Keywords for Systemic Analysis
By Jorge Mariscal and Niall Twohig
I. Method
LOOKING DEEPLY
A practice of looking beyond the visible surface to see what gives rise to visible phenomenon, material objects, or patterns of thought and behavior. The practice reveals the component parts that compose an object as well as the conditions and forces that shape it. Akin to “analysis” which in Greek means to unravel or unpack.
SYSTEMIC ANALYSIS
A mode of analysis that examines the machinery of a given society, how it has been constructed over time, the labor that fuels it, the belief systems that allow it to function, and the cultures and movements that emerge within it. This mode of analysis understands thought and behavior within its historical context.
INTERSECTIONALITY
An analytical lens for seeing how systemic violence operates on multiple valences [race, class, gender, religion, ability, etc.] creating the greatest burden for those inhabiting multiple marginalized identity categories. Intersectional analysis reveals blind-spots in “one-sized-fits-all” solutions to social problems. For example: a domestic violence law that works for white middle class women may be shown to cause dangers for immigrant women of color.
II. Framework
OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS
The measurable material [political, institutional, ecological] facts of a given place at a particular historical moment. These conditions can be verified by those who study society.
IDEOLOGY
Stories, arising from a group’s objective conditions, that are told to explain reality. Over time these stories become systems of belief. Individuals and groups form their identities, notions of truth, and understanding of others through ideologies. All societies contain multiple, often competing, ideologies. The repertoire of available ideologies, in a given historical moment, is called an ideological formation.
HEGEMONY
When the majority of people in a society accept a constructed social order as natural and dominant ideologies as truth. In “liberal” or “democratic” societies, hegemony is not usually imposed by physical force, rather it is taught in schools, promoted by the media, or perpetuated by institutional practices. In this way, hegemony becomes “common sense,” or accepted by the masses without question. When a hegemonic order or the dominant ideologies are threatened, the groups that sustain them will often resort to physical force.
CONTRADICTION
The co-existence of two opposing truths in a single entity. That entity might be an individual person. For example, a person can be honest and deceitful, loving and hateful, rational and superstitious. That entity might be a society. For example, a society can espouse and grant freedoms to a certain class or group while simultaneously denying those same freedoms to others. Contradictions often lead to a tension that cannot be sustained. A collision occurs between opposing truths that leads to change.
III. Stratification
SOCIAL HIERARCHY
An inequitable social arrangement. The group claiming a superior position in any socially constructed hierarchy has greater access to rights, resources, and political power. The groups relegated to the inferior positions in a socially constructed order are excluded from (or marginally included in) rights, resources, and political power. As a result, their lives and cultures are devalued. They are exposed to higher risk of disease, greater threat of violence, and premature death. Social hierarchies use various categories [race, religion, gender, ability] to distribute rights, resources, and political power in inequitable ways.
CLASS HIERARCHY
A social hierarchy that uses the category of class to distribute rights, resources, and political power in inequitable ways. In a capitalist system, class categories are relational, meaning a small group maintains its privileged position by extracting profits from the labor of a much larger and less privileged group. Capitalist social structures produce an inherent and continual tension/conflict between the two classes. In some contexts, a third class arises that serves as a buffer to ease the tension between the small wealthy class and the much larger working class.
SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE
When entrenched social hierarchies, and the inequitable distribution of rights and resources across these hierarchies, exposes certain populations to physical, mental, emotional suffering and/or premature death. When the ideological formation creates an inhumane common sense that leads to overt-violence or outcomes that damage poor communities. Outcomes might include bad education, toxic drinking water, food deserts, inadequate housing, lack of medical care, over-policing, etc.
ATOMIZATION
A process that separates a mutually dependent community into individuals that see themselves as being in competition with one another. Atomization maintains social hierarchies.
RACIALIZATION (verb: TO RACIALIZE)
The imposition of a racial classification on to a previously unclassified group or practice. A racialized group is inserted into the artificial race hierarchy in a specific culture in a specific historical period.
SYSTEMIC RACISM
When racial ideologies get embedded in the institutions people navigate on a daily basis. These ideologies create institutional cultures and practices that value whiteness and the norms associated with it, while simultaneously excluding or punishing blackness. Groups racialized as non-white are excluded from rights, resources, and political power. They are depicted and treated as less civilized, non-human, and outside the democratic promises.
UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
When the political-economic system, and the ideologies circulating in society, lead to different levels of development in geographic locations. “Development”, in the context of capitalist societies, means investment in the infrastructure, institutions, and resources of a given geographic location which, in turn, effects communities in that location. Uneven development leads to differences in quality of life, the range of choices communities can make, institutional access, and different life outcomes. In the United States, uneven development has occurred along class lines with a disproportionate divestment from communities of color.
IV. Constructions
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
A social theory opposed to essentialism. Whereas essentialism looks to biology to explain race, class, and gender differences, social construction looks to the historical processes that shaped these differences and attached value to them. The theory helps us to see how “superiority” and “inferiority” are social constructs rather than innate or natural qualities. It shows us how groups misconstrue these constructs as natural in order to maintain domination.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
Unlike the biological descriptor of sex, gender is a socially constructed category imbued with meaning by a culture and performed by those inhabiting the roles within the category. Gender roles change as the objective conditions of a society change. The rigid binary of gender that dominates most societies (man/woman) has been challenged by queer communities who understand gender as fluid.
RACIAL FORMATION
Social construction shows us that race is not a static category. It is as, Omi and Winant say, a “social-historical process by which racial categories are “created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” In other words, racial categories change as the objective conditions of society change and as dominant ideologies imbue race with new meanings. Racial meanings shape the way one understands oneself, oneself in relation to others, and how institutions distribute or withhold rights and resources to groups.
V. Ideological Formations
DOMINANT IDEOLOGY
Those ideologies associated with a ruling or elite group in a society. Dominant ideologies, in a field of power and privilege, reinforce social hierarchies by rationalizing domination. Dominant ideologies in the periods we study include:
CLASS ELITISM
The ideology that says that only those from a privileged group or ruling class are capable of governing society, controlling its resources, and determining its standards and norms. Those outside the elite class are treated as populations to manage; their cultures and ways of life are seen as inferior.
WHITE SUPREMACY / ANTI-BLACKNESS
The ideology that says that white people are innately superior to people of color. This ideology gains credence from pseudo-science, cultural representations, and laws that segregate racial groups. One of the most violent expressions of white supremacy is anti-blackness, or ideas and practices that cast black people as inhuman beings who should be excluded from the democratic promises.
CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY
The ideology that says that Christianity is the True religion and that all others are False. This ideology converges with ideologies of white supremacy, manifest destiny, nativism, nationalism, and militarism. The result is violent projects targeting those who do not conform to dominant Christian morality. Example: Anti-Catholic sentiment in 19th century, Anti-Semitism especially in 1940s/1950s, persecution of Communists on religious grounds, Islamophobia and Middle Eastern wars as moral crusades, courts rolling back women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
NATIVISM
The ideology that shapes the mistaken belief that the U.S. belongs to “native” born Americans (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or those immigrants who have worked their way into whiteness).
XENOPHOBIA
The ideology that shapes the mistaken belief that foreigners are invading the United States and corrupting a singular national identity/language/culture.
PATRIARCHY
The ideology that says that men are superior to women. This ideology devalues women, their work, and qualities associated with womanhood. It relegates women to an inferior role in the workplace and in the political and social worlds. In its extreme form of misogyny, patriarchy constructs women as objects or things to be manipulated or disposed by men. Patriarchy also sets normative gender roles for men and women and polices those who reject, or blur, these prescribed roles.
PATERNALISM
The ideology that perceives certain groups as childlike or less evolved. Paternalism says that these groups need to be enclosed, governed, and “civilized” if they are to exist in society.
CORPORATISM
The ideology that says that corporations are people with all the rights granted to people, i.e. Corporate personhood vis-a-vis 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. According to this ideology, government administrations should stay out of people’s business. If they overstep their bounds, they deny corporations and workers their freedom (freedom to contract).
COMPETITIVE INDIVIDUALISM
The ideology that says that one’s hard work, by itself, can lead to success. Failure, according to this ideology, is the result of personal shortcomings (bad choices, laziness, etc.). Competition, according to this ideology, builds character and leads to individual achievement and innovation. When this ideology assumes an equal playing field in inequitable conditions it becomes a way of blaming historically marginalized groups for systemic failures.
