Kaew's Media Culture Blog

As mentioned earlier, gender is not the same as sex. Gender is what you practice and perform to the society that leads to the identification of your gender that is either female or male gender. While, sex is a biological marker which distinguishes that you have a female or male sex.

After we got the clear idea of wht gender is let’s discuss about this…. Do you think Male is really a dominant gender?

I’ve done research and projects about this topic for quite a few times and I stop and think to myself , I dont think all men are dominant compared to some types of women. This maybe a silly dicussion here but I think it is interesting to sometimes think outside the box. What happens if this notion is true? Male gender is no longer dominant anymore..!??!

Typically, generally, usually…… Male gender is the most dominant gender. Other than the social and cultural discoursive aspects that influence men to present better standart, rank, and power than women; male gender has testosterone hormones which is the hormones that has an effect to how a man look and behave. Although, the bigger part is the up-bringing, environment, and backgound that can also affect them in a particular way.

However, above the notion that they are more superior than women, is it because they choose to be with the weaker type of women, whom they knew from the very start that she will not be able to beat his power and chanllenges. In another word, is it possible that a man will choose a women that the already guarantee that she will always and forever weaker han him anyways that she will submit to him.

Think it over and over, this maybe true that not all male gender are more dominant than female gender. This assumption came up in an article I read yesterday (but I forgot where I put it, so I don’t know the detail sources) which explains further about this notion. It says that it may looked normal to say that male is more dominant than female, but at the same time this is because most men never really want to be with women who is more dominant that themselves. The conclusion to this article is that the more passive or submissive a woman is with a man, the less the dominant power that man has in reality. However, this can be viewed in another way round as not all women are passive and like to be submissive to men, and that some me like that too, although that is not typical.

Eating have long been important not only for us to stay alive but also it can also signify or our identity, culture, and power relation. Yes, I know you maybe wondering that eating can do that much? Eating, the activity that we all take it for granted, meal by meal, day by day, month by month, year by year, and lifetime by lifetime.  Without realising that eating is ‘something’ more than what you think or experienced. It is a practice of consumption that can produce new meanings.

Such matters like taste, skill, authenticity, lifestlye, and health are what came up first when talking about eating and food in general. Although, they signify more to us as a relationship of food together with catering to individuals, local, and global. As eating constitutes who we are as we eat that particular kind of food which also links us to other people or society that desire the same kind of food as we do and which can creats bonds and power.

For instance, you can identify their region, nation, and ethnicity by the food they eat, such that of the abundance and popularity of seafood for example that they maybe from the Costal areas. Further more, other than being seafood, most people there eat them raw than cooked.  The dishes also made from hand made ceramics in sizes, bamboo chopsticks, and decoration from the colourful preserved vegetables. The taste is not strong, it rather stress the natural taste of the food. From these information you can tell that the nationality of these people eating this kind of food as they maybe the Japanese and also ranked in the upper class Japanese as raw fish are rather expensive for them than noodles with pork or rice and tofu.

Other than the food observation, the Japanese manner of eating, catering, and props also can tell us more about it. The Japanese will eat as loud as they can, you can observe this when you see them eating, especially for noodles, as they wanted to show respect to the person who cook for them that the foos is very delicious. The Japanese catering is very caring and praise customers as the most important in the store, showing that Japan has, to a certain extend, a good and caring catering service. Books,  magazines, and newspapers are also avaliable in all Japanese restaurants, showing that they like reading, which further more suggesting that Japanese educational system is improving which encourage them to read more to gain more knowledge as their stepping stones to success. Having books, magazines, or newspapers in every restaurants also suggest that the Japanese are very engaged to work, thus having quite a busy life and stressful. 

