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Papers by Mark Read

Quaker Studies, 2019

This article draws on data acquired for doctoral research into how Quakers live out their religio... more This article draws on data acquired for doctoral research into how Quakers live out their religious claims in the twenty-first-century workplace. It depicts Quaker everyday practice in the work setting based on the accounts of 20 interviewees. These Quakers tended to be drawn to the movement in adulthood, attracted by its heterodox, post-Christian (Dandelion 1996) claims of religious engagement with the everyday. The research participants also espoused an impulse to improve the world through their workaday participation and, in these ambitious terms, Quakers in the work organisation are framed as 'doing belief ' (Day 2011: 191). 'Doing belief ' in the everyday, however, was depicted by the research participants as more than a simple process of engagement co-equivalent to their claims. Indeed, 'doing belief ' in the workaday was not viewed by the cohort in 'dichotomous' religious or secular terms (Collins 2008b: 143). Quakers saw their aspirations to improve the world as harmonious with the espoused intentions of their work organisations. The work organisation, however, set out and policed the terms upon which the research participants' ambitions were pursued, shaping how the contemporary Quaker tradition was expedited in the workaday setting.

This paper is based on my qualitative PhD research into the contemporary workplace as seen throug... more This paper is based on my qualitative PhD research into the contemporary workplace as seen through the eyes of Quaker affiliates. Quakers are mainly employed in the public or third sectors, in almost inverse proportion to that of the general UK population. They see their aims and values as being closely aligned with those of their work organisations. My research investigates this ethical ordering.

The immediate politico-economic context of the study was the formation of a Coalition government in 2010 and its budgetary priorities. Often understood in terms of ‘austerity’, the effects of these financial readjustments on religious work-lives were the accidental focus of my research. Serendipitously, I interviewed Quakers as these budgetary constraints were being proposed and then re-interviewed affiliates after the cuts had been put into effect.

Responses to the cuts in Quaker work-life were mixed: new friendships were made, promotions achieved, Quaker values re-affirmed. But work was also a bitter, angry and toxic experience where ‘nice liberal Quaker values’ were for ‘happier times’.

I argue that Quakers’ engagement with work is framed by the organisational setting and that, with managerial support, Quakers feel able to transcend corporate terms. However, without that support, Quakerism is felt as effectively disempowered.
Full paper to follow

‘There is nothing inherently wrong with contemporary society.’ At the start of the new millennium... more ‘There is nothing inherently wrong with contemporary society.’ At the start of the new millennium, according to Norman Fairclough, this was the effusive logic of New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ project. Style and substance were conflated; appearance was the new reality. Politics was re-presented, mediated, in the everyday as ‘everyday’.

By contrast, religious belief is cast by many of its adherents as ‘more than’ words, as meaning that transcends everyday life.

This paper is based on PhD research into contemporary work-life as seen through the eyes of twenty Quakers. Whilst the group extol their unity based on shared practice and experience, ‘not on shared words’, investigation into their working lives reveals otherwise. For this religious group, founded on dissenting Christian traditions, has radically shifted its terms of worldly engagement.

Whilst organisations have a collective reach beyond the capacity of the mere individual, wider religious goals can be achieved through secular means. But if this engagement requires accommodation of worldly values antithetical to long-cherished principles, how should Quakers proceed?

This paper argues that Quaker religious values today are conflated with those of modern work-life. Critical responses are few and opposition is largely self-censored. Piety adopts a secular mask (Goffman). Vigilance is lent more towards managers. And managerialism itself suffers no alternative, compassionate critique. Instead, this hubristic tradition, up against the powerful world of work, turns in on itself; religion as rhetoric, occupying a public and an empty space.

The innate goodness of human beings and the valuing of inherently meaningful social relationships... more The innate goodness of human beings and the valuing of inherently meaningful social relationships are often central to religious belief and its customary practices. Yet these are not exclusively religious categories. This is especially so in work-life where many organisational cultures are founded upon human relationships of purposeful reciprocity and care. Caring dispositions are also instrumentalised through powerful careers discourses (Fournier) and embedded within organisations as attributes of an ideal worker (Hochschild).

