“Woman” on the move: mobile subjectivities after intersectionality

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-05-2012-0037
• Published date: 04 November 2013
• Pages: 708-731
• Date: 04 November 2013
• Author: Marta B. Calás,Han Ou,Linda Smircich

“Woman”on the move: mobile

subjectivities after

intersectionality

Marta B. Cala

´s, Han Ou and Linda Smircich

Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

Massachusetts, USA

Abstract

Purpose –The paper originated in challenges trying to theorize and research practices and processes

of actors engaged in transnational activities for business and everyday life. Key concern was the

assumption that actors’ identities remain the same regardless of time/space. While intersectional

analysis once seemed a reasonable analytical approach the authors wondered about starting from

identity-based categorical schemes in a world where mobility may be ever more the ontological status

of everyday experiences and social structuring. Thus, the paper addresses limitations of intersectional

analysis in such situations and advances its recasting via mobile conceptualizations, redressing its

analytical purchase for contemporary subject fo rmation.

Design/methodology/approach – Discusses emergence of intersectionality at a particular point in

time, its success and proliferation, and more recent critiques of these ideas. Develops alternative

conceptualization – mobile subjectivities – via literatures on mobilities in the context of globalization.

Illustrates the value of these arguments with ethnographic examples from a multi-sited ethnographic

project and analyses. Concludes by examining implications for new feminist theo rizations under

neoliberalism and globalization.

Findings – Observing the constitution of a “mobile selfhood” in actual transnational business

activities is a step toward making sense of complex processes in contemporary subject formation

under globalized market neoliberalism.

Research limitations/implications – “Mobile subjectivities” suggest that analyses of

oppression and subordination must be ongoing, no matter which “new subjectivities” may appear

under “the latest regime.”

Originality/value – Theoretical and empirical analyses facilitated a reconceptualization of

intersectionality as a mobile, precarious, and transitory accomplishment of selfhood temporarily fixed

by the neoliberal rhetoric of “choice” and “self-empowerment.” This is of particular value for

understanding transnational practices and processes of contempo rary organizational actors.

Keywords Intersectionality, Globalization, Neoliberalism, Mobile subjectivities,

Post-identitarianism, Transnational processes

Paper type Research paper

The practices by which mobile subjectivities produce their provisional identities open up the

possibility of producing against the grain, of participating on the daily practices that mark

gender, race, and class in an unpredictable way, on a slant, and thus making a difference.

Even the most hegemonic insistences that we be a certain way must be negotiated, not simply

absorbed and regurgitated. Local possibilities for undoing and re-doing naturalized identity

claims are a starting point (not a final resting place) enabling mobile subjectivities to do their

work (Ferguson, 1993, pp. 162-163).

1. Introduction

This paper has its origins in challenges faced in trying to theorize and research

organizing practices and processes of actorsengaged in transnational businessactivities

as part of their everyday lives. One key issue of concern to us was the prevalent

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

Received 1 May 2012

Revised 1 December 2012

1 May 2013

21 May 2013

Accepted 28 May 2013

Equality, Diversityand Inc lusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 32 No. 8, 2013

pp. 708-731

rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI -05-2012-0037

708

EDI

32,8

assumption in our field of research that as these actors move from one place to another

they nonetheless remain the same. That is, the common assumption is that identity is

fixed regardless of time and place. Thus, for several years we have been developing a

project to come to terms with the implications of this assumption. Specifically, we have

been following Amy Sun (a pseudonym), a woman originally from China but now a US

resident, who started and operates a transnational business in the education sector.

At first the businesswas based only in the USA but shehas since extended it to China as

part of her entrepreneurial “business plan” and is considering furtherexpansion to other

Asian countries. As we have gottento know her better – or so we think – weobserve that

she is a “woman” alwayson the move; a Chinese woman to many of thosewho would see

her on the street in New England; an immigrant woman to her neighbors; an American

woman when she meets an important corporate executive in Shanghai; a hard worker

making ends meet to support her extended family; a powerful entrepreneur in Beijing;

a millionaire to those who encounter her business activities, etc.

How can we understand and represent or write about who Amy, in all her

multiplicity and mobility, “is”? Evidently, for us “who ‘is’ she?” was not the right

question, but in many business fields, such as transnational entrepreneurship, the “is”

is implied. Thus, we wanted to explore and articulate this issue further. While the

possibility of intersectional analyses once seemed like a reasonable approach for doing

so, we have become uneasy about their potential in certain situations, such as in

analyses of some mobile populations who at first grasp seem privileged rather than

subordinated. Thus, in this paper we first address what we now believe are limitations

of intersectional analyses in situations such as these – limitations others have

already noted more generally about this approach to analyses. However, we also

believe “intersectionality” can be recast and reposition ed in ways that may redress its

analytical purchase, and that such redress, via conceptualizatio ns of mobility, would be

particularly valuable for broader understanding of contemp orary subject formation.

The paper unfolds as follows: in the first section we briefly discuss the emergence and

proliferation of the notion of intersectionality at a particular point in time in the history of

feminist thought in the USA. However, we also note recent critiques of these ideas, often

indicating key limitations for the purposes originally intended. In the second section, we

describe an alternative conceptualization for our project – mobile subjectivities – already

prefigured by the epigraph from Kathy Ferguson’s (1993) original formulation. In so doing,

we recognize as well the need for grounding this alternative in additional conceptual and

empirical support. Toward this end, we extend notions of mobile subjectivities via

linkages to contemporary literatures on mobilities – i.e., “the mobile turn” – in the context

of globalization. Conceptualizations of subjectivity formation from mobilities scholarship

and associated critiques of western epistemologies, we note, converge with current

feminist conceptualizations of the subject under globalized capitalism and neoliberalism.

In this section, thus, we begin to address a possible resignification of “intersectionality” in

more contemporary terms as transitory accomplishment of selfhood for translocal

subjectivities. We illustrate the value of these theoretical arguments in the third section

with ethnographic examples from our project, which are next analyzed through the

conceptual premises already developed. In the concluding section we briefly examine

implications for new feminist theorizations of the subject under neoliberalism.

2. Intersectionality and its discontents

Since the late 1980s feminist theorizing has produced several notions helpful for

rethinking questions of identity and agency after the postmodern and discursive tur ns,

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“Woman”

on the move