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Fundamentals: Understanding European Social Theory
*A
Theory is often thought of as a set of interrelated propositions that allow for the systematization of knowledge, explanation
and prediction of social life that generates new research hypotheses and ideas. *Theory is summarized practice. European social summarize
the world through white eyes, defining and describing the social relations of populations based on what whites thin they see. *There is a question regarding the observation
of social phenomena. Philosophy of science sees two central problems in testing theories. There is a great proliferation of
theories in sociology. Many of them are interested in and test different questions. All of these theories depend upon different
assumptions. In the last 30 years more and more competing theories have arisen. *Most generally, we think of theories as probable explanations based on a summation of human activity. |
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Pre-Modern European Theory * Our Earliest forms of European Theories * Theological explanations (religious) are focused on knowledge for the sake of the divine (god). What were gods
plans and intentions? (God's progress...) (the logic of god) * "Science" was guarded and highly specific *
The sacred ruled the scientific and philosophical. Faith was the major concern not logic or observation. Trust in the supernatural.
Focus on the abstract-- explicitly anti-empiricism = focus on supernatural, other world. * Themes of harmony were dominant. * Social thought is static, hierarchical. Order in which all things have a place, a purpose, part of a larger plan *human behavior is explained in terms of an overall structure -- natural
and moral -- of the universe * divingly created and ordered
universe. The natural and the social worlds were viewed as spiritually iinfused with value, meaning, and purpose. examples: Aristotle Plato Thucyidides European
Transition to Enlightenment * What allowed Galileo to move beyond the Aristotelian scholasticism of his time? This was
a paradigm based on the harmony (music) of the spheres, wherein all phenomena fell into a uniform theory of knowledge and
perception, and all physical phemomena were colored by a metaphysical participation in God's plan. The Church certainly
maintained the position that all things are held under God of whom they are a part, and God as the Church could maintain its
power and influence. * There were some who followed the
writings of Euclid, the geometrist, who found a new logic based on mathematical measurement and practical experiment. The
world of phemomena were liberated from the speculations of theologians, and defined through the practice of mathematical analysis.
Galileo, the rebel, was the architect of the rebirth of this scientific impulse in the Renaissance, and, needless to say,
was branded a heretic by the Church and stripped of his status. Those shifts are hard to take. * The Euclidian view was/is based on the idea that to know that the most basic physical observations
were/are well defined and stable. Scientific and technological revolutions have been born from a committment to quantification. White Enlightenment -criticism of
Chrisitianity, of status quo -secular orientation -philosophical -the logic of facts *All aspects of life are open
to criticism *Self-explanation *Use of Reason (reason+observation=scientific Method) *Intellectual progress leads to general progress *focus
on experience, observation--empirical method *focus on the
real world Order, progress, rationality all come together Reason - Intellectual interpretation arguments and conclusions based on interpretations of evidence derived in an empirical manner
that can be duplicated or replicated -- in other words, we can know the cause :. Order, progress, rationality all come together Knowledge
can rest only on fact and scientific method social world
view becomes that humans create society, we create the social world reason over faith, reason over opinion, prejudice...yet important are issues of freedom and morality. The enlightenment then promotes a liberal human social values view The question of morality and objectivity remains a concern neutral instrument vs. vehicle for social progress what are the enlighteners values? social motivations vs. social strata of the time Questions
of social control remain. Just as the enlightment thinkers critizied the Church as a form of collection of social power, could
not the same idea be applied to the enlightenment and its use of objectivity and reason? Social Science --> social knowledge * no attempt to generate a comprehensive philosophy of spirituality and life * universe as a mechanical system composed of matter in motion that obeyed natual laws * creators of scientifc world-view 15th-17th century Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo,
Newton, Euclid Origins of European Sociological Theory * The early and key thinkers in sociology were influenced by the important social conditions of the 19th and early
20th century (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Spencer, Comte, St. Simon, Vico): political revolution+industrial revolution+rise of capitalism+ transformation from rural to urban life+technological advances+ rise of bureaucracies+rise of social movements, in partincular-- socialism+religious change and growing secularism+rise of science Social Theory was not really part of the feudal revolution found in most early enlightenment thinkers due to religious
dogma. However, the enlightenment did open the door to science in a new form. Science instead of religion as center to theory
was a new idea. Sociologists were very preoccupied to harness the principles of science to the study of society not other
realms. Sociology as the first attempt to construct a social
theory regarding industrial society * Emergence of sociology
as an intellectual discourse 1. application of science to
studying social phenomena and society 2. The society to
be studied was the newly emerging European society. 3. Questions
of "the new society"--inequality and politics 4.
