Power. A Radical View
... og hvilke hjelpemidler som tilbys. Det analyseres hvordan denne informasjonen kan ses i lys av makt i tre dimensjoner (Lukes, 2005), og hvordan de påvirker laerernes handlingsrom i skoler og barnehager. Erkjennelsen av at det har skjedd en overgang fra styring som government til governance, der den myke makten brukes mer strategisk i styring av utdanningsfeltet, er anerkjent i forskningsfeltet (Hovdenak & Stray, 2015;Hudson, 2007;Karlsen, 2002;Karseth et al., 2022;Mausethagen, 2013;Neumann & Sending, 2003;Telhaug, 2005). ...
... I teorien om styringskunst handler ikke makt om et nullsumspill der makt utøves på bekostning av en annen. I stedet ses makt som en nødvendig og allestedsnaervaerende kraft som ikke er mulig å fjerne fra ligningen (Foucault, 2002;Lukes, 2005: Neumann & Sending, 2003. «Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere [...] power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society» (Foucault, 1998, s. 93). ...
... Denne makten utøves når aktør A (her staten) får aktør B (skolen) til å gjøre noe enten aktør B vil eller ei (Engelstad, 1999;Neumann & Sending, 2003). Hard makt er knyttet til styring gjennom reguleringer og trussel for sanksjoner (Bemelmans-Videc et al., 1998;Lukes, 2005). I government som styring brukes hard makt og formelle styringsverktøy der maktutøvelsen er tydelig uttrykt, for eksempel gjennom laereplanens krav om at laerere skal delta i profesjonelle fellesskap. ...
... Å bevisstgjøre om maktforhold er et av siktemålene innen kritisk teoritradisjon. Ifølge Lukes (2005) har makt tre dimensjoner. Den første er beslutningstaking -den observerbare maktutøvelsen som ligger i at en aktør får en annen til å gjøre noe. ...
... Når noe ikke blir tematisert, blir det ikke mottakelig for kritikk, og diskusjonen stilner før den har begynt. Den tredje maktformen er den ideologiske makten -en form for makt som opererer på et mer ubevisst nivå, men likefremt former folks meninger og preferanser (Lukes, 2005). Ideologisk makt trenger ikke å vaere intensjonell, men kan få sine virkninger gjennom diffuse kilder som media og sosialisering på ulike arenaer i oppveksten. ...
... Fraser (2007) understreker også dette når hun angir manglende politisk representasjon som en tredje kategori av urett -ved siden av økonomisk fordeling og kulturell anerkjennelse. Selv om den synligste formen for institusjonell makt skjer via beslutningstaking og agendasetting, virker makt også gjennom etablerte normer og praksiser (Lukes, 2005). For å illustrere, kan vi se til Nesse sitt kapittel 11 om mindreårige flyktningers erfaringer med norsk idrett. ...
Inkludering og mangfold er idealer på tvers av de organiserte arenaene for fysisk aktivitet i oppveksten, som barnehage, skole og organisert idrett. Samtidig viser forskning at ekskludering og marginalisering av forskjellige grupper av barn og unge er et tilbakevendende problem. Gjennom 19 kapitler skrevet av forskere fra ulike samfunnsvitenskapelige felt og disipliner, undersøker Bevegelsesfellesskap i oppveksten gjenstridige utfordringer, spenninger og sammenhenger på tvers av barn og unges bevegelsesarenaer. Bevegelsesfellesskap i oppveksten tilbyr en bred vifte av teorier, metoder, kritiske perspektiver og refleksjoner som åpner opp for nye forståelser av inkludering og mangfold i barn og unges organiserte fysiske aktiviteter. Kapitlene drøfter problemstillinger knyttet til utdanningsløp og idrett, men også høyere utdannings rolle i å utdanne fremtidige pedagoger og trenere. Til sammen utgjør boken et unikt bidrag til å tenke helhetlig og nyansert rundt politiske og praktiske løsninger. Boken vil være en viktig ressurs for lærere i barnehage og skole, ledere, trenere og andre profesjonsgrupper med interesse for å skape inkluderende bevegelsesfellesskap for barn og unge. Samtidig vil boken være en stimulerende kilde for studenter og forskere på jakt etter nye perspektiver på inkludering og mangfold.
... Videre er det vanskelig å vaere uenig med henholdsvis Alparone og Rissotto (2001) og Harvold (2002) at det er en dårlig løsning å legge bort eller fortie konflikter, slik faktisk en del medvirkningsproponenter foreslår. Vi er også skeptiske til om norske politikere og planleggere (Abram, 2004) -og kanskje saerlig private utbyggere ) -vil gi fra seg «makt». 2 Den innledende skildringen, bygget på feltarbeid og intervjuer, gir blant annet en indikasjon på hvordan stedsutvikling kan forstås som et spill der ulike aktører har ulike muligheter til å påvirke spilleregler og spillets utfall (Bauman, 2012, s. 5;Lukes, 2005). Med Sarkheyli og Rafieian (2018, s. 107) -som igjen lener seg på Lukes (2005) -vil vi si at det er viktig å belyse hvem det er som får prioritere og definere behov tidligst i planleggingsfasen -det er ikke alle som har «forslagsmakt» (Duch et al., 2015). ...