Not only eating can identify regoin, nation, ethnicity but it can also engaged in different kinds of occasion that lead to the notion of existence, culture, tradition, or history. The occassions in this case such as for graduations, birthdays, weddings, funerals, new year, etc. However, these occasions are different from places to places, and time to time. Let’s take birthdays for an example here. Birthday parties in general is there to celebrate the begining of a person’s new age or one can say that birthdays also suggests the notion of the person existance after a year gone by.  For instance, the Chinese birthday celebrations, longevity noodles are served to the birthday girl or boy for lunch on that day as they believe at noon is the time when the sun fully rise which suggests goodluck and for the birthday girl or boy to have a long strong life like the longevity noodle that they will be eating. While Korean birthday celebration not only for the existance of the birthday girl or boy but also for the one who gave birth to them. Seaweed brew, the tradition seaweed soup to the birthday girl or boy to for them to commemorate and respect to their mothers for giving birth to them as the soup is believed to help with breast feeding. However, these days, less people care about the importance of their unique birthday traditional and rather go for the Western style, where cakes are served instead as the result of the world wide westernisation, the new and intrend way to celebrate your birthdays…..

Everyday workkkk………….

My scheduling on edublogs here got messed up as you can see that this topic we’ve done it for quite a period of timee… LOL++Anyways, when I was young, I never seemed to understand why my parents, uncles, or aunts have to go to work? – -”’ But luckily not on Saturdays and Sundays.  

A question came up to my mind, what exactly is ‘work‘? According to the readings, there is one from Greg Nobel who said that the definition of work is never stable. Which I think he is right as work can be in all kinds of form no matter it will be monetary, non-monetary, part-time, full-time, under compulsion, private, cooporate, small, big, or many more. He goes on that work can also changes through time place as historically and socially. Everyday work here suggests the work in the contemporary cultures because it is congruent to the institutional differentiation of modernity where work has become contemporary art mentallized and rationalized, both spatically and temporary.

As working in modern days get more and more geared to capitalism which turned into an important  commodity by the inovation of wage labour system. The wage labour system is is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour under a contract. In exchange for the wages paid, the products of the labour become the property of the employer. A wage labourer is a person whose primary means of income is from the selling of his or her labour in this way. Forms of wage labour system is depend on:

1. method of hiring- the worker might engage in a labour-contract on his own initiative, or he might hire out his labour as part of a group. But he may also hire out his labour via an intermediary (such as an employment agency) to a third party. In this case, he is paid by the intermediary, but works for a third party which pays the intermediary. In some cases, labour is subcontracted several times, with several intermediaries. Another possibility is that the worker is assigned or posted to a job by a political authority, or that an agency hires out a worker to an enterprise together with means of production.
2. civil (legal) status- where worker could be for instance a free citizen, an indentured labourer, the subject of forced labour or compulsion (including some prison or army labour); a worker could be assigned by the political authorities to a task, he could be a semi-slave or a serf bound to the land who is hired out part of the time. So the labour might be performed on a more or less voluntary basis, or on a more or less involuntary basis.
3. employment status-  where workers could be employed on full-time, part-time, or a casual basis. He/She could be employed for temporarily, for a specific project only, or on a permanent basis. Part-time wage labour could be combined with part-time self-employment. The worker could be employed also as an apprentice.
4. method of payment- where there are 2 main kinds of payment, the first is the monetary method and the latter is the non-monetary method. In the monetary method is also divided to per ‘piece rates’ and ‘time rates’. The first is where the wage is directly dependent on the quantity of out-put the worker produces no matter how long they stay. For time rates is when workers are paid per the hours they stay and no matter the quantity of out-put. In addition, workers may be paid in the form of credits due to the extra effort in terms of selling or producing goods or services, or in the form of stock options or shares from the enterprise.            

 In order to maximize profit as much as posible to fulfill the power of capitalist, the costs must be low but at the same time must be effecetive. There are many ways to reduce the cost no matter of the raw material, factory location, production process, or workers. By locating the factory or the company in the area where it locates target consumers and raw material can be a good way to reduce the cost of finding target consumers ar raw material sources. The production process could involve the use of JIT or the Just-in-time production method to maximize time consumsion, workers motivation, and reduce risks in making defects. For the labourers or the workers’ cost reduction can be posible from the first step of registration where the workers got the qualified standard to work in specific area set. Moreover, the training process is also important as to guide the workers to the right direction based on their areas. Other than that, the use of hi-technology which is the boom of the twentieth century such that of camcorders in terms of surveillance control. The surveillance control is another clever method to strongly strengthened the working progress of all workers as if they are always aware that there is someone looking at them thus they can not be reckless or careless about work in any way, though, also aware that their wages are also based upon their consistency, deligence, and quality through which can always be observed by the use of that kind of surveillance.  In this way, no boss has to keep walking around their desks like primary teachers anymore but instead the workers will be psychologically aware of the boss all the time which resulting them to work deligently with less flaws. 

