Page 137 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 137
i. bijuklič ■ manufacturing and selling a way of life
p. 65). The emerging capacities of fusing people together, although only
as mere recipients, were not problematized as such, as long as the »one
mental whole« would be organised according to principles of intimacy
and compassion. The fact that communication can eliminate all distanc-
es and enhance the possibilities that vast populations could be »put in
one room« and reached with one single voice, was recognised as an actu-
al threat, especially considering the spread of revolutionary turmoil and
subversive ideas, but at the same time offered an opportunity to address
and exploit the new conditions in the right way, to ensure a stable and ef-
ficient organisational order on a large scale. Considering that the »search
for order«3 was the final preoccupation in the Progressive era, it becomes
evident why legitimisations4 of manipulation techniques, which followed
as methods of ensuring social order in the 1920s , could be done public-
ly in such an explicit way and meet no serious critical resistance. On the
contrary, they were greeted with great expectations. These foundations
laid by Progressive social theory determined also the eventual meaning
of mass communication, the dominant concept in the field of commu-
nication research from the 30s and 40s onward, namely, as a »process by
which large populations come to think or feel the same thing at the same
time. In other words, mass communication is a process by which a com-
mon consciousness is secured in a numerically large social order« (Peters,
1986: p. 48).
Unity as a Matter of Efficiency in a Society of Labourers
and Consumers
Lippmann (1960) in his apologetic work »Public Opinion«, while legiti-
mizing new instruments of manufacturing consent or one general will, re-
minds us once again of the decisively important context in which inten-
tions toward perfecting the »socialisation of man« were not just a brief
chapter in new engineering ambitions of social sciences, but became a cen-
tral issue in the so-called building process of a modern nation, which de-
manded a redefinition in the meaning of politics, citizenship and govern-
ment. The emerging theorems like that of »manufacturing of consent«
or »crystallizing public opinion«, which pursue an organised uniform-
ity of will and behaviour, suggest how consent and opinion became disre-
garded as something that comes out as a result from people’s political ac-
tivity and instead becomes perceived as something that can be produced
and engineered. It is almost impossible to imagine a greater rupture in po-
3 See Wiebe (1967)
4 See Walter Lippmann »Public Opinion« (1922), Harold D. Lasswell »Propaganda Tech-
nique in World War I« (1927), Edward L. Bernays »Propaganda« (1928).
135
p. 65). The emerging capacities of fusing people together, although only
as mere recipients, were not problematized as such, as long as the »one
mental whole« would be organised according to principles of intimacy
and compassion. The fact that communication can eliminate all distanc-
es and enhance the possibilities that vast populations could be »put in
one room« and reached with one single voice, was recognised as an actu-
al threat, especially considering the spread of revolutionary turmoil and
subversive ideas, but at the same time offered an opportunity to address
and exploit the new conditions in the right way, to ensure a stable and ef-
ficient organisational order on a large scale. Considering that the »search
for order«3 was the final preoccupation in the Progressive era, it becomes
evident why legitimisations4 of manipulation techniques, which followed
as methods of ensuring social order in the 1920s , could be done public-
ly in such an explicit way and meet no serious critical resistance. On the
contrary, they were greeted with great expectations. These foundations
laid by Progressive social theory determined also the eventual meaning
of mass communication, the dominant concept in the field of commu-
nication research from the 30s and 40s onward, namely, as a »process by
which large populations come to think or feel the same thing at the same
time. In other words, mass communication is a process by which a com-
mon consciousness is secured in a numerically large social order« (Peters,
1986: p. 48).
Unity as a Matter of Efficiency in a Society of Labourers
and Consumers
Lippmann (1960) in his apologetic work »Public Opinion«, while legiti-
mizing new instruments of manufacturing consent or one general will, re-
minds us once again of the decisively important context in which inten-
tions toward perfecting the »socialisation of man« were not just a brief
chapter in new engineering ambitions of social sciences, but became a cen-
tral issue in the so-called building process of a modern nation, which de-
manded a redefinition in the meaning of politics, citizenship and govern-
ment. The emerging theorems like that of »manufacturing of consent«
or »crystallizing public opinion«, which pursue an organised uniform-
ity of will and behaviour, suggest how consent and opinion became disre-
garded as something that comes out as a result from people’s political ac-
tivity and instead becomes perceived as something that can be produced
and engineered. It is almost impossible to imagine a greater rupture in po-
3 See Wiebe (1967)
4 See Walter Lippmann »Public Opinion« (1922), Harold D. Lasswell »Propaganda Tech-
nique in World War I« (1927), Edward L. Bernays »Propaganda« (1928).
135
