Sólidos totales

The terms ‘to govern’, ‘governing’ and ‘government’ are used here not in reference to the operations of the state but in a wider sense to describe the control that an

46 individual, group, or institution can exercise over another. To govern is not to dominate by means of limiting a person’s physical freedom, but is a way of exercising power more subtly through knowledge to guide the conduct of individuals. Government uses ‘a range of multiform tactics’ (1994/1978: 211) to normalise certain ways of speaking and being (Clegg et al., 1996) which means that it is necessary to pay attention to the day-to-day practices of people. Rose and Miller explain that ‘assemblages of devices, tools, techniques, personnel, materials and apparatuses that enabled authorities to imagine and act upon the conduct of persons individually and collectively’ (Rose and Miller, 2008: 16). As Townley asserts, making something the legitimate locus of control requires a particular knowledge of it; government requires ‘vocabularies, ways of representing that which is to be governed, ways of ordering populations (i.e. mechanisms for the supervision and administration of individuals and groups)’ (1993: 520). Foucault sees this as the management of possibilities, arguing that to govern is to ‘structure the possible field of action of others’ (1994/1982b: 241). This idea is useful to the analysis of DTs since the project of diversity training can be read as an attempt to define the trainee in a way that leads to a ‘convenient end’ (Foucault, 1991/1977: 94, quoting Le Pierre) for DPs. The task of this thesis is to find out what these ends are that are implicit in the way that DPs conduct training. This is also relevant to the formation of DPs themselves as they attempt to define each other to construct a sense of who ‘we’ are compared to others.

47 The chief way that this power acts is through ‘normalisation’. The conduct of a person is guided by the establishment of a norm against which the individual can be judged as abiding or deviating. By dividing and classifying the population (Rose, 1996: 105) into groups, relations between them can be evaluated as normal or

abnormal and intervened in where necessary to bring certain groups closer to the norm. Foucault describes how normalising techniques make the person visible, knowable, and governable as an individual: sets of discourses ‘characterize, classify, specialize, they distribute along a scale around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, discipline and invalidate’ (Foucault, 1991/1977: 223). Normalisation can be used to produce bodies that are ‘likely to lead a docile, useful, and practical life’ (Ball, 1990: 15), however that utility is defined.

The rationality of government which guides how this process seeks to produce governable subjects is termed ‘governmentality’ (Rose and Miller, 2008). A

particular form of governmentality has been called ‘modern government’ (Brewis, 1996). Modern government functions by guiding ‘free choice’, making available (and unavailable) certain courses of action (Ahonen et al., 2014: 5, Lemke, 2002: 2). It can be said to operate ‘at a distance’, because the operation of normalisation is internalised into a process of monitoring the self and self-regulation (Dean, 2010). Modern government is characterised by its use of a Western neoliberal vision of the subject: autonomous, responsible, calculating (Rose and Miller, 2008: 18),

entrepreneurial (Thorsen and Lie, 2006), economically rational (Lemke, 2002), and self-regulating, seeking to improve on oneself as a project of the self towards ‘self-

48 fulfilment’ (Miller and Rose, 1990: 24). The context of neoliberal discourse is

important to the analysis of the subjects of diversity because any subject must align at least to some extent with these rationalities of reality in order to be regarded as good, valuable, successful and so on. Moreover, the DT that is constructed must align with it because if strategies of power are seen to limit an individual’s autonomous choice, they will be resisted (Brewis, 1996). Nevertheless, modern government relies on the knowledge of experts who offer knowledge of routes to achieve particular desirable goals, such as health and profitability (Miller and Rose, 1990: 19). The concept of government, in particular modern government, is

important to the analysis of how DPs seek the formation of the DT, explored in Chapter 5.

Previous studies have considered the question of how diversity governs to be an important one, asking how it positions particular subjects to be a legitimate locus of managerial control. Bendl et al. (2009) draw on queer theory derived from the work of Butler (1990) in order to show how ‘difference’ is constructed by diversity

management to represent otherness in relation to a norm. Butler’s work is inspired by Foucault, among others, in its concern for how knowledge of something is constituted: where its boundaries are, how it is regulated and contested (Parker, 2002). The authors show how diversity management discourses perpetuate the notion of fixed identity categories by referring unquestioningly to different social groups. The identity binaries that diversity evokes reproduce an assumption that identities are ‘fixed’, and are founded on heteronormativity - a position in which

49 binary heterosexuality is assumed as the default and is privileged. The authors note that a handful of other critical scholars have also drawn attention to the tendency for diversity more generally to essentialise (to understand as being inherent) identity and difference (Lorbiecki and Jack, 2000, Zanoni and Janssens, 2004).

