Appunti di Sociology of culture

The Marxist Critique of Ideology

Ideologies: distorted reflection of reality and culminate in systems such as philosophy, law, religion, art, literature. Ideologies appear as general and try to create a comprehensive view of the world; at the same time, they are representative of determinate, limited, special interests.

Ideology = false consciousness, falsified and distorted in a systematic way.

What are the forces that shape and maintain ideological thinking?

Marx the interest of the ruling class (social causation of ideology)

Freud the interest of the ruling class (individual causation of ideology)

By what mechanism the interest of the ruling class is supposed to shape the views of other members of society? Cynicism in the rulers breeds cynicism among the subjects successful indoctrination requires that the rulers believe in what they are preaching.

Marx think ideologies can arise or take root spontaneously in the minds of those subject to them, without any assistance from others.

≠ Freud: social causation of ideology

The objects of ideology

Marx factual and normative beliefs about society (ideologies belong in fact to the superstructure)

Freud the individual himself (their experiences)

Theory of ideology

Freud: false consciousness is accompanied by an unconscious awareness of the true state of affairs. False consciousness involves self-deception.

Marx: there is no way in which people have immediate access to the truth about society. Any view of society is a construction.

Shared ideological beliefs arise in two ways:

1. Simultaneously and spontaneously in the minds of many people exposed to similar external influences.
2. First in the mind of one person, then spread by diffusion.

The sociology of knowledge makes a distinction between the study of the production of idea and the study of the acceptation of ideas

Two kinds of attitudes subject to ideological bias: affective and cognitive. Four kinds of ideological attitudes:

1. Affective attitudes may be

shaped by affectively biased processes (“religion isthe opium of the people”)

Hot motivations may be shaped by cold cognitive factors

Cognitive attitudes are often shaped by motivational processes (out of differentaccounts of social and economic causation, each group will choose one thatjustifies its interests)

Cognition may be subject to specifically cognitive distortion (class positionrather than class interest)

Marx’s actual studies of ideological thoughts differ from his official theory – the rulingideas are the ideas that serve the interest of the ruling class- When he refers to interest as an explanation of ideology, it is often in a causalrather than a functional mode. Instead of pointing to the consequence of acertain belief, he cites the interest as the cause of the belief.

Class position and interest enters the explanation of ideological thinking. Class-based illusions will not serve the interest of the group if its members are alsovictims of

this mechanism.
Ideologies belong to the superstructure (= set of noneconomic phenomena in society that can be explained by the economic structure)
Political ideologies
Relation between the special interests of a given class and the general interests of society. Class members always think that the general interest can be realized by measures that also happen to promote their special interests. When this belief is accepted by members of other classes, the class in question acquires irresistible force. (e.g., French revolution). On the contrary, the class appears hopelessly utopian and impotent.
A political ideology is not a pure expression of self-interest. Political structure is not a form of bargaining. Political parties that are too manifestly motivated by self-interest won't inflame their audience nor their own members.
Class members will believe in the identity of their special interest and the general interest
1. Parties with leaders who do not believe in their own ideology will fail tocarry conviction and gain adherents. 2. Even people who initially are just pretending to argue in terms of the general interest will come to believe in what they are saying. 3. It is not difficult to acquire the convention that the general interest is served by implementing one's own particular interest: by comparing the effect of a given policy with the effect of having no policy at all rather than with the effect of another policy, it is easy to represent it as being in everybody's interest. A political movement is a standing offer to the public. The offer is taken up when circumstances are such as to make it appear favorable. A political ideology, to be successful, must be couched in terms of the general interest. Marx argues, however, that success can be self-defeating. Economic thought as ideology Marx criticizes the economists because 1. they do not go beyond the appearance of things to their real essence. Only in communism will social relations become perfectly transparent, and

The essence immediately coincide with the appearance, which also means that the need for a social science will disappear. The essence-appearance distinction is ambiguous.

The appearance may be contrasted with what is hidden, indicating the relation between prices and labour values.

