“Neo-Weberians”
Samuel Huntington, Cultures Count and Lawrence Harrison, “Why Culture Matters”
Culture changes much more slowly than the economy, technology
Economic and tech’l modernization can occur without modern, liberal, Western cultural values
The contemporary scholars most directly influenced by Weber’s book insist that culture, usually national cultures, i.e. “culture as system,” continues to affect the economic growth of modern nations.
To get their point, imagine, if you will, that we are living in the 1950s or early 1960s. Countries across the world are becoming independent, that is they’re rejecting colonialism. Optimism abounded, and serious scholars believed that economic growth would be more or less uniform in most developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the
N. Africa was predicted by many to grow most quickly, because of its proximity to
JFK and other American leaders were openly concerned about
50 years later, what happened?
There have been some notable economic successes: Germany and Japan rebuilt their shattered economies into world powers, and Spain, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have entered the “first world,” more or less. But what about the rest of the world, especially Latin America, Africa, and the
For the most part, low economic growth and its social correlates:
severe economic stratification
Illiteracy, especially among women
Poverty
High birth rates, population growth rates
Corruption is near-universal
Why? Some explanations:
Colonialism had deleterious effects of all sorts, e.g. drawing arbitrary borders around “nations” (as in
“Neo-colonialism” Post-colonial theory
continuing dependency: countries on the global economic periphery, e.g. Latin American countries, are beholden to core countries such as the
Systemic Racism: economic development disproportionately benefits white men; the global economic system is inherently racist and oppressive to minorities and women
These explanations are unsatisfying to lots of people, certainly to H&H. So Neo-Weberians look to cultural values, including
1. equality
2. civility
3. individualism
4. time orientation
5. religious outlook
6. optimism versus pessimism
7. “trust” and social capital
8. “rationality”
Later in their book, Harrison and Huntington explore the idea that cultures should be reprogrammed and modernized, that this would be better than simply giving financial aid to poor countries. And they find support among generally western-educated scholars and NGO workers from Africa,
Cultural Anthropology
Like Weber (at times), cultural anthropologist view culture as a system.
Their analyze “cultures” in synchronic, not diachronic, terms. This is part of what makes cultural anthropology unique.
Their approach and methods are interpretive; they see cultures as texts that are open to interpretation, and contain recurring themes and symbolism
Cultural anthropology can tend to be functionalist in its thinking.
Everything in a culture serves a function
Everything in a culture is part of an integrated whole
Society is a system of mutual interdependence that must be kept in equilibrium
Cultures are necessary for human life, serve concrete needs:
For rearing and socializing children
For creating social solidarity and harmony
An implication of these functionalist views is that indigenous cultures should be protected or preserved
i.e. if Westerners tamper with one part of an indigenous culture, they may destroy the whole thing
This view was crucial for anthropology during its early years in the 20th century, when Western powers still operated systems of colonial control in “3rd world” countries.
Ruth Benedict, “The Diversity of Cultures” (Spillman)
From her undergraduate work, she had a background in literature, and in the various ways of studying a text to grasp its various levels of meaning.
She did not concern herself as much with history as did her peers. Rather, she was looking for repeated themes, for the importance given various values and beliefs, and for how all of this fit together (or didn’t).
Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934) was translated into fourteen languages and was published in many editions as standard reading for anthropology courses in American universities for years.
Culture-and-personality:
The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is “her view of human cultures as “personality writ large.’”
Each culture, Benedict explains, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. These traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique gestalt. For example she described the emphasis on restraint in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis on abandon in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient
Other anthropologists of the culture and personality school also developed these ideas—notably Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa (published before "Patterns of Culture") and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (published just after Benedict's book came out).
“modal personality”—cluster of traits most common to a traditional culture/social group
In Patterns of Culture she expresses her belief in cultural relativism. She desired to show that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be understood only if one studies that culture as a whole.
Morality, she argued, was relative to the values of the culture in which one operated.
Critics have objected to the degree of abstraction and generalization inherent in the “culture and personality” approach.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
This book is an instance of Anthropology at a Distance. Study of a culture through its literature, through newspaper clippings, through films and recordings, etc., was necessary when anthropologists aided the
Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in 1944, aimed at understanding Japanese culture. Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, Americans considered it quite natural for American prisoner of wars to want their families to know they were alive, and to keep quiet when asked for information about troop movements, etc., while Japanese POWs, apparently, gave information freely and did not try to contact their families.
