Workshop on Mass Society and Mass Culture
Please print out this Workshop file for the session
Intro:
The dossier of readings I have issue to you consists or 7 „readings‟ in a Pdf file
Page refs below refer to page numbers in the pdf file – as you scroll down the page
numbers will be indicated at bottom of pdf window.
Extract 1: Halebsky pp. 1-2
Extract 2: Ball-Rokeach etc al. pp. 3-5
Extract 3: Picture, p.6
Extract 4: Brantlinger, pp. 7-13
Extract 5: Arnold, 14-15
Extract 6: Hoggart, pp. 16-18
Extract 7: Baudrillard, pp.19-20.
They fall under 3 themes:
1) basic theoretical ideas - items 1-3.
2) history of thinking about mass culture - items 4
3) classics of the debate over mass culture – items 5-7.
We have severely edited the selections we have made so that the reading we want you
to do is substantial but very focused. Some pieces are obviously more difficult than
others.
We have tried to place the readings in an order that will allow a gradual deepening of
understanding of the issue as well as increasing breadth, and I have spent quite a lot of
hours thinking through which readings, in what order, with what purpose etc.
So PLEASE TAKE TIME AND CARE OVER THE READINGS AND MAKE
NOTES ABOUT EACH PIECE.
Come thoroughly prepared to engage with the analysis session.
Aims of Workshop:
What we wish to achieve is: all of you going away with a grasp of the MEANING and
RELEVANCE of the relation between mass society and mass culture, and further that
you have confidence that you can talk about them AND APPLY THEM IN OTHER
MEDIA AND CULTURAL ANLYSES YOU DO.
We want you to go away having a real feeling inside you that:
you know what the theoretical ideas of mass society and mass culture mean;
how they appear in the real world;
what several of the leading writers have thought about them and
that you can discuss such ideas with ease, without needing a textbook.
The purposes of the readings:
.pdf pp. 1-2
Item 1: Sandor Halebsky, (1976) extract from: Mass Society and Political Conflict,
Cambridge Univ. press
This item is the first of three which try to introduce you to the concepts and the
linkages between them that make up the idea of „mass society‟. The item starts off by
distinguishing what the phenomena of „mass society‟ stands against ie. „community‟.
This defines mass society negatively – ie. what it is not.
Get clear how the emergence of mass society threatens community – and what
happens to community.
What is the weakness of „intermediate relations‟ about? (Think about your own lives
and how say your relation to government or indeed to the top management of UCN
might be dependent upon „intermediate relations‟ and how isolated you might feel if
there is nobody to mediate for you)
Think how this could lead to „atomism‟ and ‘anomie’ (anomie literally means
„without law‟ – „nomos‟ is ancient greek for „law‟; „a‟ means „without‟)
So having read this what do we mean by the term „mass‟ in the phrase „mass society‟.
Think of the everyday phrase „look at that mass of things over there‟ – what do we
mean by „mass‟ here?
Can you make the theoretical leap to:
Reflecting upon how a mass society might differ from a social class – think about
the key term: ‘anomie’ versus a sense of belonging to a class.
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pdf pp. 3-5
Item 2: DeFleur and Rokeach, (1989) Theories of Mass Communication,
Longmans.
The point of this item is to begin to make the link between our two main themes:
mass society and mass culture via (in this case) propaganda efforts by governments
(but it could equally be big media corporations). (Question for later: Why?)
It will also give you an historical precedent and info to see that our two
phenomena (ms/mc) go back quite a long way and have infected western societies
through the 20th century.
How do you get an „anomic‟ society to work together for the war effort – ie act like a
community? Why is this a problem? (and think back to Halebsky definitions). How do
you get anomic people to value something? (link to advertising?)
If everybody is being encouraged to share a sense of values are we not on the road to
building a „mass‟ culture? (as opposed to say „working class culture‟ or „middle class
culture‟? (just a thought!)
Two problem notions: „Gemeinshaft‟ and „Industrial Societies‟(as opposed to rural
farming systems before the 19th century) Think Soc 20034 for the „G‟ word.
Things to think through:
The link between mass society and the need for and use of propaganda.
What sort of beast is propaganda? How could you link propaganda to mass media?
Explain the linkage as a process – how does it work? Give some detail.
Making the leap:
The account has been in terms of war, now think of some linkages between mass
society, mass culture, mass media outside of the example of the needs of war.
Link to magic bullet theory of communication (aka: ‘syringe’ model)
The role of simple S-R models (stimulus/response) get clear where SR psychological
models of comm fit in.
