Suchergebnisse

Studies of organization need to be more theoretically informed, politically diverse and democratically practiced. The field would be enhanced by more robust encounters with three broad areas of inquiry: (1) contemporary theories of language, politics and subjectivity, which focus organizational studies on the constitution of identities, the practices of discourse and the arrangements of power; (2) analyses of gender, race and class, which call attention to diversities and inequalities within and between identities, languages, politics; and (3) democratic practices, which raise questions about our constituencies, our sources of data and our conventions of teaching and research.

The increasing bureaucratization of politics and work has significant implications for the possibilities of meaningful citizen participation in public life. The requirements of survival in bureaucracies, either as a bureaucrat or as a client, require one to develop sets of skills and traits that perpetuate dependency and undermine autonomous political action. These traits are traditionally associated with the feminine role, but are in fact a manifestation of subordination and thus likely to be found in any dependent population. This process ought to be of particular concern to those interested in feminism, because the expansion of bureaucratic hierarchies undermines the possibilities of liberation for both women and men.