In more recent years however, Benedict's "national character" approach has been criticized as being subjective, and at times even demeaning -- she characterized Dobu people, for example, as mean-spirited and paranoid.
Anthropologists were now eager to get away from imposing their own culturally created value judgments on other societies. And Benedict appeared to have gotten caught up the mentality of her era, a mentality that wanted to see people of different nationalities in stereotyped ways. Additionally, her approach has always been criticized for not putting greater emphasis on class differences.
Clifford Geertz
Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (Spillman)
In the 1970s, Geertz becomes the public “ambassador” of anthropology, much as Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead had been before him. However, while Benedict was read by the educated public, Geertz is read mostly by graduate students and academics.
Like Benedict, Geertz conceptualizes culture as a text that can be read and interpreted in terms of recurring themes and symbolism. This is in stark contrast to Marxist and neo-Marxist (materialist) approaches.
Like Neo-Weberians, Geertz takes on the mantle of Max Weber. Geertz is one of the most famous and influential anthropologists ever, and as we will see, Richard Shweder, another anthropologist and a critic of the neo-Weberians Huntington and Harrison, takes on the mantle of Geertz.
Geertz’s famous phrase, quoting Weber: “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs…”
The analysis of culture is therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning.
Studying culture for Geertz thus involves doing ethnography, living with people in their communities, interviewing them, taking notes, and doing “thick description”
Thick description involves thinking about culture, that is thinking about what things mean in a social setting
Thin description, by contrast, involves simple physical description of what is happening
Interpretive understanding is as important as causal understanding
Geertz’s most famous study is of cockfighting on the Indonesian island of Bali
He argues that the system of betting reflects the status hierarchy and macho culture of the Balinese men.
The cultural practice of cockfighting “reflects” deeper truths about Balinese society.
Balinese men wager irrationally high stakes because of the social meaning of the cockfight and its outcome. People don’t remember the money they won or lost, so much as the status order of the winners and losers.
“The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong”
Richard Shweder, Moral Maps, "First World" Conceits, and the New Evangelists
Shweder writes in the tradition of Clifford Geertz, and so also of Max Weber, but his position is quite different from that of the neo-Weberians we discussed above.
He is, to put it bluntly, a strong relativist and he refutes notions of cultural superiority, certainly of western cultural superiority, or as he puts it the culture of northwestern Europe.
Nonwestern cultures are not something to be denigrated or reprogrammed, rather westerners have much to learn from nonwestern cultures and societies.
Harrison and Huntington are wrong because theories of “national culture” have long been discredited, because different cultures place different relative importance on different values, and because people from nonwestern societies who want to change their own cultures’ values do not reflect their own cultures, but rather certain western values.
We can all learn from all different kinds of cultures, from experiencing life in different cultures, so we ought to respect and preserve different cultures, which have lasted for thousands of years.
For example, Shweder applauds the rejection of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights by the American Anthropological Association in the 1940s. They argued that it was an ethnocentric document.
Cultural Reception and Production
Pierre Bourdieu, Snobs, and Omnivores
Bourdieuàsymbolic boundaries, quantitative techniques for sociology of culture (compare with cultural anthro)
Working-class background, studied the Kabyle in
Became more politically active later in his career: anti-globalization, anti-Americanization to some degree
Rejected Marxism, but also post-positivism
Main ideas:
Forms of capital (social, economic, cultural)
Social Space or Field
Habitus: bodily and cognitive imprint of social position
Why workers don’t like to eat fish (removing bones too dainty) or work on keyboards
Categories of refined/unrefined versus masculine/feminine
Symbolic Violence, Symbolic Domination
Distinction (excerpt)
Pierre Bourdieu is perhaps the most influential sociologist alive today. Like Foucault before him, in
For the purposes of this course, we’ll cover some of his work on Structure, Habitus, and Social Space, and then we’ll move on to Michele Lamont’s revision and extension of his ideas.
Social Space and Social Classes.
Bourdieu's Opponents:
(1) A break with Marxists: (I.e. 'objective' reality). Bourdieu is interested in RELATIONSHIPS, on more levels than just the economic, and argues that how people
interpret and make sense of their relations matters (this is the subjective element).
(2) A break with "intellectualism": The theoretical class (i.e. the one we as scientists define) is not necessarily the class that exists in-the-world.
(3) A break with Economics: There are more dimensions to the social world that just economics.
