This e-learning module introduces the concept of genocide of the mind and ethnic cleansing. It defines key terms like ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and culture. It provides scenarios to illustrate how oppressive beliefs and coding systems can be used to take away people's rights and privileges. The module argues that totalitarian beliefs in institutions can amount to thought reform and ethnic homogeneity, limiting independent thinking and threatening individuality. Overall, it aims to bring awareness to subtle forms of oppression and how genocidal ideologies can operate secretly within society.
Foresight and Innovation Culture Alicante 4.dec. 2009anita rubin
The document discusses the changing nature of change and technology in society. It argues that technological change is non-linear and shaped by social factors. As information becomes more ubiquitous, new tools and institutions are needed to cope with constant change and new information. However, ubiquitous technology both expands and limits individual possibilities by enabling new forms of community but also risks numbing emotions or commercializing intimacy.
The document discusses media representations of collective identity, using Black British collective identity as a case study. It addresses key questions around how media represent various groups, how representations have changed over time, and the social implications of different representations. The document discusses identity as something that is socially constructed through relationships and media portrayals, and how media shapes concepts of identity through the representations it chooses. Specifically, it suggests media often relies on stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities that reinforce dominant ideological views and help maintain social hierarchies.
1. The document discusses Pierre Levy's theory of collective intelligence and knowledge spaces as presented in his works.
2. It analyzes Levy's arguments that knowledge and collective intelligence will become the dominant forces in society and economy, replacing capitalism and commodity spaces.
3. However, the document also critiques Levy for oversimplifying issues of power relations and inequality and for relying too heavily on symbolic arguments rather than empirical evidence to support his utopian vision.
This document summarizes a presentation about structural racialization and opportunity mapping. It discusses how understanding of opportunity has evolved from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional, recognizing the interaction of physical, social, and cultural structures that produce racialized outcomes. It addresses concepts like implicit bias, intergroup relations, and the geography of opportunity. Solutions require recognizing how implicit and explicit biases interact with policies and institutions to maintain racial hierarchies through processes like categorization, inequality, and exploitation. Mapping is presented as a way to show the spatial inequities produced by opportunity segregation and the cumulative effects of structures that mediate different groups' access to resources.
SSI Meetup – interpersonal data, identity and collective mindsPhilip Sheldrake
Grappling with identity will never be easy — those who consider it “solvable” represent a danger to society. The identity community is entangled in code (the technologically possible), law (the legally available), and norms (the socially acceptable). There is no separation of these societal concerns. No reductionism. Life is complex and will remain so.
And yet such understanding provides, I think, the perfect foundation to create something wonderful together.
The document discusses memes as conceptualized by Richard Dawkins as units of cultural transmission or imitation that replicate and evolve through social learning in a similar way that genes replicate and evolve biologically. Key points include:
- Memes include ideas, beliefs, fashion trends, and other cultural phenomena that spread from person to person via imitation.
- Memes operate through natural selection and compete to spread more successfully through populations like genes.
- Religion and religious beliefs can be understood as particularly successful memes that confer advantages to aid their replication such as faith-based thinking and linking altruism to religious affiliation.
The document discusses several topics related to the roles of information professionals in a digital world, including:
1) Information professionals need to reexamine their purpose and roles given changes in technology and society, and may need to take on new functions like curating digital collections and providing digital reference services.
2) There is debate around what defines a "digital librarian" and whether these roles are simply extensions of existing librarian work or require new skills like web publishing and multimedia indexing.
3) Accessing information through physical documents is no longer adequate; information professionals must focus on developing skills and knowledge to help others make sense of information in a digital environment.
Foresight and Innovation Culture Alicante 4.dec. 2009anita rubin
The document discusses the changing nature of change and technology in society. It argues that technological change is non-linear and shaped by social factors. As information becomes more ubiquitous, new tools and institutions are needed to cope with constant change and new information. However, ubiquitous technology both expands and limits individual possibilities by enabling new forms of community but also risks numbing emotions or commercializing intimacy.
The document discusses media representations of collective identity, using Black British collective identity as a case study. It addresses key questions around how media represent various groups, how representations have changed over time, and the social implications of different representations. The document discusses identity as something that is socially constructed through relationships and media portrayals, and how media shapes concepts of identity through the representations it chooses. Specifically, it suggests media often relies on stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities that reinforce dominant ideological views and help maintain social hierarchies.
1. The document discusses Pierre Levy's theory of collective intelligence and knowledge spaces as presented in his works.
2. It analyzes Levy's arguments that knowledge and collective intelligence will become the dominant forces in society and economy, replacing capitalism and commodity spaces.
3. However, the document also critiques Levy for oversimplifying issues of power relations and inequality and for relying too heavily on symbolic arguments rather than empirical evidence to support his utopian vision.
