Harris, Neil. Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Chapters 1, 8, 9, 13, 14 (Different essays)
Chapter 1
Addresses changing appeal of the city by constructing an overview of urban culture as its institutions developed in America during four periods: 1. coloniol, 2. early republic to 1870s, 3. 1870s to before WWII, 4. Our own times
Concludes that interest in fostering urban public institutions (museums mainly) peaked before World War II and has since declined, reflecting a broader decline in the appeal of the city.
Chapter 8
Utopian Fiction and its Discontents: Rather than examine turn-of-the-century utopian fiction for the way it reveals the classic, broad anxieties about modernization, Harris uses it to explore relatively more mundane "subterranean anxieties" of the age. "Their urge to describe other worlds was rarely based on any need for artistic fulfillment. More often they wrote from a passion to commnicate some secial idea. Their books, in fact, demonstrate the impact of modernization upon American life, presenting worlds ruled by strange machines, crowded with masses of people, and reverent toward scientific truth. The novels' solutions to political and economic problems built on the classic anxieties we associate with this period. But their fictional details answered more intimate and perhaps more fundamental personal fears. These crudely written books offer surprising insights into long-vanished sensibilities." 150-151
"...faced with disorder the utopians sought to structure and even confine life, rather than expand it. The revolutions we have marked, until recently, as milestones of scientific progress sobered them. Their optimism about the future rested on the achievement of an environmental stasis. Unlimited growth seemed as dangerous as decay." 173
Chapter 9
The Drama of Consumer Desire
Exams 1. ideological national problems in 19th century growing consumer nation, 2. reference to age of consumer consciousness in fiction at end of 19th century, 3. description of 20th century trends, particularly 1920s, which intensified American object consciousness, and 4. examples of the way mass distribution affected novelistic sensibilities.
"mass-produced objects and object relationships came increasingly to enter the American novel, both as symbols and as experiences. But the very standardization which produced such triumphs for the manufacturing and distributing systems is here defined as a major problem for the creative imagination. Thus a national style of purchasing began to be adumbrated by our literary figures, and fixed upon as a cultural metaphor."
To sum: novels revealed consumer consciousness of the importance of objects as representing their own identity.
Chapter 13
The changing Landscape of America
Development of shopping centers
Rise and decline of hotel lobbies
Parking garages
Chapter 14
We need to consider the incredible importance of the turn-of-the-century development of the halftone effect as way to cheaply reproduce images in newspapers. Images burst into mass production, for mass consumption.
Definition of Culture
"[The word culture] has had a complex history and is the subject of continuing debate. Until the nineteenth century changed its meaning, culture was more an activity than a state of being; it represented growth or nourishment and could be applied to almost anything. Some years ago Raymond Wlliams showed how Victorians made culture into a noun signifying the highest and most valued human activities, connected particularly with the high arts. People were defined as cultured according to their interest or proficiency in certain traditional areas: music, painting, architecture, belles letters. In the twentiethc century the word culture has been transformed again, made more comprehensive and catholic. We assume that every people, every civilization, and even every subgroup possesses a culture of some kind, that is, a pattern of value structures, mores, and institutions." 14
Connections
Jackson - Crabgrass Frontier, Cohen - A Consumer's Republic, Marchand - Advertising the American Dream
Showing posts with label modernity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label modernity. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Cohen - Racketeer's Progress
Cohen, Andrew Wender. The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004
Argument
Cohen complicates the historiography from the Progressive Era through the New Deal by adding a large new body of actors to the corporations and their laborers: craft workers and small businessman. Focusing on Chicago, Cohen shows how craftsmen resisted corporate modernization and battled against corporations to protect their trades' spaces. Cohen reveals a system of order and law governed not by the official legal system but by cooperation and oversight among the trade unions and associations, enforced "through fines, strikes, boycotts, pickets, assaults, bombings, and shootings." In the twenties these associations began to turn toward powerful crime syndicates such as Al Capone to defend their trade, leading to the legal term "racketeer" which differentiated (quite loosely) illegal organization from legal organization, and was often used to persuade jurors against craft unions. Throughout, corporations sought to break up the craft associations through traditional legal routes with some success, although quite often craftsmen managed to merely ignore court rulings and quickly bounced back from any union-busting moments. Ironically, racketeering during the New Deal was redefined in a way that protected craft unions.
