Decentering technology in discourse on discrimination*

ABSTRACT

Algorithmic discrimination has become one of the critical points in the discussion about the consequences of an intensively datafied world. While many scholars address this problem from a purely techno-centric perspective, others try to raise broader social justice concerns. In this article, we join those voices and examine norms, values, and practices among European civil society organizations in relation to the topic of data and discrimination. Our goal is to decenter technology and bring nuance into the debate about its role and place in the production of social inequalities. To accomplish this, we rely on Nancy Fraser’s theory of abnormal justice which highlights interconnections between maldistribution of economic benefits, misrecognition of marginalized communities, and their misrepresentation in political processes. Fraser’s theory helps situate technologically mediated discrimination alongside other more conventional kinds of discrimination and injustice and privileges attention to economic, social, and political conditions of marginality. Using a thematic analysis of 30 interviews with civil society representatives across Europe’s human rights sector, we bring clarity to this idea of decentering. We show how many groups prioritize the specific experiences of marginalized groups and ‘see through’ technology, acknowledging its connection to larger systems of institutionalized oppression. This decentered approach contrasts the process-oriented perspective of tech-savvy civil society groups that shy from an analysis of systematic forms of injustice.     

‘The Girl About Town’: discussions of modernity and female youth in Drum magazine, 1951–1970

This article examines the trope of the ‘modern miss’ in Drum magazine 1951–1970 as a locus for debate over South African urban modernity. At the centre of Drum’s African urbanity was a debate between a progressive, positively ‘modern’ existence and an attendant fear of moral and social ‘breakdown’ in the apartheid city. The trope of the ‘modern miss’ drew upon both discourses. Drum’s fascination with the ‘modern miss’ reached a peak in the years 1957–1963, during which time she appeared prominently in the magazine as a symbolic pioneer of changing gender and generational relationships. However, this portrayal continued to coexist alongside the image of young women as the victims of moral degeneration. The ‘modern miss’ was increasingly differentiated from adult women within Drum’s pages, which distanced her from the new space won by political activists. By examining constructions of young womanhood, this article points to the gendering of ‘youth’ at the intersection of commercial print culture and shifting social relations in mid‐twentieth‐century South Africa. It is also suggested that understanding the social configurations of Drum’s modernity illuminates the gendered and generational responses of formal political movements as they conducted their own concurrent debates.     

Managerial discourse and the restructuring of a district authority

This paper arises out of continuing debates on the class position of managers and professionals in the context of public sector restructuring. Recently, attention has been focused on the self-sustaining and autonomous character of ‘professionalism’ in organisational dynamics. Such an approach underplays the cultural significance of managerial discourse as this is active in the reconstitution of professional work. In a case study of a district authority it is possible to highlight the complex nature of managerial discourse in its relations to both central and local government. This relation is above all mediated by shifting conceptions of public service on the part of managers and those in non-managerial positions. The paper concludes that due to the structural constraints under which local authorities operate directly managerial discourse is becoming increasingly significant in the reconstitution of professional and semi-professional identities.     

Demotic or demonic? Race,class and gender in ‘Gypsy’ reality TV

An intriguing shift in the public interest of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller minorities has been the rise of the ‘Gypsy’ reality TV star in shows across Europe (‘Gypsy’ is the word most often used in popular media culture). The latest phenomenon to hit the UK has been the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (Firecracker Films, Channel 4, 2010–2013), a flamboyant production that has garnered both huge audience shares and fierce criticism, with commentators berating its narrow, sensationalist focus. Drawing on both specialized literature on Roma minorities and current sociological debates on reality TV formats, this article raises questions about how the politics of the ‘demotic turn’ of such formats (as noted by Turner in 2004) can lean towards the demonic through emphasizing such groups as spectacular, extraordinary and above all, negatively different. Furthermore, this article shows how the series not only reproduces old stereotypes of Gypsies and Travellers as different, ethnicized others but is also heavily embroiled in UK gender and class discourses. Whilst the series claims to be a unique insight into a marginalized community, this close analysis discusses the wider politics within which it is embedded and how such representations can both popularize and undermine marginalized or minority groups.     

