How can we rethink the practicing of diversity in a manner that does not reproduce the inequality and social injustice it aims to challenge? That question is the main motivation of this book. Throughout the many years we have been studying diversity, we have become increasingly interested in hopeful stories and alternative theorizing that inspire us to think about a way of practicing diversity that has the potential to transform organizational settings into more equal and socially just ones. Although we are very cautious about this possibility, we believe diversity research, after primarily studying individuals and recommending diversity initiatives that attend to altering and supporting individuals, needs to make a shift towards engaging in critique of organizational norms and establishing new generous encounters that can question any kind of hierarchy of differences. The reimagination of diversity in organizational life is thus oriented towards proposing a political endeavour that aspires to contribute to future worldmaking. To achieve this, specific ‘conditions of possibility’ are articulated that are key to challenging and reconfiguring the relationships through which our lives appear.

How is this book positioned in relation to this overall aim? The conditions of possibility developed in this book are undoubtedly impacted by the research examples on which it draws, the different theories, and understandings of what kind of social change is desirable. To avoid we as researchers disappearing and falling into the trap of performing ‘the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere’ as Donna Haraway (1988, p 590) describes it, this Introduction starts with our own reflexive positionality (Janssens and Steyaert, 2009; Calás and Smircich, 2018) which we see, with Pierre Bourdieu, as epistemic rather than as personal (see Sklaveniti and Steyaert, 2020).