Community Foundations as Network Conveners: Structuring Collective Agency for Child Education & Development System Impact

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Sedgwick ◽  
Robin H Lemaire ◽  
Jessica Wirgau ◽  
Lauren K McKeague
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Structuration Theory ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Education Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Anchor Institutions ◽  
Community Foundations ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
The Public Sphere

Abstract The resource investment and flexibility necessary to support the development of collective agency among autonomous organizational actors can be substantial. Public agencies, with their rigid budget cycles and regulatory burdens, often struggle with providing the resources needed to forge this type of system building to address complex community issues. Community foundations, as anchor institutions in communities, exhibit financial and social power, flexibility, and a reputation for broad community interests that position them to be such conveners. Framing our examination with structuration theory, we conducted a longitudinal mixed methods action research project from Fall 2015 to Spring 2019 to document how a community foundation dislodged schemas and convened a purpose-oriented network to forge collective agency. Data collection included surveying 40 system providers before the launching of the network and 49 providers three years later, interviews with 10 network participants and field observations of 21 network meetings. Network analysis was employed to examine the changes to the system while qualitative methods were used to analyze the processes behind those changes. The implications of this study are that emphasizing the resources and processes that contribute to building collective action broadens perspectives about which organizations may be well suited to convening networks in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Progressive Social Movements and the Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Power ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Public Sphere

Because of the field’s foundational concerns with both social power and media, communication scholars have long been at the center of scholarly thought at the intersection of social change and technology. Early critical scholarship in communication named media technologies as central in the creation and maintenance of dominant political ideologies and as a balm against dissent among the masses. This work detailed the marginalization of groups who faced restricted access to mass media creation and exclusion from representational discourse and images, alongside the connections of mass media institutions to political and cultural elites. Yet scholars also highlighted the ways collectives use media technologies for resistance inside their communities and as interventions in the public sphere. Following the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s, and the granting of public access to the Internet in 1991, communication scholars faced a medium that seemed to buck the one-way and gatekeeping norms of others. There was much optimism about the democratic potentials of this new technology. With the integration of Internet technology into everyday life, and its central role in shaping politics and culture in the 21st century, scholars face new questions about its role in dissent and collective efforts for social change. The Internet requires us to reconsider definitions of the public sphere and civil society, document the potentials and limitations of access to and creation of resistant and revolutionary media, and observe and predict the rapidly changing infrastructures and corresponding uses of technology—including the temporality of online messaging alongside the increasingly transnational reach of social movement organizing. Optimism remains, but it has been tempered by the realities of the Internet’s limitations as an activist tool and warnings of the Internet-enabled evolution of state suppression and surveillance of social movements. Across the body of critical work on these topics particular characteristics of the Internet, including its rapidly evolving infrastructures and individualized nature, have led scholars to explore new conceptualizations of collective action and power in a digital media landscape.

scholarly journals Role of Spiritual Intelligence in Public Policy in the African American Pentecostal Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
James B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Spiritual Intelligence ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Policy Engagement ◽  
The Church

Abstract Although many U.S. faith-based organizations have become partners with the government, the African American Pentecostal Church (aapc), which holds spirituality as a means of serving humanity as its theological framework, has remained a silent partner in public policy engagement. With the framework of spiritual intelligence, this qualitative case study addresses the perceptions of African American Pentecostal leaders regarding how the church’s theology may have an impact on the public policy engagement of its parishioners. Twelve African American Pentecostal Bishops were interviewed, and data were coded and analyzed to identify themes. Results revealed that participants use their spirituality to connect with public policy issues that relate to their personal experiences. Findings also indicated that the aapc is not an organized denomination, but rather a conglomeration of factions. Lack of an organized epicenter and lack of training and development of its leaders prevent this church from engaging in the public sphere. Although members embrace their responsibility to care for the needs of others, the church lacks a collective response to community issues. Findings may be used to prepare the next generation of aapc leaders to unify the church to offer spiritual solutions to public policy issues.

Framing and Exposing Community Issues through Video Participatory Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-53
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Mathews ◽  
Maria K. Lovett
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Perspective Analysis

Video participatory research (VPR) is an emergent methodology that bridges visual methods with the epistemology of participatory research. This approach is motivated by the “crisis of representation” or “reflective turn” (Gubrium & Harper, 2013) that promotes research conducted with or by participants, conceptualizing research as praxis (Lather, 1991). In this manuscript, the authors argue that VPR can be used to explore issues directly impacting individuals involved with adult education and vocational training. Primary investigators work with community co-researchers to document issues in the community, analyze this audio-visual material, and produce and distribute video projects, exposing policy makers and key stakeholders to a community's concerns. When implementing the VPR process research teams account for intentionality of form and content, apply a multi-perspective analysis to the complex layers of data produced by video, and plan for distribution of work on the personal and local level as well as in the public sphere (i.e., at the micro and macro level).

Fake news and the discursive construction of technology companies’ social power

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 952-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Creech
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Technology Industry ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Discursive Field ◽  
Technology Industries

In the research and commentary around ‘fake news’, there has been growing attention to the way the phrase evidences a growing field of technology industry critique, operating as a shorthand for understanding the nature of social media companies’ power over the public sphere. This article interrogates elite and popular discourses surrounding ‘fake news’, using the tools of critical discourse analysis to show how public commentary constitutes a discursive field that renders tech industry power intelligible by first defining the issue of fake news as a sociotechnical problem, then debating the infrastructural nature of platform companies’ social power. This article concludes that, as commentary moves beyond a focus on fake news and critiques of technology industries grow more complex, strains of elite discourse reveal productive constraints on tech power, articulating the conditions under which limits on that power are understood as legitimate.