Though Foucauldian concepts are not evoked, other studies have also critiqued the way diversity can affect what type of equality is promoted (Liff and Wajcman, 1996) and what counts as ‘difference’ (Litvin, 1997). In one corner, diversity has been criticised for focussing on the individual as a source of difference, because this diverts attention away from the persistent privileges that have been conferred on particular groups of people over others, for instance white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied people (Ahmed, 2007a: 237). By placing social groups on a level with individual differences such as education, preferences, experiences, the

categorisations of social group difference are no longer privileged ways of viewing the population. It is argued that this individualised discourse of difference risks diminishing the salience of social groups, and ignoring or even negating the specific experiences of people who are minoritised, by making the agenda about everyone (Ahmed and Swan, 2006: 98, Ahonen et al., 2014: 9). In addition, Ahonen and Tienari (2009) looked at diversity at the level of the European Union, suggesting that its processes (through the EU Framework Programme) normalise ideas of nation and gender in such a way that certain voices are privileged and others are marginalised.

50 Criticism of diversity has also come from scholars who question the underlying assumptions of diversity about the nature of difference as being contained in certain bodies (Ahmed and Swan, 2006). This argument suggests that diversity’s discourse of difference may be detrimental to people from minoritised groups due to the organisational practices that it creates. For example, monitoring the proportions of people from minoritised groups in an organisation or part thereof may well show horizontal or vertical segregation by social group identity, but it also risks over- stating the similarities among people from those groups, relying on stereotypes to explain why they are underrepresented in certain areas (see Young, 1990), or selectively highlighting some needs whilst ignoring others (Webb, 1997). Zanoni and Janssens (2004, 2007) argue that minoritised groups may even be inadvertently positioned negatively within organisations by diversity discourses: as lacking in comparison to the norm and in need of extra support rather than their difference being seen as of value. Even where they are valued, it could be problematic for employees to depend on their difference to be regarded as valuable. Some studies of diversity programmes have raised concerns that diversity management can attempt to control employees from minoritised groups by shaping how they are viewed in organisations - as being exotic objects that add ‘spice and colour’ (Ahmed, 2007a: 246). Jones has suggested that even when the voices of the minoritised are placed into a privileged position, in the so-called ‘valuing’ of differences discourse (Liff, 1997), this can cause an 'exploitation of minority cultural skills in organisations' as employees are deemed ‘cultural experts’ taking on additional work such as interpreting (2004: 284, see also Zanoni and Janssens, 2007).

51 Whilst diversity focuses on the differences between people in one respect, making them matter, it also operates a discourse of sameness. Swan (2010a) suggests that the practice of producing images of diversity (specifically the ‘mosaic’) can firstly serve to limit diversity-heterogeneity to a relatively narrow range of differences, and secondly make these differences ‘safe’ by packaging them into a ‘contained’ image of many smiling faces. She argues that the effect of the mosaic is to neutralise any threat that difference might represent to organisations. Commentators have argued that it is precisely because diversity is less threatening to dominant social groups that it has achieved and retained currency in organisations, engaging them in conversations about change (Ahmed, 2007a: 237, Liff, 1997). However, this leverage has been gained by trading away arguments that do not fit with dominant organisational languages, such as those that are based on ideas of promoting social justice (the social justice case) rather than growth. This makes the development and implementation of diversity practices contingent on the bottom line, on being an investment that will generate a financial return (Dickens, 1999, Dickens, 2000, Noon, 2007). Knights and Omanovic show that in some cases the focus that diversity has on the business case can effectively ‘chase out’ (2016: 12) other arguments for diversity and they ask whether, if there is a failure to produce evidence of the business benefits of diversity, interest in diversity will wane or be lost.

Additionally, diversity research, Ahonen et al. argue, is itself involved in governing in the way that it tends to examine difference at the level of the population.

52 According to this view, this is implicit in quantitative research that, by its nature, ‘addresses phenomena that target population and differentiable categories and characteristics’ (2014: 6), but is also present in the critical literature because it too is involved in defining, or accepting, the legitimate subjects of diversity research and management: ‘It is a mechanism that enables the production of new legitimate diverse subjects. Diversity is no longer linked to histories of discrimination, colonialism, diaspora and economic exploitation, but rather to individualizable, productive sources upon which competitive advantage can be secured’ (Ahonen et al., 2014: 10). Foucault would call this type of power ‘biopolitics’, a power over the way that life is lived (Foucault, 1994/1988: 417), a mode of governing that manages individual variation, not directly, but in terms of how it affects the overall

population. This achieves control without interfering in the everyday freedom that is experienced by individuals. Similar to modern government, outlined above, a biopolitical approach does not contradict the notion of the neoliberal subject.

Overall, it is possible to say that diversity has made differences matter, not only in a conventional sense that it has placed centre-stage a certain agenda for organisations and management, but that it has made material a whole set of subjects and

relations: actors, objects, relations between people of different social groups, and rationalities for how difference should and can be managed. The products of diversity exist in a symbiotic, reciprocal relationship with diversity as a concept, at once constituted by it and (re)constituting it ‘in a continuous dialectical process’

53 (Fernando, 2002: 468). Analysing these products is a key method by which we can seek to understand what diversity is.

