Dynamics Of Oppression Research Articles

Looking Back When Moving Forward: Researching Sites of Former Disability Institutions

This article discusses an inclusive research program where colleagues and co-researchers (with intellectual disability) guide and inform future research practice to ensure research is targeted to areas of significance and relevance to them. The research program is about sites of former disability institutions. Many people with intellectual disability in Australia were segregated and forced to live in disability institutions until deinstitutionalisation efforts became mainstream in the late 20th Century. We are a team of four people based in New South Wales, Australia. Our team includes disability advocates and researchers who have contributed to a program of research exploring connections between sites of former disability institutions and contemporary disability rights. In this article, we reflect on conversations about our research undertaken so far and where the research goes from here. We explore five pillars of action informing how research relating to disability institutions can progress: 1. Current use: research exploring erasure of experiences of institutionalisation communicated through educational resources and maps about current use of sites of former disability institutions; 2. Reparative planning processes: research developing frameworks for alternative approaches to planning and heritage processes supporting alternative uses of former sites of disability institutions; 3. Official recognition and redress: research exploring perspectives on governments formally recognising and remedying experiences of people with disability who were institutionalised; 4. Community-led repair and remembrance: research identifying practices for both celebrating advocates with disability and reckoning with and repairing familial and social bonds broken through institutionalisation; 5. Community-inclusive practices: research exploring endurance of institutional practices in disability accommodation in community settings. These five pillars are underpinned by three foundational layers: advancing disability human rights; reckoning with intersections between disability institutions and settler colonialism, other dynamics of oppression, and eugenics; and using inclusive practices.

Meat Consumption as a Metaphor: Gender Differences in Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman

This paper studies the metaphorical representation of gender differences in meat consumption, a vital issue in vegetarian ecofeminism, masculine food studies, and feminist animal studies. In the context of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, the metaphor of meat eating resonates with Carol J. Adams’ concepts of the linked relation between women and edible animals and J Wyckoff’s linked oppression of sexism and speciesism. Using these concepts as a critical intersectional lens, the paper explores the various forms of gender oppression Marian is subject to, the power dynamics in Marian-Peter’s relationships, and the potential solutions presented by Atwood’s novel to resist such gender oppression that threatens Marian’s survival. The central question of this paper is how Marian’s identification with edible animals through Atwood’s use of meat consumption as a metaphor portrays the gender dynamics of oppression that threaten her relationship with Peter, thus leading to further gender imbalances in her society. The paper concludes that ensuring women are free to choose and speak up, regardless of societal expectations or gender, is crucial to eliminating some oppressive forms. However, it also argues that adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is not a practical solution to dismantling sexism or resisting other gender oppressions. It may perpetuate new forms of gender inequality and oppression

Violent abduction of Yemenite Jewish children in Israel: A historical study on the intergenerational dynamics of oppression and resistance

In the founding years of the State of Israel, numerous Jewish children who immigrated to Israel with their parents from Arab countries, especially Yemen, were removed and disappeared. Some of these children were adopted by people in Europe and the USA, while others remained missing. The article reconstructs the efforts to clarify the fate of these children. The disappearance of the children is analysed in the context of the Zionist founding myth and the colonial genesis of the State of Israel and interpreted as an early form of bio-politics with racist connotations. Particular attention is paid to the traumatic consequences of this practice for the people affected and the psycho-structure of Israeli society. Finally, the question is posed as to how today’s young generation of descendants of immigrants is coming to terms with the history of their ancestors and what consequences this could have for the future identity of Israeli society and its positioning between ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’.

Embracing intersectional feminist thinking in design processes

Intersectional feminist thinking has the potential to promote an understanding of the dynamics of oppression in design and foster ways to minimize them. The study presented in this article explores how it has been embraced in the design field so far. A literature review process and an analysis of three cases characterize the study presented in this article. The research shows that although emerging, research on embracing intersectional thinking in design is relatively scarce. The literature review enabled the identification of three design approaches that officially state the adoption of an intersectional lens. These approaches were analysed against two core principles of intersectionality – pluralism and contextualization. Their description and analysis are reported here to exemplify how intersectional thinking has been implemented into design processes and to highlight existing strengths, challenges and opportunities. The article offers some reflections on future directions for intersectional design approaches to engage more closely with intersectionality.

