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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru May 2024

Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the thematic preoccupation of childbirth in the formative period of feminist discourse in African literature through a critical study of selected novels of Igbo women of southeastern Nigeria. The novels studied represent the earliest published African texts in English by women. The period under focus falls within the emerging stage of Nigerian literary tradition in its written form with a dominant presence of men. This study investigates the women novelists' perspective toward the failure of male authored works to represent women's childbirth experience. Through a critical reading of Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of …

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Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken Nov 2023

Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths is a survey of a vast amount of human wrongdoing. It lays bare the motivations of aggressors who wish to subjugate nations or groups of people and corporate executives and government bureaucrats who make discretionary decisions that harm people. Along with cataloging mass killings by despots and soldiers, the book includes stories about Ponzi-schemers and the deaths of automobile drivers and passengers who were killed by vehicle defects known to the manufacturer. The book posits that “[p]owerful, elite forces are trying to force us backward toward a non-democratic state, one where power, wealth, and prerogative …

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Power And Impact: Examining The Role Of Monarchy And Media In Shaping Attitudes Around Race And Human Rights For Sub-Saharan Migrant Populations In Morocco, Leila Narisetti Oct 2023

Power And Impact: Examining The Role Of Monarchy And Media In Shaping Attitudes Around Race And Human Rights For Sub-Saharan Migrant Populations In Morocco, Leila Narisetti

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this investigation is to delve into the intricate dynamics surrounding migration in Morocco, specially focusing on the Maghreb region’s treatment of sub-Saharan migrants and the complex interplay between institutions of power, media narratives and societal attitudes towards race and identity. Drawing on Morocco’s historical relationship with slavery and its present handling of Africanness, the analysis unveils a culture of denial that deeply impacts the integration of migrants and the perpetuating of discriminatory practices. The narrative shifts towards the role of rhetoric and media, emphasizing its pivotal importance in shaping societal perspectives, particularly regarding non-Moroccans. The examination extends …

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Introduction To The Special Issue On Secrecy And Technologies, Clare Stevens, Sam Forsythe Aug 2023

Introduction To The Special Issue On Secrecy And Technologies, Clare Stevens, Sam Forsythe

Secrecy and Society

Many scholars have treated the inscrutability of technologies, secrecy, and other unknowns as moral and ethical challenges that can be resolved through transparency and openness. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, instead wants to explore how we can understand the productive, strategic but also emancipatory potential of secrecy and ignorance in the development of security and technologies. This paper argues that rather than just being mediums or passive substrates, technologies are making a difference to how secrecy, disclosure, and transparency work. This special issue will show how technologies and time mediate secrecy and disclosure, and vice versa. This …

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Reimagining The Theory Of Necropolitics In A Modern Lens: Hate Crimes And Violence, Salma Ahmed Abdulmagied Gheita Jun 2023

Reimagining The Theory Of Necropolitics In A Modern Lens: Hate Crimes And Violence, Salma Ahmed Abdulmagied Gheita

Future Journal of Social Science

This research paper is testing the validity of the Necropolitics theory and how we can reintroduce its definitions in a modern lens. Though the theory of Necropolitics is extreme and historically was a terminology and paradigm that was used towards more catastrophic and traumatizing events. The main argument that this paper is discussing is how did the idea of Necropolitics evolved into a more institutional, systematic, and legalized manors of exclusion. This is made through critical discourse analysis of the text presented on the term Necropolitics to highlight on the history of this term and what it stood for in …

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Community Gatekeepers: Power, Pitfalls And Possibilities When Recruiting And Researching Black, Asian, And Minority Ethnic (Bame) Participants, Nadia K. Bashir May 2023

Community Gatekeepers: Power, Pitfalls And Possibilities When Recruiting And Researching Black, Asian, And Minority Ethnic (Bame) Participants, Nadia K. Bashir

The Qualitative Report

Using data from a large primarily qualitative research project on how people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities experience and access health services, this methodological article focuses on the role of the community gatekeeper – a role that has significance for research teams globally when attempting to involve those facing multiple forms of exclusion. Drawing on standpoint feminist principles and using a reflexive approach, researcher positionality, situated knowledges, and the power dynamics between researchers, participants, and community gatekeepers are reflected upon. Addressing a gap in the literature by providing real-life examples of the power and influence of gatekeepers …

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Sociology Ethnographic Film Review, Kristen S. Addessi Apr 2023

Sociology Ethnographic Film Review, Kristen S. Addessi

Open Educational Resources

This is an assignment that gives students options of using different films as examples of ethnographies to understand key issues that occur in our society.

