META : I probably won't receive positive feedback as I am not respecting the assignment instructions, but we really need to talk about authority and privilege in the determination process of a source quality.
Academic authority, social privilege and conformity: a guide to sabotage your career
In this very short essay, I will use critical phenomenology and sociology to highlight how academic authority should be reconsidered as a proof of quality. I will address privileges in relation to power dynamics in this context, and discuss the notion of Institutionalism and it's effects on individuals. Finally, I will argue for a critical analysis of " Offical " and " National " labeled sources.
Scholars and academics constitutes an in_group social identity that shows consistent normalization / exclusion ethical rules. Individuals recognized as members of this group experience the phenomenon of “authority” evaluation from their peers. Authority can be described as an in_group scale of one's value, validity, and prestige. The phenomenon has formal properties and uses common markers such as: affiliations, accreditation, H-index and I10-index.
The Authority agentic property is socially desirable; individuals are subjected to conformity pressure and compliance to gain higher social status.
Being a subgroup of the U.S.A-European meta-cultural ensemble, it inherits the systemic social paradigm such as: patriarchy, racism, social classes and aristocracy. This is reflected in the authority phenomenon: women, oppressed minorities and lower classes individuals experience higher friction and gate-keeping. This produces a complex feedback loop where shifting is less likely to occur.
Reciprocally, Authority is a valid status in other power institutions. The academy is intricate with the State, and there are signs of mutual support and common strategies to keep exclusive priviledges. Legitimacy to act and legitimacy to prescribe norms is thus kept in the Institutional complex using self-validation of an institution and mutual cross-validation of institutions.
This might explain why .gov websites are given complete and systematic validity as sources; while community driven projects such as Wikipedia - the largest encyclopedia and the largest functional horizontal collective initiative, ever. - is qualified as a priori unreliable, despise the internal rich diversity of Wikipedia articles, that shows many forms and quality levels: some very bad ones, and some very good ones.
In contrast, I will bring to memory of anyone still reading this: the Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange cases, and ask why it wouldn't be more appropriate in a post Wikileaks era to carefully analyze, review and double check government sources and use critical thinking in the process.
That's it. I'll find my way out.
