Asymmetrical Power Relations Research Articles

Translating the consent form is the tip of the iceberg: using cognitive interviews to assess the barriers to informed consent in South African health facilities

The increasing digitisation of personal health data has led to an increase in the demand for onward health data. This study sought to develop local language scripts for use in public sector maternity clinics to capture informed consent for onward health data use. The script considered five possible health data uses: 1. Sending of general health information content via mobile phones; 2. Delivery of personalised health information via mobile phones; 3. Use of women’s anonymised health data; 4. Use of child’s anonymised health data; and 5. Use of data for recontact. Qualitative interviews (n = 54) were conducted among women attending maternity services in three public health facilities in Gauteng and Western Cape, South Africa. Using cognitive interviewing techniques, interviews sought to:(1) explore understanding of the consent script in five South African languages, (2) assess women’s understanding of what they were consenting to, and (3) improve the consent script. Multiple rounds of interviews were conducted, each followed by revisions to the consent script, until saturation was reached, and no additional cognitive failures identified. Cognitive failures were a result of: (1) words and phrases that did not translate easily in some languages, (2) cognitive mismatches that arose as a result of different world views and contexts, (3) linguistic gaps, and (4) asymmetrical power relations that influence how consent is understood and interpreted. Study activities resulted in the development of an informed consent script for onward health data use in five South African languages for use in maternity clinics.

Gendering and Sexualising Opium Consumption in Manchukuo, 1932–1945

ABSTRACT This article explores the sociocultural history of opium consumption and its popularisation through the beauty of female attendants in Manchukuo, which was a crucial part of the Japanese Empire and an important ‘contact zone’ of diverse cultures. It offers a glimpse into the opium–prostitution nexus by exploring the legal, commercial, social, and cultural dimensions of the gendered and sexualised practice of opium consumption, which reinforced a highly entangled triangulation of imperial consultants from Japan and Korea, Chinese opium shop-owners, and consumers of multiple nationalities. As such, the article highlights how this subculture developed at a time of increasingly pervasive surveillance of sex workers as well as deeply asymmetrical power relations between imperial subjects and the Chinese locals, and along class and gender lines. In examining how female attendants promoted opium within illegal establishments, I argue that the gendered and sexualised consumption of opium reshaped the culture and economy of the substance’s use and that this culture, its regulation, and imperialism damaged Manchukuo society. By doing so, the article reveals the subculture of gendered and sexualised opium consumption in Manchukuo and the Japanese Empire more broadly.

Exploring postcolonial relationships within policy transfer: the case of learner-centred pedagogy in Ghana

ABSTRACT Framed by Homi Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and the third space of enunciation, this study explores postcolonial relationships conceivably enacted through policy borrowing processes of learner-centred pedagogy (LCP) in Ghana. Nine Ghanaian and nine foreign stakeholders were interviewed. Conscious of the power imbalance implicit in traditional aid, the case project attempted to challenge the asymmetrical power relationships by allocating policy leadership and responsibility to Ghanaian stakeholders. However, the third space of enunciation created within the project did not seem to lead to a hybridisation of pedagogical ideas: while it was the Ghanaians themselves who promoted LCP within the project, the conceptual basis of the reform was dependent on knowledge and experiences which they gained in the West. This article concludes that the postcolonial turn through hybridisation of indigenous and Western pedagogies was not observed, although hybridity may happen in the process of actualising LCP at school and classroom levels.

Master Narratives in US Contemporary War Discourse: Situating and Constructing Identities of Self and Other

The present paper aims to discuss the discursive strategies of otherization, legitimation, and normalization typically found in extracts from the author’s video corpus of US Presidents’ selected official statements at the height of actual or potential armed conflicts between the First Gulf War (1990-1991) and the end of the Obama Administration (2016). The underlying working assumption is that, to consolidate asymmetrical power relationships and monitor dissent and/or win domestic consent about the use of force, the US Administration systematically resorts to a relatively restricted inventory of political myths and cultural constructs sustained by strategic storytelling and powerful master narratives, or Intertextual Thematic Formations. The qualitative analysis, informed by a systemic functional, critical discourse approach, is undertaken at both the macro- and micro-levels, with a view to highlighting how master narratives project distinct/conflicting standpoints and socio-institutional roles and identities (e.g. the-President-as-Father-of-the-Nation; the-Community-as-Protector-of-its-Members'-Interests; the-West-as-Civilizer), while feeding the myth of a ‘super-empowered’ President and ultimately sustaining the ideological square. The final contention is that awareness-raising pedagogical models are needed which work upwards from the bottom of the hierarchical narrative structure, contextualizing the master narrative and linking it to the audience’s individual narratives, so that discourse can fulfil its critical function of dismantling potentially manipulative and/or normalizing discourse practices and foster civil society-led, personal counter-narratives that remove stereotyping and oversimplification.