This document summarizes a presentation about structural racialization and opportunity mapping. It discusses how understanding of opportunity has evolved from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional, recognizing the interaction of physical, social, and cultural structures that produce racialized outcomes. It addresses concepts like implicit bias, intergroup relations, and the geography of opportunity. Solutions require recognizing how implicit and explicit biases interact with policies and institutions to maintain racial hierarchies through processes like categorization, inequality, and exploitation. Mapping is presented as a way to show the spatial inequities produced by opportunity segregation and the cumulative effects of structures that mediate different groups' access to resources.
SSI Meetup – interpersonal data, identity and collective mindsPhilip Sheldrake
Grappling with identity will never be easy — those who consider it “solvable” represent a danger to society. The identity community is entangled in code (the technologically possible), law (the legally available), and norms (the socially acceptable). There is no separation of these societal concerns. No reductionism. Life is complex and will remain so.
And yet such understanding provides, I think, the perfect foundation to create something wonderful together.
The document discusses memes as conceptualized by Richard Dawkins as units of cultural transmission or imitation that replicate and evolve through social learning in a similar way that genes replicate and evolve biologically. Key points include:
- Memes include ideas, beliefs, fashion trends, and other cultural phenomena that spread from person to person via imitation.
- Memes operate through natural selection and compete to spread more successfully through populations like genes.
- Religion and religious beliefs can be understood as particularly successful memes that confer advantages to aid their replication such as faith-based thinking and linking altruism to religious affiliation.
The document discusses several topics related to the roles of information professionals in a digital world, including:
1) Information professionals need to reexamine their purpose and roles given changes in technology and society, and may need to take on new functions like curating digital collections and providing digital reference services.
2) There is debate around what defines a "digital librarian" and whether these roles are simply extensions of existing librarian work or require new skills like web publishing and multimedia indexing.
3) Accessing information through physical documents is no longer adequate; information professionals must focus on developing skills and knowledge to help others make sense of information in a digital environment.
Cultural traits can spread from person to person like infectious diseases through imitation and communication. This process of cultural transmission and evolution can be modeled using concepts from biology, with cultural units called memes analogous to genes. Memes with traits that make them more likely to spread, like longevity, fecundity, and fidelity, will be selected for in cultural evolution, similar to natural selection of genes. While controversial, the theory of memetics proposes that modeling cultural change through the transmission and selection of memes can provide insights beyond traditional social science approaches.
Habermas discusses the importance of discourse and communication in a functioning democracy. He defines the public sphere as where private citizens can assemble and engage in dialogue to influence state affairs. An ideal public sphere generates public opinion to guide and legitimate government authority. However, with increased societal complexity, achieving inclusive consensus through direct community discussions has become difficult. Adult learning and discourse are therefore essential for a just, democratic society to evolve. Critical reflection allows separating identity from systems of power and money, and reflexive learning involves questioning social practices and arrangements.
This document discusses diversity, emotional intelligence, agility and innovation. It defines diversity as understanding and respecting individual differences. Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. Agile and innovative organizations hire diverse talent, encourage creativity, and develop employee skills. High emotional intelligence in groups creates norms that build trust and allow for disagreements without personal attacks. Diversity, emotional intelligence and agility reinforce each other to produce innovation when leaders harness different perspectives.
Memes are ideas or units of cultural information that can replicate and evolve similar to genes. They represent basic ideas that can be transferred from one individual to another and undergo mutation, crossover, and adaptation. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976 to describe the cultural counterpart of genes that can spread from one generation to the next through non-genetic means like imitation. While Dawkins defined memes as units of cultural transmission, memeticists have varying definitions. The lack of a consistent definition of what precisely constitutes a meme remains a principal criticism of memetics, the study of memes.
This document discusses the concepts of participatory culture, information literacy, and digital youth. It defines a participatory culture as one with low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement that supports creating and sharing creations. Forms of participatory culture include affiliations in online communities, creative expressions, collaborative problem solving, and circulating media flows. The document also defines information literacy as the ability to recognize when information is needed and locate, evaluate, and effectively use it. It explores how digital youth engage online primarily for social and personal interest-driven activities like hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.
1. The document discusses the Islamic concept of human rights, noting that Islam emphasizes dignity and equality for all people regardless of race, gender or religion.
2. Key Islamic principles of human rights include the rights to life, safety, justice, freedom of belief, basic standard of living, and equality and mutual responsibility between all people.
3. While human societies still struggle with full implementation, Islam established these rights over 1400 years ago based on principles of dignity, justice and mutual care mandated by God.
Collective intelligence refers to shared or group intelligence that emerges from collaboration and competition among individuals. It appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans, and computer networks. The concept emerged from writings in the 1970s-1990s and refers to how large groups can converge on the same knowledge. Pierre Lévy introduced the term "collective intelligence" in 1994 to describe how the internet could facilitate rapid communication and broader participation in decision making.
