Patriarchal Culture as a Private Government--- Mendoza
Anderson's section on asking her readers to open their minds to the idea of private government made me think of culture as a private government. More specifically, I thought of how the state's regulation on the employment relationship impacts the private government in a parent to children relationship. An immediate thought was Latinx youth who grew up in mixed-status households.
The example discusses Latinx households, which regularly impose their home countries' history of ongoing patriarchy. Within many homes, mainly the young girls are in submission to the private government of the family. The culture within the family tends to place set rules which limit many young Latinas' negative and positive freedom but is seen as "just" because of parents' "authoritative rights." The issue is that in some cases, mothers and fathers continue the patriarchal "norm" for their daughters in terms of available opportunities and expectations in the future. For example, I have found many mixed-status Mexican families teach young girls to cook and clean to prepare them to be "good wives" in the future. Upon such reality, I thought of Anderson's "four general strategies for advancing and protecting the liberties and interests of the governed under any type of government" (65).
I want to focus on the first one, which is to "exit." Anderson paints her example between an employee and their exit rights, which is a "defense" against worker injustice through harsh labor hours and low wages in a contract (66). I think there is a contract between teens and their parents, which is tacitly consented on. The contract exists because of the dependence teens have on their caregivers to survive both physically and mentally (moral psychology, which aids in navigating society). However, for many youths in Latinx households (as for many others), there is no exit right within the private government of the family. What then occurs for many young Latinas is that, unlike Anderson's scenario, they are, in a sense, held in "bondage," and their "human capital is imprisoned" (66). In other words, young Latinas have to bear with the ongoing systems or patriarchy, from home labor to cultural norms of being the second caregiver or, as in many situations, the main caregiver to her siblings. On top of that, the cultural norms placed on young Latinas limit what they can imagine as possible in terms of where they can place their "human capital" in society (future career). Then how is a such trap within this system of private government minimized? Anderson points to the state's intervention, which I will apply to this scenario.
Anderson states that we need to start "[recognizing]... increased state constraints on people's negative liberties can generate massive net gains in people's positive and republican freedoms" (48). The example provided was within the employee and employer context with the state intervention in imposing regulations on employment when it comes to discriminating when looking for employees. In an attempt to apply this concept of state intervention, I thought about youth employment law. More specifically, the availability of legally working as early as 14 with a workers permit. While this can lead to another form of private government for Latinas (or young Latines), it also provides some negative and individual freedom because of the chance to "exit" patriarchy.
However, that option is not effective in all cases. Some households won't allow their children to work because someone needs to stay home for the caregiving and management of the home. While others will push for their children to get jobs to bring in another flow of income. Regardless of each possible choice, it all comes back down to being stuck in a toxic private government, which limits opportunities, by imposing gender norms.
I'm open to feedback since I'm unsure if I am applying Anderson's work correctly to my example. However, I wanted to ask a question that centers on culture as a private government. Can there be a system of government intervention to alleviate some of the marginalizations of youth within patriarchal culture, which I view as a private government?
Hi Luis! This is a really interesting blog post, I like how you bring in the experiences of children in mixed status households. I wanted to expand upon your idea of “exit” and how it may not be a way to protect liberty in a private government.
ReplyDeleteAnderson discusses the harmful and incorrect belief that employees are “independent contractors” (57). She explains that we assume that employees are free to exit in and out of contracts, negotiate contracts, and obtain fair work conditions (57). However, it is much more complicated than simply leaving your job or exiting the private government. She explains that in the nineteenth century the rules of contracts changed. Workers were no longer required to work for their employers for a year or give up all of their wages if they quit. This may seem like a good thing, allowing workers to exit contracts, but it also freed the employers from any responsibility to employ workers (59). She notes, “the worst the workers could do the boss often involved suffering at least as much as the worst the boss could do to them” (59). Even with this newfound “power” for employees, the employers still held the advantage. The workers still suffered more under these new rules and struggled to make the employers feel their absence unless a big group of workers acted collectively. Similarly to what you argue Luis, exit is not as cut and dry as it first comes across.
I also wanted to connect this to idea of tacit consent we discussed when we read Locke. In class we talked in length about how if you are born under a certain government you tacitly consent to follow its rules and procedures. If you no longer agree with or want to follow these rules you have the freedom to leave and emigrate to another country. The question came up as to whether you really have the free choice to leave because leaving would mean leaving behind all your belongings, family, and experiences. In a way it is leaving your whole life behind. Many felt that with so much to lose by leaving, one could be coerced into staying. Similarly I think this applies to the relationship between the employer and the employee. Technically the employee has the freedom to leave but if they do they give up a wage and the security of having a job. Anderson also mentions that noncompete clauses also bar some employees from working in the same industry for a given period of time (66). There are other factors at play in deciding to quit or not. I would argue that this choice is not free. It would be like saying that giving up my wallet when held at gunpoint was a choice I made freely. Tacit consent may seem applicable to the situations of being born in a given country or working in a given job but I think that given the circumstances and the balance of power, active consent and free choice is necessary to limit the conditions that lead to the biased choice of whether to leave or not.
