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Political Stratification From An Embodied Perspective

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29 views8 pages

Political Stratification From An Embodied Perspective

Uploaded by

zizizildie
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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POLITICAL

STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
GROUP 4
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• From an embodied perspective, political stratification can be understood in a
number of different ways. Here individuals are at the forefront as they,
through continuous acts of self-definition, interpret and make sense of norms
and values, and as they interact with each other. Based on the symbolic
interactionist perspective of American philosopher and social psychologist
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), the “sociophysiology” of individuals
underpins self-awareness, interactions, and behavior. Interactions and the
thus-derived structures are based on the interpretation and internalization of
rules by individuals.
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• Structures and stratification are based on interaction according to a system of
rules, yet these interactions concurrently reproduce and transform the rules and
thus the underlying structures. For French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–
1984), organizations and institutions (e.g., schools, asylums, medicine) are
invested within individual bodies through discipline and punishment of their
bodily activities. As such, individuals in modern societies no longer require the
policing of their thoughts and activities by others but become their own guards.
Connected to this notion is governmentality, which also plays a role in
conceptualizing political stratification from a post-structural perspective.
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• Governmentality refers to power as tactical and continuous negotiations
between actors and institutions (e.g., markets). Meaning and knowledge
are shaped via the interconnection between discoursive strategies and
practices. From this perspective, power is omnipresent and embedded
in all forms of discourse and actions. Knowledge thus produced and
internalized has the power to regulate and discipline the self. Also,
Bourdieu’s notion of different forms of capital could be understood as
part of embodied structures because such capitals are connected to
personal fields of power and the habitus of the individual.
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• In sum, political structures can be conceived of in terms of institutions,
relations, and bodies, although these perspectives are best understood as ways to
organize different theoretical approaches rather than implying differences in
kind. Throughout, controversies about political stratification center on questions
such as: What is stratified? How is it stratified? What causes such stratification?
and What are its consequences? Postmodern, particularly post-structural,
theorists would argue that due to technological innovations and the increased
speed and efficiency of mobility of information, goods, and people, all social,
economic, political, and cultural structures are dissolving.
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• In the absence of dominant political structures and social order,
individuals no longer have positions and trajectories but are
either encouraged or forced to construct themselves and to
interpret their environment according to context-dependent,
ephemeral, media-dominated, lifestyle and consumption
choices..
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• Such suggestions may point at important dynamics associated with
modernization and globalization, but empirical evidence continues to
illustrate the persistence of structures. Part of the criticisms against
structural approaches is based on three misunderstandings: inability for
(privileged) individuals to perceive the constraints of structures,
structures as something static, and determinacy of structures. However,
individuals’ subjective experience of structures is not necessary for
structures to exist. Structures do not necessary imply stability as even
highly dynamic and changing systems can be based on structures.
POLITICAL STRATIFICATION FROM AN
EMBODIED PERSPECTIVE
• And the presence and influence of structures rarely determines
completely the thoughts and actions of individuals. Despite the
demonstrable social, economic, and political changes that modern
(and all other societies) are experiencing, structures themselves
continue to exist as they persist, adapt, or transmute. Modern
questions about political structures should not be based on whether
they exist but rather in what form and in which context they exist.

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