Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
As American as Apple Pie
Department
Sociology Department
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2013-2014
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This paper addresses the infantilizing techniques of political parties and corporations to create authoritarian social relations. This simplistic relationship of disempowerment keeps people emotionally and economically dependent on leaders and providers, where the individual plays the role of isolated consumer. We call this Infantile Authoritarianism (IA), which reduces the individual to binary emotional responses, contentment or rage. Unable to cope with larger complexities in life, this further reinforces dependence on hierarchical systems abstracted from practical function. Only the procedure matters, not the intent or the outcome. In this way, the IA perceived others merely as objects to be managed like all other objects and possessions. As it reinforces empty consumerism, it also neutralizes social critique and activism.
Conference Name
Area Specialty Meeting of the American Sociological Association
Conference Location
New York, NY
ScholarWorks Citation
Lundskow, George and Langman, Lauren, "As American as Apple Pie" (2014). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 847.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/847
