#Eric Hobsbawm

[ladyhawke]

– Eric Hobsbawm

[Text ID: “Who, having seen the Brazilian national football team in its heyday, can deny its claim to the status of art?”]

[davidhudson]

Eric Hobsbawm, June 9, 1917 – October 1, 2012.

[empirearchives]

In all seriousness, the whole “you think Napoleon looks cool because he paid people to make him look cool” has always been a very silly argument. All leaders paid people to make them look cool. Literally all of them. This argument also doesn’t take into account that Napoleon has been the target of wayyyy more negative propaganda than any of the other rulers. The historian Eric Hobsbawm said that the rise of the “Napoleonic legend” really has nothing to do with any propaganda effort on the part of Napoleon. According to Hobsbawm, Napoleon’s popularity “can be adequately explained neither by Napoleonic victories nor by Napoleonic propaganda, nor even by Napoleon’s own undoubted genius.” Saying it was entirely due to propaganda is just a way to dismiss any serious attempt to understand public support for Napoleon in the late 18th and early 19th century.

Hobsbawm quote from: The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848

[cuatrotrece]

Joshua Brown's illustrations of E.P. Thompson, C.L.R. James, Natalie Zemon Davies and Eric Hobsbawm in Visions of History (1984) by MAHRO - The Radical Historians Organization.

[articlesofnote]

SCoR - Section II, Ch. 1, Part B "Origins of Institutionalization"

summary of “The Social Construction of Reality” by Berger and Luckmann, gotta repost because Tumblr fucked up the article slugs and I couldn’t link to individual posts correctly

I. Repeated actions become habitual/patterned, thus reproducible with less effort; NB this isn't a specifically social phenomenon.

II. Habitualization provides psychological relief of choice limitation, and also frees energy for times when innovation/deliberation is required to respond to a situation.

III. Habitualization also means we don't need to define each response on the fly; prediction becomes possible, even precise.

IV. Habitualization precedes institutionalization, and can take place in isolation, but in practice it takes place in the context of an institution or institutions.

V. institutions are formed when there is a reciprocal/multilateral typification of particular types of actions by particular types of actors ("the president shall address the congress")

VI. Inherent in the institution are: historicity and control. Historicity, because institutional patterns aren't formed instantly ("institutions always have a history, of which they are products"); control, because institutional patterns are typified, therefore limited, even regardless of actual enforcement behaviors or patterns as such that are part of the institutional structure.

VII. Institutionalization is incipient in every social interaction continuing in time.

VIII. That is, even two individuals thrown together without a shared social context WILL start to typify each other's behaviors - the initiation of roles, patterns of action, historicity, etc.

IX. The participants in this process benefit from it in that they end up with more ability to predict the other's actions - less astonishment/fear, more familiarity.

X. Any repetition tends to some degree of habitualization; any observation tends to some degree of typification; but in an ongoing bilateral social situation, certain actions are more likely to be habituated/typified. Which ones?

XI. Generally, that which is relevant to both parties (hereafter, A and B). This obviously varies based on material conditions, however, usually communications come first, followed by labor/sexual/territorial relationships, etc. all of which will be inflected by the prior socialization of A and B.

XII. Then, if A and B have a child ("C"), C will experience the parental patterns as objective historical givens, NOT contingent constructs.

XIII. In other words, prior to C, A and B construct a world that is entirely transparent and accessible to them, fluid and mutable. After C, and to C, this world is objective and opaque - and this also affects A and B since they now need to keep things more consistent for C's sake.

XIV. This is the birth of the social world we are familiar with, i.e. an objective fact received from without - the child takes it all for granted, the signifier IS the signified, etc.

XV. This extends to the world of institutions that we live within - objective, external, incomprehensible except via experience.

XVI. Nevertheless, this is still a human-constructed reality - "Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product." - in an ongoing dialectical interaction.

XVII. Institutional reality also requires legitimation - ways in which it can be explained and justified to those who do not have a direct memory of its creation. These legitimations are learned as part of socialization into a given institutional order.

XVIII. As institutions depart form the original social processes that formed them, there is a corresponding increase in the need for more explicit mechanisms of social control - folks must be "taught to behave" then "kept in line."

XIX. In practice, mutual interactions between people or groups lead to multiple tracks of institutionalization which don't necessarily share a functional or logical integration.

XX. Nevertheless, institutions (which persist) do tend to some level of functional/logical coherence, implying some level of common relevance/shared meaning among participants. Note that role performances can (and must?) be functionally segregated, but MEANINGS tend to a consistency of some sort as people try to understand their experiences as occurring within some kind of framework. There may be a physiological cause for this drive*, but it isn't necessary to assume one to appreciate this habit as a real empirical phenomenon.

