Yes / John Austin introduced the formulation “performative utterance” in his 1962 book How to do things with words. This term and the related concept of performativity have subsequently been interpreted in numerous ways by social scientists and philosophers such as Lyotard, Butler, Callon, or Barad, leading to the co-existence of several foundational perspectives on performativity. In this paper we review and evaluate critically how organization and management theory (OMT) scholars have used these perspectives, and how the power of performativity has, or has not, stimulated new theory-building. In performing a historical and critical review of performativity in OMT, our analysis reveals the uses, abuses and under-uses of the concept by OMT scholars. It also reveals the lack of both organizational conceptualizations of performativity and analysis of how performativity is organized. Ultimately our aim is to provoke a ‘performative turn’ in OMT by unleashing the power of the performativity concept to generate new and stronger organizational theories.

This study traces the history of how farmers have used technologies from the eighteenth century to the present to form identities, not simply as ways of making greater economic profits. Using technologies becomes a way to 'perform' a person's sense of him or herself. This insight serves historians because it suggests that users, not just important inventors, drive technological change. My study also suggests that the relationship people have with technology (and how they use it to form their identities) has historical genealogies. Engineers and business people will also find my history useful because the notion of 'performative use' means that people's views of themselves can influence the way they adopt and employ technologies. Policy scholars will gain from my study because I show that the way people use technology to understand themselves has consequences in determining how they participate in controversies over science and technology policy. This narrative begins in the eighteenth century by analyzing how elites like Benjamin Rush viewed the agricultural practices of German farmers, regarded by many in the upper classes as backwards. I show how observances of German farmers by elites created a pattern repeated throughout American history where rural people would use technology to perform their identities for an outside observer. In addition, I describe an identity, which I call 'German agrarianism,' and contend that this rural self-image migrated to the Midwest when German farmers moved westward. German agrarianism had several important features including the association of morality with family-based production practices, an obsession with owning personal property, the inclusion of women in farming and land ownership, and the practice of performing identity through the use of material objects. Next, I describe a rural identity with English origins, one that other scholars have named 'Jeffersonian agrarianism.' This Jeffersonian identity saw farmers as heroes who conquered the frontier, preserved American democracy, and supported less moral urban dwellers. I argue that Jeffersonian agrarianism in the nineteenth century began to reject technological and social change and that this view of rural people as anti-modern has influenced the way observers of rural life have viewed farmers up to the present. This study then analyzes the rural-urban conflict of the 1920s, contending that farmers used technologies to develop their own rural modern identity, which I call 'rural capitalistic modernity.' Farmers used technology this way to combat a version of modernity, which I name 'urban industrialism.' This modern identity, arising from the cities, advocated improving rural life by making farms resemble urban factories. This factory model threatened German and Jeffersonian rural identities that existed prior to the 1920s because it removed the family as the center of production and advocated work processes that took control and property ownership away from farmers. In addition, urban industrialism saw farmers as backward and in need of reform, which offended farmers who saw themselves in heroic terms as a result of Jeffersonian agrarianism. I argue that many rural people in the 1920s used technology to perform an identity of rural capitalistic modernity as a means of combating these urban efforts to restructure farms as factories and stereotype farmers as 'yokels' or 'rubes.' This rural modern identity became reinforced during the Cold War because the farmer saw Soviet collectivized agriculture as posing the same threats as previous urban industrialism. In addition, the way farmers used technology to reinforce their views of themselves as modern became valuable to government actors in the United States who saw increased agricultural production as a weapon in defeating the Soviet Union. By the 1970s, farmers formed an identity called 'rural ultramodernity' in which they began to think of themselves as more modern than urban dwellers because of their design and use of advanced technologies and their role as producers in the global food network. This ultramodern identity incorporates aspects of previous rural identities, including an obsession with combating urban stereotypes of farmers as 'hicks.' In addition, this rural ultramodern identity views farmers as having an inborn modernity inherited from previous generations of farmers. I argue that this ultramodern way farmers think of themselves explains why rural people in the Midwest have embraced the erection of wind turbines, unlike residents of other regions in the U.S. From a policy perspective, this study also contends that debates over science and technology, such as efforts to render agriculture more sustainable and organic, are impacted by unexpressed fundamental views about nature and morality. Statements about these controversies often take the form of proxy arguments that sound 'rational' but mask these unstated ideas, and they often alienate those with opposing views. Current debates over genetically modified organisms, from a rural perspective, are actually unspoken clashes over rural ultramodern and organic identities hidden by 'objective' points made by both sides involving science or economics. This study also challenges the common notion that technology and production are male domains by showing how both men and women have used technology to construct their identities as producers on Midwest farms. This insight illustrates how disagreements over gender roles underlie current policy debates about agriculture. Farmers view organic discourse as threatening rural women's identities as modern producers by framing farming as an immoral, industrial, and male domination of a moral and female nature. Rural people view organic