Dr Proles Social Sciences

The works of Foucault focus on an inter-relationship between power and knowledge using the methodology of what he terms Archaeology and Genealogy.
These methodologies dig out the historical conditions for various forms of knowledge. It is in this context that he develops the concept of epistemes, which when uncovered provide explanations for how knowledge became established as knowledge. For Foucault knowledge is power and power is knowledge and thus he brings into question the objectivity of knowledge itself. The human subject is de-centred in that subjectivity and volition are social constructions. This approach is not teleological, for Foucault history is not progressing towards some end, it is not progressive in any sense, therefore it is not assumed that one episteme is better than another- only that each episteme is dominated by different forms of knowing and therefore power is at different times concentrated in the hands of those who possess the knowledge. Power and knowledge are entangled and like Neitzche, Foucault sees a world in which there is a constant competition for power that will never be resolved, but that will and does generate changes in the way of knowing, changes in truths. Although knowledge is power, Foucault argues that power is an intrinsic part of the process of being an individual, it is not something from which mankind struggles to be emancipated from, but something that as an individual man seeks to use to define his individualism. In Madness and Civilisation Foucault uses madness as a method of critique of bourgeois reason in the capitalist system, he illustrates different discourses surrounding madness since the middle ages, in this episteme madness was regarded as a sign of Gods grace or anger- truth, knowledge and ergo power were of course concentrated in a supreme being , later during the renaissance period madness was associated with the wisdom of folly as illustrated by the ship of fools setting out on a journey of destiny. In the classical age madness became associated with illness due to laziness and bodily deterioration and was treated by a series of weird and often cruel treatments, which concentrated on restoration of morals to the afflicted individuals, thus stripping the insane of human dignity. It was the conversion of the asylum into a medical space that began to form the society of the insane into a microcosm of the values and morals based bourgeois society. This brought about social condemnation of the insane. The sane were moral and worked hard the insane were immoral and lazy.
Psychoanalysis transformed this picture of the asylum into a more medicalised version but only on the surface, deeper underlying analysis reveals that the expertise of the psychoanalyst himself has replaced the authority in whom expert knowledge is vested and thus, the psychoanalyst has merely transferred the power of the institution of the asylum to himself and his science. He has concentrated power in his discourse.
The birth of the clinic is an excellent example of Foucaults archaeological methods, and although it has been criticised as being very close to a structuralist approach, it exposes the birth of a powerful new discourse about the body and traces the development of the medical discourse from its infancy based on the individual as a balance of humours to a stage where humans are viewed as the sum of their constituent parts. The different ways of knowing about the body have allowed the medical profession to establish a discourse of expertise about human life and legitimised the states intrusion into even the minute of everyday life. Transferring surveillance from the sick body to the healthy body. Man has through the power of this discourse become a creature to be observed, to be studied and a creature for whom living is an endless series of risks. The medico-administrative society has legitimised surveillance of the individual and policing of the individual, thus illustrating that knowledge and in particular the ability to contribute to and have expertise in the language of expert discourses creates power. Think of the new discourse of terrorism and its implications for surveillance and the way in which this has been formed into laws for our protection and the rise in the politics of fear, thus allowing the state to exert greater social control over the individual citizens.

Bourdieu Praxis –Social divisions.

Pierre Bourdieu
Taste as a sociological construction, arbitrary.
Homo Academicus ( 1988)
Language and symbolic power (1991).
Bordieu is an empirical sociologist,he provides data as well as abstract sociological theory.
Even though Bordieu’s work is quite varied its all meant to hang together in someway, there is a real attempt to understand the ordinary life. A fascination with society, how you get on in it and the obstacles.
Bear this perspective in mind, you can understand bordieus how do you do sociology through the perspective of structure V’s agency. It is a main theme that runs through sociology.
This refers to the problem of working out why social forces that are a product of the way society is organised and their relationship with individual agency( conscious decisions to act) it’s a theme that runs through Durkheim and Marx it is a central problematic. People behave according to their beliefs and desires, the sociological problem is where do the desires the preferences the choices that we think are free come from. Those choices are shaped or even determined by wider society and its specific place in History. Society historically received its cultural capital from the church now though capital is received by the individual agent through education therefore the school and the church give us two forms of capital, economic and cultural. The field of power is precisely this arena where holders of the various kinds of capital compete over which of them will prevail. At stake in these struggles amongst the dominant (oft mistaken for confrontations between ruling and subordinate classes) is the relative value and potency of rival kinds of capital, as set in particular by the going «exchange rate» between economic and cultural currencies
The problem has always been that no-one is ever sure what the right balance has been. The emphasis is on either wider social forces or should the emphasis be on the conscious human being.
Why is society like it is?
Tension is between individuals , individual freedom and community this is connected to Hegel who bequeathed to Marx who bequeathed to the Frankfurt school, the meta narrative, the story of the human subject achieving freedom, it wasn’t negative freedom, freedom for hegel involved a communities impact on the individual. Hegel saw that when society is fully rational the choices an individual makes will co-incide with what society says they should do.
This is what history is about indivdual freedom being constrained by community.
In sociology Marxist are accused of emphasising the structure.the base determining the superstructure.
Ethnomethodologists are accused of focusing on the volunatristic actions of individuals.
Bourdieus approach reconciles this Structure agency dichotomy.

Pierre Bourdieu
Key concepts
Practice/praxis
The visible daily social life that we all encounter.
His theoretical model of practice aims to explain activity/action.
It’s a methodological model of activity.

Fields/markets ( social Space)
Field as harker et al explains isn’t like a field with a fence around it or just a kind of area, its more like a field of forces, influences.
Areas of social life can be conceptualised as fields of forces.
Within these fields people struggle for advantageous positions. They are multi dimensional. Day to day individual activity. People try to transform the sociological fields they find themselves in while others try to maintain the status quo against change.
Your position in the field is determined by the allocation to your of capital , which may or may not have value in the field depending on the capital you are given. Its like a game where there are rules some people can play and win within the rules others want to change the rules.

Habitus( body hexis)
The habitus is a system of durable, transposable dispositions which function as the generative bases of structured objectively unified practices ( B Algeria, 1960 (1979))

Field is constituted by power distributed among social positions that correspond to symbolic points in the field.
Eg. Intellectual field-various positions in it eg academic , student, academic treaties correspond to academics, political slogans correspond to students etc. different roles with different corresponding artefacts, these all make up the field.
Ultimately fields are sites for struggles for more capital, its all about acquiring more CAPITAL.
Intellectual field. In homo academicus, the process by which educational fields in france are stacked , set up so as to favour certain classes and types and to perpetuate that situation. On the surface what you have is a meritocracy but it doesn’t take into account the social capital that is unevenly distributed, and thus continues to favour those with a certain social capital.

What does the quote from ‘Algeria mean. It means how we are sposed to act, talk respond and carry ourselves ( dispositions) are acquired between the interaction of the individual in the social world and their particular history or trajectory through life, these dispositions function within a field. Dispositions only have value within a field. In terms fo Action structure debate a lot of what is contained in the Habitus operates at a sub conscious level it cant be consciously controlled , its natural behaviour. The habitus isn’t wholly voluntaristic but neither is it wholly external and structural either, is a dispositional structure in the body that inclines you to behaviour but doesn’t determine specific behaviour it only works within.
Primary socialisation is a key factor in developing habitus.
Primary dispositions ( basic Habitus) always reflect the social conditions under which they were acquired. From a working class background we pick up certain conditions of speech that reflect the circumstances under which the condition was acquired. You can a tell a lot about a person by how they speak, we are attuned to what speech patterns and the wee mistakes they make, we reveal a lot about ourselves by what we do, we bear the marks of the trajectories of life. Pysical bearing can project something about who you are. Bordieus point is that we bear the marks of our background in the way we are the way we speak.
These things are durable they are difficult to get rid of her- Pygmalion.
Speech difference s in class.
There is something strained and strange about the speech of the middle classes, who may be closer to the disposition of the working classes and yet they emulate the upper classes this becomes quite funny, hyper correctivity reflects the conditions underwhich the habitus was acquired.
Ethnomethodology –passing, its difficulties, projecting a natural habitus that isn tyour own.

Not only are these dispositions durable but they operate in fields where they weren’t originally acquired.
Bodily heexis- the way the dispositions are physically realised in the body, it refers to ways of walking , eating, laughing, for example a particular accent is due to a certain way of moving the tongue, and ultimately the physical body is trained in these things that become our habitus. A child learning to speak is training the body, its not a natural organised thought process that leads to speech but the ability to move the tongue and form the mouth.
The key to this theory is explained as this different positions of the mouth they are conceived in terms of class and sexual identity, male workers are more likely to adopt the open mouthed style as opposed to wc women who are more likely to adopt the closed pinched mouth, there is a tension between the field and the habitus, working class in a middle class field. The Pinched style is viewed as being both middle class and feminine, men can only adopt the pinched bourgeois if they also adopt the effeminate. Some linguistic products are valued more highly than others in some markets/fields, it’s a skill to develop linguistic products for each market we find ourselves in . Different people have different linguistic capital and can better produce the products for different markets. Linguistic violence- used by those in positions of power, they rarely have to use physical violence due to their way of using language to convey obedience and compliance.
POSH people are quite adept at producing the linguistic products that are necessary to negotiate their way through life they have power and command, the have the common touch, they can produce linguistic products that have value in a different market, the more you can do this the better your life chances.

Capital( symbolic, cultural and materiall)
The logic of struggles is the logic of capital. Capital for B includes material things as well as more abstract or untouchables such as prestige status and authority(symbolic capital) as well as stuff called cultural capital ( culturally valued patterns of taste and consumption)- can also include goods-art.
Something becomes capital when it presents itself as rate or desireablel, sought after ( whatever it may be) and possession of such capital can have certain value dependent upon the field at hand. A certain type of Male hardness exemplified in rugby can have a high value.
Capital of one kind can be exchanged or transformed into another.
e.g. money can be transformed into other forms of capital.
Formula = practice = (habitus + Capital) + field.
Capital( Symbolic, cultural and material)

The most important form of capital is symbolic capital it is perceived as authority and this legitimates the other forms of capital, often symbolic capitall, authority, prestige, status hides or masks how it was originally acquired, it makes them seem as natural attributes but they can ultimately be traced back to material capital.
Formula Practice/action=(habitus + Capital)+ field.
S.McGonigal

Panoptican – Jeremy Bentham and later SuperPanoptican: Foucault.

