Jackson Lears: The Scholar as Cultural Critic

Many scholars aspire to write cultural criticism. Few succeed.

In my neck of the woods, the preeminent cultural critics have tended to be nonacademics—like James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Dwight MacDonald, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag and Edmund Wilson—or writers on the academy’s fringes, like bell hooks and Camille Paglia.

The list of academics who successfully combine American cultural criticism with professional scholarship is a short one. Among these, I’d list Laura Kipnis, Christopher Lasch, Jill Lepore, John McWhorter, Louis Menand, Neil Postman and Richard Sennett.

Most Popular Stories

Most Popular

Topping my list is the cultural and intellectual historian Jackson Lears.

I use the term cultural critic to refer to those who evaluate and analyze the cultural phenomena that surround us, from art, literature and film to television, media and everyday social practices. This evaluation extends beyond superficial political commentary to examine the meanings, origins, impacts and implications of various cultural products, practices and modes of expression.

The most distinguished cultural critics cut across disciplines and draw upon methods and theories from sociology, psychology, philosophy, literary theory, anthropology and political science to interpret and assess cultural artifacts and social norms. They look at how cultural elements reflect, influence or challenge prevailing social and political norms and values, as well as how culture reproduces or resists power structures, and how it articulates identities and differences related to race, class, gender and sexuality.

Cultural critics engage with a broader audience beyond the purely academic. But they’re not popularizers. Their writings take a critical stance toward their subjects, questioning and challenging the past and present rather than merely celebrating it. They seek to uncover underlying meanings and expose hidden assumptions within cultural texts and practices. They’re historically minded: They consider how historical conditions have shaped cultural expressions and how these expressions have evolved or persisted over time.

I recently saw that Yale University Press will publish a lengthy collection of Professor Lears’s essays. As I suspect that I’ve already read virtually all of them, I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on his thought and suggest why his scholarship should serve as a model for other humanists.

Two figures loom especially large in Professor Lears’s thinking. The first is William James, especially his writings on pragmatism and religious experiences.

In everyday language, pragmatism refers to a practical, down-to-earth approach to problem solving. It suggests an orientation toward results and efficiency, often focusing on what works best in the immediate context without necessarily delving into theoretical underpinnings or long-term implications. This form of pragmatism is valued in business, politics and daily decision-making where timely and effective solutions are prioritized.

Pragmatism as a philosophical stance involves a much more complex set of ideas. It argues that the truth of an idea or belief is determined by its practical effects and usefulness, rather than as an abstract, static property of statements. Pragmatism also challenges the notion that entities have inherent essences that define their true nature. Instead, it emphasizes that meanings and truths are constructed through experiences and interactions. In addition, philosophical pragmatism holds that all claims are subject to revision and improvement when confronted by new evidence or better arguments.

Philosophical pragmatism engages deeply with theoretical issues about knowledge, reality and ethics. It is not merely concerned with what works, but also with why it works, how it works in different contexts and what this tells us about the nature of reality and knowledge.

James’s treatment of religious experiences exemplifies his pragmatist philosophy, including its emphasis on the provisional nature of truth, the practical utility (or “cash value”) of ideas, and the notion that a belief’s truth should be judged by its consequences.

Rather than focusing on institutional religion or theological doctrines, James examines religious experiences, contrasting the religion of the “healthy-minded,” which focuses on the positive and uplifting aspects of spiritual life, and the religion of the “sick soul,” which is more concerned with sin, evil and suffering. He is especially open to the mystical components of the religious experience, which cannot be explained scientifically, and the insights that this offers into existential questions involving life’s meaning, the presence of evil and the nature of the divine.

A second major influence on Professor Lears’s thought is Max Weber, especially his concept of “Verstehen,” interpretative understanding, an approach in sociology that involves empathetically understanding subjective motivations and meanings of social action. Among the key Weberian ideas that run through Professor Lears’s writings are:

• The Iron Cage: A metaphor that describes how individuals become trapped within a system of bureaucratic structures and controls that were initially created to enhance efficiency and productivity, but that restrict personal freedoms and individual creativity.
• Rationalization: The increasing organization of social, economic and political life according to principles of efficiency, predictability, calculability and control, and how these principles manifest in bureaucracies, professionalism, the legal system, capitalism and even in religious organizations.
• The Disenchantment of the World: The process through which scientific understanding has replaced religious and magical interpretations of the world, resulting in a loss of a sense of the mysterious and sacred.
• Cultural Stratification: How societies are structured and divided into hierarchies of class, status and party, not just on the basis of economics but in terms of education, prestige and other factors.