Fashion in the old days may not be as prominent issues as nowadays, especially for women. Not to say that there’s no fashion for men, there is, but only to a certain extend, because culturally men are not supposed to be so concerned with their appearance, though that’s changing. Of course, fashion evolves through time since the olden days, perhaps, since clothes are invented. Fashion is geting more and more dynamic, meaning that are more commodities avaliable these days.

Talking in general, in my opinion, fashion is like art where one creates something which will always be different and new,  also varried through place and time. Although, art in general, is more to do with colours on canvases and mostly not for practicle usage, e.g.  paintings,  you can’t ‘use’ them but you can just place them some where to decorate that particular area or place, thus senses feelings to people around it but which also partially varried through person, piece of art, and material use. However, fashion is more to do with style of clothings and design of custumes where they can be practically in use, though, like art, each design can also give different impression through the material, the person who wears it, the style, but in addition the brandings (not to say that art in general has no brand, but, just less dynamic than fashion). For fashoin brandings, there are limitations such that trickle-up effect and trickle-down effect. Moreover, fashion also work as a distinguisher of hierarchical and social differences between the individuals. For example, a t-shirt and jeans may suggest that the person’s identity is male who has low to middle income, hierarchical, and social status ranking and may work in the industry field which doesn’t do a great deel but which can just afford his life and family. While a silk dress and crystal buttons may suggest that that person is a female (as it is a dress that is worn by), has high income, high hierarchical rank, and high social status ranking that may work as a successful manager of a company of her own?

Thus, mentioned above fashion has two kinds of effect; firstly the trickle-up effect and next is the trickle-down effect. The trickle-up effect is where the fashion and style occur in the lower-status group and then later adopted by the higher-status group. In another word, not only the people who have more wealth and high-class status can determine fashion, people from lower-class status can also be the ones who start the fashion too. This is for example, chains, which the idea maybe from the prisoners where it is used for capturing them in jail or some specific areas, but which later brought up and adopt into high class accessories like necklace, bracelet, ankle bracelet, and head bands that are now popular amongst the fashion industries.. Another best example of the trickle-up effect is leather; it is, however, first used by the people living in the jungle, who barely have any education and money, thus, rated as the lower class of people, but it has been a really popular and high-class item for fashion since a long time ago, and where further adopts into various genre of clothing, say from only jackets to boots, shoes, and hats.       

On the other hand, fashion can start from the higher class and disperse to the lower class, which is opposite from previously mentioned. This is the trickle-down effect of fashion where fashion from the higher class spread to the rest of the society, which includes in lower class in general. This is for example, Hush Puppies, a brand of shoes where once became very popular amongst the high-society but then spread to the lower rank of society, which later spread to the society in general, making the particular brans of shoes trickle-down.

All in all, not to say that trickle-up is always good or bad and the same with trickle-down that it’s not always good or bad. Though, trickle-up seems nicer to hear and so tends to mean more positive than trickle-down but at the same time, there are two sides to one coin, everything has two sides. 

Misicians are like artists as the work they produce must or at least come from their emotion or life experience and passion. Although, musicians don’t deal with colours and charcol like artists do, but they deal with the colour of the melodies and rhythms. Of cours, music today is a must but in the old days, musicians are similar to artists in the way that they are not given much attention by the public. Music and art…if not architechture is something concerned as hobbies and which are practiced not in public. However, after times music has have more attention to it, starting from the importance of music to churches in the old days. Melodies and rhythms are later produced along with our voice that includes words which tell stories and able to express feelings in many different ways. Now, you can see how music develops through time from pure melodies from objects to inventions of instruments with human voice to it. The words sang are differ through kinds of language, some can be harsh or soft, and which can be divided to groups of genres universally, for examples: Classic, Jazz, Indy, Pop, Rock, R&B, Emo, Punk, Reggea, Rap, K-Pop, J-Pop, and mamy more. 

