Subordinate Groups Research Articles

Democratizing memories of the Brazilian dictatorship? Permanent and temporary exhibitions in the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo

This article explores representations of political violence in the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo , a former detention and torture centre that became Brazil’s first official museological space dedicated to preserving the memory of repression and resistance during the Estado Novo (1937–1945) and the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). The Brazilian transitional process from the civil-military dictatorship to democracy has been characterized as fragile and ineffective regarding justice, truth, and memory. This situation led to a tendency to silence memories of subordinate groups, especially concerning the systematic violence committed against Afro-Brazilians and Indigenous people, which goes back to colonial times and continues amid democracy. Considering the contemporary Brazilian context, where the issue of racism has gained visibility within cultural institutions, our case study explores how the Memorial da Resistência de São Paulo responds to the present demands for redress. To this end, we analyze the institution’s permanent and the temporary exhibition called “Memories of the Future: Black Citizenship, Anti-Racism, and Resistance” (2022–2023), curated by writer and sociologist Mário Augusto Medeiros da Silva. We highlight that while the permanent exhibition sought to “preserve” the memory of repression and resistance during the dictatorship years, the temporary exhibition approaches the ongoing black movements’ demands for dignity and equality, aspects of its identity and cultural formation that shine a light on the powerful struggles over the right to memory and visibility within São Paulo’s public spaces.

Sound image as a tool of representation of difficult heritage

The article is devoted to the analysis of the sound image as a structural component of cultural memory in the context of the problem of difficult heritage. The explication of the role of sound in the construction of collective memory of traumatic experience is carried out on the example of revealing sound patterns in films representing Stalinist repression. The subject of this study will be the soundscapes captured in film language, through which the experience of collective traumatisation is revealed to us. It is proposed to understand difficult heritage as a form of cultural memory generated by trauma, which is the battleground of two opposing forces: official rhetoric that displaces the memory of traumatic experiences as a threat to collective identity, and preservationist discourse that points to the dangers of forgetting. This paper is an attempt to identify how this contradictory nature of questioning the past is represented through sound. On the basis of comparative analysis, the author identifies key features that unite the soundscape of the films under consideration. Firstly, the stratification of the auditory field into dichotomous facets: musical harmonic organisation, embodying the unifying power rhetoric, and noisy disorganisation, embodying the refusal to obscure and erase the past. Secondly, the difference in the sonic representation of the theme of repression in the cinema of the perestroika era and contemporary films, due to the change of political orientation in relation to the events of the past. The author stresses that the presence of such features relies on the existing mechanisms of labelling power instances and subordinate groups with polar sound characteristics. The author concludes that through the examination of sound recordings of the past it is possible to discover those semantic nuances for which there is no place in visual and written sources that rely on reasoned articulation.

The other side of the law: Discrimination and emergency powers

Emergency powers have always posed a threat to the rule of law, particularly standards of legality and respect for individual rights. Although system-wide impacts to legal norms and the rights of the general population continue to pose real dangers, we argue that the most egregious violations of the rule of law in liberal democratic societies in times of emergency now tend to be restricted to historically marginalized groups depicted as disorderly, dysfunctional, or pathological. As exemplified in official responses to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, reports of rampant child abuse in aboriginal communities in Australia’s Northern Territory, and high levels of homicide in Jamaica, emergency powers are often applied in discriminatory ways that reflect and reinforce existing disparities in race, gender, and class. Even when emergency measures are nominally adopted for the entire population, their application is often limited to highly specific geographical areas that place marginalized groups into “zones of otherness.” The result, we argue, is to establish a de facto system of legal pluralism that subjects subordinate groups to enhanced forms of regulation, surveillance, detention, and violence, but generally leaves established legal rules and protections intact for everyone else.

State of exception, neoliberalism, and militarization of public security in Brazil

Brazil has historically employed a militarized strategy for public security, using violence as a means of social control over subordinate groups and repressing social and labor movements. The involvement of military personnel and state police in justice administration and politics reflects a distortion within the Brazilian state, which the 1988 Federal Constitution did not alleviate. Instead, since re-democratization, militarization has shifted from being an extraordinary measure to becoming the norm, representing an expansion of the state of exception. This trend has culminated in the military’s return to the political scene and the presidency. This article examines the complex relationship between the militarization of public security and the recent trend of radicalization in far-right political positions. The analysis centers on the theoretical debate regarding the relationship between a state of exception and neoliberalism. The research hypothesis posits a convergence between the militarization of politics, a state of exception, and state violence, which collectively impose limits on the rights enshrined in the country’s legal system.