“I Am a Poor Man with a Family”: Rangers, Social Welfare, and Monitor Networks in the Forests of Interwar Zlatna, Romania

In the interwar period, forestry emerged as a powerful tool through which state institutions attempted to shape social and natural environments in rural Romania. This article evaluates how criminality, poverty, surveillance, exploitation, and labor intersected in Romania’s forests through the figure of the forest ranger, responsible for a range of tasks from managing forest ecology to serving as the state’s representative in the woodlands. Using a microhistorical approach, the article recounts the story of a Zlatna ranger investigated for theft in the late 1920s. His story and the individuals involved offer important insight into the asymmetrical power relations and local social factors that negotiated the forests’ legibility. Rangers served as part crucial asset, part embarrassing liability, existing in a liminal space between the state and local society. Through local forestry agents, their informal networks, and the “involuntary monitors” these invariably created, state forestry officials had valuable points of contact with rural society. This article demonstrates the value of rural perspectives in historical studies, challenging prevailing notions that conceptualize rural people as simple, irrelevant, or singlemindedly opposed to the encroachment of the modern state.

The effect of Chinese vaccine diplomacy during COVID-19 in the Philippines and Vietnam: a multiple case study from a soft power perspective

Vaccine diplomacy is a subset of global health diplomacy and refers to the use and delivery of vaccines to achieve a country’s global health goals and foreign policy objectives. Countries have used vaccine diplomacy to increase their soft power during the COVID-19 pandemic. China, an emerging world power, was no exception in this trend. By December 2022, China had dispatched 1.65 billion vaccines worldwide; approximately one-third of the Chinese vaccines were sent to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. China attempted to increase its soft power via vaccine diplomacy to appeal to its neighbours with which it has long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS). Focusing on two key claimants in the SCS, our study has the following research question: How effective was Chinese COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy in the Philippines and Vietnam from a soft power perspective? Through a qualitative multiple case study research design, we determined the effectiveness of Chinese vaccine diplomacy in the Philippines and Vietnam by using four indicators of soft power: public opinion, foreign policy, attractiveness, and business and trade. Data collection consisted of a literature search of academic literature and newspaper articles that were published between 26 May and 13 June 2022. A thematic analysis was conducted to analyse the data. Analysing the effectiveness of Chinese vaccine diplomacy based on the four indicators of soft power, our results show that only the indicators of attractiveness in Vietnam and business and trade in the Philippines have somewhat improved. In contrast, the indicators of public opinion and foreign policy showed neutral or negative results for China. This study concludes that Chinese vaccine diplomacy in the Philippines and Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic was unsuccessful from a soft power perspective. One reason is that China undermined its soft power approach by simultaneously using hard power tactics in Southeast Asia. Using vaccine diplomacy to increase soft power is not always desirable from a global health perspective. Instead, countries should focus on equitable vaccine access and address asymmetrical power relations.

Divergent perspectives about water security: hydrosocial transformations in the metropolitan region of Montevideo (Uruguay)

The Montevideo Metropolis, where more than half of Uruguay's population resides, is supplied with water from the Santa Lucía River (SLR), which faces increasing problems of water quality and quantity. In 2020, in the context of national government political changes, a hydraulic project (called Neptuno) involving the construction of a purification plant using water from the Río de la Plata estuary (close to the SLR basin), was proposed by a consortium of private companies. The aim of this paper is to analyze the arguments to support and oppose the Neptuno Project, as well as the hydrosocial transformations promoted by it in the SLR basin, including the scalar strategies adopted. Primary and secondary data (interviews, participant observation, and document analysis) were triangulated. Coalitions pro and against the greater involvement of the private sector with water supply services were identified. Our research shows that diverse perspectives of water security, related to different hydrosocial projects, reflect opposed interests and divergent objectives in a context of disputes within asymmetrical power relationships. This has been reactivating the coalition of the historic conflict against the privatization processes that preceded the constitutional reform in Uruguay in 2004. This coalition, against the Neptuno project, carried out a “jump scale,” taking the issue from the local to the national scale.