Having introduced this theoretical framework, the two main research questions for the thesis can be formulated:

How do diversity practitioners construct themselves as expert subjects? (RQ1)

How is the subject of the ‘diversity trainee’ constructed by diversity practitioners? (RQ2)

The analysis will respond to these questions by examining the forms of knowledge that are embedded in the talk/practices of diversity practitioners. The specific sub- questions that facilitate a response to these research questions are generated

through the review of the extant literature on DPs and training in the next chapter.

By taking a Foucauldian approach, the desire of the thesis is not to prove previous critical analysis ‘false’ but to reinvigorate critical research (Knights, 1992: 531) for which there have been calls (Zanoni et al., 2010, Calás et al., 2009). Foucault offers a way of escaping from analyses that separate the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ of a

phenomenon to instead consider the underlying power/knowledge that is at work. Such analysis is important because in the power/knowledge paradigm ‘everything

54 is at stake’ (Huffer, 2013: 437) and ‘everything is dangerous’ (Foucault, 1994/1983: 256), in other words the minute differences in how the ideas of diversity are articulated can have consequences for who subjects are, who speaks, what is said, and ultimately, what is done.

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Summary

This chapter has introduced the aim of this thesis: to contribute knowledge in the field of critical diversity studies by considering how two key subjects of the field of diversity work are constructed – the diversity practitioner (DP) and the ‘diversity trainee’ (DT).

The first part of this chapter explained that ‘diversity’ has become a key organising concept in UK organisations, taking over from the concept of equal opportunities. Previous critical research on diversity has investigated how diversity is constituted of different arguments about what minoritised groups are, which subjects belong to minoritised groups, and how they should be treated. How knowledge of these subjects is articulated gives people different vocabularies with which to speak and act. It also makes certain people the legitimate locus of interventions and control. Diversity also produces a wider set of relations, practices, objects, and subjects that compose the field of diversity practice in and around organisations. The DP is a key figure in this field of relations; as experts they occupy a privileged position to define what diversity means in the local context. Given this, we currently understand little about what their claims to expertise are in terms of their values, their relationships to others, and the skills and knowledge they see as being essential to doing good diversity work. Given the lack of formal standards and education for diversity practitioners and diversity practice, it was argued that DPs themselves are a key

56 source of information about the norms that are being used and circulated about their role.

Diversity training was introduced as a widespread diversity practice that is similarly under-researched. Through training, diversity practitioners seek to influence social relations within the workplace. They seek to do so by shaping the way that trainees view how social relations are and should be, how they understand who they are, how they should think and behave. This thesis examines the

knowledge that is offered to trainees during diversity training about why the status quo is inadequate and also how things should be otherwise – how trainees should be otherwise.

The second part outlined the key concepts and the theoretical framework of the thesis. Foucault views knowledge not as a reflection of a pre-existing reality but as a productive part of it. This informs how subjects are viewed, namely as constituted by knowledge. It is important to understand the formation of the subjects of diversity because the rationalities with which they are understood, and the subject positions that they take up, produce different possibilities for who they can be, what they can do and for whom. In Foucault’s view, while external rationalities, and the subject positions that they make available, shape who subjects can be, people are also active participants in their self-formation.

57 Power is always an effect of knowledge and so knowledge is also a key part of how control is exercised. One way in which people are controlled is through

‘government’, the use of particular forms of knowledge in order to shape how people act and what actions can be legitimately taken upon them. Government also occurs through a process of normalisation in which a ‘normal’ subject becomes the benchmark against which all are measured and found to comply or be deficient. Furthermore, ‘modern government’ was introduced as a form of government that operates at a distance by seeking to shape how people internalise norms and self- regulate. It is closely linked with modern Western neoliberal discourses of the subject as autonomous and rational. The following research is mindful of this discursive context and it is used to evaluate what is lost and gained when diversity discourses align with it. Though few previous studies have drawn explicitly on Foucault, the question of how diversity governs has been an important one throughout critical diversity research. A number of studies were outlined in order to illustrate this.

This chapter has described the purpose of the thesis to answer the ‘how’ questions of the subjects of diversity – how DPs and DTs are constructed. In recognising the different ways that subjects are produced in the name of ‘diversity’ in workplaces, it becomes possible to think about what diversity does, who it does it for and who gets left out. Producing this knowledge is to make clear ‘what is at stake’ (Dean, 2010: 48) and to facilitate experiments ‘with the possibility of going beyond’ how diversity is done at present.

58 The next chapter reviews the current literature that is available on DPs and

diversity training. It uses the framework that has been outlined here as a guide to re-read and problematize these texts, generating sub-questions for the present research.

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