Intro Soc Theory 4000 Lecture Notes for Final Exam

IV. Major American Theorists

The origins of American sociology

American sociology originates during Reconstruction, following the Civil War. As in Europe, the mid- to late-19^th century was a period of intense urbanization, but in the American case, also of immigration, mostly from Europe.

Very rapid flow of ideas from Europe (although translations from German and French were not always available or accurate)

Americans were trained in European universities

1858- course in “Social Problems” at Oberlin College

1873- William Graham Sumner (Herbert Spencer’s American protégé) begins teaching “social science” at Yale

1880s- “sociology” courses begin to appear

1889- first American sociology department, at the University of Kansas

1892- Sociology department founded at the University of Chicage—becomes dominant American department for 30-40 years

Early American sociologists were not nostalgic (compare with Ferdinand Toennies)

They were political liberals, generally unfamiliar with Marx’s writing

They were social progressives; they believed in progress, w/or w/out government action

There was a strong influence of Protestantism: desire to save the world, in this case using science rather than scripture: to “solve social problems” without radically changing society

Compared with Europe, sociology was easily established in American universities, which were newer and rapidly expanding

American sociology was mostly positivist, “scientistic” and pragmatic

Turned away from Weberian interpretive historical approaches, Verstehen

Less theoretical interpretation of long-term changes

More quantitative analysis of short-term changes

Until WWI, Social Darwinism was highly influential

Herbert Spencer (UK) à William Graham Sumner (Yale)

The Chicago School

The University of Chicago was dominant in American sociology from roughly 1900-1935-ish

Encouraged a scientific approach to sociology

Robert Park (former journalist, trained in Germany with Simmel)

Initiates tradition of “urban ethnography”

Charles Horton Cooley

George Herbert Mead

Study social psychology, “Symbolic Interactionism” (micro-sociology of identity, subjective experience)

We’ll discuss these more later.

Structural Functionalism

The Chicago School collapses in the 1930s, center of influence in American sociology shifts to Harvard, specifically to Talcott Parsons

Critical of “dust bowl empiricism” of the Chicago School and Midwestern sociology generally—lack of theoretical ambition or imagination, focus on small problems

1937, Parsons publishes “The Structure of Social Action”

(more on him later)

Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore were Parsons’s most famous students (functionalist theory of stratification)

Structural functionalism is dominant in American universities from the 1930s-early 1960s, then falls apart

Rejection of Structural-Functionalism

“Europeanization” of American sociology, renewed interest in Marx, Weber and Durkheim, minus Parsons’s idiosyncratic interpretation of them

1) return of conflict theories

a. neo-Marxisms, e.g. Critical Theory; Feminist theory

2) emergence of cultural theory

a. Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Michele Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu

b. Social Constructionism (Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann)

c. Post-positivism, Postmodernism, rejection of “scientism”

W.E.B. DuBois (all of ch. 7)

Taught sociology at Atlanta University, although is remembered more as a public intellectual than as an influential theorist

Like Bourdieu and others, DuBois did not distinguish theory from practice

Not a professional academic theorist; someone who wanted to explain and improve the situation of African-Americans (not long after abolition, 50 years before the Civil Rights movement, affirmative action)

DuBois’s mother was a maid, father a barber, preacher, drifter—left the family.

His mother died while he was a boy.

By age 16 he was self-conscious of his race, the “color line,” and class

Four white men paid for his education at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn.—an all-black university

Thought that African-Americans should organize together, accept the color line—they should not organize and strive in terms of values of individualism, egalitarianism, or economic participation (e.g. Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute, a technical institute in Atlanta)

DuBois teaches poor black children in the east Tennessee countryside, goes on to Harvard University.

7^th ever African-American student at Harvard; first to complete a PhD there

While studying at Harvard, DuBois traveled to Germany. Was astounded to find himself studying among non-racist whites—including Max Weber, who likes DuBois’s work.

DuBois returns to the U.S., is politically active:

—against racism, colonialism, imperialism

—for communism, socialism

Major ideas

the “race idea”—which he took seriously, accepted without much questioning

the “color line”—relation of the “darker” and “lighter races” across the world (the American Civil War is just one example, not unique)

“double-consciousness” or “two-ness”—the experience of being of African origin and American—a divided identity (prefigures identity politics, sociological interest in identity construction)

“the veil”—metaphor, in which African-Americans and their problems are hidden from white America, and African-Americans have a unique perspective on “White America”

“colortocracy” of light-skinned blacks in the African-American community—excessive pride in their noses, skin color, hair

The “talented tenth” of African-Americans would lead their communities

Writes The Philadelphia Negro (1899), which was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania as a study of the problems of Philadelphia’s black community. DuBois is ambivalent about this kind of study. It is insulting, patronizing, and probably won’t lead to any real change—on the other hand, he does it, and it makes known the social situation of African-Americans, which would otherwise be hidden.

The Souls of Black Folk (1903) was his major book on race and class. He was the first to write about these issues sociologically and systematically

Political career

Debates with Jamaican Marcus Garvey, who wanted to bring African-Americans back to Africa.

Loses all popularity

Seen as snobbish (which he was), elitist

Proponent of socialism, communism—neither are popular in America

Regains popularity since the 1970s-ish

Post-colonial studies, studies of globalization

Ethnic and racial studies, departments, multiculturalism

e.g. at UNT we have Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies departments, an African-American Studies institute, Mexican-American Studies, and the Study of Sexualities

Establishment of departments of African-American studies, e.g. Harvard has the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research—a famous institute, often in the news, a site of major academic controversies

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cornel West (left for Princeton)—academic, philosopher, and rapper, he appeared in The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded

George Herbert Mead (all of ch. 8)

1863-1931

Born in Massachusetts, trained at Harvard and with the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in Germany.

Was interested in Darwinism and economic theory, as well as psychology and sociology

Upon graduating from Oberlin in 1883, Mead took a grade school teaching job, which, however, lasted only four months. Mead was let go because of the way in which he handled discipline problems: he would simply dismiss uninterested and disruptive students from his class and send them home.

