SOCIOLOGY: A CONTEMPORARY AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
To better understand the discipline of sociology, we might take a look at a number of the historical thinkers who helped found and develop the field. Some contemporary sociologists have expressed concern over the fact that detached lists of sociologists commonly accompany introductory sociology textbooks. As opposed to supporting a sociological canon, we agree with Rob Stones who suggests that overviews of significant sociologists “provide a rich resource for later generations to draw upon, and they provide sociologists with common reference points in relation to which they can discuss ways of approaching new problems” (Stones 1998:7). Another important point is the neglect of female and minority sociologists in introductory textbooks—an issue considered in depth in R.A. Sydie’s feminist considerations of Durkheim, Weber and Marx (1987). We hope to emphasize to the student of sociology the importance of understanding the theoretical foundations of the discipline. As well, by studying the work of foundational sociologists we can come to understand how sociologists, like the people whom they study, are caught up in the social and political webs of our societies.
Like any discipline there is substantial disagreement as to the origins of sociology. Some find the beginnings of sociology, and all of the social sciences, in the Greeks, others indicate the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century and the twentieth century as the starting points of the discipline (cf. Jensen 1957:45). We have chosen the nineteenth century as the period with the most prevalent sociological reflection of society. It is a time in which social theory truly became a unique vocation for the social sciences (cf. Lemert 1993:3-4). The following ten thinkers reflect the beginnings of academic sociology.
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
Unfortunately, many sociological textbooks fail to introduce the work of Saint-Simon as instrumental in the foundation of academic sociology. Henri Saint-Simon is an interesting figure in social thought, if not for the mere fact of his eccentricities that characterized both his childhood and his adult life. As you study sociology you might recognize the fact that many of the famous social scientists in our discipline lived eccentric and often tragic lives. Like our contemporary goals of practicing reflexivity—a perspective that acknowledges the imbrication of our own lives in the processes of understanding our world—the study of historic social scientists reveals that the personal circumstances of the theorists impacted their understandings of the world and its people. Emile Durkheim described Saint-Simon as a person of rare character—he refused communion at thirteen, used a hot coal to treat a bite from a mad dog, and once laid in front of a moving carriage as he felt its driver was disturbing his playtime. Because of this character, his parents quickly immersed Saint-Simon in the world of education, and he later spent time in the army. Prior to his death, he lost one of his eyes in a failed suicide attempt, and much of his later life was spent in mental and physical disarray.
Many of Henri Saint-Simon’s perspectives on society influenced Comte, who actually worked as one of the thinker’s secretaries. Even today there is some debate as to the exact influence of each thinker on modern social science; this is in part due to the fact that the two thinkers shard many ideas in common. As Comte would establish, Saint-Simon believed that the human sciences should imitate the foundations of the natural sciences—after all, he suggested, both the natural and the human sciences exist in the same universe. He also viewed society as an organized machine, a sort of social organism. This view of organicism—the perspective that society should be understood in the manner of it resembling an organism—came to influence the thought of Comte, Spencer, Durkheim and manner others. Saint-Simon described his view of society through the term physiology which developed the organic analogies of society and organs.
As a theorist one of Saint-Simon’s goals was to understand the fundamental problem of industrial society. As Emile Durkheim described his approach, Saint-Simon’s objective was “to reorganize European societies by giving them science and industry as bases” (Durkheim 1972:156). The Enlightenment trust in science and rationality as a means to the end of social progress is shared in Saint-Simon’s conceptualization of a social world in need of reform. One of his major studies considered the two worlds of society—the workers, who represented the majority of society, and the nobles, who represented a parasitic body and the minority of society. Saint-Simon believed that only producers and scholars should run society and his view on society of the future featured many of the traits now associated with the ideology of capitalism—the merits of everyone working, progress based on science, a society focused on peace. For his views on science, politics and religion, Saint-Simon is now considered a socialist and a secular humanist, though we should acknowledge that both terms have radically different meanings to us today then they did in his time. Saint-Simon was imprisoned during the French Revolution, though he escaped the guillotine. In addition to influencing the work of Comte and many other sociologists, one of his major contributions was to the cause of social justice in the social sciences. Saint-Simon was an advocate for a new science of society—one focused on the elimination of inequalities based on property, power and happiness. He suggested that this new science be founded on a love for the poor and the lowly in society. His ultimate view of the future involved engineers, priests and industrials rendering a new world—one based on rationality and cognitive evolutionism that he espoused. Even religion, he suggested, would share a rational view of the world. His views eventually spawned the Saint-Simonian movement in France. Do any of his views resonate with you today? Consider the following scenario:
• Scenario: You are talking with a co-worker about the subject of religion and society. The specific conversation is the controversy over stem-cell testing in the United States. The two of you cannot seem to come to an understanding of the issue because one of you is taking a pro-technology position, while the other is taking a pro-religion standpoint. Sociological analysis: Consider Saint-Simon’s arguments about the role of science in society and in religion. Is it possible to delineate between science and religion in the United States? How likely would the ideas of Saint-Simon be implemented in our contemporary world?
• Web Resource: Henri Saint-Simon Resources
http://cepa.newschool.edu/~het/profiles/saintsimon.htm
Isidore Auguste François Marie Xavier Comte (1798-1857)
The work of Frenchman Isidore Auguste François Marie Xavier Comte established sociology as a field of inquiry distinct from social philosophy. Comte effectively synthesized the philosophical foundations of social thinkers like Montesquieu, Kant, Aristotle, Hume and many others, in order to establish a unique field of “social physics” as a science of humankind. Prior to Comte’s synthesis of the social sciences, the world was largely viewed through non-social, reductionist explanations of climate, geography and physicality (Boskoff 1957:5). The basis of his desire to establish a science of humankind has been described by many as a humanitarian ethos. Like many of the early sociologists, Comte lived in times of tremendous social upheaval and it was his belief that society could progress, especially if humans discovered the peculiarities about themselves. He once said, “Savoir pour prEvoir et prEvoir pour pouvoir,” meaning “to know in order to predict and to predict in order to control” (Coser and Rosenberg 1969:3). His statement suggests the significant humanitarian roots of the discipline of sociology, and certainly we, as students of the discipline during similar contemporary times of social upheaval, can appreciate the need to critically think about the direction of our society and our lives. In his Law of the Three Stages, Comte argued that knowledge begins in a theological state as the human mind seeks the understanding of absolute truth in the governance of supernatural beings, passes through the metaphysical state as the human mind reasons that the actions of the universe are the results of abstract forces rather than supernatural beings, and ends in the positive or scientific state in which, Comte suggests:
The mind has given over the vain search for Absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance (Comte 1893:2).
