SM5325 Chap.4 Everyday Life from the Frankfurt School to Practice Theory
Everyday Life from the Frankfurt School to Practice Theory
A debate about who shapes everyday culture
Week 5 sets two traditions against each other.
The lecture introduces the Frankfurt School as a school of critical theory formed during the Weimar Republic, associated with Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Jürgen Habermas, and then turns to Michel de Certeau, whose study of the practice of everyday life examines how people individualise mass culture by altering objects, street plans, rituals, laws and language to make them their own.
The guiding questions ask whether taste is still shaped from above by the culture industry or whether users find tactical ways around platform rules, and how the study of everyday life has moved from neighbourhoods to digital practices.
Adorno's culture industry, as Bernstein reads it
J. M.
Bernstein's introduction presents the culture industry as culture produced for reproduction and mass consumption, organising leisure by the same exchange principles that govern work, so that amusement prolongs the working day. Its core deception is that the mass-produced passes itself off as the individual: products appear individual while following a formula, and they promise pleasure rather than deliver it.
Bernstein insists that consumers can see through these products and still comply, and he defends Adorno against the charge of elitism by arguing that high and mass art are judged from the standpoint of a freedom neither achieves.
The astrology column and the objections
Adorno's study of a newspaper astrology column is the chapter's worked case: a mass product that flatters each reader into feeling singled out, an institutionalised superstition read with half belief.
The optional essay by Douglas Kellner explains why Adorno preferred the phrase culture industry to mass culture, and presses the standard objections that media are diverse and audiences are not dupes.
Bernstein's reply is that the postmodern merging of high and low is a false reconciliation, and that variety can be capital's way of selling more of the same.
De Certeau's form of attention
Ben Highmore's chapter reads de Certeau as a thinker of method. De Certeau described his aim as a science of singularity, linking everyday pursuits to particular circumstances within a grid of social and economic constraints.
Highmore warns against applying theory as a ready-made interpretation, quotes Massumi's advice not to apply concepts, and argues that cultural studies borrowed de Certeau's slogans without his close attention to the located case.
How the chapter is built
The chapter follows the two cases in prose, draws the two directions of analysis through a single everyday object, and ends with a paragraph that weighs standardisation against use in a personalised playlist.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Frankfurt School and the culture industry
- 02
Amusement as an extension of work
- 03
False particularity and the promise of pleasure
- 04
Seeing through and still obeying
- 05
The astrology column as a case
- 06
Kellner's objections and Bernstein's replies
- 07
De Certeau's science of singularity
- 08
Why theory should not simply be applied
Worked example · free
Read a branded personal item from above and from below
- 3Read the named cup as false particularity produced from above.
- 3Describe particular uses customers make of it.
- 3Combine the readings without letting either cancel the other.
Key terms
- Culture Industry
- Culture produced for reproduction and mass consumption, administered from above and organising leisure by the principles of work.
- False Particularity
- The appearance of individuality in products that in fact follow one formula for everyone.
- Secondary Superstition
- Occult belief institutionalised through the mass media, such as a newspaper astrology column read with half belief.
- Pseudo-individuality
- An illusory sense of being singled out, produced by standardised products that flatter their users.
- Science of Singularity
- De Certeau's aim of studying how everyday pursuits link to particular circumstances.
- Dialectical Criticism
- Criticism that participates in the culture it judges while keeping a critical distance from it.
Everyday Life from the Frankfurt School to Practice Theory FAQ
Did Adorno think audiences were simply fooled?
No, and this is the most common misreading. Bernstein stresses that consumers can see through the culture industry's products and still feel compelled to buy and use them. The claim is about compliance without illusion, not about stupidity. An essay that answers Adorno by pointing out that viewers are ironic and knowing has answered a weaker argument than the one the reading makes.
What does de Certeau add to Adorno?
Attention to what particular people do with mass culture in particular circumstances. Highmore presents de Certeau's aim as a science of singularity and argues that his method matters more than his famous oppositions. Where Adorno describes the formula, de Certeau watches the use, and the lecture summarises his work as showing how people individualise mass culture to make it their own.
Is taste on platforms still set by the culture industry?
The week leaves this open on purpose. A careful answer describes the frame the platform imposes, including its formulas and promises, and then describes what users actually do within and against it, attending to specific cases. The balance between the two is an empirical question about the case, which is why applying either theory as a verdict in advance tends to produce a predictable essay.
Assessment move
Pick one product you use daily and write two short paragraphs about it: one from above, describing its formula and its promise, and one from below, describing three things you or people you know actually do with it. Then write one sentence on where the formula stops. That sentence is the thesis of a good presentation on this week.
