A University of Melbourne Essay Assignment
Under the 3rd-Year Sociology subject "Social Differences & Inequalities"
Passed with High Distinction (H1)
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By Benjamin L., written during Semester 1, 2013
Tutor's comments (J. Flores):
Ben, you have achieved a very high H1 on this paper. It is admirable to see such dedication and critical analytical skills in a third year paper. Such research is promising for honours work - keep up the good work! Consider whether it would have been best to focus on either race or sexuality, not both. It could have resulted in a deeper analysis? There are some irregularities in your style of referencing. Very well done!
Introduction
The United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) defines peace education as the promotion of knowledge, skills, values,
and attitudes that are conducive for peaceful coexistence (Harber & Sakade,
2009). It recognises that schools contribute to prejudicial physical and
symbolic violence based on sex, gender, and other differences, often despite
schools’ efforts to the contrary. However, the stigmatisation of some
differences instead of others suggests that the construction of prejudice is selective. To advance the goals of peace
education, schooling must address how
these differences come to be stigmatised and expose the underlying social
processes that enable these forms of prejudice to thrive. This paper argues
that schools are generally ineffective in interrogating the underlying causes
of difference-based prejudice & typically reinforce the status quo. We will
examine the social construction and problematisation of difference as well as
how this relates to homophobic, ethnic, and class inequality.
Stigma Construction & Symbolic Violence
The selective nature of prejudice
implies that some form of social differentiation occurs and problematises some
individuals instead of others. This differentiation involves imposing a stigma
on individuals who possess certain undesirable attributes and gives them a
spoiled social identity (Hancock & Garner, 2011). Goffman (1963b, in ibid.)
argues that these attributes purportedly threaten the status quo and require
the physical removal of these deviants – as with the institutionalisation of
criminals and the insane – or, more commonly, by discrediting them and their criticisms
of the status quo. Stigmatisation is thus a regulatory process that reinforces
the existing social order by containing deviance (Hancock & Garner).
Frost (2011) believes this involves
three inter-related aspects. Firstly, the commonly held generalisations around
stigmatised individuals morph into stereotypes. Prejudice occurs when
judgements against stereotyped individuals are made a priori on the basis of
the stereotype rather than the individual’s actual traits. Secondly, prejudice
often entails discrimination – a denial of the right to equal treatment or
equal status. Thirdly, prejudice and discrimination can eventually result in
structural inequalities, where institutional structures are constructed in ways
that reflect the negative connotations imposed on stigmatised groups.
The school or education system is a
site where such structural inequalities are manifested at the institutional and
interpersonal level (Harber & Sakade, 2009). Stigma-based actions are acts
of symbolic violence, where symbolic communication is used to place individuals
under “social hierarchies and structures of domination” (p.113; von Holdt,
2012). This performatively reiterates and reaffirms the values of the existing
social order (ibid.) while containing deviance.
Homophobia & Heterosexism
Sexuality is one area where categories
of social difference are formed and stigmatised. Butler (1993) argues that sex is
not a ‘natural’ pre-discursive fact, but an outcome of discourse. Historically,
medical discourse has been instrumental in creating hetero-normative standards.
At some point, doctors shift from calling a child an ‘it’ and refer to them as
a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’. This hetero-normative interpellation performatively
produces a sexed and gendered child that disavows alternate, non-heterosexual
identities. Heterosexuality is constituted as the normative social order while
homosexuality is constituted as its antithetical, deviant counterpart that must
be sitgmatised and contained to preserve the status quo.
