Late in the Thatcher era, there were reports that her campaign argument was There Is No Alternative--TINA. At this point I hear Thatcher in Gillian Anderson's personification on The Crown rather than a direct memory. TINA referred to . opponents for PM--I can't remember if Labor was running Tony Benn in those days. It also meant her policies of privatization, public sector reductions, working class privation. It was also the era of Francis Fukuyama's End of History. All absurd.
I run into TINA problems in thinking about alternatives to the constraints of hierarchy, rigid resource allocations, and limited, ossified strategic requirements. Part of my task is to look for alternatives. I don't expect to find them in a fully operative form, but expect to find the kernel of an idea, or brief moment when alternatives took form, like some higher end element.
One reason (among many) to look at Feminist Theory, and scholars from non-hegemonic contexts, is to see what alternative forms they may have developed. As Joan Acker put it in a 1990 article, "an important feminist project is to make large-scale organizations more democratic and more supportive of humane goals" (p 140). The point about "large-scale" is particularly important. Alternate forms exist for small scale organizations, but life in today's world requires the output of large-scale organizations. I have yet to be convinced that breaking society down into small scale units which consistently result in people having basic needs provided.
In 1990, Acker wasn't able to point to great examples: "Part of the feminist project was to create nonhierarchical, egalitarian organizations that would demonstrate the possibilities of nonpatriarchal ways of working. Although many feminist organizations survived, few retained this radical-democratic form. Others succumbed to the same sorts of pressures that have undermined other utopian experiments with alternative work forms, yet analyses of feminist efforts to create alternative organizations were not followed by debates about the feasibility of non-patriarchal, nonhierarchical organization or the relationship of organizations and gender." (p 141) It's a reminder of the era of idealistic experiments that took place, and points to one strategy, which is to go back and revisit that history. Duberman's Black Mountain--documenting one of those great experiments of the past--sits on my shelf staring at me--not accusingly, but more like my dog, who is perpetually asking "what are we going to do next?"
Acker's not cynical about what we can do--she cites Kathy Ferguson's The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy (1984): "Ferguson argues further that feminist discourse, rooted in women's experiences of caring and nurturing outside bureaucracy's control, provides a ground for opposition to bureaucracy and for the development of alternative ways of organizing." (p 144)
Now I've got to get up to date on these experiments and ideas.
One key idea for Acker is that the masculine gendered organization excises worker's private lives, which deny things like child-bearing and rearing in favor of an abstract worker. There is something appealing to the idea of work that is embedded in communities, where people would be recognized for all aspects of their life. A co-op as a rule. The risk is that of the small town, the loss of privacy. In the wrong hands of authority, a work place that attempts to address the "other imperatives of existence" (p 149) would heighten oppression.
Acker envisions theory that leads to transformation of organizations "in ways that dissolve the concept of the abstract job and restore the absent female body" (p 154). As a thought experiment, I'd like to look at that sentence if you stop before the last clause. What if you "dissolve the abstract job" and instead build organizations around the individuals? The abstract job is a foundation of "proper" management. The job not the person. But of course, in the real world, organizations build jobs around people all the time, for many reasons, most of which are considered suspect. For one example, Affirmative Action asks that organizations define jobs on the basis of objective criteria that make any job accessible to a pool of applicants who will compete based on merit.
A person-based approach to building an organization would try to find a home for particular people, say finding work for every person in a community. This is most conceivable in a smallish community. You could make a point of crafting work for specific people who differ from the characteristics of the people currently in the organization. This method for building organizations would entail lots of issues that probably make it unworkable, but it does suggest more tolerance for shaping jobs to people who are already within an organization, and may require very different job classification and compensation structures.
Acker, Joan. (1990). Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), 139–158.
Duberman, M. B. (1972). Black Mountain: An exploration in community ([1st ed.].). Dutton.
Ferguson, K. E. (1984). The feminist case against bureaucracy. Temple University Press.
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