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nissakii · 3 years

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The Selection Lore: Cast System

Blessed be Illéa, the wondrous country that emerged from the ashes of its history and brought its citizens peace and most importantly: the selection.

Who will the prince choose, from the assortment of beautiful women laid before him, and is there something we’re missing in the shimmering palace with its dances and luxuries?

Today, we will look at the lore of the novels and discuss a vital part that lurks in the background but has utmost significance for many of the characters.

The cast system.

Before we begin, here is a premise on the plot for the ones who haven’t read the book yet! I do urge you guys to read it for yourself because it is a story that has a lot of interesting elements which will be discussed in this blogpost. This was your mild spoiler warning!

The pentalogy “The Selection” was published by Kierra Cass in april 2012 and has had its last publication (except for the side stories) with “The Crown” in 2016. The story begins with the idealistic young woman America who lives with her family in a dire financial situation until she gets the opportunity to get ‘selected’ for the casting that will determine the young prince Maxons’ new wife.

The plot alone established a lot of interesting themes of dystopian writing that were overlooked, and with the world that was built by Cass we find many details that we can look into more thoroughly.

What happens when your fate lies in the hands of a system that you can’t change?

As we narrow down our lense now, let us begin with the first question.

What is a caste system?

Nowadays, castes do not really exist anymore. But to make a distinctive analysis of the caste system in this book, we need to first find out what a caste is and what such a system entails.

Castes are a form of social categorization, meaning that a certain group of people, often the population of a country, will be split into groups that are set by certain criteria. These criteria can be determined by birth, race, occupation or even regional distinction, but there are many more ways to divide a society.

If we look at an often used example, we will find the caste system of India that has been historically built and left its traces until today. This only goes to show that such a system, even after being abolished, is hard to erase out of people's minds.

Why is that so?

A caste is something that works as a label for every person. Since no perfect definition for castes exists, because the system can change depending on the criteria it is built upon, we are going to stay with the system that is shown in the selection and explain further through that example.

In the case of Cass’ novel, a caste is something you are born with. Castes are a label that is ingrained in people’s mind and inherently structures not only their identities but also their livelihood, job chances and socio-economic footing.

Everything you are as a person will have some sort of tie to your caste in Illéa. Even if you do not wish to think of it, it will follow you wherever you go as it is not only a mental note in people's head but a set categorization that is supported and mandated by the government. It is not a choice, but a stamp that one can’t get rid of.

It tells every person where they belong, in what tier of the hierarchy they fall into, and which dreams they can afford to have.

In the Selection, your caste is a number which determines how you will live.

How does it work?

Illéa, the country in which Selection plays, has split its citizens into a caste system ranging from number 1 to 8 with One being the highest and Eight the lowest in the societal hierarchy.

Ones: The highest of the high, would in this instance be the entirety of the royal family and all clerics. Which renders Illéa not only an absolute monarchy but it also believes priests to be on the same level as the royals. If the royal regent gives a religious constitution the highest rank, it is most likely to ‘swear in’ regents by religious standards or to give them the mark of "holiness".

Twos: This caste is predominantly made out of very popular individuals that cater mostly to the entertainment of the rest of the country. Celebrities such as models, singers, dancers but also all of the enlisted military and public service. Although we are standing one caste under the royal family, the value of entertainment is very high and these people are shown to have a very luxurious lifestyle.

Threes: Threes encompass all academically driven employment. Focusing on jobs that have high educational value and also further scientific and technological advancement such as engineers, nurses, doctors, teachers, scientists and professors. This also goes for the “white collar” businessmen who have high stakes jobs such as CEOs. Even writers and publishers are part of this category.

Fours: As we go further down the ladder of the hierarchy with the Fours we are at the middle of the system. They represent the stability that we would call "middle class" in our society and Fours are the caste with the most diverse employment capabilities. Farmers, office and industrial workers, headchefs, property owners and lawyers for example are a Fours' element. With these jobs having not many things in common but mostly being average paying jobs they exemplify the worker class.

Fives: America Singer is a Five, and her name already says alot about her stand in the world. Fives exist to entertain and create art. They can be musicians like singers or paint and sculpt, but what distincts them from Twos is their image - Fives are supposed to stay hidden and take on the role of fading into the background. Their job is also very unstable and can depend on seasons, which makes most Fives economically challenged.

Sixes: The caste number turns from blessing to curse as we go down, and a Sixes’ role is to 'receive work'. In whatever department they work in, they are treated as lower and lesser than others, assuming they will work silently and obediently. A Six can range from a secretary to service personnel in the palace. Being a Six is hard, it requires resilience and often enough turning down a job is seen as impossible. More often than not, from this caste onwards getting hungry and staying warm starts to become the biggest problem.

Sevens: Similar to Sixes they are workers, but less refined in the eyes of society and only there to work hard labor. A Seven is invisible, never seen or heard and takes on the jobs that are needed but not wanted. Construction, gardening, plumbing, cleaning and more.

Eights: This caste is the lowest of the low, and by means of the palace deemed the 'untouchables'. Eights are homeless and shunned individuals who have no work and no home, they are often mentally or physically unable to work and therefore deemed Eights, or in worst case scenarios traitors to the royal family. They receive punishments as seemed fit and not wanted anywhere.

From this lineup alone, we can establish that the higher castes are what is valued in Illéa’s society, and the lowest what is regarded as scum on Earth even if needed.

Royalty, Religion and Entertainment are the highest priority of the government, with education and workers right behind them which only leave the disabled and ill behind.

Which only goes to show how different your life can pan out by the means of where you're born or who you marry.

Interestingly enough, since the caste is modulated by the male head of the household, we find a distinction in this system that is worth looking at.

Your caste can in fact change.

If castes aren't a set thing for your entire life, and especially for women can change after marriage or for men if enlisted in the military, or can be by buying the title with fame and money, another question emerges.

What is the significance of 'Illéa’s' castes?

What is it that makes the caste system work then?

Well, if we look at the higher castes who live in lavish houses and have no worry financially, they get distracted and caught up in their own busy lives trying to follow the will of the royal family.

They are blessed when they compare themselves to lower castes and find that blessing when they look at a Six cleaning their home. As much as it might feel unjust and cruel in our eyes, we need to look at it from the lens of the Illéan people. Working according to your caste is normalized, and seen as an honor and service to the royal family. It is a clever tactic to divide the population, as the rivalry and distinction between them distracts from the actual problems that could arise.

Lower castes will have ingrained in their mind what their role entails, but can also harbour negative feelings towards higher castes.

It is the known "divide et impera" also known as "divide and rule" which plots the opposing group against each other by sharing different experiences and blaming each other for their miseries.

This behavior is taught from generation to generation, the low castes will see their parents work hard and have to work for their own families while seeing the higher ups enjoying life, and the higher castes will ignore and despise their counterparts as they are taught to believe they are better than them.

A cycle that continues on and on, as it only fuels the effectiveness of the castes.

But what does that result in at the end of the day?

Castes and Identity

We humans are inherently known for being individuals of high complexity. It's always in our heads because we're always told: everyone's different!

This is true, because each and every person has their own set of expectations, hopes and dreams, different hobbies and lifestyles and for instance very different experiences.

We can share some of these things, which then become shared interests or experiences that make us develop the likelihood of understanding others, but being the exact same person is harder than one might think.

When we look at the people of 'The Selection' though, we find a phenomenon that changes this a little bit.

If the entire country is divided by a label, and your caste also determines where you work and how you're seen in the world, chances are that many more people will come to have similar experiences.

A community will have its shared experiences and lifestyles which will not only provide a sense of belonging and identity, but they also limit individuality.

With less jobs a community can work, and a label to adorn themselves, provided with some exemptions of course, for example all Fives will feel the struggle of artists in their lives. America loves to sing and play instruments, and she would even take that job on if she was a Three. It is part of her identity and she was lucky to find interest in it.

What if one is born a Five but has no interest in art? That person would still need to provide for themselves and their family, but they would have to either learn how to play an instrument or how to paint.

Basically, the limitation gets higher the lower the caste and not just from an economical standpoint. It's a tightly knit rope that goes hand in hand with the question of "who do I want to be" and "how do I survive?"

The caste system not only determines jobs, but also the entire life of a person and how it is valued by society.

When it comes to Identity, what do you think? Is it more restrictive to be told what you can work as? Or do you think there is merit in a guideline?

I hope to find some interesting discussions down below!