Meyer (2007) argues that schools are
sites where heterosexuality is normalized and the persistence of homophobia and
heterosexism stems from schools’ failure to address the underlying social
processes behind them. Incidences of homophobic bullying are treated as
isolated events rather than symptoms of a broader social phenomenon where
sexual boundaries are policed through peer discrimination. These acts of
symbolic violence performatively maintain a social hierarchy that privileges
heterosexual identities while stigmatising others and, by failing to address this
hetero-normative hierarchy, the school becomes complicit in heterosexual
policing. School programs also institutionalise hetero-normative ideals through
practices like the exclusive study of heterosexual romance in literature,
heterosexual sex education/abstinence programs, and prom ‘kings’ and ‘queens’.[1]
The persistence of homophobia is
partly due to inadequate teacher training. Swedish teachers report that their
training was insufficient for teaching about homophobia and sexual orientation
(Rothing, 2008). Teacher training programs try to acknowledge the ‘special
needs’ of marginalized students and encourage tolerance among the majority of
students. However, it does not scrutinize the privileges of the heterosexual
majority or the broader hetero-normative processes that stigmatise
homosexuality and preserve a homophobic social order (ibid.). In Australia,
teachers may be willing to provide supportive resources for homosexual students
but also refrain from challenging heterosexism in public due to broader
cultural concerns, while homosexual teachers who declare their sexuality often
face punitive measures (Rhodes, 2010). This is especially true of religious
schools, where some exemptions to anti-discrimination laws allow schools to
fire teachers based on sexual orientation (ibid.). Through silencing homosexual
teachers and inadequately training heterosexual teachers who aren’t as
acquainted with the challenges homosexual students may face, schools become
complicit in maintaining the invisibility of hetero-normativity and its
resulting discrimination.
Racism & Multicultural Education
Ethnicity
is another area where categories of social difference are formed and stigmatised.
Ethnic categories are human
populations whom outsiders perceive as culturally and historically distinct
(Smith, 1991). Hage
(2006) argues that ethnic inequality is based on an insider/outsider, either/or
logic that identifies people based on some marker of similarity or difference
in relation to a particular socio-cultural space. Insiders are those who have
historically evolved with that space, become attuned to its cultural
sensibilities, and enjoy a hegemonic, morally valourised status within that
space. In contrast, the outsider has historically evolved outside that space, does
not identify with its 'order of things', and feels 'culturally out of place'.
In this sense, racism is not directed only against phenotypic race per se, but
against signs of otherness – a deviance from a normative ‘self’ relative to a
socio-cultural space.
‘Anti-racist education’ (sic)
criticizes racial prejudice and recognizes that school discourses on racism are
produced through social and institutional conditions that normalize the hegemony
of the dominant group while marginalizing others through ethnic hierarchies
(Schick, 2010). However, multicultural education programs usually teach the
history and culture of ‘others’ in a way that consolidates the inside/outside
distinction without challenging the broader, socially embedded hierarchies that
valourise some ethnic groups – usually the dominant ones – while stigmatising
marginalized others (ibid.). Instead, minority groups are constructed as
objects of study and subjects[2] of
questionable status whose place in society is determined by the same hegemonic
‘insider’ group that lord over them (Cross, 2005). It does not reveal how
racism and its stigmatising effects are systemically produced.
This is evident in Brazil’s
well-intentioned attempt to combat racism against Afro-Brazilians. According to
Canen (2010), the official curriculum was modified to include Afro-Brazilian
history, culture, and the economic, social, political, and cultural
contributions that the black community has made. This was enacted in response
to the Brazilian Black movement and even included “The National Day of Black
Awareness” (p. 551) on 20th November to commemorate the death of a
black Brazilian hero who fought against slavery. However, the hegemony of the
white majority remains unquestioned. While this content-based approach may ease
racism against Afro-Brazilians, the list of cultures to learn in order to
address racism against every minority would be impractically long and further
reinforce the insider/outsider binary. It also avoids asking why whiteness is
or should be hegemonic. Instead, Canen recommends imparting the critical
thinking skills needed to question the invisible hegemony of the dominant group
and the ideological and material underpinnings of racism. Until the hegemonic
group and its ethnic hierarchies are questioned, anti-racist education would be
a “tokenism” (Schick, 2010 p. 52) that does not address the underlying systemic
causes of racism.
