Gendered places: Place, performativity and flânerie in the City of London

This paper is concerned with the relationship between gender performativity and organizational place, taking the City of London as the focus for the empirical research, and extending a Lefebvrian understanding of space through the practice of flânerie. The paper explores how the City is imagined, constructed and experienced in and through gender performativity. This is explored with reference to fieldwork including photographic and interview data, as well as through an embodied, immersive methodology based on the observational tradition of flânerie, showing how this can help to both sense and make sense of organizational place, particularly in terms of how such places can compel feelings of belonging or non-belonging. The research looks beyond the spatial configuration of a single organization to encompass the wider geographical location of multiple organizations, in this case the City. The analysis highlights the interplay between two dominant forms of masculinity, emphasizing how the setting both reflects and affects this interplay. In this way the paper contributes to scholarship on organizational place and the placing of gender performativity, and extends Lefebvre’s theories of space as socially produced by (re)producing the City through peripatetic practice based on the tradition of the flậneur

Members Only: Place and Performativity in the City of London

Through its focus on the City of London as a particular work sector and setting, the thesis emphasizes the symbolic and material significance of place to understanding organizational life. The analysis, drawing primarily on Lefebvre’s theorisation of space as socially produced and on his work on rhythms, emphasizes how the socio-cultural and material aspects of the City are co-constitutive and both compel and constrain particular behaviours. These are explored with reference to fieldwork based upon photographic and interview data, as well as through embodied, immersive research methods. The thesis extends analyses of organizational space by asking how people both sense the wider space in which they work and how they make sense of it through their lived experience, and it enhances our understanding of the day to day experience of working life by extending the boundaries of what we usually think of as organizations. Asking what is particular about certain work places, both materially and culturally, and what this means for those who work within them, it begins with a review of the literature which discusses organizational space and place, the City of London as organizational setting, and the role that gender plays here. The methodological approach to the research is rooted in embodied, sensory methods based on experiencing the rhythms of place. The thematic findings are presented in two sections, and the discussion chapter moves from the empirical to a conceptual and theoretical analysis. In combination, the insights invite analysis of the conditions of membership – and the price of belonging– to the City of London. Arguing that places dominated by one particular industry sector can function as clubs, in that they have conditions of membership based upon being ‘fit for purpose’, what this means for those who are both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of place here is the main focus of the research

There and Back Again: Neuro-diverse employees, liminality and negative capability

The workplace challenges faced by neuro-diverse employees are currently under-researched. This article considers how such employees experience the world of work, focusing on the demands they face to conform to established expectations around self-presentation and performance and how they utilise spatial resources in order to transcend them. Drawing on data generated from a series of in-depth interviews, it explores both their everyday experiences of frustration alongside how the mobilisation of liminal spaces can assist them in transitioning to and from the demands of the ‘neuro-typical’ workplace. The article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the lived experiences of neuro-diverse employees and how the design and practices of the workplace can contribute to feelings of marginalisation and even exclusion. It highlights the potentially empowering and emancipatory potential of embracing liminality and explores the relationship to ‘negative capability’ as a conceptual and diagnostic lens in studies of workplace diversity. Keywords: Neuro-diversity, liminality, workplace diversity, organisational space, negative capabilit

Eurythmia and Arrythmia: Understanding Gendered Performances Through Rhythm in The City of London

This chapter is concerned with the relationship between gender performativity and rhythm, taking the City of London (often known by its metonym the Square Mile) as the focus for the empirical research, and extending a Lefebvrian understanding of urban space and time via the practice of rhythmanalysis. It is concerned with how the City of London is imagined, constructed and experienced in and through gender performativity which can be expressed rhythmically (Reid-Musson, 2018). The research is based on fieldwork including photographic and interview data, as well as an embodied, immersive methodology used to analyse rhythms, showing how this can help to both sense and make sense of organizational place, particularly in terms of how such places can compel feelings of belonging or non-belonging. The chapter looks beyond the spatial configuration of a single organization to encompass the wider geographical location of multiple organizations, in this case the City. The findings show that the relationship between the socio-cultural and material aspects of the City can be understood through the rhythms of place. Using a methodological approach based on Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004), the chapter foregrounds a subjective, embodied and experiential way of researching the places and spaces of organizing, and shows how gendered inclusion and exclusion can be expressed spatially and rhythmically