Most famous book: Mind, Self and Society, which was published after his death

Sociologist, pragmatist (non-metaphysical) philosopher, and psychologist

Pioneering figure in American sociological social psychology, or micro-sociology

As a psychologist he was opposed to Watson’s positivism and behaviorism—which were based on the idea that the person could only be studied using scientific methods developed for the physical sciences (e.g. B.F. Skinner).

Positivism ignored the self-concept, and the social sources of the self. Thus Mead was a social psychologist.

Humans are unique in that they can take the perspective of other actors towards objects. This is the other. As a child matures, by taking others’ perspectives routinely in daily life, they internalize the generalized other, the amalgamation of all the other people with whom they have meaningful interaction. This is how social influence works, and it enables complex human society and social coordination.

A contrast to this view is behaviorism and rational-choice economics. In both, people respond to their environments by directly calculating what is in their self-interest, and pursuing their chosen goals through the optimal means (see Weber on the forms of rationality). UNT today has a department of behavioral psychology.

For Mead, existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and thus become self-conscious.

Mead writes in Mind, Self and Society that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through “play” and “game.”

"Play" comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles.

When more mature, the child can participate in the game, for instance the game of baseball. In the game he has to relate to others and understand the rules of the game. Through participating in the "game", he gains the understanding that he has to relate to norms of behaviour in order to be accepted as a player. This is the child's first encounter with “the generalized other.”

There are two phases (or poles) of the self: (1) that phase which reflects the attitude of the generalized other and (2) that phase which responds to the attitude of the generalized other. Here, Mead distinguishes between the "me" and the "I." The "me" is the social self, and the "I" is a response to the "me" (Mind, Self and Society 178).

“The 'I' is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the 'me' is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes”

Mead defines the "me" as "a conventional, habitual individual," and the "I" as the "novel reply" of the individual to the generalized other (Mind, Self and Society 197).

The "me" is the internalization of roles which derive from such symbolic processes as linguistic interaction, playing, and gaming; whereas the "I" is a "creative response" to the symbolized structures of the "me" (i.e., to the generalized other).

Political Utopianism

For Mead, the human social ideal . . . is the attainment of a universal human society in which all human individuals would possess a perfected social intelligence, such that all social meanings would each be similarly reflected in their respective individual consciousnesses — such that the meanings of any one individual's acts or gestures (as realized by him and expressed in the structure of his self, through his ability to take the social attitudes of other individuals toward himself and toward their common social ends or purposes) would be the same for any other individual whatever who responded to them(Mind, Self and Society 310).

Supporter of the League of Nations

Talcott Parsons

1937, “The Structure of Social Action”

Discusses Weber, Durkheim, Pareto

In so doing, introduces theory as a legitimate area within American sociology

His translation of Weber, and his interpretation of all 3, are now seen as biased

He suggested that all three were building to his Structural Functionalism

He was concerned with “macro” sociology, with the relations among large-scale social structures and institutions

His emphasis was on order, dynamic equilibrium (as in functionalist approaches generally)

1. Social System
2. Cultural System
3. Personality System

Social change is orderly, evolutionary

C. Wright Mills – Radical Sociology in America

Born in Waco, TX in 1916, conventional middle-class background

PhD at the University of Wisconsin, spends most of his career at Columbia University

Dies of his fourth heart attack at age 45, 3 marriages with one child from each, many affairs

Outsider in many ways, had trouble with his professional relationships as well

He was at odds with American society

Challenged Talcott Parsons (Structural Functionalist), but also Paul Lazarsfeld (rememberd for his contributions to sociological methodology)

Ideas

Marx was either reviled or ignored in American sociology, although there were exceptions, and C. Wright Mills was one of the most notable

Not a sophisticated Marxist, not very familiar with Marx’s ideas

He was a rare American “radical sociologist” though, meaning he was a

Class theorist, a power theorist

“White Collar” – analyzed the new occupational category of white-collar workers

“The Power Elite” – showed how America was dominated by a small group of white male businessmen, politicians, and military leaders—in spite of American conceits of pluralism and democracy, of a balance of competing interests

This is a “political economy” that Mills refers to as the “triangle of power”

Power in the United States had once been decentralized, spread among the states with a weak federal center

Since WWII, business and government have become increasingly unified—think of Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex”

The men of the power elite come from similar social and educational backgrounds, similar careers and styles of life

These men move easily between the three points of the triangle

Mills argued that competing interests and competition only occurred among members of the middle class, and middle-sized enterprises (e.g. labor unions and political parties—these change, but the structure of power and privilege does not).

At the “commanding heights” of the economy, military, and government, there is unity and class self-interest.

Social revolts against this system—the agrarian revolt of the 1890s, the small-business revolt since the 1880s, the labor revolt of the 1930s—have all failed to change anything (also the Reagan revolution in the 1980s, the Republican Revolution in the 1990s, Clinton’s “reinventing government” in the 1990s)

Mills argues that intellectuals need to openly discuss and debate the structures of power in American society.

Separation of the civil service from corporate interests.

Free associations of communities, families, smaller groups should be able to influence the national political economy.

“The Sociological Imagination” (1959) (damning critique of Parsons)

Robert Merton

Robert King Merton (July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003, born Meyer R. Schkolnick to immigrant parents)

He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University

"self-fulfilling prophecy."

"role model"

Revised Parsonian functionalism, retaining an interest in the integrative functions of social institutions, and, with Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, a focus on the integrative role of normative values in social life.

Merton parts ways with Parsons in his analysis of the dysfunctions of social systems, for example in his discussion of:

For Merton, manifest functions and dysfunctions are conscious and deliberate, the latent ones the unconscious and unintended.

The manifest function of a rain dance, is to produce rainhttp://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/manlat.html

The rain dance’s latent function is to produce social integration.

Berger, 1963: "...the “manifest” function of antigambling legislation may be to suppress gambling, its “latent” function to create an illegal empire for the gambling syndicates.

Or the control of the Communist Party over all sectors of social life in Russia “manifestly” was to assure the continued dominance of the revolutionary ethos, “latently” created a new class of comfortable bureaucrats uncannily bourgeois in its aspirations.

