The affirmative’s relies on a binary between abled and disabled which institutionalizes violence against disabled people

Ableism has recently been advanced as a new theoretical lens to con-ceptualize these processes of marginalization (Williams & Mavin,2012).Defined as a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces aparticular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projectedas the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human’(Campbell,2001, p. 44), ableism draws attention to the discursive practi-ces through which people are sorted, categorized and labelled either aable-bodied or disabled. This notion has increasingly been applied in theliterature on work and organizations, showing how, once so classified individuals become either ‘unemployable’or at best confined to lower-rank positions at workplaces and in the labor market (e.g. Foster &Wass,2013; Holmqvist, Maravelias & Skålen,2013; Jammaers, Zanoni &Hardonk,2016). Drawing on post-structuralist theory and, especially thework of Foucault, the emergent literature has examined the disciplinary role of a binary structured language reaffirming the primacy of able-bod-iedness over disability. It has advanced prior social model research ondisability at work, which highlighted the disabling effects of a social con-text made for able-bodied individuals (Barnes & Mercer,2005), by pro-posing an alternative understanding of power in neoliberal times asoccurring through the constitution of specific forms of subjectivity and workplace identities.While the focus on the power of language was timely in disabilitystudies (Corker,1999), with rare exceptions (e.g. Jammaers et al.,2016)analyses of ableism have tended to focus on how meaning is producedthrough specific authoritative discourses, leaving the social practices con-stitutive of ableism largely unattended (Campbell,2009). Yet, arguably, power effects do not only ensue directly from the normalization and institutionalization of ableist identity categories, they crucially arise from how such categories inform the enactment of social practices that pro-duce and reproduce a social order privileging able-bodiedness over dis-ability over time.This study draws on Bourdieuan theory to advance an understanding of ableism as a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu,1989,1990), operat-ing as an arbitrary organizing principle of social practice in the work-place. Over the past two decades, Bourdieu’s theory has increasinglybeen adopted to examine social practice in organizations as the buildingblocks of social reality (Sieweke,2014; Townley,2014). This perspective is particularly helpful to theorize the‘practice-based aspects of ableism’2520E. JAMMAERS ET AL.because it appreciates how power is enacted hrough social practice, such as the interactions in which people engage (Bourdieu,1977; Wacquant,1993) in their struggle for various forms of capital within a given field(Tatli &€Ozbilgin,2012). For Bourdieu, practices are produced not merely through norms as expressed through language but rather through habitus, the system of durable embodied dispositions acquired throughsocialization (Bourdieu,1990). To understand practice, agents’‘practicallogic’originating in their habitus and shaping their‘feel for the game’and the regularities of the social field need to be addressed (Maton,2008, p. 53). It is this practical logic that ultimately affects their ability toplay the game in ways that allow them to accrue various forms of capital. second contribution of this study concerns the role of disabled people as strategic players aware of the rules of the game in the field. A Bourdieuan perspective is conducive to seeing that disabled employees are not only defined by ableist rules–an aspect of the operation of power which is prominent in the extant literature (Goodley,2014) theyalso participate in social practice by actively taking positions, striving forthe accrual of their own capital. Although the rules of the game atBankCorp are manifestly structured along the disabled/able-bodied bin-ary to enforce social practices producing‘desirable’bodies/minds, dis-abled employees’position-takings show more heterogeneity. As illustrated by the juxtaposition of the cases of Dieter, Julie and Markwho all navigate the same highly competitive space, some disabled agents prove much better equipped than others to develop asens pratique, takea position, deal with the ableist rules of the game, and acquire the valuedsets of capital. Their comparison showcases the need to accurately graspthe operation of ableism and its effects and look beyond the disabled/able-bodied dichotomy structuring the field in an ableist way, which hasbeen at the core of the literature on ableism to date (Campbell,2009).At the same time, our research design presents some limitations.Future research might want to use a broader sample of workers includ-ing able-bodied ones with otherwise similar forms of capital in one andthe same social field. This would allow for a comparative examination ofthe effects of ableist norms on all workers, including those closer toembodying such norms. Moreover, it would facilitate a more fine-grainedanalysis of how agents’embodied dispositions and capacity to accruecapital might be simultaneously shaped by multiple principles organizingthe social field exerting symbolic violence, such as for instance gender,(hetero)sexism and ageism. This recognizes that dispositions associatedwith specific types of embodiments are likely to similarly constitute(negative) forms of cultural capital (Huppatz,2009; McCall,1992). To the extent that the arbitrarily established rules of the game reflect com-plex power relations in an organization (cf. Robinson & Kerr,2009), they are likely to exert symbolic violence through multiple hierarchized binaries, something we could only get a sense of in this study. Tellingly, the only two disabled employees in our study who manage to be‘fish inwater’were both young and male and had a technical education. Conversely, those who were‘out of water’were older and/or female,and/or with low-level or non-technical education. This suggests thatsymbolic violence is exerted in complex ways, taking at once not onlythe form of ableism but also of other‘–isms’. Further empirical2538E. JAMMAERS ET AL.investigation and theorization untangling such complexity is thereforewarranted (cf. Goodley,2014; Oksala,2013; Roberts & Mahtani,2010).Our study further builds on prior discursive research on ableism byshowing how organizational norms do not exert power solely by virtueof workers’identification with them in view of building a positive workidentity (Jammaers et al.,2016), but also, more fundamentally, becausethey come to structure the social field in which actors are socialized andthus learn embodied dispositions which come to define who they are inrelation to others (cf. Dick,2008). Ableism thus informs the field notonly as a semiotic/cultural space, but also as a space of objective posi-tions, drawing attention to the close relationship between discursive andsocial practice at the analytical level of both the individual and theorganization. Different to discursive research which points to the vio-lence of language on the subject’s identity, a Bourdieuan approach toableism emphasizes the role of embodied social practice in enforcing symbolically violent norms, highlighting agents and the effect of theirp ractice on the unequal distribution of prestige and material rewards. This rich conceptual vocabulary avoids the pitfalls of approaches whichdetach language from the social by focusing on identities (including sub-ordinate ones) as a modality of power in themselves (Zanoni, Janssens,Benschop & Nkomo,2010). Future research might want to draw onBourdieu’s work to contribute to current debates on the relationshipbetween ableism as a discursive binary and materiality, including mater-ial inequality (e.g. Zanoni,2011).