Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer

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СКАЧАТЬ the ways in which our consumer culture has led to the commercialization of childhood, with advertising pervading all aspects of children’s lives. As a countercultural alternative, she suggests that we both work less and spend less and instead devote ourselves to more meaningful activities. Living a simpler life means avoiding overconsumption, minimizing the work needed to pay for consumption, and doing less harm to the environment.

      Globalization, especially economic globalization, has also spawned a number of very active countercultural groups. They are not necessarily antiglobalization, but they favor alternative forms of globalization (Kahn and Kellner 2007; Obara-Minnitt 2014; Pleyers 2010). In fact, many of them are part of the process of globalization. The World Social Forum (WSF) was created in 2001 following a series of antiglobalization protests, particularly one in Seattle in 1999. Its members come from all over the world. The WSF’s slogan is “Another world is possible.” That other world would be less capitalistic. It would also allow for more democratic decision-making on matters that affect large portions of the world’s population. Those who accept this kind of perspective are clearly part of a counterculture. They oppose the global spread of the dominant capitalist culture that prioritizes maximizing profits over democratic decision-making.

      Culture Wars

      In the 1960s, the hippies, student radicals, and Vietnam War activists vocally, visibly, and sometimes violently rejected traditional American norms and values. Among other things, they rejected unthinking patriotism and taboos against recreational drugs and sexual freedom. The term culture war was used to describe the social upheaval that ensued. More generally, a culture war is a conflict pitting a subculture or counterculture against the dominant culture (e.g., antievolutionists versus evolutionists; Silva 2014), or a conflict between dominant groups within a society. Culture wars sometimes lead to the disruption of the social, economic, and political status quo (Hunter 1992; Luker 1984).

      In the United States today, the major culture war being fought is between those who place themselves on the conservative end of the sociopolitical spectrum and those who place themselves on the liberal end. It is largely viewed as a political battle over such things as government spending, taxes, social services, national defense, and environmental measures. Conservatives generally favor less government spending, lower taxes for the wealthy, fewer entitlements for the poor, aggressive national defense, and minimal environmental regulations. Liberals usually support higher government spending on education, health care, and services for the poor; less spending on national defense; and stricter environmental regulations. Today, this battle is epitomized by struggles between Donald Trump and his conservative allies in the Republican Party and liberal Democrats in the Congress.

      There are important differences in fundamental values between these groups. Consider, for example, the long-running battle over abortion. The political battle is over legal limits to abortion and contraception. However, the underlying values have to do with differing definitions of life and attitudes toward women’s role in society. Similarly, much heat is generated over “family values,” with conservatives worrying about the decline in the traditional nuclear family, the increasing prevalence of cohabitation and single parenthood, homosexual marriage, and the adoption of children by same-sex couples. They place more emphasis on strict moral codes and self-discipline, whereas liberals, in contrast, place more significance on empathy, openness, and fairness. Liberals tend to see the developments in the family as signs of greater acceptance of people’s differences and circumstances (Lakoff 2016; Wuthnow 2018). Within the field of sociology, in fact, there is intense debate between family scholars who argue that the family is in decline and those who feel that the concept of the family needs to be broadened to embrace the many ways in which people experience kin connections (Popenoe 1993; see Chapter 12).

      The conservative–liberal culture war is debated endlessly in the popular media. The media themselves tend to be increasingly divided along conservative (Fox News) and liberal (MSNBC) lines. News reports on these stations are often wildly different, taking contrasting or conflicting positions and even featuring completely different stories or takes on the same stories. The leading media pundits (e.g., Fox News’s conservative Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s liberal Rachel Maddow) are often at war with one another.

      Examples of culture wars are also to be found in the digital world. For example, open-source advocates believe that the internet, or at least large portions of it, should be protected from control by governments or corporations. They support free open-source software (e.g., Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, GNU Image Manipulation Program) as well as free access to information. One of their models is nonprofit Wikipedia, where anyone can create entries and modify them. They oppose the dominant profit-oriented players on the internet, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, and internet service providers. These large corporations are seen as carving up the digital world and controlling access to generate huge profits. There is a constant low-level conflict going on between members of these two cultures and the groups that support them. More recently, a culture war broke out between those who want to give some corporations (such as Comcast and Verizon) control over the internet and those who favor “net neutrality,” in which the internet is free and open to all. The issue seemed settled when in mid-2016 a federal court ruled in favor of net neutrality, but it is far from dead. In late 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to eliminate at least some of the rules that made net neutrality possible. As a result, it is likely that large corporations will gain an even greater presence in, and control over, the internet.

      Multiculturalism and Assimilation

      A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to another aspect of cultural diversity—multiculturalism, or an environment in which cultural differences are accepted and appreciated both by the state and by the majority group (Pakulski 2014). The cultural groups may be based on race, ethnicity, nationality, or language. They may also be based on age and other dimensions of difference. People in the United States, for example, generally accept that young and old people have their own cultural preferences. Americans for the most part tolerate—sometimes even celebrate—the coexistence of different cultural groups within the larger culture.

      When it comes to ethnicity and national origin, however, multiculturalism has not always been celebrated in this country. The dominant culture has been interested primarily in assimilation, or integrating the minority group into the mainstream. As a so-called nation of immigrants, the United States has always had to resolve issues of cultural diversity. Until late in the twentieth century, most immigrants to the United States were from Europe, especially eastern and southern Europe. Many of these groups did assimilate to a large degree, even if their assimilation occurred over a couple of generations. Today we do not think twice about whether Polish Americans or Italian Americans, for instance, are “regular” Americans.

      But immigrants from the next large wave, in the 1990s and 2000s, have not assimilated so well. Figure 3.3 demonstrates that the largest flow of immigrants is now from the Americas, with another large—and growing—group from Asia. These immigrants, especially those from Mexico and China, often live in largely separate enclaves and often speak their native languages (see Figure 3.4 for a map depicting the percentage of the population speaking a language other than English at home). They also often retain their basic cultures, such as their tastes in food. It remains to be seen whether, and to what degree, these groups will be assimilated into mainstream culture or their culture will be accepted as a valued element of American culture.

      Description

      Figure 3.3 Regions of Birth for Immigrants in the United States, 1960–2016

      Sources: Migration Policy Institute (MPI) tabulation СКАЧАТЬ