... Hanssen, 2010;. Uansett, basert på de nevnte studiene vil vi hevde at stedsutvikling, inkludert planprosessene, med fordel kan forstås som et spill der de ulikt posisjonerte aktørene har ulik mulighet til å både sette agendaen og til å styre spillet (Bauman, 2012;Duch et al., 2015;Lukes, 2005). Det å ha innsikt i spillets regler og hva som er mulig, leser vi som å inneha en viktig kunnskap eller kompetanse. ...
... Det å ha oversikt eller kjennskap til hvordan man skal gjøre sin stemme hørt på formelt vis, styrker ens mulighet til å ha reell innflytelse, eller makt, som de mer utrente «spillerne» ikke alltid har (jf. Bauman, 2012;Lukes, 2005). Vi så hvordan denne prosessen med utsettelse og deretter lukking førte til stor frustrasjon for mange av guttene som hadde brukt den gamle ballbingen. ...
... Videre er det vanskelig å vaere uenig med henholdsvis Alparone og Rissotto (2001) og Harvold (2002) at det er en dårlig løsning å legge bort eller fortie konflikter, slik faktisk en del medvirkningsproponenter foreslår. Vi er også skeptiske til om norske politikere og planleggere (Abram, 2004) -og kanskje saerlig private utbyggere ) -vil gi fra seg «makt». 2 Den innledende skildringen, bygget på feltarbeid og intervjuer, gir blant annet en indikasjon på hvordan stedsutvikling kan forstås som et spill der ulike aktører har ulike muligheter til å påvirke spilleregler og spillets utfall (Bauman, 2012, s. 5;Lukes, 2005). Med Sarkheyli og Rafieian (2018, s. 107) -som igjen lener seg på Lukes (2005) -vil vi si at det er viktig å belyse hvem det er som får prioritere og definere behov tidligst i planleggingsfasen -det er ikke alle som har «forslagsmakt» (Duch et al., 2015). ...
... Vi er også skeptiske til om norske politikere og planleggere (Abram, 2004) -og kanskje saerlig private utbyggere ) -vil gi fra seg «makt». 2 Den innledende skildringen, bygget på feltarbeid og intervjuer, gir blant annet en indikasjon på hvordan stedsutvikling kan forstås som et spill der ulike aktører har ulike muligheter til å påvirke spilleregler og spillets utfall (Bauman, 2012, s. 5;Lukes, 2005). Med Sarkheyli og Rafieian (2018, s. 107) -som igjen lener seg på Lukes (2005) -vil vi si at det er viktig å belyse hvem det er som får prioritere og definere behov tidligst i planleggingsfasen -det er ikke alle som har «forslagsmakt» (Duch et al., 2015). Når prioriteringer og behov har blitt formulert, kan det vaere vanskelig for de som kommer senere inn som «medvirkere» å endre på dette. ...
... Hanssen, 2010;Røe, 2019). Uansett, basert på de nevnte studiene vil vi hevde at stedsutvikling, inkludert planprosessene, med fordel kan forstås som et spill der de ulikt posisjonerte aktørene har ulik mulighet til å både sette agendaen og til å styre spillet (Bauman, 2012;Duch et al., 2015;Lukes, 2005). Det å ha innsikt i spillets regler og hva som er mulig, leser vi som å inneha en viktig kunnskap eller kompetanse. ...
Med dette bidraget søkes det å gi en nyansert situasjonsbeskrivelse og å tilby en kritisk-orientert analyse av medvirkningens maktspill. Med begrepet «kritisk» tydeliggjøres det at man ikke nødvendigvis a priori aksepterer at noe er «fornuftig» eller «bra», men at dette må
undersøkes empirisk og at ulike sider, både fordeler og ulemper, løftes frem. Basert på foreliggende litteratur og på egne felterfaringer fra medvirkningsarbeid i Oslo, ønsker vi å belyse hvordan «makt» må trekkes inn i alle kritiske diskusjoner både av steds- eller byutvikling mer generelt, samt i medvirkningsarbeid med unge mer spesielt. Politikere, utbyggere og planleggere er blant dem som ofte har forslagsmakt og som deretter styrer prosessen. Så når ungdommene søkte å snakke om sine erfaringer, eller voksne idrettsledere la frem idrettslagets interesser, ble en del «presset» til å heller bli del av de profesjonelle byutviklingsaktørenes fremdriftsplaner. Det var også tilfeller at andre i praksis ble ekskludert fra prosessene. Avslutningsvis hevdes det derfor at det må en radikal maktforskyvning til om mål som reell medvirkning skal nås.
... Modern, post-Foucauldian conceptions of power developed with an awareness of the multifarious faces of oppression, inequalities, and social injustices. They have advanced critical tools to analyze how power can be both exerted and self-inflicted (Bourdieu 1972;Lukes 2005), how it operates through structures but also discourses (Butler 2004), how its different dimensions interact in subduing specific groups (Crenshaw 1991;Fraser 1995;Hill Collins and Bilge 2016), but also how it can be equally repressive and productive (Butler 2004). These authors and their conceptualizations of social power have contributed to a broader understanding of power dynamics, highlighting the complex and multifaceted nature of power in society. ...
