Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

May, '68

AMY GOODMAN:

We begin today with our latest edition of “1968: Forty Years Later.” May 1968 was a watershed month for France, when a wave of student and worker protests swept the country and changed French society forever.

It began when university students in Paris occupied the area of the Sorbonne and Nanterre universities in response to a dispute over visiting rights to a female students’ dormitory. The protests grew into a call for wider university reforms and greater personal freedoms that led to three weeks of mass demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest heavy-handed police treatment. In a show of solidarity, ten million workers, or roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, went on strike. It marked the biggest general strike in French history.

This is one of the 1968 student leaders being questioned at the time at a news conference in Paris.

REPORTER: Could you tell us what your purpose is in being here?

DANNY COHN-BENDIT: Continue, continue politic [inaudible].

REPORTER: Could you tell us whether you’re for the overthrow of capitalist governments in France, in the United States, in Germany?

DANNY COHN-BENDIT: Yes, yes, everywhere.

REPORTER: By violent means?

DANNY COHN-BENDIT: Not again this question! You have heard what I said to your English confreres. I said that I want overthrow if the capitalist system, to defend its privilege, is taking violence, we will defend us with violence. OK?

AMY GOODMAN:

The French protests reached such a point that President Charles de Gaulle created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest. He dissolved the National Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections.

George Katsiaficas is a professor of humanities and sociology at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He’s the author of many books, including The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968. He joins me in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Thanks for having me on the show, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN:

Talk about what happened in May 1968 in France. Set the scene.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Well, in 1968, there was a global movement against the United States and against capitalism, as well as against the Soviet Union and the Soviet variety of socialism. And the relationships of those movements to each other is, I think, one of the primary reasons that we see France erupt. In fact, in his new year’s address in 1968, de Gaulle said that France, of all countries, was an example of peace and social tranquility. But as you say, by May ’68, it was the biggest strike in the history of France, a wildcat insurrectionary general strike that called for the overthrow of capitalism.

Essentially, disciplinary hearings against students who had been trying to be treated as adults and not as children turned into police brutality of an unprecedented level, and students refused to take the violence against them. The student governments in all of France voted to support these students who were being put on disciplinary trials, and the police arrested the student government leaders when they congregated in Paris. The vans — much like the free speech movement in Berkeley, the vans taking away the arrested students were surrounded. One of the vans never made it out. The prisoners were released. And the then police attacked. Students counterattacked. The residents of the Latin Quarter supported the students. The special riot police that had been created after the workers’ strikes of 1958 were then mobilized, and workers instinctively sided with the students.

Soon, within a few weeks, there were ten million workers on strike in France, and no one knew what they wanted. The Communist Party negotiated with the government, trying to legitimate its own role in the society, and got a 35 percent pay raise for more than a million workers, ten percent general pay raise, a reduced workweek, better benefits, lower retirement age, and workers rejected it. Workers booed them off the stage, threw their lunches and beer bottles at them and said, “No, we want an end to capitalism. We don’t want to work in factories for the rest of our lives in exchange for some consumer goods. We want a free society.” So no one really knew what to make of the situation.

AMY GOODMAN:

Yet Charles de Gaulle was reelected?

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

He absolutely was reelected, in part because elections are so small a segment of the population, involving a one-minute act in a booth, but also in part because there was no clear alternative that emerged at that moment. Student leaders like Danny Cohn-Bendit didn’t believe it was possible, when push came to shove, to take over the government. The Stock Exchange was set on fire. But the Parliament building, which hundreds of thousands of people had marched past, remained as it was before the uprising.

AMY GOODMAN:

Last year, when Nicolas Sarkozy was running for president, he blamed the legacy of 1968 for leading to intellectual and moral relativism and hedonistic individualism.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Yes, and I think here in the United States, we heard similar comments from people like Richard Nixon and George Bush. In fact, the legacy of 1968 involves greater freedoms for women and homosexuals —

AMY GOODMAN:

At the time, homosexuality was a crime. Women couldn’t wear pants to work. They needed their husbands’ approval to even open a bank account.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN:

There was one TV channel that had to have government approval to get the news out.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Abortion rights. Students’ lives were forever changed. Young people have much greater freedoms. Minorities in France, despite continuing setbacks, at that time were everywhere welcomed in the factories’ strike committees and said they felt at home in France for the first time. So what you had really was a thoroughgoing cultural shift.

Now, capitalism, the world system, has benefited from every upsurge against it. If we look at the 1830, 1848, the Paris Commune, even the Russian revolution has strengthened the world capitalist system. So May ’68, like other events, has also worked to strengthen the capitalist system or, as Regis Debray put it, to "Americanize" French capitalism.

AMY GOODMAN:

How did the protest end?

