Asymmetrical Power Relations Research Articles

Educational inspections in network governance: evidence from collaborative school turnaround in China

ABSTRACT Network governance’s increasing adoption in education has significantly challenged collaborative networks’ external accountability. While educational inspection in network governance has been discussed, research focusing on microlevel educational inspection practices is rare. This study uses evidence from collaborative school turnaround to explore the complexity of local governments’ educational inspection behaviors in network governance. Referencing Shanghai, China, this qualitative empirical study found three patterns of local governments’ inspection (specialized, routine, and requested) of turnaround schools and third-party actors in different networks. Analyses suggest that network governance inspection in Chinese school turnaround is a differentiated intervention instrument with local governments adopting different inspection strategies for different inspection purposes (i.e., accountability, leadership, and facilitation), generating different extents of asymmetric power relations with turnaround schools and third-party actors – hierarchical, dispersed, or democratic – that are shaped by networks’ different configurations.

Currency power as a medium: Revisiting international cost transfer mechanisms in the U.S. subprime crisis

This paper endeavors to meticulously examine the disparities in developmental trajectories between industrialized and emerging economies, employing the nuanced concept of cost transfer within the theoretical framework of the "core-periphery" paradigm. We propose an intricate conceptual model to delve into the mechanisms through which economic crises are systematically shifted from the developed core to the peripheral developing regions, with particular emphasis on the pivotal roles of monetary hegemony and geopolitical dominance. Utilizing the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis as a seminal case study, we scrutinize the intricate dynamics of cost transfer, elucidating how the developed nations leverage their monetary supremacy and geopolitical prowess, often bolstered by military might and neo-liberal ideologies, to facilitate the offloading of inflationary pressures and commodity price hikes onto developing nations, notably China. Our findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on the entrenched inequalities between the Global North and South, emphasizing the asymmetrical power relations that underpin the process of cost transfer. Furthermore, this study enhances the research framework of cost-transfer theory and offers insights into the development of inequalities between developed and developing countries, aiding in the formulation of response strategies for developing countries facing cost transfer and mitigating the adverse impacts of cost transfers, thereby fostering more equitable and sustainable development trajectories.

Escaping uncertainty: overlapping methods of knowledge production and exchange in the naturalization journey

This paper examines how forced migrants integrate individual perception, interpersonal exchange, and extended networks to navigate the naturalization process. By bringing together these three methods of knowledge creation and exchange, we aim to clarify how these strategies interact and overlap to manage uncertainties stemming from naturalization bureaucracy, a complex and often opaque process. Drawing on personal accounts of 30 Syrians in Berlin and analysis of approximately 100 social media posts, our findings illustrate that these methods could be employed concurrently or interchangeably and on the whole in a symbiotic manner, offering migrants multiple pathways to acquire and (in)validate crucial information. Although this synthesis of knowledge production methods is not necessarily conducive to accessing the right in question, in our case naturalization, it becomes necessary to arrive at “informed” decision-making in uncertain environments characterized by low level of trust and asymmetrical power relations. The paper therefore contributes to broader discussions on migrants’ navigation of legal systems and coping mechanisms in the face of bureaucratic hurdles.

For the archive yet to come

Abstract This article explores the promises and pitfalls of the colonial archives for the study of seeing and knowing contemporary violence. As an ethnographic field and a site of decolonial struggles, the colonial archive is increasingly mobilised in scholarship that seeks to historicise and disrupt conventional, Western-centric knowledge production. While using the colonial archives might reproduce asymmetrical power relations, they also hold the potential to unsettle the ‘toxic imperial debris’ of our time. How can the colonial archives challenge the post-colonial politics of erasing imperial violence and contribute to decolonial futures? Drawing on research in the African Archives in Belgium and fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper complicates problematic portrayals of the post-colonial state in the DRC and Congolese women as always already violated or silenced. We argue that the logics of the African Archives reveal a set of destabilising state anxieties that reflect the duality and instability of colonial rule itself and that infuse contemporary (international) politics. This recounting of the violence contained in the archives both narrates the concrete, violent manifestations of our ‘global coloniality’ and works towards its own demise as part of a broader ‘anticolonial archive’.

