Abstract
This article explores the ways in which the aesthetics of employees’ bodies are used as a site of control and resistance, processes which are activated through ethnic and gendered practices. By exploring three resistance strategies used by Israeli combat soldiers, we demonstrate the construction of competing identities of military masculinity. We demonstrate how, by activating a process of self-ethnicization, Israeli soldiers use an ethnic identity that empowers them and challenges the ‘appropriate‘ professionalism expected from them. This process illuminates the interrelations between ethnic and masculine identities, and emphasizes the dynamic and fluid nature of the constructing of identities within organizations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 390-417 |
| Number of pages | 28 |
| Journal | Organization |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 21 May 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Support for this study was provided by the Research Authority of the Open University. The authors wish to thank Michal Frenkel, Micki Eisenman, Sharon Gilad and Eyal Ben-Ari as well as the three anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank session participants of our sub-stream at EGOS 2011 for the opportunity to present these ideas and the useful conversations that followed.
Keywords
- bodily resistance
- control and resistance
- doing ethnicity
- identity struggles
- masculinities
- organizational aesthetics
- organizational identity
- self-ethnicizing