Solving social problems was the topic of the document. It discussed several key sociological approaches to understanding social problems, including the functionalist, social conflict, and symbolic interaction approaches. It provided examples of how each approach defines and analyzes social problems differently. The document also examined how political ideologies and the structure of the political spectrum influence how social problems are constructed and solutions are defined.
This document provides an overview of developmental levels and theories. It begins with an introduction to developmental levels based on the works of Wilber, Beck, and Torbert. It then discusses the explanatory power of developmental theories and provides examples of how they can be applied. Several developmental models and theories are presented, including Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Beck and Cowan's spiral dynamics model, and Wilber's integral model. The document outlines an activity called "Spiralectics" to experience different developmental levels. It discusses caveats and limitations of developmental models, and addresses criticisms around labeling individuals. Finally, it explores the differences between new age, magical, and integral beliefs regarding metaphysical concepts.
This document discusses how ideology affects entrepreneurship in Peru. It argues that collective values prevalent in society can jeopardize entrepreneurship, productivity, and wealth creation. Collective values found in tribal societies like solidarity and social responsibility contrast with individualistic values like private property and competition that are more conducive to an open society with a complex economy. The document analyzes how ideologies influence politics and lawmaking, and how laws intended to enhance reality can instead create conflicts and harm the economy by placing obstacles on individuals' freedom.
1. The document discusses how technologies like the iPod have a media logic that is similar to linguistic concepts like secrets. Secrets can contain dense meaning and are used for social control. This media logic of secrets is homologous to how the iPod is packaged and accessed.
2. It then discusses Geico caveman advertisements, noting the cavemen depictions tilt toward metrosexual styles and are cool/fashionable. The ads deliberately allude to and undermine tired images to produce new cultural meanings.
3. It closes by discussing how queer theory questions power structures and categories. While not intended, the Geico ads' "queered" depictions of humanity could unintentionally empower or disempower groups
This document is a conference presentation by Satya Brata Das on human rights learning given at the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in Vienna, Austria on August 28-29, 2008. The key points made in the presentation are:
1) Human rights learning is the foundation for inclusive, participatory, transparent and accountable governance and is key to conflict prevention, sustainable peace and social/economic development.
2) A human rights city enables citizens to know and claim their human rights through learning, with the goals of freedom from fear and want. This is an evolutionary process of collaboration and consensus building within communities.
3) Entrenching human rights learning builds human capacity and potential at both individual and community
This document discusses why minorities that constitute small numbers are often objects of fear and rage. It argues that predatory identities emerge when majority identities strive to close the gap between being a numerical majority and achieving a sense of national purity and wholeness. Small minority groups threaten this sense of completeness, even if they are politically and militarily weak. The Nazi mobilization of "Germanness" as a predatory identity directed against Jews is used as a prime example of how a majority identity can turn genocidal in its pursuit of ethnic singularity and purity within national borders. Liberal democracies are also susceptible to the conditions that produce majoritarian genocide if certain factors like racialized nationalist ideology capture the state, census
Crime and deviance can be summarized as follows:
1) Crime involves breaking formal laws while deviance breaks social norms but may not be illegal. Different theories seek to explain the causes and functions of crime and deviance in society.
2) Marxism views crime as resulting from the exploitation and alienation of the working class under capitalism. Functionalism sees crime as serving functions like reinforcing social norms.
3) More recent theories include strain theory, which links crime to inability to achieve societal goals, and control theory, where weak social bonds increase criminal behavior.
This document provides summaries and citations for several key texts in critical theory, cultural studies, Marxism, and media studies. It includes summaries of works by Gramsci, Horkheimer and Adorno, Foucault, Debord, Hall, Barthes, McLuhan, Morgan & Purje, Mulvey, Halberstam, Lacan, Foucault, Tavin and Tavin, Marx and Engels, Hill-Collins, Dyer, Habermas, and Jameson that discuss concepts like ideology, spectacle, panopticism, subjectivation, encoding/decoding, myth, media, queer theory, and postmodernism.
Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)Zaxapias
Stanley Cohen's research on the 1964 Mods and Rockers disturbances in Clacton departed from subcultural theory by focusing on the reaction to the events. Cohen argued that the minimal violence was distorted by the mass media, which painted an exaggerated picture and set off a "deviancy amplification spiral." As concern increased, the police and media further sensationalized the events, labeling the youth as "folk devils" and fueling moral panic. Cohen analyzed how moral panics are used to scapegoat groups and reassert social control during times of social change.
If there is a dumb meta-narrative acting as the framework of our experiences, actions, and life, then we need a more detailed theoretical explanation of how capitalism provides us with social cohesion.
One attempt at this explanation is developed in the Theory of Social Imaginaries by contemporary thinkers such as Gilbert Durand, Michel Maffesoli, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles Taylor.
The document discusses the rise of machine culture and its effects on human thinking and society. It argues that Western rationality has repressed emotion and feelings, leading to alienation as people work and live like machines. This dependency on machines leaves humanity little more than servants to the machines. It further discusses how postmodern mass media overwhelms people with images and signs, disconnecting them from reality and others in a state of hyperreality where media and consumerism become the dominant forms of expression.
