Analysis Of Power Relations Research Articles

Representation of Men and Women in English Proverbs: Analysis of Power Relationships

This study explores the multiple identities of men and women in English proverbs and power relationships depicted through these identities. This research has not only discussed the representation of female gender but also covered male gender along with relationship shown between both genders in proverbs. 38 proverbs collected from two dictionaries are analyzed through the 3D model of Fairclough. All proverbs are divided into three major categories i.e., proverbs for women, proverbs for men and proverbs involving both genders. Proverbs involving women over numbered those mentioning men. Majority of the proverbs containing women have derogatory remarks for them whereas men are presented with positive connotations. A few proverbs explained the link between men and women in the form of negative and positive dependence. Proverbs involving women display a glimpse of patriarchy by portraying women as a burden, sexual object and fragile. Men on the other hand are explicitly nominated as a gender that owns the world. These proverbs are delivering such power relationships to generations and this could be one of the reasons patriarchies in different forms is still observed in the world. Studying these proverbs about their origins will further help in understanding the picture of genders in English society and how the picture has evolved socially.

Examining pre-service special education teachers’ biases and evolving understandings about families through a family as faculty approach

This paper centers on a participatory qualitative study in which 22 pre-service special education teachers (i.e., undergraduate students) experienced, wrote about, and reflected upon their perceptions of families of children with disabilities over a semester-long course built on a Family as Faculty (FAF) model adapted from the healthcare profession for special education, teacher education programs. The FAF approach used has been reconceptualized to include three essential understandings (E.U.s): a) families as experts, b) examining positionality, and c) analyzing power relations. In our iteration of FAF, parents of children with disabilities co-plan and teach specific classes within a teacher preparation course on families. The authors examine pre-service teacher responses to FAF-structured experiences. Though many pre-service teachers demonstrated growth in their understandings of family’s strengths and their participation in their child’s education, there were some who continued to view families through deficit lenses. Pre-service teachers’ reflections of families, though well-intended, often used cloaked language revealing underlying assumptions. FAF approaches that take a critical stance can unveil hidden assumptions and assist students with self-awareness and critical consciousness needed as foundations to transform individual and systemic biases.

Methods of intersectional research

Intersectionality is a powerful concept within sociology, urging scholars to consider how an array of socially constructed dimensions of difference intersect to shape each person’s experiences and actions. This paper provides a number of different blueprints for designing intersectional research, which can be adapted for different purposes. The key methodological tenets of intersectional research are oppression, relationality, complexity, context, comparison, and deconstruction. This paper defines these tenets, addresses misunderstandings of their implications, and applies these tenets to existing intersectional research. Multiple qualitative, comparative, and quantitative strategies can be used to carry out intersectional research; there is not just one way to do intersectional empirical research. While intersectional methods require thought in designing the research, they are doable. What is more, they provide much more nuanced understandings of social relations and inequality. If race, class, gender and other socially constructed dimensions of difference are understood not as static but as dynamic, researchers can employ a wide variety of methodological tools to analyze power relations via their intersections.

Civil society and spaces for natural resource governance in Kenya

In the Kenyan context of new resource discoveries and an ambitious devolution programme, and what is argued to be a shrinking of civic space globally, the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) working on natural resource governance is critical. The resilience, space and capacity of civil society to engage in the policy process, from community-based organisations to national non-governmental organisations, all shape outcomes in terms of legislation, policy and management of scarce resources. Drawing on interviews with CSOs from across Kenya, following the new 2010 constitution and devolution programme, this article explores how new negotiated spaces of participation around resource governance have emerged in Kenya. Using multidimensional frameworks to analyse power relations, it explores how Kenyan CSOs are cautiously redefining roles, offering expertise when devolved governments struggle, and standing up to powerful interests of corporate lobbies with varying degrees of success.

