Social, economic, and cultural changes in the 1970s brought about a level of anxiety as to what constituted masculine identity in an era of rising unemployment; diminishing paternal authority within the family; a feminising of the workplace accompanying technological development; and the insistence on 'equal rights' by homosexual, women's and racial minority groups. The feeling of panic that accompanied the rapid social change of the period was reflected in a body of mainstream American films that have come to categorise 'eighties cinema'. These films depicted a style of masculinity that centered on tough, muscular bodies; violence that was both sadistic and masochistic; sexuality that was simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic; patriarchy restored through a refigured father that incorporated the maternal; the creation of all-male worlds through the exclusion of the feminine; and a nostalgia for a stable masculine identity derived more from a fear of the future than a remembrance of the past. The representations of masculinity in these films can be seen as part of a New Right Movement, symptomatic of Reaganite values. The films can also be read as a postmodern play with the images of another generation, in an acting out of excessive cultural expectations. The movies' version of masculinity also offered a fantasy space, providing heroism and power as a counterpoint to dissatisfaction and impotence. In encompassing elements of all of these, a conservative role playing that offered the protection of fantasy and the fun of a game, the films functioned as masquerade. This group of films were a masculine masquerade, in that they were an enactment of a conservative version of masculinity that was a pleasurable game of excess, and at the same time a defence against anxiety in the face of changing social patterns. The masquerade disguised as a quest for the phallus, hiding both the desire, and the refusal, to renounce masculine social power / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

No description available.

Helping and aggressing behaviors are important to study in adolescence because they relate to adaptive and maladaptive developmental outcomes. These behaviors take place within the social context and their impact may be determined by the nature of the dyadic relationship between the agent and the recipient of the behavior. Relative power may be a critical aspect of dyadic relationships as evidenced by the research on bullying and related outcomes. However, a review of the helping and aggression literatures shows that relative power between agents and recipients of behavior has largely been neglected, perhaps because measurement approaches focus on individual tendencies over time rather than single behaviors at one point in time. I propose a theory that includes relative power as a critical dimension in the conceptualization of aggression and helping in dyadic interactions. I define dyadic interpersonal behavior based on two bipolar continua: impact (extremely beneficial impact [helping] through no impact to extremely harmful impact [aggressing]) and relative power imbalance between dyad members (lower-power through balanced-power to higher-power). In this dissertation, I tested whether my theory fits with adolescents' conceptualizations of helping and aggressing behavior in dyads using a mixed-methods approach. Focus group data collection occurred from two sessions with 13 and 11 adolescents in order to create gender-relevant and school-relevant vignettes of helping and aggressing behavior. Vignettes varied in intensity of impact (extremely beneficial, moderately beneficial, neutral, moderately harmful and extremely harmful), relative power between agent and recipient (i.e., high to high, low to low, high to low, and low to high power dyads), and power type (i.e., academic power and social power). The quantitative phase involved the rating of paired vignettes based on similarity by 203 students from the same high school as the focus group participants. Similarity scores were aggregated within gender and the type of power (academic or social). Multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to test whether the proposed theory of power-relevant helping and aggressing is supported by adolescents' similarity ratings. The models of boys' interpersonal behaviors show three-dimensional solutions whereas those for girls reflect four-dimensional solutions. The first dimension of benefit and harm, which was proposed in my theory, emerged in all four sets of analyses (academic-boys; academic-girls; social-boys; social-girls). The secondary dimension proposed in the theory, relative power, only emerged for girls in regard to social power, as the fourth dimension in that solution. Qualitative analyses of focus group transcripts suggest that school atmosphere, power in the school, and bullying were primary themes salient in adolescents' thinking about helping and aggressing behavior. Relative power did not emerge as a theme or a concept in these qualitative analyses, suggesting that relative power is not a salient concept in adolescent thinking for helping and aggressing. Thus, neither quantitative nor qualitative analyses support the secondary dimension proposed in my theory. This mixed-methods study advances theory and research by: 1) demonstrating that adolescents conceptualize helping and aggressing as opposite ends of a single dimension at the behavioral level, 2) demonstrating that power at the individual level with a group referent and collective dyadic power are more salient than relative power in adolescents' perceptions of helping and aggressing behavior, and 3) situating the conceptualization and measurement of interpersonal behavior within the relational context. / Ph. D.

