Core Studies 3
Prof. P. Currah
Readings:
1. Finish William Chafe, "Sex and Race: The Analogy of Social Control," PPP, 8th edition, pp. 517-531.
2. Discuss Paul Montagna, "Operational and Definitional Introduction to Power and Authority," PPP, 8th edition, pp. 44-49.
I. Finish Chafe’s article:
Example to use in thinking through this article on the forms of power:
i. A segregated lunch counter in the South.
ii. A gay man who is closeted at work.
A. Four different kinds of power, layered over one another
i. physical force or threat of force (intimidation)
Examples: slavery, lynching, gay-bashing
ii. economic coercion
Example: losing your job for speaking out about injustice
iii. psychological forms of power: discursive or ideological beliefs
Examples: textbooks, encyclopedias that denigrated the "Negro's" intelligence; colonial Manichean systems of thought (good=colonists; bad=natives); gender ideologies
iv. internalized norms; belief systems that cast subjugated groups as inferior that the group itself begins to believe in
Examples: women who think the only proper work for women is in the home
B. Relation between these four different forms of power.
i. chronological: from slavery to Jim Crow segregation to institutionalized norms (see Feagin and Feagin’s article)
ii. situational: type of power used depends on need of situation.
iii. level of embeddedness: the more deeply rooted in discursive or ideological or belief systems, the more easily power can avoid using naked force and thus avoid the unmasking of itself and damaging the ideological or discursive structures that legitimate it. Even subjugated groups stop questioning the social practices that oppress them, thinking instead of those practices as "natural," as "common sense."
C. How to challenge power?
i. Power is instituted top-down:
(i --> ii --> iii --> iv).
But it is challenged from the bottom up:
(iv --> iii --> ii --> i).ii. consciousness, critique of the existing order of society
iii. group mobilization (from individuals to groups, to larger groups, etc.)
D. Exercise: Thinking through the examples
i. Choose one of these two examples: a segregated lunch counter in the South; or the phenomenon of a gay man who decides not to come out of the closet (say that he is gay) at work.
ii. Write a paragraph outlining either how the lunch counter ended up segregated or how the gay man ended up in a system in which it is a good idea to be in the closet. Be sure to follow as closely as possible the schema on the forms of power described above.
iii. Write another paragraph that suggests how the subjugated group would challenge the particular power arrangements that call for its subjugation. Stick to your example.
II. Discuss Paul Montagna's article, Operational and Definitional Introduction to Power and Authority
Exercise: Choose a secretary who will take notes. Be sure that the secretary writes the names of all group members on the assignment sheet.
1. How does Montagna define authority (44)?
2. What makes the exercise of power "legitimate" in authority relations?
3. Identify the four kinds of authority discussed by Montagna. Give another example (different from Montagna’s) for each type of authority.
i. example
ii. example
iii. example
iv. example
4. Identify the various authority structures that may exist in a society.
5. Which type of authority structure (from question four above) best describes these situations?
i. Priest - parishioner
ii. police officer – someone getting a ticket
iii. Hitler - Nazi party members
iv. Independent prosecutor -- President of the United States
v. Queen Elizabeth -- British Subject
vi. Professor -- student
vii. Judge – plaintiff in a lawsuit
viii. Parent – child
6. Think about and answer about the following questions:
i. Why do you think you obey the law? When you get a speeding ticket, do you pay it? Why?
ii. If you could choose, would you choose to live in a world where you didn’t have to obey the law, but everyone else did? Why or why not?
iii. If you do stand during the national anthem, why?
iv. Why did so many people in Los Angeles get upset and riot after the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted?
v. Thinking through your response to question four, try to identify the most important aspect of the legal-rational form of authority.