Urge to Seek Nature Encouraged,

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Lecture 14

• Urge to Seek Nature Encouraged,
• Yet,
• Natural Urges Discouraged?
• The Contradictions within Boy Scouting

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Pre-class slide linkFoucaults France when he
was 13 years oldnotice the infrastructure and
the presence of the militaryit is easy to see
how the seeds were planted for his understanding
of powerlink TO Boy Scout Jamboree in Japan
2015what are some ideals and materials at the
forefront of this advertisement?
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Things
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Today

• Foucault - RECAP
• Reading
• Pryke, S. (2005). The control of sexuality in the
  early British Boy Scouts movement. Sex Education,
  5 (1), 15-28.

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Recap and More on Michel Foucault
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Foucaults Place in Sociological Thought

• 1926-1984
• Remember he was a young teenager during the
  World War II, which impacted him greatly. How
  would you be impacted if a major war was going on
  in Canada?
• Our concern with Foucault the disciplined,
  sexualized, over-powered, taboo-ed body coerced
  by the legitimized truths of institutions - - -
  the controlled body/mind the controlled
  society.
• (www.nndb.com/people/323/000095038/foucault.jpg)

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• His MAIN CONCERN in every area of his research
• how certain legitimate knowledges were so
  powerful that they could shape societies and
  control individuals

• Legitimate knowledge is believed to come from
  official institutions, such as government
  offices what are other examples of where
  legitimate knowledges come from?

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So instead of referring to 'power' and
'knowledge' separately, he prefers to compound
the term 'power/knowledge'. Foucault defines the
principle methodology of the genealogist as that
of history. In fact, he calls the genealogist
'the new historian'.

• This represents a humanization of the treatment
  of criminals it had grown more kind, less
  painful, and less cruel punishment had grown
  more rationalized and in many ways impinged
  more on the prisonersthe link between knowledge
  and power AS p. 372
• Foucault is interested in the way that knowledge
  gives birth to technologies that exert power. In
  this context, he deals with the Panopticon). Hear
  of this?

• In his book, Discipline and Punish (about how
  prisoners torture was replaced by control over
  them by prison rules) he explored the idea of a
  genealogy of truth.

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Panopticon

• The brainchild of Jeremy Bentham, though the
  concept has been around forever
• Technology has revolutionized
• the features of the panopticon.What are some
  modernexamples of panopticons?
• The panopticon is a goodexample of the
  materialaspect of the ideal of control.
• HOW MANY PANOPTICONS ARE YOU SUBJECTED TO DAILY?
• Keep this in mind when looking at the panoptic
  control over Boy Scouts.
• www.danlockton.co.uk/.../images/panopticon.jpg

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• We shall soon consider how close Foucaults
  prison analogy is to the control of (presumed)
  normal sexuality in the Boy Scout movement.I
  know, it seems like a long leap. Foucault
  control is control is control.

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• Genealogy of Power
• (Foucault) History is a genealogy of power ---
  the sane having control over the oppressed

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FoucaultTruth there is no one truth what
people consider to be truth is the outcome of
dominant knowledge/power

• Power in any social era, power and knowledge are
  interdependent through a special relationship
  power cannot be possessed by someone, but it can
  be exercised by institutions (where the
  institutionalization of norms is exercised).
• You are students now, and students are extremely
  controlled. In your dream job, how much control
  do you want over your life as compared to being a
  student?
• Is your sexuality being controlled here at SMU?

• Episteme each era is characterized by its own
  body of knowledge of how to control people
  (bodies), such as how new kinds of scientific
  knowledge about the human body had given rise to
  new ways of controlling bodies. The human body
  was entering a machinery of power that explores
  it, breaks it down and rearranges it. Thus
  discipline produces subjected and practiced
  bodies (p. 239). Do you think that bodies DO
  require or benefit from being controlled in some
  situations?

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Scouting Badgework
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Some materials of ScoutingDartmouth 2008what
are the ideals about how we interface with nature
here? Will these ideals be carried into adulthood
when choosing how to interact with nature
(purchasing vehicles, leisure)?Michael Bell,
from an environmental sociological perspective,
reminds us that our bodies are part of the
environment.

• Consider
• The nude body
• Male-to-male camaraderie
• P. 37

• Connecting boys to/in naturea series of books
  called BOY SCOUTS IN THE WILDERNESS

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• Girl Guides of Canada
• (engineer, heritage homeskills, nature observer,
  scientist, recycler) (http//www.girlguides.ca/cli
  part.asp?id242clipcat22)

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A gender difference?

• Consider
• Apples (raw material in nature, out there)
• Cookies (produced in private sphere)
• How well would Boy Scout Cookies go over?
• Could Girl Guides find success and acceptance in
  selling apples? What other institution in many
  nations anchors gender to apples?

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Sexuality in the Organization

• Tolerance (a dirty word?)
• Remember, the uniform is an example of the
  material aspect of the ecological dialogue of
  scouting.
• When homosexuals wear the uniform, legally, how
  can others tell they are homosexual?

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Pryke, S. (2005). The control of sexuality in the
early British Boy Scouts movement. Sex Education,
5 (1), 15-28.

• Pryke notes a paradox there was much ado about
  sex in a sexless organization.
• It was a place for boys to escape the lure of the
  female, where they could have fun in nature and
  learn how to become men. Baden-Powell, the one
  who developed the movement, was a general in the
  Boer War a war hero. Who better to start a
  boys organization, Right?
• In the next couple of clips, examine the uniform
  and other material things --- can you tell if
  someone is homosexual in these clips?
• Hmmmm (In whose interest is this truth?)
• Who was Robert Baden-Powell? (In whose
  interest?)
• This links home website is Famous British
  Paedophiles --- again, the counterculture is
  never far awaydo you think this is a fair
  judgment of Baden-Powell?

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Influence of The Social Purity Movement

• Late 1800s to around 1930 in Great Britain and
  other parts of Europe
• A response to many things, including a physical
  reading of the Christian Bible
• Mostly otherwise good churchwomen (Church of
  England/Anglican) aimed at regulating and
  purifying the morality of the social, by
• Ending prostitution
• Ending divorce
• Ending illegitimate children births
• Ending dirty literatures
• MASTURBATION WAS a SINFUL urge LED TO INSANITY
  WAS DIRTY

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Pryke suggests that

• Scouting, among other things, functioned to
  control natural adolescent sexuality through
  repressing masturbation viewed as unnatural,
  though everyone was doing it.
• This was carried out through ideals about what
  was natural and what was unnatural --- this was
  communicated through text, concepts of
  brotherhood and manhood, acts of war, religion,
  nationhood, and sanity.

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• Next Week
• ?Tuesday, Oct. 21 No Reading. Guest or Video
• ?Thursday, Oct. 23 Discussion of guest topic or
  video