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The Masses, Culture and Leisure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Extract

In a society based on democratic principles and equipped with powerful techniques of dissemination, the participation of the masses in cultural life and the elaboration of works adapted to the needs of this new and vast public become imperative. This participation and elaboration are fairly extensive, and the quality of the cultural work disseminated or created is relatively high, but all modern societies, whatever their reigning ideology and their level of technical evolution, face this problem in their own fashion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 In a capitalist society, such as the USA, mass culture, even in the vulgar form of "Kitsch," appears to many sociologists as an index of a broad esthetic awakening among the classes, which before had to accept whatever was reserved for them, and which had practically no access to expression or esthetic compre hension. According to the leaders of a socialist society (the USSR), culture is solid and capable of unlimited, smooth development only when the entire mass of the population is integrated into the cultural structure.

2 P. Lengrand and J. Rovan, in La Calabre, collective work directed by Jean Meyriat, A. Colin, 1960.

3 D. Riesman, "Work and Leisure in Post-Industrial Society," in Mass Leisure.

4 Department of Commerce, USA, Report 1960.

5 J. Galbraith, The Affluent Society.

6 Ministry of Culture, USSR, Statistical Yearbook on Education and Culture, 1960.

7 Prudensky, "Les loisirs dans la société socialiste," in Kommunist, Oct., 1960, commentary on a survey on leisure in the cities of Gorki, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk.

8 J. London, Survey on Leisure in Oakland, 1960 (questionnaire).

9 H. Wilensky, "Travail, carrières et intégration sociale," in Bulletin Inter national des Sciences Sociales, UNESCO, Dec., 1960.

10 C. Ossipov and N. Ignatiev, "Communisme et problème des loisirs," in Esprit, special issue on leisure, June 1959.

11 B. Rosenberg and Whyte, in Mass Culture, 1952; Larrabee and Meyersohn, Mass Leisure, 1959, Free Press.

12 E. Shils, "Mass Society and its Culture," in Daedalus, Spring 1959, and in Culture for the Millions, Van Nostrand, 1961.

13 L. Lowenthal, "Un concept à la fois humaniste et sociologique: la culture populaire," in Bulletin International des Sciences Sociales, Dec., 1960.

14 "Mass Culture and Mass Media," Daedalus, 89 (2), Spring 1960.

15 B. Suchodolsky, "La politique culturelle de la Pologne populaire," in Le ré gime et les institutions de la République populaire de Pologne, Solvay Institute, 1960.

16 The author has developed these topics in Vers une civilisation du loisir?, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1962.