Comte’s understanding of the positive or scientific progression of the mind was a recognition of the fallibility of human existence with the optimistic rejoinder of a methodology of understanding humankind—a position identified in his first work, A Program of Scientific Work Required for the Reorganization of Society. In The Positive Philosophy he offered this summation of the Law of the Three Stages:
Now, each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician in his youth, and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who are up to their age can verify this for themselves (ibid.).
Like Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte stood against the mysticism of the past and instead saw validity in a world governed by science, rationality and industry. He ultimately believed that societies moved naturally towards progress, and it was this professional optimism in society that tempered his often difficult life. He was expelled from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris for leading a student revolt in 1816, suffered a number of nervous disorders, and once attempted to commit suicide. As a social theorist he benefited from the tutelage of Saint-Simon, under whom he mentored. It is in Saint-Simon’s legacy that we find the mature Comte, the architect of a grand science of sociology. Like Saint-Simon, Comte dedicated much of his time reflecting on the hope of an all-encompassing sociology than actually defining the field (cf. Inkeles 1964:3).
In Comte’s worldview the term “society” was meant to encompass all social phenomena, and within this framework he understood two major divisions—social statics and social dynamics. The first refers to major institutions in society, such as economy, polity, family. In our contemporary world we would call this realm social structure. He offered that these institutions should be understood as units of sociological analysis in such a way as to how each impinges on the other. In social statics Comte stressed a principle of interconnection—each institution must be seen in mutual relation with the others, not as an independent entity. Much like Saint-Simon and Spencer, he viewed society in a manner akin to a organism in nature. In the second, social dynamics, we see Comte’s projections of a sociology focused on the progress of society. This second division has also been called “social kinetics” and in short refers to how societies change. Whereas social statics focused on the interrelationships between institutions, social dynamics emphasized the entirety of society as a unit of analysis, including its development over time.
Many of the sociologists to follow Comte in the nineteenth century owe much to his identification of a number of social forms that the thinker identified as worthy of sociological analysis. Some interpreters of Comte have argued that his faith in a pure industrialism disallowed his ability to identify class issues in society. Though he was no Marx, it is possible to see in Comte a reflection on certain divisions within society that would eventually expand and create an increasingly pronounced class-based society—what would become Marx’s focus. This specific division can be identified in Comte’s understanding of a functional system—society—that included domestic association (feelings of solidarity and consensus) and political society (in which the state is integrated and is supplemented by a system of classes). Though Comte was not critical of it, his recognition of the role of classes in modern society illustrates an awareness of the burgeoning of social stratification in society.
• Exercise: Have a look at the many excellent Internet resources on Auguste Comte and Henri Saint-Simon. Work on locating similarities and differences between the works of these two related thinkers.
• Web Resource: Auguste Comte Links
http://elvers.stjoe.udayton.edu/history/people/Comte.html
• Web Resource: Auguste Comte Pages (Most in French)
http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde/nofrench.htm
• Comte Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Comte’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Auguste Comte and Positivism
http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde/
• Web Reading: Texts of Auguste Comte (In French)
http://membres.lycos.fr/clotilde/etexts/index.htm
• Web Reading: Comte’s Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Comte’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
For many years the contributions of Harriet Martineau to the discipline of sociology went unnoticed. Martineau, the deaf daughter of a Unitarian English textile manufacturer, spent her life considering the institutional issues of sociology including, religion, politics, economics, and education. Because of the stifling gender conditions of the times in which she wrote, Martineau was forced to conceal her writing and research as such activities were not considered benefiting a woman of the nineteenth century. She shared an elaborate social circle, including Charles Darwin, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. Many remember Harriet Martineau for her translating the monumental works of Auguste Comte into English, but her even more significant contributions to sociology include her elucidation of a moral-institutional framework of American society and the political foundations that she laid for the abolitionist and feminist movements. In the first regard, her groundbreaking three-volume work Society in America (1837) represents one of the most comprehensive studies of American sensibility and social institutions. Like the work of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1988), Martineau’s Society in America establishes a framework for understanding the public culture of the nineteenth century United States. Whereas de Tocqueville focused on abstract notions of democratic virtues in the United States, Martineau’s work assessed democracy as it was, or many times was not, exemplified in United States society. Following the publication of Illustrations of Political Economy (1832)—a ten volume collection of stories that focused on teaching everyday people economic concepts—she began a two-year expedition across the United States:
I determined to go to the United States, chiefly because I felt a strong curiosity to witness the actual working of republican institutions…I went with a mind, I believe, as nearly as possible unprejudiced about America, with a strong disposition to admire democratic institutions, but an entire ignorance how far the people of the United States lived up to, or fell below, their own theory (Martineau 1837, Vol. I:x).
Martineau’s travels across much of the United States included meetings with prominent politicians, conversations with everyday citizens, and observations of some of the troubling aspects of the United States at the time—including slave auctions. In all she traversed some 10,00 miles by riverboat, horseback, stage and train. Many of the passages from Society in America, as well as the follow-up three volume Retrospect of Western Travels (1838), display amazing participant-observation erudition—participant-observation is one of the research methods that characterizes contemporary social sciences. Partially because of the sexism of the day, Martineau made an effort to keep her own opinions outside of her research, yet it was impossible for her to avoid the cultural critique that concludes Society in America:
The civilisation and the morals of the Americans fall far below their own principles. This is enough to say (Martineau 1837, Vol. III:299).
In providing a cultural critique of the American way of life, Martineau established, much like de Tocqueville’s conclusion about the possibility of democracy in the United States, that many of the principles valued in American democracy, such as freedom of the individual, were not represented in the lives of women and slaves who were denied autonomy in their society. She concluded that politicians were too focused on public opinion and that the denial of citizenship to women and slaves could not be tolerated in a society that stood for democratic principles. A number of Martineau scholars have commented on the fact that she was the first scholar to link the plight of slaves to the plight of women. Her writings also reflect a critique of the growing classism of the United States such that “enormous private wealth is inconsistent with the spirit of republicanism” (1837:37). Martineau’s spirit was laissez-fairist and her ultimate faith in the principles of democracy and the guarantee of the rights of the individual was reflected in her writing:
Whatever evils may remain or may arise, in either the legislative departments, the means of remedy are in the hands of the whole people (1837, Vol. III:298).