What Am I Doing Here? Self-Reflexivity in Cross-Border Journalism Research

In journalism research conducted in the Global South, power relationships between the researcher and the researched mirror the uneven power structures between the Western journalists and their news subjects or their non-Western colleagues working alongside them. But so far, the figure of the journalism researcher in such contexts has not been problematized to any great extent in journalism scholarship. Moreover, the journalism researcher working in such contexts borrows heavily from the methodological toolkit of ethnography. But while the cultural anthropologists who created and refined ethnographic methodology have long been interrogating the colonial and neocolonial logics that inform ethnographic methods, journalism scholars have yet to significantly engage in such a self-critical project. We take ourselves as the starting points of the self-reflexive critical debate we believe journalism researchers interested in decolonizing journalism studies must have with themselves when it comes to conducting research in spaces of asymmetric power relations within global journalism. Laid out in three first person self-reflexive narratives, our critical questions are prompted by our own geopolitical and embodied presence in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and North Korea. We then discuss the commonalities among the questions that arose from our respective positionalities. Through this grounded, self-reflexive exploration, we aim to position global journalism researchers at the center of critical inquiry.

International social work as a human rights profession in the global society: Challenges and implications of the Sustainable Development Goals

This article discusses the importance of international social work in a global society. In an increasingly globalised world, we are interconnected in many ways and interdependent in a complex geopolitical (dis)order. This also applies to those involved in social work as a human rights profession. For a long time, the idea was that social workers had to act solely on a national level and that looking beyond one's own country could be refreshing but was unnecessary. However, we know how important international relationships, networks, and scientific exchanges are today. Geopolitical decisions often affect social work and its target groups at their core. Existential poverty and unemployment in countries of the Global South led to flight and migration to countries of the Global North. Crises such as wars or natural disasters have a wide range of effects on global value chains. The unequal distribution of poverty and wealth leads to asymmetrical power relations, which are not least the legacy of colonial and apartheid influence. This makes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations even more important. If, for example, the first goal in SDG 1 is formulated as "No poverty", then this poses numerous challenges for social work stakeholders in municipalities, states, and nations, to which they must find an answer. These challenge social work on several levels. The following article aims to discuss these challenges at macro-, meso- and micro levels and formulate mandates for action for international social work stakeholders. The aim is to contribute to forming a professional understanding that is defined beyond national structures and mandates.

Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 to Persons with Disabilities in South Africa: Is the Response to COVID-19 a Remedy for Reducing Existing Inequalities at All?

ABSTRACT: Various studies show that COVID-19 is widening existing disparities. Given the pre-existing disparities experienced by South African persons with disabilities, the pandemic may disproportionately impact persons with disabilities and deepen inequalities. Thus, we answer the key research question: what are the experiences and perceived challenges of persons with disabilities and their organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa? Based on telephone interviews conducted in South Africa, this paper highlights firstly how ableism is manifested in our response to crisis and secondly how embodied experiences of disabilities and inequalities reveal asymmetrical power relationships. We tease out how COVID-19 differently affected persons with disabilities and strongly link the findings with inequalities and systemic exclusion. Despite disability legislation and frameworks available in South Africa as well as the strong emphasis on disability rights as promulgated in various constitution sections, the responses to the pandemic still lacked a disability focus. Based on the evidence, we conclude by highlighting recommendations for government aimed at potentially reducing the inequalities.

‘Mum Added You’ Managing Transnational Aged Care Arrangements Through Family WhatsApp Groups

ABSTRACTIncreasing global migration and (im)mobilities are affecting the provision of aged care in transnational families. Such families rely on digital communication technologies like WhatsApp to manage and maintain aged care obligations across borders. This study investigates the role of WhatsApp family groups in enabling transnational families to manage transnational aged care from a distance. I draw on interviews with three transnational family constellations with members in the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. The study finds that WhatsApp family groups create a virtual home where Zimbabwean transnational families can plan, organise and deliver care to their ageing parents. However, managing transnational aged care through WhatsApp family groups can also pose problems, especially for migrants pressured to remit. Furthermore, gendered assumptions of care and asymmetrical power relationships entrenched in families are reinforced. The study contributes to the literature on transnational care and new technologies, providing a Zimbabwean perspective on co‐presence and mediated aged care practices.

