Egalitarian Relationships Research Articles

I said, they said: The ethnographic backstage and the politics of producing engaged anthropology

Two commonly articulated goals of engaged anthropology include: 1) creating equal power relations with research participants; and 2) producing scholarship that critiques inequality. Though these seem commensurate, this article discusses how working toward both goals can lead to conflict when collaborators vehemently disagree with the critical aspects of your research findings. This article argues that writing about the ethnographic backstage — the background negotiations that rarely make it to the printed page — can help engaged anthropologists foster more egalitarian relations when it comes to ethnographic representation and can sharpen our sociocultural critiques. Because engaged anthropology, by definition, is shaped by negotiations with research participants, examining the ethnographic backstage helps us better understand an important axis in the production of anthropological knowledge.

Queer Bandits and Partisans: Reimagining Male Homosexuality in Early Post-War Italy

ABSTRACT Despite state-sanctioned antipathy towards homosexuality, queer content began to proliferate in Italian art during the mid-to-late 1940s. It is now a commonplace that representations of homosexual characters in this period fell into a paradigm of fascists-criminals-paedophiles, but this essay challenges that notion. Tracing cultural representations of male homosexuality in Italy demonstrates that vilification was only one strategy employed by Italian artists of the early post-war years. Indeed, writers and filmmakers alike utilised increasingly realistic depictions based on actual cultural practices of homosexual men. In particular, Alberto Lattuada’s film Il bandito (1946) and Angelo Del Boca’s short story collection Dentro mi è nato l’uomo (1948) exemplify this trend. Analysing and contextualising these efforts, this essay contributes to a cultural history of homosexuality in Italy by elaborating on two tropes – cruising and egalitarian relationship structures – which make it possible to reconceive both how homosexual men were represented and how they may have lived.

Becoming-Perverse: Queering Sworn Brotherhood in the Non/Human Realm of Songzhuxuan’s Hailiwa and Daokousu

ABSTRACT This article examines the pornographic representation of Hailiwa and Daokousu, from Songzhuxuan’s novel Yaohu Yanshi, where a sworn brotherhood incorporates an egalitarian homosexual relationship, something highly unusual in the Qing context in which sexual acts, including same-sex ones, were intelligible only via unequal hierarchies. In so doing we explore the queer potentialities of sworn brotherhood, signifying fraternity, friendship and a sexual relationship simultaneously. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, queer theory, and Giffney and Hird’s concept of the non/human, we argue this tale and its wider genre enriches the scope of what we might term “queer literatures” in offering us historically and culturally situated stories of desire that refuse to confine themselves to the binaries that supported conventional premodern Chinese understandings of gender and sexuality—including the Confucian model of the heterosexual family unit, but also the highly hierarchical notions of sexual status underpinning Qing conceptualizations of sexual acts.

Dialectical Processes in Parent-child Relationships among Somali Families in Sweden

Non-voluntary migration has been demonstrated to have an impact on family relationships as a result of children acculturating to the host country faster than their parents. Studies have reported on immigrant parents’ perceptions of their parenting in host countries. However, less is known about how both children and parents view and make sense of their relationships in new contexts. This exploratory qualitative study aims to capture the dialectical processes in parent-child relationships among Somali families in Sweden. Data were collected using focus group discussions with youth (n = 47) and their parents (n = 33). The data were analysed using a thematic analysis. Two themes, each with three themes of their own, were identified from the analysis: finding a balance between hierarchical and egalitarian relationships and sharing of spaces. Youth and parents described different factors, including contextual changes, generational gaps, peer pressure and lack of a father figures, as affecting their relationships with each other and sometimes creating conflicts between them. Both perceived themselves as active agents in contributing to family life after migrating to Sweden. In general, the youth expressed their emotional needs, the motivations desired from their parents and their desire to be equally treated as sons and daughters. Overall, this study demonstrates that there is a need to offer immigrant families culturally tailored parenting support programmes, thereby strengthening parent-child relationships.

Qu’est-ce que les professionnels dévoilent d’eux-mêmes dans la relation thérapeutique avec les personnes atteintes de schizophrénie ?

IntroductionHealth professionals’ self-disclosure is a common practice, but there is still controversy regarding when it is appropriate, what the extent and content of self-disclosure should be, and what the clinical consequences are. ObjectivesThis qualitative study aimed to investigate self-disclosure in health and social-care professionals. MethodThirteen in-depth interviews with group leaders of an intervention to improve pleasure and motivation in schizophrenia. The interviews were subjected to thematic analysis. ResultsProfessionals describe their personal disclosures as authentic sharing of lived experiences. From a content point of view, professionals select simple events from their personal or professional life, which they find easy to share with patients, in a group. The selection criteria for these experiences mainly concern the therapeutic value and are formulated in terms of relevance of the content and the usefulness envisioned for the patient as well as authenticity. Self-disclosure generates a redefinition of the places in interaction and a more egalitarian relationship. ConclusionSelf-disclosure is found to be a tool for developing and maintaining the therapeutic relationship. Further studies of the phenomenon would be useful to design training and supervision for professionals.

