sociology short answers

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Course: SOC 311

Instructor authorizing: Jepson

Extracted from (source citation): Social Theory: the Multicultural, Global, and Classic Readings / edited by Charles Lemert. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2017.

Source owned by: Instructor

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plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. Thus was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fel­ lows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a mo­ ment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession, they had sent my little fish into hiding....

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was born in Sar­ dinia. He studied at the University of Turin, where he became active in the Italian Socialist Party. By 1924 he became a founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party. Gramsci’s literary, journalistic, and political activities eventually led to his arrest in 1926. He spent most of the balance of his life in prison, where he wrote his famous Prison N ote­ books, from which the following selections are taken. Gramsci greatly broadened Marxist thinking on the role of intellectuals in the political process and the social hegemony, both of which would in­ fluence later social and cultural theory.

Intellectuals and Hegemony* Antonio Gramsci (1929—1936)

All men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.**

When one distinguishes between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality only to the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals, that is, one has in mind

* Selections from the P rison N otebooks o f A ntonio Gramsci, Q Hoare and G Nowell-Smith (eds), Lawrence and Wis- hart, London 1971. **Thus, because it can happen that everyone at some time fries a couple of eggs or sews up a tear in a jacket, we do not necessarily say that everyone is a cook or a tailor.

the direction in which their specific professional ac­ tivity is weighted, whether towards intellectual elab­ oration or towards muscular-nervous effort. This means that, although one can speak of intellectuals, one cannot speak of non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals do not exist. But even the relation­ ship between efforts of intellectual-cerebral elabora­ tion and muscular-nervous effort is not always the same, so that there are varying degrees of specific intellectual activity. There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded: hom o fa b e r cannot be separated from hom o sapiens. Each man, finally, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a “philosopher,” an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought. . . .

It is worth noting that the elaboration of intellec­ tual strata in concrete reality does not take place on the terrain of abstract democracy but in accordance with very concrete traditional historical processes. Strata have grown up which traditionally “produce” intellectuals and these strata coincide with those which have specialised in “saving,” i.e. the petty and middle landed bourgeoisie and certain strata of the petty and middle urban bourgeoisie. The varying distribution of different types of school (classical and professional) over the “economic” territory and the varying aspirations of different categories within these strata determine, or give form to, the produc­ tion of various branches of intellectual specialisation. Thus in Italy the rural bourgeoisie produces in par­ ticular state functionaries and professional people, whereas the urban bourgeoisie produces technicians for industry. Consequently it is largely northern Italy which produces technicians and the South which produces functionaries and professional men.

The relationship between the intellectuals and the world of production is not as direct as it is with the fundamental social groups but is, in varying degrees, “mediated” by the whole fabric of society and by the complex of superstructures, of which the intellectu­ als are, precisely, the “functionaries.” It should be possible both to measure the “organic quality” [orga- nicita] of the various intellectual strata and their de­ gree of connection with a fundamental social group, and to establish a gradation of their functions and of the superstructures from the bottom to the top (from the structural base upwards). What we can do,

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for the moment, is to fix two major superstructural “levels”: the one that can be called “civil society,” that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called “pri­ vate,” and that of “political society” or “the State.” These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of “hegemony” which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of “direct domination” or command exercised through the State and “juridical” government. The functions in question are precisely organisational and connective. The intellectuals are the dominant groups “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. . . .

The philosophy of praxis does not tend to leave the “simple” in their primitive philosophy of common sense, but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life. If it affirms the need for contact between in­ tellectuals and the simple, it is not in order to restrict scientific activity and preserve unity at the low level of the masses, but precisely in order to construct an intellectual moral bloc which can make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups.

The active man-in-the-mass has a practical activ­ ity, but has no clear theoretical consciousness of his practical activity, which nonetheless involves under­ standing the world in so far as it transforms it. His theoretical consciousness can indeed be historically in opposition to his activity. One might also say that he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or one con­ tradictory consciousness): one which is implicit in his activity and which in reality unites him with all his fellow-workers in the practical transformation of the real world; and one, superficially explicit or ver­ bal, which he has inherited from the past and uncrit­ ically absorbed. But this verbal conception is not without consequences. It holds together a specific social group, it influences moral conduct and the di­ rection of will, with varying efficacity but often pow­ erfully enough to produce a situation in which the contradictory state of consciousness does not permit of any action, any decision or any choice, and pro­ duces a condition of moral and political passivity. Critical understanding of self takes place therefore through a struggle of political “hegemonies” and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s own concep­ tion of reality. Consciousness of being part of a par­ ticular hegemonic force (that is to say, political consciousness) is the first stage towards a further

progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will finally be one. Thus the unity of theory and practice is not just a matter of mechanical fact, but a part of the historical process, whose elementary and primitive phase is to be found in the sense of being “different” and “apart,” in an instinctive feel­ ing of independence, and which progresses to the level of real possession of a single and coherent con­ ception of the world. This is why it must be stressed that the political development of the concept of he­ gemony represents a great philosophical advance as well as a politico-practical one. For it necessarily sup­ poses an intellectual unity and an ethic in confor­ mity with a conception of reality that has gone beyond common sense and has become, if only within narrow limits, a critical conception.

However, in the most recent developments of the philosophy of praxis the exploration and refinement of the concept of the unity of theory and practice is still only at an early stage. There still remain residues of mechanicism, since people speak about theory as a “complement” or an “accessory” of practice, or as the handmaid of practice. It would seem right for this question too to be considered historically, as an aspect of the political question of the intellectuals. Critical self-consciousness means, historically and politically, the creation of an elite of intellectuals. A human mass does not “distinguish” itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest sense, organising itself; and there is no organ­ isation without intellectuals, that is without organ­ isers and leaders, in other words, without the theoretical aspect of the theory-practice nexus being distinguished concretely by the existence of a group of people “specialised” in conceptual and philosoph­ ical elaboration of ideas. But the process of creating intellectuals is long, difficult, full of contradictions, advances and retreats, dispersals and regroupings, in which the loyalty of the masses is often sorely tried.

Mao Tse-tung [Zedong] (1893-1976) was a founding leader of the Chinese Communist Party. After completing his formal studies in 1918 at the First Teachers’ Training School in Changsha, Mao began a long career as writer, teacher, journalist, political organizer, and politician. He was one of the original twelve delegates to the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1927, he led the peasant uprising in Hunan, after which he re­ treated into hiding. He then led the famous “long