Call for papers - Animals and Organizations

Call for Papers

Animals and Organizations

Special Editors

Tiago Franca Barreto (UPE, Brazil)
Leticia Dias Fantinel (UFES, Brazil)
Bárbara Eduarda Nóbrega Bastos (UFPE, Brazil)

We present the present proposal as a pioneering initiative in Brazil, which adds to efforts that have only recently been developed in the field of Organizational Studies, which have been concentrated for less than a decade. Abroad, it is possible to map, in 2014, the creation of the subtheme "Animals and Organizations" in LAEMOS (Conference on Latin American and European Organization Studies); the same editors organized a special issue of the journal Organization, in May 2016; likewise, in 2016, we highlight the central theme of the SCOS (Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism) conference, entitled "The Animal" and, in 2017, with the theme "Meat". Also, related to the 2016 SCOS, a special issue was published in the journal Culture and Organization in 2018. In 2019, a special issue called "Organizing Animals" was published in the journal Gender, Work and Organization and in the same year the VI CBEO (Brazilian Congress of Organizational Studies) had a Working Group "Animals and Organizations". All these are examples of efforts made by research groups in different countries that signal the importance of discussing inter-species organized relationships, with special attention to non-human animals, the special focus of this proposal.

In this context, several criticisms of studies on management and organizations are shared: our field has been systematically silencing and denying the nonhuman animal, excluding it from organizational theory (Labatut, Munro & Desmond, 2016) and/or reducing it to categories corresponding to things or others, invisibilizing relations of exploitation and domination (sayers; hamilton; sang, 2019). In a context of increasing demands by organizations on nonhuman animals (Hannah & Robertson, 2017), the latter seem to be of interest to organizational practice only in the condition of passive and obedient objects to domestication - otherwise they will be summarily removed or discarded by human managers (Sage et al., 2016).

There is, however, a recent movement that, more than simply evidencing that animals are present in organizational practices, is concerned with contesting approaches that problematize the organizational phenomenon from the sole perspective of the humans that constitute it (Fantinel, 2020; Pina e Cunha, Rego & Munro, 2018; Sayers, 2015). One recognizes, for example, the limitations of the ontological human/non-human dichotomy, conventionally adopted in different researches, which assigns to other animals a problematic "intermediary" status both in our studies and in organizational practice (Doré & Michalon, 2017). Furthermore, we problematize dualistic perspectives that mark understandings about organizations and what is conventionally understood as nature (which oscillates, in this cosmovision inherited from Western modernity, between a homogeneous source of resources and a background to be abstractly preserved). Non-human animals, in this constantly intermediate position, would tend towards organization when domesticated and useful, and towards nature when wild and unmanageable. Such a vision has proven to be insufficient to capture imbrications and entanglements, so that it is fundamental to question and debate these categories as pre-existent, self-motivated, and independently existing entities.

Therefore, we emphasize that this call proposal seeks to articulate research agendas aligned with projects that are not only epistemic, but also ethical and political, in a way engaged in thinking ways of living and existing beyond the anthropocentrism that often marks the production of knowledge and organizational practices, especially in the context in which we live, characterized by planetary emergencies, environmental and climatic disasters, extinctions and pandemics. As proponents, we align ourselves to the sensibility propounded by Haraway (2008) in the search to overcome a representational or instrumental understanding that non-human animals would be "good for thinking" or "good for eating", but rather as "good for living with". In our different species, we are constituents of the material world, in entangled processes that imbricate our existences; and in these entanglements practices and organizational forms are also imbricated.

Thus, we are interested, with the organization of the call, in opening spaces and articulating networks of researchers dedicated to problematize such relations and that may contribute to the field of Organizational Studies, especially in the Brazilian context. Our proposal places itself as open to non-functionalist epistemologies (for this, the focus is directed to critical, interpretative works, etc.) that address the non-human animal in relation to organizational forms, practices and/or structures from different possibilities of approaches, which can come from recognized theories from the animalist perspective (e.g. Adams, 1990; Joy, 2012; Regan, 2001; Singer, 2009), but that can pass through other theoretical fields, such as the Dark Side of organizations (Barreto et al, 2017), Actor-Network Theory (Doré & Michalon, 2017), the post-humanist debate (Knight & Sang, 2019) or reciprocal ontologies (Haraway, 2011). The proposal is, likewise, that we remain open to diverse ontological approaches to what the organizational phenomenon is, also including procedural perspectives on organizing.

Our proposal, in this sense, is that paper submissions will be open to a variety of topics and themes, including (but not restricting) the following

- Animal ethics, animal law, animal exploitation and extinction;
- Emergence of new moralities about non-human animals in human societies and their impacts on organizations;
- Philosophical and ideological issues about animal consumption;
- Vegetarianism, veganism, "clean" diets and raw foods, the markets and the commodification of these practices;
- Industrialization of animal production: technologies of capitalism, globalization and animals;
- The Dark side of the animal exploitation industry: corruption, corporate crimes, fraud, concealment, and distortions of reality about the treatment of animals;
- Food industry scandals (e.g., mad cow, horse meat, Operation Weak Meat) and agricultural/food alternatives;
- Animals and technologies: animal experimentation, guinea pig production and alternative testing;
- Social and environmental impacts of animal production for human consumption;
- Animal rights organizations, social movements and intersectionality: the links between the animal rights movement and other emancipatory organizations;
- Relations between animal exploitation and human labor precarity in the animal industry;
- Dirty work, workers in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants: physical and psychological effects on workers in these industries;
- Analysis of new and classic organizational metaphors such as bovine type man (ideal man), capital (cattle head), market sharks, etc.;
- The influence of consumers and society on the livestock industry: conscious consumption, boycott, direct action, influence of changes in legislation;
- Sanitary crises, public biosecurity policies, organized responses to zoonoses, zoonotic epidemics and pandemics;
- Social, historical and cultural constructions of certain animals as pests, organized relations with animals called vectors and reservoirs of disease;
- Pet industry, new markets, emerging professions and occupations related to pet animals;
- Animal labor and the animal as a labor force in urban and rural contexts;
- Management of animal populations in urban and wild environments, management of sanctuaries and environmental conservation and preservation areas;
- Organized relations with the animal show for human entertainment: circuses, zoos, agricultural exhibitions, sports, aquariums, cowboys, rodeos;
- Gender relations and the animal: production of masculinities and femininities in the organization of food, consumption of meat and animal substances, animal protection, hunting, etc.;
- Animal organizations and extinctions in the Anthropocene: catastrophes, disasters.
- Critiques of anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism and the dualism humanity/animality in organizational theory;
- Epistemologies and methodologies that allow problematizing organized relations with non-human animals beyond the condition of object.
... and so on.

