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Oscillating politics and shifting agencies: Equalities and diversity work and

actor-network theory

Abstract

Purpose – The paper has two purposes: to introduce a new perspective on power and

resistance in equalities work; and to trouble either or theorisations of success and

failure in this work. Instead it offers a new means of exploring micro-practice.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper applies/develops an “actor network

theory” (ANT) analysis to a single case study of Iopia, a Black woman equalities

practitioner working in a prison education context. It uses this to explore the ways in

which Iopia interacts with a variety of human and non-human objects to challenge

racism in this context.

Findings – Iopia, from an initial position of marginality (as a Black woman

experiencing racism) is able to establish herself (by virtue of this same identity as a

Black woman combating racism) as central to a “new” network for equality and

diversity. This new network both challenges and sustains narrow exclusionary

definitions of diversity. Thus, Iopia’s case provides an example of the contradictions,

and paradox, experienced by those working for equality and diversity.

Research limitations/implications – In the future, this type of feminist ANT analysis

could be more fully developed and integrated with critical race and other critical

cultural theories as these relate to equalities work.

Practical implications – The approach, and in particular the notion of translation, can

be used by practitioners in thinking through the ways in which they can use material

objects to draw in multiple “others” into their own networks.

Originality/value – The article is one of the first to explore equalities workers via the

lens of ANT. It is unique in its analysis of the material objects constituting both

diversity workers and diversity work and thus its analysis of diversity workers and

their work as part of a complex set of social and “material” relations.

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Key words – Objects, materiality, ambivalence, institutional racism, resistance,

micro-practice.

Introduction

Why are we angry? We are angry because we have been mistreated, we are

angry because no one understands and yet no one acts, we are angry because

no one really acts, we are angry because our thinking is not aligned with the

world, we are angry because the world is not aligned with our thinking, we are

angry because see injustice, we are angry because we have no equivalent to

the African-American movement, we are angry because we are white, because

we have power and we don’t acknowledge it, because we have boxes and the

ability to shape them from the inside, because there is every need for a social

justice movement and yet it is so hard to justify. We are angry and we’re not

sure why. These issues are complicated. (Shah, 2006, p. 19)

This quote is taken from the work of the United Kingdom (UK) independent artist and

producer Rajni Shah. It gives us some insight into the cacophony of voices and

perspectives that may be circulating within and around the contemporary concept of

diversity in all its contexts and versions. As both diversity practitioners and academics

emphasise, for good and bad, one of the notable things about the notion of diversity is

that it is elastic and baggy. It means different things to different people; and, as we

argue later, different things to the same people, depending on the context. Thus,

diversity can be invoked as a rationale for “good business”, as a way of improving

creativity in organisations, as a quantitative measure of representation, as a

description of human variety or as a policy imperative to provide a social “mission”

(Ahmed et al., 2006). As a result, diversity is simultaneously everywhere and

nowhere. It is notoriously difficult to “pin down”. At the same time, it can become as

sticky as superglue, attached to some concepts, politics, people, identities, non-human

objects and bodies more than others (Swan and Hunter, under consideration).

In spite of this complexity and multiplicity, much of the literature has tended

to reproduce somewhat simplistic binaries around diversity. For example, a dualism is

often set up between the state and activists, as a result of which state policy is viewed

as a monolithic infrastructure within which diversity work is framed, cut off from the

struggles of users. Other examples include the idea that equality is good and diversity

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is bad, or professionalisation of diversity compromised and diversity activism

uncompromised.

At the bottom of this is a relative under-theorisation of the messiness of

equalities and diversity work within the literature. Our own research (Ahmed et al.,

2006; Hunter, 2005a, 2005b) and our own experience of doing formalised and

informal equalities and diversity work suggest that this is rarely cut and dried. Our

own empirical work and that of Deborah Jones (Jones, 2004; Jones and Stablein,

2006) show that equalities and diversity workers feel a great deal of ambivalence in

relation to the types of policies, training and actions that they have to undertake. This

ambivalence arises as they feel much of this work compromises them when their

attention is diverted from what they consider to be the “real” work of equality.

Nevertheless, they report that this type of compromised work is necessary and can

lead to unexpected outcomes.

A related issue is the feeling that equality and diversity workers have to “play

the game” by presenting matters of racism and profound discrimination in more user-

friendly language; dressing up social justice interventions as commercial ventures –

the infamous business case. Thus, they draw resources – linguistic, emotional, bodily

– from different identities and discourses that can underpin equality and diversity.

These oscillations and ambivalences are seldom addressed in the equality and

diversity literature. The multiplicity of micro-practices and micro-encounters in which

contradictory identities and resources are mobilised is relatively under-explored. This

raises questions about how equality and diversity workers hold together the

contradictory aspects of their work; how they live with ambivalence and multiplicity.

Our paper starts to address some of these issues, drawing upon one case study of an

equality and diversity worker, Iopia, who worked in the UK prison education service.