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.     

Untouchable cultures: memory,power and the construction of Dalit selfhood

In the context of the philosophical literature on multiculturalism, I argue in this article that models of cultural identity based entirely on the nonvoluntary possession of a set of cultural characteristics are seriously incomplete. In particular, such models cannot address the need, among some groups, to reconstruct, invent and imagine alternative positive identities as a result of historical injustice, and to fill in the content of ‘culture’ accordingly. As an illustrative case, I survey processes of identity construction among ‘Dalits’, members of former ‘untouchable’ and other lower caste communities in India, with a focus on the role of historical consciousness and existing power relations in the imagination of Dalit culture. Dalit strategies of identity negotiation reveal the understandable need, on the part of the members of this community in progress, to produce a cultural identity that makes sense, psychologically and politically, given who they cannot imagine themselves to be, due to the fact of historical oppression. My analysis does not merely target essentialism, nor is it meant to be deconstructive of identity claims. Rather, I highlight select elements within the negotiation of Dalit identity to illustrate (1) the relevance of real historical relations of discrimination and inequality to the construction of culture; (2) the equivocal character of ‘choice’ within this process; and (3) the emancipatory possibilities provided by imagined narratives of cultural selfhood.     

Protection studies: Challenging oppression and discrimination

Social work students on qualifying programmes should have abundant opportunities to challenge racism, sexism, disablism and other oppressions in society, that is in the macro environment. Equally they are required to confront oppression in the micro environments of the family home or small institution. One way of achieving this is through integration of the issues into the whole curriculum but also through a specific module devoted to protection studies.

Child and ‘elder’ abuse and the mistreatment of dependent younger adults is at one end of a continuum of oppression with societal discrimination at the other. Oppression, whatever its form, has four essential components: the misuse of power, processes of objectification, the silence of witnesses and the entrapment or accommodation of victims. Social work students who do not fully appreciate the dynamics of the abuse of power, and the perspectives of victims are ill equipped to challenge oppression.

A rationale for a protection studies module is given. The objectives and content of the proposed studies are also suggested. Protection studies, it is argued, are essential because social workers are faced with complex issues of power and control. Those who overlook the need to protect all of society's weakest members can be seen as facilitating abusers in the same way that those who do not embrace anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practices are perpetuating bigotry and injustice.     

Who should be considered ‘Indigenous’? A survey of ethnic groups in northern Thailand

On 22 May 2014, the Thai military conducted a coup d’état and discarded the previous constitution. In April 2015, a new draft constitution was prepared. Although eventually rejected by the military, it represented an exciting moment for activists, as it recognized the existence of ‘indigenous peoples’ (referred to as chon pheun muang in the draft). This prompted us to conduct interviews in 2015–2016 with people belonging to four different ethnic groups and living mainly in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand: the Lua, Khon Muang, Hmong, and Lisu, in order to determine their understandings of who should be considered ‘indigenous peoples’, and what rights should they have. The findings indicate that there is considerable variation amongst people regarding the meaning of the term ‘indigenous peoples’; who should be considered indigenous; and what rights those defined as being indigenous should be entitled to.     

‘Do I Still Belong Here?’ The Body's Boundary Work in the Israeli Fat Acceptance Movement

Boundary work is important in all social movements, but the instability of bodily-based categories makes boundary work particularly complicated in movements where bodily attributes are key to identity formation. Many Anglo-American fat acceptance groups have attempted to draw boundaries on the basis of two ‘ideal fat subjects’: one with a stable, unitary ‘resisting’ consciousness and/or one based on excluding those who are not ‘really’ fat or fat ‘enough.’ The former excludes members who display ambiguity or ambivalence in relation to accepting their bodies, while the latter excludes members seen as not fat enough to participate. In contrast, the Israeli fat acceptance community establishes its boundaries based on shared negative social reactions to body size. This increases its ability to tolerate ambiguity and contradictions among members, and to accept members who do not fit into fixed bodily identity categories. Simultaneously, this collective identity poses other problems, like reducing members to their identity as fat and encouraging constant preoccupation with weight or social oppression based on body size.     

