Academic quote of the day

[kat_lair]

Strain Theory, old and not without limitations, but still relevant.

“... actual advance toward desired success-symbols through conventional channels is, despite our persisting open-class ideology, relatively rare and difficult for those handicapped by little formal education and few economic resources. The dominant pressure of group standards of success is, therefore, on the gradual attenuation of legitimate, but by and large ineffective, strivings and the increasing use of illegitimate, but more or less effective, expedients of vice and crime. The cultural demands made on persons in this situation are incompatible. On the one hand, they are asked to orient their conduct toward the prospect of accumulating wealth and on the other, they are largely denied effective opportunities to do so institutionally. The consequences of such structural inconsistency are psycho-pathological personality, and/or antisocial conduct, and/or revolutionary activities. The equilibrium between culturally designated means and ends becomes highly unstable with the progressive emphasis on attaining the prestige-laden ends by any means whatsoever. Within this context, Capone represents the triumph of amoral intelligence over morally prescribed "failure," when the channels of vertical mobility are closed or narrowed in a society which places a high premium on economic affluence and social ascent for all its members. This last qualification is of primary importance. [...] It is only when a system of cultural values extols, virtually above all else, certain common symbols of success for the population at large while its social structure rigorously restricts or completely eliminates access to approved modes of acquiring these symbols for a considerable part of the same population, that antisocial behavior ensues on a considerable scale. In other words, our egalitarian ideology denies by implication the existence of noncompeting groups and individuals in the pursuit of pecuniary success. The same body of success-symbols is held to be desirable for all. These goals are held to transcend class lines, not to be bounded by them, yet the actual social organization is such that there exist class differentials in the accessibility of these common success-symbols.” (Merton, 1938: 679-80, emphasis as original)

Ref.
Merton, R.K. (1938) ‘Social Structure and Anomie’, American Sociological Review 3(5): 672-682.

Comments

[new-kate.livejournal.com]

You'd think almost a century of great scientific and humanitarian advancement would have made some sort of a difference, right?

[starbuck-a-dale.livejournal.com]

I worrk that I am not quite sober enough to properly take in all of that text above right now, but I sure am sober enough to get the gist. And thanks for posting it! I'm practically a living testament to it.

(though I am super responsible and in a vanilla career these days)

[iniq.livejournal.com]

There really are no coincidences...

The spectacle not only expands the profits and power of the capitalist class but also helps to resolve a legitimation crisis of capitalism. Rather than venting anger against exploitation and injustice, the working class is distracted and mollified by new cultural productions, social services, and wage increases. In consumer capitalism, the working classes abandon the union hall for the shopping mall and celebrate the system that fuels the desires that it ultimately cannot satisfy. But the advanced abstraction of the spectacle brings in its wake a new stage of deprivation. Marx spoke of the degradation of being into having, in which creative praxis is reduced to the mere possession of an object, rather than its imaginative transformation, and in which need for the other is reduced to greed of the self. (85)

Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner. "From the Society of the Spectacle to the Realm of Simulation: Debord, Baudrillard, and Postmodernity." The Postmodern Turn. New York and London: Guilford, 1997. 79-123.



Most of the texts I'm reading on consumer society and capitalism never go into what happens when people are not simply not satisfied by the objects of desire they are presented with, but when they don't have the opportunity to amass all those objects of desire. But then... it's the humanities. And we all know the humanities don't actually have anything to do with real life. :p