Hierarchical Power Structure Research Articles

“Soul Murder”: Investigating Spiritual Trauma at the Royal Commission

ABSTRACTDuring its five-year tenure, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established that faith organisations, with inadequate practices of organisational transparency and accountability, hierarchical structures of power, and patriarchal cultures, have poor track records in child protection and high levels of child abuse. Evidence from the Royal Commission hearings identified spiritual trauma as an outcome of child sexual abuse across several religious organisations including the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Salvation Army, the Yeshiva Jewish School in Melbourne and Sydney and the Satyananda Ashram in NSW. The Catholic Church had the highest levels of institutional child sexual assault and was the site of most of the narratives of spiritual suffering. This article examines existing research on spiritual trauma with regard to child sexual abuse, applies a five-point classification model developed by Kenneth Pargament and colleagues for identifying and analysing spiritual damage, and examines the evidence from both survivors and expert witnesses that was heard during relevant public hearings involving the Catholic Church at the Royal Commission. Institutional responses to spiritual injury will be considered and it will be argued that the Catholic Church is a distinctive institution that has produced a powerful culture of spiritual identity and belonging, where the impact of child sexual abuse has resulted in a loss of faith for many survivors, families and communities.

Conflict Management in Teams: For Military and Government

Despite the hierarchical power structures in the military and government, as they reach more senior levels, leaders routinely operate in peer-to-peer teams. These environments require the ability to negotiate complex group dynamics—a skill which often goes undeveloped in typical hierarchies. Groups that succeed over time have three things in common: (1) they meet their performance goals, (2) their members feel satisfied that they are learning/benefiting from being a part of the team, and (3) the process the team uses to collaborate sets it up for future success. Recent research, however, suggests that only about 25% of teams meet these criteria. The rest of the teams typically experience less-than-ideal processes and a decline in performance and/or satisfaction. This technical note explores what goes wrong with teams, the ways in which conflict can both help and hurt a team, and how a team can harness the benefits and limit the liabilities of conflict. Excerpt UVA-OB-1208 Feb. 9, 2018 Conflict Management in Teams: For Military and Government Despite careers characterized by hierarchical power structures and clear decision-making processes, most senior officers will find themselves serving in environments involving peer leadership and complex team dynamics. From councils of colonels, to cross-functional teams, to joint tank sessions, leadership at the strategic level relies on creativity, communication, and connectivity to accomplish the mission. Rarely trained or educated on complex team dynamics, senior officers often find themselves frustrated by pointless, contentious meetings, social loafing by fellow teammates, and an inability to develop the expected synergy to derive creative solutions. What does effective look like? Successful teams have three things in common: (1) they meet their performance goals, (2) their members feel satisfied that they are learning/benefiting from being a part of the team, and (3) the process the team uses to collaborate sets it up for future success. Recent research, however, suggests that in as little as five weeks of working together, only about 25% of teams meet these criteria. The rest of the teams typically experience less-than-ideal processes and a decline in performance and/or satisfaction. So what goes wrong? Most team members report that conflict among team members gets in the way of effective teamwork, and this conclusion is largely supported by academic research. The effect of conflict on teams, however, is not always straightforward. Under the right conditions, for example, conflict can stimulate divergent thinking and lead to improved problem solving. On the other hand, it also tends to increase defensiveness, distract members from effective problem solving, and generate interpersonal animosity. So what determines whether a team can harness the benefits and limit the liabilities of conflict? More than a decade of research provides a clear answer: how team conflict is managed. Because conflict happens in all teams (even the most effective ones), the presence of conflict has little bearing on whether one team is more successful than another. The factor most important to team success is how teams handle conflict when it does arise—and there are clear and reliable patterns associated with both effective and ineffective conflict management. . . .