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

The protests ended as individual factories were compelled to go back to work. Some factories held out. Massive police presence was used to bring them to leave their occupied factories. But remember, this was a strike that erupted out of nowhere. And it involved, as it emerged, workers in one factory welding the doors shut to their managers’ offices, so the managers were kept hostage until they would agree to negotiate with these wildcat strikers. But the overwhelming majority of the people didn’t know how to proceed further. The society had come to a halt, and there was no socially legitimate hegemonic bloc that could lead people forward in a direction that made sense to people.

AMY GOODMAN:

Professor Katsiaficas, put this in a global context.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Well, when we look at 1968, I think Hegel’s understanding that world history moves from east to west is verified. We had the Vietnamese Tet Offensive, in which every major American military base was simultaneously attacked in a surprise offensive. The Vietnamese had timed it so that the South Vietnamese troops fighting on the side of the United States were all home for the holidays, and so the guerrillas were able to attack directly American troops and overwhelm them. Although they suffered heavy losses, it set off a worldwide dynamic. And all throughout the world, from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Naxalite movement in India, the Czechoslovakia Prague Spring —

AMY GOODMAN:

Which was?

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Which was an uprising against Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia that led to half-a-million Russian troops being brought into Czechoslovakia to occupy it. The French May events, which sparked movements in places like Senegal, Spain, Italy, Mexico City.

AMY GOODMAN:

What happened in Senegal and Spain and other places?

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

In Senegal, there was a student strike. In Spain, there was a strike of students and workers. In Italy, students acted directly in solidarity, attacking the French embassy. In Mexico City, students modeled themselves on what had happened in France. As we know, hundreds of students were killed in Mexico City in October, before the arrival of the 1968 Olympics. But this is the year in —

AMY GOODMAN:

And, of course, in those Olympics was the famous Black Power salute to black athletes from the United States.

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Absolutely. This was also the year when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in the United States. And in more than 150 cities, there were riots. More damage was done to the city of Washington, D.C., than had been done by the British when they captured the city during the War of 1812. The Pentagon estimated it did not have enough troops to fight the war in Vietnam and to maintain order at home. This was truly a world historical year.

The high point of the US movement — that is, our May ’68, if you will — came in 1970, from May to September. We had the killings at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, in response to which a strike of four million students and half-a-million faculty — that is the largest strike in the history of the United States — erupted on the campuses. We had the women’s strike for peace and against patriarchy in New York, the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles on August 29, in which journalist Ruben Salazar was killed by police. And to cap it off, the high point was more than 10,000 people gathering in Philadelphia in response to the Black Panther Party’s call to write a new constitution for the United States. This new constitution was internationalist. It called for an abolition of a standing army, its replacement by popular militias. It called for complete liberation of women, for communal spaces to be set aside for children to be free. It was truly a break with the established system, much like the French May events in 1968.

AMY GOODMAN:

And yet, what came of it?

GEORGE KATSIAFICAS:

Well, again, in the United States, we have these next generations coming up that have integrated school systems in many cities — I can’t say everywhere, as we know segregation continues to plague the society. But we certainly have increased rights for minorities in the United States. Women’s status and position has changed drastically in the United States, abortion rights being just one indication. Gay liberation now is pretty commonly accepted. Of course, there’s still pockets of places that just haven’t been affected. But I think, again, in general, there was a cultural shift that led to greater freedoms for people who are different or who are perceived to be different.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/14/1 ... ent_worker

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[American Dream]

More from Katsiaficas:

MARCUSE'S COGNITIVE INTEREST: A PERSONAL VIEW

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

Early Christians Lived by "Communist" Principles (FT 11/2009)

From Dr Hugh Goodacre.

Sir, Guy Priestly (Letters, November 19) concurs with the view that “neither the communist system nor the capitalist system acknowledged any God”. What about the early Christian community, which was itself communistic?

Indeed, Christian doctrine – whatever the case with Christian practice – retained its communist principles well into medieval times, drawing on the authority of St Luke’s Gospel, in which Christ calls for “that which remaineth” after the satisfaction of the believer’s bare necessities to be given to others as alms. For example, Bede, in the eighth century AD, still wrote, quite simply: “Give to the poor whatever is in excess of necessary food and clothing.”

Eventually, however, the church became more deeply integrated into the administrative structure of the medieval state, and the rise of scholasticism in the 13th century resulted in the elaboration of an alternative to Christ's communistic teachings. In particular, Aquinas taught that the wealthy could include in the category of “necessities” – and thereby exclude from what they were obliged to give in alms – a level of wealth adequate to the maintenance of their status in society.

From a Christian point of view, it is surely such scholastic doctrine that best deserves the stricture contained in Mr Priestley's comment that “a society that sets its morals according to the whim of the moment and to suit the needs of the most powerful can reasonably be described as amoral”.

