Download Descriptive Essay

9 January 1996
On Monday I said that sociological theory developed in
the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as Marx, Durkheim,
and Weber attempted to explain how and why the world of
lords and peasants had been transformed into the modern
world of cities and citizens. Today I want to develop that
argument. The major questions are: What is sociological
theory? Why did it develop when and where it did? We will
also consider the regional/national differences that Ritzer
identifies in distinguishing French, German, and BritishAmerican theories. In this context, we can consider the
major, opposing theoretical perspectives, those of Marx and
Durkheim, and consider how the debate between Durkheimian
and Marxist social theory relates to the debates between
enlightenment liberalism and conservative reaction (as
described by Ritzer). Finally, I will use the four-celled
table (on the overhead) to illustrate the socialphilosophical-political context within which classical
sociological theory emerged. Then, time permitting, we
will consider August Comte, the assigned reading for this
week in Farganis, and consider the question of how and why
you should read Farganis.
First, what is sociological theory? If we break the
concept down to its components, we might consider two
questions: What is sociology? What is theory? I've
already suggested that theory is simply a compelling
argument or explanation. For our purposes, we may define
theory as a set of assumptions, assertions, and
propositions that are organized in the form of an
explanation. But what is sociology?
Max Weber defined the subject of sociological inquiry
as "social action--action that takes others into account."
This "taking into account" might not involve physical
contact or even co-presence. Even habits--ways of
thinking, speaking, and acting are social to the extent
that they were learned and influenced by others,
particularly significant others (especially parents,
teachers, and friends). When young ladies habitually cross
their legs or keep their knees together (even if they are
wearing pants) that is social action. It is clearly not
instinctive. They are "sitting like ladies" because their
mother taught them to do so or because they have learned
from painful experience that men will stare at them and
make inappropriate attributions if they were to sit like
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men--with legs stretched and spread or folded with ankle
across knee.
Aside from that, the actors need not be flesh and
blood individual human beings. Sometimes we talk about
categories of individuals who act in particular ways (as in
my example of men and women). Sometimes we talk about
groups of individuals (people having lunch together) who
tend to exclude (perhaps, even intimidate) others. For
example, a group of faculty men eating lunch in the commons
might intimidate students (and even women faculty) who
might feel unwelcomed--not by the individuals but by the
group. In this case, a particular interesting question is
the extent to which certain categories of individuals
(males or faculty) tend to form more or less exclusive
groups. Moving beyond groups, which are, after all,
composed of individuals, organizations (and even
institutions) can also engage in social action--taking
other organizations and institutions or even groups and
individuals into account. Thus social action involves a
variety of actors and actions that in one way or another
influence each other's behavior. Social Psychology tends
to focus on individuals and groups, but other sociologists,
including the major classical theorists, focused on
institutions and organizations, particular how and why
relatively enduring forms of social organization
(institutions) change.
So, now that we know what sociological theory is, why
did it develop when and where it did? I've suggested that
social theory develops when people start asking questions
like who am I, what am I doing here, why? and so what?
When are people likely to start asking such questions, and,
more importantly, why would universities (which are
inherently conservative institutions) develop departments
of sociology to deal with the explicitly social aspect of
identity and behavior that is not the primary concern of
philosophy, economics, or psychology?
Clearly, people ask these questions when they are
uncertain, most specifically, when their social identities
and social actions change. For example, adolescents spend
a lot of time dealing with their social identities and
social actions, as they change from child to adult, boy to
man (or girl to woman), as their friends become
distinguished as girlfriends, boyfriends, and "just
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friends" (which seems to refer only to members of the
opposite sex, but that may not be true any longer).
Similarly, even conservative academics may be inclined
to consider the social world of identities and actions when
that world fundamentally changes. When the relations
between men and women, parents and children, owners and
workers, rulers and ruled, clergy and laity all
fundamentally change, as they did in the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries in Western Europe and the United
States, it seems that even the most conservative university
president might want to look for a new academic discipline
that is uniquely qualified to explain what happened and to
suggest the implications of the change.
