SOCCUL6

CULTURE

AND POWER

Jennifer L. Adams, M.A. Have you completed your online course

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INTRODUCTION • Power – having it, getting it, keeping it – is a primordial

human desire. • In its pursuit people actively deploy cultural resources

and culture defines the arena in which the struggle for power takes place. • Who are the combatants? • What is at issue? And for whom? • What should be accepted? What should be resisted? • What are the consequences of compliance/rebellion?

INTRODUCTION • We are going to examine how culture shapes power,

looking at: • What is power? • Why do powerful actors and institutions need cultural

resources? • Power at different levels of human interactions? (micro vs.

macro) • How is power institutionalized?

• The role of culture in elections, spectacles, and cognitive and emotional responses toward politics.

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS

IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE

SUBMIT TO IT?

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE SUBMIT TO IT?What is power? • Power – ability to influence or exercise control over other people

and achieve goals despite opposition or resistance • Can be an individual, a category, or a nation.

What are some examples of power? • Ex: most of us have the power to get up and go get a glass of

water, while a bedridden person or an incarcerated person does not

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE SUBMIT TO IT?What is culture again? • Geertz (1978) – an historically transmitted pattern of meanings

embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which [people] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life

• As such, it is culturally instilled knowledge and attitudes that prompts people to accept certain power arrangements and reject others. • Examples? • If A says to B “give me your phone” and B does it, A has some sort

of power over B. If a witness, C, sees it they may regard this exercise of power as legitimate or as an abuse.

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE SUBMIT TO IT?What are the ways people exert power? • Sheer Force – “give me your phone or I’ll shoot you” • Exchange – “let me buy your phone” Both are costly in that they require energy (e.g. force) or resources (e.g. exchange) from the person in power. How does cultural support for the exercise of power come about? • Culture provides a model for behavior and defines what is legitimate,

proper, and normal across the board (morals, common sense, how things should be, etc.) including our understandings of power and thus culture dictates our behavior and response.

• Ex: Professor says, “You must give me your homework” vs. “You must give me your jacket.” Are these acceptable? Why or why not?

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE SUBMIT TO IT?How binding is culture? • Two Extreme Positions:

• Agents – people are free agents in control of their own destiny in which culture provides resources for people to draw on as they pursue their own ends

• Dopes – people are programmed by their culture to such an extent that they fail to recognize their own interests

• Middle Ground: • People are somewhere between free agents and dopes. They exercise

agency, but that agency is constrained by structure. • Structure – the opposing force of agency; the complex and stable

framework of society that influences all individuals or groups through the relationship between institutions (e.g., economy, politics, religion) and social practices (e.g., behaviors, norms, and values)

POWER: WHAT IS IT, WHO HAS IT, AND WHY DO PEOPLE SUBMIT TO IT?Do the operations of culture – legitimacy, moral codes, common sense – systematically advantage one group or type of person over others? Examples?

POWER IN F2F INTERACTIONS

POWER IN F2F INTERACTIONS • Power exists in any group. How many people does it take

to form a group? • What are some examples of power in F2F interactions? • Ex: if one person in a monogamous romantic relationship always

selects what the couple will do, they hold the power • How is such power legitimated?

• Through rules. Examples? • Ex: professor requiring attendance

• Through force of personality. Examples? • Ex: charismatic church leaders asking for money (think Joel Osteen)

• Through categorical belonging. Examples? • Ex: tall people, white people, men

POWER IN F2F INTERACTIONS Let’s examine legitimacy through categorical belonging a little deeper. • Ethnicity – disadvantaged minorities lack power and

may be socially discriminated against long after legal discrimination is prohibited (ex: Roma in Eastern Europe )

• Sex – women have less power in conversations than men – they talk less and are interrupted more, because our culture teaches us to believe women will not make as important a contribution as men

POWER IN F2F INTERACTIONS • We usually assume that even small groups must have a

strong leader, someone with power, to work. • Ex: early conversation participants have more power within

conversations (making them de facto leaders) • But egalitarian microcultures may be more effective.

