History Of Oppression Research Articles

Unveiling the affective digital counterpublic: A rhetorical ecological analysis of the #JusticeForNaqib movement in Pakistan

The paper traces the emergence of the #JusticeForNaqib digital counterpublic that arose in response to the tragic killing of a young man from an ethnically marginalized Pakistani community. Drawing upon a corpus of tweets spanning a year, I elucidate how the stickiness of the hashtag #JusticeForNaqib is shaped by the circulation of diverse emotions, affective encounters with other sticky hashtags, and contact with past histories of oppression and resistance within the Pashtun community. Through a rhetorical analysis of tweets containing the hashtag #JusticeForNaqib, I demonstrate how the affective counterpublic not only provided a collective space for grieving the loss of another young Pashtun man but also enabled activists to challenge prejudicial discourses portraying Pashtuns as terrorists and to mobilize support for offline protests by circulating calls to action and fostering a space to commemorate the social movement's achievements. The study advocates for a deeper understanding of the affective dimensions of the digital counterpublic, particularly in the context of marginalized communities.

Memory and displacement: Syrian-Kurdish refugees navigating the middle east, Israel, and the holocaust

Syrian refugees have become a significant minority in Germany over the past decade, with approximately one million now residing in the country. Most of them plan to stay and are eager to integrate into German society. Alongside practical challenges such as uncertain legal status, securing housing, finding employment, facing racism, and learning the German language, they must also navigate an ideological environment where common views on the Middle East, Islam, Israel, Jews, and the Holocaust differ significantly from those in their home country. This necessitates a certain degree of adaptation. Based on qualitative interviews with more than 200 Arab and Kurdish Syrian refugees, we examine self-perceptions, views on developments in the Middle East, and attitudes toward Jews. Significant differences emerged between Arab and Kurdish respondents. Especially among Syrian Kurds, there’s a noticeable openness to challenge antisemitic attitudes, often motivated by a rejection of Arab nationalist ideology and anti-Zionist propaganda. Syrian Kurds often perceive Jews and Israel more favorably than Arab Syrians. Their history of discrimination and oppression in Syria contributes to their rejection of hatred of Jews and Israel.

Weeping of Women and Nature in Tess Onwueme’s Then She Said It!

This study explores the theory of Ecofeminism ,which elucidates how capitalism and patriarchal society treat women and nature. Moreover, it studies the effects of gender categories to show how social norms unfairly control women and the environment. This study explores how Tess Onwueme's Then She Said it dramatizes the combined tyranny of nature and women. It emphasizes the devastation caused by oil firms colluding with local authorities to exploit both. The playwright examines the historical oppression of Delta women and the environmental damage they endure, using dramatic visuals and dialogue to illustrate the harsh realities of pollution and poverty. This study examines the contradiction between the prosperity of oil companies and the poverty of people in the regions where these companies operate. Furthermore, it highlights the parallels between women’s experiences and nature in terms of pain and resistance, emphasizing how both have become sources of strength for change. This offers new perspectives on societal evolution. It is an open critique of the capitalist system and patriarchy, which convert women's bodies and natural resources into commodities for profit.

Reparative Urban Science: Challenging the Myth of Neutrality and Crafting Data-Driven Narratives

I offer how urban planning should approach technology within the context of systemic racism, advocating for a reparative approach to address the issues of urban technology perpetuating today’s racial inequality and hindering efforts to redress historical oppression. I identify three mechanisms – formalization, context removal and legitimization, and penalization and extraction – that illustrate how urban technology perpetuates historical inequalities, often penalizing marginalized groups under the pretext of neutrality and fairness. Then, I discuss methodologies of reparative urban science, aiming to use urban technology to challenge race-neutral ideologies and create data-driven narratives for reparations.

Understanding community hate crimes as an incorrigible proposition: Local political attitudes, path dependence, and the ceremonious reporting of hate crime statistics

AbstractThe Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) of 1990 requires the federal government to publicly release official hate crime statistics annually; the HCSA does not, however, mandate that local agencies submit hate crime reports to the government in the first place. Although research has evaluated the reporting of hate crime statistics in a dichotomous fashion (compliance vs. noncompliance), the current study suggests that the consistent and invariable reporting of zero hate crimes in a particular jurisdiction over time is unlikely and thus better conceptualized as a third response strategy: ceremonious compliance. We examine this strategy as a potentially unique institutional behavior, structured by local political and historical contexts, including discursive differences in the identification of hate crime as an important social problem, and localized histories of racial oppression. This research then uses multilevel multinomial logistic regression models to estimate variation in the likelihood of differential compliance strategies (i.e., true compliance, ceremonious compliance, noncompliance), according to several political and historical factors, including Republican vote share, location in the Confederate South, and historical lynchings. Findings reveal that political and historical contexts are important predictors of agency responses to hate crime, with a particular tendency toward ceremonious compliance in Republican‐leaning locales.

