Where Does Power Go When No One Wants It: Two New Academics Grapple With the Hierarchies Implicit Within Conference Spaces

Abstract

In this article, we provide a dialogical piece of writing inspired by our performative conversation, presented at the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2019. Emboldened by our activist stance that conference presentations and writings can resist arborescent models that dictate the “right” sort of academic, we seek an active engagement with such hierarchical power structures. By engaging in experiential accounts provided through transcript excerpts from conversations, we show how grappling with concepts like power, hierarchy, and insider/outsider groups within a conference space is alive and complicated. Coming to realize that we are already becoming part of an in-group within this prestigious space, we push against the walls of comfort to show our own resistance to power—while also realizing that denying power is exactly the opposite from what we want academics to do.