Hugh Goodacre,
Teaching Fellow,
University College London,
London WC1, UK

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/137b1f60-d7d0 ... abdc0.html


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[American Dream]

"Hey, You! How About Lunch?" New Laserlike Sound Beams Send Messages to Shoppers (WSJ 4/2004)



At a Safeway supermarket in Fremont, Calif., recently, Donna Now was caught off-guard by a subtle voice above the corned beef. Glancing up, she saw a plasma screen bursting with color and seeming to address only her. The voice pitched a special on Sara Lee honey turkeys and brown-sugar hams.

"It's pretty powerful," Ms. Now said. "I mean, I'm a vegetarian, but this makes you want to buy that ham."

Ms. Now had literally crossed paths with what could be the future of sound: narrowly focused sonic beams that can be directed and shaped, much as light is. Marketers and military planners alike are keenly interested in the technology, albeit for different effects.

In tests at retail stores, these laserlike sound beams pinpoint individual shoppers to encourage buying with recorded messages.

In Iraq, meanwhile, soldiers plan to use such sound beams to communicate with people approaching checkpoints. They even could be used to induce headaches among people who don't respond to authorities.

The company at the vanguard of these acoustic tricks is minuscule American Technology Corp. of San Diego, founded by a homespun entrepreneur who holds 43 U.S. patents despite never finishing college. Elwood Norris, a youthful 65-year-old known as Woody, has tinkered with electronics since his teens. In the 1960s, he invented a precursor to the sonogram. Later, he created a hands-free headset for cellular phones and sold it to Jabra Corp., a leading cellphone-equipment company.

Now he is focused on HyperSonic Sound, the product used at the Safeway store. It sends a column of sound that can't be heard just inches to either side of it, and can be molded to make the sound stop dead after a short distance. One application he's pursuing with car makers: Speakers that allow the driver, front- and back-seat passengers to listen to different music without intruding on anyone else's sound.

"We can do what physicists thought could never be done," Mr. Norris said.

Even as this potentially revolutionary technology gains credibility, obstacles abound. HyperSonic Sound is expensive. American Technology is working to overcome reliability and production kinks in the product and, meantime, add professional management to its executive team. In the past, Mr. Norris abandoned or failed to commercialize some promising inventions.

American Technology says it has spent $50 million since 1996 to develop and patent HyperSonic Sound. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the publicly traded company lost $8.2 million on revenue of $1.3 million.

Military products are helping American Technology boost sales. The company won its biggest contract ever in February, a $1.1 million award from the Marines for the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD. The 33-inch-diameter product looks like a manned spotlight but directs a sound beam up to 1,500 feet. It can serve as a megaphone to issue instructions to someone approaching a checkpoint, to determine whether the person is trying to attack. The First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq will use LRADs with MP3 players that have prerecorded Arabic warnings, including, "Stop or I will kill you."

The Marine units that have the LRAD have found it "quite effective communicating at great distances," said Capt. Dan McSweeney, a Marine spokesman. He emphasized that the intended use is as a "high-powered bullhorn," not a headache-inducing weapon, which would require extensive testing and legal reviews.

In a test at American Technology's parking lot, such orders come through loud and clear from more than 300 feet away, obscuring the traffic noise from an adjacent highway. Then the operator switches to "tone mode" to show what happens to people who don't halt: The disk emits a grating noise that is unsettling at low volume, and excruciating enough at high volumes to cause headaches. It affects only the person or small group at whom it is aimed.

"If the intruder keeps coming, he buys a bullet," said Carl Gruenler, vice president of military and government operations at American Technology. "This gives breathing room to soldiers. Before, it was: Shoot and wish you hadn't, or don't shoot and wish you had."

Launched last year, the product is being tested on Navy ships, and was used by police in Miami for crowd control during a free-trade conference last year. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is considering it for perimeter security at airports. Police in Orange County, Calif., are examining another use: to flush fugitives out of buildings.

Mr. Norris's passion, however, is the commercial success of HyperSonic Sound, the technology being tested in supermarkets, pharmacies and eyeglass shops. "First, I'll put some sound on the wall," he said, demonstrating in a room at company headquarters. He aims a square speaker at the wall, which resonates with high-fidelity dripping water. Turning the panel toward a visitor, the sound shifts to the middle of his head, as if he is wearing headphones. Swiveling it left and right gives the sensation that the sound is passing through one's head. "It's holographic," Mr. Norris said.

Unlike conventional speakers, which project a sound wave that disperses in air, Mr. Norris's invention emits a focused wave of ultrasound, using frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. The ultrasound becomes audible as it mixes with air, creating a column of sound with virtually constant volume. No sound is projected behind or to the sides of the emitter.

Mr. Norris said his breakthrough was engineering an emitter that could produce ultrasound in sufficient volume and clarity. Other companies are trying to match the technology, but "they keep bumping into patents, mostly Woody's," said Simon Beesley, a Sony Corp. product manager in London who is incorporating HyperSonic Sound into store displays that use Sony screens. American Technology has resolved initial production flaws and its product is getting positive results in European trials, Mr. Beesley said.