Moving gender across, between and beyond the binaries: In conversation with Shona Bettany, Olimpia Burchiellaro and Rohan Venkatraman

AbstractThis panel discussion explores why marketing and consumer behavior has struggled to move beyond the binary, the importance of disrupting the conventional binaries to recognize gender/sex/ual diversity, and the challenges in so doing. It raises to the fore concerns about institutional pressures, sanitization of work, academic positionalities, everyday encounters of discrimination against gender/sex/ual diversity, and the emancipatory but oppressive dynamics of categories. Yet the panelists also reflect on ways to challenge binaristic thinking. Just being in the academy and doing (small but) meaningful acts of institutional activism can produce ripple effects and open pathways for a better articulation of lived experiences and realities.

Recognition of struggle: Transcending the oppressive dynamics of desire

Recognition of struggle: Transcending the oppressive dynamics of desire

Imperialism and literature: An imperialism-oriented reading of modern Turkish literature

Postcolonial theory perceives the world as divided between the coloniser and the colonised, thus indirectly reproducing the centrality of the West. For this reason, in literary studies, postcolonial theory fails to cover the literatures of those nations which were not colonised in a typical sense but rather occupied by Western imperialism, as was the case with Ottoman Turkey. This necessitates a convergent theoretical framework that might help evaluate the fictionalisation of the intersecting dynamics of oppression, violence, exploitation, and resistance in relation to the hegemonic narratives of imperialism and shape a new perspective regarding the politico-cultural dimension of imperial discourse. This article, in this respect, will critically develop the theoretical foundations of imperialism-oriented literary theory and construct it as an interdisciplinary field that has a potential to contribute to contemporary postcolonial theory and to encompass the intersectional dimensions of imperialism and imperial discourse for the articulation of the fictionalisation of imperialism-related issues in the under-considered corpus of modern Turkish literature.

In the Meantime: RE/UN/DIScover Heuristic for Small-Scale Antioppressive Action within Systems and Organizations.

The dehumanizing effects of neoliberal, white dominant regulations, laws, policies, and cultural assumptions seep into the everyday practice of social workers in frontline and mid-level positions. Many social workers are learning various antioppressive practices and becoming aware of how microaggressions and other oppressive dynamics can manifest in workplaces but lack models to guide efforts for small-scale action. This article describes how the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic can be used to interrupt and shift oppressive processes during everyday moments of practice within organizations and systems by social workers and their interested colleagues who have some awareness of oppressive and antioppressive dynamics. The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic is an iterative set of three practices: (1) tend to self with compassionate REcover practices; (2) engage in curious, critical reflection to UNcover full understandings of the power dynamics, impacts, and meanings of specific challenges; and (3) DIScover and try out just, humanizing responses with creative courage, individually and with other colleagues. The heuristic uses a dual focus on self and situation with an ad hoc group of other colleagues to raise awareness; cultivate humanizing spaces; and implement antioppressive, relational responses. The article describes the heuristic practices and how to apply the heuristic with two composite practice applications.

Intersectional Feminist Theory as a Non-Ideal Theory: Asian American Women Navigating Identity and Power

This paper develops an account of intersectional feminist theory by critically examining the notion of identity implicitly assumed in major critiques of intersectionality. Critics take intersectionality to fragment women along the lines of identity categories such as race, class, and sexuality. Underlying this interpretation, I argue, is the metaphysical assumption that identity is a fixed entity. This is a misunderstanding of identity that neglects how identity is actually lived. By exploring how Asian American women experience their “Asian” identity in their everyday lives (e.g., the “Asian-as-patriarchal vs. White-as-gender-progressive” stereotype, growing anti-Asian racism amid COVID-19, and Asian-Black feminist solidarities), I demonstrate that Asian identity is not fixed but changing according to how it is related to power. I identify and discuss three characteristic types of the identity-power relationship: manifestation of power-as-oppression through the construction of identity, reproduction of power-as-oppression, and creation of new forms of power, namely resistance and solidarity, through the reconstruction of identity. The lives of multiply-oppressed women (e.g., Asian women) can be understood as the locus at which the identity-power relationship is worked out, that is, the power dynamics of oppression are manifested, reproduced, and resisted through the (re)construction of identity. Building on this analysis and engaging discussions on non-ideal theory in social/political philosophy, I argue that intersectional feminist theory can be best explained as a non-ideal theory in a strong sense: a theory that, by focusing on the lives of the multiply oppressed, presents the intersecting dynamics of oppression as central and theory-guiding.

