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Power Relations (power + relation)
Selected AbstractsPLAGUE AND POWER RELATIONSGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2007Rodrick Wallace ABSTRACT Public policy and economic practice, quintessential expressions of institutional cognition, create an opportunity structure constituting a tunable, highly patterned,,non-white noise' in a generalized epidemiological stochastic resonance that can efficiently amplify unhealthy living and working conditions, particularly within highly concentrated, marginalized urban populations, to evoke infectious disease outbreaks. This is especially true for the infections carried by socially generated ,risk behaviours' which are usually adaptations to histories of resource deprivation or marginalization. A number of local epidemics originating in such ecological keystone communities may subsequently undergo a policy and structure-driven phase transition to become a coherent pandemic, a spreading plague which can entrain more affluent populations into the disease ecology of marginalization. We use this approach to contrast the ecological resilience of apartheid and egalitarian social systems, and apply these perspectives to the forthcoming social and geographical diffusion of multiple drug resistant (MDR) HIV from present AIDS epicentres to the rest of the United States. [source] Popular Culture, Power Relations and Urban Discipline: The Festival of the Holy Spirit in Nineteenth-Century Rio de JaneiroBULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 2 2005Martha Abreu The Festival of the Holy Spirit was considered the most important religious celebration in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. I discuss the popular practices of music, dance and theatre during the festival. By merging European waltz and the African batuque, the heterogeneous public re-created and re-invented a number of new genres that are at the roots of twentieth-century Brazilian popular music. The festival of the Holy Spirit allows an examination of elite strategies and municipal policies regarding popular culture. In this respect, it is remarkable how much political use the Brazilian Empire made of the festival of the Holy Spirit and how its revellers fought for their celebration. [source] International Trade Theory and Policy: What is Left of the Free Trade Paradigm?DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 6 2005Sunanda Sen Free trade doctrines have been questioned from the angle of their logical validity as well as relevance. Their replacement by New Trade Theories has been matched by important policy moves on strategic trade and industrial policy in advanced countries. These are defended by the advanced nations, both at inter-governmental levels and in multilateral institutions, largely in the interest of big capital in industry and finance. However, the theoretically discarded principles of free trade are still in use to push trade liberalization in developing countries. An uneven power relation between the rich and poor nations of the world has generated this asymmetric combination of policies in the world economy. Neglect of the macroeconomic issues relating to the national as well as the world economy has led these theories and the related policies to ignore the concerns for growth as well as development. [source] FATHERS, SONS, AND THE STATE: Discipline and Punishment in a Wolof HinterlandCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009DONNA L. PERRY ABSTRACT This essay builds on fieldwork in rural Senegal to examine three cases in which elder household heads called on gendarmes to physically discipline rebellious youths. These cases, which revolved around harsh acts of corporal punishment, invite inquiry into common assumptions about African families and states. The first assumption is the common dichotomy drawn between African youths, portrayed as modern and menacing, and African elders, portrayed as "traditional" and hence benign. The second assumption is the dichotomy drawn between the African family, conceived as solidary and nurturing, and the African state, conceived as alien and predatory. In examining these cases of discipline and punishment, this essay reveals the ever-shifting power relations that link Wolof household heads, dependent junior males, and state agents, and simultaneously introduces new questions about the morality of farmer,state relations and generational conflict. My analysis reveals the spatial geography of Senegal's youth crisis, which takes different forms in rural and urban locales. The anxiety of rural patriarchs is fed by a fear-mongering media obsessed with youthful anarchy in the cities, and a long-standing political rhetoric about the threat of rural out-migration. Elder men in the countryside, who experience diminishing household authority under neoliberalism, make proactive efforts to keep the urban youth crisis at bay. They seek to augment their domestic power by reestablishing links with a state that has long bolstered patriarchy but whose power is currently in decline. By lending patriarchs their coercive force, gendarmes attempt to accomplish through private, indirect means, what the postcolonial state is unable to do: maintain social order by reining in disruptive youths. The harsh disciplinary measures that gendarmes employ are not alien to Wolof culture, but integral to Wolof conceptions of child rearing. [source] Standardizing Knowledge in a Multicultural SocietyCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 1 2005CHRISTINE SLEETER ABSTRACT Across the United States, in an attempt to raise standards for student learning, states have developed curriculum standards that specify what students are to learn. Raising standards has become synonymous with standardizing curriculum. This study critically examines the reading/language arts and history-social science standards documents in California to explore how the