Asymmetrical Reciprocity Research Articles

Patrons of commerce: asymmetrical reciprocity and moral economies of platform power

ABSTRACT What do platforms owe their users, and what do users owe platforms? We adapt the concept of asymmetrical reciprocity from political anthropology as a framework for critiquing the moral economies of platform power. Asymmetrical reciprocities are collectively held beliefs that authority figures should give or receive more than is normally acceptable. We argue that platforms style themselves as patrons to legitimize their asymmetric power – they cultivate a perception of giving more than they take so that, in practice, they can take more than they give. This is a fragile legitimacy, however, and users are not dupes. Users push back against policies that benefit platforms at their expense by issuing demands and coordinating action. We present three vignettes showing this process among a diverse set of platform constituencies – live-streamers, e-book authors, and sex workers. The vignettes show how asymmetrical reciprocities generate frictions that can destabilize platform legitimacy. Finally, we argue that where platforms choose to invest in ‘legitimacy costs’ reveals the asymmetricality of platform power. Platforms grant inducements and concessions for privileged users, but subject marginalized groups to a coercive regime of policing and exclusion.

Intermedia Attribute Agenda Setting Between the U.S. Mainstream Newspapers and Twitter: A Two-Study Analysis of the Paradigm and Driving Forces of the Agenda Flow

Performing two studies, we explore the intermedia attribute agenda-setting effects between the U.S. mainstream newspapers and Twitter. Leveraging computational methodologies, Study 1 analyzes 3,541 newspaper articles and over 1.06 million tweets about the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, illustrating asymmetrical reciprocity of substantive attributes and mutual independency of affective attributes between both outlets. Study 2 performs in-depth interviews with 16 American journalists, showing that journalists increasingly see Twitter as a news source hub, a self-promotion platform, and a prism of distorted public sentiments. The juxtaposition of both studies revealed the paradigm and driving forces of the intermedia agenda flow.

Exposing the benefits of a pedagogy of partnership in health professions education.

Literature indicates the need to prepare health professionals who are clinically competent and socially conscious. Engagement in community projects, as an extension of workplace learning, can build professional competence and social awareness. To interrogate one such engagement; an emergency first aid responder training course was orchestrated by undergraduate students studying Emergency Medical Care. The intervention was offered in response to a community need emerging from the research project being conducted in a community in the Western Cape, South Africa. Qualitative data were gathered as narrative texts from participants in the intervention and student reports about their learning experience. The data were interrogated through the application of reflexive thematic analysis and the theoretical lens of asymmetrical reciprocity. The three themes that emerged were: from research to a student led intervention, deep authentic learning, and learning as a shared experience. Benefit accrued to the students and community through a partnership of asymmetrical participants. The community offered a learning experience while students offered desired skills acquisition to community members. Through this interaction, students learnt respect for local knowledges, and gained enhanced social awareness, in a transdisciplinary partnership, that aimed to create a learning environment where academics, students, and community members are partners in a project delivered with a core value of social justice. A pedagogy of partnership describes an education model arising from community-based research that enabled a social programme intervention as a relevant learning project for health science students.

GENDER MAINSTREAMING – AN ETHICAL FEMINIST CONSIDERATION

In this article I tentatively consider the notion of gender mainstreaming from an ethical feminist perspective. Underlying this is a tension, or paradox, between law's limits and law's potential, law's poetry, poetry's law. A few theoretical arguments come into play. Firstly, the multiple meanings of sex and gender are reconsidered. Thereafter feminist critiques against the notion of one feminist method as well as a feminist jurisprudence are combined with a critical perspective on the institutionalisation of human rights and the politics of law. I recall these arguments to inform my investigation into gender mainstreaming. Two aspects are considered: firstly, in light of the critical perspectives, the preference for gender mainstreaming instead of challenging from the margins; and secondly, how mainstreaming actually takes place. Relying on the notion of ethical feminism and concepts of “asymmetrical reciprocity”, “city life”, the “imaginary domain” and the “community of the ought to be”, I ponder ways of making gender issues noticed beyond and within attempts at mainstreaming.