Until then, stay sharp!

-Nissa

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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Arming Negativity: Towards the Queerest Attack A Response to “Beyond Negativity: What Comes After Gender Nihilism?”

“We are radicals who have had enough with attempts to salvage gender. We do not believe we can make it work for us. We look at the transmisogyny we have faced in our own lives, the gendered violence that our comrades, both trans and cis have faced, and we realize that the apparatus itself makes such violence inevitable. We have had enough.

“Rather, what comes after Gender Nihilism must be a materialist struggle against patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism which understands and is attentive to the complex interrelations between these structures and which refuses to reduce any one of them to any other.” We are not looking to create a better system, for we are not interested in positive politics at all. All we demand in the present is a relentless attack on gender and the modes of social meaning and intelligibility it creates.”

The essay Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto was an explosive reflection of my own experience with both “gender” and “nihilism”. As a queer who possessed no desire for queer recognition and societal assimilation, the quote above summarized a position of pure negation which I found exciting affinity with.

I wanted to write this essay, not as a critique of Gender Nihilism but as praise, and as a personal response to some of the questions posed in Beyond Negativity: What Comes After Gender Nihilism? In this essay I outline a few quotes from that piece and respond with my own gender nihilist perspective.

“As such we are left with the need for the abolition of gender, the need to push back against reformist projects that simply seek to make an expanded notion of gender. What remains to be created is the establishment of a path forward.”

I think it is important to acknowledge that many individuals craft their own paths of queer negation towards society and its projects of assimilatory reform. For me personally, a path forward means a queer nihilism armed, wild and ferocious against the social standardization of gender and industrial control. This includes but is not limited to an individualized path of destruction which targets the internalized governance and roles that define an assigned gendered identity. The personalization of this governance, which dictates the roles and behaviors of the assigned identity, surrenders the shapeless wildness of individuality to the solitary confinement of politics. Towards the abolition of gender and against reformist projects, my anarchist war does not limit itself to the confines of politics. Instead, it includes a queer nihilist life-experience of becoming ungoverned by gender and any other social constructs intended to subjugate and discourage individual uniqueness. Beyond the limitations of theory, this also includes clandestine attack on the manifestations of society, negating the domestication of law and order.

“Only real, concrete, and organized struggle can move us forward. Mere negation, senseless violence, or embrace of unintelligibility cannot be enough. In short we must move beyond negativity. The project at hand is to adequately account for the violence of gender, the necessity of its abolition, and the strategies for achieving that abolition in material terms. Only then will we have the ability to not only achieve abolition, but to change the world.”

I believe real, concrete, and organized struggle is most powerful when orchestrated at the individual level. Since in daily life, it is the individual who experiences the struggle of survival in this gendered nightmare, no one other than that individual is most qualified to materialize that revolt. Gendered violence is unique to each individual who accumulates a history of struggle against it. Electing identity-based movements or organizations to represent individualized experience often flattens differences found between individuals, erecting a false sense of unity. This often leads to one’s association with an identity determining the legitimacy of one’s experience, rather than the experience being legitimized as individually unique. This point was eloquently summarized by Lena Kafka in Destroy Gender:

“My personal experiences with gendered violence are only taken seriously in light of revealing myself as a trans woman. Our theories should start from the ways we have experienced gender violence in our daily lives, not identity. Our relationships to each other should be based upon our affinities and similarities with each other, rather than based upon the lowest-common-denomintator politics. Daily life is far too complicated to be reduced into two categories.”

From my own individualist perspective, nihilism is so much more than just pessimism, negation and violence; it is the personification of anarchy, the reclaiming of individuality and the embracing of ungovernable uniqueness. Queer negativity is hostility towards socially constructed expectations, those who enforce them, and is subsequently the emancipation of one’s undefinable “self” from gender conformity. This includes the expropriation of violence and the total abandonment of victimhood. Queer nihilism materializes itself as a declaration of war on society. For every possibility of sexual assault there is a blade being sharpened for self-defense. Dangerous spaces are personified, replacing the positive politics of safety. Armed queers don’t just make waves; they are tsunamis against the logic of submission.

“This means recognizing that these things can only be overcome by a communist politics oriented towards the future. Abandon nihilism, abandon hopelessness, demand and build a better world.”

My queerness is an experimentation that never ends. It is the totality of a life lived against the law, insubordinate and wild. It is not a communist politics but a nihilist negation to all systems that attempt to subordinate individuality. It is not the leftist politics of demanding and building a better world but an anarchist insurgency of reclaiming life day to day, and setting fire to its captors. Since gender is embedded in every fabric of this industrial, civilized society, I find no hope in salvaging any part of it- only joy in every second of its calculated demise.

“I think its telling that I am presented as the voice of the gender nihilism, when two of the other largest contributors are indigenous trans women. Their voices matter in this debate more than mine, yet people have completely and consistently centered my voice and perspective. This is harmful.”

Society and those who wish to preserve it require identity politics to categorize people based on socially assigned constructs. Identity politics is where individual experimentation goes to die. Like studying the bricks in a wall rather than venturing beyond the wall itself, identity politics, like all politics promotes the death of imaginative exploration. Politics represent the fixed ideological prescriptions of living, assigned to “the masses” who are treated as if they are incapable of thinking and acting as individuals.

In the realm of academic recognition, identity politics predetermines the popular narrative by reversing the hierarchy; those belonging to the marginalized category become the dominating group who then are given a pass to trivialize the experiences of those they view as opposite. But this hierarchical reversal doesn’t challenge hierarchy itself – it only reforms it in an attempt to create a power masquerading as equality. This power, composed of social capital, is then used as the power to ridicule, coerce and dominate others with impunity.

Anyone who presents a single individual as the voice of something as wide spread as gender nihilism is someone who interprets the world in terms of textbook definitions rather than the organic fluidity of free thought and social interaction. Quite simply, it erases all those individuals who had already discovered and lived gender nihilism but didn’t have the academic language or status to be credited and recognized in the mainstream. Alyson’s experiences with gender are not trivial to mine simply because I am a person of color. Their experiences are unique from mine, and far more complex than the oversimplifying measurement of social constructs and any theoretical analysis of identity and privilege. And it is this uniqueness of individual experience that gets lost in the homogenizing formations of identity politics. In my opinion, the harm here is the assertion that voices belonging to certain individuals matter more than others. Ironically, there is inequality in pursuit of “equality” and the common denominator is always a social construct in one form or another.

Patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism have identity politics of their own. They each essentialize a role and behavior which reinforces their power socially. In addition to physically attacking these institutions, for me it is important to reclaim my self and emancipate from their mental captivity. This means refusing their language to define others, allowing others to define themselves beyond identity-based assumptions. It also means any positive projects that attempt to occupy space in the courtyard of capitalism compromises the integrity of their rebellion. The transforming of “queer” into another rigid, social identity by capitalism and liberalism is one of many examples. The positive politics of queer identity legitimizes the state and glorifies a civilized standard of submission. With the help of internalized and often celebrated victimhood, “queer” soon becomes another identity pacified and manufactured by capitalism.

This is why my queerness is not a positive project. It’s meaning runs contrary to the collectivized subordination in both capitalism and the left. Queer nihilism means arming negativity against the pacifying effects of positive politics, exploring the intimacy of criminal affinity with others, and arming individuality with the queerest savagery against domestication. The fire in my heart burns every gendered prison assigned to me. Queer is confrontation: my desire for freedom has intercourse with my hatred for civilization. What blooms is a lifelong dance that materializes the queerest attack on capital and social control. I find myself immersed in the chaos of bloodied weapons, broken glass and shrieking alarms. My body is a dangerous space of love and rage ungoverned by the morality of non-violence. With love, and in solidarity with the wild, and with all those who embrace queer anarchy with hysterical laughs of joy- towards the queerest attack upon the civilized order!

#flower bomb #Alyson Escalante #anti civ #anti identity #anti identity politics #domestication #gender #gender abolition #gender nihilism #communism #queer #queer nihilism #nihilism

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destructiveurges · 5 years

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Arming Negativity: Towards the Queerest Attack (USA)

A Response to “Beyond Negativity: What Comes Next After Gender Nihilism?”

Rather, what comes after Gender Nihilism must be a materialist struggle against patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism which understands and is attentive to the complex interrelations between these structures and which refuses to reduce any one of them to any other.” We are not looking to create a better system, for we are not interested in positive politics at all. All we demand in the present is a relentless attack on gender and the modes of social meaning and intelligibility it creates.”