Surveillance in Hogwarts: Dumbledore\u2019s Balancing Act Between Managerialism and Anarchism

This article considers the fictional depiction of surveillance in Harry Potter, and compares the two different models of school leadership represented by Dolores Umbridge and Albus Dumbledore. The Harry Potter books put forward a vision of school leadership that affirms the necessity of surveillance. The optimal degree of surveillance means a fine balance between managerialism and anarchism. Neither a panoptic gaze of discipline and management which aims to control the minutest details of a person’s action, nor the absence of surveillance is desirable. Hogwarts is a surveillance school, and the difference between the two principals, both of whom insist on the maintenance of a hierarchical power structure, lies in the extent to which surveillance is in operation. Whereas Umbridge represents the failure of extreme managerialism which only results in fierce resistance, Dumbledore is portrayed as the desirable model of a temperate leader who, through reducing management and developing trust, succeeds in cultivating in students a version of discipline that is not based on external behaviour but on internal values.

Understanding Blame Politics in China's Decentralized System of Environmental Governance: Actors, Strategies and Context

AbstractDecentralized environmental governance theory suggests that decentralization can produce better environmental performance mainly because lower-level governments are closer to the people and environmental issues and are considered more legitimate than the national government. However, China's decentralized system of environmental governance has been often regarded as a key factor in creating pollution problems rather than in solving them. To explain this puzzle, this article, using Blame Avoidance Behaviour in government theory as a theoretical framework, examines how blame avoidance behaviour shapes China's decentralized system of environmental governance from three perspectives: first, actors and the chain of blame shaped by the hierarchical power structure among environmental policymakers and implementers; second, the strategies of discursive domination and decentralization for blaming environmental problems on local officials; and lastly, the contextual factor of “hierarchical governmental trust.” Drawing on documentary discursive analysis and extensive fieldwork, this article suggests that the dysfunction of China's decentralized environmental governance structure may in fact be an outcome of a blame-shifting game between central and local governments.

Reflexivity, positionality and power in cross-cultural participatory action research with research assistants in rural Cambodia

This paper draws on the experiences of a doctoral student undertaking a cross-cultural, cross-language participatory action research (PAR) project in rural Cambodia. Cambodia is a largely Buddhist country with a complex history of religion, invasion, colonisation, war and oppression. Despite a democratic constitution, political control and fear of challenging authority are ever present; and all had an impact on the participation and development of this project. I recruited eight volunteer community health workers (CHWs) and two research assistants (RAs) with an aim to explore methods and challenges faced when trying to improve health with and for community members. Over eight participatory workshops and a two-day training session CHWs identified, implemented and reflected on solutions to community health problems. Simultaneously, the RAs and I reflected on the processes and challenges we faced. Creating opportunity for reflexivity allowed for discussion to emerge around culture, position and power and how these were impacting on the research process and outcomes. Established social hierarchical power structures in Cambodia presented challenges to undertaking a PAR project with emancipatory and social change aims. Such structures also impacted on the ability and readiness of participants to be critical and analytical. The importance of the RAs as cultural navigators and the necessity of embracing their situated knowledge as both an insider and outsider is a key finding.

An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism by Richard R. Gaillardetz

