Existing Power Relations Research Articles

Dogs on Film: Status, Representation, and the Canine Characters Test

The representation of animals in cinema and television reflects and reinforces dominant ideologies and traditional stereotypes. While popular culture often legitimizes prevailing social norms and existing power relations, it can also reflect shifting cultural attitudes about traditional axes of inequality such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and species. Representations of canine characters incidentally embedded in family life provide a unique lens through which to consider the evolving cultural and legal status of dogs and their place in multispecies families. This article introduces a Canine Characters Test, similar to the Bechdel Test used to measure the representation of women in movies, to critically evaluate the representation of dogs in film and television. Applying the test and its four criteria—Role in Narrative, Agency, Language, and Animality—to two examples, this article argues that portrayals that pass the test support a positive shift in social norms regarding dog–human relationships, which in turn bolsters efforts to elevate dogs’ status under the law. Benevolent speciesism, authenticity, and problematic tropes such as vanishing, ornamental, and miraculous canines are also discussed.

Empowering the already powerful? A feminist intersectional analysis of critical management education in a business school

This article investigates the possibility of critical management education to transform management education, that is, expose the ethicopolitical nature of managerial knowledge and practice, and empower students to act for social justice, in the context of a business school. Drawing on a conceptual framework on power rooted in Black feminism, we analyze three autoethnographic vignettes narrating our experience of teaching about discrimination and sexism, using participative methods inspired by pragmatic and radical critical management education, in a French business school. Our study shows that participative methodologies can empower the powerful and disempower the powerless and entrench rather than destabilize the neoliberal status quo in our classrooms. We empirically describe how participative methodologies can reinforce rather than challenge existing power relations connected to gender, race and class, as well as the neoliberalization of management education. We contribute to the literature on CME by empirically demonstrating that participative methodologies can be co-opted within business schools, thus highlighting a dark side of pragmatic critical management education and providing a feminist intersectional reading that goes beyond critical management education’s dominant focus on teacher/students power dynamics. Our work also advances scholarship on intellectual activism as we reflect on the conditions to sustain critical engagement as feminist teachers and writers.

(Post)-pandemic subversive pedagogies: Slowness, relationality and care

While power is central to the study of global politics, pedagogy is often under-recognised as a central site of power within the discipline, shaping not only what is studied but who is invited into this scholarly endeavour. We advocate for subversive pedagogies that challenge the status quo by troubling the ‘knowledge-transmission’ model of education that sees learners as passive recipients of knowledge imparted by subject experts. We articulate three key dispositions in our pedagogical practices that allow us to acknowledge how existing power relations structure our teaching and provide alternative frames for learning with our students: slowness, relationality and care. First, we identify the challenges we face working in ‘the academy at speed’, advocating a slower approach to our pedagogical practice. Second, we articulate the central features of relationality and care that can accompany a slower pedagogy, offering new possibilities for how we engage our subject and our students. We finish by tracing these elements of subversive pedagogies across the contributions to this special issue, noting how intentional subversion and attentiveness to time, relationality and care centres the power inherent in pedagogy.

The Politics of Ambiguous Loss: Missing Persons and Social Ecologies after Armed Conflict

Abstract This article seeks to understand how the concept of ambiguous loss can help explain why and how the issue of missing persons becomes a tool of politics, in terms of being instrumentalized to advance particular political agendas. Ambiguous loss is constructed relationally within the social systems that family members of the missing occupy and, as a result, social and political contexts play a crucial role in both defining ambiguity and in mediating the impacts of ambiguous loss. Because ambiguity is discursively and relationally constructed and meaning made from it subject to existing power relations, it is inherently political. The extreme and chronic trauma of ambiguous loss reshapes individuals’, families’ and, potentially, communities’ perspectives on events in which people have gone missing, making the trauma of ambiguous loss one that lends itself to being framed as a collective trauma with impacts for the entire group. More than this, the impacts of ambiguous loss resonate with what have been called ‘chosen traumas’, used to create group identities in the light of extreme experiences. In particular, the importance in ambiguous loss of meaning making and of the challenge of forgetting resonates with what makes collective traumas effective tools of politics.

