Shifting Power Relations Research Articles

A Relational Approach to Transforming Power in a Community-University Partnership

We use a relational understanding of power to analyze power dynamics at the institutional and interpersonal levels in our multi-year Co-Education/Co-Research (CORE) partnership between Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). Power in community-university partnerships is often examined only at the institutional level, conceiving of power as a resource to be balanced and shared. Indeed, CORE has advanced institutional shifts through co-governance, equitable funding, co-production of curriculum and cross-flow of people. While institutional policies and practices are critical, they alone do not transform deep-seated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. To understand how intertwined interpersonal and institutional practices can reproduce or transform these cultural and ideological dynamics, we use a relational approach, understanding that power flows in and through all relations. As community members, students and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions we have encountered in CORE. We examine how we reinforce the dominance of academic over community knowledge, even as we leverage institutional power to further community goals. These tensions can be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable relations, but they can also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. Through reflective practice and a relational ethic of care, we can try to recognize when we might be shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. This is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. A relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations, every day. And it reminds us that no matter what we have institutionalised or encoded, our individual beings, organizations and communities are always in a process of becoming.

The Business of Climate Transformation

Without deep transformations in the economy that go beyond incremental gains in decarbonization, we remain on course for catastrophic global heating. Some businesses have pledged to go carbon-neutral, carbon-trading schemes are expanding, and a growing divestment movement has pressured investment funds to shun fossil fuel producers. But financial forces are also part of the problem, still driving more production and consumption of fossil fuels. Achieving transformational shifts in finance, production, and governance calls for a more disruptive politics underpinned by shifts in power relations.

6.N. Workshop: The politics of credit and blame: centralizing/decentralizing governance in the COVID-19 pandemic

ObjectiveThe overarching aim of this workshop is to use the theory of credit and blame politics to explain significant and dynamic shifts in power relations through centralization/decentralization within and between governments during the pandemic. Centralization is not just territorial but can also apply within government and change the extend of autonomy and influence ministers, departments and agencies have. To this end we will have a total of five presentations: Introduction into the theory of politics of blame and credit as a driver for centralization/decentralization; three country case studies includingAustria,the Czech Republic andFrance and a concluding presentation onCredit-taking, blame-avoidance as drivers for power shifts: implications for effective emergency responses BackgroundCentralization between governments means an increase in the power of the central government vis-a-vis other ‘subnational' governments such as regions, states, provinces, or municipalities. ‘Command and control' is a common recommendation in public health emergencies (3) and central governments do often take powers over or away from subnational governments in crises. This is most politically contentious in federal states such Spain, Canada, or Germany, but can happen even in countries where there is a history of only local government (such as Ireland, Portugal, or the Nordic states).This workshop is built on a forthcoming publication. To ensure interactivity, the chair will feed back comments to the speakers between presentations and before the end of the session.Key messages In COVID-19 responses credit-taking and blame-avoidance leads to major powershifts within and between governments.Emergency response planning, knowledge broker, media and civil society need to help mitigate the negative effects of credit-taking and blame avoidance for a better pandemic response.

Mechanisms to exclude local people from forests: Shifting power relations in forest transitions

Forest transitions may significantly contribute to climate change mitigation but also change forest use, affecting the local people benefiting from forests. We analyze forest transitions as contested processes that simplify multifunctional landscapes and alter local livelihoods. Drawing on the Theory of Access, we develop a conceptual framework to investigate practices of multifunctional forest use and the mechanisms that exclude local forest use(r)s during forest transitions in nineteenth century Austria and twenty-first century Lao PDR. Based on historical sources, interviews and secondary literature, we discuss legal, structural and social-metabolic mechanisms to exclude multifunctional forest practices, marginalizing peasants and shifting cultivators. These include, for example, the increasing enforcement of private ownership in forests or the shift from fuelwood to coal in Austria and restrictive land use planning or the expansion of private land concessions in Laos. By integrating political ecology and environmental history in forest transitions research we unravel shifting power relations connected to forest change.