Craftsmen were ambivalent toward Progressives and their ideas of reform, who in turn had a superior attitude toward craftsmen. Progressive Era courts rebuked craftsmen for their attempts at controlling trade.
Key Terms
open shop/closed shop - Early in the century corporations campaigned for an "open shop" relationship to craftsmen which would allow them to pursue craft services in an open market, while craftsmen sought to maintain their market power through organization in a "closed shop" excluding non-members.
Review
Jentz, JAH
Cohen "wants to displace mass production labor from the center of labor history before World War II." In the 1920s courts moved from using injunctions against union activities to criminal prosecution of craft leaders.
Elliot J. Gorn, Business History Review
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096959
"Modernizing the economy was not a smooth process?it was "violent, contingent, and contested." Powerful labor organizations, which occasionally resorted to tactics like bomb ings and beatings, prevented national corporations from wholly impos ing their will on Chicago; such labor activism also provided the tem plate for federal practices during the New Deal. Cohen goes on to contest five ideas he says dominate historians' in terpretation of the early twentieth century. Modernity implies that the American economy, along with the state and society, had attained maturity by the Progressive Era; that incorporation, technology, mechanization, and free markets had transformed the nation. In fact, large segments of Chicago were still "premodern," in the sense that many workers re mained ensconced in small-scale firms where their muscle, knowledge, and skill gave them considerable power."
Argument
Cohen complicates the historiography from the Progressive Era through the New Deal by adding a large new body of actors to the corporations and their laborers: craft workers and small businessman. Focusing on Chicago, Cohen shows how craftsmen resisted corporate modernization and battled against corporations to protect their trades' spaces. Cohen reveals a system of order and law governed not by the official legal system but by cooperation and oversight among the trade unions and associations, enforced "through fines, strikes, boycotts, pickets, assaults, bombings, and shootings." In the twenties these associations began to turn toward powerful crime syndicates such as Al Capone to defend their trade, leading to the legal term "racketeer" which differentiated (quite loosely) illegal organization from legal organization, and was often used to persuade jurors against craft unions. Throughout, corporations sought to break up the craft associations through traditional legal routes with some success, although quite often craftsmen managed to merely ignore court rulings and quickly bounced back from any union-busting moments. Ironically, racketeering during the New Deal was redefined in a way that protected craft unions.
Craftsmen were ambivalent toward Progressives and their ideas of reform, who in turn had a superior attitude toward craftsmen. Progressive Era courts rebuked craftsmen for their attempts at controlling trade.
Key Terms
open shop/closed shop - Early in the century corporations campaigned for an "open shop" relationship to craftsmen which would allow them to pursue craft services in an open market, while craftsmen sought to maintain their market power through organization in a "closed shop" excluding non-members.
Review
Jentz, JAH
Cohen "wants to displace mass production labor from the center of labor history before World War II." In the 1920s courts moved from using injunctions against union activities to criminal prosecution of craft leaders.
Elliot J. Gorn, Business History Review
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096959
"Modernizing the economy was not a smooth process?it was "violent, contingent, and contested." Powerful labor organizations, which occasionally resorted to tactics like bomb ings and beatings, prevented national corporations from wholly impos ing their will on Chicago; such labor activism also provided the tem plate for federal practices during the New Deal. Cohen goes on to contest five ideas he says dominate historians' in terpretation of the early twentieth century. Modernity implies that the American economy, along with the state and society, had attained maturity by the Progressive Era; that incorporation, technology, mechanization, and free markets had transformed the nation. In fact, large segments of Chicago were still "premodern," in the sense that many workers re mained ensconced in small-scale firms where their muscle, knowledge, and skill gave them considerable power."
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Gurstein - “On the obsolescence of "Puritanism" as an epithet.”
Gurstein, Rochelle. “On the obsolescence of "Puritanism" as an epithet.” From Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn. Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Argument
The term "Puritanism" was often used as an epithet by modernists such as H.L. Mencken and Margaret Sanger to criticize the attempts at censorship by Andrew Comstock and the Comstock Laws. Modernists such as Sanger celebrated the act of rebelling as a sign that they were on the forefront of positive change from traditional to modern world.
Gurstein concludes that, while freedom of speech and availability of birth control were positive outcomes, the argument has gone too far, forcing, for example, critics of pornography to demonstrate its relation to victims of sexual violence rather than arguing its negative effects on society as a whole. Thus, "Puritanism" as an epithet should be considered obsolete.
