Bali's News

Power Dynamics

I just read this great article on Power Dynamics in groups by Agbaria and Cohen. When reading it, I understood many things.

I remember a year ago, an instructor at AUC, Egypt, wanted her students to interact online with American students to discuss "perceptions of the other" and "media's effect on perceptions of the other". I remember that she complained that her students were not participating enough, and that the students themselves complained about not feeling comfortable or understood. I realize now that there are several reasons why such an interaction did not work out well:
1. The power dynamics are obviously on the Americans' side. They are the stronger political and economic power. That automatically makes the Egyptians feel on the weaker side
2. The discussion was conducted in English. The native language of the Americans and the second language of most of the Egyptians in the discussion. This gives the Americans more power again. Whatever level of spoken English, these Egyptian students were in a "writing" course, which implies their writing skills were still not that well developed.
3. The Americans were taking this course by choice: they knew it would involve interaction with Middle-Easterners. However, the Egyptians did not take this course by choice. They discovered the interaction component after they'd signed up and started the course.
4. The Egyptians felt they lacked information about important topics and this made them feel incapable of continuing such an interaction. The students complained of this, and only one of them actually went the extra mile of finding the information needed to continue the discussion.
5. Several of the Egyptian students said they felt offended by some of what the Americans said. Again, this is more related to the power dynamics, with the Egyptians automatically taking the "powerless" or "victim" stance

So what could have been done? I think maybe the instructor here in Egypt could have:
1. Involved herself more into the discussions
2. Helped the Egyptians empower themselves by helping them increase their knowledge, or helping them with their "writing" skills - possibly bringing in the online discussion topics into the class; helping them brainstorm together and write responses

I gotta go now - i'll rethink this again later!

posted by Maha @ 1:22 AM