Cultural sources of gender gaps: Confucian meritocracy reduces gender inequalities in political participation

The historical oppression of women in China mirrors the experiences of women in many other cultures. During the imperial era, Confucian ideologies and institutions played a significant role in perpetuating women's disenfranchisement. This perception has become deeply entrenched, to the extent that contemporary discussions on women's status often automatically refer to lingering Confucian legacies as one of the obstacles to achieving gender equality. However, this study offers a nuanced perspective by shedding light on how certain aspects of Confucianism, notably meritocracy, may serve to empower modern-day women. The research focuses on the Chinese context, particularly the historically significant Confucian-based meritocratic institution known as the civil examination system (keju). I argue that historical meritocratic legacies can have a lasting impact on contemporary behavior, specifically by reducing the gender gap in political participation in local village elections. Using data from historical archives and the China General Social Survey, I find a negative correlation between a prefecture's historical success in the keju exams and the gender gap in village election turnout among present-day respondents. Further exploratory analyses reveal that the enduring Confucian tradition of meritocracy also empowers other low-status social groups, including the economically disadvantaged and the less educated.

“I wanted to show the faces of these migrant workers, their struggles to breathe, and their undignified deaths”: In conversation with Puja Changoiwala

ABSTRACT Journalist and author Puja Changoiwala has been critically acclaimed for her passionate writings on crime and social issues across India, such as gender discrimination and poverty. Her debut novel, Homebound (2021), details the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indian society, which saw the largest exodus of people since Partition, the majority of whom were from India’s poorest regions. In the book, Changoiwala tells the stories of Indian migrant labourers, showing how years of exploitation converged in a single moment of humanitarian crisis and homelessness. In this interview, Changoiwala talks about her experience as a journalist and an author in unveiling the atrocious realities of migrant life in front of a largely complacent nation and world. The discussion highlights Changoiwala’s reflections upon the conveniently neglected history of oppression that has contributed to the silencing of these marginalized populations, and her call for an awareness of such discrimination through her fiction.

Alvin Ailey and Korean Dance: Writing Afro-Asian Relations into Korean Dance History

A close examination of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s 1962 Seoul performance, as well as Ailey’s influence on Korean dancers’ training and choreography, reveals that Ailey’s impact on Korean contemporary dance is significant. Ailey’s exploration of African American experiences piqued local dancers’ and critics’ interest, and suggested commonalities between Koreans’ and African Americans’ histories of oppression. This article examines performances, interviews, and criticism across a span of four decades, and brings special consideration to similarities between Yuk Wan-sun's Heuginyeongga and Ailey's Revelations in order to reframe Korean contemporary dance’s connections to Ailey and to illuminate Afro-Asian affinity.

Letter Writing as a Time-Traveling Method for Other World Making

Abstract: This paper proposes letter writing as a method to elicit visions of liberation and identify everyday acts of resistance that breathe life into these visions. By creating a liberatory space for the letter writer to reflect on the past and envision a socially just world, letter writing becomes a time-traveling method. To illustrate an example of the use of this method, the paper shares results from a study that used letter writing to explore the relationship between freedom dreams and everyday resistance. The participants were nineteen Latina women who were each instructed to write a letter to a loved one about their desires for social change and their daily efforts to achieve those visions. One of the major themes identified was that women in the study were engaging in a daily pedagogy of resistance to (re)connect their children to roots-that is, histories of oppression, their cultural heritage, and the Earth, in order to create a more socially just world. We conclude by suggesting that letter writing offers seeds of possibility to articulate new ways to breathe outside of the logic of racial capitalist settler coloniality.

Indigenous Language Revitalization Movements: Resistance Against Colonial Linguistic Domination

Indigenous communities worldwide have confronted the persistent threat of cultural assimilation and linguistic erasure as a result of colonial dominance. In response, robust language revitalization movements have emerged as acts of resistance, seeking to reclaim indigenous languages and safeguard cultural heritage. Led by indigenous intellectuals, educators, and activists, these movements encompass diverse initiatives, including the establishment of community-based language schools, advocacy for language rights, and cultural resurgence endeavors. By contesting colonial language ideologies and fostering intergenerational connections, indigenous communities reaffirm their linguistic autonomy and cultural sovereignty. This paper critically examines the significance of indigenous-led language revitalization movements in preserving linguistic diversity, challenging entrenched colonial legacies, and affirming indigenous rights to linguistic and cultural self-determination. Through an exploration of these movements, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the resilience and agency of indigenous peoples in the face of historical oppression and ongoing struggles for cultural survival and revitalization.

