Indigenous perspectives for strengthening social responses to global environmental changes: A response to the social work grand challenge on environmental change

ABSTRACT

The “Grand Challenges for Social Work,” is a call to action for innovative responses to society’s most pressing social problems. In this article, we respond to the “Grand Challenge” of Creating Social Responses to a Changing Environment from our perspective as Indigenous scholars. Over the last several decades, diminishing natural resources, pollution, over-consumption, and the exploitation of the natural environment have led to climate change events that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples. We present how environmental changes impact Indigenous peoples and suggest culturally relevant responses for working with Indigenous communities. We propose a decolonizing cyclical, iterative process grounded in Indigenous Ways of Knowing.     

Sovereignty and the other in Ecuadorian nationalist discourse

This article explores how exhortations for national unity are intrinsically linked to the symbolic displacement of a problematic other through an examination of elite Ecuadorian nationalist discourse and its construction of Indigenous activists as internal enemies. Specifically, this article looks at the role that the 2008 border row between Ecuador and Colombia played in publicly legitimating a concept of Ecuadorian citizenship rooted in racial homogeneity. Ecuador's northern border served as an ideal mechanism for performing the Ecuadorian state's authority to establish the internal borders that separated ‘citizens’ from ‘enemies’. These performances of state legitimacy highlighted Ecuador's victimisation by a more powerful neighbour/imperial proxy as a means for building regional empathy, while reinforcing the legitimacy of the Ecuadorian government to marginalise Indigenous social movements as a means to symbolically assert ‘national unity’.     

The Kids Are All White: Examining Race and Representation in News Media Coverage of Opioid Overdose Deaths in Canada

Problematic opioid use in Canada is on the rise, and opioid overdose deaths now number in the thousands each year. While opioids have long been responsible for overdoses among certain demographics of Canadians, such as drug users on Vancouver's notoriously impoverished downtown Eastside, it is only recently that fatal overdoses have also claimed the lives of White, middle-class young people. This critical discourse analysis of Canadian news media examines the differences in racial representation in recent coverage of opioid deaths. I pay particular attention to the ways in which White opioid users are portrayed as innocent victims while other users, such as those from Indigenous communities, are often ignored or stigmatized as “addicts.” I draw on the work of Hall (1978; 2000) and Reinarman and Levine (1989; 2004) on the role of media in representing race and constructing drug scares, to frame the media narratives. I then discuss the Canadian government's current harm-reduction approach to the opioid crisis, as well as calls from Indigenous leaders for “culture as treatment.”     

Negotiating race and place in the Garifuna Diaspora: Identity formation and transnational grassroots politics in New York City and Honduras

This paper is an exploration of the relations between the politics of identity and the socio‐economic and political processes of the current era of globalization. Using ethnographic material from the transnational grassroots organizations of the Garinagu—an Afro‐Indigenous population living in transnational communities between Central America and the US—I show the multiple ways that they articulate their identity between and among the tropes of “autocthony,” “blackness,” “Hispanic,” “diaspora,” and “nation.” This construction and negotiation of identity is intimately connected to the negotiation of rights vis‐à‐vis nation‐states and international political bodies, where ideologies of race, ethnicity, nation, and citizenship carry with them different implications for rights and belonging. I argue that the complexities of this case point to the uneven processes of globalization, within which the power to define the ideological terrain of economic and political struggles is still profoundly unequal.     

The Willingness to State an Opinion: Inequality,Don't Know Responses,and Political Participation

Most explanations of inequality in political participation focus on costs or other barriers for those with fewer economic, educational, and “cognitive” resources. I argue, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's work on “political competence,” that social position in the form of income also structures political participation through differences in the sense that one is a legitimate producer of political opinions. I test whether income differences in participation persist net of costs by examining nonparticipation in a setting in which barriers to participation are low: answering political survey questions. Lower‐income people are more likely than others to withhold political opinions by saying “don't know” net of differences in education, “cognitive ability,” or engagement with the survey exercise. Further, political “don't know” rates predict voting rates, net of other predictors. Efforts to democratize participation in American politics must attend not only to the costs of involvement but also to class‐based differences in individuals' relationship to political expression itself.     

