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Through a blend of personal narrative and a survey of recent historical scholarship on gender, race and reproduction, this article asks readers to consider how our own proximity to power, privilege and oppression shapes the ways we approach the study of history. It argues that age‐old disciplinary dogmas exist for a reason and they can unintentionally limit our imaginations. It also suggests how those of us for whom the academy was never intended can help push those scholarly boundaries and perhaps even breathe new life into a disappearing discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that a new norm has emerged in former gay and now gentrified neighborhoods. Straight upper‐ middle‐class residents claim to be gay‐friendly—an attitude that has not erased hierarchies, but has both displaced and instituted boundaries. Based on fieldwork in Park Slope, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, this article highlights that gay‐friendly markers signal acceptance as much as they work to establish heterosexuals’ moral authority and social privileges. Sociability between neighbors and friends is characterized by exchanges and interactions that have an impact on heterosexuals, yet remain primarily checked and filtered by them. In the domestic sphere, which is still structured by heterosexual (and gender) norms, significant restrictions on homosexuality persist. By analyzing progressiveness in rela‐ tion to class and race, this study brings to light persistent power relations. It thus aims to contribute to the discussion about the extent, limits, and lingering ambivalences of a growing acceptance of homosexuality, which constitutes a significant dimension of so‐called inclusive cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against neoliberal and new managerial pushes in higher education, educators have a responsibility to engage students in transformational learning and prepare them for the complex world of work. This article describes the use of emancipatory praxis by engaging students in identifying structural sources of advantages and/or privilege, and reports on the data obtained from the written and oral reports of undergraduate social work students taking part in a teaching session on critical reflexivity at a Norwegian University. The data reveal the power of emancipatory praxis in heightening consciousness of intersecting social criteria, such as nationality, race, gender, religion and sexuality in creating obstacles and/or access to power, status and resources. The article lends voice to the students and details their responses to the exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work educators are tasked with students to incorporate into practice the skills of engaging diversity and difference, advancing human rights and challenging social injustice. Students are asked to engage with concepts and practices that confront the status quo of institutionalized oppression. Yet, students may not be exposed to examination of the ways in which social work practitioners may unintentionally recreate and reinforce hierarchies of inequity through common social work policies and practices. Educators can prepare students by implementing strategies in the classroom that illuminate the privilege inherent in the profession of social work, and the power and control over clients' lives that come with the degree. Educators also need to provide context for academic material, acknowledging the economic, social, and political framework within which that knowledge is put to use. Finally, educators need to prepare students to be reflexive in their practice, in order to proactively address power imbalances. This can be done by providing examples of educators' own practice and the ways in which they may have inadvertently reinforced ideas and values that have historically resulted in marginalization of clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a relative paucity of studies specifically exploring the experiences of qualitative researchers undertaking research in socially sensitive areas or with marginalised groups. This paper reports some of the findings of a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of 10 participant researchers. The findings of this study suggest that participant researchers are cognisant of issues of power and privilege in conducting their research. They also illustrate the motivation to enact change via the research findings. However, they demonstrate the complexities of power, privilege and change in the research process and how these concepts can be related to researcher guilt. The study shows that experience can act as a buffer in the qualitative research process but that further work in researcher resilience is required. Participant researchers suggest the need for more honest and open discussions around foundational principles of qualitative research. They suggest further development of cross-institutional spaces for these discussions to take place. However, the paper also illustrates the necessity to consider issues of power, privilege and research as social change at individual, institutional and systemic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Voluntaris: Journal of Volunteer Services & Civic Engagement / Zeitschrift für Freiwilligendienste und Zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As a function of their race, gender, class, and other social categories, long-standing privileges in social hierarchies have been afforded to some groups of people to the detriment of others. Recently, scholars have made considerable headway studying the social gains made by disadvantaged groups, including a better understanding of how relatively advantaged groups (e.g., White people; men) often pushback against and resist shifts in group-based power or prestige. The present body of work curates social psychological perspectives on the sense of privilege lost, the belief that one's dominant group is losing ground to other groups. Here, we outline several dominant themes emerging from scholars in this field, including a better understanding of the psychological