All these two-dimensional yellow breasted sparrows centered carefully in a cookie cut sidewalk block. Five whole birds, flat chirpless worlds. Oh Columbia, what boot is so bitter? What hunter so callous? So inhuman in their swift stomp? What angry, trickle-down, color-blind sonovabitch tenderized ten summer wings at the dusk of their Missouri home?
And now that trees spread their autumn morning ashes, a eulogy to dawn songs and figure eight fly-alongs, dreaded bohemians in their tie-dye and burkenstocks, vegan mountain bikers, blasphemers, spread you thinner into your paved graves. You feathered, trusting, pedestrian centerpieces, I look down and wonder whose soles are more worn.
Kudos to Poop City for making my neat little banner. She is an amazing freelance graphic designer. If you ever need work done...she'll probably be too self-conscious to do it, but at least you'll raise her self-esteem a bit. Thanks, Heidi. ;-)
I'm still not sure about posting my old blogs on this site. If I do, they'll be pre-dated, so they will appear prior to all the blogs that are currently posted. I'm not sure if there is a point in doing this, since it doesn't really reflect the "Missouri" experience of this blog....but then again, I guess the theme is also "Misery" because I like to inscribe the pain onto myself when I write. I don't know. Until then, if you read my blog and would like to read anything else I've written, my older bloggings can be found at www.myspace.com/sociomike Or, you could ask me for poetry, thesis writing, memoir stuff, whatever.
I'm going to try to keep the habit of writing at least 2 blogs a week regardless of how busy I am with school. They take me out of academic stress for a little while....and whether they locate me in other realms of my social life or put my schoolin' in broader perspective, they make me feel like I'm in touch with other people. Intimacy has been sorely lacking from my everyday routine.
Is anyone else looking forward to October? I don't know that Missouri could possible be as lovely as Kentucky in the tenth month, but I'm seeing the warmer rainbow of autumn foliage even here.
I pine.
For those of you who don't know, I've long had a love affair with October. I've forgotten desire, forgotten the feel of a love-sick encounter, and something about this upcoming season leaves my body in a constant ache for contact, bodily or momentary communicative touching.
and I'm tired of my political life right now. I want my artist back. I want to remember that I can feel in love because living for work is a crotchety drudgery. The love might not be real, but it could be...feel?
Haven't recouped that poet just yet.
I need new music for October; something to move my moods with the color of leaves. If you think I've sounded depressed in my last few blogs....well, I assure you I'm fine. I just need love. A good album can help me love.
Ah, 19th century economy. It's much more interesting than 21st century breakdowns. I've spent this week thinking about the past, so as not to face the present crisis.
For the sake of not letting these papers I write fall into my documents file -never to be seen again- I thought I would post this silly little theory paper I spent so much time working on this week. It's about four pages of bullshit, but I'm pretty sure that's what the Professor Lo is asking for. Now, I don't expect anyone to understand this stuff (or read it all for that matter). I post it to illustrate the ridiculous expectations of the course. Clarence is a great dude, but he specifically asks questions that will torture his students. This question, while straightforward, forced us to sift through several hundred pages in two different books about the history of economic development in the Western world.
First thing to note, he expects us to make an argument explicitly through citations in the text. I have an average of about five citations PER paragraph. Now, this might be normal for history students, but this is some bullshit for sociologists. Our sense of knowledge ownership and production doesn't work like this. Secondly, this is not in my area. Though I have read quite a bit of Marx and it's certainly relevant, the enitre framework is outside the scope of the work I do. This is the question:
"Is Marx's critique of political economy in his later writings, and his theories of ideology and consciousness in his early writings, consistent with Polanyi's account of the rise of market ideology and "natural law" around the early nineteenth century?"
In case, for whatever reason, you decide to read the whole thing and are unfamiliar, here's a few definitions. Political economy implies the relationship between political and economic institutions throughout history. Ideologies are basically cultural explanations for the material world (people, money, land, food, etc). "Natural Laws" are a set of early 19th century philosophical explanations for the economy; they argued that human beings by nature are economic beings, and the economy as a social system must be allowed to function on its own without "human" intervention for the greatest benefit of society. The two historians, Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi (pause here to say that economic historians named Karl are dicks), basically think natural laws are bullshit explanations that ignore the importance of community and that we need to protect ourselves from economic threats. For Marx, this whole issue is about conflict between social classes and the ability for the "haves" (bourgeousie) to exploit the labor of the "have nots" (proletariat). Polanyi writes 100 years later in what I assume is a functionalist tradition. He also thinks natural law is bullshit (by the way, this includes the shit idea of "trickle-down economics" which is STILL the Republican solution to poverty despite a mass of evidence to the contrary), but Polanyi generally dismisses class and argues that the State (politics) must balance out threats to our society with "interventionist" measures. Marx sees the state as another bourgeousie aparatus to control the workforce (politicians being part of the wealthy/capitalist class). These are both arguments against what we would call neo-conservative economics (which are the "liberal economics" of the past). I did think it was interesting how this is all still relevant.....
