Introduction
The “cultural turn” in the social sciences and humanities
Immediately after WWII, the human sciences took the natural sciences as their model—especially in
Search was for “laws” of human society
e.g. classical economics, Marxism
Newtonian paradigm: search for cause-and-effect relationships
Positivism hypothesis testing, independent and dependent variables, statistical tests
This model is now mostly, but not entirely, out of fashion
Generally, this search has not yielded the kinds of results once hoped for
also, Marxism fails in practice
civil rights, women’s rights, antiwar movements in the 60s and 70s couldn’t be understood or predicted in terms of scientific laws. More a matter of history and agency.
modernization projects are seen to disappoint
The contemporaneous “linguistic turn” (initiated by Noam Chomsky’s critique of B.F. Skinner)
The linguistic turn in philosophy: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Searle, Putnam, Rorty
The “cognitive revolution” in the human sciences, in which researchers found ways to study thought and meaning. Previously, the human mind had been treated as a kind of “black box” into which no one could see
The cognitive revolution motivates the growth of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, and even cognitive sociology (so far very small, as we will see later in the course)
This course is, broadly, in line with the cultural turn in the human sciences
economic and technological changes:
global media, cable and satellite television, internet à media studies
Locating this course more specifically: cultural studies in sociology
Sociology of culture
The study of sociological processes at work in the creation and reception of cultural materials
This includes, primarily, art, music, theater, literature, museums, and so on
Cultural studies/media studies
The study of the role of mass media in modern societies, how the media creates and promotes particular views, tastes, and attitudes
How the media and the advertising industry responds to and shapes patterns of consumption
The role of media and entertainment in shaping people’s identities and worldviews
Globalization and Westernization
Cultural sociology
The study of symbols, language, rituals, and meaning in all of social life
i.e. in all areas of social life: work, leisure, politics, religion, technology, organizations…
Studying cultural patterns as collective representations or constructions
Studying the role of ideas in social life
Philip Smith, What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory?
Culture is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”
Its early meanings referred to cult-ivation of land and crops, then to religious cults
1500s-1800s: “cultivation” of the individual’s mind
we still say some people are “cultured” while others are “uncultured”
we still sometimes talk about societies, communities, nations and other groups in terms of their level of culture, their civilization
during the industrial revolution, people began to discuss folk culture, as in folk culture and national culture vs. industry and capitalism; this was tied to romanticism in art and literature
In sociology and social theory today, culture usually refers to
not material, technological, social structural processes
realm of the ideal, spiritual, non-material, beliefs, values, symbols, signs, discourses
culture is everywhere in social life
scholars should try to be value-neutral when studying culture (ie. not think in terms of better and worse, higher and lower)
William H. Sewell, jr. The Concepts(s) of Culture
and
Lynn Spillman, Culture and Cultural Sociology
Sewell is a sociologist at the
Please don’t worry if you don’t know some of the names they mention.
Let’s start with Sewell’s chapter.
In order to present the various conceptions of culture that have cropped up over the years, Sewell does a lot of splitting and categorizing of ideas. The first split is a major one, and it’s between 2 understandings of culture:
1. Culture as the symbolic and expressive side of social life. Here culture is set apart from others facets of social life, such as biology (e.g. nature vs. nurture), politics, and economics. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms fits in here.
A. Culture as all learned behavior, that which makes us human
B. Culture as learned behavior concerned with meaning
C. Culture as an institutional sphere devoted to the making of meaning
i.e. art, music, theater, fashion, literature, religion, the media, education
Research in this area is usually considered sociology of culture, or cultural studies, and is focused on the production and reception of cultural products. In the sociology of the occupations, and in class theories, people working in these areas are considered “cultural specialists,” by the way, and contrasted to, basically, business people.
D. Culture as creativity or agency. We’ll spend some time on agency later in the course, but this basically refers to research on how political groups create and manipulate ideological material.
E. Culture as a system of symbols and meanings. This is the late-Durkheimian tradition, basically, and this is what we’ll spend most of the course on.
F. Culture as practice. This is a lot like culture as creativity or agency. The emphasis here is on the ways in which culture is not collective, but fragmented and open to individual interpretation and reinterpretation.
2. Culture as a life-system, a “concrete and bounded body of beliefs and practices.” E.g. American culture, Middle-class culture, American middle-class culture, Samoan culture. This is culture as everything, more or less: a whole way of life encompassing beliefs, practices, ideas, ideals, values, tastes, and styles characteristic of some specific group. Next week’s readings look at culture in this way, as does quite a lot of anthropological and sociological research. This is also, by the way, an older concept of culture, and one that is not too fashionable anymore. Which is not to say that it’s all bad.
From page 46 on, Sewell elaborates his understanding of culture. It’s one which I happen to like a lot, but it’s less important for our puposes than his presentation of the different concepts of culture. The basic division is between culture as facet of social life, and culture as system. The next few readings look at culture as a system, while the bulk of the course treats it as an aspect of life that is always present.
