User:TimRJordan/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/2020-21/Seminar group 3/Power

Power in Translation
Translation is a discipline concerned with the communication of a text's meaning from one language to another. The separate discipline of Translation Studies, which is offered as a graduate degree at many UK universities including UCL, deals with the theory and application of translation in its social, cultural and historical context. The perspective of Translation Studies reveals significant power dynamics at play in the process of translation itself.

Far from viewing translation as a straightforward mechanical process of converting text from one language into another, Translation Studies generally assert that translation is a rewriting of the source texts. There is a transformation that occurs through translation and it has important implications for meaning as the politics of what is included, excluded, emphasised, and dismissed comes into consideration.

Our view of literature is often characterised by a romantic conception of the author as a "uniquely gifted creative genius endowed with profound insight and a mastery of their native language," leading us to bestow significant power on the original author and, by extension, the source text. Since the source text holds a certain authority of its own, the translator approaches the task of translation on the expectation that they will honour the source text. Therefore, the translator must sacrifice their personal perspective and creative liberties and conform to the ideas and creative choices that stand dominant within the source text.

However, consideration of the power dynamics of translation must take into account the power that the translator holds in each decision they make regarding structure, wording, and every other aspect of the translation capable of manipulating the meaning of the original text. This is particularly significant in the context of cross-cultural translation, as language is deeply intertwined with the culture of its production. The issue extends beyond the search for equivalent words because the cultural context of these words must be taken into account to understand the subtleties of what they express. Arguably, the outcome of this is that translation becomes an exercise in manipulation, a power struggle between the source text and the translator, who approaches the source text with their own personal prejudices and a necessarily limited understanding of its cultural context.

Links between Power, Law and Society
In many regards, law is often seen as the foundation of society and politics, and as tightly linked to power within both these elements. Indeed, law is used to keep order within a society, shaping individuals’ relationships towards each other and ultimately holding power over a society’s citizens, thus institutionalising power.

Michel Foucault on Law and Power
Michel Foucault was a French 20th Century philosopher, author of philosophical literature such as “Truth and Power”, exploring themes of power within society and the relationship between law and power. He defines power as not being limited to forms of prohibition, coercion or physical restraint, but also as being good in the sense that power can be used to help others or to acquire and spread knowledge, for example. As James Nickolas puts it in “Law and Power: Ten Lessons From Foucault”, “If I say or do something that shapes or influences your experienced reality, I am exercising power over you”, resuming Foucault’s idea of power not necessarily being a bad thing, as it is otherwise often portrayed to be. According to Foucault, the use of power not solely for repression but also for good is what makes it possible for it to be accepted and respected in society. Nickolas also goes on to interpret Foucault’s views on power and truth, consisting of truth essentially being a product of power, creating “competing truth claims” between opposing sides in various disciplines such as politics, for instance.

Foucault also describes power as having moved away from law and the judicial system. He presents it instead as decentralised in modern society, coercion now being at the heart of discipline within society through the development of a “modern episteme”. This is linked to the acquisition of new knowledge within various disciplines leading to new modes of surveillance and regulation. Indeed, this may contrast with the historical links between power and law, an example being that of public torture or executions in the 18th Century, these being manifestations of sovereign power through judicial punishment.

A view into "Feminism and the Power of Law"
In “Feminism and the Power of Law”, Carol Smart explores the rise of feminism and its position in regards to the law and its power. According to her, law gains its power through its presentation as a supreme unified knowledge which stands in the face of challenges and contradictions, including feminism. She explores some Foucaultian ideas, particularly in regards to his ideas of power coming to those who claim truth. For instance, scientific discourse is often used as the ultimate justification for a claim, undermining and discrediting other point of views or forms of knowledge. There is thus a certain power which comes with the supposed scientific claim, Smart pointing out that although law does not associate itself with scientificity and truth (Foucault), this discipline may still stand out and exercise power in a similar way. Through her work Smart challenges this power that law and the judicial system have over women and feminism, pointing out a range of flaws in the legal system and explaining that it is in part only so powerful because we view it as such.

Different powers involved in Biology
In biology, the notion of power can be linked to various ideas/mechanisms very different from one another. For instance, power can be linked to energy used by the cell to power its reactions, but power is also present in biology as gender inequalities (a form of social power) found in the number of women biologists compared to men biologists.

Mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell
To function, the eukaryotic cells require energy. This energy is provided by the mitochondrion, an organelle that probably entered the cell through primary endosymbiosis. This organelle is often referred to as the “powerhouse” of the cell. In this context, “power” is used to describe a force, a source of energy. Mitochondria provide near 90% of ATP necessary for cell life, produced through cellular respiration.

ATP, Adenosine Triphosphate, provides a thermodynamic driving force through its hydrolysis. In a very important number of cells, essential reactions are energy-dependent and therefore rely on this ATP synthesis. Different tissues have different needs in terms of energy. Energy is needed for instance for maintenance of neuronal membranes, organelle transport, or electrochemical signaling in the brain (requiring significant energy, reflected in a high consumption rate of cerebral glucose and oxygen) - the brain being one of the most ATP-needing organs. Energy can also be provided through other nucleotides like guanosine triphosphate (GTP) for specific energy-dependent processes, but ATP remains the central source of energy in the cell.

Social power in biology
Another important role of power in biology is the social power in this discipline. In biology, and in sciences in general, gender inequalities are very present. Out of the 603 Nobel Prizes that have been given out since 1901, only 57 have been awarded to women. 389 of these 603 concerned sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economic Sciences) and only 25 out of these 389 went to women - 4 in Physics, 7 in Chemistry, 12 in Medicine and 2 in Economic Sciences. Likewise, the NIH R01 is a support for all health-related research and only 30% of its recipients are women.

Gender stereotypes concerning science are formed and changed through direct (e.g. social interactions) and indirect (e.g. media) observations of men and women in science-related roles, like scientists and science teachers. This social phenomena is explored in social role theory. These gender stereotypes can influence people in their decision to pursue higher education, for instance women who have a more pronounced masculine view of science are less inclined to have science aspirations. This forms a vicious cycle of underrepresentation of women in science, reinforcing gender stereotypes, which then in turn plays a part in the underrepresentation of women in science, etc. This is a type of institutional power that makes it inherently difficult to increase women participation in science. However, the frequent exposure to counter-stereotypic women, such as successful female scientists and female science teachers, can weaken gender stereotypes and encourage more female students to take up higher education in science. One study focusing on this patriarchal vision in biology found that an intervention program, getting high school students to attend workshops administered by female biology teachers, challenged the stereotypical image of scientists held by many students. More intervention programs and policies to increase women participation in science should therefore be put into place, in order to overcome the gender barriers present in biology (and science in general) today.

There are multiple types of power when it comes to biology, playing different roles within and around the disicipline, involving very contrasted themes like energy-dependent reactions in the cell, as well as gender inequalities and gender barriers in this domain.

Power in Nursing
Nursing is an important part in the health care system, including tasks related to taking care of people with potential health problems. The power issue in nursing consists in gender inequality in this field. In most domains, and scientific ones in particular, we can often see a disequilibrium between the number of men and women, counting a majority of men and a small percentage of women. However in the nursing discipline, the desiquilibrium observed is reversed. In the UK medical system, only 11% of nurses are male, while the rest 89% are female. Moreover, male students in nursing schools are reported to experience more negative feelings like isolation, and they are also with a higher drop out rate compared with female students.

Historical context
The stereotype of nursing as a feminine profession roots deeply in history when Ms. Nightingale opened her nursing training school in 1860, which served as a model for other nursing education programs across Western countries. Though Nightingale’s efforts in professional nursing training elevated the status of female nurses and provided more career options for unmarried women, the organisation of nursing school was mobilised as a female-oriented system, excluding male students from the career. Most training schools at that time were built by mimicking the environment in religious sisterhood, requiring female students to preserve virtues and to be subordinate to physicians who were mostly males. Thus, nurses were classified as a second class accessory and the ubiquitous stereotypes of female characteristics were extended into the medical world. The mobilised bias of the nurse icon act as indirect coercion, preventing males to enter the nursing world by defining it as a feminine profession. Such stereotypes are also reinforced in popular culture when male nurses are portrayed as homosexual, putting pressure on males who want to pursue a nursing career.

