Politics in Organization Studies: Multi-disciplinary traditions and interstitial positions

Abstract

This Perspectives article delves into the archives of Organization Studies covering the period 1986-2010 to advance and develop our thinking of politics and political thinking in organization studies. In our Benjamin-inflected reading (Benjamin, 2002), we look for the revolutionary energies that reside in what may at first appear as perhaps ‘outmoded’ articles in an intellectual environment where the obsolescence of ideas and concepts seems to increase at pace. The purpose of the excavation of our six chosen texts is to build a constellation of what we call ‘interstitial positions’ that reside within and outside the analytical contours of these texts. In this way we bring these texts into a critical condition in the hope that their constellation can act as a real force in the present and help illuminate our contemporary situation. We might then renew our sense of possibility and choice about the organizational worlds we inhabit and to open future avenues for thinking politics informed by the distinctive disciplinary traditions of organization studies.