Power Legitimacy Research Articles

Governing African cotton and timber through CSR: competition, legitimacy and power

Private competition to establish new principles and rules to govern the production and exchange of Africa's commodities has intensified. Building on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature, this article analyses the implications of this unbalanced and unregulated competition. A case study of competing CSR initiatives in cotton shows that the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) commands relatively more power and less legitimacy than certified organic cotton systems in Tanzania. The second case – where the effects of unbalanced competition are largely absent – explores the efforts of timber concessionaires in Cameroon to achieve Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. The resulting system enjoys high legitimacy and outperforms the existing public regulatory framework. This analysis suggests the desirability of developing new global principles to regulate competition between transnational CSR systems. Résumé L'établissement des principes et des règles par la compétition privée gouvernant la production et l'échange des produits africains a intensifié. S'appuyant sur la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE), cet article analyse les implications d'une concurrence déséquilibrée et non régulée. Un cas d'étude des initiatives concurrentielles dans le contexte de la RSE et de l'industrie cotonnière démontre que l'initiative “Better Cotton” (IBC) exige relativement moins de pouvoir et de légitimité comparée aux systèmes de coton biologique en Tanzanie. Le deuxième cas auquel les conséquences d'une concurrence non régulée sont absentes – explore les efforts des concessionnaires forestiers en Cameroun cherchant la certification du conseil “Forest Stewardship”. Le système résultant bénéficie d'une légitimité élevée et surpasse le cadre de régulation publique existant. Cette analyse suggère comme solution la valorisation du développement des principes globaux afin de régler la compétition entre les systèmes de RSE transnationaux.

When Subordinates Think of their Ideals: Power, Legitimacy and Regulatory Focus

Power influences the way people set and pursue their goals. Recent Studies have shown that powerful people, when compared with powerless individuals, have greater accessibility of their promotion goals (for instance, their ideals, their aspirations, etc.). In the current research we aim to explore the moderating role of power's legitimacy in such effect. In Study 1, after manipulating power and legitimacy, the accessibility of ideals was measured. Results showed that in the legitimate condition, the powerful, compared to the powerless people, showed greater accessibility of their ideals. However, in the illegitimate condition the opposite was true. In Study 2, the accessibility of a different type of goal: oughts, was explored. Results showed that the illegitimate powerholders, when compared with legitimate ones, had their oughts more accessible. The importance of these results is discussed in line with recent theorizing within social psychology of power.

The Elimination of the Unworthy: Credit Men and Small Retailers in Progressive Era Capitalism

The largest organization of capitalists during the Progressive Era was one that most American historians have never heard of. Motivated primarily by overproduction and ruthless competition, many of the nation's largest manufacturers, distributors, and commercial banks formed the National Association of Credit Men (NACM) in 1896 to reduce the supply of credit available to retailers and consumers. The story of the Credit Men confirms many standard assumptions regarding the rise of corporate America to economic power and cultural legitimacy while challenging others. Advances in technology and salaried organization made possible their mobilization, yet more important was the significant lag in the development of mass retail institutions and consequently mass consumerism behind mass production and distribution. The NACM deployed standardized methods and hungered for administrative efficiency but used these modern tools to instill order and ethical discipline in the nation's business, not to secularize the economy and culture of the new century. America's corporate capitalists seized power by promising moral regulation for unbridled individualism.

Illegitimacy improves goal pursuit in powerless individuals

The effects of power legitimacy on self-regulation during goal pursuit were examined. Study 1 focused on goal-setting and goal-striving. Specifically, it examined how much time legitimate and illegitimate powerless individuals needed to set goals, and how many means they generated to pursue these goals. Study 2 examined persistence in the face of difficulties. Consistently across these studies illegitimacy improved self-regulation in powerless individuals. Illegitimate powerless individuals behaved similarly as control participants. They took less time to decide on a course of action, used more flexible means to strive for goals, and persisted longer in the face of difficulties, compared to their legitimate counterparts. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Power and habitus

This article explores the relationship between habitus and social power. It is argued that legitimacy and violence constitute an alternative basis of social power. The former is based upon habitus, while the latter is an extension of natural power. The complex processes whereby the state’s monopoly on violence and education are used to create habitus, thus legitimacy, are explored. The complex relationship between power legitimacy and habitus emerge as central to making sense of three‐dimensional power, hegemony, discourse formation, symbolic violence and democracy.

