Denial Of Agency Research Articles

Are propagandists combatants? Analysing the ethical status of propagandists in warfare

Abstract Belligerents increasingly rely on media manipulation, propaganda, and communication to attain strategic advantages in conflict. Given the civilian propagandists’ clear role in creating tactical or strategic advantages for one side in the conflict, should these propagandists be considered combatants, and can they therefore be legitimately targeted because of their activities? This article overcomes traditional binary frameworks of distinction to argue that propagandists are indirectly participating civilians, i.e. participants who cannot be intentionally or directly killed in conflict. Because of their activities, propagandists, it argues, are liable to less-than-lethal harm, of which it identifies three types (destruction of property, privation of liberty, isolation). The article then proposes a necessary criterion – necessity – to decide if less-than-lethal harm is warranted against propagandists. It then creates four new criteria – denial of agency, falsehood, influence, gratification – to serve as assessment criteria able to decide what degree of harm a propagandist may maximally face. In making this argument, the article contributes to just war literature by proposing a novel way to evaluate the ethical status of a highly diverse, yet undoubtedly influential, category of war participants: those who undertake the ‘media battle’, outside of the military.

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex's Risk Analysis.

Visuals, including photographs and data visualizations, play a crucial role in the politics of EU border security, both as an internal governance tool (e.g. in surveillance) and as an external means of communication/representation (e.g. in photojournalism). Combining scholarship on photographic representations of migration with literature on surveillance technologies and data visualizations, we argue that these visuals interact to reproduce gendered and racialized meanings of migration and border security. Using a feminist postcolonial lens, we develop an intervisual framework for studying how processes of gendering and racialization render subjects, practices and spaces knowable at the intersection between these visuals. We apply this framework to a case study of Frontex's Risk Analysis Reports (2010-2021) and demonstrate how it is applicable to other security institutions. The intervisual analysis reveals how the migrant Other and (white) European are visually reproduced through: 1) the (in)visibilization of bodies; 2) the ascription and denial of agency; and 3) the spatialization of borders as 'frontier imaginings' that oscillate between fortification and expansionism. The intersectional co-constitution of gender and race, we conclude, is central to the visual politics of Frontex, contributing to problematizing migrants and migration and legitimizing violent border practices.

Robots as Malevolent Moral Agents: Harmful Behavior Results in Dehumanization, Not Anthropomorphism

A robot's decision to harm a person is sometimes considered to be the ultimate proof of it gaining a human-like mind. Here, we contrasted predictions about attribution of mental capacities from moral typecasting theory, with the denial of agency from dehumanization literature. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated mind perception for intentionally and accidentally harmful robotic agents based on text and image vignettes. Experiment 3 disambiguated agent intention (malevolent and benevolent), and additionally varied the type of agent (robotic and human) using short computer-generated animations. Harmful robotic agents were consistently imbued with mental states to a lower degree than benevolent agents, supporting the dehumanization account. Further results revealed that a human moral patient appeared to suffer less when depicted with a robotic agent than with another human. The findings suggest that future robots may become subject to human-like dehumanization mechanisms, which challenges the established beliefs about anthropomorphism in the domain of moral interactions.

Bollywood’s Angromance: Toxic Masculinity and Male Angst in Tere Naam and Kabir Singh

Abstract The article draws on specific theories of hegemonic masculinity through the performances of toxic masculinity to conceptualize “angromance” (our term for “angry romance”) in recent mainstream Hindi cinema. It analyzes seminal discourses associated with sadomasochistic heroes in commercially successful Bollywood films Tere Naam (“In Your Name,” Satish Kaushik, 2003), and Kabir Singh (Sandeep Reddy Vanga, 2019). The attempt is to understand how these films, separated by nearly two decades, deploy standard conceits of Bollywood, which tend to normalize problematic and hypermasculine traits. The protagonists’ metamorphosis into tragic heroes during the course of the narrative also reinforces the denial of agency of the female protagonists. Such transformation invokes compassion toward the tragic hero, and is marked by a shift in his physical appearance, leading toward self-destruction, bordering on masochism. This performance of angst was manifested in the character of Radhe from Tere Naam and his styling through the course of the film. In the case of Kabir Singh, the leading man’s portrayal as tragic hero was remarkable for his unkempt looks, alcoholism, substance abuse, and increasingly misogynistic attitude. Quite evidently, both narratives draw upon characteristics from traditional portrayals of obsessive love on Bollywood’s silverscreen. In recent times, representations of misogyny and sexism in popular culture have received a backlash, particularly after the exponential rise in crimes against women. Our attempt is to comprehend how Bollywood assembles various masculinities to validate the performance of angromance and, subsequently, the limitations of such masculinities.

