Emancipatory Power Research Articles

It’s funny because it’s true? Reflections on laughter, deception, and critique

This essay challenges the prevailing view among critical theorists that laughter’s emancipatory power stems from its ability to speak the truth. The disparate accounts of laughter offered by Plato, Hobbes, and Nietzsche exemplify an alternative strategy for theorizing laughter as a performance of deception, or an experience that mystifies rather than enlightens. While a view of laughter as deceptive may at first appear to reduce laughter’s critical leverage over ideology, I argue that this approach offers a stronger account of its emancipatory power. Speaking the truth does little more than reveal the falsity of ideology, and laughter’s capacity to actually transform society hinges on how it deceives differently – namely, in such a way that prompts the imagination and construction of more democratic institutions and modes of relating. The essay concludes by considering the implications of this argument for how we understand the role of truth in critical theory today.

The Educators’ Datafied Present and Future: Complexity as an Approach to Developing Educators' Data Literacies

In the higher education context, an increasing concern on the technical or instrumental approach permeates attention to academics’ data literacies and faculty development. The need for data literacy to deal specifically with the rise of learning analytics in higher education has been raised by some authors, though in spite of some focus on the need to develop academics’ data literacy to embrace fair practices, this literature is often also rooted in a technical or data-driven perspective. In this paper, the authors summarize an empirical study based on 137 articles using the terms “data literacy,” “teachers,” and “faculty development,” spanning from 2014 and 2019. The findings point out that out of the total, 78 papers reviewed took an instrumental, data science-focused perspective on data literacy, were the technical abilities like extracting data and interpreting or reporting appropriately (authors, in press). Data safety and effective data management perspectives accounted for another 35 of the 137 articles. Only seven took up data literacy from a critical perspective, while only five looked at the pedagogical practice. These preliminary findings require awareness and discussion on the light of appropriate faculty development approaches and activities. We introduce some recommendations aimed at understanding data as a complex emerging phenomenon in our societies, which requires building the literacies to face their negative effects like data surveillance and algorithmic biases, but also, to uncover its emancipatory power.

A Case for Trauma-Informed Dementia Care: The Emancipatory Power of Psychological Resilience and Trauma From COVID-19

The dominant nonpharmacological therapeutic approach in dementia care is “person-centered.” The racial disparities in disease and diagnosis affliction, represents an urge to incorporate trauma sensitivity. Antipsychotic use rates among this population being substantially higher than two years ago, as well as increasing evidence of ACE scores being a significant risk factor in dementia development, we need to consider the emancipatory power of trauma-informed dementia care. Data were collected from 103 peer-reviewed journal articles. Person-centered care practices were analyzed for adherence to SAMHSA’s principles that guide a trauma-informed approach. Studies were rated on a Likert-scale in six areas: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment and choice; and cultural, historical & gender issues. It was observed that of the 103 search returns, 38 met study criteria. Within these data, it was observed that the majority of studies scored low on incorporation and adherence to SAMSHA’s trauma-informed approach. While a few studies mentioned the magnifying effects of a current traumatic event on preexisting vulnerabilities, no study highlighted the growth or flourishing potential in triggering past trauma and the current traumatic event offering an opportunity of mind-somatic integration. This paper proposes trauma-informed dementia practices consider: 1) intake and assessment to include a screening of ACE score; 2) evaluation of (re)integrating current losses into current developmental and lifespan phase; and 3) offering therapeutic support of current traumatic event (COVID-19) to metabolize past traumatic events in the context of current developmental and lifespan phase.

Raymond Williams and Antonio Gramsci’s contributions to adult education

This time is characterised by the policies and practices of Lifelong Learning. Against this process of dehumanisation, it could be important to ‘revisit’ some authors that enlighten us on how to recuperate an emancipatory adult education, valuable for developing critical thinking about the daily life of individuals and/or communities. In this direction, Raymond Williams and Antonio Gramsci offer us some interesting ideas. Even though they both lived in different countries and in different historic moments, they hold some common points related to a definite view of adult education. I am going to focus on three: the role of the educator, the notion of hegemony and the culture(s). In the conclusions, I will reflect on the contribution of these two thinkers to break the hegemonic view that seems to have reduced adult education to a marginalised niche. Reflecting on their contributions, mostly related to the role of the educator and the notion of culture as the core of adult education, it could be possible to recuperate the emancipatory power of adult education.