The great Transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of AI

In recent years, AI research has become more and more computationally demanding. In natural language processing (NLP), this tendency is reflected in the emergence of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3. These powerful neural network-based models can be used for a range of NLP tasks and their language generation capacities have become so sophisticated that it can be very difficult to distinguish their outputs from human language. LLMs have raised concerns over their demonstrable biases, heavy environmental footprints, and future social ramifications. In December 2020, critical research on LLMs led Google to fire Timnit Gebru, co-lead of the company’s AI Ethics team, which sparked a major public controversy around LLMs and the growing corporate influence over AI research. This article explores the role LLMs play in the political economy of AI as infrastructural components for AI research and development. Retracing the technical developments that have led to the emergence of LLMs, we point out how they are intertwined with the business model of big tech companies and further shift power relations in their favour. This becomes visible through the Transformer, which is the underlying architecture of most LLMs today and started the race for ever bigger models when it was introduced by Google in 2017. Using the example of GPT-3, we shed light on recent corporate efforts to commodify LLMs through paid API access and exclusive licensing, raising questions around monopolization and dependency in a field that is increasingly divided by access to large-scale computing power.

Leveraging Secrets: Displaced Archives, Information Asymmetries, and Ba‘thist Chronophagy in Iraq

During ruptures in state power in both 1991 and 2003, varying groups and individuals seized many Iraqi state archival records, with some later taken outside of the country. Different Iraqi groups gathered unprotected archival records, as did US troops in 2003, while other records were destroyed on the ground in Iraq, likely by state employees, to maintain the records' secrets. Would the information in these records be revealed, destroyed, or used by others to leverage power? Using the concept of information asymmetry, this article explores the battle over information held in Iraqi state archival records by tracing the shifting power relations and attempts to write Iraqi history based on the information the records contain. Accordingly, this article takes up the question of scholarly engagement with the displaced records.

Bourdieu’s practice theory as a multilevel framework for exploring change in disability sport: a case study of disability cricket

ABSTRACT Research question This paper takes a multilevel perspective by combining meso and micro levels of analysis to examine change within a field of disability sport. What is the impact of policy shifts on the power relations between organizations in a field of disability sport? How does change prompt action at the micro-level of disability sport management? Research methods A longitudinal, ethnography of organizations involved in managing disability cricket is conducted during the inaugural implementation of Sport England’s Whole Sport Plans. Semi-structured interviews with 17 managers and participant observations in the form of field notes were the main tools of data collection. Results and findings While the appearance of structural management relations within the field did not appear to change, the underlying power dynamics did. Shifting power relations at the meso-level and the availability of new economic capital to reinforce this power shift, created a series of implications for agents operating at the micro-level, and on the lived experience of disability sport managers. Implications Much of the resistance to change that occurred could have been avoided by better communication between agents. Greater effort should be made policymakers to understand the experiences of those who work to develop sport.

Collaborating for Equity in Urban Education: Comprehensive Reform in an Innovative University/School Partnership

Using data from a participatory ethnography of an urban high school slated for closure, this article examines the impact of comprehensive transformation on the university-school partnership’s goal to change from a culture of underachievement and negativity toward a culture of collaboration and excellence. We explore these question/s: How do comprehensive changes in infrastructure, policies, leadership, and instructional practices shape school culture? What role do shifting power relations (generative frictions) and authentic trust play in developing shared ownership of outcomes? We argue generative frictions produced changes in culture that impacted changes in outcomes.

Social workers and refugee service users (re)constructing their relationships in a hostile political climate

Summary This article explores the relationship between social workers and adult Eritrean refugee service users in the context of a hostile political climate and restrictive state policies. It examines the implications of politics and policies on the formation of this relationship based on findings from a qualitative study conducted in Israel and Germany. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 38 participants – 16 Eritrean refugees and 22 social workers who work with refugees. Findings Despite different political, social and organizational contexts, especially in the asylum policies towards Eritrean refugees, our thematic analysis yielded two main themes common to both countries: First, changing relationship structures, in particular moving away from a ‘traditional’ conceptualization of the social work relationship towards ‘informal’ practices. These included modifications of the setting, of professional boundaries and of the therapeutic language. Second, shifting power relations, characterized by a friend-like dynamic, which enabled more egalitarian relations, and a parent–child dynamic, which included increased power imbalances and dependency. Implications An increased understanding of the role of restrictive policies, everyday racism and exclusionary political discourse in the reconstruction of the user-worker relationship dynamics could inform social work education and practice. Beyond the refugee arena, establishing informal relationship structures could help to reduce power differentials, increase trust-building and improve therapeutic outcomes with refugees and other service users. The possible risks of informal relations, such as misunderstandings or worker burnout, are also discussed.

