(Re)producing d/Discourse as Unobtrusive Control: Identity Enactments of Complicity Among Aerial Acrobats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study investigates how workers enact occupational identities that reinforce institutional Discourses through mechanisms of unobtrusive occupational control. Through a phronetic iterative analysis of interview and Photovoice data from 27 circus aerial acrobats, we identify three identity enactments through which workers reproduce and sustain occupational norms: complicit masking, complicit risk-taking, and complicit anonymity and exploitation. These findings contribute to our understanding of identification and control processes by demonstrating how discursive and bodily identity enactments—framed as small “d” discourses—function recursively to uphold dominant institutional ideologies. The study expands upon a d/Discourse framework by illustrating the embodied dimensions of identity enactment, highlighting the value of arts-based elicitation methods in accessing lived experiences of body workers. Photovoice images revealed how performers engage identity enactments in the front-facing and backstage work sites, revealing how workers sustain harmful practices, simultaneously acknowledge the dangers of these practices, and refrain from challenging the status quo.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".