Paradigm Shifts: Understanding Ideological Foundations of Inequality

1
Paradigm Shifts Understanding Ideological
Foundations of Inequality

• Dominant Paradigms in Western Thought
• The Social Construction of Categories Race,
  Class, Gender, Sexuality
• Paradigms and Power in the Post Industrial World
• The Social Construction of Reality and Social
  Change

2
The Social Construction of Inequality

• The Normal and the Abnormal
• Common Sense Assumptions
• Associations

3
Dominant Paradigms and Social Constructions

• What is a paradigm- A model. The dominant
  paradigm is the ontological underpinnings of
  social thought. It is the framework that
  structures ideologies. These ideologies then in
  turn reinforce the dominant paradigm.

4
Paradigm Shifts Understanding the Ideological
Foundations of Inequality

• Feudalism/Renaissance
• Industrial Capitalism/Enlightenment
• Post-Industrial Capitalism/Empirical Science

5
The History of Social Inequality

• Race
• Class
• Gender
• Sexuality

6
The Guiding Paradigm Structures Ideologies of
Difference/Inequality

• Understanding The Social Construction of
  Categories Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality

7
The Social Construction of Categories Race

• Racial Formation- refers to the process by which
  social, economic, and political forces determine
  the content and importance of racial categories,
  and by which they are in turn shaped by racial
  meanings. Race is a central axis of social
  relations which cannot be subsumed under or
  reduced to some broader category or conception.
  (Omi and Winant p.21)
• Racial subjection is quintessentially
  ideological. (Omi and Winant p. 22)

8
The Social Construction of Categories Race

• Racialization- signifies the extension of racial
  meaning to a previously racially unclassified
  relationship, social practice, or group.
• Racialization is a historically specific
  ideological process.
• Racial ideology is constructed from pre-existing
  conceptual elements. It emerges from the
  struggles of competing political projects.
• -By the end of the seventeenth century, Africans
  whose specific identity was Ibo, Yoruba, Fulani,
  etc. were rendered black by an ideology of
  exploitation based on racial logic - the
  establishment and maintenance of a color line.
  (Omi and Winant P.23)

9
The Social Construction of Categories Race

• The seemingly obvious natural and common
  sense qualities which the existing racial order
  exhibits themselves testify to the effectiveness
  of the racial formation process in constructing
  racial meanings and racial identities. Omi and
  Winant p. 21

10
The History of Racial Formation

• As Winthrop Jordan has observed From the
  initially common term Christian, at mid-century
  there was a marked shift toward the terms English
  and free. After about 1680, taking the colonies
  as a whole, a new term of self-identification
  appeared- white.

11
Racial Systems of Classification and Shifting
Systems of Power and Privilege

• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), the
  German anatomist and naturalist
• Blumenbach's final taxonomy of 1795 divided all
  humans into five groups, defined both by
  geography and appearance--in his order, the
  Caucasian variety, for the light-skinned people
  of Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and Africa
  the Mongolian variety, for most other inhabitants
  of Asia, including China and Japan the Ethiopian
  variety, for the dark-skinned people of Africa
  the American variety, for most native populations
  of the New World and the Malay variety, for the
  Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific and
  for the aborigines of Australia.

12
Caucasian? Isnt that a region between Russia
and Georgia?

• Caucasian- Blumenbach's definition cites two
  reasons for his choice--the maximal beauty of
  people from this small region, and the
  probability that humans were first created in
  this area.

13
Caucasian?
14
Why Race?

• Shifting Discourses-
• Colonialization and the primitive other.
• Colonial power and racial classification.

15
The Social Construction of Categories Race

• What types of Expectations/Assumptions are made
  about people of Different Races/Ethnicities (Be
  sure to interrogate Dominant Categories as well
  as subordinate).
• Abilities
• Preferences (Likes and Dislikes)
• Family Life

16
Understanding the Racialization of Terrorism

• How did terrorism become an Arab/Muslim
  phenomenon?
• Media representation.
• After September 11, 2001, images of celebrating
  Palestinians were broadcast with the implication
  being that they were celebrating the attack. In
  reality, the footage was of group celebrating a
  soccer victory.
• Single image hides the diversity of the
  community.
• Multi-religious, multi-cultural etc.

17
Discussion

• What are some of the ways that people of Middle
  Eastern Descent are racialized?
• How is terrorist and Muslim conflated?

18
The Social Construction of Categories Gender

• Doing Gender- Gender is done (West and Zimmerman,
  1987)
• Through repeated enactments of gender norms,
  gender is written on the body and into the psyche.

