QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS CRITICAL TEXTUAL ANALYSIS--TYPES, PART 3 (CRITICAL THEORY/MARXISM & POSTMODERNISM)

I. MARXISM/CRITICAL THEORY • A. Marxism refers to theories of economics, politics, & society using ideas from Karl Marx & Fredrich Engles. • B. Culture intertwined with class struggle through ideology • C. Ideology conveyed through various institutions (or superstructures) • D. The philosophy is complex & not monolithic.

D. Political Economy • 1. Grounded in the economic analysis of institutions • a. Actions of individuals motivated by self-interest (see Adam Smith) • b. Self-interest leads to greater level of overall wealth in the nation (“the invisible hand”) • 2. In media studies, Political Economy primarily focuses on the economics of mass media production & consumption. • 3. Seeks to understand “how the capitalist class promotes and ensures their dominant position in capitalist society” (Devereux)

E. “Classic Marxism” • 1. Sees culture as “the mirror of social life.” • a. Art (or culture) should be viewed in terms of “realism” • b. True art should subvert ideology & capitalism • 2. The Frankfurt School--flourished in Germany in the 1930's & in the U.S. in the 1940's • a. Sometimes is known as "critical theory" or classic Marxist theory, focusing on problems in the mass media. • b. Theorists argued that mass media had prevented history from working out as Marx had predicted, because it subverted & seduced the masses (through "low art")

F. The Frankfort School • 1. Pop culture is defined as mass culture, produced by big business for a profit • 2. Pop culture seen as synonymous with low culture • 3. Elitist vs. populist values • a. True elitists scorn popular or low culture as debased & trashy (not really "art“) • c. True populists scorn high art as pretentious & inaccessible

The Frankfort School, con’t. • 3. High vs. low art • a. High art original, serious & complex • 1) Also known as “highbrow” • 2) Includes literary & artistic masterpieces, classical symphonic music, etc. • b. Low art is popular, unoriginal & not complex • 1) Also known as "lowbrow“ • 2) Seen as trashy, garish, crude, or kitschy • 3) Includes popular novels; comic books; mainstream TV shows; Hollywood blockbusters; fashion & fads; etc.

The Frankfort School, con’t. • c. "Middlebrow" is an in-between position • 1) Prefers a safe & non-controversial middle position between high & low art; • 2) Includes popular foreign or independent films; PBS; "lite" classical music; etc. • 3) Many elitists see this position as too safe & sentimental (e.g. Adorno) • 4) Keeps us from recognizing "high art“ because prefer easy listening selections or sentimental favorites instead of the truly avant-garde

The Frankfort School, con’t • 4. Arguments made against popular art by the Frankfort School: • a. Panders to lowest tastes • b. Geared mostly to entertainment & fun • c. Often nostalgic & sentimental • d. Junk is preferred over quality • e. Over-commercial (designed to sell products)

G. Neo-Marxism • 1. More recently, the "classical" position has been modified into Neo-Marxism • a. Collapses the distinction between "high" and "low" art, while also positing a commodified culture. • b. Althusser rejected the Hegelism of western Marxism in favor of a more structuralist approach • 2. Focus on the analysis of everyday culture or “popular art”

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 3. Pop art revisionism/arguments for pop art: • a. Evocative & can be serious • b. The “literature of the people“ • c. High art/low art an artificial distinction; boundaries eroding in a postmodern world • d. Pop art is a social unifer • 1) Helps with social rituals • 2) Cements community feelings • 3) Reinforces values

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 4. Ideology is seen in “lived practices” • a. Comprehensive sets of ideas our beliefs about political & social life, what we think is true. • b. All discourses have ideological functions which help support the status quo even if not recognized • c. Ideologies serve the interests of the dominant class, stabilizing society while promoting false consciousness in the workers • d. Yet, not all powerful; can have competing ideologies

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 5. Interpellation • a. The mechanism by which people are subjected to ideology. It is "the process by which the representations found in a culture . . [seduce, or "hail"] individuals into accepting the ideologies carried by these forms of representation" (Berger, p. 57) • b. Interpellation occurs through discursive, linguistic, & symbolic orders which are necessary to live • c. It is similar to the concept of preferred reading (by S. Hall); it "suggests that we accept ideologies by identifying with characters & situations found in the arts & mass media" (Berger, p. 58), suturing ourselves into the scheme of things

