Power Hierarchies Research Articles

Power Dynamics of Cross-Border Conflict in Lebanon and Syria

This paper identifies the main conflict actors in cross-border conflict across Lebanon and Syria as being Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, and highlights the power hierarchies between those actors as well as between them and ordinary people in those border regions. The paper shows that in those two countries, both state and non-state actors (de factor authorities) are the main conflict actors who are invested in the conflict status quo that they profiteer from—the state is therefore also part of the problem. The paper additionally argues that there is a need to understand hierarchies of power among conflict actors and how they position local communities at the bottom of the conflict economy pyramid. The paper shows that local communities end up entangled in the conflict economy for the sake of economic coping and survival. Often, both conflict actors and local communities act pragmatically rather than ideologically for the sake of economic survival or gain, but conflict actors trap local communities in the coping economy by removing alternatives, cultivating relationships of dependency by coping communities on major conflict actors. The paper uses these conclusions to present recommendations for conflict response policies. The paper is published as part of the Cross-Border Conflict, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme funded by UK International Development.

A feminist cybersecurity: addressing the crisis of cyber(in)security

Abstract This article draws on feminist security studies (FSS) to construct a more inclusive cybersecurity. We ask: What can a gendered lens do for cybersecurity? Methodologically, this exploratory piece brings FSS insights to bear on studies in cybersecurity (both traditional and critical) to better conceptualize the risks and benefits embedded in the cybersphere, as well as the role of gender in cyberspace. We propose incorporating a gendered lens (an intersectional approach) to shed light on violence and insecurity online. Without recognizing gendering in the cyber realm, including how gender intersects with other systems of oppression, cybersecurity scholars and policy-makers cannot fully understand what we term the crisis of cyber(in)security. Additionally, we challenge simplistic solutions that rely solely on human rights protections in cyberspace. Such approaches often reinforce existing gender and power hierarchies through protectionist discourse. Our FSS-based understanding of cybersecurity has important policy implications. It calls for increased access and diverse participation in cybersecurity policy-making and diplomacy, and promotes a more thoughtful approach to human rights protection to address a broader range of cyber-based insecurities and forms of violence.

Integrating systems of power and privilege in the study of resilience.

Although current approaches to the study of resilience acknowledge the role of context, rarely do those conceptualizations attend to societal systems and structures that include hierarchies of power and privilege-namely systems of racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism-nor do they articulate how these structural realities are embedded within individual experiences. We offer critiques of the current literature from this structural lens, using the concept of master narratives to articulate the incomplete and, at times, damaging story that the discipline of psychology has told about resilience. We then provide three models that center history, systems, and structures of society that can be employed in the study of resilience. We close with lessons learned from listening to those voices who have been marginalized by mainstream society, lessons that require us to redefine, broaden, and deepen our conceptualization of resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Bringing the community into the classroom: professional identity and practice of social workers who studied alongside at-risk adolescent girls

ABSTRACT This study explores the professional identity development of social workers who participated in an academic elective course alongside at-risk adolescent girls aged 16–18. The course, influenced by critical pedagogy, and community and feminist social work, emphasized three core principles: flattening power hierarchies, challenging socio-structural oppression, and mutual learning. In-depth interviews were conducted with course graduates, social workers with 1 to 4 years of experience. Phenomenological analysis uncovered that the course acted as a ‘transitional space’ between student and professional life. Three subthemes emerged: recognizing the vulnerability and strengths of adolescent girls, reflecting on personal life experiences, and learning about forming partnerships with clients. Forming partnerships with clients was enabled by three vehicles: daring to be equal, daring to be authentic, and learning from clients’ knowledge. This study highlights the creation of a ‘community of practice’ through innovative teaching methods and community involvement. It underscores the importance of hands-on experiences and engagement with real-life contexts to bridge the gap between theory and practice, enhancing understanding of concepts like partnership and nonhierarchical approaches in both community and general social work.

Centralization or decentralization? Power allocation in team innovation management.

Power disparity, as an important form of internal team hierarchy, presents a "double-edged sword effect". To reconcile the inconsistent effects and systematically explore the different mechanisms of power disparity, this study constructs a comprehensive theoretical model based on power functionalism and power conflict theory, with team coordination and team conflict as dual mediators, and power legitimacy as moderator. By collecting valid questionnaires from 76 teams across 27 different types of companies in various regions, statistical analysis and hypothesis testing were conducted on the data. The results conclude that power disparity positively influences team innovation performance through the team coordination path and negatively affects it through the team conflict path. However, under the moderating effect of power legitimacy, the negative effect of the team conflict path is suppressed, and the positive effect of the team coordination path is strengthened, thus ensuring that power disparity has a positive effect on team innovation performance. This study provides a useful reference for designing the power hierarchy within enterprises, and offers profound insights into effective organizational structure and decision-making processes.