discourse as carrying on the tradition of urban industrialism, which saw farmers as backwards and farm women as unhappy and occupying an exclusively domestic sphere. This study suggests that any effort to reform agriculture must include farmers and incorporate the way rural people use technologies to form and reinforce their identities. At the same time, the conclusion advocates for a new rural identity that avoids farmer's tendencies to view all technologies as 'progress' regardless of their environmental or social impacts. / Ph. D. / This study traces the history of how farmers have used technologies from the eighteenth century to the present to form identities, not simply as ways of making greater economic profits. Using technologies becomes a way to “perform” a person’s sense of him or herself. This insight serves historians because it suggests that users, not just important inventors, drive technological change. My study also suggests that the relationship people have with technology (and how they use it to form their identities) has historical genealogies. Engineers and business people will also find my history useful because the notion of “performative use” means that people’s views of themselves can influence the way they adopt and employ technologies. Policy scholars will gain from my study because I show that the way people use technology to understand themselves has consequences in determining how they participate in controversies over science and technology policy. This narrative begins in the eighteenth century by analyzing how elites like Benjamin Rush viewed the agricultural practices of German farmers, regarded by many in the upper classes as backwards. I show how observances of German farmers by elites created a pattern repeated throughout American history where rural people would use technology to perform their identities for an outside observer. In addition, I describe an identity, which I call “German agrarianism,” and contend that this rural self-image migrated to the Midwest when German farmers moved westward. German agrarianism had several important features including the association of morality with family-based production practices, an obsession with owning personal property, the inclusion of women in farming and land ownership, and the practice of performing identity through the use of material objects. Next, I describe a rural identity with English origins, one that other scholars have named “Jeffersonian agrarianism.” This Jeffersonian identity saw farmers as heroes who conquered the frontier, preserved American democracy, and supported less moral urban dwellers. I argue that Jeffersonian agrarianism in the nineteenth century began to reject technological and social change and that this view of rural people as anti-modern has influenced the way observers of rural life have viewed farmers up to the present. This study then analyzes the rural-urban conflict of the 1920s, contending that farmers used technologies to develop their own rural modern identity, which I call “rural capitalistic modernity.” Farmers used technology this way to combat a version of modernity, which I name “urban industrialism.” This modern identity, arising from the cities, advocated improving rural life by making farms resemble urban factories. This factory model threatened German and Jeffersonian rural identities that existed prior to the 1920s because it removed the family as the center of production and advocated work processes that took control and property ownership away from farmers. In addition, urban industrialism saw farmers as backward and in need of reform, which offended farmers who saw themselves in heroic terms as a result of Jeffersonian agrarianism. I argue that many rural people in the 1920s used technology to perform an identity of rural capitalistic modernity as a means of combating these urban efforts to restructure farms as factories and stereotype farmers as “yokels” or “rubes.” This rural modern identity became reinforced during the Cold War because the farmer saw Soviet collectivized agriculture as posing the same threats as previous urban industrialism. In addition, the way farmers used technology to reinforce their views of themselves as modern became valuable to government actors in the United States who saw increased agricultural production as a weapon in defeating the Soviet Union. By the 1970s, farmers formed an identity called “rural ultramodernity” in which they began to think of themselves as more modern than urban dwellers because of their design and use of advanced technologies and their role as producers in the global food network. This ultramodern identity incorporates aspects of previous rural identities, including an obsession with combating urban stereotypes of farmers as “hicks.” In addition, this rural ultramodern identity views farmers as having an inborn modernity inherited from previous generations of farmers. I argue that this ultramodern way farmers think of themselves explains why rural people in the Midwest have embraced the erection of wind turbines, unlike residents of other regions in the U.S. From a policy perspective, this study also contends that debates over science and technology, such as efforts to render agriculture more sustainable and organic, are impacted by unexpressed fundamental views about nature and morality. Statements about these controversies often take the form of proxy arguments that sound “rational” but mask these unstated ideas, and they often alienate those with opposing views. Current debates over genetically modified organisms, from a rural perspective, are actually unspoken clashes over rural ultramodern and organic identities hidden by “objective” points made by both sides involving science or economics. This study also challenges the common notion that technology and production are male domains by showing how both men and women have used technology to construct their identities as producers on Midwest farms. This insight illustrates how disagreements over gender roles underlie current policy debates about agriculture. Farmers view organic discourse as threatening rural women’s identities as modern producers by framing farming as an immoral, industrial, and male domination of a moral and female nature. Rural people view organic discourse as carrying on the tradition of urban industrialism, which saw farmers as backwards and farm women as unhappy and occupying an exclusively domestic sphere. This study suggests that any effort to reform agriculture must include farmers and incorporate the way rural people use technologies to form and reinforce their identities. At the same time, the conclusion advocates for a new rural identity that avoids farmer’s tendencies to view all technologies as “progress” regardless of their environmental or social impacts.

