Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" on The Priority of Paradigms

How can it be that "rules derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the absence of rules" (42).

A. The paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease (43).

B.The "rules" used by scientists who share a paradigm are not easily determined. Some reasons for this are that :
1. scientists can disagree on the interpretation of a paradigm.
2. the existence of a paradigm need not imply that any full set of rules exist.
3. scientists are often guided by tacit knowledge—knowledge acquired through practice and that cannot be articulated explicitly (Polanyi, 1958).
4. the attributes shared by a paradigm are not always readily apparent.
5. "paradigms may be prior to, more binding, and more complete than any set of rules for research that could be unequivocally abstracted from them" (46).

C.Paradigms can determine normal science without the intervention of discoverable rules or shared assumptions (46). In part, this is because :
1. it is very difficult to discover the rules that guide particular normal-science traditions.
2. scientists never learn concepts, laws, and theories in the abstract and by themselves.
a. They generally learn these with and through their applications.
b. New theory is taught in tandem with its application to a concrete range of phenomena.
c. "The process of learning a theory depends on the study of applications" (47).
d. The problems that students encounter from freshman year through doctoral program, as well as those they will tackle during their careers, are always closely modeled on previous achievements.
3. Scientists who share a paradigm generally accept without question the particular problem-solutions already achieved (47).
4. Although a single paradigm may serve many scientific groups, it is not the same paradigm for them all.
a. Subspecialties are differently educated and focus on different applications for their research findings.
b. A paradigm can determine several traditions of normal science that overlap without being coextensive.
c. Consequently, changes in a paradigm affect different subspecialties differently—"A revolution produced within one of these traditions will not necessarily extend to the others as well" (50).
d. When scientists disagree about whether the fundamental problems of their field have been solved, the search for rules gains a function that it does not ordinarily possess (48).

A Biography of Thomas Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He received a Ph. D. in physics from Harvard University in 1949 and remained there as an assistant professor of general education and history of science. In 1956, Kuhn accepted a post at the University of California--Berkeley, where in 1961 he became a full professor of history of science. In 1964, he was named M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at Princeton University. In 1979 he returned to Boston, this time to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as professor of philosophy and history of science. In 1983 he was named Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at MIT.

Of the five books and countless articles he published, Kuhn's most renown work is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which he wrote while a graduate student in theoretical physics at Harvard. Initially published as a monograph in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, it was published in book form by the University of Chicago Press in 1962. It has sold some one million copies in 16 languages and is required reading in courses dealing with education, history, psychology, research, and, of course, history and philosophy of science. Structure has also generated a good deal of controversy, and many of Kuhn's ideas have been powerfully challenged (see Weinberg link below).

Throughout thirteen succinct but thought-provoking chapters, Kuhn argued that science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, science is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions" [Nicholas Wade, writing for Science], which he described as "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science." After such revolutions, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another" [Wade].

Although critics chided him for his imprecise use of the term, Kuhn was responsible for popularizing the term paradigm, which he described as essentially a collection of beliefs shared by scientists, a set of agreements about how problems are to be understood. According to Kuhn, paradigms are essential to scientific inquiry, for "no natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief that permits selection, evaluation, and criticism." Indeed, a paradigm guides the research efforts of scientific communities, and it is this criterion that most clearly identifies a field as a science. A fundamental theme of Kuhn's argument is that the typical developmental pattern of a mature science is the successive transition from one paradigm to another through a process of revolution. When a paradigm shift takes place, "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory."

Kuhn also maintained that, contrary to popular conception, typical scientists are not objective and independent thinkers. Rather, they are conservative individuals who accept what they have been taught and apply their knowledge to solving the problems that their theories dictate. Most are, in essence, puzzle-solvers who aim to discover what they already know in advance - "The man who is striving to solve a problem defined by existing knowledge and technique is not just looking around. He knows what he wants to achieve, and he designs his instruments and directs his thoughts accordingly."

During periods of normal science, the primary task of scientists is to bring the accepted theory and fact into closer agreement. As a consequence, scientists tend to ignore research findings that might threaten the existing paradigm and trigger the development of a new and competing paradigm. For example, Ptolemy popularized the notion that the sun revolves around the earth, and this view was defended for centuries even in the face of conflicting evidence. In the pursuit of science, Kuhn observed, "novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation."

And yet, young scientists who are not so deeply indoctrinated into accepted theories - a Newton, Lavoisier, or Einstein - can manage to sweep an old paradigm away. Such scientific revolutions come only after long periods of tradition-bound normal science, for "frameworks must be lived with and explored before they can be broken." However, crisis is always implicit in research because every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another perspective, as a counterinstance and thus as a source of crisis. This is the "essential tension" in scientific research.

Crises are triggered when scientists acknowledge the discovered counterinstance as an anomaly in fit between the existing theory and nature. All crises are resolved in one of three ways. Normal science can prove capable of handing the crisis-provoking problem, in which case all returns to "normal." Alternatively, the problem resists and is labeled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field's failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and so scientists set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools. In a few cases, a new candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues - these are the paradigm wars.

Kuhn argued that a scientific revolution is a noncumulative developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one. But the new paradigm cannot build on the preceding one. Rather, it can only supplant it, for "the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but actually incommensurable with that which has gone before." Revolutions close with total victory for one of the two opposing camps.

Kuhn also took issue with Karl Popper's view of theory-testing through falsification. According to Kuhn, it is the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit that define the puzzles that characterize normal science. If, as Popper suggested, failure to fit were grounds for theory rejection, all theories would be rejected at all times.

In the face of these arguments, how and why does science progress, and what is the nature of its progress? Kuhn argued that normal science progresses because members of a mature scientific community work from a single paradigm or from a closely related set and because different scientific communities seldom investigate the same problems. The result of successful creative work addressing the problems posed by the paradigm is progress. In fact, it is only during periods of normal science that progress seems both obvious and assured. Moreover, "the man who argues that philosophy has made no progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism has failed to progress."

As to whether progress consists in science discovering ultimate truths, Kuhn observed that "we may have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth." Instead, the developmental process of science is one of evolution from primitive beginnings through successive stages that are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. Kuhn argued that this is not a process of evolution toward anything, and he questioned whether it really helps to imagine that there is one, full, objective, true account of nature. He likened his conception of the evolution of scientific ideas to Darwin's conception of the evolution of organisms.

The Kuhnian argument that a scientific community is defined by its allegiance to a single paradigm has especially resonated throughout the multiparadigmatic (or preparadigmatic) social sciences, whose community members are often accused of paradigmatic physics envy. Kuhn suggested that questions about whether a discipline is or is not a science can be answered only when members of a scholarly community who doubt their status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments.

Thomas Kuhn was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954 and was awarded the George Sarton Medal in the History of Science in 1982. He held honorary degrees from institutions that included Columbia University and the universities of Notre Dame, Chicago, Padua, and Athens. He suffered from cancer during the last years of his life. Thomas Kuhn died on Monday, June 17, 1996, at the age of 73 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife and three children.

Discourse Out of Place

Mary Douglas' famous essay, "Symbolic Pollution," provides a framework through which the debates over mass culture could be interpreted. Douglas considers "dirt" to be "matter out of place." Consequently, dirt reveals what being "in place" means; that is, it reveals an underlying structure for guiding conduct, belief, and ritual. Says Douglas, "...[O]ur pollution behaviour is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications" (Douglas, in Alexander & Seidman 1990, p. 155). Douglas goes on to also argue that pollution is "a particular class of danger ... which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure, cosmic or social, are clearly defined."

