Social Sciences and Humanities Lens on Voting Rights
The topic of interest is voting rights as a fundamental part of any democratic society, and the two lenses selected are social sciences and humanities. From the perspective of the social sciences, many issues and subjects can be explained from the point of view of human behavior as well as societal forces at varying levels. On the basis of the lens of the social sciences, voting rights are heavily impacted by current ballot access challenges and legislation on voting, which can be discriminatory against specific social groups. The prime hinderers of voting rights include voter identification laws, voter roll purges, and felon disenfranchisement (Yang, 2019). For example, people who were incarcerated, inactive, relocated, or voters without IDs can be excluded under the current legislation (Yang, 2019). Thus, the lens of the social sciences provides insight into how voting rights can selectively exclude some groups through laws, which disproportionately affects the balance of power in society.
From the humanities lens, the issue of voting rights can be better illuminated through art, literature, and philosophy. It is important to note that these rights were not always accessible to everyone, such exclusion of women. For example, in response, the first-wave feminist movement used in the UK used the color white to symbolize the British Suffrage Movement to fight against oppression (Wahl, 2018). The connection can be drawn between the meaning, context, and essence of the color white to express widespread dissatisfaction with a patriarchic rule imposed on women.
Both lenses regard the issue of voting rights from the human perspective and outline how specific groups are impacted by the voting legislation. The social sciences lenses focus on the discriminatory practices in voting rights that exist nowadays, while the humanities perspective outlines the historical context within which these rights were denied to specific social groups. At the same time, both approaches disregard the stages of development of voting legislation in the US and abroad and the latest steps take to maximize the representation of different groups in the voting process. As far as differences are concerned, the social sciences lens outlines current legislative blocks that prevent many people from exercising their voting rights, while the humanities lens places the issue in historical context.
Looking at the topic of voting rights from two different perspectives, I have understood how different approaches may change the way people perceive diverse issues and how these lenses can be used by outside forces to persuade people of one point of view or the other. However, looking at the issue at a deeper level, one can conclude that all approaches reflect diverse facets of a single whole that remains unchanged no matter from what perspective one looks at it (Imbert). Some of the benefits of further research may lie in uncovering further perspectives of looking at the issue of voting rights which would serve to add to a coherent picture of the topic. At the same time, it would be interesting to analyse how these different lenses correlate with the ones I have uncovered and whether new information is able to change the overall picture of the development of voting rights in the US.
References
Imbert, E. One Topic Different Perspectives. Web.
Yang, E. (2021) Ensuring access to the ballot box. American Bar Association. Web.
Wahl, K. (2016). Purity and parity: The white dress of the suffrage movement in early twentieth-century Britain. Colors in Fashion, edited by Jonathan Faiers and Mary Westerman Bulgarella, 21-34.