Looking Like An Aid Implementor

Although there are somewhat of similarities between Weber’s and Foucault’s relations of power and dominance, how they evaluate the concepts separately and the ways these concepts are practiced in society, can be distinguished differently. Webber appears to occupy the polar opposite with the respect to his claims of how power becomes existent with bureaucratic instruments and bureaucracy itself, Foucault argues that the power relations are everywhere in society and with expansive elements; society has no option but to internalize (Shaw 2011). His explanation of power is much broader than Weber’s. Focault rejects the hierarchical models of power, and believed that relations of dominance are formations of unequal power (McClaren 2002), and over time domination may seem fixed in society’s social structure (Shaw 2011). Additionally, Foucault looks at the concept of power from a functional strategy, with the functional practices administered by authority, and emphasises that authority commonly uses discursive power and the operation of discourse to maintain the dominance (Smart 2010; Shaw 2011). What is compelling about Foucault’s concept of power are his discursive claims. Unlike Webber, he suggests that power relations are not necessarily derived from state practices, but are all under state control, and highlights that “state and hegemony is in the every area of life” (Shaw 2011). Further, to understand some of Foucault’s functional examples, he focuses on the everyday lives of

For example, many buildings in the newly sovereign post-colonial states portray ethnic, cultural and religious patterns in order to cause nationalistic feelings among the populations. I totally agree with Miodrag Suvakovic’s argument, which claimed that ‘‘architecture is a political and ideological practice that uses its techno-aesthetic and techno-artistic strategies to participate in the organisation of individual and collective human life’’. In my view, the most interesting architectural distinguish is between liberal and extremely socialist (such as communist) political ideologies. Liberal ideologies are more open, free and creative than socialist ones, which usually are practical rather than beautiful or unusual. Thus, I can claim that liberal ideologies are more intellectually stimulating for architects because there are often less rules and requirements for their work. Socialist ideologies imply that usually there is a certain architectural plan and a set of rules that you have to follow and hence, architects in socialist countries are rarely required to «think outside the box».

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

In his essay “Panopticism,” Michel Foucault introduces the Panopticon structure as proof of modern society tending toward efficient disciplinary mechanisms. Starting with his example of the strict, intensely organized measures that are taken in a typical 17th-century plague-stricken town, Foucault describes how the town employed constant surveillance techniques, centralized a hierarchy of authorities to survey households, partitioned individual structures to impose certain behavior, and record current information about each individual.

The social norms and traditions of the past shattered leaving unorganized behavior resulted from the distrust of the world’s norms. The article “Postmodernism’s Critique of Modernism” regards this unorganized behavior as a “loss of unity” with the quote, “While modernism regards fragmentation as tragic, laments loss of unity and hope to regain the loss of unity through arts…” (Postmodernism's).This lack of unity and fragmentation coupled with the enormous crowds of big cities leave the individual feeling smaller and more isolated. A quality which creates the sense of individualism and stream of conscious writing that is associated with modern

The play "Walking in the City" paints a lesson that may be applied to personal interactions. Leaders and influential people craft rules regulating social interactions and social norms that please themselves and create the sort of society that works best for them or corresponds with their ideals. This represents the view of New York that Michel de Certeau saw from the height of the Twin Towers. The city was strategized below him in topical and geographical structure; it was laid out in carefully constructed zones according to a detailed and highly thought out architectural plan. These were the endeavors of the architectural strategists of the City. Down below, however, a different scene was taking place. Pedestrians were meandering in and out of the outline, messing up the strategy and adopting 'tactics', or heuristics, that best suited their intentions and desires.

On his book on Modern Architecture, Curtis writes that modern architecture was faulted for it’s “supposed lack of ‘recognizable imagery’” towards the end of the 1970s. This statement supports the idea of Jencks’ double coding where architects must now make

Subsequently, the modernist approach of Buchanan (Silva et al., 2009) illustrate Foucault’s theory that ‘’the development of standardised uniform spaces commanding uniform behaviour, leaving no room for individual interpretation, explaining everything with signs and texts. The government and public authorities look after the citizens’’ (Silva et al., 2009 p. 339). In modernist approach rules, orders and prohibitions enforces behaviour demanding individuals to adapt to the system on the street. The individual conforms to rules and a state solves problems and looks after the people by setting up laws and prohibitions. In contrast, the flexible approach or shared space movement has the opposite outcome, making human behaviour central and negotiating ‘shared space’ as emphasised by Goffman. (Silva et al., 2009)

