1) The most recently assigned group activity - "Something to Talk About" - is now on Steve's assignment page.
2) A note about "praxis" and the group presentations: With one and perhaps two exceptions, praxis (even though you may not have known the word) was the missing key element in most presentations. Keep that in mind as we move forward.
3) If you haven't received a presentation mark in your email inbox, that's because you weren't in class last week on Wednesday to give me you email address. If that's the case, email me in the next few days (only email me from your York address if you check it regularly - I'd prefer an address for an account that you use every day, rather than once a week) and I'll send it back to you.
4) If anyone did answer the reading questions for the Marx & Engels, Gramsci, and Althusser readings and would like to discuss their answers or the problems they encountered in answering them, feel free to post a comment in response to this message.
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2 comments:
I'm copying Sonia's comment to this post's thread because it makes more sense to place it here
Sonia wrote:
"This is what I got from the readings on ideology: Ideology is an idea that the ruling class, the ones who owns the modes of production (the ISAs and RSAs) uses to put the lower class under subjection and in so doing place themselves, under the same subjection, an example of this is the justice system, the ruling class are the ones who label what is legal and what is not legal, but it is illegal for for both the ruling class and the lower class to commit murder."
My response would be to look at the values that the legal system represents (ideology is about values and representations, as you'll recall from the readings and the lecture) rather than the laws themselves. The law is just a theory when it is written on paper - it is in practice (when someone is arrested and put on trial and lawyers argue over whether the law has been broken) that ideology is made apparent.
For example: There is a familiar saying that "all are equal before the law", but imagine that a poor person and a rich person are both accused of committing murder. The rich person has a reputation and social standing, has influence, has money and can afford better lawyers and expert witnesss, and will probably present him or herself more respectably in court. By contrast, the poor person is likely uneducated and lacks influence, money, or the appearance of respectability. He or she cannot afford a lawyer and will be assigned one that is only being paid the bare minimum and cannot afford the resources of the rich person's lawyer. This comparison explicitly disproves the myth of 'equality under the law', and yet it is still a pervasive and powerful ideology.
This is to show that when it comes to ideology, we must consider all aspects in order to make sure that we are giving all items with fair considerations and without bias as well. The provided example certainly puts it into perspective.
I wanted to ask a question in regards to Dyer in “Stereotyping”.
One of the questions through the reading context questions(#2)was "How does the establishment of hegemony through stereotyping work?"
I do understand that the concept of hegemony is an active concept that must be flawelessy built and rebuilt in the face of both implicit (contained) and explicit (open) changes to it. I also understand that there are two principal features of:
1) Ethnocentrism which refers to the application of the norms appropriate to one’s own culture to that of others
2) The assumption that given social groups “have inborn and unalterable psychological characteristics”(drawn from the text).
However, I do not understand on how hegemony is being used through stereotyping. In the text(pg.356), it states that:
"In stereotyping, the dominant groups apply their norms to subordinated groups, find the latter wanting, hence inadequate, inferior, sick, or grotesque, hence reinforcing the dominant groups’ own sense of legitimacy of their domination.
What is meant by this?
Does it mean that in regards to stereotyping, once the dominant groups apply their norms to subordinated groups, they end up discovering that the subordinated groups are insignificant, therefore there's more reason and validation of the domaniant groups's emphasis on having their own sense of authority of their domination or "power"?
Is this what the author is trying to attempt to state?
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