Finding Treasure Within the Ruins: Tactics and Typologies of the Mob

• In Event: Academic Mobbing in Higher Education Internationally: Pursuing a Spiritual Center Amid an Injurious Void

Abstract

This paper utilizes feminist standpoint theory to interrogate the personal oppressions and open hostilities that critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars can face in academe. Feminist standpoint theory (Sprague 2016) informs this work, which demands an analysis of how power and authority interact. Power is a part of all social relations and is directly related to the ability to work in concert or collaboration with one another (Nyberg, 1981). Foucault’s analysis of power counterbalances standpoint theory, extracting meaning from how exchanges of power within the university serve to maintain the status quo, which is highly racialized and gendered, and used to punish those who question it, or perform in ways that upset status quo expectations based upon gender, race, sexuality, class, and other marginalized identities.
One of the ways in which critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars are “punished” or “disappeared,” is through academic mobbing. A lesser known type of bullying and harassment, academic mobbing involves the social exclusion of an individual considered to be an “outsider” within an academic department. Often, those academics who are mobbed are highly accomplished, and their colleagues fear being “overshadowed” by accomplishments that will reveal their own inadequacies (Gorlewski, Gorlewski, & Porfilio, 2014).
In this narrative analysis of the lives of critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars, first-person accounts of experiences lived while working in faculty positions in higher education are utilized. The researcher’s role in narrative analysis is one of storyteller. A weakness of the narrative method is the potential to blur the boundaries between ourselves and our own lived experiences and those of our participants (Bamberg, 2012). The intent is to document the experiences of critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars, providing a gendered and feminist perspective within academia. The following research questions were used in the study: 1. How do critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars describe their experiences with workplace inequities, such as academic mobbing, and institutional bias? 2. How does working in academia change the lives of critical social justice intersectional feminist scholars? 3. What lessons can participants provide others? Through analysis of interview transcripts, I found patterns of harassment tactics and typologies of perpetrators. The presentation of findings will include the commonalities of the victims, typologies of perpetrators (such as the Queen Bee and the Uncomplicated Rival), the tactics used to undermine victims, the institutional environments that contribute to mobbing behaviors, and survival tactics for (potential) victims.
Finally, taking inspiration from Rumi, “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure,” I end the presentation with the promise of a spiritual center, pursuing hope and knowledge amid the damaging context of higher education, which can crush individuals who pursue anything other than the status quo.

Author

• Jennifer L. Martin, University of Illinois at Springfield