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 6. Hegemony—what is “taken for granted,” or common sense about the nature of reality” (see Gramsci). • a. Ideological beliefs operate in a hegemonic system • b. We given consent to be governed a paricular way • c. Includes, yet also goes beyond, culture (R. Williams, 1977), dominating (or, as Williams says, saturating) every aspect of our lives, "what goes without saying" • d. Although we can uncover ideologies, it is harder to discover hegemonic domination, because it is ubiquitous & amorphous, concerned with "our lived system of meanings & values" (Williams, p. 110)

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 7. Base/Superstructure • a. The base is the mode of production, the system of economic relations found in a given society. • b. The base shapes the superstructure, which are the laws & institutions in a society, such as religion, education, art, law, politics, media, etc. • 1) Repressive state apparatuses (RSAs)--coercive forces such as the police which enforce an ideology when threatened by deviance) • 2) Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)-- the various social institutions that regulate & reproduce ideology on behalf of the dominant class

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 8. Dialectical struggle • a. Like Hegel, Marx posed a dialectical view of historical evolution, consisting of an underlying struggle between opposing forces (Thesis-Antithesis). • b. To become liberated and/or change the social order, we must become aware of the dialectic of opposing forces in a struggle for power • c. Otherwise, people will remain alienated from one another, “co-opted into their own oppression" (Littlejohn, p. 228) • d. This alienation is known as false consciousness

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 9. Socioeconomic Class • a. It "refers to categories based on the economic resources of different groups of people in a given society, and the social and cultural arrangements that stem from this division" (Berger, p. 47) • b. U.S. divided into 6 socioeconomic classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle (where, traditionally, a third of Americans are), upper-lower (another third are here), & lower-lower • c. For capitalist ideology to work, most of the population must believe they are in the middle class, with the fiction that class is irrelevant in U.S. society--i.e. the Horatio Alger myth, the American Dream). • d. Perceived inequities threaten that fiction

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 10. Bourgeoisie/proletariat • a. The elites who own & control the modes of production are the bourgeoisie • b. The workers who own relatively little form the proletariat • c. The bourgeoisie controls mass media, using them to carry ideological messages supporting the status quo • d. They are aided by artists, writers, etc. (members of the petite bourgeoisie), who help maintain control of both the economy & the society

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 11. Alienation/Estrangement • a. Elites are alienated from the working class & the poor, who become exploited and dominated. • b. The proletariat in turn are alienated from their work, from the products of their labors, & from the wealthy, seeing themselves only as a commodity • c. Causes both physical & psychological suffering, esp. an anomie that prevents acting to overcome one's life condition • d. The lack of pleasure in work is displaced to alternative means of gaining pleasure (e.g. TV) which leads to greater alienation, with the contradictions of society repressed

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • I2. Representation • a. The social process & product of making signs stand for their meanings • b. A sense-making process within all signifying systems, often organized & regulated in different ways within different discourses (e.g. different media) • c. Shows the social relations of signification in class society; often condensed so as to refer to the products of those relations (i.e. representative characteristics of a particular class or group, such as stereotypes) • d. Ideology often seen as the practice of reproducing social relations of inequality within the sphere of signification & discourse

Neo Marxism, con’t. • 13. Reproduction • a. Mass media, as an ISA, is based on the ability to "reproduce" reality • b. Often assumed to be an accurate representation of "reality," leading to the fallacy of realism (artificial texts are assumed to be true, thus the ideas in them are naturalized) • c. Originally, the idea was that high culture (e.g. art) had an authority & authenticity that transcended reality--something lost whenever that art is "reproduced" (for example, seeing the Mona Lisa is different from seeing a photograph of the Mona Lisa) • d. In modern industrial society one fear has been that of being "copied"--yet, in an increasingly postmodern & postindustrial world, it is no longer clear what is an original & what is a reproduction--it no longer matters as much (the idea of the simulacra & simulated experience, e.g. "virtual reality")

Neo Marxism, con’t. • 14. Commodity fetishism/consumer culture • a. Idea of the fetish object imbued with mystical, magical power taken from religion • b. Capitalist society mystifies us as to how commodities are created, leading us to ignore their true cost & to believe in magic • c. Fetish also occurs in the displacement of sexual desire from a person to an object • d. Sexual lust becomes displaced onto commodities (consumer lust, e.g. the shopping spree, shopping "addictions”, etc.) • d. Consumer culture ensures alienation--although we possess more material possessions than ever before, we are not happy

Neo Marxism, con’t. • 15. Colonized viewer • a. Creating desire to consume is the purpose of advertising, which creates fashion & style, which substitute for an authentic sense of self • b. When we accept the images & roles given to us by the media (reflecting the beliefs of the dominant group), we become "colonized" • c. Media viewers are part of a vast consumer colony dominated by materialism, capitalism, & a narrow definition of success • d. Late Capitalism not just an economic system, "but a kind of culture in which almost everything is subordinated to consumption" (Berger, p. 55)

