Pranay, Week 11: Symbolic Power
The idea of symbolic power was first introduced by Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist. When you hear symbolic power, you may think of a figurehead like the queen of England. While the royal family no longer has any political or executive role, they still undertake important representational duties for the country. However, symbolic power actually refers to the manipulation of seemingly powerless things like media and religion.
Symbolic power allows people to influence and control others without them even knowing it. Humans get almost all their information from the media, and unconsciously, most of us have grown to trust the media without much questioning. However, media is often skewed in order to fulfill political desires. For example, CNN, a highly trusted news sources, advocates for the Democratic party and degrades the Republican party. As a free country, it is up to the citizen to make decisions about the leaders of our country. Due to media, these decisions are often made with the opinions of others. Another example of media influencing society is propaganda. During World War II, Hitler enforced his Nazi regime across Germany. This regime was cruel, strict, and inhumane by all measures. A part of this regime was the relentless persecution of Jews. In order to get citizen to follow him, Hitler used propaganda to paint Jews as lying, vile rats. This propaganda created the illusion of Jews being less than human, allowing the Nazi regime to be accepted across most of the country. This form of media turned a whole country against a group of people without a real reason.
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| image of Pierre Bourdieu from Britannica |
In our recent reading of The Crucible, symbolic power is a major part of the story. Puritan beliefs are turned into a weapon in the story, primarily wielded by Abigail Williams in order to fulfill her own agenda. She starts a witch hunt in her town of Salem that is solely run on the basis of accusations. Her position as a young, vulnerable child is a ruse as she indirectly dominates the town of Salem due to their undying belief in the Bible. The ideologies of Puritanism are taken advantage of with many people remaining unsuspecting.
Symbolic power remains in the background of our lives, and unless we are vary of it we will become victim to it.
Symbolic power, or soft power, is often underestimated in comparison to hard power, such as a large military or tangible leverage. However, symbolic power, the ability to influence through persuasion, can be equally effective. One example of soft power is the K-pop industry, with a value of around 10 billion dollars. K-pop has become a major part of popular culture, softly convincing people to come to concerts, buy product, watch advertisements, and as a result the audience gives them large amounts of revenue. Another point you mentioned was the use of ever-present media which spewed ideology and propaganda to citizens. CNN did not directly force people to vote for the Democratic party, but through soft power, it has persuaded millions of viewers to be more steadfast in their left-leaning beliefs. You also came up with a thoughtful connection to The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, which discussed the use of religion as a medium to subtly influence the Puritans into wild accusations of witchcraft. In summary, soft power is a measure of the peoples trust in an idea, or how popular it is, which can be a quiet way of influencing politics, business, and other aspects of life.
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ReplyDeleteHi Pranay,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I enjoyed your discussion of popular figures believed to be representative of symbolic power in your introduction paragraph since it transitioned well into your discussion of the influence of symbolic power. It is definitely interesting how many similarities can be drawn between political propaganda in the past and propaganda in social media present today. I feel with the growth of modern tools such as AI, it has become even more dangerous for humans to blindly follow social media since it is now possible to completely fake a video. Furthermore, this form of propaganda is not as transparent as the propaganda Hitler produced, which has made it much more challenging to distinguish fact from fake. I agree that symbolic power is one of the main contributors to the conflicts created in The Crucible and I viewed it as Miller was giving a warning to the American public of symbolic power's manipulation through his writing. I feel making an effort to become more educated on the effects of symbolic power is the best solution possible to preventing manipulation from it.