“Cultured Women” do not act in films: Tracing Notions of Female Stardom in Bombay Cinema (1930s–1950s)

Women were absent from the archives and rendered as invisible within the film business that was changing the urban landscape of Bombay city in the 1930s through talkies. Questions were raised about female sexuality and respectability primarily due to a morality discourse closely associated with women acting in films. Tension, moral panic and distress had emerged from the dominant stigma regarding films making industries being a heterosexual and hybrid workspace. Moreover, an economy that capitalizes on voyeuristic pleasures of its male audience by objectifying women’s bodies. So, even though it offered women higher salaries unlike other professions, it was deemed as “dangerous” for women. Therefore, “cultured women”, essentially from the upper class, were discouraged from being a part of the studio film industry situated in the cosmopolitan Bombay city. Taking forward Neepa Majumdar’s (2009) dialogue on the denial of agency to women in Indian cinema, this paper traces the incorporation of feminist agenda into film making. This paper is limited to studying the biographical, autobiographical details and picturization of three eminent actresses: Nargis, Kanan Devi and Durga Khote. Further, I would elaborate on the struggles undertaken by them and the roles they played in films in order to deconstruct the notion of female stardom and an “ideal Indian woman” picturized in Bollywood from the 1930s–1950s. This period holds relevance in film historiography due to the ideological construction of female stardom that had its pros and cons which I would be discussing in depth through the paper.

Negotiating the Maximum-Security Offender Identity: Experiences From Incarcerated Women.

The representation of women classified as maximum-security offenders continues to be a challenge due to paucity of research regarding their experiences. Generally, their stories are masked under the experiences of the other categories of incarcerated women. Drawing from a larger study conducted with incarcerated women in a South African correctional centre in Johannesburg, in this article I provide a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews on the lived experiences of negotiating the maximum-security offender identity by 13 women. The results suggest that the maximum-security offender identity is associated with rejection, dehumanisation, denial of agency, restricted movement, and labelling. The article also highlights the significance of providing agency to incarcerated women in deconstructing stereotypes that represent them as angry and uneducated with no value to society. A more balanced repositioning of their stories emerges as they get an opportunity to construct their own experiences.

Why the Elective Caesarean Lottery is Ethically Impermissible

In the United Kingdom the law and medical guidance is supportive of women making choices in childbirth. NICE guidelines are explicit that a competent woman’s informed request for MRCS (elective caesarean in the absence of any clinical indications) should be respected. However, in reality pregnant women are routinely denied MRCS. In this paper I consider whether there is sufficient justification for restricting MRCS. The physical and emotive significance of childbirth as an event in a woman’s life cannot be understated. It is, therefore, concerning that women are having their wishes ignored, and we must ascertain whether the denial of agency is justifiable. To answer this question I first demonstrate that access to MRCS is a lottery in the UK. Second, I argue that there is nothing unique about pregnancy that displaces the ethical norm of respecting patents’ sufficiently autonomous choices. Thus, the starting presumption is that all informed choices regarding MRCS should be respected. To ascertain whether any restriction of MRCS is justifiable the burden of proof must be placed on those who argue that MRCS is ethically impermissible. I argue that the most common justifications in the literature against MRCS are insufficient to displace the presumption in favour of autonomous choice in childbirth. I conclude that MRCS should be available to pregnant women, and we must strive to reduce the lottery in access to choice.

Vulnerability and child sexual exploitation: Towards an approach grounded in life experiences

As child sexual exploitation (CSE) has risen towards the top of the UK’s political agenda, the concept of vulnerability has become a central frame through which to understand and address the issue. This article analyses problems with the concept of vulnerability as it is commonly understood in relation to CSE, taking first steps towards developing an empirically-grounded account of the notion which is more sensitive to the lived realities of victimhood for sexually exploited young people. Drawing on data from participatory qualitative research into life stories of ‘moving on’ from CSE in a large Northern city in England, the article illustrates how vulnerability is shaped through individual factors, situational dynamics and structural forces, connected by human agency through time. It argues that to respond effectively to vulnerability within the field of CSE, we need to move beyond discussion of ‘risk factors’ and denial of agency, towards an understanding of intersectional social divisions, social marginality, ‘critical moments’ and how these shape the investments and actions of vulnerable young people.

Race, Battlefield 1 and the White Mythic Space of the First World War

The popular perception of the First World War has remained an inherently white mythic space in which white men fight against other white men and where minorities, when and if they are featured, are given an anonymous secondary role and are subject to the will and motivation of their white heroic leaders. This article will be considering the white mythic space of the First World War by focusing on the video game Battlefield 1 (2016) and investigating the backlash by players on online message boards against the inclusion of soldiers of color in the game’s multiplayer features. In the online discourse, these players diminish the role that minorities played in the First World War and although the presence of minorities in the historical First World War is to a minor extent acknowledged, their space in the video game is nonetheless denied. I argue that this backlash is based on a rejection of the inclusive collective memory as portrayed in Battlefield 1, supported by racist arguments against the backdrop of the white mythic space of the First World War and that their rejection of the presence of minorities in Battlefield 1 can be constructed as a continuation of the denial of agency for soldiers of color by white individuals that took place during the First World War and the postwar period.

