scholarly journals Knowledge, Experts and Accountability in School Governing Bodies

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Young
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Lay Knowledge ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Managerial Knowledge ◽  
School Governing Bodies

School governing bodies in England have considerable powers and responsibilities with regard to the education of pupils. This article explores how power relations operate, within governing bodies, through struggles over which types of knowledge are claimed and valued. The article draws on the analysis of policy and on ethnographic research in the governing bodies of four maintained schools to explore the complex interactions between lay, educational and managerial knowledge. The article suggests that educational and managerial expertise are privileged over lay knowledge. Hence, the concept of ‘lay’ knowledge, which is attached to external governors, is easily coopted by managerial knowledge as it does not have alternative expert knowledge attached to it.

The Limitations of Wintering Away From Customary Pastures in Relation to Dzud in Mongolia's Gobi Region

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Annika Ericksen
Keyword(s):  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Heavy Snowfall ◽  
Variable Environment ◽  
Migration Decisions ◽  
Complicating Factors ◽  
High Uncertainty

This article, based on ethnographic research in a Gobi district in Mongolia, focuses on herders 'wintering away' from customary winter campsites to access better pasture elsewhere. Because of the drawbacks associated with wintering at non-customary as opposed to 'home' pastures, many herders consider 'wintering away' to be a last resort. In the 2009–10 dzud (winter disaster), in Bayanlig soum, most households that wintered away were hit by unusually heavy snowfall and suffered higher livestock losses than those households that stayed at their customary campsites. While herders' migration decisions are guided by expert knowledge of the environment, complicating factors and high uncertainty can contribute to livestock losses despite their best efforts. Mobility is essential to herders' success in a variable environment, but not all forms and instances of migration are equally beneficial. This article draws on herders' accounts to explore a migration dilemma in the Gobi that may become more common.

scholarly journals The Day of the Rally: An ethnographic study of ‘ceremony as resistance’ and ‘resistance as ceremony’

Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Organisational Culture ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Frontline Employee ◽  
Stability And Instability ◽  
Employee Resistance ◽  
Workplace Resistance

The literature on organisational culture suggests that ceremonies or rituals reinforce control. By contrast, this article contributes to the literature on resistance, culture and ceremony by arguing that ceremony can also be understood as a form of resistance. It does so through drawing on ethnographic research, first, to explore how a ceremonial 1-day rally during an academic dispute was productive for frontline employee resistance (ceremony as resistance). Second, it considers how such resistance can also be productive in generating consent, for it is infused with and reproduces established norms, subjectivities and power relations (resistance as ceremony). Finally, it is asserted that resistance can be productive in fostering a subjectivity characterised by stability and instability and so practices such as a rally are necessary to try to stabilise both the organisation and the subjectivity of resistance. The article therefore illustrates the ambiguity of productive resistance which has been neglected to date. These insights and arguments indicate that all forms of workplace resistance are decaf, for they are imbued with the context and norms through which they arise. Nevertheless, resistance remains dangerous for those in positions of authority because it means that power is never totalising and so outcomes continue to be uncertain.

scholarly journals Ampa Co’i Ndai: Local Understanding of Kafā’a in Marriage among Eastern Indonesian Muslims

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 311
Author(s):  
Atun Wardatun
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Government Employee ◽  
Eastern Indonesia ◽  
Gender Power ◽  
A Site

This article draws on an ethnographic research that focuses on the cultural practice of female-paid matrimonial funding, ampa co’i ndai (ACN), among semi-urban Bimanese Muslims of Eastern Indonesia. The practice takes place when the bride, with the help of her parents and female relatives, pays her marriage payment (co’i, including mahr). It is used only when the prospective groom is a government employee, for it is assumed as a social status raiser. During the declaration of marriage, the payment is announced to have come from the groom. This article uses the practice as a site to examine the particularity of practising Islamic laws in everyday life of eastern Indonesian Muslims. The narratives of nineteen Muslim women who have been involved in ACN reveal what its functions as an equalising mechanism, through which gendered power-relations is minimised while perpetuating traditional position of wives and husbands as a complementary couple within their family as well as before society. I argue that  ACN has been seen as a modified understanding of kafā’a in fiqh which means “equality” to “complementarity.” However, this local understanding of kafā’a is a testament to the complexities of gender power relations.[Artikel ini adalah penelitian etnografi tentang praktik AMPA co’i ndai (ACN) di kalangan masyarakat semi-urban muslim Bima di kawasan timur Indonesia. Budaya ini dilaksanakan dengan cara pengantin perempuan, dengan bantuan orang tua dan saudara perempuannya, menyediakan biaya pernikahan (co’i dan mahar). Tradisi ini dipraktikkan hanya ketika calon pengantin pria adalah pegawai negeri, yang diasumsikan memiliki status sosial yang lebih. Namun, saat resepsi pernikahan, deiumumkan bahwa biaya-biaya berasal dari pengantin pria. Narasi kehidupan dari sembilan belas perempuan yang terlibat mengungkapkan fungsi ACN sebagai mekanisme penyetaraan gender dengan meminimalkan relasi kuasa serta nmendudukkan pasangan untuk saling melengkapi dalam keluarga maupun masyarakat. Praktik ACN dapat dilihat sebagai bentuk lokal pemahaman konsep kafā’a, yang berarti “kesetaraan” untuk “melengkapi”. Namun, pemahaman lokal kafā’a ini merupakan bukti kompleksitas relasi kuasa dalam masalah gender.]

