Pragmatism And The Political Economy Of Cultural Revolution 1850 1940

Author : James Livingston
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2000-11-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807863039

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Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850–1940 by James Livingston Pdf

The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an 'age of surplus' under corporate auspices. From this standpoint, consumer culture represents a transition to a society in which identities as well as incomes are not necessarily derived from the possession of productive labor or property. From the same standpoint, pragmatism and literary naturalism become ways of accommodating the new forms of solidarity and subjectivity enabled by the emergence of corporate capitalism. So conceived, they become ways of articulating alternatives to modern, possessive individualism. Livingston argues accordingly that the flight from pragmatism led by Lewis Mumford was an attempt to refurbish a romantic version of modern, possessive individualism. This attempt still shapes our reading of pragmatism, Livingston claims, and will continue to do so until we understand that William James was not merely a well-meaning middleman between Charles Peirce and John Dewey and that James's pragmatism was both a working model of postmodern subjectivity and a novel critique of capitalism.

Author : James Livingston
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Capitalism
ISBN : 0807844675

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Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 by James Livingston Pdf

Author : James Livingston
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2011-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9780742535428

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The World Turned Inside Out by James Livingston Pdf

The World Turned Inside Out explores American thought and culture in the formative moment of the late twentieth century in the aftermath of the fabled Sixties. The overall argument here is that the tendencies and sensibilities we associate with that earlier moment of upheaval decisively shaped intellectual agendas and cultural practices--from the all-volunteer Army to the cartoon politics of Disney movies--in the 1980s and 90s. By this accounting, the so-called Reagan Revolution was not only, or even mainly, a conservative event. By the same accounting, the Left, having seized the commanding heights of higher education, was never in danger of losing the so-called culture wars. At the end of the twentieth century, the argument goes, the United States was much less conservative than it had been in 1975. The book takes supply-side economics and South Park equally seriously. It treats Freddy Krueger, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ronald Reagan as comparable cultural icons.

Author : Tom Pendergast
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780826262240

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Creating the Modern Man by Tom Pendergast Pdf

Pendergast traces the shift in US periodicals from Victorian masculinity--which valued character, integrity, hard work, and duty--to modern masculinity--which valued personality, self- realization, and image. Arguing that the rise of mass consumer culture was a key factor in the change, he describes how such magazines as American Magazine, Esquire, and True presented masculinity in ways that reflected the magazines' relationship to advertisers, contributors and readers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Lawrence Grossberg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 408 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2015-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317262749

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Caught in the Crossfire by Lawrence Grossberg Pdf

Caught in the Crossfire reveals how the United States has been gradually changing from a society that celebrates childhood into one that is hostile to and afraid of its own children. Today kids are often seen as a threat to our social and moral values. In schools, some behavior is criminalized, and growing numbers of kids find themselves in penal and psychiatric confinement. This breakdown is often too readily attributed to bad parenting, the crisis of the family, or the greed of capitalism. Grossberg offers a new and original understanding of the changes transforming contemporary America, and of the choices Americans face about their future. He documents the relations between economic ideologies and economic realities and explores what is going on in the "culture wars" as well as on the Internet and other new media. Caught in the Crossfire argues that all of these changes and tn struggles, including those involving the state of kids, only make sense as integral parts of a larger transformation to define America's uniqueness and to develop its own sense of modern culture. Part of the Cultural Politics and the Promise of Democracy Series.

Author : Nate Holdren
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2020-04-09
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781108488709

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Injury Impoverished by Nate Holdren Pdf

Combining archival research, critical theory, and gender- and disability-analysis, Nate Holdren argues that Progressive Era reform to employee injury law created new employment discrimination against disabled people and a new injury culture that treated employees and their injuries instrumentally.

Author : Michael Magee
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2004-04-12
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780817350840

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Emancipating Pragmatism by Michael Magee Pdf

A daring and innovative study that rewrites the story of American pragmatism. Emancipating Pragmatism is a radical rereading of Emerson that posits African- American culture, literature, and jazz as the very continuation and embodiment of pragmatic thought and democratic tradition. It traces Emerson's philosophical legacy through the 19th and 20th centuries to discover how Emersonian thought continues to inform issues of race, aesthetics, and poetic discourse. Emerson's pragmatism derives from his abolitionism, Michael Magee argues, and any pragmatic thought that aspires toward democracy canno.

Author : Ronald Schleifer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2018-10-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781108472951

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A Political Economy of Modernism by Ronald Schleifer Pdf

Analyzes the complex unity of modernist culture, paying special attention to artistic, intellectual, and social institutions that embody value.

Author : Kathleen G. Donohue
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2006-01-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0801883911

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Freedom from Want by Kathleen G. Donohue Pdf

Deftly combining intellectual, cultural, and political history, Freedom from Want sheds new light on the ways in which Americans reconceptualized the place of the consumer in society and the implications of these shifting attitudes for the philosophy ofliberalism and the role of government in safeguarding the material welfare of the people.

