Cultural Oppression Research Articles

Strategies of Resistance in “French Caribbean Cinema”

This article examines how resistance has been depicted over time in “French Caribbean Cinema.” By “French Caribbean Cinema” is meant all feature-length films directed by French Caribbean professionals (or of French Caribbean origin) working in the film industry, regardless of race. The aim is to examine how French Caribbean societies are portrayed in films from an insider’s stance. While there are definitely a number of Guadeloupean and Martinican film productions, according to the criteria aforementioned, it is necessary to establish that a specific French Caribbean cinema does exist based on a certain unity, determined by distinct thematic, dramatic, or aesthetic features. The article focuses on films taking place, from an objective duration standpoint, in Guadeloupe or Martinique, that is, twenty-five of the sixty films listed. The different strategies of resistance depicted in that cinema range from the resistance fighters and Maroons against slavery and economic exploitation, to the new résistants fighting against political and cultural oppression through the practice of creolization, as proposed by the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant.

Cultural revitalization as a restorative process to combat racial and cultural trauma and promote living well.

This article explores the impact of a decade of cultural education and revitalization with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, as they strive to recover from years of historical trauma and cultural oppression. The recovery or resilience is measured through behaviors (defined as living well") seen in tribal youth and community engagement. This study has 4 research questions focused on academic attainment, physical and mental health, community engagement, and national/tribal growth. A series of studies using both qualitative (ethnographic-observation and interview) and quantitative measures (survey) examined language use, educational attainment, and tribal event engagement. The samples consisted of 32 Myaamia college students (59% female, 41% male) who matriculated at Miami University between 2013 and 2017 and about 800 community members in attendance at various community events from 2012 to 2017 upon which observational data were collected. Ethnographic content analysis of interviews and descriptive and regression analyses suggest an increase in graduation rates among the college sample who took culture courses, a stronger sense of belonging, an increase in language use and tribal event attendance among tribal members, and increases in scores on Snowshoe's (2015) Cultural Connectedness Scale for the college sample taking culture courses signaling shifts in identity. This study suggests that reclaiming one's culture and language has an impact on restoring wellness among this tribal nation. Cultural rejuvenation of the Myaamiaki may represent a shift in the way healthy living can be conceptualized within tribal communities. The authors stress the importance of using community knowledge in conjunction with global knowledge to develop community-specific and community-implemented interventions for health promotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Characteristics of Indigenous healing strategies in Canada: a scoping review protocol.

The objective of this review is to identify the characteristics of Indigenous healing strategies in Canada and approaches to improving cultural relevance to local Indigenous contexts. In the previous 150 years, Indigenous peoples of Canada have experienced colonization, forced assimilation, cultural oppression and violence, and these are associated with high rates of social distress and health disparities. Today, legacies of colonization continue to marginalize Indigenous peoples, creating healthcare institutions devoid of Indigenous worldviews. Despite the growing number of Indigenous healing strategies currently in existence, literature describing these strategies has not been systematically scoped. To address this gap, this scoping review will identify characteristics of Indigenous healing strategies in Canada, and explore culturally relevant approaches used in research process. This review will consider literature that describes Indigenous healing strategies in Canada and will include First Nations, Inuit and Métis as the population of interest. Strategies may include, but are not limited to, health services and programs, policies and guidelines, models and frameworks, and Indigenous narratives and expert opinions. Healing strategies delivered in all service settings are eligible for inclusion. The databases/sources to be searched will include: CINAHL, Sociological Abstracts, PsycINFO, MEDLINE and Academic Search Premier. Searches for gray literature will be conducted in iPortal, Canadian Electronic Library, and a list of Canadian government and Indigenous organization websites. Retrieval of full-text studies and data extraction will be performed independently by two reviewers. Findings will be summarized in tabular forms accompanied by narrative text.