This thesis looks at the relationshp between water and social power. It attempts to answer two questions: who controls the distribution of water in the South African city of Durban? And how might this distribution be transformed in positive democratic ways? In attempting to answer these questions, the thesis provides insights into post-apartheid South African society and the possibilities for democratic social change. The framework of analysis builds upon work conducted in urban political ecology. In particular, I argue that urban environments, indeed all environments, should be understood as created ecosystems. Recognising this, I suggest that Durban's waterscape should be seen as produced through capitalist social relations. The waterscape thereby becomes a particular accumulation strategy through which profits may be generated. for Durban's communities, one of the most direct effects of this capitalist accumulation strategy is that access to water is dependent upon the exchange of money. Whilst this situation has been amerliorated somewhat through the development of a free basic water policy, the policy itself has necessitated a much tighter regulation of domestic supplies and, in effect, a more severe commodification of each household's water supply. In turn, this has resulted in water infrastructure acquiring power over the lives of most residents. This, I argue, is a result of the social relations that come to be invested within that infrastructure. The possibilities for change that are suggested lie within the struggle for feminist standpoint and the connection of these situated knowledges of the waterscpe with a broader historical and geographical understanding of the terrain of civil society. from such an understanding of civil society, a dialectical critique of hegemony is opened up. Overall, the thesis moves from an analysis of the power relations camprising the waterscape to the development of a critique from which, it is hoped, the possibilities for political change might emerge.

This thesis explores the social organization of ‘helping sex workers’ in Northeastern Ontario from the standpoint of sex workers or former sex workers. It is based on twelve (12) qualitative interviews with sex workers and former sex workers between the years 2002-2003. This thesis engages the feminist research framework as developed by Dorothy E Smith, a feminist sociologist. Smiths’ ontological and epistemological framework conceptualizes knowledge as socially produced and mediated by social/power relations. This is a theoretical framework that has the potential to explore the social standpoint of persons labeled ‘sex worker’ by examining social/power relations from their standpoint and by problematizing claims of the universality of knowledge and ‘truth’. Overwhelmingly sex workers identified ‘help’ as a series of stigmatizing processes that were triggered upon the ‘moment of identification’ of being a sex worker. These series of stigmatizing processes were embedded in social courses of action undertaken by social service agencies and the police. This is important research as claims to ‘helping’ sex workers by social service agencies and the subsequent social relations this creates for sex workers are rarely examined in Canada from the standpoint of sex workers.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF SAMANTHA OKON for the MASTERS OF SCIENCE degree in Communication Disorders and Sciences, presented on April 5, 2010, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: GRADUATE STUDENT PREFERENCES OF SOCIAL POWER USE IN CLINICAL SUPERVISION MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Linda McCabe Smith, C.C.C. SLP The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the preferences and perceptions of graduate student supervisees when rating the five bases of social power use of their supervisors in clinical speech-language pathology. When used in supervision, the supervisee may perceive some bases to be positive in outcome and some to be negative. Social power refers to the ability of one individual to influence the beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of another individual. French and Raven created the five bases of social power in 1959 in order to describe how individuals or groups interact with one another (Raven, 2008). The five bases of social power include coercive, reward, expert, legitimate and referent. Results indicated that graduate supervisees preferred more referent power, reward power and expert power than was used by their current supervisor. Results also demonstrated graduate supervisees would prefer less coercive power and legitimate power to be used by their supervisors in clinical supervision.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approaches the study and critique of social inequality by focusing on the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of dominance, which is defined as the exercise of social power by elites, institutions or groups, that results in social inequality, including political, cultural, class, ethic, racial, and gender inequality (van Dijk, 1993, pp. 249-250). One important social issue that be examined in any given culture in terms of dominance and inequality is gender. The historical discussion of the present study is used to suggest that institutions in political power have weaved a thread of propaganda throughout Germany's history that has used its citizen's sense of folk community for its own agenda and has consistently put women in the secondary role in terms of their contributions to the state. The present study examines the roles of women in Germany's democratic political culture of the present and compares these roles to roles of women in the Third Reich, based on popular media images of women and men, Nazi Propaganda and current issues of der Spiegel. Nazi propaganda is generally recognized as being highly "effective" in its potential for altering mass consciousness. Magazines like der Spiegel with wide scale distribution and political clout among readers in Germany are also in a position to influence the social environment. Some examples of linguistic and visual distortion that are illustrated by the data were selective use of direct quotation where authority is given to certain groups of people and is withheld from others, role allocation where specific groups of people are described through selective roles, and assimilation where other than the elite everyone is blended into a homogeneous group. The present study suggests this type of implicit interpretational distortion serves the same function as the Nazi propaganda in an even more effective manner precisely because it is implicit and indirect.