Why do more modern versions of SR incorporate ‘intervening variables?
Think about you own experiences of being communicated to – is it direct or indirect –
does the message go straight from the source into your head? Or is it routed through
friends, discussion, previous ideas etc.
Despite it being called naïve, is the ‘syringe model’ good enough today to account
for how the mass media influences mass society? How sophisticated is our ‘mass
culture’. How much do we need the complication of ‘intervening variables’ to
explain communication in mass society?
So this reading:
1) links mass society to mass media and to the creation of a mass culture.
2) It uses the example of war/propaganda.
BUT: You have to be able to fit together the three concepts to explain and
understand other situations and examples.
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pdf pp. 6
Item 3 – photograph: what does it mean?
How does it image the link between mass society and the mass media?
How is „anomie‟ expressed?
Pdf pp. 7-13
Item 4: Narmore and Brantlinger 1997, Modernity and Mass Culture, Indiana UP.
This is the most substantial piece but covers important aspects and theorists of Mass
Culture.
Note here the theorists that are mentioned and how they fit within the development of
Cultural Studies. They mention post-war French theorists (Barthes, Althusser, Lacan,
de certeau, Foucault, Bourdieu; German theorists – the pre-war Frankfurt school of
Critical Theory which includes Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer; the Italian Marxist
Antonio Gramsci (pronounced: „Gram-she’) who was the first important Marxist to
produce a marxist theory of culture and stress culture‟s its importance for the workers
and their class struggles against the capitalists and the bourgeois state.
Importantly they mention the founders of the British Cultural Studies tradition from
the 1950s onwards: Raymond Williams; Richard Hoggart; Stuart Hall. We have given
you extracts from Hoggart‟s 1957 writing and from the two main predecessors of the
british Cultural Studies tradition who got worked up about the idea of Mass Culture
versus High Culture, namely Matthew Arnold mid 19th century poet and critic, and
Frank Leavis and his wife Queenie who taught at Cambridge and were critics of mass
culture from the 1930s onwards.
This piece should help you to link theorists of mass culture to the meaning of
mass culture and the various types of mass culture versus types of high culture.
Aims of this reading: to worry about the meaning of mass culture – at best an
elusive term. Two big issues in this reading:
The definition of „mass culture‟ – note how vague it might be eg: “the most common,
ordinary, everyday culture shared by most people most of the time…” Problem: How
do we define „mass‟ in „mass culture‟.
It is clearly not the same as a class culture or to be identified with ‘working class
culture. So how close is it to ‘popular culture’.
2nd issue: what has been the attitude of intellectuals to „mass culture‟? Think along
with the reading, why their attitudes have been like they are. Can we have an idea of
„best‟ culture (this links to the extract from Arnold‟s Culture and Anarchy (2nd ed.
1875)
The authors bring in the issue of culture being shaped by the „ruling class‟ – this
kindof explanation almost automatically gives it a Marxist feel. Thus they mention
Marx and then the frankfurt school of neo-Marxist critical theorists. (Adorno etc.)
NOTE how the PRODUCTION of mass culture LINKS TO IDEOLOGY. Important
to get this clear.
Note how Adorno and Horkheimer in their very influential 1944 book, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, argue that „mass man‟ is shaped by mass culture – fragmented (link to
anomie) by each next piece of cultural trivia, romantic film, amusement. Mass culture
they say, alienates man from his „true authentic self‟ who is critical and thinking.
Mass culture makes us dull and conformist they claim. Can mass culture have good
effects on the masses? Note the point this reading makes abut the two sides of the
argument of mass culture: pro and con - it‟s a good thing; it‟s a bad thing..
And then the reading sets out 6 „aesthetic‟ cultures. Try to summarise each one and
work out their differences. The first three are NOT part of mass culture; the last three
are….roughly.
You might want to see these 6 cultures as convenient CATEGORIES which you can
use to label various bits of culture – eg. this painting, that novel, a poem, a song…
Think of how you categorise various sorts of popular music: rock, pop; indie, avante-
pop, goth, death metal…and hundreds more. Ands somehow you know how to label
them – the real difficulty is in DEFINING the criteria (the rules) for the categories.
You can do it intuitively, but the academic thing is to be able to say PRECISELY why
you said X was Goth as opposed to DEATH METAL.
The bit on the 6 categories or „aesthetic cultures‟ attempts this hard work of defining
categories.
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pdf pp. 14-15
Item 5: extract from Matthew Arnold‟s Culture and Anarchy (1st ed, 1869; 2nd ed
1875) Arnold was the son of perhaps the most famous headmaster of Rugby School,
Dr Thomas Arnold. It was during the good Doctor‟s Headship that the game of Rugby
was invented when William Webb Ellis during a football match, picked up the ball
and ran with it along the pitch.