If she is correct, there is something to the character of the United States’ political order that gives all of us a hand in the decision-making process. What do you think? Consider the following exercise:
• Exercise: Go to the Internet or find a copy of Society in America and go about the task or retracing Harriet Martineau’s journey across the United States. In addition to identifying where she traveled, what issues she identified, and the nature of the people whom she met, create a hypothetical journey of your own in the twentieth-first century. If you traversed the same route as Martineau, what differences would you expect in your account of the travels and that of Martineau’s? What differences of similarities would you expect to see in the cultural values identified in your contemporary journey and those identified in Martineau’s original study?
• Martineau Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Martineau’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Transcendentalists' Guide to Harriet Martineau (Includes Writings)
http://www.transcendentalists.com/harriet_martineau.htm
• Web Reading: Excerpts from Society in America
http://irw.rutgers.edu/research/ugresearch/international/harrietmartineau.html
• Web Reading: Alexis de Tocqueville (Full text of Democracy in America from the University of Virginia)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Quite simply one cannot study sociology without referring to Karl Marx. The world’s greatest theorist of capitalism and materialism was born into a Christianized Jewish family. Taking his Ph.D. in law and philosophy, Marx would take a decidedly divergent path from Comte whose philosophy of human nature was devoid of reflection on social relations themselves. One of Karl Marx’s most famous collaborators was Friedrich Engels (1820-1895); the two would become lifelong friends, collaborators, and eventually authors of the infamous Communist Manifesto (1999). In what is a wonderful descriptive contrast between the two thinkers, Robert Heilbroner speaks to Engel’s bourgeois character and demeanor and Marx’s Moorish, stocky and disorganized appearance (1953). During Marx’s day, and perhaps even into our day, opinions on the greatest materialist thinker varied from respecting him as a prophet, to condemning him as a madman (ibid:130). In addition to the varied opinions on Marx, one finds, especially in the contemporary period of our society, a gross misinterpretation of what the thinker represented. Many people have wrongly assumed that Marx’s ideologies were represented in the Communist governments of the past, whereas others have delegitimated his academic prowess by labeling him an anarchist. Both of these assumptions are false, and all one has to do to realize this fact is to read Marx himself.
Karl Marx’s early work is very much a reflection on and repudiation of the ontological positions of Hegel. Marx’s work is indebted to Hegel—for one of the basic positions of the later thinker was the notion that change was an inherent aspect of reality, or, as is commonly discussed in the philosophical literature, history is dialectical. For Hegel the nature of human reality was that the positive and the negative were always resolved, and in Marxian dialectical materialism or historical materialism we find the famous discussion of the process of social change arising through conflict—through thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Under the mantra of dialectical materialism, Marx sought to explain how past events come to shape future social systems (cf. Lanier and Henry 1998:250). In his ultimate rejection of Hegelian philosophy, Marx made the famous statement “Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kommt aber darauf an sie zu veraendern”, which means “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.” Some philosophers see this quote in the context of a Promethean spirit (the ability of humans to change the future), a romantic spirit (the inherent worth of the individual) and, as we shall soon see, a deterministic spirit (the idea of materialism as a force immutable through human intervention). The context of Marx’s quote here can be contrasted with the context of the work of Herbert Spencer who had no interest in changing society.
The spirit in the inherent worth and ability of humanity coupled with the spirit of doubt in his critique of capitalism can be seen in the early academic and professional activities of Marx. Very early in his career he connected to groups, organizations and individuals who shared his concern with the changing nature of society and its impact on human existence. Consider the fact that Marx wrote during the time of Charles Dickens and that many of Dickens’ works detailed the very seedy side of industrialism as in the case of child labor. Like Weber, Marx was well-versed in law and he utilized his argumentative skills as an editor for a newspaper that was eventually suspended due to its controversial content. In 1864 he was involved in the founding of the International Working Men’s Association—an organization that identified significant workplace issues that would resonate with workers in our new millennium—and because of his control over its policy agenda, it collapsed in 1872; in part this was due to conflict with anarchists, including Mikhail Bakunin, an individual often associated with the foundation of anarchistic thought.
Marx settled in London to complete much of his life’s work. Some of it, including the second and third volumes of the seminal Das Kapital (1967), was edited by Engels and published posthumously. Capital is certainly Marx’s most compelling and foundational text for the elucidation of materialism and the nature of capitalism, but some might contend that The Communist Manifesto (1999) was equally important in the international political arena. From what we can gather in our current moment in history, Marx incorrectly predicted that capitalism would destroy itself and create its own successor in a classless society. But who is to say what the future holds for global capitalism? In this sense Marx may have practiced bad prophecy in his inability to predict the future of global capitalism and its power to transform exchange from a national to an international scale. It would be impossible to consolidate Marx, or any other of our ten superstar sociologists, into this short space of discussion. We recommend that you read Marx’s works in the original, if possible; otherwise, you can have a look at the many excellent discussions of Marx’s materialist philosophy, such as Ernst Fischer’s How to Read Karl Marx (1996). Here, though, is a brief summary of the major points of Karl Marx’s sociology.
To understand Marx we must first acknowledge his ontological position—that of materialism. Materialism is a perspective that emphasizes the real, objective, material conditions of the world as they are founded in economic, political and technological structures, as the determining factors behind our social structure and our individual actions. Some consider materialism to be a deterministic philosophy because of the reliance on one factor as the determining cause of life. In sociology we sometimes differentiate between a materialist position and a mentalist position. Hegel founded more of a mentalist ontology in that he believed that people create the world through their ideas. As we mentioned earlier, Marx’s break with Hegel’s philosophy is legendary, and in this regard we can identify Marx’s allegiance to materialism as a rejection of Hegel’s notion of idealism; Marx is saying that material conditions come to dominate who we are whether we know it or not, or like it or not. Marx’s writings focus on the mode of production in terms of the economic system characteristic of a society, be it socialist, capitalist, feudalist, etc. He also addresses the means of production (the technology, energy, and resources of capitalism) and the relations of production (such as between managers, employees, investors) as two significant components of the capitalist system. To complicate matters a bit, he also employs the term base which refers to the economic foundations of the society and superstructure which refers to the valuative social institutions of religion, polity, education and the like. The two realms are intimately connected in the sense of base determining superstructure. If you will, these terms represent the rules of the game of capitalism.