scholarly journals The influence of intangible forms of capital on farms 

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (No. 6) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
M. Lošťák
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Types Of Knowledge

Intangible issues, which are often very difficult to be quantified become more and more the field of interest of social sciences. There are many research works demonstrating that various types of knowledge, institutions, social networks, and social relations have a great influence on human activities as for efficient achievement of the actors’ goals. This paper relates expert knowledge (shaping professional qualification) to human capital and tacit knowledge (understood as a broader, general, and contextual knowledge) to cultural capital. Both forms of capital exist in their primary form only in concrete individual persons. Concerning collective persons (firm, community), cultural and human capitals are transformed into intellectual capital. Work with specific knowledge, tacit knowledge and capitals corresponding to them shows the role of social networks and social capital in their organization. Using the analysis of two farms based on natural experiment, the paper demonstrates the role of tacit knowledge and cultural capital (opposing to the overestimated role of expert knowledge and human capital). The conclusions outline social determination of both types of knowledge through social networks and social capital needed for an efficient work of a farm. 

scholarly journals Theory driven analysis of social class and health outcomes using UK nationally representative longitudinal data

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Welcome Wami ◽  
Gerry McCartney ◽  
Mel Bartley ◽  
Duncan Buchanan ◽  
Ruth Dundas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Linear Regression Models ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Variation Explained ◽  
Market Relations

Abstract Background Social class is frequently used as a means of ranking the population to expose inequalities in health, but less often as a means of understanding the social processes of causation. We explored how effectively different social class mechanisms could be measured by longitudinal cohort data and whether those measures were able to explain health outcomes. Methods Using a theoretically informed approach, we sought to map variables within the National Child Development Study (NCDS) to five different social class mechanisms: social background and early life circumstances; habitus and distinction; exploitation and domination; location within market relations; and power relations. Associations between the SF-36 physical, emotional and general health outcomes at age 50 years and the social class measures within NCDS were then assessed through separate multiple linear regression models. R2 values were used to quantify the proportion of variance in outcomes explained by the independent variables. Results We were able to map the NCDS variables to the each of the social class mechanisms except ‘Power relations’. However, the success of the mapping varied across mechanisms. Furthermore, although relevant associations between exposures and outcomes were observed, the mapped NCDS variables explained little of the variation in health outcomes: for example, for physical functioning, the R2 values ranged from 0.04 to 0.10 across the four mechanisms we could map. Conclusions This study has demonstrated both the potential and the limitations of available cohort studies in measuring aspects of social class theory. The relatively small amount of variation explained in the outcome variables in this study suggests that these are imperfect measures of the different social class mechanisms. However, the study lays an important foundation for further research to understand the complex interactions, at various life stages, between different aspects of social class and subsequent health outcomes.

scholarly journals GALIA, ISTORIJA IR GENEALOGIJA: FRIEDRICHAS NIETZSCHE IR MICHELIS FOUCAULT

Problemos ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrius Bielskis
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
The Will

Straipsnyje aptariamos Friedricho Nietzsche’s ir Michelio Foucault genealogijos sampratos. Teigiama, kad genealogija gilinasi į istoriją ne dėl įvykių, mūšių ir karų aprašymo, bet dėl diskursyvių režimų ir praktikų, kurios formuoja mūsų tapatybę. Glaudus pažinimo/tiesos bei galios saitas yra esminis tiek Nietzsche’s, tiek Foucault genealogijai. Foucault dispositive (suprantamumo režimas) yra viena iš esminių sąvokų tiek istoriškumo sampratai, tiek studijuojant pačią istoriją. Nyčiška valios galiai idėja transformuojama į pažinimo tipais grindžiamą ir besiremiančią galios santykių strategijų idėją. Daroma išvada, jog Foucault genealogija redukuoja prasmę į galios santykius. Taip pat teigiama, kad Foucault sampratoje istorija yra pažini ne dėl jos vidinio prasmingumo, bet dėl to, jog žinios ir diskursyvios praktikos, būdamos esminės istorijos vyksmo procesui, yra suvokiamos kaip taktikos ir strategijos.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: genealogija, istorijos filosofija, galia, diskursas.Power, History and Genealogy: Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel FoucaultAndrius Bielskis SummaryThe essay explores Friedrich Nietzsche’s and Michel Foucault’s accounts of genealogy. It argues that genealogy sees human history not in terms of events, battles and wars (i.e. through empirical facts), but in terms of discursive regimes and practices which form our subjectivity. The link between knowledge/truth and power plays crucial role in both Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s accounts of genealogy. Foucault’s notion of dispositive (the regime of intelligibility) serves as a key concept in his approach to history. The Nietzschean idea of the will to power is transformed into the idea of strategies of relations of forces supporting and supported by types of knowledge. The essay concludes that Foucault’s genealogy reduces meaning to power relations. It argues that in Foucault’s thought human history is intelligible not because of its inner meaning, but because knowledge and discourses, which play a key role in human history, are understood in terms of tactics and strategies.Keywords: genealogy, philosophy of history, power, discourse.

