“The Birthing Process is Messy”: Positioning Sustainability “In the Cloud” as an Emerging Profession

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session and Reception
  In Interactive Paper Session: Organizational Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

We examine how practitioners communicatively position the emerging profession of sustainability, which employs around 3 million people in the United States alone. Despite extant research on emerging fields, this literature mainly focuses on institutional developments and entrepreneurial actions, neglecting the wider subjectivities that develop among “ordinary” practitioners of such nascent fields. In contrast, we adopt a “practice-based” approach, using discursive positioning theory. Drawing on interviews with 45 sustainability practitioners and 35 contributed curriculum vitae, we find that 20 discursive resources are used to construct four broad subject positions for the emerging field—discovery, enlightenment, legitimacy, and consumption. Our data suggests a “cloud” approach to field positioning, whereby positions overlap and practitioners utilize different (re)combinations of the discursive resources, in response to particular tasks, contexts, and stakeholders. Our findings contribute to discursive positioning theory, practice-based perspectives to emerging professions, and the political embeddedness of work.

Authors

• Rahul Mitra, Wayne State University

• Patrice M. Buzzanell, Purdue U