Chapter 1: Introduction: Feminist and Queer Politics in Critical Management Studies

This book represents a series of relationships that have been developed over many years, but probably began through attending conferences, including the Critical Management Studies conference. Whilst some contributors have not met each other, they unite in their commitment to addressing injustice and inequality, albeit in different ways. Some of this stems from sheer frustration at continued discrimination, lack of representation and voice, and a passion for addressing these individual experiences academically. As editors, we have been involved with Critical Management Studies as a discursive and material field of inquiry and a political ideology for many years, each one of us experiencing, and struggling against, the margin to which our work and our subjectivities have been assigned. Alison, Nancy and Mary have worked with queer and feminist theory and politics throughout their academic careers and we acknowledge that queer and feminist theory have been central to Critical Management Studies’ purpose since its inception in the early 1990s. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of Critical Management Studies, decades of feminist and queer research and activism have made significant in-roads into the marginalisation of the lived experiences of non-normative populations. These bodies of thought and lived material experiences bring with them an agenda for identity politics and change (Pullen & Thanem, 2010).