CMS6 Conference

Stream: Postcolonialism

Stream description

Postcolonial theory and criticism (or “postcolonialism”) has left a clear mark in a number of disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, history, literary criticism, political science, sociology, and the like. Despite some recent scholarly efforts, however, the field of management studies (including critical management studies) continues to remain mostly untouched by the postcolonial ferment taking place in the social sciences and the humanities. The Postcolonialism Stream of the International Critical Management Studies Conference offers an opportunity to critical management researchers to address this troubling state of affairs. This Stream, accordingly, is designed to provide a forum for employing postcolonial modes and strategies of inquiry with a view to critically investigating past and/or present management (and management related) practices, texts, theories, methods and approaches to inquiry, and research procedures and productions.

Imperialismcan also be seen as an interrelated topic. While the term imperialism has largely acquired a polemical meaning we are more interested in exploring it as an analytic, particularly as a political-economic and discursive process. We also welcome those organizational theorists who attempt to make theoretical linkages between the colonial project and the organizational project.

The broad content area of submissions to the Postcolonialism stream may cover (but is not limited to) one or more of the following:

  • Empirical and conceptual accounts of non-Western modes of managing, organizing, and economic exchange;
  • Employing the framework of colonizer-colonized dynamics for purposes of analyzing social, cultural, economic, political, and technological exchanges taking place within and between organizations;
  • Investigating the complicity of past and/or present Western management practices and scholarship with colonialist attitudes and values;
  • The relation between imperialism and postcolonialism. Neoliberal imperial practices in the contemporary political economy.
  • The construction of postcolonial sovereignties - states of exception, institutional imperialism and neoliberalism.
  • The role played by different management disciplines and sub-disciplines in establishing and enforcing colonial or neo-colonial control (material and/or symbolic) of dominated territories, cultures and sub-cultures, both within and outside 'the West';
  • The complex links between empire, nation, race, ethnicity and migration and the production of management knowledge and practice;
  • Postcolonial theoretic analyses of power, control and resistance in organizations past and present;
  • Analyses of past and/or present management texts and practices with a view to revealing and highlighting the significance of the colonial origins of such texts/practices;
  • Empirical and conceptual research which questions and challenges the universality of Western categories of managing and organizing;
  • Epistemological critiques (deriving from non-Western perspectives) of Western procedures for producing management knowledge;
  • Employing non-Western categories, constructs, and conceptual frameworks for evaluating/evaluating Western management practices and knowledge;
  • Creative transformations and 'distortions' of Western management in non-Western settings;
  • Postcolonial theoretic explorations of identity, subjectivity, and agency;
  • Radical critiques of contemporary Western models of socio-economic 'development', and their implications for management;
  • Historical/ethnographic accounts which seek to document how some of the constitutive categories of Western management may have emerged in and through the colonial encounter between the West and the non-West;
  • Postcolonial theoretic analyses of aborigine-settler colony dynamics, and their implications for management practice and scholarship;
  • The tension between postmodernism and postcolonialism, and its implications for management;
  • Conceptual convergences between strands of feminist, African-American, Aboriginal, and postcolonial theorizations, and the implications of such convergences for management research;
  • Conceptual meditations on issues of relevance to postcolonial analysis in general in the field of management.
  • Interrogating discourses of development, corporate social responsibility, stakeholders, questions of authority and power, institutional restructuring and structural adjustment programs imposed on Third World sites.
  • Knowledge management as imperialism, appropriation of public goods by transnational corporations, biotechnology and intellectual property rights regimes.
  • Latin American perspectives on postcolonial theory: implications for organizations, management theory and practice.

We seek theoretical and empirical papers which address these themes. Abstracts should be submitted by email to the lead convenor (with a copy to the other convenors) by November 1, 2008. Abstracts should be a maximum of 1000 words and submitted in single spaced, 12 point font on a layout set to A4 to allow for subsequent reproduction. We will aim to have acceptance decisions by the end of December 2008.

Convenors

Bobby Banerjee, University of Western Sydney, Australia

Anshuman Prasad,University of New Haven, USA

Rafael Alcadipani, UNINOVE and EAESP-FGV, Brazil