nature of group-based threat reactions, and for whom such demographic/power changes are deemed troubling, thus triggering pushback. We make recommendations for shaping future research on the perceived loss of group status and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our society compresses a multitude of human identities into arbitrary categories, many of which are constructed as binaries. Binary constructs offer two mutually exclusive, possible ways of being. Perhaps the most prevalent in US society is the gender binary – the pervasive idea that there are two, rigidly boundaried gender categories, each with an accompanying set of expectations. Binary gender classifications are a foundational element of US social structures that foreclose possibilities for who individuals are and who they can become. Binaries create a hierarchy within which one category is "better" than the other. This hierarchical order is embedded in societal structures and tightly bound with systems of oppression, confirming power and privilege and maintaining a social order rooted in racism, sexism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism. Not only is the maintenance of this social order limiting, it also perpetuates violence and marginalization. This paper examines the ways in which the gender binary produces and maintains the violence against and marginalization of transgender and nonbinary people. It concludes with recommendations for moving beyond binary thinking, particularly within the public sector, in order to create systems and institutions that better support human potential and open possibilities for all people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates elite young people's transitions from the Leysin American School in Switzerland, an elite secondary school, to international higher education. These young people often moved to the UK or the US for higher education – locations associated with global status in the education market. However, I argue, new configurations of race and racism in those spaces may challenge some students' elite status, despite their wealth. This article demonstrates that to navigate such issues in their transition to higher education, these young people leaned on their diasporic networks. By doing so, they strategically and pre-emptively ascertained whether their power and privilege would travel with them when they became mobile. Significantly, then, this article attends to the differential experiences of members of the transnational elite and highlights the racial discrimination that they may face in mobility. It thereby complicates the notion of mobility as an effective strategy for elite status maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates a cycle of myths perpetuated by Plato-based (Platonist) mathematics. Emphasis is placed on Grades (Years) 7 to 12 (ages 13-18). The cycle follows four stages: (1) Platonist mathematics' controversial ontological axioms lead to deducing its mythical images of itself, maintained by privileged social power. (2) Widespread beliefs in those myths. (3) Sociopolitico-economic power bestowed on those beliefs. (4) Privileges gained by that social power. The myth cycle pertains to: (a) the ontology, epistemology, and axiology of Platonist mathematics; and (b) its socio-politico-economics capital. The interrogation’s purposes are: (i) to expose myths and their current negative impact on a large majority of learners – those not interested in pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) employment; and (ii) to counter some of mathematics’ educational propaganda aimed at teachers. The article’s purpose is to question the ethics of Platonist mathematics education dictating that all learners must enroll in a Platonist mathematics program imbued with its cycle of myths, when alternative mathematics programs are viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Classica: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos is the property of Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Classicos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is commonly held that we stand in a special epistemic relationship with respect to certain facts about our minds, a relationship that is known as privileged access. Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that we either lack privileged access entirely, or that the scope of such access is severely limited. While there have been a number of attempts in the literature to respond to these skeptics, one question that has not been addressed is what, if anything, of value we fail to possess if these skeptics are right. In this paper, I argue that insofar as we lack privileged access, something of significant value would be absent from our cognitive lives. I defend this claim by developing a novel position that privileged access is necessary for possessing a type of epistemic control that is extrinsically valuable to those who possess it. I also provide reasons for thinking that privileged access is valuable in and of itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Interface - Comunicação, Saúde, Educação is the property of Fundacao UNI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Reproductive justice recognizes that women and girls' reproductive health is shaped by intersecting systemic oppressions (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism) which affect their ability to make meaningful choices about their reproductive lives. The articles in this issue represent a coordinated effort to apply the reproductive justice framework to the scientific study of social issues. Consistent with reproductive justice principles, all articles acknowledge the foundation of reproductive justice in the experiences and knowledge of women of color, consider the roles of power, privilege, and oppression throughout the inquiry process, and address the utility of findings for improving the lives of marginalized groups through structural and social change. With this special issue, we hope to reframe the relationship between research and practice on marginalized populations' reproductive health, and contribute to efforts