Social criticism
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Social criticism analyzes social structures which are seen as flawed and aims at practical solutions by specific measures, radical reform or even revolutionary change.
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[edit] Academic forms of social criticism
The dispute between critical rationalism (e.g. Karl Popper and the Frankfurt School) exemplified the principal problem whether the research in the social sciences should attempt to be 'neutral' or 'objective' or consciously adopt a necessarily partisan view.
Works of social criticism can belong to social philosophy, political economy, sociology, social psychology, psychoanalysis but also cultural studies and other disciplines or reject academic forms of discourse.
[edit] Social criticism in literature and music
Social criticism can also be expressed in a fictional form, e.g. in a revolutionary novel like The Iron Heel by Jack London or in dystopian novels like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) or George Orwell's (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (1949) or Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953), children's books or films.
Fictional literature can have a significant social impact. "For example, the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe furthered the antislavery movement in the United States, and the 1885 novel Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson, brought about changes in laws regarding Native Americans. Similarly, Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle helped create new laws related to public health and food handling, and Arthur Morrison's 1896 novel A Child of the Jago caused England to change its housing laws." [1]
Musical expressions of social criticism are very frequent in punk music.
[edit] Classical works
Among the classical works are:
- Étienne de La Boétie: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (circa 1560)
- Immanuel Kant: "On the question, what is enlightenment?" (1784)
- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (1792)
- Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
- Karl Marx: Capital (1867)
- Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873)
- Walter Benjamin: Critique of Violence (1921)
- Georg Lukács: History and Class Consciousness (1923)
- Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own (1929)
- Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
- Henry Miller: The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)
- Max Horkheimer/Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)
- Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex (1949)
- Aimé Césaire, Discourse on colonialism (1950)
- Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- Rachel Carson: Silent Spring (1962)
- Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man (1964)
- Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle (1967)
- Harry Braverman: Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974)
- Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish (1975)
- Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975)
- Joseph Weizenbaum: Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)
- Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States (1980)
and many of the writings of Pierre Bourdieu
[edit] Contemporary authors
- Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1989)
- Giannina Braschi, "Yo-Yo Boing!" (1998)
- Raewyn Connell, Masculinities (1995)
- Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent (1988), Profit over people (2000)
- Simon Head: The New Ruthless Economy. Work and Power in the Digital Age, Oxford UP 2005
- Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, Expanded Edition, London: Zed Books, 2003
[edit] References
- Patricia D. Netzley (1999), Social Protest Literature. An Encyclopedia of Works, Characters, Authors and Themes, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1999
[edit] Sources
- ^ Netzley 1999: xiii
[edit] See also
- Ableism
- African Cinema, African American literature
- Adultism, Ageism, Children's rights movement
- Antisemitism
- class struggle, council communism, Labour movement, exploitation
- Biopolitics
- Critical pedagogy, Sociology of education
- Critique of technology, Development criticism
- Eurocentrism
- Feminism, Women's movement, Women's studies,Women's Cinema
- Ideology, Criticism of religion, Critique of capitalism, Critique of technology
- Imperialism, Militarism, Nationalism
- Hegemonic masculinity, Heterosexism, Homophobia
- LGBT social movements
- Anarchism, Surrealism, Situationist International
- New social movements
- Pamphlet, Satire, Utopian and dystopian fiction
- Political Cinema, Political theatre
- Post-structuralism, Critical Theory
- Colonialism, Anticolonialism, Neocolonialism, Post-Colonialism
- Racism, Racism in the United States, Antiracism
- Sexism
- Whiteness studies