The analogy being offered here, then, is that "mass culture" is symbolic pollution in Culture (as conceived, affirmed, legitimated, structured and ritualized by Critics of Culture). "Mass culture" is discourse out of place, since it is regarded as "dirt" (even "trash"). The discourse out of place becomes, indeed, a particular class of danger among conservatives, liberals, and Marxists, because it is a discourse that did not originate within the sacred circle of critique; rather, it is an outsider's discourse -- a discourse "of the people," which is to say, not of the academy -- not of, perhaps more precisely, that class of literate experts which has for centuries been the arbiters of what counts as acceptable discourse.

Therefore, the debates about mass culture could be analogous to pollution behavior that "condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications." In essence, pollution behavior reifies the classifications, purifies them, and saves them. If popular fare become moral offenses that demand address -- and purification -- via rituals of reconciliation, expungement, fumigation, and so on, not only do these offenses reveal the ritual order of commentary on mass society, they also enable the commentary to continue.

Cultural and Symbolic Approaches

Among these traditions the human faculty to manipulate symbols is, in part, definitive of being human; further, the ability to manipulate symbols is contingent not only upon superior mental development (as compared to apes, for example) -- it is also contingent upon a cultural context.
Kenneth Burke's famous definition of man -- symbol-using, inventor of the negative, separated from natural conditions by instruments of [his] own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection -- offers an interesting commentary upon social science, itself, and upon the debates regarding mass culture, in particular. It is human nature, according to Burke, to be discontent (rotten with perfection), to be provoked into differencing as a symbolic activity ("this is good, but that is better," or "Bach but not Bird," for example). When applied to questions about the condition of modernity with regard to culture, one certainly can discern a tendency to be discontent with the present (as compared with a utopian past or future), to be fixated upon designating the superiority and inferiority of cultural forms, to separate (and be separated by) discourses.

Because culture is the arena in which symbols are created and invested with meaning, for Geertz (1973), culture necessarily precedes the development of language. Thus, prior to linguistic expressions culture (and, consequently, "terministic screens," "formulae," "pictures in our head") had already flavored the soup. There's no getting around culture except ... perhaps, by exposing its existence; as Sontag suggests in her essay, "On Style," the silences of a work of art (or of a culture, or a man) are as revealing as its utterances.

What are the silences of the debates of mass culture? What are its terministic screens?
Carey suggests (as have others), that our current, most dominant metaphor for understanding the nature of mass communication, is the transmission metaphor. Carey argues that in the transmission metaphor, "Communication was viewed as a process and a technology that would, sometimes for religious purposes, spread, transmit, and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and information farther and faster with the goal of controlling space and people" (1989, 17). On the one hand, liberalist visions of a superior mass culture suggest that the highest quality cultural forms could be made available to the masses for (ideological/moral/religious) purposes of obtaining an Enlightened society; allegedly, from this position, "democracy" would be improved once the citizenry had acquired certain intellectual standards. Yet, interestingly enough, once "the people" entered into that "democratic" domain of culture, they became "the masses." On the other hand, in radical Marxist visions of a superior culture, intrusions of "the people" (prior to the achievement of Communist utopia) upon the domain of culture were a priori dismissed as symptoms merely of "false consciousness." From both the democratic and socialist approaches, then, once the popular became popular it was suspect; thus one wonders -- for whom, exactly, were such perspectives attempting to argue? For "the people?" Or... for the theorists? In this context the second half of Carey's assertion (the goal of controlling space and people) becomes even more salient.

Of course, Carey offers an important contribution as partial corrective to the silences and screens of the considerations of communication and of culture. Rather than continue with the transmission metaphor, Carey suggests adopting a "ritual" metaphor. He explains,
A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. If the archetypal case of communication under a transmission view is the extension of messages across geography for the purpose of control, the archetypal case under a ritual view is the sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and commonality (1989, 18).

There are two directions to pursue with regard to Carey's ritual view. First, in the context of "mass" culture, the ritual view demands a reorientation toward what is valued as legitimate, meaningful, quality, sacred, and aesthetic. Such a reorientation requires taking seriously that which has been relegated to the trash heaps of "mass" culture; it requires asking -- rather than telling -- people what is "good," "valuable," "quality," "aesthetic," and, even, "sacred."

The second direction in which I would apply Carey's ritual view is in the direction of the debate itself. I suggest that the mass culture debate --- typified as it is by incompatible but similarly silent positions -- constitutes in itself a set of ritual utterances, a set of ritual practices deployed, in varying degrees, for the purposes of the maintenance of an intellectual community.
Perhaps an elaboration upon this latter suggestion would be helpful; I will conclude, then, with a brief examination of the mass culture discourse from the perspective of "symbolic pollution" (Douglas 1966).

Radical or Critical Theory Traditions

The radical or critical approaches to mass culture derive from substantially differing sources than do the traditional approaches, yet they share similar concerns. Contributors and influences upon this tradition include Marx, Weber, the Frankfurt School scholars, (especially Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Benjamin), Gramsci, Mills, and Althusser. While each of their influences have been inflected in mass theory debates in somewhat differing ways, the common denominator among them is an interest in ideology.

Karl Marx viewed modern, industrialized, capitalist society as inherently oppressive and inhumane; it separated people from nature, alienating them and isolating them not only from their society but also from themselves. According to Marx, ownership of the means of economic production necessarily facilitates a division of labor wherein owners exploit workers. As capitalism and private ownership progresses, society is stratified according to labor (into the bourgeoise, the proletariate, and the lumpenproletariate). This division among society, while stemming from economic realities, also corresponds to a division of ideology. Marx's theory of historical materialism argues that economics determines the social relations of productions, and that the social relations of production determines class consciousness. Thus, the consciousness of the bourgeoisie tends to be oriented toward maintenance of their material conditions. The bourgeoisie also own the means of mental production (such as newspapers), and are adept at the creation of ideologies that perpetuate the acceptance of the social order.

Therefore, according to Marxian perspectives, mass culture produced within the capitalist system tends (at least) to reproduce the patterns of domination and oppression at the level of ideology (within the superstructure). The actual nature of this tendency -- whether ideology (and, more largely, culture) is, "in the last analysis," a matter of economic determinism, is a topic open to debate and revision. Raymond Williams writes, "The basic question, as it has normally been put, is whether the economic element is in fact determining. I have followed the controversies on this, but it seems to me that it is, ultimately an unanswerable question ... [T]he difficulty lies in estimating the final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation" (Williams 1958, 280). While Williams is willing to grant economics determining force, if they are determining, they necessarily impact a "whole way of life;" since economics can never be isolated from the whole way of life, Williams prefers to try to understand culture from a more holistic perspective (that is, from the Weberian position of verstehen). He is therefore skeptical of the tendencies of some Marxists to dismiss any cultural form produced within "decadent" society as decadent by definition. "To describe English life, thought and imagination in the last three hundred years simply as 'bourgeois', to describe English culture now as 'dying', is to surrender reality to a formula" (Williams 1958, 281-282). Because Williams attempts a more integrative approach in his own work, and because he requires from Marxism a better definition of culture, he more resembles Weber than Marx.