Reviewed by: An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism by Richard R. Gaillardetz Bernard P. Prusak An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis, and the Renewal of Catholicism. By Richard R. Gaillardetz. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015. 172pp. $19.95. This is an insightful book about the situation of the Catholic Church before, during, and fifty years after Vatican II. As the Introduction suggests, Vatican II can be pictured as an ecclesiological building project concerned with a renewed vision for the church, “undertaken in the shadow of a still imposing but largely antiquated ecclesial ‘structure.’” Before Vatican II, “Catholics dwelled in an enchanted world sustained by a sensual religious imagination . . . . The clergy were viewed as exemplars of holiness, sacramental ‘dispensers,’ and keepers of ecclesiastical order and stability.” The pre-Vatican II church was a hierocratic, clerical institution. It was supported by five pillars: revelation conceived as truths mediated via a hierarchical magisterium issuing doctrinal propositions; a papacy exercising monarchic, centralized authority; a sacral priesthood of celibate holy men endowed with sacramental powers and unquestioned authority; a clericalized sacramental system which dispensed grace, conceived more as a “thing” rather than a transforming relationship; and a threatened, confrontational attitude to the world. A summary of the intrigues and organizational birth pangs that marked the three years of preparation for the council, leads Gaillardetz to ask: “why didn’t the council fail?” He especially credits the dramatic effect of Pope John XXIII’s opening address to the council on October 11, 1962. The talk opened the bishops to a broader vision of the council’s potential, which they then exercised in resisting the curia’s attempts to control the agenda and outcomes. [End Page 77] In Gaillardetz’s view, Vatican II gave rise to a new set of pillars: a revitalized theology of revelation as God’s self-communication and offer of relationship, with an appreciation of the historically conditioned nature of doctrinal formulations; the necessity of dialogue with genuine listening, allowing for disagreement, between all the members of the church—pope and bishops, pastors and faithful—and of the church with the world; the importance of baptism as the most basic Christian identity; a renewed theology about the active role of the Holy Spirit within the church; an emphasis on episcopal collegiality—still unrealized in its potential; the missionary nature of the church, and an understanding of the church as a pilgrim community living in history. Gaillardetz chronicles setbacks to fuller implementation of all the above, coming from the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A series of policies and documents “reinforced the ontological divide between the clergy and the laity,” and debilitated episcopal conferences. Emphasizing the need for more synthetic interpretations toward a coherent vision of the church and a corresponding program for reform, Gaillardetz first proposes a consideration of humility as an ecclesial virtue. Humility involves honest self-assessment; it is “an intrinsically other-centered virtue;” and it is linked to the exercise of power. Each of those characteristics are shown to have application to the church, and to coincide with Vatican II’s emphasis on the language of service and collaboration. Exploring how various spheres of ecclesial life are called to interact, Gaillardetz proposes that a theology of the Holy Spirit can enable shifting from a competitive to a noncompetitive ecclesial dynamic. That would entail a reversal of the historical process wherein the diverse roles and functions within the church were shaped into a hierarchical power structure. The relationship between the pope and bishops would be reconfigured by placing emphasis on their shared ministry of service to the church as a communion of churches, rather than power over the church. The “teaching authority” of the magisterium would have to learn to listen to and consult the faithful in order to gather their insights. Office holders in the church would have to welcome and empower the baptized to exercise their gifts endowed by the Spirit, rather than feel their power is threatened by them. A more intensive theology of the laity would no longer simply assign them a distinctively secular vocation. The relationship of clergy and laity, and church and world, would be...

A Simplified Model of Choice Behavior under Uncertainty.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has been standardized as a clinical assessment tool (Bechara, 2007). Nonetheless, numerous research groups have attempted to modify IGT models to optimize parameters for predicting the choice behavior of normal controls and patients. A decade ago, most researchers considered the expected utility (EU) model (Busemeyer and Stout, 2002) to be the optimal model for predicting choice behavior under uncertainty. However, in recent years, studies have demonstrated that models with the prospect utility (PU) function are more effective than the EU models in the IGT (Ahn et al., 2008). Nevertheless, after some preliminary tests based on our behavioral dataset and modeling, it was determined that the Ahn et al. (2008) PU model is not optimal due to some incompatible results. This study aims to modify the Ahn et al. (2008) PU model to a simplified model and used the IGT performance of 145 subjects as the benchmark data for comparison. In our simplified PU model, the best goodness-of-fit was found mostly as the value of α approached zero. More specifically, we retested the key parameters α, λ, and A in the PU model. Notably, the influence of the parameters α, λ, and A has a hierarchical power structure in terms of manipulating the goodness-of-fit in the PU model. Additionally, we found that the parameters λ and A may be ineffective when the parameter α is close to zero in the PU model. The present simplified model demonstrated that decision makers mostly adopted the strategy of gain-stay loss-shift rather than foreseeing the long-term outcome. However, there are other behavioral variables that are not well revealed under these dynamic-uncertainty situations. Therefore, the optimal behavioral models may not have been found yet. In short, the best model for predicting choice behavior under dynamic-uncertainty situations should be further evaluated.