Power Relations in Developing Bussiness of Cattle Farm in the District of West Tasifeto, Belu Regency, Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara Province

This research aims to analyze power relations between actors in developing local commodities through a cattle farm in the District of West Tasifeto, the Regency of Belu. The author applies descriptive qualitative research methods in disentangling power relations between actors who play their roles in drafting Belu’s Local Regulation (Peraturan Daerah/Perda) No. 6 of 2011. In collecting data, the author employs a qualitative approach, namely observation, and interviews with local farmers, Melus ethnic communities, Belu Regency’s government (Department of Farming Affairs), Local Businessmen, and secondary data from various documents. This study reveals that there are power relations among actors, namely local farmers, local authorities (Department of Farming Affairs, Belu Regency), and local businessmen, which are indicated by three indicators in drafting local regulation, selecting the farming area, and marketing the cattle products. Within these power relations, the actors influence each other at every moment and every connection. A strategy that is employed is not violence. Rather, it is through social relations and regulation system to promote various interests through politics of law, legal drafting, to enact a local regulation (Peraturan Daerah/Perda). Business people’s interests and political interests have been imposed in this process of extending local commodities, which compete with the local farmers’ interests that less impacted by the government’s project. Therefore, the expansion of local commodities through a cattle farm in West Tasifeto results in the complexity of power relations interplaying with each other.

Strategies in Power Relations in a Fictional Work: A Foucauldian Analysis

In a family, power relations can be seen in a father-child relationship, where the father has the authority to control the life of the child and the child must approve the father's decision. Not only the father, however, the son might also have different objective that he wants to achieve. Here both parties will usually try to keep pursuing their own objectives. In other words, both parties will look for strategies of how to win their objective in the power relation by acting certain ways. Hence, strategy can be used as the means to obtain victory (Foucault, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to analyze power relations that occurred in a family in a fictional work, namely Family Matters novel by Rohinton Mistry, particularly between Nariman Vakeel and his father, Marzi Vakeel. Nariman’s objective is to acquire his father’s approval for his desire to marry his girlfriend, Lucy Braganza, who is a Catholic. This is the opposite of Marzi’s belief, that his family should marry a Parsi. Power relations and strategies used between Nariman and his father were examined using the theory of power relations from Michel Foucault. The findings show that each character implements different strategies in imposing power and confronting each other. As for Nariman, his strategies include persuading his father, and when this does not work, he started to show a clear insubordination every time. On the other hand, Marzi’s strategies include writing a letter to newspaper to let other people know his opposition to interfaith marriage, objecting Lucy’s presents in his house by rejecting Nariman’s suggestion to invite Lucy over for dinner, and being patience in confronting Nariman’s insubordination for eleven years. During these years, Marzi never utilized violence. In the end, Marzi succeeded in achieving his objective to make Nariman marry a Parsi woman when Nariman was finally tired of confronting his father, and let his father choose a Parsi woman. Nariman ended up having an arranged marriage.Keywords: Family, Foucault, power relation, strategies

Power relations in sexual agreements among male couples in Southern Africa

Sexual agreements between same-sex practising men facilitate communication about health promotion activities, including HIV prevention. In African contexts, male couples negotiate their sexual agreements in relation to rigid cultural prescriptions about male power and privilege, intense hostility towards same-sex sexualities and persistent heterogendered socio-cultural norms. Yet the impact of such norms on relationship practices and HIV risk among male couples remains inadequately explored. This qualitative study examined the role of gendered power disparities in establishing sexual agreements among male couples in two Southern African contexts. Eighteen male couples completed in-depth interviews focused on relationship practices, including sexual agreements. The research employed critical social theory to analyse power relations and socio-cultural norms shaping male couples' explicit and implicit sexual agreements, with a focus on implications for HIV risk. The findings outline different types of and motivations for sexual agreements among male couples, including qualified non-monogamy with female partners only. The study illustrates how Southern African male–male sexual practices remain embedded in a cultural context favouring the replication of heteronormative sexual behaviours and relationship practices. These heterogendered norms impact negatively on the process of establishing explicit, mutually agreed-upon sexual agreements, and thus place male couples at increased risk for HIV.

