Showing papers on "Performativity published in 2020"

Towards an epistemology of data journalism in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom: Changes and continuities in materiality, performativity and reflexivity:

Abstract: This article outlines a general epistemological framework of data journalism in the devolved nations of the United Kingdom. By using an original model based on three conceptual lenses – materiality, performativity and reflexivity – this study examines the development of this form of journalism, the challenges it faces and its particularities in the context of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This research, therefore, offers unique insights from semi-structured interviews with data journalists and data editors based at, or working as freelancers for, the mainstream news organisations of these regions. The results suggest that data journalism in these devolved nations displays a distinctive character just as much as it reinforces the norms and rituals of the legacy organisations that pioneered this practice. While various models of data exploitation are tested, regional data journalists creatively circumvent generalised organisational struggles to lay the groundwork for their trade and professional com...

Answering the crisis with intellectual activism: Making a difference as business schools scholars:

Abstract: Should business school scholars engage in intellectual activism? This article explicates the origin, the intellectual tradition and politics of intellectual activism, making a case for why manageme...

Expectations of artificial intelligence and the performativity of ethics: Implications for communication governance:

Abstract: This article draws on the sociology of expectations to examine the construction of expectations of ‘ethical AI’ and considers the implications of these expectations for communication governance. We...

The Performative University: ‘Targets’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Taking Back Freedom’ in Academia

Abstract: This special issue assembles eight papers which provide insights into the working lives of early career to more senior academics, from several different countries The first common theme which emer

Doing without believing – enacting policy in the English primary school

Abstract: This paper explores how six English primary school teachers enact assessment and attainment-focused policy and asks what this performative policy work does and whether it shapes or requires a new k...

Biopolitical bordering: Enacting populations as intelligible objects of government:

Abstract: Since Foucault introduced the notion of biopolitics, it has been fiercely debated—usually in highly generalized terms—how to interpret and use this concept. This article argues that these discussio...

The Politics of Disability Performativity: An Autoethnography

Abstract: Disability is a concept that grows as we think about it, forcing us to adjust our conversations in vocabulary and rhetoric depending on which disability world we inhabit or address. Understanding d...

Nature matters: diffracting a keystone concept of environmental education research – just for kicks

Abstract: As a keystone species the concept ‘nature’ plays a vital role in shaping our world. In this article, we think with the material turn about the concept nature due to its significant performativity i...

Performative Prediction

Abstract: When predictions support decisions they may influence the outcome they aim to predict. We call such predictions performative; the prediction influences the target. Performativity is a well-studied phenomenon in policy-making that has so far been neglected in supervised learning. When ignored, performativity surfaces as undesirable distribution shift, routinely addressed with retraining. We develop a risk minimization framework for performative prediction bringing together concepts from statistics, game theory, and causality. A conceptual novelty is an equilibrium notion we call performative stability. Performative stability implies that the predictions are calibrated not against past outcomes, but against the future outcomes that manifest from acting on the prediction. Our main results are necessary and sufficient conditions for the convergence of retraining to a performatively stable point of nearly minimal loss. In full generality, performative prediction strictly subsumes the setting known as strategic classification. We thus also give the first sufficient conditions for retraining to overcome strategic feedback effects.

Pedagogies of care in performative schools

Abstract: With growing policy pressures on schools to produce outcomes, there are concerns about the loss of caring relationships from education. In this article, we argue that rather than eliminatin...

Performing a Myth to Make a Market: The construction of the ‘magical world’ of Santa:

Abstract: If you believe in Santa, do not read this paper. Through an in-depth, qualitative, empirical study, we follow the Santa myth to a remote northern location in Lapland, Finland where, for one month a...

The normative gap: mechanism design and ideal theories of justice

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between economic theory and theories of justice in the design of public policy. In particular, it focuses on the role of mechanism design in policy contexts beset with issues of social, racial and distributive justice. Economists’ involvement in redesigning Boston’s algorithm for allocating K-12 students to public schools serves as an instructive case study. The paper draws on the distinction between ideal theory and non-ideal theory in political philosophy and the concept of performativity in economic sociology to argue that mechanism design can enact elaborate ideal theories of justice. A normative gap thus emerges between the goals of the policymakers and the objectives of economic designs. As a result, mechanism design may obstruct stakeholders’ avenues for normative criticism of public policies, and serve as a technology of depoliticization.

Performativity and the demise of the teaching profession: the need for rebalancing in Australia

Abstract: Serious damage to teacher professionalism is being triggered by the current performance dominated culture caused by neoliberal global conditions (performativity) in Australian schools. Many teacher...

Historical framing of the Ukraine Crisis through the Great Patriotic War: Performativity, cultural consciousness and shared remembering:

Abstract: Remembering in Russia is increasingly performative and actualised, as shown by the Russian government and media’s conflation of the Ukraine Crisis with the Great Patriotic War. By presenting the Gr...