Dismantling the colonial mindset and becoming “Gender AWAke”: From gendered complicity to embodied praxis

The purpose of this article is to delineate the nature of the colonial mindset, which perpetuates gendered settler colonial structures of historical oppression in research and practice. By connecting a critical consciousness and living in alignment with agility (AWA), this work explicates pathways from gendered complicity to embodying praxis—or becoming gender AWAke. This article begins by describing the nature of the colonial mindset. Second, I critically examine the dominant discourse institutionalized by Western psychology. Third, I introduce the FHORT and critically analyze how the colonial mindset has affected and driven violence against Indigenous women. Examining how settler colonial structural sexism in its heteropatriarchal and heteropaternalistic forms has become imposed upon the lives of Indigenous women and gender-expansive peoples exposes subjugated knowledges; it provides an empirical scaffolding for people to become critically conscious of dominant gender norms that apply to people, institutions, and society more broadly. Finally, I propose living AWAke for personal and collective liberation.

Harnessing Resilience in the Healthy Ageing Discourse: Insights from Attappadi Indigenous Older Adults, Kerala, India

ABSTRACT In this “Decade of Healthy Ageing,” the integration of resilience into the healthy aging discourse becomes paramount, particularly in the context of indigenous communities grappling with the enduring effects of historical oppression, persistent poverty, and health disparities in their aging journey. Employing a phenomenological lens, this study seeks to derive the resilient characteristics exhibited by the Attappadi indigenous older adults of Kerala, aiming to explore the role of resilience in their pursuit of healthy aging. In-depth phenomenological interviews (n = 34), observation, and document analysis have revealed four key themes: A life course marked by adversities, Embracing the unyielding strength within, Personal resilience catalysts, and Extrinsic resilience catalysts. The participants exhibited a reasonably well-functioning collective, given their persistent adversities in their life course. Narratives illuminated a notable connection between the presence of resilience characteristics and the overall functioning of older adults. From a social work standpoint on resilience, this article underscores the vital interplay between individual agency and environmental factors in addressing adversity. The article advocates culturally sensitive, asset-based strategies to strengthen indigenous older adults’ intrinsic and extrinsic resilience to ensure that they are not left behind in the global pursuit of healthy aging.

Christianity in North America

“Diversity” predominates as the main message of the book Christianity in North America, the seventh in a series from Edinburgh University Press on Christianity in the world’s regions. It includes extensive demographic data from the World Christian Database (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), twenty-nine chapters on US regions, ethnic groups, ecclesiastical traditions, and specific themes (such as Faith and Culture, Theology, Immigration and Xenophobia, Media)—with some of these chapters including comparisons with the material presented in the six chapters devoted to Canada, St. Pierre and Miquelon, Greenland, and Bermuda. Reckoning with a history of White oppression of Natives and Blacks features prominently in many of the chapters.

Unequal Land: Towards Full Recognition of Indigenous People’s Religious Rights

Indigenous people face disparate treatment regarding religious free-exercise claims in the United States court system. Specifically, courts misconstrue native religious practices and hold native religious practitioners to a higher standard of proof than practitioners of mainstream religions in their free-exercise claims. This Article analyzes the history of oppression of indigenous people in the United States and the congressional intent to remedy such oppression through legislation. Further, this Article argues that despite Congress’s efforts to remedy the oppression of indigenous peoples, courts still utilize a problematic analysis of indigenous free-exercise claims. To resolve the inconsistent treatment between native and mainstream religious practitioners, this Article argues that courts should do three things when analyzing an indigenous free-exercise claim: (1) presume indigenous peoples suffer subjective harm from the government action at issue; (2) apply the law through an anti-subordination lens; and (3) broadly construe the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of Women's Oppression in Evie Shockley’s Selected Poems

Contemporary African American poetry passionately portrays the historical oppression of African American women. Through powerful verses, it explores their resilience and strength amid challenges, inspiring identity, empowerment, and unity within the community. One such writer is Evie Shockley, who attempts to showcase the oppression exercised upon black American women in her body of verses. Oppression includes but is not limited to gender, racial, and class oppression. The intersectional feminist approach is employed in analyzing and interpreting the oppression theme expressed in Shockley’s selected poems. The paper’s significance emanates from an investigation into the diverse oppression that African American women have encountered throughout history and continue to face in the present. Through this exploration, a heightened awareness of the plight endured by these women is achieved, fostering more significant concern regarding the inhumane treatment they have been subjected to multiple oppressions.