This chapter explores the raison d’être of the book Critical Approaches to Institutional Translation and Interpreting: Challenging Epistemologies, placing the focus on the epistemology of ignorance in institutional translation and interpreting studies. The chapter first defines what is understood by institutional translation and interpreting by briefly surveying the multifaceted meaning of institution across disciplines and the various terms used to examine translation and interpreting in and for institutions (Kang 2009). Then, the chapter explores how current reformist movements targeting research practices have understood research as historically, culturally, and socially situated, and therefore subject to power dynamics. It then frames academic ignorance as part of the power dynamics that shape human societies and a productive notion that can be used in reshaping those dynamics. The chapter concludes with an overview of the contributions to this book, which offer discussions on the challenges that institutional translation and interpreting studies needs to face in order to make room for diversity.
... Power has been characterized as the interrelationships between people and groups: the power of actors to make, receive and resist change. Social theorist, Stephen Lukes, describes three forms of power: 14,15 At its most intuitive, power, in its concentrated form, is the ability of one actor to influence another to do something that they do not want to do. The second form of power involves concealment and conscious exclusion of people and issues from the political agenda. ...
This paper is the fourth of a series of narrative reviews to critically rethink underexplored concepts in oral health research. The series commenced with an initial commissioned framework of Inclusion Oral Health, which spawned further exploration into the social forces that undergird social exclusion and othering. The second review challenged unidimensional interpretations of the causes of inequality by bringing intersectionality theory to oral health. The third exposed how language, specifically labels, can perpetuate and (re)produce vulnerability by eclipsing the agency and power of vulnerabilised populations. In this fourth review, we revisit othering, depicted in the concept of stigma. We specifically define and conceptualize oral health-related stigma, bringing together prior work on stigma to advance the robustness and utility of this theory for oral health research.
... Orna Cohen e Ronit D. Leichtentritt (2010) aprofundam a análise das reações destas mulheres mostrando como na base do comportamento está uma relação de "poder" (LUKES, 1974;. Estas mulheres desenvolvem o que Lukes chama de "falsa consciência", ou seja, aquela que contribui para uma crença enganosa que é contrária ao interesse social de alguém e que contribui, em consequência, para uma posição desvantajosa para si ou para um grupo. ...
... Indeed, preclusion of First Nations cultural capital whether deliberate or not (Walter, 2010;Xu, 2018) in institutions such as schools can lead to a significant loss of cultural agency and feelings of alienation for many First Nations children. The inability of some educators to set aside their power and authority and enter a space where shared inquiry takes place has stymied progress from occurring within educational sectors, such as schools (Lukes, 2004). ...
It has been highlighted by the international community and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child that the Australian federal government has ostensibly neglected the rights of First Nations children in Australia. Although there have been some improvements across a range of economic and social determinants, alliance with First Nations peoples is critical to eliminate socio-economic disadvantage across all sectors for First Nations children. First Nations organisations and Communities have expressed that responses to adversity experienced by many First Nations children have so far been overlooked by the Australian government. This chapter investigates the rights of First Nations children from an educational perspective, examining the ways in which current political and social structures in Australia inadvertently or purposely disadvantage First Nations children. By continuing to privilege Eurocentric systems of education in mainstream schooling the rights of First Nations children are continually being disregarded. Nakata’s, Cultural Interface is used to explore the unequal treatment experienced by First Nations children in educational settings and identifies the ways in which inequality may be reinforced by non-Indigenous educators who lack cultural capacity.
... Mediene kan påvirke hvilke saker folk er opptatt av, samt de langsiktige effektene på publikums kognitive oppfatninger (Strömbäck 2000: 145). Sosiologen Steven Lukes (2005) deler medienes makt i dimensjoner. Den første dimensjonen dreier seg om hvilke saker som havner på den politiske dagsordenen. ...
... It is also argued that there is an inverse relationship between gender inequality and low government expenditure on education (Morrison and Biehl, 2007). According to Luke (1974) the concept of power in women empowerment helps researchers, academics and policymakers to examine the underlying social and cultural structures that define gender relations. ...
Women empowerment is a broader term which has been described in a variety of ways. It is a global issue, which has been accelerated in recent decades. The term women empowerment has also received much attention from researchers, government and other stakeholders. It is now widely accepted that gender equality and women empowerment are essential component for achieving development results. The present article is an attempt to develop conceptual clarity of the term women empowerment and its dimensions in agriculture. As per the existing literature it has been reviewed that women empowerment is a complex and multidimensional concept. Different dimensions of women empowerment resulting from various definitions are: input in productive decisions and autonomy in production, ownership of assets and access to and decisions on credit, control over use of income, workload and time allocation and education. It has also been analysed that access to these dimensions and women empowerment might lead toward sustainable development in terms of improved livelihood resulting in reducing food insecurity.
... 2 Nonetheless, competing interests and power asymmetries affect environmental governance (Dietz, Ostrom, & Stern, 2003;Larson, Sarmiento Barletti, Ravikumar, & Korhonen-Kurki, 2018;Ravikumar, Larson, Myers, & Trench, 2018;Robbins, 2012;Scott, 1998;Miller, 2001). Some contexts may facilitate coercion by elites (power over) rather than community empowerment 3 and agency (power to) through collective action (power with) and selfconfidence (power within) (Chambers, 2006;Luke, 2005;Partzsch, 2016;VeneKlasen & Miller, 2007). Even if included, indigenous and traditional populations and communities (ITPCs) who participate in MSFs might not be representative of the different communities that are stakeholders to an issue. ...