Or the “manifest” function of many voluntary associations in America is sociability and public service, the “latent” function to attach status indices to those permitted to belong to such associations.” "

The manifest function of bureaucracy (Weber’s rational-legal authority) is to produce efficient outcomes. But bureaucracy has "unintended consequences,” dysfunctions and latent functions. Merton discusses the “bureaucratic personality” as an example.

Bureaucrats who work in the same role for long periods of time become mentally inflexible, they cling to routines that may no longer be functional, and they treat customers badly because they come to feel that they know all that can be known within their small area. At home they treat their families as they treat their customers and coworkers at the office (e.g. schoolteachers treating adults as children)

Merton also developed theories of deviance and a sophisticated sociology of science. He emphasized normative values and culture, and manifest and latent functions, in this work.

Merton advocated “middle-range theory” – smaller theoretical ideas that would allow broader theoretical frameworks (Marxist, Weberian, Durkheimian, Parsonian, etc.) to be challenged and tested

Combined broad [European-ish] theory and historical knowledge with an attention to empirical detail and verification

In this way he was a forerunner of contemporary sociology. Modern sociologists almost never create theories ex nihilo. So, in some ways “theory” ceases to exist as a separate sphere within sociology after the 1960s. Since Parsons, there has been almost no one who can be considered a major theorist per se.

5) Social Constructionism

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality”

In the 1960s, SC provided a radical new alternative to Functionalism and Conflict Sociology

Part of the turn to cultural theory. SCism has been influential well beyond sociology, particularly in studies of science.

B&L develop a sociology of knowledge, a way of thinking about how we know things, about common sense knowledge (“recipe” knowledge), not intellectual knowledge per se.

How do we know that the earth revolves around the sun? That today is Thursday? How do we know how to behave in different situations? How do we know ourselves?

Their approach is that of phenomenology, or thinking about the experience of existing, of consciousness, empirically although not scientifically, through reflection, introspection, and description.

They are perspectivists: knowledge is always knowledge from a certain social position.

For B&L, human nature is “world-openness”: people are born into the world unformed, unlike other animals.

Humans have no “species-specific environment.”

Human instincts (“drives”) are unspecialized and underspecified: we have to be taught almost everything we need to survive.

Humans have immense plasticity: we can be formed into all different types, unlike other animals. E.g. sexuality is treated very differently in different cultures. What is attractive to one person or a member of one culture is repulsive to another.

We need “culture” to survive, and culture is a product of society and history.

Society and culture are not imposed on people, as Marx or Parsons might have it.. They result from human actions through several processes:

Habitualization – psychological gain of reducing alternatives to action, by making action habitual; human nature to need this

Institutionalization – as habitualization occurs among groups, action become institutionalized – it becomes official, dogmatic, and historically long-lasting – e.g. the incest taboo, institutions of marriage, living arrangements, hierarchies, identities (student, teacher, father, mother, worker)

Culture is a result of processes of historical sedimentation, of ideas and habits and recipe knowledge layered on top of one another over historical time and within individual minds.

Language is a depository of historical sedimentations. Language gives ontological status to semi-arbitrary historical reifications: e.g. social categories like Black, Jew, Asian-American, English, French.

Ideas of social functions are intellectual abstractions attached to institutions ex post facto. E.g. gender, inequality, organizations.

Language and culture create a protective “universe” of cultural meanings that shield the individual from the terror of being alone and mortal.

Mythology, theology, philosophy, and science provide “conceptual machinery” that allows for universe-maintenance.

Internalization of the cultural universe

Through primary socialization of the child as a member of a society. Mostly through identification with the parents, and through language.

Internalization of the “generalized other” (Mead)

Secondary socialization into a specific segment of society (worker, student, mother). Role-specific vocabularies.

6) Feminist Theory

Feminism has a long and rich history in the United States, from the Victorian era in the late 19^th century, in cities, to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, to debates over affirmative action and women’s rights today.

A. Gender Inequality

In the 19^th century, women were legally analogous to children

Today, worldwide, women are ½ the population but own a small fraction of the world’s land and property, make a fraction of the income of men, they are limited in terms of their educational and career opportunities, denied legal rights (such as voting rights), and suffer from spouse abuse and other forms of abuse

B. Women and Sociological Theory

As sociology developed, women naturally became interested in trying to explain gender inequality (just as Marx wanted to explain class inequality, and DuBois the “color line”)

Women, however, were generally denied opportunities for higher education, and certainly for careers in academia

C. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

From a prominent New England family, difficult childhood—father left, moved around

Deeply depressed after her marriage and the birth of her daughter. Divorced husband, gave her blessing to his remarry her close friend and raise her daughter.

Gilman’s depression lifted when she was able to work, unencumbered by family responsibilities.

Gave lectures around the U.S.

Secured her reputation in feminist circles when she published Women and Economics (1898)

Advocated women’s economic independence from men

Public day care

Cooperative kitchens

Wanted peaceful socialism

Argued that the nuclear family was dysfunctional for women. It was more natural for “women’s work” (cooking, cleaning, childrearing) to be done communally, as was the case in most human societies, rather than alone and isolated in the home.

The traditional family structure is inherently exploitative—women work, but are not paid.

Gender inequality is a product of socialization in the family, not inherent biological differences.

Girls and boys learn their gender (not sex) by dressing differently, being praised and scolded for different things.

And yet, she thought that men and women were innately different. Because of evolution, women are antiselfish, they want to love, to nurture. Men are competitive, want to fight, take control.

There were racist sections of her writings, and she seemed to be speaking mainly for white women. She was against slavery and the oppression of African-Americans, and genocide and oppression of Native Americans, though.

D. Contemporary Feminist Theory

Gilman’s feminist theory is almost common sense to many sociologists today, aside from the racist parts.

