Midterm

Question 1

Homo Faber
Bases (2)
Superstructures

Answer 1

Karl Marx

HOMO FABER: essence of man in that they possess the ability to creatively produce adaptive tools to manipulate the material world

BASES:

• Relations of production (how production is organized; slavery, wage labor relations etc)
• Forces of production (technology, resources, material/ideas/sciences) → the potential for society

SUPERSTRUCTURES: philosophy, politics, economics etc. are all built upon the base; includes ideology (which conforms to economic activity) bc the forms of production influence the way we think

Question 2

Role of Labor in Human History

• Stored Labor
• Direct Labor

Answer 2

Karl Marx

means of production on which man relies in order to creatively manipulate the natural world and produce resources that allow for subsistence and reproduction, therefore class tension will always exist in society → tension will produce a proletarian revolt as the proletariat seeks to regain control of that which it produces and technology strips the bourgeois of control

STORED Labor: same amount of input can yield greater output → efficient (eg. using labor to make tools one day in order to catch more fish the next)

DIRECT: amount you input is the same amount of output INefficient (eg. using labor to catch the same amount of fish everyday)

Question 3

Materialist Theory of History (4)

Answer 3

Karl Marx

societies develop contingent on who owns the means of production (aka power / influence)
eg. Industrial Revolution

attempts to explain how societies developed and how the world changed

explains the change from epoch to epoch → to critique a society, you have to understand the time / context they lived in

Opposes ideal theory of history by saying “what drives history is how we are providing for our needs”

Question 4

Forms of Commercial Exchange (3)

Answer 4

Karl Marx

C-C = commodity → commodity (bartering)

C-M-C = commodity → money → commodity (trading)
Goal is commodity; money as mediator

M-C-M’ = money → commodity → money (mercantile capitalism)
Goal is to profit; commodity as mediator (eg. labor)

Question 5

Mode of Production

• Relations (2)
• How do they change? (2)

Answer 5

made of forces or means of production + the relations of production → mode of production (type of economy) = means of production (anything used to create) + relations of production (how it’s organized; beliefs)

RELATIONS:

• Vertical: labor hierarchy with appropriation of surplus
• Horizontal: competition at the same level

HOW DO THEY CHANGE?

• Modes of production change as technology advances and society comes up with more efficient ways to produce output.
• Changing Forces of Production influence Relations of Production; latter adapts to use former more efficiently

Question 6

Types of Suicide (4)

Answer 6

Emile Durkheim

ANOMIC: insufficient regulation; lack of regulation/limits during a period of rapid change; enhances sense of freedom, recklessness, and unforeseen failure because of new environment/collapse of existing social standards

ALTRUISTIC: excessive integration; committed for the sake of others; deals with honor, morality, duty, obligation, etc.

EGOISTIC: insufficient integration; no goals outside of the self is meaningless; inclination to suicide decreases as number of burdens increase

FATALISTIC: excessive regulation; occurs when individuals are kept under tight control and high expectations from society

Question 7

Types of Solidarity (2)

Theories of Punishment (2)

Answer 7

MECHANICAL: operates in traditional and small-scale societies; cohesion comes from homogeneity of individuals; similar values and interests (collective consciousness); easily fractures when separated from the collective conscious so the individual dies

ORGANIC: common in more complex societies w/division of labor; interdependence leads to modern individual bc the collective consciousness exerts less influence

THEORIES OF PUNISHMENT:

• mechanical societies viewed punishment as beneficial / necessary on behalf of society due to the existence of collective consciousness
• as societies move towards organic solidarity, the emphasis on punishment decreases → lives are centered on relationships so have courts to uphold interpersonal relations/obligations

Question 8

Elementary Forms of Religion (2)

Answer 8

Emile Durkheim

religion creates two realms of sacred vs profane; division created by rituals and symbols; dual nature of humanity to be consistent and unchanging in daily life but erratic and expressive during rituals

ROLE OF RITUALS: experience of exaltation via new environment/setting; groups are able to come together in solidarity due to symbols → effervescent assembly

ROLE OF SYMBOLS: fundamental connection that exists outside of rituals and within daily life; create exaltation within an individual without the participation demanded by rituals

Question 9

Homo Duplex (2)

Answer 9

Emile Durkheim

COMPONENT 1: Sensations, desires & activities all related to natural needs → grounded on physical body

COMPONENT 2: Expectations, beliefs, ambitions, principles & understandings → centers on one’s relations with others

** SECOND must prevail over FIRST bc humans are innately social creatures; problematic bc second manifests itself in the creation of the self

Question 10

Worldy Asceticism

Position on the Second Reich

Answer 10

Max Weber

WORLDLY ASCETICISM: denying oneself of bodily pleasures as a means to salvation → saw this as primary influence on modernity
Eg. Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

WEBER AND THE SECOND REICH: Weber’s position as a German nationalist and an ardent supporter of expansionist and Imperialist policies, famously characterizing capitalistic Imperialism in Africa and Southeast Asia as “essential to the maintaining and increasing the prosperity of Germany and her people”

Question 11

Ideal Types of Authority (3)

Answer 11

Max Weber

TRADITION: reflective of everyday routine and conduct; depends on established tradition or order → “obey me, this is what we have always done”

CHARISMA: able to rally diverse and conflict-prone people to support; power comes from the massive trust and almost unbreakable faith that people put in him → “obey me, I can change your life”

LEGAL-RATIONAL: grounded in clearly defined laws; dependent on the competence of the bureaucracy to embody order and systematization → “obey me, I am your lawfully appointed superior”

Question 12

Forms of Power (3)

Answer 12

Max Weber

CLASS and life chances: economic power; resulting from inequalities in production/distribution of economic resources

STATUS and ethnic honor: ideological power → resulting from unequal allocation of social prestige

