Professor Dean Manders reached into his back pocket. He pulled a $10 bill out of his wallet and held it up to a room full of students asking, “What is this?”

Then, digging deeper into his wallet, Manders pulled out his Wells Fargo gold card, held it up to the class and answered, “This is us. Commodities that talk.”

Manders is a philosophy and social science professor at SF State who recently published a book titled “The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification of Everyday Life.” A book-signing event took place at the SF State Bookstore Oct. 18.

By common sense, Manders means the “everyday concepts” that guide our daily lives. For example, common sense tells us that a woman’s place is in the home, and she should be barefoot and pregnant. This statement is an example of the “everyday concepts,” that Manders refers to in his book.

According to Manders, capitalism is within the formation of common sense, which is a point he tries to get across to his students. He said these “everyday concepts,” force people not to think critically or to question the facts we are fed daily by the media, or the president.

“It is very dangerous to live in common sense, because it removes the need to think about that contradiction,” Manders said. “I want people to think critically and trust no one. And that means me as well.”

Published in August by Peter Lang publishing, the book is part of volume 13 of the SF State Series in Philosophy. According to Manders, the book is about the need to get beneath the surface of the taken-for-granted common sense world we live in.

“We live in a society that promises people equality and democracy, but at the same time, everywhere we look there’s tons of racism, homophobia, and sexism,” Manders said. “Some people live in Hillsborough, some in cardboard boxes. This is what we call a contradiction. The rhetoric of democracy and the reality of un-democracy.”

Manders joked about his inspiration behind the book being the need to write something, and anything to receive his Ph.D. in sociology. The real motivation behind his book came from his work as a student activist at UC Berkeley. Manders was a member of the New Left – a handful of groups in the mid 1960s and 1970s with relatively common goals and objectives.

According to Manders, these groups included the black liberation movement, women’s liberation movement, student movement, and the anti-war movement.

Inspired by the tribulations of his time, Manders wrote “The Hegemony of Common Sense,” which was originally written as a doctoral dissertation – a paper written to obtain a Ph.D. – from 1976 to 1980.

His second revision brought the book up to date by changing some out-dated information. It took him an additional two years to complete, although it was not published until recently. Manders received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. near Boston.

“I didn’t want what I wrote to be useless,” Manders said. “I wanted it to be important and meaningful, so I picked a subject that no one has written on before.”

Manders teaches two classes at SF State, social science 300 – a combination of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, as well as social science 301, a course on political science and economics. The students in his social science 301 course are currently reading his book.

Sociology major, Pete Lester, 46, who is enrolled in the course, said he originally took the course as a major requirement, but he said Mander’s book is well researched and good for people interested in sociology, social psychology, and political economics.

“What Manders is talking about is how common sense phrases can reinforce the capitalist paradigm,” said Lester. “The saying ‘who ever has the most toys wins’ reinforces consumerism.”

Cherie Horton, liberal studies major, 25, who is also enrolled in Social Science 301, said she enrolled in the course because it fit her schedule.

"I think the book has good intensions based on what I understand of it," Horton said. "It is dispelling ideologies that we have about our country, and it is honest."