Feminist theory today has taken a “postmodern” turn:

Feminism against sociology: some feminist theorists are highly critical of sociology because of its male-centeredness, blindness to women

Feminism against science: view of science as a masculine, dominating enterprise

Feminism against globalization and neo-liberalism (more expressly political): the structure of the world economic system is inherently exploitative of women: e.g. sex slaves, wage inequality, poor health care and day care for immigrant working women

Global Sociology 4260 Lecture notes for Final Exam

Global Cities / Globalization and Cities

Mattei Dogan, “Four Hundred Giant Cities Atop the World” (email)

Saskia Sassen “Whose City Is It?” (packet)

Saskia Sassen “Impacts of Information Technologies on Urban Economies and Politics” (email)

The UN estimates that by 2007, more than half of the world population will live in cities.

There is a large literature, with some famous names, on how technology and globalization forces are transforming cities. Usually this is discussed in terms of:

A) Global cities

a. A global network of cities that are not very attached to their local surroundings

b. Tokyo, New York, London

Measured in terms of internet and financial activity and linkages, the “global cities” are usually listed as:

NY, Toronto, Chicago, Houston, SF, LA, Mexico City, Miami

Caracas, Rio, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires

London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Milan

Johannesburg

Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney

B) Globalization and cities

a. Communications technology, immigration

Manuell Castells is one of the big names in this area, and has written about the “Network Society” or the ‘information society’ or ‘informational capitalism’

He is a bit of a futurist, and celebrates “informationalism” and the advance of genetic engineering

Like other network theorists, he argues that flows of information across social and professional networks have become, in a sense, more important than organizational size or power.

The state, political parties, churches, and unions become less important. Each individual’s position with respect to global flows of information is what largely determines their life outcomes.

Thus Castells has written about the “fourth World”: a series of “black holes of informational capitalism,” areas that have been cut off from the flow of wealth and information in the global economy

Also known as the “digital divide,” although Castells’ conceptualization is more complex

Saskia Sassen has also written in a very general way about what happens to cities under conditions of economic globalization and advanced communications technologies.

In “Whose City is It?” she lists the world’s major financial and business centers: NY, London, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Amsterdam, LA, Sydney, Hong Kong…

Information and money flow between these cities in huge amounts, and they grow wealthier exponentially without necessarily transferring that wealth to other cities in their countries, or to poorer rural areas (thus we see mass internal migration to cities, as in the Dogan article).

These concentrations of wealth in global cities amount to a “transnational urban system” that needs to be understood not in terms of individual cities, but globally, as a system

Keep in mind Leslie Sklair’s argument on the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC)

Thus the world now has a geography of “centrality and marginality,” of center and periphery. But so, increasingly, do cities. Globalization forces are transforming cities from within. This is in stark contrast to the predictions of internet advocates in the 1990s, who argued that the internet would allow people to move out of cities and to work from home. The internet would bring the urban world out to rural areas, and would therefore increase informational equality. It would be a democratic force. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

In global cities, downtowns and metropolitan business centers thrive.

But manufacturing leaves urban centers.

Meanwhile low- and middle-income residents are starved for resources.

“National territory” within cities has been “denationalized,” that is it can be bought and sold on international markets ever more easily. This creates pressures on local residents (poor and middle class especially).

This leads to increasing inequality not only globally, but within cities, and ultimately to “brutalization” and conflicts, such as the riots in Paris this year.

Poorer city residents can now also organize globally, in terms of ethnic and religious identities (e.g. Islamic fundamentalism). But it is difficult for such movements to compete given global economic realities.

Mattei Dogan, Four Hundred Giant Cities Atop the World (four hundred with over 1 million people)

On the one hand, globalization gives us “global cities” in which immense wealth is concentrated, and which are “nodes” in a global economic and financial network.

On the other hand, globalization, technology, and demographic trends have recently given us “megacities,” cities that do concentrate wealth, but that as a result have created almost unbelievable levels of internal migration.

Mattei Dogan lists some such cities, and their ridiculous growth rates:

Mexico City: 3 > 18 million people in about 50 years

Seoul 1-10 million in 50 years

Teheran: 1-7

Istanbul: doubles in 15 years (now 15-20 million people, most of them very poor)

“Globalization and Social Exclusion in Istanbul”

Caglar Keyder

Detailed study of changes in the social fabric of Istanbul, Turkey since the 1980s. Keyder explicates the links between broad processes of globalization and the experience of life in a megacity.

The TCC is alive and well in Istanbul, and you see there many of the same symptoms of globalization one finds elsewhere:

Income polarization

Internal migration from rural areas to poor “suburbs”

An economic elite with a Western/international lifestyle

However, Keyder delves into how globalization affects the lives of citizens with more detail.

Internal migration created concentric rings of illegal settlements around the center of Istanbul, creating wealth for already-settled migrants as the city expanded. This wealth, in the form of houses, was the basis for the creation of stable social, family, and business networks.

Jobs were available in manufacturing within the city limits. Migrants who lost jobs had their houses as economic security—no need to pay rent, could rent out to others, could use as collateral for loans.

Under globalization in the early 1990s, these “mechanisms of incorporation” of migrants into the city began to fail.

De-industrialization

post-Fordism

“transition from developmentalism to neoliberal capitalism”

The result was not only economic and social polarization, but social exclusion

Social exclusion—market phenomenon reinforced by failures in the welfare regime, lack of cultural integration, spatial segregation

Istanbul was transformed: gated communities, 5-star hotels, city packaged as a consumption article for tourists, new office towers, expulsion of small businesses from central districts

Under economic globalization, protected smoke-stack industries lost their importance, shedded employees

The state itself shedded employees, where it had once been the major employer

Manufacturing moved outside city limits, leaving shantytowns with no raison d’etre

Urban growth slowed, weakening the construction industry

Last major employer was the export-oriented textile industry, which was extremely sensitive to fluctuations in trade, and female-oriented

New jobs were created in service industries and tourism, but not enough, and there was a mismatch between the skills of migrants and those needed in, e.g., the tourist sector (English, computer skills, cultural knowledge)

“Box stores” including supermarkets and hardware stores replaced local shops and markets. Do-it-yourself superstores weakened need for handymen, who were unskilled anyway.

Migration was no longer due to the “pull” of economic opportunities, but the “push” of forced migration from Kurdish villages.

