Skip to main content

power

Oracles, ignorance and expertise: The struggle over what not to know

The unknowers certainly addresses a heated contemporary discussion around the rise of populist politics and the state of democratic capitalism. The review of such a book presents a certain challenge; The unknowers attempts a comprehensive interpretation of contemporary social relations all the while oscillating between historical analysis and political intervention. It is this balancing act that makes the book both captivating and provoking.

Landscapes of political action

It is increasingly evident that organizations and different processes of organizing are not neutral, inevitable or even necessary, but inherently political. As a discipline, Organization Studies is slowly becoming aware of that organizations are not entities that exist separately from material ecosystems or outside chains of exploitation of cheap labour and raw material. Instead, organizations are intimately entangled to, dependent upon and contributing to global forces such as the destruction of eco-systems, climate change, inequality and (neo-) colonialism.

Intersectionality

The continued interest in intersectionality can be seen as a positive sign that feminist-inspired scholarship still has something significant to offer, and that its political dimension lives on. In management and organization studies, Intersectionality has been seized either as a theoretical lens or methodological approach in a number of literature strands, in both conceptual and empirical work. Yet, it would be too hasty to conclude that intersectionality is the answer to all ills, or the panacea that can replace the use of the ‘f-word’ altogether.

Subscribe to power

All Issues

| vol. 23, no. 2
| vol. 23, no. 1
| vol. 22, no. 3