The players include the proletariat (the individuals who are paid less then the value of their work), the capitalists or bourgeoisie (the individuals who have the power in that they control access to the means of production) and the lumpen proletariat (the individuals who are underemployed or unemployed and are called upon to work only when the capitalists truly need them—they occupy the very bottom of society’s social ladder). So we have the rules of the game and the players, and now we realize that according to Marx’s materialist philosophy that the game is fixed. Here are some of the ways in which capitalists fix the game such that they always end up winning: Profits—capitalism is all about making profits and in order to make profits capitalists must first work to dominate the access to the means of production. In the case of nineteenth century industrial society the average hours of factory work could reach over eighty, and in today’s day we know of similar conditions as in the examples of garment industry sweatshops and maquiladoras in Mexico. The worker simply has no choice—he or she must work the required number of hours, even in dangerous and deadly conditions. In today’s contemporary United States we know, for example, that workplace death is a killer of greater numbers of people than street crime (cf. Reiman 2004). The predominant factor in the “success” of capitalism rests in one thing—labor. Without labor a capitalist system would cease to exist, but the goal of the capitalist game is not simply to play, but to win. In order to win capitalists rely on surplus value—the extra value that comes from the blood, sweat and tears of the worker. This value includes the stored-up energies of workers as they sleep at night and the hours that they put in at work—for which they are not fully compensated. In addition to this fix, capitalists have devised a bourgeois legality—a legal system that protects the capitalist system. Even though this legal system will assure that no excesses come to harm workers, its ultimate function is to allow the game of capitalism to be fixed at the legal level. Perhaps the single most important fix in the game is the capitalists’ use of ideology. Ideology is a direct result of the mode of production in a society, and we can define ideology as justifications for existing social relations. In short, ideology masks the true, objective nature of reality such that capitalists can maintain control of the means of production. One of the best descriptions of ideology is given by Marx and Engels:
If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process…the phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises (Marx and Engels 1947:14).
With the discussion of ideology and false consciousness—the worker’s naïve belief that she or he is in a better class position than is really the case—we see the subjective realm of Marx’s philosophy coming into being. Keep in mind that this realm is still governed by the very basis of Marx’s materialism. To reiterate, base determines superstructure and social being determines consciousness. Marx certainly leaves open the possibility of the worker identifying the illusionary system of capitalism and its ideology; as he once said of modernity and the realization of its ills, “all that is solid melts into air.” As this quote indicates, the promise of a better life under modern industrialization was met with more and more contradictions (cf. Lemert 1993:27).
To sum up the game of capitalism as understood through Marx, we should look at the results. The results are fairly simple—capitalists win, everyone else loses. In addition to the maintenance of class domination in a capitalist society, workers experience what Marx called alienation—the disconnection or estrangement between the worker and the process of production and the product itself. Throughout the text we will address the conflict perspective in sociology—this is the perspective that discusses the organization of society as those with power and those with less power at economic and ideological levels. Marx is the father of the conflict perspective and through his ideas we can understand the relevance of critical materialistic perspectives in our contemporary world.
The later years of Marx are tragic years. As we noted in the physical contrasts between Marx and Engels, there was also much of a class contrast between the two giants. Engels was in fact a respected trader in the Manchester Stock Exchange and he very often felt obliged to provide the Marxes with loans. In extremely tough times Marx was forced to pawn much of his belongings, including his shoes, and in some cases he did not have enough money to purchase stamps to send his writings to the publisher (cf. Heilbroner 1953:141).
• Exercise: Go to the Internet and conduct a general web search using the term “marxism.” In a short writing assignment list at least five sites that refer to the work of Karl Marx. For each of these sites, discuss how Marx was viewed—in a positive, negative or neutral light?
• Marx Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Marx’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Karl Marx Biography and Exposition of Marxism
http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Bio/Marx-Karl/Granat/granat.html
• Web Resource: Cyber Marxism Links
http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/marx.html
• Web Resource: The International Workingmen's Association 1864
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/10/27.htm
• Web Resource: The MarX-Files
http://www.appstate.edu/~stanovskydj/marxfiles.html
• Web Resource: Marx’s Writings
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/marx.html
• Web Resource: Marxism Made Simple
http://www.marxismmadesimple.esmartweb.com/mainpage.htm
• Web Resource: Marxist Internet Archive
http://www.marxists.org/
• Web Resource: E-Mail Lists Related to Marxism
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism_html/index.html
•Web Resource: Marx Links and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Marx’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
• Web Resource: Karl Marx Bibliography
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/sefd0/bib/marx.htm
• Web Reading: Marx and Engels Writings (Includes a search engine)
http://eserver.org/marx/
• Web Reading: Marx and Engels Writings
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
• Web Resource: Maquiladoras (UCLA Reading List)
http://www.chavez.ucla.edu/maqui_murders/bibliography.htm
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Emile Durkheim, along with Weber, Marx and Freud, stands as one of the most influential social scientists of all time. Like these other influential thinkers, Durkheim sought to understand a society in flux and in contradiction, and like these others he established a rigorous approach to comprehending social life. He grew up the son of a Jewish Rabbi, and became immersed in the intellectual world of society and ideas as a student at the Ecole Normale SupErieure in Paris. Durkheim’s interaction with others in his lifeworld came to influence his curiosity about the world and his desire to interpret it. No more true is this the case in his monumental study of religion and social integration, Suicide (1966), in which he was inspired to understand the suicide of a close friend named Hommay. In that study he understood that contrary to the popular opinion of suicide being an individual act, it is, in fact, an inherently social consequence of the world and its organization. Durkheim emphasized that suicide rates were inversely proportional to the levels of social integration endemic to religions—in the case of Protestantism, suicide rates were higher, while Catholics and Jews had lower suicide rates. Durkheim argued that Protestantism stressed independence of the member and thus, being less integrated in society, the member had an increased likelihood of suicide. A number of specific forms of suicide—egoistic, altruistic and anomic (or fatalistic)—were also identified in specific terms. What Suicide illustrates is Emile Durkheim’s mastery of sociological theories and interpretative methods that would move sociology beyond the philosophical and abstract foundations laid out by Saint-Simon and Comte. It also shows us the sociologist’s concern to have the discipline focus on a wide range of social concerns. Many theorists have also emphasized that work’s development of a “moral statistics tradition,” in which significant subjective social issues, like suicide, are comprehended through public statistics (Pfohl 1994:256).
