Branding feminisms: Organizing for diverse stakeholders and social change in a neoliberal economy

Suzanne D'Enbeau, Purdue University

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore how an independent media organization with a message of feminist social change operates within a neoliberal economy where everything, including progressive political agendas, must have market value. Informed by theories of organizational communication, feminisms, cultural studies, and political economies, this study embeds the organizing practices and processes of Moxie, the organization that was the site of this study, within socio-political-cultural-economic contexts. Multiple feminist and qualitative methods were employed including participant observation of the business headquarters and sites for engaging with key stakeholders over a three month period of time; in-depth interviews with organizational members, leaders, and clients; and document analyses of websites, products, internal memos, and external promotions of community events, feminist initiatives, political stances, and marketing strategies. Three themes emerge that loosely articulate strategic disconnects between the product brand of Moxie feminism and Moxie feminism as a brand that guides organizing processes; points of intersection and divergence of feminism and consumerism as feminism is packaged for capitalism’s purposes; and discursive strategies of power and control that are employed to balance corporate independence with Moxie’s feminist commitments. In pulling together these themes, this research makes seven key theoretical contributions by (a) considering how macrodiscourses influence meso-level organizing processes, (b) expanding the nature of stakeholder-brand-organization relationships, (c) articulating intersections of branding-organizing processes, (d) embedding feminist organizing within political-economic contexts, (e) defining anti-feminist organizing, (f) managing an organizing for social change/organizing for consumerism dialectic, and (g) laying out premises of feminist entrepreneurship.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Buzzanell, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Womens studies|Communication|Organizational behavior

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