Instrument Of Domination Research Articles

The Stars that Spring from Bastardising: Wise Children Go for Shakespeare

Angela Carter's last novel, Wise Children (1991), critically examines traditional concepts of family and culture and reveals how they function as instruments of domination and exclusion. Relying on notions of legitimate vs. illegitimate and ‘high’ vs. ‘low’, both concepts are used to uphold an existing hierarchy. In a close reading, this essay analyses how Carter's novel deconstructs these binary oppositions, replacing them with less exclusive conceptions of family and culture. Allegorically applying them to Britain as a whole, the novel promotes a vision of a non-hierarchical, pluralistic society. In revealing how binary oppositions and hierarchies are constructs propagated by those in power, Wise Children pursues an agenda similar to that of many postmodern and postcolonial theoretical texts, which might conveniently have been taken as a starting point for the discussion. This essay, however, eschewing the usual approach of mapping literature onto a chosen theoretical background, gives precedence to the fictional text, treating it as an argument in its own right. Understood not as an illustration of, but as a complement to theory, fiction is regarded as an effective means of intellectual inquiry which may illuminate social and political issues from an independent and rewarding perspective.

Language, Education and Development: Case Studies from the Southern Contexts

In many Southern countries, there are multiple and conflicting perspectives regarding the central role of language, particularly in relation to educational and developmental issues. A great number of multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic Southern countries are using 'English' or some other dominant tongue as their only 'official', and/or 'national' language. Can English function as 'the national tongue' of once-colonised nations? What would be some educational, psychological, and developmental ramifications of monolingualism for multilingual societies? This paper will explore these and other language-related issues with some concrete examples from the Ghanaian, Iranian, and other cases. An interrogation of the dominant status of English in Ghana will shed light on notions of 'linguistic neutrality', 'socio-cognitive development', and 'educational attainment' of students in the light of the neglect of indigenous Ghanaian languages. In similar vein, an examination of the dominant role of Farsi in Iran will highlight the role of language as an instrument of power, oppression, domination and assimilation. It will also show the complicity of the education system in both the maintenance and reproduction of hegemonic systems.

Assessment of thinking style preferences and language proficiency for South African students whose native languages differ.

The language proficiency of first-year students at the University of Pretoria (56 men and 59 women, M age=19.40 yr., SD=.80, range from 18.00 to 20.70) was assessed by means of the English Language Skills Assessment. More than one-third of the students did not show proficiency at Grade 10, as expected. This language assessment was not correlated with academic achievement equally well for students in a group. The diversity of thinking style preferences of the students enrolled in a language development course was also assessed on the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Scores indicated a range of thinking style preferences but the group's overall mean scores represented detail-oriented and feeling-based modes of thinking processes. These preferences were correlated with academic achievement and learning of languages. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that thinking styles could be a focus of educational strategies in South Africa, using the perspective that qualitatively different approaches to teaching might be associated with students' qualitatively different approaches to learning.

The embodiment of inequality: AIDS as a social condition and the historical experience in South Africa

The embodiment of inequality: AIDS as a social condition and the historical experience in South Africa

Bilinguals’ creativity: Patricia Grace and Maori cultural context

Fiction written by Pacific islanders began to emerge on the literary scene about 1970 and began to overwrite the perspectives and stereotypes that had characterized colonial narratives set in the Pacific written prior to that time. Pacific island writers adapted the Standard English code to create a new English with which to express their own cultures and identities in a language and a point of view different than those used by their colonizers. This writing adapts the Standard English code by incorporating such elements as untranslated vocabulary from indigenous languages and discourse elements from a pre–colonial oral tradition that include repetition, eulogy, and oratory. Important works of fiction by NZ Maori Patricia Grace –Cousins (1992) and Baby No–Eyes (1998) – exploit her innovations in language and the narrative structures of Standard English in order to tell her stories in the way that the older Maori people had of telling a story, a way where the beginning is not the beginning and the end is not the end. Grace celebrates difference and contests essentializing identities and social constructions of reality by creating powerful images of post–coloniality. Her work stands among the best fiction coming out of the Pacific for its power to transform one instrument of colonial domination into an instrument of creativity and liberation.