Contemporary theories of Modernity_.pptxNathanMoyo1
This document discusses several key theories of modernity. It describes Anthony Giddens' theory of the "juggernaut of modernity" which identifies capitalism, industrialization, and surveillance as the three basic institutions of modernity. It also summarizes theories by Ulrich Beck on the "risk society," Manuel Castells on the "informational society," and Jurgen Habermas' view of modernity as an "unfinished project."
Compare And Contrast Two Criminological Approaches To...Lori Gilbert
The document compares and contrasts the classical and positivist criminological approaches to understanding crime. The classical approach views crime as a rational choice, while the positivist approach sees it as influenced by biological and psychological factors outside an individual's control. The document examines these two major theories, their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some criticisms of the classical rational choice perspective.
Cultural traits can spread from person to person like infectious diseases through imitation and communication. This process of cultural transmission and evolution can be modeled using concepts from biology, with cultural units called memes analogous to genes. Memes with traits that make them more likely to spread, like longevity, fecundity, and fidelity, will be selected for in cultural evolution, similar to natural selection of genes. While controversial, the theory of memetics proposes that modeling cultural change through the transmission and selection of memes can provide insights beyond traditional social science approaches.
Habermas discusses the importance of discourse and communication in a functioning democracy. He defines the public sphere as where private citizens can assemble and engage in dialogue to influence state affairs. An ideal public sphere generates public opinion to guide and legitimate government authority. However, with increased societal complexity, achieving inclusive consensus through direct community discussions has become difficult. Adult learning and discourse are therefore essential for a just, democratic society to evolve. Critical reflection allows separating identity from systems of power and money, and reflexive learning involves questioning social practices and arrangements.
This document discusses diversity, emotional intelligence, agility and innovation. It defines diversity as understanding and respecting individual differences. Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. Agile and innovative organizations hire diverse talent, encourage creativity, and develop employee skills. High emotional intelligence in groups creates norms that build trust and allow for disagreements without personal attacks. Diversity, emotional intelligence and agility reinforce each other to produce innovation when leaders harness different perspectives.
Memes are ideas or units of cultural information that can replicate and evolve similar to genes. They represent basic ideas that can be transferred from one individual to another and undergo mutation, crossover, and adaptation. Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976 to describe the cultural counterpart of genes that can spread from one generation to the next through non-genetic means like imitation. While Dawkins defined memes as units of cultural transmission, memeticists have varying definitions. The lack of a consistent definition of what precisely constitutes a meme remains a principal criticism of memetics, the study of memes.
This document discusses the concepts of participatory culture, information literacy, and digital youth. It defines a participatory culture as one with low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement that supports creating and sharing creations. Forms of participatory culture include affiliations in online communities, creative expressions, collaborative problem solving, and circulating media flows. The document also defines information literacy as the ability to recognize when information is needed and locate, evaluate, and effectively use it. It explores how digital youth engage online primarily for social and personal interest-driven activities like hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.
1. The document discusses the Islamic concept of human rights, noting that Islam emphasizes dignity and equality for all people regardless of race, gender or religion.
2. Key Islamic principles of human rights include the rights to life, safety, justice, freedom of belief, basic standard of living, and equality and mutual responsibility between all people.
3. While human societies still struggle with full implementation, Islam established these rights over 1400 years ago based on principles of dignity, justice and mutual care mandated by God.
Collective intelligence refers to shared or group intelligence that emerges from collaboration and competition among individuals. It appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans, and computer networks. The concept emerged from writings in the 1970s-1990s and refers to how large groups can converge on the same knowledge. Pierre Lévy introduced the term "collective intelligence" in 1994 to describe how the internet could facilitate rapid communication and broader participation in decision making.
Solving social problems was the topic of the document. It discussed several key sociological approaches to understanding social problems, including the functionalist, social conflict, and symbolic interaction approaches. It provided examples of how each approach defines and analyzes social problems differently. The document also examined how political ideologies and the structure of the political spectrum influence how social problems are constructed and solutions are defined.
This document provides an overview of developmental levels and theories. It begins with an introduction to developmental levels based on the works of Wilber, Beck, and Torbert. It then discusses the explanatory power of developmental theories and provides examples of how they can be applied. Several developmental models and theories are presented, including Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Beck and Cowan's spiral dynamics model, and Wilber's integral model. The document outlines an activity called "Spiralectics" to experience different developmental levels. It discusses caveats and limitations of developmental models, and addresses criticisms around labeling individuals. Finally, it explores the differences between new age, magical, and integral beliefs regarding metaphysical concepts.