To be sure, other influences on Professor Lears’s thought are readily apparent, including Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, which does not imply false consciousness, but rather a divided consciousness, in which contradictory values are internalized.

Then, there’s John Higham, whose 1965 essay “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s” dealt with the cultural reaction to corporatization, religious uncertainty, and the rise of the emotionally intense, bounded, inward-turning nuclear family, and Christopher Lasch’s seminal 1973 essay on “The Moral and Intellectual Rehabilitation of the Ruling Class,” and the ways that the patrician class embraced empire and governmental service to counteract their perceived status decline.

Here are some of the themes that recur in Professor Lears’s prolific scholarship.

The Culture of Control Versus the Culture of Chance

A “culture of control” embodies the belief that individuals can and should exercise control over their environments and destinies through the application of reason, science and technology. It rests on a belief that through self-discipline, willpower, careful planning, ingenuity and rational thinking, individuals can control life’s outcomes. In contrast, a “culture of chance” acknowledges the role of luck, randomness, serendipity and uncertainty in human affairs.

While modern American culture has mainly moved toward a culture of control, this shift has inflicted a high cost. The obsession with control and predictability can lead to a denial of the fundamental uncertainties of life and contribute to intense anxieties, a sense of failure when control is not achieved and an inability to cope with unexpected outcomes.

The Quest for Vitality and Authenticity

Professor Lears is especially interested in the ways which modern Americans, constrained by a Weberian iron cage of bureaucratic rationalization, seek outlets that provide a sense of real, lived experience beyond the confines of routine and control. Sports, for example, offers a realm of physical and emotional intensity that contrasts sharply with the routinized, bureaucratic aspects of modern life. In sports, individuals find not only an escape from the mundane but also a space for experiencing a sense of community, spontaneity and visceral excitement. Sports can embody a return to a more direct and unmediated form of experience, where physical prowess and the unpredictability of outcomes provide a relief from the predictable patterns of the bureaucratic world.

In consumer culture, Americans find another pathway out of the iron cage. While consumerism is often a product of the same processes of rationalization Weber critiqued (such as mass production and advertising), it also offers avenues for individual expression and the pursuit of authenticity. Through the act of consumption—whether of goods that promise artisanal quality or products that are marketed as “authentic” or “vintage”—consumers often seek to connect with perceived genuine or traditional experiences that feel more “real” than their everyday lives. Consumerism, in short, can paradoxically serve both to reinforce and resist the iron cage, offering material goods as symbols of freedom and self-realization.

Popular culture also provides fertile ground for the imagination and an escape from the iron cage. Through movies, music and television, people engage with narratives and fantasies that offer vicarious experiences of adventure, romance, and escape. Popular culture allows individuals to temporarily step outside their regulated lives and engage with alternative realities. Moreover, Lears suggests that popular culture can be a site of resistance where traditional values and norms are questioned and where new identities and communities can be formed. It can subvert the dominant cultural messages that reinforce the iron cage by celebrating nonconformity, creativity and emotional richness.

In addition, militarism, under the guise of advancing human freedom and promoting democracy, has served as a way to affirm a connection with “real life.”

The Power of Nostalgia

While nostalgia can lead to a romanticized view of the past that glosses over its complexities and injustices, this emotion can also serve as a potent catalyst for positive change and social cohesion. Nostalgia can play a crucial role in strengthening community bonds and reinforcing a shared identity in a fragmented world. Nostalgia can also inspire individuals and societies to restore or revive valued aspects of the past that they feel have been lost, and be particularly powerful in revitalizing traditions and serving as a rich source of inspiration. On a personal level, nostalgia can have therapeutic benefits, counteracting loneliness and anxiety. It can also increase one’s sense of personal meaning and existential continuity by linking past experiences with present and future aspirations.

