Staunæs, Dorthe, Post Doc

By bjorn on 12 Jul | 0 comments

Short Biography
Dorthe Staunæs is an associate professor and the head of the research programme Organisation and Learning (Organisering & Læring). Furthermore, she is the regional editor of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Her research deals with the performative effects of specific types of management (local management of educational institutions, diversity management and psy-leadership (that is, leadership that draws on educational and psychological methods and concepts. Her research has three major focuses: 1) Management of affectivity (feelings, moods, impressions, senses). 2) Management of human processes of learning and becoming (subjectification). 3) Management of diversity such as socio-cultural categories such as ethnicity, race and gender. She works with theories and analytical strategies from poststructuralism and post social constructivism, feminism, STS, postcolonial theory, intersectionality thinking and make empirical material through intra-active and co-produced research methods in the use of disposable cameras, videos, scenarios, interviews.

GEXcel Project, Themes 3 & 6 - Schooling intensities. Psy-leadership, affective economy and Whiteness
ABSTRACT: I am writing on the book with the working title Schooling intensities – psy-leadership, affective economy and Whiteness. With the point of departure in the research question “How does (which) Whiteness holds it’s place in transnationalised and educative organisational settings?” the book sets out for reflecting upon the entanglement of human-technologies, affective economy and whiteness in new forms of psy-leadership - that means leadership informed by what Nicholas Rose terms the psy-sciences; psychology, psychiatry and pedagogies (Rose 1999).

EXTENDED OUTLINE: With the purpose of raising productivity and keep up with international competition many public and private transnationalised and educative organisations tries to appropriate and correct their affective economy by drawing on softer managerial technologies, or what may be named Psy-leadership/management. Inspired by Nicholas Rose’s idea of the Psy-Sciences, the term Psy-Leadership point to managerial technologies and the learning of the very same supposed to affect and strategically correct souls, minds, expectations, fantasies and emotions. Psy-leadership is a strategic act upon others actions informed by theories and practices from pedagogy and psychology (Staunæs, Juelskjær & Knudsen 2009), especially those theories and practices named under headlines such as “appreciative”, “positive”, and “social” constructionist approaches. Psy-leadership/management and the learning and practice of the very same are supposed to open up and embrace bodies and minds for transformation, for instance by letting you become affected by the sounds and rhythms of others and through learning to listen. Psy-leadership takes place in as well private as public, transnationalised and educative organisational settings, as for instance schools, where appreciative leadership and self management are buzz words, but also in more spectacular management learning courses for managers involving horses, pilgrim routes and ethnic minoritised boys.
The concept of psy-leadership is meant to grasp the affective turn in new forms of leadership focusing on the possibilities of creating certain kinds of affective spaces and regulating the intensities, and to strategically create and correct intensities: the atmosphere, the senses, and the affects/emotions. Psy-leadership takes place in as well private as public, transnationalised and educative organisational settings, as for instance schools, where appreciative leadership and self management are buzz words, but it also can be found in more spectacular management learning courses for managers involving human and animal technology such as horses, pilgrim routes and ethnic-racial and religious minoritised boys.

The book explores the entanglement of psy-leadership, human technology, affective economy and Whiteness. The intention with the stay in Linköping is to develop, discuss and write an argument of how psy-leadership - besides it’s many promising aspects (for instance the cultivation of self reflection, affective attunement and responsibility) - also may be seen as a sophisticated process of mutation, with gendered and racialised effects. Whiteness, it is argued, does not hold its place mainly because of habits such as argued by Sara Ahmed (2007). Rather, Whiteness may hold it’s place because of it’s capability to transform itself by listening to, absorbing and appropriating Otherness; and psy-leadership, such as this is played out in many different but also parallel ways, helps Whiteness by exactly cultivating these capabilities.  In the book, I will not point to the efficiency of Psy- management/leadership, rather I intend to point to:

1) How the new forms of leadership (re-)construct power and “that/those to be managed” at a much deeper level and with (unintended) and sometimes counterproductive effects. This complex reconstruction of that “what must be managed” interferes with the implementation of policies in yet unknown ways and thereby constructs new obstacles, which once again become input for future leadership initiatives and speed up the need for strategically managing management.
2) How psy-leadership assist Whiteness holding it’s place through sophisticated processes of mutation, which have gendered and racialised effects. Whiteness, it is argued, does not hold it’s place mainly because of habits - such as argued by Ahmed (2007). Rather, Whiteness may hold it’s place because of it’s capability to transform itself by absorbing and appropriating Otherness; and psy-leadership such as this is played out in many different but also parallel ways helps Whiteness by exactly cultivating these capabilities. 

By drawing on particular the work of Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, homi bhabha, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Brian Massumi, I analyse different approaches towards Psy-leadership/management in the following chapters. Furthermore, and inspired by my colleague Lene Myong Petersens (2009) excellent term of racial silence, my ambition can be named disturbing the silence of Whiteness, and to get knowledge of potential and perhaps unexpected effects of the fantasies and paradoxes inherited in the promises and figures emerging, when the learning of new kinds of leadership is spiced up with ethnic-racialised diversity. The book is based on empirical material such as interview, video-records, policy documents and media text about school leadership soul technologies and management learning, and the sites are public schools and management learning courses involving horses, pilgrims routes and ethnic-racial minoritised boys as educational technologies.