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Critical management studies (CMS) has been criticised on a number of fronts, not the least of them being its poor track record of reflecting and challenging its internal mechanisms of hierarchy and exclusion. Acknowledging these issues, this chapter explores the role queer theory can play in developing a queer friendship with CMS, whereby CMS might be able to reflect on its normalising tendencies. This chapter does not claim that queer theory is a silver bullet which can deliver itself or otherwise work miracles for solving the complex problems that beset CMS. Rather, it seeks to fan the queer embers that already exist within CMS to spark queerer futures. Part of this endeavour involves bringing CMS and queer theory closer together, but not so close that the two become comfortable companions. As this chapter suggests, a queer friendship will involve antagonisms and tensions between queer and CMS help each other to refute the normative at every turn and gesture towards something more: queerness. Pursuing this project, this chapter provides a brief review of queer theory before outlining current queer stirrings within CMS. The remainder of the chapter focuses on what we might hope to happen from CMS and queer theory being yoked together in a queer friendship, such as bringing queers to the fore in business schools, queering management conferences and embracing forms of queer negativity that condition more radical conceptions of the future.

Public libraries in the twenty-first century are facing the challenges of being relevant in the face of new technologies, neoliberal cost cutting, and changing social realities. One of the fastest growing and changing social realities is associated with the trans community. We may be able to talk about the transgender tipping point; but in Spain, positive representations, access to information, and dialogue between local communities and the trans collective have traditionally been notable for its absence. In order to address these shortcomings in the public library system in Catalonia (Spain), a group of staff at the Biblioteca Nou Barris in Barcelona created the “Trans Identities and Gender” project.

The project envisioned creating a collection of materials aimed at the trans and gender-variant community as well as to all those who might be interested. In addition to the collection, activities were planned to use the library as a communal meeting point between the local and the trans communities as well as a means of promoting the collection and its use. The chapter focuses on the development of the project, on the growing relationship between the library, trans authors, trans community, and general public, and how new possible futures are being forged.

In this short piece we take issue with the current separatist tendencies that are being expressed in certain parts of the queer community. We illustrate how this compares with central ideas in proto-queer thought and queer theory, and how it risks undermining the possibility of a queer dialogue and queer politics.

The purpose of this paper is to deploy a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to consider exclusionary practices enacted by academic libraries as evidenced through resource provision. Specifically, this paper looks at the inclusion of trans and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) individuals in library guides, TGNC naming practices in abstracts and the physical shelving of transgender studies texts. This paper concludes with a discussion of methods to overcome such exclusionary practices in the future.

This paper deploys CDA as informed by queer theory, affording a lens to consider how language and information are structured such that particular power dynamics emerge placing symbolic value on discursively normal identities. CDA helps illuminate when, how and why TGNC individuals remain excluded within academic librarianship practices.

Findings show continued investments in heteronormative and cisnormative structures concerning information provision and access for TGNC patrons. TGNC patrons using library guides consistently fail to see any mentioned made of their respective identities aside from research about their identities. Patrons seeking information of personal value (i.e. coming out resources) find few resources. Further, library stacks and databases enact consistent microaggressions such as fetishizing, deadnaming and misgendering.

This project contains considerable social implications, as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries to invest in neutrality by showing its failures regarding TGNC persons.

This study possesses a considerable set of practical implications and highlights tangible problems that could be addressed with relative ease by academic librarians through either systemic reorganization of information or TGNC patrons. Alternatively, this work also suggests that if such reformations are not possible, academic librarians can take it upon themselves to call attention to such issues and purposefully mark these failings, thus making it clear that it is a current limitation of how libraries function and invite patrons (both cisgender and transgender) to challenge and change these representations through research and advocacy.

This project contains considerable social implications as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries (and librarianship more broadly) to invest in neutrality. This study contests the idea that while possessing neutrality academic libraries also posit themselves as inherently good and inclusive. By showing the violence that remains enacted upon transgender and gender nonconforming folks through multiple venues within the academic library, this study makes clear that statements of negativity are thrust onto TGNC patrons and they remain excluded from an institution that purports to have their well-being as one of its core values.

The deployment of CDA within information science is still a relatively new one. While linguists have long understood the multiplicity of discourse beyond language, the application of this method to the academic library as a discursive institution proves generative. Furthermore, the relationship between academic libraries and their LGBTQ+ populations is both underrepresented and undervalued, a problem exacerbated when focusing on how transgender and gender nonconforming patrons see themselves and their relationships to the academic library. This paper shows the dire state of representation for these particular patrons and provides groundwork for positively changing such representations.