Class Differentiation
& Mateship
So far, we have seen that social
differentiation is followed by stigma and inequality where one group is deemed
more desirable than the other. Homophobia is premised upon the normativity of
heterosexuality and the stigma associated with homosexuality. Likewise, ethnic
insiders are valourised while outsiders are stigmatized. However, the
stigmatization of difference is selective and the
differentiation-stigmatisation relationship is neither universal nor
inevitable. In Australia, the egalitarian ideology of mateship does the
opposite and maintains differences in wealth without a stigmatised status.
According to Bourdieu (1991), the
wealthy cultivate certain habits in their children that set them apart with a
sense of distinction or elevated status, relative to those less distinguished.
These habits are transmitted across generations within families. In this
hierarchy, distinction is acted out as a habitus: the attitudes, knowledge, personalities,
dispositions, and skills that make one comfortable and familiar within a
certain social milieu (Xu & Hampden Thomson, 2012). In France, Bourdieu
& Passeron (1977) argue that merit-based education systems fundamentally
favours children whose habitus most resembles the habitus the school aims to
inculcate. The language component of the habitus is most important: a family’s
habitus includes the child’s mastery of plain language, while the school’s
desired habitus emphasises the mastery of scholastic language through which
students acquire the categories and lexicon needed for comprehending abstract
academic concepts. The greater the difference between the family’s and school’s
habitus, the harder it is for the child to acquire the language needed for
learning and demonstrating learning. This allows children from upper class
backgrounds with a more distinguished habitus and sophisticated language skills
to achieve better grades and enter different academic streams at each stage of
their academic career, ultimately affecting the qualifications they receive and
their economic occupations in adult life. In translating their family’s habitus
into academic competence, the distinguished young thus form the next generation
of their class and differences in status and “social origin predetermines
educational destiny” (p. 80) and material inequality.
In contrast, Australia emphasizes an
“egalitarianism of manners” (Hirst, 1988 in Carter, 2006). Carter (2006) argues
that this ‘mateship’ historically emerged from the mutual dependence necessary
for braving the hardships of country life. It created an ethos where no
deference or condescension to was given to class status. Egalitarian mateship
also implied a belief in a ‘fair go’ or equality of opportunity. This emerged
from colonisers’ desire for self-advancement and the new lines of social
distinction were “carefully policed” (p. 360) to avoid the closed system of
class privilege in old Britain. However, mateship and a fair go constitute an
egalitarianism of manners rather than an egalitarianism of material outcomes
because it focused on the workingman’s equal status. Material inequality was
acceptable if everyone had an equal starting chance.
The influence of mateship is evident
in contemporary Australian debates about education. It is acknowledged that
different types of schools reproduce class inequalities through unequal
opportunities, and that this runs contrary to a fair go. For example, Colebatch
(2013) casts the politically debated National Plan for School Improvement, a
school-funding program, as a question of Australian egalitarianism and
privilege. It concerns whether Australia aspires to be a “broadly egalitarian
country, where all children have access to a good education, and the
opportunity… to make a good start in life”, or whether it prefers a
“class-based society, where good opportunities are available to those with the
money to buy them”. The juxtaposition of egalitarianism and class privilege
demonstrates a desire for a fair to in order to avoid the class determinism
described above. Even families worth over AUD $70m emphasized their
ordinariness and adhered to an egalitarianism of manners by using informal
language and deplored fortunes gained through inheritance or privilege (Bryant,
2006). Compared to the other forms of inequality discussed above, Australian
mateship is unusual insofar as the production of inequality is acceptable as
long as schools give all children a ‘fair go’ in life. It indicates that social
difference does not automatically entail prejudice: stigma is selective and constructed
within specific cultural contexts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper has argued that schools are generally ineffective in
interrogating the underlying causes of difference-based prejudice and stigma.
Stigma is attached to deviants who ‘threaten’ the normativity of the status
quo. In practice, stigma can be manifested at the individual level through
symbolic violence or at the institutional level through policies that
explicitly or inadvertently discriminate against the stigmatised.
Homophobic
prejudice is informed by hetero-normative discourses that legitimise some sexes
while disavowing others. Racism is informed by discourses that define insiders
and outsiders and legitimise the presence of some people instead of others
within a socio-cultural space. However, the differentiation-stigmatisation link
is not universal and must be considered within specific cultural contexts.
