Interplay Of Power Relations Research Articles

Flowing Body: The Collision of Power Relations, Mind and Body Agency

This article constructs a novel theoretical framework for understanding the body in feminist theory by critically engaging with existing non-binary and non-essentialist views. It advances upon foundational critiques, particularly those by Haraway, Connell, and Butler, integrating the dynamics of body agency, power relations, and mind to propose a more fluid and intersectional approach to body politics. The new framework posits the body as an active participant in its continuous formation, interacting with and reshaping societal norms and expectations. Empirically, the paper analyzed four artworks displayed in art galleries and museums in Lund and Malmö in Sweden as case studies, focusing on how these works represent and shape notions of the female body across various themes including beauty, reproduction, migration, and sexuality. These artworks serve as a medium to explore how corporeal experiences are constructed through the interplay of power relations, mind, and body agency. Through critical analyses of theory and textual analyses of artworks, this paper points out that the body is a language of fluidity, simultaneously influenced and shaped by power relations, the mind, and its agency. Feminism should treat the body more carefully, avoiding biological essentialism or absolute social constructs.

Terms of Engagement: Teaching the African Diaspora in German‐Speaking Europe

Striving to be more representative in their answer to the question, “What is German,” many programs are expanding their curricula to include the history and perspectives of Black Germans and Austrians. Through discussion of a course on “Die afrikanische Diaspora im deutschsprachigen Europa,” this article argues that examining texts by Germans and Austrians of African descent as well as by immigrants from Africa through the lens of cultural proficiency addresses a key component of both the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), namely intercultural competence. Comparative tasks that explore sociocultural perspectives obtained through the medium of the target language can defamiliarize seemingly‐familiar concepts including race, nationality, and identity. Precisely because Black German Studies focuses on the interplay of power relations between dominant and minority cultures within Germanophone cultures, it may provide a model of intercultural competence through the analysis of the successes and failures of intracultural proficiency. Finally, the article considers the need to uncouple language and cultural/national identity in the European Germanophone context while simultaneously addressing the global demand for multicultural and multilingual competence.

Whither decolonisation? Indigenous scholars and the problem of inclusion in the neoliberal university

What is the role of the indigenous critic and conscience of society in the neoliberal university? Much has been written about neoliberalism in higher education but less attention is given to how it is enacted in settler-colonial societies where intellectual labour is shaped by histories of imperialism, invasion and violence. These historical forces are reflected in a political economy of knowledge forged in the interplay of power relations between coloniality and free-market capitalism. Indigenous academics who mobilise a form of public/tribal scholarship alongside native publics and counter-publics often have an uneasy relationship with the neoliberal academy which celebrates their inclusion as diversity ‘partners’ at the same time as consigning them to the institutional margins. This article traces a cohort of Māori senior academics in New Zealand whose intellectual labour is structured around public/tribal scholarship and examines how this unsettles and challenges the problem of neoliberal inclusivity in settler-colonial institutions.

Perceptions of professional role in community mental health nurses: The interplay of power relations between nurses and mentally ill individuals

Nurses' professional role perception is related to the quality and safety of care. Limited data exist regarding professional role perception in community mental health nurses (CMHNs). The aim of the present study was to investigate the living experience of Greek-Cypriot CMHNs of their professional role. A phenomenological approach based on Munhall's methodology was applied. According to purposive sampling, five Greek-Cypriot CMHNs participated, following informed consent. The interplay of power relations between participants and mentally ill individuals during CMHNs' house calls was revealed as the core theme contributing to the perception of their status within their professional role. Participants' perception of their status as visitors in patients' homes rather than authoritative figures, an image held within hospital mental health services, was deemed as the greatest challenge of their professional role. Moreover, the necessity for autonomous and rapid decision-making during home visits was described as an absolute prerequisite for professional effectiveness. Overall, the main themes were grouped as follows: professional role perceptions, perception of self within professional role, feelings and expectations about professional role. Non-power relations between participants and patients, along with efficacy, control and adequate clinical autonomy for effective professional practice were highlighted as major prerequisites during house calls. Interventions towards nurses' psychosocial and organizational empowerment, as well as strengthening patients' self-determination are proposed.