Tribal Alienation and Conflict in India: A Perspective from Below

The Adivasi’s movement in India was seen through the abstract glasses of a Maoist movement or a peasant revolt, thus denying and failing to explain the specificity of Adivasi’s movement for democratic rights. However, the present article is an attempt to understand the socioeconomic and political structures, which forced the tribal in India to organize themselves and fight since the 1940s for the redressal of their grievances. Among the major questions which we shall attempt to answer are: how did the tribal react to alienation from the society and land, natural resources, indebtedness, and structural and cultural oppression? What was the role of the leadership in the organization of discontented tribal? The study basically aims at understanding the nexus between politics and violence in the specific context of the Adivasi movement in India. Is it a battle for social justice and equality?

Experiencing Physical Disability: Young African Women in Lesotho

The article unwraps notions related to young African women’s lifeworld experiences of physical disability. The study is positioned in the broad context of the theoretical frameworks of phenomenology, existential sociology, the social construction of reality, feminist disability theory, and intersectionality. Focus is given to the way social systems of cultural oppression and discrimination impact women with physical impairments and manifest in how they perceive and make meaning of their everyday life experiences. Women with physical impairments often experience a double measure of oppression—being both female and disabled. When these women try to engage in a normal life and interact with others, they experience barriers imposed on them by their social reality—particularly in the form of cultural norms and patriarchal ideals. There are also instances where participants demonstrate resilience in the face of negative social stereotyping, instances that clearly show that they are not different, and do not perceive themselves as being different to able-bodied women. Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with eight young Black women who are living with physical disabilities in Lesotho, the objective of this article is to examine their everyday life experiences within a predominantly able-bodied society.

Appropriated Bodies: Trauma, Biopower and the Posthuman in Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”

This article approaches science fiction using the strategically powerful perspectives of Trauma Studies and the posthuman in conjunction with Foucault’s notion of biopower, paying special attention to the deep investment of these discourses in notions of embodiment and agency. In order to do so, I will consider Octavia Butler’s 1984 short story “Bloodchild” (Hugo and Nebula Awards) and James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)’s 1973 novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (Hugo Award). Both stories explore dystopian futures—in their focus on coercive extraterrestrials and life on an inhospitable planet, on the one hand, and on oppressive consumer culture and corporate technoscience, on the other—and point back to our posthuman present through metaphoric characters that illustrate and invite comment upon the articulation of power and the construction of the embodied posthuman. The main issue at play in the two stories, I will contend, is the identification of biopower with the traumatic appropriation of the human body and the articulation of posthuman forms of resistance to it. Keywords: trauma; the posthuman; biopower; science fiction; James Tiptree, Jr.; Octavia Butler

Repression, Isolation and Paranoia: A Psychoanalytic Feminist Study of ‘The Nightmare’ by Rukhsana Ahmad

Generally, literature written by Pakistani women writers in English depicts women as victims of patriarchy, social and cultural oppression. Meanwhile, in recent times the short fiction is exploring new paradigms related to the psychological oppression of married women in Pakistan. The following paper selects the short story, ‘The Nightmare’ by Pakistani writer, Rukhsana Ahmad, where a housewife suffers from paranoia because of disconsolate marriage. Therefore, this research aims to study the causes of psychological disorders specifically paranoia among apparently happy housewives. Moreover, the causes and effects of repression and isolation on personality of women would be discussed from the psychoanalytic feminist perspective using the framework of Sigmund Freud (1973- 86) through the character of Fariha. Through the method of character analysis (Dobie, 2011) this paper concludes that the childhood experiences of repression are the reason for victim’s passiveness towards psychological oppression during adult life. This paper would also help in establishing the conclusion that women who suffer abuse in their childhood are more likely to face abuse in their adult lives, which becomes the cause of their psychological instability.

“I Shall Endeavor for Her Aims”: Women’s Alliances and Relational Figurations of Freedom

In oppressive cultures that marginalize various identity positions, a woman might find it difficult to imagine herself as autonomous or capable of self-definition. Forging alliances with other women offers opportunities for self-discovery, transformation, and autonomous agency. Considering Queen Elizabeth’s correspondence with Safiye Sultana and Phillip Massinger’s The Renegado, this essay argues that tropes of seeing, achieved either through material images or through vivid discursive descriptions, foster imaginative renderings of the possibilities of self-expression and agency. Both cases, one diplomatic and the other dramatic, demonstrate successful—even though temporary and politically motivated—alliances mediated through both patriarchal constraints and material markers of identity. Drawing on these epistolary and dramatic texts, this essay explores tropes of imaginative seeing, the materiality of identity, and physical spaces that enact women’s alliances invested in questions of women’s freedom across tributaries both political and dramatic.

