| Description |
This research considers feminist organization as a variant of collectivist organization which, given the hegemony of bureaucratic forms of modern organization, exists as an "alternative" or "oppositional" practice. In this context the research concentrates on feminist political organizations and explores the dilemma faced by all groups that want to function as oppositional forces in society: close contact with bureaucratic structures is required for such groups to influence the public policy agenda, and yet, this close contact may also necessitate significant departure from oppositional structures, processes, strategies and issue preferences. What this dilemma suggests is that these organizations must initiate strategies for simultaneously complying with and deviating from structures, processes and political agendas that are regarded as acceptable by and to those entities these oppositional organizations hope to influence. They must learn to balance at the edges of liberal and radical politics, of reform and transformation, of assimilation and opposition, thus refiguring oppositional terms into oscillations that have neither beginning nor end. I assert that feminist organizations that desire to engage in a largely oppositional politics appear in structure and practice closer to the collectivist end of what I call the bureaucratic-collectivist continuum; however, due to their interest in influencing public policies, they have also learned to incorporate certain features that resemble bureaucratic forms. The feminist purposes of these organizations act as a "corrective" to these tendencies, though, because of the primacy of means or process over ends or results within feminist organizational practices. The research--which includes participant observation, survey research, and review of other empirical studies of feminist organizations--points to the difficulties many of these organizations have in dealing with the differences which are made even more visible because of the focus of marginalized populations on their supposedly common identities. I suggest that the focus on "identity politics" and "politics of difference" has brought us to an impasse, one which can be moved around by a reappropriation of the concept of "interest" as the foundation--instead of "identity"--for oppositional politics, and a shift toward "project politics" and away from "coalition politics." Finally, I argue for the invention of techniques for institutionalizing contradiction within oppositional organizations and an embracing of intentionally schizophrenic political practices designed to help us move beyond quests for unity and into a terrain of fragmented, but tenuously balanced, agendas for social and political change. |