Decoding urban power: Architecture, symbolism and territorial control in Caracas

This study examines the conflictual dynamics surrounding the utilisation of state-architecture and symbolic imagery as instruments for power consolidation, profoundly shaping national identity and perceptions within the built environment. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic power and cultural capital, this research illuminates the complex interplay between architecture, territory and power. It offers insights into the endurance of societal values and the ongoing renegotiation and reconfiguration of urban space. The research also analyses how urban planning and territorial practices can ignite resistance and challenge existing power structures. The city of Caracas serves as a case study, where two key strategies employed by the current government are analysed: the “Great Housing Mission Venezuela” and the proliferation of Chávez symbolism across the urban realm. By exploring these territorialisation practices in Las Adjuntas, Macarao, the study further unveils the dynamics of power and socio-spatial hierarchies encoded in the urban landscape. These architectural and symbolic interventions are interpreted as attempts to shape perceived realities, consolidate hegemonic control, and regulate the city's socio-spatial order. The findings assert that these practices not only reflect power distribution, but also grant the potential for dominating, producing and controlling territories in nuanced ways. This multidisciplinary study provides a novel framework for decoding power structures embedded in the built environment.

Eco-Tech Odyssey: The Political Craftsmanship of a Green Technostate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

The United Nations’s annual climate conference in Dubai in late 2023 provided the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with an opportunity to market their interpretation of a technology- and innovation-focused approach to addressing the climate crisis. Simultaneously, this perspective also helps ensure the future and prosperity of the oil state. This article illustrates that the behavior of the technostate is problematic because it has the potential to expedite environmental damage and endorse a carbon-intensive business as usual. A significant concern lies in the fact that the techno-utopian mode with a green makeover reinforces the autocratic nature of the state, as well as its promotion to the outside world. By using ethnographic methods, this article depicts the UAE’s ecological (super-)modernization model as an inherently political process, as it discloses facets of authority, dominance, legitimacy, and power hierarchy. Ultimately, this article emphasizes the importance of practices and techniques in the conceptual debate, challenging the prevailing focus on a simplified regime-type dichotomy in the discourse on sustainability transformation.

I'm not giving up on you: Exploring the roles of politicized trust and critical agency in the Scratch coding trajectory of two Black boys

AbstractThis article looks at how a Black informal STEM educator supported two Black boys' learning opportunities in coding, specifically investigating how the establishment of politicized trust between the informal STEM educator and youth supported their development of critical agency. Using the dual lenses of socio‐spatial relationality and politicized trust, we explore how the socio‐spatial relationality of place, materials, and educator–youth interactions allowed for the shifting of power dynamics that were foundational to supporting youth in navigating a coding process that centered who they were and their interests, in the moment. We employ participatory design research aimed at reducing power dynamics by remediating who has power within a setting, grounded in dismantling and disrupting traditional power hierarchies through actively involving the community in the design process. We present two case studies that map the learning trajectories of Donovan and Jabria, two middle‐school aged Black boys. Their learning trajectories include the following phases: tensions related to coding with Scratch, pivotal interaction with the educator, and development of critical agency. We unpack how the socially produced space supported Donovan, Jabria, and Worsley to critically read the world of coding, rewrite coding through political action, and establish politicized trust. Throughout this process, we see through Donovan and Jabria's interactions they were constantly editing and producing their interactions with coding which led to newly created learning opportunities by developing their critical agency in coding. Four main points were identified: continuous access to materials, sustained engagement to reimagine possibilities, understanding that all disengagement is not equal, and being explicit in communicating expectations followed by concrete action. Across these points, the salience of relational politicized trust between educator and youth was a cross cutting thread.

Geographic Tunnel Vision and the Past and Future of Democracy

Abstract In the twenty-first century, the democracy bequeathed by the past confronts major, diverse challenges. In thinking about how it might be reimagined, it is important to look beyond conceptions of democracy that are associated with a distinctive Western tradition, indicated at an early point by Athens two and a half millennia ago. Recent scholarship has questioned some clear connection of that specific ancient experience with the democracy that has developed since the late eighteenth century, challenging in several ways what might be called “epistemic exclusion.” One challenge concerns a long debate about Athenian uniqueness. A second concerns how the founding generation of modern democracy thought about, or did not think about, Athenian practices. A third concerns whether a broader geography of influence has infused the entire modern history of democracy in which much innovation has happened in peripheral places in hierarchies of wealth and power. These reflections have implications for where to look for good ideas to construct a better democratic future.