While homophobia and ethnic discrimination places the discriminator higher up a
hierarchy of social identities, articulators of Australian mateship place
themselves on a level plane with others. Material inequality still exists, but
class differentiation is neither desirable nor significant in delineating
status. While Marxists might argue that mateship disguises or legitimises
material inequality, this argument is flawed because material inequality is widely
known, publicly accepted, and unproblematic as long as everyone gets a ‘fair
go’.
Unfortunately,
education aimed at reducing homophobia and racism is ineffective insofar as it
attempts to remove stigmas without addressing the power relations, ideologies,
and privileges used by the hegemonic social group to produce differentiation
and discrimination. Without turning the analytical gaze onto privileged groups,
education programs will only tackle the symptoms of discrimination without
addressing its fundamental causes. If the school is an ideological battleground
where the shape of future generations is hotly contested, it is imperative for
students to acquire the critical skills to question the ideologies forced upon
them. Perhaps this will discredit the prejudicial ideologies that divide us and
foster the harmonious relationships envisioned in peace education.
References
Butler, J. (1993) ‘Introduction’, Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits
of sex, Routledge, London, pp. 1-28
Bourdieu, P. (1991) ‘First Lecture.
Social Space and Symbolic Space: Introduction to a Japanese reading of
distinction’, Poetics Today, vol. 12,
no. 4, pp. 627-638
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J.
(1977) ‘Cultural Capital and Pedagogic Communication’, Reproduction in Education and Society, SAGE, London, pp. 75-106
Bryant, J. (2006) Dare to Know: Thinking sociologically, Pearsons
Education, Australia, 119-136
Carter, D. (2006) ‘Egalitarianism:
Ideals and outcomes’, in Dispossession,
Dreams & Diversity: Issues in Australian studies, Pearson Education,
NSW, pp. 355-79
Canen, A. (2010) ‘Teaching Racial
Literacy: Challenges and contributions of multiculturalism, Policy Futures in Education, vol. 8, no.
5, pp. 548-555
Colebatch, T. (2013) ‘We Remain
Class-Based without Gonski Reforms’, The
Age National Times, accessed 10 May 2013 from
<http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/we-remain-classbased-without-gonski-reforms-20130415-2hvwx.html>
Cross, B.E. (2005) ‘New Racism,
Reformed Teacher Education, and the Same Ole’ Oppression’, Educational Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 263-274
Frost, D.M. (2011) ‘Social Stigma
and its Consequences for the Socially Stigmatized’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, vol. 5, no. 11, pp.
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Hage, G.
(2006) ‘Insiders and Outsiders’, in Peter Beilharz & Trevor Hogan (eds.) Sociology: Place, time and division,
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& Garner, R. (2011). 'Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman
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schooling?’, Journal of Peace Education,
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von
Holdt, K. (2012) 'The violence of
order, orders of violence: Between Fanon and Bourdieu', Current Sociology,
vol. 61, no. 2, pp.112-131
Meyer, E.J. (2007) ‘“But I’m Not
Gay”: What straight teachers need to know about Queer theory’, in Nelson M.
Rodriguez & William F. Pinar (eds.), Queering
Straight Teachers: Discourse and identity in education, Peter Lang
Publishing, New York, pp. 15-29
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for the English Classroom’, International
Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities, and Nations, vol. 10,
no. 2, pp. 11-23
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and Heteronormativity in Norwegian Classrooms’, Gender and Education, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 253-266
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to Anti-Racist Education?’, Our schools/
Our Selves, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 47-58
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basis of national identity’ in National Identity. London: Penguin
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[1] Interestingly, Meyer (2007) notes that ‘queer’ sexed students have
resisted hetero-normativity by establishing their own drag king and drag queen
proms.
[2] This should not be conflated with Foucault’s writings on the
constitution of subjects through power/knowledge. Strictly speaking, Foucault
was referring to discourses that claimed a scientific status. Cultural studies
do not fit neatly into that definition.
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