How Do Partners Make Pregnancy-Related Decisions? Understanding the Decision-Making Process of Couples: A Scoping Review

This scoping review seeks to improve our understanding of how pregnant women and their partners make decisions related to pregnancy. A total of 43 articles were included in which four themes were identified: [1] decision-making authority, [2] communication between decisional partners, [3] informational needs/knowledge, and [4] involvement/support of the partner. The extent to which couples make decisions together depends on cultural aspects, existing power relationships, the amount of information received by both partners, the type of decision and the consequences of the decision. While many male partners prioritize female autonomy in pregnancy-related decisions, contextual factors such as income and cultural influences can affect women’s autonomy. Additionally, the research emphasizes the importance of couple autonomy, asserting that joint decision-making can positively contribute to the decision-making process of couples navigating pregnancy-related choices.

Contesting the boundaries of physics teaching: What it takes to transform physics education toward justice‐centered ends

AbstractThe underrepresentation of Black Americans in physics has been persistent for so long that it seems to have constrained physics educators' collective imagination when it comes to conceptualizing and pursuing equity in physics teaching and learning. Drawing on a teacher research study that foregrounds justice‐centered physics teaching, this article pushes past the “equity as access” narrative toward more expansive visions of equity and justice by reimagining physics education as a liberatory praxis. Accordingly, this study explores the complexities that emerged while expanding the boundaries of physics learning to embrace a justice‐centered curriculum through a Youth Participatory Science (YPS) project. Taught in the context of a freshman physics course at an urban public high school, this YPS project engaged students in designing solar energy systems for an African‐American community historically harmed by environmental racism. Critically evaluating curricular documents, I juxtaposed the traditional goals of physics learning with respect to definitions of community needs and assets. Simultaneously, I investigated the ways in which canonical physics knowledge dialectically interacts with interdisciplinary knowledge throughout the defining, investigating, and intervening phases of the YPS cycle. Throughout this process, I considered how physics learning provides opportunities to either reproduce or transform existing power relations within the sociopolitical and environmental schema of the community. The critical understandings constructed from this study frame what it takes to repurpose physics teaching and learning for environmental justice, specifically emphasizing the agentic pedagogical and curricular decisions teachers must negotiate to transform physics education for liberatory purposes.

Signals of belonging: emergence of signalling norms as facilitators of trust and parochial cooperation.

Mechanisms of social control reinforce norms that appear harmful or wasteful, such as mutilation practises or extensive body tattoos. We suggest such norms arise to serve as signals that distinguish between ingroup 'friends' and outgroup 'foes', facilitating parochial cooperation. Combining insights from research on signalling and parochial cooperation, we incorporate a trust game with signalling in an agent-based model to study the dynamics of signalling norm emergence in groups with conflicting interests. Our results show that costly signalling norms emerge from random acts of signalling in minority groups that benefit most from parochial cooperation. Majority groups are less likely to develop costly signalling norms. Yet, norms that prescribe sending costless group identity signals can easily emerge in groups of all sizes-albeit, at times, at the expense of minority group members. Further, the dynamics of signalling norm emergence differ across signal costs, relative group sizes, and levels of ingroup assortment. Our findings provide theoretical insights into norm evolution in contexts where groups develop identity markers in response to environmental challenges that put their interests at odds with the interests of other groups. Such contexts arise in zones of ethnic conflict or during contestations of existing power relations. This article is part of the theme issue 'Social norm change: drivers and consequences'.

A New Family Member or Just Another Digital Interface? Smart Speakers in the Lives of Families with Young Children

Based on longitudinal qualitative research involving twenty families with at least one child aged eight or younger, the article provides an account of how families, as distinctive communicative figurations, adopt, use and make sense of smart speakers through diverse socially situated practices. Findings show that parents and children enter in a communicative relationship with smart speakers based on their attribution of human-like or machine-like traits to the device, and the device response to their expectations. Moreover, engaging in communicative practices through and with smart speakers, family members subvert or reinforce existing power relations. However, smart speakers acquire new agency by intensifying the datafication and algorithmification of everyday life, thus entailing a shift in power dynamics between humans and machines.