Making and transcending boundaries: the effect of ritual on nationalism

In explaining national identity as an indicator of subjective belonging to the nation-state, researchers have examined factors such as occupational structure, economic discrimination, competition, and political recognition. However, the influence of cultural factors has often been neglected. By investigating the moderating effect of Shia and Sunni rituals on national identification, I find that the nature of rituals significantly influences the strength of national identity among subordinate ethnic groups. In Shia culture, the solidarity generated through ritual practices extends into national identity, fostering the formation of a confessional supra-identity. In contrast, rituals centered on personal piety in Sunni Islam do not produce the same effect. I propose a theory of interethnic solidarity based on ritual processes. A qualitative analysis of the cases of Turkey and Iran shows that in Turkey, the absence of cross-ethnic ties forged through less intense rituals leads to weaker national identity among Sunni Kurds and higher perceived ethnic discrimination. In Iran, however, the frequent practice of interactive rituals that transcend ethnic boundaries strengthens national identity among Shia ethnic minorities and reduces perceived ethnic discrimination. This research underscores how communal, intensive rituals play a key role in explaining variations in national identification.

Reading and Performing The Tempest in a Prison: Hag-seed by Margaret Atwood

This article aims to analyse Margaret Atwood's Hagseed as a rewriting of the educational project orchestrated by Prospero, and as a mirror of the process by which Elizabethan actors created and modified their performance in response to their own and their audiences' needs. Set in a prison and planned as both a rehabilitation for criminals and a vengeance, The Tempest is reenacted and adapted in a collective interpretation to suit the inmates' inner turmoil. Unlike Felix, they cannot leave the prison, but they dream of freedom. Freedom they will find by adapting Shakespeare's characters to their world of imagination and experience. Felix will allow them to find their own way of interpreting the text, which is very different from the attitude Prospero takes throughout The Tempest. In the end, the prisoners involved in adapting Caliban will write a sequel to his story, making him (and themselves) the protagonist and author/s of their own story. Undoubtedly functioning as a metatextual reading of the novel itself in relation to its hypotext, the Pirandellian scene allows us to see how a reader can become an author, and how a subordinate and inarticulate group of people can become confident and self-aware enough to reappropriate their own history. Then the Palimpsest is rewritten, bearing the memory of an educational project, but proposing a new one, more appropriate to our times, with new objectives and new tools.

Reading and Performing The Tempest in a Prison: Hag-seed by Margaret Atwood

This article aims to analyse Margaret Atwood's Hagseed as a rewriting of the educational project orchestrated by Prospero, and as a mirror of the process by which Elizabethan actors created and modified their performance in response to their own and their audiences' needs. Set in a prison and planned as both a rehabilitation for criminals and a vengeance, The Tempest is reenacted and adapted in a collective interpretation to suit the inmates' inner turmoil. Unlike Felix, they cannot leave the prison, but they dream of freedom. Freedom they will find by adapting Shakespeare's characters to their world of imagination and experience. Felix will allow them to find their own way of interpreting the text, which is very different from the attitude Prospero takes throughout The Tempest. In the end, the prisoners involved in adapting Caliban will write a sequel to his story, making him (and themselves) the protagonist and author/s of their own story. Undoubtedly functioning as a metatextual reading of the novel itself in relation to its hypotext, the Pirandellian scene allows us to see how a reader can become an author, and how a subordinate and inarticulate group of people can become confident and self-aware enough to reappropriate their own history. Then the Palimpsest is rewritten, bearing the memory of an educational project, but proposing a new one, more appropriate to our times, with new objectives and new tools.

Hierarchy as a signal of culture and belonging: Exploring why egalitarian ideology predicts aversion to hierarchical organizations

Hierarchy as a signal of culture and belonging: Exploring why egalitarian ideology predicts aversion to hierarchical organizations

Influence of Triassic and Jurassic arc magmatism in Lower Jurassic Sierra de Santa Rosa Formation, northwestern México: Constraints from geochemistry and U-Pb geochronology

Influence of Triassic and Jurassic arc magmatism in Lower Jurassic Sierra de Santa Rosa Formation, northwestern México: Constraints from geochemistry and U-Pb geochronology

When Group Appeals Backfire: Explaining the Asymmetric Effects of Place-Based Appeals

Abstract Group-based identities are an important basis of political competition. Politicians consciously appeal to specific social groups, and these group-based appeals often improve the evaluation of parties and candidates. Studying place-based appeals, we advance the understanding of this strategy by distinguishing between dominant and subordinate social groups. Using two survey experiments in Germany and England, we show that group appeals improve candidate evaluation among subordinate (rural) voters. By contrast, appeals to the dominant (urban) group trigger a negative reaction. While urban citizens’ weaker local identities and lower place-based resentment partly explain this asymmetry, they mainly dislike group-based appeals because of their antagonistic nature. If the same policies are framed as benefiting urban and rural dwellers alike, candidate evaluation improves. Thus, people on the dominant side of a group divide reject a framing of politics as antagonistically structured by this divide, even if they identify with the dominant group.

