Abstract
Autoethnography is about studying a community through the author’s
personal experience. I offer my autoethnography of moving from a
Finnish-speaking business school to a Swedish-speaking one in Helsinki,
Finland. This is my story as a Finnish speaker who works in English,
develops a sense of lack and guilt for not contributing in Swedish, and
enacts an identity of an outsider in his community. My ambivalent
identity work as a privileged yet increasingly anxious white male
professor elucidates connections between identity, language, and power,
and it may enable me to see glimpses of what those who are truly
marginalized and excluded experience. I argue that academic identity is
based on language, and once that foundation is shaken, it can trigger
self-reflection that helps to show how language is inevitably tied in
with complex power relations in organizations. I offer my story as an
invitation to discuss how we learn to deal with the complexity of
identity work and language. My story lays bare how autoethnographies by
the privileged, too, can be useful if they show the vulnerability we all
experience in contemporary universities.
Original language | English |
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Peer-reviewed scientific journal | Management Learning |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 5 |
Pages (from-to) | 576-590 |
Number of pages | 15 |
ISSN | 1350-5076 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22.10.2019 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article - refereed |
Keywords
- 512 Business and Management
- Autoethnography
- identity
- language
- power
- universities