R:ETRO Seminar Series
Reputation: Ethics, Trust, and Relationships at Oxford
Dear All,
Please join us online on Thursday 12 February for the second R:ETRO seminar of this term, hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.
Claudia Eger, Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Sustainability at the Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School will be presenting: 'Beyond confessional cultures: Identity and the role of silence in DEI interventions.'
Abstract:
This paper interrogates the confessional foundations of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work, which have emerged predominantly from Global North traditions rooted in Christian understandings of subjectivity. In such traditions, identity is asserted through self-declaration, visibility, and vocal articulation of difference, what we term a confessional culture. Drawing on Foucauldian critiques, we explore how this imperative to 'confess' produces an extreme form of subjectivity that is paradoxically both overexposed and untrue to itself. In contrast, Global South contexts, particularly those shaped by Islamic epistemologies, offer alternative modalities of identity work rooted in subtlety, silence, and communal ethics. Here, the good is practiced rather than pronounced, and self-description can be experienced as disrespectful or even transgressive. By juxtaposing these divergent cultural logics, the paper challenges the universality of DEI frameworks that prioritise self-expression and visibility. It argues for the need to reimagine DEI practices that are attuned to silent negotiations of identity, relational forms of recognition, and implicit pathways to social change. In doing so, the paper offers a deeper, more culturally pluralistic understanding of co-existence, belonging, equity and inclusion beyond the confessional paradigm.
Click here to register.
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Rupert Younger
University of Oxford
Park End Street, Oxford
+44 (0)7770 278 071
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