This study aims to overview the existing literature, knowledge framework, and intellectual structure mapping in the field of corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) by employing a bibliometric analysis approach to selected 311 papers sourced from the Scopus database between 1994 and 2022. It presents the publication growth, influential sources, productive authors, and collaboration index of countries using Biblioshiny software. Stringent regulatory regime and stakeholders' pressure followed by a growing trend of publication motivated us to comprehend the (...) evolving facets of the relationship using co‐citation analysis followed by a systematic literature review using coupling analysis which identified five research themes as CEP–CFP relationships—facets, strategies and dimensions, and methodological choices during the initial phase of 1994–2014; and green innovation and corporate sustainability practices, environmental disclosure and environmental responsibility, and green development behavior and practices during 2015–2022. From the insights congregated from research themes, the study discusses prominent developments and provides future research directions to further enrich the field of CEP and CFP. Our findings provide various global regulatory frameworks, government, policymakers, and firm managers the need to explore the dynamic factors while formulating the strategic environmental policy and how it contributes to the financial performance of the firms. (shrink)

Bu makale, 19. yüzyılın başlarında Kuzey Hindistan’da ortaya çıkan ve günümüze kadar devam eden, ilahî kudret hakkında önemli bir kelâmî ihtilafı ele alan ilk mantık araştırmasıdır. İhtilaf, birbiriyle bağlantılı iki tez içermektedir. İlk tez "imkān-i naẓīr" olarak bilinir ve bu, Allah’ın Hz. Muhammed'in aynısını yaratabilmesidir. İkinci tez ise "ikmān-i kızb" olarak adlandırılır ve Allah’ın yalan söyleme veya gerçeğe aykırı şeyler söyleme olasılığını hakkındadır. Makale, iki güçlü düşünürün argümanlarını inceleyecektir. İlk olarak, tartışmayı başlatan Shah İsmail Dihlawi (ö. 1831), Allah’ın benzer bir (...) Muhammed'i yaratabilme ve yalan söyleyebilme olasılığını savunan argümanlar sunar. İkinci olarak, karşıt görüşteki ve baş rakibi Fazl-e Haqq Khayrabadi (ö. 1861), her iki olasılığı da kesin bir şekilde reddeder. Makale, argümanların yapısının ve öncüllerinin yanı sıra tartışmada deruhte edilen temel modal kavramların ayrıntılı mantıksal analizine odaklanmaktadır. (shrink)

Like their Jewish and Christian co-religionists, Muslims have grappled with how God, who is perfectly good, compassionate, merciful, powerful, and wise permits intense and profuse evil and suffering in the world. At its core, Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil explores four different problems of evil: human disability, animal suffering, evolutionary natural selection, and Hell. Each study argues in favor of a particular kind of explanation or justification (theodicy) for the respective evil. Safaruk Chowdhury unpacks the notion of (...) evil and its conceptualization within the mainstream Sunni theological tradition, and the various ways in which theologians and philosophers within that tradition have advanced different types of theodicies. He not only builds on previous works on the topic, but also looks at kinds of theodicies previously unexplored within Islamic theology, such as an evolutionary theodicy. Distinguished by its application of an analytic-theology approach to the subject and drawing on insights from works of both medieval Muslim theologians and philosophers and contemporary philosophers of religion, this novel and highly systematic study will appeal to students and scholars, not only of theology but of philosophy as well. (shrink)

This study examines the process of knowledge transfer between a pair of social enterprises, organizations that are embedded in competing social and economic logics. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of the interaction between social enterprises operating in emerging economy settings, it uncovers factors which influence the transfer of a social innovation from a dense, population-rich setting to one where beneficiaries are geographically dispersed and the costs of service delivery are correspondingly elevated. Evidence from the case study suggests that institutional (...) bricolage—the crafting of improvised solutions in resource-constrained settings—can serve as potent driving force in driving innovation transfer, and that this process of re-combining available resources may be facilitated by the extent to which the values between partner social enterprises are aligned. With such alignment, social enterprise partners may be able to increase trust, develop a smoother knowledge-transfer process, and find practical solutions which facilitate the transfer of life-enhancing social innovations to neglected rural settings. (shrink)

