Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
The concluding chapter weaves together the various threads explored throughout the book, providing a comprehensive overview of the project and setting a research agenda for scholars seeking to delve deeper into these topics. Specifically, the chapter focuses on organization studies, identifying gaps in the existing literature and highlighting the potential for utilizing the ethical framework outlined in Chapter 6. Doing so invites researchers to explore new avenues of inquiry (such as the supply chains of care work) and expand the current knowledge base in this field (for example, by critically problematizing corporate initiatives of diversity and inclusion). The chapter suggests how the ethical framework presented in the book can inform and enrich future studies in organization studies and related disciplines and the valuation practices adopted in higher education institutions.
What does it mean to be a feminist? What can feminism say about ourselves, the work we do, and our ways of living together?
This book draws on the work of Fraser, Butler, and Braidotti to examine how societal and organizational processes shape and are shaped by our perception of work, value, and identity. Disrupting the long-established mind-body dualism, the book reveals its impact on our understanding of value, raising critical questions about how different forms of feminism influence work practices and recognition.
This is a unique and insightful analysis that sparks critical reflection, offering a foundation for corporeal ethics to drive meaningful change in organizations and society.
The Introduction highlights the book’s interdisciplinary nature, engaging with organization studies, accounting, philosophy, and the sociology of work. It outlines the main theoretical approaches and structure of the book. Starting from how the media has been framing the migration crisis, these pages emphasize the importance of the mind–body dualism in the history of philosophy and its subsequent influence on other disciplines.
The Introduction invites readers to critically examine the enduring presence of this dualism and how it functions as an ontological, epistemological, and moral framework that influences our organizational life and the valuation of work and workers. Drawing from the works of Borges and Calvino, the Introduction also explores how the mind–body dualism shapes the meanings and aims of the research endeavour. Finally, an overview of the contents explains the choice of adopting an écriture féminine à la Cixous that becomes feminist in meditation.
The fifth chapter serves as a guide for exploring the critical contributions of post-human feminism, with a particular focus on the formulation by Rosi Braidotti. By delving into the philosophical foundations of this feminism, the chapter examines the work of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, precisely their conception of the body as matter and its relationship to nature and reality. Through an engagement with Spinoza’s theoretical system, post-human feminism challenges the entrenched dualism between mind and body, advocating instead for a monistic and holistic understanding of the world. Moreover, it expands the scope of feminist political subjects beyond the human realm, encompassing the broader realm of materiality. This expanded perspective enables post-human feminism to address pressing issues such as the climate crisis and the problematic aspects of biogenetic capitalism. Building upon the concept of matter, the chapter problematizes valorization processes and interrogates how work and workers can be valued within this post-human perspective. It also explores how this theoretical framework has influenced organizational literature, opening up new possibilities and imaginaries fuelled by the transformative potential of contemporary technologies.
The fourth chapter explores the influential work of American philosopher Judith Butler, whose contributions have been crucial in addressing the violence of the heterosexual matrix on bodies and elevating LGBTQI+ claims in feminist discourse. It delves into the connections between bodies, discourse, gender, and power within work and organizations. Central to the chapter is Butler’s feminist framework, which challenges the essentialist nature of the feminist political subject and surpasses binary gender limitations. The chapter examines the relationship between organizational practices and body politics by engaging with Butler’s theories. It highlights Butler’s shift towards the body’s materiality, illustrating how her theories on subject mattering and recognition extend beyond traditional post-modernism to analyse power inscribed in corporeal existence critically. Using transitioning in the workplace as a case in point, the chapter underscores Butler’s transformative insights into challenging gender norms and power dynamics within organizational contexts.
This sixth chapter centres on the ethical values and ideals that underpin the feminisms discussed in the preceding chapters. It elucidates how recent feminisms have introduced a novel ethical framework that challenges modern ethics, serving as the foundation for neoliberal feminism. The chapter delves into a comprehensive exploration of interdependence and recognition as ethical values, examining how they can disrupt prevailing organizational practices and modes of thinking. Rather than presenting a prescriptive ethical model, the chapter facilitates a dialogue among the key contributions of the various theoretical approaches examined. It invites readers to continuously question the values that shape our work, actions, and collective existence. The chapter poses inquiries about envisioning alternative ways of coexisting, organizing, and valuing work and individuals, suggesting that moving beyond a normative perspective of independence is essential. It encourages readers to reimagine notions of individuality and explore more inclusive and interconnected possibilities.
