Legitimation of Oppression: Response and Reflexivity

The basic question addressed in this article is why people in inferior and devalued strata submit to oppression. It is my thesis that the legitimation of oppression is one of the key issues for subordinate people and that the study of the creation and processes of legitimation among such groups will shed light on the phenomenon of human obedience or of resistance to oppressive rule. The core of the study consists of (1) the development of a model of the legitimation process and (2) the use of examples from the experiences of oppressed groups to illustrate dimensions of this process.     

Change Research: Narrating Social Change from the Bottom-Up

This essay provides a review of Bent Flyvbjerg’s critique of conventional social science research, including its limitations in applied fields such as social work, followed by a specification of his alternative for a “phronetic social science.” I detail how I with two colleagues practiced phronetic social science in our collaboration with Philadelphia housing activists, including most especially the role of interpretive narrative analysis as part of our case study research. In conclusion, I discuss the somewhat ironic challenges of trying to increase the legitimacy of such activist research in applied fields like social work where an obsession with being seen as scientific is prevalent as a means to improve prestige of applied research. I discuss how we need less top-down research which focuses on a “what works” agenda that serves the management of subordinate populations and more research that provides bottom-up understandings of a “what’s right” agenda tailored to empowering people in particular settings. Real social science research needs to listen to how people on the bottom experience their own subordination so that we can help them overcome their subjugation. Good social science includes taking the perspective of the oppressed in the name of helping them achieve social justice. In the end, there are a number of tension points between the model of conventional social science and phronetic social science that starkly highlight how we need to change research in order do research that promotes positive social change.     

Life History or 'Case' History: the objectification of people with learning difficulties through the tyranny of professional discourses

Case histories of people with learning difficulties tend to privilege information that is useful to professionals, such as IQ and medical diagnosis. Such information allows professionals to slot people with learning difficulties into categories which inform 'treatment' and aid prognosis. Case records, as they are currently constructed, appear to further silence an already oppressed group of people, and to objectify, pathologise and label them. The subjects of such case records do not appear to be treated as stakeholders in the case recording process: their voices are not represented in such writings. Case records do not appear to contain information about the lived experience of people with learning difficulties. Ignorance of the unique histories of people with learning difficulties is dehumanising and allows professionals to psychologically distance themselves. Once humanity has disappeared, it is possible to treat people as 'objects' that can be controlled through 'respected' professional theories and their discursive practices.     

Cultural stereotypes and the gendering of senior management

This paper asks whether place is significant in understanding the gendering of senior management and how it might be integrated into existing theories. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with women and men in senior management in Wales, it compares the gendering of senior management in Wales with other regions of the UK. The situation in Wales is explained by the historical legacy of a peripheral economy dependent on male‐dominated heavy industries and the gender relations and stereotypes associated with this. There is a relative lack of senior managerial positions, for both women and men, and women are under‐represented in middle management compared with women elsewhere. There is evidence that paternalistic masculinites are widespread in managerial cultures and that although women may find this form of masculinity easier to deal with than a more aggressively 'macho' masculinity, it casts them in a subordinate role at work. Cultural stereotypes such as the 'Welsh mam' operate in contradictory ways, in some instances holding women back and in others furthering their careers, and there is evidence that women are challenging existing gender stereotypes. A lack of geographical mobility and associated attachment to place affects progress into senior management and creates stability at middle‐management level. Place needs to be taken into account in explaining the gendering of senior management because of the spatial distribution of production and the cultural patterns and stereotypes associated with different economic structures.     

The Impact of Authoritarian Regimes on Families … and on Therapists

Repressive powers require not only obedience on the part of the oppressed but also denial of the oppressive nature of their submission. While authoritarian governments are the focus of this article, this applies to any oppressive relationship. There is a slippery slope from experiencing the imposed nature of the oppressive rules to adapting to them to denying both internal and external evidence of their existence. To prevent that declining process becomes an urgent priority when totalitarianism appears on the political and interpersonal horizon, as it is to help people coming out of tyranny – therapists included – to recover the words and the agency lost in their previous experiences.     

Building Boxes and Policing Boundaries: (De)Constructing Intersexuality, Transgender and Bisexuality

The process of social differentiation, or the process of creating boxes in which we can place other people and in which we can place ourselves, is key to the existence and persistence of social inequality. The focus of this article is on the construction and maintenance of boxes and boundaries with respect to sex, gender and sexuality. We take the existence of these boxes and boundaries for granted, organizing our lives around them in a variety of ways. Exceptions to them call our categorizations and the decisions we make based upon them into question. Particularly interesting in this context are intersexuality, transgender and bisexuality. Intersexuality, transgender and bisexuality have in common the fact that they challenge our easy reliance on categories and the boundaries between those categories. Our responses to, treatment of and understanding of these exceptions provides striking insights into our system of boxes and boundaries and, correspondingly, to sex-, gender- and sexuality-based inequalities.     