Instead of progressing through abstractions and generalizations about the world, Durkheim felt that sociology should develop concrete forms of social analysis. Durkheim once made the statement, “the future is already written for him who knows how to read it” (1964:368). He shared many of Comte’s concerns, including the necessity of understanding the relationships of the parts of society—we call this the functionalist approach, and this approach stands as one of the major theoretical perspectives of sociology today. Unlike Comte, he advocated the development of robust social theory, empirical studies and rigorous methodology. One of his most influential contributions to the advancement of an empirical sociology is his conceptualization of social facts. Durkheim believed that social facts existed independently of the individual, yet as they inevitably impact the individual, the task of the sociologist is to empirically understand them. Durkheim’s notion of the social fact illustrates his realist perspective. Realism is a perspective that emphasizes the existence of a social reality independent of human understanding of it; the world forms a basis of social relations and social organization which must be understood by the sociologist in order to comprehend the nature of social reality. In addition to his realism, Durkheim advocated a comparative approach to social life: “comparative sociology is not a particular branch of sociology; it is sociology itself” (Durkheim 1938:139). The comparative approach emphasizes that the meaning of one part of society, or one whole society, can only be understood as it this part (or society) is placed in relationship to other parts (or other societies). As a comparative thinker, Durkheim influenced the discipline of anthropology, especially in his work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915) in which he looked at the issue of religion and social integration among Australian aborigines. Like many sociologists who would follow him, Durkheim was fascinated with the freeing of industrialization from the social and moral orders and how the fundamental problem of normative disruption is tied to processes of industrialization.
Emile Durkheim’s dissertation became his famous The Division of Labor in Society (1933) in which he established a comparative understanding of the social order. Durkheim founded academic sociology in France at the Sorbonne in 1902. Because of his prominence and his willingness to spark controversy in the discipline—a fact established by the edginess of his The Rules of Sociological Method—we may anoint him one of the first public sociologists in history. A public sociologist, in addition to focusing on the traditional theoretical and methodological concerns of the discipline, attempts to establish widespread interest in sociology and its applicability to everyday life. Durkheim’s emphasis on the public realm of sociology is seen in his emphasis on progress as a goal of sociological study. We are speaking of a different notion of progress here. To contrast with Comte and Spencer, who saw the progress of society as a natural byproduct of the increasing rationalization of the world, social theorists like Durkheim were able to see another dark side of modernity (cf. Lemert 1993:29). One of Durkheim’s interests was in interpreting the rise of individualism in society. He believed that moral consensus was a necessary foundation for social solidarity, so an obvious question was how could moral consensus and individualism co-exist? In attempting to answer this question, Durkheim emphasized the idea that society could progress, but, unlike Marx, he rejected the notion that the state was the site of class domination; he instead felt that the state itself could be reformed.
An example of his optimism as a progressive sociologist is found in his concept of moral reconstruction. Like Comte, Marx and Weber, he understood the impact of the coming of industrial society on the individual and the specific social bonds that he believed each individual needed in order to psychologically relate to society. As we will consider in a later chapter, Durkheim identified specific forms of solidarity characteristic of different eras of society—mechanical and organic solidarity. He defined a pathological society as one in which the norms were either too strong or too weak, and such a society is prone to anomie. We will address more on anomie in the chapter on deviance, crime and social control, but one quick definition explains the concept quite nicely: anomie is a “breakdown in the ability of society to regulate the natural appetites of individuals” (Vold and Bernard 1986:185). He suggested that in a society more and more dominated by impersonal forces that two solutions might allow society to move in the direction of moral reconstruction: one was the occupational association—Durkheim believed that occupational organizations would allow the individual necessary experiential ties in an ever-changing society—while the second was education which Durkheim believed could guide society in a more progressive course (cf. Pfohl 1994:275). In short, Durkheim believed that sociology could cure society in the long run, but in some respects even his conceptualization of moral reconstruction was not as specific as the detailed plans of social reform laid out in the work of Jane Addams.
Another significant contribution of Durkheim’s functionalism is his notion of the normality of crime. In a famous essay of the same title (Durkheim 1969), he suggests that contrary to popular opinion, crime is a natural, desirable and even progressive force in society. He offered that crime fulfilled a specific function in society, and in the ways that it creates solidarity among people, marks boundaries between groups, reminds people of their social values, offers tension-reducing functions for society, and eventually produces social change and innovation in society, crime can be said to be necessary and positive for a given society. In our contemporary world many sociologists use Durkheim’s concept of the normality of crime in their classrooms to stress the value of understanding the total social picture offered by sociology, as well as the need to suspend our own moral opinions on social issues.
In the late nineteenth century, the work of Auguste Comte began to fall into some disrepute and, in responding to this fact, Durkheim used the Comtean term “sociology” very cautiously. He referred to sociology as a “barbarous neologism” (cf. Giddens 1978:8)—an interesting phrase from a thinker whom we consider one of the founding figures of our discipline! To Durkheim we owe an enormous debt in terms of his influence on contemporary sociology. As the many examples have indicated, his work established a comparative, academically rigorous and public form of sociology. Later, we will consider Emile Durkheim’s influence in a number of specific realms of sociology, but consider just a few of the following scenarios as you ponder the importance of a sociologist who wrote over one hundred years ago:
• Scenario: You are working in an office when your manager has reclassified your position to include new duties—duties for which you will not be paid any additional income. Sociological analysis: Consider Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity to better understand the society and the workplace that finds you, the worker, working more hours with no additional pay.
• Scenario: You are driving on a busy street when a car slams into you. The accident is a result of the bad driver who was distracted because he was talking on his cellular phone. Sociological analysis: Consider Durkheim’s research on the impacts of industrialization on traditional society by specifically thinking about the new era in which we live—an era in which cellular phones are but one part of an ever-changing landscape of social relations mediated by technology.
• Scenario: You are reading a book on terrorism in a local coffee shop. A day later a knock at your door announces the presence of two FBI agents who want to ask you about your beliefs and why you were reading that particular book in the coffee shop. Sociological analysis: Consider Durkheim’s concept of anomie—a feeling of normlessness experienced by individuals that develops in a society undergoing massive change—and how you might understand the social and political contexts that produced the U.S.A. Patriot Act and increased the likelihood of fear and confusion influencing public policy.
• Exercise: Review Durkheim’s categories related to suicide—egoistic, altruistic and fatalistic—and attempt to apply them to the events of September 11th. Can you locate any of Durkheim’s forms of suicide in the tragic events of 9/11?
