How European Culture Changed
Confidence undermined, two philosophies follow
- The effects of world war and economic depression undermined this confidence in science and human reason, giving impetus to existentialism and producing postmodernism in the post-1945 period.
- 8.10 recorded the confidence; this records what replaced it, and names two successors.
- The CED's verbs differ: existentialism was given impetus, postmodernism was produced — a distinction worth keeping.
Match each philosophy to the CED's verb for it.
A distinction worth keeping.
Religion persists, against three challenges
- Organised religion continued to play a role in European social and cultural life despite the challenges of military and ideological conflict, modern secularism, and rapid social changes.
- Continued to play a role is a continuity claim in a unit full of change claims, and that is why it matters.
- The three challenges are named, and the CED says religion persisted despite all three.
Select all three challenges religion persisted despite.
A continuity claim in a unit full of change claims.
The arts, and a new influence
- During the 20th century, the arts were defined by experimentation, self-expression, subjectivity, and the increasing influence of the United States in both elite and popular culture.
- The first three continue 7.8's modern art; the fourth is new to this century.
- Both elite and popular refuses the usual split — the influence reached the gallery and the record shop alike.
Select all four things the CED says defined the 20th-century arts.
The first three continue 7.8's modern art.
"Continued to play a role" is a continuity claim in a unit full of change. Organised religion persisted despite the challenges of military and ideological conflict, modern secularism, and rapid social changes — an answer that reports secularisation as complete has contradicted the CED's own sentence.
Thought, religion, the arts, or daily life?
Sort each postwar cultural development.
'Perceived bourgeois materialism' shows the CED is...
A careful word, worth noticing.
Consumer culture, the baby boom, and movements
- Mass production, new food technologies, and industrial efficiency increased disposable income and created a consumer culture in which greater domestic comforts such as electricity, indoor plumbing, plastics, and synthetic fibres became available.
- With economic recovery after World War II, the birth rate increased dramatically (the baby boom), often promoted by government policies.
- Various movements, including women's movements, political and social movements, gay and lesbian movements, and others, worked for expanded civil rights, in some cases obtaining the goals they sought, and in others facing strong opposition.
The most significant reaction of intellectuals and youth was the revolts of ____.
The same decades produced the consumer culture and its rejection.
And a revolt against all of it
- Intellectuals and youth reacted against perceived bourgeois materialism and decadence, most significantly with the revolts of 1968.
- Perceived is the CED's careful word — it reports the reaction's own description of its target.
- So the same decades produced the consumer culture and its most visible rejection, which is the shape of the whole unit.
A decade delivers indoor plumbing, synthetic fibres, a birth rate promoted by the state, and a student revolt against the comfort all three produced. The revolt is not evidence that the comforts failed; it is evidence that they arrived.
World war and economic depression undermined confidence in science and human reason, giving impetus to existentialism and producing postmodernism; organised religion continued to play a role despite military and ideological conflict, modern secularism, and rapid social changes; the arts were defined by experimentation, self-expression, subjectivity, and the increasing influence of the United States in both elite and popular culture; mass production... created a consumer culture; the birth rate increased dramatically (the baby boom); movements worked for expanded civil rights; and intellectuals and youth reacted against perceived bourgeois materialism and decadence, most significantly with the revolts of 1968.