We adopt and extend the concept of ‘noncooperative space’ to analyze how (aspirant) black women intellectual activists attempt to sustain their efforts within settings that publicly endorse racial equality, while, in practice, the contexts remain deeply racist. Noncooperative spaces reflect institutional, organizational, and social environments portrayed by powerful white agents as conducive to anti-racism work and promoting racial equality but, indeed, constrain individuals who challenge racism. Our work, which is grounded in intersectionality, draws on an autoethnographic account of racially motivated (...) domestic violence suffered by our lead author. Our analysis suggests that (aspirant) black women intellectual activists must develop courage to sustain their ‘voice’ within noncooperative spaces. However, the three interlinked dimensions of noncooperative spaces—namely, deceiving design, hegemonic actors’ indifference to racism, and (some assimilated gatekeepers’) false equivalence—may gradually erode a black female scholar’s courage. This forces her ‘voice’ to vanish temporarily, or even permanently. Courage is thus fragile and depletable. Yet, courage can be regenerated, resulting in regaining voice. Consequently, we propose courageous collective action by white allies and black and brown individuals who voluntarily and officially cooperate within and across various spaces to achieve racial equality. (shrink)

A countable unidimensional theory without the omitting types order property (OTOP) has prime models over pairs and is hence classifiable. We show that this is not true for uncountable unidimensional theories.

This study examines the impact of the Chief Executive Officer ’s interlocking, created through serving on other companies’ audit committees and/or boards, on corporate social responsibility performance of the focal company and that of its linked companies. We find that CEO interlocking positively affects CSR performance of both the focal company and its linked companies. Further analysis shows that interlocks created by the CEO enhance CSR performance and in turn the financial performance of both the focal company and its linked (...) companies. Our findings are robust to a battery of analyses, including Heckman’s selection bias correction, propensity score matching, alternative measures of CSR performance, and CEO interlocks. These findings are important to regulators, company management teams, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the social ties of CEOs influence companies’ CSR performance and in the CSR–financial performance nexus. (shrink)

I address an interesting puzzle of how marginalized groups gain self-representation and influence firms’ strategies. Accordingly, I examine the case of access to low-cost HIV/AIDS drugs in South Africa by integrating W. E. B. Du Bois’s work into stakeholder theory. Du Bois’s scholarly work, most notably his founding contribution to Black scholarship, has profound significance in the humanities and social sciences disciplines and vast potential to inspire a new way of thinking and doing research in the management and organization fields, (...) including business ethics research. By drawing on Du Bois’s works, I argue that through reconstruction of their selves—knowing their souls—marginalized groups know their capabilities better, enabling them to overcome their political and strategic limitations and ensure their true self-representation. They are also empowered to use political imagination and strategies of resistance against more powerful opponents. This influences powerful actors to accept the demands of marginalized groups. (shrink)

This study aims to identify artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are applied in climate-smart agricultural practices and address ethical concerns of deploying those technologies from legal perspectives. As climate-smart agricultural AI, the study considers those AI-based technologies that are used for precision agriculture, monitoring peat lands, deforestation tracking, and improved forest management. The study utilized a systematic literature review approach to identify and analyze AI technologies employed in climate-smart agriculture and associated ethical and legal concerns. The study findings indicate several (...) ethical concerns for deploying AI in climate-smart agricultural practices pertaining to data inaccuracy, other technical errors based on wrong recommendations or wrongful acts, data ownership and intellectual property issues, and economic issues resulting in digital division and privacy and security related issues. In this study, the ethical concerns were further examined based on criminal law, tort law, privacy and data protection law, and intellectual property law. In this regard, the study finds that the current tort law pattern is more suitable than the criminal law pattern to address some major ethical concerns, such as data inaccuracy and other technical errors based on wrong recommendations or wrongful acts. Finally, the study recommends that at the global level, all countries need to fill up the current gap of international law on climate-smart agriculture through agreeing on a standard set of legal provisions and enhancing collaboration in innovation and deployment of climate-smart agricultural AI. It further recommends that at the local level, countries need to adopt suitable regulations addressing multi-stakeholders’ interests associated with the deployment of climate-smart agricultural AIs. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue 2, Page 437-460, Summer 2022.