The appearance is local: what appears always appears to a person occupying a particular standpoint and observing the phenomena from a particular perspective. Any given appearance may be contrasted with the global network of appearances, highlighting the distinction between partial equilibrium and general equilibrium in economics.

In an unplanned economy, the isolation of the economic agents from each other distorts their understanding of the economic relations that obtain among them (locally speaking, any agent can make a profit from buying cheap and selling dear. Globally speaking, this is impossible).

Their theories tend to serve as apologies for the existing capitalist system.

Sociodicy: secular version of theodicy, an argument that the existing

is the best of all possible societies and that all apparent blemishes have an indispensable function for the whole. When the ideological character of a doctrine is shown by its acceptation by a specific class, the demonstration has no implications for its truth or falsity. By contrast, when one can show that a certain view is contaminated at the level of production, there is a strong presumption against it being true. as ideology Marx was influenced by Feuerbach's view that religion is a form of projection of the human essence onto a divine being, who is then invested with power over man. Man creates God, who appears to man as his creator. This inversion of subject and object is at the origin of Marx's concept of alienation man becomes slave of his own products. In communism alienation would disappear: there would be no social inertia by which the results of human action or the products of the human mind could take on an independent existence. Distinction between thefact of religion and the specific content. According to Marx, all class societies have religion, because religion serves certain important interests linked to class subjection and class domination. Capitalism has Christianity because of cognitive affinities between the two. Religion prevents the oppressed from revolting against their state. What is the connection between religion and capitalism? Money can be hoarded; hoarding turns into obsession, which is related to the fanatical self-denying practices of extreme Protestantism. The monetary fetishism is related to the catholic practice of investing relics. CULTURE AS THE IDEOLOGICAL BATTLEGROUND OF THE MODERN WORLD SYSTEM Meaning 1: Culture: the broadest concept, traits that are not universal nor idiosyncratic, but shared with some others. Each individual is a member of many different groups, each person participates in many cultures. Culture is a way of summarizing the ways in which groups distinguish themselves from other groups, it represents

what is shared within the group and simultaneously not share outside it. Meaning 2–>Culture is also used to signify certain characteristic within the group as opposed to other characteristics within the same group. E.g., the “higher arts” as opposed to everyday popular practice.

The philosophical distinctions between the ideal and the real give rise to two perspectives:

1. those promoting the primacy of the ideal, the mind, argue that the distinction points to an ontological reality, and that the ideal is more important or nobler
2. those promoting the real, the body, believe that the ideal is a social invention, and that only the real truly exists.

Who has a culture? Groups, only certain groups though. What kinds of groups? Nations, tribes, ethnic groups, or urban intellectuals, communists, religious fundamentalists. These groups have in common self-awareness, shared pattern of socialization, organization. What is the evidence that any given group has a culture? There is a

The relationship between membership and certain behavior or values is an evolving phenomenon. Anthropologists argue that the concept of human nature and culture cannot be used to draw meaningful implications about real social situations. Culture (usage II) is suspect as an ideological cover to justify the interests of some persons (obviously the upper strata) within any given "group" or "social system" against the interests of other persons within this same group.

Six realities of the evolution of this historical system have implications for the theoretical formulations of the system itself – and how the ideologies of universalism and racism-sexism contain each of the contradictions:

1. Capitalism is a world system. This organization of social life where the predominant "economic" pressures are "international" (a bad term, but the one in common use), and the predominant "political" pressures are "national" points to a first

contradiction in the way participants can explicate and justify their actions. How can one explain and justify them nationally and internationally simultaneously?

Universalism reflects this phenomenon; at the same time, we have been erecting a network of sovereign states. The principle of universalism both on a worldwide scale and within each of the sovereign states that constitute the interstate system is hypocritical because there is a hierarchy of states within the interstate system and a hierarchy of citizens within each sovereign state that the ideology of universalism matters. Racism-sexism is what legitimates the real inequalities. Racist terminology is regularly clothed in sexist language (the superior race is masculine and dominant, the inferior race is feminine, emotional, lazy). Now that women have gained more rights of various kinds in W