This document discusses how ideology affects entrepreneurship in Peru. It argues that collective values prevalent in society can jeopardize entrepreneurship, productivity, and wealth creation. Collective values found in tribal societies like solidarity and social responsibility contrast with individualistic values like private property and competition that are more conducive to an open society with a complex economy. The document analyzes how ideologies influence politics and lawmaking, and how laws intended to enhance reality can instead create conflicts and harm the economy by placing obstacles on individuals' freedom.
1. The document discusses how technologies like the iPod have a media logic that is similar to linguistic concepts like secrets. Secrets can contain dense meaning and are used for social control. This media logic of secrets is homologous to how the iPod is packaged and accessed.
2. It then discusses Geico caveman advertisements, noting the cavemen depictions tilt toward metrosexual styles and are cool/fashionable. The ads deliberately allude to and undermine tired images to produce new cultural meanings.
3. It closes by discussing how queer theory questions power structures and categories. While not intended, the Geico ads' "queered" depictions of humanity could unintentionally empower or disempower groups
This document is a conference presentation by Satya Brata Das on human rights learning given at the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in Vienna, Austria on August 28-29, 2008. The key points made in the presentation are:
1) Human rights learning is the foundation for inclusive, participatory, transparent and accountable governance and is key to conflict prevention, sustainable peace and social/economic development.
2) A human rights city enables citizens to know and claim their human rights through learning, with the goals of freedom from fear and want. This is an evolutionary process of collaboration and consensus building within communities.
3) Entrenching human rights learning builds human capacity and potential at both individual and community
This document discusses why minorities that constitute small numbers are often objects of fear and rage. It argues that predatory identities emerge when majority identities strive to close the gap between being a numerical majority and achieving a sense of national purity and wholeness. Small minority groups threaten this sense of completeness, even if they are politically and militarily weak. The Nazi mobilization of "Germanness" as a predatory identity directed against Jews is used as a prime example of how a majority identity can turn genocidal in its pursuit of ethnic singularity and purity within national borders. Liberal democracies are also susceptible to the conditions that produce majoritarian genocide if certain factors like racialized nationalist ideology capture the state, census
Crime and deviance can be summarized as follows:
1) Crime involves breaking formal laws while deviance breaks social norms but may not be illegal. Different theories seek to explain the causes and functions of crime and deviance in society.
2) Marxism views crime as resulting from the exploitation and alienation of the working class under capitalism. Functionalism sees crime as serving functions like reinforcing social norms.
3) More recent theories include strain theory, which links crime to inability to achieve societal goals, and control theory, where weak social bonds increase criminal behavior.
This document provides summaries and citations for several key texts in critical theory, cultural studies, Marxism, and media studies. It includes summaries of works by Gramsci, Horkheimer and Adorno, Foucault, Debord, Hall, Barthes, McLuhan, Morgan & Purje, Mulvey, Halberstam, Lacan, Foucault, Tavin and Tavin, Marx and Engels, Hill-Collins, Dyer, Habermas, and Jameson that discuss concepts like ideology, spectacle, panopticism, subjectivation, encoding/decoding, myth, media, queer theory, and postmodernism.
Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)Zaxapias
Stanley Cohen's research on the 1964 Mods and Rockers disturbances in Clacton departed from subcultural theory by focusing on the reaction to the events. Cohen argued that the minimal violence was distorted by the mass media, which painted an exaggerated picture and set off a "deviancy amplification spiral." As concern increased, the police and media further sensationalized the events, labeling the youth as "folk devils" and fueling moral panic. Cohen analyzed how moral panics are used to scapegoat groups and reassert social control during times of social change.
If there is a dumb meta-narrative acting as the framework of our experiences, actions, and life, then we need a more detailed theoretical explanation of how capitalism provides us with social cohesion.
One attempt at this explanation is developed in the Theory of Social Imaginaries by contemporary thinkers such as Gilbert Durand, Michel Maffesoli, Cornelius Castoriadis, and Charles Taylor.
The document discusses the rise of machine culture and its effects on human thinking and society. It argues that Western rationality has repressed emotion and feelings, leading to alienation as people work and live like machines. This dependency on machines leaves humanity little more than servants to the machines. It further discusses how postmodern mass media overwhelms people with images and signs, disconnecting them from reality and others in a state of hyperreality where media and consumerism become the dominant forms of expression.
Contemporary theories of Modernity_.pptxNathanMoyo1
This document discusses several key theories of modernity. It describes Anthony Giddens' theory of the "juggernaut of modernity" which identifies capitalism, industrialization, and surveillance as the three basic institutions of modernity. It also summarizes theories by Ulrich Beck on the "risk society," Manuel Castells on the "informational society," and Jurgen Habermas' view of modernity as an "unfinished project."
Compare And Contrast Two Criminological Approaches To...Lori Gilbert
The document compares and contrasts the classical and positivist criminological approaches to understanding crime. The classical approach views crime as a rational choice, while the positivist approach sees it as influenced by biological and psychological factors outside an individual's control. The document examines these two major theories, their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some criticisms of the classical rational choice perspective.