Max Weber's social order resembles Marx's in that he does give acknowledgment to the economic base resulting in classes. However, Weber disagreed that history could be so neatly packaged according to ownership and the divisions and struggles resulting from ownership. History, and society, for Weber (as for Williams) were far more complex; the mechanisms of change and evolution were subtle, interwoven and resistant to precise causalities. Also, Weber embraces both aspects of idealism and materialism, but resists being confined to either. For example, Weber would agree that members of the upper economic classes tend to have higher "status" than do members of lower classes; however, unlike Marx, Weber acknowledges that status cannot be based upon class, alone. A starving artist would be accorded higher status than the starving thief, even though both occupy similar economic positions; the difference is therefore cultural rather than material. Central to unraveling (or at least describing) such complexities is Weber's concept of verstehen.

Derived from hermeneutics -- the interpretation of both structural features of and authorial intentions for texts (published writings, in particular) - - Weber's method of verstehen sought to apply the tools of hermeneutics to social actors (thus, extending the definition of a "text" to include events or actions of human agency, typically on the macro (rather than micro or individual) scale -- an extension that will reappear in the symbolic traditions of mass culture theory). For example, Weber's analysis of rational bureacracy in the West led him to explore the possibilities that particular religious practices encouraged or discouraged such structures of social organization. Weber's studies of Hinduism and Confucianism point out that the ideology of those religions impeded the growth of rational-legal bureacracies to the extent that they entrenched rigid and impermeable class distinctions, beyond which no one had the possibility of moving. The caste system, in particular, is tolerated, according to Weber, because of the Hindu promise of reincarnation and the belief that one's caste placement is the result of karma -- an irrefutable judgment based on behavior in a previous life. Contrasted with the Protestant work ethic, in which monetary or material gain was evidence of exemplary conduct and glory to God, the West was peculiarly suited to the development of the rational-legal bureacracy. Further, commandments and strict rules of conduct advocated by the harshest of the Protestants, the Calvinists, were amenable to rationalization and eventual codification within a legal system. In this case, Weber attempted to understand a particular feature of society within a holistic context that considered the social relations, the histories, and the belief systems of the people involved.
Returning then, to Williams, the cultural forms of a given society in a given moment in history must be understood within their particular contexts; one should not superimpose a particular definition of the situation upon the context. With that said, however, Williams also acknowledges that it is quite difficult to get away from "formulas" that impose definitions on existing situations. When he says, "There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses," he is arguing that "real business" of culture theory is to critically examine itself (p. 300). In particular, Williams objects, extensively, to the whole notion of a "mass" anything:
The idea of the masses, and the technique of observing certain aspects of mass behavior -- selected aspects of a 'public' rather than the balance of an actual community -- formed the natural ideology of those who sought to control the new system and to profit by it (Williams 1958, 312).

Inherent in the concept of the "masses" are assumptions about social control, about the nature of communication (for example, as "transmission"), and about the nature of social relations. The concept of the "masses," Williams argues, is an interested concept -- not neutral, nor even accurately descriptive of social reality. Yet the concept has so blinded theorists of communication that it becomes difficult to imagine mass communication in terms outside of the definition; it is tautological.
As Todd Gitlin (1982, 426) says, "So much is tautology."
Or is it?
Is there no such thing as mass behavior, as mass messages, as mass culture? Doesn't the very point of social science disappear if, in fact, social science is only tautology, only ... phenomenology?
From the point of view of symbolic or cultural theorists, the answers to those questions might be: "Yes. And no." or "Well, what was the point?"

Traditional Theories of Mass Culture

Traditionally, "mass," when used to refer to a group of people (as in "the masses"), is used as an aggregate concept that typically combines the following conditions: the masses are large, widely dispersed, anonymous, demographically heterogenous but behaviorally homogenous groups of people; they lack self-awareness as masses; they lack binding social ties with one another; they are an aggregate group of isolated individuals, and are incapable of organizing themselves as masses; and they are acted upon by external forces (McQuail 1988, DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach 1989).

This focus upon the nature of the ties or bonds between people in industrialized society derives from 19th century social philosophy, including the works of Comte, Tonnies and Durkheim.
Auguste Comte advocated the application of the "positive method" of science to society. Borrowing from the biological sciences, Comte envisioned society as an organism. Society, according to Comte, had structure, specialized parts which functioned together, and could be observed to undergo evolutionary change. Comte's social organism was threatened by the forces of over- specialization, which he attributed to the increasing division of labor; he argued that the links between individuals could be weakened by the division of labor because greater differentiation of society led to greater differentiation of experience; therefore, understanding between people would continue to erode. Comte viewed this erosion of common frameworks (or consensus) (and, thus, common linkages) between people as threatening to the equilibrium and harmony of the social organism (DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach 1989); further, he attributed the existence of social disorder to intellectual disorder. His main prescription was the application of science (in particular, positivism) for the purposes of, essentially, fine-tuning the social organism (Ritzer 1988).

Tonnies' characterizations (or ideal types) of the social bonds corresponding to pre- industrial and industrialized societies have also been influential within traditional theories of mass society. Tonnies argued that the mutual integration of individual lives with one another created conditions of mutual commitment, or "a reciprocal, binding sentiment ... which keeps human beings together as members of a totality." This state of "reciprocal, binding sentiment" he called Gemeinschaft. In contrast, industrialized societies increasingly rely upon contractual relations between individuals; thus, relations become impersonal and are based on agreed-upon fulfillment of contractual obligations rather than an appreciation of the personal qualities of an individual. Tonnies termed this latter condition Gesellschaft, and he was concerned that gesellschaft ultimately harmed the well-being of society and the individual.

Durkheim incorporated the organicism and empiricism of Comte with Tonnies's emphasis on social solidarity in his major theoretical statements; however, unlike Tonnies, Durkheim did not accept the argument that conditions of Gesellschaft eliminated moral unity or binding connection between individuals. On the contrary, while he recognized that the division of labor in society could produce conditions of anomie, he tended to believe that the division of labor increased, rather than decreased the mutual integration of the social organism (a condition which he termed organic solidarity). Thus, the division of labor contributes to the heterogeneity of the social organism, which (by definition of progress and evolution) meant the social organism was becoming more complex and was, consequently, improving. However, with Comte, Durkheim believed that the countervening force against organic solidarity was the increase (by virtue of increasing divisions of labor) with which individuality was experienced and expressed.
T.S. Eliot's view of culture has a certain Durkheimian conservatism. Eliot argues that "culture" is a manifestation of patterns of society as a whole.

Eliot writes:
It is commonly assumed that there is culture, but that it is the property of a small section of society; and from this assumption it is usual to proceed to one of two conclusions: either that culture can be the concern of a small minority, and that therefore there is no place for it in the society of the future; or that in the society of the future the culture which has been the possession of the few must be at the disposal of everybody (Eliot 1949, 31).
Eliot takes issue with both of these assumptions, arguing that the culture of the individual cannot be isolated from the culture of the group. Culture, rather, is an accumulation; it can only give meaning to the complexities of life after the lived experiences of its inhabitants have already created meaning (it is, in Durkheimian terms, an expression of the "collective conscience"). In addition, Eliot argues that since culture is not the domain of any one group but is (ideally) the expression of the whole, "it is only by an overlapping and sharing of interests, by participation and mutual appreciation, that the cohesion necessary for culture can obtain." Thus, Eliot embraces a form of organic solidarity as essential to the formation of culture. This solidarity is likewise in tension with the forces of individualism. While Eliot initially appears to be offering a pluralistic and equalitarian argument, in his chapter, "The Class and the Elite," his position becomes more clear.

