Digitalisation, social media and disadvantage: towards a reflexive global diversity management within rising posthuman conditions

This chapter contributes to global diversity management (GDM) within the emerging posthuman setting, a salient feature of the twenty-first century. Posthuman conditions generated through digitalisation inevitably dominate our personal, occupational and social lives, radically transforming conventional relations, identities, expectations, obligations and intimacies. This transformation of our lifeworld demands a reconsideration of the question ‘what is it to be human?’ with vital implications on how we understand diversity and disadvantage, as little is known about how posthuman conditions impact upon already disadvantaged individuals. Therefore, using the findings of a recent study on rural women’s social media experiences, this chapter explores human transcendence - the changing nature of sense of self and agency of marginalised people to understand if posthuman conditions generate eudemonia - the good life, and emancipation or exacerbate (digital) distraction, distress and de-flourishing, arguing that GDM practices must be revised to accommodate emerging posthuman conditions.