“This means recognizing that these things can only be overcome by a communist politics oriented towards the future. Abandon nihilism, abandon hopelessness, demand and build a better world.”

Flower Bomb (via The Anarchist Library)

#Flower Bomb #Gender Nihilism #Queer Insurrection #Anarchist Theory #Anarchist Texts #USA

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sammyspreadyourwings · 5 years

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Hi i sure as hell have time to read all the world building and story planning you have for the supernatural au. Those are my absolute favorite aus!!

Nonnie! You are on my favorite Anon list! I love anyone that wants me to ramble about my writing.

Ask me questions

This is just the world build and not the plot which is forming(?). Time for you all to experience what I call the Blender of Worlds and Words. I never know what to do, so I just to an overview where you can kind of see what plot I may do, but it gives you a better taste of the world as a whole without the microscope lens of story.

Power structures

Humans and Supernaturals know about each other, however, they have sets of different laws governing them

E.G murder is illegal for humans but for Vampires, they can kill so long as it was for feeding/self-defense

Tax evasion is illegal for everyone

Werewolves laws are more stringent

Despite the governments being equal, there is a societal imbalance between everyone

Humans are middle ground, but there are other supernaturals that consider themselves better than humans

These are the types that can pass as humans but they’re not because ~reasons~

Between Vampires and humans (this would be easier if I had a graph

WAIT I CAN MAKE ONE

Okay, so now that that’s present

The more “human” you are the higher Society thinks of you

Werewolves are the lowest because they lose their humanity, whereas Mermaids only take on the qualities of animals

There are some who try to argue against this system

The Supernaturals

Vampires

Prefer to be called Trueblooded if that, otherwise Vampire is acceptable

Do not call them leech, blood-sucker, demon, etc.

They are treated like royalty p much by everyone because they’ve established themselves as the best, regardless of how bad your blood line is

Classifications

Truebloods are Vampires that can directly trace their founders to the First

There’s about 15 Trueblood families

They’re the council of Vampires

Typically, they’re on the Supernatural governing committee

Mostly they’re in equal standing, but they’re all vying for top spot.

These are born Vampires, even if the offspring should be between a Vampire and Human

It’s a no-no, and typically the offspring will be killed

Bloodlines

This is dependent on how you can trace your sire’s line

Mostly for those turned

Bloodlines are founded originally by Truebloods

The more prestigious the bloodline, the higher rank you are

E.G if you’re from Vlad’s line you’re just under a Trueblood

If turned by a Trueblood then you’re the start of your bloodline

Newborns

1-340 years of age is a Newborn

Babies

They don’t get the protection of their bloodline completely until they’re adolescent

Newborns are the easiest and most frequently killed

Or die b/c they don’t understand their new limits/powers

Abilities

General

Immortality

Truebloods age until they’re 25

Halfers or Dampheirs age until they’re 35 if they’re half human

Blood drinking

heals

enhances abilities

sustains

Sidenote

Different things happen to a Vampire if they drink from another Super

E.G Werewolf blood will poison them where as blood of Fae creatures get them drunk

Heightened Eyesight // Night Vision

Super Speed // Super Strength

Trueblood (From most common to least)

Charm

Increases Attraction

Telepathy

Thought influencing

Empathy

Emotion Control

Sunwalking

Immune to the Sun

Oracle

Future sight

Roger

A trueblood

Sunwalker // Charmer

Really hates Vampire politics

He doesn’t care about the hierarchy shit

Except when he sees poor treatment then he gets heated

Mostly he wants to drum

Dryads

Nature sprits who use music to influence the world

Do not call them sirens

Their music is so enchanting to others that it draws them in seemingly against their will (the person influenced doesn’t though)

Classification

Music Dryads

Muses

Have been called the Muses in the past

They have the best music out of the Dryad race

Nature

Most Common

They sing to make trees grow

9/10 they’re hippies

Fire

Destructive but also Regrowth

Water

Most likely to be called a Siren

Which is why they’re so lowly thought of by the other Dryads

They have accidentally lured sailors to their deaths

Abilities

General

Luring Voice

Charm aura

People are naturally drawn to them

Perfect Pitch

Immortality (they can shift their forms)

Music Dryads

Empathetic Voice

Can make you feel the motion the dryad wants you to

Background track

You always here music around them

Freddie

Music Dryad

While typically Dryads are neutral to humans and care little about the hierarchy in general, Freddie wanted to experience it

He’s like I’m going to start a band!!

He’s mastered control of his aura and charm so that he passes mostly as a human

You can always here a piano when you’re near him

Its v distracting when the band first forms

Humans

Literally, that’s all

Most of them respect the hierarchy and don’t try to involve themselves in Supernatural politics

There are some that are prejudice against all Supernaturals however

The most extreme are Hunters

They’re an unofficial form of Law Enforcement

They tend to kill Supernaturals that are “getting out of hand and a danger”

Mostly Newborns b/c they’re easy + do cause a lot of damage

Wolf’s Head

Specialize in hunting Werewolves because they consider them to be the biggest menace to society

They’re the worst of the supernaturals

Wolves playing to be humans

John

An open-mind human

Doesn’t believe that anyone is inherently better, but doesn’t understand it

That is until he has to figure it out living with Three Supers

What was I thinking?

And he decides that he wants to try and change some of it

Werewolves

Preferred to be called Lykans or Lycanthropes (and now that we’re here, that’s what I’m referring to them as from here on out b/c I was only doing it for understanding)

Werewolves, beasts, mutts etc are hugely offensive

Ofc most people don’t care because they’re so low ranking

In some countries, they aren’t allowed within a city

In others, they can’t work with certain groups or at all

Some require Lykans to wear collars to designate their status

Many have heavy laws and regulation to protect others

“No Beasts Allowed” establishments are common

There are some that won’t allow a Lykan on a seat

Britain's Work Laws

4 days prior to the turn, and 3 days after, have to be taken off unpaid

I could have specified the week of the full moon but

Some business require more

More progressive business give half pay

Classifications

Blood of Romulus

They can trace themselves to the First Lykan, which was First King of Rome Romulus

He got cursed b/c he killed his brother

They’re only higher ranked because most of their turns are by choice

Only 3-4 times a year are they influenced by the full moon

Can shift at any given time

Born Lykans

Those with the blood of Romulus will always have the form of a wolf no matter how far removed

Turned Ones

Otherwise known as the more offensive term Cursed Ones

They’ve been bitten by a half-formed Lykan and thus have become one

Oh shit explanation

Typically a full moon transformation is slow, which means that a Lykan will be half-man half-wolf longer, and that’s when Lycanthropy is easiest to pass

About 40% chance of taking at full shift

About 2% while not shifted at all

Abilities

General

Heightened Senses

All the time if BoR

Super Strenght // Super Speed

Wolf form

Enhanced Healing

Blood of Romulus

Controlled Wolf form

Immortality Ritual

Limited shifting

Pack bonds between non Lykans

Pairbonds are a thing

The bonds let them know where their bonded are on a subconscious level

Also their condition and emotion

Most people don’t want to be packed bonded because it drops their status to that of a Lykan in the eyes of society

Blood Hunt

If they bite someone mostly to completely shifted they can track that person

Brian

Blood of Romulus

He’s rarely in his wolf form

Uncontrolled turns 1-2 times a year

It does tend to ruin his mental health // mood

Very much aware of the hierarchy

There is a specific group dedicated to exterminating his kind

He’s very careful to not draw attention to the fact that he’s a supernatural, much less a Lykan

If anyone cares enough they can look it up in the registry

#my world building #asks #nonnie #supernatural AU #Anonymous

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taylavandyspatial · 3 years

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Found critical text: Furthering post-human political ecologies (Margulies, J. and Bersaglio, B. (2018))

Notes and critical relevancy to my project:

This text helped to form ideas of my project surrounding classism (political ecology), human and non-humans (post-humanism) and their relation to justice and injustice. While reading this text I was thinking about classism in terms of the housing crisis that we are currently in the midst of versus GH, which is supposedly “New Zealand’s House”, yet physically being of much different fitness and stature. This brought me to thinking about the way in which mould and other non-human subjects (”megafauna to microbacterium”) either act with the capacity to disrupt at different levels depending on individual’s political ecology. The paper links Western philosophies of societal structure to proximity to nature (those of lowest societal class are the closest to natural world and therefore it’s potentially harmful impacts - such as low quality housing, bacteria and/or pests in homes). The text also links myth with social hierarchy in the way that myths have the power to shape our opinions, world views and societal/political structure.

