Modern Industrial Society

Modern Industrial SocietyThis essay will feat a brief review of the history of the opinion close and its relationship with the judgment civilisation, in order to understand the two constructs, without making any claims towards whirl anything new in the analysis of the chronological account of how the definition of refinement changed each(prenominal) over time.1Instead, the essay will attempt to explore the harmonies and dis-harmonies in the utilization of the two concepts, as a way of coming to terms with immanent ruptures and continuities which were explicated in various slipway in which the logic and lexicon of these concepts were deployed in the different anthropological traditions over the years.From the outset, I would like to mention that I almost aband nonpareild this rangeicular topic because of the difficulties I encountered in finding a concise definition of, chiefly the concept of gloss. When, after sev eral weeks of reading, it finally dawned on me that act ually there was none, it all started to make sense that the subject of defining the concept of acculturation has neer been closed and was never int give the axeed for foreclosure. This guesst that disposition how the concept was variously deployed was as important as appreciating the manner of its deployment, especially in ways in which this was ever so associated with the concept of cultivation, whose definition was to a heavy(p)er extent straightforward.The notion of destinationFollowing a very unsuccessful search for a concise definition of the concept civilization, it dawned on me that Terry Eagleton and several others was after all correct when he said that tillage was one of the few very complicated concepts to have ever graced the English language (Armstrong, 2010 1 Eagleton, 2006 1 Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952). Culture was a very difficult concept to define because the evolution of its etymology and its deployment varied in different contexts and anthropological tr aditions, twain contemporary and classical. Its meaning in one setting was often contested in another.The word culture was first use in America2, and in etymological terms, its contemporary utilization has its origin in attempts to describe mans relationship with nature, done which resources were extracted. It interpret the outcomes of extraction of resources from nature through a process of labor, for example, through crop farming and livestock end product (Eagleton, 2006 1). It was in this sense that the concept was first systemally deployed in the 19th century in Germany, where the word used was Kultur, which in German referred to cultivation.3The early German usage of the word culture was heavily influenced by Kant, who, like his followers, spelled the word as culture, and used it repeatedly to mean cultivation or becoming cultured, which subsequently became the initial meaning of civilization (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 10). The way the concept was first used in current En glish borrowed from the usage first made of the word by Walter Taylor, which dates back to 1871, although according to Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952 9), Taylors use of the word culture, which was borrowed from German, was similar to the way the word civilization was used in Germany.The to a higher(prenominal) place sense in which the concept culture was for long deployed depicted it as an activity or occupation that entailed a somaticist dimension related to the extraction of resources from nature. orgasm from Walter Taylor, the modern scientific sense of the word culture no longer refers primarily to the process of cultivation, but much generally as a presentation of customs, beliefs and forms of government (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 10). The latter sense signifies some abstraction to the transcendent and divine realm of spiritualism. Over time, the concept was in any case deployed in other ways that depicted it as an entity (Eagleton, 2006 1). There was likewise a sense in wh ich the concept of culture also depicted the transformation that took place in partnerships contracts with changing technologies of production as capitalism developed, although this collar was quite often deployed in racist terms to differentiate amongst less industrialized nations of the non-west from the more industrialized European societies.It is true, as observed by Eagleton that the relationship between nature and culture was such that nature produces culture which changes nature (Eagleton, 2006 3). In this sense, there is a part of nature that is cultural, and another that is not. The part of nature which is cultural is that part which labor transforms, for example, into works of art, monuments, skyscrapers (or building structures) or cities. Such products of culture are as native as rural idylls are cultural (Eagleton, 2006 4). Because culture originally meant cultivation, or managing the growth of crops, which means husbandry, the cultural therefore would imply that wh ich was within ones means to change. As pointed out by Eagleton (2006 4), the stuff to be altered has its own sovereign existence, which then lends it something of the recalcitrance of nature in much the same way as the extent to which culture transforms nature and also influences the rigorous limits nature imposes on the cultural project.To this extent, I am in agreement with Eagleton (2006 4-5) that the idea of culture sentience a double rejection, of, on the one hand, the representation of culture as an organic (biological) determinism and, on the other, as an interpretation of culture as an embodiment of autonomous spiritualism. To this extent therefore, culture rebuffs naturalism and idealism founded in biological determinism by insisting that from the point of view of culture, there was also a representation within nature which exceeded and dismantled nature. It also represented a refusal of idealism because even the highest-minded human agency had its humble grow in our b iology and natural environment.The resulting contradiction from this rejection of naturalism (emanating from organic determinism) and idealism (as a result of autonomy of spirit) led to a contest between what had actually evolved and