Public Policies for Sustainable Territorial Development in Brazil: Between Clientelism and Participation

The article discusses the permanence of clientelistic practices and their tensions with the participatory approach adopted within the framework of the Brazilian public policy of rural territorial development. It examines, in particular, the case of local implementation of the National Program of Territorial Development. The results come from the study of the functioning of the Territorial Collegiate and the projects implemented in the Águas Emendadas Territory in the Midwest of Brazil. It uses a socio-anthropological approach of patronage and political participation through the analysis of the social configuration and the relations of instrumentalisation in both the participatory spaces and the projects of this territory. The results show the existence of a not only social but also an affective dimension of clientele practice that can be analyzed as an asymmetrical reciprocity relationship based on the principle of anthropological reciprocity or as a process of unequal political exchange, considering a political science approach.

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice

Indios y encomenderos: acercamientos a la encomienda desde la cultura política y el pacto tributario. Valle del río Cauca, 1680-1750

Este artículo aborda los conflictos y relaciones de mediación y subordinación generadas por la encomienda en el valle del río Cauca. Indagamos sobre aquellas asociadas al paternalismo, la obediencia y la reciprocidad asimétrica, lo cual permite entender los valores y prácticas dados por el pacto tributario como dinámicos e históricos, donde los indios asumían parte activa y tenían posibilidades de acción. Las mitas, los accesos a tierras, las estrategias de negociación con el tributo y los servicios personales son motivos para explicitar nociones y valores que hacían inteligibles las acciones de las gentes referenciadas. El texto desarrolla una perspectiva histórica apuntando al campo de la cultura política, por lo cual se trata de un aporte diferenciador respecto de la historiografía económica y social tradicional. La investigación contó confuentes judiciales o referentes al tributo y los cuestionamientos dados por las dimensiones discursivas, simbólicas y prácticas sobre el poder y las relaciones sociales.

From existential alterity to ethical reciprocity: Beauvoir’s alternative to Levinas

While Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of alterity has been the topic of much discussion within Beauvoir scholarship, feminist theory, and social and political philosophy, it has not commonly been a reference point for those working within ethics. However, Beauvoir develops a novel view that those concerned with the ethical import of respect for others should consider seriously, especially those working within the Levinasian tradition. I claim that Beauvoir distinguishes between two forms of otherness: namely, existential alterity and sociopolitical alterity. While sociopolitical alterity is a contingent and surmountable form of otherness that results from oppression of individuals and groups, existential alterity is a necessary feature of the human condition that discloses the foreignness of the other as a freedom. Out of this view of existential alterity, I argue, Beauvoir develops an ethic of asymmetrical reciprocity. In contrast with Levinas, who dismisses reciprocity as a symmetrical or reversible model of relation that minimizes difference, Beauvoir promulgates a view of reciprocity that does not fall into the problems that Levinas diagnoses. Moreover, asymmetrical reciprocity more successfully figures the ethical relation to the other than the absolute asymmetry one finds in Levinas, which becomes evident through revisiting Levinas’s account of eros and contrasting it with that of Beauvoir.