Making Politics Visible: Discourses on Gender and Race in the Problematisation of Sex-Selective Abortion

This paper examines the problematisation of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in UK parliamentary debates on Fiona Bruce's Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill 2014–15 and on the subsequent proposed amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014–15. On the basis of close textual analysis, we argue that a discursive framing of SSA as a form of cultural oppression of minority women in need of protection underpinned Bruce's Bill; in contrast, by highlighting issues more commonly articulated in defence of women's reproductive rights, the second set of debates displaced this framing in favour of a broader understanding, drawing on postcolonial feminist critiques, of how socio-economic factors constrain all women in this regard. We argue that the problematisation of SSA explains the original cross-party support for, and subsequent defeat of, the policies proposed to restrict SSA. Our analysis also highlights the central role of ideology in the policy process, thus making politics visible in policymaking.

Making Tarefero Pride: The Collaborative Construction of Portable Photomurals for Farmworker Empowerment in Misiones, Argentina

ABSTRACTThis article draws on years of multisited ethnographic fieldwork in Misiones, Argentina to recount the collaborative construction of portable photomurals for farmworker empowerment. The murals depict work, life, and the fight for justice of the farmworkers, called tareferos, who harvest yerba mate, the tea that is Argentina’s most commonly consumed beverage. By making history and the culture of oppression a central focus, this study demonstrates how ethnographic research can support community organizing efforts through building the relationships necessary to forge collaborative, strength-based interventions. Such collaborations can bolster struggles against structural inequality and work to heal community psyches marred by historical trauma.

Neoliberalism and Accountability Failure in the Delivery of Services Affecting the Health of the Public.

Since the 1980s, the emergence of neoliberalism as a dominant government paradigm has led to increasing instances of accountability failure, resulting in significant injuries or death. Employing a grounded theory approach, accountability failure is defined and explored through analysis of 18 public inquiries and reports in the United Kingdom and Canada. The analysis reveals that the combination of a neoliberal policy paradigm and flawed regulation, governance, culture, and performance management inevitably led to accountability failure. Neoliberal policies have precipitated uncoordinated and underfunded regulatory regimes, an oppressive culture focused on financial efficiency at the expense of quality, self-serving and willfully blind governance, and underfunded and inadequate tools for measuring performance. The evidence suggests that organizations have not learned from each other within or between countries, revealing a pattern of accountability failure in which citizens are placed at risk in their communities and hospitals for preventable injury or death within an increasingly politicized government and leadership environment.

Income inequality not gender inequality positively covaries with female sexualization on social media

Publicly displayed, sexualized depictions of women have proliferated, enabled by new communication technologies, including the internet and mobile devices. These depictions are often claimed to be outcomes of a culture of gender inequality and female oppression, but, paradoxically, recent rises in sexualization are most notable in societies that have made strong progress toward gender parity. Few empirical tests of the relation between gender inequality and sexualization exist, and there are even fewer tests of alternative hypotheses. We examined aggregate patterns in 68,562 sexualized self-portrait photographs ("sexy selfies") shared publicly on Twitter and Instagram and their association with city-, county-, and cross-national indicators of gender inequality. We then investigated the association between sexy-selfie prevalence and income inequality, positing that sexualization-a marker of high female competition-is greater in environments in which incomes are unequal and people are preoccupied with relative social standing. Among 5,567 US cities and 1,622 US counties, areas with relatively more sexy selfies were more economically unequal but not more gender oppressive. A complementary pattern emerged cross-nationally (113 nations): Income inequality positively covaried with sexy-selfie prevalence, particularly within more developed nations. To externally validate our findings, we investigated and confirmed that economically unequal (but not gender-oppressive) areas in the United States also had greater aggregate sales in goods and services related to female physical appearance enhancement (beauty salons and women's clothing). Here, we provide an empirical understanding of what female sexualization reflects in societies and why it proliferates.