XXI. "It follows that great care is required in any statement… about the 'logic' of institutions." The 'logic' is not 'within' the institution, but rather is imposed by our reflections about that institution.

XXII. Language provides the fundamental well of logic which can be drown on to explain the institutional world, and all legitimations are expressed in language. This also connects with the social "knowledge" that the world one inhabits is a consistent and logical whole, since from that fact comes efforts to explain experience in terms of the pre-existing internalized social knowledge.

XXIII. So, institutions are integrated, but this is "not a functional imperative of the social processes that produce them;" rather, it is a byproduct of individual need to see their actions as part of a subjectively meaningful whole.

XXIV. Given this, it follows that analyzing social phenomena/institutional order would primarily depend on analyzing the understanding of the social knowledge of the people composing these institutions, of which complex theoretical legitimations are a part but by no means the whole. In fact, "the primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge on the pre-theoretical level," the sum total of "what everybody knows" about that order.

XXV. Since this knowledge is socially objectivated AS knowledge, deviations from it ("depravity", "insanity", "ignorance") occupy an inferior cognitive status; because this social knowledge is coextensive with "what is knowable," deviations are seen as deviations from reality itself. "Knowledge in this sense is at the heart of the fundamental dialectic of society… [it is] a 'realization' in the double sense… of apprehending the objectivated social reality, AND in the sense of … producing this reality."

XXVI. For example, in the course of division of labor, an area-specific body of knowledge is developed, crystallized in language, and transmitted to particular actors; the knowledge thus transmitted becomes an objectivation that serves to structure and channel further actions of its type.

XXVII. Then, this body of knowledge is available to the next generation as an objective truth which has the power to shape an individual into an instance of that actor, which definition only has meaning inside the social world that hosts this knowledge. With variation, this same process applies in ANY area of institutionalized conduct.

----

Notes:

re. V - The word "institutionalization" was used in the book where is used "formed"; "institutionalization" is overloaded to also mean "molding a human as an institutional actor" IMO (ref Brooksy from Shawshank Redemption)

re. XII - Unlearning the "objectivity" of parental dictates is probably a universal developmental phase? Or not - but maybe recognizing it is?

re. XVII - I can imagine an institution so totalizing that no legitimation is required - "force of nature" - conflict/discrepancies generate questions that must be answered, but if no discrepancies, no questions? Also implies that such institutions may already exist but we wouldn't know - because we don't question them or they are so universally taken for granted (i.e. the concept of death itself, see The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant)

re. XX -

* I added the caveat about persistence - might be gratuitous, but seems relevant given my interest in institutional life cycles i.e. they CAN die or degrade or change, so how? Dis-integration of belief seems related, but is it symptom or cause? Or both?

** I think Energy Minimization IS this physiological (or even pre-physiological/physical) cause(? need? drive?)

re. XXI - Found this paragraph extremely surprising statement at first, but then less so - interpreted as another instance of "The institution is in our minds" - but might be wrong about this!

re. XXIII - So what happens if folks no longer feel the need or have the ability to do this integration of experience into a "meaningful whole?"

If institutional strength is in the minds of its members, then institutional weakness would result from folks not feeling a need to integrate their experiences into the institutional patterns

"all is vanity" - "integration is pointless" (cynicism?) as a concept is a degenerate simplicity, saving much effort - folks don't have to think hard about things or meaningfully engage with the world they inhabit, because all effort is proactively deemed a waste of time

and in a complex technical society such as ours, which is relatively productive and protective of its members, a given individual member doesn't NEED to engage with many of its structures in order to survive (vs. eg the medieval peasant of my imagining)

leads to a dislocation/disconnection/differentiation between 'social integrators' eg. folks who commit to institutional logics and embody them, pulling together and strengthening them, vs. 'social neutrinos' - folks existing without integrating or participating much ("consumers", maybe!)

hypothesis: industrial productivity gains not put into "shorter workdays" (i.e. fewer hours assigned to materially-productive labor) but rather in giving less of a shit about the world we find ourselves in; anomie/ennui

drivers(?)

existentialism/scientific revolutions driving human "place in universe" farther and farther out of center (Thomas Kuhn, Eric Hobsbawm)

nb existential philosophy seems to develop roughly parallel to industrial revolution, initially dislocated (kierkegaard?) provide language for those who follow

american "rugged individualism"

contra "network", individual DOES matter, but lives in a matrix (hah) of institutions that he believes he cannot influence - which makes it so

institutional immune systems - change-from-within resistance (Le Chatelier's Principle again?)

institutions also try to change their environment to be more hospitable (Legibility)

re. XXV - See also XVI for the cycle being described in more words here

[princessofmistake]

[...] nell’era digitale, in cui c’è sempre più informazione, la memoria è urgente perché l’amnesia è nel cuore di questa rivoluzione.

