What is demonstrably false is your perspective on ethnography. Sociological ethnographies, 99 times out of 100, study and compare groups within a society not to determine what makes the qualitatively different but to evaluate where commonality and singularity lies. Anyone studying a "subculture" - a term now long out of vogue in the theory of ethnographic methods - who asserts that that subculture is qualitatively different from other subcultures within the same society necessarily rejects the idea that social structures are substantively meaningful. Really nice work has been done by Charles Ragin and others on using comparative methods in order to parse difference and commonality along these lines. Furthermore, and you're the one who recently quoted Marx in another thread, a foundational argument Marx makes about capitalism is that it's need for growth makes it a powerful, global homogenizing force. Radical geographers, like Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, Erik Swyngedouw, Richard Walker, Matthew Gandy and hundreds of others have over the last thirty years done a really nice job of exploring the dual dynamics of capitalist homogenization and differentiation.
You've recently taken on the habit of radically overinterpreting what people write in response to your posts. It is a very unattractive trait. I never said that all you needed was Utilitarianism to understand contemporary social relations and, since you've been reading my posts for two years now (I hope), you know I never would. In terms of the Catholic Church/Aquinas example: that's weak, too. You've completely inverted the point. If I were saying what you're claiming I'm saying - which I'm not - then the argument would be that Aquinas was actually no different than any other Catholic theorist because all you need to know is the outlines of Catholicism to understand Thomism or any other sect with The Church. In fact, my argument is exactly the opposite... you can't understand Aquinas, the debates he engaged, positions he took and subsequent interpretations and rejections of his work without understanding Catholicism.
If you want to read on subcultures, Dick Hebdige's books, Subculture: The Meaning of Style and Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things, do a masterful job of addressing issues of the economic, political, scientific and cultural production of the category "youth" and the subsequent ways that the agencies of the market, government, researchers, and kids themselves have made and remade the category BUT always within the bounds of a hegemonic political economy. If you're interested in even more along these lines, Rob Latham's, Consuming Youth: Vampires, Cyborgs and the Culture of Consumption (2002, UChicago) draws explicitly on Marx but in really provocative ways. Here are two quotes:
“As Dick Hebdige has observed, “The relationship between the spectacular subculture and the various industries which service and exploit it is notoriously ambiguous. After all, such a subculture is concerned first and foremost with consumption…. It operates exclusively in the leisure sphere… It is therefore… difficult to maintain any absolute distinction between commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity/originality on the other.’” [Latham 2002: 67]
“Building on Michel de Certeau’s analysis of how the strategic power of dominant institutions calls forth tactical resistance on the part of those subjected to its hierarchies—a resistance that takes the field of operations established by those institutions as its own terrain of agency—Bukatman extrapolates this argument to the realm of cyberspace, a network of information controlled by corporate and governmental and governmental authorities yet at the same time vulnerable to a concerted ‘nibbling at the edges of power and thus an elision of control.’” [Latham 2002: 224]
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alan: "Wojtek, its almost as if you've never heard of Utilitarianism.."
>
> [WS:] Utilitarianism is a philosophy. A belief that society operates
> by philosophical principles in everyday life may be acceptable to
> economists, philosophers, or lit-critters, but strikes me as rather
> odd when pronounced by a sociologist. It is like saying that
> Catholics, or even the Catholic Church operates by the philosophical
> doctrine developed by Thomas Aquinas. This is not only demonstrably
> false, but undermines the very assumption on which ethnography,
> anthropology and sociology rest - that local cultures are different
> from each other and studying them matters. If the collection of ideas
> - whether organized into a coherent philosophical system or simply
> assembled in some form of scripture - was the only thing that we need
> to know how society operates, we would not need ethnography,
> anthropology and sociology - philosophy and lit-crit woud be
> sufficient, and more cost-efficient too as studying text costs far
> less than field research.
