Dr Maria Daskalaki

In this paper, we propose that the reproduction of labour-power, achieved through the expropriation of women’s work at home and in the community, is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. Capitalist structures of exploitation rely heavily on undervaluing women’s and other marginalised peoples’ work, specifically tasks related to social reproduction and care. In this paper, we assess the effects of COVID-19 remedial state policies on the re-organisation of care and working lives during the pandemic within the UK, an example of a neoliberal regime with an individualist approach to responsibility for care. Drawing on data from the European H2020 project RESISTIRÉ (RESpondIng to outbreakS through co-creaTIve inclusive equality stRatEgies), we first assess the policies brought in by the UK government in response to the pandemic from a gender perspective, with a particular focus on the extent to which the work-care nexus has been considered. We then draw on the personal narratives of women in the UK, who were differentially affected by the pandemic, to analyse the lived experiences of this policy context and the challenges faced in ‘reconciling’ paid work and care. These experiences demonstrate that any attempt to effectively respond to and reverse structural inequalities needs to address the dynamic interrelationship of paid and unpaid work, and particularly unpaid care work that women undertake at home and beyond. This is crucial in our attempt to challenge neoliberal capitalist organising, transform societies and build a fairer, more inclusive post-pandemic future.

This special issue (SI) contributes to a growing body of work in the fields of management and organization studies focusing on the complex relationship between social reproduction and inequalities in paid work and organizations. In this introduction to the SI, we first identify three key areas of inquiry relevant to the study of social reproduction: challenging the boundaries of productive and reproductive labor; inequalities and exploitation; and alternative organizing. We then present the seven papers of the SI that draw on research from Australia, South America, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US to contribute to the aforementioned areas, foregrounding distinctive social reproduction dynamics manifesting in the household and alternative organizations (cooperatives), and facilitated by state policies. Based on these contributions, we propose an agenda for future research on social reproduction that aims to address the persistence and potential transformation of the existing gender, class, and race orders. We call for future studies exploring changing parenthood roles and how these affect the organization of re/production tasks; for research revealing and investigating underlying inequalities (re)produced by public policy; for analyses of existing and potential forms of feminist alternative organizing, and how these are sometimes hindered by heteropatriarchal structures; and for the study of social reproduction dynamics across cultural, socioeconomic and political contexts.

Drawing on narrative accounts of French business school staff and faculty about their experiences and observations of actions taken by different organisational actors in response to a trigger event, we theorise the intricate connections between organisational practices conducive to sexism and the persistence of silence around such practices. Specifically, empirical investigation demonstrates how managerial practices such as the allocation of organisational tasks and valorisation of individual contributions prompt organisational members to assume a variety of stances towards gender issues. The enactment of these stances in various interactions provokes organisational counteraction in the form of sanctions, the establishment of a hermetic and formulaic communication regime, and public reinforcement of meritocratic narratives. This results in silence around organisational sexism manifesting as a collective and individual inability and unwillingness to react. This study contributes to a broader and rapidly developing literature on sexism in academic settings and the phenomenon of silencing in organisations by shedding light on the mechanisms of its persistence.

Keywords: Sexism, business school, silencing, France

This paper draws on feminist geographies of space, proposing a feminist critical spatial practice approach to study social movement organizing. Inspired by the work of Jane Rendell (2008; 2016), a feminist theorist and architectural historian, we propose embodiment, materiality, affectivity, and alterity as co-constitutive of feminist organizing. Specifically, we prioritize the intertwining of space and body in resisting extractivism, to analyze visual artefacts produced by artists/activists who have joined the anti-extractivist struggle against mining in Northern Greece, Chalkidiki area. In particular, we focus on how bodies transgress and reconstitute space by affecting its materiality during artistic performances. We argue that the protesting (moving and ensounded) body enacts affective solidarities and invites collective action against exploitative neoliberal regimes. Finally, the article brings together body-land territory and territorial-community feminism literature to enrich our understanding of spatial practices of resistance against neoliberal extractivist regimes while highlighting the role of emotions and affect as a means of mobilizing for action and maintaining momentum.

Building on emerging research on women's careers and precarious employment, we conducted a longitudinal qualitative study of 16 young, educated women over two years in the Greek post-crisis economy. Using the career construction theory, we trace their career trajectories and the subjective meanings attached to their career transitions. We find evidence of five career narratives, reflecting the trajectories followed and meanings attributed in pursuit of stable employment. In each narrative we observe situational constraints and coping responses as the women respond to threats to their professional identities. Each trajectory is more cyclical than linear, comprised of activities reflecting the goals pursued at the time. We observe the dysfunctional effects of persistent old career identities along with resilient adjustment and pursuit of new identities. Results advance our understanding of career decisions in the context of economic crisis. They also underscore the need to contextualize the study of career narratives over time as they change in accordance with shifting personal goals and opportunities.

The global financial crisis has triggered a dramatic transformation of employment in the weakest Eurozone economies. This is evidenced in deteriorating work conditions, limited employee negotiating power, low pay, zero-hours contracts and, most importantly, periods of prolonged unemployment for most of the working population, especially women. We offer a critical analysis of the boundaries of formal and informal, paid and unpaid, productive and reproductive work, and explore how austerity policies implemented in Greece in the aftermath of the global financial crisis have transformed women's everyday lives. In contributing to critical discussions of neoliberal capitalism and recent feminist geography studies, our empirical study focuses on how women's struggles over social reproduction unfold in the public and private spheres. It proposes that women's temporary retreat to unpaid work at home constitutes a form of resistance to intensifying precarisation, and, at times, contributes to the emergence of new collective forms of reproduction.