MODEL MINORITY
This ideology categorizes all “Asians” as hard-working and successful and thus a group that other minorities should emulate. Several realities make this ideology a myth: It relies on essentialist notions of Asian identity. It ignores class, regional, and cultural differences that make it difficult for many Asian immigrants and Asian Americans to meet the model. It erases a history of exclusion where Asians were seen as undesirable and barred from immigrating (Chinese Exclusion Act). When taken as reality rather than myth, the model minority ideology functions to create a wedge between racialized groups by suggesting that those who cannot emulate the model are lazy or have inappropriate values.
IDEOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE
Those ideologies associated with groups who are marginalized within a field of power and privilege. In their reformist mode, these ideologies seek to extend rights and resources denied to groups. In their liberatory mode, they seek to transform social structures. Examples include:
UNIONISM
An ideology that reunites atomized workers so that they can demand rights, protections, and power. Unionism affirms that worker rights should be put above corporate rights because, without workers, there is no corporation. Unions use various tactics, including strikes and boycotts, to expose corporate abuse and force change.
FEMINISM
An ideology that recognizes biological differences between men and women, but that reminds us that dominant groups, and the structures they built, give meaning and value to these differences. Feminists reject the constructed notion of male superiority and female inferiority. Some demand equal access to fields (STEM) and rights (voting, bodily autonomy) from which women have been historically excluded. Some demand that reproductive labor and work socially constructed as women’s work (caregiving, nursing, domestic work, garment work, etc.) be seen for what it is: essential, and thus deserving of fair pay. Radical feminists point out the entanglements of patriarchy with capitalism and racism, suggesting that an intersectional approach is needed to liberate people from oppressive structures.
BLACK, BROWN, YELLOW POWER
Ideologies that work within racialized categories to reclaim people of color’s dignity and power. These ideologies expose the racialized violence embedded in social structures and in dominant culture. They allow for the elaboration of practices and cultural forms rooted in oppressed and suppressed traditions.
STUDENT POWER
An ideology that says that students can be active and engaged participants in the formation of society. This ideology opposes the notions that students should be passive consumers and uncritical spectators of the social order.
NONVIOLENCE
An ideology that looks past the constructed social order—beyond its hierarchies and forced division—to see the realities of our interconnectedness and the possibility of a more equitable society. Nonviolence does not see the enemy as a person or group, but as the violent ideologies that stir people to create hierarchies, to scapegoat groups, or to say or act in ways that ignore or deny the humanity of others.
RESIDUAL IDEOLOGIES
Those ideologies that have their origins in earlier historical periods and societies, and that get reconfigured in new contexts. For example, the pseudo-scientific 19th century ideology of white supremacy forms out of earlier religious ideologies that attributed inferiority to pagans or people of other religions. This concept shows us that ideologies like white supremacy never disappear. They go underground and reappear in new forms.
VI. Articulation
STRUCTURES OF EXPERIENCE
Collective experiences, shaped by the objective conditions, that cannot be fully comprehended by the accepted “common sense.” Viewed through the dominant ideological framework, these experiences are seen only partially. For example, the pressure to succeed in a highly competitive capitalist market leads many to feel anxious or alienated from those around them. When viewing that collective experience through the dominant ideological frame of individualism, we see it as a personal problem to be treated and fixed (mostly through pharmaceutical therapies or self-help) rather than a morbid symptom of a social system that needs restructuring. Structures of experience are impossible to articulate in institutionally accepted terms, therefore one must turn to lineages of collective struggle that give us a framework for seeing and a language for articulating these experiences.
MANIFESTO
A document, often written collectively, that articulates structures of experience. The document helps people see that their experiences are legitimate, that they are not alone, and that they have power. It might give practical ways of directing their energies into collective action.
PRAXIS
When one turns one’s deeper understanding of society into action. Individual praxis has the power to alter one’s relationship to oneself, to others, and to the world. Praxis leads one to paths where others are analyzing the world in similar ways and organizing, together, to make change. Collective praxis has the power to make change and, if widespread, transform society.