The exact history of where all music comes from is varied thruough countries to countries, and with in the countries there’s also local places and the main lands….. All in all, music surely derived from natural sounds no matter from animals or nature like birds, cats, monkies, snakes, water drops, rain, lightening, wind blow, etc. Where people started to find ways to immitate the sound of each phanomenon and ways to better combind it to make rhythms and sounds. Melodies may develop afterwards, where the notes are invented of  ‘do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do..’ and stuff and that instruments are invented to make stable melodies each time.

As mentioned that music has varied genre or kinds that not only chase away the mundane from the listeners but also identify group of people who listen to that particular genre of music. Apparently, other than grouping, this includes the differentiation of all kinds, for instance, social status, class, knowledge, and attitude and age. For example, person who listen to classic music tends to be ranked in a higher social status with a medium to top intellegence, also quite, emotional, and sophisticated kind of person, and which belongs to a high class people and mostly aged and rich as the classical music involves with mostly high class and expensive Western instruments. Another example if you are pop lovers, you tend to be ranked in a bourgeous status with meduim intellegence who loves making connections, active, optimistic, and playful especially for teens. The last example are Punk genre, people who love this kind of music will tend to have middle to low social status but not as low that you can’t afford to find the CDs, mostly having medium level of knowledge or lower. The attitude of these people will also be something like, fun lovers, extreme activeness, and high self confidence…. Though, not every case that will be as mentioned according to the type of music they like, some can be very active and like classical music, and for some can be very quiet but love rock music.

Not only music genres are quite varied, but music genres are also on-going and unlimited. This is because of the hybrid culture, where more kinds of music genres from different places around the world can combind together easily. Take J-pop music for example, ‘J’ which is an abbreviates from the word ‘Japan’ and which is a Pop music there, it is made world wide. Later, comes K-Pop music which comes from Korea and thus very lately it has struck many fans form many countries. Not only because of the use of universal music pop theme, but also the look and style of the Korean singers, mostly not extream in terms of masculinity and femininity. For example, Korean men don’t look extreme muscular and dominant  anymore, but rather provides a ‘cute’ side of a man, from his looks or clothings. Whereas, women don’t wear much make-ups like western singers, but rather provides the most of women natural look. Partly, I think that nowadays music has more of the visual perspective than just plain music like in the old days because of the highly imporvised sorts of music videos, which has become today’s culture for music industry. This may brought up another side of music industry and singers that have mundane music ideology…where it captures most of the fans out there, though they may not know a thing about Korean…

We give more importance to music than before, and so invent many kinds of gadgets dealing with music. As more and more gadgets are invented and advertised globally, music has sunk officially into everyday lives. I remember when iPods were still a dream to noone, music players of all kinds tried to come up with solutions to make the players compact and more portable but not soon after Apple company has introduced its new invention of music player, iPod. With the use of high technology todays, iPod, a much more compact music player where more songs can be nicly organised, consumer friendly, much portable, and suite well with cyber culture (where it can connect to computers). Later, comes in different sizes, designs, colours, programmes, gadgets, and customisation where for example you can carve your name down on the iPod, etc.

Oh, I can’t imagine, what will be the next invention to come after iPods…  

Make your house a home….  ^^ !

 Before, I used to wonder too of  how a house differ from a home? However, after learning from this subject, I think I got that straight..  

A house refers to more of an object form only just physically, though a home is also like a house you live in, but with the feeling of  harmony, love, joy, and comfort. If you don’t have any of those feelings when you get to your house, then that house is not a home! From the two pictures above you can easily identify which house is more homely than another.

In the first picture on the left, the children look quite scared and disappointed as their parents are fighting with each other. On the other hand,  the second picture filled with bonds from everyone in the family that is pretty much lively and happy together. Both positive and negative outcoms behind the family such that you find the house a home or not which not usually because of the aesthetic, conveniency, etc, but mainly about each individual family members, and their duties. It is understandable that the society these days, money is the most important thing than, maybe, family, your love ones, health and so on. This is what we called mass culture as mentioned earlier in a few blogs i did..particularly the previous one. This is where production is the most important aspects than consuming, though there are all kinds of advertisements to make us fall deep into the product without any reason to buy it, to make the consumption power level with production power. By this case, the ideology of the society is changing to suit with the mass society today, where everyone produce more for example working harder and longer hours than before to compete in terms of commercially, as money is the priority. As the result, most families have less time for their children. Nowadays, mothers who’s actual job is housewives that do only house work and taking care of the children have hogher rate of acceptance to become a working women more and more. Yes, this is how the modern families manage their times. Lack time in the family and more to work for money.