This is not to underestimate the contribution of the emergence of equality and

diversity studies across a range of disciplines. Thus, critical policy literature has

focused on the effectiveness of a variety of equal opportunities policies, including

those concerned with equal access to goods and services (Bagilhole, 1997; Bhavani et

al., 2005; Blakemore and Drake, 1996; Gewirtz, 2000; Lewis, 2000; Phoenix, 2000).

It has also begun to focus on how diversity work is done in context, examining the

implementation of equal opportunities practices in education, social work and local

government (Gibbon, 1992; Jewson and Mason, 1992; Lustgarten and Edwards, 1992;

Penketh, 2000; Young, 1992) and the role of users and social movements in the

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development of such policies (Taylor, 1996; Williams, 1989). Management literature

has examined the political implications of the “turn to diversity”, that is, the recent

shift from equal opportunities to diversity in private sector and public sector

organisations (Benschop, 2001; Kirton and Green, 2005; Liff, 1998; Litvin, 1997;

2002; Wilson and Iles, 1996).

These literatures make important contributions to our understanding of the

effects, implications and potential uses of policy. But they continue to underplay the

micro-politics involved in making and taking up policy by diversity workers, activists

and professionals. The effect of this in the literature is that diversity workers’

identities, practices and agency power can be seen in static and unambiguous ways.

Thus, it might be understood from these arguments that diversity work is relatively

cut and dried: there are good policies and bad policies; good activism and bad

corporate diversity. In contrast, we want to approach diversity workers as engaged in

a complex micro-politics, developing multiple strategies of resistance, mobilising

different and often contradictory identities, interests, desires and discourses at

different times. This provides a richer, more complex understanding of the daily

oscillations and contradictions that equalities workers face up to but also live with.

To start to get at some of these issues, in this paper we focus on one interview

with a diversity worker called Iopia. The interview is taken from a larger project with

equalities trainers and practitioners[1] in the English learning and skills sector[2]. Our

main aim in this paper is to bring a new approach to understandings of power in

equalities work. Because power relations are integral to understanding the ways in

which diversity workers are able to make inroads into unequal organisational

practices, it is important to have a more nuanced understanding of the micro-politics

involved in doing equality work.

To help us we draw upon an approach called actor network theory (ANT),

which we shall elaborate on in more detail in a later section. In essence, ANT enables

us to illuminate the formalised and less formalised processes through which equality

and diversity gets taken up or not taken up in organisations. These processes are often

hidden or assumed – what ANT calls “blackboxed” – in the literature. Once opened

up, we can start to see not only what Vicky Singleton (1998) describes as the

“explanations, recommendations and assessments” drawn upon by diversity workers

(p. 332), but also how different actors become decision-makers, are given power, take

on different identities and become network-builders (Singleton, 1996). More recent

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versions of ANT show how these processes are not stable or uncontradictory (Star,

1991; Singleton and Michael, 1993; Singleton, 1996, 1998). Thus, ANT can help us

emphasise the multiplications, heterogeneity, mutability and uncertainty that is

involved in diversity workers’ practices, identities, interests and power, and diversity

work itself.

ANT also offers diversity studies important explanatory resources, which are

relevant to this paper. First, ANT’s conceptualisation of power allows us to explain

how quite different constituencies are able to take up “diversity” and yet

fundamentally disagree about its political aims and objectives. Second, because ANT

theorises the interdependencies between non-human and human, it also allows us to

examine how material objects commonly present in organisational life contribute to

sustaining and challenging inequalities in organisations. Thus, it enables us to explore

how diversity policies, strategies, and training manuals work with emails, electronic

discussion spaces, power point technology, flipcharts and human actors to produce

equality and diversity networks.

Actor network theory

ANT is widely used across a range of disciplines including social studies of science

(Latour, 1987, 1999; Callon, 1986a, 1986b), feminist science studies (Singleton,

1996, 1998; Star, 1991; Haraway, 1991, 1997) and anthropology (Strathern, 2004)

and organisational theory (Gherardi and Nicolini 2000, 2005; Fox, 2000, 2005),

among others. Leading ANT theorist, John Law (2004) has argued that while ANT is

widely used as a “toolkit in socio-technical analysis”, it is sometimes better

considered as a “sensibility to materiality, relationality, and process” (p. 157). As a set

of conceptual resources then, it can help us explore how diversity management creates

new relations, interactions and connections. In particular, it emphasises how

heterogeneous people, groups, interests, objects, documents, bodies and skills can

align together to produce a relatively stable but dynamic network in spite of – or as

Vicky Singleton (1996, 1998) argues – because of ambivalence, contradictions and

oscillations. Thus, ANT focuses on networks-in-the-making, and ways that human

actors and non-human actors (such as diversity policies or audit reports) associate to

produce a relatively durable diversity network.

ANT has developed from a number of ethnographic studies on a range of

organisational practices. These include the doing of science, car production, cervical

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screening programmes, scallop fishing, etc. There have been a number of debates

within ANT, for example, around the politics of ANT, the colonising tendency of

ANT in relation to the “other”, the importance of ambivalence, and as a result,

extensive embellishments on the original work, particularly by feminists such as

Vicky Singleton (1996,1998; Singleton and Michael, 1993). Our work elsewhere

engages with these debates, (see for example, Hunter and Swan, 2005; Swan and

Hunter, under consideration); this paper provides an introduction to ANT, which will

be necessarily brief so that we outline enough of ANT’s distinct theoretical

commitments to be able to move on to use it as a framework for our discussion on

diversity work. This means that some of the more nuanced and complex debates on

ANT will not be covered here.