In the U.S., big names are testing the waters. Teamed with Safeway is Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television network, which is mulling an in-store network to reach the millions of eyeballs and eardrums in checkout lines. Previous attempts failed because the cashiers got fed up hearing the TV.

In the Fremont trial, 10 Safeway checkout counters boast flat screens broadcasting ABC promos and program excerpts. Actors do separate spots, such as two stars from "Less than Perfect" asking shoppers if they want paper or plastic grocery bags. Elsewhere in the store, four larger screens mix in Safeway ads and shopping teasers, including one in which an ABC actress says, "Oh, baby carrots. They're so dang cute."

Mike Benson, ABC senior vice president for marketing, said that results of a recent three-week test at three Safeways aren't in, but the network is interested in the project now that "sound technology has caught up." Safeway declined to comment.

Some Fremont shoppers didn't notice the screens, perhaps inured to supermarket white noise or in too great a hurry. Others were bemused enough to ignore that traditional checkout-line staple, the National Enquirer. One shopper, David Abad, was turned off by the technology. "There's a subliminal message to buy this or that," the electrician said. "It distracts you from the prices that you're paying."

http://www.woodynorris.com/Articles/Wal ... nal4-4.htm

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://mondediplo.com/1998/10/10bourdieu

AT THE HEART OF ANY POLITICAL BATTLE

On male domination

Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it. It is so in tune with our expectations that it becomes hard to challenge it. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we work to dissolve the apparently obvious and explore the symbolic structures of the androcentric unconscious that still exists in men and women alike. What are the mechanisms and institutions which make possible the continued reproduction of this age-old domination by men? And is it possible to neutralise them in order to liberate the forces for change which they are instrumental in blocking?

by Pierre Bourdieu


It is unlikely that I would have embarked on such a thorny topic for a book had I not been led to it by the whole logic of my research (1). Throughout my life I have been amazed at what one might call the paradox of the doxa (2): the fact that the order of the world as we know it, with its one-way streets and its no entry signs (both literally and figuratively), its obligations and its penalties, is generally speaking respected. I find it surprising that there are not more transgressions and subversions, crimes and "madnesses" (here you need only think of the extraordinary concordance of thousands of human dispositions - or wills - involved in five minutes of car-driving around the Place de la Bastille in Paris). It is even more surprising that, leaving aside the odd historical accident, the established order, with its relations of domination, its rights and prerogatives, its privileges and its injustices, manages to perpetuate itself so very easily and that it is often possible for the most intolerable conditions of existence to appear as acceptable and even natural.

I have always seen male domination, and the ways in which it is imposed and suffered, as the prime example of this paradoxical submission. I see it as an effect of what I would call symbolic violence, a violence that is hardly noticed, almost invisible for the victims on whom it is perpetrated; a violence which is exercised principally via the purely symbolic channels of communication and knowledge (or, to be accurate, mis-knowledge) of recognition and, in the final analysis, of feelings.

This social relationship which is so extraordinarily ordinary thus offers an opportunity for understanding the logic of a domination which is exercised in the name of a symbolic principle that is known and recognised by dominator and dominated alike. This may involve a language (or a pronunciation), a style of life (or a manner of thinking, doing or acting) or, more generally, a distinctive property, emblem or stigma, of which the most efficient in symbolic terms is that perfectly arbitrary and non-predictive property which is the colour of a person’s skin.

It is clear that in all this we need to restore to the doxa its character of paradox, while at the same time dismantling the mechanisms which are responsible for the transformation of history into nature, of that which is culturally arbitrary into something that appears as natural. And in so doing, we should strive to view our own universe and our own vision of the world from the perspective of the anthropologist: we need to be capable of seeing both the arbitrary and contingent character of the principle of vision and division (nomos) which lays the basis for the difference between the masculine and the feminine as we (mis-)know it, and its sociological necessity.

It is no accident that when Virginia Woolf attempts to analyse what she refers to, magnificently, as "the hypnotic power of domination" (3), she uses an ethnological analogy and relates women’s segregation back to the rituals of ancient societies: "Inevitably, we look upon societies as conspiracies that sink the private brother, whom many of us have reason to respect, and inflate in his stead a monstrous male, loud of voice, hard of fist, childishly intent upon scoring the floor of the earth with chalk marks, within whose mystic boundaries human beings are penned rigidly, separately, artificially; where, daubed red and gold, decorated like a savage with feathers he goes through mystic rites and enjoys his dubious pleasures of power and dominion while we, ’his’ women, are locked in the private house without share in the many societies of which his society is composed (4)."

"Mystical boundaries", "mystic rites" - this language, which is the language of the magical transfiguration and symbolic conversion that produces the moment of ritual consecration, the basis of new birth - invites us to direct our research activities towards discovering an approach that will be capable of grasping the actual symbolic dimension of male domination.