The role of language and education
Due to the exclusiveness toward men in early nursing schools and the continuation of education traditions, the language use in nursing is biased against men. For example, in many nursing textbooks, the use of both pronouns and nouns are found in feminine forms, thus assuming all students are female. The use of the phrase “male nurse” also segregates the two genders and marginalise male students in nursing by categorising men as the minority. In addition, it is found out that in nursing training, the ways of communication with patients are usually taught based on the female mode of emotional expression, making male students struggle to find their own ways to establish connections with patients. Moreover, eventhough male nurses took active roles in history like during wartimes, their contributions were rarely recorded in nursing textbooks. Additionally, the percentage of male teachers in nursing schools is only 5%, which is lower than the percentage of males students enrolled. Both the use of gender-biased language and the lack of male role models in nursing education act as power, giving stress to male students and discourage them from continuing to study.

What is Literature ?
What is Literature? Cambridge Dictionary answers that Literature is all written artistic works, especially those with a high and lasting artistic value. However, many consider that defining Literature is nearly impossible. Literature finds its power in its multiplicity, in fact, there are multiple forms of literature each having different purposes: novels, biographies, poetry, theatre, History books, testimonies, fairy tales, comics, religious books, political books, Philosophical essays, encyclopedias, dictionaries and even scientific treaties. Each of them teaches something new or different to the reader. As Henry Miller says « We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate ».

Powers of books
The Power of Literature really is in its ability to relate to everybody as it has many approaches. One of the first goals of a book is to make the reader dream and travel in time and space. It stimulates imagination and emotions. Ann Hood explains that what made her love reading was being brought to places she would have never imagined. She argues that reading makes the reader escape his life and confront new situations. F Scott Fitzgerald goes further by saying that it connects the reader to others: ''« That is part of the beauty of literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong. »''. Therefore, Literature is essential in understanding human nature. Ann Hood explains that this why we still read Shakespeare and many others today, even if the society has changed, human nature never will. The writers develop an intimate relationship with the reader's mind. They offer ideas, a certain way of thinking or seeing the world to people. A book can change a life because reading shapes reflection. Moreover, having a wide culture is only profitable for a person as it brings knowledge. Haruki Murakami illustrates this idea saying that« If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking ». Power is always connected to diversity.

Literature has the power to change a vocation and a life. Many authors escaped their condition by writing masterpieces. Proust, for example, was an asthmatic sick man who wrote À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, In Search of Lost Time in English, a 4 215 pages philosophical novel about involuntary memory, Art and Time. It is sometimes considered as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It has not only gone beyond the man who wrote it but also inspired countless vocations.

Literature is immortal. As the human itself doesn’t change but does its society, stories remain in Time. Reading the Iliad by Homer composed around the 8th century BC is still something interesting even if our societies don’t believe in Ancient History’s gods and heroes. It tells stories of love and betrayal, war and loss, which are forever relatable as common, human experiences.

Literature’s power can even be quantified. Current studies in neurosciences strengthen this argument. It has been proven that reading poetry activates the primary reward circuitry and can provoke emotional responses like chills, goosebumps or tears.

Future of Literature
In an age where technology is omnipresent and reading is being lost, many people, from scholars to students, realize that saving Literature is essential. The famous quote by Pulitzer price-winning scientist E.O. Wilson « We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom » highlights the importance of taking the time to concentrate and read. It has this capacity to shape the human brain in a unique way.

Along with younger people that start to realize the importance of literacy and reading , governments are concerned about the future. Many create policies to promote reading among young people. The power that Literature provides must be saved.

Power in History
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, history is « the study of past events considered together, especially events of a particular period, country, or a subject ». Thus we can state that history requires an objective approach to fully analyze a certain event. Furthermore, we can decipher a form of trust bestowed on historians, as most of history taught in schools, for example, is secondary evidence. Although the drafting of school books is the result of a collective process involving a committee of qualified historians, it is important to take into account factors that might pollute the academic neutrality.

