SOCSC 14 Definition of Terms

Conventional Citizenship

State-oriented, legalistic, focused on obligations

Pro-active Citizenship

Both the government and citizens have work to do

Government has the duty that the requisites for communities and ‘citizens’ to participate are present

Indigenous day to day practices of democracy and decision-making in communities where formal government mechanisms/elected officials may or may not exist (NGOs, Church, School)

Initiatives taken by organized groups/sectors who engage in formal democratic processes + explore other venues of expression and alternative solutions

Citizenship

Possession within the particular political community of full civil and political rights subject to special disqualifications such as [being in the age of] minority

Capacity to enjoy political rights: Right to participate in the government (right to vote); Right to hold public office; Right to petition the government for redress of grievances

Active practice of participating in public life

Most basic identification with the nation (oriented towards the state and its expressions in law and policy)

Three Ways of Becoming a Citizen

Jus Sanguinis = descent/parentage

Jus Soli = place of birth

Naturalization = legal act of adopting an alien and clothing him with the privilege of a native born-citizen

Citizenship as a CONTINUOUS process

Filipino Citizenship = processes by which citizens negotiate the nature and extent of their rights and obligations to the community

Process of Deliberation = Citizenship is the very base of collective action [shared vision, means to a sustainable future]

Pro-active practices of citizenship = indigenous… day to day…

Citizenship as a RECIPROCAL process

Role of the Government: Exercise the rule of law and make it accountable to the public; Ensure that the social requisites for the practice of democracy are present

Role of the Citizens: Need to perform their obligations and exercise their rights; Map out and implement their plans; Negotiate with other entities to bring out desired change

Strategies for turning awareness into action and protest into political power

1. Expand the Frame of the Possible

   1. Spaces of Civic Imagination; Concreteness

2. Choose a Defining Fight

   1. Define the boundaries of the fight; Debate you want to have on your own terms (but parties still respect each other)

3. Finding an Early Win

   1. Create a momentum to what people think is possible; Pressure policy makers (media to change the narrative + make arguments in public)

Power

Distribution in society, relations that resulted from the pattern of distribution, and the responsibilities involved in the exercise of power

Fruits of Power

Benefits that accrue from a just or unjust distribution of power

Elite Democracy

The true function of the vote is simply to choose among the bids for power by political elites and to accept leadership

Participatory Democracy

What makes for good leaders also makes for good citizens–active participation in ruling and being ruled and also in public will and opinion formation

Indigenous/Traditional Democracy

Practiced without theory (no written laws)

Pragmatic (Problem-oriented); Participatory; Representative; Clear sense of common good

Western Derived Democracy

Elections and a whole gamut of coded laws and political institutions

Three main concerns in building an identity

1. Instrumental

   1. Citizens and officials act in accordance with rules and identities

2. Moral

   1. Values and Beliefs

3. Transformative

   1. Self-reflection and Redefinition of individuals, institutions, and communities

Power

The production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their own circumstances and fate.

Power as INTERACTION

Reading: Social relations are made up of actions from pre-constituted social actors towards one another

• Power as an attribute that one can use as a resource to shape the actions and conditions of others

Class Discussion: Who the actors and how they exert influence at that point in time

• Immediate power dynamics

• Influence through resources, positions, and rules

Power as CONSTITUTION

Reading: Power is facilitated through social relations that analytically precede the social or subject positions of actors

• Social beings with respective capacities and interests

Class Discussion: Why actors want to do the things they want to do in the first place? (How these are already formed/shaped before interaction)

• Indirect: Rules + Practices over time and space

Power Over (Interaction) vs Power To (Constitution)

Power Over (Interaction)

• Control OVER others

• Effects of Power: Can be seen through the action of the recipient

Power To (Constitution)

• Social relationships define who the actors are, and what capacities and practices they can do

• Rooted in social relations of constitution

• Effect of Power: Present in the identities of occupants of social positions

  • Leader/Weak = This will make someone act according to the title + put within the box of expectations it entails

  • Shaping how people see themselves and what they can do

Specificity (Proximity) of Social Relations of Power

1. Direct

   1. Immediate + Tangible Causal Connection (between subject + object/between 2 subjects)

   2. Mechanistic, flush with contact, logically necessary

   3. Manifests through the immediate and specific relationship of one actor to another (spatial, physical, social, temporal proximity)