Although, some families have a good time management where they can play their role as good workers and good parents. The time with the family then regarded as one of the most important time, especially if you ever care about your children or have them at all, to make stronger family bonds and lighten up the house into a warm welcoming home. It is also a good time for everyone to share their ideas and communicate, might as well solve problems from especially the children if they have any problems at school or anything.

In addition, houses come in different style mostly based on the lifestyle of the majority. The domestic house spacing and designed then create in a modern style today, for instance more plain and compact domestic design to decrease the time consuming housing activities as most people can go to work more early and work in longer hours, as time is also known as money today. Most modern family today, also choose to live in a condo or apartment rather than an actual house where you have your own big space and privacy. This might also because of a more globalized world where, especially in Thailand, privacy seems to be less important than sharing (where they mind less of privacy).

However, it is true that no matter how beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, your houses are, and no matter if your parents are busy workers or not, you can always live happily in a house if you can feel a sense of harmony, love, joy, and comfort. That house will simply become a ……home sweet home* in a blink!      

Without realising, I think people tend to come up with easier questions as they get older, such as…What is art (in this programme at the start)? What is Freedom (in my previous Philosophy class)?

Now, what is  ’Lifestyle‘ for now? (LOL, what’s so funny?)…Of course, lifestyle is not just lifestyle! Lifestyle, can only be defined in general and not specific. It is encountered simply in every single step of our breathing life. Lifestyle draws ideas of taste, wealth, health, status, diet, aspiration, subculture, leisure in order to represent everyday life in ‘advanced capitalist cultures’ as the increase of ‘personal style achieved primarily through consumption.’

Thus, how does ‘lifestyle’ links with consumption? This is because lifestyle is more concerned with the way you consume rather than produce, as the way you consume also defines your social status, class, wealth, etc or known as ‘social distinction’. In this case, this is why consumption is more linked with lifestyle than production. Moreover, products today are less consumed by it’s capability or usefullness but instead are based on the brandings which deffinitely declare status from class. As according to Max Webber 1966  -   classes are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods ; whereas ‘status groups’ are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by special “style of life.” 

Moreover, modernity also has a hand in this topic, as modern lifestyles involve with complex process of self-presentation and social differentiation according to the rise Yof mass culture ( e.g. industrialization, urbanization, and secularization of social orders and hierarchy). With modernity, it reduces the traditional knowledge from many culture in the world, where tradition has less effect on people live today and cause them to do outside the box of their specific cultures and traditions. By all means, making people to concern more on what to wear/ eat/ use or talk or simply who to become?  You can see nowadays that people, especially the teens seem to follow their life routines from either celebrities, singers, actor/actress…all those represented in the medias. As they seems lovable, successful, fun, lively, happy, beautiful, smart, handsome, etc… This may or may not have anything to do with this topic but just to mention reasons behind this is varied. In order to be who you want to be… Money plays the most important role here. As nowadays everything can be turned into commodity, even beauty, success, health, love, feelings, etc…… Since everything can be turned into commodities, all you need to have is ‘money‘. Out-side appearance is now matter most in modernity though, the shallowest way to tell his/her true self. Todays, there are more kinds of commodities which give different outcomes when you consume it such as you want to look successful  e.g. black shiny shoes, a dark good quality leather bags, tuxidos, and a nice looking car etc… products which give you that sense no matter from colour, quality, price, but the most important thing here is brandings. 