Disrupting the knowledge-power politics of human mobility in the context of climate change. Questioning established categories

Research on security-related aspects of climate change is an important element of climate change impact assessments. Hamburg has become a globally recognized center of pertinent analysis of the climate-conflict-nexus. The essays in this collection present a sample of the research conducted from 2009 to 2018 within an interdisciplinary cooperation of experts from Universität Hamburg and other institutions in Hamburg related to the research group “Climate Change and Security” (CLISEC). This collection of critical assessments covers a broad understanding of security, ranging from the question of climate change as a cause of violent conflict to conditions of human security in the Anthropocene. The in-depth analyses utilize a wide array of methodological approaches, from agent-based modeling to discourse analysis

The Mediational Effect of Self-Regulatory Capacity on the Relationship Between Temperament, Childhood Invalidation and Interpersonal Functioning: Testing a New Neuro-Regulatory Model.

Based on existing theories of personality and socio-emotional functioning (e.g. Clark, 2005; Lynch, Hempel & Clark, in press) a new model is proposed and tested. The model hypothesises that (i) temperament (reward and threat sensitivity) and childhood invalidation predict problems with interpersonal functioning, (ii) this effect is mediated by self-regulatory capacity; where self-regulatory capacity comprises self-control (ranging from emotional over-control to emotional under-control) and flexible control and (iii) self-regulatory capacity itself has a quadratic relationship with interpersonal functioning. A UK community sample (n= 512) completed a self-report survey, measuring each of the aforementioned latent variables. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to determine the goodness-of-fit of this and variations of this model. SEM identified that a non-mediation model provided the best fit (χ²=49.403, p< 0.001; CFI=0.98; RMSEA=0.056). Good-fit was obtained for a model including flexible control as a partial mediator (χ²=269.06, p< 0.001; CFI=0.956; RMSEA=0.081) and adequate-fit for a model including over-control as a partial mediator (χ²= 91.744, p < 0.001, CFI=0.932; RMSEA= 0.096). Correlation analyses suggested that over-control and under-control correlated positively with interpersonal problems. Results from SEM provided promising initial evidence for the mediating role of self-regulatory capacity, particularly for the flexible control component. Correlation analyses provided support for the non-linear relationship between self-regulatory capacity and interpersonal functioning, whereby extreme over-control or extreme under-control is associated with interpersonal problems. Findings have implications for identifying mechanisms of change for therapeutic approaches to emotion dysregulation and for understanding the over-controlled population, which has previously been overlooked

Work, boredom and rhythm in the time of COVID-19

This article uses Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis as a foundational text for researching boredom, and offers a critical analysis of UK-based media commentaries about boredom and homeworking written during 2020 and 2021. We situate the discussion within the rhythmic rupture caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and foreground rhythm as a lens for understanding reported experiences and reflections on boredom and work. For non-essential workers, lockdown offered an opportunity to reconfigure working lives away from the constraints of commutes and everyday work settings, yet our findings highlight the narrative representation and experience of a particular type of boredom and inertia known as acedia. The analysis discusses the presence of acedia and absence of rhythm across three themes: acedia and being stuck in time and space; embodiment, movement and rhythm; and the relationship between the present and the future. We conclude by considering what the experience of boredom might mean for how we reconceptualise our post-pandemic working lives

Reduced entomopathogen abundance in <i>Myrmica</i> ant nests-testing a possible immunological benefit of myrmecophily using <i>Galleria mellonella</i> as a model

Social insects such as ants have evolved collective rather than individual immune defence strategies against diseases and parasites at the level of their societies (colonies), known as social immunity. Ants frequently host other arthropods, so-called myrmecophiles, in their nests. Here, we tested the hypothesis that myrmecophily may partly arise from selection for exploiting the ants’ social immunity. We used larvae of the wax moth Galleria mellonella as ‘model myrmecophiles’ (baits) to test this hypothesis. We found significantly reduced abundance of entomopathogens in ant nests compared with the surrounding environment. Specific entomopathogen groups (Isaria fumosorosea and nematodes) were also found to be significantly less abundant inside than outside ant nests, whereas one entomopathogen (Beauveria brongniartii) was significantly more abundant inside nests. We therefore hypothesize that immunological benefits of entering ant nests may provide us a new explanation of why natural selection acts in favour of such a life-history strategy