standards movement has reconfigured codes of power, and in whose interests. To address this question, we used Bernstein's (1975) theory of codes of power in curriculum. Bernstein suggested that codes of power can be uncovered by examining how curriculum is classified and framed. Our analysis suggests that the state's curriculum standards fit within a political movement to reconfigure power relations among racial, ethnic, language, and social class groupings. This is not simply about trying to improve student learning, but more important, about reasserting who has a right to define what schools are for, whose knowledge has most legitimacy, and how the next generation should think about the social order and their place within it. [source] Scaling up Participatory Watershed Development in IndiaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2002Shashi Kolavalli ,Participation' is widely accepted as a prerequisite to successful watershed development in India, but there is no shared understanding of its meaning, nor of how to make it operational. Meaningful participation, in which communities work collectively, help make decisions and share costs, is limited primarily to projects implemented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Participation in government projects is more superficial because staff lack the skills and incentive to engage in meaningful participation. Strategies to scale up meaningful participation require a large number of NGOs. However, the number of NGOs with the necessary skills and values is limited, so a realistic strategy must seek to improve the capabilities and incentives of government agencies. Their performance may improve by making them accountable through transparent processes and participatory monitoring and evaluation. NGO-facilitated access to information for communities can potentially change power relations and initiate political processes that make both community leaders and government agencies more accountable to communities. [source] Tackling the Down Side: Social Capital, Women's Empowerment and Micro-Finance in CameroonDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2001Linda Mayoux Micro-finance programmes are currently dominated by the ,financial self-sustainability paradigm' where women's participation in groups is promoted as a key means of increasing financial sustainability while at the same time assumed to automatically empower them. This article examines the experience of seven micro-finance programmes in Cameroon. The evidence indicates that micro-finance programmes which build social capital can indeed make a significant contribution to women's empowerment. However, serious questions need to be asked about what sorts of norms, networks and associations are to be promoted, in whose interests, and how they can best contribute to empowerment, particularly for the poorest women. Where the complexities of power relations and inequality are ignored, reliance on social capital as a mechanism for reducing programme costs may undermine programme aims not only of empowerment but also of financial sustainability and poverty targeting. [source] Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction: A Review of Methods and ApproachesDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 3 2009Esther Mwangi This article provides a review of literature on the relationship between poverty and the institutions of collective action and property rights, as outlined in the conceptual framework of Di Gregorio et al. (2008). Using the elements of the framework as a guide, it offers an overview of how researchers and practitioners identify and evaluate these concepts. The article emphasises the multidimensionality of poverty and the necessity of applying various approaches and tools to conceptualising and measuring it. In addition to highlighting the crucial role that institutions play in poverty reduction, it shows power relations and the political context to be of fundamental importance in poverty-related studies. [source] Cultivating Beyond-Capitalist EconomiesECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2010Sarah Wright abstract Conceptualizations of the economy as diverse and multiple have garnered increased attention in economic geography in recent years. Against the debilitating mantra of TINA (there is no alternative), these conceptualizations use an ontology of proliferation to insist that many viable and vital alternatives to capitalism do, in fact, exist. I aim to contribute to this project with a close reading of the diverse formal and informal economic practices associated with the village of Puno in the Philippines. In doing so, I respond to calls for work that begins in the majority world and that focuses on the broader political project associated with diverse economies. Research in this area has frequently been critiqued for not paying sufficient attention to the unstable yet persistent exclusions that may endure in, and may even be enhanced by, alternative economies. With this article, I aim to investigate the ways that power relations work through the diverse economies of Puno and the ways that residents act to transform these relations. In doing so, I draw on the experiences of three residents of Puno and their involvement in three social movement organizations. I find that the economy is usefully understood as a site of struggle in which residents work to redefine themselves and the economy. The diverse spaces of their economic lives are neither strictly alternative nor mainstream, inherently oppressive nor radical. Rather, the people of Puno are engaged in willfully cultivating spaces-beyond-capitalism through which they transform the very meaning of economic practice. [source] Networks, Scale, and Transnational Corporations: The Case of the South Korean Seed IndustryECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2006Sook-Jin Kim Abstract: In light of recent theoretical scholarship that has