Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to deal with a very complex and wide subject: inequality. When it comes to define this concept one of the major measures taken into account refers to economic and income factors. Nevertheless this work will focus on another fundamental element which has the ability to produce and reinforce differentiations within and between societies: culture.(1)
This paper will follow a specific structure. After having dealt with the notions of symbolic and social boundaries, considered as important elements in the production of inequalities, the first chapter will observe the ways in which important scholars, such as Marx or Weber, consider inequality itself and the different dimensions this social fact can have. The second chapter will focus on cultural inequality and on the close relationship between culture and power, knowledge and language. In conclusion, the post-colonial theories of Spivak and Said will be the theoretical framework used to comprehend, in the third chapter, the asymmetry between global North and South or West and East found in two specific empirical cases: the idea of the “Third World Women” and the “Us” versus “Them” discourse.
CHAPTER 1
1.1 Symbolic and social boundaries and inequality
The idea of “boundaries” is central in social sciences. Through the “ability” of setting a border or a limit, these elements divide different spheres from each other, which can be physical, personal, moral, and so on. More precisely, it is possible to distinguish between two specific types of boundaries: the symbolic and social ones.
The former, which arise when people, organizations or institutions agree upon certain visions and definitions of the world, are helpful means of interpretation, identification and classification of several elements, such as objects, people, behaviours, time and place. Due to they can create a sense of membership or distance among human beings, their analysis allows us to understand the dynamic dimensions of social relations.
On the other side, social boundaries, often considered as the concretization of the symbolic ones, manifest themselves by materializing social differences, such as unequal access to and distribution of resources and opportunities. Although these two kinds of borders belong to different levels, they are intertwined and their relationship can produce real and strong forms of social inequality, exclusion or stratification. (2)
According to the concept of equality, Sen claims that it is related to two kinds of diversities: the natural heterogeneity and differences of human beings, and the multiple ways in which equality itself can be judged. On the basis of the fact that societies are formed by people who differ because of internal or external characteristics, inequality can be considered as the result of the comparison among individuals or groups of people, according to some specific features, such as income, wealth, opportunities, rights, and so forth. (3)
In general, inequality has always been a very discussed social fact. For long time anthropologists and archaeologists have used a reductive and simplistic example to explain this phenomenon, by identifying only two kinds of realities. On the one side, egalitarian societies were found in small agricultural communities and in hunter-gatherer groups. Here, the lack of competition among individuals due to the equality of their power, status and authority, translated in the absence of rankings among the people forming the society itself. On the other side, non-egalitarian societies, identified in larger-scale groups, were characterized by hierarchic mechanisms.
Times passed and further studies have disproved such a simple dichotomy. In fact, it was demonstrated that inequality is an omnipresent factor in any kind of human society, which can be institutionalized and become a radicalized part of culture. (4)
1.2 Theories and dimensions of inequality
Inequality has been discussed and addressed by several sociologists, each of whom has developed his or her own specific theory. For instance, Marx identified it in terms of opposition and polarization between two determinate groups: capitalists and workers. According to the scholar the only way to eradicate social division would have been the revolution of the proletariat, aimed at changing the situation of the exclusive capitalists’ ownership of the means of production.(5)
Also Weber dealt with inequality. Considering that this social fact manifests itself in all societies and through different dimensions, he perceived it in terms of conflict between social groups, stratified on the basis of three key elements: class, status and power.(6)
Inequality can have different forms according to what social and biological dimension it refers to. The first type is class inequality, which is mainly defined by differences in income, wealth, education and occupation. The second dimension, concerning ethnic and racial differences, relies on factors such as skin colour or other decorations which recall a certain cultural and geographical origin. Finally, the third type of inequality is based on gender and sexual aspects.
These different dimensions of inequality are important in this paper for two main reasons. The first one is that for each of them it is possible to highlight the link between symbolic and social boundaries: advantaged groups of people with high levels of prestige will tend to interpret and classify the world according to their points of view. Consequently, the vision of the reality conveyed by these dominant groups will manifest itself concretely through several forms of social differentiations. For example, according to the gender and racial dimension of inequality, patriarchal systems tend to consider girls and women as vulnerable categories: this main dominant idea will translate into concrete forms of discrimination towards females groups.
