Slow motion revolution or assimilation? Theorizing ‘entryism’ in destabilizing regimes of inequality

Abstract

Post-essentialist and poststructuralist conceptualizations of identities and social structures offer the theoretical potential for social change to emerge from actions and interactions among socially located actors. This ‘micro-emancipation’ approach suggests that changes negotiated in relations among actors can be scaled up or expanded beyond individual interactions to effect change in macro structures that sustain inequality. This micro approach contrasts sharply with binary, essentialist and structuralist approaches that implicitly suggest that hegemonic structures will undermine any incipient changes in social relations that emerge in interactions. What has been called ‘entryism’, i.e. the entry of marginalized actors into organizations, has often been viewed in an ambivalent light particularly by critical theorists who have questioned whether marginalized actors who join organizations can do so without becoming coopted. Does the entry of some actors from marginalized groups into organizations advance the opportunities for others or, as some have argued, do actors who succeed become coopted or even participants in the legitimization and reproduction of systems of exclusion? This article theorizes the role organizations play in contributing to the reproduction or disruption and transformation of regimes of inequality. Scholarship regarding the potential for micro-emancipatory actions to generate more substantial social change is at a crossroads. While research findings illustrate the binary of outsider/insider is transgressed and there is a sense that larger scale change is occurring as a result, existing theories have not enabled us to account for how this change is occurring – if it is. This article illustrates how postcolonial and new materialist theories offer distinctive conceptual insights that enable us to advance our understanding of how the entry of marginalized actors into organizations may contribute to destabilization and transformation of regimes of inequality.