Abjection, globalisation, ethics and organizational dynamics : lessons from 'The Sopranos'

Artefacts of popular culture, like The Sopranos, are commentaries that merit academic attention. Tony Soprano is struggling with boundaries and with foreigners; one episode from the second series explicitly mentions Tony’s battle with foreigners: easterners, Indians, Asians. He sets up those boundaries from foreigners to avoid the beast within. What we have seen since September 11 is a battle with foreigners and, we suggest, not much attention to the beast within. The United States and American business with its agenda of globalization might look within. What beast within engenders such terror for Americans? What is the threat that seems "to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside"? (Kristeva 1980/1982, pp. 1-2). The field of organisation studies would similarly do well to reflexively consider both: the manner in which contemporary organisations have and continue to be edifices constructed through the invisible hands of abjection; and the manner in which abjection has figured in our analysis and theorising about organisations.