We are living through change and every society believes this (Hutton, Giddens) in late modernity according to Beck change is the law of late modernity. This change applies not only to changes on a macro level but also changes on a micro level. Changes in the way we interact with others in public spaces and the way in which we are observed in our interactions within these public spaces. Our culture has been commodified (Adorno and Horkheimer) and as a result our tastes have become bland, unified, commercialised. We no longer view commodities in terms of their functionality or aesthetic qualities but in terms of their status value and how they will reflect on our identity. Surely this includes our tastes in the people we choose to be among and to share our public space with those with whom we perceive a shared identity. Foucault was concerned with identity as a social construction of modernity, of a society obsessed with labels and categories into which they can neatly fit those they encounter, however each individual perceives themselves as unique and different and yet what seems to transpire is a mix of identities with all the unique facets of clones. But who or what gives us our identity Hall and Dugay suggest that in the modern city four types of identity emerge, the stroller, the vagabond, the tourist and the player, each of these identities perceives the world in a different way and we unconsciously adapt to these identities depending on the space in which we find ourselves and this influences our interactions with others and their interactions with us, our identities are reflexive to our environment. Our environment consists of different spaces in which we move from private space to semi public to public spaces, we adapt our behaviour to present the identity that we feel fits with the space we find ourselves in, we conform to the social norms of the space, yet we carry our habitus (Bourdieu) with us in each environment. Of course we cannot interact with a CCTV camera and neither can the unseen eye behind the lens interact with us, but the point of CCTV is supposed to be to control how we interact with others within the public or semi-public space. It works on the supposition that as individuals we will control our own behaviour when we are aware that we are being observed. Thus CCTV is a form of coercive social control that converts social spaces into administrative spaces. Why do we need CCTV? According to Beck and Giddens it is because of the rise of a risk society, media reporting of Neds and Chavs as anti-social elements of society among whom a propensity for crime is great lead to demand for surveillance and surveillance itself becomes a selling point for those ready to consume protection from the groups labelled as folk devils (Cohen). Proponents of CCTV inform us that such surveillance systems are there for our benefit, to reduce our risk of becoming a victim of crime and to provide identification of the perpetrator should we become the victim of a crime. Think of how the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles was caught on video tape by a member of the public, it didn’t afford him protection from the beating by the police officers, but it certainly allowed the authorities to apprehend those responsible, now suppose that visible CCTV cameras had been in place when Rodney King was approached by the police officers , do you think he would have been beaten. Those who argue against surveillance systems in public spaces and semi-public spaces do so on the grounds of privacy, this argument is based on the premise that privacy is always a good thing and invasion of privacy is always a bad thing. This however is not a sound argument, there are instances where privacy can have negative consequences, such as in the privacy of the home where many acts of domestic violence occur or where an old person dies alone and their body lays undiscovered for a period of time, when neighbours are questioned they often respond that they didn’t want to invade the privacy of the elderly person.
Of course there is a fine line between what is considered invasion of privacy and social neglect of members of society on the grounds of maintaining their right to privacy. What some anti CCTV and surveillance groups will attempt to illustrate is the way that data is collected and the use it is put to within the sphere of the state or even by business. Business’ could collate information on shopping habits of consumers through not only the use of loyalty card schemes and online spyware which monitors the web sites visited by individuals, but by watching them on CCTV, it isn’t too difficult to gain allsorts of information about someone very quickly by observing their time in a shopping centre. It is feasible that business could by getting the day and time of a credit card transaction on CCTV easily obtain the name and address of the individual and information about the purchases made using the card, thus they can construct a picture of the individuals lifestyle, tastes, economic group, their social class, even what type of car they drive all through electronic means without ever meeting or speaking to that person. Opponents of CCTV argue that this is why individuals in society should be wary of the increased use of surveillance technology, it allows scrutiny of the minute of life that should be private, it erodes personal freedom. We are thus living within the superpanoptican in an age where knowledge truly is power and power truly is knowledge, an age where we perceive risk as a threat and technological protection from risk as a threat, thus a dichotomy exists concerning risk. What constitutes the greatest risk for the individual within a public space the risk of information being collected about them or the risk from crime? The argument that CCTV somehow provides emancipation for the citizen to walk in freedom in public and semi-public spaces is flawed in reality, surveillance only allows for some people access semi-public spaces and allows those who exert control and power over these spaces to exclude others, those they consider flawed consumers (Bauman). Thus in such spaces citizens can face discriminatory policies based on what it construed as prevention of crime and protection of good consumers, based on nothing more than appearance. The recent controversy over the Blue Water shopping centre, which has banned hooded tops and baseball caps is an example of this. Those people who wish to access the facilities within the Blue Water shopping centre will only be able to do so if they abide by a dress code. Such a practice creates a inequality of access to certain facilities based on nothing more than having an appearance that is desirable and one that isn’t. Is this the beginning of an acceptable culture of discrimination and social exclusion within British Society? It would appear to be the progression of a discourse concerning anti social behaviour exhibiting itself as a power over semi public space, the danger is that this discourse could become normalised and thus lead to exclusion for certain social groups not only from semi public spaces in which more and more facilities are concentrated, but also from public spaces. The Superpanoptican exists not only in public, private and semi public spaces but also in cyberspace, organisations continually collect and collate information on internet users, monitor their online activities thus forcing the user to purchase every greater security software to protect their online privacy. In the space of the real world as opposed to cyberspace this is not an option, there is nothing that can be purchased that will prevent CCTV, facial recognition systems, credit card monitoring, etc from recording movement and activities of individuals. The decline of the cash economy in favour of a digitised plastic economy allows for every transaction to be scruitinised. Big brother is watching us, this is like Orwell’s 1984, the telescreen in every room is almost upon us or so it would appear, infact the telescreen in every shop is all but a reality in the modern city. But unlike Orwell’s 1984 this is not a totalitarian society where we acknowledge dress codes and live less than desirable conditions and conform . This is supposed to be a free society, but appears more and more to be the illusion of a free society. We are increasingly living in a themed world, where spaces are made into places through signs and symbols that allow us to identify that place with a specific aspect of our globalised culture, glocalisation of our immediate spaces. We can walk from china town to India, from Italy to the wild west all within a few minutes and browse and take in the plastic coated authenticity of the cultures, taste the foods and marvel at the goods for sale and consume at our leisure the manufactured choices available. Such is the life at the soft end of the city, designed for the good consumers, protected by surveillance and private security from the undesirable flawed consumers. At the hard end of the city where the flawed consumers have been pushed out into the periphery of this cultural mecca, where the cappuccino sipping, croissant munching good consumers have no need to venture we find the other side of life. Greasy spoon cafes, fried egg rolls, second hand clothing shops, shops declaring everything for a pound, and the burberry baseball caps and hoodie wearing flawed consumers of the cash economy virtually expelled from the plastic world of themes and yet still subjected to the suspicious gaze of security guards and the superpanoptican. In these areas of a city the security levels are often less conspicuous leaving the citizen to wonder if here surveillance is not a preventative measure but a measure to actually catch or incriminate the flawed consumer should they exhibit any form of anti social behaviour. There are places where the information rich from Cyburbia and information poor from Cyberia meet such as train stations, in such vicinities the surveillance is often very overt thus allowing the cyburbian classes to move through the space with the perception of reduced risk, the cyberian classes are subjected to suspicion and extreme scrutiny in these places perhaps in an effort to discourage there use of this shared public space.S.McGonigal

How according to nozick is it possible to achieve a just distribution of social goods?

In order to answer this question it is first necessary that we understand that in the neo-liberal tradition Nozick believes that the only kind of justice is procedural justice. He is not utilitarian in that he does not believe in the greater happiness principle, he believes in the happiness of the individual principle. That is Justice exists only in the sense of Laws, particularly those laws concerning property and rights to property. Social Justice in the sense of social democratic and Marxist traditions is a violation of the rights of the individual to property and liberty. He argues that redistributive justice is not justice at all, it is a violation of justice because it is coercive. It infringes the rights of the individual to dispose of his property as he sees fit, the libertarian claim that taxation for redistributive purposes is theft. Infact the pursuit of social justice deprives the individual of liberty, they are not free to make life choices, they are relieved of personal responsibility and the link between performance and reward is broken or at least weakened significantly. The stance of Nozick is anti bureaucratic interference in the market and he pursues the notion that market logic and procedural justice are the basis for a just society. He has argued consistently that although we may not like the outcomes of such a form of existence in some circumstances, there is nothing about such a form of society, which is unjust. Nozick is not interested in outcomes only that individuals be free to chose , as he states ‘from each as they chose to each as they are chosen’. Luck, good fortune, natural talent, inheritance, hard work, educational attainment, genetic ability are the factors that decide outcomes for Nozick and the individual must be free to make the most of their personal good fortune and talents without hinderance from the state no matter what the outcome of this. His theory hinges dangerously close to a social Darwinist ideal for my liking, that is not to say that the state is engineering a master race, but that those with good fortune, talent and abilities must be free to do as they choose without any obligation to those who do not share these attributes. The survival of the fittest, cleverest, wealthiest individuals without conscience for the human race, ergo if someone were starving it would be ok to allow them to starve because no law says that they cannot eat, it is just their misfortune, laziness etc that prevents them from having food. Other individuals should not be coerced into providing food or the means to obtain food for the starving person, they can voluntarily assist if they wish but they are free to choose. Of course if the person were starving because of an injustice done to him e.g. his wealth had been stolen then rectification justice would ensure that he did not starve to death.