Wind Energy on Trial in Saepmie: Epistemic Controversies and Strategic Ignorance in Norway’s Green Energy Transition

Climate change policies and the green energy transition have renewed colonial structures and injustices for Indigenous peoples in land-use conflicts, but not without resistance. This article explores epistemic controversies in a legal struggle concerning impacts from wind energy infrastructure on Southern Saami reindeer herding and culture in Norway. The article draws on courtroom ethnography and diverse written material concerning a court case between the wind energy company Fosen Vind DA and the Southern Saami reindeer herders in Fovsen Njaarke Sïjte. The findings show that the parties’ competing claims to truth rely on different knowledge systems and worldviews concerning what Southern Saami reindeer herding is an ought to be. However, beyond onto-epistemological struggles between the “Indigenous” and the “Western”, Fosen Vind DA and the Norwegian state strategically ignored all knowledges that threatened capitalist and green colonial interests. The Fosen case illustrates how Indigenous peoples can contest dominant knowledge regimes and colonial presumptions about their livelihoods, culture, and rights through the legal system. However, the Norwegian state’s reluctancy to respect the outcome of the Supreme Court verdict reveals that asymmetric power relations continue to pave the way for colonial dispossession of Saami landscapes, epistemes, and human rights in the green energy transition.

Asymmetrical power relationships in disaster reduction remain the key barrier to sustainable recovery: Neoliberalism and Nepal's post‐earthquake recovery experiences

AbstractMaking reference to recent scholarly discussions on neoliberalism and disaster recovery, in this paper I discuss how the implemented neoliberal doctrines of governance have reinforced the existing asymmetrical power relationships between the state, international agencies and citizens. This process constitutes a major barrier to achieving sustainable recovery after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. In particular, three issues, namely the risk of disempowering local communities' capacity, lack of commitment to long‐term recovery, and commodification of the recovery process, have resulted that the recovery policy basically favours the interests of international donors, and NGOs, not those of local communities. To achieve sustainable recovery, post disaster interventions must be socially inclusive. Local affected communities should be meaningfully engaged, and that social learning and sustainability transformation should be enabled as these are key processes at the core of community resilience and of any community resilience‐building strategy.

Re-imagining the Regional Polity: Lessons in Bhrātṛbhāva and Bandhubhāva from the Baghel Kingdom

Confronted by an increasing number of mahārājādhirājas and shahanshāhs during the period between the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, how do we characterise state-making and royal projections of authority, unencumbered by teleological impositions of “regional” and “imperial”? This paper examines the strategies used by the Baghel kingdom to consolidate its territorial and political control within a palimpsest of warring polities in early-modern North India. In contrast to other nascent Rajput polities of this period who were establishing themselves in opposition to the Sultans at Delhi, Gujarat, Malwa and Jaunpur through the articulation of a strong martial ethos, the Baghels employed strategies of friendship (bandhubhāva) and brotherhood (bhrātṛbhāva). In examining these strategies, this paper argues, the Baghels offer an alternate way of conceptualising the political landscape of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, one that does not solely rest on the asymmetrical relations of power associated with the study of “regional” polities. Put more directly, this paper posits the study of the regional polity during this period not in terms of language/literature/art nor in terms of successive levels of subordination, but as a politics of consolidating power.

TRANSLATION AS A TOOL OF CONSTRUCTING INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS: A CASE STUDY ON THE RELATION BETWEEN TURKISH AND CUBAN CULTURES

With the cultural turn in Translation Studies, it has been accepted that translation is not just a linguistic but also a cultural activity. This cultural activity can appear in various forms such as a positive and constructive interaction or an asymmetrical power relation including assimilation, conquest and/or colonial activities between cultures. Literature, translation and translated literature can be used as a tool or strategy in this spectrum of complicated relations. The agents/actors taking an active role in these relations have become an object of study in Translation Studies as well as in all other fields of Social Sciences. Using his agent role as an ambassador, Ernesto Gomez Abascal wrote a fictional novel titled Havana’da Türk Tutkusu 1898 (Turkish Passion in Havana 1898) drawing inspiration from historical facts to construct a positive Turkish image in Spanish and Cuban literature and culture. Abascal was inspired by the future translator of the novel, Mehmet Necati Kutlu to write this book. Kutlu, who is an academician and an agent fostering the relations between Turkey and Latin American countries, reported his findings to Abascal about the Ottoman Empire and Cuban relations. Inspired by this information, Abascal wrote a fiction based on these historical records. This article will try to analyze the role of literature, translation and agents in the process of constructing cultural images through this example.