Most of these arguments were based on a moral philosophy European Philosophy of Science
and Positivism The Philosposhy of Science as a body of literature looks at the consequences of "how we
look" in partially determining what answer we get. On the practical level, if you look through an electron microscope,
you will see electrons, not full cells. The reason I'm
having a problem following you is because the terms you use are left unspecified. For example, what constitutes as "explanation"?
There is literature in science that talks about the difference between explaining "what" and explaining "Why".
"What" may indeed provide a necessary cause for an action by the thing so defined. Quantum physics, for example
does take the explanation of an atom's state as data. Do you mean "definition"? That would make more sense,
as "atom" does have a definition. But reductionism
is bad science. On the social level, *if* one accepts one of the fundamental ideas of symbolic interactionism--that we construct
daily life, personal identity, and social definitions of things through our everyday interaction with each other and the society
we find ourselves in, the it is precisely the case that some things *may* be explained by the constituent parts of their definitions,
or social constructions. For example, until recently, the
fact that most most firemen are *men* is in part explained by the fact that our word "fireman" clearly denotes maleness,
that men are pictured in most children's books and alphabets when the "fireman" concept is taught, and that
most TV shows and books portay firefighters as men--thereby constructing a norm of firefighter=man. Of course this is explaining
"why", which also explains how "what" is defined. If you want to move the analogy to the level of theoretical physics, you get a similar dynamic. The definition, or
"what" of an atom, changed with the "discovery" of subatomic particles, which then explained the "why"
of some atomic behavior. At the turn of the century--rise
of empiricism and positivism, there was a great deal of consensus over the important issues of the day. The hierarchy of the
sciences was firmly established as was the one central method: *
Positivism --the knowledge that
that which can be determined with scientific certainty. Certainty here relates to sense perception--what is known is known
through the senses (observation, touch, smell, hearing). "knowledge is the knowledge of things." Science is knowledge
which is anchored in perception. * Critique of Positivistic approach to science--it is naive. It assumes a
rather simple and uncomplicated view of objects, people, etc. Naive view of the accumulation of facts (consensus). * Appeal of Positivism--1. Knowledge is certain knowledge
(certain scientific knowledge) 2. scientific knowledge does not contradict or surprise your experience of the everyday world
(what you observe is your fact/common sense). *The rationalizing
of scientific thought and practice eventually became rationalizing science's place in society. Science has been accorded
a privileged position.... * Theology VS. Science* ideological clash direct competition both claim a special and unique
interpretation of reality *Positivism and the theory of
science that it engenders confirms the social order. Logical
Positivism How do you test a proposition to
determine that it is true? *Marx and Historical Materialism* *Humans make their own history weighted by the influences from the past. The Historical Materialist method of sociology consists in regarding society as a living organism
in a constant state of development [and not as something mechanically concatenated and therefore permitting any arbitrary
combination of individual social elements]. This requires an objective analysis f the relations of production that constitute
the given social formation and an investigation of its laws of functioning and development The basic idea that the development of the economic formation of society is a process of natural
history allows one to arrive at this basic idea by selecting from the various spheres of social life the economic sphere,
by selecting form all social relations the "production relations," as being the basic and prime relations that determines
all other relations Modern sociologists haphazardly
investigate and study the political, social, religious and legal forms, stumbling on the facts that these forms arise out
of certain ideas held by men in the period in question-and there they stopped. and had been unable to discover any objective
criterion for such a distinction. As long as metaphysical
sociologists confined themselves to ideological social relations (i.e., such as, before taking shape, pass through man's
consciousness-of "social relations" and no others) they were unable to observe repetition and order in the social
phenomena of the various countries, and their science was at best only a description of these phenomena, a collection of raw
material. The analysis of material social relations (i.e., take shape without passing through man's consciousness; when
exchanging products men enter into relations of production without even realizing the social relations of production are involved
in the act) made it at once possible to observe repetition and order and to generalize the systems of the various countries
so as to arrive at the single fundamental concept: "formation of society" Thirdly and finally, another reason why this hypothesis was the first to make a "scientific" sociology
