Rosi Braidotti’s politics of location and its power to unveil inequality in organisations

This conceptual contribution argues that Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman theory, specifically her concepts of location and cartography, provide a unique framework to study gender and inequality in workplaces. Braidotti’s work is influenced by postmodern French philosophy; despite her pioneering contributions in women and political studies, her work is almost unknow in the gender & management literature. The paper focuses on the strengths of the concepts of location and cartography, such as their ability to detect different forms of inequality while avoiding risks of conflation, and the link to ethics. These concepts permit a nuanced and close-to-the ground understanding of how group and individual identities, organizational practices and policies, and contrasting discourses around discrimination and emancipation, intermingle. Such an intermingling represents a unique location for individuals and groups, in a broader cartography of power networks. The study of locations within power networks allows understanding inequality while overcoming the rigid focus on categories and stressing instead on historically and culturally situated understandings of subjectivity, power and forms of knowledge.