Work to be done: culture/econ

[j-harsin at nwu.edu]

Doug etal:
I'm with you on erasing that slash.  That's what interested me in the
Meaghan Morris-type cultural studies when I went back to grad school.  How
do major economic changes that in turn organize social and political life
in significant ways get implemented?  It's a very important question.
Culture is the answer.  I'm thinking of writing a dissertation on the
cultural/rhetorical work that had to be done to realize expansion from a
more or less regional and local economy to a national (then imperialistic
international esp. around the Spanish American War with United Fruit Co.
eagerly pushing the Carribean projects) economy from 1870 on.  It required
a great many things. Lots of new technologies, the railroad, refrigeration,
steam, then electricity, canals then highways. It required the seduction of
potential emigrees all over Europe and Asia; it required the historical
after-effects of slavery, Henry Grady's New South and the docilization of
the African American laborer.  It required myth-work about the U.S. as land
of opportunity.  It required speeches, novels, school teachings, church
teachings.  It required many important ideological roles for women (as
subordinates to "breadwinners," as birth-givers, and as trainers of
"proper" children, docile bodies before these regimes of socio-economic
organization/change). All this is the ideological work of culture.  State
repression of labor (Haymarket, etc.) required significant public
opinion/cultural work to demonize threats to the expansion and realization
of such an economy (Michael Rogin addresses some of this in his first
chapter of _Ronald Reagan and other episodes in American Political
Demonology_).  Two key cultural ideolgies that struggled in that
conjuncture were the Gospel of wealth (Carnegie's book) and laissez faire
found a cultural diplomat in Russel Conwell (whose speech "Acres of
Diamonds" was delivered in town squares, business meetings, churches,
schools, etc. over 6000 times!) ; and the social gospel (represented by
people like George Robert Herron's "The message of Jesus to the Men of
Wealth" or Eugene Debs' socialism).  I'm interested in the cultural
accompaniment to Martin Sklar's _The Corporate Reconstruction of American
Capitalism_. Other key conjunctures for analysis like this might be Red
Scare of 1919 and Fordism, 1947 and the Cold War, as well as the last 30
years and changes in the "global" economy.  How did consent-formation work?
Cultural analysis is absolutely vital for understanding the "history of the
present."  Does anyone know of any cultural/rhetorical history and analysis
of the period I'm talking about? I'd be interested in knowing how much of a
project I have here.
>Catherine Driscoll wrote:
>
>>ok Doug -- you will be not at all surprised by my saying i find this
>>compelling
>>but why are you posting it exactly?
>>don't do a chavez on me now
>>what do you mean by this?
>
>Ok, I thought that after having annoyed and alienated some of my friends in
>the political economy world by harping on the field's deadness to culture
>and the psychosocial, a compensatory analysis of the cultural field's
>deadness to matters of political economy would be only fair. I didn't gloss
>Morris' comments because I thought she said it just fine and nothing I
>added would be much of an improvement. This says it very well, I think:
>
>>>However, in a move that is foundational for some versions of cultural
>>>studies, Chambers immediately retreats from extending the complexity
>>>principle to analysis of relations between the (global) "machinery of
>>>capital" and (local) cultural machinations. Instead of entering the "field"
>>>constructed "mutually" by industry and culture, the former simply drops out
>>>of play.
>
>>>accounts of popular
>>>culture that take the collapse of old dichotomies (production/consumption,
>>>industry/culture) as an occasion for simply effacing the first term and
>>>expanding the second...
>
>Of course this is all part of my pre-millennial obsession of bridging the
>gaps between the two slash-separated worlds in the subject heading. I was
>just hoping the quotation would provoke some commentary.
>
>Doug

--
jayson perry harsin
Dept. of Communication Studies
Northwestern University
j-harsin at nwu.edu (773)508-4062
WNUR's Southbound Train spins Insurgent Country
89.3 fm Sundays 9:00-11:00 p.m. (listen on the Net at www.wnur.org)

  http://www.wnur.org/southbound/
Who are you indeed who would talk

	or sing to America?
Have you studied out the land,

	its idioms and men [and women]?--Walt Whitman