This paper discusses Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence and how it relates to the domination of women. Symbolic violence refers to the subtle, often unconscious ways that dominant social groups impose their values and worldviews onto subordinate groups through everyday cultural practices and norms. The paper provides an overview of Bourdieu's constructs of different types of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) that contribute to symbolic violence. It then reviews several previous studies that have applied the theory of symbolic violence and discusses how symbolic violence against women is reproduced through everyday narratives in media like television which normalize the domination of women. Finally, the paper considers applications of this theory for understanding information behaviors and the role of libraries in either challenging or perpetuating symbolic
This document discusses intersectionality and the complex nature of identity. It summarizes key concepts from several scholars, including Crenshaw's definition of intersectionality and how it allows for a better understanding of differences within groups to construct inclusive politics. Gordon's concept of complex personhood is discussed, recognizing people as multidimensional rather than victims or agents. Collins' matrix of domination describes how intersecting oppressions develop within social systems and locations. Sandoval explores the democratization of oppression and differential consciousness. Somerville critiques analogies between race and gender and calls for intersectional analysis of how racial and sexual identities are mutually constituted in law and policy. Yuval-Davis advocates for intersectional analysis that separately examines how social divisions
This document discusses key concepts learned from an e-learning course on digital cultures, including understanding the differences between utopian and dystopian perspectives on technology and finding new ways to be creative and express oneself online. It also provides information on metaphors commonly used to describe the internet in either utopian or dystopian terms and discusses transhumanism as a philosophy that sees technology as a way to enhance and transcend human limitations compared to more critical posthumanist perspectives.
This document provides an overview of communication theory and symbolic interactionism. It discusses what constitutes a good theory and examines different images of theory. A good theory goes beyond accepted wisdom to offer explanations. Additionally, a theory should consist of interconnected concepts that shape perception and behavior. Symbolic interactionism holds that people act based on the meanings and interpretations they assign to people, things, and events through social interactions and language. George Herbert Mead was influential in developing this perspective, which was further advanced by his student Herbert Blumer through the term "symbolic interactionism."
1. Welcome to the E-learning Module titled: “Genocide of the Mind.”
This e-learning module has been created to inform and
educate laypersons and experts alike on the topic of ethnic
cleansing as a form of genocide.
What is hoped you will gain from this is a different and
viable perspective of what ethnic cleansing is and its very
fabric of existence here in the United States.
2. What is Genocide of the Mind?
Genocide of the mind is a societal attempt and intent to
place an individual’s mind, thought processes, emotions,
and intelligence as defective and/or inferior.
Genocide of the mind is implemented in a Totalitarian
Society/Culture who by default, mimics the Totalism found
in China.
3. Let’s begin with some important terminology!
Ethnic cleansing Ethno-history “A Expulsion is “the Culture is “the
Terminology
is “the expulsion, study of the art of expelling.” set of shared
imprisonment, or development of attitudes, values,
killing of an goals,
cultures.”
ethnic minority conventions, or
by a dominant And, what social practices
majority in order constitutes the art that characterizes
What is the
to achieve ethnic of expelling? an institution, a
opposite of
homogeneity.” particular field,
Ethno-history? activity, or
societal
characteristic.”
4. Expel
Expelling is “the act of taking away rights and privileges of a membership
into a society, culture, organization, or group.” The opposite of expelling is
inclusion. Membership is the relationship between an element of a set or class.
Inclusion is a relation between two classes that exists when all members of the first
are also members of the second, for instance race and citizenship.
Scenario #1: Treacherous Diplomacies
In the book titled, “Hidden Codes and Grand Designs,” Pierre
Berloquin quotes: “Code is a rich and ambiguous word. It can be the
key to a cipher in which one purposely hides a meaning that someone else
can read by using the same code. This means it can be a key to being true
to your surroundings or a key to treacherous diplomacies aimed at your
brothers. . . . they cannot be separated.”
Let’s Continue
5. Using the definition of expelling which is: “the act and art of taking away rights and
privileges of a membership into a society, culture, organization, or group,” let’s take a look at
a scenario providing a better picture of this concept.
Scenario #1
Treacherous Diplomacies
One way rights and privileges are taken away within America, is through the
organizational strategy of taking one’s Social Security number, placing a cipher code
within the identifiable number, and marking it through technological means within
the economic industries; this strategy’s intended purpose is to mysteriously, expel
opportunities (systematically, in corporate America and institutionally, within
governmental programs).
Historical Example & Historical Comparative
This new formed coding and marking is done in the same manner Jewish people
were marked during the holocaust, only this time it is through technological means
rather than on the arm.
Let’s look deeper!
6. Thus far we have learned:
1. Expelling is: “the creative act of taking away rights and privileges of a membership into a society,
culture, organization, or group.”
2. One way rights and privileges are taken away within America is: “through the placing of a cipher
code, technologically.”
Let’s analyze further on how this may play out.