Neo-Marxism, con’t. • 16. Cultural imperialism • a. The effects of Westernization on the rest of the world, esp. as disseminated through the ubiquitous U.S. mass media • b. Bourgeois, capitalistic values spread throughout the world • 1) Some positive results (e.g. promoting democracy) • 2) Increased exploitation of workers, esp. in the Third World • c. “The McDonaldization of society“ (Ritzer) leads to the blandness & homogeneity experienced in the U.S.--creating a "universal shopping mall-like plasticity to life everywhere on the planet" (Berger, p. 62)

II. POSTMODERNISM • A. Means many things, ranging from a social condition to a critical perspective • B. The "modern" period occurred during & after the Enlightenment, with the rise of the individual & the beginnings of capitalism & industrialism (though some trace it back to the 15th century, with the invention of the printing press) • 1. Associated with writers like James Joyce, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, & William Faulkner • 2. Connected to artists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, along with Dadaism & surrealism • 3. In music, modernist composers include Igor Stravinsky & Bela Bartok

Postmodernism, con’t. • C. Postmodern refers to 4 interrelated phenomenon (Denzin, 1991): • 1. An artistic, aesthetic movement called postmodernism (seen in media & architecture, as well as traditional art forms) • 2. A historical transformation of society following World War II • 3. A new form of theorizing about the contemporary historical moment • 4. Social, cultural, & economic life under late capitalism • D. Influential postmodern theorists include Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault & Jean-Francoise Lyotard

Postmodernism, con’t. • E. Some key concepts: • 1. Truth & knowledge • a. Postmodernism disavows truth, especially the notion of absolutes & universals. • b. Knowledge is a discourse that becomes an accepted statement of truth, or "metanarrative“ • 1) Metanarratives set their own criteria or standards for what counts as truth (e.g. science). • 2) Must be skeptical about metanarratives • c. Postmodernism also attacks the law of non-contradiction (that an object cannot be both A & not A), seeing it as an instrument for control

Postmodernism, con’t. • 2. History & subject • a. Postmodern society tends toward disconnection & fragmentation--runs counter to the modernist impulse to order & define • b. Postmodernism "eschews history; humans exist in fragmented current moments." (Gill, p. 202) • c. Thus it reflects "the end of history"; or the end of the metanarrative of linear historical progress

Postmodernism, con’t. • d. Postmodernism also argues for the "death of the subject“ • 1) Individuals occupy positions in various language games or "communication circuits," (where we are both sender-receiver) • 2) The self is socially & linguistically constructed, a position which generally denies autonomy & individualism • e. The postmodern critic asserts that the author/artist/creator of discourse has no special privileged status in determining meaning

Postmodernism, con’t. • 3. Embracing low/popular culture. • a. Consists of a “degraded landscape of schlock & kitsch, of TV series & Reader's Digest culture, of advertising & motels, of the late show & the grade-B Hollywood film," with romance novels, murder mysteries, science-fiction, etc. (David Lodge, 1988) • b. Popular culture is integrated with all other culture, with past & present mixed together • c. Gill notes that such art can be "sexually explicit, rebellious…critical of both political & social norms. It also is schizophrenic & disorderly" (p. 203)

Postmodernism, con’t • F. Some postmodern elements: • 1. Simulacra of experience--a type of "virtual reality" or hyperreality, as in video games • 2. Pastiche--a mixture of elements not normally connected; a "crazy quilt" of images, etc. • 3. Self-referential elements--there is a self-consciousness that occurs through multiple allusions & intertextuality • 4. Spectacle--over inflated staging of events, designed to promote euphoria • 5. Overcommodified--focus on clutter & consumption • 6. Contradictory images—paradox is embraced

Postmodernism, con’t • G. Todd Gitlin (1989) offers this perspective on postmodernism: "It self-consciously splices genres, attitudes, styles. It relishes the blurring or juxtaposition of forms (fiction-non-fiction), stances (straight-ironic), moods (violent-comic), cultural levels (high-low) . . . It takes pleasure in the play of surfaces, & derides the search for depth as mere nostalgia." • 1. Postmodern American society offers "culture as garage sale" • 2. Gitlin’s list of postmodern examples include architecture, Andy Warhol's multiple image paintings, Disneyland, Las Vegas, shopping malls (especially mega malls), William Burroughs, Monty Python, science-fiction/action films, MTV, etc.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS