So unless you are claiming that social relations are all the same under capitalism, which means some 80+% of human population, how do you explain cross national (or cross-social class) differences in attitudes toward government regulations of the economy (which was the original question in this thread?)
Wojtek
On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dude, don't be a jerk. Of course material conditions mediate the actual
> expression of hegemonic philosophies. At the same time, your argument
> suggests that the philosophical foundations that grounded the
> materialization of modern capitalism/production, modern
> democracy/bureaucracy and modern science/technology - and which are not only
> embedded in how just about everyone is socialized to understand, approach
> and reproduce these relations but are also strategically used by the
> economically, politically and technoscientifically powerful to legitimate
> their power and their role in solving the problems their power produces are
> less important than the particular practices of specific firms, communities,
> organizations, etc.
>
> 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
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>