When linking all of these ideas together, it is clear that distinguished human and non-human roles are closely influenced by power. Humans have always existed with nature, however, structure of class and according power essentially decides to which degree this impact is. Does the fact that nothing s being done about the housing crisis and state of living imply that to those higher up - the decision makers - that there is no housing crisis? I feel like the housing crisis is potentially not seen in the same way by both classes (seeing is believing). Which made me think maybe my project is really about the visibility of this issue, a protest of some sort.

Definitions of themes within the text which are central to my project are found at the top right of the first page. Other annotations and links follow throughout.

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dippedanddripped · 3 years

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For centuries, dress codes have been used to maintain specific social roles and hierarchies. But fashion and style have also traditionally served another purpose: to express new ideals of individual liberty, rationality and equality, according to new research by Stanford legal scholar Richard Thompson Ford.

Video by Farrin Abbott

A new book by Stanford Law Professor Richard Thompson Ford examines the societal and political significance of dress codes over time.

Civil rights activists in 1960s America wore their “Sunday Best” at protests to demonstrate they were worthy of dignity and respect as they challenged the institutions that kept Black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Centuries earlier, during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, a pared-down business suit symbolized a departure from the status-based opulence of previous aristocratic regimes. Wearing the same clothes as everyone else, regardless of one’s social status, was a way of espousing the period’s new values, such as sensibility, rationality and even equality, said Ford.

These are just two of the many examples Ford has chronicled in his new book, Dress Code: How the Laws of Fashion Made History (Simon & Schuster, 2021), in which he argues that people have used dress codes to assert political control and social hierarchies throughout history. Sartorial style can also be wielded to challenge those norms and offer new political ideals in their stead. For example, the Black Panther movement rejected the “Sunday Best” that their civil rights predecessors wore to establish a new kind of resistance.

“It’s worth noting that the Black Panthers had a Minister of Culture, so they saw very clearly the importance of aesthetics in changing politics,” Ford said. “That developed into the ‘Black is beautiful movement’ which focused quite explicitly on the political dimensions of racial aesthetics and changed dominant norms of beauty in order to incorporate and reflect the norms of the black community.”

Here, Ford talks about some of this research with Stanford News Service. Ford is the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In your research, you argue that running parallel to a history of fashion is a history of liberal individualism. Can you explain that further?

In the modern sense, fashion involves clothing that is highly expressive; it can be a sign of individual personality. This kind of clothing emerged around the same time as the ideal of individualism began to emerge in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Clothing reflected new social and political ideals: the importance of the individual as opposed to the group-based statuses of aristocratic class and religious affinity. Fashion in this sense developed alongside other changes in the arts, philosophy and science: literature began to focus on individual psychology more than grand classical epics, prefiguring the transformation from epic to the novel. Philosophy and science put humans at the center of the cosmos, displacing a religious sensibility that subordinated human and earthly concerns to the divine and supernatural. Portraiture became expressive of individual personality. These changes in aesthetic sensibility eventually became part of liberal political ideology, that put the individual before the monarch or the church.

Fashion not only reflected these changes – it also may have helped to shape them by conditioning people to think of themselves first and foremost as unique individuals. In a sense, fashion lets people not only express their individuality but also experience it on their bodies.

Can you offer an example of how fashion reveals the politics of an era?

One example is the development of the business suit. As late as the early 1700s, the typical clothing for someone of high status in most of European society was opulent and adorned with things like brocade and jewels – this was true for men and women. This type of clothing signified status and aristocratic rank and a high place in society.

But as early as in the 17th century, things were beginning to change. In England, this involved the execution of King Charles I, who styled himself as an absolute monarch, and the rise of the Commonwealth. After the Commonwealth ended, the monarchy was restored but the old absolutist ambitions of the monarch didn’t come back. Instead, what emerged was a new kind of aristocracy in which the aristocrats – the people with a high place in society – dressed in a more toned down, subtle and utilitarian fashion.

There was a transformation during this period, which the psychologist John Carl Flügel later described as “the great masculine renunciation.” This was a renunciation of all of the opulence, jewels and brocade that defined the showy clothing of the past era. A new, pared-down aesthetic became the beginnings of the business suit which over time became a symbol of liberal individualism. At the time, people made the connection between the sparer, toned down suit and the ideals of human rights.

Another thing that the business suit accomplished was it created a kind of egalitarian uniform in which people of a variety of social statuses wore, more or less, the same clothing – this was new. Now, everyone from the most powerful heads of state to bank clerks wear business suits. That social leveling of attire symbolized and went along with – and even inspired and helped people to act out – the political ideal of formal equality before the law.

So that was for men. What about for women?

The story for women is longer and more complicated. During the same period [that saw the evolution of the business suit], menswear and womenswear diverged. As menswear got more streamlined with fewer extravagant details, womenswear got more opulent. In a sense, women almost compensated for the lack of opulent display by getting more of that for themselves. One might even say that men still engaged in opulent fashion vicariously through women.

Womenswear doesn’t participate in an evolution toward egalitarian norms until much, much later. And indeed, one of the stories I tell in the book is the way that this emergence of liberal egalitarianism goes hand in hand, and in some ways, deepens gender hierarchies, that in terms of clothing and attire, lasted well into the 20th century.

To give one example, while European men abandoned draped attire, which was the attire (characteristic of the ancient world) in the 14th and 15th centuries, women remained draped below the waist until the early 20th century. In the early 1900s, a woman wearing trousers might be subject to arrest for public indecency. For a long time in history, adventurous women would mimic parts of masculine style to express or assert their right to enjoy masculine prerogatives, whether it was masculine freedoms or masculine assertion of power. So, a woman wearing some element of menswear was a provocation and adopted by women on the avant-garde.

How is fashion intertwined with activism?

Fashion has played an important role in social activism for centuries. Sometimes that role has been as explicit: a social activist fighting against the power structure. Other times, it is more subtle. In the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance people resisted what were called “sumptuary laws,” which were designed to assign people in society a particular type of clothing that would express their social status.

They did so not so much as a direct political challenge to the power structure, but certainly as an indirect one. When a wealthy merchant or tradesperson adopted high-status attire, they weren’t necessarily trying to usurp the position of the nobility or bring down social hierarchies, but it was a way of saying “We deserve the same degree of social prestige and respect as the aristocracy and nobility. We are asserting our own status in society.” This was a new idea and one that turned out to be very challenging to the power structure and the status quo. Although those people may not have thought of themselves as activists, they were engaging in a form of activism.

During the racial justice movement in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights activists went to protest at lunch counters or to conduct public marches, there was a dress code. People were expected to wear their “Sunday Best” in order to demonstrate that they deserved dignity and respect. But importantly, it was also a direct challenge to a white supremacist power structure that endeavored to keep black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. There were laws in the United States at times that required Black people and slaves to dress in clothing that was considered appropriate to their status – which was the lowest status. For Black people to dress in a manner that was elegant and refined was a challenge to that type of power structure and that’s also part of what was going on with the Sunday best attire in the civil rights struggle.

Later, a new generation of civil rights activists rejected “Sunday Best” attire as the politics of respectability. They adopted new styles that were suited to a new style of activism. Black Panthers wore black leather jackets and turtlenecks, berets and sunglasses. It was quasi-military but also it was a new visual statement designed to express a different kind of resistance to the status quo and a different type of racial pride – one that didn’t borrow from the symbols of the white bourgeoisie but instead constructed a new black aesthetic.

How do you see dress codes changing, given the new world we are currently living in?

These things can always be somewhat hard to predict, but one area where I’m fairly confident we’re going to see changes in dress codes is around norms of gender. We’re already seeing such dramatic changes in terms of the recognition of the transgender community and people who are gender non-binary. That’s a remarkable challenge to a centuries-old set of conventions in which men’s and women’s clothing diverged and were considered to be symbolic opposites. I think that is going to be fascinating to watch develop and I’m not sure exactly whether it will develop into something of a more unisex style of clothing or whether it will simply be a remixing and reconfiguring of the gender binary.

Another interesting area is post pandemic and what happens to the norms of workplace attire in the era of the Zoom call. First, there was the idea of the “Zoom shirt” that hangs at the back of their chair and is put on right before the meeting and presumably, for the rest of the day they’re wearing sweatpants, pajamas, or something like that because we’re all stuck at home.