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The Manifestation Of Intra Gender Oppression In Margaret Atwood’S The Handmaid’S Tale As Results From Intentional Patriarchal Power Structures, Aliyah Browning Apr 2023

The Manifestation Of Intra Gender Oppression In Margaret Atwood’S The Handmaid’S Tale As Results From Intentional Patriarchal Power Structures, Aliyah Browning

The Compass

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has long been studied for its cautionary warnings about sexist ideologies that exist between men and women; seldom has it been analyzed for instances of intra gender oppression. Intra gender oppression, which this thesis seeks to define and highlight through the novel’s context, offers artificial forms of power to those in oppressed classes, enough to attract women themselves to participate in the indoctrination and policing of their own sex. This essay will highlight the ways in which Atwood’s dystopia parallels sexist beliefs held by societies past and present.

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Finding Azadi: South Asian Canadian Women’S Experiences Of Sexual Well-Being, Syna Thakur Mar 2023

Finding Azadi: South Asian Canadian Women’S Experiences Of Sexual Well-Being, Syna Thakur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with cisgender women, age 20-40, and their shared experiences were compiled into two narrative composites. This study is informed by an intersectional-life course framework, exploring sexuality as a site of shifting power relations at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of participants' lives. This study identifies five predominant sexual constructions that South Asian Canadian women understand and experience over time. It also identifies five predominant strategies used by women to maintain a personally meaningful sexual life (sexual well-being). Participants’ fluctuating sexual well-being involving active negotiation of the relationship to one’s body, identities (including ethnoracial and religious …

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Design Power And Potential Future Of Global Organization Of Life, A. Fuat Fırat Feb 2023

Design Power And Potential Future Of Global Organization Of Life, A. Fuat Fırat

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In this essay I propose a definition of design to address its potential role in largely determining power relations in the future. Some foundational discussion of wealth, culturally constructed differently in different historical times, trends of corporatization in the contemporary world, and the birth of control society is presented to help understand the possibilities and difficulties of building future organizations of life. I invite discussions and dialogues to widen and deepen the concept of design power.

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The Family Values: Is It Really About The Family? Analyzing The Family In The Egyptian Discourse Through A Sociological Lens, Taher Sabala Jan 2023

The Family Values: Is It Really About The Family? Analyzing The Family In The Egyptian Discourse Through A Sociological Lens, Taher Sabala

Theses and Dissertations

The Egyptian state has put on its shoulders the responsibility of protecting the family and its values. But how this family, in a massive society like Egypt, can be defined? In this paper, I argue that it has never been about protecting the family. However, it is an attempt to shape the citizens into small separate hives which give the State the power to gain access to the intimate details of its citizens’ lives through which they can be easily monitored, managed, and controlled. By analyzing Michel Foucault’s work on government, power, sexuality, and family, I travel through a historical …

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A Qualitative Study Of Understanding Female Navy Veterans’ Experiences With Representation And Inclusion In The U.S. Military, Antwanisha K. Williamson Jan 2023

A Qualitative Study Of Understanding Female Navy Veterans’ Experiences With Representation And Inclusion In The U.S. Military, Antwanisha K. Williamson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Research about women in the military helps to address the ongoing concerns about the lack of inclusion of female perspectives, which contributes to oppressive power dynamics and lack of women’s representation in practice, policy, and procedures. The problem this dissertation addressed is the lack of representation and inclusion of female perspectives regarding power and privilege that affect military practices, policies, and procedures. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand female Navy veterans’ experiences with representation and inclusion in military practices, policies, and procedures. Applying a larger conceptual framing using radical feminism, liberal feminism, and critical theory helped to …