According to Eliot, social philosophers tend to envision the social differentiation and the division of labor in the society "of the future" as completely isomorphic with individual talents. In such a perfectly functioning society, so the argument goes, since each will be fulfilled there would be no distinctions of superiority. Eliot sees this as an "atomic view" of society; the emergence of elites is not only inevitable, but necessary, according to Eliot, for the superior intellects (scientists, leaders, philosophers) can help guide a culture's understanding of itself. The real problem, rather, is that the modern condition has increasingly isolated elites from one another; their cohesion, thus, is essential to the optimum integration of all sectors of society within culture. And for Eliot, the real fear from mass culture is its tendency to level or equalize all cultural forms (Brantlinger 1983, 202). He regarded his contemporary culture as being clearly "in decline:" "We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity" ( 1968, 91).

Thus, Eliot is unwilling to surrender too much self-determination to ordinary people; rather, ordinary folk require the guidance of enlightened elites (similar, in a sense, to Durkheim's "social physicians" who might cure particular pathologies of the social organism). Finally, like Durkheim, Eliot is cautious regarding the separation of the individual from the "ties that bind."
The traditional approaches to the study of mass culture tend to assert, as Brantlinger argues, a "negative classicism," in which the Culture of yesteryear was superior to the "mass culture" of today; based upon this premise, modern civilization is seen to be in a state of decay, a slouching toward Rome, so to speak. Given this set of assumptions, it should therefore be no surprise that traditional approaches seek to salvage some golden moment of the past which was better -- or which has the potential for rescuing the future -- in order to prevent or obstruct the recurring Fall of Rome.

"Mass culture" from this perspective is typically a pejorative concept in that it implies a condition of inferiority in the quality of the cultural form(s) mediated or commodified, as compared (implicitly) to "high culture," Culture, or Art -- each of which has been canonized and legitimized by the application of intellectual and/or aesthetic criteria of value, within a tradition of critique. Mass culture also implies a condition of both spectacle and spectatorship, in which the aesthetic, intellectual, spiritual and/or cultural qualities of "true" Culture/Art are eliminated in exchange for sensational, titillating, vulgar or demeaning content (i.e., spectacle), and which requires the "passive" consumption from its audiences rather than their active participation in its creation (i.e., spectatorship). Additionally, mass culture, from this perspective, is believed (as alluded to above) to level taste, intellect, and the general social enlightenment by virtue of having to consider too many (rather than only the superior) preferences; in short, too many attempts to appeal to too many people waters down the culture into into mere tasteless (and nutritionless) broth.

Ironically, one could make the argument that the very means and practices that enabled the Enlightenment also provided the means and practices of spectatorship. For example, John Dewey, in his spectator theory of education, argues that the modern educational system forces students to be spectators to the knowledge-gathering and -generating process. Since they are required to read the observations or analyses of people who have already observed something, they are actually spectators to spectators. Dewey argues that knowledge can really only be acquired through interaction, through discourse, through the exchange of common symbols; it is a conversational and processual activity, rather than a passive, spectatorial activity. Dewey's observations, combined with Walter Ong's arguments that it was printing (not writing) that fixed the word into visual space, suggest that the conditions of spectatorship were created with the emergence of print culture and of institutionalized centers for learning (from which emerge cultural elites). This particular tension -- that the Enlightenment contains the seeds of its own destruction -- will be of special interest to the Frankfurt School scholars, discussed below.

Finally, "popular culture" traditionally shares some of the features of mass culture, in that popular culture also lacks a canonized set of aesthetic criteria exterior to itself by which to judge its forms; however, popular culture has, historically, referred to a localized set of cultural forms or customs that are related in some substantial way (even functionally) to the lived experiences of its consumers. For example, embroidery as a form of popular culture not only expressed the aesthetic sentiments of its producers, it could also be worn. Popular cultures have tended to be viewed as much more local, more authentic (in a folk-sense), and, typically, vulnerable to omission in official "historical" accounts of the times (with some exceptions, of course). Handlin (1961) argues that once a popular culture is mediated the local ties to lived experiences are eliminated; thus, with mass culture, the relevance, intimacy and spontaneity of emotion characteristic of a popular culture is diffused. Consequently whatever was organic, was authentic, or was expressive of a particular group's lived experience is disconnected from the cultural form; the result is that the massification of the popular renders whatever was valuable in the popular ineffective for the maintenance of the culture.

The Revolution Historical Journey

While a detailed history of the emergence of the mass media would be a valuable component of a lengthier discussion of the history of mass culture theories, time does not permit more than a general overview, to which I now turn.

Prior to the print era in medieval Europe, generally only small groups of people -- assembled as church congregations or as townsfolk -- would be exposed, via the oral tradition, to the same message at the same time. Using techniques of memorization and recitation, news from afar (which could be only as distant as a mere 20 miles) might spread, via messengers, jongleurs and troubadors, from town to town, proceeding only as fast as the horse and the tongue could carry it. It wasn't until the early 1600s, some 150 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented his alphabetic, moveable type printing press that the precursors to modern newspapers began.

During that century and a half, Europe was recovering from the Black Plague; post-plague populations began rising, cities grew, markets grew, mechanization increased -- and so, as James Burke (1989) notes, did the paperwork. With the increased availability of paper -- and Gutenberg's technology -- bills, books, political tracts (such as Martin Luther's 95 Theses) could be printed, laws could be codified, and Church doctrines and texts could be standardized. In short, two opposing tensions of social control could emerge: on the one hand, authority could be increasingly centralized because it could quickly use the printing technology to its own advantage. The various governments could consolidate their power through law, and (with improved cartography, navigation and nautical technologies) could extend that power over larger terrain. By the mid-16th century Columbus, Cortez and Magellan had extended the grasp of empires, and, consequently, enlarged markets for trade. On the other hand, however, once laws, doctrines, observations of the natural world, and philosophies about that world could also be printed (in standardized forms), educated elite classes could discover discrepancies, contradictions between "the way it is" and their own lived experiences (and they might be exposed to reports from abroad of "exotic" or alien cultures). With the increasing distribution of printing presses -- and with the increasing education of the populace, an increasing number of people began publishing and reading.

