Download The modern image of mass society begins with the French

The modern image of mass
society begins with the French
aristrocrat Alexis de Tocqueville
who toured the United States of
America in the 1830s in search of
the ‘secret of democracy’
• Tocqueville was struck by the similarity of
ideas and values among the people and
speculated that such a society might fall
victim to a mass or herd mentality which
he called ‘the tyranny of the majority’.
Tocqueville’s classic description of
mass society
An innumerable multitude of men, all equal and
alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the
petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut
their lives. Each of them, living apart, is a
stranger to the fate of all the rest. His children
and his private friends constitute to him the
whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellowcitizens, he is close to them but he sees them
not; he touches them be he feels them not.
• Tocqueville’s classic work Democracy in
America (1835-40) identifies within democracies
a tension between equality and liberty which
cannot easily be reconciled.
• ‘Democracy tends to undermine hierarchy and
discourages the formation of intermediate
groupings between the individual and society
and thereby promotes tendencies towards
individualism and centralisation which, if
unchecked, may result in an authoritarian state.’
• 19th century sociologists shared many of
de Tocqueville’s concerns about the
emerging culture of industrial societies.
Emile Durkheim diagnosed ‘anomie in the
new order’ and Max Weber focused on
the ‘dead hand of bureaucracy’ while
Ferdinand Tonnies reflected unfavourably
on the crowded, urban, mass societies
then emerging in Europe.
• Anomie means an absence, breakdown,
confusion, or conflict in the norms of a
society. The term anomia is linked to the
adjective anomos meaning ‘without law’.
• In Durkheim’s writings the concept
appears prominently in The Division of
Labour in Society and Suicide.
In ‘Division of Labour in Society’ the term
emerges through society’s transition from
‘mechanical’ to ‘organic’ solidarity.
• ‘Increasing division of labour brings about
social integration through organic
solidarity, but where economic change is
too fast for the growth of moral regulation
to keep pace with increasing differentiation
and specialisation then an abnormal or
anomic pathological division of labour
occurs.’
• In a society exhibiting mechanical solidarity, its cohesion
and integration comes from the homogeneity of
individuals - people feel connected through similar work,
educational and religious training, and lifestyle.
Mechanical solidarity normally operates in ‘traditional’
and ‘small scale’ societies.
• Organic solidarity comes from the interdependence that
arises from specialization of work and the
complementarities between people - a development
which occurs in ‘modern’ and ‘industrial’ societies.
Durkheim introduced the terms ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic solidarity’ as
part of his theory of the development of societies in The Division of
Labour in Society (1893).
• The argument is further developed in his
discussion of Suicide where anomie is one of the
four causes of suicide identified.
• Anomic suicide occurs increasingly in organic
societies, notably at times of economic
depression or boom, when there is a lessening
of economic regulation. In such periods people
are less closely locked into their society, so their
basic desires may become limitless and
confused.
The concept of mechanical and organic solidarity is
often contrasted with Karl Marx’s idea of ‘alienation’.
• Defined as the ‘estrangement of individuals from
one another, or from a specific situation or
process’, the concept of alienation is central to
Marxist sociology.
• ‘All forms of production result in ‘objectification’,
by which people manufacture goods which
embody their creative talents yet come to stand
apart from their creators. Alienation thus, is the
distorted form that humanity’s objectification of
its species-being takes under capitalism.’
Max Weber, together with Durkheim, is often
regarded the founder of modern sociology
• The neo-Kantian idea that human society
was not a matter of chance but of
‘probabilities’, and what made social
science possible was the fact that human
beings act rationally for at least a large
part of the time, is at the basis of Weber’s
work.
Weber developed a four-fold classification of social action
(action directed towards significant others and to which we
attach a subjective meaning) -
• Traditional action undertaken because it
has always been so performed
• Affectual action based on or driven by
emotion
• Value-rational action directed towards
ultimate values; and
• End-rational or instrumental action.
Only the last two of these fall within the scope of
rational action.
• Weber saw the development of modern societies
as a process of increasing rationalisation in
which the world loses its mystery.
The growth of large scale modern bureaucracy is a
major part of that process and one of Weber’s
criticisms of socialism was that it would simply
hasten this ‘disenchantment’ of life.
Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936) is famous
for his distinction between Gemeinschaft
(community) and Gesellschaft
(association).
The distinction refers to the different types of
relationships supposedly characteristic of smallscale and large-scale societies respectively.
In the former, where the population is largely immobile,
status is ascribed and the family and church play
important roles in sustaining a clearly defined set of
beliefs, emotional and cooperative relationships flourish.
The village and small community are therefore
characterised by gemeinshaftlish or community
relationships.