possible was that the reduction of social relations to relations of production, and the later to the level of forces of production,
provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of the formation of society is a process of natural history:
This distinction, important as it is for historical investigation
cannot alter the fact that the course of history is governed by inner general laws In the analysis of economic forms, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction
must replace both History brings new facts and new methods
of investigation that require the further development of the theory Productive Forces and the Relations of Production The productive forces determine the development of the relations of production A contradiction arises and intensifies between the constantly growing productive forces and
the relatively stable relations of production The contradiction
is resolved through a replacement of the old relations of production with new ones, which correspond to the grown productive
forces The relations of production have an active influence
on the development of the productive forces: new ones accelerate, an obsolete ones obstruct their development Socio-Economic
Formation Interconnection of the main elements In the social
production of their existence, people inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic
structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure an to which correspond definite
forms of social consciousness Main elements Superstructure Ideological relations and the views and theories connected with these (political, legal, ethical, aesthetic, philosophical,
religious, etc.) in the society Institutions and organizations
corresponding to these views: the state, political parties, social organizations, etc. Basis Totality of relations
of production among people in the course of the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of objects of material
value Productive forces The means of production created, inherited, stolen, etc., by society The people who operate the means of production Elements of the labor process Purposeful activity Labor is a process in which both humans and nature participate and in
which humankind, of its own accord, starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between itself and nature Object of labor An object of labor is anything at which human labor is directed: the land and the mineral and other resources, plants,
and animals, diverse materials, etc. Instruments of labor An instrument of labor is a thing, or a complex of thin, which the laborer
interposes between her/himself and the subject of her/his labor, and which serves as the conductor of her/his activity. Summation the
unity of the object of labor and the instruments of labor equals the means of production Mathematical operations
presuppose a certain stability and independence of those things whose number and measurement is required. And the less
the stability and independence are, the more complex are those mathematical operations which are needed for the study of the
quantitative definitions. It is very easy and quite necessary to apply mathematical calculations to physics, which work according
to a definite, exactly established patterns. But try to submit the life of an organism to the mathematical analysis and you
will see that the fluidity and continuous mutual connections of vital processes convert your calculations into empty play
with mathematical symbols. Objective application of mathematics to dialectical study: scientists must make use of scientific
formulae, but they must never substitute them for an investigation of the quality of economic processes. On the contrary,
these formulae must serve scientist only as an auxiliary means of illustration and for a more accurate expression of basic,
concrete quantitative changes in the process. Statistics play a part in science and in practice but in order correctly
to make use of numerical data we must proceed form the qualitative differences of the enumerated phenomena. First scientist
must carefully study quality, then quantity, and finally to re-study quality on the basis of all the data. For a full knowledge
of quality of a thing it is necessary to determine its final limit that the highest stage of its development at which it goes
over into another quality-into its opposite. Thus for the knowledge of a quality we must disclose the highest stage of its
development, the point of demarcation for its changes, the quantitative final limit of its existence a given quality. Both
quantity and quality are disclosed more fully in their unity. The disclosure of this unity is measurement in the widest
sense. The transition of quantity into quality and the reverse is nothing else than the revelation of the internal contradictions
of measurement. And that nodal point of change, at which the transition of quantity into quality takes place, expresses
very fully the measurement of the given thing. In studying any process, our primary objective is to understand the mechanism
of development, scientifically. Thus to obtain a correct understanding of an event, to get to the bottom of it, we must critically
test the evidence of immediate observation and make a clear distinction between the seeming and the real, the superficial
and the essential. Knowledge of the essence of things is the fundamental task of science. If essence and appearance
directly coincided all science would be superfluous. A.