The Toxification of Population Discourse. A Genealogical Study

During the 1960s and 70s, reducing human numbers was embraced as integral to radical social transformation. Subsequently such neoMalthusian prescriptions became so toxic, they disappeared from the political agenda. Only recently has the issue resurfaced. This article suggests it is worthwhile revisiting the population question but recognises that the reasons for its becoming taboo need first to be understood and reassessed. This is the aim of the critical analysis undertaken here. It identifies 1974–1994 as the crucial period when hostility to population policies developed. It asks why progressive thinkers turned against policies for reducing fertility rates and how a goal of stabilising human numbers became internationally reviled. Its approach is genealogical; that is, it focuses on changing ideological and geopolitical contexts and on shifting power relations that determined whose voices and interests were heard or silenced. Specifically, the analysis examines paradigm changes associated with the three intergovernmental population and development conferences: at Bucharest (1974), Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994), paying particular attention to the rise of neoliberalism, the influence of the cold war, postcolonial tensions and the impact of the Women’s Movement. The article ends by asking whether the prevailing `Cairo consensus’ established in 1994 remains fit for purpose.

An Institutional Analysis and Reconfiguration Framework for Sustainability Research on Post-Transition Forestry—A Focus on Ukraine

In this paper, we elaborate an Institutional Analysis and Reconfiguration Framework centered around the ‘action arena’ theoretical approach. We develop this framework to analyze institutional reconfiguration to enhance sustainability, and operationalize it using research methods which focus on documentation of the institutional contexts through an extensive literature review and interviews of experts in forest policy. We apply the Institutional Analysis and Reconfiguration Framework to examine forestry institutions, address forest governance, and investigate their effect on socio-economic and environmental performances in forestry of Ukraine. The paper draws on the state of affairs in post-transition forestry, its difficulties, and new prospects for economic and institutional reforms. We examine challenges and opportunities in forestry and suggest key remedies and prospective ways forward. Results show that a combination of path dependency with the rigidity of institutions and a slow pace of economic and political reforms is the major obstacle to implementing decisions regarding sustainable forest policy. A reconfiguration of social practices is required, as well as the development of capabilities and awareness raising amongst relevant stakeholders, to realize the problems, envision alternative futures, challenge existing institutions, shift power relations and create new norms, rules, and decision-making arrangements. The way towards sustainability in forestry largely goes through changing institutions, and a human dimension of institutional changes reflected in the uptake of social innovation.

FROM VISIBLE INFORMALITY TO SPLINTERED INFORMALITIES: Reflections on the Production of ‘Formality’ in a Moroccan Housing Programme

AbstractIncreasingly, scholarly works challenge the formal/informal dichotomy, stressing the multiple political practices of producing informality which go beyond state incapacity. In contrast, this article addresses a lack of research concerning the production of ‘formal’ urban space through state‐led housing programmes. Deconstructing simplistic notions of state intentionality and incapacity, the article zooms in on competing interests and diverse resources, as well as the shifting power relations between multiple private, semi‐public and public actors which shape the production of ‘formality’. Focusing on a shantytown resettlement programme in Casablanca, the article differentiates between visible informality and splintered informalities. The former relates to the prevailing clear‐cut and stereotypical dichotomy between formal and informal urban space which underpins the state's objective of eliminating the visible informality attached to Morocco's shantytowns. The latter is the result of a messy process of ensuring housing affordability through the so‐called third‐party scheme—a sites‐and‐services project based on small‐scale private investment and land speculation—once this objective is achieved. Characterized by heterogeneous actor constellations, opportunism and flexible regulatory practices, the scheme has not only capitalized but also individualized urban space. Instead of building new formal housing, the scheme has produced splintered informalities and created new uncertainties and arbitrariness beyond the control of a single actor.

Exploring the Impacts of Student-Led Sustainability Projects with Secondary School Students and Teachers

Secondary school students are granted few opportunities to change their world, yet they are expected to engage fully as citizens the moment they leave school. This issue is growing starker with multiple global crises contributing to mental health concerns. This situation stimulated a practical education for sustainability project designed to promote student agency by supporting small, student-led, community-based projects, planned and supported within the secondary school context. This research ran alongside the project in order to investigate (a) the impact of implementing these projects on the students involved and (b) the implications of this for their teachers. The research approach was based on Cultural-historical Activity Theory, which explores the learning generated through multi-layered interactions within a given activity system. In stimulating student agency, it was clear that the project had challenged existing practice. Students sensed a shift in power relations, remarking on how teachers respected and listened to their opinions. Those teachers who appeared more authoritarian appeared to experience the greatest transformation although ceding power did not come naturally, particularly where this challenged notions around teacher responsibility. In this way, teachers’ professionalism threatened to become the means by which they withheld power from their students. Implications of this for schools and policy are considered.