‘Where are you from?’: Identifying place1

Many social research projects, such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys, take local place as a given: they choose participants from a particular place, take this place as background for what the participants say, ask them about place‐related issues, and correlate responses with different places. But people can identify places in different ways, in geographical or relational terms, and in different levels of scale. This study analyses passages in focus groups in which participants say where they are from, shows that participants generally take the question and answer as routine, and then shows the ways the interaction develops when this routineness is broken, amended, or called into question. When a participant revises their statement of where they are from, they adapt to what they see as the knowledge and stance of their interlocutor, they re‐present themselves, and they create possibilities for further talk, defending, telling stories, or showing entitlement to an opinion. I argue that the ways people answer this question, interactively, can tell us about them, and us, as well as about their map of the world.     

Care for place: The contributions older people make to their communities

Older people are often positioned as passive recipients of care and dependent on resources or as overly productive and active. In this paper, we seek a more nuanced, middle ground between such stereotypes, by exploring the question: what contributions do older people make to the places they live in? Drawing on qualitative research from Aotearoa New Zealand, involving focus groups and interviews, we examine the varied and active ways many older people are involved in and contribute to their neighbourhoods and communities, or what we term ‘care for place’. In particular, we identify the different forms of older people's care for place, including volunteering, activism, advocacy, and nurturing, and consider how these efforts positively impact on older people and the communities in which they live. Whilst we caution against assumptions that all older people should be productively involved, we argue that greater understanding of older people's care for place is central to challenging stereotypes of older people as either passive and dependent, or highly active.     

Disability and the anti‐obesity offensive

This paper expands a discussion begun by a fat activist in the UK disability literature to argue that fatness is a disability issue. Some ways in which fat people are oppressed by the same ideological practices and values that oppress (other) disabled people are explored. Fatness has typically been excluded from consideration by disability scholars and in this lacuna an equivalence is drawn between attitudes to fatness and psychological distress within disability studies. In conclusion, it urges discussion on theoretical perspectives of disability that embrace fatness and sees this as a prerequisite to developing strategies that enhance both disability and fat rights.     

Elder abuse and oppression: voices of marginalized elders

The voices of elderly people from marginalized groups are rarely solicited, and the relationship between elder maltreatment and belonging to an oppressed group has not been adequately investigated. This article reviews the literature on oppression and elder abuse and describes findings from the secondary analysis of data from focus group discussions on elder abuse held with marginalized older adults and (quasi)professionals caring for them in two Canadian cities. Participants identified that increased vulnerability to elder abuse was related to oppression experienced as a consequence of ageism, sexism, ableism/disability, racism, heterosexism/homophobia, classism, and various intersecting types of oppression.     

Elder Abuse and Oppression: Voices of Marginalized Elders

The voices of elderly people from marginalized groups are rarely solicited, and the relationship between elder maltreatment and belonging to an oppressed group has not been adequately investigated. This article reviews the literature on oppression and elder abuse and describes findings from the secondary analysis of data from focus group discussions on elder abuse held with marginalized older adults and (quasi)professionals caring for them in two Canadian cities. Participants identified that increased vulnerability to elder abuse was related to oppression experienced as a consequence of ageism, sexism, ableism/ disability, racism, heterosexism/homophobia, classism, and various intersecting types of oppression.     

The exclusion of older people in disability activism and policies — A case of inadvertent ageism?

Using Sweden as a case, the article discusses the tendency within disability activism and policies to overlook elderly people. From an analysis of a major Swedish government investigation on disability it is clear that disability policies in Sweden have come to rest upon stereotyped age norms that divide the life course into set stages, and there has been a tendency to define elderly disabled people as elderly rather than disabled. It is argued that this exclusion is partly the result of a successful endeavor to provide disabled people of younger ages with rights that are typical of non-disabled citizens. Justice and equality have been defined in comparison to citizens of similar ages: children, youth and adults of “active age”. Based on the analysis of the paper it is argued that activities of movements struggling to liberate oppressed populations may contribute to ageism, and that anti-ageist research must go beyond the idea that ageism is a simple matter of attitudes towards older people.     

Young people's views of children's rights and advocacy services: a case for ‘caring’ advocacy?