A Focus on the Psychological Interior

As a cultural historian, Professor Lears has contributed significantly to shifting the focus of historical scholarship toward the internal landscapes of people’s minds—exploring their fantasies, yearnings, anxieties and emotional needs. This approach has broadened the scope of historical inquiry to include the complex interplay between societal developments and the psychological makeup of individuals and groups. This involves studying how historical changes affect inner lives and how, conversely, internal psychological dynamics can influence broader cultural and social developments.

He pays particular attention to the fantasies and yearnings of the American people, which often manifest in the culture’s consumer habits, religious movements and leisure activities. He explores how these psychological elements are not just escapist tendencies but are deeply embedded in the way people make sense of their worlds and their places within them. For instance, the fantasies surrounding consumer goods—often laden with promises of transformation and fulfillment—reveal much about societal values and aspirations.

The shift toward considering psychological interiority helps us understand how cultures evolve not just through external forces but also through the internal dynamics of desire, fear, and imagination. This approach challenges the notion of history as merely a series of political or economic events, proposing instead that it is deeply intertwined with the emotional and psychological processes of the people living through these events.

Alongside these overarching themes, Professor Lears’s scholarship makes many other sharp points:

• He looks at modern advertising’s role in mystifying corporate power and fostering faith in finding meaning through consumption.
• A former naval officer, Professor Lears is among militarism’s harshest critics, and has done yeoman work to recover and revive this country’s anti-imperialistic tradition.
• He explores how even in a supposedly disenchanted, rational and secular modern world, undercurrents of magic and mysticism continue to influence people’s lives, especially through consumerism, which co-opts and commodifies elements of enchantment and belief, such as the ways products are marketed as possessing almost magical qualities that can transform lives.
• Professor Lears argues that scientism, the belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and reduction of all knowledge to scientific knowledge, limits our understanding of the human experience by dismissing or undervaluing nonscientific forms of knowledge and understanding.
• While not a rejection of science itself, Professor Lears critiques scientism for its tendency to reduce complex, multi-dimensional phenomena to quantifiable and ostensibly manageable components. He is also concerned with how scientism tends to devalue subjective experiences and emotions, and dismisses the deep, often irrational, forces that are central to understanding cultural and historical processes. Scientism has, he argues, contributed to a technocratic approach to policy-making and governance, where decisions are based solely on technical considerations rather than on moral or ethical values.

Of course, what distinguishes Professor Lears most from his peers is a writing style that is ironic, circuitous, epigrammatic and acerbic, laden with evocative adjectives, redolent with startling images and sparkling with seamless references to theory. He has the rare ability to wear his theoretical acumen lightly, artfully interwoven into his texts.

His tone is also notable, with a focus on ambiguity, ambivalence, paradox and contradiction. He writes with a scalpel and an obvious distaste for the crude, the simplistic, the naïve and the sketchy, unfocused or linear—for works that ignore complexities and countertendencies and fall prey to lapses in logic and misplaced nostalgia.

In a brilliant assessment of the works of the sociologist Richard Sennett, Professor Lears states “that every work of history is a made thing, a fabrication to be judged not merely by the accuracy of its data (though that is surely crucial) but also by its capacity to illuminate the variety and contrariety of human experience.” Those words might well serve as a testament to the kind of cultural criticism that Professor Lears has produced, which combines the historical, the literary and the philosophical, and which penetrates surface events to lay bare their psychological and emotional roots and consequences.

Yes, history should recover, to the extent possible, the past “as it was.” Yes, it should strive to understand the dynamics of social, political, economic and cultural change. But this is not enough. Without an ethical dimension, as Professor Lears has himself written, history inevitably lapses into scholasticism and antiquarianism.

Such an approach results in works of history that are devoid of any genuine connection to the present or its relevance to contemporary issues or any profound insights into the people’s inner lives and existential realities and dilemmas. History becomes merely descriptive or analytic, and ignores its own human core that offers insights into human nature and people’s inner lives and the moral implications of historical change.

History is not just about what happened or why it happened. It’s ultimately about what we learn from it and how it helps us understand ourselves and our place in the world. That’s the history we need, and Professor Lears offers a model that the rest of us should strive to emulate.