As a consequence of globalization, you have a failure of the mechanisms of incorporation into the city (and modernity for that matter), and the social exclusion of millions of citizens.

Political Globalization 1

Larry Diamond “The Globalization of Democracy” (packet)

David Held “Democracy and the New International Order” (packet)

John W. Meyer et al. “World Society and the Nation-State” (packet)

Democracy and democratization were once mainly studies by historians and social scientists in terms of

Political theory

Democratic revolutions (French, American)

Mechanisms of democratic governance (elections, parliaments, etc)

The classic distinction in the literature is between participative and representative democracy.

Today, more and more, democracy and democratization are viewed as global processes

The reason for this is mainly the spread of democracy across much of the world, and democracy’s dominance as a national political system. At least, it seems to be the dominant system.

Why are Communist and Authoritarian governments replaced by democratic systems?

National reasons?

Global forces?

It’s probably fair to say that American scholars have dominated debate on global democratization. Political scientists like Larry Diamond and Condoleeza Rice (both from Stanford) argue that democracy is a superior political system and that its spread worldwide, especially since the 1980s, is a good and inevitable process. They, and others, link democratization with economic neoliberalism: when countries open their markets to foreign influence, their people will demand greater freedoms and democracy will advance.

Others take issue with these broad claims, and cite China as an exception to this rule.

Larry Diamond “The Globalization of Democracy”

Larry Diamond is a well-known American sociologist who teaches at Stanford. He is known as an expert on democratization (democratic transitions) and appears regularly on US and international television. Recently he supported the Iraq War, and worked for the US in Iraq for 3 months. Since then he has written a book explaining what went wrong.

LD is a liberalizer, obviously very much in favor of democratization. He has much in common with economic liberals as well. He is in favor of a strong, outward-looking American foreign policy; thus his support for the Iraq war.

Generally he equates communism and socialism with authoritarianism, and favors democracy over both.

“3 Waves” of democratization (from Samuel Huntington)

1. 1828 (USA) to 1920s (fascism)

2. 1945 (WWII ends) to 1962 (decolonization, but shift to authoritarianism)

3. 1974 (Portugal) to early 1990s (eastern bloc countries)

Democratization seems to be a long-term, global trend. But it has eroded in many places, and is superficial in others.

What are the causes of this trend?

International

1. US pressure (sanctions, withholding aid, diplomacy)
2. trade liberalization, threat of trade sanctions
3. threat of loss of membership in UN

4. demonstration and diffusion (“snowballing effect”)

i. e.g. Eastern Europe

ii. e.g. South Africa à rest of Africa

iii. globalization of media

iv. education of 3^rd-world elites in the West

Democratic assistance from international pro-democracy groups (e.g. for election monitoring, civil society, education)

Expatriate groups

David Held, “Democracy and the New International Order”

DH is a British political scientist at the London School of Economics

He presents a much less optimistic assessment of the relationship between globalization and democratization.

More careful and skeptical about global democratization than many American writers (similar pattern in the debate over economic globalization)

DH sees globalization as a challenge for democracy, because the people within a given nation do not determine decisions and policies directly for themselves. Elected representatives do not make decisions for their citizens, although in democratic theory they are supposed to do so.

Economic globalization

Trans-national issues (building a nuclear power plant near a national border)

International organizations (NATO, UN, EU, IMF)

The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended the German portion of the 30 years’ war, and established territorial sovereignty as a fundamental principle in international affairs. Nations had no legal right to interfere in each others’ affairs. Europe and eventually much of the world was ordered in terms of discrete nation-states whose national governments had sovereignty over what happened in their territory.

The United Nations charter, in 1945, broke with this Westphalian logic.

How to extend democracy in a way that addresses the undemocratic tendencies of globalization?

Held argues that what is needed today is greater power and effectiveness for the UN to promote human rights within nations.

He argues for “regional parliaments” like the EU in Latin America and Africa. Citizens should be able to vote on trans-national issues that affect them (energy policy, public transportation)

A stronger, reformed General Assembly of the UN

Susan Strange “The Declining Authority of States”

Susan Strange is a deceased British political scientist who wrote widely on globalization, and especially on the growth of the international financial system and its effects on states.

Like Kenichi Ohmae, she makes a very strong argument about state decline.

In this chapter of her book, she makes some very useful, specific arguments that address some criticisms of arguments like hers.

Basic argument:

There exists a truly global marketplace that is, in a sense, more powerful than states.

Communications technology has radically changed people’s lives and undermined state authority

Nuclear technology (the Cold War arms race) first strengthened states, as they claimed to be able to prevent nuclear apocalypse. Later, when people lost confidence that states could prevent Armageddon, nuclear technology weakened faith in states.

Investment in cutting-edge technology is ever-more capital intensive, requiring corporations to borrow huge sums from international lenders. The demand for foreign loans and investment is thus growing.

At the same time, the supply of money for loans within the international financial system has grown, as that system has become more efficient, faster, more transparent and larger.

Thus countries must compete for international investment. If they choose not to, someone else will absorb the available financing and outcompete them (e.g. Ohmae’s example of Hollywood).

Smaller countries especially are essentially victims of the global market; their real sovereignty is illusory

Strange addresses some counter-arguments:

1) increasing incursions of the state into personal life

a. more rules and regulations about

i. health, safety, housing, driving, children and family, water, food

But Strange argues that these are minor issues, unimportant compared with the real loss of state power

2) minorities desirous of states

a. e.g. Kurds, Scots, Corsicans, Quebecois, Basques, Aboriginals, Samis, Flemish

Even if they achieve statehood, they cannot achieve any real control over their economy or politics

Minorities have to be content with the appearance of statehood

3) East Asia

a. Didn’t east Asian nations modernize with strong states?

No, this is illusory. East Asian nations are a special case. They did not develop successfully because they globalized quickly (contra economic liberals). Rather, they are a special case because during the Cold War they were of strategic importance to the USA, who gave them huge amounts of aid money and allowed them to develop strong states with strong currency and trade controls out of the fear of communism. Today, developing countries would never be allowed such leeway.