to apply reproductive justice across domains of social science, including psychological science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent incidents of racism at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) have gained increased national attention. The backlash to individuals speaking out against racialized practices is often masked through discourse that dismisses the adverse effects of racism. Because university administrators often center their responses to incidents of racism on upholding free speech, scholars should analyze the ways that administrators' responses might reinforce the existence of such racist behaviors and affect marginalized students. Purpose and Research Questions: Rather than placing the burden on students to disrupt institutionalized racism, the author critically analyzed the discourse administrators utilized in their responses to understand the role of power in language. The following research questions informed the study: (a) what are the various characteristics of the discourse of university administrators as they respond to incidents of racism? and (b) how do university administrators' responses to racism support or disrupt larger patterns of social power and privilege? Research Design: The author utilized critical discourse analysis (CDA) to deconstruct relationships between the speech patterns of university presidents and larger Discourses about social power. Through a process of description, interpretation, and explanation, the author sought to reveal the underlying ideologies that go beyond surface-level discourse about free speech. Data Collection and Analysis: Based on the context of increased police brutality and student protests on college campuses, the author reviewed data on recent incidents of racism at PWIs. The three final cases chosen for analysis represented varying approaches utilized by administrators to respond to racist incidents. Through multiple phases of coding, the author interpreted relationships between textual patterns to reveal a larger narrative about administrative accountability. Findings: Each university president utilized a different approach to campus racism. The major discourse patterns represented were (a) a direct reproach of individuals as accountable for racism; (b) an indirect and theoretical approach to the reality of racism; and (c) a denial of or diversion from racism through authority. Conclusions and Recommendations: Across the cases, administrators utilized speech that either downplayed the existence of racism or defined it through privilege or colorblind ideology. With the last incident resulting in the firing of the president, the analysis revealed ways that presidents can utilize emotional speech without substantial action. In order to be more responsive to marginalized communities, administrators need to intentionally engage with marginalized groups who are often silenced because their beliefs do not fit the standard of the dominant norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical social work supervision is not immune to enactments of racial and social injustice, prejudice, power and privilege rampant in our social environment and institutions. These dynamics are active in all social interactions. Most often felt on impact, these remain underground and unevenly experienced—though predominantly by people representing intersecting marginalized identities. Such real enactments can be misunderstood or avoided in social work supervision. Negative consequences not only impede learning for the supervisee and supervisor, and affect clinical understanding of client care they also perpetuate injustice based on power and social locations. Social work supervision provides space for critical analysis to identify and alter dynamics of power, privilege, and social oppression. The critical conversations (CC) model provides a framework to illuminate and examine power dynamics in order to produce change with parallel insight and action—supervisee, supervisor, and client care. Supervisee and supervisor gain capacity to engage in reflection, examine personal and professional values, hold tension and tolerate ambiguity, use one self critically, articulate ideas and insights thoughtfully and effectively, as well as inform clinical understanding of clients. The need for critical dialogue in social work supervision regarding dynamics of sameness, differences, intersectional identities, power and privilege is emphasized. Theoretical grounding is offered to elucidate how complex structural forces of oppression and privilege, cultural patterns and narratives are internalized. A definition of CC, its theoretical underpinnings and the CC model are presented with a case scenario to illuminate the application of the CC model in clinical supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through this study I attempt to extend cocultural theory toward a dominant group theory. I offer an exploratory account of the many ways dominant group members have responded to the concerns of cocultural group members. That is, dominant group members tend to engage in strategies that produce four themes: (a) using dominant group membership for reinforcement of privilege, (b) coming to a dominant group awareness, (c) using dominant group membership for support of cocultural groups, and (d) using dominant group membership for disrupting practices of oppression. When taken together, cocultural theory and a dominant group theory afford researchers, teachers, and practitioners another tool to explore intersectional communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a rich body of research provides insights to understanding stigma within the marketplace, much less is known regarding its direct corollary, privilege. We posit that this void is problematic as it may inadvertently support and legitimate existing socio-political arrangements which inhibit consumer wellbeing and marketplace equality. The present study addresses this gap by offering a theoretical understanding of privilege within the marketplace. Using a Foucauldian approach to privilege and power, we draw on the discursive perspective on legitimation to critically investigate the contentious debate over the inclusion of halal meat at a popular burger chain in France. In light of French political secularism (laïcité), we demonstrate how power discursively operates through narratives on rights and moral responsibility to constitute, defend and challenge a certain state of privilege within the marketplace. Our resulting theoretical discussion extends existing studies on marketplace equality and the growing body of literature related to the “marketization of religion”. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A core claim of sociological theory is that modern institutions fall short of their meritocratic ideals, whereby rewards should be allocated based on achievement-related criteria. Instead, high-status actors often experience a "status advantage": they are rewarded disproportionately to the quality of their performance. We develop and test a theory of status advantage in meritocratic settings. The most influential model in past research derives status advantage from decision-makers' tendency to infer quality from status when quality is uncertain. The theory developed here integrates and extends this and other theories to explain the emergence of status advantage in the many meritocratic contexts where the decision-maker's personal, first-order sense of quality is less important to the decision. We argue that in such contexts, decision-makers must often coordinate with others to make the "best" decision, and thus they focus on the "third-order inference" problem of discerning who or what "most people" think is higher quality, as encoded in status beliefs. Three experiments demonstrate that under such conditions, status advantages can emerge even though (1) status information does not resolve uncertainty about quality; (2) the status belief is illegitimate; and (3) no party to the decision personally prefers the higher-status option. The theory implies that status hierarchies are resilient in the face of significant dissent but may be subject to public challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss how the concept of social location and tenets of intersectionality inform the understanding of power and privilege, our work with people with multiple privileged identities, and the preparation of social justice educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual assault on college campuses is a pervasive public health issue. It is important to examine factors particular to universities that influence occurrences of sexual assault and people's perceptions of sexual assault. Using a lens of socialist feminism, we argue that institutional and sociocultural factors related to gender and class privilege on college campuses are due to patterns of power and control in university systems that contribute to the occurrence and facilitation of sexual assault. Our synthesis of the literature focuses on the male-dominated party culture of the primarily White Greek system in American universities, which is reinforced by the university as an institution. We discuss how patterns of power and control dictate and influence contemporary campus norms in relation to gender and class, which then perpetuate sexual assault. We provide recommendations for policies and procedures regarding class and gender inequities in the scope of sexual violence on college campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Pierre Bourdieu’s theory to analyze the relation between the Lebanese state and the reproduction of unequal power relations, in particular through the phenomenon ofwasta(an Arabic word referring to the use of connections to obtain scarce goods or services). We attempt to demonstrate how social reproduction in Lebanon has come to rely on the clandestine exchange of certain symbolic and material resources, exemplified in practice by the ways in which different social agents make use ofwasta. We further attempt to show how such exchange, rather than any negation of the state, in fact is connected intimately to effects produced by the state in the organization of these resources. We achieve this by analyzing the particular configuration of resources and reproduction mechanisms produced by the Lebanese state and demonstrating how these objective structures lead to determinate effects in the habitus of agents. These effects are expressed through variance in agents’ (social) reproduction strategies, which can be demonstrated most vividly by comparing the habitus of agents firmly embedded within the Lebanese social space to the ‘destabilized’ (or ‘tormented’) habitus of agents less adjusted to it. In this way, we show how Bourdieu’s analysis can reveal the means by which even supposedly ‘weak’ states such as Lebanon nonetheless may produce strong social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY When an ethnographer's life is intimately enmeshed in the field through marriage or long-term partnership, what are the implications for ethnographic production? This article uses autoethnographic perspectives to engage issues of patriarchy, privilege, and power from fieldwork through the writing process. I argue that the power to represent these relationships must be examined to take anthropology beyond reflexivity to the realities of doing ethnography in an intimately interconnected world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the scholarship on how marginalised groups deploy human rights discourse focuses on how these groups translate human rights norms into the group’s vernacular. The marginalised are not alone in this respect. The American Christian Right employs the power of rights claims – which they have previously rejected – to preserve Christian privilege at the expense of greater religious inclusion. This paper demonstrates that even the ‘powerful’ need to vernacularise rights norms and ideals when the group has no meaningful history of engaging with rights and the law. This shared process of vernacularisation highlights the plasticity of rights, and how they can be bent to serve the relatively powerful or the relatively powerless. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When attending to dispositions, or educators’ assumptions and beliefs about teaching, learning, and students, teacher educators must develop a discourse that examines disability in terms of power and privilege. This article synthesizes literature related to critical race theory (CRT) and disability theory to elucidate the need for a critical ability theory in teacher education. Combining the tenets of CRT and disability theories provides a lens for viewing how power and privilege affect public and private conceptions of what it means to have a special need. Because recognition of privilege and identity serve as the cornerstones of dispositional development, prospective teachers should be asked to examine their dispositions through this lens. This article offers a novel way to explore the dispositions construct, as previous literature has not examined the ways that privilege and identity intersect with disability and teacher dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The standing of vocational education is salient for how it is perceived by those who sponsor, participate in and work within it and how its provisions are supported and administered. Yet, this standing continues to be intractably low, compared with other education sectors, more so in some countries than others. The consequences for this low standing can be profound. Serially, moreover, it has been the voices and sentiments of powerful others (e.g. aristocrats, theocrats, bureaucrats and academics) that have long been privileged in discourses about the standing of occupations and their preparation. In perhaps most instances, this privileging has and continues to come at a cost to the standing, processes of and goals for this important educational sector. Indeed, the legacies of earlier sentiments about and conceptions of different kinds of occupations and their preparation are now deeply embedded in societal discourses and variously sustain and constrain the standing of vocational education. At its strongest, concepts such the Berufs concept in the German speaking world does much to sustain and elevate vocational education. Elsewhere, this lowly standing generates constraints that comprise efforts to control and micro-manage those who teach and learn. Adopting a historical approach, this paper offers a brief and partial account of how, across time, sentiments of powerful others have shaped the standing of vocational education and its proposes and practices, often for purposes of power and control. Instead, it is proposed that for vocational education to realise it purposes necessarily requires it to be informed by and directed more by the interests of those learning about – teaching and practice – these occupations. In addition, the need for societally based (i.e. governmental) imperatives to ameliorate the long-standing consequences of these sentiments for vocational education is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Undergraduate students often struggle with understanding the theories of Bourdieu, but they are essential for understanding how power and privilege are reproduced in society. Revealing students’ complicity in this system is a powerful teaching moment, but it is often difficult to make the lesson and advanced theory accessible without triggering students’ defense mechanisms. Discussions of oppression often generate reactions of resistance, paralysis, and rage. This article describes a simulation designed to thwart student passivity while also being cognizant of pushing students too far emotionally. By having students adopt an identity during play and then analyze the results of their simulation, students were able to identify with structural oppression and learn Bourdieu's principles of cultural capital and reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine introduce critical bifocality as a way to render visible the relations between groups to structures of power, to social policies, to history, and to large sociopolitical formations. In this collaboration, the authors draw upon ethnographic examples highlighting the macro-level structural dynamics related to globalization and neoliberalism. The authors focus on the ways in which broad-based economic and social contexts set the stage for day-to-day actions and decisions among privileged and nonprivileged parents and students in relation to schooling. Weis and Fine suggest that critical bifocality enables us to consider how researchers might account empirically for global, national, and local transformations as insinuated, embodied, and resisted by youth and adults trying to make sense of current educational and economic possibilities in massively shifting contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I described how the use of feminist methodology and post-structuralist analyses of the experiences of women in a poor ‘Coloured’ community in my research led to new understandings of the experiences of poverty and privilege. I discovered the relevance of Foucault’s historical analysis of the operation of ‘pastoral power’ through the narratives of women from the Scottsville community. Historical and current accounts of so-called ‘Coloured’ women’s subjugation and categorisation are reminders of how it came about that ‘being Coloured’ became associated in South Africa with shame and with ‘knowing one’s place’. Feminist post-structuralist analyses made visible the conditions that created practices of injustice in poor women’s lives whilst, at the same time, creating conditions of privilege for me. Justice-making in Scottsville therefore started with a radical rethinking of the terms by which people’s marginalisation took place and, consequently also of the terms of ‘just’ cross-cultural engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construct of privilege has been undertheorized in the field of psychology. The discipline more commonly examines those who have been disenfranchised, marginalized, and discriminated against. However, psychologists concerned with social issues must also attend to questions of power and privilege. This article uses a collaborative research project with New York City youth and adults called