How useful is diversity? Whether used as a word, concept, or action we need to cautiously examine institutional motivation around its use and application. In ‘On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life’ Sara Ahmed asks necessary and often overlooked questions such as ‘what does diversity do?’ and seeks to unpack the language of diversity (Ahmed, 2012). Ahmed uses qualitative empirical research and her own experience as, and with, diversity workers in order to understand the complex application of methods within diversity communication in institutions. By examining diversity and its practice as phenomenological she argues that we can better understand institutions if we view them as formations, which in turn are transformed as diversity acts upon them. 

Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer and independent scholar working at the intersection of feminist, queer and ‘race’ studies (Sara Ahmed, 2021). She has extensively written about ‘race’ and diversity work, although she does admit it took time to specifically address ‘race’ in her academic writing throughout her work, including ‘Racialized Bodies’, ‘The Language of Diversity’, ‘The Phenomenology of Whiteness’, and ‘The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism’. It is also important to look at her work on embodiment and social space such as, ‘Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality’ when considering the place of diversity within, and how it acts upon, institutions and the bodies within them. 

Ahmed’s methodology when approaching this subject is to use thick description as a way to understand the fluidity of institutional existence and to unfix the perceived ‘rightness’ or unquestioned authority of the space they occupy within society. This extends to both, active spaces of the institution as an object or place and reflectively, as different disciplines discuss and explore the idea of the institution itself. By encouraging a phenomenological perspective on institutions and institutional approaches, Ahmed states that we can begin to take note of things that have receded into the background of our social consciousness. She points out that the very act of institutionalising something is to allow it to become a given or social fact. Upon establishing this view of the institution, Ahmed provides a base to frame and analyse diversity within an institutional framework that not only houses the work of diversity but proactively acts upon it.

In chapter 2, Ahmed looks at how the word diversity impacts institutions and the workers within them as both a descriptor and an actor itself. The perceived normativity of the word ‘diversity’ is drawn like a veil across institutional life; it actively describes, obscures, and creates all at once. By looking at languages ability to create and perform, Ahmed shows us how diversity can fluctuate, between a place of creation and progress to stagnation and stubbornness, within the framework of an institution. Using ‘diversity’ as an official descriptor within institutional documentation and language can create a hollow reverb across institutions. It indicates, to those observing, an intention towards diversity but can often result in lip service or being used as a value-add descriptor to virtue signal within an institution. It does however add mobility to diversity language when those in positions of power use it. When examining the flexibility of the word itself Ahmed views the emptiness of ‘diversity’ optimistically saying that it becomes a vessel for practitioners to fill and apply as needed.

‘On Being Included’ also looks at how diversity is documented within institutions, explaining that the writing of a document can be both a way of doing diversity but also a way of avoiding the work of diversity. Ahmed highlights the power of a ‘paper exercise’ to isolate and disenfranchise a diversity worker from the institution they are seeking to effect change in and its potentiality to cause document fatigue. Perhaps her most crucial point is that by making the circulation of the document the reason why it exists it becomes fetishised. However, the standard of good fetishised documentation does not ensure well implemented and effective diversity practice. In the same way that institutions create new procedures and methods to perform diversity work through documentation they also have the ability to structure these systems to present the most pleasing evidence when under the pressure of auditing. Ahmed discusses the desire to move beyond compliance in diversity work and into fulfilment but explains that the navigation of good practice can be challenging for institutions.

In chapter 4, Ahmed utilises discursive analysis to critically look at Butler’s ideas on performativity and what happens when something is actively non-performative. She does this by focusing on the variation of commitment from, and within, institutions looking at how this interplays with diversity work. For example, she names the statement of commitment as non-performative, as it does not manifest what it states. However, she goes on to explain that the commitments do not operate in isolation and can become a supporting device or foundation for diversity work. Commitment within institutions can go beyond words, which Ahmed unpacks by discussing how they can be structured and distributed using the power of committees. She goes on to point out that committees are often an institutional habit, the sedimentation of multiple commitments by an institution settling into something more solid. This discussion reiterates, as Ahmed states, her earlier discussion on how ‘will’ becomes ‘wall’ and shows what happens when new wills encounter old wills, now walls, within an institution. 