This paper looks at some preliminary findings from research with young people in foster and residential care in the UK who have received advocacy services from a range of local authority and voluntary agencies. The study also includes the views of professionals, from both children's rights and social services. The initial findings highlight the importance to young people of their relationship with rights professionals. They speak about the value to them of care and respect, aspects not always seen as fundamental to rights work. Caring, in its various guises is seen by young people as a vital component of their relationship with children's rights workers. They also see this as important within advocacy work itself since caring about the outcome is often key. A pure individual rights focus with an emphasis on challenge and ‘being heard’ may not take account of the complexity of their situation and may pose difficult dilemmas for young people, especially in dealings with their carers. This ‘caring’ advocacy is not the paternalistic approach of a professional who ‘knows what's best for you’ but is a model based on a strong awareness of ways that young people are excluded and oppressed. It is also about placing a positive value on their contribution as citizens and links to a view of society that gives importance to an ethic of inter‐relationship and care as well as an ethic of individual rights. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Potential of the Net to Construct and Convey Ethnic and National Identities: Comparison of the Use in the Sri Lankan Tamil and Kashmir Situations

This paper argues that the potential of the Internet to construct and perpetuate identities, especially ethnic and national identities, depends on the social, political and economic factors that affect the region and the people. The paper goes along with the claim that the Internet is a powerful tool in the creation of national identities, especially when the members of the community are widely dispersed and perceive themselves as suppressed or oppressed by another power. The Internet offers communities one of the most effective means of reaching its members, who may no longer live in the geographical area of the nation, while at the same time enabling them to evade the authority and power of the oppressor. Thus, the Internet is the most potent tool for creating and sustaining identities among people who are physically far removed from the nation. However, the Internet's efficacy in the instillation and nurturing of national identity is largely affected by the political, social and economic conditions of the people and the region. The article elaborates this point by analysing the potential of the medium in the long-simmering Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.     

Homosexuality as Practice and the Social Implications of Representation

ABSTRACT

What tends to be represented when talking about homosexuals is not the diversity of people who have sex with others of the same sex-gender, but a kind of group or a defined collective with some identifiable characteristics and specific identities: a collection of others, a historically oppressed minority, a community. As a result, not all people who practice homosexuality are included in the representations of homosexuals, nor do all included in these conform to the images projected onto them. This involves a series of social and political consequences, related to the reproduction of hegemonic gender and power structures. Therefore, I question the use of these representations in social sciences and propose to consider, as the analysis element, sexual practices and not the identities and categorizations created around them, showing the power relations that exist between them.     

A Gay and Lesbian Congregation Seeks Social Justice for Other Marginalized Communities

SUMMARY

The Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, is the world's largest gay and lesbian congregation. As an unabashedly liberal church, the Cathedral of Hope views social justice as the foundation of theological beliefs and the heart of community building activities with other marginalized and oppressed people. These actions of social justice and community building have produced an unexpected outcome. Social justice has been returned to this congregation in the form of community affirmation, acceptance, recognition, and advocacy. Thus, one significant way for gays and lesbians to achieve social justice is to work for the same with other oppressed people, devoid of strings or hidden agendas.     

RELATIVE ADVANTAGE

A concept of relative advantage is outlined in this article. Based on an oppressed group's selective assessment of their circumstances or character or values in comparison with either those of another group or at different points of time for their own group, the consensual image that they are relatively better off or relatively superior in some way is constructed. Drawing on the experiences of three oppressed groups, it is suggested in this article that the reality construction process occurs in various circumstances, and that the shape of relative advantage is defined differently, possibly in accord with this. It is concluded that this perception might help to engender a sense of group honor and also serve as a strategic factor in the tamping down of discontent and in the maintenance of the oppressive social order.     

Older people in America's immigrant families: Dilemmas of dependence,integration, and isolation

Immigration to the US has given rise to a population of older people who migrate here to be close to their children. Although highly integrated into their intergenerational families, these seniors voice dissatisfaction with their lives in the US. Intensive interviews with 28 transnational seniors demonstrate that their dissatisfaction stems from the contradictions between high cultural expectations for family sociability and structural constraints on kin interaction in the US. Their dissatisfaction is exacerbated by factors isolating them from social contacts outside the family. Although mobility limitations and not speaking English contribute to their isolation, immigrant families play a role. Older people are sometimes isolated by heavy domestic responsibilities in their child's household, solicitous offspring who insulate parents from practical aspects of daily life, and by a collective family ethos that calls on aging parents to subordinate their needs to those of other family members.     

TREATMENT OF CHILDREN'S FEARS: A STRATEGIC UTILIZATION APPROACH

The Sufi teaching story of the Watermelon Hunter perhaps teaches us much of what we need to know about Milton Erickson's strategic utilization approach to therapy:
Once upon a time there was a man who strayed from his own country into the Land of Fools. He saw a number of people running in fear from a field where they had been trying to harvest wheat. They reported to this man that there was a monster in the field. Upon closer observation, the traveler saw that it was only a watermelon. The traveler offered to kill this monster for them, and he cut the watermelon from the stalk and ate it. The people then became more afraid of him than of the monster and drove him away from their village.
It happened later that another man wandered into the Land of Fools, and the same thing began to take place. This man agreed, however, that it was a monster and led them tiptoeing away from it. He spent a long time with them and lived with them in their houses until he could slowly teach them the facts that would help them to loose their terror of melons. Eventually, they even grew melons for their own pleasure. (Shah, 1970)