This study explores the health-seeking process for queer and/or trans people, and factors involved in their healthcare negotiations and decisions to seek care. The data included 20 semi-structured interviews of people who identify as queer and/or trans in the southeastern United States. Qualitative analysis was conducted using constructivist grounded theory to inductively analyze accounts of healthcare events, behaviors, and experiences of queer and/or trans people. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 57, with a majority identifying as trans/gender nonconforming (65%) and those remaining identifying as queer, cisgender individuals (35%). Both queer and trans identities can overlap, therefore, I use the term “queer and/or trans.” Categories generated through the coding process were as follows: (1) mental health concerns, (2) negotiating gendered and heteronormative assumptions, and (3) significance of participants creating a bed of knowledge. My analysis asserts that these data indicate that queer and/or trans participants manage not just healthcare decisions, but the hopelessness attached to seeking this type of help.

This pilot study explores how queer slash fanfiction writers reorient cis/heteronormative entertainment media (EM) content to create queer information worlds.

Constructivist grounded theory was employed to explore queer individuals' slash fanfiction reading and creation practices. Slash fanfiction refers to fan-written texts that recast cis/heteronormative content with queer characters, relationships, and themes. Theoretical sampling drove ten semi-structured interviews with queer slash writers and content analysis of both Captain America slash and material features found on two online fanfiction platforms, Archive of Our Own and fanfiction.net. “Queer” serves as a theoretical lens through which to explore non-cis/heteronormative perspectives on gender and sexuality.

Participants' interactions with and creation of slash fanfiction constitute world-queering practices wherein individuals reorient cis/heteronormative content, design systems, and form community while developing their identities over time. Findings suggest ways that queer creators respond to, challenge, and reorient cis/heteronormative narratives perpetuated by EM and other information sources, as well as ways their practices are constrained by structural power dynamics.

This initial data collection only begins to explore the topic with ten interviews. The participant sample lacks racial diversity while the content sample focuses on one fandom. However, results suggest future directions for theoretical sampling that will continue to advance constructs developed from the data.

This research contributes to evolving perspectives on information creation and queer individuals' information practices. In particular, findings expand theoretical frameworks related to small worlds and ways in which members of marginalized populations grapple with exclusionary normativity.

This study builds on existing research to explore how transgender and non-binary people navigate complex terrain when it comes to strained and ambiguous relationships with families of origin. This chapter draws on 23 in-depth interviews with trans and non-binary adults (ages 19–41) to examine the ways that respondents navigated ambiguous and complex family relationships marked by mixed messages and contradictory behaviors from parents regarding their sexual and gender identities. I find that respondents engage in a range of strategies – correcting, conforming, and concealing – to bargain for belonging within families of origin through their work to preserve family ties. Beyond experiencing the emotional costs of ambiguous parental support, I find that some respondents also experience financial strain and inadequate housing, stemming from unstable, distressing relationships with their parents. This chapter demonstrates that ambiguous support from family and complex familial relationships may contribute to a cycle of precarity for trans and non-binary adults. Finally, I show that for respondents, connections to local queer and trans communities and supportive partnerships buffered the negative impacts of familial ambiguity. However, not all respondents had access to community support, intensifying their experiences of marginalization. This chapter contributes to the literature working to destabilize the support versus rejection binary used to characterize LGBTQ experiences and has implications for better understanding the pathways into poverty that trans and non-binary people experience.

We present a model of reappropriation, the phenomenon whereby a stigmatized group revalues an externally imposed negative label by self-consciously referring to itself in terms of that label. The model specifies the causes and consequences of reappropriation as well as the essential conditions necessary for reappropriation to be effective. To place the concept of reappropriation in proper context, we begin by discussing the roots of stigma and the mediating role played by social categorization and social identity in the realization of stigma’s deleterious effects. We also discuss the strategies available to both individuals and groups by which stigmatized individuals can enhance their devalued social identities. We provide a discussion of two historical cases of reappropriation and some preliminary empirical evidence concerning the consequences of self-labeling and attempting to reappropriate a stigmatizing label. Finally we discuss the implications of the model for groups and teams, both within and outside of organizations.