Insurgency, Political Violence and State Repressive Policies: Cuba and Spain a Comparative Perspective

This paper examines the relationships among political violence, the growth and development of an insurgency, and the state's decision to use repressive policies. We present two different cases of 20th century: Cuba between 1933 and 1959, and the Basque Separatist Movement in Spain from 1939 to the present. While the insurgency in Cuba resulted in the overthrow of the Batista government, in the Basque country of Spain the continuing conflict has produced a stalemate. Using the Power Legitimacy Transition (PLT) framework, the main argument examined in this paper is that political violence and its outcomes were related to (a) the level of intolerance of the state and some social groups towards the demands of other social groups, (b) the existence of large social, economic and political inequality, and (c) the stage of development of democratic institutions.

The Duality of Legitimacy in Global Governance

Global governance rests on the exercise of power by a myriad of authorities. The more powers and influence these authorities acquire, the more their legitimacy proves to be a matter of controversy. It is submitted here that the legitimacy of these (global and regional) authorities that partake in global governance must be appraised from a two-fold standpoint. Their legitimacy must first be gauged through the lens of the origin of their powers (legitimacy of origin). But, as an authority often comes to exercise powers that exceed those that were originally bestowed upon it, the origin of the power may prove an insufficient indicator of an authority's legitimacy. For this reason, legitimacy must also be evaluated in the light of the way in which it exercises its power (legitimacy of exercise). This paper is based on the assumption that failing to recognize this dual character of legitimacy of authorities involved in global and regional governance can undermine any endeavor to grasp the contemporary complexity of the latter.

Conjuring Hope: Magic and Healing in Contemporary Russia

Acknowledgements Preface Introduction Chapter 1. Marketing Magic Chapter 2. Magic as Semiotic Changes: Ontologies, Rituals and Terms of Affliction Chapter 3. Magic as Management of Emotions Chapter 4. The Icons of Power: Constructing Charisma from the Means at Hand Chapter 5. Charisma of the Office: Healing Power and Biomedical Legitimacy Chapter 6. The Unspeakable Emotions: Spells and Their Use in Working Life Chapter 7. The Magic of Business and the Fostering of Hope Epilogue Bibliography Index

NEO-LEFT AND NEO-RIGHT IN POST-TIANANMEN CHINA

Abstract Post-Tiananmen neo-left and neo-right theorizing is characterized by a new emphasis on central power and normative legitimacy to redress the problems of ideological and political fragmentation associated with reform. This development has strengthened the Chinese government but also undermined the Communist Party's role as the fount of ideological authority.

Genes Spell Danger: Mental health service users/survivors, bioethics and control

The focus of this discussion is disability, culture and identities in relation to bioethics and mental health service users/survivors. Taking account of the inclusion of mental health service users/survivors within the administrative categories of disability, this article argues for debates about bioethics and disabled people to address and include the perspectives of psychiatric system survivors, and their concerns about psychiatry and bioethics. There is currently an increasing emphasis in both the media and government policy on the danger, threat and 'otherness' of mental health service users, and increasing provisions to restrict their civil and human rights. This development is international and has also tended to be racialised in its public presentation. While genetic approaches to physical and sensory impairment can be seen to be concerned with physical and bodily conformity, genetic approaches to madness and mental distress that are gaining increasing power and official legitimacy, are also closely associated with regulating diversity, divergence and dissent in thinking and perceptions. The aim of this article is raise and explore these issues, and highlight the common and different concerns for us as survivors and disabled people as a basis for encouraging alliances, shared understanding and common resistance.

Donde hay doctor?: Folk and cosmopolitan medicine for sexual health among Chilean women living in Australia

This paper discusses sexual health strategies among Chilean women living in Melbourne, Australia. Twenty in-depth qualitative interviews and a survey questionnaire were administered to 100 Chilean-born women. Findings illustrate the importance of 'authority' when it comes to 'socially risky' illnesses like sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Women stressed that western trained doctors are the only answer for STDs and the only way women can protect themselves from getting STDs is by visiting the doctor. The western trained doctor is seen to have the authority and legitimacy to treat the disease and heal the social relationships threatened by STDs. Chilean women continue to value the importance of alternative medicine within the array of health and medical seeking behaviours, although their use has shifted from the traditional Latin American folk healer to the Chinese doctor, herbalist and other alternative medical practitioners, including naturopaths. We conclude by arguing that while traditional medicines are still widely used by the Chilean migrant community, when it comes to 'socially risky' conditions such as STDs, western trained doctors, because of their conferred power, authority and social legitimacy, are key figures for prevention and treatment.