Key Terms
Modernity - Indirectly deals with modernity, and people who thought themselves modern relative to so-called-Puritans/those with Victorian values.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
This relates closely to Hunter's Culture Wars who deals much more broadly and in a way more focused on religion on the cultural debates of the 80s and early 90s. (Gurstein writes in the late 90s, bracketing her discussion of early 20th century debates with contemporary issues.) The essay also somewhat relates to Lears' No Place of Grace which deals generally with antimodernists; however, the individuals Lears discusses do not agonize over slipping moral values as much as the psychic crisis they are dealing with in their rapidly changing world.
Argument
The term "Puritanism" was often used as an epithet by modernists such as H.L. Mencken and Margaret Sanger to criticize the attempts at censorship by Andrew Comstock and the Comstock Laws. Modernists such as Sanger celebrated the act of rebelling as a sign that they were on the forefront of positive change from traditional to modern world.
Gurstein concludes that, while freedom of speech and availability of birth control were positive outcomes, the argument has gone too far, forcing, for example, critics of pornography to demonstrate its relation to victims of sexual violence rather than arguing its negative effects on society as a whole. Thus, "Puritanism" as an epithet should be considered obsolete.
Key Terms
Modernity - Indirectly deals with modernity, and people who thought themselves modern relative to so-called-Puritans/those with Victorian values.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
This relates closely to Hunter's Culture Wars who deals much more broadly and in a way more focused on religion on the cultural debates of the 80s and early 90s. (Gurstein writes in the late 90s, bracketing her discussion of early 20th century debates with contemporary issues.) The essay also somewhat relates to Lears' No Place of Grace which deals generally with antimodernists; however, the individuals Lears discusses do not agonize over slipping moral values as much as the psychic crisis they are dealing with in their rapidly changing world.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Marchand - Advertising the American Dream
Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Argument
In the 1920s and 30s the advertising industry in America boomed. Marchand studies advertisements from the period (and the men who created them) in an attempt to understand what they can (and can't) tell us about American society as a whole. The title indicates two key parts to Marchand's argument. First, he credits advertising as playing a key role in shaping American consumer values that would resonate with the middle class after World War II. Second, he argues advertising men (and they were mostly affluent white men) saw themselves as serving society by advancing the benefits of modernity.
Key Terms
Modernity - Essentially, "progress;" advertisers saw themselves as "town criers" for new technology, styles, and ways of life. (1) Marchand also notes the heavy influence of modern art on advertising design.
Uplift - Recognizing that the masses of consumers to which they were advertising occupied a lower status on the socio-cultural-intellectual scale than they, some members of the advertising elite saw their role as affecting improvement among the American masses on these terms. Skilled advertisers could find a way to communicate with the ignorant masses and offer them products and services that might improve their life and, in the long run, improve their minds.
Social Tableau - a category of advertisements that depict several persons and their relationship to each other, thus offering a glimpse of the perceived social structure.
Studying Advertising to Understand Society as a Whole
The careful yet nonetheless evocative ways Marchand used advertising as sources was interesting for my own desire to use film and television as sources. The social tableau chapter was one example.
He also identified several "great parables" used as a formula for many advertisements. Marchand argues these parables "reinforced (and even encouraged conversions to) a modern, secular 'logic of living'..." (207). They "subtly redefin[ed] the terms of [the American dream]" as "the older values of discipline, character-building, self-restraint, and production-oriented achievement were subordinated to the newer values of pleasure, external appearance, and achievement through consumption." (234) Thus, advertising played an important role not only reflecting but inspiring the shift in American values of the 20th century. In the final chapter, Marchand goes on to show how by the end of the period advertising methods were firmly engaged in offering therapeutic solutions to the dilemmas of modern life.
Marchand also identifies several common cliches in advertising, such as "the office window" portraying the male CEO surveying his domain and "the family circle" demonstrating the relationship between father, mother, and children. He suggests such cliches can be useful in understanding values of the age.