The second reason for which dimensions of inequality are important is linked to the fact that upper groups will succeed both in legitimizing their cultures, beliefs, behaviours, and in delegitimizing traditions and values of lower groups. This situation, which gives a first idea of what cultural inequality is, often manifests itself in a binary and simplistic opposition between what is assumed to be “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad”, “civilized” or “uncivilized” and “pure” or “impure”. (7)
The following chapter will mainly focus on one specific type of inequality, the cultural one. Specifically, this will be examined in relation to language, knowledge and power, and according to the theories of important scholars: Foucault, Spivak and Said.
CHAPTER 2
2.1 Cultural Inequality
According to Kramsch, the concept of culture can be understood in opposition to the notion of nature: “Nature refers to what is born and grows organically (from the Latin nascere: to be born); culture refers to what has been grown and groomed (from the Latin colere: to cultivate)”.(8) Furthermore, culture can be understood at a micro and macro level, according to whether it refers, namely, to internalized personality features (e.g. beliefs, behaviours and traditions), or to specific institutions of knowledge (e.g. language, science, education and religion).(9)
Cultural inequalities, which result from differences in the treatment, recognition and representation of various groups on the basis of their norms, values, symbols and customs, have two major negative consequences. Firstly, as it has been mentioned above, when members of certain groups are identified only in terms of cultural opposition to the dominant group, then simplistic dichotomies between “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong” are created. In this way the “others” are perceived as alien or odd, compared to a supposedly superior and dominating model. Secondly, this situation can also worsen other types of inequalities, such as the political and socioeconomic ones.(10)
In particular, going back to the concept of culture from a macro point of view, it is important to notice a fundamental aspect for this paper, which refers to the link between culture itself and language, society and power. According to Fairclough, language is a strong means that has the ability to maintain and change power relations in societies at micro and macro levels.(11) By contributing to the domination of some people by others, and by reflecting power relations, language itself has the ability of building specific social identities and systems of knowledge and representations of the world.(12)
In the interview Culture and Power of Hall, it is possible to understand that culture and language are linked also to the notion of ideology.(13) This can act in two different ways. In its neutral sense, ideology can be considered as the normal ensemble of behaviours, habits, values and beliefs that a determined cultural and social group shares and uses in order to confer meaning to the world. On the other side, ideology can also have a negative connotation, as it indicates the dominant and false group of symbolic representations which, conveyed by the most prestigious and advantage classes, has the capability of hiding prejudices and inclinations of a specific social system. The problem of this form of ideology lies in its power: through it discourses can naturalize and universalize certain believes and values at the expenses of the lower groups.(14) Also Marx discusses about this notion. The sociologist, who defines this concept as “false consciousness”, states that ideology itself obscures the real conditions and situations of human beings under the capitalistic system.(15)
2.2 Discourse, Power and Post-colonial theories
Although the expression “post-colonial” refers to the period after the end of colonialism, this historical phase has really never ended: its impact and consequences have been so strong that the power relations it has generated still shape society, producing an opposition between two different worlds: the dominating global North or West, which claims its superiority on the inferior global South or East, through economic, political, cultural, and linguistic means.(16) Especially from a discursive point of view, it is possible to notice how such unequal positions are reinforced by the perpetuation through language of specific stereotypes, which don’t represent reality accurately but reiterate an homogeneous and simplistic vision of facts, people and societies. (17)
As Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin affirm: “We use the term ‘post-colonial’, however, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupations throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression”. (18)
According to language, van Dijk affirms that discourse can be a major means for the creation of inequalities. The main idea is that the more the authors of specific discourses have access to communicative resources (such as the media), the stronger will be the ability and possibility of their texts to be strong and manipulative of certain visions of the world: groups that influence and dominate the larger number of discourses will be more likely to control the minds and actions of the lower classes. In this sense, discourse is a good framework to understand the ways in which certain populations and categories are perceived and shaped.(19) (20)
In a similar way, also Foucault discusses about language as an instrument for reiterating inequality. Discourse is linked to power in the sense that who, for several reasons (i.g. economic and education advantages) is at the top of the social hierarchy has also the means to perpetuate his or her privileged condition. Power allows dominant groups to define what is real and what is not: in this way, social relations are constantly influenced by language, which organizes the way people relate to each other. The resulting gained supremacy can be maintained thanks to legitimation, a process through which actors and institutions try to justify their power and points of view.(21)
