Women and politeness: The Javanese example

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Smith-Hefner

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between the status of Javanese women and the politeness or formality of their speech. I examine the hypothesis that, cross-culturally, women will speak more politely than men as an expression of their secondary status. Ethnographic research from East Java reveals that Javanese women are required to be more polite within the family where they receive less polite speech and offer more. In the wider context of Javanese culture, however, it is Javanese men who strive to cultivate politeness for the purpose of expressing their superior status and authority. The potentially coercive or political power of politeness in Javanese is related to the ambiguity of the polite codes themselves, which may be used to express both deference or humility on the one hand and status, refinement, and power on the other. Speech patterns are linked to a number of social-structural variables: patterns of socialization, models of appropriate male and female linguistic behavior, and men's and women's social roles and typical spheres of interest. Where, as in Java, polite codes are associated with public power and control, we should expect that men may be especially concerned with the cultivation of polite styles of speech. (Politeness, gender roles, linguistic socialization, Indonesia)

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drew S. Mendoza ◽  
Sharon P. Krone

A business-owning family and a soon-to-be-wed couple often face two mutually exclusive goals that seem impossible to reconcile. On the one hand, a couple considering marriage wants to believe that love alone will keep them together. On the other hand, statistics today say there is a good chance the relationship will not last. A prenuptial agreement provides the protection an individual or the family may want against a possible divorce, but the process by which the document is introduced and negotiated can deplete the relationship of intimacy. How can a woman from a wealthy business-owning family express and reinforce the emotional commitment and trust she has for her partner while presenting a prenuptial agreement] How can a son administer a prenuptial agreement to his fiancee without controlling the process or outcome of his spouse's financial welfare] How can a family require a prenuptial agreement without jeopardizing their future relationship with the newlyweds] In the following interview, Judy Barber, a consultant and licensed marriage and family counselor specializing in the psychology of money, outlines several recommendations for families and couples who are considering a prenuptial agreement.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara B. Moore

In the following essay I draw on existing literature to suggest that homebirth represents the convergence of knowledge, power, and control during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I pay particular attention to the ways in which working-class women are disadvantaged by the medicalized model of childbirth and are less likely to acquire extensive knowledge about birth, less likely to feel as though they have power over their own birthing experiences, and less likely to exercise control over obstetric interventions and their birth environments. This is a problem that is, on the one hand, caused by a problematic health care system and inadequately staffed public health clinics and, on the other, a model of childbirth that values medicalized birth knowledge over embodied birth knowledge. I argue that all women can and should be made more aware of the various birthing options that are available to them so they can make birthing decisions that are not based solely on fears of obstetric dysfunction. I also encourage birth activists to explore the relationship between social class and birth options so their advocacy efforts can better address women's needs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 934-949
Author(s):  
Husna Siraji Nyambia ◽  
Hamdino Hamdan

Purpose This study extensively aims to investigate the effects of different aspects of corporate governance (CG) mechanism, including board size, executive directors’ shareholdings, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality, a family member as the CEO and/or chairperson of the board, independent directors in remuneration committee and number of board meeting, on executive directors’ remuneration in small firms listed on Bursa Malaysia (BM). Design/methodology/approach The sample of this study consists of 173 bottom-listed companies from Bursa Malaysia in Year 2010. The Year 2010 was chosen because the disclosure of remuneration committee activities and directors’ pay structure is required under the revised Malaysia Code of Corporate Governance, 2007. Furthermore, the period selected is after the global economic crisis (2008), which may have an effect on the remuneration structure in small firms. The ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between remuneration as dependent variable and other independent variables. Findings A finding from this study reveals that there is a significant positive relationship between executive ownership and executive remuneration, and between board size and executive remuneration. The results provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. This indicates that the independent directors are not truly independent to monitor and control the firm activities, including minimizing the excessive remuneration. Research limitations/implications This study examines how the corporate governance (CG) affects remuneration among 173 small firms in Malaysia based on market capitalization, for one year, 2010. Hence, the results may not be generalizable to other periods or types of the companies. This shows the possibility of the absence of some additional variables in the research model and hence a limitation to the findings of the study. Although the study is being parsimonious in the choice of relevant variables, prior literature serves the guide in the selection of the used variables. This therefore gives room for future research using the potential omitted variables. Furthermore, the study focuses on total remuneration, such as fees, salaries, bonuses and benefits in kind, which makes aggregate directors’ remuneration. However, this study did not consider the remuneration related to stock options. Finally, this study only uses secondary data; hence, it could be interesting to use other instruments to collect data like a questionnaire to add more weight to the research. This study only uses one-year data; therefore, impact of changes between years cannot be analysed. Originality/value Results of the study provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. They reduce the effectiveness of non-executive directors because most of them are appointed by a family member and not socially responsible to their stakeholders.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
D. V. Mukhetdinov