Knowing Differently Situated Others: Teachers and Arrogant Perception

In the context of teacher education, where practicality is the chief area of concern for teacher candidates, philosophical analyses of oppression must be perceived to contribute to the pressing concerns of teaching workloads and classroom management as well as justice. This paper proposes to make a link between teaching work and considerations of diversity that emerge as teachers "consider the standpoint of the other" (see Young, 1997, p. 22). Arguing with Iris Marion Young that it is neither possible nor ethically satisfactory to "take the other's point of view" per se, the paper provides an account of what is involved in considering the standpoint of differently situated others. The argument here, however, is epistemological rather than ethical. Specifically? - the paper addresses questions that arise as teachers occupy subject positions of relative privilege either within the society at large or as a function of the normalizing processes of schools. Young's analysis of asymmetric reciprocity is juxtaposed with Maria Lugones' analysis of arrogant and loving perception, "worlds" and "world traveling" (1990). The analysis offers teachers a means of rereading their participation in school purposes and their reception of student performances as resistance. The paper proceeds in four sections: the first reports briefly on Young's advocacy of asymmetrical reciprocity, and emphasizes a fragile understanding open to wonder and surprise rather than recognition. The second presents a reading of Lugones' and Frye's conceptions of arrogant perception and world-traveling that pays particularly close attention to Lugones' account of what it means to be at ease in a world. The third section of the paper moves to the level of institutional analysis. The object of study is that body of schooling practices that might be read as positioning teachers in subject positions of institutional arrogant perception. The fourth section addresses three practical ways in which teachers might address notions of arrogant and loving perception: deconstructing their institutional and social locations, using their own world-traveling to proliferate non-dominant curricular and classroom practices, and reorienting themselves with respect to students' resistance.

Asymmetrical Recognition. Group Vulnerability and Group Rights, beyond Cultural Identities

In this article, I argue for a strategy of accommodation of minorities that lowers the opposition between majority and minorities, and takes the concept of group vulnerability into consideration. I argue for a demystification of cultural identities regarding legal disputes. Even if culture remains personally and socially crucial, it is considered only one factor among others. Then I analyse the concept of group vulnerability, and the role it can play in accommodating diversities. Finally, I discuss to what extent such a strategy may be interpreted as a form of asymmetrical reciprocity. This can profitably work for the accommodation of minorities in diverse societies by asking public institutions to provide proof that the specific conditions and needs of vulnerable people have been considered, in order to appreciate the proportionality and reasonability of their choices.

Asymmetrical reciprocity

In this article, I argue that Hegel’s concept of recognition and Levinas’ concept of responsibility complement each other and lead to the idea of an asymmetrical reciprocity in which the origin of our social relations is not mutual equality, but rather mutual inequality. I will unfold this argument in three steps. I will first work out a fundamental asymmetry of recognition in Hegel by means of the figure of the bondsman before elucidating in a second step the asymmetry of responsibility in Levinas by means of the figure of the hostage. In the last and third step, I will correlate both asymmetries and show how far the asymmetry of recognition and the asymmetry of responsibility constantly develop from and transition into one another in our social relationships.

On the Way to Effective Team Teaching A model of ICC development within the context of team teaching in Japan

Team teaching has become a common practice in English classrooms across Japan, but since its inception, a number of problems have been observed. It is believed that the majority of these issues are due to miscommunication caused by cultural differences between the Japanese (JTs) and native-English teachers (NETs). Unfortunately, few studies have offered solutions on how teachers could improve their intercultural communication competence (ICC) so that the other problems can be rectified. Thus, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: 1) to illustrate the need for ICC among JTs and NETs through a review of literature and 2) to develop a model of ICC development specifically designed for the team teaching setting. By applying Iris Young’s (1997) theory of asymmetrical reciprocity to ICC among team teachers, this study develops a model of ICC development within the context of team teaching in Japan so that future research may then apply this model to improving intercultural communication between the NETs and JTs and thereby enhancing the overall instruction in the team teaching classroom.