Why the fuck am I writing about this? It's over. I just wanted to post about how much it sucked. Damnit. I'll write something else later. Anyway, here's that stupid paper.
Contradictions and Complements: Marx and Polanyi
The development of a capitalist economy has been interpreted in fundamentally different ways by Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi.I have sought out similarities, but these two texts are wildly different in approach.By the end of this paper, I will attempt to illustrate the Marxian notions of consciousness and ideology in Polanyi’s work; however, I come to the general conclusion that while technically correct, Marx would identify the use of these concepts in Polanyi as incompatible with a materialist conception of history.
Marx and Polanyi trace the development of modern capitalism through many of the same historical stages.In these specific similarities, the differences are glaring.Marx (p.467, par. 4) notes the importance of enclosures in the development of the proletariat class, and Polanyi (p. 36, par. 1) speaks of this period in terms of social dislocation.Marx addresses enclosures as an act of “robbery” where communal land is stolen for private ownership (Marx, p. 472, par. 1).Polanyi interprets their development as necessary and tempered by state intervention (Polanyi, p. 39, par. 1).Both also make remarks on the Speenhamland poor-rate (Marx, p. 470, par. 1).Unlike Polanyi, Marx takes a favorable tone toward the poor rate, suggesting that the “nation was obliged to recognize pauperism officially (Marx, p. 470, par. 1).”
These two examples point to distinct differences in Marx and Polanyi’s approach to political economy.The clearest statement of the Marxian model is the opening line of Manifesto of the Communist Party, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles (Marx, p. 203, par. 1).”He argues that the material world, the means of production, in any given historical epoch shapes the development of culture, family, religion, and most importantly for this discussion, the state.In a capitalist society, the state is separated from communal interests and becomes the “form in which the individuals of the ruling class assert their common interests (Marx, p. 184, par. 2).”It is an “illusory” social form, which masks the material struggles of the proletariat (Marx, p. 177, par. 177).For Polanyi, on the other hand, “history of nineteenth-century civilization consisted largely in attempts to protect society against the ravages of such a mechanism (Polanyi, p. 42, par. 2).” The state, in essence, protects the social system against the inherent threats of a self-regulating market.
In line with his criticism of Hegel (p. 159, par. 2), Marx might cast Polanyi as a bourgeoisie apologist.His later writings on the economy argue that the state encompasses bourgeois interests, which are “the national power of capital over labor (Marx, p. 510, par. 1).”Though Polanyi supports the social system through state intervention, he is intentionally uncritical of “sectional interests.”He describes class as the “natural vehicle of social change (p. 159, par. 4),” but he argues for a “double movement” interpretation of history, focusing on the complementary nature of the state system and the economic system (Polanyi, p. 138, par. 3).Marx actually echoes the double movement concept with what he calls the natural (material) relations and the social relations of society (Marx, p. 173, par. 1). However, while both critique civil society as defined by Marx (p. 179, par 4; p. 180, par. 1), Marx does not see the political state as a measure of self-protection, but rather a ruling class tool for exploitation (p. 180, par 2) and an “illusory communal life (p. 176, par. 3).”
Polanyi combats this critique from Marx in several ways.He argues that the exploitation theory of Ricardian class struggle was unable to account for a general rise in wages (Polanyi, p. 42, par. 1).He suggests that many state measures, sanitation for example, had nothing at all to do with economic interests (Polanyi, p. 161, par. 1).He draws on Owen as the only contemporary of the industrial revolution to correctly argue that the working class largely benefitted from moves made by the state (Polanyi, p. 134, par. 2)
Marx directly critiques Owen, as well as other scholars of early capitalism, as a reactionary ideologue who did not work with a mature version of class warfare and the state (Marx, p. 237, par. 3).For Marx, the state apparatus must fully develop for the population to grasp the antagonisms (or contradictions) laden in the capitalist economy.This would give the proletariat the tools necessary to bring about a new stage of human history (Marx, p. 193, par. 2).
I point to these disparities in their economic histories to support the argument that while consciousness and ideology may be apparent in Polanyi’s work, they are actually incompatible and contradictory to Marx.Consciousness, for Marx, is the “production of ideas... Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-processes (Marx, p. 169, par. 2).”In his formulation, consciousness is the awareness of individual life, but he also argues that consciousness arises out of interaction with other humans (Marx, p. 175, par. 3). This is an important distinction from notions of “pure” consciousness because it suggests that ideological processes can become “phantoms” of the material world (Marx, p. 169, par. 3) and therefore “facilitate the arrangement of historical material (Marx, p. 170, par. 170).”These “phantoms” –what we more commonly know as false consciousness- work to prevent the working class from overcoming the contradictions imposed by capitalist economies and bourgeoisie control of the state (Marx, p. 175, par. 1-2).