Multistakeholder forums (MSFs) are applied in territorial planning with the goal of bringing together diverse actors in decision‐making, allowing the participation and empowerment of indigenous and local communities, protecting their territories, and promoting community‐based conservation efforts. However, important questions remain. How are territorial planning MSFs shaped by context and power? Can they represent communities' diversity, respect their ancestral rights, and bring real change? This article explores how context and power affect the capacities and challenges of territorial planning MSFs to include, represent, empower, and benefit communities. Examining actors' perceptions, we comparatively analyze two cases, in two Brazilian states with contrasting contexts. We conclude that territorial planning MSFs are highly political spaces influenced by complexities in context, power relations, and communities' diversity. They may include, represent, and empower communities and help recognize and conserve their territories, but not necessarily. Especially in difficult settings, communities face more challenges than other actors to be represented and participate at MSFs, and territorial planning may empower or “invisibilize” communities. Other mechanisms (e.g., social action) can be key for communities instead of, or in synergy with, MSFs.
সামাজিক এবং রাজনৈতিক ক্ষেত্রে সর্বাধিক সমালোচিত ও প্রতিস্পর্ষী ধারণাগুলির মধ্যে অন্যতম হল ক্ষমতার ধারণা। ক্ষমতার ধারণাটি বিশেষ করে রাজনীতির সাথে সরাসরি যুক্ত হলেও সব ধরনের সামাজিক সম্পর্কের মধ্যেই তা বিদ্যমান। এই মর্মে ফুকো (১৯৬৯) বলেছিলেন যে, যেকোনো সম্পর্কই ক্ষমতার সম্পর্ক এবং তা সমাজের সকল ক্ষেত্রেই বিধৃত। এর কোনো নির্দিষ্ট উৎস মুখ নেই। ক্ষমতা তত্ত্বের ইতিহাস পর্যালোচনা করে দেখা গেছে ক্ষমতা শব্দটির দুটি পৃথক অর্থ রয়েছে। যাকে অবলম্বন করে প্রাচীন কাল থেকে আধুনিক যুগ পর্যন্ত ক্ষমতার ধারণাগত বিবর্তনে মূলত দুটি ধারা পাওয়া যায়; সেই দুই ধারাকে যে শব্দযুগলের দ্বারা প্রকাশ করা হয়েছে তা হল "power over" এবং "power to"-প্রথমটি হল হল কোনো কিছু করার সামর্থ্যরূপ ক্ষমতা (power to) এবং দ্বিতীয় অর্থ হল ক্ষমতার ঊর্ধ্বস্থিতি (power over)। এই দুই প্রকার ক্ষমতার ধারণাকে কেন্দ্র করে চিন্তাবিদদের মধ্যে বিস্তর মতবিরোধ গড়ে উঠেছে। ক্ষমতার এই দুটি অর্থ পরস্পর বিরোধী। তবে ক্ষমতার পাশ্চাত্য তত্ত্বগুলিকে পর্যালোচনা করে দেখা যাবে "ক্ষমতার ঊর্ধ্বস্থিতি" রূপ আগ্রাসনী ক্ষমতার ধারণাটিই সবার্ধিক গুরুত্ব পেয়ে এসেছে। এই নিবন্ধে, আমি ক্ষমতা তত্ত্বের বিবর্তনের ঐতিহাসিক পটভূমি পর্যালোচনা করে দেখব ক্ষমতার বিবিধ ব্যাখ্যায় কাঠামোগত কোনো পরিবর্তন ঘটেনি। প্রাচীন, মধ্যযুগীয়, রেনেসাঁর সময়ে প্লেটো, অ্যারিস্টটল, ম্যাকিয়াভেলি, হবস লক, রুশো, ম্যাক্স ওয়েবার, ডাল, এবং হান্না আরেন্ট প্রমুখের ক্ষমতার ধারণায় আপাত পরিবর্তন লক্ষ করা গেলও আমূল কোনো পরিবর্তন ঘটেনি। ক্ষমতার আলোচনায় সামগ্রিকভাবে সকলের স্বাধীনতা, পারস্পরিক সম্পর্ক, ব্যক্তি-বৈশিষ্ট্যের প্রাধান্য প্রভৃতি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ দিকগুলির প্রসঙ্গ আসাটা প্রাসঙ্গিক হলেও এযাবৎ যত তত্ত্বই পাওয়া গেছে তাতে স্বাধীনতা এবং ক্ষমতায়নের মধ্যের যে অন্বয়ী সম্পর্ক থাকা উচিৎ ছিল তা এই ক্ষমতা-তত্ত্বগুলি সুনিশ্চিত করতে পারেনি। এই প্রবন্ধে সেই প্রেক্ষপটই বিশ্লেষণ করব।
For the development of both the individual and society, there is a compelling need to
assess students' academic performance using examination among several other test
instruments in schools, in order to determine the extent of their knowledge and
expertise before they enter society. It serves as feedback to instructors, who are also
able to evaluate their work in terms of development, as the goals of education in
Nigeria, is unambiguously centered on development. It is nonetheless distressing to
declare that test fraud in our schools has become a hindrance to these efforts,
notwithstanding the enormous gains that education has made in society. This paper
examined the forms, causes/factors, and consequences of examination malpractice in
Nigeria using a phenomenological research approach. The paper continues by
proposing that examination standards and regulations be properly adhered to, and
that both the government and school owners maintain suitable learning facilities in
schools.
Keywords: Education, Examination Malpractice, National Development.