what ought to, which transfigured into what Eagleton described as a latent hostility between making and being made, between rationality and spontaneity (Eagleton, 2006 5).Consequently, although the relation between humans and nature was important to an understanding culture, in this paper, I rent the fond relations between humans and nature in the course of extracting from nature, through which humans change nature to be the most important. This is what is central to understanding the concept of culture, which makes it possible to view it as a systematic way of life and living, that humans consciously develop that is transferred from the past to the present and into the future. It depicts some color of historically assembled normative values and pr inciples internal to social organizations through which a diversity of relationships are ordered. In this way, it is possible to see how culture becomes an abstraction of itself, in its own right, which does not reify culture as a thing as this essentializes culture. I am inclined to agree with Armstrong (2010 2) in her definition, which presents culture more as a process of meaning making which informs our sense of who we are, how we want to be perceived and how others perceive us.The above said, we also need to recognize that eon culture is important, it is also not the only positionor that shapes social relations between humans in the course of impacting on nature in ways that change it. Several other social, economic, political, geographical, historical and physical factors come into tactical maneuver. It is necessary to recognize that culture, which embodies as much as it conceals its unique(predicate) history, politics and economics is, as also pointed out by Franz Boaz4, not inert. It is an immanently Boasian conception to view culture as extremely dynamic as having life, and existing in a continuous state of flux, as new notions of and about culture continues to emerge. This means that cultures cannot be expected to be static and homogeneous. As new cultures emerge, tensions are ordinarily generated. The totality of any culture and its individual trait cannot be understood if taken out of its general setting. Likewise, culture cannot also be conceived as controlled by a single set of conditions (Benedict, 1934 xv).It is also Franz Boaz5who noted that culture is some form of standardized or normative behavior. An individual lives in his/her specific culture, in as much the same way as culture is lived by an individual. Culture has a materiality that makes it manifest in diverse patterns implying that it meaningless to reach and generalize or homogenize about cultural patterns (Benedict, 1934 xvi). Thinking of culture as socially constructed netw orks of meaning that distinguish one group from another implies not only a rejection of social evolution but also an endorsement of cultural relativism, which is also a Boasian tradition.6Boaz7rightly argued that perspectives that view culture in evolutionary terms tend to end with the construction of a unified picture of the history of culture and civilization, which is misleading. Tendencies which view culture as a single and homogenous unit, and as an individual historical problem is extremely problematic (Benedict, 1934 xv). I consider the distinctive life-ways of different people as the most basic understanding of the notion of culture. Cultural relativity is a recognition that different people have cultures and life-ways that are distinct from those of others.The notion of civilizationThe concept of civilization, like culture, also has a complex etymology. By 1694, the french were already using the verb civiliser, and referred to the polishing of address, rendering sociable, or becoming urbane as a result of urban center life (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 11). The French notion of civilization referred to the achievement of human advancement manifest in certain customs and standards of living. The French considered civilization as the end point of a process of cultivation that took place over centuries (Elliot, 2002). The English lagged behind the French.8In 1773, Samuel Johnson still excluded civilization from his dictionary, preferring civility, and yet civilization (from the word civilize) captured kick shovel instairs the opposite of barbarity than civility. The English subsequently adopted the concept of civilization deriving it from the verb to civilize and associated it with the notion of civilizing others. The 1933 Oxford Dictionary defined civilization as A developed or groundbreaking state of human society a particular stage or type of this (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 12). By the 18th century, the word civilization in German was associated with the spread by the state of political developments akin to the German state to peoples of other nations. It was somewhat similar to the English verb to civilize (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 11). For the Germans and English, the concept of civilization invoked an purple political agenda that was apparent in the way they deployed the concept.The harmony and dis-harmonies in deployment of concepts of culture and civilizationThe evolutionary thinking about culture and civilization in the philosophy of DurkheimAmong the scholars who attempted a very rigorous narrative intended to distinguish between culture and civilization was mile Durkheim, whose publications were first published in 1893. In trying to come to terms with the complex division of labor and associated behavioral changes that occurred with the industrial revolution in England, Durkheim, argued that at heart modern industry, jobs were demarcated and extremely specialized, and while each product was a specialty, it entailed th e existence of others in form of the labor they input into its production. As society evolved from agriculture to industry, so did culture of the pre-industrial era give way to civilization associated with the conditions of progress in human societies. Durkheim extended the concept of division of labor from Economics to organisms and society, from which its association with culture was derived, arguing that the more specialized an organisms functions were, the more exalted a place it occupied in