Power Positions (power + position)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Agricultural Land, Gender and Kinship in Rural China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Two Villages

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 2 2009
DANIÈLE BÉLANGER
This study examines the impact of current land policies in China and Vietnam on women's entitlement to land, women's wellbeing and gender power relations. The ethnographic study of one village in each of the two countries contextualizes women's lives in the kinship and marriage system in which power and gender relations are embedded. Current land policies, when implemented in the existing kinship and marriage system, make women's entitlement to land more vulnerable than men's, limit women's choices and weaken their power position. Variations in kinship rules in the two countries lead to different outcomes. In the Chinese village the dominance of patrilocal marriage and exogamous marriages limits women's access to land, whereas in the Vietnamese village the rigid concentration of inheritance to males puts women in a difficult position. The comparison between communities of rural China and Vietnam reveals the importance of considering gender and kinship when studying the implementation and impact of land policies. [source]


Should service user involvement be consigned to history?

JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 5 2006
A critical realist perspective
Service user involvement in the UK healthcare agenda is now widely expected. Historically, service user groups have been increasingly successful in their demands for greater involvement. Hierarchies of involvement exist that include consultation and partnership working. Psychiatry is an archetypal arena in terms of power and control. The traditional view of interpreting the place of service users within this arena is that the service user is at the bottom of this hierarchy; involvement allows transcendence of the power hierarchy. Critical realist theory is offered as an alternative approach to understanding these complex relationships. It is argued that contemporary models of involvement perpetuate and sustain the power positions of the dominant discourse within psychiatry. It is suggested that a critical realism perspective, offers a model that does not kowtow to the dominant discourse but rather recognizes that service users now possess power, especially in terms of being able to provide services that statutory services providers now require. Is it time for service users to call the tune, and, in doing so, establish a power position outside the traditional hierarchy of power? [source]


Preferences for changing power positions and power distances: a social value orientations approach

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2003
Matthijs Poppe
Participants were asked to put themselves in the position of one of three persons who differed in the amount of power they had in a small work unit. Subsequently, they could allocate points on a power scale to themselves and the two others, and thus, change the power positions and the power distances between the positions. The least powerful individuals had the strongest tendency to increase their power. They wanted to reduce the power distance to the person in the higher position more than the power distance to the person in the middle position. The most powerful wanted to increase the power distance to the person in the middle position but not the power distance to the least powerful. Most results were consistent with social comparison theory and contrary to power distance theory. Because the dependent measures were derived from the social value orientations model, the scope of this model has been expanded. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Should service user involvement be consigned to history?

JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 5 2006
A critical realist perspective
Service user involvement in the UK healthcare agenda is now widely expected. Historically, service user groups have been increasingly successful in their demands for greater involvement. Hierarchies of involvement exist that include consultation and partnership working. Psychiatry is an archetypal arena in terms of power and control. The traditional view of interpreting the place of service users within this arena is that the service user is at the bottom of this hierarchy; involvement allows transcendence of the power hierarchy. Critical realist theory is offered as an alternative approach to understanding these complex relationships. It is argued that contemporary models of involvement perpetuate and sustain the power positions of the dominant discourse within psychiatry. It is suggested that a critical realism perspective, offers a model that does not kowtow to the dominant discourse but rather recognizes that service users now possess power, especially in terms of being able to provide services that statutory services providers now require. Is it time for service users to call the tune, and, in doing so, establish a power position outside the traditional hierarchy of power? [source]


Understanding the changing role of public sector performance measurement in less developed countries

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2010
Sandra Tillema
Abstract This article develops a framework for understanding changes in the demand for and supply of performance information in public sector organizations in less developed countries (LDCs). New Institutional Sociology (NIS) is used to argue that pressures from specific stakeholders stimulate organizations to produce particular performance information. The article distinguishes three groups of stakeholders (i.e. funding bodies, statutory boards and purchasers), and elaborates on the performance dimensions these stakeholders are interested in. The group of funding bodies, with their interest in financial performance information, used to be the most important group of stakeholders. However, statutory boards and purchasers are gaining importance as a result of recent public sector reforms, which include decentralization, marketization and the implementation of anti-corruption programs. As a consequence of pressures coming from these stakeholders, new performance dimensions, such as the quality and quantity of services and the political governance structure, will be added to organizations' performance measurement (PM) systems. Whether these and other,often more traditional financial,performance dimensions will be balanced and integrated throughout organizations depends on the power positions of the various stakeholders. The arguments presented in this article intend to stimulate public sector organizations in LDCs to design and redesign PM systems as a response to changing stakeholder interests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]