7. critical theory

7/31/2019 7. Critical Theory

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7. Critical Theory and the Rise of

the Cultural Industries

Cmns130, Spring 2012

Kathleen Cross


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Lecture Outline Today

Housekeeping

Recap last lecture (media effects research)

Critical Theory intro

Enlightenment

Frankfurt School

Standardized culture Commodity fetishism

Critical theory in context

Lecture Outline


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Media effects in Lib. Pluralism

Changed over time:

Hypodermic Needle Model Mass society concerns

War of the Worlds, propaganda,1930s - 40s

Two Step Flow theory Minimal political effects, 1950s -

Uses and Gratifications theory Audience control, advertising &

industry research

Consumer soveriengty

1970s -3


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ADVERTISING

Related to consumer culture

Prevalence of Audience Research


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Timeline of Dominant Views

1700-1800s 1900s - 1940s - 1960s -80s 1985- 2012

Neo-Liberal/Enlightenment

- ModernityLiberal Liberal

Pluralist

Liberal

Pluralist

Liberal Pluralist

Critical CulturalStudies

Critical Theory/

Cultural Studies

Critical Theory/

Cultural Studies


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Enlightenment / Modernity

(1550) 1770 1800s

CRITICAL

(MARXIST NEO MARXIST

LIBERAL

LIBERAL PLURALIST

CRITICALPOLITICAL ECONOMY

CULTURAL

STUDIESNEO-LIBERAL


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Enlightenment

Age of Reason

New humanism based on logic and thescientific method (empiricism)

Influence of other emerging sites of power:merchant class, early capitalists, educatedelites, industrialists.

Massive upheaval from agrarian toindustrial society.

Enlightenment: an intellectual approachbased on scientific and rational view of theworld, established the ideologicalfoundations for modern democracy andfree press.

Cross/Cmns130/SFU


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Enlightenment cont.

Origins ofmodernity a profound revolution in social thoughtin 18th C.

Secular movement, dedicated to freeing people fromignorance and blind religious faith, through application ofscience and reason

Emancipatory movement

Notions ofuniversal, natural, individual rights, &representative democracy

Education, and communications methods to bring reason tocivil society

Specific role of the state to safeguard rights and provideservices for the public good.

Cross/Cmns130/SFU


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Cross/Cmns130/SFU 9

Three key concepts of Enlightenment

(Classical Liberalism)

1. Assumption that humans arerational, capable of making choicesand governing ourselves

2. Liberty, all men are created equaland have unalienable rights.Freedom from authoritariangovernments

3. Truth is discoverable through reason.


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Critical Perspectives

Concerned that democracy/freedommovements were not being realized

Concerned with unequal relations of power,especially economic power

Frankfurt School

Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter

Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and later

others... Who holds the power in media? Karl Marx

1818 - 1883


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Frankfurt School

Culture Industry: Enlightenment As

Mass Deception (1944)

Progressive technical domination

Rationality through technology

Max Horkheimer


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The Cultural Industry Thesis

Adorno and Horkheimer used the ironic term cultureindustry

Refers to the process of the industrialization of massproduced culture

The industrial assembly line based model of work nowpervades leisure (Fordism)

Leisure has the same rhythms, pace, simplifications andillusions of work


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Industry

A mode of organization to produce, and

distribute something in capitalist economies

Defines institutions and their

interrelationships in networks of commerce


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mass deception critique

Issues of:

Standardization

Pseudo-individualism

Commodification


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COMMODITY FETISHISM

the result of taking the

commodity as being an almost

magical object, rather thanbeing the result of a set of

social relations


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Cultural Industries

Ifculture= the signifyingsystem through which socialorder is communicated,reproduced, experienced andexplored (Hesmondhalgh,p11)

Then cultural industries are

those institutions which aredirectly involved in theproduction of social meaning


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Hesmondhalghs Definition

Based on Raymond Williams narrower definition:

- The signifying system through which necessarily a socialorder is communicated, reproduced, experiences andexplored (page 11)

- Thus, cultural industries are those institutions which aremost directly involved in the production of socialmeaning.

Industries which produce SYMBOLIC MEANING

Centered on the creation oftexts


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Why do Cultural Industries matter?

- Make and circulate texts

- Manage and circulate

creativity- Are agents of economic,

social and cultural change


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Core Cultural Industries

Those that deal with industrial production andcirculation of texts/products/services:

Broadcasting

FilmMusic

Print/Book and magazine publishing

Advertising*

Video games

Internet


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Key Concepts in Critical Perspectives

SOCIETY is divided or stratified - the illusion ofconsensus is maintained in the midst of inherentand structural conflicts of interest.

POWER is concentrated, unevenly distributedwithin certain elites or structures of dominance

MEDIA, are both constituting and the resultof

these differential power relations media has a role in shaping the whole ideological

environment in legitimizing the social order


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Two general streams of Critical Theory

Cultural Theory

Frankfurt School

Cultural Industries

Focus on ideological

analysis

Critical Political Economy

Herman & Chomsky

McChesney

Focus on economic

analysis

Convergences between the two, eg: Gramsci


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Next week...

Neo-liberalism

Proposal due in tutorial

7. critical theory

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