A transformation strategy

What we should require from a materialist analysis of the economy of symbolic goods is that it provides us with the means to escape from the damaging dichotomy between the "material" and the "spiritual" or "ideal" (a dichotomy perpetuated today via the opposition between so-called "materialist" research, which explains the asymmetry between the sexes by reference to the means of production, and so-called "symbolic" research, which produces results that are often remarkable, albeit partial). But first, I would argue that only a very particular usage of ethnology would make it possible for us to achieve the project suggested by Virginia Woolf, of scientifically objectivising that highly mystical operation which goes to produce the division between the sexes as we know it. In other words, what we need is to treat the objective analysis of a society that is thoroughly organised on androcentric principles (5) (in our case the Kabyle tradition) as an objective archaeology of our own unconscious - in other words, as an instrument for a thoroughgoing project of social analysis (6).

Such a detour via an exotic tradition is indispensable if we are to break the relation of misleading familiarity which we have with our own tradition. The biological appearances and the very real effects which have been produced, in people’s bodies and in their brains, by a long collective labour of socialisation of the biological and of biologisation of the social combine to overturn the relationship between causes and effects, and end by making them appear to be a naturalised social construction ("genders", as sexed habituses), as the grounding in nature of the arbitrary division which is the basis both of reality and of the representation of reality, and which is sometimes to be found expressed within research itself.

Thus it is not rare to find psychologists taking on board the commonly-held view of the sexes as being radically separate and lacking in intersection, and ignoring the degree of overlap in the distribution of the things that men and women do, and the differences (of scale) between the differences identified in the various domains (from anatomy to intelligence). Or, more seriously still, they often allow themselves to be guided, in the construction and description of their object, by the principles of vision and division that are inscribed within everyday language - whether in attempting to measure the differences that are embedded in that language (the notion that men, for instance, are more "aggressive" or that women are more "timid") or, in using ordinary terminology (which is heavily weighted with value judgements), in order to describe these differences (7).

However there is a danger in this quasi-analytical use of ethnography, which, by historicising it, de-naturalises that which appears as most "natural" in the social order (i.e. the division between the sexes) - namely that it runs the risk of bringing to light constants and invariables - which are the very foundation of its socio-analytical efficacity - and, in so doing, it risks eternalising (by ratifying it) a conservative representation of the relationship between the sexes, that same representation which is condensed in the myth of what is "eternally feminine".

At this point, we need to confront a new paradox, precisely in order to force a revolution in our manner of approaching what we have sought to study in terms of the "history of women". Is it not the case that the non-variables which, beyond all the visible changes in the feminine condition, are still to be seen in the relations of domination between the sexes, oblige us to take as a priority object of study those historic mechanisms and institutions which, in the course of history, have repeatedly and continuously detached these non-variables from history?

This revolution in ways of seeing things would inevitably have consequences at the level of practice, and, in particular, in ways of conceiving strategies aimed at transforming the present state of the material and symbolic power balance between the sexes.

The basis for the perpetuation of this relationship of domination does not really reside (or at least not principally) in one of the more visible places in which it is exercised - in other words, within the domestic sphere, on which some feminist debate has concentrated its attention - but in locations such as the school, or the state, which function as places for the elaboration and imposition of principles of domination which go on to be exercised even within the most private of worlds. Recognition of this fact opens up a huge field of action for feminist struggles, which are thus called upon to take an original and decisive place within political struggles against all forms of domination.



* Sociologist and professor at the Collège de France. His publications include Contre-feux, Editions Liber-Raisons d’agir, Paris, 1998. The following article is taken from the preface to La Domination masculine, forthcoming, Seuil, Paris, October 1998.



(1) Since I am not sure whether thanking them by name would be beneficial or harmful for those concerned, I shall simply record here my sincere gratitude to those men and - particularly - women who have brought me personal experiences, documents, scientific references and ideas. I hope that my labours prove to be worthy - especially in their effects - of the confidence and the expectations that they have placed in them.

(2) The doxa is that sum of social beliefs or practices which are seen as normative, as going unsaid, as being outside the framework of challenge and criticism.

(3) Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), English novelist and theoretician; her works include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928).

(4) Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, in A Room of One’s Own..., Oxford World Classics, Oxford 1998.

(5) Which places man, not woman, at the centre of things.

(6) If only to prove that the subject of this current colume is not the product of a recent conversion, I refer back to a book of mine that is already old, where I argued that, when it is applied to the sexual division of the world, ethnology can be "a particularly powerful form of socioanalysis" (Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, Minuit, Paris, 1980, pp. 246 and 247).