From colonization to Zaitokukai: the legacy of racial oppression in the lives of Koreans in Japan

ABSTRACT

Some scholars have argued that anti-Korean oppression is disappearing from Japanese society, and that race is irrelevant to the current condition of Zainichi Koreans, Japan’s disenfranchised postcolonial minority. In contrast to these views, this article builds on racial formation theory to retrace the historical development of racism in Japan, and to reveal its continuing impact on the lives of Zainichi Koreans. It remarks that Zainichi Koreans have reacted to oppression in various ways, forging new identities and resisting using the means available to them. But it also contends that the persistence of discriminations and inequalities, as well as the recent rise of ultranationalist groups like Zaitokukai, are proofs of the ongoing marginalization and persecution of Koreans in Japan.     

Reflections on discrimination and oppression in contemporary social work practice in Bulgaria

This article draws on a study of awareness and sensitivity towards discrimination and oppression in contemporary practice in the Bulgarian social system through the perspectives of helping professionals and social clients. To that end, empirical data were gathered through a study of: the knowledge and awareness about anti-discrimination policy and legislation in the social sphere; awareness and perceptions of discrimination and oppression in society and the social work domain; and reflections on discrimination and oppression in the context of working relationships. Two questionnaires were designed and used to collect data in the period of April–May 2014 in the Southwestern region of Bulgaria. There were two groups consisting of 132 helping professionals (n?=?132) and 121 clients/service users (n?=?121). Both groups had low awareness of anti-discrimination legislation and regulations in the field of social policy and services. Discrimination and oppression were perceived as widespread phenomena that affected life of disadvantaged groups and also manifested in the social system. Ethnic minority service users needed information about their rights and community resources and claimed for larger involvement in the process of social work.     

Racial penal governance in Australia and moments of appearance: disrupting disappearance and visibilizing women on the inside

ABSTRACT

The paper considers the lives of women that are invisibilized by the racial penal governing mechanisms of the settler state. It demonstrates how a racial penal governance is configured historically by its interlockings with multiple and hierarchical systems of oppression that intervene differently in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and women, convict women, racialized diaspora and marginalized white women. The paper engages with four ‘moments of appearances’ that interrupt and speak back to racial penal governance. Mirzoeff’s The appearance of Black Lives Matter (2017, https://namepublications.org/item/2017/the-appearance-of-black-lives-matter/) theorization of decolonial spaces of appearance is integrated to the analysis of historical and recent moments of appearance visibilized in the testimonials of Thomas Brune, the Aboriginal youth Co-editor of the Flinders Island Chronicle in 1837 in the Wybalenna prison Camp and of Zoe, Alison and Pamela who have lived experience of prisons. These are embodied moments that make lives in prisons appear and matter.     

‘It just feels English rather than multicultural’: local interpretations of Englishness and non‐Englishness

Who, or what, is English? Drawing on qualitative interviews with white majority interviewees in three locations in England, this article explores local interpretations of English and Englishness. The article investigates the way members view their local environment as being ‘English’, and examines the criteria underpinning such interpretations. While various meanings are identified, it is found that Englishness is more often accomplished through talking about people and ethnicity rather than through the use of geography. That is, members defined the Englishness of place by referring explicitly to people. Rather than moving away from social categorical accounting, the category English was interpreted through the mobilisation of ‘non‐English’ others. In this rhetorical context, an English place is antithetical to a multiethnic place. Instead the term English is used to refer to white majority people. Although Englishness was defined in opposition to multiculture, this was not necessarily done in such a way as to exclude non‐English ‘others’. Above all, it reflects ambiguity amongst the white ethnic majority about how they can, and should, be named.     

