RECLAIMING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH ORGANIC COTTON SEEDS
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Date of Original Version
1-1-2021
Abstract
We are currently facing multiple ecological crises due to large-scale human impact on the planet. While a growing body of work studies the relationship of organizations with the natural environment, most research overlooks the fundamental premise that organizations, institutions, and societies are built on: anthropocentrism. To explore this assumption and to capture human-Earth power relations in everyday organizational practices, we develop a new theoretical lens, becoming naturecultural, by drawing from feminist new materialisms. Through a multi-sited ethnographic study at an organic cotton t-shirt supply chain, and by utilizing the methodological insights from actor-network theory, we narrate a human de-centered journey of organic cotton seeds from the fields until they become a sustainable t-shirt. Our case study illustrates the analytic work of becoming naturecultural and sheds light onto the emerging tensions as we experiment with non-anthropocentric writing. Our proposed relational lens facilitates moving beyond critique of anthropocentrism and making visible affirmative possibilities of more-than-human and more-than-capitalist practices.
Publication Title, e.g., Journal
81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management 2021: Bringing the Manager Back in Management, AoM 2021
Volume
2021
Issue
1
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Ergene, Seray, and Marta B. Calás. "RECLAIMING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH ORGANIC COTTON SEEDS." 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management 2021: Bringing the Manager Back in Management, AoM 2021 2021, 1 (2021). doi: 10.5465/AMBPP.2021.151.