Black women’s bodies as reformers from the dungeons: The Reformation and womanism

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective.

Krytycznie o „wyjściu”

In multiculturalism, “exit”, or to be more precise, “right to exit” is very often thought of in terms of a condition of state’s non-interference in the minority groups. However popular, this account seems to be flawed with a number of controversial assumptions, questionable theoretical and practical implications and can lead to significant paradoxes. First of all, treating “exit” as a state’s non-interventionism condition also means that in fact representatives of minority groups should actually leave their communities in order to obtain all of the civil rights and liberties – be treated as “full”, not “partial” citizens. Various other problems connected with this account (i.a. the issue of general function of “right to exit” and civil rights and liberties or mutual relations between these two categories) presented and discussed in the paper justify a proposal of change of approach towards concept of “exit”. Either one should take really seriously the assumed normative character of it and construct a whole separate theory of “right to exit” from scratch, or maybe one should simply stop treating leaving one’s oppressive culture in terms of “right” or “freedom” and understand it only in descriptive manner.

Comparing the Effectiveness of an Online Human Diversity Course to Face-to-Face Instruction

ABSTRACTThis study expands the literature of online human diversity courses in social work by comparing the effectiveness of these courses to face-to-face instruction. To measure effectiveness, pre- and posttests were completed by 117 students. The instrument used measured awareness of and ability to recognize cultural diversity and oppression and the level of belief that our society is just. The findings suggest that online and face-to-face students showed an increase in their awareness of diversity and oppression issues with little to no significant difference between the two groups. Although not statistically significant, the online students’ belief in a just world decreased, whereas their face-to-face counterparts showed an increase, which was an unexpected finding. Implications for online social work classes are discussed.

Your body is our black box: Narrating nations in second-person fiction by Edna O’Brien and Jennifer Egan

Abstract For a century, the disorienting effects of second-person narration have seemed peculiarly well suited to representing the experiential confusions and political contradictions of inhabiting a female body in times of national crisis. This essay examines such effects in Edna O’Brien’s A pagan place and Jennifer Egan’s “Black box,” very different narratives that similarly exploit the deictic and ontological uncertainties of second-person address. Second person in O’Brien’s novel participates in its depiction of a sexually naïve rural Irish girl confronting the conflicting pressures of enforced chastity and reproductive futurism in the name of the Irish State. Emphasis is placed on the narrative’s unusual use of past-tense second-person narration and its intriguing overlap with O’Brien’s nonfictional writings. In Egan’s story, the protean and multivocal second person suggests a sinister fusion of individual and governmental agency, effected through the protagonist’s cybernetically-enhanced body. The result is a deceptively simple critique of post-9/11 American foreign policy as an extension of paternalism and patriarchy in the domestic sphere. The patterns investigated in this paper shed light on other recent uses of the second person in other experimental narratives concerned with identity, self-formation among disenfranchised individuals, and resistance to political and cultural oppression.

Constitutionalism and Cultural Identity as Revolutionary Concepts in German Political Radicalism, 1806–1819: the Case of Karl Follen

The aim of this essay is to investigate the concepts of cultural identity and national sovereignty as they emerge in radical German nationalism after 1806 in relation to French revolutionary ideas and to reconstruct a radical revolutionary, i.e. a ‘French Revolution’, context for the idea of German national unity. Such a ‘French Revolution’ context questions the view that the ‘Teutomania’ emerging in the context of the Wars of Liberation and linked to German national liberation can only be interpreted as the precursor to chauvinist German nationalism of later periods. The investigation focuses on the political ideas and militancy of Karl Follen (1796–1840) as they found expression in his outline of an all-German constitution and his martial poetry. It delineates the overlap, and the differences, between Follen's constitutional outline and the French republican constitution of 1793, and asks whether the differences, which derive from a greater focus on cultural specificity in Follen's constitution, could be due to the German need for imaginative nation-building under conditions perceived as cultural and political oppression. The essay discusses this idea by exploring the pronounced similarity between the approaches to national liberation taken by Follen and Frantz Fanon. Both Follen and Fanon insist that a strong cultural identity linked to uncompromising militancy are necessary for national and social liberation to succeed.