In essence, ANT describes how “loose assemblages” of disparate people,

agendas or things can be wrought together through alliances and negotiations into a

“stable” network. A network is a specialised term within ANT. It refers to “a co-

ordinated set of heterogeneous actors which interact more or less successfully to

develop, produce, distribute and diffuse methods for generating goods and services”

(Callon, 1991, p. 133). These heterogeneous actors in relation to diversity

management can refer to relationships, objects, knowledges, connections and

processes. Networks are spread across time and space. Identities – of both people and

objects, the human and non-human – are bound up with the network. In addition,

actors only have power in so far as they are elements of a network. Power and identity

of any actor – human or non-human – is an effect of being in a network. Thus, Callon

writes that a network is:

… not a network connecting entities which are already there, but a network

which configures ontologies. The agents, their dimensions and what they are

and do, all depend on the morphology of the relations in which they are

involved. (Callon, 1991)

Rather than suggesting that objects (actors) produce relations, he is suggesting

that it is relations that create objects.

As can be seen from the discussion above, ANT makes no analytic distinction

between the human and the non-human. This means that they are all viewed in what

leading ANT theorist, Michel Callon (1986a), calls the same analytic “register”. Thus,

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no a priori distinctions are therefore made. In tandem, ANT tends to avoid macro

notions such as institutions, state, class, “race” or gender. Rather, it examines how

these are constituted as “coherent, consistent, uniform across time and space” through

networks of people, ideas and objects (Michael, 1996, p. 62). It theorises these as

effects rather than as explanatory resources. This leads to a preference by ANT

theorists for what they describe as “neutral” terminology, such as entities or actors,

which attempts to reject orthodox social science dualistic distinctions such as human–

non-human, subject–object and social–natural.

The process of how networks are brought together and stabilised is called

“translation”. Briefly, it involves multiple interactions – negotiations, co-optations,

seductions, coercions – between different actors – human and non-human. Through

these encounters, diverse interests are aligned by one of the actors becoming the

gatekeeper, which interprets, co-opts and represents these various interests. As Michel

Callon and Bruno Latour (1981) describe it:

By translation we understand all the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts

of persuasion and violence thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes

to be conferred on itself, authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or

force. (p. 279)

Translation then refers to the “work through which actors modify, displace,

and translate their various and contradictory interests” in line with the network

requirements (Latour, 1999, p. 311). It is a process of connection through cornering,

negotiation, yielding and co-opting that attempts to define particular roles for actors to

take on and particularly how problems should be understood. Essentially, it involves

finding language that is agreeable across competing interests. For example, in relation

to diversity work, translation may take the form of using the so-called “business case”

– in which equality is presented as an economic or organisational benefit – in order to

align the disparate interests of the organisation, management, black and minority staff,

white staff, diversity workers, etc.

The three core processes in these kinds of alignment are referred to as

interessement, translation and enrolment. In lay terms, Micheal (1996) defines them

as:

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Interessement: This is what you really want to be.

Translation: We are the ones who can help you become that.

Enrolment: Grant your obedience by your own consent.

Through the process of translation, translation bottlenecks are created, or what

ANT theorists called “obligatory points of passage” (Singleton and Michael, 1993).

All actors must pass through these obligatory points of passage in order to articulate

their identity or raison d’être within the network. For example, in equality work an

obligatory point of passage might be the Race Relations Amendment Act (RRAA)

2000. Therefore, different actors must be seen to abide by the terms of the RRAA to

be “doing equality work”.

Central to the concept of translation is that connections between actors do not

take the form of a cause. Thus, non-human and human actors are not all aligned in the

diversity network for the same reasons or interests, nor with the same identities or

investments. Neither is a cause followed by a string of the same connections or

explanations (Latour, 2005, p. 107). Rather, translation is “a relation that does not

transport causality but induces … [actors] into coexisting” (p. 5). The alignment

processes outlined above produce diverse and contradictory connections around

different interests. This is important in relation to diversity management because

being part of the network does not signal a unified signing up or conversion to the

same single cause. Thus, different actors are not necessarily aligned to the cause of

addressing inequality. Being translated through a network of diversity does not mean

that actors are converted or unified. Instead, the human and non-human actors’

interests are being met by enrollers in the network and, at the same time, the actors’

identities, power and practices are taken up through being in the network.

Importantly, for our discussion on diversity management, translation is a

process that displaces competing scenarios (Latour, 2005). Displacement can involve

the movement of materials, resources and information, setting up meetings, making

contacts and gaining funding, which render the actor’s network more durable

(Michael, 1996, p. 54). Thus, it is always a political process that is performative, that

is, producing new identities, relations, questions, solutions and forms of organising,

which are always dynamic and ongoing. The stability of networks is precarious and

has to be worked at through the ongoing alignment, boxing in and displacement of the

interests and identities of actors. As Susan Leigh Star (1991) writes, “every enrolment

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entails a failure to enrol and a destruction of the world of the non-enrolled” (p. 45).