Nozick bases his procedural theory of distributive justice on three criteria , justice in acquisition, Justice in transfer and justice in rectification.
Justice in acquisition relates to acquisition that arises from individual appropriation that doesn’t restrict the freedom of others. For example if everyone had access water through a series of wells in a desert community, it is right for some people to own those wells so long as there are public wells that can be accessed. What about the acquisition of natural resources? Let us return to the desert community, suppose it has no access to water, suppose you use your skill to find water and build a well and make a bucket to collect the water, according to Nozick you could rightfully charge for use of the bucket and the well because your labour and skills have created access to the water. You cannot however prevent others from building wells to also access the same water supply.

Justice in transfer arises from voluntary exchange or free gifts this includes inheritance and is based on the notion that people are free to do with their property as they choose so long as that property was acquired in a just manner. Therefore if someone wishes to gift their property to another they are free to do so and to prevent them from doing so would constitute an injustice.
All holdings are just provided they are obtained through justice in acquisition or justice in transfer.

Justice from rectification arises when past injustices are put right, and here is where it can get complicated. Are there limits on time with regard to past injustices or should all injustices be rectified? According to Nozick if someone’s ancestor stole an item from your ancestors they would be duty bound to make good that injustice. This sounds good, but what value is there on this supposing their ancestor stole your ancestors prize milking cow and from this cow and his prize bull has bred a whole herd of cattle that are valuable as milk producers and as a direct result of this has become wealthy. How can this injustice be rectified? The original cow is dead, perhaps a replacement cow is recompense or perhaps the value of the cow at the time it was stolen. Nozick would argue that this is rectification because inspite of the fortune of the cow thief being made because your ancestors cow was a good milker, the cow thief bred the cow with his own bull and created his herd through his skill therefore your entitlement to claim part of the fortune made through the production of milk by the herd is not just. If the cow thief hadn’t stolen the cow there would be no fortune for you to claim against. This can get even more tricky, suppose your ancestor were a slave captured from a village in Africa and sent to a plantation. Could you claim justice of rectification against the Slave traders ancestors who captured your ancestor and sold him? Perhaps, but only if you could prove that this was infact an injustice that has resulted in a worse deal for you in the western society that you now live. Perhaps the slave trader could demand rectification from you for the transporation of your ancestor from Africa because your living standards in the west exceed those in the village from which your ancestors came.

Nozick argues that Patterned distribution is not compatible with just entitlement he illustrates this with the saga of wilt chamberlain a basketball player who asks everyone who comes to see him play to pay 25 cents The result of this is that wilt will make $250,000 however because of the patterned distribution laws this money will not be Wilts to do with as he wishes inspite of the fact that it is his skill on the basket ball circuit that will draw the crowds who will willingly pay to see him demonstrate his skill and inspite of the fact that it was Will himself who came up with the idea of doing skill demonstations for the fee of 25 cents. Will will only get half of this money as the rest will be taxed and redistributed through social programmes and so he decides not to do his tour, the fans are then deprived of seeing Will demonstrate his talents and Will is deprived of using his skill to make money for himself and the tax man gets nothing. Everyone loses, Nozick believes that taxing Will was unjust and deprived both him and his fans from their choice to transfer their property – 25 cents to wilt chamberlain, a fair and just transaction. Those same people did not choose to give 12.5 cents to social causes they chose to give it all to wilt, this transfer of half of their property is therefore according to Nozick unjust. From each as they chose to each as they are chosen.S.McGonigal

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Capital, Marx Karl, (1867), A new abridgement, (1999), Oxford World’s classics edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Democracy, Guttman Amy in A Companion To Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Part III, 19), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford

Democracy: From City-states to a cosmopolitan order, Held David in, Contemporary Political Philosophy, An Anthology, (Part I, 6), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

Has Marxism A Future? 1990 Marx Memorial Lecture, Hoffman John, Communist Review 7, Summer 1990, 14.

Karl Marx: Gravedigger of the capitalist class in Plato to Nato, Studies in Political Thought, (p159-170), Redhead Brian, (1995), Penguin Books, London.

Marx, A beginners Guide, Hands Gill, (2000), Hodder & Stoughton, London

Marxism, Hindess Barry, in A Companion To Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Chapter 12), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford

Political Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction, Miller David, (2003), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Reading Habermas, Rasmussen David M. (1990), Blackwell Ltd, Oxford.

Social Theory and Modernity, The potential reason of Habermas, (Part II, chapter 5), Dodd Nigel, (2003), Polity Press, Cambridge.

The Communist Manifesto, Marx Karl, Engels Freidrich, (1848), Oxford World’s Classics Edition, (1998), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

The Contribution of Political Science, Goodin Robert E, in A Companion To Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Chapter 6), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford
Internet references
From Free Life No 15, November 1991’DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM:
PROPERTY, COMMUNITY AND THE CONTRADICTIONS
OF MODERN SOCIAL THOUGHT, by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1986) at http://freespace.virgin.net/old.whig/fl15djok.htm (10/11/04)
The End of History, Francis Fukayama
Issue Date: JUNE 1987 Volume: 02 Page 595,American Marxism: Theory without Tradition, BY JOHN B. JUDIS at http://www.worldandi.com/public/1987/june/mt6.cfm (10/11/04)
Participatory Democracy in the 21st Century, Participatory Democracy and Social Inequality, Paper for the 51st Political Studies Association Conference 10-12 April 2001, Manchester, United Kingdom, Peter McLaverty, University of Luton at www.psa.ac.uk/cps/2001/McLaverty%20Peter.pdf (10/11/04)
Quotes

As Mill (1958, p. 54) put it, a citizen involved in public functions is ‘called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his [sic] own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his [sic] private partialities; to apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the common good’ (From McLaverty 2001).

‘Liberal Democracy denies that popular rule is the ultimate political value. Liberal democrats qualify the value of popular rule by recognising a set of basic liberties that take priority over popular rule and its conclusions,’ (Guttman Amy, 2003, Part III, p413)

In advanced capitalist, liberal democracies, the individualism that underpins the societies is in contradiction to the development of the type of approach to public functions outlined by Mill. To do that, I want to put forward a view of human being that differs fundamentally from that of liberal individualism. (From McLaverty 2001)

Marxist ideas,
The first idea is the belief that it is possible to create a political community in which
The duties of individuals as citizens are paramount. Their public selves are more
Important than their private selves. The public realm is the sphere of action and
honour. Individuals realize their highest potential by participating in the collective
deliberations of their community .and the second idea ‘'the goal of socialism is defined as the creation of a society of associated producers, a society without markets and without classes, in which the purpose of production is the direct satisfaction of human needs’. The two ideas go together and create the under-pining for what Gamble calls ‘council democracy’
(Andrew Gamble (1991) in McLaverty 2001)

‘Voters are asked to choose between competing elites offering distinctive policy,’ Schumpeter in Goodin and Petit, A companion, Chapter 6, p1

‘for the success of liberal politics and liberal economics frequently rests on irrational forms of recognition that liberalism was supposed to overcome. For democracy to work, citizens need to develop an irrational pride in their own democratic institutions, and must also develop what Tocqueville called the "art of associating," which rests on prideful attachment to small communities. These communities are frequently based on religion, ethnicity, or other forms of recognition that fall short of the universal recognition on which the liberal state is based’ Francis Fukayama (1992)

‘The struggle for recognition provides us with insight into the nature of international politics. The desire for recognition that led to the original bloody battle for prestige between two individual combatants leads logically to imperialism and world empire. The relationship of lordship and bondage on a domestic level is naturally replicated on the level of states, where nations as a whole seek recognition and enter into bloody battles for supremacy’ Francis Fukayama (1992)

‘universal recognition in liberal democracy is necessarily incomplete because capitalism creates economic inequality and requires a division of labor that ipso facto implies unequal recognition. In this respect, a nation's absolute level of prosperity provides no solution, because there will continue to be those who are relatively poor and therefore invisible as human beings to their fellow citizens. Liberal democracy, in other words, continues to recognise equal people unequally’. Francis Fukayama (1992).

Lenin has always insisted that socialism can only come through democracy- it is only as people see for themselves the theoretical strengths but also the weaknesses of the liberal tradition that they will come to understand and support the case for a post-liberal society. Hoffman (1990) p.20.

‘Marxist critique, the capitalist economy, by virtue of its internal dynamics, inevitably produces systematic inequality and massive restrictions on real freedom. The formal existence of certain liberties is of little value if they cannot be exercised in practice. Therefore, although each step towards formal political equality is an advance, its liberating potential is severely curtailed by inequalities of class’ Held David 2003, part I, 6, p83

‘The historical circumstances which brought about a socialism without democracy, a socialism without humanity is changing before our eyes’- Hoffman (1990) referring to USSR and other socialist states

Democracy is more than elections and Parliamentary debates. It is about how far the property less majority can exert an organised force, which begins to challenge the unaccountable, unrepresentative minority of big business’, (communist review p3)

‘In Democracy and Capitalism, the property-war is replaced by a war for rights: the clash between proletariat and capital gives way to a conflict between democracy and capitalism. Democracy, however, is conceived in terms of the contemporary rights afflatus; and here the destructive sentimentality and implacable rage of the latter are hidden behind our authors' elegant prose. One does not regret the passing of the base- superstructure metaphor, a deadly conceit which nullifies law and politics. Nor need we mourn false consciousness, that condescending dismissal of ordinary people's competence. Only when we ask who is to do the defining of rights and priorities do we see that the same game continues - the old socialist power-chase: the rule of the intellectuals. But the false, tight schema of yesteryear has yielded to an amorphous rightsology with no central structure that can be refuted. It consists rather in a set of moralising obsessions arbitrarily gummed together within a curious metaphysic of action, in which becoming is everything and actual outcomes a matter of indifference………... It is the ideology of universal, 'caring' committeedom’’ Bowles & Gintis, (1986)

’ Classical Marxism was about abolishing politics as a sham and a fraud. Neo-Marxism, in direct contrast, has seen politics as ubiquitous and attempted to subvert and refashion’ Bowles & Gintis, (1986).
Markets inhibit participation by ensuring that the option of exit is always present, thus undercutting the commitment to choice. Bowles & Gintis (1986)
Because of the inequality in the wider society, and especially the economy, the equality associated with the formal political democracy, while not perhaps a sham, is, at least, greatly undermined. The ‘distorting’ effect of big business on the workings of political democracy is now accepted by a number of writers from within the pluralist tradition, such as Robert Dahl (1989) and Charles Lindblom (1977). Moreover, the survey of Parry et al. (1992) into political participation in Britain shows that the more affluent and those with higher educational qualifications tend to disproportionately participate in public or political affairs (McLaverty 2001)

Marxist ‘ideal’ democracy, try Habermas (Ideal Speech situation, discourse, end to the rule of experts, everyone equal voice etc, Discourse ethics)… this is a form of democracy and a truer form than the current situation where politics has become the domain of career seeking individuals, it isn’t about the people reaching consensus about what is good for the people its about experts and professionals dictating to the people under the auspices of representing them. The expert/professionals can do this because they have what is perceived to be a legitimate mandate to do so, they have been elected, but who selected them for election? Were they elected or selected, whom do they really represent, is this a democracy?
Perhaps the Kibbutz could be considered an attempt at an ideal form of democracy.

