MARIA CAPELLA-MORALES
INTELLECTUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Context is everything.
The minds that inspire my work.
SAID, EDWARD. ORIENTALISM. RANDOM HOUSE, 1978.
Born in Mandatory Palestine, a geopolitical British entity post WWII, Said is consider the founder of post-colonial studies. In his most renowned work, Orientalism, Said speaks to cultural representations of those from The Orient (middle east). Orientalism is defined by the ethnocentric view of Westerners upon the racialized-others of the East, with a heavy emphasis of the effects of colonial imperialism over the last several centuries. The Orientalism and The Racial-Other theories have been applied when speaking towards many different types of minorities that are not just limited to race and gender.
I empathized personally with Said’s dichotomy between race-identities. Having been raised with an English name, an American passport, and learning in an English speaking school, yet living in Palestine, being mixed race, and speaking Arabic outside of these part of his life, really resonated with me. Puerto Rican born, my parents moved to the states 2 years before my brother and I were born. My father was stationed at Fort Belvior, an army base just outside of Washington DC, and is also where my brother and I were born. I grew up speaking two different languages, and learning two different cultures. Said’s Racial and Gendered Other’s held meaning with me due to having an ethnocentric view from two different sides. But it especially helped explain how ostracized one can feel for not being pure enough for either culture.
HALL, STUART. ENCODING/DECODING. MEDIA STUDIES: A READER, EDITED BY PAUL MARRIS AND SUE THORNHAM, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996.
Hall describes the ways in which information in delivered from one entity and received by another. He calls this exchange of information encoding and decoding messages. He further explains how ideas can be developed and considered normal amongst all people who agree with these messages. Also to note, is that messages can be interpreted by many different people, in many different ways, for many different reasons. Messages can successfully be agreed upon or successfully repelled, depending on how one person decodes it. Hall’s Reception Theory is theory that those with the same background as you are more likely to agree with your world views, morals, and agendas. People from your same background are more likely to have a preferred reading when decoding your messages. People who are from complete opposite backgrounds that you, are less likely to agree with your positions and ideas, or are more likely to have an oppositional reading on your viewpoints. While those who do not chose one way or another are negotiable, or possess a negotiated reading.
I pride myself on being a master communicator in any type of relationship; friendship, romantic, business, or otherwise. I felt like Hall was providing a framework and a language to something I have already felt, believed, and understood. I also believe that my natural ability to empathize with others is deeply rooted in my ability to negotiate with decoding messages from people different than myself. I also believe this coincides with my insatiable curiosity to learn and to grow, which contributes to my patience with things I don’t understand. So really, I encode and decode messages within myself, while also encoding and decoding the messages of the world around me.
FARMER, PAUL. PATHOLOGIES OF POWER: RETHINKING HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, 1999. HTTP://AJPH-APHAPUBLICATIONS.ORG.OFFCAMPUS.LIB.WASHINGTON.EDU/DOI/PDF/10.2105/AJPH.89.10.1486.
Paul Farmer is a master of global health and health equity. In this piece, Pathologies of Power, Farmer explains the economic and political infrastructures that can contribute to preventing a person access to care. He deems these economic and political red tapes as a specific type of violence towards those who cannot pay or physically get to a facility that provides aid. These structural violence’s explain the disparity between those with means and those without and how that lopsided distribution of financial capita affects those at the bottom most.
I personally felt a draw to Farmer’s position on health equity. Having watched several interviews, Farmer often mentions the financial disparity between developed countries and those that are not, and that there is a sense of duty to distribute means evenly, especially with access to healthcare. Farmer’s most compelling belief, for me, is his belief in the right to care. That it’s fundamental, and born. The developed world monopolizes the advancements in healthcare, yet distributes those goods at a cost so few can afford—even those within the developed country itself. It’s structural violence’s such as these that have motivated his efforts in developing systems that distributes means to good like healthcare, accessible to all.
LATOUR, BRUNO. REASSEMBLING THE SOCIAL. NEW YORK: THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC., 2005.