“War is Over! If You Want It”

“War is Over! If You Want It”

First Results with Ablating Superficial Cell Layers of the Porcine Vocal Fold Using a Femtosecond Laser

Summary Most of benign, precancerous and malignant epithelial lesions in the human endolarynx, especially the vocal fold require a highly precise and controllable therapy, providing an effective ablation of injured tissue under functional preservation of adjacent structures. The dominant instrument currently used in clinical laser surgery is the CO 2 laser. However, CO 2 laser therapies in the endolarynx may result in severe postoperative risks like impairment of the vocal fold and voice quality. The femtosecond (fs) lasers available today are mainly characterized by extreme short pulses ranging from about 10 fs (10 −14 s) to 1 ps (10 −12 s) and single pulse powers in the range of gigawatts (10 9 W) to terawatts (10 12 W). Thus a fs laser enables the exact ablation of cells or superficial cell layers in target tissue by inducing microplasms during nonlinear absorption processes directly on the target. This process minimizes thermal and mechanical stress into surrounding tissues (“cold ablation”). In this basic study we tried to ablate small volumes of cells from a highly sensitive tissue using an experimental fs laser system without producing secondary damages in the periphery of the lased area. The vocal folds of a porcine larynx were used as a tissue model. First results showed that minimal ablation depths below 200 μm were achieved when a 350 μJ pulse energy and a scan rate of 1mm/s were applied. No defects were observed in the structures beneath the ablated area. Therefore, fs lasers may be suitable for the therapy of superficial small-volume lesions in the endolarynx. This has to be validated in further preclinical studies.

Le français en Afrique Occidentale Française

French Language in Western French Africa. Linguistic Construction, Representations and Colonial Dominance. This paper offers a reflection on the French language in the Western African colonies based on the cultural history and the history of representations. The main point of the exposition is focused on the linguistic production popularized by a specific form of press and littérature, i.e. the French spoken by Colonial Troupes. Through a great variety of sources, the authors show how this «language» turned to be one of the main instruments of French domination in Africa. They show also that the French native soldier has been partly «invented» as the caricature shows, and analyse the sense of the general contempt attached to this language, both in the French and African representations. This article illustrates ultimately the apprenticeship of the colonizer's idiom at the colonial school and the richness of the linguistic creativity exclusive to the African French language.

Equality and/or Difference: Real Problems, False Dilemmas

The opposition between these two terms is so frequently repeated and, above all, so frequently serves as the ideological expression of conflicts of interests or of civilization that we must begin by clarifying it and defining the real content of the discussion; if the terms are confused, the discussion may well remain unresolved. The real choice which confronts us can be reformulated as follows: either equality between individuals and groups is an equality of rights, as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen states perfectly, and not a de facto equality, and it applies to a specifically political and legal order which is above social and cultural realities, or this equality of rights implies a right to difference, which may apply to a specific social category as well as to a culture. If we consider equality from this second point of view, we must recognize the tension between the two terms--equality and difference--, a tension which can lead to opposition and rupture. Let me try to explain it by referring directly to the main historical form which this discussion has taken within the global process of economic and social modernization known as industrialization. As from the mid-nineteenth century, and in the first instance in Europe, the universalist conception of citizenship entered into conflict with what can be called social demands, that is to say the recognition of the specific rights of certain social and professional categories which can be defined in broad terms like working class or the peasantry. Many of those who defend specific interests accept the idea that there is a fundamental social conflict and therefore give a priority to the liberation of dominated categories against the universalism of citizenship that they consider as an instrument of domination of wage-earners and colonized peoples. The Twentieth century has to a large extent been dominated by the ideologies which can be referred to as Leninist-Maoist, which fought bourgeois in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the only real liberation. It was much more difficult for the advocates of the contrary thesis, that of the extension of citizenship to the realities of the world of labor and all economic activity, to formulate their position. Great Britain is the country of origin of the idea of industrial democracy that then broadened into social democracy and further still into the Welfare State. Today we tend to think that this democratic socialism won the day deservedly and through world-wide conflicts over dictatorial forms of socialism; but that could lead us to forget that this democratic socialism recognized, as did its Bolshevik opponent, the key importance of relationships of domination. Its fundamental assertion, and the one which finally won the day at least to some extent is that democratic political institutions are the essential means of defense of dominated categories, and are therefore the tools of a genuine equality of rights. It is easy to move from this evocation of an ideological and political conflict that, for a century, tore all the continents apart, to the formulation of problems of a similar nature which dominate our times. The demand for equality of social rights depended on the recognition of the central importance of social relations of domination; today we live, as a new stage of democratic thought, the assertion of cultural rights, which are not only rights to difference but, in the first instance and primarily, the defense of ways of living or thinking which are threatened or destroyed by the dominant forces. These forces are endeavoring to destroy what they call specificities in the name of what they declare to be universalism but which, in reality, is only the generalization of the ways of life and thought which correspond to their acquired interests and to their power. Today, as yesterday, the real discussion is not between differentialists and universalists or between communitarians and liberals, to use the categories which divided our intellectual world as deeply as the conflict between the social democrats and the revolutionaries divided the industrial society. …

