Search results

Women's bodies are abject and ‘out of place’ in organisations where (self and other) disciplining of women's bodies serve to regulate and silence women. Yet we know little about how expectations of body and appearance play out in the career decisions and everyday practices of women academic leaders. In this chapter reflexive accounts are used to explore if dress and appearance expectations have implications for women's career development and advancement, specifically in the context of business schools. The literature review and two reflexive autoethnographic accounts provided, illuminate how, through dress and appearance, the pervasiveness of hegemonic masculinity is both sustained and challenged and the potential impacts of this upon women's careers in academia.

By Mirowski's own description, this book is a collection of essays that dwell in the interstices of scientific disciplines and established fields of inquiry: “this book sets out to explore that no-man's land at the borders of science and economics with attendant emotions pitched somewhere beyond the thrill of spelunking and the delectation of trespass” (p. 4). With his body armor and some extra clips for his rifle, he charges headfirst into this no-man's land with his sights set on what he calls “the twentieth century science-economy problematic” (p. 6). Some scholars often utilize economic principles (especially neoclassical ones) to characterize the structure and processes of science (ever heard of the “marketplace of ideas?”) while pulling out all the stops in claiming economics to be a rigorous scientific enterprise (on par with the pinnacle – physics, of course). In short, Mirowski is troubled that critical analysis of such academic pursuits seems to be verboten.

Britain is now one of the few EC countries without some form of military representative body. Yet, probably the first military trade union was formed in the British Armed Forces in 1919. At the outset, the organisation grew rapidly with the formation of 49 branches and an estimated membership of 10,000 (Englander, 1989, p. 10). But the efforts of the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmens’ Union (SSAU) to organise the armed forces and secure a right of representation were short-lived. The authorities were quick to react to the perceived socialist threat by demobilising and discharging “men who [were] largely imbued with unionism tinged with socialism” (Englander, 1989, p. 11) and, following a raid by the intelligence services on the SSAU headquarters, the union rapidly disappeared.

The sexual and erotic dimensions inherent in leadership’s physicality impact on power dynamics within organizations but have been rendered largely invisible by current scholarship. In organizational practice, leadership is a masculine activity ideally carried out by male bodies, such that women’s leadership is still perceived as problematic. This suggests that the field is fearful of allowing sexual bodies to pollute what should be a functional, cognitive and instrumental activity. This chapter therefore draws on Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection to explain how and why the sexual body is positioned as the unspoken other of leadership. To do this, I explore the representation of two very contrasting leaders, Jean Luc Picard and the Borg Queen, in the popular film Star Trek: First Contact. The film illuminates how leadership ideally resides in a virile, mastered and distant male body. The sexual female body is represented as disgusting, dangerous, and a source of contamination and so must be cast out and destroyed. Finally, I ask whether the representation of the Borg Queen is useful as a transgressive means to undermine the abjection of the female leader’s body. However, I conclude that to counter abjection, scholars of leadership need instead to build discursive and material practices that revalue the feminine and respect the alterity of self and others.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the international community took vigorous, unprecedented steps to curb Saddam Hussein's military ambitions. The central component of these actions was a set of comprehensive arms, aviation, maritime, and economic sanctions, each imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). When the multinational coalition forces ousted Iraq from Kuwait the following year, the UNSC made these sanctions and embargoes a component of the armistice agreement. Over time, these sanctions were subsequently used as leverage to press for Iraqi compliance with relevant UNSC resolutions calling for Iraqi disarmament.¹

This chapter will report on the issues that surround the coverage of police shootings in the United States. It will also look at the issue of race and policing. In particular, the events at Ferguson, St. Louis in August 2014 and other controversial incidents will be explored. The chapter will utilize theories of policing, employ a media analysis, and develop an issue history to explain the background to problems with policing in African-American neighborhoods over many decades, culminating in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.