Class 19 - Analyzing culture and social change.pdf

CLASS 19 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø Rationalization and disenchantment Ø Marx and social alienation Ø Freud and the discontents of civilization Ø Rene Girard and mimetic anthropology Class...

CLASS 19 / Part IV: Analyzing culture and social change Ø SUMMARY: Ø Analyzing culture and social change: Ø Max Weber and the study of modernity Ø Rationalization and disenchantment Ø Marx and social alienation Ø Freud and the discontents of civilization Ø Rene Girard and mimetic anthropology Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Capitalist (/socialist) modernity as iron cage: Ø Weber was sceptical about Enlightenment narratives regarding the overall increase in human happiness effected by modern culture (the application of science and technology to industry and then to all social life) Ø Equally sceptical about the universal significance and value of science Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Capitalist (/socialist) modernity as iron cage: Ø Pessimistic diagnosis of the increasingly mechanistic character of modern industrial society and culture, and of the dominance of a competitive, rationalist and utilitarian ethos in it. Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Capitalist (/socialist) modernity as iron cage: Ø “This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Capitalist (/socialist) modernity as iron cage: Ø “Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. To-day the spirit of religious asceticism— whether finally, who knows?—has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer.” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Capitalist (/socialist) modernity as iron cage: Ø “No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive selfimportance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Weber and the problem of all culture: Ø “Science has created a cosmos of natural causality and has seemed unable to answer with certainty the question of its own ultimate presuppositions. Nevertheless science, in the name of “intellectual integrity”, has come forward with the claim of representing the only possible form of a reasoned view of the world….something has adhered to this cultural value which was bound to depreciate it with still greater finality, namely, senselessness...” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Weber and the study of modernity – rationalization and disenchantment: Ø Weber and the problem of all culture: Ø “...all “culture” appears as man’s emancipation from the organically prescribed cycle of natural life. For this reason culture’s every step forward seems condemned to lead to an ever more devastating senselessness. The advancement of cultural values, however, seems to become a senseless hustle in the service of worthless, moreover self-contradictory, and mutually antagonistic ends.” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Marx and the study of modernity – capitalism and alienation – the modern industrial factory: Ø Capitalism denies one of the essential parts of what it means to be “human” - working creatively on the external world and finding pleasure in working with other people Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Marx and the study of modernity – capitalism and alienation : The modern industrial factory leads to alienation: Ø 1. the externality of labour: Ø the lack of existential connection between the worker and - and other people, his labour and his capacity to be creative Ø no sense of the self Ø 2. the workers’ expropriation of the fruits of labour for sale in the market Ø Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Marx and the study of modernity – capitalism and alienation : Ø The modern industrial factory leads to alienation: Ø “External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self-sacrifice, of mortification” Ø Religion as comparative metaphor for external labour: Ø “Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates independently of the individual – that is, operates on him as an alien, divine, or diabolical activity – in the same way the worker’s activity is not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another, it is the loss of his self.” Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Freud and the study of modernity – the discontents of civilization: Ø WWI as civilizational shock leading to “war neurosis” - hostility felt by people towards “civilization” Ø Technological advances in modern civilization increasing comfort, luxury and well-being does not guarantee increased happiness; it places demands on people, affecting their everyday life. Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø Freud and the study of modernity – the discontents of civilization: Ø The unconscious / unconscious desire as source of the irrational is “blocked” in civilization: Ø Sexuality Ø Destructive aggression Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard (1923 – 2015) and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (1961) Ø Violence and the Sacred (1972) Ø The Scapegoat (1982) Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø Mimetism / the mimetic refers to imitation Ø In the history of philosophy, the concept of imitation goes back to Plato whose philosophy can be read also as an attempt of annihilating the Sophists’ negative mimetic powers. Ø More recent names in philosophy include Sören Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin or Karl Löwith. Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø In social theory / sociology, imitation made a major break-through with Gabriel Tarde (1843 – 1904) Ø Tarde attributed to it the function of the basic mechanism of social order and change. Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø Tarde went for a long time under the radar of sociology and it is only in the last decades that his approach gained an increased prominence, imitation being picked up by various scholars across disciplines Ø René Girard as towering figure of mimetic theory; he offers its latest and most powerful elaboration Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø René Girard’s mimetic theory is the anthropological counter-offer to Freudean inspired psychoanalysis Ø René Girard’s frees human anthropology from the “obsession” with low motifs found in Freud: the intrinsic sexual desire towards the mother and the parricide (the Oedipus complex) Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø Using the concept of “imitation”, Girard separates human desire from the intrinsic nature of the “object”, and therefore also from Freud’s psychoanalytic determinations of the “unconscious”: Ø Psychoanalytic determinations: childhood as the child’s unconscious sexual desire towards the mother (incest), the hatred of the father (parricide) Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø Brief history of mimetic theory Ø Girard’s mimetic theory has two fundamental pillars: Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: Ø Mimetic desire is an instinctive and unconscious process, very clearly visible in young children; Ø However, it is omnipresent in “rational” adults as well Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: Ø The sociability – the form of social relations – of human beings is constituted by their mimetic desire to imitate the desires of others. Ø In other words, sociability is based on mimetic triangles between: the desired object/subject – model - imitator Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: How does mimetic desire function? Ø the objects we desire are attractive to us because they are possessed by or embodied in models that are constantly changing. This leads to either: Ø a. Positive reciprocity: where social relations regarding specific objects of desire lead to and rely on love, trust, or cooperation (positive mimetic relations) Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: How does mimetic desire function? Ø b. Negative reciprocity: being competitive, vying, and ultimately violent is founded on negative mimetic relations Ø negative mimetic relations: material (property) or immaterial objects (prestige, power) are desired both by the imitator and the model and become contested between the two. Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: How does mimetic desire function? Ø With competition emerges mimetic rivalry: Ø desires converge first on contested objects/ subjects, but then enduring competition may make desired objects/subjects “disappear”, being lost sight of Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: How does mimetic desire function? Ø Mimetic rivalry can lead to mimetic doubles: each person is the model obstacle of the other Ø The rivalry between the two contending actors becomes more important than the initial object of desire Class 19: Analyzing culture and social change Ø René Girard and the study of modernity – mimetic anthropology / mimetic theory: Ø 1st pillar of Girard’s mimetic theory: Ø In sum, Girard shows that human desire is not about the subject-object dichotomy, but is fundamentally imitative: we always desire the objects and beings that others desire. CLASS 19 – Analyzing culture and social change Ø Bibliography: Ø For Weber, Marx and Freud: Ø “Chapter 5” Ø Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies; Wiley-Blackwell (1996),by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, Kenneth Thompson (eds.) Ø For René Girard and mimetic theory Ø Harald Wydra (2008) “Towards a New Anthropological Paradigm: The Challenge of Mimetic Theory”, International Political Anthropology, 1(1):161-174.