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Scholars who study humility tend to think of it in highly individualized terms, such as an absence of vanity or an accurate self-assessment. Individuating definitions can lead to such jarring concepts as the “humble white supremacist” (Roberts & Wood, 2007). Qualitative sociological research in the (predominantly North American) evangelical movement to accept and affirm lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) identities, same-sex marriage, and sex/gender transition reveals that humility is not simply the awareness that “I could be wrong.” That awareness is rooted in what we have found to be humility’s defining element, concern to foster relationship. These findings prompt us to define humility as a fundamentally social disposition, as concern to protect the kinds of intimate connection with others that can transform the self. Recognizing the social nature of humility reveals why humility is incompatible with injustice.

Donor-conceived (DC) offspring raised in lesbian-parent and heterosexual-parent families have different historical chronologies, which are clusters of events that provide frameworks for shaping contemporary views of sperm donors and donor siblings. Using surveys collected by the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), the largest U.S. web-based registry, we found that DC offspring from different family forms have somewhat different views about meeting both the donor and donor siblings. In general, all offspring are curious about the donor. All offspring want to know what the donor looks like and they believe that even minimal contact will help them understand themselves better. However, when compared to offspring from heterosexual-parent families, offspring from lesbian-parent families are less likely to want to have contact with the donor. For offspring from lesbian-parent families, donor conception is considered a normal and accepted part of family life and the donor is deemed irrelevant to the family’s construction. Especially among those who live with two heterosexual parents (where both parents are often assumed to be genetic relatives), offspring want to know the donor because they believe he holds the key to important information that the legal (or social) father cannot provide. Most DC offspring want to meet donor siblings although the interest is somewhat weaker among the offspring in lesbian-parent families. Offspring regard donor siblings as special relations who will not disrupt the natal family and who might even become part of a new kind of “extended family” network.

In this chapter, I suggest that Connecticut’s and other states’ recent discontinuation of civil unions in the name of marriage “equality” marginalizes and demeans marriage – rejecting people who may nonetheless wish to codify their intimate partnerships – for purposes of legal “incidents,” including rights and privileges, like hospital visitation rights, testimonial privilege, inheritance rights, etc. In doing so, I also call for a rejuvenation of the practice of granting civil union licenses in these states.

The paper uses archival materials, interviews, and secondary scholarship to examine debates among Indian coalitional activists on legal argumentation against India’s national sodomy law in Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi in particular, and in their mobilization activities in general. At the heart of activists’ debates was whether “rights to privacy” was the appropriate legal justification with which to argue the unconstitutionality of the sodomy law. Activists warned against uncritically advancing the notion that the sodomy law was an unlawful intrusion into an individual’s privacy, understood in spatial terms as existing within the bounds of a physical home or area, instead highlighting how gender and class shaped queer citizens’ engagements with private space. The paper argues that activists’ critical examinations of private and public space in the Indian context problematize canonical foundations of queer theory and sociological approaches to sexual citizenship, much of which assumes that all queer life moves from an inner sanctum of private secrecy, experienced as shameful, to an outer realm of equality vis-à-vis the state, the public, and the economy through declarative acts of embodiment. Drawing on critical queer studies scholarship, the paper argues that the legal debates in Naz and Indian queer activism reveal the unstated Western liberalism in prevailing scholarship on the promise of law for queer communities in contexts where core differences exist in material and social realities, and, consequently, in the meanings that individuals attach to space, privacy, embodiment, and visibility.

Entitlement persists on the basis of race, gender, age, sexuality, language and able-bodiedness, despite all efforts to eradicate it – and abetted by some efforts to preserve it. Compounding this, as teachers, it is easy for us to become habituated to possessing the only knowledge of value in the room. This chapter takes place against a backdrop of movements such as Black Lives Matter, and its Australian manifestation, Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Me Too movement, on women's workplace rights and freedoms, movements against homophobia and transphobia, and quests for equality of accessibility. In particular, we explore the notion that Australia is a haunted nation – one that has not confronted its colonial past or properly reconciled with its first peoples and their descendants. Just as the nation needs to come to terms with its past, our conversations for this chapter will confront us with our own pasts and differing subjectivities. We make use here of our own stories in challenging entitlement, in ourselves and others.

Paradoxes are historically embedded in institutions and organizations. Latent paradoxes pose danger if they become salient; sociological analyses can identify historically embedded latent paradoxes. The emergency management paradox, in which the state invests vast resources, establishing formidable organizational arrangements that rely on knowledge to respond to unanticipated events in advance of their occurrence, even though such events can only ever be known after they occur, is a paradox of this kind. Deploying methodological “dual integrity” we trace through historical description and sociological conceptualization the institutional and organizational history of the emergency management paradox in Australia, where uncontrollable bushfires are becoming increasingly common, before drawing more general conclusions about how a response to grand challenges, such as climate change, demands an interdisciplinary understanding of the rituals and realities of paradoxes that emerge historically from our collective attempts to handle uncertainty via risk. Our research serves as a warning of the grave consequences that can result from ignoring a paradox’s history, whether intentionally or unwittingly.

To explore how Critical Management Studies can be used to frame a strategy to effect change and promote diversity and inclusion in organizations.

Drawing on the experience gained from a large multi-sector action research project aimed at promoting equality, diversity and inclusion in organizations, this chapter proposes a multilayer [Critical] Ecological Model.

While early critical theorists were committed to effecting change, the rise of post-modern critical theory eroded the ground on which to stand, widening the gap between theory and practice. Secondly, the chapter asserts the importance of linking empirical research and critical theory in order to advance equality seeking projects. Thirdly, the chapter provides a [Critical] Ecological model that bridges theory and action in Critical Management Studies, based partly on experience from a large community-based research project. The need for a multifaceted approach to advance equality and inclusion emerged as a way to bridge ideological differences among actors and academics committed to effecting social change.

By addressing directly the challenges of theoretical rifts as well as differences in research focused on micro, meso and macro levels, the chapter builds a framework to allow different stakeholders – scholars, practitioners, activists and change agents across sectors – to take action in advancing inclusion and equality as well as an understanding of interactions between levels.

While sharing similar goals, many approaches to change are fragmented on the level of analysis and by underlying paradigms. This chapter is unique in its focus on ways to bridge theory and practice and to develop a framework for action that accommodates equality seeking theorists and activists working on several levels.