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The Myth Of Meritocracy: Factors Explaining Belief In Meritocracy Within The United States, Kaley Burg Oct 2022

The Myth Of Meritocracy: Factors Explaining Belief In Meritocracy Within The United States, Kaley Burg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study examined data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS) to determine what factors influence participants’ view of meritocracy within the United States. Based on existing literature that examines relative power and perception, this study sought to understand the connection between power and belief that America exists as a meritocracy, with the assumption that those belonging to groups deemed as wielding power in society should hold stronger beliefs in meritocracy. Results partially support this hypothesis. Using a multivariate linear regression analysis, those who are older or white assert stronger belief in meritocracy, while those with a greater social justice …

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Perceived Sexual Intent: Power, Relationship Status, And Gender, Joseph Eric Padgett Oct 2022

Perceived Sexual Intent: Power, Relationship Status, And Gender, Joseph Eric Padgett

Theses and Dissertations

Does lacking power cause people to think potential partners are less interested in engaging with them sexually? Do men and women perceive the interests of potential sex partners differently? Does the amount of sexual intent perceived by people who are in a romantic relationship differ from that of singles? Power has been shown to impact perceptions in other contexts, and the way people rate the attractiveness of potential mates is shown to differ depending upon their own relationship status. Similarly, gender differences are a central theme in discussions of sex related perceptions, preferences, and behaviors. In this study, I utilize …

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Climbing The Masculine Hierarchy: Examining Constructions Of Masculinity Through Incel Identities, Alyssa Jewel Davis Aug 2022

Climbing The Masculine Hierarchy: Examining Constructions Of Masculinity Through Incel Identities, Alyssa Jewel Davis

All Theses

In a gender-segregated digital space known as the Manosphere, a group of men calling themselves “Incels,” or involuntary celibates, express feelings of hostility and hatred towards women. Incels hold a low position on a masculine hierarchy where the men who hold the most power in society are those who have access to women’s emotional and sexual services. Incels are characterized by feelings of entitlement to women’s services and aggrievement by their inability to access them. As a result, they often appear to fantasize about or engage in acts of violence to compensate for their lack of masculine privilege. However, there …

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Pandemics And Power: An Applied Analysis Of American Inequality, Megan A. Engle Jul 2022

Pandemics And Power: An Applied Analysis Of American Inequality, Megan A. Engle

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Pandemics represent both social change and continuance. While these public health crises bring about seemingly new issues, they also have a unique ability to reveal pre-existing problems within our society and perpetual social processes. Understanding historical patterns related to public health crises provides greater insight on the ongoing pandemic and American policy needs. Research reveals that, both historically and presently, systemic social injustices and economic inequalities are inflamed by such events. As a result, pandemics disproportionately affect minority groups in several interconnected ways. In examining public health theory, past pandemics, and the present moment, the effects of both power disparities …

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Time And Power: The Will To Temporalize In Digital Culture, Talha Issevenler Jun 2022

Time And Power: The Will To Temporalize In Digital Culture, Talha Issevenler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I analyze the new forms of temporalization of social media in relationship to arrangements of power through nonhuman agency of the algorithm. The new social media industry refers to the entities that make up its circulatory movement, simply as ‘content’. This suggests that scientific or empirical study of social media should deal with content and analyze this as the data of research through sampling (Manovich, 2020, p. 93-94). Yet the forms and the temporality in which the content is presented not only are open to empirical research but should be central to our understanding of the organization …

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Colonial Education: Puerto Ricans And The Carlisle Indian School, Progenitors Of The Mythic Identity, Melissa Swinea Jun 2022

Colonial Education: Puerto Ricans And The Carlisle Indian School, Progenitors Of The Mythic Identity, Melissa Swinea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

‘GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES’ reads a subheading of The Red Man –a historic periodical memorializing the tune of 19th century Americana with references to Godliness and its connection to Indianness and ostentatious capitalism in a canon of school newspapers. The Red Man was the staple periodical of the Carlisle Indian Industrial Institute published monthly and declared “in the interest of Indian education and civilization” for the annual price of 50 cents[1] The subject and recipients of The Red Man would also include 193 Puerto Rican students sent to Carlisle through the U.S.’s campaign to Americanize the Caribbean …

