key figures midterm
Hall's Definition of Ideology (from Early Althusser Work)
"Systems of representation" in which men and women 'live; their imaginary relations to the real conditions of existence Systems of rep.- concrete representations (ie language and practice) Live their imaginary relations- establishes how phenomenon becomes socially meaningful experience that guides practices in objective material conditions -avoids thinking ideology as true or false Real social condition- acknowledges that real social conditions have an independent existence from ideology -such a notion of the 'real' allows for the possibility of re-definition (ideological contradictions and change are embedded)
historical/structural view of crime - repertoire of resistance and criminalization
"The class character of character of the law [and thus the labeling of 'crime], the class administration of justice, the articulation of both with the objective requirement of capital, the distribution of property and what Gramsci called the 'education' of subordinate and propertyless classes through the law are complex matters" (190) For Hall and all, the state is the category that historicize the structural forces that determine the form and class character of social control & 'crime' at the level of the entire social formation For their inquiry on moral panic over mugging: •The state is a liberal democratic welfare state •Corresponding form and character of social control is 'hegemony': popular consent with the armor of coercion
Style
"active organization of objects with activities and outlooks, which produce an organized group-identity in the form and shape of a coherent and distinct way of 'being-in-the-world.'" (42) •re-organizing objects into a new meaning •include practices, rituals, particular language (argot) - Lifestyles •Subcultural style is representing the way a subcultural group "live their imaginary relation" to the "real conditions of existence" •Definition of Ideology from Hall •Systems of Representation - Inherit from both Dominant Culture & Parent Cultures •Real Conditions of Existence = Structure and Contradictions of Social Formation
articulation
a concept to describe a historically contingent linkage between practices, social groups, contradictions, etc that make them socially effective but does not collapse them together
double articulation
a concept to describes the different perspective that one can take to understand the relation between structure and agency in a given moment
Subculture
a distinct subset of "parent culture" exists alongside parent and dominant cultures
relative autonomy
a way of describing an articulation that acknowledges simultaneously the connection and independence of the practices, social groups, contradictions, events, etc from the social relations of production •Relative is the Important part for Class Struggle Relative autonomy of the superstructure vis-à-vis the state: •NOT direct manipulation but rather a "structural" relation to safeguard the social relations of the capitalist mode of production in the long term •Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA): the institutions of legal violence •Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA): the legal civil institutions that are primarily ideological They work together to REPRODUCE the Social Relations of Production - particularly ISA. •School not just technical know-how but disciplined and politically compliant •The main ISA has shifted from the "Church-Family" to the "School-Family"
Parent culture
class based cultural formation - can be either ruling/bourgeois class or working class
(British) New Left
denotes the broad range of left-wing activist movements and intellectual formations in western Europe and North America during the mid-20th century •Nikita Krushechev's "secret speech" & Hungarian Revolution in 1956. •British movements took up the term "New Left" to denote socialist "third way" Significance : Spurred much intellectual activity and theoretical innovation to develop alternative Marxist/Socialist thought to Soviet orthodoxy and make sense of wide array of activist and anticolonial movements across the world
dialectical view of social transformation
dialectic creates opposition- continual contradictoriness process that drives social change?
Homology
fit
dominant culture
hegemony - cultural terrain for everyone
contradiction
opposition
capitalist/bourgeoisie
own the means of production
class
role or position within the mode of production
Historical Materialism
the basis of social change is conflict about production, NOT changing ideas
good sense
the coherent, unitary, and systematic forms of thought born out of labor - everyone has good sense
state
the formal political, administrative, and legal power resides above civil society and the economic base -Instrument of Popular Sovereignty -Indirect control over civil society -The state is where social conflicts are supposed to adjudicated & managed
Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)
the institutions of legal violence The Ruling Class use force to control the working class and protect their power/position in society via police/courts/army etc.
Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)
the legal civil institutions that are primarily ideological Agencies of the state which serve to spread dominant ideology and justify the power of the dominant social class
War of Position
the struggle to gain decisive influence in society Hegemony is never permeant ◦"War of Positions" a specific forms of struggle under hegemony ◦Maintenance and change of hegemony operates on multiple fronts in the state and civil society: ◦morality, language, culture, institutions of political and economic life, etc
worker/proletariat
those who must labor to survive
traditional intellectual
traditional intellectuals, such as philosophers or the clergy, were remnants of a former historical stage who retained social prestige but no longer directly served a productive class.
intellectual theoretical work as political practice
•"Worldliness of Cultural Studies" - Describes how intellectual theoretical work is part of the world and thus determined by historical material conditions •Views the Hall is implicitly and explicitly working against: Idealist/Rationalist & Reductive Marxist View •Metaphors/Models for How Historical Material Conditions Determines Intellectual Theoretical Work: Struggle & Rupture ◦Struggle: The Horror/Problem of the Soviet Union spurs intellectual struggle to refine/nuance Marxist modes of analysis ◦Rupture: Political intervention by feminist and antiracist scholar/activist opens up new questions and domain intellectual and theoretical work
structural/historical factors in the police that determined moral panic
•How crimes are recorded and categorized - Structuring Effect •Police focus on a particular crime makes it more visible - Amplifying Effect Historical patterns of policing: "focused pre-emptive policing" on street level crimes prior to mid 1972 Why was the police so focused on street crime prior to 1972? Social View of 'Prejudice' Structures of Organizational Culture •Deteriorated relations between the police and black/immigrant communities •Organization Transformation of Police: Separate Police from Community, -Reduction of Amount of Police, Creation of Specialized Squads, Communication Technology Changes General Social Atmosphere: •Concern over Law & Order and Anti-Immigrant Feelings
primary and secondary definers
•Objectivity vis-à-vis "Accredited Sources" + Constraints of Time and Resources = Over-Accessing powerful and Privileged Institutional Positions as Primary Definer -Primary Definers: The ones who establishes the initial interpretation of event and thus frames its understanding and discussion -Secondary Definers: The ones who must respond to the initial interpretation of events and must working within the framing of the primary definers
structures of secondariness (black proletariat)
•The articulated social structures that reproduce black labor as a distinct fraction of the working class •"Secondary" because secondary effects in the normal reproduction of the working class as whole •The structures are: 1) school, 2) housing market, and 3) labor market Historical Patterns of Black (Colonial) Labor: •The "structures of secondariness" formed out of the history of colonialism (i.e. global capital) •Structural Division between colony and metropole within the metropole due to post-war boom Black Parent Cultures & Black Youth Subcultures that have different relations/strategies in relation to these divisions
black panthers
- Revision -Combined elements of each in theory and, most importantly, in practice -Problem: At that point in time, they have been crushed by the state and thus unable to transform 'criminal consciousness" to a political one on the necessary mass scale •The question is unresolved in theory/writing, it must be pursued through practical struggle •One dimension to the answer would be to understand: "Race is the modality in which class is lived. It is also the medium in which class relations are experienced." (386)
Counter Culture
A culture with lifestyles and values opposed to those of the established culture.
Conjunctural Analysis
A form of historical analysis of concrete cases and political questions that focuses the "balance/relations of forces" between competing social group, political blocs, social movements, etc in relation to the contradictions and structures of the social formation at a given moment of time 1.Question about "The Degree of Development of the Productive Forces" - ◦Tendencies & Possibilities but NOT immediately determinative 2.Question about "Organic Historical Movements" "destined to penetrate deep into society and be relatively long lasting" ◦What are operative in a social formation? 3. Question about periodizing crises - The actual interval time that is being analyzed •How we locate and start understand the above two levels of analyses at a particular moment in a social formation 4.Question of the "balance/relation of forces" - The Actual Terrain of political and social struggle and development •Leads into the concepts of hegemony & Historical blocs, and Political blocs/social groups/social movement
Folk devils
A group that is vilified by the media (exaggerated) for a problem and painted in a certain light. People in society believe the portrayals and it leads to moral panic. The "Folk Devil"/Scapegoat is particular representation within "traditionalist" ideology •It focuses a social anxiety "not on structural causes but on symbolic expressions of social disorganizations" •In 1972-1973 period, "the mugger" is the "Folk Devil" •It is also an ideological mechanism for cross-class alliances: Complementarity-Its hegemonic form "connects and obscures" the differences of social experience between classes The figure of the mugger "connects and obscures" different experience of post-WWII 'affluence' between petty bourgeoisie and 'respectable' working class •Allows for the formation of hegemonic bloc between petty bourgeoisie and working class
historical bloc
A political bloc that has succeeded in gaining power/hegemony
initial definition of moral panic
A social condition or situation where social/public reaction to a perceived threat is out of proportion to the actuality of the threat •The cause of a moral panic is not the actuality of threat but the perception of threat •Perception of threat is determined less by the phenomenon but overdetermined by various institutional actors, articulations, and conditions •The perceived threat is a displaced response of other social and political force •Moral panics are fundamentally ideological Common Sense Explanation of 'Mugging' in 1972-1973 Britain: British public perceived that Increase in Violent Crime (i.e. Muggings) due to Permissiveness of the Law and thus Law need to become more punitive •"Mugging" is itself a new word •Crime statistics show that crime rates were constant from previous periods rather than rising •Criminal Sentences were not lenient but getting longer •Prior Tough policies were not deterring crime Why then was there a panic about mugging in 1972-1973?