That is why sociology became institutionalized as a
discipline, in the nineteenth century [change is
exceedingly slow in universities] in Western Europe and in
the United States. After the traditional world of lord and
peasant was destroyed in the violent revolutionary
struggles of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries,
particularly in England (1688), France (1789), and Germany
(1871), even conservative college presidents were searching
for answers. Why had the social world fundamentally
changed? What was likely to happen next.
So does this mean that every time that there is a
revolution that we will get a new academic discipline? Yes
and no. The communist and fascist revolutions of the
twentieth century fundamentally changed sociological
theory, particularly Marxist theory, and the fall of
communism is having significant (although distinctive)
effects. We should expect that the collapse of republicancapitalism will also have significant effects, but it is
not clear that it will produce a new social science. Aside
from this, even less clearly defined "revolutionary"
changes, like the communications-mass-media-computer
revolution have yielded new social sciences (e.g.,
communications) that may or may not endure as academic
institutions (it is still too soon to say whether
communications or hotel and restaurant management will be
become internationally recognized academic institutions).
First of all, there are clear differences in the
social and political context of revolutionary change, even
in Western Europe and the United States. In Great Britain,
where the revolution came first (17th century) and the
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violent struggle was less protracted, liberal enlightenment
theory (the social contract, etc.) was less challenged by
reactionary or radical parties, and sociology developed as
an off-shoot of biology, dominated by Social Darwinism and
the evolutionary theory of Herbert Spencer. The U.S.,
which lacked a tradition of lord and peasant and had its
colonial revolt (which was hardly a revolution) in 1776,
followed a similar path.
France suffered a protracted, bloody, political
struggle between its revolution of 1789 and the commune-the first working class socialist revolt?--of 1871. Here,
the protracted political debate between enlightenment
liberals and reactionaries (royalists, emperors and their
followers, etc.) provided more fertile ground for an
independent sociology, which began with the evolutionary
theory of Comte (who was a philosopher--not a biologist)
and become institutionalized in the functional theory of
Durkheim. Germany, which was a late bloomer, experiencing
revolution in 1871, after protracted struggles with Czars
and empires, and continuing a path of political instability
that continued into the twentieth century (with Hitler),
was the other major center of sociological theory,
beginning with the dialectical theories of Marx and his
followers and institutionalized in the interactive
(historical-comparative) theories of Max Weber.
The difference between German and French sociology is
important, but the similar social conditions are the more
important point at present. Not simply political chaos but
a protracted institutionalized struggle between
enlightenment liberalism and royalist or fascist
reactionaries created a niche for an independent social
science that was neither liberal nor reactionary. The fact
that conservative functional theory developed in France,
while radical dialectical theory developed in Germany
(under what might appear to be similar conditions), is a
critical ingredient in the institutionalization of Western
European Sociology. The fact that two diametrically
opposed perspectives, which were independent of (or
orthogonal to) the institutionalized political debates made
the institutionalization of this discipline possible. The
chaos of the institutionalized political debate created the
need and the opportunity for an independent social science
that would not be co-opted or repressed by the state. The
fact that there were two diametrically opposed theories
created the dynamic that fueled the development of
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sociological theory, both in Germany and in France and,
eventually, even in England and the United States.
27 august 1995
Marx was a radical, who rejected the promise of
liberal enlightenment and the reactionary claims that what
was needed was to re-establish the virtue and morality of
the aristocracy. Marx believed that the feudal order of
lord and peasant had been rife with internal
contradictions. It had, essentially, self-destructed in
the violence of middle class (bourgeois) revolution. He
also believed, however, that republican capitalism would
meet a similar fate. This time, however, the workers
(proletariat) would be the revolutionary party, and they
would create a workers state in which everyone worked
together (to each according to his ability) and everyone
shared in the product (to each according to his need).