THE POETICS OF KAZAKH POET DÜKEN MESİMHANULI

With the cultural turn in Translation Studies, it has been accepted that translation is not just a linguistic but also a cultural activity. This cultural activity can appear in various forms such as a positive and constructive interaction or an asymmetrical power relation including assimilation, conquest and/or colonial activities between cultures. Literature, translation and translated literature can be used as a tool or strategy in this spectrum of complicated relations. The agents/actors taking an active role in these relations have become an object of study in Translation Studies as well as in all other fields of Social Sciences. Using his agent role as an ambassador, Ernesto Gomez Abascal wrote a fictional novel titled Havana’da Türk Tutkusu 1898 (Turkish Passion in Havana 1898) drawing inspiration from historical facts to construct a positive Turkish image in Spanish and Cuban literature and culture. Abascal was inspired by the future translator of the novel, Mehmet Necati Kutlu to write this book. Kutlu, who is an academician and an agent fostering the relations between Turkey and Latin American countries, reported his findings to Abascal about the Ottoman Empire and Cuban relations. Inspired by this information, Abascal wrote a fiction based on these historical records. This article will try to analyze the role of literature, translation and agents in the process of constructing cultural images through this example

Encouraging household energy conservation through transdisciplinary approaches in Ghana and South Africa: assumptions, challenges and guidelines

ABSTRACTTransdisciplinary research has gained traction globally for mapping pathways for sustainable urbanisation. The involvement of local communities is believed to central to knowledge co-production needed to address sustainability challenges. But working with local communities can be challenging. This paper is structured around the authors’ personal reflections on undertaking transdisciplinary household energy conservation projects in Ghana and South Africa. The paper reflects on the assumptions and challenges of doing transdisciplinary research in urban Africa and suggests some guidelines for consideration when doing transdisciplinary projects. An inductive analysis of our reflections showed five key challenges: lack of integration, divergent problem identification, tensions in knowledge co-production, asymmetrical power relations, and distrust and managing expectations. We draw on our collective experiences to develop guidelines for conducting transdisciplinary research in urban Africa. These guidelines are not prescriptive but can be useful for a growing and broader audience interested in undertaking transdisciplinary research.

The exclusive countryside post‐pandemic

AbstractThe processes through which the British countryside has become increasingly socially exclusive have been a theme of rural scholars' research since the 1970s, and these social changes are reflected in experiences of the pandemic. This paper begins by observing the central importance of power relations, and then discusses the pivotal role of housing as a motor of rural social change and exclusivity. Notwithstanding these processes, and indeed largely because of these asymmetric power relations, rural poverty remains. This paper summarises experiences of social exclusion in rural areas during the pandemic and reflects on the social redistribution of risk and the need to rebuild social protection in a continuing ‘permacrisis’. The emergence of the concept of the permacrisis indicates a recognition that the Covid‐19 pandemic is only one of a series of continuing or recurring challenges or potential ‘shocks’ that we face, and this paper concludes by suggesting a research agenda for rural scholars as well as a potential rural policy agenda.

Examining Child-Led Tours and Child Standpoint Theory as a Methodological Approach to Mitigate Asymmetrical Adult-Child Power Dynamics in Ethnographic Research: A Child-Led Tour of Elfish Antics and Sensorial Knowledge

Child-led tours alongside intersectional feminist theory and child standpoint theory provide promising methodological insights regarding meaningful engagement and research approaches with young children that can inform intersectoral pediatric healthcare practice and policy. However, research has paid little attention to the dynamics between children and adults during research and promising methods and theories that may mitigate asymmetrical relationships of power. The authors describe lessons learned from a child-led tour through the lens of an intersectional feminist, child standpoint theoretical orientation regarding child assent, power, and control. The strength of a child-led tour coupled with a reflexive intersectional, child standpoint theoretical orientation is that it can make explicit adult epistemological biases and the tensions between children’s and adult’s interactions and collaborations. Further, this framing may make medicalized and taken-for-granted scientific assumptions of childhood and children explicit and allow for the reimaging of children’s agency, power, and capacity for knowledge generation in situ. Child-led tours coupled with an adult researcher’s commitment to anti-oppressive practice through methodological accountability and frameworks have the promise of eliciting rich, embodied, sensorial data in pursuit of knowledge mobilization for and with children. Child-led tours as an ethnographic, qualitative interview method are proposed to be child-friendly, enabling meaningful knowledge gathering concerning children’s perspectives, ideas, and experiences. More research on the potential for a child-led tour combined with an intersectional, child standpoint praxis is needed to prevent tokenistic methodological strategies that reproduce asymmetrical power relations and dynamics.