No / This study focuses on to explore the impact of social power on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and the role of OCB as a mediator of the relationship between social power and personal and organizational effectiveness. Data were collected by administering self rated questionnaires to male middle-level executives (N = 250) in face to face conditions from motor cycle manufacturing organisations based in northern India. The mediator analysis (by using AMOS) showed that all the fit indexes were in the acceptable range which indicates that OCBs have mediated significantly between social power and effectiveness. Other results as analyzed through multiple regression analysis showed the significant impact of social power on the dimensions of OCB and effectiveness as it was hypothesized. The study suggests the potential benefits of using positive forms of social power by supervisors as part of their managerial style in order to enhance OCBs and in turn increase personal and organizational effectiveness. This study advances the research on the concept of OCB and social power in an Indian work context.

No description available.

Esta tese apresenta a formalização, construção e validação experimental de um mecanismo de interação entre agentes baseado em valores de troca. Através do mecanismo de interação, os agentes são capazes de estabelecer, avaliar e regular os balanços de troca de suas interações, com o objetivo de alcançar resultados que eles valorizem, i.e., considerem adequados. Na formalização do mecanismo de interação são considerados diversos aspectos abordados nas Ciências Sociais, na Psicologia e em Teorias Utilitaristas. No mecanismo são observados, igualmente, os aspectos sociais e psicológicos que podem influenciar os resultados das interações entre os agentes. Desse modo, o mecanismo leva em consideração que os agentes podem construir suas estratégias levando em consideração as informações relacionadas com o “poder social” e as “atitudes” de interação. No mecanismo de interação recorre-se aos diálogos de argumentação com a finalidade de permitir que os agentes possam influenciar os seus parceiros em relação ao estabelecimento de acordos sobre os serviços e aos valores de troca envolvidos nas interações. Na validação experimental, o cenário utilizado foi o dos “Robôs Coletores de Lixo em Marte”. Através dos resultados obtidos, pode-se observar que o mecanismo de interação considera os valores de troca no processo de formação da cooperação, auxiliando os agentes na escolha de futuros parceiros. / This thesis presents the formalization, construction and validation of an interaction mechanism based on exchange values. Through the interaction mechanism, the agents are capable to establish, to evaluate and to regulate the balances of exchange of their interactions, with the objective of reaching the results that they consider adequate. In the formalization of the mechanism several aspects of Social Sciences, Psychology and Utilitarian Theories are considered. In the mechanism are observed the social and psychological aspects that can influence the results of the interactions between the agents. In this manner, the mechanism considers that the agents can build their strategies considering the information related to the social power and to interaction attitudes. In the mechanism the argument dialogs are used with the purpose to allow the agents to influence their partners in relation to the establishment of agreements about the services and about the exchange values involved in the interactions. In the validation, the scenario used was the “Garbage Collector Robots in Mars”. Through the obtained results, it was possible to observe that the interaction mechanism considers the values of exchange in the process of formation of the cooperation, helping the agents to choose their future partners.