Global Consciousness in Art Education: Utility and Problematics of Curriculum Development within a Critical Postmodern Relational Praxis

When we, as practitioners of art education, challenge ourselves to reflect on established views about and beyond local, regional, and national history and knowledge and how these views have necessarily created boundaries, we might think of the utility and limitations of a critical postmodern relational framework. This type of framework allows for the possibilities of thinking through critical and postmodern theories as a starting point for examining and understanding cultures affected by colonial structures, which has resulted in the denial of agency and a flattening of narratives. Often, these “bedrock” views, in their simplistic, one-dimensional, and reductive nature, cast an “othering” on cultures lesser-known in contemporary art education. Additionally, this framework exposes the limitation of Western critical thought in attempting to understand and center the aesthetic practices of non-Western societies. To consider how we might address these views within our teaching, research, and art-making is no small task. In this paper, I present a look at how an attempt at designing a curriculum and art education project for a Secondary Methods art education course offered the potential to critically reflect on the challenges of how Western patterns of thought and practice re-inscribe a colonialist mindset and privilege.

Black Space and Trauma Ruins

This text compares two artistic works and two ways of playing with leftovers to ask how they perform in those two seemingly different contexts. It presents two models of thinking about the relationship between history and present day mediated by leftovers, remains and ruins proposing “leftovers theory” in relation to famous Bill Brown's “Thing theory”.Black space is a term used by American artist Theaster Gates in reference to places abandoned by their inhabitants due to process of gentrification. In one of most well-known Gates’ works, band called The Black Monks of Missippi performs in the decommissioned St Laurence church in Chicago. In this instance, black space becomes a model for affirmation of the black identity described by famous philosopher Fred Moten as nothingness. The material traces, ruins, leftovers of capitalism become a space of something that in Moten work is called non-performance: specific ability to constitute the identity on the denial of agency. Blackness is always fragmented; it has a structure of leftovers that deny to become new building, new better reality.On the other side of the world Polish artist Robert Kuśmirowski reconstructed ruins that never existed. His Traumagutstrasse was site-specific work produced for gallery belonging to Warsaw Academy of Fine Art. In Polish context, the relation between body, ruin and leftovers is almost always, even if not directly, marked by the experience of II World War. In Kuśmirowski's body of work Marianne Hirsches postmemory reveals its performative potential: it is a field of “scriptive things” directing our bodies and motions to re-enact those missing in the ruins. Kuśmirowski's leftovers are a way to make history present and to make present time already historical.In the end leftovers can be understood as performative things, becoming material expression of time.

Restricted reproductive rights and risky sexual behaviour: How political disenfranchisement relates to women's sense of control, well-being and sexual health.

Few studies have investigated the role of disenfranchisement and denial of agency in women's sexual health. To address this, a cross-sectional study of disenfranchisement, control (general and reproductive control) and health was conducted in Ireland, where abortion is severely restricted. Multiple mediation models ( N = 513 women) indicated that general but not reproductive control mediates the association between disenfranchisement and psychological well-being. Additionally, serial mediation shows disenfranchisement is associated with lower sense of control, which is linked to poorer well-being and risky sexual behaviour. Disenfranchisement arising from socio-political contexts may have important implications for women's sexual health.

From Attire to Assault: Clothing, Objectification, and De-humanization – A Possible Prelude to Sexual Violence?

In the context of objectification and violence, little attention has been paid to the perception neuroscience of how the human brain perceives bodies and objectifies them. Various studies point to how external cues such as appearance and attire could play a key role in encouraging objectification, dehumanization and the denial of agency. Reviewing new experimental findings across several areas of research, it seems that common threads run through issues of clothing, sexual objectification, body perception, dehumanization, and assault. Collating findings from several different lines of research, this article reviews additional evidence from cognitive and neural dynamics of person perception (body and face perception processes) that predict downstream social behavior. Specifically, new findings demonstrate cognitive processing of sexualized female bodies as object-like, a crucial aspect of dehumanized percept devoid of agency and personhood. Sexual violence is a consequence of a dehumanized perception of female bodies that aggressors acquire through their exposure and interpretation of objectified body images. Integrating these findings and identifying triggers for sexual violence may help develop remedial measures and inform law enforcement processes and policy makers alike.

Perception of mind and dehumanization: Human, animal, or machine?

