User talk:Nicola.georgiou/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/Seminar group 16/ Power

Power in Education Studies
I think this is a very unique topic, and I really liked the way you tied gender/race/socio-economic status oppression into such a universal topic like academia. However, I'd love if you expanded a bit more on your point about how women often pursue in the arts, whilst men, STEM subjects, as I'm struggling to find the link between that and indirect coercion. (honestly idk how to link my username properly but ~Beans2002)

Thank you for your comments on my chosen topic Beans2002. I do agree with you that I perhaps did not explain properly the link between the gender disparities and academia to indirect coercion as I was conscious of the word limit and synthesising all I wished to say. To explain further, during my readings I noticed many sources touched on this idea that women are encouraged to pursue the humanities, and men STEM subjects. In Maaike van der Vleuten's journal article on the role of gender ideology, the study touched on how adolescent students may internalise gender expectations put on them by the wider society. From my understanding of indirect coercion as an institutionalised bias that allows a certain group to benefit over another, the study showed that this gender ideology is often encouraged in institutionalised education and affect how adolescents view their competence in certain subjects and their future career paths. More directly linked to educational studies, I also looked at a report done by the UK government on the school teacher workforce that showed how there are more female teachers than there are male. This may link back to the idea that systemically women may be favoured over men in teaching positions because of a internalised bias that females are better at humanities/arts driven subjects than males leading to an underrepresentation of males in the discipline. Again this is subjectively how I interpreted this data so please feel free to respond to this open discussion! --Caprithai (discuss • contribs) 12:36, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

To the writer who wrote this section "Power in Education Studies": I find your topic intriguing and worth exploring further. I understand your point and agree with the way you interpret data about current situation in the UK that there are more female teachers than the male ones (which is common worldwide e.g. in China). This shows the system with institutionalised inequality or subconscious bias, and how the power of long-standing gender expectations as indirect coercion impact on the pursuit of future careers for adolescents, which is a topic within both gender studies and education studies. Lily0212 (discuss • contribs)

Power in Sociology of Family
This was very interesting to read about, as I had no clue the sociology of family was considered a subdisipline! I liked how you looked at multiple examples of power within a family, however there was one part that confused me a bit. At the end of your second paragraph, you give this quote: ‘as Engels says “In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletariat.”’ I don't really know the definitions of bourgeois or proletariat, hence it's hard for me to connect the significance of this quote to the rest of the paragraph. Perhaps you could just give a brief explanation of those terms in brackets? Purpledinosaur17 (discuss • contribs) 11:40, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm very happy to hear that you found it interesting. Thank you so much for the suggestion. I also felt like that quote was only briefly connected and wasn't properly integrated into the contribution but I had already exceeded the word count and tried to keep it concise. Here are the definitions of the terms. In the context of Engels's quote in the contribution, it's referring to Marxist theory.

bourgeoisie:

noun

1. the middle classes

2. (in Marxist thought) the ruling class of the two basic classes of capitalist society, consisting of capitalists, manufacturers, bankers, and other employers. The bourgeoisie owns the most important of the means of production, through which it exploits the working class

proletariat:

noun

1. all wage-earners collectively

2. the lower or working class

3. (in Marxist theory) the class of wage-earners, esp industrial workers, in a capitalist society, whose only possession of significant material value is their labour

4.(in ancient Rome) the lowest class of citizens, who had no property

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/proletariat#:~:text=the%20lower%20or%20working%20class,material%20value%20is%20their%20labour https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bourgeoisie#:~:text=noun%20the%20bourgeoisie,it%20exploits%20the%20working%20class

This was very helpful, thank you! Purpledinosaur17 (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

=Power in Visual Arts and Dadaism= I found your topic of choice very insightful. I think your explanation of Dada was a great example reflecting how intertwined art, history, and politics are. Over the course of history, it is very difficult to think of political and social power separately from art. On Dada, Eric Hobsbawm says "Scandal was its principle of cohesion." and "...there was nothing quiet about Dada." in the chapter "The Arts 1914-1945" in his The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century. In certain cases, art movements must be loud and disruptive to get their intended messages across and create change. Very vivid contemporary examples of political art that come to mind are the works of Ai Weiwei and Banksy. In fact, the Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei was influenced by Marcel Duchamp and dadaism, and one can see influences or direct adaptations of Duchamp's work in his own. On the other hand, an article compares Banksy's destruction of his “Girl With Balloon” to the works of the Dada movement, as "Banksy’s subversive artistic predecessors."

Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century: (I recommend having a look at chapter six "The Arts 1914-1945" which is between the pages 178-198.)

https://libcom.org/files/Eric%20Hobsbawm%20-%20Age%20Of%20Extremes%20-%201914-1991.pdf

A page of World Literature Today Magazine on Ai WeiWei (explaining the influence of Duchamp and dadaism)

https://search.proquest.com/openview/9b99ae73bc2cfa895c4d9635349e9b19/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=41319

Banksy and the tradition of destroying art:

https://theconversation.com/banksy-and-the-tradition-of-destroying-art-104810

Thank you for your comment and proving more information related to Dadaism. It is good to find someone with interests on destroying art and its relation to political and social power too. Lily0212 (discuss • contribs)

=Power in Sex Work and Female Liberation=

I found this contribution interesting and it is a topic that many people are passionate about and thereby I think it is great to open up a discussion about it.

However, I have some questions about your contribution. The first one is regarding the disciplinary thought. In what discipline is this topic important to mention? And how can the power dynamics be seen in that discipline?

I am also curious about the following part of the essay: "the public often assumes all sex workers enjoy their work and that they choose to do this", because it is strongly contradictory to what I would consider being the public view of sex work. I would say that most people realize that sex workers often are forced into the work. Maybe, how the public view sex work is based in geographical differences? Or political viewpoints? I think it would be great to add a source to this statement because I think what the public thinks about sex work is strongly individual or cultural.

~ Thank you! I'd say that you could tie this topic into a few disciplines, namely Politics, Anthropology, Sociology, and more directly, Gender Studies. There are definitely many aspects of Sex Work and Feminist Studies that fit into different disciplines -- for example, legislation concerning sex work would obviously be related to Politics, whilst trying to comprehend and relate to the workers emotions and behaviour (which I believe is vital) in order to holistically solve the issue would require knowledge in Sociology and Psychology. In response to your note about sources, I definitely agree that it is a matter regarding culture and personal opinion, but that fact is irrelevant when the discussion is surrounding the workers and not the public. However, I will add a source regardless, as I should have.

=Power in Medicine=

I like your contribution! There are indeed many inequalities in Medicine and Healthcare. I wrote my contribution on a similar topic, how gender roles can still be observed today in nursing (how there is still not a term for midwife men, for example). I think our two contributions could work well together! We should collaborate and see if we can add something from each other's work:)

Also, contributions should be impartial so you should rephrase "as we see how different powerful figures" to as it can be seen, or as it is seen.

Great work! :)

JupiterJoyner (discuss • contribs)