In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis
In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis
复制标题
捍卫住房：危机的政治
DOI：
10.1177/0094306118755396y
复制
发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Nathanael T. Lauster
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Nathanael T. Lauster
历史变革的能力，社会性格。社会性格也是一个心理动力学概念（植根于精神分析），能够阐明心理（和社会）矛盾心理和冲突。与习惯相比，社会性格的概念为人类心理提供了一个更有活力的概念。 Langman 和 Lundskow 写道，“社会性格管理个人动力”（第 28 页）。他们指出了个人通过有动机的推理、否认、分裂和投射来过滤现实来强化其社会性格的非理性机制。朗曼和伦德斯科的书举例说明了精神分析的社会学在阐明文化进程方面的力量，并以这种方式有力地证明了重新燃起对精神分析的兴趣将对复兴社会学理论大有裨益。然而，布迪厄对习惯的使用确实比朗曼和伦德斯科对社会性格的使用具有更大的特殊性，这与阶级有关。布迪厄关注阶级文化的独特性，而朗曼和伦德斯科则将美国社会性格呈现为跨阶级相对标准化的个人特征。作者们当然对美国是一个无阶级社会不抱任何幻想。他们强调当代美国的极端不平等，阶级冲突是他们历史分析的一个关键维度。他们确实按阶级区分了社会性格，认为资本主义精英的成员可能表现出社会统治者、破坏性和自恋的特征（第11-14页、第112-113页、第138-152页）。 “[M]大多数最富有的 1% 人并没有变得富有和强大，因为他们为了共同利益而捐献（甚至投资）了自己的钱，”作者提醒我们（第 11 页）。这意味着这些精英通常更接近贯穿美国性格的“两极分化”的一端。在他们对当今时代的描述中，很明显，美国的社会特征不是同质的，而是高度两极分化的，美国的心理文化构成正在发生巨大的变化，由性更加解放和思想开放的年轻群体带来（第256-268页）。然而，“美国性格”在朗曼和伦德斯科的叙述中出现，超越了阶级，尽管典型特征在社会经济阶梯的顶端以极端且日益病态的形式表现出来。作者遵循菲利普·斯莱特的观点，认为在相反的文化心理极性下，美国人也怀有一种被压抑的对集体的渴望。这就提出了这样的问题：对集体主义的文化心理压制本身在多大程度上与阶级权力——即对工人阶级组织的压制——联系在一起。该书从精英反应的角度探讨了工会主义的历史（第111页），但没有研究里克·范塔西亚（Rick Fantasia）所说的工人阶级内部的“团结文化”在社会特征中的维持程度。这位读者满怀期待地期待着作者的下一本书，书名为《21 世纪的健全社会》，他们告诉我们，这本书“将会……”。 。 。关注美国性格中包容、富有同情心和进步的一面（第十三页）。
bility to historical change, of social character. Social character is also a psychodynamic concept (rooted in psychoanalysis) capable of illuminating psychological (and social) ambivalence and conflict. Compared with habitus, the concept of social character provides a far more energetic conception of human psychology. Langman and Lundskow write that ‘‘social character manages individual drives’’ (p. 28). They point to the irrational mechanisms by which individuals reinforce their social character by filtering reality through motivated reasoning, denial, splitting, and projection. Langman and Lundskow’s book exemplifies the power of psychoanalytically informed sociology to illuminate cultural processes and, in this way, makes a powerful case that the rekindling of interest in psychoanalysis would do much to revive sociological theory. One way, however, in which Bourdieu’s use of habitus does have greater specificity than Langman and Lundskow’s use of social character is in relation to class. Whereas Bourdieu pays attention to the distinctness of class cultures, Langman and Lundskow present American social character as a feature of individuals that is relatively standardized across classes. The authors are certainly under no illusion about America as a classless society; they stress the extreme level of inequality in contemporary America, and class conflict is a key dimension of their historical analysis. They do differentiate social character by class in arguing that members of the capitalist elite are likely to exhibit social dominator, destructive, and narcissistic traits (pp. 11–14, 112–113, 138–152). ‘‘[M]ost of the top 1% didn’t become rich and powerful because they gave away (or even invested) their money for the common good,’’ the authors remind us (p. 11). This means that these elites are typically closer to one end of the ‘‘polarities’’ that run through American character. In their account of the present day, it is clear that American social character is not homogeneous, but highly polarized, and that seismic changes are underway in the psychologicalcultural makeup of the United States, carried by more sexually liberated and open-minded younger cohorts (pp. 256–268). Nevertheless, ‘‘American character’’ appears in Langman and Lundskow’s account to transcend class, although the typical traits are displayed in extreme, and increasingly pathological, form at the top of the socio-economic ladder. The authors follow Philip Slater in suggesting that, at the opposite cultural-psychological polarity, Americans also carry a suppressed longing for collectivity. This raises the question of to what extent the cultural-psychological suppression of collectivism is itself bound up with class power—that is, the suppression of working-class organization. The book addresses the history of trade unionism in terms of elite reactions (p. 111) but does not examine to what extent what Rick Fantasia calls ‘‘cultures of solidarity’’ within the working class have been sustained within social character. This reader looks forward with anticipation to the authors’ next book, to be titled A Sane Society in the 21 Century, which, they tell us, ‘‘will . . . focus on the inclusive, compassionate, and progressive side’’ of American character (p. xiii).