But interestingly, another thing that developed was a kind of subtle new dress code that involved, not the clothing itself, but what was behind you in the room and how one should style the background of their Zoom call in order to communicate messages. That is very much like a different kind of dress code but your kitchen, dining room or living room are part of that public persona.

What inspired this research?

I teach employment discrimination and civil rights law and a surprising number of legal disputes have involved people challenging a dress code of some kind. For instance, women challenging workplace dress codes that required high heels or makeup or people of color challenging dress codes that outlawed preferred hairstyles that are suitable to the texture of their hair, like braids or locks.

Another thing that was very striking to me about these complaints was the intensity with which people fought the dress codes. People were willing to lose their jobs disputing workplace dress code and meanwhile, employers were willing to lose a valued employee trying to impose such a dress code. I wanted to understand why people felt so strongly about clothing, fashion and self-presentation.

The second reason is more personal. I grew up interested in fashion based on the influence of my father who actually trained as a tailor. This was at a time when African Americans often learned both a profession and a trade – the idea was they would have a trade to fall back on in case racial exclusion kept them from the profession of their choice. He never actually worked as a tailor but he learned the craft and he understood the importance of high-quality clothing. He also deeply internalized the importance of self-presentation, which was especially important for a black man growing up during the era of Jim Crow and in the era just after our civil rights laws were passed, where overt racial prejudice was still common and racial stereotypes everywhere. I saw for him how important it was to present himself in a manner that was dignified, refined and reflected his own sense of self, but also what he needed in order to negotiate a still fairly hostile society.

Image attributions in the banner: Civil rights march on Washington, D.C. from the Library of Congress; Men In Tailored Clothes, England, 1920s from The New York Public Library; Posing Louis XIV, Sun King, XXL from Getty Images; Fashion photographs for Vogue magazine from the Library of Congress, Trousers dress from Paris from the Library of Congress, Free Huey rally, DeFremery Park 1968. Reies Tijerina speaking & Brown Beret security from Bob Fitch; Man teleworking wearing a shirt, tie and pajama pants from Getty Images; Actress wearing a costume with ruffled blouse and trousers, from the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Public Domain; A 1903 engraving of Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch featured in the Figaro Illustre magazine from WikiMedia Commons; Vanity fair on the avenue, from Library of Congress.

#dress code #social change #streetwear blog #fashion blog

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abodynamicslife · 7 years

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Alpha, Beta, and Omega, particularly in the context of wolves, are early scientific descriptions of social status or rank. The idea is that the Alphas are the most dominant, powerful individuals; that the Betas are their subordinates, like lieutenants; and the “Omega” is the lowest-ranking wolf, the pack punching bag, who is submissive to everyone else and whose job is to take their abuse, and also to cajole the pack into play.

The paranormal romance genre has developed its own little sub-tropes around the framework of Alphas, Betas, and Omegas in werewolf packs, so they’re not always drawing directly on these terms as they’ve been applied to wolf packs, but it’s definitely still one of the most common versions you’ll see of werewolf society depicted in fiction.

There is also a popular trope that’s specific to fanfiction, which is also called “Alpha/Beta/Omega” or “A/B/O” dynamics, and though it shares many of the same roots as far as Alpha dominance and Omega submission, it’s not the same trope at all. A/B/O stories treat the idea of Alpha, Beta, and Omega more like sexual orientation and a description of physical sex characteristics. Some of the same problems exist in both tropes — and it gets particularly confusing when authors write A/B/O dynamics into a werewolf character setting where Alpha/Beta/Omega are also used as werewolf social ranking.

The fact that these terms are so popular, and used in so many different ways, adds an extra layer of confusion to their use, because werewolf fans will have already come across so many different ideas and iterations of what exactly “Alpha,” “Beta,” and “Omega” mean in so many different fictional universes, versus what they mean in real life, compounded with the fact that, well… the basis of the whole concept is rubbish.

Why Alpha / Beta / Omega for Werewolves Simply doesn’t Make Sense

The concept of Alpha / Beta / Omega wolves comes from flawed, outdated science. We know now that wolf packs in the wild are typically just a family unit: the “alphas” are in fact just the parents, or the breeding pair, and most of the other wolves in the pack are their offspring from the past several years. (There are many other pack configurations, including extremely large packs that might include aunts, uncles, wolves welcomed from other packs, and more, but a wolf pack on the most basic level is simply a family.)

How would your werewolves have started using these terms in the first place? They weren’t commonly associated with wolves until the 1950s. Even if your werewolves wanted to apply human scientific terms to their own society, if that society pre-dates the 1950s, it wouldn’t make sense for them to use those terms for themselves at all.

- If in your universe werewolf society goes back to much more ancient times, or are simply not coming straight out of human society with human views, they would already have their own fully developed culture, social practices, and language to describe themselves.

- The most important thing I’d love for people to understand about our ideas of power, dominance, and rank in the social life of animals, is that these are almost always just humans projecting our own nonsense onto animals.

When Alpha / Beta / Omega Might Make Sense for Your Werewolf Characters

- When your werewolves were created by, are being studied by, or are under the control of military, government, or science forces.

- When your werewolves weren’t born as werewolves, but acquired the condition from a bite, and have no idea what they’re doing.

- When your werewolves don’t use the terms for themselves, but humans have applied it to them.

There are undoubtedly other occasions when those terms might make sense, and hopefully you can give it some careful consideration to how the history of these terms might interact with the werewolf society you’ve built, if indeed your werewolves have any organized society at all.

Now Write!

I haven’t written this post with the intention of shaming authors who use this convention, but with the hope of encouraging authors to branch out a bit more in the way they write werewolves, and hopefully provide you with a bit more background on where these terms come from and their possible pitfalls for worldbuilding.

Read the full article here!

RANT ALERT

I clipped a lot of the article, to just focus on the main bits. I thought it had some interesting points, but I also thought this article was an incredibly presumptuous way of telling werewolf writers and worldbuilders how to build their own make-believe universe.

Okay, we get it, Alpha/Beta/Omega ranks were based on flawed research from the 1940s-50s, and as opposed to unrelated wolves in captivity, wolves in the wild don’t actually act that way at all. Nice. Fascinating. But werewolf fiction/horror is HARDLY one to be a stickler for factual scientific accuracy or realism in the first place.

It’s one thing to want a realistic plot and feasible character/storyline development in werewolf fiction (hello, Teen Wolf is a glaringly painful example; you’re justified to freak out trying to follow the plot holes and inconsistency and baiting). It’s another thing to single out a trope you don’t like and say in your “non-shaming” article that:

“....as much as I obviously hate this entire trope and wish it would die (sorry, I’m trying not to be judgmental, but I’m failing).”

If you don’t like ABO, or any other trope, and it bothers you that much that it’s scientifically and biologically inaccurate, there’s a very simple solution: DON’T READ OR WATCH IT.

Does it REALLY matter that werewolf stories often rely on the ABO trope in order to build their fictional stories? Yes, it often perpetuates a stereotype about human-derived hierarchies and behavioral norms, but the article is missing the point: These are WERE-WOLVES. Not REAL WOLVES. They’re ALREADY HALF HUMAN. So of course they’re going to invoke some form of human interaction and societal structures!

Then the article brought up the bitten versus born wolves. Even BORN wolves are still descended from human ancestors. “Werewolf” literally means (Hu)Man-Wolf -- the same way werefox means man-fox and werejaguar means man-jaguar. It’s rare to find a werewolf historiography in literature or film that does not begin with a HUMAN either:

being bitten by a wolf from the offset (ie: magical/scientific rabies)

using magic/potions/charms to become a wolf (eg: shamanism, animism)

being cursed into becoming a wolf, often via cannibalism (eg: Lycaon)

becoming a wolf via death-rebirth spiritualism (eg: Eastern Europe lore)

or some combination of the above

In the universes where ABO is applied to werewolves, it usually appears where multiple werewolves are already living/passing amidst normal human societies together. Technically, they’re IN CAPTIVITY; they’re not living in THE WILD. These werewolves are busy reigning in the wolf, not the human. Their community is their pack, and they’re led by a top werewolf, just like humans societies (Teen Wolf “alphas”, True Blood “packmasters”, etc). Otherwise they live like ordinary people, more or less. So by the article’s own stance that ABO ranks were only applicable to wolves not living in the wild, ABO actually applies!

