A Labor Approach to the Development of the Self or "Modern Personality"
Karl Mannheim, and Karl Marx suggested that there is a relationship
between economic and political institutions and that behaviors and
attitudes are influenced by this. Viewing this postulate as a
conception which posits the economic mode of production as the
locus of causality for culture, this examination of capitalism as
culture, investigates how education and its pedagogical techniques,
as a means of "enculturation," reflects the capitalist
economic mode of production. Building on the theoretical notions in
the Sociology of knowledge and Structuralism, this hermeneutical
analysis discusses how pedagogical techniques and curriculum
arrangements of public schools in capitalist societies correlate
with the organization of labor (for it is that role of the self
which is dominant in capitalist societies). Data for this research
was gathered through the content analysis of pedagogical techniques
and curriculum arrangements adopted by The School Board of Broward
County, Florida. Results show that the current shift in the
organization of labor (from industrial to post-industrial)
parallels, and therefore correlates with, the shift in curriculum
and pedagogical arrangements of The School Board of Broward County,
Florida; as such, it is a legitimate claim to suggest that the
socialization of the self is determined by its relation to the mode
of production.
