Oral anglais : notion Places and Forms of power

Oral anglais : notion Places and Forms of power

To begin with, I’d like to give a brief definition of the notion of Places and Forms of power. So basically, in politics and social science, power is the ability to exercise control, but also to influence the behavior of people. In order to live together members of a community accept rules, regulations, laws. This helps to create social cohesion but can also lead to conflicts and tensions. So we can wonder what are the bad sides of power.

Firstly, the new technologies can be considered as a form of power. We can think that internet, smart-phones and all the new medias give us access to freedom but this is not absolutely true. In the novel “1984” written by George Orwell in 1949, the main characters live in a society ruled by an entity called Big Brother. The inhabitants are under surveillance because the Thought Police spies upon them through the telescreen, a device that records your moves and your voice. In fact, those unbearable living conditions are due to the fright of the government to be overthrown. Furthermore, social networks have a great impact on the young people. In the television series Black Mirror, the showrunners want to show that we are dependent on screens and this dependency can endanger our lives. Sometimes, simple things can become terrible situations. The video called “Who’s at the door” shows that unknown people can become very intrusive, and when we lose the control of our private life, anyone can use personal data against us.

Secondly, I have chosen to focus on the distribution of power. In our society, there are always some leaders. We have seen in the unit that companies are sometimes managed by demanding bosses. For example, in the book and the movie “The devil wears Prada”, the young employee Andrea works in appalling conditions since Miranda, her boss, is very disdainful. Indeed, Andrea is doing her best and is very engrossed on what her boss is telling her being, but she’s reprimanded all day long for some lame reasons. Consequently, she feels shameful and guilty, and the more Miranda looks down on her assistant, the more she is shy and fears new reproaches.

        Nevertheless, the working world is not the only a place where people have to cope with dreadful situations. Even in great countries there still some issues linked with the power. In USA, the government can change the law about death penalty but nothing has changed since a couple of years. An American journalist of the magazine “The Economist” gives a lot of arguments against death penalty. He puts into relief the numerous innocents that have been killed and the inefficiency of the death penalty system.

        To conclude, we can say that the power isn't equally distributed in the working world in which bosses can totally enslave their employees. Nevertheless, when many people have access to power, this might lead to dreadful situations with social networks.

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