Embodied Liberation

Abstract Oshima Nagisa's international co-productions, which include the pornographic film In the Realm of the Senses and the war drama with homoerotic themes Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, were noted as the emergence of his female audience. How did this reported demographic change of the audience from male-centered to female-oriented relate to sexualized bodies on screen? In their roundtable discussion about sexual liberation, feminists found emancipatory power from patriarchal society in the face of the actor who played Abe Sada. Girls praised queerness that disrupted heteronormativity in David Bowie's performance in their film reviews. Focusing on the reception of the films within feminists’ discourse and girls’ culture, this article argues that the female audience created political significance of the films by interpreting the bodies as embodied liberation.

Teaching (Cooperative) Business: The “Bluefield Experiment” and the Future of Black Business Schools

Teaching (Cooperative) Business: The “Bluefield Experiment” and the Future of Black Business Schools

Women\u2019s voices on social media: the advent of feminist epidemiology?

BackgroundSocial media have in recent years challenged the way in which research questions are formulated in epidemiology and medicine, and in particular when it comes to women’s health. They have contributed to the emergence of ‘new’ public health topics (e.g. gynaecological and obstetric violence, long-Covid), the unearthing of testimonials of medical injustice, and in some cases, the creation of new evidence and changes in medical practice.Main textFrom a theoretical and methodological perspective, we observe two powerful mechanisms at play on social media, which can facilitate the implementation of feminist epidemiological research and address so-called anti-feminist bias: social media as a ‘third’ space and the power of groups. Social media posts can be seen as inhabiting a third space, akin to what is said off the record or in-between doors, at the end of a therapy session. Researchers somehow miss the opportunity to use the third spaces that people occupy. Similarly, another existing space that researchers are seldom interested in are peer-groups. Peer-groups are the ideal terrain to generate bottom-up research priorities. To some extent, their on-line versions provide a safe and emancipatory space, accessible, transnational, and inclusive. We would argue that this could bring feminist epidemiology to scale.ConclusionGiven the emancipatory power of social media, we propose recommendations and practical implications for leveraging the potential of online-sourced feminist epidemiology at different stages of the research process (from design to dissemination), and for increasing synergies between researchers and the community. We emphasise that attention should be paid to patriarchal sociocultural contexts and power dynamics, the mitigation of risks for political recuperation and stigmatisation, and the co-production of respectful discourse on studied populations.

Separate and Unequal: A Time to Reimagine Dementia.

The rapid emergence of COVID-19 has had far-reaching effects across all sectors of health and social care, but none more so than for residential long-term care homes. Mortality rates of older people with dementia in residential long-term care homes have been exponentially higher than the general public. Morbidity rates are also higher in these homes with the effects of government-imposed COVID-19 public health directives (e.g., strict social distancing), which have led most residential long-term care homes to adopt strict 'no visitor' and lockdown policies out of concern for their residents' physical safety. This tragic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights profound stigma-related inequities. Societal assumptions that people living with dementia have no purpose or meaning and perpetuate a deep pernicious fear of, and disregard for, persons with dementia. This has enabled discriminatory practices such as segregation and confinement to residential long-term care settings that are sorely understaffed and lack a supportive, relational, and enriching environment. With a sense of moral urgency to address this crisis, we forged alliances across the globe to form Reimagining Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice. We are committed to shifting the culture of dementia care from centralized control, safety, isolation, and punitive interventions to a culture of inclusion, creativity, justice, and respect. Drawing on the emancipatory power of the imagination with the arts (e.g., theatre, improvisation, music), and grounded in authentic partnerships with persons living with dementia, we aim to advance this culture shift through education, advocacy, and innovation at every level of society.

Power, control, communities and health inequalities I: theories, concepts and analytical frameworks.

SummaryThis is Part I of a three-part series on community empowerment as a route to greater health equity. We argue that community ‘empowerment’ approaches in the health field are increasingly restricted to an inward gaze on community psycho-social capacities and proximal neighbourhood conditions, neglecting the outward gaze on political and social transformation for greater equity embedded in foundational statements on health promotion. We suggest there are three imperatives if these approaches are to contribute to increased equity. First, to understand pathways from empowerment to health equity and drivers of the depoliticisation of contemporary empowerment practices. Second, to return to the original concept of empowerment processes that support communities of place/interest to develop capabilities needed to exercise collective control over decisions and actions in the pursuit of social justice. Third, to understand, and engage with, power dynamics in community settings. Based on our longitudinal evaluation of a major English community empowerment initiative and research on neighbourhood resilience, we propose two complementary frameworks to support these shifts. The Emancipatory Power Framework presents collective control capabilities as forms of positive power. The Limiting Power Framework elaborates negative forms of power that restrict the development and exercise of a community’s capabilities for collective control. Parts II and III of this series present empirical findings on the operationalization of these frameworks. Part II focuses on qualitative markers of shifts in emancipatory power in BL communities and Part III explores how power dynamics unfolded in these neighbourhoods.