Performance, performativity and melodrama as dramatic substance in Hindi film song sequences

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-147
Author(s):  
Anna Morcom
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
New Method ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Key Nodes ◽  
Hindi Film

Abstract In this article, I explore the dramatic substance of Hindi film songs through an approach based in performance studies, which presents performance as the very stuff of social life, social identities and social power. Given this, the enactment of song sequences in the Hindi film narrative cannot be dramatically benign, or just excess, or just pleasure (however intense). I describe how song sequences perform and thereby manifest and reify love and romance in the film narrative. Using work on public spectacle and power by Foucault and the public sphere by Vasudevan, I further analyse how they connect the public, emotions of love, and social or familial struggle in various ways, embodying key nodes of melodrama. I then reflect, in these terms, on the recent curtailment of performed songs in Hindi films. I thereby present a new method for analysing the dramatic agency of screened or background songs in films.

scholarly journals IN-DEPTH ISLAMIC STUDY OF “RUMAH ISLAMI” IN KELURAHAN SEI KERA HILIR I KECAMATAN MEDAN PERJUANGAN, MEDAN

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-311
Author(s):  
M. N. Loebis ◽  
D Lindarto ◽  
D.D. Harisdani
Keyword(s):  
Community Service ◽  
Community Services ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Education Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
University Lecturers

As implementation of Tri Dharma is a Community Services. This activity is carried out directly in the field by involving the public and university lecturers together in an effort to overcome the practical application of science in a comprehensive community issues. This community service focused on the in-depth problems of Islamic studies at the Serikat Amal Baik mosque in Kelurahan Sei Kera Hilir I, precisely on Jalan Ibrahim Umar Gg. Nikmat No. 7, Medan city. Working together with the partner Badan Kemakmuran Masjid (BKM) and teachers at SDIT Zahira school, conduct “Rumah Islami” studies and perform continued of comfort supporting infrastructure improvement activities as part of the worship of Islam by Zahira SDIT teachers joining together the surrounding communities. This community service activities that have been carried out concluded that the targets and outcomes achieved by seeing the enthusiasm of the participants in the Islamic spiritual education development framework on an ongoing basis.

Framing and Exposing Community Issues through Video Participatory Research

2021 ◽  
pp. 747-760
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Mathews ◽  
Maria K. Lovett
Keyword(s):  
Participatory Research ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Perspective Analysis

Video participatory research (VPR) is an emergent methodology that bridges visual methods with the epistemology of participatory research. This approach is motivated by the “crisis of representation” or “reflective turn” (Gubrium & Harper, 2013) that promotes research conducted with or by participants, conceptualizing research as praxis (Lather, 1991). In this manuscript, the authors argue that VPR can be used to explore issues directly impacting individuals involved with adult education and vocational training. Primary investigators work with community co-researchers to document issues in the community, analyze this audio-visual material, and produce and distribute video projects, exposing policy makers and key stakeholders to a community's concerns. When implementing the VPR process research teams account for intentionality of form and content, apply a multi-perspective analysis to the complex layers of data produced by video, and plan for distribution of work on the personal and local level as well as in the public sphere (i.e., at the micro and macro level).

The Right to Privacy Is Political: Power, the Boundary Between Public and Private, and Sexual Harassment

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 45-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Marie Roth
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Personal Privacy ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

This paper concerns the relationship between power and the ability to defend the night of privacy. The discourse of public and private spheres has shifted historically, engendering arbitrary and changing legal and cultural definitions of the boundary between public and private. Historic specifications of this boundary have become untenable as increasing numbers of women entered the paid labor force. Recent formulations define the boundary of privacy as an area within each individual's life. However, greater social power increases the ability to protect personal privacy because it offers the ability to define and protect the “private” from scrutiny. After outlining the history of the shifting public/private boundary, this argument is applied to sexual harassment. Explicitly sexual types of harassment are related to the public/private boundary in two ways. First, they challenge the boundary itself, representing the occurrence of “private” conduct in the “public” sphere of work and education. Second, sexual harassment reveals the importance of social power in defining and defending one's privacy. Sexual harassment represents the extreme on a continuum of communication patterns between status unequals, and an invasion of the sexual privacy of the target.

Neoliberal populism and governmentality in Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cemil Boyraz
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Public ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Legitimacy Crisis ◽  
Ruling Party

This article is based on the question “How does the current governing party in Turkey, namely Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), reproduce its social power?” In order to answer this question, it is suggested that a combination of the different techniques of governmentality of the ruling party should be analyzed, with particular reference to the policies and institutions reconfiguring the role of the state and the notion of public deliberation in the midst of the rising discontents of neoliberalism in Turkey. As an instance of such a technique of neoliberal governmentality in populist content, the formation of the communication centers by the AKP in Turkey will be investigated. For this purpose, firstly, the rise of the populism will be related to the increasing need for channels of political participation and a solution to public demands in the midst of rising authoritarian tendencies, in order to solve the political legitimacy crisis as well as creating new forms of representation for the politically excluded masses. Then, secondly, the main cornerstones of the AKP populism will be analyzed and the formation and the future of the communication centers as a particular case will be discussed in details. Lastly, it will be argued that those centers do not only reflect the populist concerns of the governing party but also serve as a crucial source of electoral success, as well as managing tensions stemming from the neoliberal configuration of the public sphere and state–citizen relations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document