Social Justice Social Order - Essay Example

Running Head: Social Justice Social Order Social Justice Social Order Intuition Post Modern social systems and their cultures are intrinsically pluralistic, secularized and varied. This pluralization of life gets about an intense disintegration of belief and practice. There is the reflective view of the loss of independence and individual sovereignty, since the autonomous self is ensnared within the world of bureaucratic command under the dominance of a modern state. There is the sagacity of the loss of simplicity, legitimacy and spontaneity. The directive of the individual within a bureaucratic and administered world proscribes genuine feeling and sentiment. The procedure of civilization thereby entails the taming of savage feeling. The majority sociological explorations of mass culture, especially those undertaken within a Marxist or critical theory standpoint, tend to be restricted in their cultural and political postulations. This cultural elitism also rests upon a position of high culture, needing discipline and simplicity which can only be acquired by the professional rational through years of withdrawal from everyday labor and daily realities. More significantly, an elitist criticism of mass culture presumes, not only the peculiarity between low and high culture, but also the accessibility of some general or complete values from which a position of critique can be sustained. Subsequent Alasdair MacIntyre's reasonably influential study After Virtue (1981), argue that a rational system of values as the base of criticism presupposes a comparatively coherent community as the fundamental social fabric of moral systems and ethical point of view. As in contemporary society the primary communal realism of values has been devastated, there can be no clear position of hierarchical values so as to found a critique of mass culture. In any case, the significance of postmodern cultural pluralism is to weaken the basis for the privileged asserts high culture to be the standard of aesthetic preeminence. Therefore, the leading metaphor or mode of thought in modern critical theory is inevitably reflective, since critical evaluation should be retrospective. The foundationalist and dualist philosophical endeavor that under girds the social order should be abandoned, so that alternative ideas can be amuses. In this regard, West admits that he has "a very strong anti-metaphysical bent" (West, 1993b: 51). Truth is thus conditional and tied thoroughly to human desires and aims. Truth, as West writes, is the product of reasonable assertions that are themselves value-laden and commendable of human beings working in cohesion for the common good" ( West, 1989: 100). In this way, West is anti-metaphysical. Consequently, persons should be made sentient that an all surrounding common culture is not a prerequisite for securing vivacious and harmonious race relations. As Roland Barthes is fond of saying, postmodernists consider persons to be open signifiers (Barthes, 1977). Undeniably, writers such as bell hooks, Paul Gilroy, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, and Manning Marable--prominent writers in the field of race relations concur that the analysis of essentialism offered by postmodernists is dominant to establishing an democratic society. This does not mean, though, that all the writers such as Paul Gilroy, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West consider themselves to be postmodernists. Indeed, at times, each one condemns postmodernism for a diversity of reasons. But what is clear is that their basic arguments are consistent with Lyotard's understanding of the key thrust of postmodernism: "astonishment toward meta-narratives" ( Lyotard, 1984: xxiv). The consequence of this attack on absolutes is that the racial ontology offered by assimilationists is no longer workable. Certainly, the uneven social relationships continued by minorities based on disparities in biological, cultural, or genetic aspects, which have put in to enriching particular cultures over others, can no longer be acceptable. Consequent to the postmodern move, the understanding that any social association is a consequence of human praxis and volition a justification for any sort of domination and suppression becomes vacuous. Particularly important, the idea of "natural inequality" loses integrity. Any description such as this should be referred back to its origin in social and interpretive processes. Once the veil of neutrality is raised from the integration perspective; there is nothing to rationalize assimilation other than a supremacist ideology. In fact, assimilation obscures the social, political, cultural, and financial factors that contribute to changing a particular viewpoint into a widespread reality. Consequently, through the metaphysics of integration, a prevailing culture is revived: a culture that reveals only one mode of reality. All others are, simultaneously, inferiorized. Viewed in this light, the integration perspective does violence to democracy where social relationships are believed to reflect an intact range of human interests. Once all social relationships are implicit to imitate a "discursive formation," the usual validation for imperialism, the disenfranchisement of ethnic societies, and the limit of personal expression, under the semblance of securing a common moral order, is diluted. The standard absolutes are displaced into a mlange of signifiers, none of which has the status to disgrace automatically cultural alternatives. Therefore, the veracity of each difference is conserved. Consequently, race relations can expand where persons practice "mature black self-love" (West, 1993d: 25). Stated evidently, West is calling for a kind of love not based on "skin pigmentation or racial phenotype," but one that comprises "egalitarian relations within and outside black societies" (West, 1993d: 25). The kind of race relations called for sociologists is constant with the kind of social order envisaged by postmodernists. For instance, Hooks asserts that minorities should go beyond "racial