Legacies of Inequity: How Hometown Political Participation and Land Distribution Shape Migrants’ Paths into Wage Labor

Summary While scholars have examined how migration impacts development, this paper asks the opposite question, examining how local development conditions shape patterns of migration. Specifically, I consider how political institutions in rural sending communities create economic opportunities and constraints for their members, channeling potential migrants into farm or urban jobs. To date, scholars have explained differences in the migration paths of similar communities by looking at features on the receiving end, or at the development of social networks tied to migration. I add to this work by showing how hometown conditions influence out-migration. I compare the histories of two rural villages in Southern Mexico whose members migrated at similar times and volumes, first within Mexico beginning in the 1960s, and then to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. I find that in the village I call “Disposeo,” hierarchical power structures dispossessed members, drove them into debt, and limited their access to urban areas. As a result, when agricultural recruiters came to the village, most potential migrants accepted. By contrast, in “Igualdad,” communal landholding enabled members to reject farm labor. At the same time, rotating political posts helped them build networks into more desirable urban service jobs. As other research underscores, such labor market insertion has long-term consequences: migrants’ first job niches shaped their destinations, social networks, patterns of movement, and social mobility. Thus, even as rural villages erode in the face of emigration, they structure migrants’ prospects in the contemporary economy. In particular, participatory governance and resource redistribution can insulate members from the worst agricultural jobs.

Gold, power, protest: Digital and social media and protests against large-scale mining projects in Colombia

Colombia’s Internet connectivity has increased immensely. Colombia has also ‘opened for business’, leading to an influx of extractive projects to which social movements object heavily. Studies on the role of digital media in political mobilisation in developing countries are still scarce. Using surveys, interviews, and reviews of literature, policy papers, website and social media content, this study examines the role of digital and social media in social movement organisations and asks how increased digital connectivity can help spread knowledge and mobilise mining protests. Results show that the use of new media in Colombia is hindered by socioeconomic constraints, fear of oppression, the constraints of keyboard activism and strong hierarchical power structures within social movements. Hence, effects on political mobilisation are still limited. Social media do not spontaneously produce non-hierarchical knowledge structures. Attention to both internal and external knowledge sharing is therefore conditional to optimising digital and social media use.

Building the Leviathan--Voluntary centralisation of punishment power sustains cooperation in humans.

The prevalence of cooperation among humans is puzzling because cooperators can be exploited by free riders. Peer punishment has been suggested as a solution to this puzzle, but cumulating evidence questions its robustness in sustaining cooperation. Amongst others, punishment fails when it is not powerful enough, or when it elicits counter-punishment. Existing research, however, has ignored that the distribution of punishment power can be the result of social interactions. We introduce a novel experiment in which individuals can transfer punishment power to others. We find that while decentralised peer punishment fails to overcome free riding, the voluntary transfer of punishment power enables groups to sustain cooperation. This is achieved by non-punishing cooperators empowering those who are willing to punish in the interest of the group. Our results show how voluntary power centralisation can efficiently sustain cooperation, which could explain why hierarchical power structures are widespread among animals and humans.

Rethinking the Concept of the Neighborhood: An Enabling or a Housing Model?

Aiming at achieving the utopian housing scheme, contemporary housing studies have exhibited an increasing interest in the concept of the neighborhood; its design, components, and relationship with the surrounding. The concept of the neighborhood, as introduced by Perry in 1929 is considered a utopian approach that seeks to create a residential community, socially and spatially, in which the sense of community as existed in pre-industrial cities prevails. It arose as one of the modern reformist approaches that appeared in response to the urban ills that characterized the modern capitalist society such as social disintegration, inequality, and injustice in resource distribution and life chances. Likewise, aiming at achieving the socio-spatial ideal, many postmodern approaches emerged to create the ideal residential community; most prominently is the movement of “New Urbanism.” But did these utopian approaches succeed as community-housing ideals in providing appropriate housing (spatially) and realizing the sense of community (socially) at the same time?This research attempts to read critically the concept of contemporary neighborhood, particularly the movement of “New Urbanism” in terms of its ability to fulfil its aims in producing a residential coherent community, socially and spatially. It compares the production mechanisms, decision-making processes, and distribution and nature of rights in New Urbanism with the concept of residential communities in traditional Islamic built environments. It is concluded that, adopting capitalist production mechanisms characterized by centralized domination, hierarchical power structure, and lack of residents enablement, New Urbanism was no more than a spatial solution that produced residential compounds (spatially) rather than enabled communities (socially). As such, it is merely a housing scheme that failed to be qualified as a socio-spatial ideal, as targeted.