Also Spivak, an important scholar dealing with post-colonial critical studies, focuses on the importance of discourse and literary texts. Her main idea is that language can be an important way through which the global North creates specific visions and representations of the reality. In particular, the author focuses on the concept of “subaltern” that refers to an heterogeneous category, which includes vulnerable people, such as women, unemployed and tribal who don’t have the social, political and economic resources necessary to answer back to the homogeneous and stereotyped visions produced about them.(22)
The relation between the global North and the subalterns of the global South manifests in what Said calls the “Otherness”. The scholar expands Foucault’s analysis of language, power and knowledge and applies this theoretical framework to what he defines “Orientalism”, which is considered as a style of thought based on a distinction between West and East.(23)
In particular, according to Said, because of the unequal access to communicative resources and of the superior richness of Europe, the West was and is able to produce and shape the Orient from a political, sociological, ideological and scientific perspective. The consequent impossibility for the East to be free in action and thought, shapes the relationship between West and East in terms of domination and hegemony of the former towards the latter.(24)
Going back to Spivak, she deals with two other important concepts: “worlding” and “epistemic violence”. The former, which refers to the way in which discourse has provided a structure and background to justify imperial expansion, and unequal power relations, is followed by the latter, which refers to the deliberate linguistic construction of reality, people and facts. Through the “epistemic violence”, which inflicts harm against the subjects represented in the discourses, the global North opposes itself to the post-colonial populations, representing them as passive and uncivilized.(25)
After having noticed that language can be a powerful instrument through which reiterate inequalities, the next chapter will deal with two specific cases which demonstrate the reiteration, through discourse, of cultural inequality and stereotyped visions concerning the post-colonial world.
CHAPTER 3
3.1 The stereotyped “Third World Women”
In her studies, Spivak refers to the concept of “Third World Women”, which she considers a specific category of subaltern. In fact, according to the scholar, women are doubly exploited and underestimated in discourses, because they belong both to the post-colonial regions and to the vulnerable female sex and gender.
Before analyzing the category of the “Third World Women”, this section will answer to three main questions, which show the importance of discourses in reinforcing and reiterating inequalities and which sum up what has been said up to now. The first question is: how do people occupy unequal positions? Social stratification doesn’t occur only because of personal characteristics, attitudes and socio-economic status. As it has been previously noticed, also practices of discrimination, stigmatization and stereotyping of vulnerable categories (e.g. girls and women) can generate persistent inequalities. The second question is: how are inequalities maintained? People, organizations and institutions build certain images of the world and populations, which are able to influence our perceptions about reality and create expectations of the “others”. The third question is: how is inequality legitimated? As it has been previously noticed, unequal power relations and access to resources can turn into a process of symbolic violence, through which specific visions of the society are perceived as natural and consequently become difficult to question.(26)
The concept of “Third World Women” reflects the will to homogenize specific groups of people. Through its discourses, the global North claims its thought cultural superiority and reinforces inequalities, ideologies and stereotypes of the post-colonial populations, not enabling them to answer back or to show their position and vision about the reality. According to the concept of “Third World Women”, Mutua notices how girls and women of post-colonial areas suffer from different kinds of stereotypes.
The first stereotype refers to the dominant vision of women as victims of male’s violence. Although it is true that females often live in similar situations, this simplistic and reductive representation, which doesn’t take into account the heterogeneity of experiences these subjects can live, reinforces the subaltern image of this specific category.
The second stereotype shows women as constantly dependent. Mutua demonstrates how, for example, although Vietnamese woman and the black American females have different cultural and geographical backgrounds, they are equally perceived as victims and subordinated just because non-Western. The limit of this representation is that both men and women are pre-constructed before they enter in the sphere of social relations.
The third stereotype concerns women and their family systems. The Northern dominant narrative portraits these subjects exclusively in relation to the role they have in their families. In this way, few discourses focus on the meanings that being mother, daughter, sister or child have for the women themselves.
The fourth stereotype concerns the combination between women and their religious beliefs. Often religions, especially Islam, are considered as the main cause for the subaltern condition in which females are forced to live.
In conclusion, the last stereotype refers to the relation between the “Third World Women” and the development process. Representing this category homogeneously, only as passive and powerless can be considered as a Western strategy to legitimize intervention programs and policies in the post-colonial world and to shape a certain view of social and economic progress.