Normativity and Body: Efficient Control Mechanisms in Society and School

Objectives: The objective of this discussion is to establish a relationship between concepts and historicity of the body, sexuality and domination, from the perspective of Michel Foucault. This is because we understand the body as involved in existing power relations, from and in the various instances of society. In this sense, biopower presents itself as a control mechanism, once well instituted and established in society it is diluted in micro relationships. Methodology: as part of the challenges of the Education in the Cerrado and Citizenship Research Group, a set of debates were carried out by members of the group. Using Discourse Analysis from a Foucauldian perspective as a tool, the search was to explain historical aspects specific to the constitution of subjects in different sociocultural positions, thus, we sought to make an ethical and aesthetic approach. Results and conclusion: sexual discourse covered in disguise is no longer supported by mechanisms of oppression, but by mechanisms of ideology that cannot be escaped, as they are everywhere. In this way, we understand that the discourse on the modern repression of sex is sustained by micro relationships and no longer by oppression, an ideological bias passed from father to son, reinforced at school, endorsed by the teacher-student relationship. Implications of the research: the research leaves questions: will schools being restricted from dealing with the dilemmas of sexuality and gender identities contribute to this move towards freedom of sexual language and the understanding of the real meaning of sex, if restricted to family cultural values? Would it be a return to the values ​​and customs of the traditional Brazilian family?

Negotiating Religion and Power: Quotidian Conflicts between the Ahom State and neo-Vaishnavism

Religious beliefs are enmeshed in the state-making processes. This theme is relatively understudied in the context of medieval Assam. Older historical works by scholars such as S.N. Sarma, Maheswar Neog, Amalendu Guha and D. Nath have enriched our knowledge on Vaishnavism and the Ahom state but there remains a scope for further exploration of the interlinkages between state, power, and religion in the broader state-making process. Religious beliefs impact existing power relations. Earlier scholars, by focusing on the persecution of Vaishnavite monasteries under the Ahom King Gadadhar Singha (1681-1696) and the later Moamaria rebellions, largely ignored the more quotidian attempts of the Ahom state to regulate religious beliefs which appeared prejudicial to its authority. This paper seeks to emphasise the significance of everyday tension and conflict which characterised the relation between Neo-Vaishnavite institutions and tribal configurations, and between the State and the Neo-Vaishnavite order; thereby shedding light on the quotidian processes of state-making in medieval Assam. State regulation extended beyond religious beliefs to religious leaders (through persecution of religious preachers, surveillance of monasteries, intervention in inter-monastery conflicts) lest they became the focal point for harbouring disaffected elements and thereby become a threat to the authority of the state. The Ahom state did not limit itself to regulation but would, at times, even come into negotiated arrangements with various disparate elements to maintain its authority. The state also attempted to nudge different social and religious groups towards state-sanctioned orthodox practices (such as idol worship) through long-term negotiations. Thus, the paper argues that the state tolerated, and at times encouraged, Neo-Vaishnavism and attempted to restructure religious beliefs to fit its viewpoint of a hierarchical society at whose apex stood the king, who ultimately made decisions regarding the legitimacy of religious traditions.

Education Prototyping: a Methodological Device for Technical Democracy

AbstractThe potential of applying a ‘technical democracy’ (Callon et al. 2009) to the context of sociotechnical controversies in education is the focus of this paper. This process reflects an emergent 'thought collective' (Fleck 1979) whose common interests, yet diverse expertise, are articulated through provisional objects and infrastructure for collective and experimental knowledge production. The technique of ‘prototyping’ was then deployed for a design experiment to: first, slow down, or suspend, existing power relations of co-evolving technologies and methodologies and, second, to accelerate, or expand, new possibilities and configurations for democratisation. Education prototyping is then introduced, with the intent to co-produce pluralistic spaces that expose challenges and test possibilities. Key aspects include the following: (i) prototyping dynamics: problematization and prefiguration; and, (ii) prototyping practices: spanning the temporal, methodological, relational, material, and spatial. These aspects were tested in the context of a research project exploring automated essay scoring in Australian schools. While always situated and partial, we argue that prototyping offers a unique device to interrupt and experiment with the politics of collaboratively researching increasingly networked and commercialised technologies across education and society.