Structuralism
A theoretical paradigm and formal method of analysis that posit that any element of human culture and society must be understood within a system/structure ◦Model for a System/Structure is Language from structural linguist Ferdinand De Saussure ◦Claude Levi Struas via Durkheim bring structuralist theory and method to the study of Culture in Anthropology--- Culture is Collective system of Representation by which people represent society to Themselves
economic reductionism
All social phenomena have an economic explanation/cause- economically centered Super structure is solely determined and thus epiphenomenal to the base- problem with classical marxism The base is statice and self-consistent
Hall's Main Criticism of Althusser's theory of Ideology in his late work
Althusser focuses only on the ideology of the dominated, doesn't give leeway to contradictions in ideology Ideology can actually set limits on the reproduction of social relations of production
Rude Boys
An informal and unruly Jamaican youth movement that included anyone against "the system." They were the main patrons of rock steady.
langue and parole
Analytical Dichotomy of Language and thus, by extension, Culture: Parole & Langue •Parole is the individual speech act -- infinite •Langue is the finite system of rules - units/element of language & ways to arrange them •Langue is unconscious •Langue is a matter of social convention, not dictated by nature •Meaning does not arise from the world but is imposed onto the world by language •There are a plurality of langue •Asymmetrical relation of determination: langue cannot be changed by an individual but langue determines individual parole
Relation of Articulation and Ideology for Understand the Social Force of Ideology
Articulation gives rise to ideology, it is what first unifies social groups and movements and links them together. It is only then that ideology can form, which creates unity, a shared vision, an aim. Culture does not merely become a social force through its mere existence. First linked/articulated— glue that binds a group
Orthodox View of Ideology
Base determines the Superstructure •The ruling class determines the ruling ideas (ideology) •Superstructure "rationalizes"/reinforces unequal relations of the base
reflection model of base and superstructure
Base/Mode of Production: forces and relations of production (economy) Superstructure: the cultural, social, and political institutions of society and ideology Ideology: Ideas, Concepts, Consciousness within the minds of people, which are embodied, reproduced, and transmitted in institutions and practices of society
civil society
Civil Society is the intermediary zone between the State and the Private Sphere of the Family, characterized by institutions 'free association' -Boundaries are porous and historical contingent -Civil Society is zone where we are socialized and enculturated in a society beyond the family -It is also the zone of innumerable social conflict Robustness of civil society is what makes hegemony possible
social conditions of hegemony
Civil Society is the intermediary zone between the State and the Private Sphere of the Family, characterized by institutions 'free association' -Boundaries are porous and historical contingent -Civil Society is zone where we are socialized and enculturated in a society beyond the family -It is also the zone of innumerable social conflicts -The state is the formal political, administrative, and legal power resides above civil society and the economic base -Instrument of Popular Sovereignty -Indirect control over civil society -The state is where social conflicts are supposed to adjudicated & managed -Robustness of civil society is what makes hegemony possible -Place where hegemony is established and fought over
traditionalist view of crime
Common-Sense in Traditionalism: Value & Form •Together, they establish a Holistic Worldview, Sense of Englishness, and Explanation of Crime at the level of Common Sense -It is practical and provides emotional concreteness -But not theoretically coherent but a longer history •It allows for the formation of a traditionalist working-class and middle class 'historical bloc' •As common sense, it has a more powerful hold than liberal views of crime.
