Public/Private Spheres vs Women in Relation to Global/International Politics

Fig. 1.  “The Gang’s All Here.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr, 5 August 2010.Web.11 June 2014.

It is very common to find private and public spheres associated with genders separated from each other throughout the history in works of scholars and political scientists. Public sphere is a big sector of social life that consists of important systems such as government with its president, Judiciary, Congress, and laws. It includes also trade system with detailed discussions of businesses and corporations. One of the largest portions of public sphere is military system. Education, media, religion have their places in this sphere also. Public sphere is basically a sphere where power operates and it is associated with masculine gender. The picture becomes contrasting when we think about the private sphere. This sector of society includes family and all its functions, marriage and sexual life. Food, fashion, and everything that is within the domestic domain are considered in the private sphere which in its turn is associated with women and feminine gender. Private sphere itself is usually ignored in the explorations and analysis of historical or present events while public sphere is in the center of discussions. Therefore it seems that men are in charge of the public sphere, and women are assigned to be in the private sphere. Accordingly, when we take a look at only public sphere and we eliminate women and private sphere from the discussions, we limit our understanding of international politics because society as a whole cannot exist with only public sphere and without intersection and connection of both spheres. Considering only public sphere will stereotype our understanding of international politics; hearing only “masculinized stories” will create  so-called “single story” about historical and present facts that will turn to be far from the reality. Therefore, we need to take into account the private sphere along with the public sphere and hear stories from both men and women in order to understand the whole picture of international politics.

To see how the separation of public/private spheres affect our understanding of international politics and women in relation to global politics, the example of Carmen Miranda and her role in international politics will be a good example to discuss.

Her example shows that the separation of spheres does not make sense because both spheres are operating depending on each other. Her example also shows that women are effective not only for private sphere operations but also for improving the relationships in global international politics between countries, i.e. women belong not only in the private sphere. Carmen Miranda was an actress, a singer and as a woman she was a representative of the private sphere (by definition). She has been also “chosen” by a corporation of a public sphere for promoting the production (bananas), and it was using her  in order to push the business of bananas forward by targeting women in private sphere and by advertising bananas using a well thought character of a woman.

Facebook: The Panopticon of Modern Age

Fig. 1. Grigoryan, Sona. “Facebook: The Panopticon of Modern Age.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr Creative Commons, 9 March 2014. Web. 2 Feb 2014.

    In 2004, a Harvard university undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook — a small social network for Harvard students to help to identify each other. Gradually, it spread to other universities, and eventually became popular among all colleges, universities, schools, the military, companies in the United States and in the whole world (Westlake 24). Nowadays, Facebook has about 1.19 billion active users who share and post personal information, photos, videos, personal thoughts, and “stay connected with their friends and family” (Navratil 51). By voluntary posting personal or general information Facebook users participate in collaborative creation of a giant database of information (qtd. in Keen). This information is under the constant surveillance not only by their friends and family, but also by Facebook that uses it for its own profit; this surveillance also generates sorted information about users and their preferences to be sold to advertising companies (Navratil 52). Facebook changes the ways of communication and interaction of users by simply keeping them under the constant surveillance. Consideration of Facebook’s surveillance will be interesting to look from panoptic perspective invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. The Panopticon was a design of a perfect prison, architecture of which allowed “to see constantly and recognize immediately” (Foucault 200). Furthermore, the Panopticon gave the rise of the disciplinary societies; the transformation of mechanisms that allows exercising power not only on a small enclosed institution, but also on bigger social bodies (Foucault 217). In this research paper, I will argue that there is the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon model, and although the concept of the Panopticon is an old phenomenon, it is still applicable in our digital century.

In order to show the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon, I will first introduce the main physical architecture of Panopticon and its purpose. I will then draw parallels between the elements of the design of the Panopticon and Facebook (see fig. 1). I will show that despite the fact that the Panopticon was meant to be an actual real building and Facebook is a virtual digital entity, they have many similarities. Next, I will introduce the idea of Facebook having a technique of disciplining the users, as well as mechanism of shaping their subjectivities, and I will argue that this is based on the panoptic gaze of surveillance and it comes from the roots of Panopticism. And lastly, I will depict that Facebook itself is a platform that collects knowledge from user posts and information for capitalistic purposes, effective performance of work, and increase of productivity, which in their turn are the criteria for tactics of power in economic process of formation of the disciplinary society.