Chapter 3- Textbook Flashcards
What does Western Marxism refer to?
More independent and critical forms of Marxism than those practised by th more dogmatic Soviet and Chinese regimes
What did Gramsci accept about Marx’s analysis and what did he diverge from?
the struggle between he ruling class and the subordinate working class, but he divergent from Marx in his analysis of how the ruling class ruled.
How does Gramsci believe the ruling class ruled that Marx didn’t state?
subtle yet insidious ideological control and manipulation
What is hegemony?
domination through ideological control and consent
What are Gramsci’s two different forms of political control?
domination and hegemony
What is domination?
the direct physical and violent coercion exerted by the police and the military to maintain social boundaries and enforce social rules
What does ideological control mean?
That a society’s dominant ideas reflect the interests of the ruling class and help to mask social inequalities
What involves consent?
hegemony
-a regime must have the allegiance of the masses
How does the hegemony of the dominant groups’s ideas and cultural forms work?
By bringing about the consent of the subordinate class
What did Gramsci separate the superstructure into?
the state (coercive institutions such as the police, military, government, and system of laws) and civil society (schools, media, religion, trade unions, and cultural associations)
What did Gramsci focus on with the superstructure in the role it plays in establishing hegemony? Why?
Civil society because through these institutions the population internalizes the ruling class’ ideas and cultural forms, which then become accepted as common sense.
What kind of a process is hegemony?
A process that is constantly negotiated and renegotiated. Hegemony is not static, the ruling class cannot take it for granted.
Why can’t the ruling class take hegemony for granted/
Because the consent secured is active consent, it is not static.
What is at the core of all feminist theories?
concern for gender oppression
What was much of the focus of early feminist theorists directed at?
the issue of equality, both social and political, between men and women
When did first-wave feminism take shape and when did it conclude?
in the mid-1800s concluding just after World War I with the victory for (some) women of the right to vote
Where does second-wave feminism find its roots?
In the social movements of the 1960s in North America
What is second-wave feminism characterized by?
Understanding “women” as a coherent social group with a common experience as women.
How was gender oppression conceived of a seeing experienced in second-wave feminism?
As being experienced in the same way by all women. They had a single, shared voice that would adequately represent all women in their struggle against patriarchy.
What is patriarchy?
A pervasive and complex social and cultural system of male domination
What is second-wave feminism associated with and how?
consciousness-raising groups because as women come to a realization about their mutual oppression they would understand that things that seem completely personal are actually widely shared and part of the patriarchal structure
What does Dorothy Smith recognize?
What women share is domination by men. She dishes to produce a sociology for women. She is concerned about the gendered character of the social production of knowledge.
What is Dorothy Smith interested in?
A feminist sociology that can provide for women an account of the social relations that shape their lives; a sociology that helps women come to understand the broader conditions within which their experiences arise.
What is Smith’s concept of ruling?
the exercise of power shaping people’s actions
What does Smith believe knowledge is as it currently stands?
androcentric in that women have been left out of knowledge production
What are ruling relations?
The abstract, conceptual, and “extra-locally” organized relations of state, professions, corporations, academic discourses, mass media, and so on” that exist in a generalized form and for to coordinate, from outside the local sites of our bodies, what people do (their actions)
What is Smith’s main point?
That we need to know and understand what is not visible from our individual locations We need to make visible the social relations that frame the conditions of our experiences. Smith is interested in a sociology the can show people how the relations of ruling shape their lives.
What is third-wave feminism?
- criticizes second-wave theorizing in that its a singular voice that supposedly represents all women but is really the voice of white, middle-class, heterosexual, educated women.
- third-wave feminists believe that what is needed is attention to the multiplicity of women’s voices
- need greater acceptance of complexities, ambiguities, and multiple locations
- difference based one ace, social class, sexuality, and so forth
What is rejected with third-wave feminism?
Dichotomous positioning around gender and sexuality which is replaced wit more fluid understanding
What does bell hooks argue?
That no one in the 1960s civil rights or women’s movement seemed to pay attention to the realities of black women’s lives. Focus on black men and focus on white women. She criticized feminist theorizing that automatically positions households as places of patriarchal oppression for women because it is assumed that if women earn far less, their financial dependency leads in turn to their subjection and exploitation in households. She points to the historical reality that for many, households have been spaces of refuge, resistance, and solidarity from racism, including the institutionalized racism of the labour force.
What view do post structuralists challenge by arguing what?
Enlightenment thinking which view scientific knowledge as being the key to human freedom by arguing that scientific knowledge, o ideas about absolute “truth”, cannot stand outside power relations.
What are post-structuralists concerned with?
how knowledge is socially produced
What was Michel Foucault interested in?
The ways that power and knowledge work together
What is one of Foucault’s greatest contributions to post-structural thought?
his rethinking of power
What does Foucault refer to the Marxist theory of power as?
The repressive hypothesis
What is the repressive hypothesis?
Holds that truth is opposed to power and can therefore play a liberating role It views “truth” as something that can be produced outside of power relations and therefore as something that can be objective.
What is power according to Foucault?
Power is not a thing possessed by one individual over another. He views power relations as being created within social relationships. They are multidirectional, can be found everywhere, and are always at work. They produce particular forms of behaviour.
Acc. to Foucault, what is power linked with? How?
- Knowledge
- Truths or facts are contextual meaning that they can never be separated from the relations of power that they are produced within.
- To know something is to exercise power