Latour is known for his contributions to the social sciences through his Actor-Network Theory. Actor-Network theory, or ANT, describes the living and non-living entities that influence each other into succession or regression. Latour considers inanimate/non-living entities important and as actants in a network when considering the relationship between all entities involved. The dominant idea surrounding the term ‘social’ assumes that the constructs are fixed, and remaining the belief that a social construct is homogenous bonded by commonalities. The actor-network theory looks at all affectors, or in ANT terms: actants, as fluid entities, homogenously interacting with each other. In this case, all actors play a role in understanding a problem, and those roles can be played by either a living or non-living thing. His belief in giving non-living entities an equal say, and a sense of influence in how other entities are affected, has been of great criticism.
I appreciate Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) because it equally distributes the importance of considering factors that are both stationary/intangible and those that are not. When addressing large problems like global health and health equity, addressing the contributing factors aren’t as simple as “this group of people does this, and that group of people does that. And that’s just the way it is.” Instead, considering geographically concerns, economic and political structures (or lack of), cultural customs, or the people themselves, ANT allows a social scientist to look at issues with a holistic/homogenous view rather than a fixed one.
DE GENOVA, NICHOLAS. THE DEPORTATION REGIME: SOVEREIGNTY, SPACE, AND THE FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, THE DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010.
De Genova describes sentient humans as being curious and creative creatures with an expansive way of constructing their worlds. The natural ability to move with fluidity across boundaries, both within the mind, and outside of it, is a natural born right. De Genova speaks towards boundaries from a socio-political perspective, and the damaging effects between nations. He also describes how these boundaries translate in a less tangible setting like socialization, where the boundaries between cultures can limit people from different creeds, causing divides and limitations.
I am going to pull from my own response in class about what this piece meant to me. I felt very connected to De Genova’s perspective of the limiting effect putting up intangible boarders can do to things we are do not know. I especially felt passionate about his analyzation of Agamben’s theories of Bare Life. “Where De Genova then strips away the perception of life down to its core naked foundation of what it is to find movement. Toward the bottom of pp. 39, De Genova digs deepest into this right to freedom, to movement, describing that liberty as something that is almost primal. It's biological. It's naturally born. The right to movement, isn't a right at all. The freedom to live, the freedom to be, is as pure as breathing.” (From my discussion post in ISS 301 A, Lesson 08, on Populations and Movement).
HARDING, SANDRA, AND KATHRYN NORBERG. “NEW FEMINIST APPROACHES TO SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGIES: AN INTRODUCTION.” SIGNS, VOL. 30, NO. 4, 2005, PP. 2009–2015.
When considering the proper context of determining methodologies and epistemologies within feminist theory research, Sandra Harding presented a framework for what methods were considered appropriate to achieving this. Meaning that in order to conduct research for feminist theory, research conducted should be located within the same social plane as those doing the research itself. The purpose of this would challenge any notion that anyone would be neutralized or othered. An example would be that in order to conduct research on women, the research must be done by women.
I appreciate Sandra Harding’s approach to considering context when doing research. While I believe her methodology and epistemology towards research, I do find it a bit alienating to those who share the same motive, intentions, and beliefs, but may not be members from the same social plane as the research being conducted. However, in the specific case of women, I do find it helpful that the research done on feminist theory be conducted by women themselves.
DOYAL, LESLIE. 1995. CHAP. 1 “MAKES WOMEN SICK: GENDER AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF HEALTH.” NEW JERSEY: RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Social reproduction, biological reproduction, and physical production. All three industries take a great deal of work to foster, accomplish, and execute. In the eyes of Leslie Doyal, work equals labor. Yet in a capitalistic environment, some of that labor has value, while others do not. Social reproduction refers to all work needed to bring a new generation into the world. From clothing, to feeding, from loving, to healing, from mourning, to remembering, to teaching social constructs and language, social reproduction takes work. Biological reproduction refers to all anatomical and physiological efforts required to create and sustain life. From preconception, to intercourse, to childbirth, to breastfeeding and weening, to postpartum effects both physical and mental, all of this takes work. And Finally, physical production is the creation of value or wealth by producing goods and services, which also… takes work. Yet in our capitalistic and domestic economy, household production is not only gendered, but the social and biological forms of reproduction are considered a bio-social phenomenon’s and are there for not considered valuable in the sense of goods and services. This bio-social phenomenon is also seen in health and the ways in which people suffer. This genderization, alienation, and devaluation of work, primarily done by women, breeds Leslie Doyal’s theories on patriarchal bargaining.
