Just Let Us Be: Domination, the Postcolonial Condition and the Global Field of Business Schools

As the field of business schools has become a global field, where schools around the world constantly interact with each other, it becomes important to understand potential dynamics of domination. According to Bourdieusian theory, we know that in a global field, hierarchies emerge, with elite groups dominating, while others remaining oppressed. Several factors enable hierarchies, including the postcolonial condition. For postcolonial business schools, their possible submissive state, within the global field of business schools, is facilitated by local intermediaries that protect the dynamics of domination. To understand how postcolonial schools could liberate themselves, we need, therefore, to understand how local intermediaries may wake up from their obedient roles. In order to explore this phenomenon, this paper presents an in-depth study of a postcolonial case in México, which was done using autoethnographic methods. The study documents the process through which local intermediaries awakened from their obedient roles. Here, the awakening of local intermediaries occurred naturally, as they came to conceive the rules of the game as not protecting them, but felt like they existed to control them. Finally, local intermediaries perceived their awakening as the result of a betrayal, fearing that elite groups would perpetually refuse to acknowledge them fully.