Mindful co-optations? Exploring the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation

Abstract

This paper explores the responses of mindfulness teachers to the risk of co-optation as identified by recent critical research on mindfulness meditation in organizations. As such, this risk is not revelatory to the mindfulness teachers, but rather understood as a basic condition of their work. Through ethnographic observations and interviews with mindfulness teachers, the paper consequently identifies three responses to the dominant conception of the co-optation of mindfulness meditation. Some teachers accordingly view it as (1) a question of intention, in which mindfulness meditation can be framed in a variety of different ways, which may enhance or curb its transformative potential. Others contend that the transformative potential of the practice is, to a degree, independent of discursive and institutional framings, and that cooptation is not necessarily something to be feared. To the contrary, mindfulness meditation can in this view potentially work as (2) a Trojan horse; discursively co-opted for the purpose of productivity, while subtly changing the organization from within through non-discursive layers of being. Finally, some teachers perceive the question of (non)co-optation as misguided, as it exaggerates the transformative potential of the practice to the point of an (3) overblown promise. These findings prompt a subsequent a conceptual discussion, in which a typology including the notions of (1) “intellectual co-optation,” (2) “inverse co-optation” and (3) “empty co-optation” are suggested as means for theoretically explaining the responses of the mindfulness teachers and as nuancing supplements to the prevailing conception of the “structural co-optation” of mindfulness in organization.