Credits, references, and bibliography

Critical Theory and the Emergence of the Culture Industry

(from: www.virb.com/themedia/photos/975549-website no longer available)

The Frankfurt School (see also) (1923, Institute for Social Research)

1. Superstructure focus
   1. Marx and economics as infrastructural base
   2. 1930s, 1940s, and post WWII: Culture
   3. Dominant Ideology, Hegemony
   4. Culture, as the product of society, and those in control of its production, came to be seen as relatively independent from traditional capitalists

(from: http://professordvd.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/the-culture-ind.html-website no longer available)

1. Mass culture (radio, magazines, newspapers, movies--now TV and internet)
2. New "opiates" for the masses
3. Deflect critical thought--anesthetizes
4. More important than work (40 hours versus 24/7)
5. More insidious--creeps into consciousness
6. At work, domination tends to be clear. Impact of technology (assembly line) is obvious. Cultural control is "invisible."
7. People tend to desire more mass culture--we seek out our own domination.
   • Pleasant control
   • Lowest common denominator (B movies, reality TV, soap operas)
   • Continual entertainment--no revolution
   • Time factor, all work and play (with a bit of sleep); no time for critical thought
   • "Who wants to be a millionaire?" (we desire to be like those who oppress us)
8. Consumerism (and mass consumption)
   • Henry Ford: adequate wage and shorter hours--time and money to spend
   • Advertising: drives consumption--more and more time spent shopping.
   • Working harder and longer--more money to use for consumption. Mounting debt--more work.
   • Less time for revolution
9. Today: dominated by consumption.
   • 24/7/365
   • Vacations as shopping experiences
   • Insidious advertising tailored to consumer interests ("Minority Report")
   • Complete anesthesia?
   • Shopping malls more important than factories: temples of mass culture
   • The Hollywood Blockbuster (after blockbuster, after blockbuster).

Herbert Marcuse

One-dimensional society

1. Loss of dialectic between people and social structure.
2. Loss of capacity to think critically.
3. We become wrapped up in consumption rather than "becoming."
4. Technology (at work and at play) comes to control us.
5. Technocratic thinking: efficiency, ends--means (rationalization).
   1. Nazis
   2. Assembly-line work (no ability to think about what we do or the consequences of our production--and actually come to think of the machine as doing the production; we become appendages).
6. Loss of reason: ability to assess choices based on human values. Capitalism as rational, but not reasonable
   1. Irrationality of rationality
      1. Culture as control rather than human expression
      2. Abundance, yet poverty

• Overall pessimism, though Marcuse had a vision of people taking control of the technology that serves to control and creating a more human society.
• Yet, "people have come to love their cages and are eager to fill them with more of the goodies being churned out by the capitalist system." (2, p. 111)

• Like the culture industry
• Education
• Focused on own interests--expanding influence over society
• Create the technology and expand technocratic thinking
• Controlled by technocrats (bureaucrats)
• Dominated by business, professional schools, and technique, rather than liberal arts
• Rather than encouraging liberating thought, universities become "student factories: "Processing as many students as possible in the most efficient way. Universities come to turn out students in much the same way that factories turn out automobiles or sausages." (2, p. 110)

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: More or less control? More or less intrusion?

Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis: The reproduction of class relationships

1. Henri Lefebvre on Space (1974/1984. The Production of Space . Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. 1991. Blackwell Publishing. 2004.) (see this analysis: from "Not Bored." Number 30, February 1999).
   • spatial practice: actions that produce and reproduce space.
   • representations of space: space as conceived of by elites ("urban removal").
   • representational spaces: ideas and representation that stem from lived experiences.
   • absolute spaces: natural spaces (green belt, confluence park).
   • abstract space: space produced through theories and ideas of elite (devoid of nature and oppressive).
   • differential space: space that represents interests of all: freedom and nature.
     • Occupy Movement
2. David Harvey on Space: The Political Economy of Space. (2005) in Low, S. and Smith, N. (eds), The Politics of Public Space, Routledge, New York). (local copy)
• "Communist Manifesto" and capitalist expansion; outsourcing, urban rural divide.
• "Spaces of hope" and utopian struggle.
3. Jaret, Charles. "Recent Neo-Marxist Urban Analysis." Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 9, (1983), pp. 499-525. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2946076.

1. Fordism: assembly-line and mass production
   • This model was adopted by many other industries
   • By 1970s--need for change
2. Fordism characterized by:
• Mass production of homogeneous products ("Any color you want as long as it is black")
• Inflexible technologies (problems: adapting to change, new models)
• Standardized work routines
• Increasing productivity: more goods at lower costs
  • deskilling
  • Issue of quality
• Uniform, mass workers --bureaucratized unions: Big labor versus Big Corporations
  • Strikes--uniform high wages, but no reward for good work
• Homogeneity in production meant homogeneity in consumption--little differentiation
3. Post-Fordism (past few decades):
   • Production of wide range of specialized items: high in style and quality
   • Production systems--flexible. Short runs and quick changes.
   • Flexible workers
   • High levels of production (still a must), yet trained and skilled workers a necessity--more demanding work, and better pay.
   • Dramatic decline in unions
   • Heterogeneity of production--heterogeneity of consumption: Sneakerization
4. Not clear exactly when all this came about, or how far the change has gone.
• Short-run assembly line is still assembly line
• Jobs outside of factories have come to be more like factories: McDonaldism (or McDonaldization)
• So, "fordism" remains

1. Core
2. Periphery
3. Semiperiphery

• Economic Stratification Worldwide
• http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/wallerstein.html
• Friedman, Harriet. "What on Earth is the Modern World System? Journal of World-Systems Research, vi, 2, summer/fall 2000, 480-515. Special Issue: Festchrift for Immanuel Wallerstein – Part I. http://www.jwsr.org/ (local copy).

• The Marxist Archive: http://www.marxists.org Biographies for Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas.  The site includes an excerpt on the culture industry from Dialectic of Enlightenment.
• Fordism, Post-Fordism, and the Flexible System of Production: http://www.willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/Fordism_%26_Postfordism.html. Fred Thompson's concise hypertext introduction to Fordism, Post-Fordism, and the Flexible System of Production. 
• The Fernand Braudel Center. http://fbc.binghamton.edu Immanuel Wallerstein directs the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems and Civilizations at SUNY Binghamton.
• The Global Policy Forum: http://www.globalpolicy.org The Global Policy Forum monitors policymaking at the U.N. 
• Herbert Marcuse Official Homepage: http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

Chapter 5 quiz

1. Much of this page comes from the "Instructor's Manual" to accompany Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics, Second Edition, George Ritzer, Mcgraw-Hill, 2007 (and 3rd edition, 2010). The Instructor's Manual was prepared by James Murphy, University of Maryland, College Park and Todd Stillman, Fayetteville State University. These excerpts are from chapter 5.
2. Ritzer, George. 2007/2010/2013. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. 2nd/3rd/4th editions. St. Louis: McGraw-Hill

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