This paper focuses on recent PhD research into contemporary Quaker views of their work life. Affiliates of the group seek to “better the world” (Johns) through work, often within ‘caring’ occupations. Their religious designs are often constrained, however, as the affiliates variously strive to avoid marginalisation in the secular environment. Ultimately, Quakers concede the religious grounds on which their soi disant caring is based to economic necessity and the goal-oriented ends of temporal authorities.

Quakers are not simply technical-rational instruments, however, as “being with” (Heidegger) others is an essentially human process (Thomas). This paper draws upon Loren Mosher’s inclusive “being with” treatment model for extreme mental distress. It highlights how the secular “being with” of work constitutes a technical-rational ideal and it depicts how a religious care-full utopianism can be differentiated from it.

The paper concludes that the detail of difference, between Quaker utopianism and organisational ideals, divines the Quaker work-life. So, whilst Quaker work-life adroitly avoids the fate of the madman, “entirely excluded from being” (Foucault), affiliates are able to ‘blend whilst they mend’. And their engagement transcends, a ‘more than’ occupationally-defined “being with”. Thus, Quaker work-life forms a cherished part of their shifting utopian horizon, a spiritual gift to the world, often invisible and unrequited, which is proffered within their mundane lives.

This paper, based on PhD research into Quaker faith in the workplace, questions whether tradition... more This paper, based on PhD research into Quaker faith in the workplace, questions whether traditional and visible sites of religious worship – churches, chapels, meeting houses, for example – truly reflect the post-Christian vision.

It draws on the idea of the ‘private life’ (Dandelion), as a worldly place to which Quakers retreat outside meeting for worship and argues that the a-religious workplace should be viewed in contradistinction to the physical ‘church’ as a singularly significant site of faith-inspired utopianism. In Dandelion’s terms, meeting houses and their activities largely define ‘Quaker Time’. However, articulation of the religious ideal is necessarily sustained within the everyday, and located more specifically in the central feature of the modernity (Blass), ‘organisational life’.

Whilst ‘the warm fuzzies’ of the Quaker membership document and therefore bureaucratise (Weber) and centralise members ‘concerns’ within the formal church space, research evidence points to a different, contemporary manifestation of religious heterodoxy. A more critical ‘movement of hope’ (Fournier) can be seen as articulated beyond the Quaker space and instead manifested within the physical/temporal site of work.

The workplace is seen by many research participants as a place of ideals. It is a place where their experience, which often precedes and transcends involvement with the Religious Society of Friends, can become re-materialised as spiritual. Between organisational definitions of ‘what counts as Quaker’ and the shifting career and professional discourses of work, interviewees can be seen as acting to create their own, personally-defined utopias.

The paper concludes by suggesting that Quakers’ ‘impetus to better the world’ (Johns) is derivative and blunted in the formal religious setting. Instead, it is at its most authentic and ‘dangerous’ (Parker) when occupying the heterotopic spaces (Pilgrim) of the contemporary, rational workplace, the modern-day ‘steeplehouses’.

This paper is based upon PhD research into the contemporary workplace as seen through the eyes of... more This paper is based upon PhD research into the contemporary workplace as seen through the eyes of twenty Quakers. The study views organisations in Martin Parker’s terms, as human processes where multi-faceted and complex subjective identities are negotiated as part of an ongoing, negotiation and re-negotiation of individual subjectivities. In this sense, organisations are regarded not as fixed or even fixable, but as processual and fluid entities, a confluence of human inter-relationships.

Although the Quaker faith of the research participants was central to how they self-identified, oppositional practice within the work environment did not tend to be subjectively viewed as singularly religious. Rather religious belief remained backgrounded (Goffman) within the job role, hidden from the organisational gaze (Foucault), a largely undeclared aspect of the interviewees’ subjectivities.

Borrowing from the theory of ‘ideal’ and ‘real’ readers in semiotics (Chandler), it is contended that the interviewees were adept at recognising the ideal organisational member as framed and naturalised (Fairclough) by workplace discourses. Whilst contestation of these organisational discourses was largely undeclared in faith terms, the interviewees as ‘real’ organisational members engaged subjectively in complex and silent oppositional practices.

So, in one example, overt oppositional practice in religious terms was disempowered by being organisationally positioned and marginalised within mental health discourse. However, the paper concludes that contestation by the interviewees as ‘real’ organisational members was more typically subversive, an invisible and significant aspect of opposition within the fluid and processual organisation."