Reading the Stranger of Asylum Law: Legacies of Communication and Ethics

In this paper I argue the way in which the UK asylum system currently functions, fails to legally and discursively acknowledge the UK’s culpability and contribution to contexts that generate refugees via, for example, legacies of colonialism and engagement in neoliberal economic practices. I claim that these legacies fundamentally and detrimentally impact on, and delineate the relationship between, asylum claimant and immigration judge. Responding to these legacies and the concurrent interpersonal impact, I draw on the work of Iris Marion Young and Emmanuel Levinas in order to reframe the relationships between the interlocutors. Using an ethical framework, I focus on the benefits that engaging with, and bearing responsibility for the ‘other’ may have on the provision of justice for refugees. I rely in part on Iris Marion Young’s understanding of a communicative ethics based on ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’, which is indebted to Levinas’ conceptualisation of the other—the other as unknowable, and irreducible, and to whom we are obligated—in order to address the place of an ethics of responsibility (Levinas 2006; Hand 1996). Young’s work unpacks the relationship between locutionary positions; she relies on generosity towards the other through what she terms ‘the gift’ (Young 1997). The ‘gift’ is a relational concept—‘opening up to the other person is always a gift; the trust to communicate cannot await the other person’s promise to reciprocate’ (Young 1997, 351). The gift’s relationship to asymmetrical reciprocity requires each party to recognize and be open to the ‘irreducible points of view of the other’ and understand the ‘irreversibility’ of their subject positions (Young 1997, 351). I make this tentative turn to ethics as a way of repositioning the relationship of law to the politics of responsibility, in a bid to foster an ethical response to the other that reaches beyond the asylum court.

On the persistence of sharing: Personhood, asymmetrical reciprocity, and demand sharing in the Indigenous Australian domestic moral economy

This article addresses the persistence of sharing in Indigenous Australian domestic moral economies well after hunting and gathering has stopped being the basis of livelihood, by examining the relationship of demand sharing with the more formalised asymmetrical reciprocity found in both pre and post contact life. Understanding the significance of the more formalized asymmetry in the pre‐contact situation helps shed light on what happens in the post contact situation, and the independence of sharing from the impact of market forces and utilitarian need.

Everyday Sacrifice and Language Socialization in Vietnam: The Power of a Respect Particle

ABSTRACTThe Vietnamese ethic ofhy sinh, typically translated as “sacrifice,” involves moral conduct and dispositions that emphasize showing respect to sociocultural “superiors” and yielding to sociocultural “inferiors.” Like “filial piety,” which has been shown to permeate many aspects of life in contemporary Asia, hy sinh is a cultural virtue learned first in families’ daily lives. In this article, I examine how participants’ linguistic and corporeal practices in routine interactions with children relate to their engagements with ancestors. Focusing on video‐recorded displays of respect, I argue that these cultivate elementary forms of hy sinh even in a toddler, thus initiating her into intergenerationally continuing moral lifeworlds. Further, I suggest that, like ritual and patriotic forms of “sacrifice” more common in anthropological accounts, hy sinh is an ethical practice that helps substantiate local sociomoral order. It underpins pervasive relationships of asymmetrical reciprocity both beyond and within the family, naturalizing inequality as ethical.

Radical-cum-Relation: Bridging Feminist Ethics and Native Individual Autonomy

For the purpose of advancing the feminist commitment to inclusion and nonliberal articulations of pluralism, in this essay I conceptualize the Native account of individual autonomy that itself evolves from a commitment to pluralism. I demonstrate that Native individual autonomy is concurrently strong and feminist in nature—what I call “radical-cum-relational.” That is, Native autonomy is more radical than the traditional liberal conception and is simultaneously grounded in relationality, which is the basis of much of feminist ethics. I demonstrate that the Native conception of autonomy is radical and promotes the highest degree of individual self-determination and independence qua individuality and particularity. Yet this radical self-determination depends on intense social interdependency. The grounding metaphysics and epistemology of the Native framework are conceived entirely in terms of ethical relationships between and responsibilities to other individuals, animals, and the Earth. That is, no part of the Native paradigm can be understood outside of the ethical connections persons have by virtue of their primary position as community members. It is by situating radical autonomy against a background of ethical social interdependence, together with the background condition of gender equality of Native practices, that the radical construal of Native individual freedom is feminist. To shore up and illustrate the connection between Native autonomy and feminism, I argue that an identification between the Native social practice of gifting and feminist reciprocity can be made, specifically Iris Marion Young’s notion of asymmetrical reciprocity. Finally, I argue that this connection avoids the problem of incommensurability and so is theoretically possible, responsible, and fits the criterion of respectfulness also at the foundation of the Native framework. Broadly speaking, the problem of incommensurability is concerned with theorists’ inability to recognize foundational incompatibilities between paradigms and their forced attempts to merge them, often at the price of ignoring inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and contradictions that result from impossible translations and conversions. Historically and to the present day, Western philosophy has been egregiously guilty of distorting Native theories and practices. In this essay I argue that since translation takes place at the level of praxis rather than at the level of language, my argument circumvents problems that arise from failed attempts to map cultural concepts onto others that do not share similar foundations.