      1. Usage of gun

2. Indirect (Socially Diffuse)

   1. Power is present even if connections are detached and mediated/have a physical, temporal, and social distance

   2. Manifests through rules and practices that shape actor’s behavior over time and space

      1. Formal Institutions

      2. [Informal Institutions] Rules that were written decades ago can still influence our behavior; they may not be here anymore but they can still constrain our behavior harder to trace the source of power

   3. Works in subtle, indirect, and long-term ways through knowledge systems and social norms

      1. Gender, race, nationality = broad/diffuse influences shape who people become in modern society

Compulsory Power

Reading

• Interaction + Direct

• Max Weber: Probability that one actor within the social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability exists”

• Robert Dahl: The ability of A to get B to do what B otherwise would not do

• Three Features of Compulsory Power

  • Intentionality (Actor A)

    • A > B to alter actions in a particular direction

  • Conflict of Desires

    • B = compelled to alter their behavior

    • A and B have different outcomes; B loses

  • Possession of Material and Ideational Resources

    • A is successful because they have material and ideational resources (material - money/technology; ideational - knowledge/influence)

• Doesn’t always rely on intentionality

  • A’s actions controls B’s circumstances = CP

• Power still exists even when those who dominate are not conscious of how their actions are producing unintended effects

  • Victims of “Collateral Damage”

• EYES OF THE RECIPIENT

• Important form power in international politics and global governance

  • a state is using material resources to advance themselves, pushing forward their interests in opposition to another’s.

  • Other examples: Multinational Corporations; International Organizations

• Symbolic and Normative Resources

Class Discussion

• Examples: Vote Buying; Gun over You; PTA meeting

Institutional Power

Readings

• Interaction + Indirect

  • Lock in power and limit change

  • What is fair and whose interest matter

• Formal + Informal Institutions mediate and act as middlemen between A and B

  • A can influence what B can/cannot do through rules, procedures, systems in institutions

  • They can perform actions that can either advantage or disadvantage individuals

• Neoliberal Institutional Approaches [Power Imbalances]

  • “Pareto-superior” → a situation where an exchange can be made that benefits at least one person without harming anyone else

• Formal and Informal Institutions Scope

  • Agenda-Setting Power = who controls the agenda?

  • Dependence and Limited Choices

  • Market Forces

  • Power through Interdependence

Class Discussion

• Examples: Duterte’s words is law; EJEEP in RBR; Arrangement in Classroom/Syllabus: Coding Schemes

Structural Power

Reading

• Direct + Constitution

• Constitutive, internal relations of structural positions

• Structure as an internal relation

  • Structural Position A exists only by virtue of its relation to structural Position B

  • Examples: Master-Slave; Capital-Labor

• Shapes the fates and conditions of existence of actors in 2 ways

  • Do not generate equal social privileges

  • Social structure not only constitutes actors and their capacities; it also shapes their understanding and subjective interests

    • Can work to constrain some actors from recognizing their own domination

Onsite Discussions

• Unequal distribution of power crystallized within those institutions begin to internally shape people's internal conception of their own possibilities for action and identities — what they can do and who they can be.

• Enduring Institutions = Unquestioned Structures/Order of things

• Is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances shaping their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things?”

• Ability to make one think that they want to do what you want them to do

• Other group is disempowered

• Multiple norms coming together to benefit one over the other

• Examples: Dress Code; Patriarchal Structures; Capital-Labor Arrangements; Gender Inequalities

Productive Power

Reading

• Constitution of all social subjects with various social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general social scope

• Looks beyond structures

• Discourse: Social processes and the systems of knowledge through which meaning is produced, fixed, lived, experienced, and transformed

  • Sites of social relations of power, because they situate

    ordinary practices of life and define the social fields of action that are

    imaginable and possible

• How the other is defined and how that definition is associated with the practices + policies that are possible, imaginable, permissible, and desirable

• Example: Civilized, Rogue, European, Unstable, Western

Onsite Discussions

• Pervades all social relations

• How structural categories are formed/understood

  • Historicity of Categories

• Labels we wear and how it shapes our interactions with people

  • Power has already exerted effects in us (WHO exerted that power)

• Power lies at the bottom of all our social practices

• Humans are not only power’s intended targets, but also it’s effects

  • Who we are, at this very moment, our ideas, our actions, our interests, our understanding of ourselves, is power in action and effect.