Contradictions of Economic, Political, and Ideological Practice
Contradictions can form within and between each level- no one becomes the primary over others
structural/historical factors in the judiciary that determined moral panic
Courts: Judicial Mood - Establishing a Perception •Judges growing anxiety over the "social permissiveness" of British society Legal reforms around parole, juvenile delinquency, and alternatives to prison •Effect of Anxiety of Permissiveness: a sense of weakening authority of the law concern over crime rates desire for punitiveness
Political Blocs, Social Groups, Social Movement and their relation to Class and Culture
Cross cut class divisions, composed of fractions of class, culture/ideology organizes and shapes groups— there is never a language of whole classes ruling over one another Culture and ideology both organize and shape these groups - conflicts occur between groups, not solely between capital and labour (class differences)
Dominant Practice
Cultural Practices that are in position to define social experience for Society as Whole in a Cultural Situation
emergent practice
Cultural Practices that are newly forming that are differently defining social experience but do not have the power to define social experience for society as whole.
residual practice
Cultural Practices that formed from an earlier time period but still persist later on but no longer have power to define social experience for society as a Whole in a Cultural Situation
signification spiral
Discursive & Ideological Mechanism Through Which the Threat of an Event is Escalated/Amplified
mods
Dressed tailored suits, with a minimalist aesthetic, with a focus on clean lines and geometric shape. They use of meth, nightlife, and beautiful women. 3. Use style as way to look the way their jobs were. Very modern, statement of rebellion against the austerity of their parent's generation. Nice suits to go to clubs and represent their style and rebelliousness. 4. Stand out from everyone, making up of what they act. Almost a reaction to the rockers, and their grandioseness. They dress clean but the activities they did, did not represent their style as they did drugs and party
Assimilation, Acceptance, Separateness, Hustling as Strategies of Resistance
Forms of resistance through race -Black assimilation = Foreclosed -Acceptance of second class citizenship -Separateness - Colony Society - Radicalizing of Acceptance -Allows for Black "Respectable" Working Class Life to Structures of Secondariness -Also provides "Hustling" as a form of survival Generational Divide of Resistance between Black Parent Cultures and Black Youth Culture: Respectable vs. Hustling Strategies •Set of Experiences Migrating to vs. Growing Up in Britain •The deepening of the crisis pushes toward the "hustling" route: •Hustling/Crimes - Increasing invested with political meaning and feeling -Pre-Condition to Politics: Crime is to Black Youth as Style is to working class subcultures
news and production of a "problematic reality"
General Function of News: Establish 'Problematic Reality' - Defines Normal/Abnormal and Provides Interpretation of 'news' events that most people have no direct experience "'News' is the end-product of a complex process" (56): 1) Sorting & Selecting Events and Topics to be Covered and 2) Constructing/Presenting Events & Topics to an Assumed Reading Public Structuring Determinants of the Social Production of News: Sort & Selecting - Not Created By News Org •Professional Values: Newsworthiness - Novelty, Elites, Dramatic, Etc •Professional Values: "Impartiality," "Balance," and "Objectivity" -Values - "give rise to the practice of ensuring that media statements are, wherever possible, grounded in 'objective' and 'authoritative' statements from 'accredited' sources" (61) •Bureaucratic Organization: Quick and Regular News Events for Reporting, Finite Resources, •Objectivity vis-à-vis "Accredited Sources" + Constraints of Time and Resources = Over-Accessing powerful and Privileged Institutional Positions as Primary Definer -Primary Definers: The ones who establishes the initial interpretation of event and thus frames its understanding and discussion -Secondary Definers: The ones who must respond to the initial interpretation of events and must working within the framing of the primary definers
teds
Group mindedness see in their strong kinship and territoriality. •Extreme touchiness to insults (real or imagined, most re: their appearance). •Aggression in response territoriality, loyalty, •Dress and appearance (originally the Edwardian suit, then modifications were made such as: bootlace tie, thick- creped suede shoes, skin trousers, straighter jackets, collars to the jackets, and adding vivid colors). •Working-class youth, mostly unskilled jobs. The style is meant to convey status as well as a certain sharpness, or the street smarts, of a hustler, with a libertine (i.e. hedonistic) bent. a.Their dress, for instance, signified an attempt to buy status, since the clothing style adopted was originally worn by upper-class dandies. b.The adoption of the bootlace tie, possibly picked up from Western films, signified being able to live by their wits, and hedonistically, while also marking them as outsiders. c.Their touchiness to insults reflects their hatred of being further deprived of what little they possessed. 4. Reflect on your subculture and the argument about the meaning of its style. Thoughts on the argument?"I believe its symbolic cultural meaning for the Teds becomes explicable as both expression of their social reality (basically outsiders and forced to live by their wits) and their social 'aspirations' (basically an attempt to gain high, albeit grudging, status or an ability to live smartly, hedonistically and by their wits in an urban setting)." (70) Criticism: The notion of buying status as a double-edged sword. The approach of "faking it till you make it" / "putting on airs" is not always effective and can earn criticisms / jabs from others, and the Teds' reactionary violence only undercuts the status they seek to put on, as if it can only be cemented through aggression.
