First, we talked about "Foucault's perspective on discourse". He has a different view on the whole sociology:
- Foucault is interested in the ways in which knowledge, language and culture operates in society.
- He seeks to develop an approach to power which departs from the conventional perspectives found in sociology.
- There are conventional perspectives e.g. Karl Marx or Max Weber.
Foucault understands social relationships as much less permanent or stable and influenced very strongly by patterns of language or discourse which he believes organize the way in which we relate to each other.
We have seen a couple of examples of discourses:
Straight or gay: The way you're acting around a person defines whether your gay or straight. The way of acting defines your sexuality. People make stereotypes based on their observation
Huts or houses: People who live in huts are more primitive than people who are living in houses. They are a couple of years behind.
Civil war or tribal war: When 2 developped countries fight against eachother, it's called a civil war because they are more civilized. If 2 primitive tribals fight with eachother, it's called a tribal war because it's less civilized.
Systema's natura
But when you read the text careful enough, you'll read that he is justifying slavery of " black coloured " people. You could treat them like animals and the other cultures like Asian, European and American are high class people, all with their good aspects.
Macro development discourses:
We have gotten a text out of the book " The making and unmaking of the third world" by Arturo Escobar. We had to read the text and find main discourses on development/ developing countries. We've discussed the following discourses:
The Truman discourse:
- “Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas.”
- “I believe that we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life.”
- “Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge.”.
The UN discourse:
- “There is a sense in which rapid economic progress is impossible without painful adjustments.”
Micro development discourses:
Micro development discourses:
We had to identify the different power relations in the two Eritrean cases. We discussed this in the classroom and these are our findings:
In the first Eritrean case we found these power relations:
- Marcus was in the back of the class. => The children are being watched by two persons, the teacher in the front of the clas and Marcus was watching the kids and the teacher in the back of the class.
- Marcus has a fancy camera with him. By this, he is showing the kids that he is wealthy. Wealthy means that he's developped.
- The kids had to do what the teacher said them to do. The first two rows had to get a stone and get back to their place. The third row had to go to the side of the windows. A couple of kids ran out the classroom and they brought a stone with them. The kids aren't lauging at them so they have respect. This is also a very positif power relation.
- The teacher is very confident because he asked Marcus what he thought about the lesson. This means he is open to criticism and by this he's also improving his English.
- Marcus comes from a foreign country so this is also a power relation. Most of the other foreign countries are very developped and this creates a high class status.
- The teacher is using a UNICEF- book. This is also a power relation. Eritrea doesn't have the economical strength to buy/ have textbooks. So Unicef is helping them out.
- Some teachers also use poor teaching methods => a stick. The stick is used to get respect from their students. The stick creates fear. The most of the students are afraid from the teacher because of this stick- method.
These are the power relations we found in the second Eritrea case:
- The teachers are highly paid. This creates a high status. A high status means power.
- The economical position isn't good at Eritrea. This position means "threat", "poor" and " "underdevelopped".
Reflection:
I found it interesting to read something about the book " Systema's Natura". I found it very
despicable that the western culture was making up different classes between all the people of the
world. They were making a kind of encyclopedia of " cultures" . It's really bad that we actually
approved slavery in that dark history. I already know that they made " black" people as slaves, but by
reading the text of the book, it seemed that they were saying, that those people were just like animals
without any rights! Another interesting part of this lesson was discussing the different power relations
in the Eritrean situations. I had no idea that there are a lot of small things who present " Power".
These things have an influence on the surrounding people but it also makes people react differently.
We as a western culture already have a " power" status because of our wealth and luxury. It's
surprising that other cultures can really "see" and " feel" this status.