Power, control, communities and health inequalities III: participatory spaces-an English case.

SummaryThis article—third in a series of three—uses theoretical frameworks described in Part 1, and empirical markers reported in Part 2, to present evidence on how power dynamics shifted during the early years of a major English community empowerment initiative. We demonstrate how the capabilities disadvantaged communities require to exercise collective control over decisions/actions impacting on their lives and health (conceptualized as emancipatory power) and the exercise of power over these communities (conceptualized as limiting power) were shaped by the characteristics of participatory spaces created by and/or associated with this initiative. Two main types of participatory spaces were identified: governance and sense-making. Though all forms of emancipatory power emerged in all spaces, some were more evident in particular spaces. In governance spaces, the development and enactment of ‘power to’ emerged as residents made formal decisions on action, allocated resources and managed accountability. Capabilities for alliance building—power with—were more likely to emerge in these spaces, as was residents’ resistance to the exercise of institutional power over them. In contrast, in sense-making spaces residents met informally and ‘made sense’ of local issues and their ability to influence these. These processes led to the development of power within capabilities and power to resist stigmatizing forms of productive power. The findings highlight the importance of designing community initiatives that: nurture diverse participatory spaces; attend to connectivity between spaces; and identify and act on existing power dynamics undermining capabilities for collective control in disadvantaged communities.

Power, control, communities and health inequalities. Part II: measuring shifts in power.

In the health field, there is great interest in the role empowerment might play in reducing social inequalities in health. Empowerment is understood here as the processes of developing capabilities that individuals and/or communities need to exercise control over decisions and actions impacting on their lives and health. There is a fundamental problem, however, in identifying and measuring capabilities for collective control that emerge at the level of the collective, with much of the existing literature focusing on individual measures even where community-level processes are concerned. Collective measures need to capture the dynamics of interactions within and between groups, not simply aggregate individual-level measures. This article, Part 2 in a three-part series, takes up the challenge of identifying qualitative markers of capabilities for collective control. We applied the emancipatory power framework (EPF) reported in Part 1 of the series, to qualitative data generated during a longitudinal evaluation of a major English area-based empowerment initiative, the Big Local (BL). We identified empirical 'markers' of shifts towards greater collective control pertaining to each of the 'power' dimensions in the EPF-'power within', 'power with' and 'power to'-and markers of communities exercising 'power over' other institutions/community members. These markers can usefully be applied in the evaluation planning and evaluation of empowerment initiatives. Part 3 in the series uses these markers and a second analytical framework developed during our evaluation of BL to explore how power dynamics unfold in participatory spaces in BL neighbourhoods.

Epistemologias do Sul: desafios teórico-metodológicos da educomunicação

Neste artigo, procuramos fazer uma reflexão acerca dos desafios teórico-metodológicos imperativos para a concepção da educomunicação como uma epistemologia do Sul, com potência crítica e emancipatória. As epistemologias do Sul, com base em Sousa Santos (1994-2019) se utilizam dos seguintes procedimentos: sociologia das ausências, sociologia das emergências, ecologia de saberes e a tradução intercultural. As epistemologias do sul produzem ciência de forma contra hegemônica, apropriando-se de metodologias não extrativistas, pois objetivam promover a justiça cognitiva e a produção de conhecimento emancipatório que implica em um re\conhecimento do outro como sujeito (comunicativo).

Sangre de amor correspondido: a small secret war

Por su rareza, Sangre de amor correspondido se distingue de las otras siete novelas que publicó Manuel Puig. No sólo porque fue compuesta a partir de la grabación, transcripción y traducción de entrevistas que mantuvo en portugués con un albañil brasilero, sino, y en particular, por los interrogantes que plantea con respecto a la autoría, la economía política del sexo, la sexualidad y la lengua. Esta condensación de elementos le otorga una singularidad que puede funcionar como punto de referencia para estudiar otros textos de la época, la de 1980, mientras aún perduraba en América Latina la creencia en el poder emancipador que le asignaba a la literatura su supuesta autonomía.

