Gender, Work and Organization 10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference Sydney, 13-16 June 2018 Organising bodies: Race and difference at work Convenors: rashné limki, University of Essex, UK Marjana Johansson, University of Essex, UK Mrinalini Greedharry, Laurentian University, Canada Pasi Ahonen, University of Essex, UK As recent events and political developments around the world have shown, race in its various incarnations is still one of the key organizing principles for action. Why then do we persistently fail to think about race in organizations and their studies? And, perhaps most urgently, what does this mean for those whose life and work always already evidences the expectedness of racial power? How can we tease out gendered and racialized aspects of organizing which underpin unequal access to resources, decision-making and participation? This stream seeks to draw attention to questions of difference and power as they emerge within organizations and organizing. Scholarship on the subject of racial difference, in particular, has sought to engage with power relations as they underpin the construction of differences and the emergence of the ‘diverse’, racialized Other (Ahmed, 2007; Ahonen et al., 2017). Yet, within the context of diversity research, there has been a tendency to elide discussions of power and the ways in which the concept of diversity becomes deployed to commodify difference (Ahonen et al 2014; Tienari and Ahonen 2016). As such, discussions of difference seem to rely on the constructing, cataloguing and critiquing of organizational differences. Rather than further concerning ourselves with developing ever more complex taxonomies of difference, in this stream we want to pay particular attention to considering how racial architectures shape organizational identities and positionings. In gender and organization studies there is a substantial literature on the experience of difference amongst those with marginalised identities (cf. Tomlinson, 2008; Mcdowell et al., 2016; Wyatt & Silvester, 2105), and the ways in which marginalised peoples become compelled to ‘do’ race and gender in their working contexts (cf. Bruni et al., 2004; Liu, 2017). Exploring similar issues, although with less focus on race, the literature on embodiment and organization has examined how gendered and sexualized bodies are spatially organized (e.g. Riach and Wilson 2014; Simpson 2014; Tyler and Cohen 2010); how notions of professionalism are tied to gendered bodily displays (e.g. Haynes 2008, Waring and Waring 2009, Riach and Cutcher 2014); the gendered and sexualized nature of service work (e.g. Hancock et al. 2015; McDowell 2011); and the intertwining of gendered bodies and organizational boundaries (Brunner and Dever 2014). While specifically race, embodiment and organization has been the focus of separate critical exploration (e.g. Ahmed 2012; Puwar 2004), we see the possibility of drawing on these strands of research for advancing our understanding of how the imperative to ‘do’ race, and the embodied character of that ‘doing’, upholds structures that marginalise and subjugate racial Others in organizational settings.