Dimensions Of Power Relations Research Articles

A Watchdog That No Longer Barks: Role Performance of Investigative Journalism in China in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT This article examines the practices of investigative journalism in China in changing times. It does so by focusing on the case study of Southern Metropolitan Daily (SMD), a well-known newspaper in China which built its name on investigative journalism. The aim is to understand how the changing social conditions have shaped investigative journalism and transformed the role performance of investigative journalists. Drawing on data from multiple sources, including archival research, in-depth interviews, and news content analysis, the study found that under a trio of pressures: technological disruption, economic downturn and most importantly tightened political control, the media have been repositioning and reorienting themselves in relation to power. Investigative journalism, although it still retains the name, has shifted to trumpeting the value of constructiveness rather than criticism. This study contributes to the ongoing debates on journalistic role performance by showing how the watchdog and facilitator roles are combined in the practice of Chinese investigative journalists in changing times. It reaffirms the complex cooccurrence of journalistic roles and adds insights into the possibility of roles overlapping, not only across different dimensions but within the same dimension of power relations.

Ageing, embodiment and datafication: Dynamics of power in digital health and care technologies

As a growing body of work has documented, digital technologies are central to the imagining of aging futures. In this study, we offer a critical, theoretical framework for exploring the dynamics of power related to the technological tracking, measuring, and managing of aging bodies at the heart of these imaginaries. Drawing on critical gerontology, feminist technoscience, sociology of the body, and socio-gerontechnology, we identify three dimensions of power relations where the designs, operations, scripts, and materialities of technological innovation implicate asymmetrical relationships of control and intervention: (1) aging bodies and the power of numbers, (2) aging spaces and the power of surveillance, and (3) age care economies and gendered power relations. While technological care for older individuals has been promoted as a cost-effective way to enhance independence, security, and health, we argue that such optimistic perspectives may obscure the realities of social inequality, agist bias, and exploitative gendered care labour.

Drawing The Boundaries Of Economic Sociology: A Critical Assessment

It can be argued that the core of the subfield of new economic sociology (NES) is consisted of two inter-related yet distinct foundational criticisms by the sociologists to mainstream economics: i) that its commitment to rational choice leads to an “under-socialized” concept of the agent; and ii) that it can correct the mainstream understanding of market affairs, if the concept of “embeddedness” is included in the analysis. In this paper, I will argue that these dual criticisms are insufficient, due to; first, even in the economics discipline itself, such a reconceptualization of the agent had already been posed long before the NES scholars even formulated their criticisms, and thus such criticisms had already been absorbed by the conventional economic thinking as exceptions to the rule; and second, the introduction of the concept of “embeddedness” by the NES cannot overturn neoclassical economics, since the NES scholars hardly differ from the heterodox-minded economists as both focus merely on the interpersonal and situational (while largely dismissing the structural) dimensions of power relations.

A Análise Foucaultiana do Discurso e sua Utilização em Pesquisa Etnográfica

RESUMO O artigo discute alguns conceitos fundamentais da arqueologia proposta por Michel Foucault como estratégia de análise da dimensão discursiva da realidade para, na sequência, apresentar a forma como esse modo de análise do discurso foi utilizado em uma pesquisa etnográfica concreta. Demarca-se a especificidade da análise foucaultiana do discurso em relação a outros tipos possíveis, a partir da discussão sumária dos principais resultados alcançados pela pesquisa. O objetivo é elucidar a pertinência do uso da AD em pesquisas qualitativas, especialmente a etnográfica. Deixa-se sugerida a necessidade de se abarcar na análise a dimensão genealógica das relações de poder envolvidas em toda prática discursiva.

River histories: a thematic review

This review discusses contemporary river history literature of the past two decades. It presents an introduction to the evolution of river history literature and discusses its relation to the scholarly field of environmental history. The review argues that the study of river histories is increasingly sophisticated methodologically, particularly in interdisciplinary breadth and comparative approaches. This article concentrates on selected studies of European and North American rivers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and discusses the recent literature on river histories within three thematic frames. First, this paper discusses the spatial dimensions and different spatial scales of river histories, especially rivers as connectors and dividers. The second theme presents three different types of power relations in human–river interaction. Third, this paper will touch upon the temporal questions of river biographies. This review will pay special attention to the growing literature addressing the attempts to re-establish environmentally sound human–riverine relationships and improve the status of rivers through restorative activities. This article shows that a thematic analysis of contemporary river history offers a fruitful frame to understand the complex and intertwined nature of the temporal, spatial, and power-related dimensions in the narratives.

Comment on: "The reproducibility of a new power mapping instrument based on the phase shifting schlieren method for the measurement of spherical and toric contact lenses"

Abstract Purpose To assess a new method of power measurement of soft and rigid contact lenses. The method is the phase shifting schlieren method, as embodied in the Nimo TR1504 instrument. Materials and methods Three Nimo TR1504 instruments were used to measure the power related dimensions of: (a) a range of custom toric rigid lenses; (b) a range of commercially available spherical hydrogel lenses; and (c) a commercially available range of toric silicone hydrogel lenses. The measurements were carried out using a standard ISO ring test protocol where independent tests were carried out under conditions of reproducibility. The analysis of the measurements was carried out using ISO methods which enabled the reproducibility standard deviation, SR, of the method to be calculated. Results The results show that this new method has SR of 0.048D for spherical soft (hydrogel) lenses. This means the back vertex power of spherical soft lenses having a power in the range ±10.0D can be determined to current ISO product tolerances with a single measurement. The method has SR of 0.059D for sphere power and 0.093D for cylinder power for toric soft lenses having powers in the range ±10.0D and cylinder powers in the range ±2.0D. A single measurement will determine sphere power to current ISO tolerance limits with 95% confidence while two measurements are required to determine the cylinder power to the same confidence level.

Deaf perspectives on communicative practices in South Africa: institutional language policies in educational settings

This article reports on a study into communicative practices in educational settings by members of the South African Deaf community. The data contain interviews of miscellaneous South African Deaf people who were interviewed through South African Sign Language (SASL) by Deaf SASL users who received a short training on interview simulation. From the narratives a general prevalence of communicative barriers in educational settings emerges. Similar to many other Deaf communities, Deaf identities appear to be shaped by means of alienation from the hearing community and solidarity among the Deaf community (to a certain extent even across ethnic boundaries). The communication barriers lead to different dimensions of power relations. Moreover, certain educational practices extend beyond the school premises and influence family practices. What also emerged from the South African data were issues of stigmatization of signing and complex issues of communication in South Africa's multilingual society. Linguistic ethnography has proven a very productive methodology as it has yielded interesting “counter-narratives” (i.e., narratives from within the Deaf community that give a different picture than the beliefs put forward within a hearing hegemony) by means of which Deaf South Africans get “a voice” in mainstream society.

Transcultural Medicine: A Multi-Sited Ethnography on the Scientific-Industrial Networking of Korean Medicine

Through a multi-sited ethnography of three different types of organization—a traditional medical clinic, two laboratories, and a biotech company—this article examines how Korean medicine (KM) scientizes, globalizes, and industrializes its clinical knowledge. By tracing the complex networking process among multiple places, I aim to understand how KM reinvents its knowledge, identity, and boundaries in a global situation. In particular, I pay attention to how this process involves multiple dimensions of power relations, economic interests, and scientific authorities. This article concludes that heterogeneous and unequal encounters between KM, science, and industry lead to simultaneous productions of new culture and power without reducing them to a single logic or center in a global age.