Sociology Now, Census Update

to withstand changing social situations, and traditional authority is unable
to handle much change without breaking down. And no leader, however
charismatic, would today be able to sway tens of millions of people of
diverse socioeconomic classes, races, religions, and life situations, on the
basis of their personality alone.

Power/Knowledge

Weber argued that we obey authority because we perceive it to be legiti-
mate. But how do we get the idea that it is a good thing to obey a leader,
instead of rebelling or striking out on our own? The late twentieth-
century French philosopher Michel Foucault had a different idea: We obey
because we cannot conceive of anything else. Power is always explicitly
connected with knowledge. In fact, he wrote, they should be the same
word:power/knowledge(Foucault, 1980).
Power/knowledge does not force us to do things, but it shapes and
limits our thoughts and desires until they correspond to the dominant ide-
ologies of our society. If you cannot think of doing something, then it is
pretty hard to entertain actually doing it. For example, if you have no idea
that there are forms of contraception, it would be difficult to imagine
“planning” your family. If the rules of a game are firmly established, it’s hard
to imagine that they might be otherwise.
Authorities use three strategies to limit our own power/knowledge and thereby
maintain control:

1.Hierarchical observation. They watch and observe what you do, sort of the

way that supervisors constantly check up on salespeople in retail stores or “Big

Brother” may be observing what Internet sites you are visiting when you are

supposed to be working on office spreadsheets.

2.Normalizing judgment. “Experts” use their knowledge to determine if what we

do or want to do is “normal,” like the ways that employers use personality tests

to decide whether or not to hire you.

3.Examination. Regular assessments determine if we have acquired the proper

thoughts and desires—probably something like the test you’ll take about this book

at the end of this semester.

But Foucault did not see power/knowledge as purely repressive and prohibitive;
it is also a creative force. The very actions taken by the powerful create new opportu-
nities for resistance to it. So, for example, Foucault argues that the sexual repression
of the Victorian age also created, for the first time, distinct sexual identities called
“homosexuals” and “heterosexuals.” (There were behaviors before, of course,
but never the idea that such behaviors formed an identity. In other words, prior to
that era, “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were adjectives, describing behaviors, not
nouns, describing people.)

Political Systems

Political systems determine how group leaders exercise their authority. Virtually all
political systems fall into one of two categories, authoritarian or democratic.

POLITICAL SYSTEMS 459

Today the term politically correctis used

mostly by political conservatives to

condemn what they perceive as liberal

hypocrisy. Originally the term was positive,

referring to honest attempts to avoid

offending different groups. The efforts to

change the word “mankind” to “humankind”

or to eliminate the use of “Miss” or “Mrs.”

for women (which referred to them only in

their relationship to men) were some

examples.

Actually, the term is much older. It first

appeared in 1793 in a Supreme Court decision

(Chisholm v. Georgia) to distinguish between

“the United States” and “the people of the

United States” (the latter was politically

correct).

Didyouknow

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