Page 121 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

HANNO HARDT 109

that is knowable through the application of scientific techniques which
stressed the plurality and equality of facts, through the belief in the
objectivity of expert observations and the power of empirical explanations.
Since mass communication was treated as a series of specific, isolated
social phenomena, it resulted in a narrow understanding of communication
and in a conduct of media studies without appreciation for the importance
of their historical environment.
As a matter of fact, in the past the American perspective on culture
had been more closely related to a biological approach towards man and was
less committed to emphasizing the differences between natural and cultural
disciplines than the German tradition. This position was reflected in the
struggle against the biological bias of Spencer’s sociological methods which
had occupied a generation of social scientists after the turn of the century
and continued while the trend towards a cultural analysis of social
phenomena gained ground with the coming of the Progressive era in
American social history. A generation later, traditional sociology
rediscovered nature, and under the influence of Talcott Parsons, embraced
structural functionalism with its claim to move steadily in the direction of a
theoretical system, like classical mechanics.
Throughout this time, there was hardly any disagreement over the
suggestion that there can be no human nature independent of culture. The
question was rather how to deal conceptually with the historical
components in the examination of social and cultural processes. Indeed,
there was a strong movement among the first generation of American
social scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century, which reflected a
sophisticated understanding and appreciation of the German historical
school, including socialist writings. As exponents of a cultural-historical
tradition in social science scholarship, its most prominent representatives
provided academic leadership in the critique of social and political
conditions of society with works which were a direct response to the reality
of their own age. However, in their writings they sought to reach an
accommodation with existing economic structures and political power, and
their solutions to the problems of modern capitalism were based upon the
conviction that despite its failures, capitalism offered an appropriate
context for the growth and success of a great society. Thus, the first
encounter with the ‘critical’ in the social sciences, and specifically in the
study of mass communication as a concern of modern sociology, reflected
more accurately the tolerance for dissent within the academic
establishment, and therefore within the dominant theoretical paradigm,
than the emergence of an alternative, let alone marxist theory of society.
When the context of culture became a significant feature of the
sociological enterprise, particularly with the rise of a spirit of collectivism
in American thought before the First World War, its theoretical position
was a reflection of European and American influences. Under the