mass society
mass society The modern image of mass society, although not the label, begins with the French aristocrat Alexis de
Tocqueville, who toured the United States in the 1830s in search of the secret of
democracy. He was struck by the similarity of ideas and values among the people, and speculated that such a society might fall victim to a mass or herd mentality which he called ‘the tyranny of the majority’. Tocqueville's classic description of mass society has echoed through the whole subsequent history of social theory: ‘…an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is a stranger to the fate of all the rest. His children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them but he sees them not; he touches them but he feels them not.’
Nineteenth-century sociologists shared many of de Tocqueville's concerns about the emerging culture of industrial societies. Émile
Durkheim diagnosed
anomie in the new order, and Max
Weber focused on the dead hand of
bureaucracy. Ferdinand
Tönnies, in
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), reflected unfavourably on the crowded, urban, mass societies then emerging in Europe.
These ideas were largely ignored or dismissed as élitist nostalgia until the 1950s, when sociologists and political scientists began to write about the immediate past history of
totalitarianism in Europe and the Soviet Union. In
The Politics of Mass Society (1959), William Kornhauser argued that populations cut adrift from stable
communities, and having uniform and fluid values, would be highly vulnerable to the appeals of totalitarian mass movements.
Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, and others of the Frankfurt School (see
CRITICAL THEORY) focused their attention on the narrowly ideological nature of ‘mass culture’, and a whole critical literature developed around this perspective. Herbert
Marcuse in
One Dimensional Man (1964) developed this line of argument to its fullest extent, asserting the absolute
hegemony of mass culture and the impossibility of social change. Salvador Giner provided a comprehensive summary of both conservative and radical theories in his 1976 book
Mass Society.
The term mass society has fallen out of fashion in sociology because of its essential vagueness and its value-laden character. But social theorists as various as Krishan Kumar, Christopher Lasch, Peter Berger, and Robert Bellah continue to explore the social relationships and cultural meanings created within large-scale, highly institutionalized societies which lack traditional community ties.
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Sarah Waters on Sylvia Townsend Warner
Magazine article from: Out; 12/1/2006; ; 700+ words
; ...bed, and found love there," Sylvia Townsend Warner wrote in her diary after her...described in a poignant memoir, For Sylvia: An Honest Account), her on...neglected mid-century writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, in this issue. (This piece...
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Sylvia Townsend Warner's "very cultured voice".
Magazine article from: New Criterion; 3/1/2001; ; 700+ words
; ...in fiction. One who has done it brilliantly is Sylvia Townsend Warner, the British writer who died in 1978 and was the...one's very soul. Throughout her long career, Sylvia Townsend Warner enjoyed success and renown, if not fame...
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Critical Essays on Sylvia Townsend Warner, English Novelist, 1893-1978.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 5/1/2006; 468 words
; 0773458735 Critical essays on Sylvia Townsend Warner, English novelist, 1893-1978...essays are a tribute to the work of Townsend Warner, whose interest in feminism...correspondence. The topics covered include Townsend Warner's sense of place, her...
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MR FORTUNE'S MAGGOT SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER ; BOOK OF A LIFETIME
Newspaper article from: The Independent - London; 3/2/2007; ; 602 words
; Sylvia Townsend Warner describes how she came across a volume of letters by a missionary...the possibility of finding love and losing it. It seems to me that Sylvia Townsend Warner pulls off a fine trick: letting us glimpse the frailty of...
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In Dorset, some things don't alter FICTION Dorset Stories By Sylvia Townsend Warner BLACK DOG PRESS pounds 15.99 pounds 15.99 (P&P FREE) 08700 798 897
Newspaper article from: The Independent on Sunday; 9/3/2006; 664 words
; Shortly before Sylvia Townsend Warner's death in the late 1970s I was...Russian cigarette. Smoke hovered around Warner as her beloved cats, Moth and Pericles...eccentric occupants) were all grist to Warner's literary mill. The Honourable...
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This Rapturous Form
Magazine article from: Marvels & Tales; 1/1/2006; ; 700+ words
; ...writes that she was not aware of fairy tales' influence on her until, "along in her sixties," she came upon Sylvia Townsend Warners evocation of "Sleeping Beauty" in the tiny poem that goes like this: The Sleeping Beauty woke The spit began...
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POWERFUL TALES FROM 'FRAU NOAH'
Newspaper article from: The Boston Globe; 1/9/1989; ; 700+ words
; SELECTED STORIES OF SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER. Viking. 440 pp. $24.95. Sylvia Townsend Warner, born to a schoolmaster's family but without formal education herself, worked in a munitions factory during World War I and spent 10 years editing...
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Ahead of Her Time
Newspaper article from: The Washington Post; 2/25/2001; ; 700+ words
; THE MUSIC AT LONG VERNEY Twenty Stories By Sylvia Townsend Warner Counterpoint. 220 pp. $24 THE ELEMENT OF LAVISHNESS Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell 1938-1978 Edited by...
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A meeting of true minds
Magazine article from: The Spectator; 6/10/2006; ; 700+ words
; THE ELEMENT OF LAVISHNESS : LETTERS OF SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER AND WILLIAM MAXWELL , 1938-1978 edited by Michael...years. It began as a simple transaction; in 1938 Sylvia Townsend Warner, as a dare, submitted a short story to...
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BOOK REVIEW
Newspaper article from: The Independent - London; 6/19/1994; ; 700+ words
; SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER refused to write her autobiography, claiming that she was "too...pressure of her prose, is obvious, but what really matters is the way Sylvia Townsend Warner experimented in her diary with the unwritten rules of the...
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Sylvia Townsend Warner
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Sylvia Townsend Warner 1893-1978, English novelist and poet. Her first published work...ed. by S. Pinney, and The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978 (2001), ed. by M. Steinman...
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Warner, Sylvia Townsend
Book article from: The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
Warner, Sylvia Townsend (1893–1978), novelist and poet. Her first volume of verse, The Espalier (1925), was followed by several others...
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Book Clubs
Book article from: American Decades
...1926, established the integrity of the judges: Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes: or, the Loving Huntsman...salutary. THE 1926 BOMC SELECTIONS Lolly Willowes, by Sylvia Townsend Warner Teeftallow, by T. S. Stribling O Genteel...
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Maxwell, William (Keepers)
Book article from: Contemporary Novelists
...Horizon Press, 1980. Editor, The Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner. London, Chatto and Windus, 1982; New York...Editor, with Susanna Pinney, Selected Stories , by Sylvia Townsend Warner. London, Chatto and Windus, 1988...
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William Keepers Maxwell, Jr.
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
...Bibliography: See biography by B. Burkhardt (2005); M. Steinman, ed., The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, 1938-1978 (2001); C. Baxter et al., ed., A William Maxwell Portrait (2004).
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