Power Of Knowledge Research Articles

Socioeconomic Status and Out-of-School Citizenship Education in China’s Shanghai

Many studies have noted the important role family socioeconomic status (SES) plays in students’ out-of-school learning. However, very little is known about the relationship between student’s SES and citizenship education in out-of-school contexts. To address this research gap, this study conducted an out-of-school citizenship education survey (involving 2,950 teachers, 7,388 students, 2,564 parents, and 112 out-of-school education organizations in Shanghai, China), in 2015, to explore the relationship between SES and students’ out-of-school citizenship education. This article found SES affected primary and junior middle school (but not high school) students’ participation in out-of-school citizenship education. This article adopted a power–knowledge relationship perspective to explain this pattern, and found that the relationship between education and power is not so mechanical that only powerful groups in society can determine knowledge and learning; instead, educational forces and students may mediate the influence of SES.

Salawah Wahidiyah in The Frame of Thareeqat in Indonesian Archipelago: Resistance in The Face of Perverse Fatwas in Tasikmalaya

The relationship of power and resistance against it has been widely discussed as an intellectual discursive debates. However, resistance groups against the theological authority is off the debate. This paper analyses the resistance movement of Salawah Wahidiyah (SW) in the face of the erroneous fatwa by the Assembly of Indonesia Ulema (MUI). With the analysis of power relationships, knowledge, and resistance, this paper finds that SW is fighting against the misguided fatwa of Tasikmalaya MUI which is carried out as the majority of theological hegemony to defend the doctrine and amaliyah as well as to reject the deviating claim. This is all done to maintain the freedom to believe and practice the teachings of an inside democracy which guarantees and protects the right of religious freedom. Ironically, the resistance of SW in Tasikmalaya was not able to replicate the success of the Centre SW in conducting resistance against NU figures. SW Tasikmalaya failed to reconcile the differences of religious views with MUI. As a result, the motion of SW became limited because it is still stigmatized as deviant.

Youth and their workers: the interacting subjectification effects of neoliberal social policy and NGO practice frameworks

ABSTRACTThe effects of neoliberalism on young people and youth workers through outsourcing government services has attracted critique from multiple sources. Post-structural analysis interrogates subjectification effects of these policies on youth. However, this kind of analysis of the governmental formation of youth ought to consider the interaction between the knowledge of youth underpinning neoliberal social policy, and those employed by non-government agencies implementing them. The interaction between these two shape the reciprocal governing activity within the young person and youth worker power–knowledge relationship that, this paper will argue, is an important factor in the critique of neoliberal social policy. Young people are governed by a diverse array of knowledges developed by government, youth studies, NGOs and young people themselves. These knowledges interact, reinforce and contradict discourses of youth work. This paper focuses on a neoliberal social policy (FLO) which constructs youth as a surplus population in need of risk management, and youth workers as the producers of young workers. Furthermore, I will consider the interfering subjectification effects produced by an intake and assessment tool (Your Story) utilised by a non-government FLO provider. These discourses underpinning Your Story and FLO render young people and their workers as relational beings or economic citizens respectively.

APPLICATION OF CONFLICT MODEL FOR COUNTERACTION MECHANISMS STUDY OF STATE AND TERRORISM (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

This article is devoted to interaction mechanisms study (counteraction) of state and terrorism on the basis of conflict model application. Consequences of such interaction and also options of received results used in state and legal practice are investigated (on the example of fight against terror in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century). Separate parameters influencing formation of complete theoretical model of the conflict are determined. Method of reflexing system creation developed by V. A. Lefebvre for studying decision-making problem by parties of the conflict is used. Method of reflexing system creation allows investigating not only legal but also social regulators to consider random behavioral factors of conflict participants, and also to influence decision adoption process. One of the parameters influencing creation of effective legal model is awareness for which knowledge concept structure accounting is used. So according to relevant standards of regulatory legal act it is possible to draw a conclusion about the level of power knowledge and about scales and nature of state terrorism. For the state it is necessary to keep information balance between parties of the conflict. It is noted that the system assessment of terrorism condition at the stage preceding decision-making is a key of successful conflict solving both on micro and macro levels. The most irregular shapes of counteraction to terrorist threat are shown in that case when conflicting party consciously neglects rationality principle and in advance provides a certain size of own losses. Attention is focused on separate features of public and secret methods of counteraction in conflict. Special attention is paid to problems of advanced legal impact and choice anticipatory rationing. Anticipatory legal regulation in mediated form reduces the size of potential guilty under behavior regulation.