The perception of climate change (i), observations on climate change (ii) and climate change
adaptation strategies (iii) of 37 transhumance farmers were questioned. The study was carried
out in Silifke, Aydıncık, Erdemli district of Mersin province in the Mediterranean Region,
Turkey. The data analysis was done both using qualitative and quantitative methods. Likerttype scale was used to measure perception on climate changes and adaptation strategies.
Majority of farmers have heard of climate change (71%). Almost all farmers observed both the
frequency and severity of extreme climatic events such as drought (58%), heat and unreliable
rainfall (86%), reflecting actual trends in rainfall and temperature in the study area and farmers
focused mainly on selling livestock (100%) (mostly to cope with degraded natural
grassland/feed deficiency) as an adaptive strategy. There is a massive gap on the adaptative
strategies action plan in the regional administration. In light of the aforementioned findings
and shortfalls, it is suggested that early warning policy systems be developed with the goal of
making transhumance farmers aware of future climate variability and potential shocks so that
they can take proactive steps to employ various approaches that best suit different agro-climatic
conditions.
While the international environment remains characterized by the desire of states to strengthen their position, the literature has revealed a growing preference for soft power instruments over military intervention. Higher education has been repurposed as a tool to achieve foreign policy goals, with many states embracing the international norm on world-class universities in an attempt to improve their international competitiveness and their image abroad. This paper considers the soft power conversion model of higher education and attempts to determine its effectiveness through a case study devoted to Russian Higher Education. A survey of foreign students starting their studies and of another finishing their studies in three leading Russian universities reveals that receiving a higher education in Russia may contribute to aligning students’ positions with the Russian perspective on international issues diffused in these universities as was confirmed by surveying a control group of Russian students. These preliminary findings suggest that the benefits of internationalizing national higher education systems are not just reserved to the norm initiators (US, UK) but extend to second wave norm adopters (Russia, China).
The chapter proposes a framework to understand women religious leaders. This operates on two axes: The first axis is that of power where the extremes are 1) Weberian idea of power as authority and 2) power as radical source. While power as authority views it individualistically reinforces patriarchy, power as radical source views it systemically and aims to reverse the power relations in the society. The second axis used in this chapter is that of societal change. In the societal change axis, the extremes are prophetic leaders and institutionalist leaders. While institutionalist leaders focus on reform of the religious structures, prophetic leaders act as the conscience keepers against any injustice in religion. These two axes give us four types of religious women leaders: traditional prophetic (TP), traditional institutional (TI), radical prophetic (RP), and radical institutional (RI). Mother Teresa, Matha Amruthandamaye, Marie Dentiere, and Jamida Beevi are few women leaders of religion the authors explore in this chapter to explain this framework.
This paper analyzes the process of reorganization of the Uruguayan university student movement in the early years of the eighties and specifically during the period between 1980 and 1983. The work seeks to trace the genesis of the reconstitution of this social and political actor to through a careful analysis of the student agazines that emerged during this period, proposing an alternative look at democratic transitions beyond the political partisan spheres. The work concludes that the student magazines constituted alternative channels of expression, but also privileged spaces to forge and catalyze a generational and student identity and sensitivity during a period in which traditional channels of participation and activism were unavailable.
This paper examines the power relations that unfold when Indigenous-led struggles invoke settler-colonial law toward protection from industry’s impacts. Building on Critical Race Theory, I posit a “triple-helical” relationship between law, power, and ideology, which co-produce one another, mediated by nudges from individual agents. I argue that the triple-helix of Indigenous rights to protection from industry’s impacts has stagnated, due to industrial capitalism’s push-back through social regularisation processes as well as its capture of formal and informal regulators and of discourses and ideologies. I conclude with a research agenda for applying the triple-helix framework to Indigenous-led engagements with industry.
Ongoing controversies around the existence of neoliberalism can be resolved by way of more clearly delineating the neoliberal core. In addition to key concepts like property rights, freedom of contract and rule of law protecting property owners from discrete political intervention, the opposition to both laisser-faire liberalism and collectivism can be identified as central to the history and variety of neoliberalism within and beyond nation states. At the international level, neoliberals aimed at political arrangements that likewise protect property owners and promote economic globalization through GATT and the WTO, and a range of other international financial and regulatory organizations. To this end, neoliberal thought collectives within and around the Mont Pèlerin Society developed global performance indicators like the Economic Freedom Index, for example, which serve to direct and observe legislative and regulatory reform processes around the globe. Core values, principled beliefs and political approaches of the economic freedom movement subsequently have been institutionalized at the level of global financial institutions, where global performance indicators like the World Bank’s ease to do business index have started to exert epistemic authority way beyond the scope of the original neoliberal thought collectives and yet remain subject to contestations.
This term is central to much sociological analysis, but in current usage its meaning is rarely given sustained and careful attention, despite the problems surrounding it and the considerable discussion of these in the specialised literature. Some of the positions adopted in that literature are discussed, in particular those of Lukes and Foucault, along with issues such as whether power is a capacity or an effect, as well as the distinction between ‘power to’ and ‘power over’. Partial synonyms such as ‘structural violence’, ‘cultural violence’, and ‘symbolic violence’ are also critically examined. In the second half of the chapter, a distinction is drawn between directive and consequential power, these corresponding to two of the central processes that ‘power’ is used to identify in sociological research: the capacity to direct the behaviour of others, and the capacity to make decisions that are consequential for others.