Perpetrated Strategy: The Art of Expelling
There is the man behind the computer who codes a particular label in the
form of a cipher and attaches it to an individual’s social security number,
establishing their place in society. This code is only known by the circles
trained to understand its interpretation—loyal to this understanding, these
circles automatically decline , take away, and deprive opportunities, by
secretive measures. Like the “hidden hand” in the economy implied by
Adam Smith during the Industrial Revolution and cloaked in mystery—this
strategy of a cipher code is thoughtfully developed, devised, and executed to
take away one’s freedom.
By loyalty or by training, this code is implemented with no protections
for the individual.
Is it possible?
7. Absolutely, it is possible, individuals and elite’s alike, could develop, devise,
and implement strategically, a cipher code, taking away one’s freedom (if
they haven’t already). Numbers were used back then to implement expulsion and
genocide (as in the holocaust), just as numbers are used to identify us today. Slavery
is a key outcome and consequence, a careless and distinct implication of genocide
and genocide of the mind.
Neil Postman, author of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, states,
“. . . Those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group
that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence.
Harold Innis, the father of modern Communication Studies, repeatedly spoke of
the ‘knowledge monopolies’ created by important technologies. . . . those who
have control over the workings of a particular technology accumulate power and inevitably
form a kind of conspiracy against those who have no access to the specialized knowledge
made available by the technology.”
What an easy way to create character assassination and
enslavement on an individual or group of people; placing them into
categorical identities of inequality where privilege rules, based on the
code.
Let’s look further!
8. Thus far we have learned:
1. Expelling is: “the creative act of taking away rights and privileges of a membership into a
society, culture, organization, or group.”
2. One way rights and privileges are taken away within America is: “through the placing
of a cipher code, technologically.”
3. By loyalty or by training, this cipher code is implemented with no protections for the
individual.
What are the deeper implications of danger in the above statement, “By
loyalty or by training?”
Deeper Implications of Danger
If we as a society become completely accepting to a system and institution
who trains employees and layperson’s alike on the interpretation of
information within a database and train them to make specified decisions
based on that interpretation, without regard to the cipher’s “other” meaning,
slavery has just succeeded to mass produce in mystery.
What is the outcome?
9. There is another form of weaponry in our American institutions and American culture, the same
intent as the act of genocide, only secretly devised and mysteriously implemented. This weaponry
is at the heart of oppression and separatism; it is still war, not peace!"(c) 2010, M. Gouin
The outcome is:
1. poverty
2. oppression
3. identity assassination
4. inequality
which equivocates to:
a) dictatorship
b) Tyranny--Totalism
and
c) the act of genocide
rather than:
i. diplomacy
ii. freedom
Another Important Point
10. The Internet is lawless! We all know that!
If the internet is lawless, what is at stake in
relationship to human rights and what are the
potential issues of this lawlessness?
This question is not about freedom of speech or civil
liberties rather, protections from slavery, tyranny, and
dictatorship which together, accumulates to terrorism
and attack on individuality.
If the internet, as a database and information
highway is lawless, how does an individual, a group,
and country protect themselves from the lawlessness?
Although, this is another complicated topic
altogether, it is important to understand the issues we
have faced, we face today, and can expect to face in
the future.
11. Ethnic Cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is “the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a
dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity.”
Scenario #2: The Secret Hand of Oppression
In the book titled, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” author
Robert J. Lifton writes about “brainwashing and thought-terminating cliché’s
in China.
Although, I will not delve deeply into this book I want to share excerpts I feel
give substantial evidence to a danger lurking deeply within the belief system
of Psychology, Social Work, and our institutions. I point out a “belief system”
because in our institutions across the United States, the “cultural norm of
belief” is very similar to the thought-terminating processes Totalism
represents, “ethnic homogeneity.”
Let’s look deeper!
12. Using the definition of homogeneity which is: “the quality or state of being homogeneous, (sameness in
belief and thinking), ethnic which is: “of or relating to large groups of people classed according to
commonality and/or beliefs, experiences, or culture,” and imprisonment which is: “constraining and/or
confining a human being from the liberties true freedom provides, let’s take a look at a scenario of ethnic
homogeneity and how it may be applied in a human service situation.
Scenario #2
The Secret Hand of Oppression
The other day, a Social Worker stated to a client (who is suffering from the affects of
poverty and oppression), “You need to change your thinking.” The Social Worker truly
believes the changing of one’s thinking will erase the problem of poverty and disconnection
caused by prejudice and oppression, of which this client lives and reaches out to the
healing community in alleviating. In effect, the client is being forced to submit to the belief
that the reason for his/her circumstances is because of his/her biological defects.
In such a trained and majority cultural belief system, the Social Worker demands by
authority the clients conformity; the result of this demand becomes a coerced client on
defense for their individual diversity and a system betraying its very premise of protecting
humanity. The client has no human right protections for their individuality once this
system incorporates this ideology in radical formulation—”Change your thinking.”