(4) A break with “Objectivism” in favor of a symbolic understanding of social structure.
He also has s definite focus on POWER STRUGGLES.
Social Space: A geographic/mathematical metaphor for how people are arranged in society. Bourdieu defines social space as:
"a (multi-dimensional) space constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution constituted by the set of properties active in the social
universe under consideration, that is, able to confer force or power on their possessor in that universe." (p.229).
The points to keep in mind with this def:
(1) Social space has multiple dimensions (ex economic, educational, cultural, etc.: n dimensions) These dimensions can usually be categorized as a form of
Capital.
(2) "...constructed on the basis of principles of differentiation or distribution..." This mean that how
much and what kind of the particular capital one has is the basis for sorting along the dimensions.
(3) "...by the set of properties active in the social universe under consideration, that is, able to confer
force or power on their possessor in that universe." The quantity or quality (i.e. point 2) of a given good only matters to the extent that the good in question
is 'active' in the social world of interest. This part of the definition implies an element of contextual specificity. Two groups' relative position depend on the
particular 'field' that is active. If we're dealing in the economic field, then the relative position of $$ matters, if we're dealing with the educational, then
that's what matters. [note, that this discussion is about one dimension at a time, Bourdieu does not think that way - this is for illustration only, the point is that in
some struggles, the relative value of a given dimension will change.].
Power follows from the ability to mobilize capital.
The social space is a field of forces -- the system of relations, alliances, and power struggles. His vision of social space is NOT one that is (necessarily)
static, but instead constantly infused with power struggles. Thus we see the world as a system of 'objective power relations.'
Is this paranoid? Overdramatic??
This allows us to see the social world in two ways, as the positions themselves thusly: (take culture and econ as examples)
Hi Culture
|
| A
|
|
Poor ---------------------------- Rich
|
| B
c |
|
Low Culture
In this picture, the three groups are arrayed on these two dimensions (thus C is poor and holds mainly 'low culture' values, A is rich with 'high culture' , etc).
Because these positions are at the same time relations, because domination follows from the ability to utilize this capital, we could instead view this picture
as:
A -> B-----> C
\ _____/
Where A dominates (a little) B, and both B and A dominate C. What Bourdieu wants to claim is that these systems of relations are in constant contest -- not ONLY
in who gets to be WHERE, but what having a certain quantity/distribution of a good GIVES you, ie what it MEANS.
The dimensions are the elements that give power (education, money, social contacts, etc) in general, these elements form types of CAPITAL. The four
general types of capital for Bourdieu are:
1.Economic Capital: How much money one has.
2.Cultural Capital: The systems of value and meaning a person can draw on, what counts as 'good' for a group. (the main distinction is between
high and low culture for Bourdieu, thus the difference between a person who listens to Garth brooks and goes to the bowling alley every weekend versus a
person who reads Shakespeare, drinks fine wine, and goes to the museum all the time).
3.Social Capital: The set of relations one can draw on: who you know that MATTERS.
4.Symbolic Capital. : the extent to which one has the power to institute, to NAME, to define who is who. Symbolic power rests on RECOGNITION, i.e., give or take, legitimacy (Weber).
Bourdieu argues that each of these types of capital is transformable (to some extent), i.e. able to be converted and reconverted, one to the other. Thus if you have enough money you might get to know a new
set of important people, etc.
The two dimensions along which each type of capital are arrayed is Volume and composition. Thus the AMOUNT of money one has, and the TYPE of
money matter (i.e. cash vs stocks vs gold vs land).
Classes on Paper:
On the basis of the distribution of the various forms of capital, we can find groups of people who have 'similar' distributions. These are 'classes' in the
logical sense -- people who occupy the same cell in a cross-tabulation. BUT, we can't necessarily assume that these classes are self-recognized. This is the
long standing differentiation between classes in-themselves vs. classes for themselves.
What exists is a space of relations, out of which may or may not emerge a class per se.
We can compare this to Marx’s theories of class, in which he assumes that groups form from similarity, but it does not explain how the groups form. Instead, through a theoretical ‘slight of hand’, the
essential questions are spirited away:
We don’t ask about the political work needed to organize and created a self-recognized, mobilized class
Don’t explain how the formal ‘classes’ of social scientists are related to the actual, living classes in society.
Classes and class fragments develop “habituses”—roughly but not quite subcultures
The Perception of the social world and political struggle.
One must account for how actors see the world to make sense of how they act. That is, we ned to look to the social construction of identity.