PARTY and politics: control over and access to structures and practices connected to organized violence

Question 13

Nazi Anti-Semitism Part 1: General Concepts (3)

Answer 13

Enzo Traverso

1. represents the pinnacle of “modernity,” wherein technological and societal implementations designed to alleviate some of mankind’s burdens have ironically evolved into tools of oppression and death, aka the “industrialized production of corpses”
2. reaction against normative society / capitalism (widespread investing in commodities for profit)
3. not anti-modern (eg. support for a monarchy) but a romantic rejection of modernity (eg. yearning for a vague structure of the past)

Question 14

Nazi Anti-Semitism Part 2: Things to note (3)

Answer 14

Enzo Traverso

DISTINCTIVELY modern characteristics:
Anti-Communism
Imperialism/Neo-Colonialism
Anti-Semitism

CHALLENGES three other interpretations of nazi violence:

• Reaction to soviet union
• Resurgence of anaristocracy
• Nazism as a continuation of age-old antisemitism

RELIES on several tropes and traditions appropriated from societies of the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East, Far East, and Southeast Asian world(s)

Question 15

Bureaucratic indifference to violence (2)

• Guillotine (4)
• Taylorism

Answer 15

Enzo Traverso

helped to expedite and streamline Nazi extermination policies by allowing for fluidity of guilt

• The Nazis did not strive to justify what they were doing, they only sought to implement an atmosphere of indifference, so that no one would stop them → illogical elimination of millions of people, carried out to the utmost degree of logic, order, efficiency, etc.
• Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment at Harvard demonstrated human willingness to disregard suffering under peer or institutional pressure

GUILLOTINE: which ultimately led to the dehumanization of death as the Industrial Revolution entered the domain of capital punishment → four figures of death:

• Doctor: deciding to proceed with it
• Engineer: preparing its structures
• Judge: defending it (on the legal level)
• Executioner: carrying it out

TAYLORISM: relegated individuals to infinitely small roles within the operation of concentration camps, absolving them of blame

Question 16

Biopolitics

Biopower

Answer 16

BIOPOLITICS: comes from Michel Foucault; state is no longer just a state in just economic functions and begins to enter into biology of people; transgressing into human reproductiveness in order to “maintain” the population → again, a modern concept

BIOPOWER: people demonstrating specific control over a bodily function
Eg. abortions

Question 17

Ian Morris (2)

Answer 17

tries to explain historical variation in both (a) widely shared
Values about equality and hierarchy, as well as violence; and (b) empirical levels of equality and violence → EXPLANATORY, not interpretive enterprise of three different “ideal” societies (foragers, farmers, and fossil fuels)

INEQUALITY VS VIOLENCE:

• Forages: low inequality, high violence
• Farmers: high inequality, low violence
• Fossil fuels: middling economic inequality, low violence
• • Differences in equality within Wealth / Economic, Gender, and Political / Status

ENERGY CAPTURE: determines social organization, therefore values are functional and, therefore, materialist theory; defined as production of calories; individuals create this energy in order to modify the world around them through genetic engineering / creativity / increased levels of productivity
** process goes :: energy capture > productivity > reproduction > increased scale > stratification / hierarchy > high level of material inequality > rationalizing ideology (population making peace with the existence of inequality)

Question 18

Christine Korsgaard (4)

Answer 18

critic to Morris – alternative to the idea that our values are shaped by our method of energy capture is her theory that the capacity for valuing has some tendency to attach itself to real moral values, but this tendency is extremely fragile and subject to distortion.

1. Fails to mention of “real” and/or “positive” values
2. Lacks respect for individual values when judging ethics and morality
3. Considers energy production and consumption to be the definitive factor in the evolution of society, nothing else comes close
4. “Distortion view”: learning process distorted by other social barriers / bias / etc

Question 19

Margaret Atwood (3)

Answer 19

critic to Morris – How many Horsemen of the Apocalypse? If the tools we invent change our nature, what will our values in terms of which we judge future developments be?

1. An anthropocentric argument—Morris does not consider harm done to the Earth and its ecosystems to be a form of “violence,” does not acknowledge societal harm done to the planet
2. Disregards the role of the individual both throughout history as well as in the makeup and operations of civilization
3. Does not acknowledge the importance of quintessentially human questions like “who are we,” “where do we come from,” and “where are we going” in his discussion of societal values and evolution

Question 20

Jonathan Spence (5)

Answer 20

critic to Morris – ideal types obliterate the fine detail of actual societies, making it impossible to understand the lives lived in them. Other questions about difficulties of understanding other societies with our categories foreign or alien to them.

1. Makes extremely vague and nonspecific arguments and assertions
2. What Morris has in intellectual width, he lacks in intellectual depth…without connecting to deeper and more poignant/diverse issues across time and space, his theories are intrinsically shallow
3. Forces audience to accept/share his own point of view
4. Tosses important regional, historical, and cultural context to the wayside, effectively condensing all of humanity into a homogeneous, monocultural, generic and predictable array of individuals
5. Does not consider the role of the individual

Question 21

Richard Seaford (5)

Answer 21

critic to Morris – Farming does not produce the same values everywhere; what does Morris mean by saying values work best—work best for whom? by what measure?

1. Doesn’t address notable counterexamples to his theories of development, such as Ancient Greek and Chinese civilization
2. Morris has extremely high expectations for what constitutes a “democracy,” to a point where he brands many historic democracies as “undemocratic”
3. Failure to describe, assess and comprehend the varying scales of societies as they have existed throughout time and space
4. Idealizes and romanticizes elements of forager society
5. Disagrees with Morris’ characterization of societal change as the product of biology and genetics—Seaford feels history and individuals direct such changes to a far greater degree “values from the victors”