The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life

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The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life, is a path-breaking synthesis, a unique contribution to the study of class and consciousness. Here, Dean Wolfe Manders brings critical social theory to bear on the nature of links between American popular sayings, capitalist ideology, and the everyday lived dynamics of class domination. The agenda of this book is easily stated -- that reigning American "common sense" is amenable to sustained critique by means of inquiry into common sayings, proverbs, and other forms of everyday discourse. What Manders offers, in particular, is a "Gramscian" critique of common sense in which class is a central category. The Hegemony of Common Sense posits that in our deeply class-divided society, the seemingly neutral and universal wisdom of American common sense masks a deeper, mystified reality -- a reality of unresolved doubt and uncertainty, of distrust and resentment, ambivalence and contradiction, hope and rootless surrender. Common sense is revealed as often self-defeating, infused with fatalism and passivity in ways that prove detrimental to working people. Displaying a rich, interdisciplinary intellectual palette, and a sharp critical agenda, The Hegemony of Common Sense explores the interior of mass-popular common sense -- the "givens," taken-for-granted assumptions, and tacit meanings that saturate the popular sayings of the day, where they hide, in effect, in plain sight. "This pioneering work remains unique. No one else has mined the field of proverbial expression for insight into common sense with similar breadth of vision. What Manders offers -- a synthesis of critical theory and proverb study, fired by the sociological imagination -- is unavailable from any other source" —David Norman Smith, from the Epilogue, The Hegemony of Common Sense, second edition. "[the] book is enormously impressive, truly original as a work of political theory. I know of no other work that explores class and its relationship to popular consciousness in the thoughtful and incisive way you have done. You have clearly read widely among social theorists and drawn from them what is useful for your thesis. I welcome your book especially because there is such a mistaken idea, especially among European intellectuals, but also in this nation, about the apparent lack of class consciousness, the failure to see such consciousness manifested in many different ways. This failure has important consequences for political action, for any strategy for social change." —Howard Zinn Dean Wolfe Manders received his B.A. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University. He has previously published works both in the United States and Europe. Having taught extensively in the San Francisco and the Boston Bay areas -- and, at the International People's College, in Helsingor, Denmark -- he presently resides in the San Francisco Bay area, where he continues to teach, write, and consult. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Acknowledgements Contents Preface: A Note on Common Sense Introduction: by Anatole Anton 1. Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life A Marxian approach to common sense. Gramscian conceptual foundation. Brief critique of symbolic interactionism and phenomenology. Plan of the book. 2. The General Conception of Common Sense Gramsci’s conception of common sense. The perspective of paroemiology. Further views on common sense. 3. American Common Sense: Lived Content and Context The notion of ideological hegemony. The ideological hegemony of capital in the United States. Capitalist ideology and American common sense. 4. Questions of Method Explanation of current interest in language. Interpreting common sense language. Selecting common sense: procedural and methodological issues. 5. American Common Sense and Jamesian Philosophic Pragmatism William James and the pragmatic method. William James and pragmatic popular philosophy. Instrumental truth and American common sense. Gramscian and instrumental-pragmatic truth. Jamesian and Paroemiological practical wisdom. American common sense and everyday rationality. Common sense praxis and everyday-historical rationality. Living common sense: preliminary summary appraisal. 6. Capitalist Ideology‚ Community Studies‚ and the Mystification of Social Class Selecting a community case study for empirical investigation. Empirical verification of capitalist ideological hegemony in common sense usage. Some problematic issues in the Lynd and the Adorno studies. Community studies: social class and ideological mystification. Community studies: brief concluding remarks. 7. Critical Paroemiology of American Common Sense American common sense and capitalist cultural hegemony. Critical paroemiology of the common sense of work, time, and self. Advanced capital and the lived organization of self experience. On questions of social psychology. Critical paroemiology of the common sense of self. 8. Standing Common Sense on Its Head A Marxian-Gramscian critique of objectivist false consciousness. Standing common sense on its head. Toward a politics of uncommon sense. Future Marxist investigations into common sense. Epilogue: Time is Still Money, by David Norman Smith Appendix Bibliography