FINAL

AnSo 300: MODERN THEORIES OF CULTURE & SOCIETY 

Winter 2026 Raley-Karlin: Final prompt


[REASONS FOR THIS PROJECT] This prompt asks you to assume a position of authority regarding the assigned texts in this class. That is, it invites you to go beyond summarizing the readings and develop your own interpretation of them. It then asks you to explain your interpretations to an outside reader and illustrate the reasoning behind them. This is a skill that will benefit you in any endeavor in which you need to process, explain, and defend your interpretation of an event or idea. Taking an individual stance regarding shared information and then communicating why you hold this stance is a skill desired in almost every contemporary profession and workplace. 


[FORMAT] We have read 21 original theoretical texts by 17 social theorists this term. In your final work for this class, I would like to center your own voices: less academic language and more natural and unfussy explanations in your own words. Please respond to one of the prompts below, containing written text (quotes from the texts, anchoring points, a bibliography at the end) or images.


Prompt: What is the relationship between power and knowledge in society? How does each author define or understand power? What kind of knowledge does each theorist focus on? What is the route or manner by which power influences knowledge? Can knowledge be used to resist or refashion power relations? How? Give a real-world example (one that is not discussed in the author’s text) that shows the theorist’s understanding of the relationship between power and knowledge in action. Consider using examples from your own life! In your recorded video, talk through your answers to these questions for each author and provide relevant quotes from the text as slides with page numbers and citations to support your assertions. You are welcome to supplement your spoken explanations with other slides containing images or text. 


[GRADING] You will be assigned a grade on your response based on the following criteria: 

  • How clearly you explained, in your own words, each theorist’s concept

  • The degree to which you used natural, everyday speech to make your points

  • How closely you connected the quotes you chose from the texts to your explanation

  • How thoroughly you answered the prompt you selected

  • How persuasively you presented the connection between reality and ideas for each theorist (Prompt 1 only)

  • How persuasively you used each theorist’s concept(s) to explain specific aspects of the media you chose (Prompts 2 and 3 only)


[CITATIONS] Make sure to cite authors’ work each time you paraphrase, summarize, refer to, or directly quote their work or ideas. In a video, this means showing a slide while you are talking with the direct quote, citation, and page number. Though sociology uses ASA style  for citations, you are welcome to use another citation style if you are more comfortable with it. Please include a Works Cited slide at the end of your presentation.


How these eight theorists form a coherent narrative

  • Marx → Durkheim: from material structures to collective meaning.

  • Durkheim → Collins: from shared meaning to contested knowledge and standpoint.

  • Collins → Anzaldúa: from standpoint epistemology to borderlands consciousness.

  • Anzaldúa → Foucault: from identity formation to disciplinary power shaping bodies.

  • Foucault → Mead: from external discipline to internalized norms and the social self.

  • Mead → Gilman: from the social self to gendered socialization and economic dependence.

  • Gilman → Fanon: from gendered structures to racialized embodiment and colonial power.

This gives you a presentation that moves logically from macro-structures → meaning → knowledge → identity → power → self → gender → race, with each theorist building on the previous one.

FINAL on slides:

Marx

The main focus is on how capitalism systems divide individuals from their labor, goods, and species and mold human experience.
Power: Structural dominance and capitalist control of production.
Knowledge: Understanding one's work, species, and exploitation.
Power → Knowledge: Workers are alienated from and unable to comprehend their own labor under capitalism.
Class awareness is knowledge as resistance.
For instance, gig economy workers are aware that algorithmic management conceals the actual worth of their job.

Durkheim


Focus: how common moral frameworks and meanings are created through social living.
Why this decision: Durkheim's symbolic/collective structures neatly replace Marx's material structures.
Power: Social facts; collective moral authority.
Knowledge: Collective representations, customs, and shared symbols.
Power → Knowledge: People's understanding of the universe is shaped by the categories that society creates.
Knowledge as resistance: Changing moral limits by reinterpreting social symbols.
As an illustration, online groups are developing new customs (like fandom areas) that alter moral standards and a sense of belonging.

Collins

Focus: the politics of who gets to know and speak; knowledge generation from underrepresented perspectives.
Why this decision: By moving from communal meaning to disputed epistemologies and power, it expands on Durkheim's ideas.
Power: The ability to decide who is permitted to generate valid knowledge. information: Firsthand information derived from the experiences of Black women. Power → Knowledge: What constitutes "objective" knowledge is determined by dominant groups. Validating lived experience as epistemic authority is known as knowledge as resistance. Black maternal health activists, for instance, use personal experience to confront medical racism.

Anzaldúa

Focus: new epistemologies, resistance, and hybrid identities in borders.
Why this decision: By examining how identity and knowledge arise in environments of political and cultural conflict, it expands on Collins' work.
Power: Political, linguistic, and cultural barriers that control identity. Knowledge: Embodied knowledge; hybrid, borderlands awareness. Power → Knowledge: Border regimes stifle many forms of knowledge and produce fractured identities. Embracing hybridity to develop new epistemologies is knowledge as resistance. As an illustration, consider how immigrant children navigate multilingual environments and create new cultural forms on the internet.