By the mid-1600s the Enlightenment was in full swing; and the various natural sciences were emerging; the methods of rational logic, observation, and verification began to reveal gross distortions in Church doctrines explaining the natural world. Such distortions were becoming seen as doctrine rather than divine truth, and the power of the Church to define reality was forever undermined. Here's a brief list of some of the more extraordinary achievements of the 17th and early 18th centuries (compiled from Garraty and Gay 1972, Boorstin 1988, Crowley & Heyer 1989):

Time Line 1 :
· 1609 Publication of Astronomia Nova by Kepler, containing his statement on the first two laws of planetary motion
· 1610 Galileo publishes Sidereal Messenger, describing his telescopic observations of the heavens
· 1619 Kepler publishes Harmonia Mundi, announcing his discovery of the third law of planetary motion
· 1637 Descartes publishes Discourse on Method
· 1644 Milton publishes Areopagitica
· 1650 Hobbes publishes Leviathan
· 1660s Boyle publishes New Experiments in Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of the Air; legal definition of Negro (African and Carribean) slavery begun in Virginia and Maryland
· 1662 Royal Society of London is founded
· 1666 French Academy of Science is founded
· 1676 Roemer determines the finite velocity of light
· 1677 The existence of microscopic male spermatozoa is discovered by van Leeuwenhoek
· 1678 The wave theory of light is proposed by Huygens
· 1687 Newton publishes Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis
· 1690 Locke publishes Two Treatises of Civil Government; first American newspaper, Publick Occurrences begins and ends in its first issue
· 1704 Newton's Opticks is published, some of whose basic ideas had been communicated to the Royal Society in 1672; Boston News-Letter begun

As the feudal era drew to a close monarchies were increasingly replaced with governments that depended, in part, upon the support of the people (at least, those with suffrage); consequently, those governments tended to be more lenient toward the nascent press (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach 1989). By the late 1600s and early 1700s a new social class had emerged: professional writers and intellectuals -- who saw themselves, for the first time in history, as the opposition to the Church -- who saw themselves, perhaps as importantly, as the self-appointed guardians and educators of the minds of ordinary people (Brantlinger 1983, 93). Also during the late 1600s and early 1700s the English government and its citizens grappled (sometimes viciously) with questions of press freedom, and much of the early press doctrine was exported to England's colonies in the New World. By 1721, James Franklin (with the help of his brother, Benjamin) had begun the first (successful) daily newspaper in the colonies, the New England Courant.

The American colonial press was by no means a "mass" press; rather, it would take a Revolutionary War (the results of which included the First Amendment privileges of the free press), increasing industrialization, urbanization and intensifying commercialization (leading to an intensified division of labor) -- combined with widespread education -- before the real mass press of the penny era could emerge. The early years of American newspapers are characterized by partisan loyalty and patronage. Their readership (in both the Revolutionary and party press eras) tended to be the wealthy, educated upper classes of elites; their news tended to focus upon political events and trade; they were sold by subscription, delivered by mail, and tended to be fairly expensive. During both the colonial and party press eras newspapers often challenged government authority (and/or critics of the government); thus, these newspapers helped to establish, circulate, legitimate and reify the emerging authority of particular social sectors -- namely, the intelligentsia (in addition to local governmental authorities and capitalists).

By the 1830s the penny press era had arrived in the U.S. Sold on the streets for a penny, these newspapers broke with convention and catered their news to the working person of the emerging middle class. Sensational, flamboyant, profit-driven, the penny newspapers depended upon advertising revenues for their profits; in fact, they helped pioneer the field of advertising. However, it was not until after the invention of the telegraph and the construction of railroads that the mass press had truly arrived.

The telegraph was rapidly adopted during the mid-1800s. The first telegraphic demonstration using Morse code was conducted by Samuel Morse in 1844; during the 1850s the first newswire agency, the Associated Press, and Western Union Telegraph Company, were established; by 1866, one of the often unappreciated wonders of the modern world -- the TransAtlantic cable -- was laid between Newfoundland and Ireland. Because the telegraph enabled the swift exchange of information between distant cities, its impacts were felt in the shifting trade practices from arbitrage to speculation, of levelling prices between regions, and, with the addition of swift transportation via the railroads, of facilitating the emergence of national markets (Carey 1989).

Meanwhile improvements upon printing technologies -- including the development of rotary and web presses -- enabled a faster, more frequent publishing schedule at the printing houses -- which the Sears & Roebuck catalog put to good use, securing one of the first national markets. Earlier, in the 1840s, cheap paper and steam presses had helped make possible a growing market for popular literature; by the end of the century the book trade had grown so rapidly that magazines began offering digests of some of the "better quality" fare.

After the Civil War, the U.S. press experienced one of its strongest growth periods. Industrialization and urbanization were proceeding rapidly, absorbing the growing immigrant population; shops and department stores increased in number, drawing (with the help of streetcars) thousands into the cities to shop and marvel at the new luxuries being imported or factory-made. The growth of consumption -- tied as it is to industrialization, commercialization, and urbanization -- is also key to the growth of the mass press. The penny newspapers were more than happy to help the stores and the manufacturers advertise their wares, prices, and amenities; advertising prices were set according to circulation, and the newspapers began offering discount rates for frequent advertisers.

By the late 1800s, advertisers, keen for an edge against the growing competition, began promoting brand loyalty. In the context of an immigrant society wherein shifting economic and social practices intervened in traditional modes of living, brand loyalty became, according to Boorstin, a way of acculturation into the American fabric: "Old-fashioned political and religious communities now became only two among many new, once unimagined fellowships. Americans were increasingly held to others not by a few iron bonds, but by countless gossamer webs knitted together by the trivia of their lives" (Boorstin 1973, 148). The gossamer webs to which Boorstin refers are "consumptive communities" -- that is, affiliations between people based upon the products ("trivia") they used, rather than based upon their cultural traditions. Advertisers played upon this development as it emerged, appealing to a diverse population's anxieties about "fitting in" in the new society.

The newspapers of the day were strategic in assisting advertisers reach the thousands of potential customers. As Boorstin says, "City newspapers had become the streetcars of the mind. They were putting the thoughts of tens of thousands of people in new cities on tracks, drawing them to the centers where they joined the hasty fellowship of new consumption communities" (Boorstin 1973, 106). This link between newspapers and advertisers was a formula for success; manufacturers and shopkeepers benefitted in sales from increased advertising (and some were able to convert such profits into additional stores, even chains of stores), and the newspapers grew richer, as well.

Time Line 2 :
· 1785 Edmund Cartwright patents power loom
· 1789 Washington inaugurated first President
· 1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin;
· 1798 Whitney builds a firearms factory new New Haven; Alien and Sedition Act passes in Congress
· 1801 Jefferson takes over as President; Sedition Act is permitted to expire (Alien Act is still on the books)
· 1804 Hegel publishes Phenomenology of Mind
· 1808 Slave trade in the US ends
· 1811 Pittsburgh's first rolling mill opens
· 1820 Pony express riders race between Boston, New York and Washington carrying Congressional news
· 1821 Adoption of gold standard in England
· 1822 First textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts
· 1829 George Stephenson perfects the steam locomotive (first built in 1814)
· 1830 Railroads put to use in US (transcontinental railway complete in 1869)
· 1830-42 Auguste Comte develops his positivist philosophy
· 1833-39 Invention of photography
· 1833 Benjamin Day begins the New York Sun
· 1835 Tocqueville publishes Democracy in America; James Gordon Bennett launches the New York Herald
· 1841 Horace Greeley starts the New York Tribune
· 1840 What is Property? published by Proudhon
· 1843 Marx is expelled from Germany, meets Engels in 1844
· 1844 Telegraph links Washington & Baltimore
· 1845 Engels publishes The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844
· 1848 Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto
· 1859 Value added by manufacturing exceeds value of agricultural products sold
· 1860 Lincoln elected
· 1861 Civil War begins
· 1863 Emancipation Proclamation is issued
· 1865 End of Civil War, 13th Amendment
· 1866 First transatlantic cable is laid
· 1867 Marx publishes his first volume of Das Capital
· 1879 Edison patents the electric light
· 1884 Eastman perfects the roll film
· 1895 Marconi & Popoff transmit first wireless signals
· 1903 "The Great Train Robbery"
· 1912 News of Titanic sinking conveyed internationally by wireless

The mass press may have been the most obvious -- and first -- medium to cater to a (presumed) homogenized, aggregate audience; certainly, the scandalous, breakfast-linen-soiling, penny newspapers were regarded with jaundiced eye by members of the educated classes. Yet the more sensational penny newspapers were only part of a larger picture of the emerging "popular" culture. By the turn of the century the book trade had produced an enormous quantity of "pulp" literature of "dubious" moral, educational and artistic value. And, within the next three decades the U.S. would witness the rise of vaudeville and nickelodeons, the development and proliferation of movies and movie theaters, the emergence of broadcast radio, the growth of popular magazines, the increasing sophistication in the reproduction of images, and the rise of comic books. By the end of the second world war nearly everyone in the country had radios (and the post-colonial world was being wired for sound as part of the war effort), weekly movie attendance in the States had hit 90 million more than once, and the first experiments with television were underway (having been postponed during WWII).