This exceptionalism is already being eroded.

Authority beyond the state

If states have lost authority and power, who has gained it in the world today?

Non-state actors, including:

Organized crime

Professions (e.g. insurance and accountancy)

Inter-governmental organizations

Transnational social movements

Transnational religious and ethnic groups

“ungovernance” – a power vacuum in the international political-economic system

Americanization

Richard Kuisel “Debating Americanization: The Case of France”

Jan Nederveen Pieterse “Hyperpower Exceptionalism: Globalization the American Way”

Natan Sznaider “The Americanization of Memory: The Case of the Holocaust”

Anti-Americanism dates to the 19^th century, when the United States expanded geographically, West and South; remained integrated after a civil war in the 1860s; and then industrialized rapidly. For Europeans, it seemed that the USA, a former European colony, was quickly becoming a superpower.

Anti-Americanism has an especially long history in France, but also in Germany and elsewhere.

Americans were seen as lacking in culture and taste, and as a threat to European industry, military power, and values and cherished ways of life.

European anti-Americanism has shifted from the right to the left and back many times within European societies. The sense that America was a threat to national identities, in Europe and elsewhere, waned during the 50 years of the Cold War, but has reemerged in our era of ‘globalization.’

French scholars in the 1960s and 70s (and some today), along with French politicians (Charles DeGaulle) were strongly opposed to the ‘Americanization’ of their country following their defeat in WWII and liberation by the USA. Even today, in France globalization is identified as Americanization, and opposed by political activists (e.g. Jose Bove, the French farmer who became famous for smashing a French McDonalds) and others. Yet today, Starbucks coffee and McDonalds hamburgers are popular in France, French middle-class families aspire to send their children to elite American colleges, and French kids look, act, buy music, and dress very much like American kids.

Scholars of globalization have gone back and forth on Americanization. In the 1990s there was a reaction to the equation globalization=Americanization, although there has been a bit of a counter-reaction more recently.

Does globalization=Americanization?

And what is Americanization anyway?

Consumerism?

Liberal economics?

Popular culture (rather than high culture, or local culture)?

American values?

Are countries around the world really becoming more like the USA?

Richard Kuisel “Debating Americanization: The Case of France”

Kuisel reviews the evidence that France has indeed “succumbed to Americanization”.

American English is the second most popular language

2/3 of French citizens agree that everyone should know Amer. English

The French government has tried to limit use of AE by legislation

France has 800 McDonalds restaurants, is now the 3^rd largest overseas market

Coca-Cola controls most of the cola market and half the soft drink market

In 1998 Hollywood movies earned almost 70% of ticket sales in France

Of the top 20 films only 3 were French

Disneyland Paris more popular than Notre Dame or the Louvre

Michael Jordan was voted the most popular athlete in France

American-style shopping malls and garden centers are popular (suburbanization)

French business managers are virtually indistinguishable from Americans

What is Americanization?

Kuisel defines Americanization in terms of imports of “products, images, technologies, practices and behavior closely associated with America/Americans”

Mass consumerism, market capitalism, mass culture

Begins after 1890, in France during the 1950s

Americanization in France is accepted more quickly by business groups, less by agricultural sector and rural communities

Kuisel places himself in the counter-reaction to the trend of weakening ideas of Americanization, in favor of globalization, diversity, and more complex analyses of ‘national cultures’

e.g. Pierre Bourdieu argued that America was a force for cultural imperialism, a hegemonic and despotic force; others have rejected his view; now Kuisel wants to salvage it, but with greater nuance

Four perspectives on Americanization

1. assimilation/domestication (local assimilation, negotiation, and interpretations of American products)

a. semiotic approach – changes in the meanings of symbols of America, e.g. Italian manufacturers using Cowboy images to sell jeans to other Europeans

but, as a counterpoint, when McDonalds entered the German market they remodeled their restaurants to look more “German” (wood paneling, darker lighting, beer)

but this failed, and McDonalds went back to their standard restaurant model, which is what gives them their unique identity

e.g. French teenagers claim to enjoy McDonalds because it is different from French restaurants and cafes, more relaxing and cool

also, French restaurants have voluntarily become more like McDonalds in order to compete

So assimilation/domestication has its limits

2. “Culture in motion”

a. culture is something complex, socially shaped

b. Americanization is accepted in different ways for different social classes within a country

c. But some things are still recognizably American

3. Globalization

a. Shouldn’t we be discussing “globalization” rather than “Americanization”?

b. Ideas, goods and services flow across the world, not just from America outward

c. E.g. look at the foods you can buy at a normal supermarket- feta cheese, jalapeno peppers, German beer, Indian chutney, Israeli oranges, Colombian coffee…

d. Globalization is “transnational”

Kuisel argues that globalization and Americanization are two different things, and that Americanization is still real and important

Globalization still has an American face, and American corporations generally win

4. Behaviour, meaning, and identity

a. To what degree is Americanization psychologically significant?

b. How does Americanization affect identity?

c. E.g. the widening of generational differences

d. E.g. casual dressing

e. E.g. changes in eating habits

f. E.g. changes in language

g. E.g. the spread of entrepreneurship

h. E.g. consumerism (e.g. its effects on the kibbutz movement)

Kuisel concludes that yes, Americanization is a real phenomenon, not reducible to anything else.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse “Hyperpower Exceptionalism: Globalization the American Way”

Pieterse is a Dutch academic who is associated with theories of “hybridity” and globalization, with the complexities and paradoxes produced by globalization rather than its homogenizing tendencies.

Yet in this article, he pays a lot of attention to the Bush administration and their “unilateralism,” i.e. their willingness to use American military power when and where they see fit regardless of international opinion.

Pieterse looks much more closely at the USA than do most academics who are interested in Americanization and globalization (e.g. Kuisel, who looks at Americanization in France but not at America itself)

What is it about America that is different from the rest of the world, and why does it have such an enormous international influence?