Staying Tuned

Ethnographers today find themselves experimenting with new approaches to digital ethnography amid pandemic-related restrictions on research. Yet such developments only accelerate a broader trend toward the dissolution of the traditional ethnographic ‘field’ due to new communications technologies and the emergence of a globalized ‘knowledge economy’. Through six contributions from around the world, this forum explores how the emergence of a more diffuse, interconnected ethnographic field is impacting fieldwork’s status as a rite of passage, creating new affective entanglements and shifting power relationships between researchers and participants. Despite the potential for influence and surveillance that new technologies cede to already powerful institutions, the discussions underline how ethnographic interlocutors are auteurs in their own right—and that ethnographers are also often bit characters in other people’s stories.

Staying Tuned

Abstract Ethnographers today find themselves experimenting with new approaches to digital ethnography amid pandemic-related restrictions on research. Yet such developments only accelerate a broader trend toward the dissolution of the traditional ethnographic ‘field’ due to new communications technologies and the emergence of a globalized ‘knowledge economy’. Through six contributions from around the world, this forum explores how the emergence of a more diffuse, interconnected ethnographic field is impacting fieldwork's status as a rite of passage, creating new affective entanglements and shifting power relationships between researchers and participants. Despite the potential for influence and surveillance that new technologies cede to already powerful institutions, the discussions underline how ethnographic interlocutors are auteurs in their own right—and that ethnographers are also often bit characters in other people's stories.

Authenticity, uniqueness and talent: Gay male beauty influencers in post-queer, postfeminist Instagram beauty culture

The emblematic rise of the female Instagram influencer has been understood as exemplifying shifts in postfeminist and neoliberal frameworks of femininity. Yet, the central place of gay men in postfeminist beauty culture and its intersection with ‘post-queer’ culture have so far escaped considered attention. In this article, we examine the performance of femininity by four of the top gay male influencers in Instagram beauty culture, Jeffree Star, James Charles, Bretman Rock and Patrick Starrr, whose followings make them as or even more popular than their most high-profile female counterparts. These influencers are notable for their visibility, fame and authority in beauty culture on Instagram, a space populated primarily by girls and women, with its focus on the application of makeup. We explore how the production of femininity by these gay male beauty influencers demonstrates a key, yet relatively unexplored relationship between postfeminist conditions of visibility and the mainstreaming of queer male identities, suggesting that this cultural space of shifting power relations positions a privileged subset of gay men as equal, if not more compelling, in fulfilling contradictory postfeminist demands of authenticity, individuality and femininity.

Global Humanitarian Governance and the COVID-19 Moment: The Evolution of Sacrifice

