Page 132 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 132
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
tablished the conditions for an instrumental development of communica-
tion as control, command and planning that was not bound by political or
communal human activity of speaking. This specific conceptual construc-
tion preceded and influenced the foundation of mass communication the-
ory and research in the 30’s, which was understandably preoccupied with
measuring effects in order to find out how to ensure that a certain message
would cause predicable effects in mass audience, while completely »lack-
ing political self-consciousness« (Peters, 1986: p. 1).
The idea of communication as a disposable instrument for manufac-
turing social harmony, which was initiated as an engineering approach
in the emerging social sciences, most elaborately in the Chicago school
of sociology, was condemned to destroy what was determined to accom-
plish. Although they had in front an ideal of a restored community, they
wanted to enlarge it on the national scale, beyond the face-to-face per-
sonal interaction or beyond the »primitive direct man-to-man democra-
cy« (Lippmann, 1917: p. 142-143) seen as hostile to large organisations.
These intentions found their ground and support also in the political dis-
course of the time, especially in Wilson’s introduction to a series of pro-
gressive reforms »The New Freedom« (1913), where personal relations be-
tween men are recognized as belonging to the past while in the coming era
of the »new social age« relations of men will be »largely with great im-
personal concerns, with organisations, not with other individuals« (Wil-
son in Wallas, 1967: p. 3).
The classic liberal theory was conditioned by the political project of sus-
taining individuality. The political project of Progressive intellectuals
was the reverse: to create community. /…/ The solidarity and intimacy of
the small community was their model for the reconstruction of Amer-
ican life. What emerged from this project, was a new kind of liberalism:
one that still saw the face-to-face community as the cradle for democ-
racy and yet adapted to the complexity of modern conditions (Peters,
1986: p. 67).
Obviously enough, this project soon collided into an unresolvable
contradiction. In the newly emerged perspective of the continental na-
tion as one whole, forms of locally confined communal life, which indeed
offered practical possibilities for public appearance and direct participa-
tion in political institutions, became something obsolete. Although the
reconstruction of community was the »tenet of Progressive thought«
(ibid.: p. 64), there was no turning back to tradition, which became mute
in front of present problems. This new »Great community«, as Dewey
(1927) calls it, had to be knitted together anew in an artificial way. Not
130
tablished the conditions for an instrumental development of communica-
tion as control, command and planning that was not bound by political or
communal human activity of speaking. This specific conceptual construc-
tion preceded and influenced the foundation of mass communication the-
ory and research in the 30’s, which was understandably preoccupied with
measuring effects in order to find out how to ensure that a certain message
would cause predicable effects in mass audience, while completely »lack-
ing political self-consciousness« (Peters, 1986: p. 1).
The idea of communication as a disposable instrument for manufac-
turing social harmony, which was initiated as an engineering approach
in the emerging social sciences, most elaborately in the Chicago school
of sociology, was condemned to destroy what was determined to accom-
plish. Although they had in front an ideal of a restored community, they
wanted to enlarge it on the national scale, beyond the face-to-face per-
sonal interaction or beyond the »primitive direct man-to-man democra-
cy« (Lippmann, 1917: p. 142-143) seen as hostile to large organisations.
These intentions found their ground and support also in the political dis-
course of the time, especially in Wilson’s introduction to a series of pro-
gressive reforms »The New Freedom« (1913), where personal relations be-
tween men are recognized as belonging to the past while in the coming era
of the »new social age« relations of men will be »largely with great im-
personal concerns, with organisations, not with other individuals« (Wil-
son in Wallas, 1967: p. 3).
The classic liberal theory was conditioned by the political project of sus-
taining individuality. The political project of Progressive intellectuals
was the reverse: to create community. /…/ The solidarity and intimacy of
the small community was their model for the reconstruction of Amer-
ican life. What emerged from this project, was a new kind of liberalism:
one that still saw the face-to-face community as the cradle for democ-
racy and yet adapted to the complexity of modern conditions (Peters,
1986: p. 67).
Obviously enough, this project soon collided into an unresolvable
contradiction. In the newly emerged perspective of the continental na-
tion as one whole, forms of locally confined communal life, which indeed
offered practical possibilities for public appearance and direct participa-
tion in political institutions, became something obsolete. Although the
reconstruction of community was the »tenet of Progressive thought«
(ibid.: p. 64), there was no turning back to tradition, which became mute
in front of present problems. This new »Great community«, as Dewey
(1927) calls it, had to be knitted together anew in an artificial way. Not
130