Dictatorship of the proletariat.

Vanguard of the proletariat.

Resignation of Tommy Sheridan, accusations of one-person party? Frances Curran’ insistence that anyone can and everyone should sit in the parliament on a revolving basis. Examples of more idealist notions of democracy ANYONE? S.McGonigal

Neo-liberalism has a pessimistic view of human nature. The basic assumption is that human beings, will always try to favour themselves. This also applies to people holding a public office (Messner, 1995: 1341). So in a society that works towards achieving social justice as opposed to solely working only for procedural justice there are outcomes which are undesirable such as; scroungers, loafers, fraudsters, high taxes. Hayek thinks that any society would prefer to avoid these unforeseen consequences of pursuing social justice if it could. He thinks that individuals have to sacrifice their own preferences in order to obtain social justice, furthermore he doesn’t think that social justice is attainable.

Neo-Liberals think that the rise of corruption in Politics is an automatic inevitable response to the problem of large government and a public sector. To prevent this corruption the neo-liberals argue that the public sector must be reduced in favour of a free market.
For neo-liberalists the perfect human being is comparable to Robinson Crusoe who has only limited power and alternatives. He is solely restricted by his natural surrounding and not by any other human being. In this situation he can act absolutely independent (Friedman 1962: 12). The pursuit of social justice brings with it restrictions on individual preferences. For instance, positive discrimination laws put a burden on individuals within society to include people that given the choice they might prefer to exclude. Further Justice in the neo-liberal sense is there to prevent coercion of individuals, laws that promote social justice exist to coerce individuals, it erodes their freedom of choice.

"Indeed, a major aim of the liberal is to leave the ethical problem for the individual to wrestle with." (Friedman 1962: 12). He frees the state from any social and ethical responsibility. Thus social or welfare policy is not necessary. A free market which regulates itself, in order to create a society of justice, in the sense of neo-liberalism. This justifies even very high social costs, which are unavoidable in such far-going reforms and changes.

Social justice – patterned distribution of social goods. Whose preferences are given priority? Who loses out?

Plato- Politics is the business ‘whose art it is to care for souls’, (in Sunstein (1999) p13)- quite what this infers is open to different interpretations those who want social justice and view it as a necessity for a truly democratic state can claim that it means the state has an obligation to care for its people when they need help, to provide welfare assistance when needed etc therefore it can be construed as an entitlement for the souls to be cared for, a right. It can also be interpreted as the states business being that of caring for the individual rights of the souls in its care, their right to choose, their right to employ and to be employed, their right to give their money to whom or whatever cause they wish. The state then is responsible for ensuring that these rights are protected.

Hayek is suggesting that when we work for social justice we are working for something that is not only unattainable although it might be desirable, but that we are working against our own interests. That the consequences of working to achieve social justice mean that we lose our right to choose for ourselves, we have personal responsibility for our success or failure taken from us and this encourages a mentality that promotes dependency as opposed to independence. It means that no matter how hard we work or how lazy we are personal rewards are the same, infact it is actually not beneficial to work hard because in doing so we become those who support the people who refuse to do so. Hayek thinks that when we seek social justice we are working against our own interests because we are willingly working to destroy our own freedoms.

Is this really the case, after all it is in our interests to have low crime rates and yet in the USA that lacks a strong social welfare system there are higher rates of crime than in the UK where we have a strong social welfare system. (Messner and Rosenfelds, Crime and the American Dream- institutional anomie theory).
Is it not in the interests of society to have socialised medicine that is free at the point of delivery, surely this means that diseases that are no respecters of class and economic status are kept under control. Isn’t that in everybodys benefit? Does the existence of a state education system mean that we are less free? Surely it means that there is a better educated workforce in place to meet the needs of society and thus improve the economic circumstances of the nation. Surely as the economic circumstances of individuals in a society get better they have more money to spend and are able to enjoy life better than if they were living in a society that has high crime rates due to huge inequalities, a society where the rich have to lock themselves away behind gates (wheres the freedom in that?) The wealthy are so scared of crime, which may occur due to social injustices that they voluntarily imprison themselves.
The outcome of a society that constantly works to improve social conditions for all, i.e. works towards social justice, would be more personal freedom than one that ignores social justice and creates a huge gap between the classes. Ghettoisation of the poor doesn’t stop resentment, education of the poor, provision of good housing, welfare benefits, socialised medicine etc helps stem resentment from those who for one reason or another need help. Who wants freedom if it means freedom to die of starvation unless you are willing to break the law, freedom to be homeless because you cannot afford a home, freedom to die from an illness that could be cured because you cant afford the medicine or the Dr’s fee’s or the insurances. What kind of freedom is it that means that you never learn to read or write because your parents couldn’t afford to educate you. Freedom for a life of menial labour and/or a life of misery and squalor or even a life of imprisonment because you are poor or disabled etc.
For the wealthy their freedom in this kind of society is only a mirage, they lock themselves away from the world behind security systems, surrounded by security guards to protect them from attacks, they live in fear of the resentment of those that they deny social justice to rising up and taking from them those things that they hold dear. In a society without social justice no one has real freedom, the freedom to choose is limited to a choice of what you can or cannot afford. A poor man might prefer to live in a nice house with a garden, in an area where he doesn’t have to lock his door, the wealthy man might also prefer to do the same thing but without some social justice, neither the poor nor the wealthy man can achieve this. The wealthy man can only achieve the illusion of being able to do this.

Choice is restricted by availability. Take the Labour govts much heralded right of a parent to chose the school their children attend. In a city this is easier for parents to do, except that places at schools are limited, once a school is full because it’s a good school, even parents in the catchment areas cant choose that school. In small towns and villages the choice is restricted, the whole notion of a free choice is an illusion.

Without social Justice freedom is a mirage that is unattainable.S.McGonigal
Bibliography

Hayek, Fredrich, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2, The Mirage of Social Justice, 1976, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Messner, Dirk: Staat und Entwicklung
in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Heft 7, 1995
Blätter Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Bonn – translation ‘country and development’ in sheets ( pages) for German and International Politics, Volume 7, 1995,
Sheets ( pages) Publishing House Company mbH.

Friedman, Milton: Capitalism And Freedom, 1962
Chicago University Press, Chicago.

Sunstein, Cass R, Free Markets and Social Justice, 1999, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Why should citizenship bring with it more than political rights? Equality under the eyes of the law among citizenships is according to some writers enough. Beyond this basic political equality they argue lies personal responsibility. There is a concept that citizenship brings with it a responsibility to contribute to the economic and social life of a nation. But others would argue that the nation state has a moral responsibility to make provision for the economic and social life of its citizens, who are subject to times of need and that there should be a right to the basic needs of human beings. A moral obligation on the state and its citizens to make provision for those who for one reason or another cannot make provision for basic needs themselves. Those needs include such things as health care, clean water, affordable housing, education, welfare benefits in times of need. The Straussian view is that political rights are where the state obligations to its citizens end and that citizens are not born equal in the social or economic sense and never will be equal no matter what social and economic rights are bestowed upon them, therefore there should be no economic or social rights, for Strauss the state has no moral obligations in this sphere. This view is one in which there are rights only in the political sense, social and economic achievement has to be earned by the individual not provided by the state. Provision of economic rights in the form of welfare is seen to impinge on the rights of others to liberty, the freedom to earn money and spend their money as they wish, some extremists view taxation to support others as a form of state robbery. They argue that the very existence of a welfare state allows Government to legislate in areas where Government has no business. For instance if a socialised health service exists, Governments begin to monitor the populations health, their behaviour and causal relationships between bad behaviour and poor health. Legislation is produced that tells people what they can and cannot do to minimise risk to their health. The risks of certain behaviours are weighed up against the cost to the nation for provision of health care to tackle the results of the behaviour. Then Governments seek to tell people, what they should and shouldn’t eat, what exercise they should take, what they should and shouldn’t put into their bodies. Where they can and cannot undertake certain activities. Basically a nanny state evolves as a result of the creation of a risk society due to the existence of a socialised health care system. This is seen by many as a restriction of rights pertaining to liberty or at least an unwarranted attempt to control those freedoms to live your life as you wish. The alternative point of view is one that social and economic rights must exist in some form for the good of society as a whole. The welfare system for instance provides a safety net for those who cannot earn an income due to lack of employment opportunities or the skills required to gain the available employment. The alternative to a welfare system could be higher levels of crime, as those with no legal means to gain an income seek to somehow gain the means to live. Of course this would mean that there was pressure on the state to provide greater security for its citizens as those with little or nothing seek to obtain something by any means. The absence of a social welfare system also leads to other problems that could have an impact on every citizen. Disease is no respecter of economic or social class and invariably where poverty persists disease thrives, welfare rights of some kind are therefore in the interests of every citizen. Economic rights are also essential for a society that wishes to maintain some form of stability. The lack of basic economic rights could lead to a situation in which those who are at an economic disadvantage in a society and have no right to some form of state support, try to take control of the systems of power themselves, anarchy or collective revolutionary action. Therefore it is in the interests of those citizens who are supporters of the existing economic system to ensure that at least basic economic rights are in place so that they may avoid revolutionary confrontation. Of course that is a dramatic scenario but none the less one which is possible if there were a situation where one group of society were so impoverished that their only option for survival were to take control of government themselves. It is oppression and deprivation, lack of economic and social rights that have driven popular revolts in the past in different nations. It is such things as these that lead to the formation of new political forces that gain popularity through grass roots movements and end up in positions of power. When their plight is adopted by individuals who would seek change for their own agenda under the guise of acting in the interests of those who would seek greater social and economic rights there have been some terrible outcomes. Such movements in the past have scapegoated groups within society who appear to do well from the existing system and made them social pariahs or even subhuman. I think that there is danger in not having social or economic rights in some form in society, especially in a society that claims equality of political rights for all its citizens.)S.McGonigal
Bibliography