A part from misrepresenting the reality, these stereotypes hide the real needs and voices of the girls and women who are represented in the discourses, depriving them of their identity and individuality. Furthermore, once again, such representation reinforce the cultural inequality between the global North and South.(27)
3.2 “Us” vs. “Them” discourse
No analysis of the relationship between global North and South can be understood without considering the so-called “identity politics”. This expressions sums up what has been observed up to now in this paper: the discourses produced by the global North continuously create an opposition between “us”, the white, civilized and modern people and “them”, the black, uncivilized and traditional ones.(28)
This last section will confirm the theory of the identity politics by briefly examining some portions of text of the digest of UNICEF entitled: “Early Marriage. Child Spouses”.(29) This quick analysis will prove the situation of cultural inequality created by the global North.(30)
By reading the text it is possible to notice the presence of two specific linguistic strategies: the overlexicalisation, which refers to the consistent repetition of words belonging to the same semantic field and the structural oppositions, which works by contrasting two mutually exclusive terms, such as “black” and “white”.(31) These two linguistic figures can make us understand the way in which Western societies develop specific visions and points of view about post-colonial world and populations and produce cultural inequalities.
The persistence of words such as “choice”, “chance”, “choose”, “consent”, “freedom”, “opportunity”, “empowerment”, “skills”, opposed to “lack”, “loss”, “denial”, “suffer”, “damage”, “pain”, “trauma”, “risk”, namely attributed to the global North and South, reflects specific value judgments about different cultures from ours. These words allow to spread the vision according to which only Western societies would enable their citizens to decide for their lives and have a good future, while the others post-colonial societies would only neglect rights and opportunities to their populations.
The second category of overlexicalisation and structural oppositions present in the digest of UNICEF totally confirm what has been stated up to now. Expressions such as: “industrialized world”, “modern individualistic systems” and “modern values” are opposed to “cultural settings”, “traditional sets of values”, “familist system”, and so forth. Once again, this discourse sums up the analyzed dominant narrative reiterated by the global North, according to which the world is characterized only by two unequal realities and cultures.
Also the use of adjectives confirm this stereotyped vision. Expressions like: “odd behaviors” or “alien”, referred to the traditions of post-colonial populations reinforce the idea according to which “our” culture is right and “theirs” is wrong.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this paper was to look at the way in which discourse can produce an important asymmetry in the representation of the post-colonial world by the global North. In particular, it has been noticed how unequal access to communication resources can lead to a misrepresentation about the reality. Western discourses reiterate stereotypes and dominant narratives which identify two only possible worlds: the Northern one, culturally superior and right, and the Southern one, culturally inferior and wrong.
A part from being considered as a means of legitimation of the development programs and politics proposed by the developed world towards the global South, this simplistic view of the society doesn’t allow the populations of the post-colonial world to show their real needs and visions of the world.
As Spivak would say, these Western representations don’t make the subaltern speak.
NOTES
(1) Warwik-Booth L. Social Inequality. London and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013: 2. 3
(2) Lamont M. and Molnár V. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 28., 2002: 167-168.
(3) Sen A. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992: 1-2.
(4) Price T. D. and Feinman G. M. “Foundations of Prehistoric Social Inequality” in: Price T. D. and Feinman G. M. (eds) Foundations of Social Inequality. New York: Plenum Press, 1995: 3-10.
(5) Bendix R. “Inequality and Social Structure: A Comparison of Marx and Weber”. American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 2. American Sociological Association, 1974: 150-151.
(6) Weber M. “Selection s in Translations” in: Runciman W. G. (ed) Selection in Translation. Cambridge, NewYork and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1978: 8.
(7)Lamont M. and Molnár V. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 28.2002: 172-176.
(8) Kramsch C. “Language and Culture” in: Widdowson H. G. (ed) Oxford Introductions to Language Study. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998: 8.
(9) Charles M. “Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in ‘Postascriptive Society’”. The Annels of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Science. 2008: 42.
(10) Langer A. and Brown G. K. Cultural Status Inequalities: an Important Dimension of Group Mobilization. CRISE: Centerfor Research on Inequlity, Human Security and Ethnicity, Working Paper No. 41. 2007: 4-11.
(11) Norman Fairclough also refers to language by using the word “discourse”.
(12) Fairclough N. Language and Power. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001: 3.
(13) Hall S. interviewed by Osborne P. and Segal L. “Culture and Power” in: Radical Philosophy. London, 1997: 30 https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/files_mf/rp86_interview_hall.pdf.
(14) Mitchell W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987: 4.
(15) Morton S. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2003: 93.
