Marx as a Student of Technology

1976 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Index Volume ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Social Pathology ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Importance

This paper will attempt to demonstrate that a major reason for the fruitfulness of Marx's framework for the analysis of social change was that Marx was, himself, a careful student of technology. By this I mean not only that he was fully aware of, and insisted upon, the historical importance and the social consequences of technology. That much is obvious. Marx additionally devoted much time and effort to explicating the distinctive characteristics of technologies, and to attempting to unravel and examine the inner logic of individual technologies. He insisted that technologies constitute an interesting subject, not only to technologists, but to students of society and social pathology as well, and he was very explicit in the introduction of technological variables into his arguments.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

The Other Side of the Paycheck: Monopoly Capital and the Structure of Consumption

1976 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Batya Weinbaum ◽  
Amy Bridges
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Index Volume ◽  
The Other ◽  
Accumulation Process ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
Economic Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
Economic Function

The housewife is central to understanding women's position in capitalist societies. Marxists expected that the expropriation of production from the household would radically diminish its social importance. In the face of the household's continuing importance, Marxists have tried to understand it by applying concepts developed in the study of production." Yet obviously, the household is not like a factory, nor are housewives organized in the same way as wage laborers. As Eli Zaretsky has written, the housewife and the proletarian are the characteristic adults of advanced capitalist societies." Moreover, households and corporations are its characteristic economic organizations. Just as the socialization of production has not abolished the housewife, so accumulation has not abolished the economic functions of the household. Harry Braverman has demonstrated how the accumulation process creates new occupational structures, and he has documented the expansion of capital's activity to new sectors. We will argue that these developments also change the social relations of consumption, an economic function which continues to be structured through the household and performed by women as housewives.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

scholarly journals VIOLENCE AS SOCIAL PATHOLOGY THROUGH THE OPTICS OF SOCIAL WORK

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 653-658
Author(s):  
Hermína Mareková
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Social Pathology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
The Media ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Terrorist Acts ◽  
Interesting Area

Human aggression is perhaps the most interesting area in the exploration of the evolutionary behavior of mankind. Its existence is evident in our everyday lives, as we often use various kinds of violence, ranging from finer (innocent) coercions to murders and terrorist acts. In the professional world, as well as among laypersons, there are conflicting views on the assessment of aggression. Our work is an attempt to summarize the basics of the theory of violence. It is necessary to realize how divergent and inconsistent the various theories are. Attempts to define violence are subject to social norms. Even in scientific literature, some theories are highly dependent on the personal beliefs, points of view, and interests of the respective authors. An example is the opinion that humanity is currently experiencing its most peaceful time.The questions of the necessity and impact of violence on our life constantly resonate in society and cannot be analyzed from only one angle. The aim of this paper is not to give a comprehensive picture of the problem of today's violence (including that found in the media), nor is our goal to find a single correct opinion on the topic, due to the extent of the problem. We rather attempt to contribute to the broadening of knowledge in this area and to propose more topics worth researching. We are inclined to utilize Husserl's methods of contemporary philosophy, with an emphasis on scientific precision and with the aim of creating a basis for further research.Violence as a social pathology, with its social consequences, is largely addressed through social work. It is the cases where violence is often present, when the client as well as the social worker or the staff of other branches (police, health care) have to make decisions while having limited choices and, at the same time, trying to comply with the law.

Social Relations of Production and Consumption in the Human Service Occupations

1976 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gelvin Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Index Volume ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social

The human services require an explicit theoretical analysis of the social relations of consumption in addition to the social relations of production. The purpose of this paper is to begin such an analysis.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Against Populism: Music, Classification, Genre

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-267
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BALLANTINE
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Social Pathology ◽  
Music Classification ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