People choose to use more of the branding products rather than anything else, no matter how the product is actually functioned ( good or bad, difficult to use?), branding is the most important thing to help defining the status or class you want to be in, even though, you are not belonging to that kind….(it’s who you want to be, not who you are). In theory, people from higher class/status are identified by the consumption of the branded products as they can afford them, where as people from lower class/status tend to viewed as using the branded products less as they can’t afford the products. This then means that status/class of people are judged by the use of branded products. However, a coin has two sides, for some people, brands are use to cover his/her true identity, for example when people from lower status or class who drive a Mercedes Benz will simply ranked as to a higher status/class. This applies to people from higher status or class as well, who use only public transports and not Mercedez Benz or branded product as such will simply be viewed as beonging to a lower status/class although this is not always true. From the previous examples show that the type of product they consume can really make a difference, just by observing their out-side appearance and you can tell their status/class, though this does not apply to every case. According to lifestyle is based upon social, cultural simulation is perceive as constructed by product characteristic (commodities).

 These two types of transportation…. the first one is Mercedes Benz and the second one is Taxi…

Who knows, in that taxi could be a prince in disguised…!?!!?!

…  Well, I forgot to mention about the topic ‘ the polotic of everyday life’ before the previous blog, but as everything here is all linked together, I guess it’s not too bad to mention it now?   First of alllll, it is a complicated relationships between people in the society, no matter where, whether it involves the sense of power, patriotic, authority, race, age, gender, sex, religion… etc. As everyday life intergrates with areas mentioned, politic is another major area that affct everyday life today, though different place and time will have different effect more or less.

Power, for example, has two types: sovereing power and disciplinary power. The soveringe power means that the power of the people in the society are ruled by the king, rulers, a person or a group of people who has absolute power over the society. The disciplinary power is the opposite which means that the power are exercised from the individuals, not from the soveringe anymore. In short, we can point out three differences that :

1) sovereign power exercised through specific visible agent(s) while disciplinary power is diffused in its operation, coming from everywhere and acting on everyone

2) because of its visibility, sovereign power is sensitive to resistance, while disciplinary power, invisible and all-pervasive, is difficult to locate, and therefore difficult to resist

3) sovereign power affects only a small portion of an individual’s life but disciplinary power affects virtually all aspects of living, subjecting everyone to the possibility of surveillance at all times.

According to Michel Foucault, the examples for the explaination could involve with school, hospitals, or prisons. Take schools for example, as to sovereing power, where teachers are the most powerful objects around shools and of course the students are the subjects. The students must follow and obey what ever the teacher told them to do, think, or act, some like the predominants or the sovereings. Thus, teachers will be the most dominant group of people in the school area. The positive side of having sovereing power is that the subordinates will obey and do as the sovereing told them to do, but the negative side to this is that those rules and regulations are not inside the people’s conciousness but only on the surface of being told-to-do so if there are countless subordinates or say ‘many’ it is difficult to make all of them unite together and actually do what the sovereing told, meaning that the sovereing power doesn’t exhort us to create ourselves as particular kinds of individuals.

Where as for the disciplinary power, take panopticon prison for example. Before prisoners are hang, drown, or executed when they do illegal actions or that the society claimed to be unapropriate. The punishments didn’t involve just hanging, drowning, or excecuting, but also been done infront of the public, for everyone to see. However, a new kind of prison was invented by Bentham in 19th century, which is the panopticon, where the prisoners will be watched by the poliece through a speacial one way mirror. This works by the notion of the prisoners that there are someone watching them, the disciplinary power is then created within the prisoners to behave inaccordance to the rules and regulations set in ther prison. The key idea is not that the prisoners are monitored or watched, but that they monitor themselves by following the rules as though we are being monitored or watched all the time.       