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When Trauma Comes To School: Toward A Socially Just Trauma-Informed Praxis, Catriona O'Toole Jan 2022

When Trauma Comes To School: Toward A Socially Just Trauma-Informed Praxis, Catriona O'Toole

International Journal of School Social Work

Given the prevalence and devastating consequences of childhood trauma, there has been a surge in initiatives to help schools become trauma-informed. However, despite the growing adoption of such initiatives, a number of concerns have been expressed. These include the lack of attention paid to issues of power and inequality including poverty, racism, and community violence as well as the power of adults to neglect, mistreat or abuse children. Contemporary approaches can also serve to inscribe deficit-based perceptions of children, reinforcing negative stereotypes and stigmas; and they tend to overlook the possibility that schools themselves can contribute to students’ distress, especially …

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Wanderscaping: Stirring Agitated Reflections Into Our Home The Campus, K. Annie Bingham Jan 2022

Wanderscaping: Stirring Agitated Reflections Into Our Home The Campus, K. Annie Bingham

Selected Undergraduate Works

Wanderscaping is a two part project completed over the 2021-2022 school year. The first portion, "Wanderscaping Our Home The Campus" meanders through the physical space of Sarah Lawrence College, as a landscape and an institution, while the second, "Stirring An Agitated Reflection" floats that knowledge in the psychic space of an interconnected host of guides, through books, conversations, and other media. As a whole this project is a process-oriented wrangling of freedom, connection, and their borders. It has culminated in practices of public participatory performance, photography, mapping, iconography, audio recording, and writing. Wanderscaping aims to share a space to dream …

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Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne Jan 2022

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

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Guest Editorial: Power In Engaged Scholarship: Dimensions And Dynamics Of Knowledge Co-Creation, Margaret Post, Morgan Ruelle Dec 2021

Guest Editorial: Power In Engaged Scholarship: Dimensions And Dynamics Of Knowledge Co-Creation, Margaret Post, Morgan Ruelle

Sustainability and Social Justice

Collaboratively engaged research is shaped by dynamic power relationships among individuals, institutions and communities. Where some disciplines have explored the theoretical and methodological implications of power relations, the engagement movement writ large has suffered from a lack of explicit conceptual models and in-depth analyses of the role of power in the process of knowledge co-creation. Over the last 30 years, considerable attention has been paid to how resources and expertise within academic institutions can be brought to bear on the intractable social and economic problems of local communities. A necessary, yet under-theorised aspect of these dynamics is the extent to …

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Policing Perspectives Of Human Trafficking, Joanne V. Silva Aug 2021

Policing Perspectives Of Human Trafficking, Joanne V. Silva

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This study incorporates a criminological and feminist analysis of policing perspectives surrounding the power dynamics within human trafficking.

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Metal Music And Gender, Adam Fortney Jun 2021

Metal Music And Gender, Adam Fortney

Sociology Student Work Collection

Heavy metal music is experienced as a vibrant and empowering global community, but its history, structure, and practice reflect and recreate larger patterns of masculine hegemony within the metal world. As the metal ethos is centered around the practice and affirmation of social transgression, some are pushing the boundaries of metal itself to become a vehicle for critical social discourse around structural inequalities, including gendered hegemony.

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Proximity To Power: The Challenges And Strategies Of Interviewing Elites In Higher Education Research, Kevin Mcclure, Jon L. Mcnaughtan Mar 2021

Proximity To Power: The Challenges And Strategies Of Interviewing Elites In Higher Education Research, Kevin Mcclure, Jon L. Mcnaughtan

The Qualitative Report

Presidents, provosts, deans, and other upper-level administrators in higher education fit common definitions of “elites” in the context of qualitative research. Scholarship on methods specific to the field of higher education has not identified or described the unique challenges of interviewing these and other elites. The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges and share strategies for elite interviewing, with specific application to qualitative research in the field of higher education. We provide three examples of empirical studies involving elite interviewing and, using literature from other fields, highlight challenges and strategies. By anticipating challenges and implementing these strategies, researchers …