Smith: The real price of everything, what everything really
costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ... Labour was the first price, the original
purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world
was originally purchased... B. Ricardo: Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their
scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them. There are some commodities, the value of which
is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot
be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scare books and coins, wines of a peculiar quality, which
can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this description.
Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying
wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess them. These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily exchanged in the market. *By
far the greatest part of those goods which are the object of desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multiplied, not
in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary
to obtain them.* (emphasis added) C. Marx: Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year,
but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding
to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society's aggregate labour.
It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished
by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. |
Conflict Theory The conflict school emerged
in the 1950s Counter to the Parsonian paradigm of Structual-Functionalism Gouldner - study found in 1968 found that 65% of the sociologists at the ASA meeting were conflict-oriented. Conflict fragmented in the 1960s Race Gender Class Culture Marxist Today
there is no one dominant conflict school or paradigm Why
did conflict emerge when it did? - criticism of Parsoniam
approach to theory building (the idea that theory construction should be exhasutive and systems based, est. sociology as a
"true" science, gradniose-comprehensive theory) In
his day, Parsons' approach fit the mood of society -
Parsons and his students saw no conflict as legitimate, a dysfunction - a disease. Conflict was extraneous to the social system. - Marxism disappeared in the 1940s with the cold war and McCarthyism. - 1950s Coser, Lockwood, Dahrendorf (European style thinkers) introduced
conflict and Marx to American audiences again - conflict
identified itself by stating what it was against - Parsons, S-F and consensus based theory - Parons tried to explain conflict by turning to a crude version of Freud In the Social System - Parsons used Freud's argument that conflict is only intrinsic because
of bad/poor parenting. Lewis Coser - 1956 The Functions of Social Conflict -Used Simmel by way of S-F -Conflict as a normal
part of society - Used Simmel's ideas about forms of
Association institutional context is superflous because
the basic forms of interaction remain throughout - such as the size of the interacting group, characteristics of interaction,
social types, leadership, superordinate and subordinate status -
Coser, in effect, borrows from Simmel's conflict sociology (date?) Simmel is simply restated in functional terminology. Simmel is being distorted and misused by Coser to make his points. Coser did not want to give up on S-F entirely but to add conflict to
it! - Main points of Coser 1. Conflict can be functional 2.
Conflict can also be unhealthy 3. Conflict must be institutional
to be manageable 4. Conflict promoting integration/problem-solving -Problems with Coser 1. Problems are too abstract??!!! 2. Funcionality
depends on the unit of analysis 3. Turning a conflict approach
into something else - S-F? 4. Simmel's work is often
distorted - Coser doesn't understand the dialectical nature of Simmel's work. "fitting a square peg into a round
hole" Ernest Horton - Conflict sociology is not a coherent discipline - Maintainance of the Status quo makes deviation seem bad - order vs conflict approaches (Ideal types) order
-> shared agreement on values -> anomie -> consensus conflict -> alienation -> exploitation/adaptive
failures -> strategies of ruling group/rationalizations -> disagreement Ralf Dahrendorf - "Toward a theory of social
Conflict" (1957) - argues for a conflict approach vs.
