The call centres on the metaphor of ‘terra’ – the various grounds
social scientists stand on to articulate their social constructions.
And we invite contributors to use this metaphor to explore the
established, the new and the unknown in organizational discourse
analysis.
Terra Firma draws attention to well-trodden terrain: the dominant, the safe,
the familiar and the reassuring. Organizational discourse analysis has firmly
established itself in the past two decades as a topic of interest, an analytical
perspective informing a variety of theoretical approaches, and a methodology
for organizational research. Through Terra Firma, while we welcome papers
that engage with these core debates and theories, in this 11th conference we
also wish to attract papers that reflect more critically on the
contribution that organizational discourse analysis can offer. We call for greater scrutiny of the
dominant and the institutionalised in our theoretical approaches and in the
worlds which we research and inhabit. We welcome papers that question
what might be viewed now as the solid ground of orthodox and established
discursive approaches in organization studies.
Equally, we encourage papers
that call into question the firm ground of hegemonic or deep-seated
discourses, to explore the processes whereby certain meanings and forms of
representation become institutionalised.
Terra Nova casts our attention to issues of novelty and emergence. We call for
papers, firstly, that consider new empirical sites, new issues, new theoretical
approaches, and new methodologies for the discursive analysis of
organizations. Additionally, through the theme of Terra Nova, we encourage
papers that scrutinize and question the discourse of ‘newness’ and its
relationship with aspects of social, organizational or discursive change. Such
papers could focus on either contemporary or historical examples of apparent
discursive novelty. In doing so, we emphasise the power effects of discourses
to question how particular worlds are made possible through the invoking of
certain discourses.
Terra Incognita traditionally marks the part of a map left empty, denoting the
undocumented or the unchartered, and in popular myth depicted by the
expression “here be dragons”. We use the term to draw attention to the
hidden, marginalised, excluded bodies, silent voices and submerged
meanings, or the ways in which organizations operate to maintain the
obscurity of certain meanings and identities. We also point to more
unorthodox, risky, possibly iconoclastic approaches and understandings of
social phenomena. Through Terra Incognita we invite consideration of issues
and ways of understanding that move beyond the conventional in discourse
analysis, drawing perhaps on critical praxis, new forms of intervention, and
more effective ways of linking academia to different communities. Finally, we
draw attention here to the recursive and interconnected nature of meaning
and to how one person’s incognita may be another person’s terra firma.
Prospective contributors interested in presenting a paper should send
an abstract of approx. 1,000 words by 10th January 2014.