Although there has been considerable theoretical support outlining a positive relationship between religiosity and voluntary simplicity, there is limited empirical evidence validating this relationship. This study examines the relationships among religious orientations :432–443, 1967) and voluntary simplicity in a sample of Australian consumers. The results demonstrate that intrinsic religiosity is positively related to voluntary simplicity; however, there is no relationship between extrinsic religiosity and voluntary simplicity. Furthermore, this research investigates the processes through which intrinsic religiosity affects voluntary simplicity. The relationship (...) between intrinsic religiosity and voluntary simplicity is sequentially mediated by communal/personal well-being and environmental well-being. The findings not only identify a prosocial role of intrinsic religiosity in motivating voluntary simplicity, but also indicate that secular pursuits that enhance communal/personal well-being and environmental well-being may also motivate voluntary simplicity. (shrink)

This paper applies moral foundations theory in the context of consumer ethics. The purpose of the study is to examine whether moral foundations theory can be utilised as a theoretical framework to explain consumers’ beliefs regarding both ethical and unethical consumption. The relationships among various moral foundations and different dimensions of consumer ethics are examined with a sample of 450 US consumers. The results demonstrate that, among the various moral foundations, only the sanctity/degradation foundation is negatively related to beliefs regarding (...) all forms of unethical consumer actions as well as ‘no harm, no foul’ actions. On the contrary, the care/harm, fairness/cheating and authority/subversion foundations are related to positive beliefs regarding ‘doing good’ actions. This indicates that moral motivations for supporting pro-social actions as a consumer are not necessarily the same as moral motivations for condemning unethical actions. The findings also demonstrate that the loyalty/betrayal foundation is positively related to beliefs regarding unethical consumer actions and negatively related to perceptions of pro-social consumer actions. This demonstrates that in-group loyalty leads to supporting unethical actions. Furthermore, the results show that various moral foundations mediate the relationships of idealism with consumers’ ethical beliefs. Hence, various moral foundations can explain the effects of personal variables on consumer ethics. (shrink)

This paper applies moral foundations theory in the context of consumer ethics. The purpose of the study is to examine whether moral foundations theory can be utilised as a theoretical framework to explain consumers’ beliefs regarding both ethical and unethical consumption. The relationships among various moral foundations and different dimensions of consumer ethics are examined with a sample of 450 US consumers. The results demonstrate that, among the various moral foundations, only the sanctity/degradation foundation is negatively related to beliefs regarding (...) all forms of unethical consumer actions (actively benefiting from illegal actions, passively benefiting from the mistakes of the seller and actively benefiting from legal but questionable actions) as well as ‘no harm, no foul’ actions. On the contrary, the care/harm, fairness/cheating and authority/subversion foundations are related to positive beliefs regarding ‘doing good’ actions. This indicates that moral motivations for supporting pro-social actions as a consumer are not necessarily the same as moral motivations for condemning unethical actions. The findings also demonstrate that the loyalty/betrayal foundation is positively related to beliefs regarding unethical consumer actions and negatively related to perceptions of pro-social consumer actions. This demonstrates that in-group loyalty leads to supporting unethical actions. Furthermore, the results show that various moral foundations mediate the relationships of idealism with consumers’ ethical beliefs. Hence, various moral foundations can explain the effects of personal variables on consumer ethics. (shrink)

This essay presents the interwoven phenomenological reflections of three feminist women, situated across various intersections of difference, whose plans to conduct research on Black feminism and ambiguity were affected by the coronavirus and the social climate resulting from widespread responses to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States during the summer of 2020. The authors offer an experimental, juxtaposed intersubjective phenomenology of research, located in the critical phenomenological framework of intersectional ambiguity. The reflections include reconsiderations (...) of the utility of research and its (inter)subjective dimensions. Each writer captures how differences in their sociopolitical identity and positioning affected their ability to conduct “research” during a summer of unrest and unease. Taken in sum, these reflections argue that critical phenomenology provides many opportunities for reflecting upon lived experience and the relevance of intellectual labor and knowledge-production to the sociopolitical challenges we face. (shrink)