Women, Fair Trade Tea, and Everyday Entrepreneurialism in Rural Darjeeling

2018 ◽  
pp. 240-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debarati Sen
Keyword(s):  
Fair Trade ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Local Translation ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Tea Production ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Trade Interventions

Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research in Darjeeling’s non-plantation tea producing areas, this chapter highlights the gendered effects of Fair Trade certification of organic non-plantation tea on rural tea cooperatives. Through a focus on rural women’s everyday entrepreneurialism and their run-ins with the transnational Fair Trade bureaucracy, the chapter underscores how Fair Trade interventions can inadvertently strengthen patriarchal/gendered power relations in Fair Trade certified tea cooperatives in Darjeeling. It highlights how women tea farmers also creatively use specific Fair Trade interventions to defend their own entrepreneurial priorities and rupture Fair Trade’s imbrications with local patriarchies. Women tea farmers creatively juxtapose Fair Trade and swaccha vyāpār, a local translation of Fair Trade, to defend their own entrepreneurial ambitions and enact new modalities of women’s collective self-governance. This chapter brings much needed attention to women’s contemporary economic lives and their role in tea production in non-plantation rural locations of Darjeeling.

scholarly journals The nature and role of experiential knowledge for environmental conservation

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
IOAN FAZEY ◽  
JOHN A. FAZEY ◽  
JANET G. SALISBURY ◽  
DAVID B. LINDENMAYER ◽  
STEVE DOVERS
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Quantitative Information ◽  
Environmental Conservation ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Conservation Actions ◽  
Types Of Information

Understanding the nature and role of experiential knowledge for environmental conservation is a necessary step towards understanding if it should be used and how it might be applied with other types of knowledge in an evidence-based approach. This paper describes the nature of experiential and expert knowledge. It then discusses the role of experiential knowledge as a complement to scientific knowledge and explains the interplay between experiential knowledge with conservation research and practice using a simple conceptual model of how individuals learn. There are five main conclusions: (1) because experiential knowledge will always play a role in decision-making, enhancing ability to learn from experiences (including research) will have a significant influence on the effectiveness of conservation outcomes; (2) while experiential knowledge is qualitatively very different from quantitative information, both are important and complementary; (3) some experiential knowledge can be expressed quantitatively, but experiential knowledge can be difficult to isolate as single facts or propositions and qualitative methods will therefore often be required to elicit experiential knowledge; (4) because each person's expertise is unique, when using experiential knowledge the extent of a person's experience and its relevance to a particular problem need to be specified; and (5) as with any form of knowledge, there are limitations to that derived from personal experience. Synthesis and communication of research is therefore essential to help prevent erroneous thinking and, where possible, experiential knowledge should be used in conjunction with other types of information to guide conservation actions.

scholarly journals How to Sustain Fisheries: Expert Knowledge from 34 Nations

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Nilsson ◽  
Elizabeth A. Fulton ◽  
Craig R. Johnson ◽  
Marcus Haward
Keyword(s):  
Fisheries Management ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Fish Stocks ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Marine Governance ◽  
Impact On Biodiversity

Ensuring productive and sustainable fisheries involves understanding the complex interactions between biology, environment, politics, management and governance. Fisheries are faced with a range of challenges, and without robust and careful management in place, levels of anthropogenic disturbance on ecosystems and fisheries are likely to have a continuous negative impact on biodiversity and fish stocks worldwide. Fisheries management agencies, therefore, need to be both efficient and effective in working towards long-term sustainable ecosystems and fisheries, while also being resilient to political and socioeconomic pressures. Marine governance, i.e., the processes of developing and implementing decisions over fisheries, often has to account for socioeconomic issues (such as unemployment and business developments) when they attract political attention and resources. This paper addresses the challenges of (1) identifying the main issues in attempting to ensure the sustainability of fisheries, and (2) how to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and governance of marine systems. Utilising data gained from a survey of marine experts from 34 nations, we found that the main challenges perceived by fisheries experts were overfishing, habitat destruction, climate change and a lack of political will. Measures suggested to address these challenges did not demand any radical change, but included extant approaches, including ecosystem-based fisheries management with particular attention to closures, gear restrictions, use of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) and improved compliance, monitoring and control.

scholarly journals Rural Schooling and Good Life in Late Socialist Laos

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Roy Huijsmans ◽  
Piti
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Rural Schooling ◽  
Late Socialism

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic research in northern Laos, this article analyses articulations of a good life in primary school textbook imagery and how this resonates with everyday life in rural upland communities. This is contrasted with children’s sketches of a good life found in the classrooms and ethnographic accounts of moments of ‘good time’ in the context of rural schooling. It is argued that these latter moments constitute brief instances of a good life in the present. Given the deeply hierarchical power relations in which rural education is embedded, not all of these good times stay good for very long. This is reflective of the condition of late socialism in rural areas.

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