Reading 4

Barker- Cultural Studies Chapter 4
Biology and Culture

I respect Barker's viewpoint to assess gender and the body with respect to cultural as well as physiological implications. In choosing to dismiss completely biological explanations as reductionist, the practitioners in effect present a form of their own reductionism. A viewpoint that is encompassing of a variety of alternative explanations would be by definition more open-minded and critical.

Reductionism makes me think of the scientific method. It is impossible to have a true scientific experiment without some measure of control and variable so that a scientist can truly track that which is part of the causal chain. Additionally, a trained scientist should acknowledge that even when a causal chain appears to exist one must account and accept that forces not controlled could be the cause of any events.

Even more interesting to me is viewing the science culture through a Foucault lens. Science expects and demands answers in varying levels. In fact it can be argued that the scientific community forms its own social grouping that consists of it own normalizing techniques especially with respect to who can speak and who cannot. Even more disturbing is that through peer-reviewed journals, scientists determine which ideas are "important" and which are not. Strangely through surveillance and discursive practices scientists allow themselves to be restrained with respect to the very ideas they should be attempting to unravel.

I'd like to dissect this comment by Dennett "The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution is now beyond dispute among scientists." First is the irony of stating a theory in "beyond dispute." ( Barker, 124) Theories (while at any given point in time may seem "truth") should always be subject to new viewpoints and varying tests. This statement directly exemplifies the problem I noted in the preceding paragraph. As scientists are at the mercy of journals in who can say what, when, information that may be in disagreement with a current theory may be suppressed for political and personal reasons thus altering the known and public set of scientific principles.

What Barker does not note (and I think it is important here) is that Dawkins is a devout atheist (and I reconize the oxymoron here!) who uses his evolutionary theory in a political way to disprove the belief in God. I note this because in Dawkins's attempt to break the ideology of God, he creates a new ideology based on the theory of evolution.


Barker- Cultural Studies Chapter 8
Ethnicity, Race and Nation

Not only is race a social construction but it became embedded in a political agenda. This correlation made me question how many of our political beliefs are embedded in social constructions and how many social constructions are embedded in our political beliefs. Does the connection work both ways in equilibrium (constantly shifting due to outlying factors) or is one direction more prevalent?

The idea of the nation-state and "imagined communities" (Barker 253) are especially important when taking into consideration Ogbu's social theory of voluntary and involuntary minorities. One would assume that in the application of a voluntary immigration a person is giving a level of acceptance to the nation-state ideal with which respect to their own identities. As a contrast, involuntary immigrants would see acceptance of the new nation-state as a denial of self and futhermore a consent to the treatment to which they would be subjected.

This is most obvious in contrasting a black citizen of America to an African immigrant who comes to America. I remember in college finding it very interesting that foreign students from Africa were more likely to cross race lines (not only in normalizing techniques of whites but also black Americans). I especially remember thinking it was odd because the African immigrant was more likely to have language as a cultural barrier. Perhaps African immigrants were more willing to lump together Americans despite color than Americans are willing to lump themselves together. This feeds my assertion that cultural studies should spend more time on emphasizing what draws us together and less on what separates us.

Wih respect to savage and slaves (Barker 264), I'd like to take it one step further. In Shakespeare's time through the use of current popular culture, the playwrights took the savage to a new level by naming a character in a play Caliban. This is a clear play on the word cannibal. Caliban's character also extends the stereotypical belief that native, wild people can't keep their hands off pale white women (menace to society). It is this belief that causes the protagonist Prospero to treat him poorly and through a series of typically Shakerspearean farce, eventually leads Caliban to CHOOSE to obey his enslaver.

Based on the notion of race, ethnicity and culture, how long (how many generations) occur before the hybridization occurs such that the dominant culture starts to replace facets of the immigrants culture?

Spring- American Education Chapter 5
Multicultural and Multilingual Education

I am leery of accepting the binary of Western/Confucianism. I think that alternate realities encapsulate a measure of both the whole and the parts to view different portions of the world at any time. Confucianism is limited with respect to orientation and travel. By this I mean that an object or person is seldom removed from its original environment and moved to a new environment. The Chinese society of past (in Confucious time) was very isolated. The ideas about the object on its own apart from environment was not as required as in Western world when objects had to serve similar purposes in a new environment. For example, will this plant, animal, person thrive in this new environment? Western thought would be concerned with the plant and not necessarily the new environment as a whole. It is obvious how these viewpoints led to Individualist and Collectivist societies.

How does the concept of freedom differ in Individualist and Collectivist societies?

Cultural frames of reference can act as negative factors on a person's experience. It could create a false concsiousness of discrimination in a changing culture that does not actually discriminate according to the expectations created in the dominated culture.

My experience is completely contrary to the sexism experience. I was always supported by my teachers and parents for my abilities in skills in math and science.
I hit the SAT out of the park, was involved in sports, and pursued a bachelor's degree in a male-dominated science discipline (Chemistry) Even in those courses I never felt like I was less of a student or treated different in any way. However, I will say that I find myself grouping "women" into a less than acceptable group based on my experiences with them. I would never choose an all-woman's university or school, simply because that would mean it was all women LOL!

Language and Cultural Rights in a time of Diaspora:
Jews are a unique culture (race and/or ethnicity) because their being revolves around their religion. Because Jews were forced to travel the world to find a place to live they always found themselves as outsiders in part of a foreign culture. However they held onto their primary culture and beliefs in two main ways:
a) educating for economic power (via lisa delpit's theories)
b) ethnocentric education (held at synagogue through Hebrew School)

I would propose that althought for most intents Jews would be considered "white" (especially Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European ancestry) they have only recently been accepted by the dominant culture as "white." This in fact coincides with the decrease in ethnocentric education (while educating for economic power was held constant).