When I say … haunted curriculum.

As medical and health professions education (HPE) fields shift towards frameworks of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI), there has been an increased focus on addressing the environments of learning to understand hierarchies of power and create better learning experiences for students who have historically been marginalised in these fields. We propose the haunted curriculum as an evocative conceptual framing to engage with the aspects of medical and HPE that are toxic and troubling to learners and to understand how violent histories continue to loom large and permeate the present. The haunted curriculum examines how forms of oppression and injustice, such as racism and ableism, are always ever-present and often arise in unexpected ways during training. The haunted curriculum also helps to uncover how environments of training and professionalisation may themselves inflict these forms of oppression and injustice and may be ideal spaces to counter them.

Dance movement psychotherapy for the deconstruction of power and identity in Mexican women in Spain: affective migration

A creative laboratory for Mexican women living in Seville was implemented from the psychodynamic perspective of dance movement therapy (DMT). The principal objective was to create a space for community meetings that would bring about dialogues on topics of interest for the participants. The thematic analysis method was used, observing that migration provides perspective when regarding problems pertaining to the country of origin, which are rooted in the body itself. Thanks to the distancing from cultural references and to the contact with new representations, certain questions and insights arise – regarding the way in which they relate to their body, to themselves, to other women, to the community and to the culture. The analyses show that the participants are in a process of deconstruction regarding power hierarchies, family loyalties, love, self-care, the position of women today; this allows them to make visible their internalised oppression.

Confucian Familialism and the Crisis of Care

Abstract This paper critically examines Confucian proposals for social welfare espoused by contemporary Confucian moral and political theorists, who promote a familialist, residual welfare state in which welfare provision should be the family's primary responsibility and public assistance be a last resort only available to the poor without family support. By investigating the situation in South Korea, a country whose welfare system bears a striking resemblance to the Confucian ideal, I argue that the Confucian scheme is inherently flawed. It considers poverty to be a personal failure, idealizes the family as a single unity of common interest free from power hierarchies, and lacks knowledge about social reproduction. Their proposal in actuality humiliates and excludes disadvantaged and marginalized people from social protection, abdicates the state's responsibility for the well-being of citizens, and colludes with capitalism in free riding on women's unpaid labor.

Transition and change: opportunities and challenges of CHW programme reform for community health systems and vertical disease programmes in Liberia

BackgroundGlobally, community health worker (CHW) programmes are critical to addressing health worker shortages and have been recognised as critical pillars within the drive towards universal health coverage (UHC). In 2016, the Liberian Ministry of Health launched the National Community Health Services Policy 2016–2021, which included significant CHW programme reform to address ongoing health workforce capacity gaps in the country. However, little consideration was given to the impact of such reforms on ongoing health interventions that rely heavily on the use of CHW cadres. Our study explores how CHW programme reform in Liberia influenced performance of CHWs involved in the delivery of Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) programmes to elucidate how health systems reform can impact the delivery of routine health interventions and vice versa.MethodsWe used a qualitative case study approach conducted between March 2017 and August 2018. Our instrumental case study approach uses qualitative methods, including document review of five CHW and NTD program-related policy documents; 25 key informant interviews with facility, county, and national level decision-makers; and 42 life and job histories with CHWs in Liberia. Data were analysed using a thematic framework approach, guided by Kok et al. framework of CHW performance. Data were coded in QRS NVIVO 11 Pro.ResultsOur findings show that CHW programme reform provides opportunities and challenges for supporting enhanced CHW performance. In relation to health system hardware, we found that CHW programme reform provides better opportunities for: formal recognition of CHWs; strengthening capacity for effective healthcare delivery at the community level through improved and formalised training; a more formal supervision structure; and provision of monthly incentives of 70 US dollars. Efficiency gaps in routine intervention delivery can be mitigated through the strengthening of these hardware components. Conversely, supervision deficits in routine CHW functioning can be supported through health interventions. In relation to systems software, we emphasise the ongoing importance of community engagement in CHW selection that is responsive to gendered power hierarchies and accompanied by gendered transformative approaches to improving literacy.ConclusionsThis study shows how CHW programme reform provides opportunities and challenges for health system strengthening that can both positively and negatively impact the functioning of routine health interventions. By working together, CHW programmes and routine health interventions have the opportunity to leverage mutually beneficial support for CHWs, which can enhance overall systems functioning by enhancing CHW performance.