As indicated in the model of political attitudes
presented last week. Radicals are optimistic about human
nature. Marx believed that people were inherently social
(Farganis, pp. 70-71) and productive. In fact, people
realize their true nature (or specie being) through labor
(Farganis, p. 41). In the German Ideology, Marx developed
the idea that what separates man from other beasts was that
man was capable of transforming the material means of
production. Man can transform the naturally occuring
material world by cultivating plants, domesticating
animals, and developing new technologies that can make
nature more productive. This capacity, in Marx's opinion,
would ultimately enable man to create a utopian socialist
world in which fairly limited collective labor would
produce more than enough for everyone. He was, in fact, so
optimistic aqbout human nature that he thought that the
workers would figure out for themselves (just as the
bourgeoisie had done) what needed to be done once they had
seized the means of production from the capitalists. Marx
never developed a very clear picture of what socialism
would look like because he thought that the industrial
workers would know what to do. that is incredibly
optimistic.
Marx was equally pessimistic about the instituted
order and all preceding institutions that were based on the
exploitation of labor. Marx believed that the harmony
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between human and nature (and between different classes of
humans) was destroyed by the act of exploitation--the
appropriation of another's surplus labor value. In Capital
(volume I) Marx describes how labor is the source of all
value and how labor (at least theoretically) was naturally
expended in producing useful products to meet the needs of
the laborer and his family. This harmony was destroyed,
however, by the intrusion of nonlaboring classes who seized
control of the means of production (traditionally, land)
and on that basis alienating labor from production oriented
toward needs (or use-values) and established commodity
production, in which products are produced for for an
impersonal market, governed by the laws of supply and
demand. Once labor is alienated from productive enterprise
by the imposition of exploitation, the laborer becomes
alienated from his human nature, his fellow workers, and,
in general, his life.
But all forms of production that are based on the
exploitation of labor are plagued by internal
contradictions and thus ultimately self-destruct. Once
human labor is no longer producing for the needs of the
laborer, the economy becomes plagued by periodic crises of
over-production in which the increasing capacity of
productive enterprise exceeds the capacity to distribute
and consume the products.
Marx illustrated this general principle in his
analysis of the General law of Capital Accumulation
(Capital, vol 1, chapter 25). Under primitive
accumulation, capitalists increase production by hiring
more workers. Since the increasing demand for workers
tends to increase wages and thereby decrease the rate of
profit, capitalists must employ even more workers in order
to claim a reasonable profit. This vicious cycle of
increasing wages and falling rates of profits would lead to
bankruptcy if capitalists were not able to increase the
productivity of labor.
When capitalists invest in new technologies that
increase the productivity of labor, they can produce more
with fewer workers, thus decreasing the demand for labor
while increasing production. In the medium run these
technological innovations drive competitors out of
business. Those who can not afford the new technologies
cannot compete, so this tends to produce few but larger
capitalists who invest more money in machinery than in
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workers in order to produce more products per worker. Thus
as fewer workers produce more products the demand for labor
declines and wages fall until ultimately improverished
workers are producing incredible quantitites of products
that no one can afford to buy. This is the nature of the
crisis of over-production. Marx believed that these crises
would ultimately generate a proletarian revolution, when
the workers of the world seized control of the means of
production and collectively produced what they collectively
needed.
Marx believed that this would happen, because it fit
the pattern of "all known history" that he and Engels
described in The Communist Manifesto. The Roman Empire,
for example, was based on a slave economy that periodically
produced more food and more slaves than the economy could
absorb. This lead to increasing military enterprises to
conquer new lands that might be brought under cultivation,
but this also created more slaves. Ultimately, the Romans
hd to rely on mercenaries to carry-out their wars of
conquest, and finally the barbarians won.
Then the remnants of the barbarian or mercenary armies
formed private armies under the control of a prince (or
lord) who occupied a territory in which peasants cultivated
the land, offering protection from other lords in exchange
for a share of the harvest (or a specificed number of days
of work on the lords lands). As this "protection racquet"
was institutionalized the productive efforts of the
peasants began to produce surpluses. On the one hand,
there was surplus food, in good years--more the lord and
his army could consume. On the other hand, there were
surplus peasants--children who were too numerous to divide
the available land. The problem was that many sons made
for a wealthy peasant--he had lots of labor to increase the
productivity of his small piece of land. But many sons
made for many poor (or landless) peasants in the next
generation. In this regard the internal contradictions of
feudalism are apparent.