bond" if existent pluralism is to arrive (Hooks, 1990: 6). Socialists' postmodernists who snub "grand narratives" as the source of personal or collective uniqueness. Instead of relying on abstract principles, social order must be interceded by "face-to-face" meeting (Levinas, 1961: 64-70). Seen in this light, dominion based on racial disparities loses all validation. One group no longer has the high moral ground from which to judge all others. Consequent to postmodernism and the anti-essentialist turn, the integration perspective should mingle with all other forms of discourse. By the way, postmodernism gives a means for deflation supremacist ideology, while setting up a non-repressive means of order. It is also pragmatic that in post modernity the regulation of law, sustained by government and the force that under girds it, that seeks to lessen conflict and aggression in modern societies. But it does little to sustain genuine peace, in the sense of preventability and sympathy. For instance, people of diverse classes, cultures, and sexes are detained comparatively, to good behavior by law and customs of civility, but they do not find one another very knowable or reasonable. There is a low and waning level of taken for-grantedness in the potential of others. For instance, children are reminded to run from outsider making conversation with them, for fear that they might be captors or molesters as in fact they might. Handguns are extensively viewed as a lawful and effectual form of protection from the prospect of attack, yet as they are more probable to be used against a spouse or oneself. Meanwhile, husbands and wives find themselves in a stable process of cooperation of roles that change from year to year; geographic mobility only worsens the difficulties. And these complexities lead to violence dismayingly often. The thought of a progression of social forms of peace is constant with a long custom in social theory. Fundamental anthropological theory rests on a theory of cultural development driven by the vital means of production; from foraging to horticultural to industrial and postindustrial. Marx considered the development of the means of production as the basic engine of social and cultural change as well, stating that capitalism was the product of earlier forms of economy and expecting that it would eventually yield to a new form. Durkheim visualized of the history of human arrangements as an progression of social solidarity from "reflex" commonality to "organic." Finally, Weber traced the history of human organization from "customary" to increasingly "coherent." In numerous ways these diverse continua from classical anthropological and sociological theory are the similar thing. Durkheim conceived the two forms of cohesion to solve the dilemma of developing a universal theory of social structure that would concern to modern as well as ancient civilizations. They explained how the modern world could accomplish the similar functions as the ancient world, despite its distinctions to it. If all social structures need cohesion to survive, then such distinct worlds must carry out this fundamental function in very diverse ways. Thus the simpler, traditional societies were held mutually by mechanical cohesion; modern, complex ones by the organic type. Weber viewed the similar process, the progression of social order -- in a comparable way. His generality of history typified social evolution as a development of increasing rationalization, by which human roles as well as interactions become more and more uneven and instrumental. Rationalization as well as its organizational manifestation, bureaucracy, is made essential by industrialism as industrialism brings a more compound division of labor. A product comes to be made not by a craftsman, but by dozens of less-skilled workers whose efforts need supervision and synchronization. And the manufacturing process is a symbol for the social order itself, as society at large is typified by a greater distribution of roles and functions, needing coordination, supervision, and control. This is a formulation similar to Durkheim's, for the decisive force behind modernism and validation is also the escalating intricacy of the division of labor. In the views of both Durkheim and Weber this development of social order has led to problems; in reality, they both weeped for much the same problem. For Durkheim, the compound division of labor of modern society gives rise to anomie, an erratically translated French term that in fact might be a fair synonym for "peacelessness" in the sense used here. In societies distinguished by anomie, norms are indecisive or of inadequate strength to provide a common morality. This makes it complex for individuals to "have a clear concept of what is and what is not proper and acceptable behavior" (Ritzer 1992: 85). In Weber's view, the consequence of modernism's intricacy is the "disillusionment" of the world. He spent his career signifying the loss of meaning and humankind in a wide diversity of social institutions as they progressed over the centuries. The economy, religion, law, politics, even the arts all had eventually replaced the recognizable taken-for-grantedness of tradition with an intended, instrumental association based on the connection of means to ends. One way to distinguish the rational approach to these institutions might be to note that in the rational world it becomes reasonable to ask "why." Ritzer (1992) recognized six essential characteristics of Weber's idea of rationality. These comprise a focus within organizations on calculability through counting and quantification. Additionally, rational organizations request to gain control over doubts, through management, the compilation and analysis of information, and record keeping. Finally, they obligate a great deal of effort to make certain predictability, through larger-scale organization and assimilation. In short, the core of modernism is the rise of new, rational methods of retaining certainty the rule of law. As populations grow, expand, and become more compound and dense, new ways develop to