Polanyi, too, is concerned with consciousness. He argues through Robert Owen that the “reform of human consciousness” is “reached through the recognition of the realities of society (Polanyi, p. 133, par. 2).” This is not unlike Marx; however, the nature of these realities is debated between the two.Polanyi and Marx are both critical of “natural law” economics.In chapter ten of The Great Transformation, Polanyi details natural law theories from Smith’s humanist foundations (p. 116, par. 2) to Townsend’s explicit animalistic naturalism (p. 119, par. 2), the law of wages (p. 128, par. 4), and others.In “Birth of the Liberal Creed,” Polanyi explains how these natural laws became full-fledged ideologies acting against protectionist politics (p. 148, par. 2; p. 150, par. 2).
For Polanyi, natural law and the liberal creed are an ideological mythos used to defend against “collectivist” measures (Polanyi, p. 151, par. 3).Marx would agree with this assessment.He argues that these natural laws provide “an opportunity for the underhand introduction of bourgeois situations as irreversible natural laws of society in the abstract (Marx, p. 379, par. 2).”However, this is as far as the similarities can take us.For Marx, these natural laws are ideological tools used to establish class supremacy.Polanyi, however, equates Marxist economics with the liberal creed as yet another sectionalist interest, which denies the spontaneous balance between economy and state (Polanyi, p. 158, par. 2).In fact, Polanyi accuses Marx of bringing naturalist assumptions into his economic theory through his association with Ricardian economics (Polanyi, p. 131, par. 2), which continued to assume some tenets of natural law (Polanyi, p. 132, par. 3).
I believe Marx would counter this argument by suggesting that Polanyi’s elevation of the state is in fact an ideological justification for the current mode of production because Polanyi glosses over the interests involved in the state mechanism itself (Marx, p. 184, par. 1).This becomes a circular argument of whom is the ideological obstruction for whom.The character of Polanyi’s use of consciousness and ideology is quite different from Marx.Through Marx’s materialist approach, he seeks to emancipate the species-being from the alienating nature of all pre-Communist societies (Marx, p. 140, par. 2).Polanyi, on the other hand, is concerned more with the threats imposed by a self-regulating market on the total social system, disregarding class interests (Polanyi, p. 138, par. 3).While the two draw on similar historical events and, in fact Polanyi’s use of consciousness and ideology may have origins in Marx, the distinct modes of historical analysis lead us to two contradictory conclusions.
Today, I chose the book Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence NOT to read this week. Narrative and Identity meets tomorrow, so I'll stay quiet and contribute if the conversation is specific or general enough to sound competent. I'll maybe catch up next week.
Tonight I watched the three hour special premiere event of Heroes. I chose this over finishing my Marx reading and prepping the paper I will write tomorrow comparing a Marxist conception of political economy, consciousness and ideology to a later work on a similar topic. Hopefully I will get up at 6 tomorrow morning and finish the paper by tomorrow night with enough time to get 50-100 pages into Making Sense of Race, Class, and Gender. I'll read that all day Wednesday when I'm not in class....probably in a hurry. I'll write my response paper (hopefully at the graduate level), get up Thursday morning and prepare to teach a lab section. I'll do my classes that day, and Tyler and Lindsay will be here that night. I'll relax. Hopefully not all weekend.
In total, I have nearly 700 pages to read this week. That is literally impossible. I know the old notion that you can never read everything that is assigned to you in graduate school. You'll go insane. But WHY on earth should I be assigned so much reading that I have to choose which book NOT to read at all?
I want to be a good graduate student. I love the readings and the courses when I have the time to complete them. But it will not be my goddamn life. I cannot do this every day without reprieve. I've been moderately social here (at least compared to UK or what I might have expected from myself). I'll keep that going. But I'm also going to blog. Christ, this may be the only thing that keeps me sane if I want to finish this program. Otherwise, as I've told several people today because Missouri loves company (haha!), I won't be cut out for this.
I don't know what I want from this whole thing, but I'll be pretty damn pissy if I've already convinced myself that it won't work.
Graduate school is dark times. Dark times, indeed.
-Mike
p.s. I have little time for longing....but if you are from Kentucky, I miss you terribly right now.
It really sucks that I haven't written anything in the last couple weeks. I wish I could say it's because I've been working hard on my Ph.D. and that I'm super excited about sociology right now.
I am a shitty grad student.
It doesn't really make sense. I work about 60 hours a week between coursework and my teaching assistantship. Doesn't that sound like I work enough? The problem is, I fit that 60 hours between Sunday night and Thursday afternoon. Every single week since the semester started, I have managed to be lazy Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and yes, most of Sunday. I decided that Thursday was my crash night....I fit so much stress into those four days of work that I practically collapse by the end of the week. And it takes two full days of football to recuperate.