Beyond “Traditional” and “New”: An Attempt of Redefinition of Contemporary Fatherhoods through Discursive Practices and Practices of Care:

Abstract: In this article, I use thirty-five interviews with heterosexual Italian fathers to problematize the distinction between “traditional” and “new” fatherhood. Adopting a performative approach to gende...

Performativity and convergence in comparative corporate governance

Abstract: We engage with the convergence/divergence debate in the comparative study of corporate governance by commending a nuanced formulation of the convergence thesis. Directing attention to the precarious constitution and adoption of knowledge claims about corporate status and architecture in the field of corporate governance we suggest that the study of comparative corporate governance might usefully incorporate consideration of claims about corporate governance as potentially performative statements that function to stabilize particular ideas of status and architecture of the modern corporation with substantive outcomes for political economy, thereby influencing the shape of the institutions comprising the field of corporate governance. We conclude that the predominantly epistemological preoccupations of participants in the convergence/divergence debate could be usefully refined and supplemented by giving closer attention, empirical as well as theoretical, to the relation between performativity, convergence/divergence, and political economy.

The CV as a Symbol of the Changing Nature of Academic Life: Performativity, Prestige and Self-Presentation.

Abstract: The effects of performativity in academic life are widely discussed and debated. Yet most analysis relies on conventional forms of empirical enquiry, notably interviews and questionnaires. The curr...

Performative and ideological populism: The case of charismatic leaders on Twitter:

Abstract: Taking Donald Trump’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s use of Twitter as paradigmatic case studies, this article demonstrates that the charismatic leader features as a distinct mode of the performativity of pop...

Felicity conditions of a theory of expertleadership in professional football

Abstract: This thesis is a critical investigation of a theory of expert leadership (hereafter TEL) and has the central aim of theory development. In proposing a TEL, Goodall (2012) argues that those at the top of organisations should be among the best experts in their industry, as opposed to general, professional managers. Empirical support for the TEL and its effects are reported in a small number of studies that show positive correlations between expert leadership and organisational performance. Moreover, expert leaders are thought to gain credibility and respect and are better able to understand motivations and values of followers having been one of them. Whilst these findings are interesting and imply something important in terms of what we might look for when choosing leaders, they raise conceptual and methodological concerns that were the starting point for this study. My approach draws on Gadamer’s (1989) conceptualisation of hermeneutics and Josselson’s (2011b) narrative approach in what I described as hermeneutic storytelling to account for the lived experiences of managers in the backdrop of men’s professional football, on the assumption that stories about our lives are representations of reality. To explore this phenomenon, I borrow from J. L. Austin's (1962) work, How to Do Things With Words, and the idea of felicity conditions, as a theoretical lens to understand expert leadership influence. Felicity conditions refer to criteria that must be in place and satisfied for performative acts to achieve their purpose. As a theoretical contribution to knowledge I found first that, for expert leadership influence to be felicitous, football managers need to meet, in the requisite way, conditions of; authority and be authorised beyond the position they hold; which is granted by virtue of authenticity, in the way they operate in relation to others; and sincerity, with thoughts, intentions and motivations that embodied the virtue. This is mediated by interplay of thoughts, beliefs and expectations of people who interact with football managers and also what is rooted in historically affected cultures and traditions. Second, there is a dark side to this leadership that undeniably exists and in any study involving people who have great authority and hold powerful positions this reality needs to be truthfully told. Third, as a practical contribution my thesis proposes the Human Resources (HR) profession, and recruitment in general, moves away from traditional competency and behavioural practice, to selecting leaders on a values-based process, that assesses the fit of human values and the cultural of an organisation. My thesis allows the reader to reimagine expert leadership and proposes the need to examine what is human about the phenomenon in question. I conclude, the TEL is a paradoxical mix of perceptions of leadership qualities, human conditions and performativity in context.

Judith Butler : Theorist and political activist

Abstract: Judith Butler, a hugely influential but also controversial theorist, is a philosopher whose writings are not often found on the bookshelves labelled 'philosophy'. An avowed feminist, her early, major books Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter are seminal within queer theory. Butler's work has provoked significant interest in management and organization studies, both through its influence on feminist or gender theories of work but also because her thesis of performativity offers ways of understanding management, organizations and work more generally. This chapter tracks how Butler has developed her theory of performativity since Gender Trouble. It devotes little attention to the still-developing theory of precarity because of the relevance of the former theory to 'critical performativity', a theory of political practice developing in critical management studies that draws, somewhat loosely, on Butler's theory of performativity.

‘I, Robot?’ Or how transgender subjects are dehumanised

Abstract: In this essay, I focus on the earlier works of Judith Butler to discuss her understanding of gender theory and moreover do so in relation to people who are transgender. Transgender folk are important to Butler’s early work but I contend that her allegorical use of them does not do justice to their precarious lives. I relate my discussion to existing work in organisational studies concerned both with Butler and trans folk and argue that Butler’s concept of performativity should be (re)read alongside her other concerns with embodiment and universality to argue that, at least in relation to transgender folk, her work needs to be extended to consider issues of dysphoria in order to explain why some gender identities are refused and made abject.

