The loss of power: How illusions of alliance contribute to powerholders’ downfall

Organizational scholars have devoted substantial attention to the challenges and weaknesses of diversity initiatives. However, we still lack a clear understanding of how to design effective diversity policies, especially initiatives that will engage those in power or who otherwise may not see a benefit for themselves. How can organizations design more effective policies that successfully engage people in powerful and privileged positions? This symposium presents work that suggests avenues for positive change in diversity and inclusion policy. Together, these presentations show how different approaches to diversity affect the way people in dominant societal positions (e.g., men, Whites, the wealthy) receive and engage with diversity issues in organizations. Further, this symposium identifies how organizations can engage those in power not only to increase diversity and inclusion, but also to inspire meaningful participation from groups otherwise often excluded or even threatened by diversity conversations. This symposium also provides practical solutions and interventions to help make diversity efforts more effective - thereby making organizations truly meaningful. Talks integrate research from psychological, sociological, and organizational sciences to move beyond the challenges identified by previous researchers and suggest new ways of improving diversity and inclusion in organizations. Overall, such work can deepen our understanding of organizational approaches to diversity, while helping researchers and practitioners create better policies that successfully engage people in powerful positions. First, L.T. Phillips develops a theoretical approach to understanding how those in power react to diversity initiatives and inclusion efforts; dual concerns of maintaining power and resources and achieving a sense of personal merit drive the responses of the powerful and privileged to diversity policies. Using this lens, she provides empirical evidence that addressing maintenance and security concerns can encourage the powerful to engage positively in diversity efforts within their organizations. Second, Martin, K.W. Phillips, and Sasaki use experimental methods to test how different ideologies about gender can influence inequality outcomes. They find that gender-blind approaches (downplaying differences and focusing on similarities between men and women) cause men to stereotype women colleagues less and treat women more respectfully compared to gender-aware approaches, which contrasts with recommended approaches for reducing racial bias in organizations. Third, Wynn uses a one-year ethnographic case study to analyze high-level organizational leaders’ engagement with gender equality initiatives; she finds that leaders combine the rhetoric of the initiative with their preexisting views about gender to conceptualize diversity and its importance to the organization. Finally, Romero, Emerson, Johnson, and Malahy draw from their practitioner experience at Paradigm, a strategy firm that partners with companies to build more diverse and inclusive organizations. They outline three strategies from the field for engaging organizational leaders in diversity initiatives and discuss how these leadership engagement strategies contribute to sustainable positive change in organizations. By exploring ways of successfully diversifying organizations, this symposium suggests how organizations can increase their social value and contribute positively to the inclusiveness of marginalized groups. Strategies for Engaging Leaders: Implementing Gender Equality in a Silicon Valley Tech Company Presenter: Alison Tracy Wynn; Stanford U. The Benefits of Gender-Blindness for Men's Bias Towards and Inclusion of Women Presenter: Ashley E. Martin; Columbia Business School Presenter: Katherine W. Phillips; Columbia U. Presenter: Stacey Sasaki; Columbia Business School Using Research to Inform D&I Strategies: Lessons from Engaging with Tech Companies and Leaders Presenter: Carissa Romero; Paradigm Presenter: Joelle Emerson; Paradigm Presenter: Natalie Johnson; Paradigm Presenter: Sean Malahy; Paradigm Merit vs. Maintenance: Using Safety Nets to Promote Merit Motives Among the Powerful Presenter: L Taylor Phillips; NYU Stern

After 75 years of rapid and continuous improvement, in the early 2010s life expectancy improvements slowed, stopped or reversed across the UK, and in many other rich countries. In the UK, the trends for poorer areas and populations were even worse, with life expectancy actually going into reverse: people dying younger and earlier. Life expectancy is a good marker of broad societal progress, and declines had only previously been seen in times of profound crisis: wars and pandemics. These changes therefore represent an almost unprecedented disaster, with extraordinary numbers of people in the UK dying well before their time. Yet these trends are largely unknown among the general public and many of those in positions of power. A considerable evidence base has been established, demonstrating beyond doubt that the principal cause of these changes has been government ‘austerity’ policies which have had a calamitous impact on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. This book shines a light on this catastrophic issue, but also goes further by: explaining why this matters; setting out the precise details of the causes of the changes; showing how and why people in positions of power have failed to respond adequately; explaining what has to be done to reverse these trends; and relating what has happened to the experiences of real people.