• Durkheim Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Durkheim’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: The Durkheim Pages
http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/
• Web Resource: Emile Durkheim Online
http://www.emiledurkheim.com/
• Web Resource: Durkheim Archive
http://durkheim.itgo.com/
• Web Resource: Durkheim Bibliography
http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Bibliography/Bib01.html
• Web Reading: Durkheim Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Durkheim’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
Georg Simmel, the founder of the German Sociological Society (with Max Weber and Ferinand Toennies), is one of the most intriguing figures of nineteenth century sociology. As an academic, writer and citizen, Simmel displayed an idiosyncratic sensibility, which some suggest led to his becoming a “stranger” of the sort which he considered in one of his most famous essays. In that study, “The Stranger,” Simmel addressed the role played by the stranger in group interactions (1950a) Simmel was continually denied the academic spotlight deserved of an erudite sociologist; in fact, his reputation as a thundering and virtuoso lecturer provided him more fame than any of the sporadic university positions that he occupied. In the academy the negative experiences to which he became accustomed were the result of prevalent anti-Semitism. Many of his ideas were communicated in short essays which some theorists of the day criticized as either being too formal or not detailed enough.
Simmel’s influence on contemporary sociology is felt in many significant regards. In one sense he laid the framework for the work of the symbolic interactionists at the University of Chicago while simultaneously moving German sociology away from the idealist tradition. As a social researcher he advocated a true scientific framework for the discipline, yet his attention to small group issues, social interaction and the values of conflict, competition and cooperation in society led to a humanistic tradition which influenced the important work of the Frankfurt School many years later. Simmel’s work illustrates the constructivist position in the social sciences—this is the perspective that emphasizes that the ideas, actions, symbols and mental constructions of humans form the basis of the reality in which all humans exist.
The basis of Georg Simmel’s sociology is found in his distinctions between the abstractions of general sociology, the metaphysical and epistemological dimensions of philosophical sociology and the study of societal forms in what he called formal sociology. Simmel laid claim to this later form of sociology as he believed that much of the work of the past had been too focused on the grandiose philosophical categories of society. He called for an attention to the details of everyday life, in forms of human behavior and interaction, and suggested that sociologists need not concern themselves with everything human, as Comte had argued. As such we can say that Simmel decisively moved sociology from the macro (large scale) perspective to the micro (small scale) perspective. In understanding the micro-scale of human existence, he suggested that society was founded on sociation, including association and disassociation, and recommended that sociologists study the patterns of sociation employed by individuals. Much in the manner of isolating parts of language within a grammar, the sociologist was to uncover the nature of the interactions of individuals in society. Many of these interactions were identified by Simmel as psychological, and one of his most powerful pieces analyzes the psychology of individuals in an urban metropolis (1950b). Many of the forms of social organization that we study in contemporary sociology can also be attributed to Simmel’s influence. One example is his focus on the nature of relationships within dyads (two-person situations) and triads (three-person situations). Another contribution of Simmel’s to contemporary sociology is found in his emphasis on forms of competition and conflict within society. Just this last issue is one that continues to raise questions about the social quality of life in the United States. Consider the following scenario:
• Scenario: You are moving into a new community and in all of the interactions you have had with others you feel outcast. You feel as if the only reason you are being singled-out is because of your being new to the community. Sociological analysis: Consider Simmel’s classic essay “The Stranger” and find points from the author’s article that either contradict or support the explanation suggested in the scenario—that you are being singled out as a stranger by others.
• Simmel Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Simmel’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Georg Simmel Online
http://socio.ch/sim/index_sim.htm
• Web Reading: Simmel’s Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Simmel’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
• Web Reading: The Metropolis and Mental Life
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/intro/simmel_M&ML.htm
• Web Reading: The Stranger
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/intro/stranger.htm
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Hebert Spencer, the British social theorist of the nineteenth century, is often considered to be as influential in the founding of academic sociology as Auguste Comte. Also like Comte his legacy to the discipline of sociology is the subject of much academic debate. What was Spencer’s position on social evolution? Did he believe in the notion of the “survival of the fittest” as it pertains to human societies? What exactly did he suggest about society acting like an organism? These questions continue to fill the pages of sociological textbooks and academic journals, and like any other social thinker, the specific details of Herbert Spencer’s legacy will continue to be debated; what is clear is that Spencer stands as one of the foundational figures in the discipline of sociology and the most discussed English thinker of the Victorian period.
Because of the spirit of religious and political dissent among his relatives, Spencer grew up in a tradition of nonconformity. His education, much like his early life, was nontraditional. He had very little formal education and was first employed as a railroad engineer at the age of seventeen. His expert knowledge in mechanics is said to have influenced his later philosophical positions on evolution and society. Given his later disavowal of state-based programs for the needy, an ironic moment in his early life came when he joined with his radical uncle Thomas in what was a movement to support worker suffrage during the political turmoil of the Whigs and Tories. Following his work in the railway system, Spencer began erudite considerations of the nature of evolution and the structure of society; much of his knowledge of biology and philosophy was self-taught. He then took up a career as an editor with The Economist in 1848.
Spencer’s work The Principles of Sociology (1877) represents the first systemic description of sociological analysis. Whereas Comte had laid out a general theoretical statement of the science of society, Spencer paid more attention to the specification of issues that he believed to be important to the discipline of sociology. As you will discover if you analyze some of Spencer’s writings in the original, his language seems archaic given our standards, but the relevance of his concepts to our contemporary world is clear. In some cases if we update the language that Spencer used to describe sociological issues we can more readily understand the applicability of the issues to our contemporary world. One example is found in his notion of “system of restraints.” In our minds we might understand the concept using the phrase “social control.” In fact one the exercises we have presented to you involves studying the relevance of Spencer’s concepts from Principles of Sociology to our contemporary world.
One of the major attributions of Spencer’s theory of society is his concept of organicism. Some sociologists refer to the contribution as the “organic analogy”—basically, Spencer assumed that society was superorganic and that it is organized in a way that a body is organized as a biological entity. The thinker was quite familiar with the role of biological evolution in human life, though his view of it differed from Darwin and Wallace’s notion of natural selection as the primary factor in evolution; Spencer in fact owed much of his concept of the mechanism behind evolution to Lamarck—who postulated the now disavowed view of acquired characteristics. Interestingly, Spencer’s view on social evolution paralleled some of the concepts of Sir Francis Galton who suggested that personal characteristics and abilities, such as mathematics and political ability, were inherited, not made (cf. Perdue 1986:58). Galton had eugenic views and believed that the principle of personal inheritance of characteristics was applicable to groups and races. Spencer’s comparison of biological systems to society was controversial in his day, and today his views in this regard are considered scientifically unfounded and politically troubling. Later in his life Spencer himself would admit to the problematic nature of his organicism. A number of contemporary sociologists have commented on the confusion as to whether he conceived of society as literally being an organism or if society were simply analogous to an organism.