incorporated scale with networks perspectives, this article examines the potential of a scalar networks-based approach to understanding the global strategies and activities of transnational corporations (TNCs), through a comparative case study of two TNCs that were involved in the recent transformation of the South Korean seed industry. The comparative study demonstrates that a foreign TNC's mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of major South Korean seed companies in 1998,1999 in the context of structural adjustment (TNC's material politics of scale) was an outcome of complex relations and the intermingling of various actor-networks that were embedded in various scales. A domestic TNC's responses to the M&As, on the other hand, illustrate how the TNC's struggle to reshape power relations through a discursive politics of scale enabled it to extend and enrich its networks and power relations with farmers, politicians, the general public, and the government. Material and discursive uses of scale in the business strategies of TNCs are shaped by complex actor-networks that are embedded in specific sociocultural and institutional contexts and influence new configurations of networks and power relations, and a scalar networks-based approach helps one understand this complexity of TNCs' activities. [source] The Rift: Explaining Europe's Divergent Iraq Policies in the Run-Up of the American-Led War on IraqFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2006JÜRGEN SCHUSTER America's plan to attack Iraq split Europe down the middle. Why did European countries take such different stances toward the Bush administration's policy? This article examines three different approaches, each rooted in one of international relations (IRs) prominent schools of thought, with regard to their explanatory power in this specific puzzle. Firstly, it shows that public opinion (utilitarian,liberal approach) cannot account for whether a state joined the "coalition of the willing" or not. Secondly, it demonstrates that in Eastern Europe systemic forces of power relations (neorealist approach) are suitable for explaining state behavior, but not in Western Europe. Thirdly, it shows that the ideological orientations of governments (liberal,constructivist approach) were the decisive factor in determining whether a state supported the United States in Western Europe, but not in Eastern Europe. These results offer some interesting insights for the theoretical debate in IRs theory and foreign policy analysis, which are discussed in the final section of the article. In regard to foreign policy analysis, for example, the results of this study propose to "bring political parties in." [source] ,A Man among Men': Gender, Identity and Power in South Africa's Marashea GangsGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 2 2001Gary Kynoch This article explores gender and power relations in a South African criminal society through an examination of the legend surrounding a prominent leader. Tseule Tsilo achieved a degree of notoriety in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. Tsilo's legend lives on in the lore of the Marashea, the criminal organisation to which he belonged. However, rather than being embraced by the entire Marashea, Tsilo is a hero only to men. The legend was created, and is sustained, by men and for men, a discursive development that mirrors the gendered nature of power within the Marashea. [source] ,GLOCAL' MOVEMENTS: PLACE STRUGGLES AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZING BY INFORMAL WORKERSGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2009Ilda Lindell ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the scalar practices of collectively organized informal workers and the political implications of such practices. It illustrates how the studied group organizes across scales , hence, a ,glocal movement', and stresses the importance of an analysis that integrates these multiple scales of collective organizing, as they may have a bearing on each other. In so doing, it contests a common tendency to analytically privilege one or other scale of resistance and agency. In particular, I argue that networking across scales may be of significance for local struggles and thus play a role in local politics. The transnational activities of the studied group assist it in challenging local power relations and dominant place projects that repress informal livelihood activities. This paper comprises a conceptual discussion of notions of scale, of conceptions of the spatialities and scales of resistance as well as of place, followed by an empirical illustration that refers to an association of informal vendors in Maputo, Mozambique, and its international connections. The analysis is based on interviews with vendors, leaders of the association and with the international partners of the association. [source] SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF HYDROPOLITICS: THE GEOGRAPHICAL SCALES OF WATER AND SECURITY IN THE INDUS BASIN,GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 4 2007Daanish Mustafa ABSTRACT. The article identifies important themes and future research directions for analyzing water and conflict dynamics at the subnational scale in the Indus Basin. A historical overview of water development in the Indus Basin suggests that the water-security nexus was always a salient theme in the minds of water developers, even in the nineteenth century. Conflicts over contemporary large-scale water-development projects in the Indian and Pakistani parts of the Indus Basin are reviewed. Engineers' single-minded focus on megaprojects, to the neglect of the wider set of values that societies attach to water resources in the eastern and western Indus Basin are largely to blame for continuing low-grade conflict in the basin. A review of local-level conflicts over water supply and sanitation in Karachi and the distribution of irrigation water in Pakistani