and medicated (e.g. with caffeine or cold and stomach medications) to hide any symptoms of stress and fatigue. When it breaks down, the body becomes misaligned with organizational norms and therefore unable to conform to its disciplining culture. Michel’s 2014 study of investment bankers demonstrates how body breakdowns made it impossible for them to continue working in culturally normative ways, hence creating the necessary distance for them to recognize the previously transparent influence of the banks’ organizational culture and transcend the invisible controls within their work environments. It is precisely the experience of work-disruptive breakdowns that can push individuals to reflect on their action and its relationship with the organizational culture. In our study, breakdowns signal to the individuals that they do not inhabit their bodies as static and passive objects; they rather experience them as arguments for questioning a particular regime of control based on pace, intensity and extreme physical requirements.
We thus extend this line of research by arguing that body breakdowns reveal the precarious dynamics of identity regulation processes and the potential political dimensions of bodies in the face of disciplining cultures. Indeed, we show specifically that breakdowns trigger a progressive physical and normative disconnection between activists and their organization when they realize their unfitness to the bodily requirements of the working culture. Hence, their passion for the cause remains steady, but is no longer tied to their engagement with the organization. Self-expulsions become political gestures rather than punishments, as they show the regeneration of activists’ autonomy to choose the reasons why they shape their lives in one way or another.
Methods
We draw on a 21-month ethnography within a movement organization we refer to by the pseudonym AlterNV to understand the corporeal dimensions of activists’ self-identity at work. The context of an activist organization is particularly relevant in that such settings are value-based and characterize work by dedicated commitment and sacrifice (Maslach &d Gomes, 2006), characteristics that are in turn integral to the self-identity of passionate members (Rettig, 2006; St-Louis, Carbonneau, & Vallerand, 2016). Breakdowns resulting from injuries, illnesses and extreme exhaustion are common within such settings, which are also particularly associated with altruistic motivation rather than instrumental rewards (Cox, 2011). However, Cox notes that the question of ‘personal sustainability’ has just begun to receive attention within the activist and academic communities. Increasingly, body breakdowns are being correlated with movement cultures (Klandermans, 1997), without necessarily investigating their impact on activists’ identity and everyday commitment within organizations.
Marked by high commitment and passionate engagement, these settings require the researcher to adopt a particular posture in order to access the field and eventually find one’s own position within it. Our ethnographic approach was thus motivated by a willingness to generate an empathetic understanding of the group under study based on close proximity with their everyday life activities (Alvesson &d Skoldberg, 2000; Cunliffe, 2010). Our study began in October 2015 with our participation in civil society’s organizing activities in preparation for the next international climate conference, COP21. During this time, we engaged with the community of AlterNV activists, attending meetings, events and actions aimed at mobilizing ahead of the international climate conference in December. While we disclosed our role as researchers from the start, we believe that what was crucial to our access was our evolving position from participants-observers to activists-organizers which enabled an ‘insider’ perspective (Brannickk & Coghlan, 2007). Our engagement was inspired and informed by the work of activist-ethnographers (Reedy & King, 2017) within social movement theory (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010; Maeckelbergh, 2012) and critical organization studies (Willmott, 2008). We were also inspired by the work of Juris (2007) on ‘militant ethnography’, which aims to build ‘long-term relationships of mutual commitment and trust’ while being aware of ‘the procedural virtues of reflexivity, giving voice and relationality-emotionality’ (Reedy & King, 2017, p. 8).
The most intensive phase took place between June and November 2016, when one of this study’s two authors came to develop a trustful relationship with some of the most highly engaged activists by becoming herself one of them. Indeed, she was invited to collaborate on a transnational project launched by some members of AlterNV in preparation for the next climate conference, COP22, taking place in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2016. Originating from that country, she had close links with local civil society actors, spoke fluent Arabic, and thus played a key role in advancing the project by connecting activists from both sides of the Mediterranean. In charge of coordinating with movements from the south of the Mediterranean to develop a common platform around climate justice issues specific to the region, her experience in the field pointed to her own embodiment, previously taken for granted. She was surprised to see herself pushing her own body to limits she had never expected.
I keep telling myself ‘it’s my responsibility’, now that I was designated – or rather pushed – to become a coordinator. I started as this ‘little hand’ who calls on the phone (recruiting volunteers, contacting potential supporters, gathering information. . .) and writes minutes of meetings; and now, a few weeks later, I’m the one spending most of her time outside, meeting authorities to get permits and negotiate logistical support, so that our project can see the light of the day. Escalated commitment in progress. . . This notion of ‘escalated commitment’, mentioned earlier in my notes, applied to my own experience is increasingly associated with moments when I feel like I’m drowning – sensations of ‘sinking’ under the number of things to do. Obviously, each one of us [in the project] invests depending on her time, means and capacities. It remains, however, that a core of ‘super invested’ people accumulate a big part of the work. (researcher field notes)
The extract of the field notes above describes metaphorically the early signs of exhaustion that most activists feel at some point while under constant pressure to work harder. Because of her immersion in AlterNV, the researcher’s embodied, active position allowed her to experience first-hand what other highly engaged activists would later describe during interviews. In fact, the extract shows that she was not only learning about the importance of this type of escalated commitment and its consequences, but actually embodying it and somehow promoting it herself in order to secure her continued presence in the field. Shifting the boundaries between insider and outsider, these bodily tensions were thus key to deepening her relationships with AlterNV activists, with whom she could share informal discussions on the questions of exhaustion and care within social movements. This in turn triggered the decision to analyse the phenomenon of breakdown and subsequent exit that she and others would later experience. Indeed, following the end of this project at COP22, the researcher experienced such exhaustion that she had to stop fieldwork for a couple of months. She had lost considerable weight and had to take care of different parts of her body that she had overused, especially her feet and back. This experience thus allowed her to understand the emotional dimension of engagement with others; while forming strong attachment to her fellow activists, she increasingly felt ambivalent about the group’s way of functioning.
Conducted at a later stage of the fieldwork, interviews were welcomed by most activists as a valuable opportunity to open up about the physical, emotional and psychological issues they were facing. These interviews allowed them to verbalize an internal struggle characterized by contradictory feelings of commitment to and growing distance from the organization – thereby echoing the researcher’s experience but raising additional questions related to emotionality and relationality in ethnographic research. While pondering how her position as an insider-outsider could benefit the organization and its members, the researcher received an email from Sarah, an activist she had interviewed a few weeks earlier.
