Oppressed Groups Research Articles

"When you live in a colony… every act counts": Exploring engagement in and perceptions of diverse anti-colonial resistance strategies in Puerto Rico.

While social psychology has contributed much to our understanding of collective action, other forms of resistance are understudied. However, in contexts of long-standing oppression-such as ongoing colonialism-and past repression of liberation struggles, other resistance strategies are important considering the constraints on overt, collective action in such contexts. This paper reports findings from an interview study in Puerto Rico (N = 22) exploring anti-colonial resistance. We analysed participants' own resistance, future preferred strategies, and descriptive norms of other ingroup members' resistance. Through thematic analysis, we identified six distinct forms of anti-colonial resistance. Notably, none of the participants reported participating in collective action. Instead, participants engaged in different forms of symbolic everyday resistance to preserve a positive, distinct cultural identity, and raise critical consciousness of the group's oppression. Additionally, more tangible resistance strategies included staying on the land and building independent economies. Overall, this study illustrates the importance of considering a more comprehensive set of resistance strategies in contexts of long-standing colonial oppression to recognize oppressed groups' agency and provide a better understanding of how people undermine destructive power.

Geopolitics of Inter-subaltern Colonialism and Gender: Challenging Methodological Dualism through the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Journey from Kurdistan to Iran

By challenging postcolonial theory's “methodological dualism,” this article explores non-Western intersocietal encounters and interactions that facilitated the vanguard role of the Kurdish region of Iran (Rojhelat) in the country's “woman, life, freedom” revolutionary movement. The neglect of inter-subaltern interactions within the framework of methodological dualism has rendered it incapable of explaining the agential entanglement of “inter-subaltern colonialism” and gender in the non-Western nation-building process and its subsequent impact on the affected groups. Addressing this limitation, the author argues that Rojhelat's vanguard position arises from the strategic deployment of patriarchal gender norms in Iran's nation-building process characterized by “inter-subaltern colonialism” before and after the 1979 revolution. Anti-patriarchal tendencies within the left faction of the Kurdish national movement in Rojhelat emerged in response to this context, rendering it receptive to the slogan “woman, life, freedom,” which originally emerged through the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and Syria. Furthermore, the centrality of gender in the Islamic Republic of Iran's exceptionalist geopolitical discourses has made the slogan a powerful tool for expressing opposition to the state and mobilizing multiple oppressed groups.

In between jockeying and resisting proximities to whiteness: the challenges and promises of cross-racial solidarity

ABSTRACT This paper examines how white supremacy structures relations between colonized groups within contemporary spaces because the structures and allocations of power are inherently constructed as a process of jockeying for power based on proximity and mimicry of whiteness. This results in battles amongst oppressed groups for increased power to secure a space for the self by impressing the white power structure. These battles are waged on the internal front as ingroup dynamics based on shadeism and nationality, and externally between groups such as the evidence of anti-Black racism in South Asian communities and the antipathy towards South Asians in Black communities. Following a historical analysis of the relations between Black and South Asian communities, the authors, examine the nuances, complexities, and impacts of cross-racial violence in schooling within and across Black and South Asian communities in Toronto, Canada. This paper frames communal networks as a possibility for cross-racial solidarities.

Neurodivergent Spatialities: A Geographical Reading of Recent Empirical Work in Neurodiversity Studies

Neurodivergent people often feel they don’t belong. This is not just an emotional response to neurotypical norms, but a matter of “misfit” embodiment in particular places (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Recent empirical research adopting a neurodiversity critique is beginning to examine neurodivergent spatialities in increasingly substantive ways. Often space is a static container for the discourses and practices that shape neurodivergent people’s lives. Unmarked whiteness often accompanies this approach to space. However, space becomes a much more active presence when examining the experiences of racialized neurodivergent people. Strategies of spatial containment have long been central to regulating racialized and other oppressed groups. However, “container-space” on its own is inadequate for understanding the different risks and outcomes that different neurodivergent individuals face, especially when exhibiting neurodivergent comportment and emotions. Other work builds on these critical insights by seeking to affirm neurodivergent ways of relating to the world. Here, often borrowing from ideas of queer and crip time, scholars show how space can shape how people are continually becoming as embodied subjects over time. This scholarship invites us to ask how specifically neurodivergent forms of agency might emerge from the mutual relationship between embodiment, time and space. Deeper engagement with material space through intersectional thinking and more robust attention to space when exploring alternative temporalities are needed not only to understand how neurodivergent people can be misfits, but also how they may thrive.