In this paper, we take a critical discourse analytic approach to short notes written at the end of exam papers by Iranian students asking for a higher score. Such notes are sometimes written when the student has a feeling that they might fail the exam as a result of not providing satisfactory answers to questions. We consider this to be a manipulative strategy employed by these students to control their professors. Manipulation, however, is often considered an illegitimate source of power abuse by people having the higher hand in unequal power relations [Van Dijk, T.A. (2006). Discourse and manipulation. Discourse & Society, 17(3), 359–383]. The present paper argues for a new understanding of this important concept in the critical discourse analysis (CDA) tradition by highlighting manipulative strategies used by less powerful people. The analysis of 71 such notes written by students in two Iranian universities suggests that the students, as people in a lower position of power, resorted to certain manipulative strategies to exert influence on professors, people in a higher position of power. Four of the most frequent strategies identified in the data will be discussed: (1) tapping into religious beliefs; (2) highlighting personal and social problems as causes for inability to prepare for the exam; (3) referring to negative consequences for failing the exam, and therefore tapping into the examiner's conscience; and (4) resorting to honorific terms to address the examiner. This study would have implications for application of CDA in Higher Education.

This article investigates electoral reforms in Indonesia and Thailand in the 21st century, highlighting important dimensions of the electoral changes and their consequences in disproportionality and the effective number of parties. In the first stage, we identify electoral changes and the ideal goals of electoral reform. Second, we compare each election's results by calculating disproportional results and the effective number of parties, followed by in-depth interviews with key stakeholders (N = 8) to uncover the evaluation and recommendation for a better future of the electoral system in both countries. The analysis reveals the government's motivation behind the electoral system chosen. In Indonesia, the reforms addressed realising the limited pluralism party system raised a thorny debate among small to medium parties about rescuing their seats in parliament. Otherwise, the Thai government accommodates small parties by waiving the electoral threshold. We identify that different people in positions of power in each country cause different ideal goals. This research contributes to developing an understanding that elite motivation outweighs the public good in designing electoral reform. While in Thailand the control to determine which electoral system is chosen seems more centralised by the junta military, the shift of the electoral system in Indonesia is strongly motivated by political actors in order to gain their pragmatic interests.

The editors of several major journals have recently asserted the importance of combating racism and sexism in science. This is especially relevant now, as the COVID-19 pandemic may have led to a widening of the gender and racial/ethnicity gaps. Implicit bias is a crucial component in this fight. Negative stereotypes that are socially constructed in a given culture are frequently associated with implicit bias (which is unconscious or not perceived). In the present article, we point to scientific evidence that shows the presence of implicit bias in the academic community, contributing to strongly damaging unconscious evaluations and judgments of individuals or groups. Additionally, we suggest several actions aimed at (1) editors and reviewers of scientific journals (2) people in positions of power within funding agencies and research institutions, and (3) members of selection committees to mitigate this effect. These recommendations are based on the experience of a group of Latinx American scientists comprising Black and Latina women, teachers, and undergraduate students who participate in women in science working group at universities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With this article, we hope to contribute to reflections, actions, and the development of institutional policies that enable and consolidate diversity in science and reduce disparities based on gender and race/ethnicity.