19
The Social Construction of Categories Gender

• Talking about gender for most people is the
  equivalent of fish talking about water. Gender
  is so much the routine ground of everyday
  activities that questioning its
  taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions
  is like thinking about whether the sun will come
  up. (Lorber p.99)

20
The Social Construction of Categories Gender

• As a social institution, gender is a process of
  creating distinguishable social statuses for the
  assignment of rights and responsibilities.
  Lorber p.101
• Gender creates the social differences that define
  woman and man.
• Gender boundaries tell the individual who is like
  him or her, and who is unlike.

21
Dominant Ideologies of Gender

• What do dominant ideologies tell us that men and
  women in American Culture
• Look Like
• Act Like
• Like/Desire/Enjoy
• Dislike/Avoid
• Value
• Expect

22
The Social Construction of Categories Class

• Formal Components of Class Income, Wealth,
  Education, Occupation.
• Informal Appearance, possessions
• Cultural Capital- Knowledge, abilities, and
  preferences that are socially valued (Bourdieu)

23
The Social Construction of Categories Class

• Class position is assumed to be Earned-
• The Horatio Alger Myth
• Implications and Assumptions-
• People who get ahead work hard
• People who fail to get ahead are somehow
  deficient and individually responsible for their
  position.
• Because our system is meritocratic, success is
  equally available to all.

24
The Social Construction of Categories Class

• What types of Expectations/Assumptions are made
  about people of Different Class Statuses?
• Abilities
• Physical Appearance
• Preferences (Likes and Dislikes)
• Family Life

25
The Social Construction of Categories Sexuality

• Understanding the Continuum
• How is Sexuality done?
• Heteronormativity- the normalization of
  heterosexuality.

26
The Social Construction of Categories Sexuality

• The fact that the homosexual in history is the
  subject of study, but not the heterosexual
  demonstrates the machinations of power.
• -According to this proposal, women and men make
  their own sexual histories. But they do not
  produce their sex lives just as they please.
  They make their sexualities within a particular
  mode of organization given by the past and
  altered by their changing desire, their present
  power and activity, and their vision of a better
  world. (Katz p.146).

27
The Social Construction of Categories Sexuality

• -To understand the subtle history of
  heterosexuality we need to look carefully at
  correlations between (1) societys organization
  of eros and pleasure (2) its mode of engendering
  persons as feminine or masculine (its making of
  women and men) (3) its ordering of human
  reproduction and (4) its dominant political
  economy. (Katz p. 147)

28
The Social Construction of Categories Sexuality

• According to Dominant Ideologies, what do
  heterosexual and homosexual/Queer men and women
  in American Culture
• Look Like
• Act Like
• Like/Desire/Enjoy
• Dislike/Avoid
• Value
• Expect

29
Paradigms and Power in the Post Industrial World

• How are people advantaged or disadvantaged by
  being in different categories?
• Race
• Class
• Gender
• Sexuality

30
2000 Median Annual Earnings of Year-Round,
Full-Time Workers
31
Otherness Discussion Activity

• Form Groups of 4-6 and Discuss the Following
  Questions
• 1) Discuss a time you realized you were being
  viewed as the other.
• 2) Discuss a time you saw someone else othered,
  while you remained in the dominant category.
• How did these experiences make you
• Feel/think About Yourself
• Feel/think about other people
• Feel/think about your status/authority/options
• Feel/think about others status/authority/Options

32
The Social Construction of Reality and Social
Change

• Because categories are constructed, they can be
  changed.
• A continuous process of change occurs as groups
  and ideologies compete and material conditions
  alter.

33
Altering the Paradigm of Difference

• Recognize Social Constructions
• The effort must be made to understand race as an
  unstable and decentered complex of social
  meanings constantly being transformed by
  political struggle. (Omi and Winant, p.25)
• Understanding Social Construction as Process
• Because gender is a process, there is room not
  only for modification and variation by
  individuals and small groups but also for
  institutionalized change. (Lorber p.102)

34
Otherness as a Catalyst for Change

• Politically, the process of othering, creates
  the boundaries that define group identity and
  allow for collective action. (Ibish, p.41)

35
From Otherness to Privilege

• The experience of otherness is part of systems of
  privilege/oppression. It removes the option of
  being in the dominant category.

36
Dorothy Allison and the Mythical They

• In Your Opinion, what is the Question of Class?
• In what ways is Allison oppressed?
• How are her experiences of oppression manifested?

37
Key Concepts

• Paradigms
• Otherness
• The Social Construction of Inequality
• How Paradigm Shifts have altered concepts of
  race, class, gender and sexuality

• Racial Formation
• Racialization
• Doing Gender
• Sexuality Continuum
• Cultural Capital
• Horatio Alger Myth
• Heteronormativity