Professionalism lapses in health professions training: Navigating the 'Yellow Card' moments for transformative learning.

Health professions training programmes face increasing reports of professionalism lapses, which can delay, or end, trainee progression. How programmes respond to professionalism lapses to facilitate professional identity development has not been clarified. The objective of this study is to identify factors that facilitate and impair transformations around professionalism lapses in health professions training programmes. We conducted a qualitative study interviewing 5 faculty and 20 trainees with firsthand or secondhand experience with professionalism lapses from a range of health professions training programmes at McMaster University. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we coded verbatim transcripts informed by the lenses of social and transformative learning theories. We constructed themes through iterative and comparative analysis, seeking meaningful variation across professions and triangulating faculty and trainee perspectives. Four themes were constructed. First, lapses are in the eye of the beholder with personal definitions intersecting with institutional and situation norms. Difficulties exist in recognising and convincing trainees to respond to lapses that are perceived to be minor or subject to interpretation. Second, responses to professionalism lapses occurred within power hierarchies, which impacted how trainees reacted to the remediation process, risked superficial trainee responses to concerns and led to concerns around inequitable treatment in how standards were applied. Third, fostering transformation involves building trainee confidence, agency, trust and engagement. Focused support and advocacy for trainees can empower and promote agency in tackling disorienting lapses. Fourth, perspective shifts involve deep engagement over time, including but not limited to self-reflection, structured discussion and seeking support. Identifying and addressing professionalism lapses is complex and requires nuanced and contextual exploration of personal, institutional and situational dynamics at play. By fostering environments that promote genuine reflection and dialogue and focus on building trainee confidence, agency, trust and engagement, health professions training programmes can better support trainees in navigating these complex situations and contribute to the broader goal of socialising to a professional culture and practice.

Not burning, but rebuilding: The ABCS of anthropology using multimodal methodologies and DEAF values

In 2019, Ryan Cecil Jobson made the case for ‘letting anthropology burn’, arguing that: “the field of anthropology cannot presume a coherent human subject as its point of departure but must adopt a radical humanism as its political horizon” (2019:328). In this article, Robinson upholds Jobson’s mandate to adopt a radical humanism, though not by burning, but methodologically rebuilding anthropology using multimodal ethnographic praxis, drawing on learnings from time spent working and learning from DEAF spaces. She charts her intellectual and affective journey from working with deaf artists and educators, through studies in anthropology, and towards transformative encounters with multimodal social semiotics. Through learning to listen and evaluate in DEAF ways, she found that non-deaf, majority-centred ways of conducting research naturally receded, thereby re-scaffolding ethnographic methods, proffering a ready-made approach to inclusive anthropological knowledge-making and a potential means for democratising anthropology from the ground up. Robinson argues that approaching ethnographic praxis in a way that both de-prioritises English-text and prioritises participant-led approaches by default reshapes what constitutes valuable anthropological knowledge, facilitating broader participant inclusion and legibility, while also rendering more apparent entrenched power hierarchies and epistemic imbalances.

Decolonising] the Contentious Politics of Seeing: Reading Visual Cultures

Art and imagery consumed globally through digital and social media are increasingly intertwined with everyday life and politics. This article discusses the often contentious politics of seeing art and imagery, and the problematique that surrounds it. It inverts the lens to look at visual cultures by contextualising it within larger cultural politics and examines the process of visual meaning-making in the public sphere. We seek to disrupt disciplinary and methodological boundaries and employ a transdisciplinary approach to deconstructing meaning-making in the public sphere. We focus on how continued hegemonic discourses are problematised in the production and representation of artworks, especially in the context of the Global South, and how these contribute to decolonising visual cultures and knowledge production. We argue that seeing as a conscious act of engagement differs from casual consumption and spectatorship, and an engaged position alters the viewer’s receptivity. We conclude that through participatory engagement with art and an ongoing dialogue a more inclusive public sphere is possible, enabling education and disrupting a multitude of power hierarchies.