Metaphorical Shadow Boxing: A Response to Cornelissen’s Reply to our Rejoinder

tions. We stand by ours, as well. After these several rounds of point/counterpoint, punch and counterpunch, we ask only that you, the reader, do two things: 1) carefully consider that Cornelissen’s entire case against the value of the identity metaphor hinges on his questionable and weakly defended assertion that there is allegedly little conceptual similarity between individual and organizational identity and 2) carefully consider the implicit power of paradigmatic assumptions in assessing the value of any concept or metaphor. On the first point, we believe his philosophical grounds for making this assertion are not workable. Almost any reasonable consideration would dismiss his assertion that there is little isomorphic similarity between ‘organization’ and ‘identity’ as simply untenable. Actually, the similarity at issue is not between organization and identity, per se, but between individual identity and organizational identity. No matter. In the end, we trust that the power of the organizational identity metaphor and its use by interested scholars will settle this debate in the academic marketplace of ideas anyway. On the second point, even if we acknowledge that Cornelissen’s proposed procedures have some usefulness for the field in weeding out metaphors of marginal value, we nonetheless disagree that the procedures are as universalist as he implies. Clearly, the criteria of their application favors metaphors that can be parsed and concretized over those that are more gestalt – a not-so-subtle hint that, despite his protests, functionalist criteria are once again being invoked to evaluate nonfunctionalist ways of understanding. We reiterate that according to the criteria articulated, many rich metaphors would fail Cornelissen’s tests of usefulness. Conceiving of organizations as brains, as theatres, as psychic prisons, as instruments of domination, etc. would all now be purged from our vocabulary. Curiously, the main metaphor that would appear to pass his ‘rigorous’ tests is the machine metaphor, which we believe to be adequate testament to the functionalist roots of his analysis and the perhaps unwitting hidden agenda of his article. We continue to see this method of metaphor assessment as essentially one that sets up metaphors that it can knock down on paradigmatically inappropriate criteria. That old tactic suggests yet another useful (but probably not very long lived) metaphor by which Cornelissen might better understand his own project: he appears to be shadow boxing with metaphorical opponents of his own making. It is not surprising, then, that the match he has set up is rigged and that his metaphorical sparring has more to do with an image he has created than with the pragmatics of metaphor use in organizational study. British Journal of Management, Vol. 13, 281 (2002)

Antidumping Reform, Trade Policy Flexibility, and Compensation

Antidumping has become the dominant instrument for temporarily restricting imports. There is need for concern, as it represents a particularly distorting trade policy measure. Many observers have made suggestions on how to improve the current situation. These suggestions aim at restraining antidumping by reducing the number of circumstances where it may be applied. In other words, they envisage higher prerequisites for the use of antidumping. Yet, higher prerequisites for temporary import restrictions impair the government's trade policy flexibility. This article assumes that governments are not ready to sacrifice such flexibility by means of an international trade agreement. Therefore, suggestions that merely intend to raise the prerequisites for the use of antidumping are difficult to realise. We propose an alternative solution for antidumping reform. It considers abolishing antidumping and introducing a revised safeguard clause. This clause would permit temporary import restrictions without any prerequisites, but would make these restrictions dependent on full compensation for affected trading partners. In contrast to existing suggestions for reform, this alternative solution preserves the trade policy flexibility provided by the current antidumping regime, but effectively restrains protectionist behaviour.