Lynn Spillman
Argues that culture usually refers to
1. intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic development of an individual, group, or society
2. intellectual and artistic activities
3. way of life of a community or society
Culture is about meaning, while much of sociology, and the social sciences generally, ignores meaning
Marx on Religion à Critical Theory
Marx on Religion
religion serves ruling elites
religion legitimizes the status quo
religion reinforces social stratification
most religion is other-worldy, and it encourages people not to think about their problems here and now
one of Marx’s most famous lines: religion is “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”
e.g. Hinduism supports the caste system in
in the Middle Ages in
more recently, Saddam Hussein turned to Islam during his last years in power
Culture and 20th-century Marxist Thought
We’re finished now with Weber and recent Weberian scholarship, and Durkheim and recent Durkheimian scholarship. The last line of thought from classical sociology to contemporary cultural studies is the Marx line.
Even more than Weber and Durkheim, Marxist thought dominated much of sociology and the social sciences in the 20th century, especially in
If we recall that Marx was the quintessential materialist social thinker, who saw culture, along with government, the family, and education, as part of a societal “superstructure” ultimately controlled by whomever controlled society’s material “base,” i.e. the “means of production,” the factories and farms.
Marx’s vision wouldn’t seem to leave much room for culture. In fact it doesn’t, and this has put Marx at odds with at least 30 years of increasing cultural explanation in the social sciences.
Philip Smith gives us a good overview of the interplay of Marxist thought and ideas about culture in his chapter. He makes three main points
1. “There has been an attempt to assimilate cultural explanation within a Marxian framework.” Culture is given more autonomy, although its role is generally to regulate social life to maintain the capitalist economic order.
2. Culture, especially ideology, is used to explain the non-arrival of the revolution that Marx predicted was inevitable. Why so little working-class radicalism?
3. Movement toward humanism and away from the “science” of historical materialism, the search for laws of human history and development (we talked about this general trend at the start of the course)
I should note that in many courses, the Marxian tradition would receive much more attention than it does in this one. This week will just give an overview of some main thinkers and ideas, and we will focus on a few.
Also, one question we might ask of this intellectual tradition is how much Marx is left over once we’ve made these moves?
George Lukacs
advocates a more humanistic, more cultural Marxism
like Weber, Marx, and Durkheim, he saw history unfolding unilinearly, with motivation from several fundamental processes; a specific capitalist logic was driving history
Commodification – capitalism “colonizes” more and more dimensions of private life: our bodies, love, beauty
Reification – assumption that they way things are is how they must be
Commodity fetishism – mania for consumer products, which are imbued with almost magical qualities
Class consciousness – people’s identification in terms of their socioeconomic class, Lukacs thought it was necessary for a modern society but required reflective thinking and self-awareness about the ideological effects of capitalism
Antonio Gramsci
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Prison Notebooks written while in jail in
wants to explain why a communist revolution had not occurred in
focuses on the interrelations of the state, intellectuals, and ideas
the state is not simply a rationalizing instrument, a rational, efficient bureaucracy, but is rather a tool for class domination
the state represents the interests of dominant economic actors, i.e. capitalists and the bourgeoisie
the state acts not only through violence, because violence, while useful, is costly
the state controls society through hegemony, through the propagation of hegemonic beliefs
e.g. common sense, nationalism
hegemonic beliefs are spread by organic intellectuals who, like priests, translate complex ideas into simple language so as to be easily understood
for cultural theory, Gramsci pointed out connections between ideas and concrete social and economic arrangements
he influenced the British Cultural Studies school, and has had an impact in many disciplines
he was especially popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but began to lose steam in the 90s
The
a group of intellectuals who were associated with a research institute in
I will focus on Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
They were members of the German cultural elite, and Adorno moved to
saw Nazi populist propaganda, then in
A and H, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, argued that the project of the European Enlightenment had reached an end, and had led to a world of narrow pragmatic rationality and a mass society of passive, uniform consumers
Popular media produced by the culture industry appeals to the lowest common denominator, simple likes and dislikes, in the interest of maximum profits
“No independent thinking must be expected from the audience”
Audiences are zombie-like and amused, but unthinking and gullible
Classical and avante-garde art, however, is much better
Jurgen Habermas
A generation younger than other members of the
His popularity increased after the democratic revolutions in
He is deeply concerned with democracy and especially with free, democratic civil life, and with rationality
His one main idea, perhaps, is the public sphere, an open space where ordinary people can meet to discuss fundamental questions of social life, where they can exchange ideas freely and rationally
these public conversations are understood, or hoped, to be empowering and rational
they are rational because they are built on communicative reason, undistorted, clear mutual understanding that can be achieved through language
they are part of the lifeworld, independent of the system world of capitalism, bureaucracy, and the state
in the lifeworld, solidarity and face-to-face contact, family relations, and communities create value commitments that are the basis of rational collective action
the lifeworld is increasingly colonized or invaded by modernity
Habermas argued that the public sphere was vibrant in 18th century
His writings have been criticized for idealizing the public sphere of 18th century
