Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity

Citation

Kavan, H. (2004), "Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity", Women in Management Review, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 178-179. https://doi.org/10.1108/09649420410529898

As a little black girl Brenda Allen learnt how to internalise oppression by singing with her friends, “When you're white, you're right; when you're brown, stick around; but when you're black, oooh baby, get back, get back, get back.” Today, as Associate Professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado and volunteer at a soup kitchen, she argues for change, and motivates students to be aware of prejudice. The title of her book, Difference Matters was inspired by Cornel West's controversial book, Race Matters. Allen takes up West's argument that race is important, and extends it to examine five additional social identity categories: gender, social class, ability, sexuality and age. It is probably no accident that the cover is in suffragette colours of purple, green and white.

Allen envisages her book being used as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate papers in organisation and communication, as well as other training courses and curricula. She has opened a web site with ideas and resources to be used in conjunction with it: http://communication.cudenver.edu/∼ballen/Difference‐Matters.html (currently still under construction) and invites readers to email her.

Interactive educational tools like these ones are particularly relevant in this area, as society continues to become increasingly diversified and organizations attempt to develop strategies to deal with the changes.

The book begins with an introduction on why difference is important and the obstacles that impede us from valuing it. Allen makes it clear from the outset that she is looking at difference through a social constructivist lens, because she sees this as the best perspective for discovering how amenable to change social identities are. In the second chapter, Allen describes power dynamics and how power is communicated, introducing students to the ideas of Foucault and Gramsci. The next six chapters focus on each of the six social identities: race, gender, social class, ability, sexuality and age. In each of these she includes a section on history, and then synthesises research from several disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy and psychology, on how social identity relates to communication in organisations. In the final chapter Allen concludes by urging the reader to be aware of prejudice, stereotypes and dominant ideologies, and to initiate change proactively.

From a teaching perspective, Difference Matters has mixed merits. On the positive side, Allen consistently makes an effort to keep the content interesting so that class discussion will flow easily. By including historical contexts and using a broad definition of organisation to include all social collectives with goals, she introduces a variety of material. We learn, for example, about the industrial revolution's “ugly laws” which prohibited diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed people from being in public places. For those more interested in contemporary culture, Allen outlines research showing that Academy Award nominees and winners tend to be younger women and older men.

Another strength of the book is that Allen engages the reader. She writes in the first person and is lucid in her discussions of Foucault, concertive control and hegemony (clarifying the pronunciation – hih‐jeh'‐minny – for students who may be new to the word). Each chapter begins with a personal story, and several times I put the book down to reflect on these. Similarly, exercises at the end of each chapter ask readers to relate the subject matter to their experiences. While it may seem that tasks such as analysing your interaction with a romantic partner, parent or work supervisor by applying Foucault's conception of power, may lend themselves to injustice collecting, I expect they will make the material meaningful to students. Another feature that students might appreciate is Allen's acknowledgement of the anxieties members of dominant groups may have as they try not to offend, and I would have enjoyed more of this (John Cleese's frustrated cry, “Have you any idea what it's like to be English?” has long resonated with me).

Notwithstanding the book's engaging content and style; I have some questions about its use as a text. The first is that all the material relates to the US, and the heavy American slant, especially in the chapter on social class, limits its use in other countries. I gather (from looking up Allen's Western States Communication Association profile on the Internet) that the book's subtitle was initially going to be Communicating Social Identity in the United States, and in the United States was later dropped. This omission is misleading, and ironic given that one of the book's purposes is to teach us how important it is to acknowledge cultural difference.

Another limitation, I feel, is the book's social constructionist stance, and this is especially evident when we come to the chapter on gender where Allen uncritically adopts the old binary logic that characterises the essentialism debate. Thus, although less than 30 pages earlier she has warned us against using simplistic dichotomies, Allen explains her social constructivist perspective by contrasting it with essentialist theories (which suggest that differences are innate), and argues that the latter obstruct change and can be used to justify patriarchy. The idea that if we accept that there are innate differences, then we perceive them as unchangeable and thereby preserve the status quo, has been hotly rejected by biologists (see the discussion in Segerstråle (2000) and Wilson's (1998) argument that knowledge of innate impulses helps us to master them). If I were to play devil's advocate to Allen (excuse the patriarchal Judeo‐Christian image) I would argue, as a female academic, that biological research which developed contraception has brought me more freedom than Foucauldian philosophers, and that the social research that connects with the sciences will enhance women's lives more than scholarly rivalries.

Again, we encounter the limitations of social contructionism in Allen's chapter on disability in which she concludes that disability is socially constructed, suggests that the medical model oppresses the disabled and promotes the social model instead. Allen is only able to sustain this argument by excluding from her discussion people with disabilities that are characterised by chronic physical pain, for whom the social model ignores – to use Wendell's (1996, p.45) phrase – “the hard physical realities”, and is not much help.

These issues raise a deeper educational question: Should a textbook, especially one that overtly asks students to make ethical changes and be aware of prejudice, be based on an ideological stance – in this case social constructionism – and imply that other research findings and models are somehow less ethical? Dismissing biological research as potentially oppressive seems to have the same logic as excluding research on protein from nutrition texts because it is used to justify the slaughter of animals for meat. Would it not be more productive to give students a range of perspectives and present them not so much as opposites, but as complementary angles on the same phenomena, and allow students to form their own views? Kingsley Browne's (2002) Biology at Work, for example, would be an interesting choice of additional reading for the chapter on gender.

Further questions arose for me in Allen's conclusion in which she urges readers to “snip the invisible strings that control your behaviour” and “rewrite the scripts” to bring liberty and justice to all. Aside from the issue of whether these rousing exhortations strengthen or weaken Allen's scholarship, the practical suggestions that follow do not sound very liberating to me. Students are urged to be vigilant about TUIs – occasions when they are thinking under the influence of prejudices, stereotypes and dominant ideologies, and to monitor their thoughts, attitudes and feelings for any assumptions. Perhaps it is Allen's use of the word “vigilance” that leaves me feeling tight around the collar, and reminds me of Sommer's (1995, p. 27) comparison of modern feminists with religious adherents who relentlessly search for sins. Or maybe it is just that I am wary of analysis paralysis. Whatever the case, I find it difficult to believe that developing one's own internalised thought inquisitor – the very oppression that Foucault spent his career exposing – will help anyone, however well‐meaning Allen's intention.

Despite these issues, I would recommend Difference Matters as a book for students, managers and educators to discuss. Even as a critical reader I found parts that engaged and motivated me. As a writer hoping to inspire the reader to think deeply about the importance of difference, Allen succeeds, and I can see why she has been voted “Most influential professor” by Department of Communication graduates.