The greater exposure of communities of color and poor communities to environmental harms compared with white and middle-class neighborhoods constitutes “environmental injustice.” Here, we examine how environmental attitudes and experiences with discrimination, as well as environmental and racial identities, affect environmental injustice assessments. Specifically, we focus on environmental injustice pertaining to actual distributions of environmental harms among low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color (distributive environmental injustice), and prescriptions regarding fair decision-making procedures underlying the distribution of environmental burdens in communities (procedural environmental justice). Our data stem from a survey of black people living in the United States. Seemingly unrelated regression analyses indicate that environmental attitudes influence assessments of injustice regarding the distribution of environmental harms in disadvantaged neighborhoods and prescriptions regarding just decision-making procedures about distributing such harms. And while experiences with discrimination only affect assessments of distributive environmental injustice, black identity strongly predicts both forms of justice related to the environment (even controlling on environmental identity, which only affects procedural environmental justice prescriptions). Our discussion focuses on the profound impact of black identity on shaping meanings of environmental justice even for those unaffected by such harms.
This article investigates the power dynamics in police interviews with suspects in China by examining a real-life sample. It first overviews some recent developments and legislation in China regarding police interviewing of suspects, followed by outlining the linguistic and psychological research upon which the analyses are based. The interviews are examined using critical discourse analysis that reveals the high-power position of the Chinese police in suspect interviews. However, the large proportion of open questions found in the interviews is encouraging, as this suggests that regulations outlawing use of evidence obtained by torture or other illegal means are taking effect. This article is the first to empirically examine actual Chinese police interviews with suspects, providing valuable insights for theories and practice.
This chapter applies a critical human security perspective to cyberspace. It contends that emancipation provides human security with its core purpose, as it frees people both from the constraints imposed by despotic regimes (freedom from fear) and from an exploitative economic system (freedom from want). The idea that human emancipation can challenge the pre-existing order is reflected in the literature that foresees the digital revolution ushering in an age of transparency and empowerment. Conceiving security as emancipation, this chapter utilises the conceptual tool of the “three faces” of power to examine how human agency is enabled by the digital revolution (freedom from) as well as being simultaneously constrained by it (oppressed by).
In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.
China is positioning itself as a global leader in both renewable energy research, development, and deployment, and fossil fuel investment, exploration, and consumption. The newly merged mega-company, China Energy Investment Corp., has agreed to invest an unprecedented 250 billion in energy investments across the United States. While investment and dispossession in Appalachia have long been international in scope, the scale of this investment, as well as its particular political-historical context, makes this case unique. This paper analyzes two key processes central to this conjuncture in West Virginia's recent history. First, building on recent scholarship, it argues that the ways in which the social and environmental costs of meeting China's energy needs are increasingly being externalized into global "sacrifice zones" at global scales, even as China is making massive domestic investments in renewable energy, may constitute a sort of regional "socioecological fix" to the environmental effects of capitalist development. Second, via a consideration of Gaventa's classic and more recent analyses of power and power-lessness in an Appalachian coal community, it explores why and how political assent to such development-which seems to reprise so many historical patterns that local critics decry-is secured in West Virginia. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways in which these familiar processes are playing out in a distinctive contemporary context, one characterized by a combination of populist and authoritarian politics that, in the United States, have touted false promises to "bring back coal" and rejuvenate a struggling local economy, and in China have led an authoritarian state to maintain economic growth for the nation at all costs.
In this article I will combine Erving Goffman’s sociology with some of the main aspects of Actor-Network Theory in order to outline a theatrical conception of social power. My first aim is to try to summarize the sociological perspective introduced by Kenneth Burke and then improved on by Erving Goffman to understand the face-to-face interactions of everyday life. Secondly, I will try to use the theatrical metaphor underlying this theoretical framework to describe power-over relations in everyday life. Thanks to the combination of the dramaturgical theory proposed by Erving Goffman and the ‘object turn’ given to social theory by Actor-Network Theory, a theatrical conception of power allows the episodic, dispositional and systemic dimensions of power relations to be mapped respectively depending on the actors’ performances, their roles of power and the institutionalized scripts. Moreover, this theatrical representation of power-over relations is a defaced understanding of the phenomenon that enables us to investigate not only its different directional forms (power-to, -over and -with), but also their possible variants (empowerment, resistance, domination and solidarity).
Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.
While joint decision-making is regularly launched by a proposal, it is the recipients’ responses that crucially influence the proposal outcome. This chapter examines how support workers respond to the proposals made by clients during rehabilitation group meetings at the Clubhouse. Drawing on a collection of 180 client-initiated proposal sequences, the paper describes two dilemmas that the support workers face when seeking to take client proposals “seriously.” The first concerns the meeting’s agenda and consists of a tension between providing recognition for the individual client and encouraging collective participation. The second dilemma has to do with agency and consists of a tension between focusing on the client as the originator of the proposal and avoiding treating him or her alone accountable for it. The analysis of these dilemmas contributes to a deeper understanding of group decision-making, in general, while these findings have specific relevance in mental health rehabilitation.
It is now 10 years since the introduction of the systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny in the House of Commons and assessments have shown that it is yet to become a regular part of committee work, at least from the perspective of published reports. Although the procedures in the House of Lords are different, the extent of post-legislative scrutiny has also remained limited. This article attempts to identify the post-legislative gap and provides insight into why this gap is occurring. The article begins by analysing the limited amount of post-legislative scrutiny that has taken place to date, before analysing which government departments have been producing post-legislative memoranda and whether these memoranda are being picked up by departmental select committees. In so doing, the article analyses which committees have not, so far, been undertaking post-legislative scrutiny and explores some of the reasons for why they have not engaged.
