RELS 161 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution, Sigmund Freud
14 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
January 30, 2018 RELS 163
• How is a given text used to further social relations, create shared
meanings/values, or contest social norms
• Social norms are affected by discourse
o Discourse: shared ways of talking about and therefore understanding
the world
o The ways we talk about the world affect the ways we understand the
world
o Our interpretations of the world are limited by the discourses in
which we operate
o Complicated by the fact that discourse operates in group and
individual levels
• Discourse sets the limits of acceptable speech
• Discourse is shaped by power
o Influenced by relationships of power
• Discourse varies between social groups and periods
o Can change as time progresses
• Discourse: systems of through composed of ideas, attitudes, courses of
action, beliefs and practices that systematically construct the subjects and
the worlds of which they speak
• Discursive Fields: competing ways of giving meaning to the world and of
organizing social institutions and processes
o Don’t just affect individuals or societies, can affect institutions as well
o E.g. popular culture and the difference between mass versus folk
culture
o E.g. religion (Marx versus Eliade)
• Discourse is never homogenous – competing views
• Hegemonic versus counter-hegemonic discourses
Pre-Modernity/Modernity/Post-Modernity
• Modernity as perceived rupture: anti-traditional
o Modernity constitutes a break
• Technological aspect: animate versus inanimate power
o Animate power: living forms of power, e.g. legs, animals, etc.
o Inanimate power: non-living forms of power, e.g. machines, etc.
• Fordism (assembly line): mass production and alienation
o E.g. fridge to keep food, etc.
o Industrial revolution – 19th century
• Temporal aspect: when did modernity begin?
o Protestant reformation (16th century)
o Industrial revolution (19th century)
o Scientific revolution (16-18th centuries)
o Enlightenment (18th century)
o Common themes: individualism, rationalism, Sapere Aude
o Disenchantment: magic/religion vs. science/rationality
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
