“Wobbling” on a Forklift: Precarious Inclusion in Corporate Organizations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v14i2.7637Abstract
This essay explores and discusses inclusion in corporate organizations. Drawing on both autoethnographic data and ethnographic cases involving disabled workers, I argue that organizations fundamentally foster precarious inclusion, which results in greater exclusion rather than genuine inclusion. I support my argument through three core claims. First, corporate organizations predominantly adopt neoliberal values, which influence ideal worker standards and cause individuals perceived to deviate from these standards to experience social precarity. Second, neoliberal values are reinforced by Universal Design principles that help to standardize workplaces. Standardization can create moments of inaccessibility for disabled workers, leading them to make short-term, microactivist affordances while facing long-term physical and digital precarity. Third, even when organizations attempt to be inclusive, their efforts often manifest as doubled-edged swords that create an illusion of inclusiveness while masking ulterior corporate motives. Finally, I offer a brief perspective on addressing precarious inclusion through encouraging a reconsideration of the role that anthropologists can play.
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