Privacy for whom?: a feminist intervention in online research practice

ABSTRACTAs shifts in technology and culture have complicated traditional definitions of privacy, researchers need new approaches to navigating privacy in online contexts. In this article, we argue that the experiences and perceptions of vulnerable groups must form the starting point for online researchers’ ethical decision-making, regardless of whether their research population qualifies as ‘vulnerable.’ This is especially important in spaces where privacy violations put people, particularly marginalized individuals, at risk for online harassment and abuse, among other harms. We seek to intervene in online research practices by putting forth a feminist approach to privacy, drawing on two studies related to online harassment. Specifically, we argue that feminist theory and methodology inform an approach to privacy that (a) starts from the lives of socially and politically vulnerable groups, (b) takes an intersectional approach to analyzing power relations, and (c) draws on a moral imperative of care and responsibility in enacting feminist principles of context, dialogue, and reflexivity throughout the research process. In doing so, we offer questions to prompt critical reflection on privacy concerns in online research.

Mediatization Studies and Cultural Studies: A Possible Dialogue for Further Critical Analysis?

<p>Over the last decades, it has been possible to observe an increasing amount of research having for common assumption the impossibility to dissociate changes which occur within medias, culture and society. Mediatization theories, particularly developed in Scandinavian countries, and American configurations of cultural studies utilize interesting tools and conceptual material to think about the transformations that occur within the social field. Both encourage questioning the power relations and struggles that inform those transformations. However, their manner of conceiving and using “culture” and “media” as conceptual tools for analysis differ, bringing multiple and diverging ways to study and question objects, phenomenon and processes. These two approaches do not appear as irreconcilable and would take advantage of being put in dialogue as a way to see how they can possibly complement each other. For example, by enriching their mutual understanding of power and, therefore, their critical character. This article draws points of tension and convergence between cultural studies and mediatization studies. It explores cultural studies' focus on (cultural) practices as a privileged site to analyse power relations and their ongoing negotiations by and through media. This approach may resonate or complement Couldry’s (2004) proposal for a paradigm of media as practice “to help us address how media are embedded in the interlocking fabric of social and cultural life” (p. 129). This dialogue between mediatization theories and cultural studies is being put to the forefront with the hope it may allow further discussions and relevant theoretical avenues for critical research located within both fields. Thinking of this possible interplay let foresee the possibility of questioning objects, processes and phenomenon in a critical perspective in a context produced and characterised by medias’ omnipresence. It would allow researchers to question the power struggles that are negotiated through practices themselves, without neglecting the consideration that most of these practices are made by, with or within media. </p>

Mediatization Studies and Cultural Studies: A Possible Dialogue for Further Critical Analysis?

Over the last decades, it has been possible to observe an increasing amount of research having for common assumption the impossibility to dissociate changes which occur within medias, culture and society. Mediatization theories, particularly developed in Scandinavian countries, and American configurations of cultural studies utilize interesting tools and conceptual material to think about the transformations that occur within the social field. Both encourage questioning the power relations and struggles that inform those transformations. However, their manner of conceiving and using “culture” and “media” as conceptual tools for analysis differ, bringing multiple and diverging ways to study and question objects, phenomenon and processes. These two approaches do not appear as irreconcilable and would take advantage of being put in dialogue as a way to see how they can possibly complement each other. For example, by enriching their mutual understanding of power and, therefore, their critical character. This article draws points of tension and convergence between cultural studies and mediatization studies. It explores cultural studies' focus on (cultural) practices as a privileged site to analyse power relations and their ongoing negotiations by and through media. This approach may resonate or complement Couldry’s (2004) proposal for a paradigm of media as practice “to help us address how media are embedded in the interlocking fabric of social and cultural life” (p. 129). This dialogue between mediatization theories and cultural studies is being put to the forefront with the hope it may allow further discussions and relevant theoretical avenues for critical research located within both fields. Thinking of this possible interplay let foresee the possibility of questioning objects, processes and phenomenon in a critical perspective in a context produced and characterised by medias’ omnipresence. It would allow researchers to question the power struggles that are negotiated through practices themselves, without neglecting the consideration that most of these practices are made by, with or within media.