(7) See, among others, J.A. Sherman, Sex-Related Cognitive Differences: An Essay on Theory and Evidence, Thomas, Springfield (Illinois), 1978; M.B. Parlee, "Psychology: review essay", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1, 1975, pp. 119-38 - particularly as regards the balance of mental and behavioural differences between men and women identified by J.E. Garai and A. Scheinfeld in 1968; M.B. Parlee, "The Premenstrual syndrome", Psychological Bulletin, 80, 1973, pp. 454-465.

[American Dream]

Sexual capital

Sexual capital or erotic capital is a form of social worthiness granted to an individual, as a result of his or her sexual attractiveness to the majority of his or her social group. As with other forms of capital, sexual capital is convertible, and may be useful in acquiring other forms of capital, including social capital and economic capital.

Definition

Economic

The first more economic-related definition is based on the “human capital” theory of Gary Becker, and predicts that people invest rationally in exhibiting their sex appeal when they can expect a return on their investments. This he defines as a form of health capital which is itself a form of individual capital.

Sociology

The sociological definition is based on the Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of “fields”. This definition builds on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of capital. Green defines "erotic capital" as accruing to an individual due to the quality and quantity of attributes that he or she possesses which elicit an erotic response in another, including physical appearance, affect and sociocultural styles. Some of these attributes may be immutable, such as an individual's race or height, while others may be acquired artificially through fitness training, plastic surgery, a makeover, etc. There is no single hegemonic form of erotic (sexual) capital. On the contrary, currencies of capital are quite variable, acquiring a hegemonic status in relation to the erotic preferences of highly specialized social groups that distinguish one sexual field from another. Importantly, this means that erotic capital is best conceived as a property of the field, and not an individual form of capital

A second definition is developed by Catherine Hakim, treating erotic capital as the fourth personal asset. This definition is a multifaceted combination of physical and social attractiveness that goes well beyond sexual attractiveness that is the focus of the 'fields' perspective. Unlike the former conception of erotic capital, Hakim's erotic capital is an individual capital with no necessary referent to a field

Importance

Catherine Hakim suggests that erotic capital matters beyond the sexual field, and beyond private relationships. She has shown that erotic capital is important in the media, politics, advertising, sports, the arts, and in everyday social interaction, and includes:

Beauty
Sexual attractiveness
Social attractiveness
Vivaciousness
Presentation
Sexuality
Fertility

Catherine Hakim's theory of Erotic Capital argues that erotic capital is a valuable fourth personal asset, alongside economic capital, cultural/human capital and social capital; that erotic capital is increasingly important in affluent modern societies; and that women generally have more erotic capital than men because they work harder at it.

Adam Isaiah Green finds that sexual capital may be related to both sexual and mental health, as when individuals with low erotic capital show diminished ability to talk about or negotiate condom use with a partner possessing greater erotic capital, and develop negative emotional states as a consequence of feeling unattractive.

In broader theoretical terms, sexual capital is important for social theory insofar as it is one among other types of capital, including social capital, symbolic capital, and cultural capital which influence the status accorded individual members of the larger society. Sexual capital is convertible to other forms of capital, as when actors parlay erotic capital into financial capital or social capital (e.g. Marilyn Monroe),[2][7] or when attractive employees get raises and social connections from bringing in more customers by virtue of their looks.

Race

Several studies suggest that sexual capital is closely associated with race or racial stereotypes of sexual attractiveness. Gonzales and Rolison argue that regardless of income US white men enjoy higher levels of “sexual capital” than black men, black women and white women, allowing them more sexual opportunities and more latitude for sexual experimentation. By contrast, Green finds a more complex relationship of erotic capital to race whereby some black men are afforded high sexual status in the context of a gay sexual field in New York City precisely because they appeal to the racialized fantasies of some white gay men.[2] Susan Koshy argues that Asian women have gained “sexual capital” in the West through glamorous accounts of western male – Asian female sexual relationships in the media and arts.[4] James Farrer argues that white men living in China have enhanced "sexual capital" arising out of associations of whiteness with modernity, sexual openness and mobility.
[edit]Class and gender

Scholars suggest that sexual capital is closely tied to social class. Groes-Green argues that sexual capital and other forms of bodily power become important resources among disenfranchised young men in Southern Africa when their access to economic capital and jobs is diminished. Groes-Green further argues that the emergence of sexual capital is linked to gender relations, e.g. when poor young men build sexual capital by grooming their looks and improving sexual performance in order to satisfy female partners and in competition with middle class peers and older so-called 'sugar-daddies'. Thus sexual capital reinforces masculinity in the face of male disempowerment, and it often develops as a response to conflict between hegemonic and subordinated masculinities.

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[American Dream]

QUOTES ON PROSTITUTION


We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables


To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

EMMA GOLDMAN, Anarchism and Other Essays


What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?

ANGELA CARTER, Nights at the Circus


Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals

Continues at: http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/prostit ... uotes.html

[American Dream]

Have you got erotic capital?