(Un)ethical practices: intimacy and Internet in the media coverage of the Ashley Madison hack

In the summer of 2015, the “cheating website” known as Ashley Madison came under scrutiny, as a group calling itself the Impact Team revealed users’ private information. This case study explores the controversy’s Canadian media coverage and sheds light on the main discourses about intimacy and the Internet that were made visible during this event. It interrogates how cheaters, hackers, and the company were represented. To varying degrees, the mainstream press condemns the cheaters, the hackers, and the company for their behaviour. The article also addresses the ways intimate practices are politicized and commercialized in the digital context, including a discussion of the emphasis on “privacy.” To conclude the article, I discuss the transparency and privacy issues implicated in digital intimacies and the power–knowledge (im)balance implied by hackers’ online anonymity.

Ethics and the Evolving Deployments of Disciplinary Practices: A Foucauldian Analysis of the Glamorization of Bodies

The paper discusses how individuals are constituted by disciplinary practices as presented in Michel Foucault’s two major works: Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. The workings of power-knowledge gave rise to the penal apparatus and deployments of sexuality, which affected entire populations. But even as these disciplinary practices evolve and become seemingly more humane and liberating, they continue to produce docile and normalized subjects. One particular example of this process, discussed here in detail, is the transition from the figure of the hysterical woman to the modern glamorous (beautiful) woman. Such a transition extends Foucault’s ideas to show the immense variety of disciplinary practices. The last section explores a Foucauldian conception of ethics that seeks to reclaim the autonomy of subjects through self-creation. Keywords Disciplinarity, governmentality, sexuality, subjectivity, ethics, askēsis

Biopolitics, complex systems theory and ecological social work: Conceptualising ways of transitioning to low carbon futures

INTRODUCTION: Social work is engaged with understanding and acting into change processes within society at various levels. How new social and environmental movements are conceptually framed can be usefully explored to enable new ways of understanding their role in change processes, particularly in addressing the most significant problem of our times, climate change and excessive non-renewable energy use.METHODS: Complex systems theory and deep ecology are two of the theoretical conceptualisations that inform the Transition Town movement transnationally. Social workers share these two theoretical frameworks with the Transition Town movement as ways of thinking about effecting change processes. A brief introduction to a biopolitical lens, based on Lemke’s reading of Michel Foucault is added to offer another way to conceptualise the movement’s naturalistic logic.CONCLUSION: A biopolitical lens seeks to make visible the precarious and contingent difference between nature and culture as well as politics and life. Biopolitical analytics aims to focus social workers on investigating the network of power relations, knowledge practices and modes of subjectification evident in change processes. The intersection of life and politics has transformed modern society and biopolitics aims to bring this into focus to understand what we are doing to ourselves.

Variation of Woman’s Knowledge Power in the Fulfillment of Family Food Based on Economic and Social Status Difference

The aim of this research is to analyze the variation of woman’s knowledge power in the fulfillment of family food based on the difference of economic and social status. The study was carried out in Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatera Indonesia. The method of this research is qualitative method by using critical paradigm. Data were collected by in depth interview, observation and group discussion. The result of this research shows that in terms of power knowledge relation, women of high social and economic status family were subordinated by men. Women’s knowledge power in the middle social and economic status family is more dominant than man’s knowledge and power. The power relation of woman’s knowledge in the lower economic and social status is inclined to be equal to man’s knowledge power in every aspects of the fulfillment of family’s food.

E-government and moral citizenship: the case of Estonia

The present article concerns Estonian e-government, that is, the digitalization of government and public administration, and the way e-government produces a moral citizen. Although several case studies on e-government exist, they have seldom been sensitive to the local conditions shaping the functions and social meaning of digitalization. E-government involves producing knowledge, and the present article draws on a theoretical perspective that stresses the tight relationship between knowledge and power. In Estonia, the power–knowledge regime is characterized by centralization. Centralization is the condition for a firm national e-government policy, and within this policy, an image of the unique Estonian citizenry is produced. The Estonian moral citizen who emerges out of e-government is de-politicized and detached from a social context, on the one hand, and strongly politicized and attached to a specific ethno-national community, on the other.

Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of International Relations: Towards a vernacular turn

The performance of International Relations (IR) scholarship – as in all scholarship – acts to close and police the boundaries of the discipline in ways that reflect power–knowledge relations. This has led to the development of two strands of work in ontological security studies in IR, which divide on questions of ontological choice and the nature of the deployment of the concept of dread. Neither strand is intellectually superior to the other and both are internally heterogeneous. That there are two strands, however, is the product of the performance of IR scholarship, and the two strands themselves perform distinct roles. One allows ontological security studies to engage with the ‘mainstream’ in IR; the other allows ‘international’ elements of ontological security to engage with the social sciences more generally. Ironically, both can be read as symptoms of the discipline’s issues with its own ontological (in)security. We reflect on these intellectual dynamics and their implications and prompt a new departure by connecting ontological security studies in IR with the emerging interdisciplinary fields of the ‘vernacular’ and ‘everyday’ via the mutual interest in biographical narratives of the self and the work that they do politically.

Exploring worker consciousness in China

ABSTRACTThis paper presents findings from a study that has explored how the lived experience of everyday Chinese workers influenced their struggle to improve their working conditions. We argue that because the consciousness of everyday Chinese workers remains at an embryonic level, their ability to campaign and change their working conditions remains constrained. We inform this argument by engaging with Foucault’s power–knowledge framework (1980). The study draws on original interviews with n = 74 Chinese workers gathered across two phases of data collection conducted between 2011 and 2014.

Restorative Practices and Youth Work

Restorative practices (RP) and youth work continue to emerge as more formalized fields of theory and practice. The interaction between these fields requires attention as RP gain popularity among services delivered to young people. Of particular importance, and currently receiving inadequate attention, is a tension regarding the conceptualization of power in the relationship between practitioners and young people. This article examines the conceptualization of power within youth work and restorative practices drawing on post-structural power–knowledge relations. A shared emphasis on empowerment and relationality within these fields obscures the problematization of the young person–worker dynamic. Of concern in particular is that restorative practices appear to operate within a power–knowledge discourse of control. This article will outline the frameworks’ potential as a source of both transformation and extension of a ‘carceral network’.

Knowledge leadership: Mobilizing management research by becoming the knowledge object

This article explores contrasting forms of ‘knowledge leadership’ in mobilizing management research into organizational practice. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on power–knowledge, we introduce three axes of power–knowledge relations, through which we analyse knowledge leadership practices. We present empirical case study data focused on ‘polar cases’ of managers engaged in mobilizing management research in six research-intensive organizations in the UK healthcare sector. We find that knowledge leadership involves agentic practices through which managers strive to actively become the knowledge object – personally transposing, appropriating or contending management research. This article contributes to the literature by advancing the concept of knowledge leadership in the work of mobilizing management research into organizational practice.

Objectively best or most acceptable? Expert and lay knowledge in Swedish wind power permit processes

This article analyses legal aspects of the Swedish wind power development, theoretically based on how different types of knowledge are represented in legal contexts, mainly in the courts. A sample of appealed wind power permits is analysed, a handful of relevant informants are interviewed – including two judges in the Land and Environment Court and the appeal court – and the legal setting is analysed. Of key interest here is the interplay between expert and lay statements in the court cases, which here is related to the concepts of calculating and communicative rationalities that are developed in the planning literature. The results indicate that the juridification – which takes place as a permit issue is appealed in the judiciary system – supports the calculating rationality more than the communicative, and that the plaintiffs often attempt to adapt in how they shape their argumentation.

Fundamental Inequities in Algorithmic Space: What Do Games Teach Us About Power in a Software Mediated Society?

Game-space is the ultimate software mediated space, where all activity is known by the space, and all activity is mediated by the space. Outside of these virtual spaces we occupy a reality that itself is increasingly mediated and made by algorithmic processes driven by the expansion of surveillance capacity enabled by big data. By unpacking games through a framework of Object Oriented Programming, this paper draws on game-space as indicative of the power relations the occur when an individual must operate within an algorithmic construct. The paper focuses on three key aspects, the necessity of calculability, inequity in knowledge and inequity in power, to examine how algorithmic constructs in both game-space, and software mediated society govern those individuals that must operate within them.

