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QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT AND
ORGANIZATION CONFERENCE
April 4-6th, 2012.
Anderson School of Management
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Embodiment, Imagination, and Meaning
Keynote Speakers
Mark Johnson
University of Oregon
Karen Lee Ashcraft
University of Colorado, Boulder
"Discovering, making, and communicating meaning is our full-time job. We do it from the moment
we are born until the moment we die." (Mark Johnson, 2007: 17)
As researchers everything we do is concerned explicitly and implicitly with meaning -
meanings of actions, intentions, texts, words, gestures, theories, and so on. However,
making meaning is not just an academic or an intellectual activity, it is, as in the epigraph
quote, an integral part of life. Meaning making is fundamentally embodied because there
is never a time when we are not a sensate being in the world.
Over the last 30 years, Mark Johnson has challenged persistent dualisms such as the
separation of mind/body, transcendence/embeddedness, reason/imagination,
conscious/unconscious thought, conceptual/real metaphor, and cognition and emotion,
arguing that meaning resides in bodily experiences. His theory of imaginationi is crucial
in emphasizing the embodied nature of human meaning and in positioning
understanding and imagination as central to constituting our ways of being and acting in
the world. He has extended these ideas to a consideration of the role of imagination in
moralityii, and more recently elaborated upon the relationship between aesthetics,
meaning, experience, our bodies, emotions, thought and languageiii . His 1980 book
Metaphors We Live By, co-authored with George Lakoff, is a classic in studies of
language.
The themes of language, bodies and emotions also play through Karen Ashcraft's work,
more specifically in the context of gender relations, power and identity in work. Her
research utilizes ethnographic approaches and has included studies of a non-profit
women's shelter and commercial airline pilots.
The aim of QRM 2012 is to explore the significance of Mark Johnson's ideas for
researching organizational life. We also want to build on the initiatives of QRM 2008 and
2010 in providing opportunities for qualitative researchers to discuss various ways of
thinking about and studying organizational life. We encourage paper, panel and other
forms of presentation that explore philosophical, conceptual and methodological issues
in researching organizational life from a qualitative perspective.
The conference will consist of two streams. Stream 1 will focus on exploring how
embodiment, imagination and meaning play through our research as both topics of study
and as constitutive of the research experience. Stream 2 will address more general
issues relating to methods, voices and ways of writing qualitative research.
We encourage contributions from a variety of epistemological perspectives and a range
of disciplines including management and organization studies, accounting, marketing,
communications, cultural studies, information and decision sciences, sociology,
psychology, education, health and public administration.
Prospective contributors should send an abstract of up to 1000 words, via email, to Ann
Cunliffe at alcqrm@mgt.unm.edu by November 30th, 2011. The abstract should also
include name, contact information, and submission stream.
Conference organizers and contact information:
Ann L Cunliffe, Anderson School of Management, USA
alcqrm@mgt.unm.edu
Karen Locke, College of William and Mary, USA
alcqrm@mgt.unm.edu
Conference Website: http://www.mgt.unm.edu/qrm/
i See Johnson, M. (1987) The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and
Reason.
ii Johnson, M. (1993) Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics.
iii Johnson, M. (2007) The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.