There has been exponential growth in the power exercised by social media in hospitality and tourism. The power of social media platforms as stakeholders has been widely accepted by both academics and industry practitioners. However, to the best of the current authors’ knowledge, there has been no conceptualization of the power attributable to social media. On this basis, it is both timely and necessary to establish theoretical grounds that explain the concept of social media power and its application in hospitality and tourism. A hierarchical model that characterizes social media power is constructed in the present article by bringing together fundamental power discourses, media effect theories, and technology determinism. The authors identify definitions and sources of social media power at different levels of the power pyramid and present various technological mechanisms that trigger such sources. This conceptual study proposes theoretical foundations for future research and theory-building.
This paper addresses the question of whether and how public action via civil society and/or government can meaningfully shape industry-wide corporate responsibility (ICR) behaviour. We explore how, in principle, ICR can come about and what conditions might be effective in promoting more ethical behaviour. We propose a framework to understand attempts to develop more responsible behaviour at an industry level through processes of negotiation and coalition building. We suggest that any attempt to meaningfully influence ICR would require stakeholders to possess both power and legitimacy; moreover, magnitude and urgency of the issue at stake may affect the ability to influence ICR. The framework is applied to the retail banking industry, focusing on post-crisis experiences in two countries—Spain and the UK—where there has been considerable pressure on the retail banking industry by civil society and/or government to change behaviours, especially to abandon unethical practices. We illustrate in this paper how corporate responsibility at the sector level in retail banking is the product of context-specific processes of negotiation between civil society and public authorities, on behalf of customers and other stakeholders, drawing on legal and other institutions to influence industry behaviour.
This study examines the relationship among gender, democracy, and national development in Nigeria. This translates to a discussion of the possible linkages among gender identity, gendered representation, and national development in the country. Beyond the typical gender theorization, this article squarely focuses on women’s political representation within the Nigerian state and the power implications of the inherent challenges. The work reechoes the issue of underdevelopment as a societal phenomenon. The methodology of the contribution is normative argumentation. The theoretical framework is the power theory. The study concludes that the disarticulations between gendered representation and democracy have invariably led to contentious national development in Nigeria.
For the European Union, nuclear weapons are a taboo. But the more the EU takes steps towards defense integration, the closer the moment comes that the role of the French nuclear weapons has to be discussed. This article hopes to clarify that debate. The first part of this article outlines the debate between those who regard nuclear weapons as powerful and legitimate defense instruments and those who perceive them as too powerful and therefore illegitimate. It is argued that power and deterrence are concepts that are constructed and given meaning by people. The second part applies this debate to the future role of the non-American nuclear weapons in the EU: is there a chance that the French nuclear weapons will be further Europeanized, or will the EU in contrast turn itself into another nuclear weapon free zone (similar to Latin America, the Pacific, and Africa), or will not much change ? It is argued that the outcome of this political debate to a large extent will be determined by the outcome of the aforementioned general debate about power and legitimacy of nuclear weapons.
This chapter considers how threat is defined, created and controlled. It explores the relationship between threat and risk. It focuses on the social psychological processes involved when societal agents actively influence the way risk arises, is understood and, as a result, ensure that it becomes threat. Identity Process Theory and Social Representations Theory are used to direct this analysis. The ‘threat process’ is outlined. It is argued that the early twenty-first century is an age of societal uncertainty, where previously established beliefs and values are severely challenged and change at many different levels is occurring rapidly and unpredictably, and this gives rise to an era of threat—in which there is no agreed system for interpreting such complex and interacting threats. This creates an opportunity for those who can control channels of communication to manipulate the representations of threat and influence reactions to threat. The chapter goes on to describe the significance of identity processes and social representations in the era of threat. It considers how the identity processes of the individual respond to the threat nexus in this age of societal uncertainty. It concludes with the assertion that identity-defending coping strategies, in the face of threat, are enormously resilient.
Over the past 20 years, scholars have examined the role policy transfer has had on the development of environmental policies across the globe. The literature in this area has discussed everything from the movement of cap-and-trade policies to the movement of rain barrels. As the name ‘policy transfer’ implies, studies tend to focus on the successful movement of a policy or program. Part of the reason for this focus is that studies tend to neglect the role power and time play in the transfer process. To begin addressing this, the concepts of power most commonly associated with the three faces of power debate and ideas of political time, policy time and ‘chronological’ time (i.e. timing, tempo, time) can help explain a range of environmental transfers (or non-transfers) better than the existing literature.
In the United States, forest governance practices have utilized a variety of public participation mechanisms to improve decision-making and instill public legitimacy. However, comments, one of the most frequent and accessible avenues for the public to provide input, has received little attention. Further, there has been no analysis of the ways that government actors utilize this form of public participation in their decision-making. I empirically examine responses to public comments across the United States Forest Service to understand how they handle and deal with public feedback on forestry projects. I employed two qualitative approaches that examine comment handling processes and agency justifications for responding to comments. Through this empirical work, I found that agency employees utilize a range of strategies to handle and respond to public concerns. I present data suggestive that most public comments received are outside of agency personnel decision-making capacity and thus, personnel respond to comments in ways that deny their worth and block those concerns from project agenda setting. Understanding how the United States Forest Service thinks about and deals with public input will help forest managers and public commenters better negotiate efficacy in projects and decisions that affect forestland areas.
