Zoe Cunliffe

We examine how actors who have no legislative authority over others are able to transform water management from a fragmented approach to a coordinated regional approach, by drawing on a longitudinal study of a regional water board in British Columbia, Canada. We found that the water board enacted an ethic of care to initiate and implement change to achieve water sustainability. Three caring processes operated in the initiating change period: leveraging a caring water ethic to amplify urgency, constructing care narratives to reduce resistance, and embedding care in organizational structures to demonstrate authenticity. Two caring processes operated in the implementing change period: enacting an ethic of care to transform relationships and valorizing a caring water ethic. We found that care within the social world (e.g., caring for others both in a community and in neighboring communities) led to better care for the biosphere world (e.g., water). This study contributes to the emerging organization scholarship on the ethics of care by examining the process through which care is enacted inside and outside (e.g., between interdependent actors) the organization and the consequences of the enactment of care (e.g., beyond the organization, field-level effects). We reorient care in organization scholarship not only as a response to suffering as commonly portrayed in extant literature, but also as a source of agency. From this, we discuss the potential of care ethics for finding innovative solutions to environmental sustainability, and grand challenges in general.

This study builds new theory on how historically marginalized actors reconstruct Indigenous ways of organizing to pursue community resurgence, based on a longitudinal study of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. We found that Tla-o-qui-aht (“people of the Tla-o-qui”) developed an ethical process of Indigenous resurgence through the establishment of Tribal Parks (vs. National Parks). Specifically, Tla-o-qui-aht enacted a peoplehood model (an Indigenous concept) to pursue Indigenous resurgence. Two processes were involved: reviving peoplehood and reclaiming a responsibility-based ethic. Reviving peoplehood (relearning sacred oral history and participating in ceremonies) motivated marginalized individual actors to reconnect with the land, rediscover their Indigenous identity, and seek alternatives. This process seeded community actions. Establishing ethical protocols, empowering through himwitsa (“storytelling”), and envisioning a land use plan empowered the community to reclaim a responsibility-based ethic. This responsibility-based ethic includes responsibility to the land (e.g., reconciling with the earth) and responsibility to peoples (e.g., reconciling with non-Indigenous peoples). The above two processes lay the foundation for ongoing enactment of resurgence practices within and across communities. Tla-o-qui-aht inspired other Indigenous communities to adopt similar processes in their own territories to pursue an ethical form of Indigenous resurgence. This study foregrounds the role of the peoplehood model as an ethical resource and an agentic mechanism for Indigenous resurgence. We discuss the implications of Indigenous scholarly frameworks for advancing the literature on Indigenous resurgence, for decolonizing management theory in general, and for policy and practices of resurgent reconciliation on the ground.

This chapter aims to survey and evaluate various approaches to feminist philosophy of film and to offer suggestions of new topics and directions for research. The focus is on feminist philosophy of film as it pertains to contemporary popular cinema. The first part of the chapter comprises an overview of feminist critique of mainstream films. Five broadly construed areas of interest are examined: images of women, spectatorship and the male gaze, audience-text negotiation, cognitivism, and ideology critique. The second part of the chapter engages with the question of how mainstream films can contribute to a constructive feminist philosophy of film. There are three themes that are drawn out here: subversion of patriarchal ideas, development of a resistant imagination, and expansion of the feminist imagination.