On ableism and anthropocentrism: A canine perspective on the workplace inclusion of disabled people

Abstract

Despite growing attention for how disabled people become Othered in organizational settings and similar scholarly interest in the treatment of non-humans at work, no analysis so far has focused on the potential double marginalization that takes place when disabled people go to work with their service animal. In filling this void, this study draws attention to the embodied entanglement of ‘humanimal’ in a number of organizations where animals are unexpected. The study argues that the spatial, discursive and affective treatment of service dogs operates as a proxy for the in/exclusion of employees with mobility and visual impairments. This way, processes of ableism become masked as subtle and indirect performances towards non-human Others. Contributions are made towards several literatures by introducing the idea of a ‘proxy’ to help understand the different modes of peripheral inclusion of disabled employees via their legally accepted service animals, by bringing in the role of affect in workplace disablement, and finally by taking animal labour more seriously.

“I prefer working with mares, like women, difficult in character but go the extra mile”: A study of multiple inequalities in equine (sports) business

“…Despite the anthropocentric approach to data collection, the data analysis is conducted in a posthumanist spirit, aiming to examine horses as “participants in organizations in more ethically grounded terms” (Satama & Huopalainen, 2019, p. 362) and staying critical of the grading of animals in terms of their capacity to serve humans (Clarke & Knights, 2021). In that sense, it is important to clarify that the authors' childhood experiences with horses at the amateur level have formed their understanding of horses' uses (Birke & Brandt, 2009; Birke & Thompson, 2018; Monterrubio & Pérez, 2021), while their later professional careers as critical management scholars urged them to rethink formerly engaged‐in practices of riding and owning horses, through the eyes of both horses and humans, making a conscious attempt to erase the strong human/animal divide, and recognize the existence of animal subjectivity (Huopalainen, 2022b; Jammaers, 2023).…”

“…Acker expressed a clear wish for future feminist researchers to extend the explanatory power of the gender substructure toward a fully intersectional focus in order to include other forms of inequalities that make up social reality (Benschop & Doorewaard, 2012; Sayce, 2019). By expanding this “range of workers” to include nonhuman animals, we join the debate started by other researchers who have combined the study of workplace human diversity with that of nonhumans (Jammaers, 2023; Sayers et al., 2019). Coulter (2017) makes a call for more humane jobs, as in jobs that are both good for people and animals.…”

“…A horse's “point of view” is not amenable to simple or structured forms of qualitative enquiry as language loses its primacy in human–animal relations (Hamilton & Taylor, 2017; Huopalainen, 2022a). Alternative approaches, such as affective ethnography (Gherardi, 2019) and the use of photo‐ or videography to systematically observe and document different cues and physiological markers (Haanpää et al., 2021; Jammaers, 2023; Lansade et al., 2018; Wels, 2020) that can tell a more complete story of horse well‐being during labor need to be examined in the future. This will require close collaboration within interdisciplinary research teams in posthumanist perspectives, where questions of power, ethics, and mutuality are thoroughly considered.…”

“…(Continues) making a conscious attempt to erase the strong human/animal divide, and recognize the existence of animal subjectivity (Huopalainen, 2022b;Jammaers, 2023).…”

Oddity as Commodity? The body as symbolic resource for Other-defying identity work

“…This particular research project is part of a larger ongoing project set out to generate knowledge about management and organizations from the marginalized and often ignored perspective of people with disabilities (Jammaers, 2021a(Jammaers, , 2021bJammaers & Williams, 2021a, 2021b. In an attempt to reconstruct the meaning-making processes of dis/ability across ancient times in the West through historical readings, the first author stumbled upon a newly released book entitled The great story of little people (Gevaert, 2016).…”