Pedagogic governance: theorising with/after Bernstein

Researchers interested in new modes of social control and regulation through pedagogic means have increasingly drawn on Bernstein’s theories of social control through pedagogic means and the emergence of a totally pedagogised society. This article explores this aspect of the Bernsteinian theoretical project by extrapolating and contrasting Foucault’s and Bernstein’s theories of power knowledge relations, pedagogic discourse and different types of knowledge structures. It elaborates on Bernstein’s theory of the complex division of labour within the field of symbolic control, consisting of agents from different class factions engaged in conflicts and struggles over the production and recontextualisation of different types of scientific knowledge. The article provides two case studies of empirical research to illustrate how Bernstein’s concepts can be used to theorise different modes of pedagogic governance. It demonstrates the possibilities of Bernstein’s later theoretical oeuvre to studies of social reproduction, interruption and change in and through pedagogic relations.

Knowledge model for electric power big data based on ontology and semantic web

It is very important for the development of electric power big data technology to use the electric power knowledge. A new electric power knowledge theory model is proposed here to solve the problem of normalized modeled electric power knowledge for the management and analysis of electric power big data. Current modeling techniques of electric power knowledge are viewed as inadequate because of the complexity and variety of the relationships among electric power system data. Ontology theory and semantic web technologies used in electric power systems and in many other industry domains provide a new kind of knowledge modeling method. Based on this, this paper proposes the structure, elements, basic calculations and multidimensional reasoning method of the new knowledge model. A modeling example of the regulations defined in electric power system operation standard is demonstrated. Different forms of the model and related technologies are also introduced, including electric power system standard modeling, multi-type data management, unstructured data searching, knowledge display and data analysis based on semantic expansion and reduction. Research shows that the new model developed here is powerful and can adapt to various knowledge expression requirements of electric power big data. With the development of electric power big data technology, it is expected that the knowledge model will be improved and will be used in more applications.

China's rise and the ‘Chinese dream’ in international relations theory

The rise of China/East Asia and the perceived decline of the US/West pose an emerging question about how international relations (IR) theory should respond to this change. Increasingly, there have been heated discussions among Chinese IR academics over a desirable Chinese contribution to IR theory (IRT), particularly the possibility of building a distinctive Chinese IRT. Inevitably, this drive towards theorizing from a Chinese perspective also creates a backlash among not only Western but also other Chinese scholars as they question the ‘nationalistic’ if not ‘hegemonic’ discourse of the scholarship. Drawing on the sociology of scientific knowledge framework, this article examines the linkages between the vibrant dynamics of the Chinese theoretical debates and the actual practices of Chinese scholars in realizing their claims. It suggests that this investigation can serve as a springboard into a better appreciation of the theory–practice and power–knowledge relationships in the context of Chinese IR.

Relationships among Risk Assessment, Risk Perception and Acceptance Model of the Residents near Nuclear Power Plants in Japan

This study aims at revealing the relationships among risk assessment result, risk perception model and risk acceptance model of the residents near nuclear power plants in Japan. Risk acceptance model is based on the trust of resident to nuclear power plants (NPPs) companies. The risk perception of the residents is very fragile and is not always based on objective technical knowledge. In addition, there are two models of risk acceptance: traditional trust model and salient value similarity model. In order to discuss the risk communication framework between NPPs with residents, applicability of two modes on the perception of the residents should be investigated. The author collected questionnaire from local resident near Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP in Niigata, Japan. Severity of risk is significantly affected by the extents of risks, not by amount of knowledge. Radiation relating hazard is normally evaluated higher risk. Risk acceptance level is significantly related to the factors of social benefits and trust to the NPPs company, not by regional interest nor amount of knowledge. Furthermore, value similarity model was not significant in this study. The results demonstrated that risk acceptance model of local residents near NPPs could be arranged by traditional trust model. In order to establish mutual trustworthy relationships between local residents and NPPs engineer, expert knowledge in nuclear power, communication skills, and expertise in safety are necessary to the engineers.

Game‐theoretic modeling and analysis of relay selection in cooperative wireless networks

ABSTRACTIn this paper, distributed single relay selection in cooperative wireless networks is modeled as a Chinese restaurant game (CRG). Specifically, the CRG is used to model strategic relay selection decisions of source nodes, taking into account negative network externality due to the potential sharing of relay nodes among source nodes. Two cases are studied as follows: (i) perfect relay transmit power (RTP) knowledge and (ii) imperfect RTP knowledge. Under the first case, a distributed relay selection algorithm is proposed and shown to converge to a Nash equilibrium grouping. Under the second case, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed and combined with the distributed relay selection algorithm to allow network nodes to select rate‐maximizing relays. Simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed distributed relay selection algorithm when compared with other relay selection schemes and demonstrate that it yields a network sum‐rate that is comparable with that of centralized relay selection. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.