Sarah asked me to write a report on the ‘harshness and violence of (activist) engagement’ based on the testimonies I had gathered that supposedly gave me a good general view. She wanted to use this document as a basis for opening a discussion with the other managers of the movement at their next meeting. Interpreting this move as a recognition of the ‘exhaustion’ issue at the movement level, I complied with her demand and asked her myself to keep me updated after their meeting. Having not heard from her for a while, I reached out to other managers of the movement but they hadn’t heard about either the document or any discussion around it. The next time I met her, several months later, Sarah had taken some time off from her activism, so when I asked her about the exhaustion and exit (temporary or permanent) of many activists, alluding to the fate of the report I had written, wondering whether it had ever been discussed, I was quite surprised by her reaction: she nodded her head, avoided the question, telling me instead that she took on a personal project to help newly formed couples in the movement to take care of themselves and the ones they loved. She also added that now, within the coordination team, each member at the end of every meeting has to tell the others which day of the week they take off and inform them of future holidays (which implies, she insists, that everyone has to plan in advance to think about taking time off). (researcher field notes)
The vignette above describes how personal exhaustion was handled at an individual level but never considered an organizational problem to be discussed openly. For us, the fate of this report signalled the internal reluctance to open what was seen as a ‘Pandora’s box’ within national instances of coordination. After all, the increasing exits were balanced and somehow covered by newcomers joining the movement. We remained free to investigate the topic of breakdowns while continuing work as organizer-activists; but how to be a companion sharing the collective purpose (Scheper-Hughes, 1995) and a vocal critique? How does this tension affect the relationships with activists?
Our position inevitably led us to reflect upon the critical relationship between participation and observation in ethnographic research (Favret-Saada, 1990; Marcus, 1999). We personally experienced the centrality of the body to the organization’s everyday functioning, both in our flesh and through the written report we were asked to produce. We were therefore de facto situated in endogenous political relationships with growing tensions around the power of the cause in shaping activists’ lives. By intervening directly in the activist work, we gained sufficient legitimacy to discuss and investigate what was becoming a burning (but still taboo) issue in the movement. We also felt caught in specific networks of complicity, and possibly enmity, that have influenced our relationship with some activists. However, as the tension in itself was involving our (researcher’s and participant’s) body, it revealed that this was the very matter of our fieldwork, i.e. what mattered in this organization while we were both doing activist work and taking field notes, observing activists at work: our engagement as bodies on these fields thus became both a challenge and an opportunity to develop a dialogic relational reflexivity (Hibbert, Sillince, Diefenbach, & Cunliffe, 2014). Indeed, the existence of vocal critics within the organization promoted a certain sensitivity and a continual reflection on the topic. While criticism was never expressed on a collective organizational level, it remained localized within small circles of activists. Taking advantage of our double position as insider-outsider, we decided to develop an ‘in-between’ position in the field: we interacted a lot with these critics’ circles, providing scholarly material on ‘sustainable engagement’ and ‘care within social movements’ published by academic-activists. We also attempted to secure constant exchange with less critical activists, respecting their unwillingness to discuss these issues blatantly. At some point, we felt the need to step back from the field and take some distance in order to pursue the analysis.
Research setting
Born in 2014 at Bayonne, a small city in the south of France, AlterNV emerges as a central actor of the French environmental activist scene in 2015 with its hundred local chapters mobilizing young and novice activists for COP21 taking place in Paris. It thus defines itself as an ‘incubator of new militants’ (extract from a collective text produced post-COP21) who are attracted by its spirit of joyful, inclusive and concrete activism. One member, Marie, describes her early involvement: I could see that it was very open, very familial. . . that there was a very good atmosphere among people (. . .) and that we could gather easily without having any a priori knowledge about what to do to enter the (activist) domain. And so, I stayed.
Combining experimentation with concrete alternatives and non-violent direct action in the public space, the group’s practice is based on what they call a ‘radical-pragmatic software’ that emphasizes the value of learning by doing, but also of strict organization and discipline. On this matter, the group’s status document highlights ‘discipline, rigor, sense of organizing, and search for efficiency’ as the basic common principles of engagement. Exemplifying the enactment of these principles, regular meetings are characterized by a strict detailed agenda, including scheduled interventions by members; time duration for each debate; and role distribution between facilitators, time keepers and rapporteurs.
To give a sense of its size, the movement claims over a hundred active local chapters in France, one chapter in Haiti and another in Switzerland. Its power derives from its capacity for mobilization at the national level, along with specific skills in organizing distributed actions at the local level. Membership in each local chapter ranges between 10 and 50 activists with varying levels of experience, aged between 19 and 40, mostly well educated. Organized as a network, AlterNV relies on the voluntary work of its members while occasionally employing some of them for specific temporary campaign missions. Our study focuses on the group’s core organizers, whose engagement was characterized by a constant and long-term commitment to the movement as members of the national facilitation team. This team’s main task is to implement collective decisions taken at assemblies, while ensuring coordination and communication among local chapters. These assemblies consist of face-to-face meetings every three to four months where activities are debated and where all members are allowed equal representation.
Following COP21, the movement engaged in a process of structuration seen as necessary to build a mass mobilization for climate justice in France. This led to the introduction of numerous organizational arrangements through the formalization of rules and procedures. Table 1 summarizes the main organizational choices regarding membership, sanctions, rules and monitoring that exemplify the formalization of the movement. Through this process, AlterNV lost many of its original characteristics as a movement, such as inclusiveness, horizontality and autonomy, in favour of more centralization, procedural rigidity and differentiation of roles.
Overview AlterNV’s main organizational arrangements collectively approved in 2016 and 2017.
As defined in Den Hond, de Bakker and Smith (2015).
Data collection and analysis
Data were collected between February 2016 and November 2017, from periods of observation and participation in 18 meetings, 3 assemblies combining various chapters, 2 training camps and 5 direct action performances. Analysis of internal documents helped to trace the formalization of the organization. Observations account for a total of 1096 hours. Additionally, 23 interviews lasting between 45 and 120 minutes were conducted. Among these interviewees, nine were co-organizers with whom we had worked and discussed issues of engagement and exhaustion on multiple occasions through informal conversations. Respondents were first identified through personal contacts and followed a snowball sampling technique.
The research process evolved in an iterative manner, moving from analysing the empirical materials to developing the conceptual framework. Through an open-ended and inductive approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), the analysis proceeded in four main phases to illustrate ways that the body irrupted in the activists’ work and influenced the identity regulation of the organization. First, we started from the tension that emerged as a crucial issue for activists: how to balance caring for themselves with caring for the planet through their engagement? This pushed us to interrogate the role of embodiment in relation to their identity as activists.
Second, we coded the data in multiple cycles. With the help of NVivo, we began with descriptive codes and aggregated them to broader themes and conceptual categories. Themes coalesced around (a) body-work-identity, (b) exhaustion as sacrifice, (c) normative control and (d) disconnection from the organization.