[userpreferencegirl]

hobsbawm !!! sorry for ever doubting you i was not familiar with your game

[pericardio-relicario]

Most of what I have written in this bopk, except obvious personal judgments of the author, readers will have to take on trust. There is no point in overloading a book such as this with a vast apparatus of references or other signs of erudition.

— Eric Hobsbawm, from AGE OF EXTREMES: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, on The Age of Catastrophe,

[adribosch-fan]

KARL MARX, SUS TEMORES SOBRE EL CAPITALISMO Y UN PLAN DE ACCIÓN: EL MANIFIESTO COMUNISTA CUMPLIÓ 175 AÑOS

Historias. Por qué uno de los pronósticos más famosos del mundo no se llevó a la práctica. Ezequiel Burgo “¿Qué piensa de Karl Marx?”, encaró el multimillonario George Soros a Eric Hobsbawm. El financista y especulador de fama mundial por apostar contra la libra esterlina en los 90 y provocar su devaluación, sabía que este historiador británico, acaso uno de los más famosos y agudos de todos…

[gabinete63]

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Left has generally underestimated the fear and hatred of the Right, the ease with which well-dressed men and women acquire a taste for blood.

Eric Hobsbawm, The Murder of Chile

[davidhudson]

Eric Hobsbawm, June 9, 1917 – October 1, 2012.

[fruityyamenrunner]

This community note on the platform formerly known as Twitter is a noteworthy example of the dire state of anti-woo.

This note is going to get policed by polite people as being written by the ghost of a fedora atheist (derogatory) (indeed, the epithet attached by the person who brought it to my attention was "new atheist reddit tier shit") and is therefore ludicrous.

I note first that aalewis' famous quote is from 2013, a time when even *atheism*, let alone "scepticism" was on the downswing, hence aalewis' otherwise unremarkable quote taking off both within and further fuelling the reaction. That was almost 10 years ago.

Here's a Google trends graph of the colocation "fedora atheist'. The step is in 2012. The "fedora atheist" as an unmemed "authentic" phenomenon - if there ever was one - is essentially a late 2000s figure, becoming a *memed* folk devil in the early 2010s.

This folk devil, ten years on, can still be evoked in the face of a very minor anti-woo reaction like the above.

But this response is *itself* compromised in a way no actual fedora wearing skeptic speaking about alternative medicine before (idk where to date the beginning of this wave) would be.

The response objects, up front, to the characterisation of these modalities as "traditional" on the grounds they are modern inventions.

This is no good -- anyone who has read the book titles of Eric Hobsbawm knows that traditions can date from any time, so it's a bad argument.

The argument the anons writing it *really* want to make is the one they offer halfheartedly -- that those modalities are *unscientific* -- that they are "pseudoscience" --, and that scientific authorities like the WHO should not be promoting them.

But they can't -- the spirit of the times is so anti-anti-woo that you get the above which, read literally, suggests that what makes something a pseudoscience is that it was developed parallel to a science. And makes no argument that the UN should not be promoting it -- that is purely implicit.

[ardor-mohr]

“The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one’s comtemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late 20th century. Most young men and women at the century’s end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in.”

— Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991 (1994)

[notasapleasure]

RUDE

I can't illegally download Eric Hobsbawm with my work access login

And I feel he'd want me to be able to, y'know?

[azspot]

Eric Hobsbawm has noted that the Soviet Union saved Western capitalism two times. The first time was when the USSR defeated Nazi Germany. The second time was that by displaying an alternative political-economic system to the rest of the world, the USSR compelled the West, and specifically the US, to reform its institutions. The reforms of the Civil Rights Movement, for instance, were adopted in part due to the Johnson Administration’s concerns about Third World countries watching African American children being fire-hosed by the police in Alabama. With the end of the Cold War, the US lost its only major ideological competitor and thereby, the argument goes, its rationale for maintaining its global reputation. Indeed, the first years following the end of the Cold War were less characterized by triumphalism than malaise, violence, and economic decline.

The Eruption of the New Right