For Spencer evolution “was tantamount to a natural law for the physical, biological, and social universe” (Perdue 1986:59). His view of natural law impacting all of these diverse realms can be considered deterministic—which is a perspective that states that one primary factor or force is the explanation for the nature of reality. He was a social Darwinist before Darwin, and he coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”—a concept that remains his most controversial legacy to sociology. Many call Spencer the first structural-functionalist; like Comte he theorized that society could be best understood through social statics and social dynamics, but what is more pronounced in Spencer’s “social organism” is an emphasis on self-regulation and equilibrium. In terms of social institutions, Spencer defined them as either sustaining, such as kinship and marriage, distributing, like economics, and regulating, like religion and polity. One notes in each of these types of institutions the biological basis of his foundation—one could say, for example, that a regulating institution like polity is analogous to the regulating system of an organism like the nervous system. Ultimately, he believed that social systems were maintained in the equilibrium of these institutions and through processes of what he called “reciprocal influences,” such as how sexual norms impact the family (cf. Inkeles 1964:5).
The sociologist’s System of Synthetic Philosophy represented a ten-volume attempt to catalog the nature of evolution through the various realms of life. The perspectives presented in that work, or his The Principles of Sociology (1877), ultimately fail at the analytical level if not for the mere fact of misplaced analogy. In one passage from The Principles of Sociology, “Society is an Organism,” Spencer displayed the nature of misplaced analogy: he moves from topics of spores and germs, to blood and cells, to governing political bodies, armies and social institutions. In contemporary sociology we can acknowledge the difficulties of trying to compare two religious systems (both composed of humans), not to mention extending that comparison to non-human organisms. As one author sums up the point:
Although there may be some crudely drawn similarities between societal equilibrium and biological balance, the two do not equate. Put bluntly, evolution in the biological world was transferred by Spencer to the social world without proof (Perdue 1986:61).
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the application of Herbert Spencer’s theories relates to what is a popular topic in contemporary sociology—public policy. One of his primary emphases was on laissez faire—a proto-libertarian view that the state should keep its hands out of the affairs of its citizens (what is a real contrast to the positions of Rousseau and Hobbes!) Here are just a few of Spencer’s views on this subject:
• The belief that hierarchy was a natural state of society.
• The principle of dissolution, meaning that unfit societies will eventually disappear.
• A position against public education because of the need to allow the children of superiors to outlast the children of inferiors.
• A position against the mixing of the races.
• The view that some less advanced nations might halt the evolutionary progress of other geographically adjoining nations.
• A view that the state should only serve the individual, with no measures of egalitarianism or public good—what one sociologist calls “antisociety” (Perdue 1986:62).
• A number of positions against public works projects, including public education, a nationalized postal system and aid to the needy.
• Fluctuating views on the rights of women and children.
• Exercise: Find an Internet or printed version of Principles of Sociology. Develop a comparative chart in which you attempt to list and compare concepts from Spencer’s nineteenth century work with our textbook.
• Exercise: Work on a short writing assignment in which you attempt to argue for or against the statement, “society is an organism.” In making your points, use a comparative approach to parallel the arguments of Spencer with real-world examples from contemporary society.
• Web Reading: Spencer’s Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Spencer’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
• Web Reading: The Development Hypothesis (1852)
http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/spencer_dev_hypothesis.html
• Web Reading: First Principles (1862)
http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/%7Eecon/ugcm/3ll3/spencer/firprin.html
• Web Reading: The Man Versus the State (1884)
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/%7Eecon/ugcm/3ll3/spencer/manvssta
• Spencer Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Spencer’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
As G. Duncan Mitchell suggested in A Hundred Years of Sociology, the development of sociology involved the moving away from speculative social inquiry in favor of a research-oriented methodology and a closing of the gap between pure philosophical reflection on society (as we see with the work of Comte) and the reformist, applied focus on society (1968:3). Jane Addams, like W.E.B. Du Bois and Harriet Martineau, was a pioneer for social justice and the cause of progressive sociology, and with Du Bois she stands as one of the most influential figures in the discipline to have moved sociology away from the grand theoretical milieu into that of the applied field. Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois in 1860 and attended the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia. Like many of the social thinkers of her day, she came from a prominent background. Yet during a number of pivotal trips to London, Addams connected to those who did not share her class position—the urban poor. As an activist she used money inherited from the death of her father to found the world-famous Hull-House in Chicago in 1889, where she worked until her death. Addams’ background and upbringing included significant immersion in the arts and Christian ethics, and this fact certainly impacted her ability to work as a reformist sociologist. Like Du Bois she was a firm humanist and she believed in the inherent worth and rights of individuals, regardless of their country of origin, race or class position.
Hull-House became the home of hundreds of immigrants whose founders provided them with important social services like daycare, employment services, classes and a library. Addams’ research focused on issues related to the poor, such as housing and education, and many of these topics are addressed in her publications, including Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes (1910). Just as a social project, Hull-House was an enormous undertaking for Addams and her allies. She effectively rallied community members to take a part in the activities of the center, but most importantly she used her feminist connections to gain the financial backing of wealthy women in the city of Chicago.
In terms of the applications of sociological issues, Jane Addams might be considered the first applied sociologist. What is remarkable about her work at Hull-House is that she was able to generate a significant reform movement. Initially, Addams and her allies focused on providing art and literature for the poor and needy, but the tide soon turned in the realization that what the members of Hull-House really needed was basic services, such as child care, English as a second language classes, legal services, and assistance in securing employment. Addams’ connection to the people whom she served was exemplified in her ability to adapt Hull-House’s services to meet their needs. In a number of lectures given after the opening of the community project, she spoke to the desire to have Hull-House be flexible to the changing needs of the local community. The programs at Hull-House expanded to include meeting locations for labor unions. As well, Addams enlisted the aid of middle-class citizens to act as intermediaries between their clients and city bureaucracy. Clearly, modern social work, as well as sociology, owes much to the applied project that was Hull-House.
The Hull-House group and its supporters enacted a number of juvenile and immigrant protection programs, clinics and services, culminating in protective legislation for women and children. In 1916 the efforts of Jane Addams and the Hull-House collective were realized in a federal child labor law. Indeed, Hull-House had established Addams as one of the great reformers of the day. Academically, she began to attract the attention of significant social scientists, including the pragmatist John Dewey at the University of Chicago, and she was instrumental in the establishment of the same university’s School of Social Work. In many ways her attention to the details of both Hull-House and the University of Chicago’s School of Social Work marked Addams as an early organizational sociologist. By working beyond the realm of exclusionary theory, she paid attention to the application (the praxis) necessary to make Hull-House a successful organization. In fact her view on achieving social justice through praxis was that all constituents—from the needy person, to a middle class provider to a politician—be involved in the decision-making processes of the given project.
