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Culture Industry
The term culture industry () was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book '' Dialectic of Enlightenment'' (1947), wherein they proposed that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods—films, radio programmes, magazines, etc.—that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity. Consumption of the easy pleasures of popular culture, made available by the mass communications media, renders people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances are.Horkheimer & Adorno, p.107 The inherent danger of the culture industry is the cultivation of false psychological needs that can only be met and satisfied by the products of capitalism; thus Adorno and Horkheimer perceived mass-produced culture as especially dangerous compared to the more technic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Theory
Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fundamentally shaped by power dynamics between dominant and oppressed groups. Beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics, it explicitly aims to transform society through praxis and collective action with an explicit sociopolitical purpose.Ludovisi, S.G. ed., 2015. Critical theory and the challenge of praxis: Beyond reification. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Critical theory's main tenets center on analyzing systemic power relations in society, focusing on the dynamics between groups with different levels of social, economic, and institutional power. Unlike traditional social theories that aim primarily to describe and understand society, critical theory explicitly seeks to critique and transform it. Thus, it positions itself as bot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dialectical Materialism
Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science. As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of functional contradictions within and among social relations, which derive from, but are not limited to, the contradictions that occur in social class, labour economics, and socioeconomic interactions. Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development. In contrast with the idealist perspective of Hegelian dialectics, the materialist perspective of Marxist dialectics emphasizes that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved with dialectical analysis, from which is synthesized the solution that resolves the contradiction, whilst retain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in a rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either ''arational'', if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or '' irrational'', if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards. There are many discussions about the essential features shared by all forms of rationality. According to reason-responsiveness accounts, to be rational is to be responsive to reasons. For example, dark clouds are a reason for taking an umbrella, which is why it is rational for an agent to do so in response. An important rival to this approach are coherence-based ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Weber
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences more generally. His ideas continue to influence social theory and social research, research. Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history in Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, and Heidelberg University, Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law in 1889 and habilitation in 1891, he taught in Berlin, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, and Heidelberg. He married his cousin Marianne Weber, Marianne Schnitger two years later. In 1897, he had a breakdown after Max Weber Sr., his father died following an argument. Weber ceased teaching and travelled until the early 1900s. He recovered and wrote ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism''. During the First World War, he initia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity Fetishism
In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the economic relationships of production and exchange as relationships among things (money and merchandise) rather than among people. As a form of Reification (Marxism), reification, Commodity (Marxism), commodity fetishism presents Value-form, economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services. Concept In the first chapter of ''Das Kapital, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' (1867), commodity fetishism is used to explain how the social organization of labour manifests in the buying and selling of commodities (goods and services). In the marketplace, social relations among people—who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, etc.—are represented as social relations among objects. In the process of Trade, commercial exchange, commodities appear in a depersonali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marx's Theory Of Alienation
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their human nature, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class. The theoretical basis of alienation is that a worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of these actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SAGE Publications
Sage Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent academic publishing company, founded in 1965 in New York City by Sara Miller McCune and now based in the Newbury Park neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, California. Sage Publishing has offices located across North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. In North America, Sage Publishing has offices in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Toronto. The European operations are headquartered in London, United Kingdom. In the Asia Pacific region, Sage Publishing has established offices in Melbourne, Australia, India and Singapore. It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books a year, reference works and electronic products covering business, humanities, social sciences, science, technology and medicine. SAGE also owns and publishes under the imprints of Corwin Press (since 1990), CQ Press (since 2008), Learning Matters (since 2011), and Adam Matthew Digital (since 2012). History SAGE wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fascist Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party began to eliminate political opposition and consolidate power. A 1934 German referendum confirmed Hitler as sole ''Führer'' (leader). Power was centralised in Hitler's person, and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, cooperat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Culture
Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, sometimes contrasted with fine art) and cultural objects, objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving forces behind popular culture, especially when speaking of Western popular cultures, are the mass media, mass appeal, marketing and capitalism; and it is produced by what philosopher Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry". Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Dialectics
''Negative Dialectics'' () is a 1966 book by the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, in which he presents a critique of traditional Western philosophy and Dialectic, dialectical thinking. Adorno argues that the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and progress has led to the domination of nature and the suppression of human individuality, and he develops the notion of negative dialectics as a critique of the positive, Idealism, idealistic dialectics of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel and the Marxism, Marxist dialectical materialism that grew out of it. Negative dialectics rejects the idea of a final synthesis or reconciliation, instead emphasizing the importance of maintaining the tension between contradictory elements and resisting the temptation to subsume particulars under abstract, totalizing concepts. Central to Adorno's argument is his reflection on the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the phenomenon of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy and the aesthetics, philosophy of art and philosophy of religion, religion. Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Holy Roman Empire, during the transitional period between the Age of Enlightenment#German states, Enlightenment and the German Romanticism, Romantic movement in the Germanic regions of Europe, Hegel lived through and was influenced by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. His fame rests chiefly upon the ''The Phenomenology of Spirit, Phenomenology of Spirit'', the ''Science of Logic'', and his Teleology, teleological account of history. Throughout his career, Hegel strove to correct what he argued were untenable Mind–body dualism, dualisms endemic to modern philosophy (typically by drawing upon the resources of ancient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
