Lehrende/r: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Axel Schäfer
Veranstaltungsart: Hauptseminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan: 05.866.532
Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | 30
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches: Abundant America: The Promises and Perils of Prosperity in the Twentieth-Century U.S. The transition to a consumption-oriented economy and the vision of “freedom from want” are among the central experiences of modernity. As literary critic Van Wyck Brooks put it in his 1915 classic America's Coming of Age, “a familiar distinction between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries is that the problem of civilization is no longer the problem of want but the problem of surplus.” Yet the accelerating environmental crisis and the unsustainable use of natural resources has raised awareness of the need for a post-consumerist society beyond the wastefulness of mass consumer culture and the cult of economic growth that has undergirded liberal democracy. In this course we will unpack the historical relationship between “prosperity politics” and modern democracy in the U.S. since its emergence in the late nineteenth century, analyze its ambivalences and contradictions, and ask about the prospects for a post-consumerist society that remains committed to democratic governance. The focus will be on a range of influential twentieth-century social theorists, activists, writers and politicians who helped shape the ideas, institutions, and policies of the politics of consumption. Indeed, many of them came to believe that the “age of surplus” could lead to a "postcapitalist” society (Howard Brick) and a “socialized democracy” beyond the class conflicts, inequalities, and ethnoracial discriminations inherent in the societies of the past. At the same time, however, many of them were “illiberal reformers” (Thomas Leonard). Well into the mid-twentieth century they combined progressive social politics with a deep commitment to a “racialized democracy” in support of the most egregious manifestations of racial injustice, jingoistic excess, nativist immigration policies, social Darwinian theories, “scientific racism,” and eugenics.
Zusätzliche Informationen: Guest Lecture - We July 5 Chad Seales, University of Texas at Austin "Love and Debt: The Product Red Campaign and the Racial Dynamics of Neoliberal Religion"