Historical nihilism
Let’s take a look at « historical nihilism »: a term used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to designate any scepticism in regards to the government's version of the country’s history, defined by the party itself as that which « seek[s] to distort the history of modern China's revolution, the CCP and the armed forces under the guise of reevaluating existing narratives ». The CCP is well known for enforcing harsh censorship rules, such as the « Great Firewall of China » controlling the Internet, isolating China from the rest of the world. This is a prime example of what power can mean in history: influencing and moulding young minds after not only concealing events, but recreating a new past. This also echoes the danger of fake news or the spread of false information.

Gender gap in history
Another example of how power is considered in history could be through the gender gap amongst historians: in 1979, more than two-thirds of public historians were men, whereas they represented a little over 30% of all public historian in 2009. This is an important subject of historiography. The object is to « assess, in terms of modern standards, the value of historical works for us ». A sub-division of which is feminist history, which aims to go over history from a female point of view. Because historians have been predominantly male for so long, there has been an institutionalized unconscious bias towards analyzing events from a male perspective. This reinforces the idea of gender being another form of power in History.

Social psychology
Social psychology is a sub-discipline of psychology that deals with how our social interactions affect our opinions and behaviors. Social psychology and politics are often studied together as many social psychologies dedicate their work to investigating how people interact with political processes and form their political opinions. This then enables them to shed light on political events and policy.

Political bias in research
As social psychology examines ideologically controversial topics, political diversity in the field would mitigate the effects of confirmation bias and empower minorities to challenge the view of the majority, pushing them to consider different perspectives and have a more informed opinion. Studies have shown that in the field of social psychology, there are disproportionately more socially liberal than conservative researchers. In 2011, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt gave an unprecedented speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology about the lack of ideological diversity in social psychology and the benefits it would bring. During this speech to illustrate his point, he asked an audience of around 1,000 social psychologies to raise their hand if they were conservative. Exactly three hands went up. He then detailed another attempt to identify conservatives in the field, searching “conservative social psychologist” on Google which yielded no active conservatives. Another study of over 800 social psychologists found that only 6% described themselves as conservative and that they are afraid of biased treatment if they revealed their political beliefs to their colleagues. This study also found that the more liberal researchers were, the more likely they were to discriminate against their conservative colleagues, in ways such as making them less likely to award them a grant and invite them to conferences. When it comes to research, there is evidence that there is confirmation bias present amongst academic reviewers as they tend to evaluate a scientific finding more positively if it was written by a researcher of similar political views than if the writer was on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Due to these biases, conservative psychologists claim that it is more difficult for them to publish and disseminate research that challenge liberal views, ultimately creating an inherently hostile research environment that discourages new conservatives from entering the field.

A process that is inherently inclined to produce a particular outcome is systemically biased and thus systemic bias manifests as a form of power as institutionalised coercion. From the reasons outlined above, it can be inferred that there is systemic bias against conservatives in the field of social psychology and that liberals in the field have power over the conservatives as they have more influence on what is produced from the field.

That said, biased treatment against conservatives might not be the main reason why conservatives are underrepresented in the field of social psychology. Liberals tend to more open-minded and curious than conservatives, meaning that they are more interested in exploring unconventional ideas on how to use science to improve society. Thus, it is inevitable that scientific fields lean more left on the political spectrum. It can also be argued that if the science seems to confirm one political viewpoint more than the other, then that viewpoint might be more closely aligned to science.

Power of Gender Bias in Medicine
Gender bias is the act of privileging one gender over another. This is reflected in many disciplines, such as in medicine, in which a patient’s gender has an impact on the treatment he receives and his inclusion in clinical research. It is important to note that while sex represents an individual’s biological and reproductive features, gender is a social construct. There are many genders but most of the studies here focus on gender inequality between men and women.

Gender bias in medicine is a form of power as a strategy. This means that gender bias is not voluntary and is unconsciously embedded in our society. It is as a type of power because it is a form of authority that has repercussions on our daily lives.

Gender Bias in Clinical Treatment
First of all, gender bias has an impact on the treatment of patients. For example, women’s symptoms are more often attributed to psychological and emotional reasons, and many physicians believe that 25% of women make excessive demands, compared to 14% of men. However, no studies prove that this true, and this shows how stereotypes can play a role in a doctor’s way of treating patients. Thus, women are prescribed more often psychoactive drugs. Older women also have less probability of being admitted to intensive healthcare than men.