make life more comprehensible and predictable. Tradition is reinstated by reason, compliance by incentive, morals by law, faith by calculation. It is no wonder that numerous people have come to think that peace and integrity require individual freedom and disbanding of social institutions usually. But this is an flawed conclusion, for it relies on a commencement of human nature that assumes the elimination of social control will free up the intrinsic passivity of humankind. In fact, it is effective and significant social order better called community that sets free the supportive and positive impulse. The dilemma in the modern world is that bureaucratic rationality is a poor system for attaining it. Contemporary societies pose a traditionally new problem, then, for the formation of peace. As the trademark of modernism is dependence on rational, relatively than traditional, bases for interface and cooperation, modern societies leaned to reject tradition as a establishment for civility. Where people in a customary society cooperate simply as that is the way to live, those in contemporary societies cooperate as it is practical, expedient, and practical. Briefly, one could say that the development of increasingly multifarious layers of cogent organization leads to a disintegration of compromises on meanings and values. This consecutively requires the obligation of force and compulsion as a means of assistance, and this tends to form injustice. Postmodernism as a substitute set of theories of social change and advanced post modernity as a state of affairs status opposed to Weber's view of modernization or as a conditions coming after rationalist modernization. Post modernity consequently involves a de-differentiation of spheres, a decline in the confidence uttered towards instrumental rationality, a new focus on the sentiments and the human body, a greater apprehension for the intimate, the secret and the everyday, and corrosion of conviction in the value of economic capitalism and a growing wakefulness of the significance of environmental and green issues. Post modernity underlines the local, the oppositional, the appropriate, and the locally explicit. as the Protestant ethic proposes a life of intense significance in fact religion can be definite as the serious life, postmodernism draws attention to the consequence of play, travesty, irony and imitation. This moralistic and Spartan view of culture in Weberian sociology, and more generally within the German erudite classes of the nineteenth century, has been intensely challenged by some modern developments. though Weber had argued that Islam was unable of providing values and stimulation essential for the development of rational capitalism, Islamic culture has been really successful in the twentieth century both as the host of economic development in the oil-rich societies of the Middle East and the emergent societies of Asia and South-east Asia, and as a third-world leader in political reform, insurgency and revolutionization. Certainly the economic success of Islamic communities around the world has often been dismissed by Western commentators as simply a growth which is scrounging upon global capitalism, mainly in terms of the West's dependency on oil. Though, it is hard to support this argument given the industrial accomplishment of a variety of Islamic societies and cultures as by the development of Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. The political commotion of Islamic communities has also been a aim of denigration by many Western commentators. Once again a certain irony in Weber's political posture. Weber believed that captivating political breakthroughs were part of the political configuration of pre-modern societies which he saw in terms of a dichotomy between custom and captivating authority. Especially, the apprehension between the priest and the prophet represented for Weber the whole inheritance of traditional politics. Though, in the twentieth century Islam have formed a number of intensely significant charismatic leaders, of whom the Ayatollah Khomeini is perhaps one of the greatest examples. We must not be surprised therefore that Michel Foucault saw the Iranian Revolution as a intensely religious event in the wasteland of contemporary politics. These changes in Islam are no longer part of the outside or external framework of Western politics, but part of the necessary establishment of global politics. In a diversity of multicultural societies such as Australia, Canada and the United States, Islamic issues turn out to be a major dimension of domestic politics. Societies like Holland and Australia, which have in several respects welcomed cultural multiplicity, cannot easily disregard the insinuation of Islamic politics for local educational systems, the working of the law and even for conceptions of national identity. When sociologists assume postmodernism, they characteristically think about the film industry, advertising and fashion. Though, cultural diversity, Islamization and multicultural politics could as well be seen as part of the post modernization of politics; to some degree they defy the idea of a 'grand narrative' of a single national homogenous individuality. The state classically arose on the back of the thought of ethnic consistency; this is why the word 'nation' uses in describing the contemporary state as a 'nation-state'. It is based upon the postulation that a united polity has to have a unified ethnic base and certainly the nineteenth-century nation-states had a strong strategy of confederacy and assimilation which required the subordination of local parlance, regional culture and domestic multiplicity. In this revere the United Kingdom is no exception to the rule, since the Celtic fringe was considered as an discomfiture to the consistency of the state. Ethnic diversification and multicultural politics confront the idea of the political grand narrative of national democracy, national consistency and national confederacy. Postmodernism can be seen as a conservatory of this integration of high and low culture. Certainly, postmodernism