THE HIDDEN BLUEPRINT: A DISSECTION OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT ON LIVING SYSTEMS

The proliferation of technological systems which permeate, and often dominate, human sociological systems is ripe for critical exploration. The purpose of this panel is to investigate the myriad ways in which technology has encroached upon—and, arguably, engineered—human behaviors, once considered the domain of psychological and biological outcomes. Additionally, this panel will offer critical insight into how disproportionate and otherwise ethically skewed technological influence may be mitigated at the point of creation in order to restore balance between tech consumer and tech creator. Topics in this panel span human migration, algorithmic encoding, human-machine communication, datafication of the human subject, glitch technology, and AI-based prediction. This panel will investigate ways in which technology has converged with human systems, often unquestioned, and offer analysis into the potential consequences of this convergence, as well as potential solutions for alleviating the omnipresence of technical sovereignty on living systems. Specific panel presentations discuss: • The inorganic digital footprint that mitigates the tangible human footprint of human migration. • The pitfalls of cybernetic prediction and the corrosive nature of AI-based prediction. • The nature of human-machine communication, as documented by interactions with Amazon Go. • Normalization of gender, as evidenced by algorithmic determination in Spotify suggestions. • The emancipatory power of “breaking” the black box of participatory technology. Each panel topic identifies technology as the basis for living systems at the socio-cultural level. For example, multiple papers investigate how algorithms seek to manage, mitigate, and encourage human behavior, while others look at the physical technological infrastructure which guides the flow of human migration. The overarching goal of each paper encourages the end-user to take a deeper look at the symbiotic relationship between digital infrastructure and living systems in order to critically examine the consequences of convergence without critical oversight. Each paper in this panel also identifies a humanistic concept that interrogates the blurring between natural and artificial, human and machine, agency, and autonomy. Dissection of the hidden blueprint of techno-socio systems requires scholars to reconsider what it means to be human and forces a critical inquiry about why, how, and under what circumstances machines can or should engineer or augment human actors, and the extent to which machines can be made to act responsibly. For example, as displaced populations are forced from their nation-states, the ethical implications that those migrants of diaspora may tailor their migratory routes to current technological infrastructure must be considered. As we evolve towards engineering more scalable communication networks capable of harnessing the allegiance of a wide swath of the population based on geographic proximity, we mustn’t neglect to consider that these networks are driving human behavior as much, if not more, than they are supporting it. Similarly, when considering the hidden philosophical blueprint that prescribes predictive artificial intelligence, we mustn’t neglect to consider the assumptions which belie this philosophy, nor the impact of systems derived from such philosophy which claim to predict the patterns of our human behavior. These research topics identify the importance and relevance of scholarship in the area of human-machine communication and advocate for their inclusion in the conceptualization, prototyping, and creation of ethical robotic and AI technologies. Increasingly, humans find themselves socializing with intelligent agents and robots at home, in schools, and at work. Further, humans often do recognize the extent to which technological systems drive human behavior. This panel offers a glimpse into the necessary, provocative, and timely discussion about HMC and the role of critical scholarship in shaping technologies of the future. As technology progresses, we find ourselves on the precipice of social and cultural evolution in which the illusory real disguised as “user-friendliness” becomes more and more ubiquitous in design theory. In many respects, the trajectory of the modern-day Internet suggests that rather than heading towards emancipation (what user-friendliness promises)--we are headed closer to invisibility. Each of these panels reveals a mechanism by which we may peek into the constructs of our techno-social reality, as so that we may mitigate the dangers of such invisibility.

Metafisika Mediasi Teknologis: Kritik Atas Filsafat Teknologi Klasik

This paper aims to propose philosophical criticism toward 'classical' thinking on philosophy of technology. This set of thinking tends to be trapped in the distinction between subject-object and romantic-pessimisms on the existence of technological dominance. The authors objective is to provide comprehensive understanding through contemporary approaches in philosophy concerning technological mediation. The study employs factual historical analysis and philosophical reflection to understand technological mediation patterns. The result maps point of view that develops a metaphysical orientation of technological mediation in terms of several approaches. Postphenomenological approaches technological mediation in a relational and intentional context rather than providing a subject-object distinction. Actor-network theory improves the asymmetrical relation of humans and non-humans. Simondon and Harman provide for ontological analysis of tools and technology in human relationships. Critical theory of technology opens the chance that technological relations are not only neutral-instrumental but have transformative and emancipatory power. Therefore, the technological mediation approach can become a new subject in the metaphysics of technology discourse in overcoming the limitations of the classical philosophy of technology.

