Foundations Of Social And Behavioral Sciences Theory

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Lecture6.pdf

Marx and the Cultural Geography of Modernity

Week 4 & 5, Lecture 6

Outline

• Karl Marx, life and times

• The Communist Manifesto

• What capitalism is

• Creative Destruction

• Nihilism

• Social differentiation, spatial diffusion, and cultural de-fusion

Karl Marx

• 1818-1883

• Born in what is now Germany, lived most of his life in England

• University of Bonn, Berlin and Jena--studied law, philosophy and history

• Writer in Germany, France and eventually England

• Early and Later Marx writings

Karl Marx

• The Communist Manifesto

• Published in 1848 (“The Year of Revolution”)

• A pamphlet written for the Communist League (a group of German workers in France)

• Later became a general statement for international communism

The Communist Manifesto

• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

• The present society is a result of the struggle between the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production) and the proletariat (those who own only their labor)--this is capitalism

• This has led to a situation of “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” in which the labor of workers is used to enrich capitalists

• but...

The Communist Manifesto

• Capitalists must compete against each other, and thus:

• “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and then the whole relations of society. Conservation of old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is sold melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind.”

Creative Destruction

• Large scale: New economic systems rise from the destruction of old ones. The creation of capitalism comes from the destruction of feudalism.

• Middle scale: Capitalists must destroy wealth in order to create new wealth

• Small scale: Within capitalism, wealth comes from the destruction of previous

- ways of life (rural to urban, walking to mass transit to cars)

- techniques of production (small artisinal to factory to just-in-time)

- types of consumption (books to tv to itunes)

- types of commodities (walkman to ipod to iphone)

• Webster’s Dictionary: Nihilism - a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless

• The creative destruction of capitalism produces a cultural tension between progress and nihilism

‘The bourgeois, wherever, it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”

The Nihilism of Creative Destruction

It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of cold calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade.’

Does such nihilism actually emerge from capitalism?

• Capitalists cannot destroy the past so easily . . .

• “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something entirely new, pricelessly in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.” (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

Creation Destruction

Meaning Nihilism

Progress Nostalgia

Order Disorder

Tensions of Modernity

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Social Differentiation

• Different “spheres” of social action specialize and develop according to their own internal logic

• No single sphere as complete dominance

• The totality of social life is fundamentally partial, open and fragmented

Culture

Production Science

Finance

Education

Politics

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Spatial Diffusion

Ernest Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model, 1925

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity: Spatial Diffusion

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity: Spatial Diffusion

Multinucleated Metropolitan Region “postsuburbia”

Home

Work, Politics, Culture

Modern Industrial Urban Model “city & suburb”

Work, Politics, Culture

Suburban Single-Family Homes

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion...

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

➫ ➫ ➬ ➬

Cultural Fusion

Interpretation Communication

Psychological IdentificationCathexis

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion...

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

➫ ➬ ➬

Cultural De-fusion

Misinterpretation Communication

Psychological IdentificationCathexis

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion...

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception➬ ➬

Cultural De-fusion

Misinterpretation Miscommunication

Psychological IdentificationCathexis

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion...

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception➬

Cultural De-fusion

Misinterpretation Miscommunication

Alienation/DistanceCathexis

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion...

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

Cultural De-fusion

Misinterpretation Miscommunication

Alienation/DistanceCynical/False/Inauthentic relation to background culture

Background Culture (Binaries, Scripts,

Narratives)

The Cultural Fragmentation of Modernity

• Cultural De-fusion is a fundamental aspect of modern life because of the endless plurality of background cultural elements and audience groups

Actor’s Performance

Audience Reception

Misinterpretation Miscommunication

Alienation/DistanceCynical/False/Inauthentic relation to background culture➪ ➪

No single background culture in modern societies

No single audience in modern societies