With each of these developments social practices changed; new alliances between formerly unconnected groups were forged on the basis of taste and consumptive status; religious and moral codes were threatened not only by the "questionable" content of the various media, but also by the increasing contact among previously isolated groups and by the increasing access of these groups to differing lifestyles and worldviews. The rapid transformations in the social and economic structures -- combined with profound shifts in the cultural fabric away from theological or autocratic authority toward a secularized intelligentsia -- set the stage for the expansion of social and cultural critics and philosophers who observed these trends with varying degrees of disdain, alarm, or approval.

The emergence of "mass society" and "mass culture" thus occur at several crucial contextual intersections:
a) the context of the traditions of the Enlightenment, which valued social and intellectual progress and improvement,
b) the context of the emergence of Art and Culture as domains of privileged access to the literate, upper classes,
c) the context of the emergence of localized popular cultures,
d) the context of increasing commercialization of culture (and Culture) via the new mass media, and
e) the peculiar predicament of American society, in which national identity would collide with pluralist values. This assortment of contingencies has been interpreted by theorists of mass culture in a variety of ways, and it is to the theorists and their traditions that I now turn.

Limitations of Marxist analysis

Critics argue that Marxism is just another ideology (despite claims by some that historical materialism is an objective science). Some Marxists are accused of being 'too doctrinaire' (see Berger 1982). Fundamentalist Marxism is crudely deterministic, and also reductionist in its 'materialism', allowing little scope for human agency and subjectivity. Marxism is often seen as 'grand theory', eschewing empirical research. However, research in the Marxist 'political economy' tradition in particular does employ empirical methods. And the analysis of media representations does include close studies of particular texts.

The orthodox Marxist notion of 'false consciousness' misleadingly suggests the existence of a reality 'undistorted' by mediation. The associated notion that such consciousness is irresistibly induced in mass audiences does not allow for oppositional readings. Marxist perpectives should not lead us to ignore the various ways in which audiences use the mass media.
Neo-Marxist stances have in fact sought to avoid these pitfalls. The primary Marxist emphasis on class needs to be (and had increasingly been) related to other divisions, such as gender and ethnicity

Strengths of Marxist analysis

Unlike many approaches to the mass media Marxism acknowledges the importance of explicit theory. Marxist 'critical theory' exposes the myth of 'value-free' social science. Marxist perspectives draw our attention to the issue of political and economic interests in the mass media and highlight social inequalities in media representations. Marxism helps to situate media texts within the larger social formation. Its focus on the nature of ideology helps us to deconstruct taken-for-granted values. Ideological analysis helps us to expose whose reality we are being offered in a media text. Whilst Althusserian Marxism helps to undermine the myth of the autonomous individual, other neo-Marxist stances see the mass media as a 'site of struggle' for ideological meaning, opening up the possibility of oppositional readings.

Marxist theory emphasizes the importance of social class in relation to both media ownership and audience interpretation of media texts: this remains an important factor in media analysis. Whilst content analysis and semiotics may shed light on media content, marxist theory highlights the material conditions of media production and reception. 'Critical political economists' study the ownership and control of the media and the influence of media ownership on media content cannot be ignored. It also remains important to consider such issues as differential access and modes of interpretation which are shaped by socio-economic groupings. Marxist media research includes the analysis of representation in the mass media (e.g. political coverage or social groups) in order to reveal underlying ideologies. We still need such analyses: however oppositional it may sometimes be, audience interpretation continues to operate in relation to such content. Because of the distribution of power in society, some versions of reality have more influence than others.

Althusser theory

Louis Althusser (b. 1918) was a French Marxist philosopher who saw Marxism as a science. His work is in the structuralist tradition. One feature of Althusserian Marxism is a rejection of Marx's Hegelian essentialism. Essentialism is a reduction of things to a single principle or essence. Althusser rejected two kinds of Marxist essentialism: economism (economic determinism) and humanism (in which social developments were seen as expressive of a pre-given human nature). So Althusserian Marxism is anti-economist and anti-humanist. In rejecting economism he saw ideology as itself a determining force shaping consciousness, embodied in the material signifying practices of 'ideological state apparatuses', and enjoying 'relative autonomy'. Althusser's work represents a move away from a preoccupation with economic determination.

Ideology, for Althusser 'represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence' (cited in Stevenson 1995: 37). Ideology transforms human beings into subjects, leading them to see themselves as self-determining agents when they are in fact shaped by ideological processes.

Tony Bennett notes that since he represents all ideological forms as contributing to the reproduction of the existing system, Althusser comes 'dangerously close to functionalism', representing capitalist society as monolithic, and failing to allow for internal conflict (Bennett 1982: 53). Stuart Hall adds that in Althusser's theory it is difficult 'to discern how anything but the "dominant ideology" could ever be reproduced in discourse' (Hall 1982: 78). In Althusserian theory mass media texts 'interpellate the subject' whereas many current media theorists argue that the the subject projects meaning onto the media texts. For the notion of a 'struggle over meaning' one must turn to Volosinov and Gramsci. Althusser's influence has been held responsible by some critics for leading some of his followers into purely formalist readings of the signifying systems of mass media forms, neglecting their modes of production and reception. However, Althusser is 'the central conduit through which developments in structuralism and semiotics have both entered into and lastingly altered Marxist approaches to the media' (Bennett 1982: 53).

For useful general accounts of Althusserian Marxism see: Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 3-16; Gurevitch et al. 1982: 23-5; Bennett 1982: 51-3; White 1992: 168-9; Fiske 1992: 286-88.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School of 'critical theory' was regarded by orthodox Marxists as 'revisionist' partly because it criticised economism and crude materialism, and partly because of its eclecticism. In media theory it is important for offering the first Marxist attempt to theorize about the media (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 8). However, it provided no real way forward for the study of the mass media (Curran et al.1982: 23). The most notable theorists connected with the Frankfurt School were Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer - all committed Marxists - who were associated with the Institute for Social Research, which was founded in Frankfurt in 1923 but shifted in 1933 to New York.

The Frankfurt School was influenced by predominantly conservative notions of 'mass society', though it gave this perspective a leftist slant (Bennett 1982: 42). The so-called 'father of the New Left', Herbert Marcuse, in One-Dimensional Man (1972), presented the media very pessimistically as an irresistible force:

The means of... communication..., the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood... Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour. (Marcuse, cited in Bennett 1982: 43).

