Class 18: Analyzing Culture and Social Change

CLASS 18 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø The rise of modern capitalism Ø Capitalism and its lasting effects Ø Rationalization and disenchantment Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø M...

CLASS 18 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø The rise of modern capitalism Ø Capitalism and its lasting effects Ø Rationalization and disenchantment Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The concept of “elective affinity”: Ø How could Protestant ethic spread and become a powerful force in the rise of modern capitalism? Ø 17th century Calvinism caught on because its teaching and doctrine had an “elective affinity” (a good “fit”) with the social, psychological, and cultural needs of the emerging bourgeoisie Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The concept of “elective affinity”: Ø Explains the “fit” or the “attraction” between: Ø a socioeconomic group (the class of the rising bourgeoisie) Ø its way of life (the new type of capitalist economic activity) Ø and a specific set of cultural beliefs and values (Calvinism) which give meaning to the activities and life of said group Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The interpretative - analytical model: Ø 1. the break-up of the medieval order with the rise of Protestantism and the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries Ø 2. The Calvinist formulation of the doctrine of predestination and the expansion of the idea of vocation (God’s calling) to secular realms of activity Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The interpretative - analytical model: Ø 3. The birth of inner-worldly asceticism Ø 4. The elective affinity between this inner-worldly asceticism with its Protestant (work) ethic and the newly emerging bourgeois class Ø 5. The spirit of modern capitalism and the rationalization of life as the lasting effects of applying Calvinist inner-worldly asceticism to the economic sphere of activity Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the rise of modern capitalism: Ø The interpretative - analytical model: Ø 5. On the level of methodology: Ø a. Interpretative (meaning), genealogical form of understanding; Ø b. Ideal-typification: scientific understanding based on the identification of social “idealtypes” (i.e. the bourgeois character) necessary for the existence of a phenomenon (capitalism) Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the capitalist spirit / capitalism and its lasting effects: Ø 1. The paradox of secularization: Ø The development and expansion of capitalism, while dependent on Calvinist religious values and culture (inner-worldly asceticism), gradually lead to the secularization of cultural values as such: Ø Concern with the material world and less with the spiritual world, more preoccupied with wealth in this world rather than with the salvation in the next Ø Secularization as the major process affecting culture in the transition to modern capitalist societies Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the capitalist spirit / capitalism and its lasting effects: Ø 2. The paradox of materialism: Ø Capitalism as we know it: an economic system based on highly materialist set of values: Ø self-interest; maximization of profits; continuous accumulation and expansion of wealth; materialist understandings of human life, materialist understandings of fulfilment, happiness, and meaning Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the capitalist spirit / capitalism and its lasting effects: 3. Rationalization, the power of bureaucracy, disenchantment Ø instrumental rationality - the instrumental adaptation of means to ends – came to dominate more and more areas of life in western cultures Ø 4. The growing pre-eminence of scientific and technological values: Ø many world cultures developed empirical knowledge Ø Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the capitalist spirit / capitalism and its lasting effects: Ø 4. The growing pre-eminence of scientific and technological values: Ø However, rationalization processes helped develop the uniquely western creation of theoretically organized science with universal empirical validity Ø The construction of modern science as a cultural form of universal value and significance: the claim to represent the only possible form of a reasoned view of the world Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity - the capitalist spirit / capitalism and its lasting effects: Ø Rationalization: among the four “lasting effects”, rationalization is the essential one, determining all the others: Ø rationalization is the central thread linking the rise of capitalism with its development, and with its other lasting effects (secularization, materialism, modern science and technology) Ø Rationalization is underlying the other specified effects Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Weber saw the modern Western world as the “increasing rationalization of more and more areas of life” Ø the growth of western modern science and technology, of western capitalism as a “rational” form of economic life, of a political culture rooted in legalrational laws, rules and procedures Ø He made no distinction between capitalism and socialism as both underpinned by rationalization processes Ø Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Rationalization effected the growth and power of bureaucracy as a form of organization in both capitalism and communism Ø Bureaucracies established not only to deal with economic, social and political processes, but also to achieve values of justice and equality Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø However, modern bureaucracies cannot provide a solution to the problem of theodicy: Ø i.e. they cannot answer questions about life, death and human suffering, explaining and justifying the ways of God to man For Weber, the role of culture was precisely to provide such answers, to give meaning to human life Ø Traditional cultures, especially in their religious dimensions, offered ways of dealing with such deep questions Ø Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø By contrast, modern rationalization processes and their manifestation in bureaucratic power lead to disenchantment: Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø disenchantment: Ø Medieval culture was saturated with the religious and the “irrational”, providing the moral framework for everybody: Ø saints’ days, fairs, pilgrimages, festivals, seasons of feasting, atonement, celebration, magical spells, rituals, healing waters etc. Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø disenchantment: Ø This medieval culture gradually disappeared, leaving space to a world which: Ø more and more could be understood only through the application of rational forms of explanation Ø which could be mastered and controlled only through the application of instrumental reason Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø disenchantment: Ø Modern culture became increasingly secular and materialistic in its values, instrumental rather than spiritual, dominated by scientific and technological rationality Ø “Entzauberung der Welt” (disenchantment, demagification, secularization) Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø On the aesthetic and the erotic: Ø Enlightenment wanted science to replace religion as a basis for moral values, providing the foundation for a new culture, the modern civilization Ø Weber thought that the problem of meaning, suffering and justice cannot be satisfactorily addressed by science Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø On the aesthetic and the erotic: Ø In the culture of disenchantment and with the retreat of religion, a residual form of meaning to be found in the realm of the aesthetic and the erotic Ø These two areas are not yet wholly dominated by technical and scientific rationality Ø Protestantism: tension between religion and the aesthetic and the erotic (Catholicism: aesthetic forms are more acceptable) Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø On the aesthetic and the erotic: Ø the taboo on “pleasure and gratification”, the erotic and the aesthetic, was fundamental for the rise of capitalism Ø with the advancement of capitalism, increasing pressure to lift this taboo, as sexuality and art were the few remaining areas of modern culture resisting “rationalization” Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø On the aesthetic and the erotic: Ø The aesthetic and erotic spheres as the realms of the non-rational, set apart from the normal life of rational work processes Ø The two spheres replace to some extent religion as a source of meaning in modern culture, acquiring also the characteristics of something “sacred” Ø The presence of artistic and erotic culture industries in urban social formations Class 18: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Modernity as fundamentally ambiguous Ø Bryan Turner commenting on Weber: Ø “The essential feature of Weber’s view of modernity is…its ambiguity. Modernization brings with it the erosion of meaning, the endless conflict of polytheistic values, and the threat of the iron cage of bureaucracy. Rationaliztion makes the world orderly and reliable, but it cannot make the world meaningful.” CLASS 18 – 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.)