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Social movements and their effects in society
Social movements and their effects in society
Social movements and their effects in society
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Gramsci, in his Notebooks, maintained that what was required was that not only should a significant number of ‘traditional’ intellectuals come over to the revolutionary cause (Gramsci himself and his role model Marx were examples of this) but also the working class movement should produce its own organic intellectuals. Gramsci said that all men were intellectuals, yet not all men have the same function of intellectuals in society. He points out in “Prison Notebooks” that: “there is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded” and that everyone, outside their particular professional activity, “carries on some form of intellectual activity …, participates in a particular conception of the world, has a
conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought”. This may at first sounds as if he was exaggerating the possibilities – but what Gramsci is really trying to convey here, is that people have the capability and the capacity to think. The problem was how to harness those capabilities and capacities.
When reading historical letters and or other types of reading materials, one cannot bear to become intrigued when reading these didactic and informative pieces of art. For example, one of the most known and most important pieces of historical masterpieces’ would have to be Martin Luther King’s “ Letter From Birmingham Jail.” This letter was written in response to the published statement that was written by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama. Those eight fellow Alabama clergymen were Bishop C.C.J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray, the Reverend Edward V. Ramage, and the Reverend Earl Stallings.
In “Hidden Intellectualism,” Gerald Graff pens an impressive argument wrought from personal experience, wisdom and heart. In his essay, Graff argues that street smarts have intellectual potential. A simple gem of wisdom, yet one that remains hidden beneath a sea of academic tradition. However, Graff navigates the reader through this ponderous sea with near perfection.
I’d like to start answering this question with Kellner’s definition of Intellectual because it helped me to better understand the rest of the article and I think it might help others too. We all know what “intellectual” means but here is Kellner’s definition of intellectual from his article “Techno-Politics, New Technologies, and New Public Spheres”; “The concept of the intellectual traditionally involved workers in the sphere of mental labor, who produced ideas, wrote text, and developed and transmitted intellectual abilities as opposed to manual workers who produced good and worked with their hand in the realms of manufacture, heavy industry, agriculture and other field that primarily depended on manual labor”.
Through out the course of history there have been several events that have been a pivotal point which has molded the behaviors and thoughts of this century. A lot of notable activist and authors wrote stories and speeches about how they believed that this day and time would be like. A lot of these views were very accurate surprisingly. In the novel 1984 author George Orwell gives his vision on how he believed that the countries would be like if they kept going the way they were.This report will give you a brief rundown of the characters, theories and principles of this novel along with some of my personal insight of the novel.
...nstantly struggled between these two ideas, and throughout his life he fought for a socialist society in Britain to represent his belief in the need of both community and the individual. He wrote powerfully and blatantly to illustrate the concept of balance between the affects of community and the individual.
Most prisoners that are in prison now are more than likely to be free one day where some will spend the rest of their living life there. When they enter into the prison system, they lose more than just being able to wear what they want. They even lose more than just their civil liberties. Gresham Sykes was the first to outline these major deprivations that prisoners go through in his book The Society of Captives. His five major pains, which he calls “pains of imprisonment”, were loss of liberty, loss of autonomy, loss of security, deprivation of heterosexual relationships, and deprivation of goods and services. Matthew Robinson adds onto Sykes’ five pains with three more of his own. His additional pains are loss of voting rights, loss of dignity,
Intellectuals are philosophers, are writers, are artists. They are all those people who work with their minds by questioning the events that touch them and that are touched by them. To recall a Plato's famous allegory, we can say that intellectuals are those who are able to look beyond the shadows and never take concepts for granted. However, some questions as what their role is and, more specifically, whether they should be engaged in politics are still unanswerable. Over the years answers and behaviors towards the engaged culture have been various and we can assume that the intellectuals who cannot separate the two live their lives actively for they want to be part of the events that surround them and let awareness win over apathy. On the contrary, we can assume that those who let apathy win are the intellectuals that look at politics and culture as two different and specific concepts and live a solitary life far from society. However, this is not an appropriate judgment because it would be difficult to consider to which extent solitude can be regarded as cowardliness and to which extent action can be regarded as consciousness.