Punjab illustrates the critical role of governance and differential social power relations in accentuating conflict. The article argues against neo-Malthusian assumptions about the inevitability of conflict over water because of its future absolute scarcity. Instead, the article seeks to demonstrate that, despite evidence suggesting that international armed conflict over water does not exist, the potential for political instability over domestic water distribution and development issues is real. The question of whether conflict at the subnational scale will culminate in violence will depend on how water-resources institutions in the basin behave. [source] Teaching and Learning Guide for: Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural GeographyGEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2008Toby Butler Author's Introduction This article is concerned with the history and practice of creating sound walks or ,memoryscapes': outdoor trails that use recorded sound and spoken memory played on a personal stereo or mobile media to experience places in new ways. It is now possible to cheaply and easily create this and other kinds of located media experience. The development of multi-sensory-located media (,locedia') presents some exciting opportunities for those concerned with place, local history, cultural geography and oral history. This article uses work from several different disciplines (music, sound art, oral history and cultural geography) as a starting point to exploring some early and recent examples of locedia practice. It also suggests how it might give us a more sophisticated, real, embodied and nuanced experience of places that the written word just can not deliver. Yet, there are considerable challenges in producing and experiencing such work. Academics used to writing must learn to work in sound and view or image; they must navigate difficult issues of privacy, consider the power relations of the outsider's ,gaze' and make decisions about the representation of places in work that local people may try and have strong feelings about. Creating such work is an active, multi-sensory and profoundly challenging experience that can offer students the chance to master multi-media skills as well as apply theoretical understandings of the histories and geographies of place. Author Recommends 1.,Perks, R., and Thomson, A. (2006). The oral history reader, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. This is a wonderful collection of significant writing concerned with oral history. Part IV, Making Histories features much of interest, including a thought-provoking paper on the challenges of authoring in sound rather than print by Charles Hardy III, and a moving interview with Graeme Miller, the artist who created the Linked walk mentioned in the memoryscape article. These only feature in the second edition. 2.,Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: a short introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. A refreshingly clear and well-written guide to the different theoretical takes on what makes places , a good starting point for further reading. 3.,Carlyle, A. (ed.). (2008). Autumn leaves: sound and the environment in artistic practice. Paris, France: Double Entendre. This is a collection of short essays and examples of located sonic media art; it includes interviews with practitioners and includes Hildegard Westekamp's Soundwalking, a practical guide to leading students on a mute walk. Lots of thought provoking, applied reading material for students here. 4.,Blunt, A., et al. (eds) (2003). Cultural geography in practice. London: Arnold. A great book for undergraduate and postgraduate students , concepts explained and lots of examples of actually doing cultural geography. The chapter on mapping worlds by David Pinder is particularly useful in this context. 5.,Pinder, D. (2001). Ghostly footsteps: voices, memories and walks in the city. Ecumene 8 (1), pp. 1,19. This article is a thoughtful analysis of a Janet Cardiff sound walk in Whitechapel, East London. Online Materials http://www.memoryscape.org.uk This is my project website, which features two online trails, Dockers which explores Greenwich and the memories of the London Docks that are archived in the Museum of London, and Drifting which is a rather strange experiment-combining physical geography and oral history along the Thames at Hampton Court, but still makes for an interesting trail. Audio, maps and trails can be downloaded for free, so students with phones or iPods can try the trails if you are within reach of Surrey or London. The site features an online version, with sound-accompanying photographs of the location. http://www.portsofcall.org.uk This website has three more trails here, this time of the communities surrounding the Royal Docks in East London. The scenery here is very dramatic and anyone interested in the regeneration of East London and its impact on local communities will find these trails interesting. Like Dockers, the walks feature a lot of rare archive interviews. This project involved a great deal of community interaction and participation as I experimented with trying to get people involved with the trail-making process. The site uses Google maps for online delivery. http://www.soundwalk.com This New York-based firm creates exceptionally high-quality soundwalks, and they are well worth the money. They started by producing trails for different districts of New York (I recommend the Bronx Graffiti trail) and have recently made trails for other cities, like Paris and Varanassi in India. http://www.mscapers.com This website is run by Hewlett Packard, which has a long history of research and development in located media applications. They currently give free licence to use their mscape software which is a relatively easy to learn way of creating global positioning system-triggered content. The big problem is that you have to have a pricey phone or personal digital assistant to run the software, which makes group work prohibitively expensive. But equipment prices are coming down and with the new generations of mobile phones developers believe that the time when the player technology is ubiquitous might be near. And if you ask nicely HP will lend out sets of equipment for teaching or events , fantastic if you are working within reach of Bristol. See also http://www.createascape.org.uk/ which has advice and examples of how mscape software has been used for teaching children. Sample Syllabus public geography: making memoryscapes This course unit could be adapted to different disciplines, or offered as a multidisciplinary unit to students from different disciplines. It gives students a grounding in several multi-media techniques and may require support/tuition from technical staff. 