Dehumanization is reached through several approaches, including the attribute-based model of mind perception and the metaphor-based model of dehumanization. We performed two studies to find different (de)humanized images for three targets: Professional people, Evil people, and Lowest of the low. In Study 1, we examined dimensions of mind, expecting the last two categories to be dehumanized through denial of agency (Lowest of the low) or experience (Evil people), compared with humanized targets (Professional people). Study 2 aimed to distinguish these targets using metaphors. We predicted that Evil and Lowest of the low targets would suffer mechanistic and animalistic dehumanization, respectively; our predictions were confirmed, but the metaphor-based model nuanced these results: animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization were shown as overlapping rather than independent. Evil persons were perceived as "killing machines" and "predators." Finally, Lowest of the low were not animalized but considered human beings. We discuss possible interpretations.

(Un)reasonable Doubt: A "Narrative Immunity" for Footballers against Sexual Assault Allegations

(Un)reasonable Doubt: A "Narrative Immunity" for Footballers against Sexual Assault Allegations

The JCMS Annual Lecture: The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis and EMU: A Failing State in a Skewed Regime*

The Greek sovereign debt crisis of 2010 exposed the weaknesses of governance of both the ‘euro area’ and of Greece. Successive governments in Athens had failed to overcome endemic problems of low competitiveness, trade and investment imbalances, and fiscal mismanagement placing the economy in a vulnerable international position. Once the market crisis erupted, the European Union's Council of Ministers and the European Central Bank failed to provide a timely and effective response. The implications are threefold: the constraints on domestic reform proved immutable to EU stimuli; the ‘euro’ is more vulnerable to crisis than previously acknowledged; and the early discussion on ‘euro’ governance reform suggests that its underlying philosophy has not shifted significantly towards more effective ‘economic governance’. This article explores the antecedents and management of the crisis and assesses the outcome. At the EU level, a paradox was evident in the denial of agency and resources that might limit the obligation of states to rescue an errant peer. Domestically, within Greece, the unprecedented external monitoring and policing of its economy – though matched by some initial successes – raises in the longer term sensitive issues of legitimacy and governability, with uncertain prospects for avoiding further crises.

Trust, disruption and responsibility in accounts of injecting equipment sharing and hepatitis C risk

Accounts of health-related risk behaviour are generated in a social context of risk acceptability and moral responsibility. Drawing upon qualitative semi-structured interviews with injecting drug users (IDUs) in Belgrade, Serbia (n = 67) and Podgorica and Bar, Montenegro (n = 32), we explore drug injectors' accounts of sharing injecting equipment, and ‘discriminative’ and ‘exceptional’ sharing specifically, alongside accounts of hepatitis C risk. We find that accounts emphasize discriminative and exceptional sharing as acceptable given the circumstances, with normative syringe sharing presented as unacceptable and irresponsible. Two key themes emerged in descriptions of discriminative and exceptional sharing: ‘trust’ based in social relations, ensuring that sharing took place under ‘reduced risk’ conditions; and ‘disruptions’ to safety routine brought about by accidents, unexpected events, drug withdrawal and the environment. In accounts of environmental disruption, a lack of trust (and blame) was identified in relation to pharmacies and police. Whereas trust accounts justified sharing as reduced risk, disruption accounts accepted risk opportunity but appealed to a denial of agency. In addition, accounts portrayed a general context of risk and uncertainty in relation to hepatitis C, characterized by a lack of trust in knowledge about others' disclosed antibody status, a lack of faith in expert helping systems and confusion about HCV transmission.

Accounting for risk and responsibility associated with smoking among mothers of children with respiratory illness

Contemporary public health discourses construct individuals as rational, responsible and knowledgeable, and thus promote a self-controlled prudent response to risk. In the context of evidence emphasising risks to children's health associated with passive smoking, mothers of children with respiratory illness may knowingly place their children at increased risk should they continue to smoke in their presence. Drawing on an analysis of depth qualitative interview accounts with mothers who smoke and whose young child was recently admitted to hospital with respiratory illness, this study describes mothers' constructions of risk and responsibility associated with their smoking. Three forms of accounting style were identified: 'stories of acceptability'; 'denial of agency'; and 'reflections of guilt'. 'Stories of acceptability' either positioned the risk of passive smoking as contained and controlled to an acceptable level, or disputed the level of risk that passive smoke posed. 'Denial of agency' drew on discourses of addiction and shared responsibility to exonerate the mother of responsibility or blame. 'Reflections of guilt' were presented when contradictions arose within accounts, particularly in relation to discussions of agency and rationality in decision-making. The study illustrates how constructions of moral responsibility, especially in relation to being a 'good mother', framed mothers' accounts of smoking in the face of risk. The study concludes that far greater consideration be given to the way in which mothers rationalise their smoking to others if paediatric doctors are to foster risk reduction practices associated with passive smoking more effectively.