CATHERINE HAKIM 24th March 2010 — Issue 169

It can be just as valuable as a university degree—especially for women


Katie Price, aka Jordan, does not owe her astonishing success to university

Michelle and Barack Obama have it. Carla Bruni and David Beckham have it. Jordan has even made a career from it. So great is the advantage “erotic capital” can bring to the labour market—especially in sport, the arts, media and advertising—that it often outweighs educational qualifications.

It’s a term I coined to refer to a nebulous but crucial combination of physical and social attractiveness. Properly understood, erotic capital is what economists call a “personal asset,” ready to take its place alongside economic, cultural, human and social capital. It is just (if not more) as important for social mobility and success.

Erotic capital goes beyond beauty to include sex appeal, charm and social skills, physical fitness and liveliness, sexual competence and skills in self-presentation, such as face-painting, hairstyles, clothing and all the other arts of self-adornment. Most studies capture only one facet of it: photographs measure beauty or sex appeal, psychologists measure confidence and social skills, sex researchers ask about seduction skills and numbers of partners. Yet women have long excelled at such arts: that’s why they tend to be more dressed up than men at parties. They make more effort to develop the “soft skills” of charm, empathy, persuasion, deploying emotional intelligence and “emotional labour.” Indeed, the final element of erotic capital is unique to women: bearing children. In some cultures, fertility is an essential element of women’s erotic power. And even though female fertility is less important in northern Europe (where families are smaller) women’s dominant position in this market has been reinforced in recent decades by a much-lamented phenomenon: the sexualisation of culture.

Since the contraceptive revolution of the 1960s, surveys from around the world reveal a dramatic increase in sexual activities, numbers of partners and varieties of sex. London now hosts an annual Erotica fair, showcasing the new diversity of sexual lifestyles and tastes. World Health Organisation research shows that humans see sexual activity as essential to quality of life—but men still rank sex as more important than women. Indeed, rocketing global demand for sexual activity of all kinds (including commercial sex, autoeroticism and erotic entertainments) has been far more pronounced among men than women. Sex tourism is essentially a male hobby, while erotic magazines for women often fail.

This creates an effect that should be familiar to any economist: the laws of supply and demand raise the value of women’s erotic capital, in particular their beauty, sex appeal and sexual competence. It is happening in Scandinavia as well as Mediterranean countries, in China and the US. The pattern is confirmed even in countries that are sexually “liberated” such as Finland and France. Men are two to ten times more likely to have affairs, buy pornography, seek lap-dancing clubs and erotic entertainments. And call girls’ earnings can exceed wages in nearly all the professions, despite working shorter hours.

It is true, as feminists argue, that some of these relationships can be exploitative. And, to a degree, women’s new advantage is concealed by the explosion of sexual activity among both women and men under 30, many of whom now regard one-night stands and flings as normal. In this age group there is a parity of libido, but the imbalance returns among men over 30—surveys around the globe find that women over 30 steadily lose interest in erotic games.

This is an implicit rebuttal to feminist thinkers (like Sylvia Walby, Mary Evans, Monique Wittig or most recently Kat Banyard) who argue that men and women are “equal” in their sexual interest, as in everything else. This is obviously not true, which is why it should not surprise us that some women do use sex, and their erotic capital more generally, to get what they want. It happens as often today as in the past, as illustrated by the daily sexual bargaining described in Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt’s 2009 book, The Sex Diaries.

The sexualisation of culture affects public as well as private life. Beauty, sex appeal, social skills and the arts of self-presentation have increasing value everywhere, helping to sell ideas, products and policies. Popular culture especially valorises female erotic capital: just look at unkempt boy bands and glossy girl bands. Yes, men with high levels of erotic capital do better than those who don’t. But it is beautiful and elegant women who grace the advertisements for products of all kinds, from cars to detergent—not men.

Continues at: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/ ... c-capital/

[American Dream]

A critique of Catherine Hakim's position as given just above:

Hakim’s theory is precisely the kind of talk that, in 1968, sent women stripping themselves of bras and girdles, to protest the notion that women were “enslaved by ludicrous beauty standards.” But Hakim believes that times have changed—the qualifications and training we once valued at work already overshadowed by the social connections and beauty advantage that get many people in the door. Men have erotic capital too, she says—but women’s sex appeal has always been more prominent. She faults traditional feminists for dismissing its importance: erotic appeal is the one aspect of life, she writes, where women undoubtedly have an advantage over men. “Everybody should use all the assets they’ve got, and this is one asset that women have often been told is inappropriate to use,” she says. “I think women need to stop having a chip on their shoulder, or feel uncomfortable investing in erotic capital. Attractiveness and beauty has real value.”

Her views are controversial, to say the least—and we haven’t even gotten to her thoughts on lesbianism (a “defeatist” response to male domination); botox (she compares it to “keeping fit”); or the idea that we could someday outlaw discrimination based on looks (she’s against it). Yet despite seven chapters on the utilities of erotic capital—or her insistence, no matter the title, that such capital is about much “more than sexuality”—she won’t divulge how, or whether, she uses it herself.

