[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
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