The Black Lives Matter Movement, Jewish Allies, and the Long Legacy of Black Anti-Zionism

Abstract: From the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, massive numbers of Jews, committed to resuming the Black-Jewish coalition of the civil rights era, became its avid allies. They failed to recognize that this alliance, which foundered and was sundered by the late 1970s, had increasingly been replaced by Blacks' identification with "their Brown Palestinian siblings," which rendered the conflict with Israel in stark racial terms. After the Six Day War, Black militants promoted a narrative that replaced Jews as a fellow oppressed group with Jews as iniquitous Zionists, who had established an illegitimate settler-colonial state that ethnically cleansed and victimized indigenous people of color—a narrative upon which their successors in the BLM movement drew heavily. With the rise of the BLM movement, the Black-Palestinian alliance was solidified—their wide divide on issues of race, gender, and homosexuality overridden by their shared anti-Zionism. In 2016, when the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a constituent partner of the BLM umbrella organization, issued a policy platform identifying Israel as "an apartheid state," committing "genocide against the Palestinian people," leading Jewish organizations appeared confounded and dismissed these views as a minority position. Spokespersons of secular and religious Jewish associations condemned what they labeled BLM's "anti-Israel rhetoric," which they insisted was "totally unrelated" to the movement's "social justice work." They appeared to be unaware that far from mere "rhetoric," the denigration and delegitimization of the Jewish state had long been at or near the core of the anti-racist ideology propounded by the Black militants revered by BLM leaders and activists. Thus, in 2020, organizations allegedly "representing over half of Jewish people in America" published a statement that endorsed the BLM movement "unequivocally," while several of the signatories released additional statements condemning those Jews who had rejected the movement once it posted the policy platform. The Jewish community fractured over the issue of Black antisemitism, but unlike in earlier periods, far more Jews, identifying as "progressives," continued to support a movement whose leaders and activists espoused or tolerated antisemitism, albeit lightly cloaked in anti-Zionist garb.

Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you: Reappropriation, identity change, and collective action

AbstractReappropriation has been discussed as an identity management strategy as a means to reevaluate oneself in a context that will not allow for large‐scale social change. There are, however, numerous examples of reappropriation of stigmatizing labels as connected to political movements. This research examines whether reappropriation of stigmatizing labels can function as a precursor to collective action. In Study 1, we conducted semi‐structured interviews on the reappropriation of çapulcu identity with 20 Gezi Park protesters in Turkey. Interviews focused on how they recall the reappropriation of the word to have started, how they gave subsequent meaning, and how çapulcu identity predicted their protest participation and their broader politicization during and after the protests. In Study 2, we conducted a cross‐sectional survey on the reappropriation of fat identity by collecting data from fat liberation and body positivity activists in North America (n = 479). Reflexive thematic analysis (Study 1) and structural equation modeling (Study 2) showed that reappropriation of stigmatizing labels among activists is associated with a greater willingness to participate in collective action through increased agency, empowerment, and identity change. Findings provide important insights on identity management strategies and social change, and open new avenues to discuss reappropriation as a possible political strategy that might mobilize oppressed groups.

The feminization of freedom: An analysis of love, happiness and freedom from the perspective of childfree, never-married single women of color

This article addresses singleness as a state of being and not a transition for childfree, never-married single women of color. As the characterization of adult romantic relationships has evolved, the meaning of singleness has also gone through a transformation. My research applies the theoretical framework of feminist standpoint theory through an intersectional lens to explain how women of color experience love and relationships in a non-traditional way and how they create a singular corridor that allows them to exist on the boundaries of heteronormative marriage and romantic love. I examine the research question: How do childfree, never-married single women of color experience and feel about romantic love, singleness, sex, and attachments in society? My study utilized a qualitative research methodology with an inductive inquiry approach. I conducted forty semi-structured interviews with women between 36 and 61. I argue that these women have a unique positionality in society. They are women who have remained free from the heteronormative obligations to a husband or children, and they are also women who have not had the privileges of some of their white counterparts. Therefore, they have a group-based experience and knowledge rooted in group oppression.