Hamlin A, 2003, Welfare, in Goodin and Petit (2003), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Chapter 41, p651-662

Kolm SC, 2003, Distributive Justice, in Goodin and Petit (2003), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Chapter 22, p438-461

Waldron J, 2003, Rights, in Goodin and Petit (2003), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Chapter 33, p575-585

Freedom is about being free to choose and the market allows us to demand that our choices are supplied in a freely entered into exchange. Freedom is about being free to say Yes or No based on preference to everything from food to lifestyle, from work to leisure pursuits, from political system to political ideology. If we have freedom we can carry out our lives unhindered by others and without restraint, excepting those restraints that Locke deems necessary for the good of all, those which allow us all to live in a relative freedom without impinging on the freedoms of others. The choice is ours to make ‘to be or not to be?’ We are free to decide! Or are we?
If our choices are constrained by the market, limited by the supply that cannot or refuses to meet the demand are we still free? If our ability to live and survive, in a society that is determined by the market, is subject to our participation in the labour exchange system, our subjugation to a hierarchical class structure that is based on the ownership of the means of production, are we still free to choose?

Illustration of the point of freedom of choice based on preference as an illusion of the market.

Take the video recorder, the Beta max video recorder was arguably a better product and some people demanded the technology, however the continued availability of the product itself was determined not by the market forces of supply and demand, the supply of the video recorder and the video tapes to use on the machine was halted, did those people who had purchased the technology of Beta-max suddenly stop demanding movies in beta-max format or did the market determine that we all use VHS video recorders. Surely the choice between the two technologies was decided by the investors and the marketing agencies. So was the freedom of the consumer to decide, which technology to use based on personal preference infringed upon by the market? I would say definitely yes. Both products were feasible and both desirable to the consumer, it was the marketing of the product that increased the desirability of the VHS technology and the decline in supply despite demand that made the ultimate choice for the consumer, the consumer was therefore not free to choose between the products based on preference, but was forced to chose between owning a video recorder or not owning a video recorder.

BETAMAX V VHS as an illustration of the Pareto criterion ( in terms of equal products as opposed to equal states)

No one technology was better than the other, consumers had an equal choice between the two, however one group had more to gain by the success of one technology over another and this can perhaps be what economists refer to as the Pareto criterion when they discuss two states that are equally desirable, but the utility of one state has more benefit for one person and thus can be argued to be ‘Pareto-desirable’. Like VHS technology over Beta max, the state that has benefit for one person/group (in this case the investors had more to gain from one technology) more so than the other, when all else is in balance becomes the most desirable state of existence. Thus a kind of utilitarian morality is rationalised for the market.
For Smith, Politics, Economics and Morality were all part and parcel of the same framework within society. We have in Smith a corrective form of justice (not distributive), we have obedience to authority that is habitual and we have moral judgements based on ‘sympathy’. The pursuit of wealth created inequality, which stabilises society by strengthening the sentiments of Justice, without which there is no order or peace and presumably without order and peace there is no freedom according to Smith. Mikhail Bakunin would however argue that freedom comes not from order and peace but from freedom itself, freedom exists not within ordered systems but also within anarchy, he was of course writing with reference to Marxism but I think that his thoughts can be of equal value when discussing a system that is based on the market being an essential foundation of freedom.‘Idealists of all kinds — metaphysicians, positivists, those who support the rule of science over life, doctrinaire revolutionists — all defend the idea of state and state power with equal eloquence, because they see in it, as a consequence of their own systems, the only salvation for society. Quite logically, since they have accepted the basic premise (which we consider completely mistaken) that thought precedes life, that theory is prior to social experience, and, therefore, that social science has to be the starting point for all social upheavals and reconstructions. They then arrive unavoidably at the conclusion that because thought, theory, and science, at least in our times, are in the possession of very few, these few ought to be the leaders of social life, not only the initiators, but also the leaders of all popular movements……. This fiction of a pseudo-representative government serves to conceal the domination of the masses by a handful of privileged elite; an elite elected by hordes of people who are rounded up and do not know for whom or for what they vote. Upon this artificial and abstract expression of what they falsely imagine to be the will of the people and of which the real living people have not the least idea, they construct both the theory of statism as well as the theory of so-called revolutionary dictatorship………….The differences between revolutionary dictatorship and statism are superficial. Fundamentally they both represent the same principle of minority rule over the majority in the name of the alleged “stupidity” of the latter and the alleged “intelligence” of the former. Therefore they are both equally reactionary since both directly and inevitably must preserve and perpetuate the political and economic privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic subjugation of the masses of the people.’ Mikhail Bakunin
Perhaps then there is no freedom in any organised society and yet it is also argued that without organisation that there is no freedom indeed Marx would contend that only by state control of the means of production can real freedom begin to be achieved although again in Marx’s final Epoch the state has withered away and what we have is a communist Utopia in which people are equal and free.
I would argue that the market restricts freedom and choice because it has the pretence of utilitarianism in the guise of democracy, and yet it regulates the choices we are free to make, infact not only does it regulate the choices it actively creates them through what the Frankfurt School call the ‘Culture Industry’, this serves to support the ideology/false consciousness of the market that is essential for the survival of the ruling classes in a capitalist society. It isn’t essential to the existence of freedom in society, only freedom is essential to freedom, ‘only freedom can be created by freedom’.

Adam Smith: the Enlightenment and the philosophy of society, Robertson John in Plato to Nato, Studies in Political Thought,( p135-147), Redhead Brian, (1995), Penguin Books, London..

Contemporary Political Philosophy, An Anthology, (Part II, 7), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford.

Political Philosophy, A Very Short Introduction, Miller David, (2003), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

The Contribution of economics, Brennan Geoffrey, in A Companion To Contemporary Political Philosophy, (Chapter 5), Goodin Robert E & Pettit Philip, (2003), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford

Social Theory and Modernity,(Part II, chapter 3), Dodd Nigel, (2003), Polity Press, Cambridge.

Internet references

Statism and Anarchy, Mikhail Bakunin, (1873) at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm (21/10/04)

Social Problems and sociological problems within society are difficult to define and the differences between them is part of an ongoing controversial issue. There seems to be no right or wrong answer and different people have varied views. Within this essay examples will be given of social problems and how they become more widely spread and result in a sociological problem. Differences between these two problems will also be clearly highlighted and the role of the sociologist will be given and how they tackle the day to day social/ sociological problems. Furthermore, there are many factors that influence both sociological research and social policy making. This essay will examine and define the importance of the role of the sociologist in three main policy areas.
Firstly, before any definitions of what is a social and or sociological problem are given it must be noted that there is no one specific correct answer. Different people share many different perspectives on this ongoing controversial question/ issue within society today.
A sociologist uses objectivity when studying problems within the whole of society. If sociologists see that there is a problem, for example a social problem becoming a bigger issue they will research it further and create arguments and it will become what is known as a sociological problem, they explain why it happened. It is the wider perspective of problems that occur within entire societies, not small groups within society. ‘Social problems are those aspects of social life that cause private unhappiness or public friction and are identified by those in power as needing some kind of social policy to deal with them’, (P McNeil, 1990: ‘Research Methods’, 2nd Ed, Routledge).

There are two aspects of a social problem being objective and subjective. The objective is the actual social condition and the subjective is the perception of a social condition as a social problem.

Not all social conditions become elevated to the status of “social problem”, the objective condition must be perceived to be a social problem publicly. At the beginning of the 20th century alcohol abuse was perceived to be a very serious social problem, responsible for family breakdown, abandonment of children, accidental death at work and violence in society. A “Temperance Movement” emerged that further consolidated public opinion to a point that people wanted to do something about it (http://www.alcoholism.about.com). If people affected by a condition are influential or powerful, the condition is more likely to be considered a social problem than if those affected are not influential. ‘People in power control the mass media, and therefore, control public opinion. Often “relevant issues” are defined by those who wield power through the mass media, (Russ Long, 2003, ‘The Sociological Approach To Social Problems’, www.delmar.edu/sociosi/rlong/problems/chap-01.htm). The mass media gives selective attention to certain conditions. The Liberal press will highlight certain issues while the Conservative pres will select others.
Alcoholism is a huge social problem within society, stats released on 4th march 2003 by the Charity Alcohol Concern, reveal that this equates to 1 in 13 adults- twice the amount of people that are dependant on all other forms of illegal drugs. 429,000 people from the south east are dependence on alcohol. Alcoholism is also linked to mental health problems, research has shown that around 65% of suicide attempts are associated with alcohol. Because of the increase of alcohol consumption Ireland has spent an estimated £1.5 billion on alcohol related car incidents and medical costs. As stated by the health Minister Michael Martin, “There has been the beginning of a realization that we have in relation to alcohol, a culture of acceptance”. A recent UK survey on underage drinking showed that from the age of 13 onwards more teens are drinking than not drinking. 59% of 13 year olds are classified as drinkers, 74% of 14 year olds and 84% of 15 year olds and this has become a serious issue within society and has been highlighted to the Government which has put in place several strategies in an attempt to minimise the problem such as the HEBS adverts and other forms of advertising features i.e. in teen magazines. In 1997, 21 percent of the young drivers 15 to 20 years old who were killed in crashes were intoxicated, (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Young Drivers Traffic Safety Facts 1997, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1997). With such an important issue as alcoholism a social policy is made, this refers to those actions of governments that have a direct effect on the welfare of the citizens of a country. Further current US stats revealed that two thirds of teenagers who drink can buy their own alcohol, among teenagers who “binge” drink, 39% say they drink alone, 58% drink when they are upset, 30% drink when they are bored and 37% drink to feel high. As previously stated the first use of alcohol occurs at the age of 13 and alcohol use at an early age is an indicator of future drug and alcohol problems. (Maryland Underage Drinking Prevention Coalation, 2000, www.mudpc.org)