Detroit as a Marker for Divorcing Place-Based Education and Orthodox History from Oppressive Pedagogy Practices

Most research and practice surrounding place-based education is focused in STEM-specific initiatives. This article takes a social theoretical approach to question that predominance, underscoring the role of STEM in bipartisan, nationalist narratives in the United States since the 1980s to suggest that place-based practice serves an oppressive function when instituted without corresponding place-based pedagogy in social studies. These potentially oppressive dynamics are argued to be acute in urban contexts in which orthodox, didactic pedagogical methods in social studies education promote complacence within an oppressive economic system. These orthodox methods are contextualized within the perspective of social theorists from Baudrillard to Fukuyama that history has increasingly been made to appear as a static procession as opposed to as a transformable process in which young people can participate. Using the author’s experience as a place-based educator in Detroit, the article charts a path for an orthodox but critical, place-based social studies curriculum for high school students in Detroit in which history is taught backwards through the context of the city and its history, a process that is replicable in other localities. It also charts an unorthodox, dynamic, dialogical social studies curriculum in Detroit---also replicable in other localities---for educators invested in place-based processes of knowledge production with young people. These processes utilize a deep place method in which the classroom and the dynamics therein are made a critical aspect of place.

In plain sight: Oppressive dynamics and learning challenges in adult ESOL programs in the United States

A previous convergent mixed methods study conducted by the author revealed that, based on their preservice preparation and access to in-service professional development, instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners in the United States often felt ill-equipped to address the oppressive dynamics and learning challenges that might manifest in their adult ESOL classrooms. This follow-up interview study explored the prevalence of these oppressive dynamics, such as racism, sexism, and linguicism, and learning challenges, such as neurodiversity, and investigated how preservice preparation, continuous professional development, program administration, and the field of TESOL might address these issues more consistently and equitably. Semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom or over the telephone with 10 randomly selected volunteers. The findings revealed that oppressive dynamics and learning challenges are commonplace in adult ESOL programs in the United States. Recommendations included either routinely incorporating discussions and content related to these issues throughout preservice coursework and continuous professional development or creating postgraduate certificate programs to do so. Participants also felt that the field of TESOL should address these issues on a regular versus ad hoc basis through its conferences, publications, and research literature. Limitations of the study and areas for future research were also identified.

Webs of oppression: An intersectional analysis of inequalities facing women activists in Palestine

How can we understand the multiple, intersecting webs of oppression that Palestinian women activists face in their everyday organizing? With a long tradition of counter-hegemonic organizing, the Palestinian context presents opportunities and challenges for women pursuing activist causes in the public domain. Adopting an intersectionality framework, we uncover how gender, class and settler-colonized domination interact, engendering dynamics of oppression differentiated by activists’ social positions. Activists’ stories captured at interview reveal they were not victims across all categories of difference, experiencing forms of relative privilege, characterized as safeguarded, secured and sheltered. We connect relative privilege to the patchwork nature of Palestinian institutions, whereby women’s agency intermingles with a patchwork of historically constituted structures and conditions. Our fine-grained study contributes to literature on feminist and activist organizing and to theorizations of intersectionality by identifying forms of relative oppression and privilege as women actively resist hegemonic gendered structures in Palestine.