Fringe stakeholders with limited resources, such as grassroots organizations (GROs), are often ignored in business and society literature. We develop a conceptual framework and a set of propositions detailing how GROs strategically gain legitimacy and influence over time. We argue that GROs encounter specific paradoxes over the emergence, development, and resolution of an issue, and they address these paradoxes using cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy strategies. While cognitive and moral strategies tend to be used consistently, the flexible and paradoxical use (...) of pragmatic strategies has important consequences, both for GROs’ legitimacy and for their potential influence over powerful organizations associated with them. We enrich our framework with the help of two illustrative cases and discuss the implications of the framework for GROs’ legitimacy strategies in business and society literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the deep theological faultline generated by divergent understandings of the divine attributes among two early antagonistic Muslim groups – the traditionalists (main...

Research on the antecedents of consumers’ ethical beliefs has mainly examined cognitive variables and has neglected the relationships among affective variables and consumer ethics. However, research in moral psychology indicates that moral emotions have a significant role in ethical decision-making. Thus, the ability to experience, perceive and regulate emotions should influence consumers’ ethical decision-making. These abilities, which are components of emotional intelligence, are examined as antecedents to consumers’ ethical beliefs in this study. Five hundred Australian consumers participated in this study (...) by completing an online questionnaire that included measures of emotional intelligence, consumers’ ethical beliefs and personal moral philosophies. Results demonstrate that the ability to appraise and express emotions in oneself is directly negatively related to beliefs regarding actively benefiting from illegal actions as a consumer, passively benefiting at the expense of the seller and actively benefiting from questionable but legal actions as a consumer. The ability to appraise and express emotions in oneself is directly positively related to beliefs regarding ‘doing-good’ actions. The ability to appraise and recognise emotions in others is also directly positively related to beliefs regarding ‘doing-good’ actions as well as pro-environmental buying actions. The effects of the different components of emotional intelligence on consumers’ ethical beliefs are mediated by personal moral philosophies. This study demonstrates the relationship between emotional intelligence and consumer ethics and highlights the interplay of affect and cognition in consumers’ ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Aniruddha Chowdhury offers an illuminating account of the post-deconstructive conception of subjectivity and history in the tradition of Continental thought, and Postcolonial theory.

Based on my study of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, I develop a rejectionist perspective by identifying the understanding and mobilization of epistemic disobedience as the core premise of such a perspective. Embedded in this contextual perspective, epistemic disobedience refers to the decolonization of the self and a fight against colonial legacies. I argue that, rather than viewing a rejectionist perspective as a threat, it should be integrated into the moral learning of contemporary institutions and businesses. This approach is important (...) in ensuring colonial legacies and biases do not create further racism or unequal situations for marginalized groups. The implication for critical management studies is that scholars from this camp should be more sensitive to issues of black consciousness and implement an authentic pragmatic ideal to promote black culture and historiographies in universities and curricula. It also highlights a need for the field of business ethics to apply more sensitive theory of marginalized stakeholders in order to prevent any escalation of violence by multinational corporations in the name of shareholder value creation and profit-maximization. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to broaden U.S. scholars' awareness of the similarities and differences of gender literature in another part of the world. In providing this partial review of gender scholarship in India, the authors hope to foster critical reflection on the inequities of global knowledge production and consumption and the role of U.S. academic institutions and scholars in this project. The article is written not by scholars who are based in India but by those who are (...) based in U.S. academies. Given their location, linguistic and cultural competencies, and scholarly expertise, the review, at best, can be described as a glimpse of gender scholarship in India. The four sections of this article feature theoretical and methodological issues, the women's movement, and violence against women in India. (shrink)

Current incentive structures are more favorably aligned with the world’s problems than with their solutions. We conceptualize this as the paradox of incentives to argue the need for new thinking and restructuring of incentives to break the paradox during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, and create new opportunities for societal transformation.