“A Collective Force of Burning Ink”: Will Alexander’s Asia & Haiti Harryette Mullen* (bio) Will Alexander, Poet and Essayist: A Special Section A homegrown if not “organic” intellectual, Will Alexander is an African-American writer from South Central Los Angeles, whose surrealist poetry is global, even cosmic, in scope, encyclopedic in its display of esoteric knowledge and arcane vocabularies, visionary in its apocalyptic intensity. The author of numerous works of poetry, fiction, drama, and essays, of which a fraction has been published, Alexander has been largely ignored by black as well as mainstream readers, scholars, and critics, despite regular appearances of his poetry and prose in Sulfur and Hambone, literary journals friendly to avant-garde poetics, edited respectively by Clayton Eshleman and Nathaniel Mackey. Beyond convenient labels such as “African-American surrealist” or “North America’s Aimé Césaire,” Alexander is difficult to categorize aesthetically as well as ideologically. However, the political landscapes of Asia & Haiti, published by Douglas Messerli’s Sun & Moon Press, could bring Alexander to the attention of a wider audience, including more black readers. Born into the early cohort of the post-war “baby boom” generation, Alexander is a child of the Cold War era, which in part defined the aspiring revolutions and liberation struggles of so-called Third World nations, that in turn inspired the Civil Rights movement and black nationalist struggles in the United States. Alexander’s father, a World War II veteran who was born in New Orleans, married a Texan and left the South for California following a military tour that took him, among other places, on a brief visit to the Caribbean. There, the elder Alexander was impressed to see black people in positions of power, and his story of that experience left a distinct impression on his son, who counts among his culture heroes Césaire of Martinique and Wifredo Lam of Cuba. Asia & Haiti deals with relatively recent historical events—shifts in power that began during the poet’s childhood—which also represent the changing role of the Third World in the latter half of the 20th century. Not only do Cold War ideologies provide subjects for Alexander’s poetry in Asia & Haiti, the era also supplies metaphors for his poetics, as seen in his essay, “Poetry: Alchemical Anguish and Fire”: “Poetics which reduce, which didactically inform, take on the infected measures of the gulag. During the earlier part of the 1950’s we see the poet Césaire in sustained resistance against this gulag. He takes on the ‘Communist’ party boss Aragon and the latter’s demand for plain spoken diacritics, for abject poverty of description” (16). [End Page 417] Published together as a book titled Asia & Haiti, the two poems “Asia” and “Haiti” exist in a kind of dialogic or interactive relationship to each other, so that together they imply a more comprehensive statement about Third World politics, and the current situation of oppressed peoples globally in the post-Cold War climate of a world no longer divided into Soviet versus United States allies sustaining a balance or stalemate between two super powers. Pairing these poems together allows the poet to explore correspondences between the political weakness and spiritual strength of the inhabitants of two countries, Tibet and Haiti, the one overwhelmed by communists and the other by capitalists. Crucial to the perspective of this work (and perhaps to Alexander’s marginalization as a black writer) is the absence of any “white oppressor” in “Asia” or “Haiti.” Alexander is careful to point out, in response to this observation, that the majority of the world’s population is not white, and that this global majority is governed by people who are not white. The power of so-called Third World people, and not only their oppression, should be a topic for serious discussion and analysis by black intellectuals. Asia & Haiti brings to mind some of the difficulties of writing and evaluating poetry within a framework of politics. The political messages of poetry written about recent or ongoing events are interpreted differently than those concerning events that for the reader have receded into distant history. In the former case, the political message tends to be foregrounded; in the latter...

High and rising levels of economic inequality come at a tremendous cost to societies, yet the public is often hesitant to confront these inequalities. Prior research has attempted to explain this paradox, pointing to how it is driven by individuals' misperceptions of the extent of inequality, broader narratives that justify inequality, and distrust in government intervention and redistribution. These beliefs and attitudes are not simply a reflection of individual predispositions; they are also a product of societal debates. The limited scholarship on such debates has focused on elite discourse, examining how discussions about inequality unfold among people in positions of power in formalized contexts such as parliaments or the media. Most of this research has been conducted in the Global North. We know very little about how ordinary people talk about economic inequality, especially in the Global South. Everyday conversations about economic inequality deserve more scholarly attention because of their distinct form and extensive range, covering diverse voices and social situations. They reflect how societies struggle with economic inequality and how some groups are silenced, while others have their voices amplified. Finally, conversations may affect opinion formation differently than unidirectional exposure to information. This article reviews the literature and sets out a research agenda to comprehensively study how ordinary people talk about economic inequality in various contexts.

Malaysia has the highest infection rate in Southeast Asia, with over 1 million positive COVID-19 cases and over 8500 deaths. The National Immunization Programme, which began in late February 2021, had a particularly slow vaccination rate, with only 4% of the targeted group receiving vaccination in three months. The delay has sparked a lot of public debate and concern, especially in light of allegations of vaccine injustice, unclear prioritization, queue jumping by people in positions of power, and other aspects of the vaccination process. Using an interpretative social science approach, this paper examines the ethical issues that arise in Malaysia’s COVID-19 vaccination discourse, focusing on vaccine justice and the bioethical principle of ‘respect for autonomy’. The paper finds that despite several shortfalls in the immunization process, most Malaysians remain optimistic and support the government’s immunization initiatives. The paper contributes to the understanding that building public trust is critical to the success of the immunization programme. Health agencies should make more efforts to inform the public about the benefits and risks of vaccines, as well as the transparency of immunization processes, which will increase public trust in health systems.

Religious groups offer their members social support, opportunities for leadership development, and numerous other nonspiritual benefits. While positive outcomes of church participation are worthy of attention, significant attention has not been placed on potentially negative aspects of church life. This is especially the case in the literature on the Black Church. This article examines the creation and maintenance of power structures (formalized power) and conflict in a Black United Methodist church. Themes derived from qualitative data reveal a number of paradoxes related to power, such as the observation that not all people in positions of power welcome the trappings of power. Also, results indicate that power structures are the result of a nexus between micro and macro factors which operate at both local and nonlocal levels.