1. “American exceptionalism”

combination of Republican and millennial (religious apocalyptic) traditions

anti-statist, pro-market ideology

reinforced by sustained economic growth

other countries (Germany, Japan) see themselves as unique, but are not superpowers

2. Free Enterprise Capitalism

no socialism or labor party

laissez-faire capitalism

3. Political Conservatism

small-government conservatism, from Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton

in a sense the US is more right-wing than other countries, but lacks an ethnic/racial nationalist-conservative right wing (e.g. Japan, Germany)

4. Social inequality

bourgeois nation geared to the marketplace

little concern for social equality, more for individual freedoms and equality of opportunity

5. Americanism

nationalism based on ideas, not on the folk

6. Shallow modernity

short historical memory, no feudalism, empire, absolutism, or peasant culture

the US was founded on principles of rational progressivism

2. Military Strength

Pieterse argues that these exceptional national characteristics have had an international influence, through globalization, mainly through:

Laissez-faire economics after the British Empire

combined with

Weak world leadership (for a superpower) on women’s issues, the environment, and in the international community (for domestic political reasons)

Pieterse concludes that because of its inequality and economic instability, the USA cannot be a model for other nations, and he looks to the “other America” that is more attuned to world trends

Natan Sznaider “The Americanization of Memory: The Case of the Holocaust”

Has the USA “Americanized” the Holocaust, turning it into a consumer item and rendering it superficial, even trivial?

Americanization of the Holocaust refers to its “banalization” or “trivialization” or “Disneyfication” within popular culture

e.g. the soap opera “Holocaust”, movie Schindler’s List, even the US Holocaust Museum

That the Holocaust has been Americanized is an accusation heard in American Jewish circles, and in anti-American discourse

Sznaider does not agree with the critics of Americanization. Rather, he argues that Americanization is a gateway to the universalization of the Holocaust that may be a force for moral good in the world, e.g. in the Balkans, and perhaps in Sudan and elsewhere

The Holocaust has been internationalized during the post-WWII period by “cosmopolitans,” mostly American Jews who wished and worked to de-particularize the Holocaust. That is, they wanted it to be viewed not as only a Jewish tragedy, but as a universal human tragedy. This process was controversial, and began in the 1960s. It was effective for defending Israel in American political forums.

The universalism with which the Holocaust is viewed in America is quite different from how it is viewed in Israel or Germany.

This universalist American view, the “lessons of the Holocaust,” spurred the US to intervene to stop massacres in Kosovo, a move framed in moral terms, rather than in economic or political terms.

In the USA, Elie Wiesel has been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show. The discussion was not about the specific holocaust against the Jews, but about universal human suffering and its effects on the ‘self.’

Cultural Globalization 1: Individualization and Cosmopolitanism

Giddens, Anthony. from Modernity and Self-Identity. (packet)

Beck, Ulrich. Interview with Ulrich Beck.

optional:

John Meyer and David John Frank “The Profusion of Individual Roles and Identities in the Postwar Period” (email)

Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity

Anthony Giddens is one of the best-known sociologists alive today. He was a leading light for the “third way” politics of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, a politics that was intended to transcend the old left-right divide, to embrace capitalism but with a social emphasis.

He is also well known for theories of “structuration,” and for his very general, broad writings on modernity and identity.

Here we focus on modernity and self-identity. Here Giddens shows off both what is best and worst about his writing. He is theoretically ambitious and far more philosophical than most sociologists. He also tends to make quite grand claims that may be argued to be ethno- or Western-centric.

For Giddens, firstly, modernity = globalization

The two are closely aligned, such that globalization is seen as a very broad process, as modernization is/was thought of as a broad process. It is broader even than Americanization (mass culture, consumerism, entrepreneurship)

He follows Durkheim’s analysis of the Division of Labor in Society in arguing that modernization/globalization produces broad social changes. His elemental dichotomy is between global modernity and tradition. Some vocabulary is necessary here:

• Reorganization of time and space (David Harvey)

• Deterritorialization (detachment of people from their heimat, their ancestral land, their national territory, even their immediate surroundings, their neighborhoods)

• Reflexivity (self-awareness, self-consciousness rather than the automaticity of traditional village life)

• Institutional reflexivity (self-awareness of modern institutions, such as the state and family)

• Risk society/ risk culture (from Ulrich Beck – modernity reduces some risks, introduces new risks into daily life; people become reflexive about risk, rather than fatalistic as in traditional societies)

• Life is permeated by abstract systems

Giddens’ discussion of the “Trajectory of the Self” is of interest to us this week. He begins by delving into the self-help literature, which is very popular in America and apparently the UK and perhaps in most Western societies.

AG starts with the book “Self-Therapy” which recommends that individuals who are feeling overwhelmed or unhappy perform therapy on themselves, by observing themselves, thinking about their lives, who they are, and what they want. For Giddens, this is an example of reflexivity.

Importantly, Giddens asks how distinctive are the concerns expressed in this self-help manual? Are these new concerns and ideas, uniquely modern? Did “the individual” exist in traditional cultures? Was individuality prized? Or aberrant? (remember Durkheim)

Modernity/globalization presents individuals with heretofore unimagined choices, choices of lifestyle, values, careers, and so on that are anathema to traditional cultures.

So many choices leads individuals to engage in strategic life-planning, to even developing life-plan calendars.

This Giddens refers to as the colonization of the future. He also discusses the colonization of the body, in which the reflexive individual chooses what to do with her/his body. Anorexia nervosa is the extreme result of this expansion of the sense of control available to the reflexive individual (after all, in traditional cultures, do women worry about their weight or appearance after marriage? Do they try to control their bodies as people do today?)

In modernity, the pure relationship emerges. In the pure relationship, individuals choose, reflexively, with whom they want to spend time, intimately or otherwise. In traditional cultures, one’s “friends” are simply provided within the family, tribe, or village.

So modernity/globalization produces radically altered social and individual circumstances. This is a far more general phenomenon than Americanization, and it needs to be seen in its entirety if we are to understand social problems like Anorexia, or really to understand the world today whatsoever.