So the surplus peasants took the surplus food and
established themselves as bandits or trades, eventually
forming urban settlements (or burghs, and becoming
burghers). These burghers in their wars against bandits
(who were, in same sense, the same people) established the
basis for trade between estates, which provided the tax
base of organizing states that might defend the rights of
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free trade. Ultimately, the surplus products and surplus
peasants destroyed the feudal lords (or the aristocracy) in
the revolutionary struggles that ushered in the age of
capitalism.
Thus Marx saw history as a series of violent
revolutions, each inspired by the internal contradictions
of economies based on the exploitation of labor.
21 October 1995
The big picture is that sociological theory developed
in the nineteenth century in western europe and the U.S. in
response to fundamental changes in social life (especially
institutions: economy, government, religion, family).
These changes inspired protracted political debates, as
liberal enlightment thinkers faced reactionary
(loyalist/royalist) interests in an ongoing struggle for
political authority. Within the context of this political
debate, an orthogonal (academic) debate emerged between
radical (Marxist/dialectical) and conservative
(Durkemian/functionalist) theorists. This debate became
institutionalized in sociology, as liberals (like Weber)
attempted to accomodate the contradictory theoretical
perspectives and orient the debate toward empirical
analysis (particularly historical-comparative research).
So we can characterize nineteenth century sociological
theory by three political perspectives, three models of
society, and three institutional realms that were the focus
of each theoretical perspective.
Theorist
Partisanship
Model
Institution
Marx
Radical
Dialectical
Economic
Durkheim
Conservative
Functional
Cultural
Weber
Liberal
Interactive
Political
These theories were applied in attempts to understand
the fundamental social transformations that we might
characterize as the shift from feudalism to capitalism. In
varying degrees, the theorists were able to explain what
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happened, how, why, and so what--what might the future
hold. Marx offered the most deterministic (predictive)
model, but history proved him wrong in predicting the
destruction of capitalism and the rise of communism as the
logical consequence of capitalist development. In fact,
the twentieth century produced a variety of paths to the
modern world--state socialism, corporate capitalism, and
fascism. Thus twentieth century sociologists (and social
theorists) attempted to develop the three theoretical
models that they had inherited. In some cases
(particularly, NeoMarxism), they tried to expand one model.
In other cases (structural functional and conflict
theories), they tried to combine models. In some cases
(symbolic interactionism), they tried to reorient theory
from a focus on institutional structure to a focus on the
process of social action.
As I argued in lecture, Structural functionalism
combined a functional model of social systems with an
interactive model of the relations between functionally
differentiated systems (culture, economy, and government,
in particular). This combination of Durkheimian
(functional) and Weberian (interactional) theory provided
the foundation for modern functional and conflict theory.
The later was more political (and more liberal) and focused
on the conflicting interests between elites (or
authorities) and masses (or subordinants). The general
thrust of the conflict perspective is the assertion that
established institutions serve the interests of elites
(functional for elites) who have the power and organization
(they are a mobilized interest group with leadership and
organization) to impose their will on nonelites. They have
a vested interest in the status quo and attempt to
accomodate conflicting interests while minimizing social
change. As Darhendorf suggests, conflict can be
accomodated by offering nonelites at least some
opportunities for mobility and, at least, routine access to
political influence (voting, petitioning, etc.) if not
authority.
Unlike conflict theory, NeoMarxist theory builds on
Marx's dialectical materialism and attempts to develop
dialectical models of culture (NeoHegelian), ideology
(Critical), and government (structural). In attempting to
link government and economics, some critics argue that
Poulantzas produced a functional theory, but I would argue
that he (and Skocpol, one of his critics) produced an
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interactive Weberian model. Those who built on this
structural tradition in analysis of corporate liberalism,
the welfare state, and the fiscal crisis of the state
(especially O'Connor) were more successful, but there are
continuing debates on the relations between economy and
government, which now must accomodate the analyses of how
both economy and government have changed since the
nineteenth century: specifically, the development of
monopoly (versus entrepreneurial) capitalism and the
expansion of capitalism into an international (world)
system.