Hi Dara and Luis! Great discussion going on here.
ReplyDeleteJust to play a little devil's advocate, I want to push back slightly on Luis's application of Anderson's private government model. I was also thinking about how other institutions in society can function as private governments, but ultimately, I don't know if the family fits as well with the analogy as the workplace.
Anderson is critical of the employer-employee relationship for several key reasons. The first, and most important of these, is the "intensive [...] and incompletely specified" (Anderson 106/107) nature of the authority managers have over workers. She uses the example of Walmart telling its drivers "what they have to pick up, when and where they have to deliver it, and what route they have to take." (107) This is a limitation on the workers' ability to pursue their own personal objectives, or even their ability to select their own means to a prescribed end. As you pointed out Luis, families can operate in a similar way, by imposing patriarchal expectations that limit positive and negative freedoms of children.
However, it is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. The discussion to be had here should center around the perpetuation of patriarchal stereotypes, not necessarily the authority of parents over children. As we discussed in class, having a hierarchy in a family is often beneficial, because children are not fully developed rational agents yet, and thus require figures of authority to make decisions on their behalf. This naturally creates hierarchies of authority within families, with parents occupying the authoritative role.
Ultimately, the issue you bring up is entirely valid, however I would contest that it stems from patriarchal injustice, rather than highlighting an inherent issue with familial hierarchy. As we said in class, hierarchy within the family is not detrimental to the family's function until there is an abuse of power, in which case, the abuse is the issue, not the hierarchy itself.
Hi guys, great discussion here! Umer, I wanted to push back a little on your comment.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to separate natural hierarchies in the family, which Luis does point out, from family hierarchies stemming from patriarchal structures, which Luis also points out. The former is less controversial, as you do point out that certain hierarchies within the family are needed to develop children into fully rational agents. It is acceptable and understandable for a parent to want to protect their children and thus take away certain negative freedoms to protect them. A seven year old should be stopped from driving a car, even if that child really wants to. However, to Luis's credit, parents can take this a bit too far. Parents may subject children to arbitrary authority using the justification of "being their parent," as perhaps a manager would do with an employee. As Umer points out, this can count as abuse. However, sometimes abuse within the family is not explicit. Certain expectations and ways of raising children, while cruel, might also be normalized in certain families. (I am not arguing that this is abuse at all) A parent may force their child to follow a certain profession supported by the want for their kid to have a financially stable life, even if that kid does not want to follow that profession. Some families raise family as the utmost important thing in life and can use that as leverage to make their children de-prioritize other aspects of their lives that are important to them, diminishing the opportunity to pursue other things.
However, I Luis does point out that in certain cultures, and even around the world, gender norms in family, which are perpetuated by the patriarchy, can take away freedom of choice and opportunity:
"Some households won't allow their children to work because someone needs to stay home for the caregiving and management of the home. While others will push for their children to get jobs to bring in another flow of income. Regardless of each possible choice, it all comes back down to being stuck in a toxic private government, which limits opportunities, by imposing gender norms."
This is deeply patriarchal. Many individuals do not have the ability to choose what they want to do and are weighed down by the expectations their gender places on them in the family. Girls who are raised to "be good wives" were not given the opportunity to be equipped with the capability to pursue their own dreams and goals. Unpaid domestic labor is time consuming and exhausting - it is not easy for individuals to escape its deep-rooted expectations in order to live a fairer and freer life.
Hi Luis et al.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really cool discussion. I want to consider the system of unpaid labor in prisons and how we can apply Anderson to a system where the private government environment is at times, constructed by the imprisonment system. Anderson comments on the distinctions between states and private governments, noting that, "Private governments impose controls on workers that are unconstitutional for democratic states to impose on citizens who are not convicts or in the military" (Anderson 63). But, Anderson mainly discusses the distinction between state and private entities, not as much analyzing when the boundaries blur and become less distinct between state and private government. Here, I think the prison system is the best example. The current US prison system allows state owned corporations to contract incarcerated people out to private companies. In fact, over 17,000 incarcerated people work in the private sector (in all sectors); more than 500 million dollars of revenue comes from these incarcerated workers.
Incarcerated people hold very little control over their labor. In these cases, the lines are wholly blurred and it becomes questionable which employer intervention and activity can be justified for incarcerated people. There is a similar, though more exacerbated, power that employers wield over employees in the prison workplace than any other private government.
So, I wonder how Anderson will consider imprisoned people whose unpaid labor is dished out to private corporations who can act as they do without the prisoners having the same rights of exit etc, which employees may possess. This question becomes increasingly alarming when we consider the racial disparities in prisons and how this institutionalized legal form of slavery (or at least unpaid labor) is racialized and unregulatable for prisoners because of their legal condition. These power dynamics go unaddressed, mostly because of the state's introduction to the question of private government. But, the limbo in which prison workers labor within is not exactly explained by Anderson and I am curious to understand better if the issue can fit into her idea of private governments or is too far removed with governmental aspects of the prison system.