1.,Introduction What is a located mediascape, now and in the future? Use examples from resources above. 2.,Cultural geographies of site-specific art and sound Theories of place; experiments in mapping and site-specific performance. 3.,Walk activity: Westergard Hildekamp , sound walk, or one of the trails mentioned above The best way , and perhaps the only way , to really appreciate located media is to try one in the location they have been designed to be experienced. I would strongly advise any teaching in this field to include outdoor, on-site experiences. Even if you are out of reach of a mediascape experience, taking students on a sound walk can happen anywhere. See Autumn Leaves reference above. 4.,Researching local history An introduction to discovering historical information about places could be held at a local archive and a talk given by the archivist. 5.,Creating located multimedia using Google maps/Google earth A practical exercise-based session going through the basics of navigating Google maps, creating points and routes, and how to link pictures and sound files. 6.,Recording sound and oral history interviews A practical introduction to the techniques of qualitative interviewing and sound recording. There are lots of useful online guides to oral history recording, for example, an online oral history primer http://www.nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/research/audiovis/oral_history/index.htm; a more in depth guide to various aspects of oral history http://www.baylor.edu/oral%5fhistory/index.php?id=23566 or this simple oral history toolkit, with useful links to project in the North of England http://www.oralhistorynortheast.info/toolkit/chapter1.htm 7.,Sound editing skills Practical editing techniques including working with clips, editing sound and creating multi-track recordings. The freeware software Audacity is simple to use and there are a lot of online tutorials that cover the basics, for example, http://www.wikieducator.org/user:brentsimpson/collections/audacity_workshop 8.,Web page design and Google maps How to create a basic web page (placing pictures, text, hyperlinks, buttons) using design software (e.g. Dreamweaver). How to embed a Google map and add information points and routes. There is a great deal of online tutorials for web design, specific to the software you wish to use and Google maps can be used and embedded on websites free for non-profit use. http://maps.google.com/ 9,and 10. Individual or group project work (staff available for technical support) 11.,Presentations/reflection on practice Focus Questions 1What can sound tell us about the geographies of places? 2When you walk through a landscape, what traces of the past can be sensed? Now think about which elements of the past have been obliterated? Whose past has been silenced? Why? How could it be put back? 3Think of a personal or family story that is significant to you. In your imagination, locate the memory at a specific place. Tell a fellow student that story, and describe that place. Does it matter where it happened? How has thinking about that place made you feel? 4What happens when you present a memory of the past or a located vision of the future in a present landscape? How is this different to, say, writing about it in a book? 5Consider the area of this campus, or the streets immediately surrounding this building. Imagine this place in one of the following periods (each group picks one): ,,10,000 years ago ,,500 years ago ,,100 years ago ,,40 years ago ,,last Thursday ,,50 years time What sounds, voices, stories or images could help convey your interpretation of this place at that time? What would the visitor hear or see today at different points on a trail? Sketch out an outline map of a located media trail, and annotate with what you hear/see/sense at different places. Project Idea small group project: creating a located mediascape Each small group must create a located media experience, reflecting an aspect of the history/geography/culture of an area of their choosing, using the knowledge that they have acquired over the course of the semester. The experience may be as creative and imaginative as you wish, and may explore the past, present or future , or elements of each. Each group must: ,,identify an area of interest ,,research an aspect of the area of the groups choosing; this may involve visiting local archives, libraries, discussing the idea with local people, physically exploring the area ,,take photographs, video or decide on imagery (if necessary) ,,record sound, conduct interviews or script and record narration ,,design a route or matrix of media points The final project must be presented on a website, may embed Google maps, and a presentation created to allow the class to experience the mediascape (either in the classroom or on location, if convenient). The website should include a brief theoretical and methodological explanation of the basis of their interpretation. If the group cannot be supported with tuition and support in basic website design or using Google mapping with sound and imagery, a paper map with locations and a CD containing