The social agency of instruments of surveying and exploration c.1830–1930

ABSTRACT This paper utilizes the concept of the agency of material objects, proposed as a tenet by several historians of science in the late twentieth century. It argues that scientific instruments have agency in the field due to their value and fragility, both of which attributes served to dictate a social hierarchy of activity. Furthermore, the resulting numerical outputs served to discriminate between various groups. The principal focus is the role of instruments used by travellers sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, London, but it also looks at the role of instruments on a larger triangulation; the project to survey the African part of the arc of the 30th meridian east of Greenwich. Seeing the instruments as material objects allows insights into the social arrangements and interactions taking place. It is argued that instruments, and the results of instrument use, entrenched existing power hierarchies, imparting greater prestige to those who were previously endowed with privilege. It is argued the instruments contributed to ‘othering’ both in the field and in the publications resulting from the expeditions.

Public governance in national minority rights protection

The article is devoted to the analysis of public administration in the field of national minorities rights protection. The author analyzes the system of authorities aimed at protecting the national minorities interests and nationalities in Ukraine. The Committee on Nationalities under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was the first ukrainian central state body of the executive power, entrusted with the functions of ensuring ethno-national policy and protecting the national minorities interests. It is emphasized that the structure of public authorities protecting the rights of national minorities was not limited exclusively to the activities of the specialized central executive body. The positions of Advisor to President on ethno-national problems of Crimea and Advisor to President on the affairs of the Ukrainian diaspora were introduced. At the regional (oblast) level, the Republican Committee for Nationalities and Deported Citizens of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea operates, as well as the relevant subdivisions at the local level – nationalities and migration departments of regional state administrations. The situation changed with the switch of the state policy vector from pro-Russian to pro-European. This was not least due to the recommendations of the OSCE and the need to converge with the acquis communautaire of the European Union. National minorities rights protection has been in focus since the independence of Ukraine. Establishing and functioning of the relevant Ministry (Committee) on National Minorities is a direct confirmation of this thesis. This issue was always in focus of the Ukrainian governments besides the period of the rule of the pro-Russian government (2010-2014), when most of the state institutions for the protection of national minorities were liquidated. This fact determined the revolutionary events of the Euromaidan (2014) to some extent. As of today, Ukraine fulfills its obligations regarding the protection of the national minorities rights. The current central authority (State Service of Ukraine for Ethnic Policy and Freedom of Conscience, DESS) was formed in accordance with the recommendations of the OSCE and taking into account the experience of the EU member-states. Its status is lower in the executive power hierarchy. However, its scope of competence and its actual activity best serves the interests of the national minorities.

“They’re Doing Their Own Kind of Nursing”: Challenging the Gender Bias

ABSTRACT Despite Iceland's reputation as a gender equal country, men make up about 4% of nurses which is low in comparison with similar countries. To shed light on what determines the choice of nursing and on cooperation at work, interviews with ten female and seven male nurses were analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. Drawing on poststructuralist and feminist theories, focusing on power relations and gender in the workplace, the analysis revealed stereotypical gender differences. Choosing nursing was for the female nurses a “natural” channel for their talents, the males were conscious of crossing a line and prepared for stereotyping obstacles. A powerful hierarchy characterized daily work, female nurses described suppressing working situations and lack of support, males ranked themselves higher in respect and opportunities, prioritized their professional boundaries, self-care, and nursing competence, free of gender labels. This difference is an important and self-sustaining part of nurses’ image as powerless, deters young people from nursing education and leads to distance between genders in the workplace. The findings highlight the need to recognize and tackle stereotyping, which maintains inequality, prioritizing diversity instead is a task for educational and health systems, and the debate on gender equality in Iceland.

On the Ethics of Mediating Embodied Vulnerability to Violence

Media ethics has long been haunted by the question of representing human beings’ vulnerability to violence. While journalism and photojournalism have an obligation to report on the realities of violence and suffering in the world, the “spectacle of suffering” is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this essay, I seek to theorize the ethics of vulnerability to violence in media representation. As a starting point, I argue for the politics of embodiment as a generative process that constitutes differential vulnerabilities. I move then to consider the way embodied vulnerabilities play out in the media, as exemplified by recent events such as the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements as well as in times of war, from Vietnam to, more recently, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. This leads to considerations of spectatorship: who looks and who is looked at? How are these relations of gazing related to the vectors of social and geopolitical power? Are images of embodied vulnerability simply media spectacles that reinforce power hierarchies, or are they powerful prosocial messages that might mobilize humanitarian activism? To address these epistemic questions, I propose that the feminist ethics of care encompasses an invitational rhetoric that can guide media praxis. Care ethics is aligned with various religious epistemologies, and because of that, I argue for it as an umbrella framework that has application in a variety of national and cultural contexts.