Through these ongoing processes, networks can stall, break down and change

direction, and our next section starts to explore these through examples from our case

study.

Feminist challenges

There are many versions of ANT and one important challenge to what we might refer

to as the canonical ANT outlined above comes from feminist writers such as Vicky

Singleton (1996, 1998) and Susan Leigh Star (1991), and others – often referred to as

“after ANT” writers – such as Annemarie Mol (2005), Charis Cussins (1998) and

Helen Verran (2002). These writers draw on some elements of ANT, but challenge

and extend it in quite new ways. In essence, their work has stressed indeterminacy,

ambivalence and multiplicity in practices across a number of fields. They differ in a

number of ways but they all point to the importance of recognising that practices not

only make identities and agency but also more profoundly “enact” realities (Mol,

2005). In addition, participation in practices, and networks, is multiple. One of the

reasons this occurs is because networks exist within networks. Thus, actors’ identities

are partly defined through their relationship to one network forged by others, while

they are also involved in constructing their own networks. This latter network can

both problematise and reinforce the identities on which the original network is based.

If networks are multiplicitous and multidimensional … they are rendered

durable by the way that actors at once occupy the margins and the core, are the

most outspoken critics and the most ardent stalwarts, are simultaneously

insiders and outsiders – in sum are ambivalent. (Michael, 1996, p. 65)

If networks are created through the alignment of multiple actors, each with

multiple identifications and conflicting perspectives related to these identities, the

enroller must call on these actors to prioritise one element of that identity in order to

fulfil their role within the network to achieve network durability.

But there are other reasons why multiplicity, ambivalence and contradiction

are central to networks. For example, for Singleton (1996, 1998), actors can have

several contradictory identities at once, and these actually help sustain a network as in

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her case of the UK Cervical Screening Programme (the CSP). Her main argument is

that the CSP was held together by instability and multiplicitous identities. For Cussins

(1998), multiplicity operates in a different way in her study of women undergoing in

vitro fertilisation (IVF). Her main, somewhat counter-intuitive argument, is that

women have agency in their own objectification in the IVF process, as they render

themselves compatible with instruments and practices, and manage themselves as

much as the medics and procedures. Cussins argues that women’s agency and

subjectivity are multiply configured through this process. Cussins’ work profoundly

challenges simple notions of agency. Thus, she suggests that women can participate

actively in their own objectification – for Cussins, this is not a contradiction in terms.

This is because women have agency in the IVF process at times when they might

appear not to; they have to render themselves objectifiable, we might say.

Furthermore, agency comes and goes over time, and depending on the context (for

example the success or failure of the treatment) can even be enacted retrospectively.

She refers to this as ontological choreography. Through these accounts, feminist

theorists are suggesting that contingency, contradiction, mutability and multiplicity

are at the centre of networks, practices and realities.

A final contribution from this feminist literature that we take forward in our

own work is in determining where we focus in the network. Feminists have critiqued

much of ANT’s focus on the “heroic” actor, the most obviously powerful actor

positioned at the pinnacle of hierarchical networks (Star and Griesemer, 1989).

Haraway (1997), positioning herself in contrast to Bruno Latour, claims that as

analysts too we “must always be in the action, be finite and dirty, not transcendent

and clean” (p. 36). For Haraway, all knowledge is situated and located knowledge

whether it is official or unofficial. Similar to Cussins’ (1998) notion of “ontological

choreography”, we suggest that knowing involves a kind of “epistemological

choreography”, where, following Haraway: “location is the always partial, always

finite fraught play of foreground and background, text and context”.

Susan Leigh Star (1991), suggests that one powerful way in which feminist

analysis and ANT can be joined is in linking the outsider or marginalised actors

characteristic of feminist work with the translation model of ANT to explore “the

point of view of that which cannot be translated: the monstrous, the Other, the wild”

(p. 38). This perspective enables us in this paper to understand what marginal actors

achieve through day-to-day work and the novel ways in which organisational futures

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may get played out as a result. But it also enables us to think through how the

perspectives of those actors also change depending on where they are positioned in

the network; depending on what constitutes their foreground and their background.

Thus, such a feminist analysis enables us to consider the ways in which all actors are

always “powerful and powerless” (Hunter, 2005a, p. 159, 2005b), the ways in which

they embody contradiction and points to why network durability for equality and

diversity is so precarious.

Iopia and the human and non-human actors

In this next section, we want to draw upon the key concepts and techniques of a more

feminist ANT to illuminate some of the less visible processes involved in diversity

and equality work in the learning and skills sector. To do this, we turn to the case

study, drawn from interviews by one of the authors with a Black woman working in a

men’s prison education unit in the North of England. As Vicky Singleton (1996)

argues, the starting point for any ANT analysis is chosen by the researcher, and this

affects the viewpoint created. We chose to enter the network alongside of Iopia, to

enable us to explore the dynamics by which so-called marginal actors can create and

sustain a central role, thus developing our understanding of equality and diversity

work.