“This Is a Man’s Job”: Challenging the Masculine “Warrior Culture” at the U.S. Air Force Academy:

Abstract: This article explores models of identity at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Drawing on qualitative data gathered through a number of focus groups with cadets, it finds that despite technological change...

Athena’s claim in an academic regime of performativity: Discursive organizing of excellence and gender at the intersection of heterotopia and heteronomia:

Abstract: From a Foucauldian perspective, we regard “excellence” and “gender” as discourses that become relevant in academia. We analyze the organizational dispositives of “excellence” and “gender” as organi...

Gender Trouble's Afterlife in Chinese Studies

Abstract: As anyone who has written a book can tell you, when you finally finish wrestling with it and it is confined between covers, or tucked away in e-book form, it goes on to have an afterlife, sometimes quite a complicated one, which the author may glimpse only in intermittent and fragmentary form. An original and provocative book such as Judith Butler's Gender Trouble will travel to places its author never anticipated and become embroiled in conversations the author may not overhear. A book's influence on another field far from its point of origin is not best assessed by a citation index—though Gender Trouble's numbers are massive. To take the measure of the work that Gender Trouble has done for scholars working in Asian studies (itself a constructed and constantly morphing category, like gender), we should ask how the book traveled. Which pieces were taken up by scholars of Asia, and what conversations and challenges did the book enable, not as a blueprint but as an incubator of locally grounded thinking? How has it been adapted, pruned down to one or two insights, or expanded into new domains?

Reflexive learning and performative failure

Abstract: In this article, we emphasize the importance of context for student learning. Based on reflective logs and interview data, we explore how students learn outside of the classroom as they undertake a...

The performativity of monitoring and evaluation in international development interventions: Building a dialogical case study of evidence-making that situates ‘the general’:

Abstract: The dominance of high-income countries in ‘generalised’ evidence-making is increasingly recognised as a barrier to advancing understandings of social change processes in international development. ...

Academic Women in Neoliberal Times

Abstract: This book investigates the gendered dimensions of academic life in the contemporary Australian university It examines key discourses – most notably academic performativity and identity – through a feminist lens, and scrutinises how discourses of neoliberalism and feminism are entangled in the structure, systems, operations and cultures of the university Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with academic women in Australia, the author uses a mix of experimental methods to emphasise the performative and discursive decisions women make with regard to their academic careers In doing so, this book reveals how women themselves generate neoliberal and feminist shifts, how they manage the contradictions they produce, and how they carve spaces of influence and authority Moving towards a re-evaluation of existing discourses, this book offers new insights into gender inequality in the Australian university in neoliberal times

Staging Identities and Multiplied Dialogic Spaces in Higher Education

Abstract: In this paper, we address the topic of dialogic pedagogy in a performative key. No place cultivates dialogue in all its complexity as theatre: here all elements are always, necessarily in relational conversation with each other. This dialogue is of a unique kind: theatre performs dialogic processes as embodied exchanges between humans, non-humans (props, costumes, scenography, sounds) and imagined-humans (characters). We look at embodied/relational theatrical practices in two different contexts in higher education, with the purpose to collect new insights on the practical and conceptual role of performance in education. Our objective is the exploration of the stage experience, with its embodied dialogue and building of imagined identities. Our empirical study consists in two different set of data collected at two different higher educational programmes where theatrical tools are applied to non-arts education. The novelty of this paper lies in the conceptual and empirical rethinking of performance and performativity in higher educational practices, by giving processes of redoubling of bodies, realities, worlds, identities a focused attention. We make use of theories about performance, dialogism and identity-building. In the concluding section, we sum up original findings and possible take-aways for the reader: 1) limen, 2) being naked, 3) embodied knowledge, 4) stage empowerment. Against the background of this knowledge, higher education can reinvent ways of establishing embodied conversations, which allow for multiple meanings to emerge from bodies and senses, rather than exclusively from rationality and logic.

Teachers' Changing Subjectivities: Putting the Soul to Work for the Principle of the Market or for Facilitating Risk?.

Abstract: Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers’ current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas’s claim that ethics is the first philosophy with its concomitant responsibility for the Other (Alterity). This provides a valuable point of departure and our understanding of its relevance is expanded by Biesta and Todd. This perspective allows interruption of the global reform ensemble with its reductionist understandings of teachers’ subjectivities within concerns for a ‘visible pedagogy’ and performativity. We illustrate how this global policy imperative is reworked in policies in the Republic of Ireland and share reflexive insights from our tutoring of teachers studying for a Master’s degree in Education. We show that teachers’ autonomy, which we understand as the capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judgements, is severely restricted by imposed standards, codes and laws to which there is tightly policed adherence. Instead we describe teachers’ practices occurring within an Invisible Pedagogy, which is not concerned with totalising and limited performativity but instead, explores risks associated with existential possibilities beyond commodification.