Although organization and management scholars are beginning to research opposition and dissent emerging in response to the global financial crisis, there are few accounts or feminist analyses of social movements and women's mobilizations as an important part of these movements. We address this gap by considering a case of women activists opposing extractivist mining in Chalkidiki, Greece, to demonstrate their crucial role in initiating and organizing resistance within their communities. Drawing theoretical inspiration from social reproduction theory and the literature on embodied protest as a form of political action, we argue that women use diverse means to promote the politics of visibility, erasing public and private distinctions as they defend their communities' right to live in unpolluted environments. By way of contribution, we enhance understanding of the role of affective embodiment as a foundation for activist feminist practices; develop a theory of the protesting body altering spatial relations as a means to oppose the neoliberal assault on life and environment; and suggest how this might prefigure new political practices in the context of social movements. We identify the implications of this theorization and call for academics' deeper sustained engagement in activism.

This article discusses solidarity economy initiatives as instances of grassroots organizing, and explores how 'values practices' are performed collectively during times of crisis. In focusing on how power, discourse and subjectivities are negotiated in the everyday practices of grassroots exchange networks (GENs) in crisis-stricken Greece, the study unveils and discusses three performances of values practices, namely mobilization of values, re-articulation of social relations, and sustainable living. Based on these findings, and informed by theoretical analyses of performativity, we propose a framework for studying the production and reproduction of values in the context of GENs, and the role of values in organizing alternatives.

This paper offers a spatial conceptualization of resistance by focusing on the practices through which solidarity initiatives constitute new resistance socio-spatialities. We discuss two solidarity initiatives in Greece, WCNA and Vio.Me.SI, and explore how they institute distinctive local and translocal organizational practices that make the production of new forms of resistance possible. In particular, we adopt a productive and transformative view of resistance. First, we identify three local practices of organizing solidarity initiatives, namely, the organization of general assembly meetings, the constitution of resistance laboratories and the (re)articulation of socio-spatial relations in local sites. Then, we turn to flows, movements and translocal social formations, and examine the role of solidarity mobilizations, the material and symbolic co-production of resources and members{\textquoteright} mobility in the production of resistance. We conclude that new resistance socio-spatialities become constitutive of a broader reconfiguration of political agencies, a creative process that challenges existing relations and invites alternative ways of working and organizing.

This paper draws on research conducted in Greece, where, during the last seven years, an acute socio-economic crisis has led to the emergence of a number of alternative organizational forms. By foregrounding the term drasis, the unexpected unfolding of an event in a specific space and time, we discuss how these alternative forms assemble differential capacities in order to resist the neoliberal ordering of socio-spatial and economic relations. In particular, we focus on two self-organized spaces, namely, a social centre and a squatted public garden and discuss two concrete instances of drasis. We propose that drasis instigates the establishment and evolution of transformative, prefigurative organizing through three interrelated processes, namely, the formation of resistance assemblages, social learning and socio-spatial solidarity. The paper offers three propositions, suggesting that drasis provides the socio-material conditions through which new resistance formations challenge the established productive forces of society and co-produce alternative forms of civic life. 

This article discusses the de/construction of liminal identities in relation to translocal patterns of work. Through a phenomenological analysis of three autobiographical narratives, it informs management and organization studies, discussing liminality and translocality as embedded and embodied phenomena experienced in relational, spatio-temporal, and inter-corporeal levels. In particular, the article proposes that a post-dichotomous conceptualization of place and non-place, self and other, and fixity and mobility unveils the complexities of studying identity, liminality, and translocality as interrelated phenomena. Liminal identities are explored as socio-spatial, temporary crystallizations of translocal bodily experiences, disrupted by differentially embodying displacements and emplacements across space–time. Finally, we suggest that translocal socio-spatial scales are inter-corporeal performances that challenge both material and immaterial boundaries. The article concludes with the contributions of this work to identity, liminality, and translocality studies and a discussion of future research directions.

The article discusses what we term urban social formations and expands on prior work that predominantly examines urban 'subcultures' as opposed to the world city paradigm and homogeneous cityscapes. We describe the process of 'subculturalization' through which urban social formations, after they have been marginalized and illegalized, become formalized as subcultures and incorporated into the fabric of consumption and profit making. The article proposes that these ossified moments of crystallized practice are only part of wider rhizomatic territories that remain open fields for urban engagement, inviting fluid urban identities and creative states of becoming. The article concludes by exploring the challenges and opportunities of conceptualizing urban social formations as rhizomes.

The article contributes to the literature on organizational discourse, metaphors, and change, by providing an empirical account of how the discursive translation of imposed metaphors that takes place during organizational entry shapes organization realities for new employees and redefines the concept of organizational entry. A recontextualized organizational entry can potentially provide the discursive space necessary for organizational change to occur. New employee induction is a process, the article proposes, during which situated discourses construct an environment that surfaces current organizational assumptions and invites new interpretations to emerge. This environment or space can become a reflexive, interventionist arena for jointly effecting proactive change initiatives and dialogical organizational development.

This paper presents a discussion of network identity in relation to the processes of network transformation in the creative industries. Employing the case of semi-permanent work patterns prevalent in creative projects, the paper suggests that repeated collaborations across projects result in volatile cultural and structural relations among network members. Transformations in patterns of relating are linked with shifts in network identity and members{\textquoteright} perceived creative potential. Future work could empirically test whether an optimal mix or a pattern of affective bonding and anti-conformist bridging could be linked to creative potential in semi-permanent work teams.