At the centre of the case study is Iopia, an African–Caribbean woman teacher

who works in a prison education department in England. Iopia is employed as a basic

skills teacher[3] working with prisoners. In the case study, Iopia shows how she

draws upon a range of human and non-human actors in order to create and maintain a

central role for herself as a race equality leader. This is in spite of her having

experienced racism (direct and indirect) within the prison and explicit exclusion from

applying for the post of Race Relations Officer.

The equality context in which Iopia is working is critical for understanding

how she works with human and non-humans in this example. One of the more

significant non-human additions to the equality landscape in the UK in recent years

has been the RRAA (2000). It has had a significant impact on how equality and

diversity work gets structured, understood and carried out. The Amendment, brought

into existence after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and the subsequent MacPherson

Report (1999), is seen to signal an ideological break with previous equality legislation

for two reasons. It enshrined the concept of institutional racism in statute and

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emphasised the concept of “public duty”, meaning that educational institutions have a

specific duty to demonstrate the ways in which they encourage equality and diversity

to develop within their organisations. In theory then, a shift has occurred in the

“burden of proof” for racism. Rather than assuming a level playing field,

organisations now have to assume the existence of race inequality and evidence the

ways in which they are combating it. These provisions have led to educational

providers being required to publish diversity strategies, race equality action plans,

race equality schemes (RES) and race equality impact assessments; so adding to the

proliferation of other non-human objects flowing from the RRAA.

UK diversity work has been, and continues to be hugely influenced by the

work of Black activists (see Alleyne, 2002; Shukra, 1998; Lentin, 2004). There is a

long history of Black activism in education (Mirza, 1998) and more recently in the

learning and skills sector specifically. The work of Black activists has contributed to

the creation of a number of different formal and informal networks for Black and

minoritised staff, students and managers. A consortium of some of these networks,

together with trade unions and a network of principals, produced the Commission for

Black Staff’s Challenging Racism: Leading the Way In Further Education (2002) and

the subsequent creation of the Black Leadership Initiative (see also Bhavani et al.,

2005). Despite this activist influence, it continues to be “formal” statements of race

(in)equity, as presented in official documents and positive action programmes

locating the problem of (and solution for) race equality in minoritised staff, that tend

to accrue value in organisations (Ahmed et al, 2006; Bhavani et al., 2005; Gulman,

2004). Thus, equally importantly, many more informal challenges to the unequal

organisational structures levied by Black and minoritised staff on a daily basis are less

valued, accrue less organisational capital and often remain hidden from view (Hunter,

2006; Kilic, 2006; see also Sudbury, 1998).

In relation to Iopia’s prison education context, there are two key reports that

are central to Iopia’s network-building, both by the Commission for Race Equality

(CRE): the first is the report into the racist murder of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham

Prison in 2000 (CRE, 2003a); the second is the report of a wider investigation into

race equality in prisons in England and Wales (CRE, 2003b). The CRE investigation

was established as a result of representations made by Zahid’s family after his murder.

CRE commissioners and the HM Prison Service were the key players in examining

what went on and creating the two formal reports. These reports, however, drew on a

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vast array of perspectives that went beyond the CRE commissioners and the Prison

Service. The range of materials used included police interviews conducted at the time

of the murder with White and Black prisoners and prison officers, the individual

commissioners and prison governors. It also draws upon materials from the HM

Prison Service initial internal inquiry into the murder, supplementary materials from

the CRE investigation, along with evidence from two other cases of unlawful racial

discrimination within the prison service in which the CRE had been involved (see

CRE, 2003b).

As a result of the investigation, the CRE had the right to serve a Non-

Discrimination Notice on HM Prison Service on the basis of the finding of unlawful

racial discrimination[4]. However, they suspended the decision to do this for two

reasons. First, the Prison Service agreed to work with the commission to accelerate

the pace of change on race equality. Second, it had provided evidence of steps being

undertaken to deal with the problems the investigation had focused on (CRE, 2003a,

p. 13). This report and the investigation surrounding it are important because they are

representative of broader cross-sectoral epistemological struggles over the notion of

“institutional racism” post-MacPherson, a significant part of which was characterised

by the resistance to recognise the category at all (Neal, 2003). Many have argued that

the definition is too tight. Others have argued however that the nebulous nature of the

MacPherson definition comes out of the continuing tension between activists’ and

establishment understandings of the term “institutional racism” (Solomos, 1999).

The struggles around institutional racism can be understood in ANT terms in

relation to what Susan Leigh Star (1999) refers to as “control of the indicators”. Her

case comes from quarrels between psychoanalysts and biologists over disease

classification systems, in which numeric indicators were developed that squeezed out

psychoanalytic perspectives altogether. She writes:

When large epistemological stakes are at issue in the development of a system,

one political tactic is to focus away from the larger question, and instead to

seize control of the indicators. (p. 388).