I chose this piece from Doyal because I believed firmly in her explanation of work equaling labor. Almost as if she was using the Harding’s theories on context, I felt that Doyal was presenting the value of specific kinds of work from a sort of Marxist-feminist/economist perspective and context. I think this is especially important when talking about how health is affected, especially women’s health, in the US economy. Her work presents the argument that women have been placed in a system that doesn’t support the reproductive and biological work that is needed to sustain our species, yet expects them to produce this work within a system that values physical production. Basically stating that the economic system that is in place is designed to not support bodies that have biological responsibilities.
ROSSER, SUE.1994. CHAP.1. “ANDROCENTRIC BIAS IN CLINICAL RESEARCH.” IN WOMEN’S HEALTH—MISSING FROM U.S. MEDICINE.”
Androcentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of (1) presenting maleness and male experiences as universal, or the neutralized norm, of (2) treating males as a sort of universal, objective, neutral representation of species and treating women as a special case—something different, deviant, extra, other, and (3) androcentricm is the placing of male perspective, or masculine point of view at the center of history and culture. The product of such a multi-facetted mindset creates what Rosser et. al. would consider gender polarization. This polarization of genders, dichotomizes them. The association of gender as being opposites, leads the association between sex and psyche. In Rosser’s work, she highlights the androcentric bias placed on research, specifically women’s health. Issues concerning women, for instance, drugs administered to women, were rarely ever tested on women prior to their release to the medical public. The androcentric bias, as Rosser argues, affects choice and the definition of problems deemed worthy to study.
I picked Sue Rosser’s work towards how women are considered in research, especially health research, especially for products that are intended to be used on women’s bodies, extremely compelling (and perhaps shocking). Because I hope to discover what are the contributing factors to mortality, but specifically the mortality of the gendered and racialed othered, Rosser’s work answered a lot of questions to what factors yield discourage support to these specific communities.
BEM, SANDRA L. THE LENSES OF GENDER : TRANSFORMING THE DEBATE ON SEXUAL INEQUALITY. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1993.
To follow Sue Rosser’s notion of androcentrisms and the polarizing effects it has on gendered bodies, Sandra Bem goes deeper into describing these bodies through gendered lenses. Lenses sustain the expectation of what gendered bodies are supported, or rejected, into the androcentric norm of society and producing work/wealth. In the case of a male lenses, their lenses push in the same direction as what is expected of them, and affirmed by a system that considers maleness the norm. As for women, lenses push in the opposite direction. Gender polarization stresses that females are different than men, yet adrocentrisms affirms maleness but diminishes femaleness. This opposing direction of what is supported and what is not, creates a paralyzing effect that conflicts with biological and anatomical predisposition.
Again, following my curiosity of what systems are in place that either value women’s work, or devalue it, Bem’s explanation on how social expectation either match or reject different types gendered bodies. This becomes even more challenging if someone would find themselves outside of the gender binary.
CRENSHAW, KIMBERLE. “DEMARGINALIZING THE INTERSECTION OF RACE AND SEX: A BLACK FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF ANTIDISCRIMINATION DOCTRINE, FEMINIST THEORY, AND ANTIRACIST POLITICS [1989].” FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY: READINGS IN LAW AND GENDER, TAYLOR AND FRANCIS, 2018.
Crenshaw presents the argument in terms of women of color, in that the explanation of their experience cannot be reduced to simplifying the differences of their skin color versus their gender, but that the experience required an intersectional approach to understanding the experience holistically. Intersectionality is the analytical framework that describes the way in which implemented systems can affect those who have been alienated and marginalized by society. Intersectionality includes universality, simultaneity, and interdependence. Yet the 3 characteristics of intersectionality are as follows (1) intersectionality mutually constitutes identities such as age, culture, race, religion, etc. (2) an intersectional approach captures the consequence between two or more forms of subordination. It further goes to address manners in which racism, the patriarchy, class opposition, etc, work to create inequality that structures the position of gendered bodies, races, ethnicities, and classes. And finally (3) Intersectionality addresses the way in which specifics acts and policies operate together to create further disempowerment.
Crenshaw perfectly describes the complexity of one’s experience and gives equal representation to each and every facet to that experience. Appreciating the details in a very thorough form. I chose Crenshaw’s work for the same reason I chose the ISS program – my hope is to have an interdisciplinary and an intersectional approach to understanding the complications and challenges any member of our society faces. But in order to understand their position, I must be aware and immersed in the context of it all. Intersectionality allows that.