The 'Conservative turn' since the late 1970s (user search)
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 02:09:40 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  History (Moderator: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee)
  The 'Conservative turn' since the late 1970s (search mode)
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: The 'Conservative turn' since the late 1970s  (Read 1688 times)
Tetro Kornbluth
Gully Foyle
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 12,846
Ireland, Republic of


« on: May 26, 2013, 02:38:21 PM »

This thread - sorry for the somewhat academic title (but then again the 1970s-1980s was full of such turns) - was inspired by this conversation here:

Why do people - especially scientists who dip their toes in social science - always seem to think that we are now living through TEH MOST EXCITING TRANSFORMULATION ERA EVAR!!!111? I? I don't see it personally. This is - except in regards to technology - an incredibly conservative era compared to any time between 1920 (or maybe even the 1890s) and 1979. And I don't see much cultural change on the horizon, growth or not.

The Forward March of Labour Halted. No question mark.

That, of course, is a major cause of that. I wouldn't deny that. Not the only one though.

I don't disagree, but these things all link up. The death of Modernism, for example.

I think most of us can agree looking at history there in the 'west' (wherever that is) there has been a Conservative and Culturally shift over the last 30-40 years. This has corresponded imo with a period in which 'popular' and 'high' culture (if those distinctions even mean anything or were just the bastard creation of Victorianism and Modernism) have mostly been stagnant and uncreative especially when compared to before. This is hardly a new insight, in fact it is so common place that even Vanity Fair wrote an article on this last year though their emphasis was solely on, o/c, public culture and fashions. So a question then, or at least a discussion point, How are these cultural and political trends connected? What has caused this? How do we get it out of it, assuming that we can? I certainly see no great cultural revolution on the horizon at this minute and despite the crisis, all political movements seem to be playing out their worn and predictable scripts just more shrilly than before (Hello Tea Party) or as irrelevant as the pre-crisis recent (Hello Occupy movement).

I think here I would like to give an intellectual example before going:
A while back I read the French Annaliste historian, Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism Volume III which is an overview of the Early Modern period and the development of what was then called Capitalism. As economic histories go, it is good oversight although as a discipline much has changed since the 1970s when it was written (as happens in academic life - there's not a single mention of 'networks' or 'globalizing'. And very few of 'markets' and when they do occur they tend to refer specifically to stock markets). But in his epilogue he makes an interesting argument, having developed a lineal narrative which jumps from Venice, Sevilla, Amsterdam and London over three centuries and takes in Mexico, Peru, Brazil, the Carribean, West Africa and Bengal (among others) he starts to speculate on the nature of capitalism and in particular whether it is soon to dissapear*. Now Braudel was a liberal, not a Marxist and his economic analysis was not specifically Marxist, talk of the class struggle is mostly absent but... could you imagine any historian or any intellectual writing that now? Hell, what does that even mean? Does anyone even know anymore? Braudel certainly didn't. He never once mentions - in the best Marxist tradition - what it was to be replaced with**.

(* - Just to show how anachronistic this is to modern eyes, to back up his argument he quotes Herbert Marcuse. Yes, that's right)
(** - This story I often use in other places to argue against those who like to backup their arguments with ephemeral and difficult to define concepts especially if they are of recent vintage)
Logged
Tetro Kornbluth
Gully Foyle
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 12,846
Ireland, Republic of


« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2013, 07:28:37 AM »

The idea that 'high culture' ever drove anything is a fallacy. Those who pine for 'something' to happen to cause a cultural shift (because they want something to get invested in, attach to or oppose for their own personal development) should be rightly ignored.

I'm not too sure for this actually (though it depends a lot on what you mean by high culture). I would certainly argue against any viewpoint which states that cultural products are merely epiphenomen of material or technological causes and are thus unimportant - or that they merely 'reflect' society (whatever that means) or the individual in question responsible for the work and don't influence the perception of it.

I'm not pining for anything really, I'm trying to understand shifts in historical consciousness which can be identified in the late 1970s.
Logged
Tetro Kornbluth
Gully Foyle
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 12,846
Ireland, Republic of


« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2013, 06:22:37 AM »

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not talking here about Asia.

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

I never said otherwise.

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Quote
You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm not talking here about 'traditional media' and I would really question that despite the greater variety and options now there are actually more 'styles' available in practice.

can't we just be vulgar and claim that the conservative turn in culture is, in the last analysis, reducible to the increasing concentration of capital and the reverse-redistribution of the neoliberal counterrevolution?

No.
Logged
Pages: [1]  
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.031 seconds with 12 queries.