MICHEL FOUCAULT Y EL SABER PODER

El constructo analítico de Foucault permitió descubrir la profunda relación existente entre el poder y el saber, sustrayendo del saber su presupuesto de neutralidad. El saber requiere un entramado de poder para su concreción y a la inversa, siendo a su vez el saber un producto del poder. La propuesta de Foucault nos da visos de acción y análisis de vigencia singular, validos hoy día como en el futuro, sobre todo en los marcos de condicionalidad políticas aparentemente normativas del sistema capitalista y su posicionamiento teórico neoliberal que han dejado, supuestamente, sin base a gran parte de las propuestas teóricas alternativas. Si bien la relación de poder-saber se deja ver objetivada en el sujeto, es indudable también, la gran caiga que lleva sobre si la institución del Estado como matriz de un modelo normativo que también individualiza. Esto hace que la propuesta deba ser la consecución de la libertad tanto del modelo de Estado como de la forma individualizan te que dimana de este, en un horizonte posible dando lugar a otra subjetividad. El pensamiento de Foucault adquiere en nuestro tiempo mayor interés y utilidad, en especial su forma de analizar las relaciones de poder brindan un marco teórico que da pista para la realización de estudios más integrales que tomen como referentes los diversos tejidos culturales o sociales que marcan los mecanismos de control, ocultos tras la modernidad tecnológica de nuestras sociedades.

Islam and Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Qatar

This paper offers an Islamic perspective on the issues of female migrants, mainly in domestic work, and the Islamic ethics that pertain to their contemporary circumstances in Qatar. It uses intersectionality theory to argue that multiple identity categories of migration, ethnicity and class are important along with gender to better analyse power relations and discrimination facing female migrant domestic workers. It refers to Islamic egalitarian and humanitarian teachings as an ethical framework for legislative and cultural reforms. The paper also offers some real-life examples to illustrate the issues and challenges facing migrant domestic workers in Qatar. In the end, some recommendations and implications are offered.

Salawah Wahidiyah in The Frame of Thareeqat in Indonesian Archipelago: Resistance in The Face of Perverse Fatwas in Tasikmalaya

The relationship of power and resistance against it has been widely discussed as an intellectual discursive debates. However, resistance groups against the theological authority is off the debate. This paper analyses the resistance movement of Salawah Wahidiyah (SW) in the face of the erroneous fatwa by the Assembly of Indonesia Ulema (MUI). With the analysis of power relationships, knowledge, and resistance, this paper finds that SW is fighting against the misguided fatwa of Tasikmalaya MUI which is carried out as the majority of theological hegemony to defend the doctrine and amaliyah as well as to reject the deviating claim. This is all done to maintain the freedom to believe and practice the teachings of an inside democracy which guarantees and protects the right of religious freedom. Ironically, the resistance of SW in Tasikmalaya was not able to replicate the success of the Centre SW in conducting resistance against NU figures. SW Tasikmalaya failed to reconcile the differences of religious views with MUI. As a result, the motion of SW became limited because it is still stigmatized as deviant.

Putin’s Pastorate

In this article, I argue that Foucauldian concept of pastorate is an appropriate tool to analyze power relations in authoritarian contexts, as it takes into consideration different ways authoritarian system manifests itself. Following Carrette, this article proposed translation of pastorate through four indicators: (1) references to transborder sovereignty, (2) securitization discourse, (3) direct involvement, and (4) sexualization of the figure of the pastor. Most importantly for International Relations (IR), pastorate has dramatic implications for a state’s foreign policy. At the same time, the concept of pastorate shows how post-structuralism is embedded with a range of relevant themes in international studies that pertain to security, gender, and overlap of domestic and foreign policy.