Indigenising the screen: Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Wēniti—The Māori Merchant of Venice (2002)

This article examines Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Wēniti—The Māori Merchant of Venice (2002), the first dramatic feature film, performed entirely in te reo Māori (the Māori language). This adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was based on Pei Te Hurinui Jones’ 1946 te reo Māori translation. Alongside close readings of the film, I drew on an interview with director, Don Selwyn, whānau (family) input and the literature. I applied Kia Manawanui: Kaupapa Māori Film Theoretical Framework, an analytical tool, to provide thematic structure. Don Selwyn’s interpretation disrupts hierarchies of language, validating not only the Māori language but Indigenous languages globally as eminently capable of cinematic expression. He draws out the dynamics of oppression and colonisation, providing transformative and disruptive images of Māori, Māori culture and tikanga (protocols). By expressing these features Don Selwyn successfully indigenizes the screen. I argue that the film is a taonga (treasure).

Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico

Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico

Instructors reflect on how their preservice preparation and ongoing professional development prepared them to address oppressive dynamics in adult ESOL programs in the United States

For decades, researchers have asserted that the preservice preparation for instructors of adult emergent bi/multilingual learners (EBLs) in the United States can be inconsistent, and access to ongoing professional development (PD) can be insufficient to address the demands of the 21st century classroom. A previous study conducted by the author revealed that instructors of adult EBLs felt adequately prepared to teach English, but they often felt ill-equipped to address the learning challenges and oppressive dynamics that might manifest in their adult English to Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) classrooms. This convergent mixed methods study was a preliminary attempt to address these issues. Eighty-five participants recruited throughout the United States were asked to reflect on the degree to which challenges, like learning dis/abilities, and oppressive dynamics, like racism and sexism, were addressed in their preservice preparation and ongoing PD through a 20-item survey instrument administered via Qualtrics. The findings revealed that issues closely related to language teaching were more commonly addressed, but learning challenges and oppressive dynamics were inadequately addressed, if at all. Suggestions included interweaving discussions of these issues and dynamics throughout preservice coursework but exploring them more extensively in ongoing PD. Limitations of the study and areas for future research were also identified.

“Nothing about us without us”: Tending to emancipatory ideologies and transformative goals in participatory action research partnerships

In this paper, a collaborative group of university researchers and a community organizer who participated in a 2-year participatory action research (PAR) partnership reflect upon their inquiry process and analyze its effects. Authors examine the benefits, challenges, and potential of using PAR to advance educational justice and transformative goals amidst austere neoliberal education reforms, such as public school closure and state sanctioned privatization. Authors consider ways PAR can reflect emancipatory ideologies, enable social and political change, and disrupt oppressive dynamics that many urban education organizers and activists oppose. Insights pertain to cultivating community-based norms that foster collective learning, agency, and social action, while also confronting methodological tensions in the work. Such tensions pertained to varied ideas about emotionality in research, research design, and the layered power dynamics of university-community relations. Authors highlight implications for implementing justice-oriented PAR in urban education arenas affected by intensifying neoliberal political contexts.

The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Language Alive No Matter the Odds by Anton Treuer