One's perspective in the world is due to two things:
1) 'Objective': People see the world differently because they occupy a different space in the world.
2) 'subjective': The tools brought to bear, the language used, are all the products of previous struggles, and influence the meaning of the very dimensions
that people array themselves along.
Thus, not only are people seeing the world from different spaces, but the very view of that space, the relevant value of any given quantity/quality
distribution is different depending on a group's past history of struggle.
While Bourdieu argues that people TEND to accept the position they find themselves in, there is social change, and it comes from struggles for power related
to (1) and (2).
in an earlier essay, Bourdieu writes
“Knowledge of the social world and, more precisely, the categories which make it possible, are the stake par excellence of the political struggle, a struggle
which is inseparably theoretical and practical, over the power of preserving or transforming the social world by preserving or transforming the categories of
perception of that world.”
These are social categories: racial, social class, economic categories, that change over time
So being able to define the dimensions of status, to identify the subject of political debate and shape the way issues are seen to be related are all symbolic actions,
and they are the means through which politics are carried out. Thus, being able to control these means gives one control of political outcomes. The power of
naming is crucial.
Examples:
? Political rhetoric about abortion: proponents use ‘right-to-choose’ language, opponents use ‘rights-to-life’ language.
? Use of the word ‘Liberal’ in presidential campaigns
Symbolic Capital: Any capital when it is perceived by an agent as self-recognized power to name, to make distinctions.
It follows that objective power relations reproduce themselves in symbolic power.
The power to create titles
Citizenship is bestowed by the government,
The definition of ‘adult’ or ‘graduate’
“It is the most visible agents, from the point of view of the prevailing categories of perception, who are the best placed to change the vision by changing the
categories of perceptions. But they are also, with a few exceptions, the least inclined to do so.”
Why? Because they benefit from the current arrangement. That those in power control the means to power creates a cycle, whereby they reenforce the power
that they have. Bourdieu refers to this as the “circle of symbolic reproduction”.
Symbolic power rests on legitimate recognition your brother-in-law can’t declare you a graduate of the university. The title ‘graduate’ can only be made by
those with legitimate control of symbolic power.
Symbolic order and the power of naming.
Symbolic power can be arrayed along a dimension of intensity/legitimacy:
Insult Official Naming
I-----------------------------------------------I
Low power High Power
We can think about the proliferation of titles in current work and occupations. This rise (sanitary engineer, executive assistant, vice president, e.g.) follows FROM the
desire of groups to NAME THEMSELVES, and thus make their own distinction. The move in contemporary society to provide all with a new name, is a struggle for legitimate power. Racial epithets are the imposition of place by a ruling class on a
ruled class, and when the POWER associated with those epithets can be reversed, then the group has gained the symbolic upper hand.
e.g. minority groups referring to themselves in terms of racial “slurs”—not just the N word—Chinese, Jews, immigrants in
Bourdieu points out that rewards separate a title from a task. Thus, a part-time person doing the same work as a full time person will likely be paid less (even by the
hour) than the person who officially occupies the position. Or, for example, a nurse and a doctor often do exactly the same things, but the doctor will make
more.
Because symbolic power is a useful power, something that can be used to gain resources in multiple dimensions, it is clearly the subject of controversy.
Groups fight over the right to control the naming process.
“Every field is the site of a more or less openly declared struggle for the definition of the legitimate principles of division of the field.” (p.242)
Alliances in the Political Field
Those who occupy similar, but distinct social spaces (or who are in similar, but distinct patterns of social relations) tend to form alliances (though, again,
not necessarily).
How do people at the bottom of a symbolic power system gain capital to change the present point of view?
Bourdieu says it happens through alliances with those who have the ability to control symbols. For example, the intellectuals will ‘embezzle’ symbolic power for
the workers. These alliances occur where there is a similarity in their position in the structure, across dimensions of the structure. Thus, workers are the
dominated group in the production/economic realm, while intellectuals are the dominated group in the cultural realm. The one helps the other because of the
similarity of their situation. For Bourdieu, this was Marx’s error: to look only within the economic realm for the emergence of classes.
Critiques of Bourdieu (general)
too agonistic, too focused on struggle and competition
isn’t Bourdieu himself an example of why he is wrong?
too Parisian, too French, and perhaps too old
Michelle Lamont: Money, Morals, & Manners
Symbolic Boundaries and Status
The study of “symbolic boundaries” and “cultural repertoires” is an important theoretical area within cultural studies, and it is mostly a French-American venture.
