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This article is a transcript of a conversation with Judith Butler, a prominent philosopher and gender theorist, discussing various topics related to gender, social justice, and interdependency. Butler's work focuses on the organization of gender in and through work, and their upcoming book explores the fear and controversy surrounding gender. The conversation highlights the importance of open debate and critical examination of gender studies literature, as well as the opposition and attacks faced by this field. The text also explores issues such as free speech, violence and injustice, solidarity, and the need for ongoing recognition and engagement in the process of solidarity. Butler's forthcoming book will examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our understanding of interdependency and inequality. [Extracted from the article]

This paper introduces the original research articles that constitute the present Forum issue on unpredictability, contingency and catastrophe. In doing so, it also identifies and discusses the specificity of realist approaches to the above questions. It is argued that attentiveness to the ontological dimension of (un)predictability opens promising avenues for reflexive approaches to social science and collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay encourages fellow scholars to consider critical organizational studies of post-human technologies. While these nascent technologies hold many promises, they also risk exacerbating several unacceptable organizational features that have been regularly documented, discussed and combated in Organization over the past 30 years. These features include, among other evils, corporate domination and colonization; further erosion of organic solidarity; entrenchment of inegalitarian imaginaries; and impoverished lifeworlds oriented toward instrumental efficiency alone. In order to steer them democratically, we need reflexive empirical studies of post-human technologies in connection with big societal issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of domestic workers and employers in Kolkata (India) examines the significance of workplace humiliation as an important yet neglected concept for organization studies. It identifies practices of symbolic, sexual and physical workplace humiliation that shape corporeality and subjectivity in such a way that workers feel inferior, fearful and docile. Practices of workplace humiliation serve the purpose of social reproduction by stabilizing the existing skewed power relations between workers and employers, and making workers comply inexpensively with the harsh requirements of highly exploitative workplaces. In foregrounding humiliation as a key organizational mechanism, this study furthers understanding of workplace humiliation, oppression, caste and exploitation in organization studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-human technologies, such as human enhancements and artificial intelligence, blur or displace the boundaries of our common humanity. While these technologies enhance many valuable human powers, there is limited philosophical discussion as to whether and how they can also be dehumanizing? To answer this question, I start from a philosophical discussion of the concept of 'dehumanization' and argue that it conflates three social mechanisms through which (i) human flourishing is impeded; (ii) subalterns are degraded; and (iii) automated processes replace typically human activities. Furthermore, I argue in realist fashion that we should consider both the natural powers harnessed by post-human technologies and the social contexts through which the latter are designed, produced, marketed and consumed. I then illustrate my thinking with three recent inquiries that I conducted on post-human technologies' dehumanizing potential. All three inquiries happen in the contemporary neo-liberal context, but each one foregrounds a distinct mechanism of dehumanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is collective remembering inhibited by organizational changes which were not intended to manipulate it? And how does collective forgetting affect workers' power and sense of identity? We rely on an ethnographic study of a charitable organization that went through recent organizational changes to study two processes constitutive of collective forgetting. The first process consists in the past becoming unusable because once-useful memories lost their practical usefulness for participants' new activities. The second process consists in the past becoming uprooted because the social relations through which memories used to be shared had changed beyond recognition. Our findings provide insights into the organizational processes through which memories cease to circulate. They also help understand the complex relations between memory, power relations and participants' sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endangered loggerhead sea-turtle (Caretta caretta) nests on the shores of the Mediterranean, but faces threats to its existence from a variety of sources. Answering the question of how this species can survive is complex as it involves examining the relationships between the turtle, its natural environment, local tourists, property developers, conservation organisations, governments and law-makers. We argue that actor-network theory provides a powerful methodology for tracing these relations and identifying crucial actors which enable the survival of this animal. Using a rich ethnography and drawing on insights from 116 interviews, we trace three actor-networks that highlight factors important to the survival of the species. Yet, we also highlight the conceptual difficulties that result from using an actor-network theory ontology for understanding socio-ecological interactions and argue that these may be ameliorated by embedding the actor-network theory methodology within a critical realist ontology. We argue that this engagement between critical realism and actor-network theory offers researchers a powerful method for understanding relations between socio-ecological actors while overcoming some of the theoretical difficulties of actor-network theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the concept of dehumanization and critical realism at the 19th Critical Realist Conference which was held in Cardiff, Wales in July, 2016.

This study examines the alleged organization of violence by Coca-Cola through a field study conducted in a village in India. It draws on the works of Judith Butler to show how subaltern groups are derealized and made into ungrievable lives through specific, yet recurrent, practices that keep violence unchecked. Many participants attempt to resist derealization through protest activities that showcase their vulnerability. However, the firm appropriates their claims to vulnerability through a paternalistic discourse that justifies intensified violence and derealization. This research offers insights into accumulation through derealization and on the effects of resistance to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper interrogates the status, nature and significance of epistemological relativism as a key element of constructionism and critical realism. It finds that epistemological relativism is espoused by authorities in critical realism and marginalized or displaced in the field of management and organization studies, resulting in forms of analysis that are empirically, but not fully critically, realist. This evaluation prompts reflection on the question of whether, how and with what implications epistemological relativism might be recast at the heart of critical realist studies of management and organization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I propose that Foucault's works, since he wrote Discipline and Punish, rely on an implicit meta-theory that is compatible with the fundamentals of critical realism. To this end I examine the status of truth, methodology and social ontology used by Foucault. If this thesis is correct, then a critical realist reading of Michel Foucault would avoid some of the pitfalls that have been attributed to his works—such as constructivism, determinism, localism, and reductionism. Moreover, this understanding of Foucault's works would also offer novel and challenging perspectives for researchers adopting a Foucauldian and/or critical realist study of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a puzzling feature of social conventions: the fact that they are both arbitrary and normative. We examine how this tension is addressed in sociological accounts of conventional phenomena. Traditional approaches tend to generate either synchronic accounts that fail to consider the arbitrariness of conventions, or diachronic accounts that miss central aspects of their normativity. As a remedy, we propose a processual conception that considers conventions as both the outcome and material cause of much human activity. This conceptualization, which borrows from the économie des conventions as well as critical realism, provides a novel perspective on how conventions are nested and defined, and on how they are established, maintained and challenged., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014.)