Mama's Baby, Papa's Slavery? The Problem and Promise of Mothering in Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild"

On planets ravaged by war and in civilizations plagued by oppression, Octavia E. Butler’s mothers invest themselves in caring for their communities. Whether biological mothers, such as Lilith from the Lilith’s Brood trilogy (1987-1989), or adoptive and community othermothers, such as Dana of Kindred (1979) and Lauren of the Parable series (1993, 1998), Butler’s mothers work to improve the circumstances of their people by destroying hierarchical power structures and developing more egalitarian societies. As Dorothy Allison famously asserts, the heroines of Butler’s science fiction are “independent, stubborn, difficult, and insistent on trying to control their own lives” (471), but they eschew the peace of solitude and accept the power of maternity, forging connections that allow them to effect social and political change. Readers will discover powerful mothers throughout Butler’s body of work, yet only in “Bloodchild” (1984) does Butler extend both the emotional potency of motherhood and the physical possibility of pregnancy beyond women, giving the men of her story—including her adolescent male protagonist, Gan—the ability to continue what Naomi Ruth Lowinsky calls the “motherline,” the tradition of maternal care that unites parent and child and, in Butler’s story, human and alien (Lowinsky 12-13). Butler writes in her afterword to “Bloodchild” that she “wanted to see whether [she] could write a dramatic story of a man becoming pregnant as an act of love—choosing pregnancy in spite of as well as because of surrounding difficulties” (30). By claiming that she composed a “love story” (30), Butler seeks to quell questions and criticism concerning the presence of reproductive “domination” (Butler, “Interview” by McCaffery 56) and “enslavement” (Helford 266) in “Bloodchild.” However, critics such as Jane Donawerth continue to describe “Bloodchild” as a tale of “exploitation” (40), while Amanda Thibodeau and Marty Fink offer more ambivalent responses to the tenor of human-alien relationships in Butler’s story and maintain that the author depicts a “parasitic” partnership (Thibodeau 270) resulting in the “violent physical invasion” and “alien appropriation of human bodies” (Fink 417, 418).

Catolicismo e poder no Congo: o papel dos intermediários nativos, séculos XVI a XVIII

Ao incorporar formas de exercício do catolicismo ao modo de vida local, tornando-o um importante elemento na afirmação de hierarquias de poder, os dirigentes do Congo passaram a conviver com missionários e recorreram à escrita e à religião para se relacionarem com os novos agentes que passaram a atuar em suas terras a partir do final do século XV, especialmente a Coroa portuguesa e a Igreja Católica, com sede em Roma. Os sacerdotes e catequistas nativos, formados pelas escolas dos missionários em terras conguesas e angolanas, ou mesmo em Lisboa, foram centrais na estruturação de novas práticas e crenças que aliavam elementos cristãos aos tradicionais da região. Tomamos como exemplo disso um determinado sacerdote: D. Calixto Zelotes dos Reis Magos, sobre o qual temos informações esparsas e que teve papel de destaque em algumas situações da política local.

The Children's Table: Childhood Studies and the HumanitiesAnnaMae Duane, Editor. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013.

The Children's Table: Childhood Studies and Humanities Anna Mae Duane, Editor. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2013.The idea of the children's signifies marginal presence of those who occupy space at family dinner table like at Thanksgiving. But it is also where true children's culture can be seen. Duane's work is a project that takes apart this hierarchical power structure that exists both in American dining rooms and in academy. Essays compiled in this volume recognize children's agency and resistance. They do so without necessarily denying fact that childhood is commonly understood as a temporary stage with dependence and fragility. Stemming from theories advanced by Michel Foucault and Judith Butler about power and identity, these essays examine subjectivity that children experience.Annette Ruth Appell problematizes fact that children are often framed as private subjects whose voices are rarely heard outside of their immediate environment, especially home. Appell argues that looking at children as legal subjects and as citizens will enable us to recognize children's agency and realize how children from different backgrounds may share similar interests and struggles. While Appell's approach is based in feminist tradition, Lucia Hodgson relies on critical race theory to examine how African Americans have historically been considered children, regardless of their age, and cannot be autonomous citizens. She shows that this history generates contradiction even for those who study children and who recognize children's agency at same level as their adult counterparts. Black youths may not possess as much agency as white youths because Black adults have been dissociated from full-agency citizenship. James Marten focuses on wartime children, including those during American Civil War. He postulates that children do not simply adopt ideas given by adults about a war but construct their own views about a conflict. John Wall agrees with these authors and states that there is a need for a social revolution that centers on children, just like gender, racial, and other minorities have had in varying degrees.Sophie Bell, Lesley Ginsberg, and Roy Kozlovsky, respectively, write on matter of discipline. Bell uses Unde Tom's Cabin (1852) to understand how race affected children's education and disciplining. Ginsberg focuses on antebellum American literature that described power relationship between children and adults. …