This article examines the role of business, through the World Gold Council, in the evolution of the Conflict‐free Gold Standard (CFGS). Using document analysis of meeting minutes, augmented by interviews with key participants, it is demonstrated that through the use of structural and discursive power, mining firms were able to socialise other actors (governments and NGOs) into accepting a business‐friendly standard. During the consultation process, the standard was weakened sufficiently as to allow business to continue to pursue opportunities in conflict zones. It is argued that the CFGS does little to address the issue of mine site conflict, but instead serves as a mechanism to reassure gold investors and consumers. The paper concludes that the Conflict‐free Gold Standard, like many private governance initiatives, is unlikely to address the issue it purports to. And, that, firms’ contribution to global governance should be cautiously viewed in this light.
As the impacts of climate change intensify, potential relocation is becoming more of a reality for coastal communities throughout the world. This is furthering the demand for the implementation of governance relocation frameworks. In order to stay true to the principles of environmental justice while at the same time ensuring an effective policy that meets the needs and wants of affected communities, an adaptive relocation framework requires collaboration between state and non-state actors. It is thus important to pay attention to how non-state actors are incorporated into public participatory climate change adaptation efforts. In order to affectively address previous limitations of public participation, stakeholders must pay attention to already existing power systems. Through a case study approach of a village relocation project in Fiji, I examine the role of power in a climate change adaptation plan that involved the community of Vunidogoloa, local government, and national government stakeholders. I employ Steven Lukes’s three-dimensional framework of power to the case of Vunidogoloa, a Fijian village that relocated inland due to coastal erosion and shoreline flooding, to illustrate how the political arrangement of participation reinforced existing hierarchies between the village and the government.
Disinformation campaigns such as those perpetrated by far-right groups in the United States seek to erode democratic social institutions. Looking to understand these phenomena, previous models of disinformation have emphasized identity-confirmation and misleading presentation of facts to explain why such disinformation is shared. A risk of these accounts, which conjure images of echo chambers and filter bubbles, is portraying people who accept disinformation as relatively passive recipients or conduits. Here we conduct a case study of tactics of disinformation to show how platform design and decentralized communication contribute to advancing the spread of disinformation even when that disinformation is continuously and actively challenged where it appears. Contrary to a view of disinformation flowing within homogeneous echo chambers, in our case study we observe substantial skepticism against disinformation narratives as they form. To examine how disinformation spreads amidst skepticism in this case, we employ a document-driven multi-site trace ethnography to analyze a contested rumor that crossed anonymous message boards, the conservative media ecosystem, and other platforms. We identify two important factors that filtered out skepticism and contested explanations, which facilitated the transformation of this rumor into a disinformation campaign: (1) the aggregation of information into evidence collages—image files that aggregate positive evidence—and (2) platform filtering—the decontextualization of information as these claims crossed platforms. Our findings provide an elucidation of “trading up the chain” dynamics explored by previous researchers and a counterpoint to the relatively mechanistic accounts of passive disinformation propagation that dominate the quantitative literature. We conclude with a discussion of how these factors relate to the communication power available to disparate groups at different times, as well as practical implications for inferring intent from social media traces and practical implications for the design of social media platforms.
This article explores the Facebook unfriending of users from a majority group by members of a minority group, focusing on Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. Indeed, this is the first study to focus on power differentials among Facebook users in the context of unfriending. The article thus adds depth to our understanding of unfriending, while also shedding light on the experience of social media use from the perspective of an oppressed minority. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with twenty ’48 Palestinians (Palestinian citizens of Israel), we present various triggers for unfriending (mainly, encounters with racism and surveillance), and show that Palestinians’ stories of unfriending Jewish Israelis are sometimes about punching up and sometimes about stepping away. However, while unfriending is broadly considered an apt response to abuse, it also distances Palestinians from centers of power in Israel. This suggests an important way in which social media reproduce inequality.
Abstract The participation of practitioners in transdisciplinary sustainability research has been heralded as a promising tool for producing ‘robust’ knowledge and engendering societal transformations. Although transdisciplinary approaches have been advanced as an effective avenue for generating knowledge positioned to question and transform an unsustainable status quo, the political and power dimensions inherent to such research have hardly been discussed. In this article, we scrutinise the constitution of participation in transdisciplinary research through a power lens. Guided by social theories of power and a relational understanding of participation, we analyse how diverse actors equipped with a variety of material and ideational sources wield power over the subjects, objects, and procedures of participation. We applied a qualitative meta-analysis of five transdisciplinary projects from a major German research funding programme in the field of sustainability to unveil the ways in which the funding body, researchers, and practitioners exercise instrumental, structural, and discursive power over (i) actor selection and (re-)positioning, (ii) agenda setting, and (iii) rule setting. We found that researchers primarily exert instrumental power over these three elements of participation, whereas practitioners as well as the funding body wield primarily structural and discursive power. By elucidating tacit and hidden power dynamics shaping participation in transdisciplinary research, this article provides a basis for improving process design and implementation as well as developing targeted funding instruments. The conclusions also provide insights into barriers of participatory agenda setting in research practice and governance.
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