In werewolf literature/film where the main character is bitten by a mysterious rogue/wild/feral (were)wolf who only exists as a plot device (usually killed in order to “cure” the character or lift the “curse”), there are no packs or ranks anyway, since that lone (were)wolf was a one-off for the sake of the storyline.

So it’s not surprising at all if werewolf packs started adopting human terms to describe what they are, even if before the 1950s they didn’t have a name for their system -- which brings up another point:

We’re taking it for granted that fictional werewolf packs around the world are even speaking English and using ABO tropes in the first place. Who’s to say that wolf packs in Europe and Mexico and Africa and Asia and the Arctic and North America are all using the same terms to describe themselves? Especially when you think about the social structures already inherently different around the world, applied on top of the ways different cultures perceive animals like wolves. You already get hints when looking at werewolves/wolves/canines in mythology and folklore and seeing how different they are!

I just think the article took the whole thing too seriously; suspend your disbelief. No one expects werewolf fiction to be scientifically accurate -- it’s myths and horror and pop culture, and the ABO kink/trope emerged from it via Supernatural fanfiction, not some special on Animal Planet or National Geographic issue. It’s all FICTION.

#werewolves #abo real life references #info on canines #abo dynamics

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netflixanthrothings-blog · 5 years

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Born a Crime - YSJ

Trevor Noah is the author of the autobiographical comedy memoir Born a Crime. The title of the book was inspired by the relationship between his black African mother and his white Swiss father, which was legally prohibited by the 1927 “Immorality Act” (Noah, 2016). Born a Crime provides an exemplary blend of sociopolitical analysis as well as a first-hand account of the days under Apartheid rule and its aftermath. The main issues addressed in the book include racism, gender, colonialism, religion, and class. Noah predominantly highlighted the institutional racism experienced by South Africans during the Apartheid era. The author’s purpose of the book is to showcase his perspective as a mixed child under Apartheid, from a micro level of Trevor and his family’s experiences but also from a macro level of forces and powers at work opposing each other.

After the development of Apartheid in 1652, first influenced by the Dutch East India Company (Feinstein, 2005), the system was based on institutionalized racial segregation that installed policies to protect white supremacy, by separating residential areas, educational institutions and places of worships to maintain racial differences (McEwen & Steyn, 2016). In this racial system, it has its own social mobility where the lighter the skin of each race, the more likely that an individual of said race can rise up in the social hierarchy.

Guest (2017) defined culture as a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts and institutions that are created, learned, shared and contested by a group of people. In Soweto families, women were responsible for taking care of the children and cleaning homes whereas men were obligated to be the breadwinner of the family and had to move into the city to look for jobs to feed the family (Noah, 2016). However, under the apartheid state, patriarchy co-existed with colonialism and developed a racial and gendered hierarchy that resulted in segregated employment locations. White men were given managerial jobs and black men were delegated to hard labor such as mining and farming (Jaga et al., 2017). Eventually, structural separation caused their husbands to leave their families permanently. Most women and mothers were left to raise their families alone, and the empty void left by absent men were filled by religion - commonly Christianity. Another element of the black culture in South Africa is the ‘black tax’ which is the curse of being both black and poor (Noah, 2016). Poor black families remain in a vicious cycle which sees them spend all their time and money fixing problems of the past instead of focusing on progressing forward, economically.

Trevor’s mother, Patricia Noah was an independent woman who raised Trevor to know that there were no limits to what he could accomplish. She defied all societal standards and taught her son to survive in a racist society. By doing so, she brought Trevor to places that were common for the whites because she didn’t believe in division among whites and colored was and she wanted his son to see the world beyond the ghetto. Most importantly, she never let oppression define who she was. With the acknowledgment that being a black woman meant being the minorities that were most oppressed and lowest of the social hierarchy, she still fought hard for her son to become more than what society determined him to be. The predominant social ideology would put black people in lower social hierarchy for work, commonly hard labor, whereas Noah disregarded the societal expectations of a black man’s career, and instead used the platform he had as a comedian and political commentator to provide insight and voice out for the extensive issues faced by the black community. As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history” (Ulrich, 2007), Patricia was one of the rebellious women that made a small difference in Trevor’s childhood that led him to a successful career that made a substantial impact in the world we live in today.

Ghetto is defined as an impoverished residential area of a city which houses a minority of neighbors who are unemployed, on drugs or in and out of jail (Pattillo, 2003). In his teenage years, Noah grew up in the ghetto - the chaotic yet systematic social hierarchy based on which avenue people lived. Living in the hood, cheese symbolized the rich; the poorer you are the more ghetto you are and the richer you are, the more cheese you are. Crime is not an exception but a norm in the ghetto. The only difference is the type of crime and its severity. The ghetto does not discriminate - it does not exclude its people from the crimes that define it and it does not allow its people to leave it either (Noah, 2016). As an illustration, Noah was not an exception, although he was biracial, growing up in the hood encouraged him to commit crimes, in particularly the CDs and video games he copied and sold.

Colonialism is the implementation of a political coalition that denies its indigenous people equal rights and exploits its nation economically (YPI, 2013). Similarly, colonialism in South Africa created a flawed system of institutionalized racism that made people turn against one another so that the government could overrule and control the people - South Africa went to war itself when Zulu and Xhosa blamed each other for the problem that the whites created.

It shaped the culture of South Africa in which the colonists used the hegemonic aspect of power that people propagandized themselves to believe that interracial marriage was invalid. In relation to the book in the chapter of Go Hitler!, colonial powers never indoctrinated history with emotions or moral dimension to the people in South Africa. Ergo, under no circumstances, they grew to be aware and sensitive on complications such as the impact Hitler had on the world. During one of his DJ sets in a Jewish school, the dancers around him chanted “Go Hitler” repeatedly. Trevor and his crew did not realize that Hitler had a negative connotation to the Jewish because the name ‘Hitler’ in South African culture was to indicate a person with great strength, not the dictator of Germany’s Nazi Party.

In the course of introduction to cultural anthropology, the standpoint of colonialism was the reason race was constructed all over the world. Many colonists during that era theorize that all cultures develop the same approach; where it begins as savage, then barbarian, to cultured. They acknowledged the unilineal cultural evolution and repudiated the historical particularism the nation had. Besides, the course has explored the importance of intersection language and culture, through which the social power of the speaker determines language acceptability.

In the book, he stated “If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.” Colonialism forced the majority of humanity to believe and follow the process of how Westerns developed in their culture, these colonists continuously westernized and Christianized places to go because they think they were helping them for the better. However, they became ethnocentric as they did not justify the history of their culture and judged them as being wrong and barbaric. Moreover, the author stated, “Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.” Language creates an imaginary bond instantly when someone speaks of the same language or accent and it meant that you belonged in that tribe and that you are capable of crossing boundaries, handling situations and navigating the world.

According to Trevor’s purpose, his exploration of culture was comparatively subjective because the insightful memoir strikes in as personal and historical. Noah wrote about his childhood amidst weaving in cultural and political information about the legacy of Apartheid with humor and relayed it in a natural way that made it relatable to the audience. His life in South Africa ingrained him with fearlessness as he discussed the subject of complexities and contradictions of race and how his personal story embodies them. Born a Crime has demonstrated the extreme lengths that black people had gone through to survive the abuse, discrimination, and racism they faced.

Personally, I’ve learned so much more about the history and culture of South Africa that I previously had knowledge on. The stories have shown me the importance of a mother’s role in her child’s life, such as ideologies like to be the man you are today, to never let painful memories hinder you from trying something new, and not conform to rules that are not rational. This book demonstrated the importance of Noah’s relationship with his mother and helped the audience feel what he went through in an emotional aspect which is unlikely to be taught in classrooms. The most important lesson I took away from this book is when Noah stated, “People love to say, “Teach a man how to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime,” but never “And if would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” Minorities all over the world spent their whole lives being discriminated at the bottom of the social hierarchy will never have the opportunity to progress economically or socially because they are never given access to resources or support. I’ve become more aware that I am privileged to not experience oppression daily as the black community.

#born a crime #trevor noah #book review

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tutorsof · 7 years

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Organizational Theory Final Exam SCORE 100 PERCENT

Question-1

The process by which organizations move from their present state to some desired future state is called ______.

a) Restructuring

b) Scanning the environment

c) Organizational change

d) Transaction analysis

Question-2

Coca-Cola takes pride in a long-term commitment to employees; Pepsi is very political and competitive. These are differences in organizational ________.

