Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and ValueCulture in a Rationalizing World

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value: Culture in a Rationalizing World [Whereas Karl Marx decried without hesitation or reticence what he saw as the ‘dominance of things over men’ in capitalist society, the German social theorist Max Weber (1864–1920), born 46 years after Marx, deployed the more ‘neutral’ notion of rationalization to describe a process that both opened up the way to purposive rational action and led us into an ‘iron cage’ (Lowith, 1993[1960]).1 In the following two chapters, the argument is made thatMax Weber’s work on rationalization has much to tell us about the fate of cultural values in the late modern world that we inhabit. Weber perceived a world in which cultural values were in retreat and impersonal forces had come to dominate (Gronow, 1988). if the rationalization of thought and action had yielded material wealth and, to some extent, a greater scope for freedom and responsibility of action, Weber was also acutely aware that accompanying such developments were, as Alan Sica (2000, p. 42) comments, ‘seedbeds of pathology that affected individuals as much as the societies in which they struggled, vainly ... to maintain their individuality and freedom’. Distinctive cultural values and ways of being, wTbether creative or morally purposeful, whether aesthetic or ethical in orientation, whether serving the ‘demons’ of an artistic or a moral value sphere, were threatened by the very same purposeful rationality that enabled them to find an emboldened form in the first place.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Sociology of Culture, Taste and ValueCulture in a Rationalizing World

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/a-sociology-of-culture-taste-and-value-culture-in-a-rationalizing-AZxz4ns0Uq

References (0)

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-47790-6
Pages
8 –31
DOI
10.1057/9781137377081_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Whereas Karl Marx decried without hesitation or reticence what he saw as the ‘dominance of things over men’ in capitalist society, the German social theorist Max Weber (1864–1920), born 46 years after Marx, deployed the more ‘neutral’ notion of rationalization to describe a process that both opened up the way to purposive rational action and led us into an ‘iron cage’ (Lowith, 1993[1960]).1 In the following two chapters, the argument is made thatMax Weber’s work on rationalization has much to tell us about the fate of cultural values in the late modern world that we inhabit. Weber perceived a world in which cultural values were in retreat and impersonal forces had come to dominate (Gronow, 1988). if the rationalization of thought and action had yielded material wealth and, to some extent, a greater scope for freedom and responsibility of action, Weber was also acutely aware that accompanying such developments were, as Alan Sica (2000, p. 42) comments, ‘seedbeds of pathology that affected individuals as much as the societies in which they struggled, vainly ... to maintain their individuality and freedom’. Distinctive cultural values and ways of being, wTbether creative or morally purposeful, whether aesthetic or ethical in orientation, whether serving the ‘demons’ of an artistic or a moral value sphere, were threatened by the very same purposeful rationality that enabled them to find an emboldened form in the first place.]

Published: Nov 10, 2015

Keywords: Ideal Type; Modern Culture; Rational Capitalism; Substantive Rationality; Rationalize World

There are no references for this article.