The epistemic power of the police

This article uses movements against police brutality as a starting point to rethink our theorizations of police power, asking how the police maintain their dominance over oppressed groups, and what it takes to challenge it. I argue that an important, but undertheorized dimension of police power is epistemic power, the ability to control what is known and what remains unknown about policing practices. Epistemic power derives from (1) the police's control over the production and non-production of data about crime and policing; (2) the assumption that police officers are more credible than their targets; and (3) their privileged access to the media. Using France as a case study, I show how the police draw on epistemic power to produce ‘truth’ and manufacture ignorance about their practices, and I examine activist strategies to challenge and disrupt this power.

Dalit Feminism: Historical Context And Impact

Dalit feminism aims to dismantle the prevailing narratives that uphold their oppression by empowering Dalit women to express their agency and reclaim their stories. Notwithstanding casteist violence and persecution, Dalit women have always been important voices for their rights and dignity. Prominent individuals such as Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, and Ramabai Ambedkar have played a pivotal role in the anticaste and anti-untouchability campaigns in India, championing the cause of women's empowerment and education rights. Organizations like the Dalit Mahila Samiti and the All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch (AIDMAM) sought to address problems including domestic abuse, healthcare access, and sexual exploitation of Dalit women in the 20th century. Dalit feminism also criticizes mainstream feminism for failing to represent the experiences of women from lower castes and for being dominated by upper-class viewpoints. It aims to elevate Dalit women in the feminist conversation and promotes unity with other oppressed groups, such as LGBTQIA+ people and males of lower castes.

Similarities Across Difference: Consequences of Intersectional Sexual Stereotypes for Black and Latinx Women and Men in the United States

Complexity in the structure of power relations is a fruitful site of analysis that an intersectional framework brings to bear in articulating radical Black feminisms. The psychological literature utilizing an intersectional approach to study stereotyping has illuminated the importance of moving beyond a single-identity or single-axis lens. For instance, there is burgeoning literature showing that there are unique social categorizations and perceptions that vary by combinations of multiple group memberships (e.g., race and gender together). Further, an intersectional approach also draws attention to similarities and connections across different groups with unique relationships to systems of power and oppression. Focusing on these areas of similarities across difference provides insight into contexts that reinforce social inequality and are powerful avenues for building collective power through coalitions to address inequity. Therefore, the current investigation sought to address how Black and Latinx people in New York City discuss these sites of similarities and differences in power and privilege as they relate to their understanding of sexual stereotypes and their consequences in their everyday lives. We conducted 11 focus groups with 75 participants. Using thematic analysis, we identified four major themes highlighting shared and distinct stereotype-based experiences, including microaggressions and discrimination, double standards, interpersonal relationships, and emotional and behavioral responses. Beyond illuminating harmful consequences of sexual stereotypes, findings underscore the radical potential for achieving collective liberation by amplifying oppressed groups’ commonalities and differences simultaneously.

"Lacking Members of Play": Sexual/Textual Politics in J. M. Coetzee's Foe

Abstract: This essay considers the divide between two camps of critics responding to the use and potential abuse of a white woman narrator in J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and finds within the novel a critique of contemporaneous feminist discourses. I identify a rhetoric of rape deployed by the novel's protagonist, Susan, against the mute ex-slave, Friday, and consider its effect on Susan's ability to mediate between oppressed and dominant groups, represented by Friday and the author—(De)Foe—respectively. Ultimately, I argue that Susan's curiously masculine sense of desire complicates the charge that Coetzee is simply appropriating the voice of a woman, finding instead that he utilises Susan's attempted penetration into Friday's silence to demonstrate the faults of a second-wave feminism that exploits various categories of otherness.

Towards an Abolitionist Concept of Beauty: The Aesthetics of Counter-Communities

Abstract: Many oppressed groups describe their forms of life in aesthetic categories. This article explores the implicit conception of beauty and the shared characteristics of counter-communal aesthetic practices. It reconstructs the hegemonic conception of beauty via a reading of Schiller and explores two exemplary discourses on the beauty of counter-communities: Peter Weiss' reflections on the aesthetics of resistance and Saidiya Hartman's description of Black fugitive aesthetics. What both examples share is that they locate beauty not in harmony, but in conflict and struggle. They lay the foundation for an aesthetic standpoint theory: counter-communities are economically, politically and culturally marginalized, but they are more beautiful than dominant forms of life.