Labeling and the Realization of Cultural Values

Labeling plays a role of increasing significance as a technique to reveal, with adequate certification, the content of a product in both a physical and a moral sense by reporting, say, on labor conditions, environmental sustainability or animal friendliness of the product chain. Whereas voluntary labeling leaves all initiative to the private sector, under mandatory labeling the state imposes an obligation to label, often in conjunction with the requirement to meet official standards. Besides aiming to ensure product safety, standards derive from paternalistic motives and seek to mitigate external effects of consumption, to manage catastrophic risks, to improve the representation of the poor, and to preserve the cultural heritage. Nowadays, they are also used in the fight against crime and terrorism and for the protection of intellectual property rights. Standard-based labeling is a source of recurrent conflict because it serves both to protect the own culture and to export it. Developed countries fear that discretionary policies at a national level would harm their exports. They call for international harmonization of the standards but developing countries are reluctant to participate, because their exports might suffer, while antiglobalists denounce it as an instrument of domination by the North. The paper reviews the arguments on both sides. It adopts a WTO perspective in proposing that for non-product standards, international harmonization, rather than being attached to products, should apply to territories, be organized by subject and delegated to specialized international agencies that operate under the mandate of separate international treaties. But we differ from the WTO position when we argue first, that product as well as non-product standards should be modulated so as to reflect the cultural diversity across countries and their different stages of development, and second, that it should be permitted that countries refusing to sign a treaty should face import restrictions by signatories.

Hearing grass, thinking grass: postcolonialism and ecology in Aotearoa-New Zealand

This article examines the land and its biota as actors in colonialist and postcolonialist processes in Aotearoa-New Zealand. It provides a cultural analysis of Monday’s warriors, Maurice Shadbolt’s novel of cultural encounter between Maori prophet Titokowaru and nineteenth-century colonials, Herbert Guthrie-Smith’s environmental history Tutira: the story of a New Zealand sheep station, and the author’s ethnographic fieldwork in the South Island pastoral high country. These narratives of Aotearoa provide an opportunity for a productive convergence of modes of discursive analysis and detailed observation. They suggest how textual, historical and ethnographic analysis can examine the significance of land and place in relation to biogeophysical and cultural components. The article argues that introduced grass as a material commodity with social value, and as an instrument of colonial domination and its accompanying agricultural conquest, is an ecological signifier through which identity can be emplaced and land embodied for pakeha and Maori actors. Thinking through grasslands better enables us to consider the mixed authenticities of place and identity. This works as a device for revealing the twisted entanglements within emergent postcolonialism, as Aotearoa, like other settlement nations, collectively invents itself and discovers that there is no fixed place to which one can return.

Diverse thinking-style preferences in a university course in mathematics.

At the University of Pretoria during 1999 the thinking-style preferences of three groups of students (ns = 50, 31, and 13) taking a first course in calculus were assessed using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. Analysis affirmed diversity in thinking-style preferences among the students and that the groups' scores represent a composite range of such preferences. Clearly, teachers of mathematics should be aware of and accommodate this diversity in instructional activities.

A four quadrant whole brain approach in innovation and engineering problem solving to facilitate teaching and learning of engineering students

Engineering curricula traditionally favour the development of analytical and technical skills. There is a worldwide recognition that this bias needs to be addressed to also develop "non-technical" skills. During 1999 the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), by which human thinking style preferences can be described, was used as facilitating tool to enhance the learning of non-technical skills of first year civil engineering students at the University of Pretoria. The knowledge pertaining to the engineering students' preferred thinking styles was used as a point of departure to foster an awareness for the whole brain concept and the existence of diversity in thinking style preferences. This diversity has implications for teaching and learning style preferences that pose challenges for all classroom practices. This article demonstrates, with a few selected examples, the application of a four quadrant whole brain approach in teaching and learning facilitation of non-technical skills to first year engineering students. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.15(3) 2001: 202-209 AJOL Home Page How to order photocopies Order Form INASP

Teaching Cataloguing and Classification at the University of Pretoria: Thinking Preferences of Second Year Students

The information profession has changed drastically in the last few years. The core requirements for information workers have also changed because the workplace needs specific qualities and skills. The necessity of continuing to teach cataloguing and classification is questioned, and many library schools have discontinued teaching these subjects. Many experts, however, believe that cataloguing and classification are still among the basics of information work. The subject still forms part of the curriculum at the University of Pretoria. At the beginning of 2000, funds were obtained to use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to establish the preferences of the second year Library Science students taking cataloguing. The result showed that their preferences do not really correspond to those of cataloguers. They specifically do not like the analysing and mastering the technical details required in cataloguing. As these skills are required for cataloguing, teaching methods will have to be adapted to equip students for the workplace.

