Mom bloggers as self-enterprising individuals. Exploring ‘new’ forms of fragile identity work being carried out across the Finnish blogosphere (Esitys Organization Studies Summer Workshopissa, Mykonos 23.-25.5. 2019)
Suvi Satama; Astrid Huopalainen
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2021042822960
Tiivistelmä
Despite an ever-growing
interest in digital labour and ‘digital-materialism’, the research fields of mom blogging,
mumpreneurship and self-employed motherhood remain narrow in the field of
management and organizational studies. This paper
delves into the communicative practices of mom blogging as a multiple and
intriguing site for performative identity work. Building on the literatures on digital
labour, blogging and mumpreneurship
combined with insights from the more critical literature on identity work in
organizational studies, we empirically explore how six popular Finnish
mom bloggers seek to construct, communicate and navigate their fleeting and fragile
identities as mumpreneurs – mothers and (micro-)entrepreneurs – in and through
their personal blogs. Specifically, by conducting critical
media analysis, we focus on the co-creation and re-creation of identities, as
well as the insecurities, tensions and complexities involved in mom blogging as
seemingly flexible and fun yet exhausting and boundaryless realm of identity
work that brings the spheres of motherhood, self-entrepreneurship and lifestyle
intimately together. This paper develops a dynamic understanding of how
digital technologies, dominant expectations and normative idea(l)s relating to
both (self-)entrepreneurship and motherhood come to shape, discipline and
construct contemporary maternal entrepreneurial subjectivities. Finally, we argue for the need to further study precarious and intimate
forms of identity work in the digital sphere from more diverse and
intersectional perspectives.
Kokoelmat
- Rinnakkaistallenteet [19207]