the animal hierarchy. For Durkheim, the extent of division of labor in society influenced the direction of the development of the evolution of mankind from culture to civilization (Durkheim, 1984 3).Durkheim used division of labor to make the distinction between culture as a preserve of the pre-modern mediaeval society and civilization as belonging to the modern industrial society. Durkheim argued that all societies are usually held together by social solidarity. In the pre-industrial societ ies, where social bonds were based on customs and norms, this solidarity was automatonlike while in the industrial societies, which were highly individualistic, the solidarity was organic, and social bonds were maintained by contracts which regulated relations between highly individualistic beings. To Durkheim, societies transition from relatively simple pre-modern societies to relatively more complex industrial societies (Durkheim, 1984 3).Durkheim argued that division of labor influenced the righteous constitution of societies by creating moral rules for human conduct that influenced social order in ways that made industrial societies distinct from the pre-industrial ones. It created a civilized, individual man, capable of being interested in everything but attaching himself exclusively to nothing, able to savor everything and understand everything, found the means to combine and epitomize within himself the finest aspects of civilization. For Durkheim, tradition and custom, col lectively defined as culture were the basis of distinction of the simpler societies which defined their mechanical form of solidarity that they exhibit. The modern societies, according to Durkheim, were characterized civilization (Durkheim, 1984 3-4).Durkheim advanced an essentially Darwinian argument. In the biological determinism of Durkheim, it is argued that the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity was comparable to the changes that appeared on the evolutionary scale. Relatively simple organisms showing only minimal degrees of internal differentiation ceded place to more highly differentiate organisms whose functional specialization allowed them to exploit more efficiently the resources of the ecological niche in which they happened to be placed. The more specialized the functions of an organism, the higher its level on the evolutionary scale, and the higher its survival value. In similar ways, the more differentiated a society, the higher its chances to exploit the maxi mum of available resources, and hence the higher its efficiency in procuring indispensable means of subsistence in a given territory (Durkheim, 1984 xvi).There were fundamental contradictions in the perspectives of Durkheim. If Durkheim denigrated culture to the pre-modern, and viewed society as developing in evolutionary terms to the industrial, it could be assumed that he also believed that the solidarity which was associated with the industrial society was better. What then explains the fact that Durkheim was deeply convinced of and concerned about the pathology of acquisitiveness in modern capitalist society? Durkheim did not believe that the pathological features of the industrial society were caused by an inherent flaw in systems built on organic solidarity. Rather, he thought that the malaise and anomie were caused by transitional difficulties that could be overcome through the emergence of new norms and values in the institutional setting of a new corporate organization of i ndustrial affairs (Durkheim, 1984 xxi).For Durkheim, the flaws in industrial and class relations did not mean that the pre-modern characterized by culture was better. That the class conflicts which were inherent in the industrial society and were associated with the structure of capitalist society would be overcome by the emergence of a new corporate society in which relations between employers and employees were harmonized. Beholden to none of the political and social orientations of his day, Durkheim always attempted to look for a balanced middle way (Durkheim, 1984 xxii).The contemporary play of relationships between culture and civilization has, to say the least, rendered wanting, the ideas which were advanced by Durkheim. For example, if culture is a preserve of the pre-modern, what explains the pervasiveness of barbarism within civilized formations of the industrialized world? open fire we have culture in societies that are characterized as civilized or with civilization? Or are societies that are said to possess culture impoverished of civilization?The contradictions in the etymology and deployment of concepts of culture and civilizationThe usage of culture and civilization in various languages has been confusing. Websters Unabridged Dictionary for English defined both culture and civilization in terms of the other. Culture was a particular state or stage of advancement in civilization. Civilization was called advancement or a state of social culture. In both popular and literary English, they were often treated as near synonyms, though civilization was sometimes restricted to advanced or high cultures (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 13). As early as the 1950s, there were some writers who were inclined to regard civilization as the culture of urbanized societies characterized by cities. Often, civilization was considered a preserve for literate cultures, for instance, while the Chinese had civilization, the Eskimo were seen as in possession of culture (Kroe ber Kluckhohn, 1952 13).The English language distinction between civilization and culture made in the past was different from that made in the German language. In German, civilization was confined to the material conditions, while the English expression sometimes included psychic, moral, and spiritual phenomena (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 13). The German Kultur also referred to material civilization, while culture in English over time came to mean something entirely different, which corresponded to the humanities. The German Kultur also related to the arts of savages and barbaric peoples, which were not included in any use of civilization since the term civilization denoted a stage of advancement higher than savagery or barbarism. These stages in advancement