This paper is based upon an interim analysis of a PhD study into the contemporary workplace as se... more This paper is based upon an interim analysis of a PhD study into the contemporary workplace as seen through the eyes of twenty Quaker interviewees. It questions whether ‘religion’ or ‘nonreligion’ descriptors can be meaningfully applied to modern work organisations.

This analysis of the research data is based upon viewing organisations as processual, rather than fixed and structured, entities. Organisations are understood as a confluence of individual, subjective, meaning-making and processes of identity accommodation. (Parker, 2008) Taking the view that subjective identities are fundamentally grounded beyond the organisational form, and articulated at the point of multi-various decision-making within the job role, analysis of the data suggests that the interviewees’ complex motivations remain largely invisible in organisational terms.

The interviewees can be regarded as engaging in private articulations of multi-faceted personal beliefs within a locus of public discourse. Within this discourse, Quaker belief is a singular, variously significant aspect of the interviewees’ subjective identity. However, engagement with the requirements of the work role, and contestation of organisational norms in the particular, reveal a more complex articulation of the subjective self that undermines a religious/non-religious binary definition.

The paper concludes that individuals in modern, technical-rational organisations (Bauman, 1989) bring a multi-faceted subjectivity to their work which cannot be recognised readily within formal organisational discourses. It suggests finally that subjective identities are organisationally significant, and through their religious/non-religious invisibility, have the potential to shape, unrecognised and fundamentally, the identity of the collective whole.

Cutbacks in Utopia: Articulations of Faith in The Toxic Office This is an interim analysis of in... more Cutbacks in Utopia: Articulations of Faith in The Toxic Office

This is an interim analysis of interview data collected as part of a PhD study into Quaker faith in the workplace. All participants were interviewed twice, some before and then after severe government cutbacks in local authority spending.

This paper explores how these profound changes in work circumstances provided a backdrop to very different faith responses. The paper outlines how some Quakers saw themselves during the emotionally intense experience of redundancy and how events at work affected their faith in subjective terms. Quakers’ religious belief and professional practice are placed more narrowly in a managerial and an organisational frame.

This paper argues that Quakers in professional life can be viewed as finding their work meaningful and fulfilling in terms of religious belief. It also contends that Quakers do not necessarily share common approaches to professional practice when their faith is viewed through a utopian lens.

It also appears that religious belief for the cohort is not simply realised within the narrow job role. What counts as professional practice can be understood within broader religious and occupational terms. These terms, however, are not always visible as such within the organisation. This is especially apparent with regard to individual utopianism which contests managerial articulation of organisational priorities

This paper draws upon Martin Parker’s processual, as opposed to rigidly structural, view of organisational identity. It concludes that religious belief within professional practice at an everyday and individual level can be understood as a meaningful aspect of the organisational identity as a whole.

Inequalities of religious vision: articulating (Quaker) utopianism in the contemporary workplace ... more Inequalities of religious vision: articulating (Quaker) utopianism in the contemporary workplace

This paper is based upon semi-structured interviews conducted as part of PhD research into Quaker faith in the workplace. Interim analysis of the data reveals that Quakers share many utopian views of work. However, some interviewees' utopian visions were seen as marginalised in the workplace. Drawing upon Martin Parker’s ideas of organisations as processual identities, this paper presents an analysis of Quaker subjectivities and asks how such marginalisation could have occurred.

The interviewees' utopian view of work could be termed ‘unfolding’ or ‘opportunistic’ and can be understood as being based on shared ideals, typically situated in this world rather than the utopian next. The contemporary work organisation can also be seen as a complex space and the data shows the Quaker interviewees needed to articulate their utopianism in pragmatic terms within organisational ideologies.

According to the data, how a utopian vision is articulated in the workplace does matter. It appears that the utopianism of interviewees in professionalised occupations found accommodation within their employing organisation in both the private and public spheres. Overt and direct articulation of a utopian vision could be problematic, however, and on the shopfloor of one manufacturing company, management conflated explicit expressions of Quaker belief and mental illness.

This paper argues that the interviewees' articulation of their utopian vision highlights wider inequalities of faith at work. As the interviewees were ‘challenging prevailing definitions of the possible and the impossible’ (Pinder, 2005) they also ‘sought to expand senses of what is possible’ (ibid) in terms of the Quaker faith. The workplace can be seen, then, as a context for articulations of the Quaker utopian ideal but also as a place where other inequalities within the faith community are brought into the light.