Ahmed’s discussion around diversity work and its ability to be both performative and non-performative comes to a head when discussing the power of anti-racist policies and public relation (PR) statements in direct response to racism. In this context, diversity becomes a tool of PR to explain why an institution could not possibly be racist, host, or foster inherently racist spaces and to shut down the voices of those who have experienced racism. Expanding on the discussion of an institutional status quo as institutional happiness, Ahmed explores the responsibility of institutions who use bodies of colour as tools to display institutional virtues, create a culture of diversity as debt, and refocus diversity as the generosity of whiteness. She then confronts the truth, that in actuality it often falls on people of colour to conceal racism to socially pass within institutions and to be seen as someone who contributes to institutional, and often white, happiness.  

On Being Included is a linguistically pointed and well-crafted piece of academic work. By studying what diversity workers do Ahmed’s analysis shows how institutions change or do not change allowing us to understand diversity as a phenomenological practice. The use of a thick form of description allows readers to stand back and view verbal concepts from a different perspective and to ask what are we claiming when we use such phrases? (Geertz, 1973). As a reader and reviewer, it can create challenges grammatically as the word ‘diversity’ forces you to reflect on what the word is doing and how it is both defining and re-defining the context dialectically. On Being Included has encountered some criticism when it comes to the ratio of discussion given to ‘race’ vs diversity throughout the text. When reviewing the book Kimberly Truong states, “I felt that the researcher could have presented how diversity workers made meaning out of the racism they experienced in performing their work.” (Truong, 2013). However, I do not believe that Ahmed’s focus is to specifically research racism experienced by diversity workers and how they viewed it but rather to understand the impact of diversity as an ideal construct. 

The theoretical work Ahmed contributes in unpacking her data fleshes out Butlers work on ideal constructs; “a regulatory ideal whose materialisation is compelled, and this materialisation takes place (or fails to take place) through certain highly regulated practices.” (Butler, 2011, pg.xii). Ahmed’s data and analysis confirms Butler’s theory that long held norms still require constant regulation but are susceptible to a destabilising effect that can produce “rearticulations that call into question the hegemonic force of that very regulatory law.” (Butler, 2011, p.xii). 

A minor limitation of Ahmed’s conclusion could be seen in the inconsistency of her work theoretically. In the final two pages she shifts her focus from the ontological discussion of diversity, its fluctuation between the performative and non-performative, and how that shapes and is shaped by institutions, to looking at the work of Urry and Bauman on social mobility and fluidity. While examining the current theoretical trends of sociology, Ahmed suggests her work shows that “what appears to be mobile and changing can hold its shape.” (Ahmed, 2012, p.186). Even though the social transformation may be stubborn this is not necessarily down to a lack of social fluidity but may be more theoretically consistent if Ahmed looked at the precarious life cycle of an ideal norm. These interruptions to the institutional happiness stop and point to what we hold to be unquestioned, our doxa, the hegemony of regulation that is operating within and across the institution without question (Bourdieu, 1977). The blockages or bodies ‘flowing’ in the wrong direction could be cited as the very rearticulations that Butler refers to, and Ahmed has already referenced and laid the groundwork for Butler’s work on social constructs, regulation, and performativety which would allow for more consistent theoretical development.

By examining the creation process of ‘will’ as ‘wall’ Ahmed builds a unique and theoretically complex study of diversity as phenomenological. And, by situating diversity and it’s performative and non-performative aspects, Ahmed has created a nuanced and descriptive analysis that can be utilised by academics to understand what diversity is actually doing and how it compares to its predecessors, around which there has been much discussion (Ahmed and Swan, 2006). 

References:

Ahmed, S. and Swan, E. (2006) Doing Diversity. Policy Futures in Education [online]. 4, pp. 96-100. 

Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2304/pfie.2006.4.2.96 

[Accessed 09 March 2021].

Ahmed, S. (2012) On being included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2021) Sara Ahmed BIO. Available from: https://www.saranahmed.com/bio-cv [Accessed 09 March 2021].

Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline Of A Theory Of Practice [online]. English Language Edition: Routledge.

Available from: https://www-cambridge-org.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/core/books/outline-of-a-theory-of-practice/193A11572779B478F5BAA3E3028827D8

[Accessed 09 March 2021].

Butler, J. (2011) Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of sex [online]. Routledge Classics: Routledge.

Available from: https://www.vlebooks.com/Vleweb/Product/Index/1996224?page=0 

[Accessed 09 March 2021].

Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures [online]. Basic Books: HarperCollins Publishers.

Available from: https://philpapers.org/archive/GEETTD.pdf 

[Accessed March 09, 2021]. 

Truong, K. (2013) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed (review). The Review of Higher Education [online]. 36, pp. 432-433. 

Available from: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/502352 

[Accessed 09 March 2021].

Second Year Undergrad