Brown Bag Lunch with Nyla Obaid (Tuesday November 10th)

Performances as a Response to Community Obsolescence

Featuring:  Nyla Obaid, PhD Candidate, York University

Nyla will present the findings of a study that examined how communities mount a response to the prospects of obsolescence and the role of various embedded organizations to this process. In particular, she conducted a qualitative case study of Middleton, USA, a small town that was fading into obsolescence in the 1980s, but managed to turn itself around into a thriving town by the late 2000s. Through interviews, archival data, and participant observation, she discovered that the community put on "social performances" for outside audiences, and this led to the ultimate resurgence of the town. Organizations played a large part in this social performance, including providing the script, serving as the actors, collaborating with one another, and participating in the performance itself. The study serves as an exploratory work on both the dynamism of communities as well as social performance within macro-organizational contexts, and calls for more studies on both these topics.

Let’s see where the conversation takes us!

Date: Tuesday, November 10^th, 2015

Time: 11:30-12:30pm

Location: Goodes Hall, Room 100

Bring your lunch!

RSVP (appreciated but not required): csi@queensu.ca