Skip To Content

Courses

Master of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS) 611

Transformatory Organizing (Revision 3)

**Note:Students in Group Study courses are advised that this syllabus may vary in key details in each instance of the course. Always refer to the Moodle site for the most up-to-date details on texts, assignment structure, and grading.**

Introduction

Transformatory Organizing is a course about organizing within the context of globalization. The course introduces students to feminist analyses of development and organizing, and to strategies for transforming organizations and overcoming the marginalization of women. It argues that the big corporations, bad jobs, and low wages of global capitalism disproportionately affect women, and it explores organizing strategies to combat these exclusionary processes.

This course focuses on theoretical and practical ways to reframe, rethink, and transform development through our organizing strategies that will create a place for women to share equitably in shaping a world that suits us all. Most writing on women and development does not look at processes of organizing and at organizing strategies in any depth. Those who write about organizing strategies from a critical perspective, that is, those who question how we get what we want done without exploiting each other, seldom read the women and development literature. This course attempts to bridge the gap. At the theoretical level it examines assumptions of development and of organizing and how they do, or do not, marginalize women. At the practical level, it examines existing strategies to end the marginalization of women, in organizations and in development projects. Thus, the course identifies what organizers and activists are able to accomplish, and how to set about doing it. In a reversal of "the ends justify the means," the course author argues that the means chosen to organize produce the ends.

The primary objective of the course is the examination of the practice-based transformatory organizing strategies that organizers need to know and apply to bring about change for women, and in the process, to change society.

Course Author

Collette Oseen received her PhD in feminist organizational theory from the University of Alberta in 1993 and has taught and consulted in that field since then.

In 2003, Dr. Oseen received a three-year SSHRC research grant to research the processes of participatory organizing-how to get work done in participatory, inclusive, non-hierarchical ways. This course is both a predecessor to, and an outcome of, this research focus. Those who take this course, as well as MAIS 612: Gender, Leadership, and Management, might like to consider working as a graduate research assistant for this research project, based in Edmonton.

Course Structure

Master of Arts-Integrated Studies 611: Transformatory Organizing consists of four parts, spread over fourteen weeks; the fifteenth week is reserved for completing the course assignments:

  • Part 1 Transformatory Organizing, Development Discourse, and Global Capitalism-Weeks 1 to 2
  • Part 2 Non-governmental Organizations, Bureaucracies, and Organizing: The Possibilities of Resistance to Globalization- Weeks 3 to 6
  • Part 3 The Practice of Creating the Non-hierarchical Workplace: Grounding the Issue Through Shared Decision Making, Consensus Building, and Responsibility-Weeks 7 to 10
  • Part 4 Practical Strategies for Creating the Non-hierarchical Workplace-Weeks 11 to 14

Course Objectives

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to

  1. briefly explain the theoretical assumptions that underlie development and organizing from the feminist perspectives considered in the readings, and comment on the organizing strategies that arise from these feminist perspectives on development and organizing.
  2. analyse how sex and power relations shape organizing and development processes, based on your own work experience.
  3. reflect critically on ways to put transformational organizing strategies into practice.

Evaluation

You should be prepared to devote the time necessary to complete the various activities in this course:

  • reading all assigned readings actively and critically, and in time to participate in the weekly online discussions
  • writing succinct, critical postings, reviews, and commentaries
  • researching and writing an academic paper that is both critical and integrative

To receive credit for this course, you must participate online and complete the assignments. The following table summarizes the evaluation activities and the credit weight associated with each evaluation activity.

Activity Weighting Length
Three online postings per week
10%
 Varies
Five critical reviews
35%
 Varies
Five critical commentaries
35%
 Varies
Research Proposal
5%
 250-500 words
Research Essay
15%
 2,500 words
Total
100%

Course Materials

The course materials for Master of Arts-Integrated Studies 611 include the items listed below. If you find that any of these items are missing from your course materials package, please contact the Course Materials Production department of Athabasca University at (780) 675-6366, or 1-800-788-9041, ext. 6366 (toll free from anywhere within Canada or the United States). You may also write in care of Course Materials Production, Tim Byrne Centre, 4001 Hwy 2 South, Athabasca AB T9S 1A4; or direct your e-mail to cmat@athabascau.ca.