The Performative University: ‘Targets’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Taking Back Freedom’ in Academia

This special issue assembles eight papers which provide insights into the working lives of early career to more senior academics, from several different countries. The first common theme which emerges is around the predominance of ‘targets’, enacting aspects of quantification and the ideal of perfect control and fabrication. The second theme is about the ensuing precarious evocation of ‘terror’ impacting on mental well-being, albeit enacted in diverse ways. Furthermore, several papers highlight a particular type of response, beyond complicity to ‘take freedom back’ (the third theme). This freedom is used to assert an emerging parallel form of resistance over time, from overt, planned, institutional collective representation towards more informal, post-recognition forms of collaborative, covert, counter spaces (both virtually and physically). Such resistance is underpinned by a collective care, generosity and embrace of vulnerability, whereby a reflexive collegiality is enacted. We feel that these emergent practices should encourage senior management, including vice-chancellors, to rethink performative practices. Situating the papers in the context of the current coronavirus crisis, they point towards new forms of seeing and organising which open up, rather than close down, academic freedom to unleash collaborative emancipatory power so as to contribute to the public and ecological good.

Music as sexual violence? Investigating the case of bar/club-based sex trafficking and sonic harm

ABSTRACT Accounts of human trafficking suggest music’s uniquely insidious role for victims forcibly trafficked into strip club-based sex work, wherein music is ubiquitous. In sociological fieldwork, sex workers and trafficking victims testify to various effects of musical sound: against their will, the onset of music commands bodies to perform erotic dance, and songs’ formal and rhythmic features compel forms of movement. In situations of strip club-based trafficking, events of musicalsound therefore amount to coercion – itself defined as a form of sexual violence by the World Health Organization. Comprehending structures of trafficking victims’ abjection requires communicative,semiotic understandings of coercion’s mechanisms, and must resist conflating violence andphysical materiality. Building on J. L. Austin’s theorization of how verbal utterances perform certain kinds of semiotic actions, I argue that musical sound can behave like certain assaultive and coercive speech acts: acts of signaling that command sexual performances from trafficking victims within gross power asymmetries. A discourse analysis of the public forum online “The Ultimate Strip Club List” (TUSCL), which hosts discussions amongst both sex workers and patrons of strip clubs, suggests situations where the entanglement of sound and materiality loses explanatory and emancipatory power to critique music’s injurious capacities.

Las metástasis de la mariposa: Pedro Lemebel y el archivo analfabeto

This article focuses on Pedro Lemebel’s body in its complex relationship to illness. It explores the many functions of illness as an emancipatory power that violently distances itself from the imperatives of health and sex. Relating a personal encounter with Lemebel in Santiago, the article insists on the intersection between the archive and the diseased body, especially the diseased body of the Chilean writer himself. After a portion of his larynx was removed due to cancer, Lemebel symbolically and materially made the hole is his body public. He transformed that empty space into a new organ of communitarian intelligibility and speech: an anal-phabetic archive.

„Tijelo pamćenja je pčela koja me bode.“ Emancipatorne prakse ženskog pisma 80-ih

The book of essays Smrtni grijesi feminizma (The Deadly Sins of Feminism), written by Slavenka Drakulic, and Irena Vrkljan’s novel Svila, skare (The Silk, the Shears), both published in 1984, became the samples of feminist activism and the poetics of l’ecriture feminine in Croatian literature. Considering their generic aspects and their narrative strategies focused on revealing the conflict between public/historical/political and personal/everyday/trivial, in our paper we will discuss Vrkljan’s novel as outstanding example of the emancipatory changes in the cultural field of the 1980’s. “Trivial as political” in Slavenka Drakulic’s writing, articulated through Irena Vrkljan’s autobiographical narrative, incites the emancipatory power of l’ecriture feminine that simultaneously reflects the Other in itself, produces its own difference and writes without inscribing itself. This type of women’s writing, as previously defined by Helene Cixous, is presented in Irena Vrkljan’s text as writing its own life that is “always in-between” and that undermines declared democratic values as much as the politics of literature, as understood by Jacques Ranciere. Revealing discordances between poetic and social hierarchies, women’s writing makes changes in the partition of the visible and the sayable, in the intertwining of being and writing, body and words.

Is less more … or is more less? Scaling the political ecologies of the future

Imagining progressive environmental futures, especially among critical scholars, can be a fraught enterprise. While some theorists and activists turn towards the social emancipatory power of modern technological interventions at scale, others point to the revolutionary power of degrowth, simplicity, and conviviality. These competing political geographical imaginaries are often strident in their response to one another, though they share core materialist commitments. This essay reviews these contrasting approaches in light of the tradition of political ecology, within the context of an Earth economy that is trending towards higher levels of energy and lower levels of human labor, weighing the degree to which the work and conclusions of political ecologists are congruent with either perspective, neither perspective, or both. The conclusions suggest that, while these two traditions have inverse, or at least orthogonal, views of economic scale, they may not be beyond compromise. Socialist modernism and degrowth sprouted from the same seed, share a political ecological tradition, and may indeed require one another. Eschewing both utopian and dystopian aspirations may open the door to progressive reconciliation and action.