(16) Spivak talks about global North and South and Said about West and East, or “Orient”.
(17) Child P. and Williams P. Introduction To Post-Colonial Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2013: 11.
(18) Ashcroft B. Griffiths G. and Tiffin H. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge, 2002: 2.
(19) van Dijk T. A. “Critical Discourse Analysis” in: Schiffrin D., Tannen D. e Hamilton H. E. (a cura di). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001: 352-371.
(20) This consideration will be important for the analysis of the “Third World Woman” and the discourses on childmarriage in the third chapter.
(21) Kirby M., Kidd W., Koubel F., Barter J., Hope T., Kirton A., Madry N., Manning P. and Triggs K. Sociology in Perspective (AQA Edition). Oxford and Melbourne: Heinmann Educational Publishers, 2000: 38.
(22) Abdalkafor O. Gayatri Spivak. Deconstruction and the Ethics of Postcolonial Literary Interpretation. Newcastle UponTyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015: 9-12.
(23) Morton S. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2003: 38.
(24) Said E. “Orientalism” in: Longhofer W. and Winchester D. (eds) Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2012: 375.
(25) See note 26.
(26) M. “Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in ‘Postascriptive Society’”. The Annels of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2008: 46-52.
(27) Mohanty C.T. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” in: Mohanty C. T., Russo A. and Torres L. (a cura di), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991: 51-80.
(28) Dusche M. Identity Politics in India and Europe. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks e London: Sage Publications, 2010: 4, 97- 99.
(29) The digest deals with the phenomenon of child marriage, considered as a harmful practice which affects a large number of girl especially in developing countries.
(30) Umemoto S. H., Early Marriage. Child Spouses. UNICEF Innocenti Digest no. 7. Firenze: Innocenti Research Centre. 2001 http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest7e.pdf
(31) Machin D. e Mayr A. How To Do Critical Discourse Analysis. A Multimodal Introduction. London and Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2012: 36-38.
REFERENCES
Abdalkafor O. Gayatri Spivak. Deconstruction and the Ethics of Postcolonial Literary Interpretation. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Ashcroft B. Griffiths G. and Tiffin H. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Bendix R. “Inequality and Social Structure: A Comparison of Marx and Weber”. American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 2. American Sociological Association, 1974: 149-161.
Charles M. “Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in ‘Postascriptive Society’”. The Annels of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2008: 41-58.
Child P. and Williams P. Introduction To Post-Colonial Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Douglas Price T. and Feinman G. M. Foundations of Social Inequality. New York and London: Plenum Press, 1995.
Fairclough N. Language and Power. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.
Hall S. interviewed by Osborne P. and Segal L. “Culture and Power” in: Radical Philosophy. London, 1997: 30 https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/wp-content/files_mf/rp86_interview_hall.pdf.
Kramsch C. “Language and Culture” in: Widdowson H. G. (ed) Oxford Introductions to Language Study. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kirby M., Kidd W., Koubel F., Barter J., Hope T., Kirton A., Madry N., Manning P. and Triggs K. Sociology in Perspective (AQA Edition). Oxford and Melbourne: Heinmann Educational Publishers, 2000.
Lamont M. and Molnár V. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 28. 2002: 167-195.
Langer A. and Brown G. K. Cultural Status Inequalities: an Important Dimension of Group Mobilization. CRISE: Center for Research on Inequlity, Human Security and Ethnicity, Working Paper No. 41. 2007.
Machin D. e Mayr A. How To Do Critical Discourse Analysis. A Multimodal Introduction. London and Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2012.
Mitchell W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Morton S. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Price T. D. and Feinman G. M. “Foundations of Prehistoric Social Inequality” in: Price T. D. and Feinman G. M. (eds) Foundations of Social Inequality. New York: Plenum Press, 1995: 3-10.
Said E. “Orientalism” in: Longhofer W. and Winchester D. (eds) Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2012: 372-387.
Sen A. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Umemoto S. H., Early Marriage. Child Spouses. UNICEF Innocenti Digest no. 7. Firenze: Innocenti Research Centre. 2001 http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest7e.pdf.
Van Dijk T. A. “Critical Discourse Analysis” in: Schiffrin D., Tannen D. e Hamilton H. E. (a cura di). The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001: 352-71.
Warwik-Booth L. Social Inequality. London and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013.
Weber M. “Selection s in Translations” in: Runciman W. G. (ed) Selection in Translation. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
