IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/crpeac/v21y2010i3p232-242.html

Performativity and the politics of identity: Putting Butler to work

Author

Listed:
  • McKinlay, Alan

Abstract

Judith Butler occupies centre-stage in debates about gender identities. Butler's key concept is performativity: the ways in which gender identity is embodied and enacted, rather than a more or less adequate reflection of some underlying bodily reality. Butler draws on Foucault in several respects, not least her stress on the physicality of individual and social life, and her concern to understand identity as a social process. Identity is always provisional rather complete, a deeply ambiguous and unstable moment. Performativity is not reducible to performance and the degree of choice involved in identity construction both makes it appear more ‘natural’ for the individual and also open to reinterpretation. This is where Butler finds political hope. Foucauldian research on contemporary work identities has largely ignored Butler. Corporate, professional and occupational identities are too often portrayed as simply imposed on individuals in ways that leave little scope for ambiguity or negotiation. Butler's notion of performativity provides a way of understanding the ambiguities and paradoxes of contemporary identities at work.

Suggested Citation

  • McKinlay, Alan, 2010. "Performativity and the politics of identity: Putting Butler to work," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 232-242.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:21:y:2010:i:3:p:232-242
    DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2008.01.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235409001294
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.cpa.2008.01.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mats Alvesson & Hugh Willmott, 2002. "Identity Regulation as Organizational Control: Producing the Appropriate Individual," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 619-644, July.
    2. Miller, Peter & Napier, Christopher, 1993. "Genealogies of calculation," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 18(7-8), pages 631-647.
    3. David Knights & Darren McCabe, 1998. "‘What Happens when the Phone goes Wild?’: Staff, Stress and Spaces for Escape in a BPR Telephone Banking Work Regime," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 163-194, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Harney, Nicholas DeMaria, 2011. "Accounting for African migrants in Naples, Italy," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(7), pages 644-653.
    2. Brown, Judy & Dillard, Jesse, 2013. "Agonizing over engagement: SEA and the “death of environmentalism” debates," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-18.
    3. Grisard, Claudine & Annisette, Marcia & Graham, Cameron, 2020. "Performative agency and incremental change in a CSR context," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    4. Gauneau, Julie & Lambert, Caroline, 2025. "(In)visibilization, silencing and diversity washing: an intersectional analysis of diversity discourses," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Brown, Judy, 2017. "Democratizing accounting: Reflections on the politics of “old” and “new” pluralisms," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 20-46.
    6. Sheerin, Corina & Garavan, Thomas, 2022. "Female leaders as ‘Superwomen’: Post-global financial crisis media framing of women and leadership in investment banking in UK print media 2014–2016," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baker, Darren T & Brewis, Deborah N, 2020. "The melancholic subject: A study of self-blame as a gendered and neoliberal psychic response to loss of the ‘perfect worker’," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    2. Eveline Bruijn & Gail Whiteman, 2010. "That Which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work by Local Indigenous ‘Stakeholders’," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 479-495, October.
    3. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    4. Lee Parker, 2004. "'Presenting' the past: perspectives on time for accounting and management history," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 1-27.
    5. Carmona, Salvador & Ezzamel, Mahmoud & Gutiérrez, Fernando, 2004. "Accounting History Research:Traditional and New Accounting History Perspectives," De Computis, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, issue 1, pages 24-53, December.
    6. Newark, Daniel A., 2014. "Indecision and the construction of self," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 162-174.
    7. Bigoni, Michele & Funnell, Warwick, 2015. "Ancestors of governmentality: Accounting and pastoral power in the 15th century," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 160-176.
    8. Carmona, Salvador & Donoso, Rafael & Walker, Stephen P., 2010. "Accounting and international relations: Britain, Spain and the Asiento treaty," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 252-273, February.
    9. Mai Chi Vu & Nicholas Burton, 2022. "Bring Your Non-self to Work? The Interaction Between Self-decentralization and Moral Reasoning," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(2), pages 427-449, November.
    10. Ali Osman Uymaz, 2016. "The Influence of Transformational Leadership on Personal Branding through the Learning Organization and Consideration of Future Consequences," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(3), pages 1-16, March.
    11. Himick, Darlene, 2016. "Actuarialism as biopolitical and disciplinary technique," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 22-44.
    12. repec:bcp:journl:v:9:y:2025:i:10:p:4092-4109 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Cristofaro, Matteo, 2022. "Organizational sensemaking: A systematic review and a co-evolutionary model," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 393-405.
    14. Manfred Auer & Gabriela Edlinger & Andreas Mölk, 2021. "How do Potential Applicants Make Sense of Employer Brands?," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 47-73, March.
    15. Croft, Charlotte & Currie, Graeme & Staniszewska, Sophie, 2016. "Moving from rational to normative ideologies of control over public involvement: A case of continued managerial dominance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 124-132.
    16. Kalthoff, Herbert, 2002. "Figures, writing and calculation thoughts on the representation of economic practices," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 3(3), pages 28-39.
    17. Minbaeva, Dana & Rabbiosi, Larissa & Stahl, Günter K., 2018. "Not walking the talk? How host country cultural orientations may buffer the damage of corporate values’ misalignment in multinational corporations," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 880-895.
    18. Suzan Lewis & Deirdre Anderson & Clare Lyonette & Nicola Payne & Stephen Wood, 2017. "Public sector austerity cuts in Britain and the changing discourse of work–life balance," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(4), pages 586-604, August.
    19. Jeacle, Ingrid, 2016. "The diet of the nation: The state, family budgets and the 1930s nutritional crisis in Britain," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 54-68.
    20. Macintosh, Norman B. & Shearer, Teri & Thornton, Daniel B. & Welker, Michael, 2000. "Accounting as simulacrum and hyperreality: perspectives on income and capital," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 13-50, January.
    21. Bala Balachandran, 2007. "Imperialismo occidental y contabilidad en Oriente: La historia del Instituto de contadores de gestión autorizados de Sri Lanka," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:21:y:2010:i:3:p:232-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/critical-perspectives-on-accounting/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.