SOC210H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Arab Culture
Document Summary
Canada used state apparatuses to construct/exclude blacks as other. What is discourse: a way to think and communicate about and the relationship between things, people, and social organization of society, emerges out of societal institutions, like politics, education, media, law and medicine. Discourses shape our thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and sense of selves by giving us the language to think about our lives, the people around us. Embedded in power relations: politics, knowledge, and media produce our ideas of right/wrong, reality/fiction, normal/deviant, truth/false, those in control of these institutions have the power to control the formation of our ideas. Orientalism as a discourse: shapes what we think are facts about the east using knowledge, politics and media, tells us what the orient and the arab mind are like, as if they are real. The orient is not just an idea : centuries of discourse, imagery, and vocabulary gave the orient a reality and presence in the west.