While coated by historical, instrumental, ethical, cultural, material and symbolic aspects, which permeate and are inserted in organizational forms and processes, the human-animal relationship highlights its importance as a field and locus of investigation in Organizational Studies. Be it in the scope of human-animal work, of the new markets, relations, professions and occupations produced around the relations with non-human animals, of the relation with living and dead animal bodies in the sphere of production, management and consumption, of the instrumentalization of these bodies as objects of laboratory experimentation or spectacularization, of the so-called management of animal populations, among other possibilities.

We understand, therefore, that the theme has great relevance for our field; furthermore, the possibility of publishing a thematic dossier on the subject will contribute a lot to the field in the sense of articulating researchers dedicated to such debates, and once again will reinforce Farol as a vanguard journal in the discussion and visibility of innovative and non-hegemonic themes and approaches in Organizational Studies.

References

Adams, Carol J. (1990). The sexual politics of meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York: Bloomsburry Revelations.

Barreto, Tiago F., Bacelar, Denise F., Lima, Maria H. C. C. A., Feitosa, Marcos, G. G., & Lorêto, Myrna S. S. (2017). “Soltem os beagles”: desvelando o dark side das organizações a partir da perspectiva da ética animal. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Organizacionais, 4(1), 279-319.

Doré, Antoine & Michalon, Jérôme (2017). What makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’? The de-scription of anthrozootechnical agencements. Organization, 24(6), 761-780.

Fantinel, Leticia D. (2020). O organizar multiespécie da cidade. In Luiz Alex S. Saraiva & Ana Silvia R. Ipiranga (Orgs.). História, práticas sociais e gestão das/nas cidades (pp. 297-344). Ituiutaba: Barlavento.

Hannah, David R. & Robertson, Kirsten (2016). Human-animal work: a massive, understudied domain of human activity. Journal of Management Inquiry, 26(1), 116-118.

Haraway, Donna J. (2011). A partilha do sofrimento: relações instrumentais entre animais de laboratório e sua gente. Horizontes Antropológicos, 17(35), 27-64.

Haraway, Donna J. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Joy, Melanie (2012). Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows: an introduction to carnism, the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others. Newark: Audible.

Knight, Charles & Sang, Kate (2019). ‘At home, he’s a pet, at work he’s a colleague and my right arm’: police dogs and the emerging posthumanist agenda. Culture and Organization, 355-371.

Labatut, Julie, Munro, Iain, & Desmond, John (2016). Animals and organizations. Organization, 23(3), 315-329.

Pina e Cunha, Miguel, Rego, António, & Munro, Iain (2018). Dogs in organizations. Human Relations, 72(4), 778-800.

Regan, Tom (2001). Defending animal rights. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

Sage, Daniel, Justesen, Lise, Dainty, Andrew, Kjell Tryggestad, & Jan Mouritsen (2016). Organizing space and time through relational human–animal boundary work: Exclusion, invitation and disturbance. Organization, 23(3), 434-450.

Sayers, Janet G. (2015). A report to an academy: on carnophallogocentrism, pigs and meat-writing. Organization, 23(3), 370-386.

Sayers, Janet, Hamilton, Lindsay, Sang, Kate (2019). Organizing animals: species, gender and power at work. Gender, Work & Organization, 26(3), 239-245.

Singer, Peter (2009). Animal liberation: the definitive classic of the animal movement. New York: Harper Collins.

Modalities of Contribution

Farol - Revista de Estudos Organizacionais e Sociedade accepts contributions in the form of Covers, Articles, Essays, Debates, Provocations, Interviews, Testimonials, Reviews (of books, films, exhibitions, artistic performances), Photographic and Video records. The languages accepted in the contributions are Portuguese, English and Spanish, as long as they are in accordance with the editorial policy and guidelines for authors. To access the general guidelines, go to: https://revistas.face.ufmg.br/index.php/farol/about/submissions.

Submission

Whatever the type of contribution (Covers, Articles, Essays, Debates, Provocations, Interviews, Testimonials, Reviews, Photographs or Videos), authors should inform the editor, in the item "Comments to editor", that they are submitting specifically for the thematic issue "Animals and Organizations". To submit contributions, go to: https://revistas.face.ufmg.br/index.php/farol/index.

Deadline

The deadline for contributions to the "Animals and Organizations" thematic issue is November 14, 2022 (Monday).

Further information

If you have any questions about this special issue, please contact the special editors: Tiago Franca Barreto (tiagoefebarreto@gmail.com), Leticia Dias Fantinel (leticiafantinel@gmail.com), or Bárbara Eduarda Nóbrega Bastos (barbarabastos@outlook.com). For questions about the journal itself, contact the editorial office (farol@face.ufmg.br).