The third stage of analysis focused on the daily work of activists and how they discussed the increasing rule- and procedure-bound context. Narratives of highly engaged activists, particularly the vocal critics among them, were created to understand their internal conflict that pitted strong commitment against growing dissatisfaction with their work. Tracking individual trajectories revealed a shift over time in activists’ relation to their body and appreciation of their engagement within the organization.
In the fourth and final stage, we returned to the literature on organizational control – particularly the question of how cultural constraints operate and impact identity formation and transformation. Going back and forth between theoretical concepts and analytical themes derived from the empirical material, we identified the processes involved in identity regulation and the crucial role of the body in these. Through iteration with the literature, we then pinpointed ‘body breakdown’ as a shifting point in activists’ self-identification with the organization. The crucial role of the body in influencing activists’ responses to organizational normative control was then analysed through three main themes that we develop in the following section.
Findings
We describe the interrelation between (1) the construction and maintenance of a culture of self-sacrifice based on the intensive character of activist work, corporeal self-neglect and the ‘athleticisation’ of the activist, (2) a process of self-identification with the founder and early members that leads activists to think that their willingness to sacrifice is freely chosen and (3) body breakdowns, generating a progressive disconnection between activists and the organization.
A culture of self-sacrifice
Self-sacrifice is a common feature of communities marked by the meaningfulness of virtuous actions (Cornwall, 1998), high ethical gestures (Milbank, 1999), or ‘pure volunteering’ (Smith, 1981). Based on activists’ narratives of self and our ethnographic immersion in a particular organizational culture, we proceed to describe three dimensions of the culture of self-sacrifice that has developed in the organization.
Atmosphere of intensity
Activists experience their work as shaped by an atmosphere of intensity – i.e. cycles of extreme commitment where the sense of urgency dictates everyday life. This is particularly important as activists sometimes work alone. As a result, many express a need for close bonding with others to help them overcome extremely stressful moments. Indeed, activist work occurs through cycles of engagement described by members as ‘short, intense periods of activity where (they) have to give everything’ (Georges). These periods can last from a few weeks to several months depending on the specific nature of the activity, whether it’s a three-day blockade involving hundreds of activists requiring intense training; a national campaign of distributed direct actions targeting local banks and lasting less than an hour; or a five-month European bike tour involving hundreds of participants welcoming eco-bikers at every stop around public conferences.
[For the three-day blockade] we had only a month and a half to organize this whole mobilization: to find a spot where all activists would gather, find the necessary equipment, find the budget, communicate, organize. . . well, everything, everything, everything. So, these were six crazy weeks, really crazy. (Paul)
Acting as a logistics coordinator, Paul thus found himself similarly working ‘from 80 to 100 hours per week, sleeping four to five hours a night’ in preparation for this three-day blockade.
During each engagement cycle, activists alternate between co-working on site and remotely, thus experiencing alternatively periods of togetherness or isolation. Indeed, between two main actions, activists rely primarily on communication technologies to facilitate social interactions, organize meetings or training workshops, and recruit new volunteers to prepare for the next planned action – thus progressively sketching the contours of the various building blocks of an action performance (such as strategy, logistics, or communication). Hence, to build an action from scratch, each activist has specific tasks to perform individually in front of a computer or on a phone but needs to regularly meet with fellow activists to take stock of the evolution of preparations. Co-presence is thus important for coordination, but it becomes all the more necessary in the few weeks preceding an action. Indeed, as the action date approaches and the atmosphere intensifies, collaborating in the days leading up to a protest performance helps to build the bonds required for the overall success of the mission.
There are all those periods of preparation that are super-intense. This is where we forge links among people because we live the same strong moments; the same stressful moments; moments when we’re happy because we succeeded in doing something, etc. And at the same time, during those periods, we forget about our body. Well, we haven’t eaten very well, not very healthy, haven’t done a lot of sport because we didn’t have time. (Perrine)
At the same time, this intense work load and lack of leisure time lead to high stress, poor living conditions and unhealthy habits taking their toll. This tension is associated with a shared sense of urgency that one activist summarizes as: ‘The urgency, all the time, too much, too much, too fast. . . it never stops’ (Elsa). Yet, it simultaneously exacerbates the collective affective bonding that helps balance these very working conditions. Hence, the absence of feelings of togetherness between actions in turn makes the atmosphere of intensity all the more present as activists suffer from social and geographical isolation.
A factor to take into account that began to weigh on me, I had talked about with others. This is the fact that each one of us works alone from home. So, for me, I’m a lonely person (. . .) hence, at the beginning it was ok for me. You see, I perform my little tasks, I work. And at some point, the only interactions that I have with others for two months are through Skype. And then, it becomes quite weighty. That’s it, weighty because we find ourselves having to do more and more work, with less and less social time with friends. (Emilie)
What keeps people committed appears to be a perceived balance between work intensity and social cohesion, while the body is ‘forgotten’, in the words of some interviewees. When isolation prevails, physical problems emerge because they are not compensated by intensive social interactions.
Corporeal self-neglect
Work intensity and sense of urgency directly impact the ‘relationship’ that activists have with their bodies. For instance, Elsa talks about mistreating her body: Over the last year and a half, my day would start at 8am and finish at midnight at best. I had no social life anymore. . . I’ve never physically mistreated myself so badly. . . I didn’t take care of myself anymore, I stopped sleeping, I ate badly (. . .) you go to any (AlterNV) event and people would have dark rings under their eyes, they are under extreme tension. . . This violence really bothers me today. (Elsa)
Elsa left the organization later that year, as she could no longer keep up with the pace and intensity of work. One of the organization’s earliest members, she had sustained her engagement for almost two years before increasing doubts turned her into one of the most vocal critics. Indeed, our informants explain that they ‘forget’ their bodies, which are simply viewed as objects devoted to an urgent cause. In periods preceding an action, bodies are used (and abused) to resist and endure extreme living and working conditions, while between actions they become addicted to the thrill of political activism. In a way, bodies are treated as unproblematic objects that are constantly infused with engagement and passion for the cause (St-Louis et al., 2016). This prevents activists from considering them as relevant ‘subjects’ (Michel, 2011).
Indeed, activists experience harsh everyday living conditions characterized by lack of sleep, bad eating habits and self-medication with caffeine to mask the symptoms of fatigue. As Georges recalls his experience at the three-day blockade: Preparing for the action is really exhausting. We don’t sleep much, we drink thousands of coffees a day, smoke hundreds of cigarettes, so it’s not very healthy. Then, we go for three long days of actions, and after that, we just need to sleep.
Then, following an action, bodies seem to enter a vicious cycle pointing to the addictive dimension of activism, revealed in the difficulty they face when trying to slow down and recover energy following intense efforts.
