Abstract
Focusing on discourses of parental leave, we explore how certain bodies became visible and valuable in work contexts, whereas others are neglected/rejected. To this end, we study “the work-body relation as an indeterminate symbolic-material object constituted in communication” (Ashcraft, Knowing work through the communication of difference: a revised agenda for difference studies. In: Mumby DK (ed) Reframing difference in organizational communication studies: research, pedagogy, practice. Sage, Los Angeles, pp. 3–30, 2011). And we develop a conceptual framework for analyzing communicative practices of affective embodiment, understood as patterned utterances that endow specific relations between discourses and materialities with affective charges (intensity and valence). Such practices, we argue, constitute the individual and collective identities involved; they enable (and delimit) the embodiment of parental leave. We explore four such embodiments to illustrate how parenting and parental leave has not only become more visible and viable for some employees but also continues to be a privilege not available to all.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter only deals with issues directly related to Mayer’s motherhood and, hence, does not touch upon the sale of Yahoo and Mayer’s exit from the organization.
- 2.
The best seller leading to the creation of Lean In Circles (leanin.org) designed to promote women’s leadership and gender diversity in organizations.
- 3.
Again, this chapter only deals with the direct interrelations of Zuckerberg’s parenting and managing and does not consider how broader issues like Facebook’s recent crisis might also play into this relationship.
- 4.
The discussion, as well as the establishment of a predominantly positive affective relationship between female bodies and practices of ‘opting out’, goes back to at least 2003 when The New York Times Magazine featured a story on what was then termed ‘the opt-out revolution’ (Belkin 2003). Ten years later, however, the magazine ran a follow-up with the message that ‘the op-out generation wants back in’ (Warner 2013), suggesting that the predominant affective relationship may be shifting or is, at least, being contested more openly and vocally. In this context, however, the practice of mommy blogging operates to suggest that one can stay at home and have a career at the same time. Mommy blogging, then, comes to signify the best of both worlds; a personally and professionally rewarding life.
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Just, S.N., Remke, R.V. (2019). Nurturing Bodies: Exploring Discourses of Parental Leave as Communicative Practices of Affective Embodiment. In: Fotaki, M., Pullen, A. (eds) Diversity, Affect and Embodiment in Organizing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98917-4_3
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