Positive Inertia: D.H. Lawrence and the Aesthetics of Generation

“Inertia” became a key term for D.H. Lawrence’s understanding of energy and materiality, leading him to a unique environmental aesthetics that stresses the body’s constant engagement with its surroundings. His articulation of “positive inertia” as an attention to the limits, needs, and fragility of human life serves as an important counterpoint to modernism’s obsession with autonomy, excess, and limitless production. Lawrence fully develops this critique in The Rainbow , where the negative inertia of industrialism and coal mining is juxtaposed to the positive inertia of familial generation and personal growth. This aesthetics of generation leads to a model of community based on ecological dependencies rather than hierarchical power structures.

Christopher Sly’s Arabian Night: Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew as World Literature

This essay draws together Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Kitāb ‘alf layla walayla, or The Arabian Nights, texts conventionally segregated by disciplinary protocols that group texts according to ideas of national or continental traditions rather than on the basis of common tropes or topoi. Each of these texts approaches similarly a common story type, in which a commoner wields the authority of a nobleman for a single day. Not only does reading The Taming of the Shrew and The Arabian Nights together afford a clearer and deeper understanding of each text’s individual critique of hierarchical social power structures, it models a valuable critical practice in a cultural moment when East and West continue to be seen in terms of their allegedly irreconcilable traditions and values. Remeasuring various strands of The Taming of the Shrew’s intertextual web brings the play into conversations about Shakespearean Orientalism, while also recognizing Shakespeare as a cultural and social bridge uniting “East” and “West” in the landscape of global culture.

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia ed. by Gabriella Gutierrez et al. (review)

Reviewed by: Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia ed. by Gabriella Gutierrez et al. Nadia M. Richardson Gabriella Gutierrez yMuhs, Yolanda Flores Nieman, Carmen G. Gonzales, and Angela P. Harris (Eds.). Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press, 2012. 570pp. Paper: $36.95. ISBN 978-0-87421-922-7. This anthology, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, is comprised of essays that explore the presumption of incompetence that arises when women of color pursue academic careers in culturally inhospitable institutions of higher education. The theme woven throughout the book is the experienced and, at times, internalized presumption that the women represented in these stories do not possess the intellectual competency to belong in the academically rigorous “ivory tower” traditionally equated with White male scholars. Although the civil rights movement in the United States is currently commemorating its 50th anniversary, affirmative action debates continue to rage, spurred on most recently by the Supreme Court’s decision to order an appeals court to re-rule on the most current affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas). At issue is the questioned constitutionality and necessity of considering race in higher education admission processes in what some consider a postracial society. Institutions of higher education are caught in the crux of the debate and face the challenge of increasing campus diversity in environments that covertly resist such efforts by claiming liberal objectivity and academic freedom. Instead, scholarly uniformity may be rewarded with tenure, and social hierarchical power structures are reproduced along the lines of race, gender, and class (Evans, 2007; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996; Woods, 2006). Through interviews, academic research, and first-person accounts, Presumed Incompetent explores the intersection of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity in the professional experiences of women in academia. While the stories and research represent a variety of disciplines, a majority of them are legal academic narratives that utilize critical race feminism and intersectionality. Critical race feminism (CRF) is a theory that emerged in response to the essentialist portrayals of Black women in critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT) (Crenshaw, 1991; Williams, 1991; Wing, 1997). It deconstructs the allegedly neutral concepts of CLS and CRT by focusing attention on the sexual and racial aspects of power relationships and the multi-dimensional experiences of women of color who are subjected to multiple forms of discrimination based on their race, class, and gender. Combined with intersectionality, a concept that examines the “multiple systems of oppressions” that “simultaneously corroborate and subjugate to conceal deliberate, marginalizing ideological maneuvers that define ‘Otherness’” (Few, 2007, p. 454), CRF places women of color at the center of its analysis. Presumed Incompetent adeptly brings theory to life by providing powerful examples of overt and covert discrimination that women in academia face due to their intersecting identities. Presumed Incompetent consists of 30 chapters grouped in five parts. Part 1, “General Campus Climate,” focuses on ways in which institutions of higher education can foster hostile climates that contribute to the persistence of discriminatory stereotypes that negatively impact how students and colleagues perceive women of color. Part 2, “Faculty-Student Relationships,” highlights classroom challenges for women of color, especially regarding teaching evaluations and unexamined consumer-driven student expectations of faculty homogeneity. Part 3, “Network of Allies,” presents the struggle that women of color face in developing the professional networks and mentorship they need to advance their careers and secure tenure. Part 4, “Social Class in Academia,” is a rare and thought-provoking analysis of class bias in higher education with a particular focus on the performance of class, class bias, and the evolving acquisition and navigation of social capital. Part 5, “Tenure and Promotion,” showcases the institutional racism that pervades the often ambiguous path to tenure and the self-doubt and psychological harm that it elicits. Each story, study, and interview presented in the five individual parts deconstructs the layers of cultural incompetence and inequitable power structures that inform the contributors’ presumed incompetence. The women who contributed their stories, research, and time to this important anthology provide a wealth of cultural and professional...