Relational Egalitarianism and Emergent Social Inequalities

This paper identifies a challenge for liberal relational egalitarians—namely, how to respond to the prospect of emergent inequalities of power, status, and influence arising unintentionally through the free exercise of fundamental individual liberties over time. I argue that these emergent social inequalities can be produced through patterns of nonmalicious choices, that they can in fact impede the full realization of relational equality, and that it is possible they cannot be eliminated entirely without abandoning fundamental liberal commitments to leave individuals substantial discretion in their personal lives. In such cases, I argue that liberal egalitarians should accept fair relational equality—a demanding but nevertheless imperfect form of relational equality.

Environmental Performativity in Native American and Afro-American Womens Fiction: An Ecofeminist Critique of Erdrichs Tracks and Morrisons Beloved

This article, evaluating the usefulness and applicability of the ecofeminist tenets upon the environmental fiction of Erdrich and Morrison, creates a new understanding of the preservation of the environment for engendering a more egalitarian relationship between humanity and nature. It presents the critique of the ways Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich engage with the environmental themes and motifs using the historical connections of their communities with nature as a reference point via eco-performative texts. The overall scheme of the article, therefore, denies the anthropocentric approach upheld by the Euro-American world towards the environment and glorifies the biocentric approach revered and celebrated by the Native American and AfroAmerican lifestyle, emphasizing that in the cosmic scheme of nature, not just humans but non-humans, nature and environment are equal partners. The study concludes that Morrison and Erdrich have stressed in their fiction the ecocritical recognition of the inevitable interdependence of man and nature. Their fiction asserts that considering environmental issues to be human issues can positively affect the human attitude towards nature/environment.

The diverse functions of hearing voices peer-support groups: findings and case examples from a US national study

ABSTRACT Background Hearing voices peer-support groups (HVGs) enable people coping with voices, visions, or other unshared perceptual experiences to explore the particularities and potential meanings of their experiences while receiving support from others facing similar challenges. HVGs have now spread to 30 countries on five continents, and many members report profound life changes as a result of participating. Yet systematic research exploring how and why these groups work is still in its early stages. Methods To understand the diverse functions that HVGs can serve, we analyzed the experiences of 111 group members across the US, who provided detailed accounts of their voice-hearing histories and group participation in a questionnaire. Our collaborative team of voice hearers and researchers used phenomenological and thematic analyses. Results The key elements that make HVGs distinctive include their prioritizing of self-determination; de-emphasizing behavioral targets or pressure to change; respecting and welcoming multiple frameworks of understanding; cultivating curiosity about perplexing experience in any form; and fostering egalitarian collaboration and genuine relationships among members seen as “experts by experience.” Discussion We illustrate the dynamic relations among these elements through case examples, and then outline comparisons between HVGs and other types of groups, as well as directions for future research.

Creating Learning Environments Free of Violence in Special Education Through the Dialogic Model of Prevention and Resolution of Conflicts.

Violence suffered by children is a violation of human rights and a global health problem. Children with disabilities are especially vulnerable to violence in the school environment, which has a negative impact on their well-being and health. Students with disabilities educated in special schools have, in addition, more reduced experiences of interaction that may reduce both their opportunities for learning and for building protective social networks of support. This study analyses the transference of evidence-based actions to prevent violence in schools – the dialogic model of prevention and resolution of conflicts (DMPRC) – in the context of a special school, and its impact on the reduction of violence, the creation of egalitarian relationships, and the prevention of bullying. A case study with a communicative approach was conducted including in-depth interviews and communicative focus groups with the diverse participants to analyze the process of transformation carried out in the school and the main actions that give students a voice in the management and creation of egalitarian non-violent relationships. The results show that the inclusion of the students’ voices in the resolution and prevention of conflicts reduces violence, empowers special education students, strengthens friendship relationships, caring behavior, and active positioning among the community. The positive impact of the transference of the DMPRC to special schools contributes to students’ well-being and healthy development by offering safe and protective educational spaces and quality emotional education, also contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals related to the elimination of all forms of violence in childhood.

The ethics of ethnographic methods in conflict zones.