Lamont’s research is especially qualitative and interpretive. Her writings are based mostly on interviews she has conducted over the years with, e.g., middle class Americans and French citizens, working class Americans and others.
Lamont is from
Her theoretical ideas:
“symbolic boundaries” the types of lines that individuals draw when they categorize other people
“high-status signals”
“boundary work” work of maintaining distinctions between one’s own group and other groups
Types of symbolic boundaries
moral boundaries
drawn on the basis of moral character
honesty, work ethic, integrity, consideration for others
socioeconomic boundaries
wealth, power, professional success
cultural boundaries
education, intelligence, manners, taste, command of high culture
People in different countries value these boundaries differently. For example in
In both countries socioeconomic boundary work seems to be on the upswing
e.g. New Yorkers seeing Midwesterners as parochial
Businessmen seeing intellectuals as unrealistic
accountants, bankers, marketing executives, realtors
Social and cultural specialists seeing businesspeople as materialistic
e.g. artists, social workers, priests, psychologists, researchers, teachers
French seeing Americans as puritan moralists
She compares American and French members of the upper middle class
Midwesterners versus New Yorkers
Parisians versus residents of
Businesspeople versus social and cultural specialists
So Bourdieu looks at the social world and sees groups in conflict over forms of capital, attempting to reproduce their capital in their children, and struggling over symbols that define their existence. Naturally, one wonders whether his ideas reflect social reality, say, in
Questions like these are Michele Lamont’s starting point. To answer these questions, she employs a number of concepts, most of which are not terribly original (and many of which overlap):
1) symbolic boundaries, boundary work
2) high-status signals
3) evaluative criteria, “criteria of purity” (Mary Douglas)
4) cultural resources versus structural situations
5) structures of thought that organize perceptions of others (think of Foucault’s modes of objectification and dividing practices, and of Berger and Luckmann)
Her method is the individual interview—not the statistical analysis of survey data: Bourdieu’s method—which tends to corroborate a view of “boundary work” that is more individualistic than Bourdieu’s analyses of “social space.”
Her main findings:
1) symbolic boundaries and “boundary work”
looser boundaries in
moral boundaries are important, and Bourdieu ignores them
moral and socioeconomic boundaries are more important in the
cultural boundaries are clearer and stronger in
symbolic boundaries are nation-level phenomena: there’s less regional variation within countries than one would think (NY versus
“social trajectory” matters a lot in people’s evaluative criteria, i.e. upwardly versus downwardly mobile (Bourdieu does not overlook this at all, though)
cultural specialists versus for-profit workers: occupational area matters a lot more in the
Much of this is likely due to the high level of geographical mobility in the
Diverse ways of experiencing high culture—more emotional, social, “self-actualization” in
Excerpt from film “The Dinner Game”
Bethany Bryson
“Anything But Heavy Metal”: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes
Music has many roles in social life, creating solidarities and encouraging political resistance.
People engage with music in many different ways in different areas of life.
Music becomes part of people’s identities, the way they identify themselves and draw closer to or else distance themselves from other groups and individuals.
While social exclusion is a well-understood sociological phenomenon, “symbolic exclusion” is the topic of Bryson’s paper. Symbolic exclusion is, in a word, taste.
Symbolic exclusion is a form of Lamont’s boundary work, the work of drawing lines between ourselves and others so as to establish our place in the social world.
Bryson examines musical exclusion and musical tolerance
From Bourdieu, we expect that elites will behave in a snobbish manner regarding music and musical tastes, excluding, or discriminating against, certain types of lowbrow music
Yet the opposite seems to be true: highly educated people are more musically tolerant than are people with less education, that is they are more open to more different kinds of music
Yet she finds that educated people are more tolerant generally but also very intolerant to low-status music, or music associated with uneducated people, such as country or gospel music in the
She calls this patterned tolerance
She refers to multicultural capital
Hypotheses
High Status Exclusiveness (wealth, education, occup prestige)à dislike more genres (not confirmed)
Educated Tolerance Educationà fewer dislikes
Symbolic Racism: Racist Whites will dislike non-white music (confirmed)
Patterned Tolerance: People who dislike few genres will dislike those types of music associated with people with less education
College students don’t listen to, or they say they dislike: heavy metal, rap, gospel, country
There exists a “Tolerance Line” between high-statues cosmopolitanism and low-status group-based cultures