For whom the bell tolls: state-society relations and the Sichuan earthquake mourning in China

In the wake of the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008, the Chinese state, for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic, held a nationwide mourning rite for ordinary disaster victims. Why did this “mourning for the ordinary” emerge in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake but not previous massive disasters? Moreover, the Chinese state tried to demonstrate through the mourning that the state respected ordinary people’s lives and dignity. But this moral-political message contradicted the state’s normal repressive practice. The contradiction was salient when the state forbade the parents of child victims, who died of school collapse, to mourn their children at anniversaries of the earthquake. What can account for this contradiction? Drawing on the state-society relations perspective, I argue that the emergence of “mourning for the ordinary” can be explained by some important changes in structural state-society relations in China in the 2000s, such as the rapidly developing civil society with moral consciousness and the more adaptive authoritarian Chinese state with concern about its moral legitimacy. These changes were strengthened in the situational dynamics in 2008, which led to the state’s acceptance of a mourning proposal from the public sphere. The mourning did not occur in previous disasters because those structural factors were absent or weak and the situational dynamics were different. The state suppressed parents’ mourning and outside activists’ alternative mourning because the state’s concern with stability overrode its moral legitimation, particularly in the changing political context after the Beijing Olympics, and, meanwhile, the civil society was unable to resist the state’s repression. This study theorizes an important but understudied mourning genre, “mourning for the ordinary,” and introduces the state-society perspective into public ritual study.     

Femininity is not inferiority: women-led civil society organizations and “countering violent extremism” in Nigeria

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and the Millennium Development Goals, brought the inclusion of women in the security agenda into the international limelight. Although these global frameworks, and other international resolutions, underscore the importance of women’s participation in the politics of peace and security, Nigeria’s frameworks have not been inclusive. Extant literature has examined the role of women within the context of mainstream responsibilities for “counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency” that are held by the military and paramilitary forces. This study interrogates the role of women-led civil society organizations in “countering violent extremism” activities in Nigeria. Using a mixed-methods approach, it demonstrates that the participation of women-led civil society organizations in “countering violent extremism” activities has generated certain positive results for achieving women’s inclusion and gender equality in politics and society.     

Sociological Social Psychology and Intersectionality: A Synergistic Relationship

Sociological social psychology developed out of interdisciplinary knowledge growth. Despite this positive progress, critics have argued that sociological social psychologists need to “step up their game”. In this paper, I review the three “faces” of sociological social psychology and propose a potential avenue to address this critique by incorporating ideas from intersectionality research into sociological social psychology's paradigms. To accomplish this integration, I also discuss the background and current debates of intersectionality research. Intersectionality scholarship originated in the gender studies area and has always been multidisciplinary. However, notions from intersectionality have not spread widely within the field of sociological social psychology. I propose a true synergy between sociological social psychology and intersectionality with the hope of advancing both fields.     

Saving the Savior

This article begins with an autobiographical reflection about what sociology has meant to me as an Iranian intellectual. Sociology has enabled me to think critically about my country's politics and culture, appreciating its strengths without overlooking its unjust and injurious aspects. That experience shapes my answer to the question “Saving Sociology?” If there is anything in sociology that I would like to save–in both senses “to keep” and “to rescue”—it is sociology as a critical, reflective discipline, a discipline that not only studies society but also contributes to its change. As the contemporary world moves toward a “global” society, we are increasingly facing the dilemmas of multiculturalism. Sociologists often investigate other societies or (like myself) look back at their own from a spatial and cultural distance. This situation has created a dilemma for many scholars: Should we criticize problems stemming from “indigenous” beliefs and practices of other societies? Cultural relativism argues that different cultures provide indigenous answers to their social problems that should be judged in their own context. While this approach correctly encourages us to avoid ethnocentrism, it has led to inaction towards the suffering of oppressed groups. Reflecting on the relativist approach to sexual dominance, I question some cultural relativist assumptions. Discussing how “indigenous” responses to male domination in many cases disguise and protect that domination, I will challenge the “localist” approach of relativism and argue for a universalist approach.     

