SOCY 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Language Industry, F. R. Leavis, Elective Affinities
15 Jun 2018
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Department
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Week 10 Lecture 1 Notes- Culture and Critique
The Classical Tradition and Culture
Marx-
• Ideas, conceptions and consciousness interwoven with material activity and material interaction.
Language of real life
• Dominant class is the dominant intellectual force. Controlling the means of production gives
control over the means of intellectual production
The message of new communications allows us to receive and give out information faster.
Durkheim
• Collective representations a key analytical concept
• The symbols, myths, stories, objects and images a society uses to define itself
• The arise from individuals acting and crystalize or are instituted as particular ways of thinking,
acting and feeling
Collective representations reflect institutionalized practices
Sociology is the science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning
The study of institutionalized collective representations is central focal to Durkheim’s sociology
Weber- Interpretive understanding of the meaning behind social action. How prevailing frames of
mind shape a social formation and are shaped by the social formation. Elective affinity between
particular ideas and social practices
Marx- Class consciousness: ideology (mental, intellectual, spiritual)
Durkheim- Collective representations (conscience collective, collective representations)
Weber- Frames of mind
Culture- “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” industry,
democracy, class, art and culture. Changing meaning is a map of broader social change
Culture is cultivating the land. Cultivating the mind, culture as the arts, culture as a way of life.
Culture and industry- a moral vantage point to assess industrial world’s impact on people’s lives
Culture as a reference point to identify exploitative practices (moral position). The principles of
wealth production moving societies to industrialize can’t be the reference point. Old feudal order
and rights cant be the reference point
Week 10 Lecture 2- Culture as a Pure Type
Matthew Arnold
• Address matters that most concern humanity. Pursuit of human perfection- harmonious, fully
developed humanity
• The best that has been said and thought in the world
Leavis and Thompson-
• Rooted in a genuine community
• Express careful reflections of its most artistic and creative members
• Educating taste and sensibility in the face of mass culture
• Lost the organic community in which living culture is embodied
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Document Summary
Week 10 lecture 1 notes- culture and critique. Marx: ideas, conceptions and consciousness interwoven with material activity and material interaction. Language of real life: dominant class is the dominant intellectual force. Controlling the means of production gives control over the means of intellectual production. The message of new communications allows us to receive and give out information faster. Durkheim: collective representations a key analytical concept, the symbols, myths, stories, objects and images a society uses to define itself, the arise from individuals acting and crystalize or are instituted as particular ways of thinking, acting and feeling. Sociology is the science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning. The study of institutionalized collective representations is central focal to durkheim"s sociology. Weber- interpretive understanding of the meaning behind social action. How prevailing frames of mind shape a social formation and are shaped by the social formation. Elective affinity between particular ideas and social practices.