The more active you become, the more engaged you are, the more responsibilities you take on - and finally, you tell yourself ‘I have to slow down’ but then you still continue. . . there is this addictive aspect to it. (Elsa)
In fact, the organization places a high emphasis on assuming responsibility and upgrading skills, two mechanisms through which new members are integrated into the collective and their work valued. Newcomers take on progressively more responsibilities and tasks, gradually increasing their status within the collective. Paul summarizes the process: As it grows, (the organization) is based on taking responsibility. As such, we’re going to encourage you to do that. Meaning that you may start by making a banner, then we’ll see that you like it. So, the next time, we’ll ask you: ‘Listen, can’t you do this?’ And hence, you’ll go and do it (. . .) Taking responsibility means that you commit vis-a-vis others, but also you get boosted in the sense that if you fulfil your responsibility, you feel valued by the collective, and so, there is something happening at the level of personal enhancement.
Hence, symbolic and emotional gratifications come in the form of a heightened sense of belonging to the group, masking other difficulties and constraints at work that bodies nevertheless express progressively: Militant engagement: it strikes a chord, one of emotions and ego. You do a lot of things and get recognized for it. . . so you get boosted and so it feels good. But when we have responsibilities, we have time constraints. There are so many mornings when I don’t feel like waking up. I stay in my bed in a foetal position, telling myself, ‘No, I don’t wanna go.’ And then, you wake up. And since each one of us works from home, you walk three steps to your computer, you sit down, and then you’re there until two in the morning. (Elsa)
What could be interpreted as the early signs of bodily resistance (foetal position) is nevertheless ignored by activists who appear to have lost control of their bodies and lives. Many reported feeling ‘caught’ in the movement, which they described metaphorically as a ‘powerful and overwhelming machine’. Unable to follow its pace, adapt to its growth and submit to its constraints, members begin to feel like machines themselves, as well as experiencing their bodies as such. Recalling her exhausted state following COP21, Emilie says: After the COP, I was exhausted. I was telling myself, ‘I’m only a body in action now.’ Meaning that you’re exhausted and your brain functions, but in fact I feel like I’m a machine that says ‘You have to do this’ and then does things mechanically.
While not reflecting a typical image, the ‘machine-like’ activist that uses and abuses his body for the cause sketches the contours of a powerful central image of the ‘good activist’ that is largely based on corporeal performance.
Activists as enduring athletes
Paradoxically at first sight, corporeal self-neglect accompanies a shared definition of the proper activist as an individual capable of resisting physical duress, in a competitive spirit often deriving from a regular and intensive practice of sports.
I have a certain endurance in work and concentration: I learnt these things while doing sports, really, in a strong way! I did marathon races and stuff like that, and I’ve often told myself: ‘I’m not sure I would have experienced the COP and Pau (blockade) without giving up and cracking if I didn’t have this physical training.’ I was talking about the body earlier, but more precisely it’s about outdoing oneself and controlling oneself in something where you’re suffering like hell. . . And you find yourself a month before thinking: ‘I’ll never be able to run that distance, it is useless.’ But in fact, because I succeeded in doing this (running marathons), I really think it helped me in my activist journey. (Sarah)
In this account, Sarah builds a narrative around her activism in relation to her past private experience of sports. Her attention to the performance of the physical body reflects an approach very close to that of an athlete, who is used to pushing her limits and sacrificing her physical integrity (including through injuries, as Coupland (2015) describes) to achieve extraordinary performance among an elite group of performers. Highlighting her regular practice of sports in addition to her experience running marathons, she emphasizes the physical capacities she developed as being essential for her activist journey. This narrative suggests the existence in this activist organization of a figure of what Kelly, Allender and Colquhoun (2007) call the ‘corporate athlete’. In fact, sport is used by many activists in reference to their resistance capacities in confronting police forces (by not fearing injury and being able to overcome pain) but also in sustaining their high engagement within the movement. In particular, self-control and endurance represent key capacities that activists perceive as required for keeping up with their everyday work and their regular actions. Interestingly, the corporate athlete figure ‘provides for individual submission to self and professional assessment (. . .) and the linking of employees’ health to the health of the organization (. . .) Self-control, discipline and will-power are all important’ (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 277).
For the characteristics, I was telling you about a certain. . . in the struggle, a certain violence, self-control. . . an extreme concentration in fact to be able to do all that we do, really. . . it’s also the case on the ground actually, when you go to perform actions. You’re focused on your task; you don’t depart from it. As I was saying, you have your role, and you stick with it. It’s also for this reason that it works. (Sarah)
Self-control and endurance are also associated with a form of disguised violence in Sarah’s quote above and acknowledged by many highly engaged activists we interviewed. Highlighting a generalized state of physical exhaustion, some speak of the ‘mental fatigue’ while others refer to ‘helplessness’ that they feel following multiple cycles of high engagement. Hence, there is a dark side to the key capacities of control and endurance perceived as necessary for their job. Internalizing a discourse around the perceived urgency of the climate crisis, they associate the ‘violence’ they experience with the pressure weighing on their work. Elsa describes the dark side of the organizing culture as the ‘violence vis-a-vis the urgency’ and says, ‘because we have succeeded in doing amazing things, while nobody knew each other, while we had no resources, while everyone was saying it was impossible, we did it. Well, we put such pressure on ourselves at work.’
This reflects the feelings of the most engaged activists, who internalize this pressure to such a degree that it becomes self-inflicted. For instance, Emilie believes it is necessary and unhealthy at the same time: ‘If I don’t fuel this pressure, I stop. So, in fact, we fuel this dynamic of pressure, to be always in action, which is not very healthy.’
At a collective level, AlterNV meetings exemplify how this pressure is diffused, especially among newcomers. Meetings are characterized by high levels of discipline and rigor, following a strictly detailed agenda in which each participant’s intervention is specified and the time duration for each topic discussed. Once again, these types of meetings require activists to behave as disciplined corporate athletes; that is to say, ‘more productive, efficient, competitive’ (Kelly et al., 2007, p. 282), especially as they need to work quickly. We attended one of the meetings Emilie was leading as a communication coordinator, where she experimented with techniques to facilitate participation and slow down the pace of work within her team. Emilie faced strong resistance from her fellow activists when she extended the discussion on elaboration of the next newsletter by asking newcomers for their opinion on a particular image she wanted to use: ‘What do you think of this image as the front cover?’ While she intended this as an inclusive gesture for new members, an activist intervened: ‘No, we don’t have time. You are the coordinator, you will decide.’ Another added: ‘We have to go fast; we don’t have time. Anyway, we can talk about it later.’