Social Formation - "Complex Structure in Dominance"
How to analyze social totality concretely rather than abstractly- complex structure in dominance Complex- simultaneous existence of "residual, dominant, and emergent practices"— Structured- practices are regulated, maintained, and connected to other practices Dominance- structure is maintained, regulated toward dominant forms/tendencies
Althusser's General Contribution to a Theory of Ideology from his late work
Ideology is the framework for defining social-historical experience and determining social action in the world Ideology's connection (or non connection) to the Reproduction of the Social Relations of Production Ideology is Material: Language and Rituals/Practices of Social Action Ideology exists by creating Subjects---but those subject are not necessarily for the Reproduction of the Social Relations of Production ◦Subject is not the same as living concrete individuals but subjects of discourse & subjected ◦Mechanism by which subjects are created is through "interpellation" (i.e. hailing) - "hey you"
mugging as a social phenomenon
Inquiry in the Mugging Label as a Social Phenomenon; Not a Particular Street Crime The focus is thus on the word "mugging," the ideas and associations bound to the word, rather than the phenomenon/act that word describes To examine mugging label as a complex social phenomenon is to recognize that the social life of the word "mugging" is overdetermined and effects are multiple across all levels of social formation than the phenomenon it seeks to describe -The word "mugging" has a distinct social origin and history from the phenomenon it describes -There are many social and historical forces, institution, and practices at play in the labeling of "mugging" separate from the phenomenon -The social and political effects of labeling phenomenon as "mugging" "Mugging" = representation of How Men and Women 'live' their "imaginary relation to their real conditions of existence."
universalization and autonomy of the liberal state
Liberal Democratic State, Law, and Hegemony: •The liberal democratic state and the law = "organizing and connecting" structures and institutions of a social formation towards the long term maintenance of capitalism. •It does so by becoming "autonomous" from specific class conflicts, positioning itself as 'neutral/universal' arbitrator for the entire social formation. -Undermine interests of particular capitalist but enshrines other capitalism interest as generalized interests -"The inscription with its legal forms of the key relations of capital—private property, the contract —is no well-kept secret. If the law demarcates illegal forms of appropriation, it makes the legal forms public and visible—the norm—and sanctions them positively." (205)
Lumpenproletariat
Marx & Engel's Account of the Lumpenproletariat -Problem : Does not consider that sector as having political importance
gender and structured secondariness (in youth subcultures)
Names the way girls are differently positioned within the institutions/structures of a social formation ◦Primary ideologically and materially position to home/family, which subordinated to work ◦Thus, all other institutions are articulated differently Significance of Concept: ◦Same institutions but occupy different relations to them due the ideological and material division between home and work ◦Structural reason for the relative absence or contingency of girls in many of the working class youth subcultures ◦Points to different site for the formation of working class female youth subcultures: the home ◦How to theorize difference structurally and intersectionally
Overdetermination (Althusser)
Overdetermination—an articulation with multiple sources - against mono-causal explanation ◦Drawn from Freud's work on dream analysis—displacement and condensation = the influence of two or more causes in a single superstructural effect {In psychoanalysis a dream image is said to be "overdetermined" if it expresses two or more of the dreamer's unconscious thoughts; Althusser says cultural products and historical events are likewise overdetermined in that there's never a moment when the economy is the sole determining factor—the last instance never actually comes}
means of production
Owned by capitalists/bourgeoisie -money, markets, private prop., firms who organize how we produce based on profit motive Facilities and resources for producing goods
Class Reductionism-False Consciousness
Proletariat/lower class accept ruling ideology= false consciousness They don't recognize material interests
fanonian "wretched of the earth"
Provides an account of non-proletarian classes (e.g. peasantry and lumpen) as the key political agent and the specificity of black politics as one that is not tied exclusively to points of production -Problem: Geared in the colonial situation than the metropolitan center
reserve army of labor
Reserve Army of Labor -Colony & Metropole reserve army of labor is most helpful for understanding the economic situation of black labor as migrant "subproletariat" class -The "reserve army of labor" refers to the unemployed population who are employable -Their function for Capitalism is to be: •1) super-exploitation for disciplining 'productive' labor & 2) in and out of the labor market depending on the needs of capital -Problem: Doesn't explain the political and ideological dimensions