Whose Upward Mobility?: Evaluating Intersectional Effects of Gender Quotas

ABSTRACT Existing research shows that gender quotas implemented at the lowest level of government can have positive spillover effects on enhancing women’s representation at higher levels of government where gender quotas are not in place. Yet it is unclear whether this carry-over effect varies for different subgroups of women. I theorise why gender quotas may support the career progression of some women but not others. Analyzing India’s 40 years of state-level election data, I find that more women from privileged groups have run for higher-level political office with exposure to 50% gender quotas implemented at the village level political office. A closer look at the overall institutional context shows that women from traditionally disadvantaged groups benefit in higher-level elections in the presence of electoral quotas for subordinate groups. Had there been no quotas for marginalised groups at the higher level, the upstream effect of exposure to gender quotas would have been skewed toward women from dominant groups. This research contributes to our understanding of sustainable representation through an intersectional lens and emphasizes the importance of carefully designing institutional reforms in achieving political inclusion.

Spatial politics and struggle for hegemony: The role of Komala in the revolutionary movement of Iranian Kurdistan

The question of Kurds in Iran is a political as well as a regional issue. By applying the Gramscian spatial perspective, this paper examines how the socialist movement in Iranian Kurdistan has rethought and reshaped the collective identities of the Kurds through spatially collective mobilization. While “private spaces” were central for Komala as sites of group formation and political underground activities, after the fall of the Shah in 1979, the opening up of public spaces was of crucial importance for Komala to transform from a small organization to a social and influential current. The production and use of the public spaces enabled Komala to establish associational ties among subordinate social groups through strengthening a collective identity and political ideology. For Komala, the territoriality of the Kurdish region has been historically formed by class conflicts and class-relevant social relations in conjunction with the national question (self-determination for Kurdistan), and in relation to a specific spatial location in place, space, and scale.

The Ukrainian Project “Re-vision of History” (2019): Identity Change and Memory Transformation as the Main Instruments of Cognitive Wars against Russia

The paper analyzes the cultural project of the Ukrainian public organization Internews-Ukraine, implemented in 2019 with the support of European foundations by cultural fi gures integrated into the European educational space. The cultural analysis of the collective memory of the Russians in Ukraine as a social group shows that the project is aimed at transforming Russian cultural identity by inverting key topoi of collective memory and replacing them with an ideological meta-narrative based on anti-Russian rhetoric. The analysis of deconstruction of narratives in the “Re-vision of History...”project shows that contradictory rhetorical strategies and manipulations of consciousness are used to infl uence the audience. The purpose of infl uencing the Russians of Ukraine through such projects is to legitimize the political power of Ukraine, which implements anti-Russian policy. Russian language abolition in Ukraine and the prohibition of contemporary Russian culture in the country cut off the Russians of Ukraine from the Russian cultural memory and include them in the Ukrainian cultural space, built on the interpellation of Russians as a marginal and subordinate group in society. It is noted that individual strategies for preserving Russian identity in Ukraine are insuffi cient, since identity is always transmitted and preserved with the group whose collective memory it forms

Effect on Feeding Behaviour and Growing of Being a Dominant or Subordinate Growing Pig and Its Relationship with the Faecal Microbiota.

Pigs are a social species, and they establish hierarchies for better use of resources and to reduce conflicts. However, in pig production, the opportunities for growth can differ between dominant and subordinate animals. In the present study, a system was tested to perform a dominant versus subordinate test in growing pigs to investigate how the hierarchy affects feeding behaviour, growth, and gut microbiota assessed in faeces. Sixty-four animals housed in eight different pens were used, with four castrated males and four females in each one, weighing 18 kg at arrival and maintained during the whole growing period, until 140 kg. Three stool samples were obtained from the animals directly from the anus to avoid contamination of the faeces 58, 100, and 133 days after the start of the study to investigate the microbiota composition. The dominant animals had higher gains during the growing period than the subordinates. In addition, they were performing more visits to the feeder throughout the day. Differential abundance patterns were observed in five bacterial genera, with Oliverpabstia, Peptococcus, and Faecalbacterium being more abundant in dominant animals and Holdemanella and Acetitomaculum being overrepresented in subordinate ones. This microbial biomarker accurately classified dominant versus subordinate groups of samples with an AUC of 0.92.

Psych Unit Gangs: An Autoethnography.