Palimpsest: Science as a talking cure

The article proposes an intergenerational talking cure with Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) as a model for feminist research and other takes on epistemology aiming at the transformation of not only hierarchical power structures but also dualist epistemology. The debate on the enmeshments of epistemology and power is reframed by connecting it to the third-wave feminist take on new materialism. I show how we can find answers for current debates in the past, if we decide to elaborate some unexpected (genealogical) descends to some fore-fathers and mothers. The cross reading of Teresa's oeuvre together with psychoanalysis sheds new light upon old but reviving issues such as the (new materialist rethinking of the) interconnectedness of materiality/corporeality and textuality in reaction on the preeminence of text in poststructuralism. Thus, emphasizing how twenty-first century (feminist) epistemology is on different levels challenged by the assignment to think inclusively and to surpass the seductive attraction of revolution as annihilation of tradition.

No place to turn: Nursing students' experiences of moral distress in mental health settings

While researchers have documented the significant issue of moral distress among nurses, few have explored moral distress among mental health nurses. In addition, no research to date has explored nursing students' experiences of moral distress during mental health clinical rotations, despite nursing students typically reporting negative attitudes towards mental health nursing. This manuscript reports on a qualitative study involving seven Canadian baccalaureate nursing students, who reported on their experiences of moral distress during a 13-week clinical rotation on inpatient psychiatric units. Overall, nursing students reported significant moral distress related to the perceived lack of nurses talking meaningfully to patients on the unit, a hierarchical power structure for physicians, a lack of information given to patients about their psychiatric medications, and an inability of their nursing instructors to advocate for ethical change on the units. Several students made a specific connection between their moral distress and not wanting to pursue a career in mental health nursing.

‘It’s supposed to be 1863, but it’s really not’: inside the representation and communication of heritage at a pioneer village

While much heritage studies research concerns dissonance and the use of history in contemporary spaces, nuances of the narrative construction process have only more recently begun to receive attention. This paper investigates the dynamics of heritage representation, in particular the contests among park staff, which have resulted in tremendous variation in heritage narrative communication at Spring Mill Pioneer Village. Contestation among the site’s administrators and interpretative staff regarding representations of time and place in the village has resulted in inconsistencies in both the material landscape and performative storytelling. As a result, the interpretative staff use a number of narrative tactics when engaging with tourists. While the village is located within a state park and therefore has a clear hierarchical power structure, this case illustrates how dissent manifests in the actual communication of the village’s narrative. Thus, this paper contributes to the ongoing study of spatio-historical context of heritage sites as revealed in the multifaceted construction, contestation and communication of narrative.