sound files/images might be submitted instead. For examples of web projects created by masters degree students of cultural geography at Royal Holloway (not all sound based) see http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/MA/web-projects.html [source] Transnational lives, transnational marriages: a review of the evidence from migrant communities in EuropeGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2007ELISABETH BECK-GERNSHEIM Abstract Whom do migrants marry? This question has become a popular topic of research, and existing studies identify a common trend: most of the non-European, non-Christian migrants in Europe marry someone from their country of origin. The motivations for such practices are to be found in the characteristics of transnational spaces and in the social structures that emerge in such spaces. Based on a review of research from several European countries, three such constellations are discussed: first, the obligations to kin, especially when migration regulations become more restrictive, and marriage becomes the last route by which to migrate to Europe. Second, new forms of global inequality, between the metropolitan centre and countries of the global periphery, give migrants in Europe improved status and standing in their society of origin and therefore excellent opportunities on the marriage market there. Third, gender relations have started to shift in both host society and migrant families. Men and women alike are trying to rebalance power relations within marriage and to shift them in their favour. In this process marriage to a partner from the country of family origin may promise strategic benefits. The article ends with suggestions for future research. [source] NGOs' transnational advocacy networks: from ,legitimacy' to ,political responsibility'?GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2001Alan Hudson NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ,legitimacy challenges' concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ,legitimacy' is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty-based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ,legitimacy' is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ,political responsibility' is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns. [source] Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental Governance: How Non,State Market,Driven (NSMD) Governance Systems Gain Rule,Making AuthorityGOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2002Benjamin Cashore In recent years, transnational and domestic nongovernmental organizations have created non,state market,driven (NSMD) governance systems whose purpose is to develop and implement environmentally and socially responsible management practices. Eschewing traditional state authority, these systems and their supporters have turned to the market's supply chain to create incentives and force companies to comply. This paper develops an analytical framework designed to understand better the emergence of NSMD governance systems and the conditions under which they may gain authority to create policy. Its theoretical roots draw on pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy granting distinctions made within organizational sociology, while its empirical focus is on the case of sustainable forestry certification, arguably the most advanced case of NSMD governance globally. The paper argues that such a framework is needed to assess whether these new private governance systems might ultimately challenge existing state,centered authority and public policy,making processes, and in so doing reshape power relations within domestic and global environmental governance. [source] FLORENTINE CIVIC HUMANISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN IDEOLOGYHISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2007HANAN YORAN ABSTRACT This article revisits the question of the modernity of the Renaissance by examining the political language of Florentine civic humanism and by critically analyzing the debate over Hans Baron's interpretation of the movement. It engages two debates that are usually conducted separately: one concerning the originality of civic humanism in comparison to medieval thought, and the other concerning the political and social function of the civic humanists' political republicanism in fifteenth-century Florence. The article's main contention is that humanist political discourse rejected the perception of social and political reality as being part of, or reflecting, a metaphysical and divine order or things, and thus undermined the traditional justifications for political hierarchies and power relations. This created the conditions of possibility for the distinctively modern aspiration for a social and political order based on liberty and equality. It also resulted in the birth of a distinctively modern form of ideology, one that legitimizes the social order by disguising its inequalities and structures of domination. Humanism, like modern political thought generally, thus simultaneously constructs and reflects the dialectic of emancipation and domination so central to modernity itself. [source] The Historiography of a Construct: "Feudalism" and the Medieval HistorianHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2009Richard Abels Between 1974 and 1994, two influential critiques of feudalism were published, an article in 1974 by Elizabeth A. R. Brown and a book by Susan Reynolds in 1994, that crystallized doubts about the construct of feudalism harbored by many historians of the Middle Ages. Over the last few years textbooks have begun to reflect the new consensus. Medieval historians responsible for chapters on the Middle Ages in Western Civilization and World Civilization textbooks now shy away from the term ,feudalism'. This reticence is less evident in civilization textbooks lacking a medievalist among the collaborators. In several of these we still find