Yes / In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of ‘critical performativity’, a concept designed to debate relationships between theory and practice and encourage practical interventions in organizational life. Notwithstanding its laudable ambition to stimulate discussion about engagement between CMS researchers and practitioners, we are concerned that critical performativity theory is flawed as it misreads foundational performativity authors, such as Austin and Butler, in ways that nullify their political potential, and ignores a range of other influential theories of performativity. It also overlooks the materiality of performativity. We review these limitations and then use three illustrations to sketch out a possible alternative conceptualization of performativity. This alternative approach, which builds on Butler’s and Callon’s work on performativity, recognises that performativity is about the constitution of subjects, is an inherently material and discursive construct, and happens through the political engineering of sociomaterial agencements. We argue that such an approach – a political theory of organizational performativity – is more likely to deliver on both theoretical and practical fronts than the concept of critical performativity.

Drawing on Butler’s (1990, 1997) concept of performativity and the new materialist work of Barad (2007), Coole and Frost (2010), Pickering (1993), and others as a theoretical framework, this dissertation presents three articles that demonstrate the new ways to envisage the agency of human, nonhuman, and material bodies in the educational environment by examining the discursive, performative, and material practices of six Latina aspiring educational leaders. Guided by Gee’s (2014) critical discourse analysis methodology, the first article examines how my participants were constrained from moving toward their career goals and how they subverted constraints as they moved towards their goals. The second article aims to show how these women use performative, material, and discursive agency to position themselves as viable leaders in their school districts. The third article provides an argument for using posthumanist and new materialist concepts as a new way of understanding women’s leadership ontology by drawing on two examples from my broader study with aspiring Latina educational leaders.

According to Robinson (2008), England exists more in imagination than it does anywhere else, except on the sports field. However, Englishness remains relatively unexplored in discussions of sporting nationalism. For so long, academics have focused on the ways in which male sport plays a key role in (re)producing national identities, with the contribution of women to the relationship between sport and national identity formation undeniably ignored. Based on interviews with 19 elite sportswomen from England s netball, football, rugby and cricket teams, this thesis examines the relationship between gendered, national and sporting identities, giving a voice to England s heroines of sport . These sports were chosen as the women had only represented England, rather than Great Britain, in international sport. Few research studies have adopted this approach of speaking to athletes about their national identities, although significantly, those that have were not concerned with women (see Tuck, 1999; Tuck and Maguire, 1999; McGee and Bairner 2011). The challenge was not only to integrate personal experiences into discussions of sport and national identity, but also to try to incorporate gender into these very discussions. The question here is whether women s sport has a place in the national imagination, and how do those very women who embody their nation on the field of play articulate their experiences. Central to this research is an understanding of the ways in which we perform aspects of our identity. Building on work by Butler (1990) and Edensor (2002), we can understand how international sport provides a site where multiple identities are performed. Findings suggest that performances of femininities are contextual, and that elite sport is an arena where displays of heteronormative femininity are inappropriate. In addition, sport serves to clarify imaginings of Englishness, where previously it may have been confused or conflated with conceptions of Britishness. What was clear throughout the research, however, was the performative nature of the participants identities, as well as the way in which their identities can be conceptualised as multiple and fluid, subject to change depending upon context and circumstance.