  • Who you are at a certain pause already sets a limit and defines yourself and your capacity and potential action in relation to others

• We are not passive recipients

Norms

Standards of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity

Social norms take the form of “Good people do (or not do) X in situations A, B, C… because

Types of Norms [R. C. E/P]

1. Regulative: order and constrain behavior

2. Constitutive: forms your identity (create interest, actors, actions)

3. Evaluative/Prescriptive: proper and appropriate (moral assessment/may result in praise/stigma)

Institutions

Aggregation or collection of rules/practices defining appropriate behavior for specific groups of actors in specific situations

Behavioral rules are structured together and interrelate

Reinforced by a lot of norms

Levels of Aggregation

Domestic to International; Norms at different levels are increasingly interconnected

International Norms began as Domestic Norms

Domestic conversations can affect international

Norms that matter/reach internalization are due to these three potential reasons

1. Legitimation

2. Prominence

   1. State recognizes the effectiveness of key norms in other countries, then they are most likely to support the cascade of norms in their own country

3. Intrinsic Characteristics of the Norm

   1. Norms that are clear and specific and have been around for a while + survived numerous challenges

   2. Capitalism; Liberalism; Legal equality of opportunity resonate with basic ideas of human dignity = Powerful

   3. Universalistic Claims + Applications = more influential

      1. Example: Universal rejection of Slavery

   4. Principles are central to world culture:

      1. Universalism

      2. Individualism

      3. Voluntaristic Authority

      4. Rational Progress

      5. World Citizenship

STAGE 1: Norm Emergence

• Definitions:

  • Attempt to convince a mass of states (norm leaders) to embrace new norms 

  • Products of Human Agency

  • Follow from strong ideas of what is good and appropriate; Change society into vision/idea

• Norm Entrepreneurs

  • Frame issue in a way that resonates with people + calls for urgent change

  • GOAL: Message must capture the imagination of wider public

  • Motives:

    • Empathy = participate in other’s feelings

    • Altruism = take action to benefit another

    • Ideational Commitment = ideas and values in the norms

• Norm Landscape

  • Norm Contestation = Saturation of Norms

    • Entrepreneurs push for change in a landscape where there are already existing rules and other actors pushing/vying for change

• Organizational Platforms

  • Entrepreneurs act on these from which they amplify the effects of their call for change

  • Functional capacities, org structure, decision making processes contain implicit biases that affect how norms are deployed

STAGE 2: Tipping Point

• Tipping Point = Threshold [T is to T]

• Norm entrepreneurs persuaded a critical mass of states to become norm leaders and adopt the new norms

  • Key actors support your cause

• Rarely occurs before 1/3 of total states in the system adopt the norm

• This happens when:

  (1) Substantial number of countries start to support a way to address an issue

  (2) When specific countries popularly known to have a history of opposition to some emerging norm/s or are the most implicated in the functioning of a norm suddenly agree with them, most countries who remain undecided choose to support the emerging norm

STAGE 3: Norm Cascade

• Key actors at the international level: States/International Organizations/Advocacy Networks

• More countries begin to adopt new norms more rapidly even without domestic pressure for such change

• Socialization

  • Norm leaders persuade others to adhere

  • Induce norm breakers to become norm followers through active processes (debates, protests, contestations)

  • Emulation (of heroes); Praise (Behavior that conforms to group norms); Ridicule (Deviation)

• Not to challenge the ‘‘truth’ of something, but to challenge whether it is good, appropriate, and deserving of praise

• Relies on emotions and changing the values of people

  • Things they already value

• GOAL: Make them see that they want it because it’s good

Conformity

• Goal of Socialization

• Countries, organizations, and networks hope that all their preferred norms reach a level of familiarity in the international community that everyone just conforms to the norms.

• By conforming to the actions of those around us, we fulfill a psychological need to be part of a group

Socialization

• Norm leaders persuade others to adhere

• Induce norm breakers to become norm followers through active processes (debates, protests, contestations)

• Emulation (of heroes); Praise (Behavior that conforms to group norms); Ridicule (Deviation)

Norm Landscape

• • Norm Contestation = Saturation of Norms

    • Entrepreneurs push for change in a landscape where there are already existing rules and other actors pushing/vying for change

Organizational Platforms

• Entrepreneurs act on these from which they amplify the effects of their call for change

• Functional capacities, org structure, decision making processes contain implicit biases that affect how norms are deployed

STAGE 4: Norm Internalization

• Taken-for-granted quality + No longer a matter of broad debate + No longer questioned + Automatic

• Powerful and Ambivalent

  • Powerful: Norm is not questioned

  • Ambivalent: No longer critically examined by mainstream

• Professions

  • Powerful + Pervasive agents working to internalize norms among their members

  • Most professions come with their own set of normative standards: physicians value life, academics value intellectual freedom, etc. 

