After reading Frances Fox Piven chapter of The Nature of Disruptive Power. The author describes power as an ability for those who are superior either physically or materially to control or dominate those that do not have much of an advantage. There was one aspect that I found to be important in this chapter which was the fact that disruptive power can provide a massive impact for those at the bottom of the hierarchical social pyramid. Piven defines disruptive power which many individuals have, but they do not realize their real power until some collective action is being directly taken or shown. The term disruptive power is explicitly denoting the leverage or even “potential power” that the lowest within the socioeconomic hierarchy have. With
…show more content…
This author mentions in the beginning that to truly understand the term privilege you must be willing to learn the basic foundation of the word (Ferguson 2014). Also, that thinking that the word privilege cannot be learned as a single lesson, but as a field of study, which means that we must continue reading, learning, and thinking critically. When looking at this term in a social-organizing setting, we see the word “privilege” refer to the set advantages that a group is favored by society, just by being within that group. Think of this term as bring born, members of the same privilege group all receive an invisible jetpack. They get so used to this jetpack they forget they even have it at all, even though it has helped them get through their daily obstacles. For everyone not in this privileged group, it is apparent they have the jetpack. The only thing is that if you already have the pack on, you will never notice you have it on unless you start looking for it. This is what the term privilege truly means which is to say the benefits or advantages that someone receives by being a part of that group. The critical aspect of privilege is the culture that surrounds it. For example, living in America a white person is privileged because they are part of the ethnic majority. But if …show more content…
The term he used in this article called “power-over” which requires the domination or even the oppression of others, while the other type of relationship talked about is the “power-with” which looks at bringing collective energy with the result being able to act together (Kuyek 2011). A clear understanding in our modern-day society of who has the most “power-over” influence is corporations within western capitalism society because this term “power-over” depends on the control of capital, resources, and force that all play a significant influence on the government’s agenda due to their corporate organizational capabilities. Power-over can also be seen in non-monetary form as well through either physical or psychological force of dominance in many forms which can include spousal abuse, genocides, wars, racism, gangs, and even schoolyard power struggles (Kuyek 2011). With our economic system in Canada, we can see the social welfare system has become a punitive and complex system that is hard to understand truly. Power everywhere is often synonymous with money. Meaning that much of the things that we do in society over-values money which restricts us from callusing other things in life like hobbies, human interactions, and even the environment around
This author mentions in the beginning that to truly understand the term privilege you must be willing to learn the basic foundation of the word (Ferguson 2014). Also, that thinking that the word privilege cannot be learned as a single lesson, but as a field of study, which means that we must continue reading, learning, and thinking critically. When looking at this term in a social-organizing setting, we see the word “privilege” refer to the set advantages that a group is favored by society, just by being within that group. Think of this term as bring born, members of the same privilege group all receive an invisible jetpack. They get so used to this jetpack they forget they even have it at all, even though it has helped them get through their daily obstacles. For everyone not in this privileged group, it is apparent they have the jetpack. The only thing is that if you already have the pack on, you will never notice you have it on unless you start looking for it. This is what the term privilege truly means which is to say the benefits or advantages that someone receives by being a part of that group. The critical aspect of privilege is the culture that surrounds it. For example, living in America a white person is privileged because they are part of the ethnic majority. But if …show more content…
The term he used in this article called “power-over” which requires the domination or even the oppression of others, while the other type of relationship talked about is the “power-with” which looks at bringing collective energy with the result being able to act together (Kuyek 2011). A clear understanding in our modern-day society of who has the most “power-over” influence is corporations within western capitalism society because this term “power-over” depends on the control of capital, resources, and force that all play a significant influence on the government’s agenda due to their corporate organizational capabilities. Power-over can also be seen in non-monetary form as well through either physical or psychological force of dominance in many forms which can include spousal abuse, genocides, wars, racism, gangs, and even schoolyard power struggles (Kuyek 2011). With our economic system in Canada, we can see the social welfare system has become a punitive and complex system that is hard to understand truly. Power everywhere is often synonymous with money. Meaning that much of the things that we do in society over-values money which restricts us from callusing other things in life like hobbies, human interactions, and even the environment around