Comprehensive Exam for Heather Morrison (November 24, 2010)

Instructions:

Select TWO questions from the list of questions below listed in each comprehensive area and write essays for each question that are a minimum of 5 pages long and a maximum of 10 pages. The total length of the exam should be somewhere between 20-25 pages.

Comprehensive Exam Area #1: The Commodification and Rationalization of Everything

1. Lukacs draws on Max Weber's critique of rationalization to expand on, and to refine, Marx's discussion of commodity fetishism. In this way, Lukacs strives to bring a critique of technique and instrumental rationality into Marxism. Write an essay that discusses Lukac's approach and goes on to analyze, briefly, how the critique of rationalization and instrumental rationality figure in the work of both Marcuse and Habermas.

2. Marx argues that capitalism inevitably works to "universalize" the market. Write an essay that explains his rationale for this and give some examples in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of the relentless spread of commodification in the world.

3. It is often argued that the emphasis on the ideal of rationality in the European Enlightenments (French, English and Scottish) of the 18th century provided a necessary foundation for the broader spread of instrumental rationality in modernity. Write an essay that discusses this argument. 

4. Write an essay, using examples where necessary, on the social factors that you believe have been responsible for commodifying the modern university since the end of the second world war. To what extent, in your view, has academic research proven resistant to commodification? To what extent has acadmic research been overtaken by commodification? 

Comprehensive Exam Area #2: Constructing Emancipatory Communication

1.  Contrast broadcast communication with the Internet from the standpoint of their emancipatory content. How important is corporate ownership of networks and sites? Compare the implications of unedited content from many sources vs. edited content from few sources. What are the implications of surveillance in the two cases?

2. What is emancipatory communication? Is it simply a matter of the process of communication or does it imply something about the kinds of contents that are communicated? If the latter, what are the implications for societies with very unequal educational qualifications such as Canadian society?

3. Discuss Habermas's communication theory and his notion of the public sphere. How does this theory apply to present day society?

4. Write an essay that outlines and analyzes the challenges of developing "alternatives" in the realm of communication, to a commodified and rationalized society. Is the internet sufficient on its own to develop these alternatives? How might alternative or emancipatory communication develop to take a more mainstream institutional form? Or is this even a possibility?