These relationships however dissolve into contractual and
impersonal relationships as the division of labour grows
more complex, so that large-scale organisations and
cities express gesellschaftilich associational social
forms.
• These ideas were largely ignored or
dismissed as elitist nostalgia until the
1950s, when sociologists and political
scientists began to write about the
immediate past history of totalitarianism in
Europe and the Soviet Union.
• In The Politics of Mass Society (1959),
William Kornhauser argued that
populations cut adrift from stable
communities, and having uniform and fluid
values, would be vulnerable to the appeals
of totalitarian mass movements.
‘The structure of mass society consists in direct
elite-non-elite relations by virtue of the paucity of
intermediate groups. The lack of intermediate
groups leaves institutional elites poorly related to
society, and directly accessible to penetration by
mass movements. It also leaves non-elites
poorly related to society, and directly available
for mobilisation by mass-oriented elites …
Mass society is characterised by mass men in
elites as well as in non-elites, and therefore
by the psychological vulnerability of both
elites and non-elites to mass appeals.’
• Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, and
others of the Frankfurt School focused
their attention on the narrowly ideological
nature of ‘mass culture’ and a whole
critical literature developed around this
perspective. They were the founders of
what is known as the ‘critical theory’.
• The first meaning of the term critical theory was that
defined by Max Horkheimer in his 1937 essay Traditional
and Critical Theory. Critical theory is social theory
oriented toward ‘critiquing and changing society as a
whole’, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only to
‘understanding or explaining it’.
• Its core concepts are: (1) That critical social theory
should be directed at the totality of society in its historical
specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific
point in time), and (2) That Critical Theory should
improve understanding of society by integrating all the
major social sciences, including economics, sociology,
history, political science, anthropology, and psychology.
• Theodore Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in
which critical tendencies or potentialities were
eliminated.
• He argued that the culture industry, which produced and
circulated cultural commodities through the mass media,
manipulated the population.
• Popular culture was identified as a reason why people
become passive; the easy pleasures available through
consumption of popular culture made people docile and
content, no matter how terrible their economic
circumstances. The differences among cultural goods
make them appear different, but they are in fact just
variations on the same theme.
Adorno conceptualised this phenomenon as pseudoindividualization and the always-the-same. He saw this
mass-produced culture as a danger to the more difficult
high arts.
Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensional Man
(1964) developed this line of argument to
its fullest extent, asserting the absolute
hegemony of mass culture and the
impossibility of social change
• One-Dimensional Man offers a wide-ranging critique of
both contemporary capitalism and the Soviet model of
communism, documenting the parallel rise of new forms
of social repression (both public and personal) in both
these societies as well as the decline of revolutionary
potential in the West.
• He argued that "advanced industrial society" created
false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing
system of production and consumption via mass media,
advertising, industrial management, and contemporary
modes of thought. This results in a ‘one-dimensional’
universe of thought and behaviour in which aptitude and
ability for critical thought and oppositional behaviour
withers away.
• The principle themes of the theory of mass
society are still important. In fact the
recent work of Robert Putnam – Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community – on social capital
has once again raised this issue, returning
to the ideas of Tocqueville.
• Putnam argues that the United States of
America has undergone an unprecedented
collapse in civic, social, associational, and
political life (these he collectively calls social
capital) since the 1960s, with serious negative
consequences. Though he measured this
decline in data of many varieties, his most
striking point was that virtually every traditional
civic, social and fraternal organization -- typified
by bowling leagues -- had undergone a massive
decline in membership while the number of
people bowling increased drastically.
Putnam makes a distinction between two kinds of
social capital: bonding capital and bridging capital.
• Bonding occurs when you are socializing with people
who are like you: same age, same race, same religion,
and so on. But in order to create peaceful societies in a
diverse multi-ethnic country, one needs to have a second
kind of social capital: bridging.
• Bridging is what you do when you make friends with
people who are not like you, like supporters from another
football team.
Putnam argues that those two kinds of social capital,
bonding and bridging, do strengthen each other.
Consequently, with the decline of the bonding capital
mentioned above inevitably comes the decline of the
bridging capital leading to greater ethnic tensions.
Mass media, mass culture and
mass society
The relation of the mass media to contemporary popular
culture is commonly conceived in terms of dissemination
of news and information from the elite to the mass.
• During the 18th century it was the utmost chic for the aristocrats of
the French Court to assume the guise of shepherds and peasants in
their restive outings.
• Akbar and Birbal are said to often disguise themselves as common
people to find out what was happening in the kingdom.
• Rama had his agents moving around his kingdom and it was one
such agent who reported to him the comment passed by the
washerman about Sita.