Finding meaning in the everyday: religious perspectives on professional practice What do we mean... more Finding meaning in the everyday: religious perspectives on professional practice

What do we mean by religious belief? And how is this belief realised in the everyday world of professional work?

This is an interim analysis of interview data collected as part of a PhD study into Quaker faith in the workplace. The paper explores how Quakers see themselves at work and focuses on how they value integrity in faith and professional terms. It places Quakers’ religious belief and professional practice more narrowly in a managerial and an organisational frame.

This paper contends that Quakers share common approaches to professional practice across occupational fields. It argues that Quakers in the caring professions can be viewed as finding their work meaningful and fulfilling in terms of religious belief. The data also indicates that this perspective is shared by Quakers who work in a variety of other occupational fields such as investment banking, accountancy and engineering.

It appears that religious belief for the cohort is not merely realised within the narrow job role. What counts as professional practice can be understood across the cohort within broader religious and occupational terms. This is especially apparent with regard to contesting managerial articulation of organisational concerns and priorities.

Following on from pilot research into Quaker identity at work, this is an analysis of interim dat... more Following on from pilot research into Quaker identity at work, this is an analysis of interim data collected through semi-structured interviews conducted as part of the reseach proper. It draws on the ideas of Martin Parker in the field of Organisational Studies which suggest that individuals in work organisations can be seen as significant if the organisation is viewed as a collective of subjective identities.

Analysis of the data suggests that for members of the Religious Society of Friends, their religious identity is significant for them at work, and that this significance is realised within their job role.

However, this is also a contested area of within a moral frame. The research data indicates that the occupational choice has presented individual Quakers with opportunities to put into practice their religious values. Evidence also shows that the work environment provides spiritual challenges which have led many to question the ethics of their workplace and as well as the foundation of some of their most fundamental religous beliefs.

This paper concludes by suggesting that the beliefs of the participants were at times compromised and occasionally radicalised by practices within the contemporary working environment.

Quaker professionals or professional Quakers: articulations of faith identity in the contemporary... more Quaker professionals or professional Quakers: articulations of faith identity in the contemporary workplace

This paper is based upon research into individual, ‘soi disant’ Quakers and their particular faith beliefs. Data from semi-structured interviews has been used to contextualise the Quaker faith within the contemporary world of work. In order to understand fully Quakers’ experience at work, the research also identifies trends in contemporary working culture. The research analyses how individual Quakers locate themselves within particular work environments and how far they connect this experience at work with their faith beliefs.

This research explores specific contemporary trends within a Quaker’s experience of the modern work environment: attitudinal trends towards work, trends in religious belief and trends in particular behaviours in the workplace. It depicts, therefore, how far individuated aspects of religious belief, and the workplace, form distinctive characteristics of a Quaker’s subjective identity.

Following on from this depiction of individual Quaker identity, the study also examines how the religious belief is realised within contemporary working culture: i.e. it examines the priority of religious faith, from a Quaker’s point of view, especially with regard to the discursively expressed aims and practices of the secular and rational workplace.

This paper also describes some of the features and trends of British working culture which make the workplace contemporary. It identifies some of the current academic ideas about how individuals form meaning and identity through work. Within this context, it tries to depict, through an analysis of interview data, a Quaker sense of self. It suggests that, by viewing the interview data through a critically analytical lens, Quaker faith is realised discursively and non-discursively at work.

The paper concludes that a subjective Quaker identity does exist in the contemporary workplace. The data indicates that this subjective identity can be located within different professional fields. Quaker identity also takes a recognisable form at an individual level.

As Parker (2000), has pointed out: ‘Organisational culture is a continually contested process of making claims of difference within and between groups of people.’(2000, 233)

It is argued that Quakers consciously engage in an articulation of identity and meaning-making within the contemporary workplace. They locate themselves as Quakers within the workplace. As simultaneously Quakers and organisational members, they locate themselves in two distinctive ways: as ‘Quaker professionals’, through a subjective identification with the aims of the organisation, and as ‘professional Quakers’, contesting from within the identity of the workplace.

Conference Presentations by Mark Read