Textbooks

The following textbooks and readers are used in this course. Please consult the Study Schedule in the Course Guide to learn at which points in the course the different readings are required.

  • Chambers, Robert. Participatory Workshops: A Sourcebook of 21 Sets of Ideas & Activities. London: Earthscan, 2002.
  • Guijt, Irene, & Meera Kaul Shah, eds. The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: ITDG Publishing, 1998.
  • Lewis, Debra J., and Jan Barnsley. Strategies for Change: From Women's Experience to a Plan for Action. Rev. ed. Vancouver: Women's Research Centre, 1992.
  • The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective. Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
  • Miller, Carol, and Shahra Razavi, eds. Missionaries and Mandarins: Feminist Engagement with Development Institutions. London: Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd, with United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1998.
  • Whitford, Margaret, ed. The Irigaray Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers Inc, 1991.
  • Young, Kate. Planning Development with Women: Making a World of Difference. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.

Print Materials

Course Guide: The Course Guide contains the introduction, objectives, reading assignments, commentaries, online activities, assignments and evaluation criteria, and other information students will need to complete the course successfully.

Reading File: The assigned readings, with the exception of any articles that can be found online, are included in the Reading File. The "Study Guide" section of the Course Guide will direct you when to read these articles.

  • Abbott, Dina. "Turning Acts of Borrowing into Acts of Empowerment: Self-organization of the Annapurna Women of Bombay." In Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries: A Global Perspective, edited by Parvin Ghorayshi and Claire Bélanger, 183-193. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
  • Baden, Sally, and Anne Marie Goetz. "Who Needs [Sex] When You Can Have [Gender]?" In Feminist Visions of Development: Gender, Analysis and Policy, edited by Cecile Jackson and Ruth Pearson, 19-38. New York: Routledge, 1998.
  • Briskin, Linda. "Autonomy, Diversity, and Integration: Union Women's Separate Organizing in North America and Western Europe in the Context of Restructuring and Globalization." Women's Studies International Forum 22, no. 5 (September-October 1999): 543-554.
  • Brown, Helen. "Chapter 8: Creating Non-hierarchical Organisation," "Chapter 9: Organisation Theory and Non-hierarchy," and "Chapter 10: Implications for Feminist Organising Practice." In Women Organising, 147-192. London: Routledge, 1992.
  • Desai, Manisha. "Non-hierarchical Participatory Organizations as Agents of Change: Notes from the Women's Movement in India." Paper presented at the NGO Forum on Women '95, Huairou, People's Republic of China, August 30-September 8, 1995.
  • Goetz, Anne Marie. "Introduction: Getting Institutions Right for Women in Development." In Getting Institutions Right for Women in Development, edited by Anne Marie Goetz, 1-28. New York: Zed Books, 1997.
  • Oseen, Collette. "Luce Irigaray, Sexual Difference and Theorizing Leaders and Leadership." Gender, Work and Organization 4, no. 3 (July 1997): 170-184.
  • Osirim, Mary J. "Vehicles for Change and Empowerment: Urban Women's Organizations in Nigeria and Zimbabwe." Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives and Area Studies 17, no. 2 / 3 (June-September 1998): 145-164.

Forms: The forms students will need to submit assignments or to inform the University of a change in status as a student are included with the course materials.

Online Materials

Digital Reading File

Any assigned readings that are available online can be accessed via the MAIS 611: Transformatory Organizing Digital Reading File, which is linked to the course home page.

  • Callamard, Agnès. "Far from Equal: Women's Rights in the 21st Century." Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2000, pp. 1, 4-5.
  • Guilhot, Nicolas. "Repackaging the World Bank: Where Economics Meets Politics." Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2000, pp. 10-11.
  • Burrows, Paul. "Work After Capitalism." Paper presented at the Life after Capitalism Conference, World Social Forum III, Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 23-28, 2003.

Online Resources

Athabasca University Library: Students are encouraged to browse the Library's Web site to review the Library collection of journal databases, electronic journals, and digital reference tools: http://library.athabascau.ca.

Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice. Courses offered by other delivery methods may vary from their individualized-study counterparts.

Opened in Revision 3, April 11, 2007.

Last updated by E. Comrie  11/19/2010 16:55:43