Polling for Justice to engage in a discussion about privilege as it runs through three areas of that work: by design, in results, and through action. First, the paper argues that privilege is an epistemological standpoint of empirical psychology that has been disguised as objectivity. Next, that privilege is a set of material and social psychological conditions that protect adolescents as they develop, take risks, and mature. Finally, that those who hold privilege can embrace and model a sense of collective responsibility and solidarity, not retreat or passively empathize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-based privileges are supported and reproduced in part by control of discourse about identity and structural inequality. In the case of social class, this discourse is largely absent. This article explores the ways in which the lack of explicit and sanctioned discourse on social class affirms and reproduces class privileges. Qualitative thematic content analysis was used to analyze the final papers of students (N= 82) who participated in a semester long class-focused intergroup dialogue course. Content analysis found that students came into the dialogues with low levels of class salience. The dialogue course was an informative and fulfilling experience for most students, but the majority of students still had difficulty discussing class based privileges. This difficulty in engaging in an open and disruptive form of class discourse was in part due to the tendency to conflate discussions of class with race, taboos against discussing social class, and the presence of negative stereotypes about class groupings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two psychological reasons that powerful groups are socially privileged are (1) powerful groups are culturally and mentally normalized, which disguises their privilege as 'normal' while highlighting inferiority and stereotypes about other groups, and (2) affiliating with own-groups and promoting their power are more psychologically compatible for dominant groups than for subordinated groups. Prior research concerning social categories defined by gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and race is summarized to illustrate how social category norms focus people's attention away from powerful groups and their privileges. The present research shows that, for race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in the U.S., own group membership is more salient, and works less well in promoting own group power and group dominance for members of subordinated than of dominant groups. Implications for why group privilege is not mutually recognized by dominant and subordinated groups, and for how this may translate into support for different social policies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature on social identities focused largely on the oppression of people with marginalized identities without much attention paid to privileged, or dominant, group members. In conclusion to this special issue on privilege, I synthesize the authors' contributions and current research on various forms of group privilege. The authors vary in their approach to dissecting privilege, either intersectionally or examining a single group's privilege. This body of work is imperative to the growing academic field of Privilege Studies, as well as encouraging more mainstream discourse about privilege and oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores cooperation as contradictory and therefore with a constant possibility for conflict. Consequently it is called conflictual cooperation. The notion is presented on the basis of a participatory observation in a control room of a district heating system. In the investigation, cooperation appeared as the continuous reworking of contradictions in the local arrangement of societal conditions. Subjects were distributed and distributed themselves according to social privileges, resources, and dilemmas in cooperation. Here, the subjects' activities and understandings took form from each other, their dilemmas, and their previous experience. This meant that they had each their perspective on ongoing praxis. Three observations from the collaboration in the control room are presented, one on stabilizing the function of an object, another on standardizing a procedure, and one on regulating who can use what in what way. Contradictions in the observed activity are discussed. It is argued that for the participants the connections of acts appear in such contradictions in cooperation. This conception is discussed in relationship to the notions of practice, as expounded by Bourdieu and MacIntyre and Schatzki. As a contrast a notion of praxis is set up in which actions are reciprocally differentiated under contradictory conditions, and habitualizations, institutionalizations and conflictual cooperation are identified on this basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the incorporation of service learning into classroom education specific to women's studies, focusing on how this type of experiential learning not only provides experience within a community, but allows the students to understand and question the privileges that accompany their post-secondary education. The relationship between power and privilege and reasons for service learning are explored, and the author claims that awareness of privilege is a critical step toward accountability for those students that intend to move on to work in the non-profit sector.

The article offers the author's insights on how the victory gained by diversity, particularly in the workplace, in turning into a shared mainstream goal ended or limited some essential issues on power and privilege. She suggests that diversity is more mainstream, acceptable heir to the idea of equality called for by the feminist and civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s. She says that diversity enables the introduction of changes and inclusion of individuals who used to be excluded into areas hostile to claims on power or justice. She discusses how the ideal of diversity is insufficient and sometimes obstructs justice.