How old is she? “I really don’t want to answer that,” she says.

Has she ever had plastic surgery to increase her own capital? “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” she responds.

There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.

In other words, perhaps she knows deep down: yes, women still lag behind in the corporate world. Sure, men may be more susceptible to the allure of a woman’s sexual capital. But erotic capital isn’t quite as simple as plastic surgery and charm school, nor is it as easy to employ as it apparently is to argue.

It’s one thing to make the case that women should use what they’ve got. But women already navigate a culture that holds them to an unattainable beauty ideal—one that eschews aging and advances only those who can afford the latest and greatest artificial products. Buying into the belief that we must keep up with that ever-changing archetype—investing in whatever product will get us there—is not only bonkers, it complicates the problem.

Indeed, attractive women get ahead at work—the beauty premium has been well-documented. But studies show that good-looking women also face a double-bind: punished for being too sexy, both resented by colleagues and viewed as less intelligent or vain. And let’s be honest: who wants to constantly have to wonder, Did I really deserve that raise/promotion/recognition, or did he just like the way my legs look in that skirt?

In the personal sphere, erotic capital has been widely accepted as a piece of currency—i.e., the attractive woman gets the rich guy. And it’s used by the millisecond in advertisements and on TV. Hakim’s argument that today’s uber-sexualized culture gives erotic capital more weight may even hold some truth. But does encouraging women to primp and doll—in the name of equal rights—really foster equality?

Hakim puts it this way: “I think the key point is that particularly in higher occupations, women stand out because they’re the minority. If you’re going to stand out, you might as well stand out and look attractive."

It’s certainly controversial enough to sell some books. But does she really believe it?

Excerpted from: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -work.html

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[American Dream]

Another critique:

Barbara Amiel Black is a classic example of a woman who has used her looks and sexuality for economic benefit. More of us should do exactly that, argues Catherine Hakim, the author of a ferociously debated new book called Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital. Exploiting our erotic capital is a legitimate – indeed admirable – way for women to level the economic playing field.

“Anyone, even quite an ugly person, can be attractive if they just have the right kind of hairstyle, clothes, and present themselves to the best effect,” Ms. Hakim told The Daily Beast. “This isn’t a frivolous spending of money. It has real benefits.”

As you can imagine, Ms. Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, has stuck a stick into a hornets’ nest. Some people are accusing her of setting back the cause of women 50 years. On the other hand, some of what she says is unarguably true. I’m thinking of two female economists. Both are highly placed and extremely smart. One looks like a dowdy 60-year-old schoolteacher. The other looks like a hot babe, gives good bytes and markets the hell out of herself. Guess which one gets on the evening news? Is that a bad thing? Not really. It’s just the way the world works.

In an image-conscious age, the tyranny of lookism is more inescapable than ever. A ton of research shows that tall men are more successful than short men, and that good-looking people earn more than ugly ones. Can anybody doubt that Sarah Palin got so far because she’s sexy? Personal attractiveness pays off in all walks of life – even feminism. Take Gloria Steinem, a pioneer of women’s rights who also (and I say this with admiration) had the luck to be a major beauty. Ms. Steinem is a brilliant, highly influential woman. But she wouldn’t be so popular if she’d looked like Betty Friedan.

I discovered the value of erotic capital as soon as I started working as a waitress during university. I quickly learned that I was able to enhance my earnings by flirting with the customers (women as well as men). Wearing miniskirts helped, too. I made far more in tips than the plump, older waitress who’d been working there for 20 years and whose feet hurt. I realized this was cosmically unfair. I also realized I should definitely finish my degree.

Ms. Hakim bashes feminists for downplaying the importance of beauty and sex appeal. But none of the younger women I know have bought that message anyway. They seem quite comfortable – in a way my generation never was – with combining sexuality and assertiveness, both on the job and off. Their social skills are phenomenal. Fortunately, few of them aspire to marry a millionaire. I regard that as progress.

The basic difference between men and women is that as we get older, our erotic capital wanes. Men’s erotic capital – providing they achieve power and success – only grows. As Gloria Steinem correctly observes this is why men tend to grow more conservative with age, and women tend to grow more radical.

Catherine Hakim does not believe in growing radical. She believes that the correct response to aging is to work like hell at looking good. She approvingly quotes Christine Lagarde, the chic new head of the International Monetary Fund, who says she’d rather exercise than sleep. As for those unfortunates who run to fat, she has nothing but contempt. “There is no excuse for being fat,” Ms. Hakim says categorically.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le2186817/

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

This one helps explain some questions suggested by previous posts:


“Better Than Your Mother”: Caring Labor in Luxury Hotels by R Sherman - 2002

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