Emerging from activists’ accounts of self in their work environment are two facets of the same self-sacrificial culture. On one side, self-control and endurance are valued as necessary capacities for facing both the urgency and pressure at work. On the other, this self-inflicted pressure among activists channels a shared logic of self-destruction that masks the deterioration of their working conditions while becoming the norm, as Georges puts it: ‘We self-destruct a lot (. . .) If I’m not exhausted, that means I haven’t worked enough.’
The promotion of this double-faceted norm operates through the culture of self-sacrifice that is embodied by the movement’s founding fathers and early members, who exemplify the model of the ‘good’ activist in the organization: an athlete dedicated to an objective that implies self-sacrifice and absolute dedication. As many activists self-identify with this model and express admiration for the founders, they also convey the idea that their sacrifice may well be freely chosen rather than imposed from the top.
Self-identification with the founder
If tens of people around France have followed the same mode of functioning as this person [Thierry] while they were not before. . . a lot of people I talked with were not at all following this functioning mode! . . . well, it’s true that at some point, this is something which is going to leave a mark on you. (Paul)
As a major public figure of the movement Thierry, one of the two co-founders, is highly valued for his work at COP21. He embodies a hybrid of the charismatic, ideological and pragmatic leadership styles (Wilson, 1973). Indeed, in the first two years that the movement existed, he played a major role both inside and outside: articulating its claims and strategy with the larger society but also inspiring participants through his heavy engagement in strategizing, organizing and performing actions. The symbolic place he still keeps among a large base of followers points to his influence in developing the organization post-COP21. In particular, his impact on the organizational culture can be seen in the normative patterns of commitment he inspired, making exhaustion the desired norm rather than a consequence of high engagement. As Georges explains: What really applies the pressure are the people who created this movement and the people who are part of it; many of them are engaged in a self-destructive manner [in the sense that] one gives everything one has to this. And working with these people, if you don’t have the same kind of investment, sometimes it can be awkward (. . .) I have the tendency to give everything I have as well, but it’s true that. . . here, there is something of a cult of exhaustion.
The culture of sacrifice is exemplified by the figure of Thierry and early members, who easily bring the metaphor of the corporate athlete (Kelly et al., 2007) to mind. According to those who joined him at the very beginning, such as Paul, he is highly admired for having committed his life to the cause and brought that spirit with him, meaning that ‘his life is dedicated to militancy’ and ‘so, surely the philosophy it brings to the movement is: We outdo ourselves, we go farther, we always do more.’ As a former militant of the Basque struggle for independence, the co-founder projects an aura among many members who strongly identify with him and thereby see their sacrificial commitment as voluntary. For instance, in an informal conversation with Jean and Marie, two young activists we met at a climate camp, one of them suggested that we could interview the co-founder. We responded that he must probably be busy, leading us to discuss the work-life balance of an activist:
Clearly, he [Tierry] doesn’t have a family and he doesn’t want to. He’s good as he is (. . .) It’s black, his agenda; he’s never available, like he has meetings all the time, even on Sundays, all the time. It’s his life [speaking of militancy]. He’s also a model for many. Well, for me, when I see him, it’s like a fatherly figure. . . when I see [Thierry]. . . you know we were talking about aura earlier, it’s exactly this. . . well, I admire him [Tierry] a bit, because you know, when you see him, you’re like: shit, this man had dedicated all his life to this (militancy) and he never stops.
yeah, but actually, I found there are many people like this. . . many people. . . people you have the impression that they’re exhausted but they’re still here, and they only do this. But they love it, because actually they need this.
Indeed, these quotes suggest that certain activists seem to experience overwork and the correlated sacrifices as voluntary choices, supporting Michel’s findings in her study of bankers’ self-controlling work habits (2011). Embodying a ‘cult of exhaustion’ (Georges) at work, the co-founder has normalized a way of living and doing activism among a community of activists who have internalized it despite its dramatic impact on their lives. Reflecting on her experience with AlterNV, Sarah explains: ‘I’ve done only militant jobs, but none of them required so much energy and investment (. . .) you put a big part of your life aside for a time.’ Self-imposed pressures are therefore linked to a chosen identification with powerful symbolic figures who embody a ‘proper activist’, possessing such attributes as energy, strength and passion which encourage them to constantly over-perform, even at the cost of corporeal self-neglect or disconnection from one’s private life: The problem is that we’re so engaged that the rest of our life completely passes us by. . . we don’t maintain family relations. . . nor friendships. . . we have no personal hobbies, and we’re always in there, in there, in there. (Paul)
Although Thierry left the movement to focus on more local socio-environmental struggles in the Basque region, his print is still tangible. Invoking the symbolic relationship developed by many members with this charismatic leader, Paul recalls: ‘When [Thierry] took some distance vis-a-vis AlterNV, I felt like I was taken away from my father, you see? . . .when talking with other friends, they identified with this feeling.’ In fact, their limitless engagement is a recurrent topic of (informal) discussion among activists, especially in the absence of any space for emotional support within the movement. This too is attributed to Thierry’s influence. While we were discussing how emotions were addressed in social movements, Paul relayed an incident that occurred during a particularly tense team meeting that reflected both his own strong emotional attachment to the founder and the latter’s particular discourse on emotions. Struggling with ambivalent feelings of motivation and exhaustion, Paul found himself trapped between expressing his feelings and keeping them to himself, realizing the organizational inability to face and discuss these issues on a collective level: I know that it’s a person I value a lot, and in my relations to people, when I value a person a lot, I have the tendency to glorify them. And the thing is that [Thierry] actually represents that: this idea of putting your emotions aside. . . and you go, like a machine, always forward. And what’s funny, is the fact that when I snapped during the meeting, he came out and we talked over it. . . his reaction was. . .: ‘well, if you have a problem with your emotions, you have to solve it!’ It’s funny, coming from a person who has put all his emotions aside, who chose militancy as a way of life. . . so when that person tells you that, because you emotionally snap, it means you have a problem with your emotions. . . it’s also really significant for the movement’s relation to emotions.
In sum, the fetishism for the figure of the co-founder is an argument for the expression of violence inflicted de facto upon bodies, in that he represents the (historical and living) embodiment of personal sacrifice. The normative control is thus maintained and reproduced via this exemplary sacrificial figure standing as a model for other activists in becoming. Eventually, many highly engaged activists experience body breakdowns (in the form of particular diseases, depression or burnout) or witness their fellow comrades going through them, which opens a breach into this process of self-identification with the founder and exemplary members.
Body breakdowns
At the moment of our fieldwork, body breakdowns were starting to thwart the self-sacrificial culture. This is because some activists had physically reached their personal limit, forcing them to treat their bodies as ‘knowledgeable subjects’ (Michel, 2011), i.e. a serious personal issue that they could not address openly within the organization. This realization in turn helped them to transcend the cult of exhaustion.