Vehicle Writings in an Iranian Context: The Interplay of Habitus and Field

The main objective of this paper is to problematize writings on vehicles in an Iranian context. Previous studies have indicated that vehicle stickers can be employed to express emotions and social status, political views, ideology and identity, and religious beliefs. However, very little has been done on this discursive practice in Iran. This study is the result of the content analysis of 122 vehicle writings collected from April 2011 to March 2012. This paper will draw on six of the most frequent themes: religion, humor, playing pessimism, didactic expressions, ethnic-geographic identification, and love. Employing Bourdieu's conceptual frameworks of “habitus,” “field,” and “doxa,” and Heath and Street's social practice perspective on literacy, it will be argued that vehicle writings in this study can be regarded as situated literacy practices reflecting the dominant undisputed discourses in the context, but at the same time displaying the dynamic interplay of power relations, the relationship of cultural structures and individual customized versions of those structures in vehicle writings.

Hybridity in Meja Mwangi’s Little White Man

The study examined elements of hybridity in Meja Mwangi’s Little White Man, a text set in colonial Kenya. In particular, the study was interested in the writer’s juxtaposition of the world of the child characters with that of the adult characters and the hybrid syncretic crossings reflected therein, against the backdrop of colonialism. The postcolonial theory was useful in the analysis of the selected text. The findings reveal that the text reflects both cultural and character hybridity. For the child characters, hybridity is a site for social reconstruction from which they emerge wiser and more enlightened through social interaction and practical experience of each other’s world. The adult world on the contrary, stands in total contrast to the children’s world. It is characterized by suspicion, insecurity, tension, contempt, violence and racial prejudice. It largely revolves around the interplay of power relations with the colonial settler at the top and the natives at the bottom. At interpersonal level, the adults always impose their will on the children. In effect, colonization is depicted at two levels in that, the Africans are colonized by the whites and secondly, the children are colonized by the adults who deny them the freedom to pursue their personal interest. It is notable however, that even under such strict conditions; the children always maneuver their way around the adults so as to pursue their own interests. This they do through being noncommittal, giving excuses and vague responses as in the case of Kariuki, the protagonist. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n6p267

Coordinating Contemporaneity: (Post) Modernity, 9/11, and the Dialectical Imagery of <i>Memento</i>

-Lt is now widely accepted that the debate surrounding postmodernity reached a highpoint with the 1991 publication of Fredric Jameson's article Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, in which he questions the historical uniqueness of the postmodern, arguing that its apparent newness is in fact a depthless expression of reification in late capitalist society. Two decades after the publication of Jameson's essay, certain key ideas such as those of living in a society of spectacle, of experience being a narrative/ interpretive process (or worse yet, pure simulacra), of language being a groundless signifying procedure of difference and deferral, and of meaning and truth being an interplay of power relations that are neither absolute nor stable have attained an established intellectual

The Liminal Family: Return Migration and Intergenerational Conflict in Japan

The central aim of this article is to explore, from the perspective of return migrants, the interplay of power and multiple obligations that shapes the experience of return migration from major metropolitan areas to rural areas in Japan. I suggest that for many, return migration means inhabiting a liminal social position between the neolocal and stem family ideologies that co-exist in Japan. I examine the narratives of two return migrants, with specific reference to the interplay of power relations within the family that contributed to their returns. This article also presents an example of how quantitative demographic data taken from a national census can be used by anthropologists to inform traditional qualitative data. Employing a demographic technique known as cohort analysis, I examine inter- and intraprefectural migration patterns in Japan. Data from the Japanese national census are analyzed to consider the relationship between population distribution and age structure.