AbstractOften described as a social pathology, populism currently finds virulent expression in political movements across the world. Unlike the recognition that involves mutuality and respect, populism is typically founded on misrecognition; it pursues alterity, essentializes identity, offers ‘protection’ against the threat of hostile ‘others’. Often the social consequences are tragic. Music, however, can confirm or disrupt the way populism constructs identity. Epistemologically, genres can enable us to both understand and misunderstand our world: we can recognize ourselves (‘us’) in the genres that undergird the music we identify with, and (mis)recognize others (‘them’) in those we find alien. But genres can be undermined; they can be integrated, hybridized and directed towards more inclusive or cosmopolitan ends, thus destablilizing ontologies frozen around pre-fixed identities. I elaborate this theory, illustrating it with examples of focused genre-transgression, particularly in South African jazz, where progressive social tendencies have sought to create an integrated, cosmopolitan society.

The Chivalric Turn

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Crouch
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
First Time ◽  
History Book

This is a book about the medieval obsession with defining and practising superior conduct and the social consequences that followed from it. It is also a book about how historians since the seventeenth century have understood medieval conduct, because in many ways we still see it through the eyes of the writers of the Enlightenment. This is nowhere more so in its defining of superior conduct on the figure of the knight, and categorizing it as Chivalry. Using for the first time the full range of the considerable twelfth- and thirteenth-century literature on conduct in the European vernaculars and in Latin, the book describes and defines what superior lay conduct was in European society before Chivalry, and maps how Chivalry emerged and redefined superior conduct in the last generation of the twelfth century, and suggests how and why it did. The emergence of Chivalry was, however, only one part of a major social change, because it also made necessary a new and narrower definition and understanding of what Nobility was, which had consequences for the medieval understanding of gender, social class, violence, and the limits of law. The book tackles social change on a European scale and in the emerging understanding that twelfth- and thirteenth-century elite society was a predominantly literate one. Indeed, the majority of the many male and female writers on conduct used here (mostly for the first time in a social history book) were not churchmen, but lay people giving their opinion on their own society and its problems.

SUICIDE EXTREME ACT OF PATHOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (32) ◽  
pp. 293-306
Author(s):  
Dorota Zbroszczyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Problem ◽  
Suicidal Behaviour ◽  
Size Structure ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Social Pathology ◽  
Structure And Dynamics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Value Loss

Contemporary times pose many threats to life and health. The type of changes in many areas of human life, e.g. changes in the economy, value loss, consumerism causes unexpected intensification of extreme social problems, e.g. suicides. Suicide is an extremely complex phenomenon in its aetiology, which is a problem not only of individual but also of social pathology. Due to their size, structure and dynamics, and above all the social consequences of suicidal behaviour, suicidal behaviour is an important social problem that cannot remain unnoticed.

D?r al-?arb as the Motherland? The Muslim Tatars of (the Grand Duchy of) Lithuania and Social Contract

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Grand Duchy

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Germana
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial History ◽  
The Face

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist examines Ralph Ellison’s body of work as an extended and ever-evolving expression of the author’s philosophy of temporality—a philosophy synthesized from the writings of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche that anticipates the work of Gilles Deleuze. Taking the view that time is a multiplicity of dynamic processes, rather than a static container for the events of our lives, and an integral force of becoming, rather than a linear groove in which events take place, Ellison articulates a theory of temporality and social change throughout his corpus that flies in the face of all forms of linear causality and historical determinism. Integral to this theory is Ellison’s observation that the social, cultural, and legal processes constitutive of racial formation are embedded in static temporalities reiterated by historians and sociologists. In other words, Ellison’s critique of US racial history is, at bottom, a matter of time. This book reveals how, in his fiction, criticism, and photography, Ellison reclaims technologies through which static time and linear history are formalized in order to reveal intensities implicit in the present that, if actualized, could help us achieve Nietzsche’s goal of acting un-historically. The result is a wholesale reinterpretation of Ellison’s oeuvre, as well as an extension of Ellison’s ideas about the dynamism of becoming and the open-endedness of the future. It, like Ellison’s texts, affirms the chaos of possibility lurking beneath the patterns of living we mistake for enduring certainties.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.

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