Reviewed by: The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Language Alive No Matter the Odds by Anton Treuer Jenny Lee-Morgan (bio) The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Language Alive No Matter the Odds by Anton Treuer Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2020 AS THE TITLE of Anton Treuer's book suggests, The Language Warrior's Manifesto calls for courage and inspires conviction, evident in Treuer's strong personal voice. Treuer introduces readers to the subject of language revitalization through his own world of Indigenous experience. The specificity of his circumstances echoes the stories of Indigenous peoples' struggles all over the world. For Treuer, growing up in Washington in the 1970s as a brown boy with long hair and of Ojibwe and German ancestry, schooling was devoid of any cultural care or recognition. Much like in the wider society, schooling devalued Native peoples, cultures, and their languages, setting the scene (or battleground) for Indigenous language revitalization. With decolonizing intent, Indigenous language learning is positioned in the sociohistoric violence of colonization and exposes some of the intricacies of ongoing colonizing processes in our contemporary context. Treuer's analysis names the structural impediments, namely the racism that asserts the superiority and dominance of English and the associated normative behavior of monolingualism that excludes and delegitimizes Indigenous languages, all of which affect funding, resourcing, and program growth. While the narratives of dispossession of Indigenous land, language, and culture are well told, less discussed are the problems, originally caused by the atrocities of colonization, that compound and conflate present-day trauma and are played out in disturbing ways in our communities. One of the strengths of the book for me (as a Māori language learner/teacher and advocate) is Treuer's courage to gently call out the practices of self-harm that we inflict as Indigenous communities on each other—the dynamics of oppression on the inside. Using Paulo Freire's theory of freedom articulated in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Bloomsbury, 2014), Treuer points out that three of the four types of oppression (internal, lateral, intra-oppressed, and external) manifest in the "common sense" attitudes, practices, and behaviors of the oppressed themselves. Treuer strongly cautions against perpetuating the oppression of colonialism by fighting one another. [End Page 196] For those of us who work in Indigenous communities and tribal groups with our relations, simple yet powerful instructions, such as "No blaming. No shaming" (38) or the plea to not "out-Indian one another" (16), resonate and challenge us to refrain from acts of self-oppression. He urges us to find ways through the disputes in Indigenous language learning, whether they be over dialectal or other writing systems, that can hamper progression and distract from creating resources and ultimately the meaningful usage of our languages. Treuer is forthright and direct, and issues a challenge to us all, including for our tribal corporate entities to broaden the key measures of Indigenous success beyond the confines of economic prosperity. In this way, this book is actively decolonizing through conscientization; Treuer persistently reminds us that "we are more than the sum of our tragedies" (36). Treuer's analysis is crafted in a powerful narrative that is accessible and grounded in his lived experience as an Ojibwe learner, teacher, and leader. The journey into language learning, teaching, and leadership requires commitment, and Treuer's willingness to share his personal journey is at the heart of this book. This manifesto is sourced in the realities of our communities, with an integrity that comes from an undeniable sacrifice and experience on which his reflections and guidance are based. Treuer asserts that the language warrior's greatest weapon is "real, intentional effort" that must be lived because as Treuer intimately knows: "We can't lead in their [language] revitalization from the sidelines" (12). The book's opening narrative strategy, deeply intertwining the personal with the political, continues through to the end. It becomes evident that if you commit to keeping your language alive, the language becomes who we are—and who we are becomes the language. In this sense, Treuer's call to revitalize our languages goes far beyond the conventional academic frames of second language learning...

The Rise of the Robots: Technocapitalism and the Policing of Race

This article critically engages with the emergence of police robots in the United States, arguing that their inevitable foray into everyday policing will fuel existing issues of racial discrimination. Building on Luis Suarez-Villa’s (2009) conceptualization of technocapitalism, I situate police robots within a framework of social domination that thrives not only on its connections to corporatism and militarism, but also on technocapitalist conditions that invariably exacerbate the oppressive dynamics of racist and discriminatory policing. Although police robots will make police work safer for officers (Sharkey 2008), I contend that they will be used by the police as weaponized machines of racial discrimination.

“Authority must be on the side of freedom”: The relationship between teachers’ authority and Black and Latinx students’ political agency in challenging racism

ABSTRACT In order to position Black and Latinx youth to challenge racism and other dynamics of oppression, their education must be oriented toward equipping them with the requisite skills and sense of efficacy. This article makes an argument for teachers having to develop a reciprocal sense of authority rooted in their students’ freedom in the face of oppressive systems. Drawing on the author’s previous researchthis paper illustrates that educators who are reflective about their own positionalities, pair the study of racism with resistance strategies, and who make space for students to resist racism, created authentic opportunities for their Black and Latinx students to develop political agency in challenging racism.

Social Simulation for Social Justice

We argue that social simulation can help us understand social justice issues. In particular, modeling certain social dynamics within computational systems can be used to creatively explore and better understand the social and identity dynamics of oppression. Writing theories of oppression in code forces us to explicate everything, and question what we leave out or what we can’t account for. As an early step in this direction, we present an in-progress social simulation of group discussion in activist meetings, developed in the already-existing AI system, Ensemble. Through this minimal, highly constrained social arena, we can explore wide-reaching phenomena like privilege, intersectionality, and power dynamics in nonhierarchical groups, but in a way that’s grounded in concrete, person-to-person interactions. We propose that this kind of social simulation can aid in the process of unlearning hegemonic ways of being, and imagining liberatory alternatives.