A) culture

B) structure

C) environment

D) design

Question-3

Organizational design is:

a) a way to measure organizational effectiveness.

b) a way to measure organizational efficiency.

c) a source of competitive advantage.

d) important only to large companies.

Question-4

Organizational design:

a) consists of two components: strategic management and organizational behavior

b) can help a company control its environment.

c) reduces innovation.

d) does not allow for contingencies.

Question-5

______ is a means of implementing strategy.

a) Organizational theory

b) Entrepreneurship

c) Organizational design

d) Organizational missions

Question-6

Which of the following are contingencies that cause the organization to face uncertainty?

A) organizational design and organizational processes

B) technological environment and organizational design

C) the technological environment and organizational processes

d) the organizational environment and organizational design

Question-7

____ is the ability of one company to outperform another because its managers are able to create more value from the resources at their disposal.

a) Strategy

b) Competitive advantage

c) Organizational design

d) Managerial expertise

Question-8

The specific pattern of decisions and actions that managers take in order to use core competences to achieve a competitive advantage is called ________.

A) strategy

B) change management

C) organizational design

D) the organization's mission

Question-9

Determining management's rewards and incentives is primarily the responsibility of ________.

a. the board of directors

b. corporate management

c. the CEO

d. the shareholders

10. Which of the following statements about the CEO is false? a. He or she is the chief operating officer. b. He or she determines top management's rewards and incentives. c. He or she allocates resources to subunits. d. He or she influences stakeholders.

11. Which of the following employees would be considered to have a line role? a. sales manager b. executive Vice President of Finance c. R&D director d. vice President of Production e. All are line roles.

12. Which of the following managers has a line role? a. sales manager b. R&D manager c. production manager d. executive vice president of finance

13. Which of the following would be considered to have a staff role? a. sales manager b. executive Vice President of Finance c. R&D director d. vice President of Accounting e. All are staff roles.

14. Which of the following would be considered to be the lowest level of management? a. divisional managers b. functional managers c. line managers d. vice presidents

15. Divisional managers will most likely report to which member of the top-management team? a. vice presidents b. corporate management c. senior vice presidents d. the board of directors

16. Vice presidents are part of ________ management. a. corporate b. divisional c. functional D. line

17. An organization used to obtain supplies from 3,000 suppliers, but now deals with less than 300. They have reduced ________. a. environmental dynamism b. environmental complexity c. innovation d. rites of enhancement

18. Which term is defined as the strength, number, and interconnectedness of the specific and general forces that an organization has to manage? a. environmental dynamism b. environmental complexity c. environmental richness d. organizational domain

19. ________ is/are a function of how much and how quickly forces in the specific and general environments change over time and contribute to uncertainty. a. Environmental dynamism b. Organizational behavior c. Organizational theory d. Societal ethics

20. Which term is defined as how rapidly the forces in the environment change? a. environmental dynamism b. environmental complexity c. environmental richness d. organizational domain

21. Which term is defined by the amount of resources available to support an organization's domain? a. environmental dynamism b. environmental complexity c. environmental richness d. organizational domain

22. Environments may be poor because: a. resources are plentiful. b. uncertainty is low. c. competition is high. d. the country is wealthy.

23. Which of the following is not one of the reasons that an environment would be considered poor? a. The organization may be located in a poor country or a poor region. b. There is a high level of competition. c. There are many organizations fighting over a limited amount of resources. d. There is a large customer base and organizations can't fill the demand.

24. Which is not a part of horizontal differentiation? a. division of labor b. specialization c. centralization d. increased productivity

25. Grouping tasks into roles is part of ________. a. integration b. vertical differentiation c. horizontal differentiation d. formalization

26. ________ causes functions or divisions to develop subunit orientations. a. Authority b. Integration c. Vertical differentiation d. Horizontal differentiation

27. At the B.A.R. & Grille restaurant, Bob and Amanda noticed conflicts between the cooks and the wait staff. Both sides were acting as if they were the most important to the success of the restaurant. The cooks noted that "without us, we wouldn't have customers," while the wait staff touted its excellent service as the reason for success. This is an example of ________. a. integrating mechanisms that are too complex b. integrating mechanisms that are too simple c. the downside of vertical differentiation d. subunit orientation

28. Subunit orientations are the result of differences in: a. external environments among departments. b. official goals. c. perspectives of time frames and goals among departments. d. the personalities of organizational managers.

29. Production is concerned about reducing costs in the short-term whereas R&D is concerned about innovation, which is long-term. This is an example of ________. a. subunit orientation b. integration c. educational differences d. standardization

30. Which of the following is the simplest integrating mechanism? a. direct contact b. hierarchy of authority c. liaison role d. task force

31. A nuclear power plant has a very tall managerial hierarchy for all the following reasons except: a. to maintain effective supervision of activities. b. to empower employees to make decisions. c. to cross-check the work of lower managers. d. to ensure that rules are followed.

32. How did Bob Iger reshape Walt Disney? a. He recognized that the span of control was too wide and added a layer of management. b. He centralized decision making, which resulted in a more consistent experience for the consumer. c. He eliminated a layer of management, which resulted in faster decision making. d. He created a "customer service" department designed to solve consumer complaints.

33. Tall hierarchies are associated with all of the following problems except: a. communication problems. b. motivation problems. c. a wide span of control. d. high bureaucratic costs.

34. ________ refers to the number of subordinates a manager directly supervises. a. Span of control b. Parkinson's Law c. Vertical differentiation d. Effectiveness

35. Which of the following principles can help an organization avoid unnecessary layoffs? a. Parkinson's Law b. rational-legal authority c. the minimum chain of command d. loosely defined rules

36. Rose supervises Iris, who in turn supervises Violet and Daisy. Violet has four subordinates and Daisy has six. Present spans of control are as follows a. Rose 13, Iris 2, Violet 4, Daisy 6. b. Rose 13, Iris 12, Violet 4, Daisy 6. c. Rose 1, Iris 2, Violet 4, Daisy 6. d. Rose 3, Iris 12, Violet 4, Daisy 6.

37. If the span of control is too wide: a. the hierarchy will be too tall. b. bureaucratic costs will increase. c. the division of labor will be too low. d. subordinates may shirk responsibility.

38. A product structure organizes people according to: a. what the people are required to produce. b. the type of customer they serve. c. the regional market they serve. d. the functions they perform.

39. A company will be able to handle more complex product choices when it moves from a ________ structure to a ________ structure. a. functional; product division b. functional; geographic c. multidivisional; matrix d. multidivisional; market

40. A regional company markets ice cream, milk, and frozen yogurt. A ________ structure is the most appropriate structure for this firm. a. product division b. multidivisional c. product team d. market

41. A product division structure: a. has self-contained operating units. b. has a corporate headquarters staff. c. has centralized support functions at the top of the organization. d. allows a company to operate in several markets.

42. Most large U.S. companies use the ________ structure. a. product team b. global c. multidivisional d. multidivisional matrix

43. A corporate headquarters staff is created in a ________ structure. a. product division b. multidivisional c. product team d. matrix

44. Under the leadership of Alfred Sloan, General Motors: a. centralized support functions at the top of the organization. b. grouped businesses into self-contained divisions. c. eliminated the corporate level in the organization. d. centralized decision-making authority.

45. Which socialization tactic separates new organizational members from existing members during the learning process? a. individual b. disjunctive c. investiture d. formal

46. ________ socialization tactics involve providing newcomers with role models and mentors. a. Serial b. Formal c. Informal d. Investiture

47. ________ mark an individual's entry to, promotion in, and departure from the organization. a. Terminal values b. Rites of passage c. Formalization and socialization d. Innovations

48. ________ build and reinforce common bonds between organizational members. a. Instrumental values b. Rites of integration c. Individual tactics d. Meetings

49. Retirement is an example of a ________. a. rite of passage b. rite of enhancement c. rite of degradation d. divestiture tactic

50. A company invites all employees to a day at an amusement park. This is an example of ________. a. organizational language b. a rite of integration c. a rite of enhancement d. social responsibility

51. A middle manager finally gets invited to play in the executive golf tournament. This is an example of a ________. a. rite of passage b. rite of integration c. rite of enhancement d. rite of degradation

52. Traditionally, manufacturing concentrated on all of the following except: a. increasing mutual adjustment. b. decreasing the level of skill required to perform a task. c. creating a mechanistic hierarchy. d. transferring control to managers.