The stigma against people with mental illness is a well-worn subject; however, stigma between groups of people with different mental illnesses is rarely discussed. Within the context of a psychiatric hospital, hierarchies form among patients based on symptomatology and diagnosis. In this perspectives piece, I explore, how, in my experiences with being on the bottom of this hierarchy as a person with a schizophrenia-spectrum psychotic illness in a psychiatric hospital. I, and my fellow "psychotics," were stigmatized and outcasted by other groups of individuals who were diagnosed with mental illnesses that are considered less serious than psychosis. I explore how one stigmatized, outcasted group (people with substance use and mood disorders) construct power relationships over an even more highly stigmatized, marginalized group (people with psychotic disorders). Utilizing Goffmanian and Tajfel theories, the perspective explores stigma within a total institution, and the formation of in-groups and out-groups. I explore how people, upon entering the psychiatric hospital unit, know almost immediately whether they belong to the dominant group or the subordinate group, and I conclude with recommendations to reduce the stigma of psychotic disorders within popular culture.

Education, perceived discrimination, and identity voting: evidence from Brazil’s 2018 election

ABSTRACT Brazil’s electoral arena has long been characterized as devoid of identity politics. Recent analyses, however, have uncovered shifting racial subjectivities and effects of race and gender on electoral preferences. This paper leverages Brazil’s 2018 election to reassess conventional wisdom and test whether recent findings derived from racial groups extend to other subordinate social groups in this context, namely women and sexual minorities. I test two hypotheses: (1) that higher levels of education correlate with greater perceptions of group-based discrimination, and (2) that perceptions of group-based discrimination explain within-group variation in support for Bolsonaro. Analysis of national survey data show that education correlates with group consciousness among subordinate groups, and that these individuals are more likely to oppose the far-right populist candidate. This article provides a more complete understanding of the electoral salience of identity in the Brazilian context, and provides evidence that insights derived from one marginalized group can extend to others.

Social Conflict and Social Change in Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys

Social conflict is a common phenomenon in everyday life. Basically, social conflict occurs because of differences in interests between the two groups. As a result, this triggers the emergence of social change in society. Not only in real life but conflict can also be represented in literary works, such as in the novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. The novel tells about the social conflicts that occurr in black and white US society, especially at the Nickel Academy. Furthermore, this study aims to determine the form and impact of social conflict on social change in the novel. This research is included in literary criticism, which uses the sociology of literature approach by applying Ralf Dahrendorf's conflict theory. The data in this study were taken from the novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, which was published in 2019 by Doubleday, US. Research data were analyzed by identifying, classifying, interpreting, and making conclusions. This research resulted in two findings. First, the social conflict in the novel is represented through several acts of discrimination that occur at Nickel Academy. This social conflict occurred as a result of differences in interests and goals between groups in the social structure there, namely the Nickel Academy staff group, which has the above social structure (superordinate group) and the Nickel Academy student group, which has the lower social structure (subordinate group). Second, the social conflict that occurs in the novel has an impact on social change which is related to the social structure that exists in the Nickel Academy. This change is represented by the removal of the social structure that was there by the US government. Moreover, the researcher suggests future researchers use another approach, such as structuralism, psychology, or others. In addition, they can also use other conflict theories, such as the conflict theory of Karl Marx, Lewis A. Coser, or George Simmel.

Hidden Transcripts of the Powerful: Researching the Arts of Domination

This article develops a submerged aspect of James C Scott’s work on ‘hidden transcripts’. Whereas Scott focused predominantly on the hidden transcripts of the powerless, here we propose a research agenda based upon studying hidden transcripts of the powerful. First, we define our terms. Second, we map existing literature, observing that although plenty of research exists into the public transcripts of dominant and subordinate groups, and that Scott initiated a productive research agenda into the hidden transcripts of powerless groups, research into hidden transcripts of powerful actors is lacking. We identify an assumption within this literature that because existing social institutions are already structured in such a way as to reflect and advance the interests of dominant groups, there is no need for separate spaces to foster the consciousness, cohesivness, and mobilisation of the powerful. Third, we ask how social scientists might study the hidden transcripts of the powerful, and what methodological challenges and opportunities such a research programme might present, identifying in particular the promising avenue of studying what we have chosen to call ‘transcripts hidden in plain sight’. Fourth, and finally, we question the epistemological status of these hidden transcripts, focusing on whether they can be used by social researchers as a reliable indicator of the ‘true’ consciousness of the social group that expresses them.

The protective effect of social support: Can humans reassure pigs during stressful challenges through social learning?

The protective effect of social support: Can humans reassure pigs during stressful challenges through social learning?

Global Refugee Crisis

This essay explores the often-ignored historical intersections of forced migration and disability. This intersectional approach directs attention to understudied dimensions of how crossing inequalities of race, class, national origin, and ability can shape the experiences of subordinate groups in various ways. Disabled refugees and asylum seekers are the most economically and socially disadvantaged members of society. This displaced population is at heightened risk for abuse, exploitation, and violence. Through the conceptual frameworks of human rights, disability studies, and critical refugee studies, this paper looks the United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1981 International Year of the Disabled Person and their impact on contemporary policies toward refugees. By analyzing these historical policies, we can gleam insight into ways for improving resettlement policies and practices for disabled refugees in the contemporary moment.