Global Humanitarian Governance and the COVID-19 Moment: The Evolution of Sacrifice Peter J. Hoffman (bio) and Thomas G. Weiss (bio) This article was contributed to Forum—the edition’s portfolio of thematic content—by GJIA’s Global Governance section. In the rush to help victims, develop vaccines, and otherwise confront COVID-19, analytical attention has rightly focused on the direct operational problems of resources, scale, and coordination. The bulk of analysis has concentrated on state-led responses within their own jurisdictions, which is where the preponderance of efforts has taken place. However, discussion around the very nature of responses and their significance is missing-in-action in the context of humanitarian emergencies—especially in war zones, large-scale disasters stemming from natural hazards, or “protracted crises” (that is, where perennially vulnerable populations suffer because of limited state capacities and development infrastructure). This essay sheds light on how providing relief in the context of COVID-19 affects the authority and capacity of global humanitarian governance—the web of inter-governmental and international nongovernmental agencies dedicated to this work. Our concern is the hierarchies, inequalities, and institutions that determine who lives and who dies, which indicate shifting relationships between aid workers and the needy; they reveal larger questions of justice and power. Humanitarianism is a touchstone for sacrifice in international politics: it reflects the power to aid and save some while abandoning others to suffer and die. Public service is more than a theoretical exercise; the values underpinning humanitarian action have practical repercussions. If they are tainted, the sector’s legitimacy is undermined. This essay explores humanitarianism’s past, present, and future. It does so not only to explain how customary challenges are compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to spotlight how responses exhibit inherent limits, shifts in power relations, questions about the role of aid agencies, and ultimately soul-searching about the meaning of humanitarianism and its ramifications for sacrifice. Timeless humanitarian challenges, a brief history Rescuing those imperiled by wars and natural disasters has never been easy—there was no “golden age” of humanitarianism because moral, operational, and political challenges routinely plague humanitarian action. The ethical foundations for succor are ubiquitous in religious and [End Page 36] cultural traditions. But institutionalizing the humanitarian impulse raises questions about who is entitled to assistance, how to distribute it, and its impact. To that end, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was founded on core principles—humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence—which uphold that all in need should receive aid regardless of other interests and agendas. The success of these principles helped alleviate suffering in armed conflicts from the Franco-Prussian War (1870– 1871) through World War II (1939–1945) and they guided the ICRC and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that built their reputations as protectors of the vulnerable and as viable components of global governance. Yet, the patina of these accomplishments was tarnished. World War II witnessed a particularly shameful chapter in humanitarian history as the ICRC faced an impossible choice: publicly denouncing the Holocaust or collaborating with the Third Reich to secure access to prisoner-ofwar (POW) camps.1 Respecting neutrality and state sovereignty was the price to provide relief; it was a price that the ICRC paid, choosing to protect allied POWs over concentration camp victims. A similar conundrum arose during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), when the central government sought to manipulate relief by denying aid for those supporting Biafra’s attempted secession. The British Red Cross adhered to traditional principles whereas the French Red Cross objected. This skirmish over the sanctity of humanitarian principles foreshad-owed the tumultuous 1990s and gave birth to an alternative organization and norm: Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Doctors Without Borders movement, which prioritized maintaining solidarity with the needy and bearing witness.2 The humanitarian fallout from wars in the 20th century’s final decade made apparent new possibilities for access and action—including more humanitarian space opened by military force and greater resources from public and private agencies—while also exposing new difficulties of coordination and coherence in the “business.”3 In particular, an infusion of more resources and the proliferation of...

Advice-giving, power and roles in theses supervisions

The interactions involved in postgraduate theses supervisions can be crucial to students' development of research skills, academic writing and their own sense of themselves as research writers. One relatively unexplored area of supervisory sessions, however, is the dynamic interplay of power in these interactions. This study examines advice-giving by two supervisors in supervision meetings with two L2 master's students at an English-medium university. Drawing on observational data and detailed analysis of supervision transcripts, we show how supervisors and students co-construct their interactions through shifting power relations to shape the Literature Review Chapter. Exploring participants' language choices in these encounters, we show how language helps to shape student and supervisor roles and enact power relations which in turn mediate students' understandings of research knowledge and their positioning of themselves as writers. The findings suggest that power is reproduced as supervisory advice is accepted and challenged through student agency during the interaction. Power-over, power-gaining and power-maintaining interactions helped to reinforce sense-making in the encounters, develop students' orientation to the task and increase their self-assured stance taking.

Mapping the development of China's data protection law: Major actors, core values, and shifting power relations

This Article seeks to map the possible paths of the development of China's data protection law by examining the changing power relations among three major actors - the State, digital enterprises and the public in the context of China's booming data-driven economy. We argue that focusing on different core values, these three major actors are the key driving forces shaping China's data protection regime. Their dynamic and multidimensional power relations have been casting the development of China's data protection law with various uncertainties. When persuing different, yet not always conflicting values, these three major actors may both cooperate and compete with each other. Based on our careful analysis of the shifting power relations, we identify and assess three possible paths of the development of China's data protection law. We are much concerned that the proposed comprehensive data protection law might be a new attempt of the State to win legitimacy abroad, while actually trying to reinforce massive surveillance besides economic goals. We argue that a modest alternative may be that this law might show some genuine efforts for protecting data privacy, but still with poor enforcement. Last, we argue that the most desirable development would be that this law could provide basic but meaningful and effective protection for data privacy, and lay a good foundation for further development.

For women of colour in social work: black feminist self-care practice based on Audre Lorde’s radical pioneering principles

This article offers women of colour in social work a black feminist self-care practice based on three principles from Audre Lorde’s work. The colonial situation of social work inevitably marginalises black feminist thinking and methods. In the context of chronic racist denigration, generic social work models of recovery, reparation and resilience equate to complicity with intersectional racism. Social work values and ethics alone are not enough. A material shift in power relations is required. Black feminist self-care practice responds to the physical, material and emotional impacts of silence, exhaustion and vilification of feeling that women of colour encounter in their living. In a call for women of colour in social work to gather together for mutual sharing of experience, this article affirms the power of collective dialogues as the primary strategy of black feminist self-care practice.