is a festivity of these changes. The austere calling of the customary academic and the free-floating intellectual has moderately little social relevance in the framework of popular and postmodern society. The traditional notion of the accountability of the intellectuals and the thought of an antagonist culture are now arcane. There is in reality 'no respect' for the traditional rational. The thought of the 'last of the intellectuals', the wisdom of intellectual decline, and certainly a feeling of intellectual betrayal are now accepted themes in the sociology of the rationals, and the discernment of the closing of the mind is a prevalent cultural retort to these changes, predominantly in North America and Europe. Indeed the classical sociological custom saw assured limits to the procedure of modernization. Durkheim was anxious that utilitarian individualism, the decline of community and the deficiency of a system of professional ethics would show the way to a reflective situation of anomie, which was obvious in high levels of inconsiderate suicide. As, Weber saw the restrictions to validation in the problem of meaningfulness in social relations, as instrumental rationalism could never reinstate the values which had been eroded by the very development of social change as well as modernization. Even Marx looked ahead to a period of commonality and communalist values which would offer an substitute to the conflicts and dissections of industrial capitalism. Within the debate concerning reflexivity, postmodernism and modern nihilism, there might also be a parallel deliberate concerning the limits of post modernity. For Schelsky, the modern realization of perpetual self reflexivity had in fact shattered much of the customary community of Christianity within which there was a close interconnection between spiritual life and the total public and private subsistence of human beings. Reflexivity had formed a sense of the end of religion as well as the end of history. Schelsky speculated whether such a process could be persistent indefinitely devoid of the corrosion of social relations as such. One gets a similar mood in Robert Bellah's dazzling essay on 'Religious evolution' (1964) in which he stressed the meaning of the individual in contemporary society as the decisive source of all moral elucidations, in a framework where conventional forms of ritual and practice had been reinstated by individualistic representation and rite. One would envisage that, while postmodernism is a challenge to the imposing narratives of both Islam and Christianity, the postmodern period will not be without its own religious aspect. In retrospect it might turn out that religion, and not the self or the body, offer the link between classical modernism at the end of the nineteenth century and postmodernism at the end of the twentieth century. It was, after all, writers like Weber, Simmel and Troeltsch who investigated the modern perception in terms of a debate concerning asceticism, polytheistic values, the disillusionment. as Weber rejected any flight to the church, he was only too well responsive that private belief, religion and individualized religiosity would be the way of life appropriate for a modern soteriology of modern times. Weber noted that the disenchantment of the world was the 'fate of our times' but also noted that specifically under these situation the individual would look for the most inspiring values within the transcendental monarchy of mystic experience. Consequently it is not an calamity that in our time the most considerable works of art lean to be both intimate and personal to a certain extent than monumental. In personal relations, religion would state itself pianissimo. In a related fashion much post-structural and postmodern thinking has been influenced by contemporary technology, contemporary capitalism and the contemporary state which endangered to destroy numerous of the traditional forms of religious life. The idea of the sublime has emerged as a basic issue in postmodern philosophy around the work of writers like Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot and George Bataille. In postmodern philosophy the matter of the sublime is linked to the prospect of categorical love under the untrammeled nature of beauty. The debate concerning the sublime had its origins in artistic philosophy mainly with the work of Kant on aesthetic judgment. However, the development of a mass market, however, suggests that sublime experience is a spiritual experience which cannot be reproduced in the modern world, as the impression which surrounds has been ruined by modern technology. Therefore, Nostalgia is a significant theme within the question of the limits of post modernization; the expedition for the local, the contextual and the daily represents a quest for a point of security and constancy within a world distinguished by an inexplicable plethora of point of view, lifestyles, modes of discourse and opinions. In summary, I must say that we are confronted by the post modernization of polytheism. References: Alasdair Macintyre, 1981 [1984]. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. University of Notre Dame Press. West, Cornel. 1989.The american evasion of philosophy: A genealogy of pragmatism , Madison:University of Wisconsin Press. Barthes R "The Death of the Author" in Heath S (ed) Image Music Text Roland Barthes Fontana Press 1977 Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon. West, W. G. (1993). Escalating problem or moral panic A critical perspective. ORBIT, 24(1), 6-7. Hooks, bell 1990 "States of Desire." (Interview with Isaac Julien). Transition 1,3. Levinas, E. (1961). Totality and infinity (R.A. Cohen, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1959. Basic writings on politics and philosophy. ed. by Lewis S. Feuer. New York: Doubleday. Ritzer, G. (1992).Classical Sociological Theory.New York:McGraw-Hill, Inc. Schelsky, Helmut. Der Mensch in der Wissenschaftlichen Zivilisation. Kln: Arbeitsgemeinschaft fr Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Geistes wissenschaften Heft 96. Read More