Intergroup cooperation in the lab: asymmetric power relations and redistributive policies

Intergroup cooperation in the lab: asymmetric power relations and redistributive policies

Reimagining energy infrastructure for justice: Power, politics, and institutional work in India’s 2.05 GW Pavagada solar park

India has positioned itself as a leader in transitioning its energy sector to renewable sources, with ambitious targets and policies in place. Large-scale grid-integrated renewable energy plants have been identified as the most efficient option. Scholarly arguments differ regarding the impacts of renewables-led transitions, with some emphasizing positive environmental, economic, and social outcomes, while others highlight the potential for reinforcing asymmetrical power relations and unjust outcomes. Viewing the energy transition as a socio-technical process, we utilize a recent conceptualisation of the relationship between institutional work and infrastructures to analyze the unfolding power dynamics and its influence on socially just outcomes. Theoretically, we draw on the ‘Triple-Re’ framework, which distinguishes three interrelated domains of institutional work in socio-technical transitions: reimagining, recoding, and reconfiguring of infrastructures. Through a process tracing approach, we study the planning and realization of India's Pavagada Solar Park to understand the interactions among actors, institutions, policies, and material contexts at various spatial and temporal scales. Field observations, interviews, and archival research reveal how discursive dynamics and the recoding of rules and policies have facilitated land and resource mobilization, resulting in changes to ownership models, local infrastructure, land use, ecosystems, and occupational structures. We argue that recognizing and understanding these outcomes are crucial for achieving socially just outcomes in the context of renewable energy infrastructure.

School maturity and the quest for normalcy: how parental complaints shaped expertise and state policies in socialist Hungary and East Germany, 1960s-1980s

ABSTRACT After World War II, socialist states developed a new schooling system aimed at building an egalitarian society. While there is a solid body of research discussing the relationship between the intent and effect of the egalitarian design of socialist school systems, the importance of school maturity assessments for the socialist project has received only minor attention. This article discusses how the introduction of school maturity assessments developed by experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy in 1960s Hungary and East Germany contributed to the visibility of children who were deemed immature. It shows that both socialist states developed institutional solutions beyond the standard school system for tackling the problem of school immaturity in children; these solutions, in turn, evoked different reactions from parents. As the article discusses, parents used various avenues to oppose the official expert assessments with which they disagreed. In both countries, parents increasingly voiced their opinions in complaint letters addressed to the state in a quest to overcome what they perceived as a severe threat to their children’s ‘normal’ development. By tracing parental bottom-up initiatives, the article investigates how parental agency ultimately shaped state policies and expertise despite the asymmetrical power relations that were present in these authoritarian societies. To show the interplay of parental agency, experts, and the state, we employ a combination of two methodological approaches, the sociology of expertise and the concept of Eigensinn, for understanding the spaces of negotiation and the role expertise plays in it. This article thereby sheds light on parental agency and its impact on expertise and state policies concerning school maturity in two socialist states that offered very different institutional answers to the problem; bureaucratic approaches towards complaint letters also varied significantly.

The Power of fiction and a shared framework in confronting contested pasts

ABSTRACT Artistic memorial interventions that raise the question ‘what if?’ – what life in the present would look like had past events unfolded differently – can be understood in light of the concept ‘as if’ in Jeffrey Goldfarb’s Politics of Small Things. ‘As if’ constitutes a shared framework for public debate that enables a more equal voice to participants with different identities and social positions who meet ‘as if’ they were equal. In cases of conflict over the past and present, like Nakba’s memory in Israel–Palestine, the creation of a joint framework in which all sides can participate without erasing asymmetrical violence and power relations is crucial yet difficult. By opening up space for the consideration of counter histories, a new public can be formed, even if temporarily, and potentially expand the horizon of public debate.

The shifting landscape of international higher education: Why Chinese returnees with overseas degrees come back for doctoral studies?