• Ex: participatory democracy (p. 167) • And some groups skirt politics altogether to keep people

from reflecting on the power relationships within the group. • Ex: Becker’s 1999 study of US church congregations (p. 167-8)

IDENTITY POLITICS

IDENTITY POLITICS • History in the collective memory plays a big role in

making some actions seem legitimate, moral, or common sense at the expense of other actions. • But history is a cultural construct, subject to individual and

institutional manipulation, revision, and selective emphasis and forgetting. Examples? • Ex: Texas History Textbooks and Vietnam War Exclusion

• Zerubavel (1997) points out the cultural influence on perception (what people notice), attention and concern (what people care about), classification (how people categorize things), and time (how people place things in the past or future). • Ex: A-As regard slavery as a relatively recent “cultural trauma” with

important contemporary meaning while many white Americans see it as a long past institution with little current relevance

IDENTITY POLITICS • But cultural ideology only gains power when it combines with

resource distribution/allocation. • Sewell (1992) – social structure is composed simultaneously of

schemas, which are virtual, and of resources • Ironically, schemas are the effects of resources and resources are the effects

of schemas. • Example:

• If a society believes that girls are not as good at math as boys (ideology), the girls may prove this to be wrong if they are given equal opportunities in the classroom (resources).

• But if boys are given more resources (such as attention from the teacher, the opportunity to work a problem on the board, more encouragement from significant others, etc.) then this will result in a self-fulfilling prophecy in which boys do end up being better at math.

• This is the Thomas Theorem in action! What’s the Thomas Theorem? • What are some other examples?

IDENTITY POLITICS • How is this relevant to power? Well, the powerful control more

resources than the less powerful. • This is true on both a micro and macro level.

• But don’t power structures sometimes change despite their tendency to reproduce themselves? • Tendency to Reproduce – Bourdieu (1984) pointed out that educational

systems tend to take children with social advantages and pile on more advantages putting them in more powerful positions when they become adults. Can you explain this? • He referred to things like this as habitus – underlying transposable dispositions

that reproduce structure even in improvised action in totally new contexts. • Sewell (1992) built on to this idea but argued that we need a less rigid

conception of society/structure which contains conflicting schemas and unpredictable resource shifts that lead to change. • Ex: Dad holding the remote  Mom holding the remote  no remote (p. 169-170)

IDENTITY POLITICS • Powerful schemas include those of gender and race as well as

collective memory. • Groups differ sharply in what they remember and how they feel about it,

the social mind and horizon of expectations at work. • But when a memory acquires resources, it becomes history.

• History – the documented account of the past that is institutionally supported • Collective Memory – an account of the past shared by a group, often

perpetuated more informally • History and collective memory may or may not match.

• Evidence of matching? Commemorations, monuments, and museums • Evidence of not matching? Documentaries, eyewitness accounts, stories, rumors,

and photos • Change

• Collective memory can change over time. • As can history, because what is and is not institutionally supported can shift (p.

171-2).

THE AESTHETICS OF POWER

THE AESTHETICS OF POWER • If cultural creators can frame their message so it

resonates with a frame that the audience already possesses, they are more likely to get the audience to buy in. • Ex: Gay Rights Movement stood on the shoulders of the Civil Rights

Movement • Ex: FDR’s Lincoln frame to garner support for WW2 (p. 172)

• Political framing, though, is hard to accomplish. • Claims-makers work to legitimize their frames through

aesthetic means by using rituals and symbols. • Sometimes resources factor into this decision making.

• Ex: Parade vs. Police State

THE AESTHETICS OF POWER • DiMaggio (1997) on Interaction Between Cognition and Social

Life • Under everyday circumstances, people organize information via

automatic cognition using learned cultural schemas (aka knowledge) – we are essentially on autopilot.

• But sometimes we have to deploy deliberative cognition which is slow, deliberate, reflexive, and critical.

• Sees culture operating through the interaction of three forms: • Information, distributed unevenly through the population • Schematic representations that shape the way we perceive,

interpret, remember, and feel about the information we encounter.

• External symbol systems. • Culture isn’t any 1 of the 3 but the interaction among them.

THE AESTHETICS OF POWER • Probably the most familiar form of power through aesthetics are at

the national level in the form of parades, holidays, and celebrations.

• Power gets embodied in speeches and rituals but it also impresses itself on human bodies. • Bordo (1993) argues that EDs are not bizarre cognitive disorders but

predictable responses to the cultural messages about desirable body size. • Starvation constitutes a reasonable plan of action whereby the anorexic as creator

produces a body as cultural object that reflects the ideal we are taught to admire and seek.