Exhaustion is activists’ own business
The very intrusion of the body between activists and the self-sacrificial culture forces them to face the reality of their work, triggering significant doubts regarding continued engagement. Nevertheless, exhaustion alone is not enough for the body to speak. Indeed, despite their deteriorating living and working conditions, activists initially turn to denial, unwilling to admit or recognize their exhaustion since they regard their exertion as more intellectual than physical: When we speak of exhaustion and fatigue, it’s really about body exhaustion. We forget that because we think, ‘I’m gonna be doing a job that is more intellectual somehow: communication.’ So, this corporeal exhaustion, we don’t feel it. In fact, we don’t want to feel it. (Sarah)
Moreover, while struggling with exhaustion and distress, activists are rarely able to openly discuss their personal issues as the organization does not provide such space. Even some interviewees who credited their involvement in high-level sport with better performance, self-control and ability to withstand stress still insist emotional fatigue is an obstacle. For instance: I think I can really push back the physical fatigue. The mental fatigue, on the other hand. . . the emotional fatigue, I have a hard time handling it. (Paul)
In fact, the organization’s very culture made it impossible for exhausted activists to express their feelings, even as they were becoming increasingly aware of them. As such, the culture values the collective over the individual, who must accept being ‘absorbed’ by the group as in any community of purpose (Kanter, 1972). The environmental cause itself implies that individuals regard themselves as inferior to the collective goal, which some describe as a form of violence: It’s true that, because of the climate urgency and discipline of our movement, I definitely cannot allow myself [to talk about] this. But at the same time, it’s a reality, and this is what makes it violent. . . It’s not only psychological, it’s intellectual and psychological questions that . . .impact your body. (Elsa) We all work a lot but we do different tasks, and so it’s difficult to discuss [issues] (. . .) I realize now that sometimes, I’ve tried to express it in a clumsy way, to a person who told me: ‘Well, it’s your job, it’s your role.’ Then, I’ve told myself: ‘Ok. So, I don’t have to complain, I shut my mouth and continue. So, I do my mission and when I finish, that’s it.’ So, there was somehow a resignation at that moment, and also I felt like I was facing a wall. . . (Emilie)
Hence, while activists struggled to articulate their experience of exhaustion, this didn’t necessarily push them out of the organization because their very subjugation seems a condition of collective efficiency. Witnessing fellow activists’ breakdowns, however, triggered the reflexive process necessary to make a self-expulsion decision.
Corporeal limits and disconnection from the organization
While it is hard to count the exact number of highly engaged activists who left the organization since its creation, we can speak of an ‘exit phenomenon’ that many report having witnessed and which seems to have impacted them.
So many cracked and completely gave up because they were exhausted or disgusted. There are a lot of people who left the national team and grassroots groups [saying] ‘No, I cannot anymore. I want my life back’ (. . .) I’ve seen all these people falling sick, leaving, being disgusted, and even cutting the human relationship, not only the militant relationship.» (Elsa)
Precisely because of the militant and sometimes friendship relationships they have developed over time, witnessing fellow bodies breaking down triggers new questions for activists. Without necessarily being self-conscious about their own bodily exhaustion, they grow more aware of the discrepancy between the organization’s purpose and members’ experience of suffering. This opens a breach in the activists’ sense of identity in relation to the organization, starting to disconnect them from its culture: I’ve watched many friends experiencing burnout. . . people who are friends, more than just fellow activists, really. . . not really buddies, but friends, because there are differences. And so, watching friends cracking while they try to be in a movement which is supposed to bring positive things, that raises questions. (Paul)
For others, witnessing the withdrawal of fellow activists reflects back to their own bodily experience, revealing to them that they have reached their own limits, and that they need not feel ashamed even if they have fallen short of the organizational model of the activist-athlete.
I’ve realized, we all know it but still. . . [this job] is quite demanding and involves moving from one big project to another. And even if we try to limit ourselves in time, if we don’t have anything on the side [another job or activity] we let ourselves get absorbed by work and pressure. Now, I’ve reached my limits. (Emilie)
While remaining passionate about the cause, activists begin questioning their commitment to the organization as they become concretely aware of their own limits. Greg summarizes the dilemma this way: ‘How can we take care of the planet if we don’t take care of ourselves?’ Hence, at the time of the interviews, many organizers were seriously questioning the sustainability of their engagement, considering adopting some necessary limits while continuing to work for the environmental cause. This reflexive process, originating in the ‘violence’ that they increasingly see visited upon others, is exacerbated when activists experience the same violence on their own body. This turns the initial questions and doubts into tensions that reveal the contradictions lying at the heart of their practice. These are conceptualized as ‘confrontation’ between personal needs and how the organization succeeds or fails in meeting them.
In hurried moments, when you’re tired, when you haven’t seen your family or your friends and haven’t done anything else for the last six months, the last year, well. . .. at some point, there is a confrontation, a strong tension between the model you believe in and. . . you as a human being and your fundamental needs that. . . that the movement nourishes after all. In the sense that. . . you make friends, have great parties, make great memories. There is definitely a part of your fundamental needs that are nourished by the movement itself. But at the same time, there are so many things that you neglect. . . (Paul)
Elsa was forced to take a break from her activist work when she was diagnosed with a lung infection following her role in organizing an act of mass civil disobedience in April 2016. Extending that break until September, she reflected critically upon her activist involvement – past and future. She reports a tension between the organization’s values and her own experience of ‘violence’, leading to a fundamental question: It’s true that I’m very convinced and engaged. But I understand that some people have stopped [their involvement], because I also have asked myself these questions after all. In fact, this summer, I asked myself: ‘How badly do you want to come back? You’ve never experienced such violence as you have since belonging to a movement that claims to be benevolent. . .?’ My life has never been as violent as it is since I’m in this thing. If you think of its rhythm, and its pressure. This violence really bothers me today, because I think it goes against what we promote: a society of living well and slowing down.
The decision to withdraw is thus nourished by a growing feeling of disconnection between activists’ everyday work practices and the organization’s values and purpose. Body breakdowns shake activists’ sense of self-identity in relation to the organization and its working practices.
I’ve never experienced this [exhaustion] before. I’ve never experienced this in the socio-cultural milieus. And I think it’s linked as much to the person at the origin [of the movement] . . . and I think the other thing is the question of the method [of working]. We really push people to take responsibilities for tasks (. . .) This driving force, it might have its limits. Can I seek the boost I need elsewhere to allow me to be more serene within the movement, maybe under less pressure. . .? (Paul)
Questioning the gap between their (external) discourse and (internal) practice, they see in their own body a mirror of the core contradiction at the heart of their activist practice. The disconnection from the organization grows as this contradiction between their discourse and everyday practice becomes clear.