Accounting for imperialism: a case of British‐imposed indigenous collaboration

The involvement of accounting in imperial expansion in the South Pacific during the mid‐nineteenth to the mid‐twentieth century is critically analysed. Through a study of archival data, it examines the way in which the practice of accounting became involved in the production of a calculative knowledge of imperialism. In particular, it explores: (a) the processes through which an indigenous Fijian élitist structure was transformed into a British instrument of domination and control; (b) the way in which accounting calculations and explanations were imposed upon the indigenous chiefs; and (c) the way in which accounting, once imposed, was used as an integral part of imperial policies and activities for Empire expansion. The study highlights that before annexation what was previously seen to be just a question of an “American debt” came to be seen as requiring formal imperial intervention. During formal imperial rule, however, British reaction to indigenous resistance to accounting‐based administration was managed through a bargaining policy. This change enabled high chiefs to enjoy a “special immunity” through accounting’s negotiable interpretations, interrelationships and explanations. Accounting as a financial and an administrative system of accountability thus became an integral part of a British‐imposed collaborative system of imperialism.

Islamic Banks and Investment Financing

Islamic Law prohibits charging interest. We study financial instruments used by Islamic banks and find that most are not based on profit-and-loss sharing (equity) but, instead, are very debt-like in nature. We see some bias against providing financing for agriculture and industry. Long-term financing is rarely offered to entrepreneurs. Our model shows that debt-like instruments are a rational response by Islamic banks to their contracting environments. As agency problems become more severe, debt becomes the dominant instrument of finance. We give conditions under which banning debt increases social welfare as well as conditions under which banning debt decreases social welfare.

Towards a culture of good governance: the Presidential Review Commission and public service reform in South Africa

On its election to power in April 1994 South Africa's first democratic government was quick to recognise that its ambitious programme of reconstruction and development would require a dramatic transformation of the public service inherited from the apartheid regime, from an instrument of discrimination, control and domination to an enabling agency which serves and empowers all the people of the country in a fully accountable and transparent way. The framework for this was set out in the Government's 1995 White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service. To ensure that the change processes were subject to independent scrutiny, the White Paper recommended the establishment of a Presidential Commission to carry out a comprehensive review of the structures, functions and operation of the post-1994 public service. The Presidential Review Commission (PRC) was established by President Mandela in March 1996 and submitted its findings and recommendations two years later in March 1998. Although acknowledging the achievements that have been made in translating the transformation agenda into practice, the Commission provides exhaustive evidence in support of its main conclusion that ‘overall progress in relation to the effective implementation of the transformation and reform process has in many ways been seriously disappointing’. It also proposes a wide-ranging set of recommendations for placing the transformation process back on track. Through an examination and critique of the findings and recommendations of the PRC, the following article attempts to highlight some of the main challenges and contradictions associated with public service reform in countries such as South Africa that are faced with the task of negotiating the difficult path between economic liberalization on the one hand and political democratisation on the other. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Trade as an Instrument of Dominance

The present conjuncture of world capitalism is characterized by the globalization of the international economy, which has reached a new stage that Donald Bray and I (1998) have called transperialism, in large part as the result of technological advances that permit instantaneous communication and thus even greater rationalization of production. Nevertheless, persistent regional differences permit the enterprises of the metropolitan areas to continue to dominate the system, taking advantage of the low-wage labor markets of the periphery. The role of the international structures of finance and investment controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the maintenance of this hegemony has been widely studied and discussed. The history of trade policy, negotiated among states and serving the interests of the elites of the dominant ones, has been given less attention. In order to understand current developments it is necessary to put them into the context of past relationships. In the current international economic climate, the neoliberal model, which calls for open economies, is the dominant paradigm even in many nations of the Third World. Under the guise of free trade, a new structure of domination, the World Trade Organization (WTO), has been created that will make economic policy even less responsive to the interests of the smaller, weaker nations in the international system and of the ordinary citizens of the currently dominant nations as exercised by their legislatures. In addition, regional trade blocs being created in the western hemisphere will assist capital from the dominant economies in taking advantage of the low-wage economies of the region. Pursuing the policies of this new stage, most countries of Latin America have reduced their tariffs and are seeking to become partners in free-trade agreements and common markets with each other and with industrialized nations. Similar policies have been attempted in the past with less than salutary results.