Furthermore, Mills Identified five overarching social problems being alienation, moral insensibility, threats to democracy, threats to human freedom, conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason. (C Wright Mills: The sociology of C. Wright Mills, 2002, pg. 59 http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Four/Presentations/MILLS/)

An example of a huge sociological issue is religion. A sociological definition of religion is social institutions, or stable clusters, created by society to answer questions science cannot. Sociologists of religion study every aspect of religion from what is believed to how persons act while in worship and while living out their stated convictions. They study the changing role of religion both in the public arena (political, economic and media) and in intimate interpersonal relationships. Global religious pluralism and conflict, the nature of religious cults and sects, the influence of religion on racial, gender and sexuality issues, and the effect of the media and modern culture has on religious practices are all topics of interest in current sociology of religion research. (No name or date given, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, http://hirr.hartsem.edu/sociology/sociology.html) Religion has become a wider problem within society, you could say it started with conflict among different religious groups and or cults, resulting in violent religious bigotry. As this social problem became more recognisable sociologists set out to find out the causes behind religion and the social problems that are brought about by it and to define religion. The Government also took on this controversial issue within society and set out to make the country less racist by putting on HEBS adverts and displaying the ‘Scotland one of many cultures’ logo to be seen. Laws were also passed to stop and or prevent religious bigotry, all is set out to make people equal no matter of their religion/ race and to make all different cultures accepted within society.

Furthermore, Michael Parenti stated, “Focusing on the poor and ignoring the system of power, privilege, and profit which makes them poor is a little like blaming the corpse for the murder” (in Eitzen and Baca- Zinn, 2000) Skolnick and Currie notes, “convential social problem writing invariable returns to the symptoms of social ills rather than to the source of those ills” (Eitzen 2000) These approaches to social problems can be categorized under what Eitzen calls the personal blame approach.

Therefore, according to most definitions, a social problem is a harmful social condition, according to the beliefs and values of some influential or dominant group in the society. A harmful social condition becomes a social problem when it persists over time and is not solved because there are a number of competing proposed solutions on which people do not agree. Thus social problems involve social issues. Sociological approaches to social problems usually involve research to determine the causes of social problems and the effectiveness of policies or programs in attempting to solve them. (Allyn & Bacon, 2002: ‘General Sociology, Applied Sociology and Social Problems’, http://cwabacon.pearsoned.com)(S.McGonigal)

As a form of social persuasion or as a false consciousness Ideology can be argued to have a strong role in reproducing relations of power.

For a Marxist the Bourgeois Ideology dominates a capitalist society ensuring that the Proletarians contribute to society by providing their Labour in what is sold to them as a fair contract, the exchange of labour for a wage that has been negotiated freely, “a fair days work for a fair days pay”. The Marxist view of this is that in reality there is no other choice than to comply with capitalist view of what is fair and this is reliant on capitalist market forces. A worker cannot freely negotiate a wage with the employer, because in reality the employer is in business to make profit from the workers labour and therefore will not employ a worker for their own determination of what is a fair wage, but at a rate that will maximise profit (the difference between what the worker earns, other costs of production and what the end product or service can be charged for). In addition to this the employer can impose terms and conditions of employment on the employee, such as hours worked, amount of work undertaken, quality of workmanship, length of breaks, the freedom to eat and drink when necessary, forcing subordination of the worker.
The worker has the need for a job and is socialised into acceptance of the capitalist ideology, this gives the employer a power over the worker. If the worker refuses to work for the wage that is determined by the capitalist bourgeois market or obey the terms and conditions set down by the employer the worker can find themselves and their families without the means to live, food, shelter, utilities etc because by not participating in the existing system he has cut himself off from the means of survival within a capitalist society.

This being the case, one has to ask why the proletarians don’t overthrow the system, if proletarians are as exploited and oppressed as Marxists believe and there are considerably more proletarians than Bourgeois why is there not a revolt? This is where the Ideology plays a major part, infiltrating every mechanism of our lives from the first awareness of a parent, or in more modern times both parents going off to work to earn a wage, our acceptance of this as the status quo invariably leads to the same acceptance by our offspring, it how the world is, we don’t question, we accept. This is then reinforced by the education system, where the needs of industry determine to a certain extent what is taught in our schools and children are given the message that to achieve well in school will lead to well paid work and thus thrust them up the economic ladder.
The media also sends messages that inform us from babyhood that the objective of life is to accumulate material possession and emulate the bourgeoisie and that this is achieved through work and wage. Work and wage is the normal state of affairs in a capitalist society, it is normal because the proletarians cannot envisage any other economic system, they are blinded by the ideology that is dominant in society, to aspire to something different is abnormal, frowned upon, perhaps even illegal? The ‘false consciousness ‘ that this is how things are, how they should be and how they always will be is the accepted norm. Several factors encourage this, democracy in the sense we know it today has a huge part to play in maintaining the false consciousness, pre- universal franchise the inequalities within capitalist societies were perhaps more apparent, but universal franchise has meant that the proletariat are given the false notion that they actually have power, they have a say in the Government that controls power because their voice is their vote. They do have a vote, they can chose to vote from those who stand for election in the existing system, but they are powerless to change the actual system that the Government works within and that is the capitalist system. The choice I contend is a choice of no choice, although we believe we have a choice, that choice is controlled and constrained by bourgeois ideology.

The very voting systems control who is able to obtain power and who is not, the power of the Bourgeois lies in the threat of the tools of state, such as the Armed forces and the Police. The bourgeois make the laws for their benefit and then they organise a police force to enforce these laws, what need has a person of no property for laws to protect property? Yet we have many laws concerned with property and we accept them as being right, proper and natural, because we look at them though eyes clouded by a dominant bourgeois ideology.

Beneath this Bourgeois ideology as a supportive substructure, we have what we refer to as political ideologies, such as liberalism, and conservatism, these are dependent on the success of bourgeois ideologies they are merely supportive alternatives that uphold the existing dominant ideology, they give the proletarians the false notion of choice. This notion of choice is given support by the ability to change Governments from one to another such as from Conservative to Labour and yet in reality the ideological differences of the Politics encompass a narrow sphere.
The Conservative norms and values are those that are traditionally associated with those of the economically advantaged groups in society and from time to time they take control of the system, persuading even those proletarians who aspire to emulate the economically advantaged groups that this is achievable by everyone by participation in the system, I would argue that a proletarian voting for conservative norms and values is akin to a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, and yet there are many who willingly do so, due to the belief in the messages given throughout life that accumulation of wealth is the ultimate goal in life, wealth equals success and success equals wealth.
The Labour norms and values traditionally advocate the redistribution of wealth through the taxation system and are viewed as the traditional party for the working classes, who are the majority and yet even Labour has managed to encompass more and more of the Bourgeois ideals into its norms and values and this is accepted by the proletarians, because they expect that a Labour Government will grant them certain concessions, as in the past with the advent of a welfare state. These concessions themselves erode impetus for radical change they dilute the perception of inequality by providing state sanctioned rights to certain things such as a minimum income level, pensions and health care. Therefore although the proletarians gain some concessions through the norms and values of labour they are also helping to maintain the domination of the ideology of the bourgeois, assisting the false consciousness and ensuring the survival of capitalism and the bourgeois elite.
I therefore content that a dominant ideology exists and that we are socially conditioned into an acceptance of this ideology as the natural way things are and that even when we recognise inequalities and conflict between how things are and how we think they should be, the dominant ideology has permeated society so deeply that we cannot imagine an alternative. Alternatives are dismissed as utopian dreams, impossible due to certain aspects of human nature, such as greed, jealousy etc. The bourgeois ideology has convinced man that man is inherently evil, nasty and brutish and containment of these aspects of human nature requires the masses to be subordinate to a powerful elite for our own survival, and that their way is the natural and acceptable way of how things are and how they should be.

The purpose of this essay is to outline the historical origins of the Constitution of the United States of America, giving an explanation of the separation of powers, the role of the president, the role of congress and the role of the Judiciary within the US political system.

America was initially a vast continent inhabited by native Indians who lived in tribal societies. Later the continent of North America was colonised by the British, as can be seen by the names of states such as Georgia & New Hampshire. The colonial inhabitants of America grew increasingly aware that they were being governed by a nation from which they felt increasingly alienated. The Stamp Act increased the protestations of the colonists and in Boston these protestations spilled over into the first revolutionary acts by the American colonists against their British colonial Masters. This initial insurrection was to culminate is what has become known as the American Wars of Independence or the revolutionary wars, 1775 –1783. In 1776 the thirteen Colonies declared Independence from Great Britain, these colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The Declaration of Independence was made in Congress and signed by representatives of the thirteen colonies. The Declaration was the instrument with which the representatives of the Thirteen States voiced their discontentment with rule from Great Britain and the Monarchy (George III) and set out the reasons for their striving towards a new form of Government and at the heart of this declaration is the wish of the colonies to be freed from what they perceived to be imperialist tyranny. The Declaration of Independence is clear that the power and rule of the country should be undertaken by the people of the nation and their elected representatives. This is further echoed in the Constitution of the United States of America.