Instrumental Civil Rights and Institutionalized Participation in China: A Case Study of Protest in Wukan Village

The current study uses the Wukan protest as a case study to assert that the Chinese farmers involved in the incident demonstrated “instrumental civil rights consciousness” in their protest. Civil rights is a means by which farmers strive for their economic rights and not an end in itself. Without real “rights consciousness,” the Wukan protests resemble “institutionalized participation” more than “rightful resistance.” The grassroots elections and self-governance that have resulted from the protest are not so much a harbinger of the emergence of bottom-up civil society as top-down initiatives by the central government. The central government has incorporated opposing powers into the existing institution to adjust state–society relations. By using bottom-up institutionalized participation, the central government has managed to strengthen its supervision over local governments, fight corruption, and stabilize its authority.     

Public relations,indigeneity and colonization: Indigenous resistance as dialogic anchor

Cultural communication has been put forth in the context of globalization and the emergence of Indigenous movements as a framework for dialogue to be carried out by organizations (Love & Tilley, 2014). Concepts of Māori communication for instance have been foregrounded in the public relations literature to anchor strategies of effective engagement through dialogue, leading to the building of trust in Indigenous communities (Love & Tilley, 2014). Similarly, Indigenous engagement has been foregrounded as a key resource in achieving global sustainable development (Dutta, 2013, 2019). This turn to Indigenous cultural communication is broadly situated in the framing of indigeneity as a category to be developed within frameworks of dialogue and engagement, constituted within the structures of transnational capitalism (Dutta, 2019).Drawing from Dutta’s (2008) theorizing of the cultural sensitivity and culture-centered approaches to communication, we critically interrogate the hegemony of Indigenous dialogue as a strategy deployed by dominant organizations. Whereas cultural sensitivity incorporates cultural characteristics to serve organizational goals, cultural-centering serves as an anchor for collaborating with cultural communities at the margins in building “communicative infrastructures” for voice. Arguing that superficial markers of culture incorporated into engagement is a communicative inversion that serves the colonizing tools of transnational capital, we attend to culturally centered communication strategies of engagement that are grounded in resistance and emerge from within the voices of Indigenous movements that are increasingly threatened by ever-expanding colonial missions of globalization.Comparing across two case studies, one about the struggle of the Dongria Kondh in the Odisha state of Eastern India against mining capitalism, and the other a critical review of the use of Māori cultural knowledge in the public relations literature, we articulate indigeneity as a site of resistance within the meta-theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach (Dutta, 2008, 2011). In conceptualizing Indigenous resistance as an agonistic anchor to communication, we attend to the impossibilities of dialogue, and simultaneously to the role of communicative infrastructures in inverting neoliberal hegemony. Dialogue is radically transformed, not in generating consensus but rather in its capacity to disrupt the neoliberal status quo through the presence of Indigenous voices. Indigenous resistance “renders impure” the ontological category of dialogue, on one hand, attending to the limits of dialogue, and on the other hand, turns dialogic tools into the hands of Indigenous social movements. Dialogue as a communication infrastructure located materially within Indigenous resistance movements turns the power of communication into the hands of Indigenous communities.     

Building Indigenous Australian Social Work

Abstract

An Indigenous social work guided by Indigenous Australians’ participation and experience that has, at its heart, human rights and social justice is in its infancy in Australia. The present paper continues a discussion on Indigenous Australian social work theory and practice developments being generated by those working in this field. Aspects of this “praxis” include recognition of the effects of invasion, colonialism, and paternalistic social policies upon social work practice with Indigenous communities; recognition of the importance of self-determination; contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous colleagues working in partnership; the impact of contemporary racist and neocolonialist values; and rethinking contemporary social work values and practices. There is discussion of appropriation and reinterpretation of social work concepts, incorporation of international and local Indigenous theory, and the framing of social work by Indigenous Australians’ views and values.     

INTERPRETING THE SOCIOLOGICAL CLASSICS: CAN THERE BE A “TRUE” MEANING OF MEAD?

Many sociologists have tried in vain to find the “true” meaning of the classic works in the discipline. An interactionist perspective suggests that this search is not a valid one for sociologists, especially symbolic interactionists. Although there can be no “true” meaning, some authors use conventions of writing that make their work more or less clear. Using Mead's Mind, Self and Society as an example, we discuss the dimensions of clarity. We then argue that the sociological classics should be read to (I) simulate new theories and research (pragmatic analysis), (2) determine how sociologists have used that classic to support or refute particular theories or perspectives (rhetorical analysis), and (3) provide information about the sociological concerns of the author and his/her contemporaries (historical analysis).     