Author : John R. Shook,Paulo Ghiraldelli
Publisher : Rodopi
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789042021228

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Contemporary Pragmatism by John R. Shook,Paulo Ghiraldelli Pdf

Author : John S. Haller
Publisher : University Alabama Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780817320539

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Fictions of Certitude by John S. Haller Pdf

The search for belief and meaning among nineteenth-century intellectuals The nineteenth century's explosion of scientific theories and new technologies undermined many deep-seated beliefs that had long formed the basis of Western society, making it impossible for many to retain the unconditional faith of their forebears. A myriad of discoveries--including Faraday's electromagnetic induction, Joule's law of conservation of energy, Pasteur's germ theory, Darwin's and Wallace's theories of evolution by natural selection, and Planck's work on quantum theory--shattered conventional understandings of the world that had been dictated by traditional religious teachings and philosophical systems for centuries. Fictions of Certitude: Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning, 1840-1920 investigates the fin de siècle search for truth and meaning in a world that had been radically transformed. John S. Haller Jr. examines the moral and philosophical journeys of nine European and American intellectuals who sought deeper understanding amid such paradigmatic upheaval. Auguste Comte, John Henry Newman, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Fiske, William James, Lester Frank Ward, and Paul Carus all belonged to an age in which one world was passing, while another world that was both astounding and threatening was rising to take its place. For Haller, what makes the work of these nine thinkers worthy of examination is how they strove in different ways to find certitude and belief in the face of an epochal sea change. Some found ways to reconceptualize a world in which God and nature coexist. For others, the challenge was to discern meaning in a world in which no higher power or purpose can be found. As explained by D. H. Myer, "The later Victorians were perhaps the last generation among English-speaking intellectuals able to believe that man was capable of understanding his universe, just as they were the first generation collectively to suspect that he never would."

Author : Daniel Wickberg
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2015-01-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801454387

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The Senses of Humor by Daniel Wickberg Pdf

Why do modern Americans believe in something called a sense of humor, and how did they come to that belief? Daniel Wickberg traces the relatively short cultural history of the concept to its British origins as a way to explore new conceptions of the self and social order in modern America. More than simply the history of an idea, Wickberg's study provides new insights into a peculiarly modern cultural sensibility. The expression "sense of humor" was first coined in the 1840s, and the idea that such a sense was a personality trait to be valued developed only in the 1870s. What is the relationship between medieval humoral medicine and this distinctively modern idea of the sense of humor? What has it meant in the past 125 years to declare that someone lacks a sense of humor? Why do modern Americans say it is a good thing not to take oneself seriously? How is the joke, as a twentieth-century quasi-literary form, different from the traditional folktale? Wickberg addresses these questions among others and in the process uses the history of ideas to throw new light on the way contemporary Americans think and speak about humor and laughter. The context of Wickberg's analysis is Anglo-American; the specifically British meanings of humor and laughter from the sixteenth century forward provide the framework for understanding American cultural values in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The genealogy of the sense of humor is, like the study of keywords, an avenue into a significant aspect of the cultural history of modernity. Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplinary perspectives, Wickberg's analysis challenges many of the prevailing views of modern American culture and suggests a new model for cultural historians.

Author : John J. Stuhr
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780253221421

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100 Years of Pragmatism by John J. Stuhr Pdf

William James claimed that his Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking would prove triumphant and epoch-making. Today, after more than 100 years, how is pragmatism to be understood? What has been its cultural and philosophical impact? Is it a crucial resource for current problems and for life and thought in the future? John J. Stuhr and the distinguished contributors to this multidisciplinary volume address these questions, situating them in personal, philosophical, political, American, and global contexts. Engaging James in original ways, these 11 essays probe and extend the significance of pragmatism as they focus on four major, overlapping themes: pragmatism and American culture; pragmatism as a method of thinking and settling disagreements; pragmatism as theory of truth; and pragmatism as a mood, attitude, or temperament.

Author : Kevin P. Murphy
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2010-08-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780231129978

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Political Manhood by Kevin P. Murphy Pdf

In a 1907 lecture to Harvard undergraduates, Theodore Roosevelt claimed that colleges should never "turn out mollycoddles instead of vigorous men," warning that "the weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community." A paradigm of ineffectuality and weakness, the mollycoddle was "all inner life," whereas his opposite, the "red blood," was a man of action. Kevin P. Murphy reveals how the popular ideals of American masculinity coalesced around these two distinct categories. Because of its similarity to the emergent "homosexual" type, the mollycoddle became a powerful rhetorical figure, often used to marginalize and stigmatize certain political actors. Murphy's history follows the redefinition of manhood across a variety of classes, especially in the work of late nineteenth-century reformers who trumpeted the virility of the laboring classes. Challenging the characterization of the relationship between political "machines" and social and municipal reformers at the turn of the twentieth century, he revolutionizes our understanding of the gendered and sexual meanings attached to political and ideological positions of the Progressive Era.

Author : Jeffrey Sklansky
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2003-10-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807861431

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The Soul's Economy by Jeffrey Sklansky Pdf

Tracing a seismic shift in American social thought, Jeffrey Sklansky offers a new synthesis of the intellectual transformation entailed in the rise of industrial capitalism. For a century after Independence, the dominant American understanding of selfhood and society came from the tradition of political economy, which defined freedom and equality in terms of ownership of the means of self-employment. However, the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Large landowners and industrialists claimed the right to rule as a privilege of their growing monopoly over productive resources, while dispossessed farmers and workers charged that a propertyless populace was incompatible with true liberty and democracy. Amid the widening class divide, nineteenth-century social theorists devised a new science of American society that came to be called "social psychology." The change Sklansky charts begins among Romantic writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, continues through the polemics of political economists such as Henry George and William Graham Sumner, and culminates with the pioneers of modern American psychology and sociology such as William James and Charles Horton Cooley. Together, these writers reconceived freedom in terms of psychic self-expression instead of economic self-interest, and they redefined democracy in terms of cultural kinship rather than social compact.