This “narrowing to control” is one way of interpreting what many

commentators argue has happened with the concept of institutional racism. Thus,

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many academics and practitioners argue that institutional racism is now interpreted

“narrowly” in bureaucratic diversity management interventions and, hence,

disconnected from its original use (Bhavani et al., 2005). Under these circumstances,

the indicators for race equality become dominated by racialised body counts and

numerical targets that can easily be met while organisational practices remain

unchanged (Puwar, 2004; Wrench, 2003). Our case study below shows how Iopia, a

marginal actor, worked with official policy documents, concepts and identities

produced after the CRE investigation to stop this quantification of institutional racism

and to foreground her own identity as a leader for race equality.

Oscillations

Prior to the publication of the CRE report, Iopia had experienced difficulty in “being

heard” regarding her own personal experiences of racism and those of Black and

minority ethnic prisoners within the prison. She had been feeling that she had been

“fobbed off” over quite a long period of time by the prison administration. However,

she saw the report’s publication as a possible opportunity for starting to address some

of these issues: “I thought, well okay, I’m not going rush things; I’ll just see how

things progress”. The rest of the case study explores what happened and how in our

view Iopia constructs “new” networks and draws upon the non-human to work for

equality and diversity within the prison.

We begin with a quote towards the middle of the interview. At this point, Iopia

was answering a question about how things progressed after she first raised the issue

of discriminatory practices in the prison.[5]

As a result of me challenging the situation at HMP lock-up I was able to liaise

with the director on a one to one. I attended a couple of interviews with him

where I was able to highlight my concerns. And the actual effects that the

adverse effects could have if they didn’t change their attitude to the concerns

that I had. And also the fact that if they continued in a certain methods that

they were doing using stereotypes to sack prisoners and their attitudes then

they would risk the institution of becoming, well, being classified as

institutionally racist. I also brought to light the fact that the CRE in the prison

service had recently completed the study that showed institutional racism was

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prevalent within … the prison service anyway. And that prison service

included our establishment cause we’re part of the prison service...

In this first part of the excerpt, we can understand Iopia’s account in terms of

translation. Translation involves bringing together her interest in race equality

together with the prison’s interest in not being described as racist. Using Michael’s

(1996) ANT framework, we can explore the situation in the following terms:

You want to be a high quality prison (ie for equality) yet you institute bad

quality (“racially” unequal) employment practices.

I can help you become for a high quality prison (by helping you with “race”

equality).

Grant me your autonomy; support me in this by putting me in the position by

which I can help you become more “racially” equal.

Translation in this instance refers to the way that certain roles and definitions

of the situation are being offered for take-up that produce a network around race

equality. These roles and definitions crucially close off competing roles and

definitions. In this case, the prison can only not be institutionally racist if it changes

its procedures. It cannot continue to discriminate and be considered as equal.

In this next quote, Iopia presents her account of how she mobilised other

actors in the network, while being mobilised herself. As she develops her explanation,

through the lens of ANT, we can see how she enrols different actors – both human

and non-human – into her network around race equality:

I was also able to bring to their attention the criteria for both race relations

officer and assistant race relations officer and how that had changed.[6] So

that helped me. And gave me the confidence to apply for a job that that’s taken

me into the public sector. But it’s also … put me in a position now where I can

actually implement policies in regards to race relations. That I can actually

investigate race relations. I can actually define packages – packages that are

looking at cross-cultural communication, religion, identity with both prisoners

and with officers, and the actual prison service staff.

16

In this excerpt, we can see how Iopia creates “allies” through non-human

objects to redefine the network. These include the job descriptions for the race

relations officers, educational courses and policies. She also enrols discourses on race

equality such as cross-cultural communication, religion and identity that go broader

than the legislative network that arose from the CRE investigation and the RRAA.

Iopia is also creating new roles for the humans: prisoners and staff in the network as

“learners” in race equality. It is important to emphasise here, lest we produce an

account of these moves that can be seen as humanist, that Iopia is also being enrolled

as she enrols. Thus, she is aligning her own interests with different human and non-

human actors, at the same time as she is being enrolled by others in ways that she

might not intend. New roles and identities are being taken up by Iopia as she draws

upon resources from different actors and networks. Thus, none of this is without

contradiction and ambivalence.

In the next excerpt, Iopia gives an account of how she extended the network

even beyond the group of non-humans and humans identified in the quote above.

Also working with directors as well. Not just officers or senior officers. But

also managers and directors. And it’s given me an opportunity also to liaise

with organisations and the communities … To get them to participate more

within the prison. And get involved in the prison aspect in bringing people in

hopefully. And also to increase the number of Black minority ethnic

employees within the establishment that I belong to. So from a negative, a sort

of negative experience that I’ve had at the lockups inspired me to move on to

something else now … there’s something good come out of it.