‘Not Fanatical’: The Evolution of Sociable Piety and the Dialogic Subject in Multi-religious Indonesia

In Indonesia, the politics of ‘sociable piety’ has been reinvigorated by local Islamic sermon groups opposed to a range of public behaviours labelled as ‘fanatik’. United by an intra-Muslim alliance self-identified as being ‘not fanatical’, members of urban middle-class sermon groups shrewdly redraw moral boundaries across the long-term ‘traditionalist’ and ‘modernist’ divides. As revealed by my fieldwork between 2009 and 2012, the improvisation of ‘sociable piety’ is so prominent that not only optional rituals such as tarawih but obligatory prayers such as salat can be negotiated contextually. Using the multi-religious city of Salatiga as a window to see the broader religious trends in many religiously pluralistic Indonesian cities, this paper contends that the general appeal of Islamic self-cultivation in Indonesia has been simultaneously an individual ethical cultivation and social, even national, improvement. Theoretically, this study of the everyday Indonesian strategies to deal with the tension between piety and sociality is a modest attempt to rethink subjectivity that moves beyond either the docile or the deliberative self and towards the dialogic subject in a world of conflicting heterogeneity.     

Citizens of the margin: citizenship and youth participation on the Moroccan social web

This paper examines how marginalized youth in Morocco use YouTube to contest hegemonic discourses of state power and institutional practices of social exclusion. The paper analyses a user-generated, YouTube web-series, Tales of Bouzebal, as a performance of marginality and a social critique of state bureaucracies and institutions in the context of post-Arab Spring Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and discourse analyses, the paper argues that the new media practices of producing and consuming user-generated video are best understood as practices of cultural citizenship that contribute to social change through the production of counter-discursive political subjectivities among youth in MENA. The paper posits that the concept of citizenship needs to be expanded to account for citizen participatory media practices that contest the conditions of marginality and inequality sustained by normative definitions of citizenship.     

Sexual Orientation,Gender, and Gender Identity Microaggressions: Toward an Intersectional Framework for Social Work Research

ABSTRACT

Professional ethics compel social workers to address all forms of discrimination and oppression. Microaggressions can contribute to health disparities for marginalized groups; yet, little is known about the frequency, mechanisms, and impact of microaggressions on sexual minorities, cisgender women, and gender minorities—particularly for those with intersecting marginalized identities. This article extends microaggression literature by exploring interrelated constructs of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity microaggressions, and offering recommendations for future research using an intersectional lens to foster an integrated and complex understanding of microaggressions. Implications of an intersectional microaggression framework for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Fragile scenes,fractured communities: Tunisian Metal and sceneness

The paper proposes a reshaping of musical and cultural scene as a framework for the study of youth cultures. Developed in the ambit of post-subcultural theories, scene well represents the forces and flaws of such a category: high dynamism and ethnographic richness on one side; vagueness on the other. In order to reduce such vagueness, I conceptualise sceneness, intended as the substance of scenes, their density in networking and infrastructures. I use Arjun Appadurai’s concepts of locality and neighbourhoods to signify, respectively, sceneness and the actual scenes: in this way I redefine scene as a fragile construct that needs to be ritually revived, and that can work as a context for the development of new meanings and social groups. This implies conflict as a central element of scenes, one which can lead them to disequilibrium and disappearance. Such a redefinition is helpful for analysing fragile scenes which struggle to exist in troubled contexts, such as poor and hostile social environments. I provide, as an example, my ethnographic research on Metal in Tunisia. Caught between idealised images of community and an actual community which was conflictual and ‘fractured’, the Tunisian Metal scene lives a precarious existence threatened by material constraints and cultural marginality.     

Football hooligans: theory and evidence

This paper describes empirical research amongst hooligans. Such research has not always been valued. The significant factor in hooligan behaviour may be asserted to be the generation of violence in the lower working class and its dissemination amongst football fans. It is commonly asserted that hooligans operate in well-organized groups. It is argued here that such assertions need to be based on better evidence. A detailed account is given of the behaviour of a notorious group of fans and its key individuals. This shows that the ‘hard core’ fans were distinguished from others only by greater dedication to football and their club; they had a potentiality for violence but only of the low level kind that many others shared; they were more often involved simply because they went to more matches; they lacked organization. Nevertheless outsiders were, not unreasonably, sure they were a violent, organized group. This casts doubt on similar beliefs held about other groups unless beliefs are well substantiated. Detailed ethnography is valuable because it helps to sort out the nature of the ‘hooligan’ problem that requires to be theorized.