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. The party slogan of Ingsoc illustrates the sense of contradiction which characterizes the novel 1984. That the book was taken by many as a condemnation of socialism would have troubled Orwell greatly, had he lived to see the aftermath of his work. 1984 was a warning against totalitarianism and state sponsored brutality driven by excess technology. Socialist idealism in 1984 had turned to a total loss of individual freedom in exchange for false security and obedience to a totalitarian government, a dysutopia. 1984 was more than a simple warning to the socialists of Orwell's time. There are many complex philosophical issues buried deep within Orwell's satire and fiction. It was an essay on personal freedom, identity, language and thought, technology, religion, and the social class system. 1984 is more than a work of fiction. It is a prediction and a warning, clothed in the guise of science fiction, not so much about what could happen as it is about the implications of what has already happened. Rather than simply discoursing his views on the social and political issues of his day, Orwell chose to narrate them into a work of fiction which is timeless in interpretation. This is the reason that 1984 remains a relevant work of social and philosophical commentary more than fifty years after its completion.
eorge Orwell’s 1949 classic 1984 is a hauntingly original entry into the dystopian science fiction genre. The main elements that elevate Orwell’s novel into a masterpiece are its setting, characterizations, theme, and symbolism, which will be discussed in this paper. The theme and main idea of 1984 is rebellion from a totalitarian regime.
In the book On Crimes and Punishments; the author; Cesare Beccaria talks about the justice system and the changes that he believes will make society better for all the citizens. In many of Cesare Beccaria’s statements he argues that to lower crimes, all citizens should be treated equally to have society properly function. Despite the changes that Cesare Beccaria made on equality, there is still a lot of hard work to be done to attain equality worldwide even to this day. Beccaria believes that certain aspects of the law have to change so that everyone could be treated the same even if they are of a different class divisions as well as if they have been accused of a given crime.
Each person has his/her unique thoughts and ideas about life. Many people have tried to bring a positive change into the world. Some have accomplished bringing a change and some have not. Joseph Jacotot, a French lecturer brought up different perspectives about human beings, discussed in a book by Jacques Ranciere named, “The Ignorant Schoolmaster”. In his book, Ranciere argues, very descriptively, his principles of intellectual emancipation, with which I could not agree any less than he does with.
Despite the resilient nature of mankind, it is deceptively easy to change one’s personality through aggressively cruel yet effective tactics. Mental and physical torture is ever-present in modern day society and remains a shockingly potent tool in the correct hands. Winston’s transformation in George Orwell’s 1984 demonstrates an extreme example of the dreadful effects of torture on the human mind. Winston’s mental rehabilitation is a complex procedure; it begins with his struggle to maintain his character, followed by O’Brien’s attempts to change Winston’s mentality, which culminates into his complete transformation into the perfect Party member.
Co-author of “They Say/I Say” handbook, Gerald Graff, analyzes in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism” that “street smarts” can be used for more efficient learning and can be a valuable tool to train students to “get hooked on reading and writing” (Graff 204). Graff’s purpose is to portray to his audience that knowing more about cars, TV, fashion, and etc. than “academic work” is not the detriment to the learning process that colleges and schools can see it to be (198). This knowledge can be an important teaching assistant and can facilitate the grasping of new concepts and help to prepare students to expand their interests and write with better quality in the future. Graff clarifies his reasoning by indicating, “Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in Source over the student who writes a life-less explication of Hamlet or Socrates’ Apology” (205). Graff adopts a jovial tone to lure in his readers and describe how this overlooked intelligence can spark a passion in students to become interested in formal and academic topics. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos to establish his credibility, appeal emotionally to his readers, and appeal to logic by makes claims, providing evidence, and backing his statements up with reasoning.
At the time of his death on the fifteenth of April, 1980, at the age of seventy-four, Jean-Paul Sartre’s greatest literary and philosophical works were twenty-five years in the past. Although the small man existed in the popular mind as the politically inconsistent champion of unpopular causes and had spent the last seven years of his life in relative stagnation, his influence was still great enough to draw a crowd of over fifty thousand people – admirers or otherwise – for his funeral procession. Sartre was eminently quotable, a favorite in the press, because his statements were always controversial. He was the leader of the shortly popular Existential movement in philosophy which turned quickly into a fad for the disillusioned post-World War I generation, so even when the ideas criticized were not the ideas of Sartre’s Existentialism, he still came to the public mind. Sartre was alternately celebrated and vilified, depending on which side of the issue the speaker or writer was on, and whether or not Sartre had early espoused – and possibly later turned against – the ideals in question. Despite Sartre’s many political and philosophical about-faces, fellow Marxist political philosopher Herbert Marcuse said of him, “He may not want to be the world’s conscience, but he is.” [Hayman, 458]
... people are more advantaged than others and will receive a top notch education, while others will receive a mediocre education that will prepare them less for college and more for a working class job. There most likely is a connection between social class and the educational opportunities presented to students, but it is also possible that other social forces are at play which determines the quality of a student’s education. In Gatto’s essay it was argued that are educational system is designed to perpetuate faults in order to create a manageable society. He supports his argument with various strong statements which makes his logic convincing, but he falls short when backing the credibility of his claims. The strengths of his essay prove to also be its weakness, which results in a piece of literature that only succeeds in arousing emotional reactions from readers.