>
> One more point - the underlying assumption of organizational
> sociology - in which I was trained in graduate school - is that
> organizational behavior is determined by the cast of organizational
> actors - their interests, relative power, mutual connections, values
> etc. - but it is ex post facto rationalized by references to the
> dominant ideology or mythology, such as utilitarianism, efficiency
> maximization, economic rationality and similar Platonic ideas. The
> point is that there are very different outcomes justified by the same
> general ideals, so it is clear that these general ideals do not
> explain the variation of outcomes. Hence the focus on the cast of
> social actors, their interests, power, subculture, etc. Consequently,
> while I do appreciate abstract economic, philosophical or theological
> theories as art forms, I do not see them as very useful in explaining
> social behavior.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 7:51 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wojtek, its almost as if you've never heard of Utilitarianism... the
> > philosophical foundation that undergirds not only the kinds of "economic
> > rationality" you ascribe to a deviant subculture of capitalists but also
> to
> > the who rational, self-interested, individualistic, and personally
> > responsible norms and values that pervade what you appear to think is the
> > rest of our non-deviant society. But, then again, you (implicitly) admit
> to
> > having a sense of it when you point to he ways that these norms and
> vallues
> > are celebrated and glamorized in the media and most areas of the academy
> > (and, by the way, its not just academic literature... it is how students
> are
> > told to be entrepreneurial in their pursuit of a degree and faculty who
> are
> > insufficienty "rational, self-interested, individualistic, and personally
> > responsible" are told to go elsewhere).
> >
> > Yeah, it is true that there are other values resident in and produced by
> > other kinds of less-utilitarian social relations out there. But, since
> > Utilitarian norms and values also undergird modern representative
> democracy,
> > the heroic brand of technoscience and the rationalization of
> bureaucracies
> > everywhere, as well as the secularization of previously religious
> > ontologies, these other arenas are constantly under threat within
> > modernity... thus the myriad forms of reactionary anti-modern movements
> here
> > and abroad.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 9:02 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Miles: " personal responsibility, individualism, self-interest"
> >>
> >> [WS:] Where do these come from? This discussion started about
> >> breaking laws & government regulations. Business propaganda (quoted
> >> by Michael P.) argues that this is a universal condition and
> >> regulations will never work - which is the standard spiel of most econ
> >> textbooks. I countered that it is not, because regulations work if
> >> compliance with them is a part of business subculture, in which case
> >> it is enforced by informal sanctions (e.g. Japan.) On the other hand,
> >> if noncompliance is legitimized in that subculture - they will not
> >> work (e.g. the US.) Furthermore, a subculture that justifies breaking
> >> the law for a personal gain is considered deviant by generally
> >> accepted standards - whether it is corporate subculture or a street
> >> gang subculture. The only difference between the two is that the
> >> former receives good press and legitimation by academic theories
> >> whereas the latter does not.
> >>
> >> So what do personal responsibility and individualism have to do with it?
> >>
> >> Wojtek
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> >> > On 10/30/2010 05:59 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> In sum, different social groups and networks develop different value
> >> >> systems, which in turn affect the behavior of members of these groups
> >> >> and networks. Some of these value systems are considered deviant by
> >> >> general population, but most of them are not. This is Sociology 101.
> >> >> What makes the deviant value systems of the capitalist subculture
> >> >> different than those of "ordinary" deviant subcultures is the immense
> >> >> propaganda effort undertaken by the media and the academia to
> >> >> legitimate it. This creates a highly deceptive illusion that these
> >> >> deviant norms are "natural" and prevail in every human society. In
> >> >> reality, however, they are limited to a narrow group of capitalists
> >> >> and their mouthpieces. It follows that fighting the deviant norms
> and
> >> >> behavior of the capitalist class is much easier than the noise
> machine
> >> >> that glamorizes it claims - it is fundamentally no different from
> >> >> controlling (if not eliminating) other forms of deviance that all
> >> >> human societies do.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > Hey, I love Soc 101, so I agree with most of this. I do have a hard
> time
> >> > thinking of the norms of capitalists as "deviant" when they are in
> fact
> >> the
> >> > dominant norms of our society (e.g., personal responsibility,
> >> individualism,
> >> > self-interest). For instance, if you ask the majority of people in
> our
> >> > society why some people are poor, they will typically point to poor
> >> people's
> >> > personal deficiencies. I agree that's the result of the incessantly
> >> > reinforced norms and values of capitalism; however, from a
> sociological
> >> > perspective, there's nothing "deviant" about it; it's just the
> dominant
> >> > perspective in our society right now.
> >> >
> >> > Miles
> >> > ___________________________________
> >> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >> >
> >>
> >> ___________________________________
> >> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *********************************************************
> > Alan P. Rudy
> > Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> > Central Michigan University
> > 124 Anspach Hall
> > Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> > 517-881-6319
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319