This thesis presents an inquiry into the concept and phenomena of content marketing and its corresponding market in Sweden by attending to its constituent practices. By adopting a practice based approach to markets, influenced by recent developments in economic sociology, it utilizes a constructivist  view of markets as constantly forming and emerging. This allows examination of a concept that is novel, ambiguously defined yet increasingly popular by focusing on its practical enactments along with actors' conceptions and ideas in order to study what constitutes content marketing. By archival analysis of trade media, examination of industry media and in-depth interviews with content marketing practitioners the paper highlights the formatting effect of ideas on practice, the existence of multiple and conflicting definitions and enactments of content marketing and the implications thereof. It also shows how different categories of content marketing practice are connected and interlinked, before arriving at a definition drawing on practitioners descriptions, enactments and ideas central to the market. The thesis contributes with an inquiry into content marketing where academic research is scant and also provides an empirical application of theory from the growing research tradition concerned with a practice approach to markets.

With a focus on gender expectations, this qualitative study analyses how Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series represent evil. Through close reading the first and the final three books of the series using the feminist criticism perspective performativity, the aim of this study is to highlight how the evil women in the series are portrayed in comparison to both good characters of both sexes as well as evil men. The results show that while the evil women represent evil in the ways that they break their gender expectations, the good men also represent goodness in the way that they break their gender expectations. Thus, they are not evil because they deviate from these expectations, but because the gendered traits these women embody are connected to evil and, in turn, help make the reader perceive them as such.

This dissertation examines the bread subsidy in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It scrutinizes the socio-political conflicts that surround this policy, the spatial practices that subsume it and the ways in which it is understood and given meaning. Despite repeated attempts by international financial institutions to eliminate them, authoritarian regimes throughout the region have gone to great lengths to maintain this and similar welfare programs, even extending them during the tumult of the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ This dissertation seeks to answer why. Through the lens of bread, I suggest a new approach to understanding state power, not as the straightforward product of a monolithic entity but as the unstable product of social practices that make the state appear to exist. Building on the work of Judith Butler and Alex Jeffrey, I call these routine actions “performing the state.” The empirical chapters, based on extensive fieldwork in Jordan, attend to how welfare provision not only reflects the state—its capacities, historical development or cultural proclivities—but performs it into being. The analysis centers on how certain institutions and actors, through their imbrication in the social, spatial and political patterns of welfare provision, work to entrench the state—as an idea, a material force and a locus of affective investment—in the lives of citizens. In attending to how the Jordanian state is constituted and reproduced through discourses, spatial practices of reach, moral economies and political rationalities, this study seeks to illuminate the iterative processes of reference that create the appearance of an autonomous structure that both citizens and scholars call the state. By understanding the state as the contingent product of routine performances, we can better examine the disproportionate importance of particular welfare programs to assembling state power and fostering authoritarian outcomes, as well as their links to key political processes and policy outcomes.