Epistemic Oppression and Affective Exclusion

Epistemic oppression is the systematic exclusion of oppressed groups from knowledge-making practices. One of the goals of feminist epistemology is to understand the nature of the barriers preventing oppressed individuals from realising their epistemic agency and contributing to knowledge production. Feminist epistemologists have taken monumental strides in theorising the different forms of exclusions that constitute epistemic oppression (e.g., Fricker 2007; Dotson 2014; Bailey 2014). But more needs to be done by way of understanding what makes an oppressive epistemic landscape resilient and resistant to change. In this paper, I develop a pragmatist account of the affective mechanisms in place that protect the epistemic landscape from critical reflection and produce what I refer to as affective exclusion. I argue that, since the mechanism that protects the epistemic landscape from critical reflection is affective by nature, we cannot reason ourselves out of affective exclusion. Instead, I propose that, although they often prevent us from realising our epistemic agency, our co-occurring emotions and feelings, such as grief, anxiety, and other epistemic feelings, can be catalysts for reflection about the skewed nature of the epistemic landscape. I conclude with a discussion of the role that narrative fiction might play in helping us resist affective exclusion and ending epistemic oppression.

Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Kaptula la Marx as a site of cold war contestation and communitas making

This article analyzes Euphrase Kezilahabi’s Kiswahili play Kaptula la Marx, examining its explicit engagement with Cold War politics, ideologies, and aesthetics. Kezilahabi blends the satirical and revolutionary, making the play a site for Cold War contestations and community-building. It is a work of postcolonial disillusionment but also a call to arms. By focusing on the portrayal of the African dictator, particularly his ill-fitting clothes as symbols of power, Kezilahabi satirizes and undermines the dictator’s authority. The play’s rich Cold War references reveal Kezilahabi’s global visions, addressing African politics’ entanglement in the global Cold War and a growing North/South divide. Additionally, the play draws on radical theater traditions, featuring a revolutionary leader figure and interactive elements with the audience that inspire oppressed groups to unite for change.

Children’s narrative identity formation: Towards a childist narrative theology of praxis

This article explores children’s narrative identity formation and the impact of adult–child relationships on shaping a child’s narrative. The formation of identity in all children is vulnerable to a culture of ‘adultism’, wherein the authority wielded by adults can potentially subject children to abuse and neglect. Consequently, adultism has the aptitude to hinder the constructive development of a life-affirming identity in children. The primary objective of this article is to develop a childist narrative theology of praxis methodology, aimed at raising consciousness and educating adults on both life-denying and life-giving ways of engaging in the process of children’s narrative identity formation.To achieve this goal, the methodology is developed by adapting Denise Ackermann’s ‘feminist theology of praxis’ to focus specifically on children. The application of feminist theory principles is deemed relevant to the social standing of children as it aligns with the broader goal of liberating oppressed groups, whether women or children. Additionally, John Wall’s work is employed to elucidate the terms ‘childist’ and ‘childism’ as interpretive frameworks. Positioned within the scientific domain of Practical Theology, this study seeks to transform conditions that impede human flourishing into opportunities for positive change.The research objectives determine that a literature review will be suitable to gather essential information for the formulation of a childist narrative theology of praxis. This review, characterised as explorative and descriptive, is conducted within the field of Practical Theology.Contribution: The significance of this study is underscored by its exploration and description of the pastoral functions of consciousness, awareness-raising, and education concerning adult–child relations. By scrutinising these pastoral functions, the emphasis is placed on the proactive, preventive, and universal aspects of pastoral care in the context of children, thereby contributing valuable insights to the discourse.

The Resilience of Caste through Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019)

India, the largest democracy in the world, has experienced important social advances since its independence in 1947, such as the abolition of untouchability, one of the oldest forms of social segregation and discrimination whose major victims have been the Dalits. The situation of Dalits has undergone a series of changes in the second half of the 20th century due to various phenomena, including the industrialisation of India, the influential social work of Dalit activists and thinkers such as B. R. Ambedkar, and the passing of legal provisions for Dalits’ social inclusion, political emancipation and protection of rights. All these factors, along with a relative democratisation of education, have prompted this historically oppressed group to build a voice.
 
 Since then, Dalit literature has progressively become a platform through which past and present injustices committed against this community are exposed. Lately, the impact that democracy has had on the lives of Dalits has been a questioned topic and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019) is an interesting gateway to it. The author’s gender and geographical position and her particular experience with ‘Dalithood’ result in an unusual but necessary insight into Dalits’ state of affairs in contemporary India. Thus, using Dutt’s memoir as a lens, this paper aims to examine the conditions that led to the perpetuation of a learned helplessness among Dalits, the shortcomings of Sanskritisation as an escape strategy from casteist stigma and the implications of the reservation system set for India’s Depressed Castes.