First of all, what do we mean by ‘city’, here? A large main town and the important area for commere and financial activities, where globalization strongly occures? However, this is not exactly what we are talking about, city in this case is the defining of cultural geography or space of modernity. In our everyday life, we behave, think, or act in accordance to the rules set for different places / different spaces. There are two different types of spaces, intermural and extramural spaces.  Firstly, the intermural spaces is where cultures or practices are variagated through diferent sub kinds of one place. To make this clearer, think of students from different faculties in Chula, each will behave or has different culture or practices, such as the Engineers and the Arts, the Engineer may has a tough environment, in terms of study, so make the Engineer culture become more stressful and harsh, while the Arts may has a friendly environment, making the Arts culture become more relaxing and calm. In addition, paces like the cafeteria, libraries, meeting room, or and classroom are all encoded with different special social activities. Another kind of space is the extramural space, where different form of cultures and practices are brought from outside, in another word, they are the minority and the less powerful in terms of cultural influences and practices, this is for example the small 7Eleven troops in the area of Chula. Henri Lefebure (1901-1991):- “- space is not natural or neutral but it is socially produced, – thus served as a tool of thought and action, also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.”  According to Henri, this can also be represented through the Arts building (BRK), where it was a building that princess Sirindhorn attened her classes. The building is divided into 5 sections, from the top down, for the royalties, Thai teachers, Foreign teachers, students, and everyone. This shows the kind of power that able to divide classes/caste, national/cultural, ability, age, gender (tiolets signs)

Talking further about space, how does it differ from place? What a rhyme, ‘space’ and ‘place.’ In this case, space is refers to cultural, and place refers to maerial. *Space is a practiced place, or in another word place, e.g. a house, for practicing space (culture). This space and place is somehow link with power, mentioned earlier. Power got its hand into this because ‘city’ is a concept produced and govern by the powerfuls, it is said, city is a place of some what full of glory but a lost dream in a way, some like white and black, as in there’s no white if there’s no black

Continue from the last time, now we know what ‘ideology’ is, let’s move on to the reading about ‘ideology of everyday life’. Why say Ideology of ‘everyday life’? Before we get to that, I want to talk about ‘Pictorial plaque of NASA’ that was introduced in the first section of the reading. At first just by looking at the picture I was wondering what ‘pictorial plague of NASA’ is to do with ideology anyways. But after half way through the paragraph, I realized that really everything has something in accordance to ideology. Just for a recap on that, this paragraph is about the picture on that plaque, that was attached to the side of the craft with the intension to signal the ship’s function and provenance to any extraterrestrial forms of life that might detect the craft as it was travelling out of the solar system,  in about 20th century. On the plaque there were pictures of a woman and a man and some kind of a solar map of where it came from…………………………….. Planet Earth!!!!!!!! Which was designed by 3 great astronomers (Dr  Carl Sagan, Dr  Frank Drake, and Linda Salzman Sagan) However, no matter how the figures were designed by the results of a computerized analysis of the average person in the American civilization, culture, specific gender and sexuality, this is not right…

The reason to why is because they must also generalize different other people from different countries in the planet too. By taking only the result of the average American civilization is not enough to say that this craft is from the planet call ‘Earth’.  The two figure were presented as the representatives of the remaining ‘human’ on Earth. The representatives both have big body builts, white skin, sport facial features and most bady parts were hairless, which is in accordance with the trends of the Americans back then.  

The design of the figures were somehow a monogamous heterosexual couple which in this case, a man seemed to be the more powerful/dominant figure, compared to the woman where the characteristic will be more like submissive figure. you can tell from the gesture, the man will stand straight, rigit, stable while put one arm up as a leading sign of welcome…  whereas the woman, she stand tilting to the man’s side, not straight, looking at the man’s side as if she’s following him or and learning from him of what to do next.

 This will obviously affect the image of the outsiders from the outter space have on ‘humans‘,  that  the one who is a man will play a more active role of power and leadership while women will be another thing opposite. Overall, this is just one example of cultural studies-that meaning/knowledge/truth are always cultural constructs ………. Cultural Studies claims that all knowledge is complexly produced, that is culturally govern ways of speaking and thinking of the world………… becuase there are no meaning or knowledge that can be universally true not even a single understanding or representation of reality. Bu we have many knowledge, different concept of reality so as different concept of truth claims. This has been explored by the  cultural studies through the concept of “Ideology” 

Not to say that all American is wrong about this but, this is only to show that this is the ideology of the Americans…. that assume male as more dominant than female….this is similar to many other countries such as China and many othe countries. However, there are also a number of places where not all male are more dominant than frmale.

This concluded that the plaque is designed with both biases and the beliefs that reflect only a specific cultural context within which it was produced. this is some what one of the ideology of everyday lives…… as most males are more dominant+ has more power that females.  sob sob…