Our Aims

Stereotypes are culturally conditioned reflexes that we carry around in our heads. To a large extent they shape how we will define other people even before we see them. In the media, and in the theatre of politics and power, stereotypes are routinely employed to stir up public emotions while systematically sidestepping thought.

Within each of us the history of dominant ideas has left indelible marks. Nowhere is this truer than in the stereotypes that form and interfere with our capacity to comprehend the world we live in.

Stereotypes are the footprints of history, culture and power running through our minds. To some extent, Stereotype & Society is here to provide an opportunity to pierce through the veil of "psuedo-environments" that clouds the burning issues of our time; to respond to the ways that current events are framed or staged to stimulate those conditioned reflexes.

S&S is also a place to revive social memory, to communicate a history we've never been taught. In a challenge to the prevailing Age of Amnesia, we will be hunting down the historical footprints of dominant ideas—in the halls of art, science, religion and popular culture, and in the ongoing conceits of power—and explore the ways they have shaped or influenced common ways of seeing.

We invite you to join this enterprise. Spread the word.

Comments

[Naomi]

Who makes stereotypes?

I think the powerful people in economically advantageous positions, because they also govern politics and are able to manipulate various information to create dominant ideology.

Stereotyping might be useful to categorize people, but at the same time, it serves as a tool of descrimination. I feel the latter notion is more prevailing in public these days.