Foucault

The creation of submissive bodies, surveillance, and discipline are the main topics.
Why this decision: The mechanisms of power that mold bodies and behavior take precedence over identity and epistemology.
Power: monitoring, normalization, and disciplinary authority. Knowledge: Conversations that specify what is typical, healthy, illegal, etc. Power → Knowledge: Organizations create knowledge that influences people's bodies and actions. Knowledge as resistance: Rejecting compliance and revealing the construction of norms. For instance, schools can use behavior-tracking applications to generate data-driven student "profiles."

Mead

Focus: how social contact and internalized standards shape the self.
Why this decision: In keeping with Foucault, it illustrates how social institutions and power are internalized during the self-formation process.
Power is the internalization of social norms through contact.
Knowledge: Understanding oneself and one's place in society.
Power → Knowledge: People learn how to behave and think from the "generalized other."
Reworking the roles we absorb is knowledge as resistance.
For instance, young people who identify as queer use internet platforms to create identities that defy social conventions.

Gilman

Focus: the social creation of gender roles, gendered work, and economic reliance.
Why this decision: It links structural inequality and the gendered division of work to Mead's socially constructed self.
Power: Gendered division of work and economic reliance. Knowledge: Gender roles are socially formed. Power → Knowledge: Women are taught to view dependency as normal by economic arrangements. Knowledge as resistance: Demanding economic sovereignty and acknowledging gender as a construct. Examples include discussions over the "mental load" and unpaid domestic work.

Fanon

The lived experience of being turned into an object, colonial brutality, and racialization are the main topics of discussion.
Why this decision: By demonstrating how institutions, power, and identity lead to racist embodiment and resistance, it brings the arc to a close.
Power: Objectification and colonial racialization. Knowledge: Phenomenology of the body; lived experience of racialization. Power → Knowledge: Black subjects' perceptions of themselves and how they are perceived are shaped by racial categories. Reclaiming subjectivity and revolutionary consciousness are examples of knowledge as resistance. For instance, racial profiling affects how Black people move through public areas.

FINAL Not on slides:

Marx

Marx contends that because the goods they produce are owned and controlled by a third party, workers under capitalism lose touch with their humanity. Because capitalists dominate production, they have the power to alter workers' consciousness. According to Marx, labor "does not belong to him, but to another" and the worker "becomes poorer the more wealth he produces." These lines demonstrate how economic power distorts knowledge: because the system distances workers from their job, they fail to see their own creative potential. The path to opposing authority is class consciousness—realizing this alienation.

Durkheim

According to Durkheim, people's categories and interpretations of the universe come from society itself. Power manifests as the collective's moral authority, which forms knowledge through rituals and common symbols. His statement that "the idea of society is the soul of religion" demonstrates how religious knowledge is essentially society's self-reflection. People accept communal representations as truth because they are "the result of an immense cooperation." Reinterpreting these symbols to change moral limits is the source of resistance.

Collins

Collins contends that power functions by establishing the legitimacy of knowledge. The lived experiences of Black women provide a type of knowledge that is frequently disregarded by dominating institutions. Black feminist thinking, according to her, "challenges the basic power relations of society" by maintaining that lived experience is a legitimate source of truth. Marginalized perspectives become instruments of resistance because dominant groups define "objective" knowledge. Knowledge is not derived from aloof objectivity but rather from conversation, community, and lived experience.

Anzaldúa

The borderlands, according to Anzaldúa, are places where identities intersect, resulting in both oppression and new kinds of knowledge. Power operates through political, linguistic, and cultural barriers that determine who is allowed. "The border is a wound where the Third World grates against the first," she argues, illustrating how violent structures define identity. However, she also maintains that living in contradiction leads to a "new mestiza consciousness." By rejecting purity, binary thinking, and forced classifications, this hybrid mode of knowing challenges authority.

Foucault

Foucault demonstrates how discipline, monitoring, and normalization—rather than dramatic punishment—are the ways in which contemporary authority operates. In order to influence behavior, institutions provide information about bodies, including what is normal, healthy, and illegal. According to him, discipline "produces subjected and practiced bodies, 'docile' bodies," demonstrating how authority shapes the very people it controls. Knowledge is a weapon of control and is never neutral. The first step in resistance is to show how these standards are artificial rather than organic.

Mead

Mead contends that social interaction—particularly assuming the role of the "generalized other"—forms the self. When we learn to perceive ourselves from other people's perspectives, we internalize rules and expectations that are used by power. He demonstrates how identity is socially constructed by writing that "the self is something which has a development; it is not initially there." This social process leads to self-awareness, including one's duties, responsibilities, and opportunities. Changing the roles and conventions we absorb is a key component of resistance.

Gilman


Gilman contends that gender inequity stems from women's economic reliance on males. The economic system that restricts women to domestic work and then normalizes that restriction is the source of power. "We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food," she says, highlighting the social rather than biological construction of gender roles. Recognizing gender as created becomes a method of resistance since women's self-perceptions are shaped by economic forces.

Fanon


African Americans are racialized by colonial power and become objects of white gaze, according to Fanon. This forced identification shapes knowledge: the Black person is "sealed into that crushing objecthood." He illustrates how racial categories skew self-knowledge by writing, "I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects." Stereotypes, colonial rhetoric, and the white gaze are all ways that power operates. Reclaiming subjectivity and rejecting the identities that colonialism imposed are two ways that resistance manifests.