> social/political movement (change). To avoid philosophical debates on the
> "extrarational", I think we can all agree you need to be motivated to
> participate in social/political change and motivation isn't solely based on
> rational reflection. Even if you believed that merely exercising your
> right to vote was enough, right now most people aren't even motivated
> enough to vote.
>
> Anyone out there has pointers to such theorectical and historical analysis?
The great theoretical resource here is the Frankfurt School, and particularly the work of Theodor Adorno. Thanks to some dubious translations, his pointed, poetic and wondrous German is often misconstrued here in the USA as the meanderings of a whiny mandarin, but the theory the Frankfurters laid out is *absolutely crucial* to understand how it is that late capitalism functions. The short answer is, Adorno will insist that it's the consumer culture which ties everything together; it's the crucial mediation between the circuits of production and consumption, the political and the psychological, etc.
Try "Dialectic of Enlightenment", for starters, plus Adorno's "Minima Moralia". Two points to watch out for: Adorno didn't know squat about American jazz modernism, nor did he really understand film culture. But the theory is just bang-up stupendous.
-- Dennis