The model we propose is one that promotes deceleration, so that there can be climate justice. But at the same time we, as managers of this movement, don’t embody that. (Paul) [It is] a way of living that we defend, but we don’t apply it to ourselves. (Sarah)
Thus, the normative control occurring through a process of identity regulation is weakened by the breakdown of the body, accelerating activists’ temporary or permanent withdrawal and triggering increasing criticism of the organization.
Listening to and talking with one’s body
For the first time, activists see their body as a subject with which they can ‘talk’ and relate, allowing it to have input into whether to leave or stay. When breakdowns disrupt their capacity to fulfil their everyday tasks, it allows the body to speak and thus accelerate the ongoing reflexive process: ‘I had no choice left. So, I guess after all, when you don’t listen to your body, at some point, it finds a way to tell you things (Elsa)
Bodily talk follows the process of cognitive distancing that took place through questioning, doubting and noting contradictions. For Elsa, ‘salvation’ came from the lung infection mentioned above. For Jenna, breaking a leg forced her to take some time off to reflect on her commitment to the organization. Emilie decided to take a one-way backpacking trip to Asia after struggling with exhaustion and depression. Those whose body didn’t literally break down but who nonetheless experienced sustained exhaustion still decided to withdraw, such as Sarah and Georges who went backpacking throughout Europe to meet other activists’ groups and learn from them. The bodies talk when they are injured or weakened, because they can no longer be seen and used as machines, contrary to rugby players, for instance (Coupland, 2015).
All activists who withdrew – whether due to disabling physical illness or intense emotional distress – express an awareness of their body as a critical resource for sustaining commitment and developing a critique of the organization, its perceived violence, and neglect of individual physical needs: I believe there is still a lot of internal violence within our movements. We sometimes even force ourselves into doing things. You see, there is violence towards our body, when we go beyond our limits. . . for instance, when we’re tired but have to stand. We force ourselves, we force our body. (Emilie)
Before breakdowns, activists were sacrificing their physical well-being not just to engage in a freely chosen cause (Rip, Vallerand, & Lafrenière, 2012), but because they did not conceive their life otherwise. This is because the organization used an invisible form of identity regulation based on corporeal athletic endurance and intense work. The breaking down of bodies confers agency to activists, allowing them to form new life orientations by creating a disconnection between their intrinsic passion and the culture of self-sacrifice (Frank, 2002).
As new knowledge of the body emerges, it also leads to novel insights on the body/mind relationship. At a basic level, respondents experience the two as inherently connected: ‘If your body is exhausted, your mind is useless’ (Jenna). In one paradigmatic case, the activist’s body operated as a mirror of his mental and emotional state, warning him of the violence experienced at work. Georges suffers from psoriasis, a chronic skin disease that erupts in psoriatic plaques during situations of stress. He advances the importance of listening to one’s body and caring for its well-being: We have to succeed in – at least intellectually – managing ourselves a bit, because if my body blows a fuse. . . I have an auto-immune disease, so if I enter into destructive logics, it’s true, I self-destruct. I try, when I feel it’s too intense. . . emotionally for me, I try to slow down. I’m very passionate about what I do, whatever I do, I really throw myself fully into it. And I burn myself and after that, I’m disgusted and I don’t wanna hear about it anymore. And I don’t want to do it like this with activism since. . . I hope it will last until we win.
When an activist’s body finally demands to be heard, it becomes a marker of inclusion or exclusion within the organization based on its capacity to withstand the pace and intensity of engagement. When no longer able to embody the normative capacities required, exhausted activists take a stand and acknowledge the disconnection between their passion for the cause and their belonging to the organization.
Discussion
Understanding how the body – a crucial but largely forgotten notion in organizational research on identity (Courpasson & Monties, 2017) – influences identity regulation in a value-based organization is difficult because empirical studies have long focused on the construction of identity primarily through discourse. Only recently has the literature extended to focus on bodily norms, illuminating how bodies can mediate individual responses to organizational normative control (Michel, 2011; Paring et al., 2017). However, these studies tend to depict bodies as being either docile, disciplined by norms displayed by a cultural discourse (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002) and rituals of training (Coupland, 2015), or sites of resistance and contestation (Courpasson & Monties, 2017; Johansson et al., 2017). Our study rather offers a political explanation of the uncertain dynamics of identity regulation, showing the precariousness of the control regimes based on bodily docility and demonstrating the political potential of bodies in resisting these regimes.
The precariousness of identity regulation based on bodies
This study articulates an understanding of the body in relation to identity as a dynamic mutual constitution of docility and resistance, thereby highlighting its capacity to disrupt identity regulation processes. Indeed, on the one hand, activists accept the sacrifice of their bodies to the organizational cause and inhabit their bodies as conduits of identity construction because they passionately embrace the environmental cause and therefore see the prevalent culture of self-sacrifice as a condition of collective organizational efficiency. Hence, identities of activists are subject to regulation because people position themselves in relation to an ideal notion of who is a proper activist, and how she or he acts and reacts (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Costas & Grey, 2014). They appear as docile ‘corporate athletes’ (Kelly et al., 2007) who use and abuse their corporeal resources to achieve a meaningful collective purpose.
On the other hand, the intrusion of body breakdowns materializes individual physical vulnerabilities that trigger a shift in these internal dynamics. Indeed, the mere fact that norms of self-sacrifice that had previously been taken for granted cannot be systematically embodied transforms the perception of what is achievable and acceptable and what is not, producing questions, doubts and growing distance. Identity thus ‘erupts from the flesh’ (Battersby, 1998, p. 39). In this sense, breakdowns express a bodily refusal that allows activists to destabilize the clear-cut demarcation between compliance and resistance that is produced by identity. Our data show that this destabilization does not solely rest on individual bodies breaking down but also on a mirror-like effect of seeing friends’ bodies struggling or falling. Indeed, while they strongly self-identify with those who embody the ideal image of the ‘proper’ activist, they also share deep affinity relationships with other activists and are thereby affected by their corporeal suffering. Hence, the fact that breakdown as a phenomenon concerns more and more activists without prompting any organizational reaction participates in one’s growing feeling of inadequacy vis-a-vis the working culture. We can say then that the progressive disconnection operates in a twofold sense: (1) by reflecting back on their own singular bodily experience, activists grow aware of both their vulnerability and others’, which allows them to further see the contradiction between their working practices and the organizational discourse on values and purpose; (2) the organization’s unresponsiveness or blindness to the issue of exhaustion reinforces the idea that it can only be activists’ own business and should be dealt with as such, which leads to their decision to withdraw.