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Multispecies Disposability: Taxonomies Of Power In A Global Pandemic, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman Jan 2021

Multispecies Disposability: Taxonomies Of Power In A Global Pandemic, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman

Animal Studies Journal

This paper bridges critical conversations regarding animal exploitation and racialized violence that have been occurring throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We apply Claire Jean Kim’s analysis of taxonomies of power to help make sense of the interwoven multispecies catastrophes of racialized animalization and animalized racialization, such as the violence experienced by various species of nonhuman animals, as well as East Asians and other People of Colour in the West, whether in public spaces, in media, on farms, or inside industrial animal slaughterhouses or meatpacking plants. We conclude by arguing that Kim’s ethics of mutual avowal provides a productive way for social …

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Power-Laden (Mis)Understandings Surrounding Written Voluntary Informed Consent Procedures In Postcolonial Southern Africa, Michelle R. Brear Dec 2020

Power-Laden (Mis)Understandings Surrounding Written Voluntary Informed Consent Procedures In Postcolonial Southern Africa, Michelle R. Brear

The Qualitative Report

Written voluntary informed consent (VIC) procedures are the standard approach for operationalising the ethical principle of respect for persons’ autonomy in qualitative research. However, achieving fully informed and truly voluntary consent is challenging, particularly in qualitative research and/or postcolonial contexts. Evidence about (mis)understandings (i.e., unintended meanings) surrounding VIC comes primarily from participants in quantitative, biomedical research. I aim to advance knowledge about qualitative research participants’ (mis)understandings of VIC. I used ethnographic methods to document the evolving (mis)understandings participants attached to written VIC procedures in two postcolonial settings, Eswatini and South Africa. All participants provided me consent to document their interactions …

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“Surveilling The Maternal Body”: A Critical Examination Through Foucault’S Panopticon, Sarah Symonds Leblanc Nov 2020

“Surveilling The Maternal Body”: A Critical Examination Through Foucault’S Panopticon, Sarah Symonds Leblanc

The Qualitative Report

This article analyzes my personal experience of having a maternal body through autoethnographic means. Being pregnant is a time of celebration, but moms experience private and public changes in their bodies. These public changes continue during the postpartum period. Ground in Foucault’s panopticon, this paper explores how the maternal body undergoes self-surveillance as well as surveillance by the proverbial others. I provide vignettes and personal experiences to highlight the panopticon: moms self-surveil but moms are also being surveilled when in the public eye. I make the argument of how the maternal body is a site of surveillance often used to …

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Negotiating With Gatekeepers: Reflexivity In Exploring Turkish Men’S Engagement In Domestic Violence Perpetrator Interventions In The Uk, Zeynep Turhan Phd, Claudia Bernard Phd Aug 2020

Negotiating With Gatekeepers: Reflexivity In Exploring Turkish Men’S Engagement In Domestic Violence Perpetrator Interventions In The Uk, Zeynep Turhan Phd, Claudia Bernard Phd

The Qualitative Report

This article explores methodological and ethical challenges and complexities in negotiating access with gatekeepers in research that examines Turkish perpetrators’ engagement in domestic violence interventions in the UK. This research presents the examples and conceptual information about the process of working with gatekeepers based on the sensitive research topic. This paper draws on the first author’s own experiences and the emotional impact of undertaking such sensitive research where community leaders held patriarchal beliefs. It also argues that there are challenges in building trust and rapport with gatekeepers which are related to gender power relations; stigmatisation in the community; ideologies around …

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Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra Jul 2020

Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra

Doctoral Dissertations

The intensification of neoliberal economic reforms and new patterns of middle-class consumption in India have coincided with rising levels of urban inequality and poverty. Yet India’s capital, Delhi, positions itself as a “world-class city,” invoking neoliberal state aspirations to justify widespread violence against communities living and working in state-contested spaces. While much has been written about the reproduction of urban inequality and poverty in India, this body of scholarship under-emphasizes mechanisms of social control and violence, specifically, criminalization by the state.
To understand these dynamics, children’s experiences are particularly important given their age-based potential and vulnerabilities. To give visibility to …

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