Capitalism is modernity's most beguiling and dangerous form of enchantment

posted by S. Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Eugene McCarraher in Aeon:

Perhaps the grandest tale of capitalist modernity is entitled ‘The Disenchantment of the World’.

Crystallised in the work of Max Weber but eloquently anticipated by Karl Marx, the story goes something like this: before the advent of capitalism, people believed that the world was enchanted, pervaded by mysterious, incalculable forces that ruled and animated the cosmos. Gods, spirits and other supernatural beings infused the material world, anchoring the most sublime and ultimate values in the ontological architecture of the Universe.

In premodern Europe, Catholic Christianity epitomised enchantment in its sacramental cosmology and rituals, in which matter could serve as a conduit or mediator of God’s immeasurable grace.

But as Calvinism, science and especially capitalism eroded this sacramental worldview, matter became nothing more than dumb, inert and manipulable stuff, disenchanted raw material open to the discovery of scientists, the mastery of technicians, and the exploitation of merchants and industrialists. Discredited in the course of enlightenment, the enchanted cosmos either withered into historical oblivion or went into the exile of private belief in liberal democracies.

As Marx put it, all that was solid melted into air, and the most heavenly ecstasies drowned in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

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Eugene McCarraher

is an associate professor of humanities and history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Dissent, The Nation, Commonweal, The Hedgehog Review and Raritan. His latest book is The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity (2019).

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What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism

an article by Kristian Frisk (University of Southern Denmark) published in Sociology Volume 53 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

The article discusses four dominant perspectives in the sociology of heroism:
– the study of great men;
– hero stories;
– heroic actions; and
– hero institutions.

The discussion ties together heroism and fundamental sociological debates about the relationship between the individual and the social order; it elucidates the socio-psychological, cultural/ideational and socio-political structuring of heroism, which challenges the tendency to understand people, actions and events as naturally, or intrinsically, heroic; and it points to a theoretical trajectory within the literature, which has moved from very exclusive to more inclusive conceptualisations of a hero.

After this discussion, the article examines three problematic areas in the sociology of heroism:
– the underlying masculine character of heroism;
– the presumed disappearance of the hero with modernisation; and
– the principal idea of heroism as a pro-social phenomenon.

The article calls for a more self-conscious engagement with this legacy, which could stimulate dialogue across different areas of sociological research.

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Perceptions of surveillance: Reflexivity and trust in a mediatized world (the case of Sweden)

an article by André Jansson (Karlstad University, Sweden) published in European Journal of Communication volume 27 Number 4 (December 2012)

Abstract

Even though the field of surveillance studies has expanded during the last decade, there is still a need for studies that empirically explain and contextualise people’s perceptions of the increasingly mediatised ‘surveillance society’.

This article provides a ‘middle range’ social theorisation, following Giddens, as well as an updated empirical account, based on a nationwide Swedish survey, of how various forms of surveillance are perceived as social phenomena.

Through factor analysis three dimensions are elaborated:

• state surveillance, 
• commercial surveillance, and
• mediated interveillance.

The article argues that the realm of interveillance blurs the line between systemic and social trust, and thus calls for context-specific modes of routinised reflexivity.

Whereas such modes of boundary maintenance may potentially run across social lines of division, the results suggest that the management of interveillance primarily constitutes an instance of sociocultural structuration.

Hazel’s comment:
This item is, of course, not even remotley connected to careers information but the blurb about my blog says “with the emphasis on” not “exclusively about”!

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