ABSTRACT The post-pandemic era might witness a shifting landscape of international higher education, partially reflected by a restructuring of international student mobility (ISM) patterns. Notably, there is a nascent trend of Chinese returnees with degrees from Anglo-American universities pursuing doctoral studies at home. Previous research concentrates on the motivations of Chinese students learning abroad and the experiences of foreign students in China; understanding of the ‘reverse’ mobility of Chinese returnees is thin. This empirical study unveils the underlying incentives behind Chinese students’ decision to return for doctoral degrees through an analytical framework exploring asymmetrical power relationships among ISM actors. 23 doctoral candidates/graduates from eight Chinese universities participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal a narrowed gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) doctoral education between Chinese and Anglophone universities. The promising industries and life prospects at China’s megacities impel Chinese overseas students to return earlier for career paths. Meanwhile, they have suffered from multiple risks abroad including outsider identity, xenophobia, and safety concerns, while enjoying privileges for doctoral enrollment at home. As repositioning its peripheral status, China still has a lot to improve in the institutionalization of the application-assessment doctoral admission system, internationalization of the doctoral curriculum, and quality assurance of pedagogical practices.

Colonialism, Genocide and Reparations: The German‐Namibian Case

ABSTRACTIn 2015 the German government acknowledged that the Empire committed genocide in its colony South West Africa, known since its independence as Namibia. This acknowledgement marked a new reference point in how to engage with colonial crimes. Since then, Germany has fallen short of bearing full and unconditional responsibility for and recognition of the crime in terms of restorative justice. While Germany deserves credit for its commemoration and remorse over the Holocaust during World War II, victims of other forms of extermination with the intent to destroy still crave adequate recognition, commemoration and compensation in the form of reparations. This article presents the Namibian case to illustrate the contradictions and limitations that emerge when general notions are tested and undermined by asymmetric power relations of Realpolitik.

The YWCA of the USA ‘In Service for the Girls of the World’, 1947–1985

Before mid-century, the Young Women's Christian Association of the USA (Y-US) was complicit with global northern imperial projects, as its work with women across national borders was characterised by an ethos of ‘imperial maternalism’. Applying Serene Khader's (2019) analysis of imperialism in global northern feminisms shows that Y-US's approach to ‘overseas’ work was ‘missionary’ in its use and promotion of ‘western’ values and strategies. Although Y-US inevitably worked within ‘asymmetrical power relations’ (Grewal & Kaplan, 2000, para.4), in the 1970s its approach shifted as it began to recognise these imbalances. By the 1980s, Y-US's ‘global’ programmes sought out women's context-specific knowledge to identify and critique structural inequalities and US imperialism, characteristic of ‘transnational feminist’ ethic. The contribution of Y-US to the YWCA movement was more complex, and positive, than a perpetuation of cultural imperialism. In its national policy and project planning and evaluations, Y-US continued until the 1980s to apply mixture of missionary and transnational feminist lenses to understand its role and responsibilities as a member of the worldwide YWCA movement, and to grapple with the implications of US power on the world stage.

State–Firm Nexus, Indigenous Coupling, and Social Downgrading in the Aerospace Global Production Network: A Case Study of Embraer, Brazil

Global production network (GPN) scholars increasingly focus on examining exclusionary processes in strategic coupling. However, attention has been given to structural coupling, where uneven outcomes often evolve through lead firms exploiting power asymmetries to foster their interests over regions. Functional and indigenous coupling, although acknowledged to have exclusions, are considered to be less likely for such outcomes due to assumed symmetrical power. This assumption has led to a lack of studies exploring not only how uneven outcomes evolve in indigenous coupling but also what territorial mechanisms are involved. This article addresses this gap by conceptualizing the notion of a statist transnational community (STC) as a crucial mechanism in indigenous coupling, and with potential to explain how asymmetrical relations can emerge and foster exclusionary processes. Based on qualitative methods, this article analyzes Brazil's integration into the aerospace GPN through indigenous coupling. First, it examines how the Brazilian developmental state, under a national developmental ideology, fostered coupling in São José dos Campos (SJC) by establishing institutions, regional assets, Embraer, and an aerospace industrial cluster. Second, it elucidates how the Brazilian state facilitated the formation of an STC crucial in establishing firms and creating and harnessing regional assets. Additionally, it reveals how and why the SJC STC is marked by relative symmetrical and cooperative relations, and encourages collaboration. Lastly, this article investigates a training partnership between Embraer and the Aeronautics Institute of Technology in SJC, disclosing how asymmetrical power relations can also be present in indigenous coupling, fostering social downgrading, especially in relation to labor.