The third chapter explores critical-socialist feminism, which opposes neoliberal feminism by radically rethinking the relationship between feminism, ethics, and work. This perspective challenges the conventional separation of productive and reproductive labour, questioning which types of labour are recognized and valued. The chapter utilizes the concept of the body-territory, theorized by activist Veronica Gago, alongside works by Nancy Fraser and Angela Davis, to examine critical-socialist feminism’s unique view of labor and value. It highlights the importance of understanding the intersections of class, race, and gender in organizing social diversity. Shifting from a Western-centric viewpoint to a global and inclusive perspective, this feminism addresses the complexities of diversity and inequality within global value chains. It has inspired collective and local resistance against neoliberal feminism, leading to new forms of activism aimed at reshaping feminist discourse and practice.
The second chapter critically analyses neoliberal feminism, which has aligned with contemporary economic systems to become a dominant ideology. Tracing its roots to the liberal feminism of the 1950s, the chapter highlights its initial articulation in Simone de Beauvoir’s influential work. It explores how this feminist project evolved into a distinctly ‘neoliberal’ character, describing neoliberalism as an ideology that permeates various social spheres with an economic logic. The chapter delves into the interconnectedness of economics and ethics, focusing on values of freedom, independence, and competition rooted in modern philosophy and the Cartesian binary understanding of identity. The chapter concludes that neoliberal feminism has rationalized and economized feminist issues, potentially weakening the original liberal feminist political project initiated by de Beauvoir.
As I argued in the preceding chapter, it makes sense, in the context of an incorporated comparison concerned with processes of deindustrialization, to zoom in on Western Europe and examine different national cases that reflect the variegation of global capitalism. Britain bears hallmarks of a liberal market economy. Accordingly, the institutions characterizing the British political economy reflect the assumption that the market mechanism allocates resources efficiently: the regulation of the financial sector is comparably ‘light’ (see Gallas, 2010; Tooze, 2018); for-profit, private sector companies and public–private partnerships play an important role in delivering public services (Flinders, 2005; Gallas, 2016: 241–2); and economic inequality is higher than in the other Western European countries. Indeed, economic liberalism has deep roots in the country. Paired with colonialism and imperialism, it was a prominent feature of government policy in the age of the British empire in the 19th century. Back then, leading politicians had been promoting the erection of a ‘world market’ based on ‘free trade’ (Arrighi, 1994: 47–58; Gallas, 2008: 283; 2016: 76, 134–5). After the Second World War, economic and social policy shifted. Under the postwar settlement between capital and labour, full employment and benefits were traded for union acquiescence. A welfare state was erected, and successive governments started to experiment with Keynesianism and corporatism. But in reaction to a deep crisis of the British political economy and a wave of rank-and-file militancy on the side of organized labour, leading politicians re-embraced, from the mid-1970s onwards, ‘free market’ ideas.
The commitment to taking seriously a global angle is at odds with a lot of research in the fields of political economy and labour studies. Single country case studies and comparative studies of a small number of countries are common currency. Both have contributed significantly to our understanding of different capitalist social formations and the fact that institutions and configurations of actors at the national level matter and differ. Through establishing differences and communalities across national states, they enhance our understanding of what the capitalist mode of production is, and what specificities of macroregional or national contexts are. Many of those studies exhibit a research strategy that can be called ‘methodological Fordism’. With this term, I refer to a set of methodological choices starting from the implicit assumption that Fordism is the standard mode of capitalist development. This does not mean that all research in this mould studies ‘Fordist’ or ‘post-Fordist’ configurations or uses the corresponding terminology. My point is that it has a family resemblance with scholarship that explicitly does so and shares with it a number of guiding assumptions: the primary unit of analysis is the national state; the study of manufacturing and of the labour relations in the sector – frequently referred to as ‘industrial relations’ (see Nowak, 2021) – are key to understanding national political economies; and contemporary capitalism can be deciphered by focusing on a relatively small number of highly industrialized core countries.