Matthew Arnold was a fine mid 19th century English poet whose most famous poem
was „On Dover Beach‟.
It was he who made famous the phrase “Sweetness and Light” to describe the
wonders of true culture – of the best form of culture as opposed to vulgar, „barbarian‟
culture. Culture which was not thought-provoking and challenging.
Note: in the 19th century Europe was big on celebrating the cultural achievements of
the ancient greeks (around 500 bc). It was the greeks who developed ideas about
democracy and about morality or ethics which they spoke of as virtue (arête – the
greek word for virtue) or living in the best way possible – an art of existence.
Doing what was best for the community.
So people like Arnold, who would have been educated in the classics and held ancient
greek ideas in awe and reverence, would have learned of the importance of striving
for the „best‟ in culture, politics, morality, for society.
Culture and Anarchy is a classic. It is one of the founding contributions to the
high/lmass culture debate that is still going today.
Note how Arnold appeals to reason and God.
Note how machinery (industry) is associated with hate!
And then how the “raw and unkindled masses” can be touched by sweetness and light
of „good‟ culture.
Note what he says at the bottom of p.69 about whether we should dumb-down high
culture for mass consumption. Should we?
And note on p.70 how he introduces the theme of indoctrination. Make a link to
culture as ideology versus culture as classless
…because true culture in NOT IDEOLOGY but pure and true in itself. i.e. it
does not become ‘true’ because it represents good moral or political values..it
just simply is ‘good’.
Thus Arnold is a founder of the Art for Arts sake idea! (L’art pour l’art)
This is culture as expressive of human individuality (humanism) and freedom of
thought – another big 19th century theme cos of what was known as classical
liberalism (link to the famous 1859 essay by J.S. Mill, On Liberty)
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pdf pp. 16-18
Item 6 – Extract from Richard Hoggart‟s Uses of Literacy, 1957 Penguin.
Hoggart served on the Pilkington Committee reviewing Broadcasting 1960-62 and
led the attack on the quality of ITV (mass culture). He later became the first Director
of the world famous Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at
Birmingham University, and then Warden of Goldsmith‟s College, Univ of London.
He is talking about youth in the 1950s – a post war world of increasing disposable
income and rising wages and easy employment. This was a time of coffee bars in the
cities, of the beginnings of rock and roll and mass TV.
National Service was for 2 years, that is British males had to serve in the armed forces
for a period. It was stopped in 1958 (too expensive to maintain).
Major themes here are: 1) again the link between mass vulture and mass society
2) the loss of traditional working class identity – perhaps the loss of identity in
general
In the text:
Think about the meaning of the phrase “sensation without commitment” - back to
anomie? The condition of mass man?
How does Hoggart link up mass culture with mass society ultimately seeing it in a
positive or a negative light?
So this piece helps us a) to get to know something of a major bit of post-war cultural
criticism and b) see how modern popular/mass culture is discussed in terms of mass
society and alienated youth. Not even a sub-culture in sight?
Note: Hoggart was a Leeds working class scholarship boy who went to grammar
school and university.
How does he understand the tensions between working class traditional life and
that of these ‘juke-box boys’ many of whom come from working class homes but
who seem to have abandoned their roots by becoming ‘rootless’.
Think this through: how does modern mass culture and mass media reinforce
‘rootlessness’? What does Hoggart say?
AND think of difference then between ‘mass’ and ‘class’
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pdf pp 19-20.
Final item (7): extract from Jean Baudrillard‟s In the Shadow of the Silent
Majorities (1983)
This is perhaps the weirdest piece to read (and the shortest)
Aim: to have a taste of recent radical thinking about mass society and mass
culture.
Baudrillard is regarded as the leading French theorist of the postmodern.
Postmodernism suggests that we live life in a very fragmented way rather than with a
sense of purpose, stable sets of values, and a sense of wholeness as Hoggart would put
it.
Baudrillard is talking about the relation between the producers of mass media and the
reponses of the masses to it.
Question: how do they respond to the producers attempts to get across meanings?
What does Baudrillard say?
What does he mean by the masses thirst for the spectacular (remember item 3 – the
picture?) – the idolisation of any content so long as it is spectacle (mass culture
images? Link to semiotic theory - the play of signs.
What do the masses do to the meaning of the message sent out by the media?
Do we care about meaning and culture anymore? Or is everything mere
momentary sensation? The death of all culture?