the ,feudal Middle Ages' presented without apology, as well as comparisons drawn between Japanese, Chinese, and medieval Western feudalisms. Whether or not the assigned textbook mentions ,feudalism', most Western civilization instructors probably continue to use the term because it is familiar to them and to their students. This article presents an overview of the historiography of one of the key concepts for the study of the Middle Ages, and an assessment of where the state of the question now stands. The author concludes that, although the critique of feudalism is powerful and necessary, the pendulum is threatening to swing too far in the other direction, away from the vertical ties and power relations that once dominated discussions of medieval politics and society, and toward a new paradigm of horizontal bonds, consensus making, and community. [source] The Productive Power of Ambiguity: Rethinking Homosexuality through the Virtual and Developmental Systems TheoryHYPATIA, Issue 1 2005ANN BURLEINArticle first published online: 9 JAN 200 This paper juxtaposes Deleuze's notion of the virtual alongside Oyama's notion of a developmental system in order to explore the promises and perils of thinking bodily identity as indeterminate at a time when new technologies render bodily ambiguity increasingly productive of both economic profit and power relations. [source] The Functions of Participation in a Village-Based Health Pre-Payment Scheme: What Can Participation Actually Do?IDS BULLETIN, Issue 1 2000Andreas Wilkes Summary This article analyses micro-level interactions in one case study to argue that participation does not necessarily lead to accountability. The case study covers the process of establishment, implementation and evaluation of a village-based health pre-payment scheme in a poor village in China. Judged on widely used criteria, the scheme and evaluation activities represent examples of ,high degrees of community participation'. However, analysis of the process points to the influence that different interests, different channels for voicing interests, and unequal power relations have in determining the outcome of decision-making processes. [source] The polyphonic spree: the case of the Liverpool DockersINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Chris Carter This paper is concerned with the possibilities opened up for Trade Unions by the internet age. The paper analyses forms of resistance, their preconditions and organisational backgrounds. It is argued that polyphonic organisation and, closely linked, new organisational forms, provide a strong basis for power relations and strategies of resistance. The paper starts with a brief introduction to the dispute between the Dockers of Liverpool and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company. Contextualising the evolving issue in the broader picture of trade union crisis and renewal, the case study is theorised using linguistically informed approaches to management and organisation theory. Introducing these theoretical developments, the potential of new organisational forms for power relations and resistance are elaborated. [source] Conflict and identity shape shifting in an online financial communityINFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 5 2009John Campbell Abstract., This paper challenges traditional explorations of online communities that have relied upon assumptions of trust and social cohesion. In the analysis presented here, conflict becomes more than just dysfunctional communication and provides an alternative set of unifying principles and rationales for understanding social interaction and identity shape shifting within an online community. A model is advanced that describes the systematic techniques of hostility and aggression in technologically enabled communities that take the form of contemporary tribalism. It is argued that this tribe-like conflict embodies important rituals essential for maintaining and defining the contradictory social roles sometimes found in online environments. This research offers a critical interpretive perspective that focuses on the link between identity shape shifting behaviours and the power relations within an online financial community. The analysis reveals how conflict between positions of power can help to align the values and ideals of an online community. With this study we seek to motivate a re-examination of the design and governance of online communities. [source] Reflections on issues of power in packaged software selectionINFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2006Debra Howcroft Abstract., The adoption of packaged software is becoming increasingly common in a variety of organizations and much of the packaged software literature presents this as a straightforward, linear process based on rationalistic evaluation. This paper applies the framework of power relations developed by Markus and Bjørn-Andersen to a longitudinal study concerning the adoption of a customer relationship management package in a small organization. This is used to highlight both overt and covert power issues within the selection and procurement of the product and illustrate the interplay of power between senior management, information technology (IT) managers, IT vendors and consultants and end-users. The paper contributes to the growing body of literature on packaged software and also to our understanding of how power is deeply embedded within the surrounding processes. [source] ,By papers and pens, you can only do so much': views about accountability and human resource management from Indian government health administrators and workersINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2009Asha George Abstract Although accountability drives in the Indian health sector sporadically highlight egregious behaviour of individual health providers, accountability needs to be understood more broadly. From a managerial perspective, while accountability