What Iopia’s account shows is that she is wanting to bring in new and less

formalised equalities networks into the prison network. In ANT terms, this account

suggests the bringing together of loose assemblages around different perspectives on

race equality and drawing them into a network. This account suggests that the prison

network will be broadened out to situate diversity work within its broader community

context and wider identities and interests around equality. This is achieved, not

through an imposition of will, but through processes of translation and enrolment, of

which Iopia is both subject and object. In particular, she presents herself as enrolling

the prison education department in such a way that they are persuaded of the value of

17

race equality not only in terms of numbers but also in terms of the qualitative

experience of employment.

At the same time, we need to understand Iopia herself as part of a network. By

taking on the formal race equality work in her institution she too is being enrolled by

the prison network on the basis of racialised positioning, occupying a certain space

within the organisation, working for race equality and providing a “Black

perspective” (Hunter, 2006; Kilic, 2006; Turner, 2006). This positioning in itself,

however, reproduces racism by confining Black and minority ethnic staff into certain

racialised roles. Thus, Iopia is in the position of enrolee and enroller. This reinforces

the notion that ambivalence and multiplicity can be part of participating in networks

and, in particular, equality and diversity networks. It also underlines that simplistic

binaries in diversity studies of insider and outsiders, or good diversity work versus

bad diversity work, need more debate.

This account also suggests the oscillations that form part of Iopia’s

participation in the prison network. From an initial position of marginality (as a Black

woman experiencing racism and direct exclusion) within the network of the prison,

Iopia is able to establish herself (by virtue of this same identity as a Black woman

combating racism) as central to a “new” network for equality and diversity. This new

network also challenges narrow decontextualised understandings of diversity, while at

the same time gaining much of its power from narrow decontextualised

understandings of diversity. Iopia is enrolled, through a specific part of her identity,

but she then simultaneously enrols others (community groups, an Asian woman

colleague, Black prisoners) previously marginal to the prison network through the

CRE’s report (2003a, b) and other documents. She then moves on to create new non-

human objects integral to sustaining the network. These objects rely on broader

classifications of equality than the inclusion and quantification of Black bodies. These

objects now enrol ideas and actors around ethnicity, religious experience and

communication practices.

Finally, we begin to see the way in which Iopia gestures towards a re-

definition of the prison itself. She re-situates it in terms of its interdependence with

the “outside world”, the variety of communities and other objects that give meaning to

and thus perform the prison. At the same time, the heterogeneity of actors, interests,

ideas, etc. within this network enrol different aspects of Iopia’s identity and provide

different types of agency and resources. Some of these, as we have suggested above,

18

are what might be seen as racist and anti-equality, underscoring the contradictions,

ambivalence and multiplicities in diversity work.

This case study points to the ways in a range of actors, human and non-human,

are currently being brought into equality and diversity work. Through the use of ANT,

we can see how the CRE report (2003a, b) constitutes a non-human means of

standardising equality and diversity work within prisons. This enabled the broader

prison network to enrol Iopia and other actors, but also enabled Iopia to enrol other

different actors into her own race equality network. The report acted as a means for

translating information across different “worlds” but crucially without homogenising

the interests or discourses of different actors. A form of contemporary management

device that serves to define relations and coordinate different actors, it constitutes

end-points but also starting points. It structures behaviour but allows for restructuring.

Diversity work in this case involves continual renegotiation, amendment and

rewritings between different non-human and human actors. As a result, it is also

precarious, contingent and creates ambivalence and contradictions. May be that is

what much diversity work involves: ambivalence work?

Conclusion

In this paper, we have drawn upon an ANT approach to introduce a more complex

analysis to explore the hidden, often forgotten elements of diversity work. Through an

empirical case study using an ANT analysis, we have sought to challenge the taken-

for-granted notion that there is a monolithic state that creates the only infrastructure

for equalities. One way we have done this is to show how this infrastructure is

profoundly relational in character. Thus, there are struggles surrounding the inclusion

of multiple perspectives in its very construction; and also in terms of how it is then

taken up. Our main argument has been that rather than viewing professionals as

complicit in the narrow bureaucratisation and quantification of inequalities, and

activists as “impotent” in the face of this managerialism, the very diversity

infrastructure itself is constituted through a complex network of relations where

activists, professionals, organisations and states are interdependent.

There are two other important aspects of this relationality that we want to

emphasise. As ANT shows us, materiality is central to this relationality: non-human

actors create and sustain relations between different actors. Through our case study,

19

we have explored how the prison network was extended and rendered durable through

the agency of the non-human as well as the human: documents, policies, reports,

investigation accounts and legislations among others all enrolled human and other

non-human actors. The second significance around relationality is that being aligned

to the network does not mean that you are signed up to one cause or interest. Our case

study shows how Iopia joined different worlds around the notion of “race equality”,

although these worlds understood race equality differently. Nevertheless, the notion of

race equality itself enrolled Iopia and enabled her to enrol other actors.