Conventional Approach to Politics

• State-centric (state, government, policies)

  • Political beings as those who hold elective office or those who hold some sway in matters concerning purely public matters

• Limited in both physical and abstract spaces

  • Politics only happen in specific moments (election/dialogues) when the conditions are right

• The state (and its institutions) and its exercise of its authority to make decisions for society as a whole

  • Actions and decisions that affect society as a whole

• People Congregate = Power is there!

• Politics as optional

2 Types of Public Behavior

1. Activities authorized by the state

   1. Legal Steps that Individuals/Organizations take to influence the government in making and implementing policy (Elections)

2. Activities that alarm/threaten the state

   1. Organized protests, illegal organizations challenging the government and its officials, rebellion, revolution

Building Blocks of Country’s politics

• Alliances and Factions

• Holding together these factions and alliances are kinship, personal ties, exchanges of goods and services, and political machines

Everyday Politics

• Spontaneous and Complex

  • Occurs even outside predetermined spaces for engagement and governing

• Issues of many sectors of a society rather than certain types of people (politics, government officials)

• Understanding the norms and rules to authority over, production of, and allocation of goods, services and other important resources

• Politics consists of the debates, conflicts, decisions, and co-operation among individuals, groups, and organizations regarding the control, allocation, and use of resources and the values and ideas underlying those activities

• Resources: Material and Nonmaterial

The Content of Everyday Politics

• Central dynamic: People trying to make claims on each other and on a range of resources according to their relationships to persons superordinate or subordinate to themselves and in terms of their interests and values

• People are acutely aware of considerable inequalities and of where everyone is positioned

• Both STATUS and CLASS

  • Status - standard of living

  • Class - roles in production

Status

Standard of Living

Range from varying graduations of poor to adequate standard of living

Status: Lita Zamora is poorer and Victor is more well-off

Class

Roles in production

Peasants/Capitalist/Workers

Broad Patterns of Interaction among subordinate and superordinate people

1. Networks that join them

2. Antagonisms between them

Oikos (Home)

Not part of the public as belonging to the private realm of the household

Economics

Polis

Greek for City

Politics came from this word

Institutions

• Rules, Policies, Norms that have passed the test of time

• Rules of the game which shape human behavior in economic, social, and political life

• Durable social rules and procedures, formal and informal, which structure (but do not determine) the social, economic, and political relations and interactions of those affected by them

Formal Institution

Formal institutions are normally understood to be (written) laws, regulations, legal agreements, statutes, contracts and constitutions—the so-called ‘parchment institutions’ which are enforced by third parties.

Informal Institution

• (Unsually un-written) norms, customary practices, standard operating procedures, routines, conventions and traditions which are often deeply embedded in culture and its associated ideology.

  • Manifestations of ideology and culture that have passed the test of time 

Hybrid Institutional Arrangements

• Some formal institutions have strong foundations that remain unwritten, and thus are usually considered informal.

• British Constitution: 900-year old system of written rules, unwritten precedents, and collectively-held principles

Deep Institution

• Slow Moving

• Cultural Institutions that change slowly

Superficial Institution

• Fast-moving

• Formal political institutions may change quickly (i.e., constitutional reform or decentralization; presidential, parliamentary, federal and unitary systems)

Economic Institution

Definition, acquisition, distribution, and regulation of economic goods, such as property, and services

Formal Economic Institutions

• Laws and policies that govern this portfolio of policy issues.

• Form more or less dense network that can promote/frustrate economic activity

• Define and protect property rights, determine the ease or difficulty and length of time it takes to start a business, facilitate exchange and promote and regulate organized coordination and competition.

Informal Economic Instittutions

• Informal elements would include gender norms that pertain to rights of property ownership, class systems about access to economic goods, etc.

• Conventions, norms and traditions which might govern access to opportunities (or credit) as between genders or social groups, expectations on who should do this or wear this which embody the rules which facilitate cooperation between some groups while excluding others.

Political Institutions

They are about how power is obtained, used, controlled, and by whom.

Formal Political Institutions

• Forms of Government, Written Constitutions, Electoral System

• Formal rules, laws, and constitutions which prescribe how official political power is sought, won, distributed, and controlled at national and sub-national levels

Informal Political Institutions

• Cultures of Corruption, Familial, Patron-Client Ties

• Support the formal ones as ‘complementary’ institutions, but often also undermine, compromise, or subvert them

Social Institutions

• Govern and shape the nature and form of relationships and behaviors that animate our cultures and societies

• Most cultural and social institutions are informal in the sense conveyed above and they shape the areas of largely private and communal behaviours, relations and interactions between individuals and amongst many social groups, including those defined by age and gender.

