General Overview: This course surveys major conceptual and theoretical
approaches to the study of culture change.  It does so primarily
through the medium of broad, topical lectures and with the aid of a
few "classic" monographs.  The lectures and the readings have been
selected to illustrate a particular school of thought, an exemplary
line of reasoning, a general ascription of cause that accounts for
change, as well as methods and techniques appropriate to the study of
culture change.  Although primarily a lecture course, the format has
been designed to allow time each week for questions and discussion.
There will be additional opportunities to discuss specific readings in
small groups moderated by the instructor. In this way the themes
covered in the readings and in the lectures can be explored further
and related one to the other.

If there are texts in this course they are: Return to Reason by
Stephen Toulmin, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, by Jerome Bruner, The
Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert Simon, and The Conditions of
Postmodernity by David Harvey.  They comprise the first and last
reading assignments.  Embedded in this quartet of works are a series
of monographs that can be related to one another through intellectual
filiations and strongly expressed differences.  They are: The Poverty
of Historicism by Karl Popper, The Road to Serfdom by Frederick Hayek
and Plow, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History by Ernst
Gellner; The Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer and The Future of
Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas; The Great Transformations by Karl
Polanyi and The Gifts of Athena by Joel Mokyr.

The books by Popper, Hayek, Horkheimer, and Polanyi were considered
"war-work" by their authors.  Each was too old to fight fascism from
the trenches in World War II, so each decided to inquire into the
causes of the conflict in the hope of preventing such wars in the future:

The Poverty and The Open Society were my war effort.  I thought that
freedom might become a central problem again, especially under the
renewed influence of Marxism and the idea of large-scale "planning"
(or "dirigism"); and so these books were meant as a defense of freedom
against totalitarian and authoritarian ideas, and as a warning against
the dangers of historicist superstitions.  (Popper, "Autobiography" In
The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Paul A. Schilpp, editor, LaSalle,
Illinois, Open Court Publishers, 1974, p. 91).

This book was written in America during the Second World War (p. vi).
Nineteenth century civilization has collapsed.  This book is
concerned with the political and economic origins of this event, as
well as with the great transformations that ushered it in (Polanyi
The Great Transformations, 1944, p. 3).

This book takes a different approach.  Its aim is to inquire into the
concept of rationality that underlies our contemporary industrial
culture, in order to discover whether this concept does not contain
defects that vitiate it essentially.
At the moment of this writing, the peoples of the democratic nations
are confronted with the problems of consummating their victory of
arms.  They must work out and put into practice the principles of
humanity in the name of which the sacrifices of war were made
(Horkheimer  The Eclipse of Reason, 1947, p. v).

In turn, each of these three authors had a younger student or
colleague who took up one or more of the threads of analysis from
them.  Popper, Hayek and Gellner were colleagues in the  London School
of Economics in the 1960s; Habermas was in the generation that
succeeded Horkheimer at the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt);
Mokyar founds his argument, in part, on a critical reading of Polanyi.
In the first two cases there were strong, demonstrable, personal
intellectual ties between the senior and junior member of the pair
(although these were not always marked by complete accord), and in the
third case there was a somewhat looser conceptual association.

Assignments:  All participants in this course--registered students and
auditors alike--are required to complete the readings on or before the
dates specified in the class schedule. Each student who is registered
in the course for credit will be required to complete six small (ca.
5-8 page) papers on the causal arguments offered for culture change by
Popper, Polanyi, Horkheimer,  Habermas, Mokyr, and Gellner.

Suggestions to Reduce Anxiety and Anomie:  The contents of this course
are akin to a giant "Erector" set from which one can build a variety
of useful and functional devices.  Just as there is no single "best"
machine that can be assembled from the nuts and bolts, girders and
electric motors, and other parts of the "Erector" set, so there is no
single "right" answer to the questions posed by the core of this
course.  Instead, you can construct any number of functional,
aesthetically pleasing edifices from the theoretical parts offered.
Moreover, you can tie the whole together in any number of disparate
but pleasing ways.  Thus my first suggestion:  read and listen for the
structure of arguments and their conclusions, not for right answers;
moreover, do not look for the "punch line" before you have finished
the readings.  My second suggestion:  look upon the lectures as one of
many frameworks that can be applied to these materials and the
problems of culture change.   My third suggestion:  you can learn as
much from each other as you can from me, so take advantage of formal
and informal places and times to discuss the themes, theories,
methods, and metaphors that address “culture change."