Gender Bias in Medical Research
Secondly, women are very often excluded from clinical research. This is mainly due to the fact that there is less knowledge on the physiology of a woman’s body. Furthermore, women are often excluded from drug trials since they could represent a danger on their reproductive system. Hence, there are often lack of funds for research on women’s disease. For example, most of the research on the coronary artery disease was made on men, even though it mostly affects women. As a consequence, men are treated more than twice as much of the coronary artery disease than women, creating a real gender disparity.

Causes and Consequences of Gender Bias in Medicine
In conclusion, evidence in medicine is gender biased, contributing to the unequal treatment of patients according to their gender. There are many explanations for this, that Katharina Hamberg explores. Historically, women’s body have been less studied due to “gender order”, which means that in some societies women are often less valued than men. The "two-way view" is also a key concept: we tend to overestimate or underestimate differences between men’s and women’s bodies. Finally, stereotypes play an important role. This indirect coercion has consequences on women’s and men’s health, and is a real interdisciplinary issue.

Furthermore, we can also consider power dynamics between genders in the medical professions. For instance, even though there are more and more female physicians, it is rare for them to access leading positions, mostly taken up by men. They also suffer discriminations, such as sexism and sexual harassment: 30% of them have already experienced sexual harassment at work. Even though this is different from gender bias, it is a form of power not to be neglected in medicine.

Introduction
As the Cambridge Dictionary puts it, “politics is the job of holding position of power in the government.”. These positions are in definition very few in numbers and are most of the time reserved to a socio-economic elite. As a result, a small number of people end up with the power to influence the government and the majority of the population. This power can take different forms but regarding to politics, two mains strains come out: Direct Coercion and Indirect Coercion.

Power as Direct Coercion
For many of us the first role of politics is to control a country. Let it be by creating rules, laws and institutions which maintain order, punish criminals, or protect and give some rights to the people. At the end, politicians decides for the population.This is known as direct and indirect coercion. The more explicit one is ‘direct coercion’ and reflects a situation where, as Dahl explains, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do”. This can be seen in everyday life. Like the law that prohibited people from smoking inside in 2007 in the UK or more recently the law in France that forced people to park their electric scooters in designated parking places. In both cases, politics played a role in making the population change their habits that would not have occurred otherwise.

Power as Indirect Coercion
More implicitly is power as indirect or institutionalized coercion. Not when direct rules are put in place to target certain people but when, as Bachrach and Baratz say, “a mobilization of bias exists which allows a preferred population to benefit from advantages at the detriment of the rest.”. This type of power if abused is a lot more difficult to take down as it cannot be traced to one particular individual or law but rather exists in the mind of everyone. In America, the Jim Crow laws were direct coercion but even after the Civil Rights act of 1964, criticism of minorities and their exclusion from the white population took place under de facto segregation. Stereotypes like the fact black people were lazy, smelled bad, were ugly or were inferior continued to exist and spread for years on. The Clark Doll experiment showed that a majority of kids still considered whiteness as more beautiful in the 21st century providing evidence for this and showing how difficult it is for institutionalized power to change.

Power Within Art History
Art history is an interdisciplinary subject which encompasses a variety of different approaches. At the simplest level, art history is the study of artworks and artefacts throughout history.

Art history, as a discipline, has a power imbalance; both in terms of the demographics of people who engage with art history as a subject and the historical significance and importance placed on Western verses non-Western artwork. In terms of demographics, not a single history of art professor was listed on the Runnymede Trust’s 2017 list of all the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) female professors in the UK. In addition, DataUSA shows the majority of Art History, Criticism and Conservation graduates between 2012 and 2017 to be white (the highest percentage within this range being 69.9% white graduates in 2012).

There have been attempts to shift the balance of power between Western and non-Western art. Several key exhibitions can be pinpointed as important steps towards this decolonisation. The Havana Biennial, set up in 1984, exhibited artworks by a variety of non-Western artists, notably Latin American and Caribbean artists within the first biennial and African, Asian and Middle Eastern artists within the second. The 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre was curated by Jean-Hubert Martin and featured artists from all across the globe. This exhibition was subject to criticism for its two-dimensional, westernised perspective through which it considered many of the artefacts on display.