The computer, one of the icons of the information age, has become an integral part of society. Email has replaced snail mail, online videos have replaced the tape cassette, and social media has replaced the village square. In his essay “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze argues that the rise of the computer heralds the transition from a disciplinary society to a control society, where people are no longer viewed as individuals, but as “dividuals,” like data points in a system. In her book How We Became Posthuman, Katherine Hayles gives examples of the “dividualizing” effect computers have on individuals. Deleuze's control society stands in contrast to the older disciplinary societies outlined by another French philosopher, Michel Foucault. In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes what he terms a “panopticon,” a system in which a large number of subjects are observed from a central location, knowing that they may be observed but not knowing when they are, in an effort to induce them to self-discipline their own behavior. The panopticon forms the basis of a disciplinary society, which uses “panoptic” institutions such as school, prisons, and hospitals to encourage individuals to conform to certain standards and norms (e.g. learned, law-abiding, healthy). In the article “The Subject and Power”, Foucault further discusses the power relationships that underlie such disciplinary societies, asserting that power in

Through analyzing the written works of Max Weber’s Types of Legitimate Domination and Bureaucracy to C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination, the writings of the comparative authors reveal the domination of power in a socially constructed society and the way that individuals are influenced by the constructed hierarchy of power. Through sociological analysis, these concepts can be applied to the ways individuals are continuously influenced through socially constructed institutions in a society where individuals constantly interact with one another. As Mills and Weber apply sociological analysis to the context of their observations, they are able to observe the growing positive and negative influences that ultimately shape the

Imagine a city where no green space can be found. Where concrete and steel buildings rise up and block the sun. Where streets are chaotic and gridlocked and citizens are stuffed in cramped, dirty and unsanitary apartments. This was the world of 19th-century cities where human health and happiness were disregarded for economic gain. These horrid conditions shaped the lives and ideas of three very influential men: Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They took their own experiences and redesigned the sprawling metropolis to improve the lives of the residents. Each man created urban utopias that included green spaces, farms, and parks to improve air quality and the livelihoods of the people. Despite theses similar views, each design differed from the others. Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright all completely reimagined the urban city in differing ways based on scale, distribution of land and technology. Their design concepts have been adapted across the globe and implemented into modern urban planning everywhere.

“The best that can be said of the conception is that it did afford a chance to experiment with some physical and social planning theories which did not pan out. “ This quote reflects Jane Jacob’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to criticize the social housing’s design approach and its associated urban planning in modern era. “The physical and social theories” outlines the urban planning idea of social housing (Utopian idea) and according to Jane’s statement, such experiment of these theories were deem to be unsuccessful. It is inevitably certain to some extent that a provocative statement towards modern era social housing approaches would hold true due to the minimal success the plans brought to the city, such as solving the working class commendations temporarily. Nevertheless, it is a failure to deliver long-standing social improvements corresponded with the increasing suspicion of modernism, one cannot simply attribute ill fate to its “innovative physical features” (As Jane said, the Utopian and Utopia), but should rather considered a range of other elements in the larger aspect of society: factors such as difficulty of racial integration, problems of financing and management, lack of bridging between architecture and planning, as well as the increasing preference of suburban lifestyle from the rising mid class. These problems reflected evidently in some stereotypes of social housing communities built in the modern era such as Pruitt-Igoe, sunny side Gardens, Paul

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

As a result of a booming development of the nineteenth century city, “progressive” architects of the time started to deliberate and conceive opinions to create long term solutions. Known for his radical cultural manifestos, Le Corbusier is one of the architects that epitomizes the change in ideal of the Machine Age. He introduced ideas of living in completely analogous, planned, designed, and then built, cities. Le Corbusier 's proposition for the City of Tomorrow had in its roots the intention of creating a series of fundamental principles that would become the skeleton of any modern city plan. However, considerations that were not applied during that period of time, are the cause of its unsuccessful development.

This essay aims to discuss the reading by David Harvey concerning the right to the city. The essay will critic on the reading and give an insight of what Harvey means when he says that we should adopt the right to the city as both a political idea and a working slogan, (Harvey,2008:23).