Reasonability and the Linguistic - Division of Labor in Institutional Work

We examine institutional work from a discursive perspective and argue that reasonability, the existence of acceptable justifying reasons for beliefs and practices, is a key part of legitimation. Drawing on philosophy of language, we maintain that institutional work takes place in the context of ‘space of reasons’ determined by widely held assumptions about what is reasonable and what is not. We argue that reasonability provides the main contextual constraint of institutional work, its major outcome, and a key trigger for actors to engage in it. We draw on Hilary Putnam’s concept ‘division of linguistic labor’ to highlight the specialized distribution of knowledge and authority in defining valid ways of reasoning. In this view, individuals use institutionalized vocabularies to reason about their choices and understand their context with limited understanding of how and why these structures have become what they are. We highlight the need to understand how professions and other actors establish and maintain the criteria of reasoning in various areas of expertise through discursive institutional work.

Relocating the American Dream : The America of the 1960s as Portrayed by the New Journalists Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe

The concept of the American Dream was subject to a strong re-evaluation process in the 1960s, as counterculture became a prominent force in American society. A massive generation of young people, moved by the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and psychedelic experimentation, created substantial social turbulence in their efforts to break out of conventional patterns and to create a new kind of society. This thesis outlines and analyses the concept of the American Dream in popular imagination through three works of new journalism. My primary data consists of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1967), Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971), and Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (1968). In defining the American Dream, I discuss the history of the concept as well as its manifestations in popular culture. Because of its elusive and amorphous nature, the concept of the American Dream can only be examined in cultural texts that portray the values, sentiments, and customs of a certain era. I have divided the analytical section of my thesis into three parts. In the first part I examine how the authors discuss the American society of their time in relation to ideology, capitalism, and the media. In the second part I focus on the Vietnam War and the controversy it creates in relation to the notions of freedom and patriotism. In the third part I discuss how the authors portray the countercultural visions of a better America that challenged the traditional interpretations of the American Dream. I also discuss the dark side of the new dream: the problems and disillusions that came with the effort to change the world. This thesis is an effort to trace the relocation of the American Dream in the context of the 1960s counterculture and new journalism. It hopes to provide a valuable addition to the cultural history of the sixties and to the effort of conceptualizing the American Dream.