53. A source of competitive advantage is ________. a. uncertainty b. rules and standard operating procedures c. an effective culture d. centralized decision making

54. Taking core competencies and combining them to exploit opportunities in the environment is part of ________. a. functional-level strategy b. business-level strategy c. corporate-level strategy d. global-level strategy

55. All of the following are selected at the business level except ________. a. organizational domain b. a low-cost strategy c. a differentiation strategy d. a diversification strategy

56. McDonald's core competences in manufacturing, marketing, and materials management create a competitive advantage over rivals Burger King and Wendy's. This is an example of a(n) ________ strategy. a. business-level b. environmental c. value creation d. educational

57. Wal-Mart uses a ________ strategy to achieve a competitive advantage. a. differentiation b. market penetration c. diversification d. low-cost business-level

58. Amazon.com used a ________ strategy. a. low-cost b. differentiation c. low-cost/differentiation d. computer

59. One would expect to find the smallest span of control in an organization using which of the following forms of technology? a. small-batch b. mass production c. large-batch d. continuous-process

60. A mechanistic structure is most appropriate for which of the following organizations? a. a biotechnology company b. an automobile manufacturer c. a specialized chemical processor d. a custom furniture maker

61. According to the Woodward studies, organizations that employ continuous-process technology have _________ structures and a relatively _________ span of control. a. tall; narrow b. tall; wide c. flat; narrow d. flat; wide

62. The theory that technology determines structure is known as ________. a. transaction cost theory b. resource dependence theory c. the technological imperative d. the Aston Study

63. Which of the following is a finding of the Aston Study? a. The type of technology determines organizational structure. (Not Sure) b. Technology influences organizational structure more in smaller firms than it does in larger ones. c. Technical complexity depends on task variability and task analyzability. d. Intensive technology is associated with sequential interdependence.

64. ________ is the number of new or unexpected situations that a person encounters while performing a task. a. Task variability b. Task analyzability c. Craftswork d. Specialization

65. Charles Perrow states that the difference between routine and complex tasks is due to which of the following dimensions? a. Task variability and task interdependence b. Task variability and task analyzability c. Task analyzability and technical complexity d. Task interdependence and task analyzability

66. An evolutionary approach to change is characterized by all of the following except: a. incremental change to organizational strategy and organizational structure. b. benefits of making changes outweigh the costs of change. c. a bottom-up change strategy. d. a top-down change strategy.

67. When changing task and role relationships, managers must: a. centralize decision making. b. adjust the technical and social systems. c. change the cohesiveness of a subunit. d. change the culture.

68. The principles of total quality management are based upon ________. a. continuous improvement b. environmental theory c. the rites of passage d. organizational behavior

69. Which of the following is not an approach to implementing revolutionary change? a. innovation b. restructuring c. Total Quality Management (TQM) d. reengineering

70. A flexible work team is designed to: a. standardize the work process. b. be ready for revolutionary change. c. give a team the responsibility for completing the entire task. d. develop norms and values for efficiency.

71. A ________ is a group of workers who assume responsibility for performing all the operations necessary for completing a specified stage in the manufacturing process. a. quality circle b. control group c. flexible work team d. top management team

72. Which of the following is not a characteristic of a flexible work team? a. The team eliminates the need for a separate quality control function. b. Existing team members train new team members. c. The team discusses ideas for improving productivity. d. Managers assign team members to tasks.

73. New United Motors Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI), a joint venture between GM and Toyota,: a. relies primarily on robots. b. uses flexible work teams. c. has high absenteeism. d. assigns managers responsibility for designing more efficient ways to perform tasks.

74. Population ecology notes that births in a new environment are rapid at first. This is because: a. many organizations are executing a strategy at the same time. b. many new organizations are founded by entrepreneurs that leave existing companies to set up their own companies. c. margins are almost always higher in the early stages of an industry. d. the population density is lowest at the early stages.

75. The benefits an organization derives from being an early entrant into the environment are called ________. a. liability of newness b. population growth c. first-mover advantages d. birth

76. McDonald's was one of the first fast-food restaurants and has a recognized name because of ________. a. first-mover advantages b. late entry advantages c. top management d. decreased competition

77. According to population ecology theorists, births diminish over time because: a. existing organizations may engage in actions, such as extensive advertising, to deter new entrants. b. the new environment lacks legitimacy. c. companies are unwilling to adapt to the institutional environment. d. isomorphism arises.

78. An organization will gain first-mover advantages when it pursues which of the following strategies? a. r-strategy b. k-strategy c. generalist strategy d. specialist strategy

79. A large video company observes that smaller companies are having success with pay-per-view movies and decides to enter the pay-per-view market. This video company is pursuing which of the following strategies? a. r-strategy b. k-strategy c. specialist strategy d. r-specialist strategy

80. Which of the following statements about generalists and specialists is true? a. A generalist is able to provide better customer service than a specialist. b. A specialist is better able to survive in an uncertain environment than a generalist. c. Specialists and generalists can coexist in an environment. d. Generalists typically have superior products.

81. Which of the following is an example of explorative learning? a. A supplier implements a TQM program b. A steel mill refines its production processes c. A shoe manufacturer implements a network organization d. A computer company uses the garbage-can model for making decisions

82. Improving an existing TQM program is an example of ________ learning. a. explorative b. radical c. exploitative d. structured

83. Which of the following is not one of the levels of organizational learning? a. intra-individual b. individual c. organizational d. interorganizational

84. Organizational learning needs to be encouraged at what four levels? a. individual, group, division, and organization b. individual, division, organization, and interorganization c. group, division, organization, and interorganization d. individual, group, organization, and interorganization

85. Senge recommends using examples of mental models at the ________ level of organizational learning. a. individual b. group c. division d. organization

86. Developing a learning organization includes all except: a. feeling attached to a job. b. making programmed decisions. c. developing a commitment to work. d. developing a taste for risk-taking.

87. Senge encourages workers to develop a sense of personal mastery by: a. repeating a single task. b. referring decisions to supervisors. c. developing and using mental models. d. using procedures and rules.

88. Why did The Gap have trouble managing the innovation process? a. Frontline managers were not given enough authority to determine product lines. b. Frontline managers were given too much authority to determine product lines. c. They didn't recognize where the products were positioned in the life cycle. d. They were not able to innovate effectively enough in production to produce a cost effective product.

89. What does the term "creative destruction" refer to? a. Organization that focus too much on creativity so as to ignore the bottom line b. Entrepreneurs that lack management skills c. Old, inefficient companies being driven out of the market by new ones 20

d. Obsolete products that never make it to market

90. The leaders of innovation and new product development in established organizations are called ________. a. project managers b. team leaders c. intrapreneurs d. entrepreneurs

91. What is a knowledge-creating organization? a. One that provides a knowledge service, such as a web search engine. b. A research firm finding a cure for a disease. c. One in which innovation is occurring at all levels of the organization. d. One in which intrapreneurs share ideas.

92. What is the first step in the project management process? a. developing a critical path model b. charting all activities on a PERT chart c. developing a clear plan to take the product from its concept phase to market d. aligning product champions

93. A PERT/CAM network would most likely be used during ________. a. quantum change b. incremental change c. project management d. stage 1 of the stage gate model

94. Which innovation technique is most likely to ensure that projects receive the necessary funding? a. product champion b. stage-gate development funnel c. intrapreneurs d. product team structure

95. A manufacturing manager refuses to cooperate with a sales manager because they had a big fight last month. This is an example of ________. a. conflict aftermath b. manifest conflict c. felt conflict

d. perceived conflict

96. The method chosen to manage conflict depends on: a. the tallness of the hierarchy. b. the source of the problem. c. property rights. d. integrating mechanisms.

97. Which structure will most likely cause conflict as an organization grows and differentiates? a. functional b. product division c. product team d. market

98. An organization can best manage conflict by implementing a(n) __________ structure and by ___________ authority. a. organic; centralizing b. organic; decentralizing c. mechanistic; centralizing d. mechanistic; decentralizing

99. Which of the following describes the relationship between power and conflict? a. Power and conflict are not related. b. Groups can use their power to resolve conflicts in their favor. c. If a group has power, other groups will not engage in conflict with it. d. Power is the primary source of conflict.

100. Which of the following is not a source of power? a. conflict b. centrality c. nonsubstitutability d. control over uncertainty