• In other words, the plan makes cultural sense. • Thus the person isn’t sick, the culture is. • And since beauty both confers and is defined by power, the anorexic is just trying to

grab some power back by managing the body’s aesthetics. • Zamponi (1997) on Mussolini’s required Roman salute (p. 174)

THE AESTHETICS OF POWER • Politics (referred to as the state in the book) lay claim that nations are

“natural.” • But sociologists are quick to point out that they are, in fact, constructed. • Yet the state leans on the myth of the nation via cultural symbols. (Ex: Freedom

Monument on p. 174) • In today’s world of multicultural societies (including within nations), the

state can use schemas, resources, and aesthetics to support various approaches. But they definitely cannot ignore multiculturalism. • Suppressing multiculturalism via removal, ethnic cleaning, or denial (e.g. Darfur). • Denying multiculturalism (e.g. “the melting pot”). • Marginalizing or creating a separate space for minority cultures (e.g. Native

American Reservations) • Admitting the existence of multiculturalism but creating an overarching, pan-

cultural identity (e.g. the “New Nigerian”). • Celebrating multiculturalism.

POLITICAL ACTS AS

CULTURAL OBJECTS

POLITICAL ACTS AS CULTURAL OBJECTS• Culture’s role in political life goes well beyond spectacles of

power and group membership. • For example, office holders use aesthetic means to shore up

their claims to legitimacy. • Ex: Obama’s 2008 Election Night Rally • Tools deployed include: • Media coverage • Strategic photo ops • Carefully constructed speeches • Flags and other props

• Do you think displays of power in politics legitimate that power or cause people to question it? Why? What if it’s ostentatious or over the top?

POLITICAL ACTS AS CULTURAL OBJECTS• Voters, if not cynical, are at least sophisticated in the marketing and

media manipulation – known as spin – that politicians use. • As such it is harder than ever to impress voters, though ICTs have

helped with impression management and garnering support. • Even rituals with some tradition behind them can lose their ability to

legitimate power, in part because of the limited capacity of ritual itself in today’s world. • Rituals - repeated and simplified cultural communication in which the people

interacting, and those observing, share a mutual belief in the validity of the contents and their authenticity • Energizes the participants and attaches them to each other.

• Formal rituals aren’t as central today but social performances – like those of political leaders – have the same goals: to legitimate power and make a transition. If they seem artificial and inauthentic, they won’t succeed. • Ex: the presidential candidates tour of primary states (shaking hands, kissing babies, touring farms)

CULTURES WITHOUT CENTERS

CULTURES WITHOUT CENTERS • National myths and politicians’ efforts to embody them are

fighting against the tide of a decentered world. • We have gone from: • a world of cultural hierarchies to a world of multiple and

parallel meaning systems, • a world where specialists controlled access to information to

a world where information is readily available to almost everyone via the web.

• Cultural purity is gone, if it ever even existed at all (since humans have been migratory, basically, forever).

• Culture is not a melting pot nor a salad bowl, but more like a soup where some flavors are not identifiable.

CULTURES WITHOUT CENTERS • Yet humans continue to ward off chaos by using cultural objects. • They continue to produce and perpetuate their culture(s) through

interaction and socialization. • Our original cultural definitions still work. • People may exist in multiple communities through multiple networks but they

still share meanings with one another. • Communities, whether spatial or relational, still collectively represent

themselves through patterns of meanings embodied in symbols, meanings that shape thoughts and actions.

• So while understanding culture may be more complex today, the same familiar questions are still applicable: • What are the characteristics of this specific cultural object?? • What does it mean and for whom? • Who are its creators? • Who are its receivers and how do they interpret it? • From what social world does it come and into what social world is it sent?

CONCLUSIO N

CONCLUSION • Power is a primordial human desire. • Culture shapes power in many ways including by teaching us which

power arrangements to accept and which to reject. • Power is granted and legitimated in a variety of ways. • Cultural ideology grants more power to some groups/people than others

and collective memory plays a big part in this. • Claims-makers – such as politicians – work to legitimize their frames

through aesthetic means by using rituals and symbols. • The world is increasingly decentered yet humans continue to use

cultural objects to ward off chaos and make sense of the world. • And the same familiar questions can still be asked about old and new

cultural objects, both tangible and intangible.

ANY QUESTIONS?

THANK YOU I have sincerely enjoyed having each and

every single one of you in class and I hope to see you in my future classes and that you will stay

in touch! [email protected]

Don’t forget to complete your online course evaluation for EC!

Congratulations UH graduates!