Migrating injustices in the small city: drought-impacted interstate migrant workers’ experiences in Tiruppur’s sanitation sector

ABSTRACT Climate stresses like droughts amplify economic precarity, pushing low-income, caste-oppressed communities across India to pursue temporary rural-urban migration as an adaptation strategy. This paper develops an intersectional framework on ‘migrating injustices’ to examine how caste and regional identity mediate interstate rural-urban migrants’ experiences of vulnerabilities and injustices, particularly as these experiences move and endure with migration, shaping migrants’ adaptive abilities. The framework is applied to trace the injustices that a group of 800-odd drought-impacted, caste-oppressed, landless persons from central India experience through their adverse economic incorporation as sanitation workers in Tiruppur’s privatized sanitation sector in southern India. Findings reveal that a history of caste oppression and uneven development in their home region produced unequal drought impacts for our informants, pushing them to migrate. However, migrants’ caste and regional identity combine with their climate and economic precarity to direct their migration into precarious, unjust working conditions and employer-provided, environmentally risky accommodations—both removed from local socio-political networks, undermining migrants’ ability to contest injustices in Tiruppur. In highlighting the translocal and trans-sectoral intersections between the migrating environmental, economic, and caste-based injustices for circular migrants, the paper argues that eliminating migrating injustices is crucial for achieving transformative adaptation and urban climate justice.

On the ‘demonic grounds’ of South African higher education: centering Black women and queer activists’ experiences in decolonization movements

Amidst the global wave of decolonization movements, the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement in South Africa has echoed globally, connecting struggles against racism and colonial legacies such as Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. to Change the Date campaign in Australia. This study focuses on the experiences of Black women and queer activists within #RMF, examining their role in disrupting hegemonic patriarchy and addressing gender-based violence. Using McKittrick’s (2006) demonic grounds as an epistemic framework, we delve into how Black women and queer activists navigate and resist ‘violent grounds’ spaces of historical oppression and violence – within their geographical and institutional contexts in South Africa. Our findings reveal how such violence is an empirical manifestation of the ‘demonic’ and how resistance materializes through counter-movements and oppositional politics in contested spaces. This research illuminates the intricate dynamics of resistance within the #RMF movement and highlights its significance as a microcosm of broader struggles for social justice, emphasizing the transformative power of marginalized voices in the global discourse on decolonization.

Generativity and Nigrescence: The identity of a Black school principal pursuing social justice

This study explores the relationship between the identity development of a school principal and the concept of social justice leadership. We examine how one African American principal used equity-focused leadership in two different high schools to improve the conditions of all students. Erikson's view of identity and Cross's conception of Negrescence guided the research questions guided the study of the identity development of a Black school principal as a social justice leader, what actions he took, and what supports and barriers he encountered. The principal's case suggested several factors that form a social justice leader. He acknowledged a history of oppression, confronted racial animosity, and showed empathy through action. He had strong role models and received a solid education with Black professors and mentors and formed lifetime friendships. He developed the confidence to believe in himself as an educator and advocate for others. As an innovative educator, he was able to take risks. As a Black man, he fit well into one culture but was limited by racism in another. He became a leader who continued the pursuit of social justice after the principalship.

Self-Defense and the Surround in Finally Got the News (1970)

Abstract: Drums and DRUM, percussion and organization: these are prominent motifs in Finally Got the News (1970), the documentary that chronicles the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and their struggle against the exploitative labor practices of the Big Three automakers in late 1960s Detroit. One hears the drums immediately in Finally Got the News , playing over a montage of images that trace the history of exploitation and oppression of Black workers in the United States from the plantation to the factory floor. While Finally Got the News explicates the calculable dimensions of the history of racial capitalism in Detroit, positioning the DRUM and the League at the intersection of revolutionary Black nationalism and revolutionary Marxism, the beat of the drums during the film's opening montage signals another dimension of resistance against or over which these intersecting trajectories of social struggle play out, one that defines the limit of the dialectical narrativization of resistance and progress articulated in the film. Drawing on the work of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, this essay argues that the beat of the goblet drums in the film's opening montage signals the presence of the blackness that surrounds the structures of racial capitalism in US-American society. It is against this backdrop, the essay argues, that Finally Got the News improvises and stages its own political intervention.

“Catachresis at the Origin”: Names and Power in Toni Morrison’s Fiction

Abstract: Toni Morrison’s fiction is replete with characters who carry nicknames, who rename themselves, or are renamed by others. Some misnamings carry the stories of histories of marginalization and oppression—as with the “drunken yankee” responsible for the naming of Macon Dead in Song of Solomon . Morrison’s characters also rename themselves to resist the legacy of American slavery and institutionalized racism. What ties Morrison’s namings, misnamings, and renamings together is the sense that there is no path to the recovery of true names for many African American people. The consequence is not powerlessness; rather, the “catachresis at the origin” that Gayatri Spivak refers to is intuited organically by many Morrison characters, who embrace misnaming and rename themselves as a mode of claiming self-ownership. Catachresis may begin as rhetorical violence imposed from without, but in Toni Morrison’s fiction, it can end as an opportunity to assert power, autonomy, and a boundless creativity.