A data feminist approach to urban data practice: Tenant power through eviction data

ABSTRACT Acknowledging the role of data in reproducing (and disrupting) existing power relationships, this article argues data feminism is a useful intervention in data practice for planners and others interested in engaging in data ethics evaluation of complex urban problems. Through critical organizational analyses of eviction-related projects in Atlanta, Georgia, and Richmond, Virginia, we illustrate the data feminism approach to reimagining eviction data as a tool for tenant empowerment. We find that why, how, for whom, and with whom we collect, present, and organize eviction data is both driven by and drives the narratives, policy, and practice around eviction. Shifting the power, process, and participants of eviction data creation can facilitate tenant organizing and a rebalancing of the landlord-tenant power and information dynamic. Such a reorientation of the purpose, creation, and usage of data could promote data justice across a variety of urban policy areas.

Social class and streaming in contexts of educational disadvantage: what young people have to say

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the everyday practices of streaming working-class students into vocational education and training pathways in public high schools in Western Australia. It challenges existing beliefs, assumptions and practices underpinning the ways in which students are artificially divided into academic and non-academic forms of school knowledge at a young age. In a country that prides itself on the myth of egalitarianism, we argue that streaming functions to legitimate existing power relations, social hierarchies, and educational inequalities. Drawing on the tradition of critical ethnography, the article examines the post school reflections of five young adults, now studying at Tertiary and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, as they reflect on their experience of high school and the processes around their decision to enrol in a vocational education and training programme at school and with what effects. The article identifies five emergent key themes organised around the narrative of each student.

Deconsecration: Symbolic Sanctions, “Courts of Honour,” and the Cleansing of Denmark’s Who’s Who After the German Occupation, 1940–1945

How may elites experience a symbolic fall from grace? Elite scholarship has typically described how symbolic structures contribute to consecrate and reinforce existing power relations. Processes of deconsecration are, however, less well described. Deconsecration as a social process is distinct from déclassement, as well as from cultural or juridical processes of exclusion. It is the loss of the very status as “elite.” We address the question of deconsecration through a historical case study of the exclusion of elite groups from the Danish Who’s Who and professional bodies in the wake of the liberation after the German occupation of Denmark 1940–1945.

“The Ice Mother”: Figure Skating Coach Jutta Müller as Contributor and Profiteer of the East German’s Sport Performance System

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the roles, responsibilities, struggles, constraints, and freedoms of coaches within the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) hierarchical, performance-focused sport system. The paper focuses on Jutta Müller, one of the most successful figure skating coaches of all time. We show how Müller had to become an actor in political power games within the GDR’s sport system, therewith reproducing existing power relations, shaping them, and using them to her advantage. Based on archival sources collected from the German federal archive, we concentrate on the time period between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, when Müller’s athletes achieved great international success. In revealing how Müller dealt with the challenges of the GDR’s sport system, our results are insightful for current elite coaches, who work within the constraint of national systems.

The interplay of episodic power in enabling and coercive budgetary designs in universities: A case study

AbstractThis paper explores how power exercised at the individual level within existing power relations in a university influences its enabling and coercive budgeting forms. A qualitative case study in a Sri Lankan university involved interviews and document analysis. Findings demonstrate the dominance of coercive controls over enabling controls in the university due to the power and influence of dominant individuals stemming from ongoing struggles among those pursuing diverse interests and strategic actions. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating how power is mobilised by actors and its impact on the variations of the enabling and coercive budgetary forms and practice.