functions as a control mechanism that involves reviews and sanctions, it also has a constructive side that encourages learning from errors and discretion to support innovation. This points to social relationships: how formal rules and hierarchies combine with informal norms and processes and more fundamentally how power relations are negotiated. Drawing from this conceptual background and based on qualitative research, this article analyses the views of government primary health care administrators and workers from Koppal district, northern Karnataka, India. In particular, the article details how these actors view two management functions concerned with internal accountability: supervision and disciplinary action. A number of disjunctures are revealed. Although extensive information systems exist, they do not guide responsiveness or planning. While supportive supervision efforts are acknowledged and practiced, implicit quid-pro-quo bargains that justify poor service delivery performance are more prevalent. Despite the enactment of numerous disciplinary measures, little discipline is observed. These disjunctures reflect nuanced and layered relationships between health administrators and workers, as well as how power is negotiated through corruption and elected representatives within the broader political economy context of health systems in northern Karnataka, India. These various dimensions of accountability need to be addressed if it is to be used more equitably and effectively. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Re-awakenings?: A discourse analysis of the recovery from schizophrenia after medication changeINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 2 2001Trudy Rudge ABSTRACT This paper explores the construction of recovery from schizophrenia after medication change through the analysis of people living with schizophrenia. The study is framed by a discourse analysis which assumes that the language used to discuss schizophrenia and its treatment by medication is imbued with the power relations of mental health. The analysis uses research literature, pharmaceutical literature and previous studies of schizophrenia as the discursive background that frames how recovery can be talked about. The discussion highlights how the discourses of medical science construct recovery as a linear event that silences the embodiment of schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia refuse this construction, through finding a ,niche' for themselves. In conclusion, the paper suggests how such analysis opens up for exploration of the silencing of ,insanity', and establishes a beginning dialogue with people who live with the continuing presence of schizophrenia. [source] Empowerment in social work: an individual vs. a relational perspectiveINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 1 2007Dag Leonardsen Social workers with only an individualistic understanding of empowerment will easily end up as moralising agents rather than as facilitators for their clients. It is in the complex interaction between a given socio-material situation and the individual capacity to interpret and act that one finds the key to an empowerment worthy of its name. This presupposes two things: that social workers have as a part of their education theoretical knowledge about organisational structures, and that they themselves have been empowered in ways that give them practical competence to act in relation to situations. They need the competence to identify the complexities of interests and power relations in society. The implication of such a recogni-tion should be clear for the education of social workers: the ideology of empowerment has to be contextualised. To discuss this topic the author makes a distinction between an individua-listic and a relational perspective and between social problems conceived of as a ,lack of money' vs. a ,lack of meaning'. [source] Beyond Presentism: Rethinking the Enduring Co-constitutive Relationships between International Law and International Relations,INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Rémi Bachand This paper challenges the views in the fields of International Relations and International Law that treat the significance of law in the international system solely on the basis of the contemporary context marked by the increased institutionalization of world politics. Instead of focusing on the relationship between rules and the conduct of actors, we conceptualize the co-constitutive relationship between law and politics, and incorporate the multiple forms of legal-political expression that constitute power relations and dynamics into our analysis. Three dimensions of the co-constitutive relations between Law and Politics are explored: legal forms, legal constraints, and the indeterminacy of law. [source] State Project Europe: The Transformation of the European Border Regime and the Production of Bare LifeINTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010Sonja Buckel Giorgio Agamben refers to a basic problem in the constitution of the modern nation state: the state as a nation implies that "bare life" becomes the foundation of sovereignty. With the loss of their citizenship, refugees lose not only all their rights, but more fundamentally the "right to have rights" (Arendt). This dilemma of modern statehood does not vanish under conditions of European integration; it is rather re-scaled. Applying a state-theoretical approach to the European border regime, we will concentrate on the two main techniques by which the EU produces "bare life": the "camp" and the invisible "police state." It will become apparent that the institutionalization of "the right of every human being to belong to mankind" is still lacking. Yet, in contrast to Agamben, we do not trace this constellation back to the collapse of the concept of human rights, but to hegemonies and power relations. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||