Circulating Women as Objects of Trade in Malay Historical Texts

AbstractIn this paper, we shall discuss ‘circulating women’ as objects of trade based on the corpus of three historical texts such as The Malay Annals (Sejarah Melayu) and Misa Melayu Perak. Barbara Andaya (2006:104) has cogently argued that “Southeast Asia is an attractive laboratory to investigate women’s economic roles” especially in the early modern period. By focusing on issues related to marriage and slave trade, we look specifically at the movements of women in the chronicles. Whether they were consorts, concubines and maids-in-waiting in the Malay courts, the traffic of women showed an intricate web of social exchange where symmetrical and asymmetrical reciprocity took place in various political situations of the day. By showing these exchanges, we unveil an aspect of women and trade in early modern Southeast Asia where women were involved in boosting male prestige and power, political hierarchy, social identity and legitimacy.

Embracing resistance and asymmetry in pre-service teacher aesthetic education

This narrative account describes and analyzes the story of resistance to aesthetic education in an undergraduate pre-service teacher education program. After carefully listening to the students’ resistance to the Lincoln Center Institute’s aesthetic education component of their student teacher experience, the author designs a curriculum initiative to address the questions of relevance and application of aesthetic education in pre-service teacher preparation. This article follows the initiation, development, implementation, and evaluation of the aesthetic art initiative. Framed by Young’s (1997) understanding of ‘asymmetrical reciprocity’, the author suggests that three layers of asymmetry — instructor asymmetry, departmental asymmetry, and institutional asymmetry — may have influenced the pre-service teachers’ engagement with aesthetic education. This autoethnographic account asserts that embracing resistance and asymmetry may be important to the development of aesthetic education with pre-service teachers, and also yields insight into the ways contextual features of higher education may influence educational experiences.

Asymmetrical Reciprocity and Compliance with the Laws of War

How does one get the Taliban in Afghanistan, the FARC in Colombia, Russian troops in Georgia, and Blackwater contractors in Iraq, to improve their dismal record of compliance with international humanitarian law? The recipe, inasmuch as one can be surmised, will involve a complex mix of carrot and stick, normative and political, humanitarian and strategic. One basic question is the degree to which reciprocity is a toxic factor in the normative dynamics of international humanitarian law, importing conditionality and offering excuses to match any violation committed by the other side, or whether there lies in reciprocity a force that can be successfully marshalled to improve the protection of the victims of war. A second related question is the extent to which an armed conflict has to involved symmetrical forces in order for reciprocity to operate at all. Should we agree with Marco Sassoli that “reciprocity … does not work in asymmetrical conflicts”? The paper attempts to show that even in asymmetrical conflicts so unreceptive to humanitarian ideals as the ones listed above, reciprocity offers such potential that it should not be discounted as merely another hurdle to overcome in the application of the laws of war, but rather that one of the bases on which legitimate norms can be established to link participants variously positioned in a regime like international humanitarian law.

Seeing Oneself through the Eyes of the Other: Asymmetrical Reciprocity and Self-respect

Iris Marion Young argues we cannot understand others’ experiences by imagining ourselves in their place or in terms of symmetrical reciprocity (1997a). For Young, reciprocity expresses moral respect and asymmetry arises from people's greatly varying life histories and social positions. La Caze argues there are problems with Young's articulation of asymmetrical reciprocity in terms of wonder and the gift. By discussing friendship and political representation, she shows how taking self-respect into account complicates asymmetrical reciprocity.