Power and Status

Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Chapter 6

Not for the first time in this class, I’m reminded of the cultural analysis we did in Workplace. Stories, language, documents, organizational structure, adaptation and change - it all fits in with genre and activity theory. Cultural analysis was why I thought we should ask Dr. R. for stories and organizational background as part of our information gathering. All Bawarshi and Reiff had to do to drive the similarities home was drop in a little Bourdieu and some cultural capital.

I had never thought of genres carrying any cultural capital, but of course they do. In a multiple-person activity system, the person who creates a spreadsheet and a workflow is probably of a different status than the person who enters provided data into the spreadsheet. But the data entry clerk may modify the workflow, if not the actual spreadsheet, in order to conform it to their personal needs.

Bawarshi and Reiff refer to status several times throughout this chapter so I’ve decided to focus on that. First, there is a discussion of Catherine Schryer’s research on differences between two veterinary school genres which notes that “these differences... are associated with status and power within the discipline, and as such they position their users [researchers or clinicians] at different levels of hierarchy within veterinary medicine” (81). The division of labor in an activity system also contributes to hierarchy/status (97). Finally, though it might be a bit of a stretch, Bawarshi and Reiff refer to Thomas Edison’s ultimate marketing job of using newspapers to establish himself as a celebrity, demonstrate the need for electric light, and lend credence to his work. If Edison and his colleagues hadn’t “made incandescent light and central power... a social and discursive reality” (101), in part by establishing their expert status through text, then the outcome might have been very different or at least less dramatic.

To continue on the theme of status and cultural capital, Bawarshi and Reiff note that “meta-genres [the guidebooks, manuals and/or discourse that explain the rules and language of a discipline] help teach and stabilize uptakes, and knowledge of meta-genres can signal insider and outsider status” (94). Again, not something I would have thought of when thinking of genre, but a meta-genre, or at least the knowledge contained in a meta-genre, would demarcate between those-who-know and those-who-don’t. Power and status can come from this kind of insider knowledge and also, as they say, serve as a signal to others.

In conclusion, the authors write that “genres are part of how individuals participate in complex relations with one another in order to get things done, and how newcomers learn to construct themselves and participate effectively within activity systems” (104). It follows that part of the “effective participation” involves figuring out their status within the system as well as identifying the status of others within the system.