Formal Elements of Social Institution

• Governments in their capacity to regulate social relationships/behavior (marriage laws)

Informal elements of Social Institutions

• Primacy placed on family ties, gender roles, and religious beliefs.

Organizations

• Formally or informally co-ordinated vehicles for the consolidated interests of people and the promotion/protection of a mix of individual and shared interests and ideas. 

• Organizations are the group and collectives that participate these spheres.

Formal Organizations

Companies, trades union, political movement or parties, churches, news media, banks and businesses, public bureaucracies and ministries, security services, professional and business associations

Informal Organizations

• No public profile; no formal constitution; operate behind the scenes; hidden Ties 

  • Mafia, Secret Societies, Criminal gangs, Cabals, Political factors/cliques within parties and organizations

Institutional Interaction

• Social, political and economic institutions overlap and affect each other—and they seldom relate to isolated spheres of human action and interaction. 

• Change in one institutional sphere will impact on other institutional  spheres. When people change the way they use resources, they change their relations with each other in a number of institutional spheres.

• Interactions between interests, ideas and institutions are central to developmental outcomes.

Institutional Stasis

• Root of the divergent patterns of economic growth and poverty reduction in low income societies and why some countries exhibit poor economic performance over time 

Institutional Persistence

• Social and cultural institutions that underpin the functioning of economic institutions may be slow or resistant to change

• Institutions may also persist if the existing institutional arrangements favour the rich and the powerful in the society, who have no real interest in institutional change that may not benefit them

Institutional Change

• not a functional solution which enables individuals or groups to capture the gains of co-operation (though they may indeed have that effect, whether intended or not)

• More likely to be the outcome of power struggles between groups and interests to shape rules which benefit them most

Institutional Failure

• Existence or establishment of formal institutions is itself no guarantee of their efficacy.

• While formal institutions do matter, they require effective implementation and enforcement if they are to work effectively for poverty reduction, political stability or inclusive social development

• Institutions are ‘empty boxes’ without organized human agency that makes them work, or undermines or compromises their purposes

Sitio San Roque

Thriving urban poor community that sits on public land owned by National Housing Authority

National Housing Authority —> Ayala Land Inc

Communities Involved (Important lang ig…)

• Community Health Response Team (CHRT)

Initiatives

• Kusinang Bayan

• Community-responsive health systems

• Context-specific, community-based learning continuity plan

Save San Roque Alliance

The Sitio San Roque Community united during the COVID-19 crisis to create grassroots survival initiatives when government support fell short. This included establishing 27 community kitchens serving 5,000 residents daily a community health response team, and a local education program.

Challenges experienced by Save San Roque

Challenges

• Sustaining efforts due to fatigue from community

• No established support from the government

Contributors to the Problem

• Lack of government support and aid (Neoliberal urban development policies; DOH lacked functioning public health systems; DepEd’s distance learning)

• Constant State Policing (Volunteers were scared)

Bombay

• Call for an Urban development that prioritizes equity and human dignity over economic growth

• Lack of basic infrastructure and needs (inadequate toilets, water shortage, and poor governance)

• Communities affected by central issue/problem: slum dwellers, women, commuters

• Contributors to the problem: Bombay’s government; Middle-class residents (10 pm curfew)

Doing More w Less: COVID-19 relief by community networks

• Challenges: Congestion of health/pandemic-related infrastructures; Limited budget; Volatile Progression of COVID-19 cases

• PH, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia

• Challenges:

The Rights of Nature

• Recognize indigenous communities

• Natural communities and ecosystems possess fundamental and legal rights to exist and flourish

• Allows us to re-conceptualize who we are

• Changes in the legal systems are reflection of social changes

Pachamama

• The idea of “Mother Earth” in indigenous andean cultures 

  • There is no distinction between human and non-human nature

  • Our reality according to indigenous cultures 

1994 Survey on Contemporary Philippine Values

• Certain perceptions of citizenship and democracy are more common than others

Democracy

• process, fundamentally a way of life, a means of relating with other individuals, groups and the state, and a collective process of decision-making in order to attain political liberty, social justice and equity

Pareto-Superior

Situation where an exchange can be made that benefits at least one person without harming anyone else

Coercion

Institutions set rules and policies that limit what actors can do

Hegemony

The system defines what is “real” and “possible,” so people accept their roles without realizing they’re being controlled