This paper focuses on the analysis of the Islamic thinker Kh. A. ElFadl’s political and legal conception. This conception assesses the potential of the Islamic tradition for the legitimization of democracy. We indicates that El-Fadl’s concept is not another ‘Islamic democracy’ project, but an analysis of the relationship between democratic ethos and Islamic political values. It is demonstrated that an adequate understanding of this relationship requires a comprehension of Qur’anic anthropology — the idea of human call, in particular. The logical transition from acceptance of God’s sovereignty and the status of man as His earthly governor (a successive authority’) to the inadmissibility of usurpation of power is considered reasonable. The article proves that El-Fadl allows historical variability of the forms of checks and balances that impede usurpation of power. Therefore, he emphasizes precisely the democratic ethos, and not a particular political theory or a specific political regime. The irregularity of the monopolization of a democratic ethos by the Western culture, on the one hand, and the monopolization of Shari‘a by Islamists, on the other, is thoroughly noted. In the conclusion the author outlines a general understanding of the nature of Shari‘a and the Shari‘ah foundations of political practice in the concept of El-Fadl.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Gidaris

This paper examines the relationship between interactive life insurance companies and their policyholders and the way in which wearable fitness devices are deployed by these companies as data-generating surveillance technologies instead of personal health and fitness devices. Working within an expanded framework of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2015), I argue that while the notion of self-care generally associated with wearable fitness devices is underpinned by neoliberal constructs, the incentivization of interactive life insurance programs works to obscure the immense value placed on information capital. This paper briefly considers the legal loopholes involved in the harvesting of sensitive health and fitness information from consumer wearables and suggests that the push toward fitness trackers has little to do with any real concerns for the health and fitness of consumers and policyholders. Lastly, I consider different forms of unwaged labour in the relationship between policyholders and interactive life insurance programs. I contend that policyholders do not recognise the free and immaterial labour that goes into sustaining the data-based business model that interactive life insurance companies and social media platforms use and rely on for profit. In so doing, they relinquish power and control over the data they work to produce, only so that the information can be commodified and used against them.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 411-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Mund ◽  
Christine Finn ◽  
Birk Hagemeyer ◽  
Franz J. Neyer

When examining the associations between personality traits and partner relationships, the majority of studies have focused on the one-way effects of personality traits on the quality and stability of relationships. Recent work, however, has shown that relationships likewise retroact on personality traits and their development. Apart from these mutual influences, recent studies have also emphasized the necessity of considering both members of a couple in order to understand how their personalities and perceptions of the relationship interact. We review the status quo of research on personality-relationship transactions and outline suggestions for future research that move the focus from predicting the interplay between the two domains to explaining how personality traits and partner relationships dynamically interact. Specifically, we propose the need for (a) a functional perspective on personality traits, (b) a differentiated view of behavior, and (c) acknowledgment of the dynamic nature of traits and relationships in appropriate analysis models.


Author(s):  
Mohan Jyoti Dutta

Power constitutes discourse and is in turn, constituted by discourse. Power mediates the relationship between economics and discourse, working through discourse to reproduce the extractive interests of capital. It is on hand, embedded in economic structures; on the other hand, it is often enacted through discursive processes, discursive spaces, and discursive tactics. A conceptual framework for theorizing power is offered in this overview in order to understand the various approaches to power in communication studies, the divergences between these approaches and the convergences between them. A Marxist analysis of power as rooted in economic structures and exerted in oppression is positioned in relationship with post-structuralist reading of power as fragmented and multi-sited. Reading power and control through a framework of intersectionality foregrounds the intersections between class, race, gender, caste, and colonial formations. The various sites of workings of power are examined, from interpersonal relationships, to groups, to organizations and communities, to mediated spaces. The roles of communication strategy, communicative inversions, and communicative erasure are articulated in the context of power, depicting the ways in which power plays out through communication. These concepts then grapple with the contemporary context of power and communication in the realm of the digital, and outline potential anchors for communication scholarship seeking to explain & resist power amid the digital turn in the neoliberal transformation of the globe. Attention is paid to the extractive industries, poor working conditions, big data industries driving behavior change, and digital development markets that are continually consolidating new forms of capitalist profiteering.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Kiritsis

The aim of the study is twofold. On the one hand it concerns the measurement and the examination of the subjects’ self-concept and on the other the detection and justification of the role of family in its configuration. The study analyzed the data collected from the answers to a research questionnaire of 1344 15-and 16-year-old school students in the Prefecture of Thessaloniki, Greece) with the use of a stratified random sampling technique. The first important finding concerned the high degree of the general self-concept of the adolescents. Among the seven specific sectors of the general self-concept a major variation was noted, with the higher average to be traced in the relationship that the students have configured with their peers and the lower one in the valuation of their academic competence. The second important finding was the ascertainment of the essential contribution of the family.


Scrinium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 281-294
Author(s):  
Alexander V. Pigin

(1567) is a Northern Russian hagiographical work devoted to the founder of the St. Niсholas Alexander-Oshevensky Monastery, which was located nearby the town of Kargopol. The article analyses hagiographer Theodosius’ techniques for dealing with literary sources, especially with two Byzantine texts, The Ladder by John Climacus and The Life of Alexis the Man of God. Theodosius uses these sources to develop one of the major themes of his own work, that is, the relationship between St. Alexander and his family. The family theme bears ambiguous meaning. On the one hand, the family is rejected from the standpoint of monastic asceticism, but on the other hand, it is rendered as the ultimate value and stronghold of Christian morality.



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