in civilization were even popularly known as stages of culture implying that the word culture was used synonymous with the German Kultur (Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 13). In English, culture was a condition or achievement possessed by society. It was not individual. The English phrase a cultured someone did not employ the term in the German sense. There was a sense of non-specificity in the way in which the concept culture (Kultur) was deployed in the German sense (Krober Kluckhorn, 1952 13).From its etymological roots in rural labor, the word culture was first deployed in reference to civility then in the 18th century, it became more or less synonymous with civilization, in the sense of a general process of intellectual, spiritual and material progress. In Europe, civilization as an idea was equated to manners and morals. To be civilized included not spitting on the carpet as well as not decapitating ones prisoners of war. The very word implied a dubitable correlation between mannerly conduct and ethical behavior, which in England was equated to the word gentleman. As a synonym of civilization, culture belonged to the general spirit of Enlightenment, with its cult of secular, forward self-development (Eag leton, 2006 9).Form my reading of the literature on this subject, it was not clear at what point culture and civilization begun to be deployed interchangeably. Suffice to mention, however, that in English, as in French, the word culture was not unconditionally interchangeable with civilization. While it was not entirely clear, between the two concepts of culture and civilization, which predated the other, they both shared a inexplicable association with the notion of cultivation, as something which is done to (or changes in) humans in the course of exacting labor upon nature to change it, that leads to the development of human qualities to suit the involve of collective humanity. Culture, which emerged in German from the notion of Kultur, which meant cultivation, appeared as a form of universal subjectivity at work within the particularistic realm of our bring out individualities. For Eagleton (2006 8), it was a view of culture as a component of civilization which was neither dis sociated from society nor wholly at one with it.This kind of focus also portrayed an essentially Kantian notion of man as becoming courteous through art and science, and becoming civilized by attaining a miscellanea of social graces and refinements (or decencies), in which the state had a role to play. This Kantian conception therefore distinguished between being cultivated and being civilized. Being cultivated referred to intrinsic improvement of the person, while being civilized referred to improvements of social interrelations (interpersonal relations), some kind of ethical pedagogy which served to liberate the collective self buried in every individual into a political citizen (Eagleton, 2006 7 Kroeber Kluckhohn, 1952 11).There was a sense in which the concept of civilization had an overwhelming French connection (coming from the concept civilizer), in the same way culture was associated with the Germans (from the concept Kultur). To be described as civilized was associated b y the French with finesse with regards to social, political, economic and technical aspects life. For the Germans, culture had a more narrowly religious, artistic and intellectual reference. From this point of view, Eagleton (2006 9) was right when he observed that (i) civilization was deployed in a manner that played down national differences, while culture highlighted them and, (ii) the tension between culture and civilization had much to do with the rivalry between Germany and France. I am reminded here of Eagletons renowned phrase that civilization was formulaically French, while culture was stereotypically German (Eagleton, 2006 10-11).Towards the end of the 19th century civilization and culture were invariably viewed as antonyms. If, however, the description by Eagleton (2006 9) of French notion of civilization as a form of social refinement is acceptable, then one can also accept Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952 14) description of civilization as a process of ennobling (or creati ng nobility) of humanity through the exercise by society of increased control of the elementary human impulses. This makes civilization a form of politics. In the same light, I also agree with Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952 14) that cultures German connections link it with the control of nature through science and art, which means culture embodies technology (including equipment) as well as knowledge systems (including skills) relevant for subduing and employing nature.The implications of the above are two-fold (a) culture and civilization, can not be looked at as antonyms or binary opposites, in the sense in which evolution theorists would want us to view the relationship between these two concepts with culture as being akin to an inferior status while civilization is ascribed to the superior (b) both tend to depict not only elements of normativity in advance in life-forms, but also constantly ameliorate internal conditions of the internal elements of these concepts that define hum anity which they embody. There is a way in which the elements embodied by these concepts depict superiority in their respective life-forms. purge when there are tendencies for overlaps in the elements depicted by these two concepts, for example, their association with politics, art, technology and urban living, there is a sense in which both concepts cannot be viewed as stages of development one from the other.It appears to me that Eagleton viewed civilization as a value-judgmental concept that pre-supposed an improvement on what went before, to whatever was not only right, but a great deal better than what was (Eagleton, 2006 10). Eagleton was also non-presumptive when he pointed out that historically, the deployment of the term put it within the lexicon of a pre-industrial European middle class, which used the concept to justify majestic ambitions of mercantile and early industrial European capitalism towards those they categorized as of inferior civilization (Eagleton, 2006 10) . This fact has to be borne in