Class 17 - Analyzing culture and social change.pdf

CLASS 17 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø The rise of modern capitalism Class 17: Analyzing culture and social c...

CLASS 17 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø The rise of modern capitalism Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø The approach of liminality emphasizes the complex emergence, factual and discursive, of processes of change and crisis Ø it seeks to capture the particular, contingent, and idiosyncratic, always aiming at a sensitive grasp of the context. Ø it rejects the (conceptual) opposition between the individual and the state, the international and the domestic, the political and the social Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø the focus of inquiry should be on the genealogical exploration of the processes of becoming Ø liminality highlights the processual nature of all social life Ø It entails a cyclical, rather than progressive understanding of social life Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø liminality means that without understanding what is happening at the limit of the social, we are unlikely to grasp the workings of the core Ø liminality allows for the deeper understanding of what happens during the ‘constitutive’ moments in society (national and international) and enables the specification of the effects of these critical experiences. Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø The use of liminality in social theory points towards the following key differences existing between “controlled” and “contigent” liminality: Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep: liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø 1. “controlled liminality” in ordered ritual passages: Ø Guided by masters of ceremony Ø Future is known as the personal and social liminality of the people remains framed by the continued existence of their home society Ø Clear time span of the liminal ritual Ø Clear entry and exit points Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep - liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø 2. “contingent liminality” during situations of large scale social change and crisis: Ø no acknowledged masters of ceremony to guide societies through their inner strives Ø the future is inherently unknown as nobody has ever gone through the same liminal period of a social crisis / change before, and background structures of society are collapsing Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep - liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø 2. “contingent liminality” during situations of large scale social change and crisis: Ø no clear time span of the liminal experience Ø no clear entry and exit points signalling the beginning and end of liminality Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep - liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø In contingent liminality, the problem of leadership is acute – Ø the danger of false leaders: Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Beyond Arnold van Gennep - liminality from cultural anthropology to social theory: Ø the danger of false leaders: Ø Societies facing contingent liminality can face extremely dangerous situations. Ø Liminal moments in the sense of whole-scale social crises create the scene for self-proclaimed masters of ceremony who claim to “have seen the future” Ø In reality, they establish their own position by perpetuating the liminal crisis and emptying the moment of real solutions to problems. Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Conceptual perils / limitations of liminality: Ø 1. there is the peril of determinism - making a hyperbole argument by claiming liminality is to be found everywhere 2. the determinations of stretching the notion from small-scale communities to societies writ large should be clearly stated (contingent liminality) Ø 3. The question regarding the actual subject who experiences the liminal ordeal at a wider scale: who is it? How can you differentiate from non-liminal subjects? Ø CLASS 17 – Analyzing culture and social change Ø Bibliography: Ø For liminality: Ø Bjorn Thomassen: “The Uses and Meanings of Liminality”, International Political Anthropology, 2009: 2(1): 5-27. Ø Mälksoo, M. 2012. “The Challenge of Liminality for International Relations Theory”, Review of International Studies, 38(2): 481-494. Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: not concerned with formal practices and the rules of symbolic classification, but with the role played by social values in major historical transitions Ø Followed the genealogical method: enquiry into the conditions of emergence of a certain social practice, value, idea etc. and delineation of its lasting effects Ø The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905): how did capitalism, the economic system underpinning modernity, arise? Ø Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Paradoxically, the story of the emergence of modern capitalism is not linked to secular, materialist and “progressive” practices, values or philosophies, but to religious values and religious asceticism Ø It was 16th and 17th century Calvinism (the European Reformation) which was fundamental to the creation of modern capitalism as a form of political-social-economic organization Ø Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Two types of capitalism: Ø 1. adventurer capitalism: based upon the use of conquest and violence to extract profit; Ø 2. rational bourgeois capitalism: based on rational action and non-violent means of exploiting labour Ø Modern capitalism is of the second type and specific to the history of the West. Ø Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Capitalism in the sense of profitable economic activity had existed for a long time, in many societies; Ø but only in Western Europe emerged its rational, modern form on any extended scale. Ø Rational bourgeois capitalism: an economic system driven by self-interest, the desire to maximize profit on a regular basis, to accumulate, invest and expand wealth Ø Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: This leads to the spirit of modern capitalism - or the rational pursuit of economic gain - the rationalization of a distinctive type of economic action based upon sustained, systematic capital investment, employing formally free labour Ø The condition of emergence for the spirit of capitalism is given by religion / religious culture - the Protestant ethic - specifically the Calvinist theology of predestination and its social-moral effects Ø Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø Calvinist doctrine of predestination: Ø The decision of who is saved/damned is God’s alone Ø Individuals compelled to live as spiritually as possible, in the hope of salvation, though never knowing whether one was God’s “elect” or not Ø this lead to a powerful inner religious compulsion (conscience) to order life in the rational pursuit of salvation – religious asceticism Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø Calvinist doctrine of predestination: Ø According to this vision of religious asceticism, each individual lives out God’s will in a specific vocation (a calling from God) and demonstrates his faith and the status of being elect by the successful works of his vocation Ø Religious drive to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø this engendered inner-worldly asceticism: Ø God’s calling shifted from the Catholic priest who leaves the world and devotes his life to God (and his congregation), to a calling influencing all everyday behaviour inside the world Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The doctrine of predestination and the notion of a vocation enhanced rational conduct in the exclusive sense of instrumental rationality: Ø Rational conduct “one of the fundamental elements of modern capitalism…and of all modern culture...was born...from the spirit of Christian asceticism” Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø For entrepreneurs of early capitalism these evolutions facilitated the religious justification of the rational pursuit of economic wealth (in order to be successful in one’s calling): Ø “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of the monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order” Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: the new type of capitalism was based on the inner character of the bourgeois capitalist Ø This character was itself derived from the cultural values produced by Protestant (Puritan/Calvinist) innerworldly asceticism: Ø Ø Forsaking immediate pleasures and luxurious living Ø Habits of thrift, of long-term savings in order to accumulate and then invest money Ø learning to calculate profits and losses, simultaneously “calculating” the pursuit of salvation Class 17: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø In sum, Calvinist /Puritanist religious culture lead to the rationalization of the whole sphere of economic behaviour: Ø the capitalist learned to organize economic behaviour (like religious life) in regular, systematic, long-term, instrumental ways for the purpose of increasing wealth, that is rationally maximizing profit. Ø capitalism emerged not because of a loss of religious values; rather: the presence of a certain type religious culture was necessary to its formation CLASS 17 – Analyzing culture and social change Ø Bibliography: Ø For Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø “Chapter 5” Ø Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies; Wiley-Blackwell (1996),by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, Kenneth Thompson (eds.)