There are many theories around why certain people dominate a field and others don’t. One I like to look at is the social structures around why people will end up in certain positions. As someone with a mental illness I feel the social bonds of certain groups is an inhibitor to the ability to allow many disparate voices. Even when we choose to include other groups we may not be able to really include their input with some of the efforts being purely symbolic. Something that came up recently was the complexities of certain histories and the ability to include them in bigger projects that are worth money.

I could see both sides of the story though. For instance some parties felt ignored and others felt they had done their best to include different ideas and histories. What I could see because I can in a way sit on the outside of social bonds was both parties not really communicating with each other effectively. Definitely some parties were clearly dominant and had a better social reach than the others but essentially both were able to negotiate and to me it came down to interests. The dominant party was interested in making a bigger social impact whereas the other parties were carrying their cards close to their chests. In fact both were just as powerful as each other but one chose to make a social effort centred around potential business whereas the others didn’t care to see their art as a business.

The problem these days is everyone is in a sense seen as a business person. You need to work within the confines of business as a social contract for social interaction as seen in the rising dominance of promoted social media content. So far this has been negative with fake news and these types of larger manipulations but it will be an even bigger problem when individuals have to promote their own voice to be heard on these bigger business advertising models. In a way the dominant parties are simply making the first move while others guard what is becoming a smaller and smaller territory. But the dominant parties feel they are under the same threat. I suppose in a way the world is becoming more competitive and really everyone feels threatened.