Spitting in the Salad: Minor Rebellion as Institutional Agency

Liisa Välikangas*, Arne Carlsen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

How can a desire for rebellion drive institutional agency, and how is such desire produced? In this paper, we develop a theory of minor rebellion as a form of institutional agency. Drawing from the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as from notions of social inquiry and the sociology of punk, we qualify and illustrate minor rebellion as a lived-in field of desire and engagement that involves deterritorializing of practice in the institutional field. Three sets of processes are involved: (i) minor world-making, through establishing the aesthetics and relations of an outsider social network within a major field, including the enactment of cultural frames of revolt and radicalism; (ii) minor creating, through constructing and experimenting with terms, concepts, and technology that somehow challenge hegemony from within; and (iii) minor inquiring, through problematizing social purposes and the related experiential surfacing of the desirable new. Minor rebellion suggests a new solution to the paradox of embedded agency by describing institutional agency as shuttling between political contest and open-ended social inquiry, involving anti-sentiments, but also being for something. The paper also contributes to recasting institutional agency as a process resulting from emergent collective action rather than preceding it. To illustrate our theorizing, we describe the emergence of Robin Hood Asset Management, a Finnish activist hedge fund. At the end of the paper we discuss how minor rebellion raises new questions about the multiplicities and eventness of desiring in institutional agency.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)543-561
Number of pages19
JournalOrganization Studies
Volume41
Issue number4
Early online date1 Apr 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2020
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • agency
  • desire
  • institutional work
  • minor
  • rebellion

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Spitting in the Salad: Minor Rebellion as Institutional Agency'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this