S-F Anthony Giddens - Weberian conflict theory/perspective Neo-Marxism Fordism The 'fordist state' makes reference
to the role of the state in mediating the ups and downs of the economy; to manage conflict between workers and owners; to
appropriate some of the surplus value of the gross domestic product to low-profit lines of production and to encourage growth
within the nation and competition of US firms in the global economy. All this comes out of a 'fordist form' of production...the
idea that problems can be managed rationally; that order and progress comes out of bureucratic organization, lines of authority,
specialization and close control of labor, markets and raw material supply. Post-Fordism The post-fordist view is that all
these things become most difficult in a globalized economy since the nation-state cannot manage the New World Order dominated
by some 1500 Trans-National Corporations beyond the reach of both law and order. Feminism Sheila
Rowbotham (in _Oz_ in 1971!) contends that the word "virgin" originally denoted not "(1) a person (esp. a woman)
who has never has sexual intercourse" [Concise Oxford] but a person who was not betrothed, who was a free agent not having
been the subject (or object) of the property transaction of marriage. This certainly makes more sense of, for example "the Vestal virgins" than the 19th-century version does.
And it serves as a warning against looking at past events with a "modern" world-view. Marxist Feminism Marxist-feminist analysis evolved as a feminist-inspired
critique of the shortcomings of traditional Marxist approaches to the 'women's question'. Viewing marxist categories
as 'sex-blind' and thus incapable of addressing the analysis of gender-related issues, authors such as Heidi Hartmann
and Z. Eisenstein (who call themselves 'socialist feminists') argued for a synthesis of Marxist and feminist theory,
coining the term 'capitalist patriarchy'. Others (such as Michele Barret, Maxine Molyneux, Flora Anthias, Patricia
Connelly, etc), argueing that it is not marxism but actually the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production which is blind
to sex-categories (which does not mean that capitalists are blind to the advantages of exploiting women's subordinate
position) have opted instead for a more historical approach to the question of the articulation of gender divisions and the
economy. These authors have argued both against the 'reductionism' inherent in attempts to explain the gender divide
in terms of the mechanics of the capitalist system (as traditional marxists did), as well as the 'dualism' inherent
to synthetic theories (such as implicit in the expression 'capitalist patriarchy'). They suggest instead, that the
analysis of the dynamics of gender and class (and gender and the economy) is better posed not at the abstract level of capitalism
as a mode of production, but of capitalism as a system of production developing, articulating, and transforming relations/
structures of gender and class in historically determined social totalities, that is, in given social and economic formations. Theorists
and social thinkers who are Marxist sustain an analytical (and political) primacy of the mode of production in laying bare
the basic social, economic, and political structures/relations in which women and men enter or find themselves in struggling
for their life means and in putting in motion the process of succession of generations. The focus on the analysis of the articulation
of social relations (of gender, class, race/ethnicity, kinship, generation, etc), and how they define the situation of women
in different/specific class instances. Politically, many of these thinkers are involved in the feminist and wider women's
movements, as well as in class-based social movements, fighting against gender, racial, and class oppression. Postmodernism * Technology * What mathematics
did for observing the natural world, it has now created in and of itself. The medium is the message, in that all things, physical,
psychological, imaginative and electronic are made of the same stuff, the same language of electrons. The nuclear structure
reflects itself at all scales, micro and macro, and theories of indeterminacy leave open the creative growth of these systems.
Where mathematics seemed to offer a stable model for knowledge of our own perceptions of Nature, it now gives us the mercurial
nuances of cyberspace. Nothing separates real and imagined, potential and actual, except our insistance on making a separation
between ourselves and technology ( on top of the old split with Nature). * As long as we see technology as an entertainment or service, we can distance ourselves from its power over us.
We can continue to seize on Nature and the Spiritual as healing alternatives to the loss of our subjectivity. We can seek
to debase technological products and procedures as in-human, and fail to see their evolutionary inevitability. * Out of this ironic knowledge, we have begun to tie together the observed
systems, for the sake of the whole. This tying-together has come in the form of electronic information systems and digital
replication. The mixture of physical, emotional and imaginative information within the electronic matrix is the new nature,
much larger than our perception of Nature, the old classical "other". We can be simulataneously in it and outside
it. We are modified by it, and our singular minds are enfolded into its greater mind. |
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