Previous research describes regimes of intelligibility through which workers make sense of a convergence between their work and the role of the body in shaping their identities: Being a manager (Johansson et al., 2017), a police officer (Courpasson & Monties, 2017), a banker (Michel, 2011) or a rugby player (Coupland, 2015) is coherent with the bodily models promoted in these specific contexts of work. Furthermore, these studies reveal how individuals, through their constant efforts and self-sacrifice, come to sustain and reproduce the identity regulation rather than weaken it. Our data rather highlight a movement of disconnection between the identity regulation and the self-conception of voluntary engagement for a cause, therefore explaining the growing wavering between moments of docility – when work is prioritized over life, and rebellion – when lived bodies make a brutal comeback. This suggests instability in the very activists’ engagement with the self-sacrificial culture. In other words, our study accounts for the precarious nature of identity regulation through bodies: Although commitment to the cause is a powerful motivator to sustain their engagement, activists’ bodies eventually succumb to exhaustion, eroding under increasing physical constraints. As a consequence, we see bodies both as crucial conduits for the enactment of the identity regulation, and as sites of overt resistance to this regulation, hence emphasizing their political dimension.
The politicization of bodies
Previous ethnographies of high-commitment organizations (Michel, 2011) and occupations (Coupland, 2015; Courpasson & Monties, 2017) have shown that the body is largely excluded from accounts of organizational control. They illustrate that the body does have agency, because it can resist absolute compliance to organizational norms. However, these studies do not politicize bodies. Instead, they see them as adapting to organizational circumstances rather than transforming them. Our study takes an extra step, illustrating how corporeal breakdowns show not only the physicality of identity regulation (Paring et al., 2017) but also the political dimension of self-expulsions by provoking a radical change in activists’ relationship with their organization, their own bodies, and the cause to which they are committed.
By refusing to recognize breakdowns as political issues, the organization treats them as individual weaknesses, driving out members who are physically unfit. However, breakdowns are moments where bodies explicitly become sites of individually comparable performance, defining and sustaining criteria of inclusion and exclusion (Trethewey, 1999). The organization’s implicit denial of the political aspect of bodily breakdowns thus contradicts the meaning that exiting activists give to their self-expulsion. Indeed, they interpret breakdowns as a rejection of their culture rather than a corporeal impossibility stressing the physiological dimension of their bodies and denying their political character. Hence, this tension between interpretations of the same event directly challenges the absolute power of the sacrificial culture and turns the ‘personal’ into a political matter. In particular, self-expulsions are political gestures that stem precisely from a critique of the identity regulation, opening de facto a space of resistance (Johansson et al., 2017). We hence contend that politics emerge at the interface between the docile enactment of the norm of self-sacrifice and the revelation of its concrete physical impossibility and implicit violence. Indeed, the experience of breakdown reveals how the ideas of sacrifice and martyrdom (Chen & Gorski, 2015) infiltrate bodies and are infused with meaning (Godfrey, Lilley, & Brewis, 2012). Breakdowns thus produce a violent experience for activists that also transforms their relation to their bodies and the cause.
In fact, because breakdowns burst through the normative corporeal barriers (enduring versus non-enduring bodies), they create a moment of tension where political acts can develop through the emerging talk between activists and their own bodies. This encourages a critique of the self-sacrificing culture, sometimes resulting in self-expulsions. Passion for the cause often leads activists to ‘forget themselves’ and surrender their social life and health to an overwhelming organizational culture. They experience this sacrifice as freely chosen, because it stems from passion and self-identification with symbolic figures that create valorizing self-images such as that of the corporate athlete (Kelly et al., 2007). However, breakdowns shift this perception, producing a tension between body and passion. This inner contradiction forces activists to choose between the two. They are forced into a new relationship with their body that encourages them to reconsider their commitment to the organization. Because their passionate attachment to the organizational cause tempts them to remain docile, the challenge is therefore to separate the organization from the cause. This means that the relevant source of identity regulation is questioned. Those members who choose to exit shift their focus from the self-sacrificial culture to a self-defining cause, allowing them to first detach themselves cognitively and emotionally from the organization before physically leaving. Their passion for the cause can then be expressed elsewhere.
Following this discussion, our contribution lies in illuminating how breakdowns permit the politicization of the body in the face of the insidious violence of identity regulation processes. The concreteness of corporeal vulnerabilities reinforces the idea that identity regulation does not rest upon discourse and abstract idealized identities, but is rather lived every day by specific individuals, alternating moments of adequacy and inadequacy. Our study shows how the body becomes ‘carnally reflexive’ (Ball, 2005) because of its very physical limits. Indeed, the experience of bodily vulnerability allows people to step back and re-interpret the meaningfulness of their work and lives. The initial focus on passionate work for the environmental cause shifts to an utter inclination to deciding upon the material personal circumstances of their lives. Breakdowns enable individuals to rearticulate a sense of what it means for them to be activists, as well as reasons to act politically and disentangle their commitment to the organization from their attachment to the cause. It is thus through this friction between each body and the prescribed norm of sacrifice that politics emerge.
Conclusion
Responding to recent calls to attend to the body in identity research (Courpasson & Monties, 2017; Johansson et al., 2017; Knights & Clarke, 2017; Paring et al., 2017), we offer a view of the lived body as a position from which to criticize the practices of organizational power that derive from identity regulation based on prevalent norms physically affecting bodies at work. Indeed, this paper understands regulation as operating through the way bodies physically respond to a dominant culture of self-sacrifice that is concretely performed in everyday activities, thus involving a constant test of their physical limits. What it means to be a ‘good activist’ for the organization is therefore made visible through how each activist inhabits her body – that is to say, her ability to cope with duress at work. This paper extends research on the body-identity nexus by revealing the everyday tensions between a passionate commitment and a vulnerable body. It interprets body breakdowns as shifting political moments allowing activists to make autonomous decisions about their lives, thereby disconnecting their passion for a cause from the organizational purpose.
Our study hence offers a richer conceptualization of the role of the body in identity research, highlighting its political connotations. This analysis of body breakdowns could thus interest leaders of value-based organizations by reflecting on longer-term repercussions and risks of the promotion of heroic images of the ‘right’ engaged self. Radicalizing norms of commitment is always potentially dangerous because it highlights deep fractures in otherwise supposedly cohesive communities of purpose.
The study also informs recent research on activism and burnout, our results confirming previous studies on the impact of movement culture on activists’ bodies (Plyler, 2006) (see Rodgers (2010) on the ‘culture of selflessness’ and Chen and Gorski (2015) on the ‘culture of martyrdom’ as leading causes of extreme exhaustion and withdrawal). Among the growing scholarship on ‘personal sustainability’ in social movements (Cox, 2011), we thus join the calls to activist organizations to open spaces for dialogue on experiences of exhaustion and develop mitigating support and resources for self-care and well-being (Gorski, 2015).
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
