The unit on Working, which we just finished, operated on an inductive logic. We started small -- with individuals and their stories of work, class, and income inequality. (We asked: what are the material conditions of our existence as workers, and how do they condition our lives, bodies, behaviors, thoughts, etc.?) We got bigger -- with the artistic presentation/representation of labor struggles. (We asked: what are the poetics of work? how can a piece of art, music, film, poetry, or writing change a person's mind about, say, a mine workers' strike?) Finally, last week, we pulled back and looked at the general economic logic, or il-logic, of a capitalist labor system -- from two very different perspectives. (We asked: how do you take a concrete material situation (such as work) and make abstract it into a general theory? what are the real-life stakes of creating that theory in one way (e.g., Marx) versus another (e.g., Friedman/Mankiw)? and, what does a weird-looking picture of a cow have to do with our accepting that there will always be vast wealth inequalities in America?)
In our final unit, on Knowing, we will go deeper into this last set of questions. We all have things we take for granted as truth and/or fact. How, we will ask, did we come to accept these things in the way that we have? We saw how even something as seemingly straightforward as an introductory econ textbook actually ends up being a sophisticated, intentional, and deeply ideological piece of cultural rhetoric (and a very convincing one) -- and we will find that all 'truths' work the same way. This doesn't mean they're any less true. It just recognizes that they're cultural.
In this post, you'll start doing some of this work -- and then in class on Tuesday, we'll take it further. Here's what you need to do:
1) READ Robin and Carl Herndl's article "Beyond the Realm of Reason". You'll find Robin and Carl developing a theory for exactly how and why people come to accept the 'truths' that they do, and applying this theory to a specific case (the anti-environmentalism of the John Birch Society). Don't worry about the details of the specific case; what's important is to understand the theory they're developing, and how they're using it.
2) VISIT the "Science and Culture" section of the Discovery Institute's website, and poke around a bit. Read enough to get a sense of what the people writing for the Discovery Institute seem to accept as 'truth,' and the kind of cultural logic and rhetoric that they use to try to convince others (you) of it.
3) WRITE a post, around 300 words long, in which you take one 'truth' you see being argued for by the Discovery Institute and explain how it works culturally, using the terms, concepts, and methodologies that Robin and Carl use in "Beyond the Realm of Reason." In other words: take the method that Robin and Carl use in "Beyond the Realm of Reason" to analyze the "truths" put forward by the John Birch Society, and use that same method to analyze one "truth" put forward by the Discovery Institute. The more detailed, the better -- you'll probably want to include a few quotes from both sources...but don't go overboard. What's most important is your analysis: explain how, and why, this culture works.
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