I argue that meta-ignorance and meta-insensitivity are the key sources influencing the reoccurrence of the (un)conscious misrepresentation of marginalized groups in management and organization research; such misrepresentation, in effect, perpetuates epistemic neocolonialism. Meta-ignorance describes incorrect epistemic attitudes, which render researchers ignorant about issues such as contextual history and emotional and political aspects of a social problem. Researcher meta-ignorance can be a permanent feature, given how researchers define, locate, and make use of their epistemic positionality and privilege. In contrast, meta-insensitivity is (...) a special issue that arises when researchers miss multiple opportunities to capture valuable aspects of marginalized groups’ voices or their life experiences and expectations. The problem of meta-insensitivity during fieldwork is more serious because researchers—despite their apparent willingness to be innovative—fail to understand how to be sensitive toward marginalized groups. The perpetuation of these elements’ misrepresentation contributes to long-lasting negative consequences for marginalized groups. To counter this, I introduce and conceptualize the idea of oppositional views which researchers can mobilize to address misrepresentation of marginalized groups and challenge epistemic neocolonialism. (shrink)

Cleaning the floor, stripping the bed, arranging a bouquet of flowers—such tasks are essential to keeping a hospital room clean and creating a pleasant atmosphere. They usually fall under the purview of female* nurses, cleaning staff and housekeepers. In everyday hospital life, the demands for hygienic cleanliness commingle with the imperatives of economization, marketing logic, and attention to the affective and emotional needs of the actors in these rooms. Although the standards of clinical hygiene are based on medical knowledge, the (...) division of labor and the demands for cleanliness at various hierarchical levels also reveal gendered and partly racialized ideas that point beyond the clinical context. This blending of imperatives in the hospital environment invites deeper consideration of the history of bacteriology: The logic and language of defense against infection in science and everyday life is also interwoven with social markers of difference.Drawing on the findings of an ethnography on cleanliness and cleaning work in hospitals, as well as a history of knowledge approach, the article links the question of (feminized) care for the environment with the question of the atmosphere of clinical rooms. In what ways, and to what effect, does scientific knowledge about medical hygiene also carry with it cultural and aesthetic perceptions of beautiful and pleasant cleanliness that reveal feminine connotations rooted in the nineteenth century? (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDen Boden putzen, das Bett abziehen, einen Blumenstrauß arrangieren – Bemühungen um Sauberkeit sowie eine angenehme Raumatmosphäre obliegen im Krankenhaus meist weiblichen* Pflegerinnen, Reinigungskräften und Hauswirtschafterinnen. Im Klinikalltag vermischen sich Anforderungen an hygienische Sauberkeit unter Prozessen der Ökonomisierung mit Logiken des Marketings sowie mit affektiv-emotionalen Bedürfnissen der Akteur_innen dieser Räume. Obwohl die Maßstäbe klinischer Hygiene auf medizinischem Wissen basieren, sind die Arbeitsteilung sowie Ansprüche an Sauberkeit auf verschiedenen Hierarchieebenen zugleich von vergeschlechtlichten und teils rassifizierten Vorstellungen durchdrungen, die über den klinischen (...) Kontext hinausweisen. Dies legt schon eine Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte der Bakteriologie nahe: Die Logik und Sprache der Infektionsabwehr ist in Wissenschaft und Alltag auch verwoben mit sozialen Differenzmarkierungen.Unter Rückgriff auf die Ergebnisse einer Ethnografie zu Sauberkeit und Reinigungsarbeiten im Krankenhaus, die wissensgeschichtlich fundiert werden, wird in dem Beitrag die Frage nach der (feminisierten) Sorge für die Umwelt mit der Frage nach der Atmosphäre klinischer Räume verknüpft. Auf welche Weise und mit welchen Effekten verschränken sich wissenschaftlich-medizinisches Hygienewissen mit einem alltäglichen, jedoch historisierbaren Wissen über schöne und angenehme Sauberkeit, das immer noch weiblich konnotiert ist? (shrink)

This article draws on data from various sources for 190 developed and developing nations and uses them to examine gender regimes, or forms of patriarchal structures, at the regional level. I argue for multiple, rather than single, measures of gender inequality and illustrate that using many inequality measures exposes a wider range of outcomes within the Global South than the North, also suggesting the inefficacy of this geographic dichotomy. Then I re-examine the outcomes with nations grouped into seven regions, showing (...) that each region has different variables that define their gender inequalities. Finally, I link gendered social institutions and implicitly gendered political-economic structures to gender-inequitable outcomes in six regions to reveal three different gender regimes across the regions. (shrink)

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) inclusion in advertising is important from a marketing ethics perspective and many brands have implemented marketing campaigns that feature LGBTQ-related themes. However, certain segments of society, such as some (but not all) religious consumers, are resistant to LGBTQ-themed advertisements. Does religiosity undermine or enhance support for brands that use these types of advertisements? This research aims to answer this question and reports the findings of two studies that examine the role of religiosity in (...) relation to consumers’ responses to LGBTQ-themed advertising. The results show that, among the various religious orientations, intrinsic religiosity generally leads to negative attitudes for brands that use LGBTQ themes in advertisements. Feelings of disgust mediate these effects. However, not all forms of religiosity are detrimental to the efficacy of LGBTQ-themed advertising. Quest religiosity leads to positive attitudes for brands that use these types of advertisements. Furthermore, the negative impact of intrinsic religiosity on consumers’ responses to LGBTQ-themed advertising can be mitigated by portraying gay and lesbian individuals in inspiring roles in advertisements. Such ‘inspirational’ LGBTQ advertisements generate feelings of awe leading to positive brand attitudes among both intrinsic religiosity-oriented consumers and quest religiosity-oriented consumers. Hence, the findings provide managerial insights on how to develop LGBTQ-themed advertisements that promote inclusivity, are consistent with societal trends of greater acceptance of sexual orientation diversity, and concurrently appeal to both intrinsic religiosity-oriented consumers and quest religiosity-oriented consumers. (shrink)

This article argues that the condition of women in Third World societies cannot be separated from the colonial experience since the power relationships that were established during the colonial era between Europe and its territories, and between women and men, have not varied significantly and are still recreated through contemporary mechanisms. For example, development projects promoted by Western countries to modernize the Third World have, in the long run, better served their own interests than those of their intended beneficiaries. As (...) a result and contrary to expectations, growth and prosperity still elude the Third World. We also show that during the current international economic crisis, women's unpaid or underpaid labor has become the basis of new development programs and policies and is crucial to the recent phase of capitalist development. We discuss how the structural position and status of women and colonies closely resemble each other and have served as the foundations of the capital accumulation process and the development of industrial nations. The concept of women as a last colony thus becomes a compelling metaphor of liberation and leads us to stress the need for a worldwide process of gender decolonization, entailing the reformulation of power relations between women and men. (shrink)

In this paper we establish the following theorems. THEOREM A. Let T be a complete first-order theory which is uncountable. Then: (i) I(|T|, T) ≥ ℵ 0 . (ii) If T is not unidimensional, then for any λ ≥ |T|, I (λ, T) ≥ ℵ 0 . THEOREM B. Let T be superstable, not totally transcendental and nonmultidimensional. Let θ(x) be a formula of least R ∞ rank which does not have Morley rank, and let p be any stationary completion (...) of θ which also fails to have Morley rank. Then p is regular and locally modular. (shrink)

Let T be an uncountable, superstable theory. In this paper we prove Theorem A. If T has finite rank, then I(|T|, T) ≥ ℵ0. Theorem B. If T is trivial, then I(|T|, T) ≥ ℵ0.