So when I say I'm a shitty graduate student, what I really mean is that I should be working 80 hours a week. I should be working 100 hours a week. I shouldn't have to choose which book I'm not going to read this week or which two books I'm going to half ass. I should be reading outside my course load. I should be conducting research and writing papers for publication. I should be a graduate student.
The assistant professor who leads my Culture, Difference, and Inequality seminar left just one note on my previous week's response paper: "This is not graduate level work, and you can do better." I don't think she is correct on either count. I can do better, but not right now. It is graduate level work, but it's not doctoral work. Still, I don't think I've ever been told that my work isn't quality enough. My first reaction is to think I've peaked my intillectual capacity. My second, realistic, reaction is that I can't fake my way through school anymore. Every graduate student has a bit of impostor syndrome - a feeling that they don't deserve to be where they are, that everyone else knows more than you, is more driven than you. And I recognize that I'm not the worst graduate student, but I know what tactics have worked in the past to get me out of working hard. Up through my Master's program, I skimmed readings, I used my writing skills to bullshit through papers, and I gave people the impression that I knew more than I did. It was partially intentional and partial intentional negligence.
Unlike my last school, I'm surrounded by faculty and students who can hold me accountable. Not only do I feel like the graduate students here are stronger scholars, but many of them study my areas of interest. I can't just flaunt my niche to make myself seem brilliant; I have to back that shit up. I turned my Master's thesis in for review last week. I felt dread. I was embarrassed for my work to be evaluated by scholars in my area. It lacks cohesion. The conclusions are premature and with weak theoretical grounding. I've already learned about how I ought to have conducted the project. At last, I will be revealed as the fraud I have always been. They're all gonna laugh at me.
Maybe my teachers haven't cared enough to tell me that I could work harder. My average work has always been better than other students, so why would they bother to question? I might ask this professor who pointed out my uninspired work to be my advisor. I'll have someone to push me where I probably could go if I just gave the effort. Or maybe she'll just see me as a bum, as the impostor, and she'll have nothing to do with me.
Maybe the larger issue is that I'm already losing excitement. It's just a normal life again....one without the comforts of home. I don't know what the fuck I want to do, and the more I think about it, the more I know I could be happy with some less-than-ideal nine-to-five. I could stress less and pursue the other things I love.
I am a shitty grad student. I keep saying it over and over again. Maybe it's just because I am an unhappy human being.
A. That I'll never have time to devote to my writing, whether that be memoir, blogging, poetry, whatever.
B. That all I have to write about is school (or what is lacking from my life because of school).
So I think if anyone likes to read my writing, Lord knows why, that you'll have to deal with both of these struggles on a regular basis. I plan to complain. I'm basically going to average about three books and a paper or so a week. This makes it difficult both to write blogs and to think about much else apart from transforming the Occident from feudal economy to a capitalist marketplace or the situated construction of identity narratives in a post-modern world or....something about women and white racism (haven't looked at that book yet).
Really, I'm pretty excited about all this. I have about a thousand research ideas, and it's kind of neat planning my position in the discipline. I don't feel much pressure, contrary to the typical graduate experience....and that's making me a little wacky.
I'm imagining an atypical approach to my doctoral work. I might consider using my personal narrative writing. I read a book this week called Landscape of a Good Woman by Carolyn Steedman. It combined a memoir-style with psychoanalysis. The purpose of this book (written in the 80's) was to bust apart previous research about working class women that only caricatured their experience (written predominantly by men). Exciting, eh? It wasn't terribly effective through today's literature, but it raised questions for me about the utility of....unconventional projects, particularly using my own narrative writing.
The narrative is not a new idea. I toyed with it at UK. As I said in the seminar discussion of Steedman's book, I wish I had the courage. You may not be aware of this fact, but sociology (and other fields) have very narrow definitions of how their own disciplinary work can be practiced. Diversity exists among researchers, but what I pose lies outside most feasible frameworks -- especially for graduate students.
I'm not quite sure how I would apply it as research method, to what end, and of course, whether or not I'd find support (either epistemologically or in the Mizzou faculty). But I'm not particularly invested in the discipline of sociology separate from a body of justice-oriented knowledge production. I don't need the disciplinary boundaries that make the big bucks (hah). I'm pretty sure I want to be a stay-at-home-dad anyway.
Bet you didn't take that last sentence seriously. Take it seriously.
Who knows if I can do this or if I'll find a worthwhile purpose....but if I am changing at all here in Missouri, I am becoming bolder. I'm taking names and melting faces. I think you're going to see a very different Mike sooner than you might expect.
Well that's strange....after typing out this blog, I've essentially conceived of a solution to both A and B.
I think I'm gonna buy an iPhone tomorrow as a reward.
