Social criticism is a form of academic or journalistic criticism focusing on social issues in contemporary society, in respect to perceived and power relations in general.
Ancient social criticism
Five fragments of text produced by the
ancient Greece philosopher
Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 BC) cover aspects of social criticism, including comments on the
adulation directed to leading sport players and advice on living a life of moderation. These fragments have been seen as anticipating some of the later writings of
Plato in his
Republic.
Social criticism during the Enlightenment
The origins of modern social criticism date back at least to the Age of Enlightenment. According to the historian
Jonathan Israel the roots of the radical enlightenment can be found in
Spinoza and his circle.
[Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750, Oxford University Press 2002] Radical enlighteners like
Jean Meslier were not satisfied with the social criticism of the time, which was essentially a criticism of religion. The focus of his criticism was the suffering of the peasants. In addition, there was also a criticism of civilization for religious reasons, such as that which emanated from the
Quakers in England. Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed a social criticism in his political philosophy which influenced the French Revolution and in his pedagogy.
Academic forms
The positivism dispute between critical rationalism, e.g. between
Karl Popper and the
Frankfurt School,
dealt with the question of whether research in the
should be "neutral" or consciously adopt a partisan view. Academic works of social criticism can belong to social philosophy, political economy,
sociology, social psychology,
psychoanalysis but also
cultural studies and other disciplines or reject academic forms of
discourse.
In literature
Social criticism can be expressed in a fictional form, e.g. in a
novel like
The Iron Heel (1908) by
Jack London, in
like
Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World (1932),
George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949),
Ray Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and
Rafael Grugman's
Nontraditional Love (2008), or in children's books or films. According to Frederick Douglass, "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
[From Douglass's speech in 1886 on the 24th anniversary of emancipation, Washington, D.C.]
Fictional literature can have a significant social impact. For example, the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe furthered the anti-slavery movement in the United States, and the 1885 novel Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson, brought about changes in laws regarding Native Americans. Similarly, Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle helped create new laws related to public health and food handling, and Arthur Morrison's 1896 novel A Child of the Jago caused England to change its housing laws.
Charles Dickens and Orwell respectively wrote A Tale of Two Cities and Animal Farm to express their disillusionment with society and human nature. A Tale of Two Cities typifies this kind of literature. Besides the central theme of love is another prevalent theme, that of a revolution gone bad. Dickens shows that human nature causes humans to be vengeful and at time overly ambitious. Both of these books are similar in that both describe how, even with the best of intentions, human ambitions get the best of them. Animal Farm, written in 1944, is a book that tells the animal fable of a farm in which the farm animals revolt against their human masters. It is an example of social criticism in literature in which Orwell satirized the events in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. He anthropomorphizes the animals, and alludes each one to a counterpart in Russian history. Both authors also demonstrate that violence and the Machiavellian attitude of "the ends justifying the means" are deplorable. They also express their authors' disenchantment with the state of evolution of human nature.
Dickens and Orwell imply, that even if humans begin with honourable intentions, there will be some who will let their basic instincts take control. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens examines the inner soul, and shares with us how people are driven to the valley of human emotions, where desperation and anger reign, and what could happen afterwards if we let these emotions build up inside. Every human being is capable of becoming a ruthless, opportunistic being like Napoleon or Madame Defarge, if placed in the right place, at the right time. Animal Farm portrays this nature through parodying events in real history. Given the right conditions, these events could happen anywhere, for example a leader becoming overly ambitious to the point of harming his people for more power.
Classical writings
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Étienne de La Boétie: Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (circa 1560)
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Baruch de Spinoza: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670
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Immanuel Kant: What Is Enlightenment? 1784
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Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 1792
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Karl Marx: Das Kapital. 1867
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Mikhail Bakunin: Statism and Anarchy 1873
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Friedrich Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations. (1873–1876)
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Upton Sinclair: The Jungle. 1906
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Walter Benjamin: Zur Kritik der Gewalt. In: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik, 1921, engl. Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, Stanford University Press 2021
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Georg Lukács: History and Class Consciousness. 1923
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Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own. 1929
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Sigmund Freud: Civilization and Its Discontents. 1930
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Max Horkheimer: Traditional and Critical Theory (1937)
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Norbert Elias: Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. 1939, engl The Civilizing Process
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Friedrich August von Hayek: The Road to Serfdom. 1944
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Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklärung. 1947, engl. Dialectic of Enlightenment
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Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe , 1949, engl. The Second Sex.
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Aimé Césaire: Discours sur le colonialisme (1950), engl. Discourse on Colonialism
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Ernst Bloch: Das Prinzip Hoffnung (1938 bis 1947), engl. The Principle of Hope
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Erich Fromm: The art of loving. 1956
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Milovan Đilas: 1957
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Friedrich August von Hayek: The Constitution of Liberty. 1960
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Frantz Fanon: Les damnés de la terre, engl. The Wretched of the Earth
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Rachel Carson: Silent Spring (1962)
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Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man (1964)
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Guy Debord: La Société du spectacle (1967), engl. The Society of the Spectacle
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Louis Althusser: Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’État, published in La Pensée, no 151, June 1970, engl. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
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Michel Foucault: Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (1975), engl. Discipline and Punish
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Michel Foucault: La volonté de savoir, engl. vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality
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Cornelius Castoriadis: L'Institution imaginaire de la société (1975), engl. Imaginary Institution of Society: Creativity and Autonomy in the Social–historical World, London: Polity, 1997 (new edition)
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Pierre Bourdieu: La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (1979), engl.
Important contemporary works
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Audre Lorde: Sister Outsider, 1984
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Michel Henry: La barbarie. Bernard Grasset, Paris 1987,engl. Barbarism, Continuum 2012
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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Can the Subaltern Speak? in: Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Hgg.): Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1988,
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Judith Butler: Gender Trouble. 1989
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Monique Wittig: The Straight Mind and other Essays, 1992
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Raewyn Connell: Masculinities. 1995
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Richard Sennett: The corrosion of character. The Personal Consequences Of Work In the New Capitalism. 1998
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Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent. 1988. Profit over People. 2000
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Gilbert Rist: Le développement, Histoire d’une croyance occidentale. Presses de Sciences Po, Paris 1996 – engl. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Zed Books, London 2003
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Arno Gruen: . Human Development Books, Berkeley 2007
In music
Social criticism is present in
opera (e.g.
The Cradle Will Rock or
Trouble in Tahiti) and other types of
classical music, such as the Symphony No.13, called "
Babi Yar", of Dmitri Shostakovich.
expressions of social criticism are also found in
Rock music and
rap music, with examples that include "God Save the Queen" by the
Sex Pistols and "Brenda's Got a Baby" by 2Pac.
See also