This analysis is important as it adds another dimension to burgeoning work on

auditing for diversity, or audit culture. Much of this work, including our own, strikes

significant notes of caution about the ways in which documents sustain cultures of

performativity rather than cultures of action (Ahmed et al., 2006; Blakemore and

Drake, 2006; Swan, 2006), going so far as to demonstrate the ways in which the

documenting of inequality through race equality statements actually blocks action for

race equality. But, there is another story to tell here. We have pointed to the way in

which these non-human actors of audit and performativity can actually force action,

constituting important starting points from which to make bolder claims for race

equality. These non-human actors do this in spite of perspectives that continue to

support inequality through liberal discourses of natural progression. Thus, they hold

and show the traces of more than one set of concerns, enabling other actors in a

network to maintain their respective concerns. At the same time, there is a

precariousness to all of the moves. There are epistemic and ontological oscillations at

every turn. This may mean that we cannot hold on to a simple binary of cultures of

performativity versus cultures of action.

Challenging racism and sexism is about challenging hierarchically ordered

dualistic and simplified modes of thinking and organising. This is because these fail to

take account of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of being. We have suggested ways

in which ANT as a mode of theorising against this oversimplification is a useful tool

for theorising against racism and sexism. It enables us to think about how Black and

minoritised staff can be marginalised by racism, but also how they can mount strong

and successful challenges to their marginalisation through their everyday work. This

is important to recognise in order to rewrite common narratives around Black and

minority ethnic staff as lacking the agency to challenge the oppressive relations of

racism. Thus, policy and policy documents are not as “fixed” as we may believe.

20

Policies can be oppressive, but they can also be used as means to force social change

in unexpected ways. One of us has argued elsewhere (Swan and Fox, under

consideration) that the way in which diversity workers interact with diversity

discourses can have unstable and unpredictable consequences; we are also claiming

that their multiple interactions with documents have unpredictable impacts. At the

same time, we need to acknowledge the ambivalence and precariousness involved in

work that seeks to disrupt the status quo, and to work harder at understanding the

emotional and psychic consequences of such labour.

Acknowledgements

Thanks very much to the reviewers for their most helpful comments, challenges and

insights. Thanks to Professor Sara Ahmed for her emotional and intellectual

inspiration.

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27

Dr Shona Hunter

Dr Shona Hunter is Research Councils UK Fellow in the New Machinery of

Governance in the School of Sociology and Social policy at the University of Leeds.

She has carried out a variety of interdisciplinary research into gendered and racialised

relations in health and social care and education. For the fellowship she is doing more

work around the relational politics of equalities policy-making. The aim is to develop

a new approach to exploring governance, which considers the affective dimensions of

policy analysis in social policy. This project draws on a theoretical synthesis between

psychodynamic, critical cultural theories (critical race, feminist and queer), feminist

sciences studies and actor–network analysis. Her teaching interests are around post-

colonial and feminist approaches to social policy and research methods on

professional, post-qualifying, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. She is

articles editor for Critical Social Policy and has published on her work around the

negotiation of gendered, raced and professional identifications in Critical Social

Policy, Journal of Social Work Practice and Policy Futures in Education; she is

currently working on other pieces for Social Politics, Policy and Politics and

Feminism and Psychology and the Scandinavian Journal of Management.

Dr Elaine Swan

Dr Elaine Swan is senior teaching fellow at Lancaster University Management

School, where she teaches organisational behaviour and diversity to postgraduate and

post-experience students. She also runs the Leaders for Change Programme for the

Health Foundation. Elaine has co-directed two large-scale interdisciplinary research

projects funded by the Centre for Excellence in Leadership/Department for Education

and Skills on Equality and Diversity work and Leadership Development Practices in

the learning and skills sector (2003–2006). Her other research focuses on the rise of

therapeutic cultures in organisations, diversity training and audit cultures. She is co-

editor with Professor Sara Ahmed of a special issue of Policy Futures in Education on

“Doing Diversity Work in Education”, has published articles in Gender Work and

Organization and Management Learning. She is currently completing a book on

workplace diversity for Sage with Dr Caroline Gatrell and regularly reviews articles

for Management Learning and Gender, Work and Organisation. Other planned work

is for the Scandinavian Journal of Management. She and Dr Shona Hunter are also

28

working with Dr Diane Grimes of Syracuse University, USA, on a further

international editorial project around White Spaces? Racialising Organisational

Femininities and Masculinities.

1. We tend to use the labels equalities practitioners and equalities workers interchangeably. We

recognise the contested nature of these categories (see Swan and Fox, under consideration, and Hunter,

2005), but use the terms here as shorthand for all of those professionals working in the learning and

skills sector with some form of responsibility for equality and diversity work. This may be additional to

their principal role, as is often in the case in the English learning and skills sector, or their only

responsibility, as is increasingly the case.

2. By English learning and skills sector, we refer to the vast and diverse set of institutions and practices

that make up post compulsory education in England including adult and community learning, further

education, higher education and work-based learning.

3. Basic Skills in an English context refers to numeracy and literacy.

4. Non discrimination notices constituted one of the few legal powers open to the CRE. The serving of

such a notice constitutes a mandate that discrimination be stopped.

5. To protect anonymity, the prison is referred to as “lock-up” in the extract; Iopia is also a pseudonym.

Both were chosen by the participant.

6. Here, Iopia was referring to changes in the requirements for race relations officers in terms of rank

and position within the prison.