For Marcuse, the mass media defined the terms in which we may think about the world (Bennett 1982: 44). The Frankfurt School in general was profoundly pessimistic about the mass media. As Janet Woollacott puts it, their work 'gives to the mass media and the culture industry a role of ideological dominance which destroys both bourgeois individualism and the revolutionary potential of the working class' (Woollacott 1982: 105).

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1972, cited in Bennett 1982: 31) coined the phrase 'the culture industry', referring to the collective operations of the media. The Frankfurt School's focus on ideology helped to undermine economism, but it was criticized by other Marxists for elitism and for Hegelian idealism (Bennett 1982: 47).

Karl marx : Differences within Marxism

The different schools of thought within Marxist media theory are variously framed by commentators. Michael Gurevitch and his colleagues listed three 'contending paradigms': 'structuralist', 'political economy' and 'culturalist' (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 8). Althusserian Marxism is structuralist. Purely structuralist analysis focuses on 'the internal articulation of the signifying systems of the media' (Curran et al. 1982: 28).

In the Marxist fundamentalist tradition, 'political economists' see ideology as subordinate to the economic base (Curran et al. 1982: 26). Work by Graham Murdock (Murdock & Golding 1977; Murdock 1982) represents the 'critical' political economy approach, locating the power of media in the economic processes and structures of media production. Onwership and economic control of the media is seen as the key factor in determining control of media messages.

Work by Stuart Hall (e.g. Hall et al. 1978) represents the Marxist culturalist approach, which sees the mass media as a powerful (if secondary) influence in shaping public consciousness (Curran et al. 1982: 28). Culturalism follows Althusserian structuralism in rejecting economism, but unlike structuralism, it emphasizes the actual experience of sub-groups in society and contextualizes the media within a society which is seen as 'a complex expressive totality' (Curran et al. 1982: 27). The culturalist approach is reflected in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, of which Stuart Hall was once the director.

As Curran et al. put it, 'Marxist theorists vary in their accounts of the determination of the mass media and in their accounts of the nature and power of mass media ideologies' (Curran et al. 1982: 23).

Karl Marx : The constitution of the subject

Marxist theorists make a particular kind of distinction between subject and object. Tony Bennett notes that the historical dialectic involves a mutually interactive relationship between the subject (human agents) and the object (the conditions of their existence) (Bennett 1982: 42). Fiske distinguishes 'the subject' thus:

The individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture. Theories of the individual concentrate on differences between people and explain these differences as natural. Theories of the subject, on the other hand, concentrate on people's common experiences in a society as being the most productive way of explaining who (we think) we are... The subject... is a social construction, not a natural one. (Fiske 1992: 288; my emphases)
In Marxist thought, individuals are 'constituted' as the bearers of positions through the effects of social relations (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 7). This is referred to as 'the constitution of the subject'.

Althusser rejected the humanist notion of the individual as a self-conscious, autonomous being whose actions could be explained in terms of personal beliefs, intentions, preferences and so on (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 14-15). He introduced the concept of a mechanism of interpellation, whereby subjects are constituted as the effects of pre-given structures. Ideology functions to constitute individuals as subjects. Individuals are interpellated (have social identities conferred on them) primarily through 'ideological state apparatuses' (ISAs), including the family, schooling and the mass media. It is through ISAs that people gain both a sense of identity and an understanding of reality (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 8).

The notion that the human subject is constituted by pre-given structures is a general feature of structuralism, according to which subjectivity is determined by structures such as language, family relations, cultural conventions and other social forces (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 10-11).

Althusser's notion of interpellation allows Marxist media theorists to explain the political function of mass media texts. 'As a pre-existing structure, the text interpellates the spectator, so constituting him or her as a subject' (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 12). According to this view, the subject (viewer, listener, reader) is constituted by the text, and the power of the mass media resided in their ability to 'position' the subject in such a way that their representations were taken to be reflections of everyday reality.

Althusserian Marxism did not allow for the possibility of individuals resisting the process of interpellation, whereas ISAs are not invariably and completely successful; the subject can be agent as well as effect. Althusserian media theorists tended to see the text as the sole determinant of the subject's response (Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 15). They also treated the subject as 'unified', whereas subsequent Marxist theories have posited 'a contradictory, de-centred subject displaced across the range of discourses in which he or she participates' (Curran et al. 1982: 25).

Whilst Herbert Marcuse's (1972) portrayal of the power of the mass media tended to cast audiences as passive victims, neo-Marxist stances have typically come to grant more active roles to audiences. As Curran et al. put it, whilst dominant meaning systems are seen as 'moulded and relayed' by the mass media, they are also seen as 'adapted by audiences and integrated into class-based or "situated" meaning systems' (Curran et al. 1982: 15).

Karl Marx : Media as amplifiers

In Marxist media analysis, media institutions are regarded as being 'locked into the power structure, and consequently as acting largely in tandem with the dominant institutions in society. The media thus reproduced the viewpoints of dominant institutions not as one among a number of alternative perspectives, but as the central and "obvious" or "natural" perspective' (Curran et al. 1982: 21).

According to adherents of Marxist political economy, in the mass media there is a tendency to avoid the unpopular and unconventional and to draw on 'values and assumptions which are most valuable and most widely legitimated' (Murdock & Golding 1977: 37, cited in Curran et al. 1982: 26).

As Curran et al. note, most researchers in the Marxist tradition in Britain (such as Stuart Hall) have approached the issue of media portrayals of violence in terms of whether such portrayals have served 'to legitimize the forces of law and order, build consent for the extension of coercive state regulation and de-legitimate outsiders and dissidents'. 'They have thus examined the impact of the mass media in situations where mediated communications are powerfully supported by other institutions such as the police, judiciary and schools... The power of the media is thus portrayed as that of renewing, amplifying and extending the existing predispositions that constitute the dominant culture, not in creating them' (Curran et al. 1982: 14; see also ibid.: 27).

Similarly, 'some Marxist commentators have contended that media portrayals of elections constitute dramatized rituals that legitimate the power structure in liberal democracies; voting is seen as an ideological practice that helps to sustain the myth of representative democracy, political equality and collective self-determination. The impact of election coverage is thus conceived in terms of reinforcing political values that are widely shared in Western democracies and are actively endorsed by the education system, the principal political organizations and the apparatus of the state' (Curran et al. 1982: 15).

Karl Marx : Ideology

A central feature of Marxist theory is the 'materialist' stance that social being determines consciousness. According to this stance, ideological positions are a function of class positions, and the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of its dominant class. This is in contrast to the 'idealist' stance that grants priority to consciousness (as in Hegelian philosophy). Marxists differ with regard to this issue: some interpret the relationship between social being and consciousness as one of direct determination; others stress a dialectical relationship.

In fundamentalist Marxism, ideology is 'false consciousness', which results from the emulation of the dominant ideology by those whose interests it does not reflect. From this perspective the mass media disseminate the dominant ideology: the values of the class which owns and controls the media. According to adherents of Marxist political economy the mass media conceal the economic basis of class struggle; 'ideology becomes the route through which struggle is obliterated rather than the site of struggle' (Curran et al. 1982: 26).

Althusser rejected the notion of false consciousness, stressing that ideology is the medium through which we experience the world (Curran et al. 1982: 24). Althusserian Marxism stresses the irreducibility and materiality of ideology: i.e., ideology is seen as a determining force in its own right. The ideological operation of the mass media in the West contributes to the reproduction of the capitalist system.