Asymmetric power relations in multistakeholder initiatives: Insights from the government-instituted Indonesian National Forestry Council

Waves of democratization, which occurred in Indonesia by the end of the 1990s, have provided opportunities to deepen and diversify broader civil society elements for engagement in formal public policymaking. In the forestry sector emerged a multistakeholder initiative of the National Forestry Council (Dewan Kehutanan Nasional/ DKN), which was envisioned to promote good forest governance by engaging the broader public in the formulation of strategies and policy options to foster intelligent forest management in Indonesia. The DKN was instituted to create a space for multistakeholder dialogues and learning, and was expected to become an influential body in national forest-related policy-making processes. Through the application of theories related to power relations in multistakeholder initiatives, this paper assesses whether the DKN functions as a deliberative and inclusive platform. The hope and expectation placed upon the DKN were sky- high. The DKN initially provided opportunities for the spectrum of public/governments, private sector organizations, and civil society groups to come together on the same table. It also drew support from many institutions at the national level and donor agencies. However, the DKN has later shown the unequal resources of participants and eventual asymmetric power relations. As a result, it fully facilitated deliberative processes due to the asymmetric power that subtly manifested through the stakeholders’ interaction patterns, which were heavily driven by the government.

Human Rights Due Diligence by Corporate Creditors in Sovereign Debt Restructurings – A Great Missing Link

AbstractThis article studies human rights due diligence by private corporate creditors in the context of sovereign debt restructurings. First, the legal bases of this specific due diligence are presented and systematized. Then, by providing empirical statistical evidence, the article analyses whether haircuts applied by creditors across countries regularly consider the social and economic human rights situation of the debtor countries in question, as part of creditors’ due diligence. Also, the main characteristics of bond markets that contribute to understanding the asymmetric power relationship between private lenders and sovereign borrowers are described. Finally, Argentina’s latest debt restructurings are studied in depth to determine whether human rights were taken into account when agreeing on the size of haircuts. From quantitative and qualitative data, this article concludes that the haircuts agreed by creditors are regularly not sensitive to the social and economic human rights situation of debtor populations or to the impact that debt agreements could have on them.

One-Sided Tale of Poor Latin America

The experience of participating in a mobility program is both enriching and shocking. While facing different identities and asymmetrical relations of power, the international student from the Global South is forced to reanalyze his or her identity in the world. The politics of racialization and the dichotomy between the politics of belonging and of bordering make those who study abroad realize the stereotypes of the country they are nationals of and the prejudice their co-citizens may suffer. As such, this text is my narrative as a Brazilian student in the Middle East living in a community predominantly constituted by Europeans, describing the process of realization of my identity as a Global South and Latin American citizen.

Tensiones y consensos en torno a los fenómenos educación, tics y políticas públicas: reflexiones desde el saber y poder

Teachers immersed in the digital world must use a set of technologies to achieve the objectives of their teaching activity; however, there is no doubt about the challenges generated by the incorporation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education, which also produce a set of problems typical of the asymmetrical relations of knowledge and power, within the framework of what knowledge societies mean in the global south, a space identified by inequalities of all kinds. In this order of ideas, the objective of the article is to discuss the main tensions and consensus around the phenomena: Education, Tics and Public Policies, dichotomously assumed as interrelated concepts and social phenomena of global scope. For the theoretical development of the research, political materialism was used and, methodologically, the documentary research technique and the hermeneutic interpretation of the texts reviewed. It is concluded that ICTs, as part of the technological evolution and their contribution to contemporary educational practices, both in their modalities and their potential for expansion to other educational models, should be a priority in educational policies.

A critical discourse analysis of selected political interviews in Nigerian news media

Several studies have been carried out on political discourse using different linguistic approaches of Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Stylistics as well as implicature. However, little attention has been given to the blend of Critical Discourse Analysis and rhetoric as a means to unravel different ideological stances in political discourse. Thus, this paper investigated how ideological beliefs of individuals or groups were conveyed through linguistic expressions to manipulate those of others in political interviews of Nigerian politicians. A total of two (2) interviews conducted by Channels Television were randomly selected. The data for the study were video files downloaded from the official YouTube page of the Channel Tv station and were transcribed so as to draw out relevant extracts. van Dijk’s 2006 socio cognitive aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis and rhetoric were used as its theoretical framework. Findings revealed that ideology is an individual’s perception or experience of the world. It also revealed that the interviewees in the selected interviews deployed language as a strategy of domination and supremacy by exploiting lexical items and strong imperatives which allow them to impose their views on others. Commonly, it was found that they created asymmetrical power relations of privileged ‘we’, ‘us’ and less privileged ‘they’, ‘them’ through positive self-presentation of us and negative other presentation of them. It was also revealed that certain rhetorical and ideological strategies such as actor description, polarisation, burden, categorisation, comparison, consensus, populism, vagueness and appeal to emotions among others present in the selected political interviews are implicitly used to project different ideological positions of the politicians.