GS202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Arturo Escobar (Anthropologist), Judith Butler, Michel Foucault
Document Summary
Discourse is ways of speaking which are commonly practiced and specifically situated in. What is discourse? a social environment: speech in habitual situations of social exchange . Michel foucault ws interested in power and discourse. Discourse for foucault was practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak (1972, 49) Discourse means the coded phrases, sentences and key terms in use in a language that protect certain power structures. Power structures are seen in institutions, such as prisons, hospitals, development agencies and the military. Each institution has its own discourse, which helps to situate its position in a hierarchy of power relations (balee 2010) Encountering development: the making and unmaking of third world (1995) Draws upon foucault"s work to argue that development should be understood a discourse which permits particular modes of thinking and doing. Development discourse dominates the way in which africa, asia and latin america are represented. People start to see themselves as developed or underdeveloped .