This article examines the ethics of using ethnographic methods in contemporary conflict zones. Ethnographic research is an embodied research practice of immersion within a field site whereby researchers use ethnographic sensibility to study how people make sense of their world. Feminist, conflict and peacebuilding scholars who research vulnerable populations and local dynamics especially value ethnographic approaches for their emphasis on contextual understanding, human agency, egalitarian research relationships and researcher empathy. While immersion leads to knowledge that can hardly be replaced by using more formal approaches, it also elicits ethical dilemmas. These arise not only from the specific research context but also from who the researcher is and how they may navigate violent and often misogynous settings. I argue that many dilemmas may and perhaps should not be overcome by researcher skill and perseverance. Instead, ethical challenges may lead researchers to adopt limited and/or uneven immersion in their field site, not as failed or flawed ethnography but as an ethical research strategy that incorporates ethnographic sensibility to a varying extent. Examining why researchers may opt for limited and uneven immersion is important because in conflict research, stereotypes of the intrepid (male) researcher with a neutral gaze still tend to mute open discussions of how gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, class and other background factors inevitably shape immersion. This article seeks to contribute to creating discursive space for these conversations, which are vital for researchers to analyse, reflect and write from the position of a ‘vulnerable observer’ and incorporate greater transparency in the discussion of research findings.

Ceremonial or Convivial Gifts: Two Forms of Gift-Giving in Contemporary Chinese Diplomacy

Summary This essay presents the findings of empirical research on gift exchange in contemporary Chinese diplomacy (2003-2019). Two patterns emerged that can be structurally explained by the type of relationship in which the diplomatic practice is mobilised: ceremonial gift exchange in more hierarchical relations and convivial gift exchange in more egalitarian relations. Additionally, this case study allows us to observe the impact of the ‘mediatisation and societisation of diplomacy’ on what is — presumably — a universal, transhistorical practice.

Mitigating Servility: Policies of Egalitarian Self-Relations

AbstractHow should inequalities generated in part by people's self-devaluing attitudes be understood, and what can be done politically to counteract them? Building on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this article scrutinizes the case of servility as an instance of failure to relate to oneself as an equal, attitudinally and behaviorally speaking. From this perspective, servility as well as the adverse distributive consequences it gives rise to should be considered objectionable and in need of mitigation. Considering the case of political voice, the article points to certain paternalistic policies as a means of altering servility by inducing people to make their claims heard. Indeed, such policies may serve as particularly apt instruments since they directly target attitudinal barriers to relational equality in the political sphere. The novel claim is that paternalism, by altering servile attitudes as well as behavioral patterns, may effectively help make people relate to themselves in a more egalitarian manner.

Outcasts and Relational Egalitarianism

Most individuals desire a more egalitarian society but figuring out what that would mean and how to get there is unclear. Elizabeth Anderson’s relational egalitarianism is one approach to understanding what building a more egalitarian society would mean; this article will agree with her analysis but will highlight how, in attempting to achieve that goal, some serious issues arise. Specifically, Anderson mentions that a consequence of her view would be the elimination of “outcasts” as a status of social groups and how this leads to a tension between promoting social relationships as a primary good and respecting autonomy and privacy. This article will attempt to navigate this tension by providing a close analysis of how outcasts are created and clearly articulating how the elimination of such a group status creates the aforementioned tension. The upshot of the analysis is a sketch of a positive proposal that avoids the tension and makes progress toward the elimination of outcasts as a social group.

Conceptualizing participation in the community mental health context: Beginning with the Clubhouse model

ABSTRACT Purpose Although participation is key to community mental health, the concept remains elusive. The study explored a conceptualization of participation in the community-based mental health agencies context from a first-person perspective, using the Clubhouse model as an example. Methods Qualitative data, collected from 21 Clubhouse service users through three focus groups (1 UK and 2 US) for primary analysis and secondary data from 104 individual interviews, were analysed using a grounded theory approach. Results Focus group narratives revealed three main domains of what may be named everyday participation process, Making Decisions, Doing Work, and Locating Oneself in Community, blended with each other rather than forming clear-cut stages. Sixty-six extracted primary codes, with two underlying interrelated core categories identified, named Autonomy and Egalitarian Connection, were organized by domain and by category. Conclusions The findings suggest a 3 × 2 axial model of participation that participation signifies a behaviour, comprised of three blended activity domains, entailing actions and interactions that concern Autonomy and Egalitarian Connection, which, dynamically interacting with each other, appear to condition meaningful participation the next day. Egalitarian relationship skills development appears critical for training practitioners to help promote service users’ quality everyday participation and getting-a-life-back experiences towards well-being, or meaningful life.

