Call for papers - WORK, CAREER AND FAMILY IN INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Call for papers
WORK, CAREER AND FAMILY IN INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Special Editors
Aline Mendonça Fraga (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil)
Cláudia Sirangelo Eccel Alvim (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Josiane Silva de Oliveira (State University of Maringá and Federal University of Goiás, Brazil)
Does work have color? Does a career have gender? Is a family a nuclear organization? There is evidence that professions and careers individually and collectively tend to reproduce inequalities, produce identities, reinforce stereotypes, sexisms, or even serve as a way to (re)affirm sexuality. Moreover, work spaces, fields of action, and professional trajectories are marked by color, language, and represent their own social hierarchies. Thus, work, career, and profession, from local to global, are historical, dynamic, and changing fields. Organizations, occupations, and trajectories of the most varied kinds are plural arrangements, speaking and silencing the individual and the collective. Thus, it is necessary to understand how intersectional social categories are sociohistorically articulated in the formation of fields of work, occupations, and career paths that constitute social subjects.
Moreover, it is necessary to consider that the weaving of these relationships between work and career is constituted from the institutional dynamics of society, such as families. In Brazil, for example, historically the labor market was forged based on a process of slavery of the black population by the white population, whose dynamics had at its core the non-recognition of black men and women from their human condition, but as labor pieces. In fact, it was denied by the white population the recognition of this social group the field of possibilities of affective constitution from family ties (Gonzalez, 2020; Schucman, 2018; Davis, 2016). This justified, therefore, the economic transaction of these people as commodities without any kind of affective bond and/or kinship with other human existences, being individual pieces of the labor market. In this sense, how to think about the relations between work and career in societies whose organizational process has as its constitutive basis the family break as a founding assumption of its labor dynamics, based on racial conflicts?
This process, which marks capitalism globally, leads us to reflect on how historically discussions about work, career and family have silenced structural debates in society and, more specifically, theoretical productions made outside the logic of the hegemonic thought of Western whiteness (Bento, 2022). This becomes necessary, especially in countries marked by racialized slavery as the basis for the constitution of labor relations, since in these societies it is the breaks in family ties that mark the construction of the labor market.
In Brazil, it should be noted that approximately 48% of the families are under the responsibility of women. This percentage increases to 55.5% when referring to black women, being 56% without a spouse (IPEA, 2022). Thus, it is possible to understand the need to consider the articulations between work, career, and family from an approach that makes it possible to understand the specificities of societies shaped by racialized slavery, such as Brazil, which can be observed in relation to black feminist epistemologies.
In Brazil the discussions about the field of black feminist epistemologies formed by intellectuals such as Beatriz Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez, Luiza Bairros, Conceição Evaristo, Sueli Carneiro, and Megg Oliveira are articulated with the production of American intellectuals such as Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks, for example. The construction of this epistemological field, still little recognized in the area of Applied Social Sciences in Brazil, especially Organizational Studies, makes it possible to recognize how, historically, these intellectuals have scientifically produced an analytical repertoire on mechanisms of oppression that deny the right to existence to millions of people in the world in favor of maintaining a social system of privileges to a few (Braga & Izaú, 2021). Therefore, it is necessary that those who experience these oppressions be recognized existentially in their fullness, which includes their places as producers of scientific knowledge.
In the feminist political struggle, Black feminism contributes by developing an intersectional analytical approach to oppressions and privileges in different socio-historical contexts, highlighting how social categories are articulated from local singularities in the constitution of relations of domination and oppression. This is what Lélia Gonzales has highlighted in her scientific and intellectual trajectory by analyzing the racial conflicts that structure and organize labor relations in Brazil, just as Patricia Hill Collins and Angela Davis, in different epistemological fields, also do in the U.S. context. Building a debate on work, career and family based on intersectional epistemological and methodological assumptions becomes a challenge of analytical sophistication for Organizational Studies to the extent that its adoption can break with the epistemicide (Nascimento, 2016) of non-white thought in organizational analyses, with white supremacism in the epistemological construction of this field, as well as the recognition of scientific productions that, more than in diaspora, has in its essence a collective construction that transcends territorial limits and borders. The struggles to break structural oppressions are more than analytical categories for intersectional black feminism, for they are projects of social construction, which presupposes the modes of scientific production.
And it is from these discussions that we intend to stimulate intersectional debates on work, career and family in Organizational Studies, which recognize structural oppressions as grounds for articulating these social phenomena. Thus, this thematic dossier hopes to stimulate the production of theoretical and empirical studies that address work, career and family in an interdisciplinary manner and from an intersectional perspective. Gender, sexuality, color, race, ethnicity, body, social class, age, nationality, and regionality produce differences that make a difference in work relations, from movements of insertion, inclusion, and exclusion. Thus, they are paths to explore, but not limited to:
- How are labor relations, jobs, and careers marked by hierarchies of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality?
- How are jobs and careers engendered by family hierarchies?
- How do different family arrangements impact work and career relationships?
- How are work and career privileges intersected by family hierarchies?
- How are work and career privileges imbricated by racialized slave heritage?
- How are work and careers entangled by racialized privilege/advantage?
- How professions/careers are constituted by hierarchies of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality?
- How do fields of work transform over time creating new spaces of inclusion and exclusion?
- How are professions/careers occupied by people who break with established and hegemonic patterns in work relations?
- How can work methodologically on work, career and family in an inter-sectional way?
References
Bento, C. (2022). O pacto da branquitude. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Braga, A. F. & Izaú, V. R. (2021). Da revolta da vacina ao povo sem vacina contra a covid-19: reflexões sobre pandemia, raça e exclusão social. Farol – Revista de Estudos Organizacionais e Sociedade, 8(21), 12-21.
Carneiro, S. (2003). Enegrecer o feminismo: a situação da mulher negra na América Latina a partir de uma perspectiva de gênero. In Ashoka Empreendedores Sociais e Takano Cidadania (Orgs.). Racismos contemporâneos (pp. 49-58). Rio de Janeiro: Takano.
Davis, A. (2016). Mulheres, raça e classe. São Paulo: Boitempo.
Gonzales, L. (2020). Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas Aplicadas – IPEA. Retrato das desigualdades de gênero e raça. Recuperado em 19 dezembro, 2022 de: Retrato das Desigualdades de Gênero e Raça - Ipea.
Nascimento, A. N. (2016). O genocídio do negro brasileiro: processo de um racismo mascarado. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Schucman, L. V. (2018). Família inter-raciais: tensões entre cor e amor. Salvador: UFBA.
Modalities of Contribution
Farol – Journal of Organization Studies and Society 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 must inform the editor, in the item "Comments to editor", that they are submitting specifically for the thematic dossier "Work, career and family in intersectional perspective". To submit contributions, go to: https://revistas.face.ufmg.br/index.php/farol/index.
Deadline
The deadline for contributions to the thematic dossier "Work, career and family in intersectional perspective" thematic issue is November 27, 2023 (Monday).
Further information
If you have any questions about this thematic dossier, please contact the special editors: Aline Mendonça Fraga (alinemf.adm@gmail.com), Cláudia Sirangelo Eccel Alvim (claudia.eccel@ufrgs.br), or Josiane Silva de Oliveira (oliveira.josianesilva@gmail.com). For questions about the journal itself, contact the editorial office (farol@face.ufmg.br).