The constitution of the United States of America is based on a social contract, whereby the authority to Govern comes from the people, many theorists and philosophers of the time proposed such a form of Government among them Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. This new form of Government would be based on a form of Federalism whereby individual State Governments would work along side a National Government representing and Governing the same territories and people. The National or Federal Government would be a bi-cameral institution where the powers would be separated, this separation of Powers was based on a misinterpretation of ‘The Spirit of the Laws’ by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquiue 1748.

It was not until September 17, 1787 that members of the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia, signed the final draft of the Constitution of the United States of America, the signatories of the Constitution are collectively know as the Founding Fathers of America. It is worth noting that the Founding Fathers were all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who favoured a Protestant Work Ethic based on Calvinism. Despite requests for a review of the constitution proposed by Edmund Randolph and supported by George Mason and Elbridge Gerry the constitution was adopted as it was drafted on Sept 17, 1787.
The constitution proposed a new form of Government for the 13 colonies joined together by the articles of confederation. George Washington was selected to be the president of a National Convention to revise the articles of confederation to be held in Philadelphia February 21, 1787. Those drafting the constitution were aware that creating a Central Government had serious implications because there was a fear that such a central authority could become too powerful and may evolve into a despotic, tyrannical institution therefore they sought to agree to a method of safeguarding the rights of the individual citizen, the structure of Government, the basis of representation and the regulation of interstate trade, laissez-faire. A letter written by George Washington at the time acknowledges the difficulty of the task faced by the members of the convention, he wrote ‘It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be preserved; and, on the present occasion, the difficulty was increased by a difference among several States as to their situation, extent, habits and particular interests… thus, the constitution which we now present is the result of a spirit of amity, and that of mutual deference and concession, which peculiarly of our political situation rendered indispensable.’ (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep17.html), this letter accompanied the constitution. Although debate on the constitution continued it eventually became Law in June 1789. The first ten amendments were adopted as the bill of rights during George Washington’s first term of Presidency.

A Government can be defined as an organised use of force to ensure social order, this definition of a government is based on the writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, who agree that people will willing give up certain freedoms to a Government so that social order can be maintained. The American Constitution recognises that there are certain rights, which must be maintained by the individual to avoid tyranny. The founding fathers also recognised that the avoidance of tyranny must be a major concern when forming a new system of Government and therefore they hoped that a system based on the constitution would never evolve into a system of despotic rule. To prevent tyranny and despotism the founding Fathers decided that by separating the powers held by Government they could maintain a system of checks and balances, no one institution could control the affairs of Government in its entirety, each branch of Government has some control over the actions of the other branches and requires cooperation between the branches. According to Richard Neustadt the constitution does not separate powers so much as create a Government of separate institutions sharing power.
The separate branches of Government created when separating the powers are as follows legislative, executive and judicial.
The legislative branch of Government, that is the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are known collectively as Congress, makes laws, checks on the president, can impeach and remove the President from office, can override a Presidential veto with a two-thirds majority, ratifies Presidential appointments, authorises or appropriates funds for legislation, checks on the Judiciary, can impeach and remove Judges and Confirms Federal Judges. Only congress can declare War and appropriate funds for the Armed Forces, the senate must approve treaties instigated by the president.
Congress is divided by the bi-cameral aspect of its make up, which leads to a fragmentation of power. Congressional representatives have local constituencies and local mandates to manage and therefore do not have the presidential/executive advantage of a national perspective with unitary authority. The representatives of both houses of congress are directly elected by the people. Within Congress there are several specialised congressional committees who examine proposed legislation and the implications of such proposed legislation on the constitution and both state and federal laws. The path of bills by both houses is based on an 8 step system the initial stages of the bill are the same, it is introduced and assigned to an appropriate standing committee and then referred to a sub committee which holds hearings and once approved by the subcommittee it is then returned to the standing committee at this stage in the process there can be conflict between the houses as bills may emerge from the standing committees with different amendments, once the bills are approved at committee level they are reported to the floor of the house of representatives or the floor of the Senate, where they are further debated and amended, it is in the next stage where differences in bills approved by both houses but with different amendments are reconciled by a conference committee, the bills are then voted on in both chambers and if approved the resulting bill is sent for presidential signature or veto. The specialist committees of which there are approximately 36 are divided between the Senate and the House of Representatives and there are also joint committees, which examine topics such as economics and taxation.
The Executive branch, the Presidency enforces the Laws, checks on Congress, proposes legislation, veto’s legislation, makes treaties, appoints Federal Judges; ambassadors, supreme court justices and other national office holders, enforces Court decisions and checks on the Judiciary. The members of the executive are appointed by the President and are considered to be experts in their own particular fields. The president is the Commander in chief of the Armed Forces a President is an elected Head of State and may only serve two terms in office.
The Judicial branch, the Supreme Court and the Lower Courts interpret the Laws, checks on the President, reviews executive acts, checks on congress and reviews congressional laws. The judicial system of the United States of America can be expensive for the individual citizen to use to ensure justice there are two paths by which a case may go to the Supreme Court the Federal route and the State route. Federal cases start in the US District Courts on appeal they can go forward to the US Courts of Appeals and upon further appeal can then go on to be heard by the United States Supreme Court. State Cases begin in the Lower State Courts and after Appeal may be heard by the State Supreme Court and then upon further appeal may be heard by the United States Supreme Court.

No single branch of Government is able to function without cooperation from the other branches, this method prevents excesses in policy that could occur if one single branch had complete control, this system also ensures that no one institution strays too far politically from the other institutions and that the Government of the United States of America is able to progress through political evolution as opposed to political revolution. However a criticism of this form of Power sharing is that it can lead to tension and conflict because it is based on a constitution, which is by its very nature, both adaptable and ambiguous and therefore open to many forms of interpretation. There have been instances where the separate branches of Government have attempted to reinterpret the constitution in order to gain greater powers within the US political framework. The constitution provides only a basic framework for Government ‘intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs,’ (a quote from Chief Justice Hon Marshall in 1819, Politics USA, Robert McKeever et al, p52, 1999). And in times of crises and war the constitutions interpretation has occasionally changed or been amended to allow the Government to take actions that previous interpretations have denied, the introduction or abolishment of Laws can also cause constitutional conflict and it is in such an instance that the system of checks and balances can be seen in action.
An example of how the system of checks and balances works can be shown using United States V Lopez 1995. The right to bear arms is the constitutional right of the American citizen the attempt to amend this constitutional right by the Government was over ruled by the Supreme Court, the Government wished to make it illegal to bear arms in the vicinity of a School and attempted to introduce the Gun Free School Zones Act 1990 (Source: Politics USA, Robert Mckeever et al, P63, 1999), The supreme court argued that if the Governments argument for altering the constitution on the grounds presented would in effect make it ‘difficult to perceive any limitation on Federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or Education where States have historically been sovereign’ (Politics USA, Robert McKeever et al, p63, 1999). The decision meant that the constitutional rights of the citizen to bear arms were upheld, however State Governments themselves were able to set individual state laws regarding the issue without altering the constitution.

The ambiguity of the Constitution makes the American political system very adaptable to changes in both world and internal politics. The system of checks and balances regulates the power of the institutions within the American political System ensuring that no one body can become too powerful or tyrannical and the Federalism of American politics ensures that there is no presumption of a one size fits all policy for every state in the Union, individual regions are free to represent their citizens attitudes towards matters that prove controversial such as Gun laws and Abortion.(S.McGonigal)

Bibliography
American Politics & Society, David McKay, 5th edition (2001), Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, ISBN 0631-22416-5.

POLITICS USA, ROBERT McKEEVER.JOHN ZVESPER.RICHARD MAIDMENT, 1999, PEARSON EDUCATION LTD, HARLOW, ISBN 0-13-354151-7

http://www.sanjuan.edu/schools/miraloma/ISWebsite/mont.htm

http://www.colonialhall.com/biousc.asp

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/politics_separationPower.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/sep17.html

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/rights/law/main.htm

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this experiment is to test for interference in visual perception.

The stroop test is an effective way of measuring the difference between visual perception with interference and visual perception without interference.

For the purpose of this experiment a two-tailed hypothesis was chosen.

Hypothesis (H1), ‘ that there will be a significant difference in the participants information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’, the Null Hypothesis (H2) proposed that there would be no significant difference in the participants information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’.

A random sample of a homogenous population was used for the experiment. Statistical tests which were applied were ‘t’ test and Spearman’s Rho. The level of significance was 0.05, this means that there is a one in twenty chance that what occurred in the stroop experiment occurred by chance factors and allows for (n-1) degree of freedom ie a 19/20 chance that the IV affected the DV. The critical value used is 2.861.

The experiment discovered that there was a significant difference in the participants processing times for Condition A and Condition B, thereby proving H1, ‘that there will be a significant difference in the participants information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’. Thus showing that interference in information processing does occur under different conditions.

INTRODUCTION

It is the cognitive School of Psychology which is involved in exploring and investigating the way the mind processes and stores information.
Cognition can be divided into groups which include but are not confined to attention, language, thought processes, memory, perception and problem-solving.

A cognitive psychologist will explore these hypothetical constructs by carrying out experiments which require the participants to use memory or problem solving skills.

Automatisation is a process whereby tasks which are regularly or frequently performed become almost automatic so that they require very little active memory or problem solving in order to be performed, e.g. reading, the physical process of driving, riding a bicycle, recognising colours and sounds are functions, which make use of the process of automatisation. It is when interference occurrs in this process that the individual becomes aware of some of the functions their brain is performing. Our brains experience a constant bombardment of sensory information and stimulation from our sense organs. The brain then has to sort out the important sensory information from the not so important information, to make the process easier the brain uses automatisation so that some tasks can be completed using very little of the sensory information required to complete other tasks. The processing and organising of incomming sensory information is known to psychologists as perception. Perception is each individual brains interpretation of external stimuli, we can not be 100% sure that everybody percieves the world around them in exactly the same way and therefore we can assume that in part, at least, perception is unique to each individual.