He also explore depression era developments in advertising, revealing shifting tactics. Advertisers strove to emphasize the equalizing power of consumerism, as well as the dangers of ill-advised purchasing decisions.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Cohen-Consumer's Republic - This is something of a prequel to Cohen with a more specific focus. Advertisers in the 20s and 30s were laying the groundwork and fighting for the shift to a "Consumer's Republic" of purchaser consumers who saw their buying power as a way to self-improvement rather than community- or national- improvement. According to Marchand, advertisers painted a picture of consumption as the secret to individual and family happiness relative to individuals and families around them, rather than consumption as a way to improve the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Critique
Well-written, clear and interesting. Marchand was also able to include numerous black-and-white and color examples throughout the pages that really drive his point home. His chapters are nicely organized and accessible. His methods are clear and his argument is well-made.
Argument
In the 1920s and 30s the advertising industry in America boomed. Marchand studies advertisements from the period (and the men who created them) in an attempt to understand what they can (and can't) tell us about American society as a whole. The title indicates two key parts to Marchand's argument. First, he credits advertising as playing a key role in shaping American consumer values that would resonate with the middle class after World War II. Second, he argues advertising men (and they were mostly affluent white men) saw themselves as serving society by advancing the benefits of modernity.
Key Terms
Modernity - Essentially, "progress;" advertisers saw themselves as "town criers" for new technology, styles, and ways of life. (1) Marchand also notes the heavy influence of modern art on advertising design.
Uplift - Recognizing that the masses of consumers to which they were advertising occupied a lower status on the socio-cultural-intellectual scale than they, some members of the advertising elite saw their role as affecting improvement among the American masses on these terms. Skilled advertisers could find a way to communicate with the ignorant masses and offer them products and services that might improve their life and, in the long run, improve their minds.
Social Tableau - a category of advertisements that depict several persons and their relationship to each other, thus offering a glimpse of the perceived social structure.
Studying Advertising to Understand Society as a Whole
The careful yet nonetheless evocative ways Marchand used advertising as sources was interesting for my own desire to use film and television as sources. The social tableau chapter was one example.
He also identified several "great parables" used as a formula for many advertisements. Marchand argues these parables "reinforced (and even encouraged conversions to) a modern, secular 'logic of living'..." (207). They "subtly redefin[ed] the terms of [the American dream]" as "the older values of discipline, character-building, self-restraint, and production-oriented achievement were subordinated to the newer values of pleasure, external appearance, and achievement through consumption." (234) Thus, advertising played an important role not only reflecting but inspiring the shift in American values of the 20th century. In the final chapter, Marchand goes on to show how by the end of the period advertising methods were firmly engaged in offering therapeutic solutions to the dilemmas of modern life.
Marchand also identifies several common cliches in advertising, such as "the office window" portraying the male CEO surveying his domain and "the family circle" demonstrating the relationship between father, mother, and children. He suggests such cliches can be useful in understanding values of the age.
He also explore depression era developments in advertising, revealing shifting tactics. Advertisers strove to emphasize the equalizing power of consumerism, as well as the dangers of ill-advised purchasing decisions.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Cohen-Consumer's Republic - This is something of a prequel to Cohen with a more specific focus. Advertisers in the 20s and 30s were laying the groundwork and fighting for the shift to a "Consumer's Republic" of purchaser consumers who saw their buying power as a way to self-improvement rather than community- or national- improvement. According to Marchand, advertisers painted a picture of consumption as the secret to individual and family happiness relative to individuals and families around them, rather than consumption as a way to improve the wealth of the nation as a whole.
Critique
Well-written, clear and interesting. Marchand was also able to include numerous black-and-white and color examples throughout the pages that really drive his point home. His chapters are nicely organized and accessible. His methods are clear and his argument is well-made.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Freud - Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962.
Questions
Freud attempts to apply his psychoanalytic theories to civilization. What are the psychological motivations behind the organization and direction of human civilization? Freud defines civilization as "the whole sum of the achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes - namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations." (36)
Answers and Arguments
Civilization has grown up around the tension between the human desire for happiness and the human tendency for aggression and destruction. Religion, which Freud touches on often, is a cultural construct and self-deception that provides a promise of happiness in the afterlife via a deity if a person represses their aggressive behavior. Love (Eros) is also a key factor, as it represents the greatest form of happiness (sometimes but not necessarily sexual). "Love your neighbor as yourself," is a phrase Freud sees as co-opted but probably not created by religion. He muses that the phrase is meaningless on examination, as loving one's neighbor arbitrarily would undermine the meaning of love, affecting relationships with closer friends more deserving of love and diminishing the happiness one receives from love. Again, the phrase remains upheld as one of the greatest values in human civilization only because it encourages resistance among humans to their aggressive tendencies. The conscience (super ego) "arises through the suppression of an agressive impules, and...is subsequently reinforced by fresh suppressions of the same kind." (77) Thus the conscience is also a force leading towards civilization.