“Anonymous Collectivity” and “Sly Civility”: Postcolonial Defiance in a Satirical Short Story by Aziz Nesin

Until a few years ago, Turkey was usually seen as irrelevant to colonial studies owing to its non-colonial status. More recently, however, there has been a more flexible approach to considering the possibility of studying modern Turkey under the heading of postcolonial studies. By acknowledging the socio-political similarities between Turkey and colonized countries, the current study employs a postcolonial framework to analyze a short story by a Turkish author. In doing so, Aziz Nesin’s “Don’t you have any Donkeys in your Country?” is studied to show how Nesin contributes to the political and socio-economic status of Modern Turkey and the highlighted controversy over the applicability of postcolonial perspectives to the Turkish context. The present study draws upon Albert Memmi’s notion of “anonymous collectivity” and Homi K. Bhabha’s “sly civility” as postcolonial means of indirect defiance, to identify the ways in which the narrative contributes to its contemporary milieu. We argue that throughout the story Nesin satirizes the so-called expert colonizer for his fundamentally false assumption about the naivete of the colonized nation. The story reflects that although the Turkish peasant has unconsciously internalized the colonialist ideology of “anonymous collectivity,” the very same indirect means of defiance is consciously used by the peasant to overcome inequality and white supremacy in the sphere of selling Turkish carpets as one of the most prestigious products to the Western world. This study contributes to the literature on postcolonialism, first by raising the possibility of including modern Turkey in postcolonial studies, and then by examining Nesin’s response towards the postcolonial-like ideology whereby it is concluded that oppression creates contradictions in the ostensible colonized/colonizer, impairing and reversing both groups’ identity and humanity. We also conclude that the narrative reverses the dominant ideologies of clever and knowledgeable Americans by giving voice to a subaltern Turkish peasant whose goal is to resist the enduring effects of economic and cultural oppression.

Violence as a health disparity: Adolescents' perceptions of violence depicted through photovoice.

Violence is a public health issue that disproportionately affects adolescents from historically marginalized communities. In response to growing concerns of local violence, our community-academic partnership explored adolescents' perspectives about violence, including perceptions of its causes, consequences, and potential solutions. Ten adolescents participated in a 12-week photovoice project. They received training in basic research methodologies, documented representations of violence through digital photography and creative writing, engaged in empowerment-based photo-discussions, and presented their work to influential advocates in a community forum. Adolescents and staff conducted a thematic analysis of photographs and narratives from which 10 themes emerged across 3 domains: a culture of violence and oppression, structural violence, and mental and physical health. Adolescents presented their work to community stakeholders in a public forum to foster additional discussions regarding violence in the community. This photovoice project yielded rich qualitative insight into adolescents' experiences with and perceptions of violence.

Repression, Isolation, and Paranoia: A Psychoanalytic Feminist Study of ‘The Nightmare’ by Rukhsana Ahmad

Generally, literature written by Pakistani women writers in English depicts women as victims of patriarchy, social and cultural oppression. Meanwhile, in recent times the short fiction is exploring new paradigms related to the psychological oppression of married women in Pakistan. The following paper selects the short story, ‘The Nightmare’ by Pakistani writer, Rukhsana Ahmad, where a housewife suffers from paranoia because of disconsolate marriage. Therefore, this research aims to study the causes of psychological disorders specifically paranoia among apparently happy housewives. Moreover, the causes and effects of repression and isolation on personality of women would be discussed from the psychoanalytic feminist perspective using the framework of Sigmund Freud (1973- 86) through the character of Fariha. Through the method of character analysis (Dobie, 2011) this paper concludes that the childhood experiences of repression are the reason for victim’s passiveness towards psychological oppression during adult life. This paper would also help in establishing the conclusion that women who suffer abuse in their childhood are more likely to face abuse in their adult lives, which becomes the cause of their psychological instability.