The various types of NeoMarxist theory are rooted in
dialectical materialism (the internal contradictions of the
exploitation of labor), but as they move into the analysis
of political discourse, international trade, income
inequality, and social movements they often build on
Weberian (interactionist) theory and offer contingency
(rather than causal) models. Nevertheless, despite the
influence of Weber and the failure to develop a
comprehensive dialectical theory, NeoMarxist theories are
distinguished from conflict theory by their concern with
internal contradictions that generate conflict and change
(dialectics) and suggest (at least) the possibility that
the struggle may ultimately resolve the internal
contradictions in revolution. The extent to which that
revolution must be violent and must be led by the
proletariat are just two of the many points of contention
within NeoMarxist theory.
Symbolic Interactionism developed the interactive
model of Weber and reoriented the focus from the relations
between individuals and society to the focus on the
relations between individuals. Mead's early work suggests
that self, other, and society were three interacting
elements in the negotiated order. Blumer (reacting against
Pasons, in particular) offered an extreme version of a
process theory that denied structural constraints. Goffman
and the structural Symbolic Interactionists have brought
structure back in by examining how the interaction process
is structured through the use of culturally available
definitions of the situation within which identities are
embedded (Goffman) and how identity is structured by a
hierarchy of salient identities that are more or less
appropriate over a wide range of interactions and others
(structural SI).
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With the return to structuralist concerns in Symbolic
Interactionism, the prospects for combining this micro
perspective with either NeoMarxist or
Functionalist/Conflict perspectives are improving.
Labelling theory, for example, combines interactionist and
conflict perspectives. Differential Association theory
seems to be closer to functionalism, but clearly
incorporates interactionism. Links between NeoMarxist and
interactionist theories are less apparent in the crime and
deviance literature (although Rieman, Spitzer, Scull,
Ohlin, Cloward, and others have been working on Marxist
theories of crime and punishment). The bridge is more
clearly defined in historical (and contemporary) social
movement theory, where resource mobilization and political
process theories (Tilly, McAdam, Tarrow) that are clearly
rooted in Marxist (and Weberian) theory are attempting to
incorporate the more interactionist perspectives on how
leaders "frame" collective action and how the media
exploits (and is exploited by) social movements (Gamson,
Snow, Gitlin).
These are the theoretical tools at your disposal.
Explore the different theoretical models--compare,
contrast, combine them in attempting to answer the question
that is the focus for your next paper. You might want to
bear in mind, however, that dialectical and functional
models can both be combined with interactive models but
cannot be (or, at least, have not yet been) effectively
combined with each other.
To illustrate how classical theorists and theoretical
models have influenced the major contemporary theorists,
the following table presents contemporary theorists and
identifies the major classical influences, the models
employed, and the institutional focus of each. This might
help you to sort out the large number of theorists and the
different types of theories.
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Contemporary Theorists
Theorist
Influence
Models
Institutions
Parsons
Durkheiem
Weber
Functional
Interactive
Culture
various
Merton
Durkheim
Weber
Functional
Interactive
various
science
Dahrendorf
Weber
Durkheim
Interactive
Functional
Political
Mills
Weber
Interactive
various
Gramsci
(NeoHegelian)
Early Marx
Hegel
Dialectical
Culture
Habermas
(Critical)
Early Marx
Weber
Dialectical
Political
Culture
Althusser
(Structural)
Late Marx
Dialectical
Politics
Economics
Thompson
(Historical)
Middle Marx
Dialectical
various
Dialectical
trade
Wallerstein
Late Marx
(World System) Lenin
Recall that "early" Marx (German Ideology) is more
philosophical, late Marx (Capital) is more structural
economic determinism, while middle Marx (18th Brumaire) was
more socio-historical. Recall also the functional,
interactive, and dialectical models that were offered in
lecture.
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