ucsp

Week 5
Week 4

What is culture?
Characteristics of culture.
Types of culture
Elements of culture
Xenocentrism, Ethnocentrism and
Xenophobia
POLITICS
A dirty word?
Trouble?
Disruption?
Deceit?
Violence on one hand?
Samuel Johnson

“Nothing
more than a
means of
rising in the
world.”
Henry Adams

“The
systematic
organization
of hatred.”
The different views of politics
1. Politics art of government
2. politics as public affairs
3. politics as compromise
and consensus
4. Politics as power
Politics as the art of government
Polis – city – state
Athens
Cradle of
democratic
government
Affairs of the polis
What concerns the
state
Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck

 “Politicsis not
science .. But an
art.”
 Art of government
through the making
and enforcement of
collective decisions.
David Easton
 “Authoritative
allocation of values,”
 Authoritative values are
therefore widely
accepted in society and
are considered binding
by the mass of citizens.
 Politics
is associated
with policy .
John Emerich E. Dalberg Acton
 “Despotic power is always
accompanied by corruption
of morality.” “Authority that
does not exist for Liberty is
not authority but force.”
 Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts
absolutely.
Politics a public affairs
 Political and non-political coincides
 Public realm and private realm conforms to
the division between the state and civil
society.
 Apparatus of the state (courts, police, army
and so forth can be regarded as public they
are funded by the at the public’s expenses
out of taxation.
 Politics is restricted to the activities of the
state.
 public private

The state apparatus Civil society, autonomous

bodies. Businesses trade
of government
union, clubs, families and
so on
 Public Private

Public realm politics Personal realm, family

commerce work art and domestic life
culture and so on
Politics as compromise and consensus

 Politics seen as particular means of resolving

conflict that is by , compromise. Conciliation and
negotiation rather that through force and naked
conflict
 Politics is certainly no utopian solution
( compromise means that concessions are made
by all sides, leaving no one perfectly satisfied)
but it is undoubtedly preferable to the
alternatives : bloodshed and brutality
Bernard Crick
 When social groups and
interests possess power
they must be
conciliated, they
cannot be crushed.
 Thatsolution to the
problem of order which
chooses concialiation
rather than violence
and coercion.
Politics as power

The broadest and the most radical

definition of politics
Power .. The ability to achieve a
desired outcome through whatever
means.
Karl Marx  Politicalpower as merely
the organized power of
one class for oppressing
the other.
 From this perspective ,
civil society, characterized
as Marxists believe is to be
by class struggle, is the
very heart of politics.