As the individual experiences an inner struggle between self-preservation and the demands of the libido, neuroses emerge. Freud wonders but does not conclude whether civilization may suffer from a sort of mass neurosis, since it has evolved out of a struggle (desire for life and desire to destroy).
Other Thoughts
I had never really thought of the Oedipal complex as something that Freud actually thought once happened in human history (though here he only discusses it is possible that it happened). But Freud actually suggests, somewhat in passing, that ancient man (or an ancestor of man) may have well killed his father regularly. So, Freud's theories about the Oedipal complex have an evolutionary and instinctive origin. Realizing this helped me to understand how indebted Freud is to Darwin. I had never thought about where Freud claimed all of these elements of the human subconscious came from, but I now understand that he supposes they emerged through the evolution of the species.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Lears - No Place of Grace Freud briefly mentions neurasthenia in the first chapter, a psychological anxiety about the changes of modern society that Lears's antimodernists struggled with. Freud's use of the term suggested to me the relation between his own work and the wider struggles with modernity going on within the world he was working.
Critique
For as much as I've read other people who use Freud or other people who write about Freud, I really haven't read that much of Freud himself. I was a little intimidated opening the book, but I found his writing pretty accessible. Partly, I think I'm smarter than I give myself credit for. Partly, I know more about Freud than I think. And partly, his writing just wasn't quite as dense as I expected.
Questions
Freud attempts to apply his psychoanalytic theories to civilization. What are the psychological motivations behind the organization and direction of human civilization? Freud defines civilization as "the whole sum of the achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes - namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations." (36)
Answers and Arguments
Civilization has grown up around the tension between the human desire for happiness and the human tendency for aggression and destruction. Religion, which Freud touches on often, is a cultural construct and self-deception that provides a promise of happiness in the afterlife via a deity if a person represses their aggressive behavior. Love (Eros) is also a key factor, as it represents the greatest form of happiness (sometimes but not necessarily sexual). "Love your neighbor as yourself," is a phrase Freud sees as co-opted but probably not created by religion. He muses that the phrase is meaningless on examination, as loving one's neighbor arbitrarily would undermine the meaning of love, affecting relationships with closer friends more deserving of love and diminishing the happiness one receives from love. Again, the phrase remains upheld as one of the greatest values in human civilization only because it encourages resistance among humans to their aggressive tendencies. The conscience (super ego) "arises through the suppression of an agressive impules, and...is subsequently reinforced by fresh suppressions of the same kind." (77) Thus the conscience is also a force leading towards civilization.
As the individual experiences an inner struggle between self-preservation and the demands of the libido, neuroses emerge. Freud wonders but does not conclude whether civilization may suffer from a sort of mass neurosis, since it has evolved out of a struggle (desire for life and desire to destroy).
Other Thoughts
I had never really thought of the Oedipal complex as something that Freud actually thought once happened in human history (though here he only discusses it is possible that it happened). But Freud actually suggests, somewhat in passing, that ancient man (or an ancestor of man) may have well killed his father regularly. So, Freud's theories about the Oedipal complex have an evolutionary and instinctive origin. Realizing this helped me to understand how indebted Freud is to Darwin. I had never thought about where Freud claimed all of these elements of the human subconscious came from, but I now understand that he supposes they emerged through the evolution of the species.
The Morgan Memorial "Deja Vu - You've Seen this Before"
Lears - No Place of Grace Freud briefly mentions neurasthenia in the first chapter, a psychological anxiety about the changes of modern society that Lears's antimodernists struggled with. Freud's use of the term suggested to me the relation between his own work and the wider struggles with modernity going on within the world he was working.
Critique
For as much as I've read other people who use Freud or other people who write about Freud, I really haven't read that much of Freud himself. I was a little intimidated opening the book, but I found his writing pretty accessible. Partly, I think I'm smarter than I give myself credit for. Partly, I know more about Freud than I think. And partly, his writing just wasn't quite as dense as I expected.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)