Totalism is thought reform, as Robert Jay Lifton suggests. In the preface of his book
“Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” Robert writes, “Totalitarianism is part of
the human repertoire, an ever present potential that can readily manifest itself when historical
conditions call it forth. What is new is the potential for radically increased consequences of
Totalism, to the point of human extinction!”
Let’s look deeper!
13. Thus far we have learned:
1. Ethnic Homogeneity equivocates to a Totalitarian existence produced through the
implementation of thought reform within systems and culture.
2. One way rights and privileges are taken away within America is: “through the belief
that changing the way one thinks will result in a better more productive person and
implementing institutional strategies that enforce this ideology upon it’s clientele.
3. In the case of this social worker, this mental state of belief becomes the terroristic threat,
a fist of authority, and an implementation of ethnic cleansing upon the client population
it services.
What are the deeper implications of a totalitarian state of mind as
practiced by this Social Worker?
The problem of such beliefs (individually and collectively) is:
1. the practice of a culturally accepted intent , “change your
thinking”
2. behavior of ethnic cleansing which diminishes the talent and
potential of human beings.
Is it possible?
14. Robert Jay Lifton goes on to write, “For an individual person the effect of the language of ideological Totalism, (in
this case, the statement, “you need to change your thinking.”), can be summed up in one word: constriction. He
or she is linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, his/her capacities for
thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed.” “. . . In effect, an individual is profoundly confined by these
verbal fetters.”
Consequences and Comparative Details
As Robert Jay Lifton points out above, there is an outcome of confinement in
a society, culture, and institution who truly believes homogeneity is a
necessity for the subsistence of a majority culture.
If the individual does not change their thinking, to the conformed belief, they
experience a form of violence that falls under the category of genocide.
So when the Social Worker in her belief system expresses, “You need to change
your thinking” to the client, the suggestion becomes an operational change
advocate of a clients thinking, shaking the clients own power of knowing. The
end result and intent of the Social Worker (due to the loyalty of the
professional belief) is the injuring of the client’s ability to think independently,
threatening the very existence of individuality.
No human being should have to tolerate this type of genocide repeatedly, and
yet most clients do, especially those in the system. This is at the heart of
institutional failure, individual breakdown, and DSMIV diagnosis, in most
systemic cases!
15. Other Totalitarian Beliefs Integrated Within our Culture and Institutions
1. If you feel emotional suffering externally or internally, it is
because you must change your thought processes and/or
accept your “genetic defect.” And the thought processes
are based on the “experts” knowledge rather than, the
individuals knowing.
2. If you are poor, you brought this upon yourself either
because you are mentally inferior, have a disease that
incapacitates you from developing self-sufficiency, or you
are a criminal.
3. If there is conflict in your life, it is because you are creating
that conflict. Again, the cultural norm acts in their belief
if an individual has conflict around them it is because they
are the contributor of that conflict or they are choosing to
be in that conflict.
Society and institutions validate this belief through the interpretation and application
of theory which creates a separation between the individual’s capability and present
ability of personal knowing and a systems doctrine that must always be right till,
scientifically proven wrong.
Final Thoughts
16. One needs to be careful about the way in which they go
about trying to “help” a people or trying to alleviate
suffering, especially when it is based on the supremacy of
one’s educational theory that has become the “fields norm”
of accepted interpretation.
Another words, equivocating the “helping” and aligning
the consensus of those beliefs in order to justify and
validate (or revalidate) the interpreted theory.
Even more, a healer needs to look at how they are
contributing to genocidal conformity by submitting
theoretical gibberish in substantiating why someone
behaves the way they do.
Hopefully, the resilience of a people in poverty does not
succumb to its intent, an inferior status and a victim.
The chains of genocide mutilate a people and this is at the
root of oppression.
17. There is another form of weaponry in our American institutions and American culture, the same
intent as the act of genocide, only secretly devised and mysteriously implemented. This weaponry
is at the heart of oppression and separatism; it is still war, not peace!"(c) 2010, M. Gouin
What is the opposite of Ethno-History?
1. poverty
2. oppression
3. identity assassination
4. inequality
which equivocates to:
a) dictatorship
b) Tyranny--Totalism
and
c) the act of genocide
rather than:
i. diplomacy
ii. freedom
18. Bibliography
1. Morse, John M., Fredrick C. Mish, Madeline L. Novak. Merriam
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition. United States of
America: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.
2. Berloquin, Pierre. Hidden Codes and Grand Designs. New
York: Sterling Publishing, 2008.
3. Moore, MariJo, Vine Deloria, Jr. Genocide of the Mind. New
York: Nation Books, 2003.
4. Lifton, Robert Jay. Thought Reform and the Psychology of
Totalism. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1989.
The End!
Designed and written by: Madeline A. Gouin
All sources quoted have been placed in the bibliography.
All inquiries about this e-learning module can be addressed
at: gouin_madeline@hotmail.com.