Because women are more likely to seek professional help, and because they are more likely to be the victims of abuse by people in positions of power, women who do seek professional assistance may end up being victims of sexual exploitation by the very people from whom they seek help. Unlike other problems which primarily affect women, such as rape and domestic violence, this issue has received little public attention and has had little success in building a social movement to combat it. Bohmer analyzes the social construction of this unique problem and the response it has received from individuals, groups, and various institutions, such as the law and the regulatory process. Bohmer explains why this problem has a different history from other problems facing primarily women, and why it has not had much success in stirring social movement for addressing the problem. Using other issues of feminist concern, Bohmer connects the problem of professional sexual exploitation to issues of gender and power and shows the ways in which women seeking help are punished for doing so. In addition, the available self-help groups and organizations are examined in light of their benefits and relative lack of success in combating the problem. The legal and regulatory systems in place are also discussed in terms of the ways in which society responds to new social problems as they receive public attention.

Despite decades of research and thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication written by a worldwide community of academics, a number of people in position of power, including security, justice and legal practitioners have embraced “body language” pseudoscience. This autoethnography aims to offer an otherwise inaccessible glimpse of the process a person can go through when turning to and away from pseudoscience. To achieve this objective, I describe and reflect upon the main events that, as a young lawyer, influenced my transition from body language pseudoscience to scientific research. To shed additional lights on these events, I turn to the cyberbullying and intimidation attempts that followed my journey and my decision to speak publicly. This autoethnography ends with a call for scholarly institutions to adequately protect researchers, including graduate students, from cyberbullying and intimidation attempts.

Background: Child sexual abuse (CSA) is one of the most pervasive occurrences which are reported all over the world. It often goes unnoticed and undocumented due to surrounding taboos; its sensitivity in nature and affects the less powerful population. Anecdote information is available on the nature and extent of sexual abuse among children in Tanzania. The aim of this study was to explore factors, forms, context of abuse and perpetrators of child sex abuse in selected regions of Tanzania.Methods: Key informant interviews were conducted among adults including parents of the victims to explore factors associated with sexual abuse of children under 10 years old in Tanzania. The interview guide centred on factors for child sexual abuse, the type of perpetrators and the context into which these abuses take place.Results: There were incidences of child sexual abuse in Tanzania and the major forms were anal and vaginal penetration, and the most affected were girls. The abuses were rarely reported due to shame and embarrassment faced by the affected children and parents. The causes of child sexual abuse were poverty, ambitions and moral degradation, myths and beliefs, urbanization, foreign culture and poor parental care. Incidents of CSA were reported to occur in perpetrators’ homes and in semi-finished housing structures, madrassa and recreational venues where children can freely access entertainment by watching movies. These acts were committed by people in position of power, close relationship and trusted by the children. Contexts where child sexual abuses occur included overcrowded living spaces and social activities that go on late into the night.Conclusion: We recommend for strengthened interventions at different levels within the society to address the root causes and different contexts in which child sex abuse occurs. Increased awareness of the root causes should go hand in hand with measures to encourage parents and survivors to report incidents to relevant authorities timely as they occur.

