Western Marxism and critical theory offer a perspective from which to look at the contemporary industrial world. On the one hand they offer a critique of totalitarianism in its various forms as they emerged with the growth and expansion of the state, including under Stalinism and fascism. On the other hand they also formulate a critique of the pretensions to freedom under welfarism and liberal capitalism. The relative autonomy of the cultural and ideological is an important emphasis that emerges from this tradition. Inspired by it, culture as ideology, domination and hegemony became the basis of many contemporary analyses of societies across the world and not just in industrialized countries. Social domination was now formulated as a mixture of cultural as well as material processes, replacing the primacy of the material in traditional Marxist analyses. Consumerism has been recognized as an important social process shaping identities and struggles. Resistances and counter-hegemonies are also formulated as key processes, being played out through the media and culture.
Weeks 1,2,3
Suggested portions of reference books:
Elliott, A., & Lemert, C. (2014). Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory. New York and London: Routledge.
Chapter 3 "The Frankfurt School"
Chapter 11 "Contemporary Critical Theory"
OR
Ritzer, G. (2011). Sociological theory (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
pp 277-297, out of chapter 8, "Varieties of Neo-Marxian Theory"
Core Readings:
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ from The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944).” In Garner, Roberta, and Black Hawk Hancock, eds. 2014. Social Theory: A Reader: Continuity and Confrontation, Volume 1:391–402. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge, 1992. "Introduction" pp 1-7
Fromm, E. (2008). To have or to be. London: Continuum. Chapters 1 and 2: "The great promise, its failure and new alternatives" and "A first glance" pp 1-23.
Additional Readings:
Benjamin, W. (2006). The work of art in the age of its mechanical reproducibility. In Selected Writings: Volume 3 1935-1938 (pp. 101–133). Cambridge, Massachussets and London, England.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1936)
Bourdieu, P. (2004). The forms of capital. In The Routledge Falmer reader in sociology of education (pp. 15-29). New York: Routledge Falmer. (Original work published 1984)
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge. 1992. "Aesthetics, ethics and aestheticisim" pp 44-62
Fraser, Nancy. "Rethinking Recognition.” New Left Review, no. 3 (June 2000): 107-20.
Fromm, E. (1995). Love, the answer to the problem of human existence. In The Art of Loving (pp 6-30). London: Thorsons. (Original work published 1957)
Gandhi, M.K. 1938 (1909). Indian Home Rule or Hind Swaraj. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust. Please read at least pages 25-47.
Gramsci, Antonio. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. Edited by David Forgacs. NYU Press, 2000. "Intellectuals" and "In search of the educational principle"
Habermas, Juergen. (1981) 1987. “The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society.” In Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, translated by Thomas McCarthy, 2:374–403. Beacon: Boston Press.
Habermas, Jurgen. (1973) 1992. ‘The End of the Individual’. In Legitimation Crisis, 117–29. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1999. ‘Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies’. In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Second, 97–109. London and New York: Routledge.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. ‘Integrity and Disrespect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on a Theory of Recognition’. In The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, 247–60. New York: State University of New York Press.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). What is enlightenment. In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1947)
Lukose, Ritty A. 2009. ‘Fashioning Gender and Consumption’. In Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India, 54–95. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press.
Marcuse, H. (2007). The new forms of control. In One dimensional man (pp. 3-20). London and New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1964)
Pathak, A. (2008). Education and Moral Quest: Recalling the Forgotten. New Delhi: Aakaar.
Pathak, Avijit. 2008. “Introduction. Moral Questions: Situating the Debate.” In Education and Moral Quest: Recalling the Forgotten, 13–24. New Delhi: Aakaar.
Ritzer, George. McDonaldization: The Reader. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2006.
Ritzer, George. "Varieties of Neo-Marxian Theory.” In Sociological Theory, 8th ed., 277-330. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Williams, Raymond. 1977. “The Sociology of Culture.” In Marxism and Literature, 136–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zukin, Sharon, and Jennifer Smith Maguire. "Consumers and Consumption.” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (January 1, 2004): 173-97.