Increased knowledge of the gene–disease associations contributing to common cancer development raises the prospect of population stratification by genotype and other risk factors. Individual risk assessments could be used to target interventions such as screening, treatment and health education. Genotyping neonates, infants or young children as part of a systematic programme would improve coverage and uptake, and facilitate a screening package that maximises potential benefits and minimises harms including overdiagnosis. This paper explores the potential justifications and risks of genotyping children (...) for genetic variants associated with common cancer development within a personalised screening programme. It identifies the ethical and legal principles that might guide population genotyping where the predictive value of the testing is modest and associated risks might arise in the future, and considers the standards required by population screening programme validity measures . These are distinguished from the normative principles underpinning predictive genetic testing of children for adult-onset diseases—namely, to make best-interests judgements and to preserve autonomy. While the case for population-based genotyping of neonates or young children has not yet been made, the justifications for this approach are likely to become increasingly compelling. A modified evaluative and normative framework should be developed, capturing elements from individualistic and population-based approaches. This should emphasise proper communication and genuine parental consent or informed choice, while recognising the challenges associated with making unsolicited approaches to an asymptomatic group. Such a framework would be strengthened by complementary empirical research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 333 Michelle V. Rowley, Elora Halim Chowdhury, and Isis Nusair Refusing to Account: Toward a Pedagogy of Tectonic Instability The increasing commoditization of knowledge and corporatization of the academy have led to a drastic restructuring of higher education, and in particular, of public institutions of learning. There is a striking similarity to the strategies enacted across institutions, (...) each governed by modes of efficiency and profitability. These moves have included a preference for larger classes, curriculum decisions that are governed by seats rather than pedagogical possibilities, an expansion of online offerings, tuition increases, and ramped-up bureaucratization, with the latter being accompanied by fewer faculty hires, a greater dependence on contingent faculty, and a swell in the ranks of senior administrative staff. This restructuring has held very specific consequences for women ’s studies programs. While larger classes are not inherently at odds with a student-centered feminist pedagogy, they do require adjustments in order to achieve similar results with our students, and they do exact greater physical and emotional labor from us as instructors. These restructuring strategies have also positioned the field in a Catch22 in that a number of issues that we have lobbied to have valued within the academy have now come into the university’s line of vision only to be redeployed as part of the university’s public relations branding agenda. There are numerous examples if we would but look: campuses that are spotted with banners portraying faculty and students of color —a visual map to the institution’s “embrace of diversity”; committees 334 Michelle V. Rowley, Elora Halim Chowdhury, and Isis Nusair that are convened to review the institution’s sexual harassment policy while simultaneously refusing the involvement of women’s studies academics in the process, for whom these are scholarly and intellectual areas of study; the introduction of multicultural general education curricula, where the study of “difference” amounts to a banal presence of one or more categories of “otherness” in syllabi. This list is not exhaustive but the similarity that threads through is the commodification and the PR-ization of issues that sit at the heart of the field of women’s studies. Such cooptation notwithstanding, in this economic climate of profit maximization, small, interdisciplinary programs and departments such as women’s studies, ethnic studies, and LGBT studies have become woefully vulnerable to mergers, downsizing, and elimination.1 Our own program, now defunct, attests to this growing reality.2 So what then is the story to be told for a program that no longer exists? As alumna of Clark University’s now defunct women’s studies doctoral program, we consider the ways in which Clark, under the guidance of Cynthia Enloe, worked to move the field toward a more transnational bent. While we begin with an engagement with Clark’s specific institutional vulnerabilities, we use Clark’s commitment to a transnational praxis as our comparative point of departure to note the ways in which the importance and acuity of a transnational feminist critique have seeped away from the field. At various points in the article, we discuss how our individual trajectories emerged out of a transnational feminist sensibility. We interrogate the ways that the dominant logics of the field continue to be complicit with the very inequities and modes of representation critiqued within transnational feminist discourses. We point to the role that our scholarly pursuits play in an ongoing effort to hold the field accountable to a transnational feminist critique. Finally, 1. See Miranda Joseph, Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Privatized Citizens, Corporate Academies, and Feminist Projects,” in Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 2. The doctoral program at Clark began in 1992 and closed in 2008, graduating twenty-six PhDs and training many more who have gone on to make significant contributions at NGOs among other locations. For example, Parissara Liewkeat and Barbara Schulman have held positions with the International Labor Organization and Amnesty International, respectively. Michelle V. Rowley, Elora Halim Chowdhury, and Isis Nusair 335 we look back at our own training... (shrink)

In an important fragment in The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin points to two perspectives on the present. The present is defined either as catastrophe or as triumph.1 Two perspectives, Benjamin seems to suggest, constitute two modes of temporality. Whereas for a triumphant history, the present is located in the duration of time that Benjamin famously calls “homogeneous, empty time,”2 in the movement of the same, for the historiography of the oppressed, on the other hand—and that is how Benjamin sees the (...) position of historical materialism—the present is located in a temporal disjuncture “in which time stands still and has come…. (shrink)