Suchergebnisse

Nearly four decades ago, in 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein published the first volume of his magnum opus, The Modem World-System. That same year, Perry Anderson, British historian and editor of the New Left Review, released the first two installments of his own large-scale history on the origins of modernity. The coincidence of publication invited many scholarly comparisons of their macro-historical perspectives. It is noteworthy that both writers think in terms of totalities. To totalize is to insist on methodological holism. Wallerstein conceives of totality in terms of world-systems, while Anderson advocates for totalization. This is a meaningful contrast. World-systems are closed totalities in the sense that they are historical systems, with a beginning, an end, and identifiable geographical boundaries. Totalization is historically open-ended, and thus invites analyses, in Anderson's case, beginning in Antiquity and without a specified end. While they each write about the modern world, Wallerstein and Anderson conceive of that world in drastically different terms. Neither scholar, however, has asserted his view as a singular paradigm of social analysis. Wallerstein has instead claimed world-systems to be a "call for a debate about the paradigm."

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how women in senior management draw on discourses of merit and special contribution in making sense of the contradictions and tensions they experience in their working lives. It has a particular focus on how women explain possible experiences of disadvantage and the extent to which they see such experiences as gendered.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on an Australian study of women leaders in the private and tertiary sectors. Data are drawn from in‐depth interviews with 14 women.FindingsFindings suggest that women draw on discourses of meritocracy and of "special contribution" in discussing their experiences at work. Inconsistencies between these competing discourses are mediated through notions of choice.Research limitations/implicationsThe research has implications for the understanding of how women at senior levels make sense of their experiences in organizations. A wider sample may give further corroboration to these results.Originality/valueThe paper highlights the significance of the discourse of choice in aligning discourses of "special contribution" with the reality of their lives whilst keeping intact the concepts of equality and meritocracy to which they strongly adhere.