Fighting over nation or state: States, communal demography, and the type of ethnic civil war

AbstractWe recognise nationalist and centre‐seeking ethnic civil wars as distinct types of conflict and draw on key ideas from political sociology to make hypotheses about the causes of each. First, we argue that the character of states shapes antistate actors in ways that channel ethnic conflict in different ways, with pluralist states promoting nationalist warfare but integrative states contributing to centre‐seeking civil war. Second, we propose that the relative power of communities affects the type of ethnic civil war, arguing that centre‐seeking civil war is most common in situations of communal multipolarity whereas nationalist civil war is concentrated in regions with asymmetric power relations. And because historical statehood promotes elements of pluralist states and asymmetric communal power relations, we hypothesise that the risk of nationalist civil war is high in places with large and longstanding states. To test these hypotheses, we use ethnic fractionalisation to measure configurations of communal power and the state antiquity index to measure level of historical statehood, create a variable measuring the extent to which colonial states were pluralist, and run panel analyses of the odds of civil war onset. With one possible exception, the findings support our hypotheses.

Transient spaces, temporary alliances: harvesting breathing spaces in India’s sugarcane fields

ABSTRACT Marathwada is a historically drought-affected and caste-ridden region in Maharashtra, and a reflection of India’s story of exclusionary economic growth. Poor rainfall, extractive agrarian practices, and social exclusion have forced nearly one million marginal farm families and landless communities to harvest sugarcane in neighbouring districts. They are recruited in pairs, as a koyta, almost universally comprising husband and wife, and live and work on different sugarcane fields for six months a year. This article first describes the asymmetrical power relations and day-to-day practices of gendered public space that shape the lives of female cane harvesters as women, wives, and migrant labourers. It then illustrates the temporary friendships and inter-generational alliances that have emerged in these shared life/work spaces, referred to as ‘breathing spaces’: on their co-ordinated walks to complete morning ablutions in the open fields, in their shared kitchens outside their makeshift homes, and on the tractor-trailers that ferry them from one sugarcane field to another. Here, they express themselves and engage in both casual banter and serious discussion about their alcoholic husbands and abusive labour contractors, sexual and reproductive health problems, and even anxieties and dreams. It is in and through such smaller, transitory spaces within the larger spaces – in the absence of men – that the article presents the myriad ways in which the female koyta workers (re)produce social relations and reclaim their own little pockets of freedom to ensure safety, relief, and recovery. The article is based on a multi-sited ethnographic study, including inter-generational conversations, focus group discussions, stakeholder interviews, and thick field notes documented between October 2020 and August 2021.

Reconfiguring labour and welfare in the Global South: How the social question is framed as market participation

This special issue explores the intertwining reconfigurations of labour and welfare in the Global South by bringing together eight empirical studies of different national and transnational contexts and three commentaries. It asks how Global South people and states alike have come to prioritize market logics as guiding principles for welfare systems, moving away from collective risk-pooling towards individual responsibility, and how this reorientation is connected to the restructuring of labour. In this introduction to the special issue, we discuss the genealogies of the social question and review the growing academic discussion on the changing landscape of welfare in the Global South. We then underscore how the contemporary social question is predominantly framed in the terms of people’s capacity for market participation in the specific empirical contexts discussed by our authors. The framing of the social question as such, and the accompanying solutions to it, we argue, disregards politics, political economy and social justice at the cost of the more urgent social question that confronts the increasingly asymmetrical power relations between labour and capital.

Iran’s water policy: Environmental injustice and peripheral marginalisation

Water exhibits various politico-economic dynamic. Water scarcity can lead to conflicts, and it lies at the core of Iran’s environmental crises. The literature on Iran’s water crisis indicates the effects of this issue in terms of multidimensional environmental degradation, community disintegration, and state-society and intercommunal conflict. Approximately 28 million of Iran’s 85 million residents reside in water-stressed areas, a situation identified as ‘water bankruptcy’. The water shortage is experienced differently across the country. The plateau’s central regions, home to Iran’s major industries, are where the worst water deficit is occurring. However, regions with abundant water resources have also been impacted. These regions – known as ‘donor basins’ – due to intensive and disproportional inter-basin water transfer and other engineering interventions deployed by the Government to deal with the water shortage of the central regions, suffer from a different form of water crisis. A condition of asymmetrical and conflictual power relations between the state and subaltern communities in Iran’s peripheral regions has been created. This paper argues that this constitutes environmental racism, characterised by multilayered impoverishment and unsustainable development among communities in the donor regions.