struggle and resistance
Resistance is a defensive position in hegemony- maintain autonomy, not seeking ground ◦Struggle is an offensive position in hegemony- trying to gain ground, create change
hegemony
Rule through mass consent with and over Coercion ◦Consent: normative value and legitimacy ◦Coercion supports the production of consent ◦"Historical bloc": Alliances between factions and groups with the balance of material forces- normative claim to represent society as whole ◦Specific power a historical bloc exercise with hegemony: leadership and subordination ◦Leadership - the power to set the agenda of society, ◦the power to establish what is taken for granted, ◦power to change the structures of a social formation ◦Subordination is the power to marginalize ◦not total silencing or indoctrination ◦subordinated faction can have opposing ideas and practices, ◦they cannot set terms and agenda for society as whole
relations of production
Schools, church, gov. social relationships that people must enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life -the social relations linking the people who use a given means of production within a particular mode of production
normal crime and social crime
Social crime are 'deviant' activities that explicitly challenge the social and political order -'Normal' crime are 'deviant' activities that are not seen to be challenging social and political order As categories, they cannot be easily maintained because the category of "crime" changes over time, specifically shaped by a historical dialectic of control and resistance: 1) "Crime" as part of a repertoire of resistance to class domination 2) Process of Criminalization as "strategy of repression and control" "To put the matter more simply, in a class society, based on the needs of capital and the protection of private property, the poor and the propertyless are always in some sense on 'the wrong side of the law', whether they actually transgress it or not: 'the criminal sanction is the last defence of private property'. All crime control (whether against crime undertaken for conscious 'social' motives or not) is an aspect of that larger and wider exercise of 'social authority'; and in class societies that will inevitably mean the social authority exerted by the powerful and the propertied over the powerless and the propertyless" (188).
Structuralist definition of culture
Structuralism - Culture as system of collective representation by which people represent their society to themselves •Structuralist focus on the set of rules that determine the elements and the ways of arranging those elements (i.e. langue) •Culture as language has no necessary relation to the world, meaning is imposed on the world
The way Structuralism resolves the problem of William's Theory of Culture
Structuralism places more emphasis on the systems in place which we are born into -no individual can change culture, cut we can choose how we place meaning in culture, and if several individuals come together, can shape it ourselves !! Clearly states both structure AND agency!!
public idiom of the news
Structuring Determinants of News: Constructing News: Contextualizing/Mediating •Public Idiom of Media = Rhetoric, Imagery, and Assumptions about the 'Normal' Reading Public of a Newspaper •Public Idiom + Primary Definers (Feature Story) = Primary Definers as Speaking for the Public -"The significance of using a public idiom with which to 'set the agenda' is that it inserts the language of everyday communication back into the consensus. While it is true that 'everyday' language is already saturated with dominant inferences and interpretations, the continual process of translating formal official definitions into the terms of ordinary conversation reinforces, at the same time as it disguises, the links between the two discourses. That is, the media 'take' the language of the public and, on each occasion, return it to them inflected with dominant and consensual connotations" (65) •Public Idiom/ Voice + Pundits/Journalist (Editorials) = Structuring of Public Opinion as Objective •This possibility depends on the "existence [and strength] of organize and articulate sources which generate counter-definitions of the situation" (67)
capitalist mode of production
System of Organizing Production and Distribution of Material Goods for the Private Appropriation of Surplus Value — organized towards industrial profit
Marxism without guarantees
Term Describes a non-dogmatic and non-reductive form of Marxist analysis •A critical forms of inquiry that maintains a fidelity towards apprehending the rich, nuanced complexities of the social problems that it seeks to understand •It maintains a commitment towards a broad understanding of historical materialism •It maintains a commitment towards a Marxist discourse/terms for apprehending the "basic grammar of capitalism." •It jettisons: economic reductionism and a teleological view of class struggle
Thresholds (in Signification Spiral)