Combating Hate Speech on Social Media: Applying Targeted Regulation, Developing Civil-Communicative Skills and Utilising Local Evidence-Based Anti-Hate Speech Interventions

Social media platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) set their core aim as bringing people and communities closer together. Yet, they resemble a digital communicative battleground in which hate speech is increasingly present. Hate speech is not benign. It is the communicative driver of group oppression. It is therefore imperative to disarm this digital communicative battlefield by (a) regulating and redesigning social media platforms to prevent them from playing an active and enabling role in the dissemination of hate speech and (b) empowering citizen-users and local civil associations to recognise and actively counter hate speech. This top-down and bottom-up approach necessarily enforces responsibility and builds capacity. This requires that we adapt and combine three aspects of communicative peacebuilding: first, the (re)building of civil-communicative institutions; second, the use of digital citizenship educational programmes to support the development of civil-communicative skills for using social media; and third, the identification and use of local civil capacity and knowledge, which manifests in the present context in the use of local evidence-based anti-hate speech interventions. We argue that this interdisciplinary combinatorial approach has the potential to be effective because it combines two things: it places responsibility on relevant actors to both make social media safer and to navigate it harmlessly and responsibly; and it simultaneously helps build the capacity for actively identifying and countering hate speech in civil societies.

Symbiotic Justice: Hate Crimes, Police Humiliation, and Layered Legal Consciousness in Dalit Human Rights

This article responds to scholarly critiques, which highlight the failures of hate crime legislation in delivering justice to historically oppressed groups. Drawing on ethnographic data on the mobilisation of India's only hate crime law – the Prevention of Atrocities (PoA) Act– among Dalit (untouchable) communities, the article proposes that the potential of hate crime law to create a restitution must be analysed in conversation with other social justice frameworks. In India, Dalit legal aid advocates interweave hate crime cases with a culturally specific discourse of Dalit human rights. By strategically bringing “failed” PoA investigations before India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Dalit advocates hold the police accountable for negligent investigations, while also creating collective affects of hope for survivors of casteist crimes. This process, which I call symbiotic justice, engenders a form of legal consciousness, which regards hate crime law as a creative tool that can offer new avenues of agency.

Forensic Evaluation of Refugees from Myanmar.

Forensic evaluators may have little experience and knowledge of the political context of Myanmar, the Burmese people, and the refugee crisis. Oppression of several ethnic minority groups has marked Burmese military rule of Myanmar for several decades. Protracted trauma exposure, both pre- and post-migration, among refugee populations increases the risk for mental health disorders, particularly depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder. These experiences may result in anger and psychiatric manifestations that bring Burmese refugees in conflict with the law in their host country. Culture influences how mental distress is experienced and reported, and it can influence a forensic evaluator's assessment of psychological-legal matters, such as competency to stand trial and asylum evaluations. The salience of cultural competence becomes particularly pressing given the small number of those of Burmese background in the United States. Most evaluations will be performed by forensic mental health professionals who are not Burmese in ethnicity, nor familiar with Burmese culture. In this article, we provide a backdrop of the military suppression of ethnic minorities prior to discussing the integration of cultural matters in forensic assessments of competency to stand trial, competency for extradition, and asylum seekers in Burmese refugees.

Resistance from below among racialized peoples: Exploring Kurdish understandings of power

AbstractUnderstanding power and resistance dynamics from below requires focusing on the micropolitics of oppressed group existence. This involves exploring the ways members of the oppressed and resisting groups make sense of power in terms of identity, community, culture, and politics. As Kurdish researchers living in Turkey and Bakurê Kurdistan, we conducted in‐depth interviews with 16 Kurds in Van and Istanbul. We explored contemporary Kurdish epistemologies and praxis of racial critical consciousness toward contents and sources of Kurdish power. In this pursuit, we contextualized and synergized tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and anticolonial approaches. Our analysis shows that Kurdish understandings of power involve both representations and boundaries. Both themes are influenced by the multifaceted Kurdishness as an exteriority, a reclaimed racialized identity, an epistemology of existence, and a praxis of resisting in response to Turkish coloniality. Furthermore, the sub‐themes of power highlighted senses of agency, capacity, resources, community bonds, and social organization. We suggest that Kurdish power is constituted beyond a dualistic understanding of power, capable of creating subaltern strategies. We contribute to the transnational extensions of CRT and provide a contextualized account of antiracist and anticolonial resistance.