Why do superiors attend to negative stereotypic information about their subordinates? Effects of power legitimacy on social perception

Power can be defined as control over people's outcomes. using this definition, we explored the impact of power on attentional processes involved in impression formation. Because powerful individuals may want to maintain and justify their position, powerful participants should pay particular attention to negative stereotype-consistent information about their subordinates. In contrast, powerless participants should devote their attention to stereotype-inconsistent information in an attempt to increase their control over the social context. Study 1 directly manipulated control by assigning participants to the role of leader or subordinate ina task group. Results showed that, compared to subordinates, leaders devoted more attention to negative stereotypic attributes. Study 2 manipulated the legitimacy of power and replicated the pattern found in Study 1 but only when power was illegitimate. Our findings suggest that the experience of power can be associated with feelings of threat, especially when power is illegitimate, thereby orienting impression-formation processes toward information likely to maintain the existing social structure. We discuss our results in the context of current work on motivated social cognition, social identity, and legitimisation. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

Continuities: Essentialist or Sensory?

Hamilakis and Yalouri make an important contribution to the recent growth in studies of Greek nationalism, which is part of a more general trend in history, anthropology and related disciplines to analyse nationalism as a cultural phenomenon, and the politics of ‘invented traditions’. By focusing on the sacralisation of archaeological remains, they add an important piece to the general picture of the uses of the past in modern Greece. While doing this they make their argument relevant to those authors looking at the power of objects and material remains to serve as sites for memory and historical consciousness, objects and/or rituals whose function is to ‘recall the past without enumerating it’ (Rappaport 1994: 76). In particular, archaeological remains resemble those ‘inalienable possessions’ which because of their power to symbolise continuity with ancestors, are withdrawn from the circuits of gift and commodity exchange (Weiner 1992). Objects from the past, much as we may attempt to preserve them behind glass cases in museums, have a ‘social life’ and are deployed in struggles for power and ideological legitimacy in the present. Given the sacred or ‘religious’ character that archaeological remains play in the Greek national narrative, Hamilakis and Yalouri sensibly argue that archaeologists, like historians and other scholars, must see their work as necessarily political. We cannot escape into objectivity; studies of the past are always in some way also reflections of the values of the present and the future. The authors rightly point to the hegemonic status of the ancient past in contemporary Greece. As I discovered during my research into historical consciousness on the island of Kalymnos, Kalymnians of radically different religious and political persuasions were united in the view that History should be read for what it revealed about the continuity in character of peoples and nations. Like archaeology, the narrative of Greek nationalism dominated written history on Kalymnos. Popular memories which conflicted with this narrative — for example, of women-led collective action — could still be found, but had none of the social capital to compete with ‘official history’, as written by an educated elite (see Doumanis 1997; Sutton 1998; 1999).

Preface

Communism in the Soviet Union has long served officially as religion's surrogate. It has offered an organized and compelling belief system with which to rationalize the misfortunes of the past, establish codes of behavior to manage the present, and conceptualize the future. Although communist theory categorically rejects religion, it actively promotes, and is itself predicated on, institutions of “faith” in the abstract sense. The herculean industrialization and literacy campaigns of the early decades of Soviet rule that forever transformed the USSR's largely illiterate, agricultural society vividly illustrate the power and popular legitimacy of communist institutions of “faith” such as the Party and the Komsomol. Trusting that earthly sacrifice will bring future rewards has been as much the basis of Soviet communism as it has been of the Abrahamic tradition of religion addressed in this issue.

Premarital Female Sexuality in Morocco

In the Arab world, the study of “illegal” and/or “anomalous” sexualities have disturbed the political powers. Indeed, studying these sexualities as social phenomena is a way to recognize their existence and the difficulties faced by the religious authorities to limit sex to the marriage institutions. Therefore the study of these sexualities could become an ideological weapon to contest the Arab/Islamo political power legitimacy.