The Boundaries that Mark Out the Limits of Social Tolerance •Levels of Threshold: Permissiveness->Legality->Extreme Violence •The higher an event is placed on thresholds then the greater the threat
Convergence (in Signification Spiral)
The Discursive Linking of Two of More Activities to Implicitly or Explicitly Establish Parallels to Them •Student + Hooliganism = Student Hooliganism -Likens Student Protest as Criminal Activity -Erases the Political Dimension of Student Protest
Complementarity
The actual or potential relationship between two places, usually referring to economic interactions. Complementarity-Its hegemonic form "connects and obscures" the differences of social experience between classes The figure of the mugger "connects and obscures" different experience of post-WWII 'affluence' between petty bourgeoisie and 'respectable' working class •Allows for the formation of hegemonic bloc between petty bourgeoisie and working class
common sense
The task of organic intellectuals is to organize "common sense" •Organic Intellectual are "organic" in 2 senses of the word: rooted in good sense from labor & organizing •The model for Gramsci - Catholic Church in Italy
organic intellectual
The task of organic intellectuals is to organize "common sense" •Organic Intellectual are "organic" in 2 senses of the word: rooted in good sense from labor & organizing •The model for Gramsci - Catholic Church in Italy-Proletariat who takes the unorganized ideas of the masses and form them into a coherent theory which can help motivate and mobilize the masses for the sake of a better more just tomorrow. o MLK
Economic, Political, Ideological Practice
These are analytical levels of practice: different practices that make up the structure of the social formation: Economic-practices that transform material/nature in socially useful products Political/legal- practices that transform, maintain, administer social relationships Ideological- practice that constitute social subjects and consciousness (the big questions)
Skinheads
They were bigoted and against anyone they perceived as "odd" or outside, they found masculinity to be incredibly important, targeting anyone that just looked different in "queer-bashing" and were very anti-immigrant, specifically having an activity called "Paki-bashing". They were not a fan of authority of any sort, including "do-gooders" such as social workers. Clothing style is an exaggerated style of what the working class wore at the time. They also appreciated football for its violence and all that is articulated around it. There was an emphasis on territory as well, each "mob" was organized by territory and so they identified with the area from which they were from. -Their style signifies what was and not what is, it didn't bring back the working class of the time, they used an "image" rather than really recreating what was. So, things their parents and grandparents would have done, not creating new styles/activities, they see themselves as a "natural continuation of the working class tradition of the area, with the same attitudes and behaviour as their parents and grandparents before them." (81-82) Their actions are a "reaffirmation", not a real attempt at recreation. -They're kind of...eugh...racist...it's a low opinion, they're uneducated and don't want to be educated they perceive any kind of institution to be oppressive. On top of this, they also are against people that they think will become authority figures, they hate the do-gooders.
williams's culturalism
Value a Democratic & Materialist account of Culture against a notion of culture ◦Culture = Shared Definition by which social historical experiences are defined and made meaningful in a community ◦Culture is a "whole way of life" - Significant patterns in the shared definitions - organization of practices in a social formation: ◦Interaction between social groups and classes rather than individual social group or classes ◦Point of Criticism for Lack of Conflict - Revises culture to incorporate conflict/struggle: dominant, residual, and emergent ◦Social Totality (i.e. society as a whole) is composed of nothing but material social practices Against Base & Superstructure ◦No one practice has primacy over another, they interpenetrated one another ◦Social formations are differentiated by how they organize (i.e. the patterns) these material social practices ◦At the center of this notion of social totality is the conception of Man as Agent/Creator - Promethean Man
wagelessness
Wagelessness as Refusal to Exploitation - Crime as Expression of Refusal -Problem: Doesn't accurately the economic position of British black proletariat
Stuart Hall's Main Criticism of Williams's Theory of Culture
Williams tends to fuse both the determined and lived experiences, creating unclear boundaries (structure vs agency)
Windrush generation
Windrush Generation = the generation of West Indies migrants to Britain after WWII •Labor shortages due to WWII - British Nationality Act of 1948 •Immigrants faced extreme forms of prejudice, intolerance, and racism •Significance: Highlighted the historical and geographic contingencies of identity and its systems of power