Language of Desire: A Methodological Contribution to Overcoming Gender Violence

Previous research has generally found that providing specific research evidence about concrete improvements in the development of field work promotes the achievement of social impact during the research process itself ( Aiello et al., 2021 ). This result opens as a prospective for further research to specify which scientific evidences can promote this impact in the different research topics, as well as the methodological aspects that will facilitate it. In research on gender violence, some of these evidences have already been identified—for example, the mirage of upward mobility ( Oliver, 2010-2012 ). However, the methodological aspects that will determine, when exposing such evidence, the social impact obtained during the research process have not been analyzed. In this sense, in the FREE TEEN DESIRE project, sharing this evidence with the participants using the language of desire has promoted transformations. This language of desire must be incorporated from its reality, being the result of a construction between the researcher and the participants. Its incorporation is enhanced if it is done in the context of Dialogic Feminist Gatherings (DFG). And, throughout the process, the researcher must adopt a role in which, among other things, she or he makes visible any attitude linked to violence when it becomes unattractive, as well as making visible the language of desire that is being constructed with respect to egalitarian relationships. The social impact of this research methodology was evidenced by the fact that after participating in DFG on the mirage of upward mobility, the girls’ intention to have a sporadic relationship with a boy with violent attitudes decreased ( Puigvert, 2016 ).

Why Did the Greeks hate the Tyrants? A Comparative View on Monarchy in Archaic Greece

Archaic tyrannies, emerging during the period of polis formation, are in many respects comparable to city-state monarchies in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. There is every reason to consider tyranny as a vehicle for state formation in Archaic Greece. However, Greek poleis eventually did not accept monarchy as a legitimate form of government. The article discusses the reason precluding the entrenchment of sole rule in Archaic Greek poleis, conditioned by the relative egalitarianism of the society evolving from the Early Iron Age.

Variation in interpersonal relations in manuscript reviews with different recommendations

Studies on author identity and relations in academic writing have mostly focused on research articles and relatively few studies have attended to the construction of identity in texts where there is a more obvious unequal relationship between author and reader. This paper reports on a study of interpersonal relationships constructed in an occluded genre, the manuscript review, and compares writer–reader relations across reviews with three different reviewer recommendations: ‘reject,’ ‘major revision,’ and ‘minor revision.’ An analysis of select lexicogrammatical features used in the construction of recommendations and the presence of author and reader in texts reveals the construction of a more unequal relationship between author and reader in ‘major revision’ and ‘reject’ reviews than in ‘minor revision’ reviews. This is due to the use of strong directives, the lack of author presence in mitigating negative evaluation and recommendations given, and the more direct reference to authors through the use of the second person pronoun, especially in negative comments. This study reveals that the polite and egalitarian relationship identified in public academic genres may not always be present in private academic genres and shows that author persona can vary in response to purpose, context, and readers of a genre.

Os modos tradicionais de dizer dos séculos XIX e XX: uma análise de cartas pessoais de pernambucanos

Ao investigarmos os diferentes modos tradicionais de dizer presentes em 80 cartas pessoais (subgêneros cartas de amigo e cartas de família) de pernambucanos do século XIX e XX, objetivamos verificar quais marcas composicionais estão presentes nas missivas e como as formas recorrentes de dizer contribuem para uma maior ou menor implicação emocional das expressões e, também, o que isso, consequentemente, nos traz de evidência acerca do grau de proximidade/distância comunicativa a partir da observação das relações de poder (hierárquicas) ou igualitárias presentes (BROWN; GILMAN, 1960). Para isso, adotamos o modelo de abordagem das Tradições Discursivas (TD) (KOCH; OESTERREICHER; 2006; KABATEK, 2006), a fim de percebermos quais marcas pragmático-discursivas são evocadas no gênero carta pessoal. Os resultados nos mostram que o uso de expressões recorrentes da carta pessoal se apresentou nos dois subgêneros da missiva e nos dois séculos e que esse uso oscila e é atualizado de missivista para missivista, dependendo de com quem se fala, do objetivo da carta e da assimetria ou simetria no relacionamento construído entre os correspondentes.

Genealogy and politics of equality: Pierre Rosanvallon's relational egalitarianism

Genealogy and politics of equality: Pierre Rosanvallon's relational egalitarianism

Term of Reference on Politeness of Speech in Manado Malay

This research aims to explore and explain the “term of reference” on politeness of speech in Manado Malay. The methodology used is a descriptive exploratory method with a technique of tap, speaking and listening, free speaking engagement, record, and notes. The data analysis technique used is the determining element. Term of Reference (the form of referring someone as a reference) as a form of politeness in Manado Malay appears in the oral communication event, how greeting (ego) to the speech partner. These greetings forms are distinguishable in hierarchical relations and egalitarian relations. In general, speakers use the first-person pronoun kita with a variety of kits and atik, self-names (nick name), profession/ position names, term of kinship for the ego.