Another Marxist theorist of ideology, Valentin Volosinov, has been influential in British cultural studies. Volosinov argued that a theory of ideology which grants the purely abstract concept of consciousness an existence prior to the material forms in which it is organized could only be metaphysical. Ideological forms are not the product of consciousness but rather produce it.

As Tony Bennett notes: 'Rather than being regarded as the product of forms of consciousness whose contours are determined elsewhere, in the economic sphere, the signifying systems which constitute the sphere of ideology are themselves viewed as the vehicles through which the consciousness of social agents is produced' (Bennett 1982: 51).

Clearly, Marxist theorists agree that the mass media has ideological power, but disagree as to its nature.

Karl Marx : Media as means of production

The mass media are, in classical Marxist terms, a 'means of production' which in capitalist society are in the ownership of the ruling class. According to the classical Marxist position, the mass media simply disseminate the ideas and world views of the ruling class, and deny or defuse alternative ideas. This is very much in accord with Marx's argument that:

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. (Marx & Engels: The German Ideology, cited in Curran et al. 1982: 22).

According to this stance, the mass media functioned to produce 'false consciousness' in the working-classes. This leads to an extreme stance whereby media products are seen as monolithic expressions of ruling class values, which ignores any diversity of values within the ruling class and within the media, and the possibility of oppositional readings by media audiences.

Joseph Goebbels and his propaganda and fall

German Nazi Party member Joseph Goebbels became Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister in 1933, which gave him power over all German radio, press, cinema, and theater.
In 1925 Goebbels met the party leader Adolf Hitler. In 1926 he was made Gauleiter, or party leader, for the region of Berlin, and in 1927 he founded and became editor of the official National Socialist periodical Der Angriff (The Attack). He was elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1928. By exploiting mob emotions and by employing all modern methods of propaganda Goebbels helped Hitler into power.

His work as a propagandist materially aided Hitler's rise to power in 1933. When Hitler seized power in 1933, Goebbels was appointed Reichsminister for propaganda and national enlightenment. From then until his death, Goebbels used all media of education and communications to further Nazi propagandistic aims, instilling in the Germans the concept of their leader as a veritable god and of their destiny as the rulers of the world. In 1938 he became a member of the Hitler cabinet council. Late in World War II, in 1944, Hitler placed him in charge of total mobilization.

As Reichsminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment, Goebbels was given complete control over radio, press, cinema, and theater; later he also regimented all German culture. Goebbels placed his undeniable intelligence and his brilliant insight into mass psychology entirely at the service of his party. His most virulent propaganda was against the Jews. As a hypnotic orator he was second only to Hitler, and in his staging of mass meetings and parades he was unsurpassed. Utterly cynical, he seems to have believed only in the self-justification of power. He remained loyal to Hitler until the end. On May 1, 1945, as Soviet troops were storming Berlin, Goebbels committed suicide.
Listed below are the principles purported to summarize what made Goebbels tick or fail to tick. They may be thought of as his intellectual legacy. Whether the legacy has been reliably deduced is a methodological question. Whether it is valid is a psychological matter. Whether or when parts of it should be utilized in a democratic society are profound and disturbing problems of a political and ethical nature.

Goebbels' Principle of Propaganda

1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.
c. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences

3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.

4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity

5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.

8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.

9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.

10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.

11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.

12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.

13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof

15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.

16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves

17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective

18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.
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Antonio Gramsci and ' Hegemony '

Who is Antonio Gramsci? He is the man who is a critical theorist who has a major influence on cultural critics in the study of ideology.The impact of the ideas of Gramsci however led to death in prison during the Fascism regime.His famous work, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, in 1971 became a major influence in the Anglo-Saxon world

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian (1891-1937), was a leading Marxist thinker. Like Althusser, he rejected economism, insisting on the independence of ideology from economic determinism. Gramsci also rejected crude materialism, offering a humanist version of Marxism which focused on human subjectivity.

Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. Commentators stress that this involves willing and active consent. Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is 'the way a subordinate class lives its subordination' (cited in Alvarado & Boyd-Barrett 1992: 51).

However, unlike Althusser, Gramsci emphasizes struggle. He noted that 'common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself' (Gramsci, cited in Hall 1982: 73). As Fiske puts it, 'Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle' (Fiske 1992: 291). References to the mass media in terms of an ideological 'site of struggle' are recurrent in the commentaries of those influenced by this perspective. Gramsci's stance involved a rejection of economism since it saw a struggle for ideological hegemony as a primary factor in radical change.

Criticisms of Althusser's theory of ideology drew some neo-Marxists to Gramsci's ideas

Karl Marx : Introduction to his Media Theory

Introduction

In Britain and Europe, neo-Marxist approaches were common amongst media theorists from the late '60s until around the early '80s, and Marxist influences, though less dominant, remain widespread. So it is important to be aware of key Marxist concepts in analysing the mass media. However, there is no single Marxist school of thought, and the jargon often seems impenetrable to the uninitiated. These notes are intended to provide a guide to some key concepts.
Marxist theorists tend to emphasize the role of the mass media in the reproduction of the status quo, in contrast to liberal pluralists who emphasize the role of the media in promoting freedom of speech.

The rise of neo-Marxism in social science represented in part a reaction against 'functionalist' models of society. Functionalists seek to explain social institutions in terms of their cohesive functions within an inter-connected, socio-cultural system. Functionalism did not account for social conflict, whereas Marxism offered useful insights into class conflict.
As the time of the European ascendancy of neo-Marxism in media theory (primarily in the 1970s and early 1980s), the main non-Marxist tradition was that of liberal pluralism (which had been the dominant perspective in the United States since the 1940s) (see Hall 1982: 56-65).

As Gurevitch et al. put it:
Pluralists see society as a complex of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant all of the time. Media organizations are seen as bounded organizational systems, enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalized pressure groups. Control of the media is said to be in the hands of an autonomous managerial elite who allow a considerable degree of flexibility to media professionals. A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions and their audiences, since in McQuail's words the 'relationship is generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms'... and audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media in an infinite variety of ways according to their prior needs and dispositions, and as having access to what Halloran calls 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 1)

In contrast, they continue: Marxists view capitalist society as being one of class domination; the media are seen as part of an ideological arena in which various class views are fought out, although within the context of the dominance of certain classes; ultimate control is increasingly concentrated in monopoly capital; media professionals, while enjoying the illusion of autonomy, are socialized into and internalize the norms of the dominant culture; the media taken as a whole, relay interpretive frameworks consonant with the interests of the dominant classes, and media audiences, while sometimes negotiating and contesting these frameworks, lack ready access to alternative meaning systems that would enable them to reject the definitions offered by the media in favour of consistently oppositional definitions.

International Announcement

This is the one and only blog site would ever going to produce such complicated information regarding the massive ideologies, the root of evil, the influence and impact by the society or individuals, history of the world, physical of the mind theories, and of course the revolution.

Therefore I will also include my own theories and my beliefs. This is also blog on propaganda. It may have sensitive issues and all categories of negativity there is. It may or may not realize that some people might interpret it as also a propaganda site. The decision is tough but I will reveal it any way.

So I hope you enjoy reading!


The Editor!
Jordache Fuhrer,November 2005