Reviewed by: From #BlackLivesmatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Adam Szetela FROM #BlackLivesMatter TO BLACK LIBERATION. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 2016. Similar to Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation (1969), Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's latest contribution is a timely and much needed intervention. Both intellectually rigorous and accessible, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation is a historical exposition of the conditions that contributed to the reemergence of Black radicalism in the United States. It is also a persuasive case that #BLM's fight against racism must also be a fight against capitalism. In chapter one, Taylor looks at the mutually reinforcing ideas of American exceptionalism and "culture of poverty." Through a meticulous analysis of public policy and political rhetoric, she explains that the manufactured connection between Black poverty and Black culture allows conservatives and liberals to portray America as a country where anyone can make it. The oppression experienced by Blacks is imagined as a failure of the Black family and Black role models, not a failure of the state. This absolves the federal government from intervening through social welfare. In chapter two, Taylor locates the emergence of "colorblindness" as a reactionary political theory. For Taylor, this "ideological tool, initially wielded by conservatives in the Nixon era to resist the growing acceptance of 'institutional racism' as the central explanation for Black inequality," denies structural racism and perpetuates a politics that blames Blacks for their own suffering (17–18). With a careful attention to Black history, [End Page 114] Taylor looks at the ways that this narrative became dominant in the late 1960s after the decline of the radical Black power movements. Chapter three, "Black Faces in High Places," makes the convincing case that more Black people in positions of power will do nothing to alleviate the institutional racism that permeates America. As she historicizes the rise of Black politicians, police chiefs, and elites Taylor evinces the reality that this "progress" has not blunted mass incarceration, police brutality, the destruction of public housing, and other areas where Black Americans suffer disproportionality. Chapter four elaborates the specifics of "The Double Standard of Justice" that exists in America. While chapter five, "Barack Obama: The End of an Illusion" builds on chapter three with an examination of Obama's failure to address "critical issues facing African Americans" (19). Chapters six and seven look at the rise of #BLM under the first Black president as a sign that Black Americans are again embracing "institutional racism" as a schematic for understanding reality. They are also engaging in forms of activism that diverge from party politics. A central strength of #BlackLivesMatter is Taylor's meticulous demystification of the meritocratic myth that pervades American culture and politics. Like Michelle Alexander and Cedric Johnson, she utilizes demographic statistics, rhetorical analysis, and comparative-historical analysis to illuminate the new guises of institutional racism. Most importantly, she targets not just conservative politicians, but liberals like Obama and Al Sharpton who propagandize American exceptionalism, "culture of poverty" narratives, and meagre reformist policies that can be assimilated into a political-economy of racism and class privilege. Taylor's intelligent rebuke of prominent antiracist author Tim Wise alone makes her book worth reading. Ultimately, Taylor makes a compelling final argument that antiracist movements must also be socialist. Capitalism is a system that disproportionality exploits minorities, but it is also a system that exploits people of all races and ethnicities. For Taylor, police are the repressive state apparatus that recreates class power as it systematically disem-powers and persecutes the poor. As Black Americans are overrepresented among the poorer classes, it is unsurprising that they are disproportionality targeted at a higher rate than whites. Yet, while it is important to recognize these disparities, such differences do "not say much about who benefits from the inequality of our society" (212). For Taylor, a political-economy built on slavery, mass incarceration, the destruction of the social welfare state, and wage slavery—"the pivot around which all other inequalities and oppressions turn" (206)—will not be disrupted by Black elites who represent the interests of the ruling class. It will only be challenged by an intersectional politics that sees Black liberation as part...

TV series, one of the visual arts, can include cultural phenomena of society, representations of power and everyday events. One of the basic points of visual arts is the law of conflict. In order for there to be conflict, each character in the series must have a goal, purpose and ideology. Marx's "false consciousness" discourse and the concept of "ideology", Althusser's grouping of "ideological apparatuses", Gramsci's "consent" and "hegemony" discourses have been a part of ideology criticism. Therefore, ideology and conflict cannot be separated from each other in TV series. The characters in Snowpiercer are directed towards different goals in line with their status differences. For this reason, the aim of the study is to reveal how the conflict and class differences between people in positions of power and individuals in lower class positions develop. The population of the study consists of all the TV series that were screened all over the world after 2010, in which there are indicators related to the concepts of ideology, conflict and power. The reason for choosing Snowpiercer as the study sample is that it is a study in which the concept of ideology, conflict theory, class conflict and elite theory are processed together. This study is important in that ideology, conflict and elite theory take place in the same series and in a single space and emphasize the difference between classes. This study concludes that keeping people with status and class differences in the same space for a certain period of time will lead to interpersonal conflict.

According to the Old Testament «When the Most High divided the nations, as He scattered the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God». (Deuteronomy 32:8-9). Therefore, every mass movement and settlement of people in foreign lands is condemned. Especially, when it has elements of invasion (dictated for example by a specific religion), the deliberate population transfer for demographic alteration, is considered poaching-colonisation and should be condemned under the Article 49 of the Geneva Treaty (1949), the violation of which, results in penal sanctions (Article 146). Even more so, when the inhumane crimes at the expense of the natives committed by the conqueror are equal to war crimes (Article 147). Therefore, we have been in a state of war. But what do the United Nations do about it? They have been always very selective about when to mediate and in favour of whom. What do Western state leaders do? Demonstrations have recently been recorded in various parts of the Western world against illegal immigration as a reaction to the explosion of crime and the alteration of morals, customs, profile and principles of the West, while all that talk that was developed over the past years, trying to blur the image that stood in front of our eyes is no longer convincing. The purpose of this article is not to bridge a gap in the name of a peaceful coexistence but to disillusion by revealing what is behind the curtain and the role played by key people in positions of power and/or in the public eye.