Cultural Globalization 2 – homogeneity and hybridity

chapters 1 and 3 from Tomlinson Globalization and Culture (packet)

John Tomlinson “Cultural Imperialism” (packet)

Steve Derné 2004 “The (limited) effect of cultural globalization in India” (packet)

John Tomlinson

John Tomlinson is a British academic, a theorist of globalization, and one of the first writers to really focus on cultural aspects of globalization. One of his earlier books is Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. As the title suggests, he is critical of the very idea of cultural imperialism, and he wants to analyze it carefully.

There is a long history of writing on cultural imperialism, much of it French, and much of it focused on “Americanization” or something along these lines.

JT gives as an example the TV series Dallas, which gained international popularity in the 1980s. He cites a study by Ien Ang, who discusses both the popularity of Dallas and its critical reception in many countries.

On the one hand, Dallas was incredibly popular.

On the other, cultural critics often regarded Dallas as a threat to authentic national cultures and national identities.

e.g. in 1983 Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture, proclaimed Dallas as the “symbol of American cultural imperialism”

and very recently, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian Prime Minister, banned Western music in Iran.

These kinds of reactions often draw on the “critical theory” of the sociologists Horkheimer and Adorno, both members of the Frankfurt School, who criticized mass culture of all kinds. They saw popular culture as a product of the “culture industries” – mainly Hollywood, but also the recording industry, Broadway, etc. Critical theorists borrowed much from Marx in arguing that mass culture (like religion for Marx) discouraged any kind of creative, critical, sophisticated, or authentic thought among audiences. It makes the public into passive consumers who do not question politics or economic inequality, and who do not aspire to any kind of cultural refinement, beauty or sophistication.

Horkheimer and Adorno were extremely highbrow European intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany for the “freedom” of the United States, only to end up living in California and being appalled by what they saw as the stupidity of consumer culture (Disneyland, Hollywood, and so on)

Since Horkheimer and Adorno, and before them as well, “professional intellectuals” have been dismissive of American-style consumer culture. Many analysts see popular culture as not just entertainment. They think it has obvious, manipulative ideological effects.

Ien Ang studied the reception of Dallas in the Netherlands, and found that many people who enjoyed watching the show also disapproved of its capitalistic ideology. Some people defended watching it with a populist anti-intellectual discourse. Others adopted an ironic stance toward the show.

So reactions in Holland were complex, to say the least.

Katz and Liebes, two American-Israeli social scientists, studied the reception of Dallas among lower middle class Israeli citizens. Their groups included:

Israeli Arabs

New immigrants from Russia

Immigrants from Morocco

Kibbutzniks

These were compared to similar groups in Los Angeles

They watched the show, then participated in an “open structured” discussion and filled out questionnaires.

They found that people interpreted the show in very different ways, sometimes incorrectly.

Some of the Moroccan Jews claimed that the show made them more proud of their Jewish identity and their moral standards (as compared with the Dallas characters, many of whom are “bastards”)

They conclude that the discourses of ordinary people about Dallas were quite sophisticated, so we should be skeptical about discussions of cultural imperialism and passive audiences.

Tomlinson, chapters 1 and 3 of Globalization and Culture

It is important to note that Tomlinson argues that we should not conflate globalization and modernity, and that today’s “global age” is something fairly new and is not just a continuation of modernity. Here he disagrees with Giddens.

Globalization threatens some aspects of modernity, such as the state, and it introduces new risks such as global environmental risks. Changes in communication technologies are also new.

Analysts like Giddens may be wrong and ethnocentric to counterpose Western modernity and tradition. There may be “multiple modernities” in different parts of the world, and culture is not mainly about maintaining difference but rather about meaning.

Dreams of Global Culture

In chapter 3, Tomlinson discusses some of the ways in which cultural universalism has been viewed in a very positive light. We have already talked about this in terms of some 19^th century movements, such as the Esperanto movement and the standardization of many technologies (telegraph, transportation, electricity, the metric system, mail systems etc.)

European bourgeois values

Marxism, socialism and communism

Global communications outlets today (e.g. CNN)

Scientific research

United Nations and demands for more global governance

UNESCO programs around the world

Nightmares

American Marxist Herbert Schiller

Argues that transnational corporations are operating a dominant global political-economic system

These corporations have both political-economic power and ideological power to define reality for many people

More recently, books on The Global Media (1997) discuss how a small group of corporations, including Disney, TimeWarner, Viacom, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation.

Many of these writers are writing from a “neo-Marxist tradition”

Also writing on McDonaldization, Coca-Colonization, even McDisneyization

But isn’t there a “fallacy of internalism” in these writings. Just because cultural objects exist does not mean that they are internalized at a deep level.

Creolization, indigenization, hybridization and the “active audience”

Isn’t culture “globalized” rather than “global”

Steve Derne, The (limited) effect of cultural globalization in India

Derne is a young, American sociologist. We will read more work by analysts like him next semester, I think.

This is a case study of the effects of “new media” in India. It should allow us to answer some of our questions about culture and globalization.

The Indian media was rapidly liberalized in the 1990s, and cable television and foreign movies became widely available.

Because of the Gulf War and the increase in the price of oil, India sought IMF loans, and as a result was forced to open its internal markets to foreign competition.

As is the case almost everywhere, the foreign films and television shows available glamorized sex, consumerism, and violence.

Did the radically changed media landscape change the way people think and act, their beliefs and values?

Derne focuses on non-elite men only. Derne had previously interviewed many of these men in the 1980s, and most of them were proudly Indian and culturally conservative. They were family-oriented, and approved of arranged marriages and limitations on women’s movement outside the home.

In 1991 and 2001 he interviewed men in the small city of Dehra Dun in northern India.

In 1991 most nonelite men were not exposed to Western movies, while in 2001 most of them were.

In 2001, most nonelite men still had poor job prospects.

And yet, in 2001 most nonelite men still:

Rejected love marriages

Reject women’s autonomy

Approve of joint-family living

Reject global media messages

They came to embrace male violence more in films. They enjoyed the action scenes in Hollywood films.

They also enjoyed foreign pornography and films which objectify women.

For these men, cultural globalization seems to have reinforced preexisting arrangements rather than destroying or transforming them.