mind if the concept when the concept is deployed today.Culture on the other hand, required certain social conditions that bring men into complex relationships with natural resources. The state becomes a necessity. Cultivation was a theme of the harmonious, all-round development of the personality. Because there was overwhelming recognition that nobody could do this in isolation, this helped to shift culture from its individual to its social meaning. Culture had a social dimension (Eagleton, 2006 10).Whichever was, between culture and civilization, the progenitor of the other, there is a dual sense in which these concepts appear linked by their enlightenment era roots and also not linked at the same time. I agree with Eagleton that civilization sounds abstract, alienated, fragmented, mechanistic, utilitarian, in thrall to a crass faith in material progress while culture seems holistic, organic, sensuous, autotelic and recollective. However, I have rese rvations with Eagletons postulation of, first, a conflict between culture and civilization, and secondly, presentation of this conflict as a manifestation of a quarrel between tradition and modernity (Eagleton, 2006 11).One of the greatest exports from the Enlightenment era was its universalism. Post-enlightenment political philosophy contributed significantly to critiques of enlightenments grand unilineal narratives regarding the evolution of universal humanity. We can look at the discourse of culture as a contribution to understanding the diversity inherent in different life-forms with their specific drivers of growth. Increasingly, it had become extremely perilous to relativize non-European cultures, which some thinkers of the time idealized as primitive (Eagleton, 2006 12).In the 20th century in the primitivist features of modernism, a primitiveness which goes hand-in-hand with the growth of modern cultural anthropology emerged, this time in postmodern guise, in form of a roman ticizing of popular culture, which now plays the expressive, spontaneous, quasi-utopian role which primitive cultures had played previously (Eagleton, 2006 12).While todate the concepts civilization and culture continue to be used interchangeably, there is also still a sense in which culture is still deployed almost as the opposite of civility (Eagleton, 2006 13). It is not uncommon to encounter culture being used in reference to that which is tribal as opposed to the cosmopolitan. Culture continues to be closed to rational criticism and a way of describing the life-forms of savages rather than a term for the civilized. If we accept the fact that the savages have culture, then the primitives can be depicted as cultured and the civilized as uncultured. In this sense, a reversal means that civilization can also be idealized (Eagleton, 2006 13). If the imperial Modern states plundered the pre-modern ones, for whatever reasons, is it not a statement of both being uncultured and lack of civility, quite antithetical to what one could consider as civilization of the west. What sense doe it therefore make to posture as civilized and yet act in an uncultured manner?Can see culture as civilization, on one hand, and civilization as culture, on the other hand, help to resolve the impasse in the contemporary deployment of these concepts? One fact is clear, either way it has potential to breed postmodern ambiguities of cultural relativism (Eagleton, 2006 14). Alternatively, if culture is viewed, not as civilization, but as a way of life, it simply becomes an assertion of sheer existence of life-forms in their pluralities (Eagleton, 2006 13).Pluralizing the concept of culture comes at a price the idea of culture begins to entertain cultural non-normativities or queer cultures, in the name of diversity of cultural forms. Rather than dissolving discrete identities, it multiplies them rather than hybridization, which as we know, and as Edward Said observed, all cultures are involved in one another none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and non-monolithic (Eagleton, 2006 15).Attempts to valorize culture as a representation of particular life-forms associated with civility can also be perilous. There is a post-modern sense in which culture can be considered as an intellectual activity (science, philosophy and scholarship), as well as an originative pursuit of such exploits as music, painting and literature. This is the sense in which cultured people are considered to have culture. This sense suggests that science, philosophy, politics and economics can no longer be regarded as creative or imaginative. This also suggests that civilized values are to be found only in fantasy. And this is clearly a caustic comment on social reality. Culture comes to mean learning and the arts, activities confined to a tiny proportion of humanity, and it at once becomes impoverished as a concept (Eagleton, 2006 16).Concludin g RemarksFrom the foregoing analyses, it is clear that understanding the relationship between culture and civilization is impossible until we cease to view the world in binaries in which the westward (Europe) was constructed as advanced and developed with the non-West perceived as primitive, barbarous and pagan. Historically, the Wests claim of supremacy was always predicated on their provincialization of the non-west, whose behavioral patterns were judged from the experience of the West, and characterized in generalized terms as traditional customs and therefore culture. I agree with Benedict, that the West did all it could to universalize its experience to the rest of the world, even when this experience was different from that of those from the non-west (Benedict, 1934 5).Assumptions of the mutual exclusivity of culture and civilization in society are premised on perceived irreconcilability of values and beliefs. Religion was always used in the West to posit a generalized provin cialism of the non-west. It was the basis of prejudices around which superiority was justified. No ideas or institutions that held in the one were valid in the other. Rather all institutions were seen in opposing terms according as they belonged to one or the other of the very often slightly differentiated religions.In this contemporary era of highly globalized populations of footloose movements an