This movement to make art history more inclusive reflects the wider campaign to decolonise the curriculum. In the context of the UK, this campaign examines how British colonialism continues to impact the epistemology of the education system.

When it comes to decolonising art history, there are mixed views surrounding the existence of a core canon, which definitively marks out the most important and historically significant works. Arguments exist both supporting the broadening of the canon (in order to include works from previously underrepresented cultures and marginalised groups) and supporting the eradication of the entire notion of an artistic canon.

Power in Philosophy
Philosophy is one of the oldest disciplines, dating back to 600BC with records of work by Thales of Miletus. It is a highly respected and popular degree that allows its students to intellectually challenge themselves, granting unique perspectives to prepare them for many fields of work. However, as it is not a degree that directly leads into a job, such as medicine, law, and dentistry, it can be considered a privilege to study. Patrice Haynes, a senior philosophy lecturer in Liverpool Hope University descried philosophy “for posh, white boys with trust funds” in an interview with the Guardian. The field is certainly dominated by men. The American Philosophical Association did a survey on its membership diversity in 2018. The data states that 74% of its membership are male. Interestingly, the share of female and male students who enrol in philosophy degrees is fairly well balanced. In 2014/15, Higher Education Student Statistics in the UK recorded 46,070 female students and 40,235 male students joining historical and philosophical studies. Since the numbers of female and male students have a negligible difference, this begs the question as to why so few female professors of philosophy emerge out of the degree. This is an example of power as indirect coercion. Whilst there have always been female philosophers, such as Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician, astronomer and philosopher born in 355 BCE, philosophy has still been widely dominated by men since its generation. Catherine Bateson, a dean at Amherst College, discussed in an interview the hiring process at her university. She described the process as one being that would hire many female workers, often more than men, and then would let them go soon after. The result being that the university could claim having hired more women than men, but of course not providing the opportunities they were entitled to. Professor Jennifer Saul, head of philosophy department at the University of Sheffield started a blog in attempts to convey and learn more about what is was like to be a woman in philosophy. Through this blog she received great numbers of contacts daily telling stories of sexual assault and harassment in the field. Many of these women described leaving their positions in philosophy as a result of these incidents.

Here there is a clear imbalance of power, in terms of systemic power making women marginalised in the workplace and thus, vulnerable.

How language shapes the way we think
“Language shapes the way we think” is a popular claim that could be heard from a High School English teacher, from a Linguistics professor or even from a cognitive scientist. The truthfulness of the claim is backed up by evidence from studies of native tribes’ languages and their comparison to modern languages, such as English. An example would be the study of the Native American language Hopi. A main difference between Hopi and English is the way they express past and present tense. In English, the verb changes accordingly to indicate the time of occurrence of an event, while in Hopi -- it doesn’t and instead, the focus is placed on the circumstances surrounding the event. For example, a Hopi speaker would use two very distinct verb forms to indicate whether the knowledge is first-hand or generally known, while in English the verb form remains unchanged. For example, in English, the verb form is the same in both “Yesterday was New Year's Eve” (generally known), and in “Yesterday I broke my ankle” (first-hand). The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf who studied the Hopi language in the 1940s believed that because of that major difference between the two languages, speakers of each may think about events differently. For example, an English speaker may focus more on the time of an event, while a Hopi speaker -- on the source of information about the event.

Language in Education
Following the logic that language does, to a great extent, shape the way we think about events and information, it could also be argued that language possesses power in the discipline of Education. Primary School Education, specifically, plays a big role in shaping the way children think, and it does that through the use of Language. An example would be the words present under each topic in children's vocabulary books. A vocabulary book would typically include words from different topics, such as Colors, Numbers, Environment, Technology and aims to develop a child’s vocabulary equally in every topic. This way, a child would have the same capacity to think about information within each topic. However, the rapid expansion of the technological fields in real life and the new vocabulary emerging within those raises the question of whether children’s vocabulary books should reflect this expansion? Should children be learning more words within the topic of Technology than Environment, for example? If yes, that may result in children being able to think more about Technology than Environment. So, putting this hypothetical situation into perspective, a child may be more likely to be interested in technological advancements than in taking action to preserve the environment. It could be argued that the presence of more words within the topic of Technology than other topics in vocabulary books is a form of Power. More specifically, this Power could be seen as a strategy, in other words, a normalised coercion of power. Power as a strategy in this example could be interpreted as a creation of a system of thought within children where certain choices (certain topics to think about) are more available than others.