Unlocking sustainability? The power of corporate lock-ins and how they shape digital agriculture in Germany

The digital transformation of agriculture is widely presented as a path to sustainability and a win-win strategy that benefits the environment, farmers, and consumers alike. However, recent studies show how the digital economy is characterized by monopoly structures, market concentration and corporate power that determine patterns of control over digital technology, distribution of benefits and value creation from data. In the field of agriculture, there is a lack of empirical research on lock-ins that examines in detail the logic of these effects, the actors, and the power dynamics behind them. Yet such insights are exactly what is needed to better understand the effects and to break unsustainable lock-ins towards more sustainable agri-food systems. Drawing on the literature on the political economy of food and agriculture, and on studies of innovation and sustainability transitions, this article aims to fill this research gap. Based on an empirical case study in Germany, it identifies systemic, technological, data, legal, soft, and discursive lock-ins that reinforce existing power relations and farmers' dependence on corporate agro-industrial farming models. It concludes that sustainable transformations in agriculture require a disruption of the identified lock-ins at multiple levels.

Theatre self-translation as cultural renegotiation and a tool of empowerment: the case of Luigi Pirandello

ABSTRACT This article investigates theatre self-translation as cultural renegotiation and a tool of empowerment, in terms of the relation between language and dialect, and the conceptualization of “national”. Building on previous research on the figure of self-translator, the issues of power and the monolingual paradigm, the article analyzes Luigi Pirandello’s self-translation of Tutto per bene from Italian into Sicilian. The case study begins with an outline of the Italian sociolinguistic context and Pirandello’s views on language, dialect and translation, followed by a detailed analysis of significant changes made in self-translation and of the (in)visibility of the Sicilian and Italian plays. While this self-translation occurs between language and dialect, it still involves cultural renegotiation dictated by a shift in the sociolinguistic reality. Pirandello’s dialect self-translation demonstrates that self-translators are agents helping challenge the existing power relations and that self-translation is a tool of empowerment, recognition and cultural inclusion.

Dissident women’s organizations as a counter-hegemonic actor in Turkey

ABSTRACT Could the Turkish women’s movement, which has a strong reaction mechanism, be a constituent actor of counter-hegemony? The main reasons behind this question are the women’s movement’s deep-rooted history and its openness to combine theory with practice/action. When looked from the Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s perspective of radical democracy theory, the women’s movement appears to have a considerable potential of deciphering the existing hegemony and articulating the social demands which exclude and are excluded by the present-day hegemony in Turkey. This article tries to understand how women’s movement in Turkey conceptualizes the existing power relations that constitute the neoliberal religio-conservative hegemony and how it responds to it.

Агонистический плюрализм и состязательная модель демократии: проблемы нормативного обоснования

The article is devoted to the analysis of the main tenets of the theory of competitive democracy and its underlying principle of agonistic pluralism, which have become quite widespread among the Western political philosophers in the recent years. The author identifies two main approaches to the normative substantiation of the value of democratic competition. The first approach is based on the postulate about the importance of maintaining the diversity of public discourses and, therefore, inadmissibility of giving one of them the status of dominant or preferred. The second approach emphasizes the importance of constantly challenging the established power relations. Having demonstrated serious flaws in these approaches, one of which, in fact, promotes diversity for the sake of diversity, and the other — variability for the sake of variability, the author turns to the strategy of justifying competitive democracy that focuses on providing all stakeholders with an equal opportunity to change the existing power relations. In his estimation, this strategy, which largely overcomes the shortcomings of the above mentioned approaches, also has its weaknesses related to (1) the difficulty of disentangling between unequal opportunities for transforming power mechanisms and other social inequalities, (2) the unattainability of the complete equality of opportunities, and (3) the ambiguous relationship between the value of the opportunity to define and abolish social restrictions (political equality) and other values (in particular, the so-called intrinsic equality). A special attention in the article is paid to the identification of the deep value foundations of agonistic pluralism. The author notices that advocates of agonism want to evade clarification of these foundations and states that agonistic pluralism as the highest moral basis of politics is highly doubtful, while the part of the concept that is acceptable does not represent anything fundamentally new. According to his conclusion, all this speaks of the purely instrumental nature of this principle, and thus of its relative importance in comparison with those ideals that it intends to achieve.