This thesis examines how the Amazigh diaspora, networked in France's Amazigh cultural associations, village committees and political movements, constructs an imaginative geography of North Africa, which they call Tamazgha, and the implications this has for this emergent and diverse group. It sets out to theorise and understand the political geographies of this diasporic social movement in the contemporary moment. It does so by approaching the Amazigh diaspora as its primary object of research within a relational, multiscalar analysis of its geopolitics. This thesis contributes to the subdiscipline of political geography as well as Amazigh studies. Drawing on ethnographic and documentary methods, including an experimental methodology for the digital sphere, it outlines the major themes of the diasporic Amazigh movement's relationship to space and place; making the diaspora, articulating indigeneity, negotiating citizenship and accommodating nativism. It analyses facets of Amazigh diaspora politics at times as a nation, at others as a social movement, finding a productive interaction between these two concepts. It is both an imagined community of people who claim to share a common language and culture and a political movement entraining activists, members and political parties in the pursuit of political change. As an Indigenous people, it is both a transnational social movement calling on the states where they live to uphold the rights of their Amazigh populations, and also a nation with a flag, asserting its claim to sovereignty, however limited. The diaspora associations frame themselves as a social movement championing diverse citizenship and integration in French society, whilst homeland-oriented citizenship is mostly expressed in nationalistic terms. This thesis charts how the politics of this diasporic Amazigh movement contest and produce spatial imaginations in the contemporary context of Mediterranean integration, new nationalisms and populisms, and the fear of Islamist terrorism in French society. With its focus on the political and imaginative geographies of the diasporic Amazigh movement, the thesis is organised topically, elaborating on different facets of political subjectivities in four substantive chapters that focus on the core themes of diaspora, indigeneity, citizenship and nativism. Chapter 2 provides an historical and sociological context for the study, and Chapter 3 details its methodology. Chapter 4 examines diaspora as a geopolitical concept, understood on the one hand as like a social movement and on the other as like a nation. It presents an understanding of diaspora 'as process' or 'assemblage' that constantly reworks the boundaries of nation, state, community and identity, within an imaginative geography of 'home'. Chapter 5 picks up from here to focus on how indigeneity is articulated as a political positioning in the diasporic Amazigh movement. Drawing on Stuart Hall's terminology to theorise the politics of indigeneity in relation to place, it outlines several Indigenous articulations made in the discourse and practices of the leaders and members of diasporic Amazigh associations. Chapter 6 focuses on the discourses and practices of citizenship, which in the diaspora intersect, overlap and produce transnational spaces. Drawing out an empirical distinction between 'diaspora-oriented' and 'homeland-oriented' citizenships, the chapter details how citizenship practices in relation to French state and society can be understood as 'ordinary' whilst those in relation to North African state(s) and society are characterised more as performative 'Acts'. Finally, chapter 7 homes in on Amazigh politics in the current context of increasingly influential nativist-populism in France and across Europe.

Organisational improvisation is often seen as a way for corporations to be able to cope with emergent strategies (Cunha, et al, 1999) and a way to meet the challenges of modern ways of working which include agility, flexibility and responsiveness (Vera and Crossan, 2004). However, seeing improvisation as a tool that can be used to deliver desirable organisational change is placing it within a discourse of systemic consultancy techniques that are predicated on assumptions about organisational change which I argue do not reflect the everyday lived experiences of people at work. As a management consultant, I have worked with many organisations using tools and techniques in an attempt to deliver prescribed outcomes. However, these never seemed to turn out as expected, for my colleagues or myself. Through my research I have understood that organisational change is far more pluralistic and uncontrollable than is suggested by systems thinkers like Seddon (2003; 2008) because consultants or managers could never predict with certainty how change initiatives would play out. I build on Mead's model of communication (1934) where a gesture to another evokes a similar response in the gesturer as it does the responder as part of the whole social act. In doing so I argue that improvisation is a way of describing communicative interaction between human bodies which are interdependent and therefore in relations of power with one another. As groups and individuals we become invested in and caught up in organisational games where many different groups struggle against one another in an attempt to control the game and get what they want. As these improvisational moves in the game are played, narrative themes that organise our experience are both sustained and contested at the same time. But these narrative patterns are not solely about working practices or procedures but also include wider aspects of identity such as gender and sexuality, which are interwoven in our organisational lives. Specifically I am arguing that communication is not just one body gesturing and responding to another, but one sexed and gendered body gesturing and responding to another sexed and gendered body and this affects our interactions, assumptions and understanding of what it is we are doing together. These improvisations which both create and maintain narrative themes emerge through the paradox of the rehearsed and the unrehearsed at the spontaneous moment of performance, where the anticipation of an audience's reaction, represented by Mead's concept of the generalised other (1934: 154), both enables and constrains one's performance.