Rhetoric and reality in protected area governance: Institutional change under different conservation discourses in Mount Elgon National Park, Uganda

The approach to governance of protected areas has been in transition over last decades, partly driven by evolving policy discourses that shape the ways in which conservation is thought to be delivered. The most influential discourses are the “fortress” approach, “community conservation” and “back-to-the-barriers” How different discourses translate and are instituted on-ground are, however, complex and disputed. Inclusive policy strategies in relation to local involvement in developing countries are of particular concern. The study analyses how conservation policy discourses have become manifested, taking the case of Mount Elgon National Park (MENP), Uganda. It outlines main conservation policy discourses, analyses actor's interests and power relations and further examines how institutions for park governance have evolved and changed according to the different discourses. The results indicate that conservation discourses—and donor support—come and go, while MENP seems to outlast all. The worrying reality is that MENP administration, strongly influenced by the interplay of path-dependent institutional forces rooted in the “fortress” discourse, simply “sticks to its guns”—maintaining the application of law enforcement as key management instruments in its approach to governance, especially to local people interactions. There is an apparent gap between rhetoric and reality in protected area governance.

Internationalization of the Social Sciences: a reflection

This article is a brief critical reflection on the issue of internationalization of Social Sciences, seen as a crucial factor for the circulation of ideas. It examines to what extent such process, which is not new but gets redefined in the context of globalization, impacts the intellectual work. The analysis is focused in particular aspects of the current debate: the criticism over Eurocentrism; the insufficiency in analysing power relations in the field of Social Sciences from the perspective of a “North/South” dichotomy; the presence of English as the language of world-modernity; the dominance of rationality emerging from the system for evaluating the intellectual work.

Privatization of Governance, Delegated Censorship, and Hegemony in the Digital Era

The Turkish media environment provides rich examples of how the ruling elites exert control over the flow of information in the digital era for undemocratic purposes while most popular accounts see democratization as inherently defined within the internet itself. It is crucial to analyze power relations before making bold claims of transformation when it comes to the democratizing potential of media. An analysis of the relationship between the Turkish government and media companies, including digital networking platforms, reveals how the struggle to control the information flows is taking place: through access restrictions, legal cases, and attacks from government officials, the ruling elites try to privatize governance by offloading censorship onto private intermediaries on behalf of their own interests and to establish a relationship similar to their relationship with the mainstream media.

The Production of Power in Organisational Practice – Working with Conflicts as Heuristics

This article argues for the value of working with conflicts in social practice as resources for collaboration, learning and development. The interest in conflicts in social practice is rooted in a preoccupation with social power relations and how to understand and analyse power relations from a subject-science perspective. Following this interest, a methodological framework, best described as a kind of ‘mobile ethnography’, is discussed and exemplified through an empirical example. A preliminary conceptual framework for understanding power as a capacity for action is presented. The overarching ambition of the article is to consider what democratic collaboration and coexistence entails and how it might be supported conceptually and analytically by the notion of conflicts as heuristics for social inquiry and by the notion of power as a capacity for action and social participation.

Raza, negrismo, y prostitutas rehabilitadas: revolucionarios inconformes y disidencia involuntaria en la Revolución Cubana

El artículo analiza las relaciones de poder y autoridad de la gran narrativa de la Revolución Cubana con prácticas culturales revolucionarias disconformes y la disidencia involuntaria relacionadas con la raza y el género que durante los primeros doce años de revolución fueron marginadas, sobre todo en referencia con la población cubana afrodescendiente. La autora utiliza una aproximación interdisciplinaria en la que se combina el cine documental, el testimonio oral y la historia para develar un aspecto poco conocido y controversial de la primera época de la Revolución (1959-1971) relacionado con los discursos de las identidades raciales y genéricas.

CIRCUITO ESPACIAL PRODUTIVO DO CAFÉ E O JOGO DE ESCALAS coffee productive spacial circuit and the game of scales

Since the 90s, the adoption of neoliberal ideology and politics caused major changes in the productive dynamics and agent’s relations in the Brazilian coffee productive spacial circuits. Changes in the role of the state allowed the increase of power and action scale of large companies like traders and roasters vis-a-vis small coffee growers. Thus, this article aim to analyze power relations in the coffee productive spacial circuits and the geographical scales of action of its agents. It begins by a theoretical discussion about the definition and articulation of the concepts of productive spacial circuits and geographical scales. After that, it analyze the ascendancy of corporate regulation and alternative production of specialty coffee developed by some producers.