Power in Ecological Study
When examining the relationships between organisms within ecosystems we can often adopt an anthropocentric view where we view ourselves as the most highly evolved and most successful organisms. However, we fail to take into account the fact that we as humans have only existed in our current form for approximately 250 thousand years, less than one percent of the 3.77 to 4 billion years that life has existed on earth.

Taxonomic Chauvinism
As humans we favour taxa that are more closely related to us and neglect others - this phenomena is known as taxonomic chauvinism. Studies have demonstrated that birds and mammals are highly overrepresented in studies of vertebrates, whereas fish, reptiles and amphibians are underrepresented. Scientists questioning our intrinsic anthropocentric biases place the blame on our inherent social tendency for empathy for us anthropomorphizing the behaviour of other species. Behavioural science teaches us to be aware of our biases, but without knowledge of what it is like to be another species we simply cannot correctly interpret all behaviours. Kokko draws a comparison with physics, where our intuition simply falls away when we begin to operate at a much smaller or larger scale than we are used to thinking about.

Plant-Blindness
The term plant-blindness has also been coined to describe our self-centred view of our world. In terms of ecosystems and the construction of environments, we are far less important and far less abundant than plants, and yet we are often blind to their value. However, plants participate in many symbiotic relationships as they form the fabric of many ecosystems - for example with mammals which eat fruit that trees grow to gain nutrients, which helps the trees with seed dispersal - a seemingly mutualistic relationship whereby both species become reliant on each other.

Economic Geography
According to the dictionary, economic geography is “a branch of geography that deals with the relation of physical and economic conditions to the production and utilization of raw materials and their manufacture into finished products” There are four main keys to the geographic economy:

Firstly, there is the role of natural resources. In order to create a more thriving economy, access to water for example is primordial for agriculture, energy, industry… You also need rich soil for agriculture as raw materials such as minerals, oi, wood for the industry). Finally, beaches, mountains… can attract tourism participating greatly to the growth of the economy.

Secondly, there is the role of the population. Are there people for labor? Is the population young enough? Is labor cheap or expensive? Then comes education, as well as schools and universities, create educated and skilled workers. The economy also needs consumers, usually in urbanized places with a high purchasing power. Lastly, with the development of a ‘knowledge economy’, firms focusing on technological advances tend to relocate where others do the same and close to research and education centers (Silicon Valley).

Thirdly, there is the role of communications infrastructures and access to transport through roads, rivers… A country with a sea, rivers, roads, airports will be able to transport people and goods easier and therefore help the economy. It is the same thing with information infrastructure with cell towers, telecommunications, internet…

Finally, there are the criteria taken into account by firms depending on the geography and type of economy. When firms chose to relocate their production facilities or even the whole company they tend to do so in a country where transport (usually maritime) is easy and cheap. They also look at the population (the price of labor), the neighboring countries (to see if the region is unstable), and the image it would give the world to move there. Therefore, in company choices, geography plays a great part as well.

Tim Marshall’s Analysis Of The USA
The correlation between geography, economics, and politics is made evident in Tim Marshall’s Prisoner of Geographies. A perfect example of it is the United States. The author exposes the geographical advantage they have which was reflected through history. They are bordered by 2 oceans and have a mass of land well suited for various agricultural and mining endeavors, added to the mountains offering them protection. In his words: “there is a ‘strategic depth’ for a defending force to fall back to”. Furthermore, the U.S.’ neighboring countries are either too nice (Canada) or too small (Mexico) to pose a direct threat. All of these factors allowed America to grow quickly to become one of the world’s biggest economic, maritime, and military power: they are an example of the advantages that a good geographical setup brings. Moreover, he also shows that their isolated state created an entrepreneurial, can-do, and can-fix attitude which wasn’t always to their advantage. Indeed it is this belief that created their impulse to force-democratize other nations with different cultural and historical backgrounds, which in most cases was doomed to failure. Therefore, the U.S.A. is the perfect example of the influence that has geographies on other disciplines.