Meat Your Enemy Animal Rights, Alignment, and Radical Change

Radical change can be conceived in terms of the reconceiving of ontological distinctions, such as those separating humans from animals. In building on insights from French pragmatism, we suggest that, while no doubt very difficult, radical change can potentially be achieved by creating “alignment” b...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of management inquiry Vol. 26; no. 2; pp. 123 - 138
Main Authors Whelan, Glen, Gond, Jean-Pascal
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2017
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Ontology
Organization studies
common worlds
animal rights
alignment
social change
economies of worth
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Radical change can be conceived in terms of the reconceiving of ontological distinctions, such as those separating humans from animals. In building on insights from French pragmatism, we suggest that, while no doubt very difficult, radical change can potentially be achieved by creating “alignment” between multiple “economies of worth” or “common worlds” (e.g., the market world of money, the industrial world of efficiency). Using recent campaigns by animal rights organizations as our case, we show how the design of “tests” (e.g., tests of profitability, tests of efficiency) can help align multiple common worlds in support for radical change. Our analysis contributes to the broader management and organization studies literatures by conceiving radical change in terms of changing ontological categorizations (e.g., human/animals vs. sentient/ non-sentient), and by proposing that radical social change agents can be helpfully conceived as opportunistically using events to cumulatively justify the change they desire overtime.
ISSN:1056-4926
1552-6542
DOI:10.1177/1056492616671828