Abstract
This chapter extends Rom Harré’s positioning theory to a critical topic in conflict analysis, that is, the ways in which governments exert disciplinary controls over the governed. In particular, I examine a menacing kind of governmental power to manipulate vulnerable population groups by distorting their sense of self, generating a feeling of their inferiority and diminishing their social or political standing in the nation. This is the power to humiliate systemically. Such power can be exercised, for example, through certain governmental directives, verdicts, policies, decisions and norms that foster debasement, disgrace or denigration. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the power-positioning interface of such controls. I argue that underlying such governmental power of consciousness-distortion are systems of positioning that state agencies carefully craft and strategically deploy. A case study of the current immigration policies and discursive practices of the United States government is presented. Underpinning the intense polemics over “the immigration problem” in the United States are contested systems of positioning of immigrants and native-born Americans.
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Notes
- 1.
Positioning theory came onto the academic scene with the publication of two volumes: first, Positioning Theory edited by Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhove published in 1999, and second, The Self and Others: Positioning Individuals and Groups in Personal, Political, and Cultural Centers, edited by Rom Harré and Fathali Moghaddam, published in 2003.
- 2.
Despite the impression given by the violence portrayed in his case studies of domination, Foucault insists that governmental power is not necessarily pernicious. He rejects the notion that all power relations are relations of domination. With any power relation, the impacted group can react, resist, or possibly rebel. With any governmental strategy to subordinate a segment of the population comes the possibility of insubordination (Foucault 1982, p. 794).
- 3.
The notion of habitus goes historically at least back to the work of the Ancient Greek philosophers. For Aristotle, “habitus” refers to multiple processes for developing one’s moral habits—either virtuous or vicious. One’s habitus is developed through a long process of acquiring, or failing to acquire, moral qualities. Habitus becomes embedded in the ways in which one thinks, acts, and lives with others, and it is a vital aspect of our life (Aristotle 1941; 1103b, 23–5).
- 4.
Bourdieu writes:
The effect of symbolic domination…is exerted not in the pure logic of knowing consciousness but through the schemes of perception, appreciation, and action that are constitutive of habitus and which, below the level of the decision of consciousness and the controls of the will, set up a cognitive relationship that is profoundly obscure to itself (Bourdieu 2001: 37).
- 5.
Bourdieu writes: “What appears to us today as self-evident, as beneath consciousness and choice, has quite often been the stake of struggles and instituted only as the result of dogged confrontations between dominant and dominated groups” (Bourdieu 1998: 56).
- 6.
His discussion of this tweet can be seen online here: https://thinkprogress.org/steve-king-stands-by-racist-claims-59457bf800ba/.
- 7.
NumbersUSA. “Border Surge Tele-Town Hall”. Filmed (July 2014). YouTube video. Posted (July 2014)). https://youtu.be/vKaqPSnWqHA.
- 8.
According to ICE reports, 240, 255 aliens were removed by ICE operations in 2016 (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 2016).
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Rothbart, D. (2019). Governmental Power and Positioning of Marginalized People. In: Christensen, B. (eds) The Second Cognitive Revolution. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26680-6_10
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