Re: [ox-en] Epistemological status of the five step model
- From: adam <adam diamat.org.uk>
- Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:56:33 +0000
Hi there,
Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:51:15 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED] (MET) Stefan Meretz wrote:
On 2009-01-06 10:21, Raoul wrote:
The definition of the status of “dominant” for a mode of production
is often misunderstood. It is assimilated to a simple question of
share of people producing according to the principles of that mode.
For example, if the share is superior to a given percentage, the mode
would be dominant. In the Marxist conception, a mode of production
can be dominant without involving the majority of the producers. It
is a question of dynamic. Marx considers that capitalism becomes
dominant as early as the 16-17th century, since the further
development of society is already essentially determined by the
still-young capitalist reality.
Exactly. There are really interesting investigations about the huge
"dominance shift" we had in europe around 1620. Eske Bockelmann wrote a
book ("Im Takt des Geldes" -- roughly: "In the beat of money") about
this qualitative historical transistion. He took two examples -- music
(and poetry) and science -- and showed, that the understanding and
feeling, of what music (or science) is, changed dramatically. In case
of music there was a shift from a kind of a "material beat experience"
(every beat within a part of music has a distinct meaning) to an
"abstract beat experience" (the beat was abstractified through
decoupling from the meaning: the modern understanding of abstract
"beats" was born). The same applies to poetry and the understanding of
science.
thanks for that
i came across a paper, which may be of relevance, and have pasted a bit
of it below ...
<snip>
The New Reality: The Early Modern Reaction to the Modern Evolution
------------------------------------------------------------------
Human nature, like the nature of society, can only exist when it
relates to itself while relating to others, and when it relates to
others while relating to itself; in short, when the foreign relation
and the self-relation are recursively closed. This recursiveness
unfolds itself historically in the synchronization of extensive
and intensive socialization.[29] The synchronization process can be
described in roughly schematic fashion as follows.[30]
In the process of extensive socialization, of the summing-up and
integration of social structures, the participating individuals and
human groups must learn to de-center themselves and to harmonize their
behavior patterns with those of others. This requires the cultivation
and universalization of such standards of behavior as make possible
cooperation between members of an expanding social community. This is
the civilization of human thought and behavior.
In the process of intensive socialization, of the differentiation
and specialization of social structures, the participants must learn
to centralize themselves and to form a cultural identity. This
requires pluralizing and diversifying forms of life in order to
express [Ausprägen] those specific collective and personal behavior
patterns through which human groups and individuals unmistakably
distinguish themselves from one another. This is the cultivation of
human thought and behavior.
The era of modern capitalism, frequently characterized by the
methods of Ford (i.e., by the forced division of labor and function
to the extreme limit, the consequent resulting increase of
productivity, and the accompanying possibility of supplementing
individual wages and social services with a portion of that increased
productivity), does not distinguish itself in such a way that the
synchronization of extensive and intensive socialization, of
civilization and cultivation, is realized so that humans are removed
from traditional social milieus and class, as well as from any
group-specific model for the manner of living. At the same time, and
of equal importance, this synchronization is not realized such as to
link humans to two distinct social networks: those administered by
market formation and power formation.
It seemed for a while as if this perpetual motion machine had found
a quick fix for social conflict. The “Fordist” process of
socialization certainly turned out ambivalent. To the liberation from
those handed down social edifices visible at a glance, within which a
good part of individual reproduction was previously completed,
corresponded an increasing entanglement in the finely spun thread of
those opaque foreign forces; a market economy and power politics.
Still, both networks seemed to be stably balanced in their reciprocal
support. Certainly local turbulence arose around such turning points
as unskilled labor/sufficient pay; mass production/mass consumption;
threats to existence/state welfare; growing freedom/the encroachment
of the culture industry. Certainly the forces and frictions frequently
distributed themselves in such a way that the system as a whole did
not turn out to be equally balanced. Yet firmly anchored in both
networks, little room remained for the exercise or the development of
individual and collective energies potentially volatile to the market
and/or power structures.
That discourse, grouped around such key concepts as a “social market
economy,” a “social constitutional state,” and “the movement of 68,”
indicated that in Western Europe after the Second World War
simultaneous processes set in which forced the evolution of modern
societies away from the status quo. The modern evolution of society,
and the behavioral orientation which grows from it, are executed
within the following three main levels:[31]
1. The economic level, dominated by the profit orientation of the
economic subject.
2. The political level, dominated by the hegemony orientation of
the political subject.
3. The cultural level, dominated by the argumentative orientation
[Argumentationsorientierung] of the cultural subject.
“Dominant” means here neither “exclusive” nor “immediate.” Other,
even directly contradictory, behavioral orientations within these
modes are not only theoretically thinkable, but even practically
necessary and empirically determinable. “Dominant” in this context is
to be understood in the sense of a criterion of selection which
prioritizes [präferiert] from among the variegated multitude of
established behavioral orientations those which best correspond to the
given actual orientation and which can most effectively realise it.
This dominant behavioral orientation acts as a sort of “departure
point.” Neither the mode to which the immediately determined empirical
pattern of behavior belongs, nor the mode which primarily structures
it, is self-evident. On the contrary, advertisements and elections
furnish ample examples of the multiplicity of subtle processes of
misrepresentation. For example, the formation of a model that serves
the behavior orientation of hegemony does not necessarily need to
explicitly thematize hegemony. It can even directly rebuff hegemony
and be successful precisely in this way.
Without a doubt the question of if, when, and to what extent which
of these three levels, with respect to those modes of the actual
and/or tendential directing of behavior, is dominant at any given
micro, meso, and macro level, is debatable. It should however not be
debatable that the modern evolution of society cannot be reduced to
the trivial notion that the steering of behavior oriented to profit
is the all-dominating form that has colonized all other forms of
behavioral direction, whether based on hegemony or argumentative
orientations, and that has thoroughly structured, to the last detail,
worldly, intricacies [Verästelung]. Beyond this, the central problem
to be practically solved is a “better method and manner for
cultivating and integrating modern economic, political and cultural
evolution.” [32]
Notes
29. Compare W. Engler, Teilnehmen und Beobachten. Zur Kritik der
Wissenssoziologie Dissertation Bern Institut für Theorie,
Geschichte und Organisation der Wissenschaft der Akademie der
Wissenschafter der DDR, Berlin, 1988), p. 322 ff.
30. Compare W. Engler, “Auf dem Weg zu einer Gesellschaft der
Individuen? Kollektive Handlungschancen jenseits und gegenüber von
Vermarktung und Vermachtung” (Unpublished manuscript, Berlin,
February 1990).
31. Compare H.-P. Krüger, “Zur Differenz zwischen kapitalistischer und
moderner Gesellschaft.”
32. Ibid, p. 213.
<end_snip>
Taken from : Illusions and Visions: Models of and in Modern Societies
by Lutz Marz, Translated by Jed Donelan
http://tinyurl.com/dawe2t , or
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=D9A89189-3657-43C3-B653-AD091A1B04F1
-- adam
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