The framed right to participate in municipal youth councils and its educational impact

This study describes the phenomenon of framed participation, which constrains children's participation frameworks within a confined area of decision-making. It draws on interviews and focus groups with 32 children who participated in eight Israeli municipal youth councils, ranging in age from 13 to 18. In addition, five interviews were conducted with adult leaders of youth councils. The study showed that council activities remained confined to the particular municipal department responsible for them and comprised mostly the organization of leisure activities, such as parties, performances, and group trips for youth. Yet, almost all the children participating in the study perceived the organization of leisure activities as “meaningful” participation, which “succeeds”, “empowers”, and “leads”. The adult leaders acknowledged the framed participation and, while critical of it, preferred to remain within the comfort zone of their professional responsibility. We argue that when framed participation entails the organization of popular activities, in which the municipality invests considerable resources, the ensuing positive experiences may frame the children's rights consciousness and critical thinking. We also discuss the institutional conditions that may shape framed participation, and the role of human rights education in building children's capacity to mobilize their participation rights.     

Homosexuals,Heretics, and the Practice of Freedom Commentary on Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pelligrini

Here I construe Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini's proposal to protect freedom of sexual expression among consenting adults within an agonistic theory of democracy. Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue contrary to the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures have intervened in political conflicts over sexual morality by “establishing” sectarian Christian mores, and they urge more robust protection of religious and sexual expression. I develop three themes in response: First, to display the democratic framework of their proposal, I briefly set out the constitutional analogy on which Jakobsen and Pellegrini depend; second, I explain Jakobsen and Pellegrini's rejection of the ethos of tolerance in light of the agonistic political theory of William E. Connolly; and third, I propose that Freud's theory of mourning and melancholia may point to affective resources for invigorating practices of freedom.     

Mann,war, and cyberspace: dualities of infrastructural power in America

Not long after the completion of Michael Mann’s “quadrilogy” on The Sources of Social Power (1986–2012), social scientists began to interrogate the meaning of his concepts of “despotic” and “infrastructural” power. While we know that the former is the most evident sign of danger in times of war, less well understood is the role of infrastructural power in state/civil society relations. Most important is the ambiguous relationship between the two types of power and the possibility that—especially in times of war—infrastructural power can become the vehicle for despotic ends. But infrastructural power is also reciprocal, offering firms and civil society groups channels with which to contest the state’s projects. In this article, I first explicate the different meanings that Mann gave to his concept of infrastructural power. In the second section, I turn to how the concept has been “received” in political science and historical sociology. In the third part, I argue that the main danger to American democracy in wartime lies not in its becoming a despotic state, but in the use of the state’s infrastructural channels for the exercise of despotic ends. The fourth part illustrates the complexities of infrastructural power in business/government/civil society relations in cybersecurity, which Mann—for understandable reasons—did not examine in his encompassing work.     

“Time Immemorial” and Indigenous Rights: A Genealogy and Three Case Studies (Calder,Van der Peet,Tsilhqot'in) from British Columbia

“Time immemorial” has operated as a legal fiction in the discourse of colonization, performing a genealogical function in the construction of “antiquity” and “legal memory” in English law, and repurposed in Indigenous rights cases in Canada. Beginning with a genealogical outline, this paper analyzes “time immemorial” in relation to Settler and Indigenous discourses of time, memory and the land in Calder, Van der Peet, and Tsilhqot'in.     

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare,Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter‐century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare” are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of “bureaucratic field” to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the “disciplinary society,” David Garland’s account of the “culture of control,” and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of “individual responsibility.” This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.     

“Taking Back Our Country”: Tea Party Membership and Support for Punitive Crime Control Policies

The Tea Party Movement (TPM) emerged shortly after the 2008 election, with members rallying behind the call to “take back our country.” Many observers suggest that the movement represents, in part, a racialized backlash against the election of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, motivated by perceived threats to the racial hierarchy. Racial threat theory predicts that if the TPM is motivated by and reinforces racial concerns, racialized support for punitive crime policies that disproportionately impact blacks should be higher among Tea Partiers. Drawing on recent national survey data, this study tests this prediction. The results show that TPM membership is positively associated with punitiveness and that this relationship is mediated, in part, by Tea Partiers’ animus toward blacks. We discuss the import of these findings for competing accounts of the TPM, racial threat theory, and the argument that the United States has become a “post‐racial society.”