Political Science-James Scott James Scott Essay

Total Length: 599 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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Because concealment is provided, hidden transcripts, which in most cases are contrary to the public transcript, are unrestrained performances within the safety provided offstage and the assumed like-mindedness of the audience.

The difference between the public vs. The hidden transcript is the "impact of the domination on public discourse" (5). Thus, Scott illustrates the contradiction between the public and the hidden transcripts as he illustrates George Orwell's experience in colonial Burma (10-11). For the dominant, failure to perform his role could very well threaten his autocratic position, which may open for questioning the legitimacy of his authority and power. Because he needs to maintain his position of authority, he chooses to perform his public transcript despite his hidden transcript. While public performance has much bearing on the dominant's position of authority, Scott shows that decisions that truly matter are made in the realm of the private rather than in public assemblies where public transcripts are performed (12).

Scott brings to fore an alternative reading of power relations in introducing the concepts of public and hidden transcripts.

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Power relations viewed from the lenses of transcripts becomes more nuanced as it attempts to see what lies beneath the direct and openly observable relations between the dominant and the subordinate (13-14). Scott's seminal way to analyze power relations challenges traditional notions of public sphere by introducing the domain of offstage, which can be viewed as an alternate "public" sphere wherein it becomes the public sphere of either the dominant or subordinate......

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/political-science-james-scott-james-scott-25860