This paper explores the pitfalls associated with conducting research within a group with higher economic or social status than the researcher. Using examples from fieldwork conducted in Jamaica, I complicate the notion of power in the field by demonstrating that while the raced, gendered, and classed positions of the researcher necessarily affect relations of power in the field; it does not follow that social power or prestige will inhere to the researcher. In the context of differences of race where the researcher is read as disadvantaged or differences of class where the researcher again is read as socially or economically disadvantaged, how is power negotiated? What does it mean to study up? What are the theoretical ramifications of studying up? As more anthropologists choose to study 'the privileged' the dilemmas associated with studying up will become more common, particularly for anthropologists of color. The process of studying the production of whitenesses in Jamaica created a rich environment for assessing how my positionality limited access, in some instances increased access, and ultimately changed the parameters of the project itself. This paper examines how the various aspects of my identity affected the work I was able to do in Jamaica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the optimal choice set of candidates standing for elected office. The decision dimensions are in the number of candidates standing for election, the experiential base of the candidates standing for election as measured by the length of prior experience held by the candidates, and the proportion of candidates with such prior experience. We find that while there are benefits that accrue to having a larger choice, the optimal number of candidates is strictly finite. Second, to justify an increase in the optimal length of prior experience requires strong increases in the ratio of benefits that accrue from additional experience to the cost of abuse of privilege. The conditions under which an increase in the length of prior experience can be justified are where the cost associated with abuse of privilege is negligible. This would require the development of appropriate formal (legal and constitutional) and informal (civil society) institutions that ensure that abuse of office remains negligible. Finally, we allow the number of electoral candidates, the length of their prior experience, as well as the proportion of candidates with experience to vary. Under this choice problem optimal pairings of length of experience and the proportion of candidates with prior experience may not exist. Hence, societies may be condemned to suboptimality even should the political system prove to be amenable to change, rendering disaffection endemic to the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on power and privilege. The author mentions her experiences regarding social justice when she was a child including the invitation of her father to a crazy lady, being a dirt scraper in a game with a group of popular girls in school, and a member of a sorority in her college life. Moreover, she says that problems among people are created in sociopolitical arena and wisdom can only be obtained by truth.

The article argues that despite legislation granting formal equality before the law as of the late 19th century in German judicial proceedings, sentencing privileges continued to be extended according to local power relations and "scientific" assumptions about the credibility of witnesses and their testimony. Social inequalities thus tended to be perpetuated rather than eliminated in the judicial system. Using a case study from the period, the author claims that judicial "truth" was a less compelling factor in judgment than local power relations.

To facilitate movement toward a more equitable society, this paper explores the construct of secular privilege. In keeping with a critical perspective, power differentials are examined and illustrated in the nation's most influential medium for constructing public discourse—broadcast programming. Given the pervasiveness and invisibility of secular privilege, representative privileges are delineated. A subsample of these are deconstructed to provide insight into the benefits secular people typically enjoy and strategies are offered to help decenter the dominant narrative. Resistance will likely be encountered from those who are granted power by the current social structure, but productive change is possible since many secular people are committed to creating a more democratically representative society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The central question for whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa can be put simply: how to maintain privilege in a situation in which black people have achieved political power. Many stances to the new dispensation are available to white South Africans, but this article concerns only resistant white discourses, referred to as White Talk. Two weekly columns published through 2000 in the most widely read Sunday newspaper in the country were downloaded and analysed. The article demonstrates how two discursive repertoires, New South Africa Speak and White Ululation are played off against each other to enable positive self-presentation while resisting transformation. In some ways South African White Talk has come to resemble the more 'respectable' international whitenesses, but the postcolonial, post-apartheid context gives it a different edge, particularly in relation to constructions of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many diversity courses in psychology originally aimed to reduce student racial bias and raise their awareness of racism. However, quantitative data testing the effectiveness of such courses are lacking. This study assessed a required diversity course's effectiveness in raising awareness of White privilege and racism; increasing support for affirmative action; and reducing prejudice, guilt, and fear of other races. Students (N = 146) completed identical surveys during the first and last weeks of the semester. Results indicated greater awareness of White privilege and racism and more support for affirmative action by the end of the term. White students (n = 131) also expressed greater White guilt after completing the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the sample activities that focused on the issues of privilege and power in visual culture. According to the authors, visual culture covers all manifestations of cultural life that are significantly expressed through visual aspects and interpreted through individual and shared experiences. The sample activities are Memorable Narratives, Cultural Artifacts, Gender Constructions, Race Privilege and Revision It. These activities offer examples of strategies to reveal, critique and re-envision privilege and power in visual images.