The Stroop effect (Stroop 1935), is an effective way of showing how interference can occur in the process of automatisation. The Stroop effect shows how the brain can become confused by a combination of words and colours and slows down the information processing time. In cognitive psychology the information processing procedure is often compared to the processes used by a computer.

The Stroop effect phenomenon can be shown in the experiment known as the Stroop colour-word test. This experiment deomonstrates how responses and automatic processing are subject to interference.
It is expected that this experiment will show that some tasks which are normally processed by the brain automatically take longer to complete and require a greater amount of attention when interference occurs.

Previous studies which have explored interference have been carried out by many psychologists, Kahneman (1973) put forward the idea that human beings have only a limited amount of processing capability and the information processed by the brain is dependant upon how much processing is taking place at one time, therefore if the processor was being used to near mazimum prcessign capability there is litle room for other information and this information is therefore unprocessed and is left out (Gross, fourth edition, 2001, p191).
Later Norman & Brobrow (1975) put forward the idea that there are two distinctly different processes by which information is dealt with in the brain, the process used being entirley dependant upon the type of information to be processed. The processes are called data limited processing and resource limited processing. The quality and speed of the processing is defined by the external influences at the time of processing, therefore, external stimuli can ‘interfere’ with the processing capabilities of the brain ( Gross, Fourth Edition, 2001, P192). Broadbent (1982) showed that when two tasks are performed at the same time interference does occur because there is some disruption in the speed and efficiency of how the brain copes with more than one task. (Gross, Fourth Edition, 2001, p192).
It was Schneider and Shiffrin (1977), who carried out studies into processing and labelled two forms of processinexplanation further andg as Automatic Processing, that which makes virtually no demand on attention and Controlled Processing, that which makes large demands on attention, i.e. tasks which require concentration to perform. (Gross, Fourth Edition, 2001, p193).
The stroop effect demonstrates these two types of processing and how they cause confusion when they are in action together competing for priority in processing, this is known as interference.

METHOD

This experiment was undertaken using the repeated measure design, which is when all of the participants in an experiment experience all conditions. This serves the purpose of allowing the participants themselves to act as the control for the experiment. All of the participants in this experiment experienced both Condition A – 3 lists of neutral words printed in coloured ink, and Condition B – 3 lists of Colour words printed in coloured ink. To avoid learned behaviour affecting the results of the experiment, the group of participants were divided into two sections, the first 10 participants were given lists 1, 2 & 3 first followed by lists 4, 5 & 6. The second 10 participants were given Lists 4,5 & 6 initially followed by Lists 1,2 & 3.

The participants were approached individually and asked if they would like to take part in an experiment, which was examining perception. The Participants were chosen at random, from the Students who attend James Watt College, North Ayrshire Campus.
The experiment took place in a small room adjacent to the library and the Participants were tested one at a time.
The Participants were all given the same 2 pieces of paper to read, which would act as a simple test for colour blindness and dyslexia. The first sheet was an explanation of what was required of the participant for the purpose of the experiment, the second piece of paper contained four boxes each coloured in a different primary colour red, yellow, blue and green. This also assured the experimenters that each pariticpant was of a simillar standard of intellectual ability. The participants were reassured that this was not a test of intelligence or intellectual abilities and that there were no right or wrong answers. Once the experimenters were satisfied that the participant could distinguish the primary colours and the participant was at ease, the participant was asked if he/she was ready and the experiment began.

In the room were 3 students carrying out the experiment, 1 to record the times for each list on a chart, another to record the mistakes made for each list on a separate chart and one with a stop watch to time the participant for each list.

Materials:
Chart to record time Three lists of Neutral words
Chart to record Mistakes Three lists of colour words
Stop watch Test card of primary colours
Pens Passage for participants to read
Procedure:

Participants were given times to come to the room adjacent to the library, they were met by a member of the experiment team and introduced to the other members of the team to put them at ease. They were then asked to sit down at a table and were asked to read a short passage and a test card containing four coloured rectangles one of each , red , blue, green and yellow. The participant was then asked if they understod what was required of them and it was reittereated that it was the colour of ink that was required to be named not the written word. Once it was established that the participant felt at ease and understood what was requied of them he/she was asked to indicate when he/she was ready. The participant was then given each list one at a time. The times were recorded by a member of the experiment team using a stop watch and written down on the time chart, any mistakes were recorded by another member of the team on a mistake chart. When the participant was finished reading all six lists tey were thanked for participating and reassured that the experiment was not of intelligence or intellectual abilities. The participants were told the true nature of the experiment and thanked for participating.

RESULTS

The raw data from Condition A and Condition B was then totalled and the figures rounded up or down to form whole numbers. The mean and mode were then calculated for each participant and the mean and median for each list in condition A was calculated and then the mean and median for each list in Condition B was calculated. The standard deviations for each condition were also calculated.

Stroop Effect:

Condition A Condition B
(Neutral words) (colour words)
Mean = 11 Mean = 14
Mode = 10 Mode = 11

Total mean for Total Mean for
Condition A Condition B
216.67 284.65

Standard Deviation Condition A = 5.10

Standard Deviation Condition B = 7.63

Condition A shows a significantly lower result than Condition B.

TREATMENT OF RESULTS

Spearman’s Rho was used to provide inferential statistics and descriptive statistics were used to form Graphs to illustrate the results. Because the experiment used a two-tailed hypothesis and because the experiment itself was of a parametric design i.e. the participants were drawn from a normal population distribution and the data tested is continuous a ‘t’ test was performed. This test would show whether the Hypothesis was to be rejected or proven.

The ‘t’ test result is as follows;

Condition A Condition B
Participants =20 Participants =20
Total mean result=216.67 Total mean result =284.67

Degree of freedom = 19 Critical value of ‘t’ = 2.861
Significant level of ‘t’ = 0.05 (because this is a two-tailed hypothesis)
The mean difference between Condition A and Condition B = 3.4
‘t’ = 6.64

Spearman’s Rho result for this experiment Rho = 0.99 (see appendix )
Size of n = 20 level of significance = 0.05

Spearman’s Rho test was used to analyse the data because this experiment used a two-tailed hypothesis, with a sample size of 20. The relationship between the IV (participant times) and the DV (Stroop effect) were examined to see if one variable could be attributed to the difference in the other variable this is what Psychologists term correlation. Spearman’s Rho is used to assess the correlation between the variables in the experiment. The strength of correlation is determined by the number of ‘r’ this can vary between 1.00 and –1.00.

Discussion:

This experiment shows that it takes longer for the brain to distinguish colours when a colour name is written in a different coloured ink, than it does to distinguish colours when a neutral word is written in coloured ink. It appears to be that some confusion occurs in the processing methods of the brain, which slows reaction times, thus showing that some perceptual interference is occurring.
H1 ‘that there will be a significant difference in the participants information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’ can therefore be accepted and H2 ‘that there would be no significant difference in the participants information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’ can be rejected.

If this experiment were to be repeated it would be interesting to see if a stimulant such as caffeine or a depressant such as alcohol would have any effect on the results. This experiment took place in May when a lot of the participants may have been under stress because of examinations and the workload at the end of the academic year. It also took place at lunchtime when students may have been concerned over how long the experiment would take because they hadn’t had their lunch or were perhaps sluggish because they had just eaten. However students at James Watt College provided a varied age range within it’s population.

This experiment supports previous ‘stroop effect’ experiments and other experiments, which test for interference, Cherry for example tested for interference in the processing of sound by asking participants to listen to different sounds in each ear, one sound was ‘shadowed’ by the participants, they were then asked to relate back what they had heard, the participants had much greater recall of the sounds which were not shadowed and had difficulty in remembering the shadowed sounds, (Gross, Fourth Edition, 2001, p196).

Flowers et al (1979) used numbers to demonstrate the stroop effect,
They found that people had difficulty in saying how many numbers were in a row and were more likely to read the actual written numbers as follows.

555
1111
2
33333
44
555
44444
5555
3
444
222
33
444
111
3
222

This version of the Stroop effect also demonstrates that interference occurs in visual processing because the learned action of reading dominates the process of counting (Gross, Fourth edition, 2001, p194).
CONCLUSION

The purpose of this experiment was to show that interference in perceptual processing can occur and that some cognitive processes require a greater amount of attention than others. The experiment also showed that there is an element of fallibility in automatisation.

To test this theory of cognition it was decided that the Stroop Colour-Word test be used.

This test Validated H1, ’that there will be a significant difference in the information processing time under two different conditions of the Stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’ and rejected the Null Hypothesis H2,’ that there will not be a significant difference in the information processing time under two different conditions of the stroop effect, Condition A and Condition B’

Thus it can be concluded that for the sample used the Stroop Effect Theory has been validated.(S.McGonigal)

Political expressions explained using cows as metaphors

Feudalism
You have two cows, your lord takes some of the milk.

Pure Socialism
You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in abarn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.

Bureaucratic Socialism
Yours cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.

Fascism
You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

Pure communism
You have two cows. Your neighbours help you to take care of them, and you all share the milk.

Real World Communism
You share two cows with your neighbours. You and your neighbours bicker about who has the most ‘ability’ and who has the most ‘need’. Meanwhile no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

Russian communism
You have tow cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

Perestroika
You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much as you can and sell it on the free market.

Cambodian Communism
You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

Militarianism
You have two cows. The Government takes both and drafts you.

Totalitarianism
You have two cows. The government takes them and denies that they ever existed. Milk is banned.

Pure Democracy
You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.

Representative Democracy
You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

British Democracy
You have two cows. You feed them sheeps brains and they go mad. The Government doesn’t do anything.

Bureaucracy
You have two cows. At first the Government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain.

Pure Anarchy
You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.

Pure capitalism
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Capitalism
You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you any money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.

Environmentalism
You have two cows. The Government bans you from milking them or killing them.

Political Correctness
You are associated with, (the concept of ‘ownership’ is a symbol of phallo centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently aged, (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non specific gender.

Surrealism
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.