Following her successful work in Chicago, Jane Addams became an international figure in a number of progressive women’s, worker’s and peace movements. She was elected the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, became a member of the NAACP, and took center stage in a number of national political issues. One of these involved a controversy with Theodore Roosevelt who ran for president as a Progressive party candidate. Addams delivered the seconding speech at the party’s convention, but when she spoke out against United States participation in World War I, Roosevelt was not amused. During this time Addams began an international peace movement that included an International Congress of Women in 1915 (an effort that involved one thousand women from twelve nations), a touring delegation of women aimed at settling the war through peaceful means, and the eventual formation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919 (Bissell Brown 2000). Addams’ public positions against the war were met with suspicion and charges that she was connected to radicals. In 1931 she was the first woman and first sociologist to be awarded the Noble Peace Prize—one of her Hull-House colleagues, the reformer, economist and sociologist Emily Balch, also won the prize in 1946.
Perhaps the most lasting aspect of Jane Addams’ legacy was her focus on making sociology a device for social change. She was adamant in her view that Hull-House not be a sociological experiment, but that it be a place where the needy could be given the basic services that they deserved. Likewise, she expressed that sociology, in adapting to the times in which it existed, be respondent as a discipline of advocacy, not merely act as a empirical, investigative science. Consider the following applied exercise:
• Exercise: Jane Addams founded the successful community project known as Hull-House. Do an Internet study in which you compare the work of Hull-House to a contemporary and still active community reform project. One example of such a project is San Francisco’s Delancey Street. Write a short comparative paper in which you discuss the similarities and differences between Hull-House and the contemporary project that you have chosen.
• Addams Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Addams’ name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/index.html
• Web Resource: Delancey Street
http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/grassroots/delancey/index.htm
• Web Reading: Twenty Years at Hull-House (Entire Text from University of Virginia)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ADDAMS/title.html
• Web Reading: Addams’ Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Addam’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
Max Weber (1864-1920)
Like many of the grand theoreticians of his age, Max Weber was a holistic sociologist as he sought to make meaningful all of the realms of everyday life—economics, authority and politics, legal history, urbanism and the city, religion, music and social class. Unlike previous social scientists, particularly Comte, he brought the grandiose scale of an all-encompassing sociology down to earth by focusing attention on individual subjectivity. Like Durkheim and Marx we can trace specific influences of Max Weber’s sociology in the work of contemporary sociology programs and individual sociologists.
Max Weber, like many of our nineteenth century social theorists, led an interesting life full of moments of eccentricity, tragedy and varying levels of political participation in Germany. He suffered greatly from the death of his father, who worked in the legal profession, and depression that he would experience later in life led to a five year period of inactivity. In his home he experienced a strict form of Calvinism stressed by his mother; no doubt this early inculcation with religious values would guide his later research in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). In 1884 Weber passed his law exam and perhaps because of his legal training, he displayed a reluctance to critique the status quo (Perdue 1986:174). Following his work in law, he completed his dissertation dealing with the history of medieval business in 1889 at the University of Berlin. He would later share duties in his two fields as a lecturer at the same university and as a professional lawyer. Weber had an opportunity to present a paper at the World’s Fair in St. Louis and he became quite enamored with the economic virtues of the United States that he experienced during his visit. In his own country of Germany he had contrasting relationships to the political order of the day. During the reign of Bismarck he noted the problematic nature of state power, especially as the governmental bureaucracy expanded, even into the university system, and as the growth of industrialization led to an increasing division of labor (cf. Perdue 1986:175). During World War I he reversed from initial nationalist support of Germany’s position to one of critiquing his country’s role after the war. During the war he held a position in a hospital due to his poor health. Later, he would contribute to the writing of a new German constitution. Weber’s wife Marianne shared his academic and social interests and many consider her one of the first German feminists.
Because of Weber’s emphasis on subjectivity we can identify his perspective as idealism—a view that emphasizes the intersubjective realm of human experience through investigations of meanings, ideas and actions of people and how they reflect the world in which we exist. As an idealist sociologist Weber importantly identified the level of social meaning desired by the researcher as verstehen (“understanding”)—what might be summarized as the attempt to sympathetically uncover the intentions of individuals as if you could get inside their minds; or, as Raymond Williams said, an “intuitive grasp” (1995:15). Attached to the concept of verstehen is an emphasis on social action; as Weber himself says:
[Sociology] is a science which attempts the interpretative understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects (Weber 1947:88).
Like Kant, who believed that the mind was separate from nature, Weber developed the possibilities offered by so-called subjective approaches to understanding society rooted in the post-Comtean Geisteswissenschaften movement of Dilthey, Windelband and Rickert. His own relationship to this school is complex, and one should not misinterpret this relationship to mean that Weber was a subjectivist thinker. He firmly believed in the development of a value-free sociology, and this is certainly emphasized in his programmatic approaches suggested by the ideal types. A very significant realization of Weber’s was the need to identify frames of sociological analysis. Like Durkheim he desired a way of testing and understanding society that was not purely metaphysical or philosophical. His concept of the ideal type—generalized sociological concepts that encompassed both the subjective and objective realms of life—met this desire.
One of the most important concepts of Weberian sociology is that of social action. Weber identified social action as the behavior of individuals related to the expectations of others in society to which all humans attach subjective meaning. Social action fell into four ideal types: traditional (always so performed because of custom or habit), value-rational or wertrational (based on ultimate values, such as religion, in which an individual has rational goals but irrational means), purposively rational or zweckrational (sometimes called instrumental action—in which the individual uses rational means to achieve an end; an example would be gaining an education to attempt to achieve greater wealth in society), and affectual (based on emotions—a form of action that Weber said was quite powerful in society).
Another of Weber’s most meaningful contributions to sociology is his conceptualization of authority and forms of legitimation found in society. He was intrigued with the subjective meaning that authority offered individuals, and he was particularly curious as to why people so commonly, and so often so slavishly, listened to authority figures in society, Weber concluded three forms of authority—traditional, rational-legal and charismatic—encompassed this important figure of contemporary society. In the most recent period following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a number of sociologists asked why there was less political dissent in the United States, especially given the problematic nature of the war and the justifications behind it. Clearly, the influence of Weber’s analysis of authority remains in our contemporary understandings of the political world—a subject to which we will return in Chapter 13.
At a less specific level, another significant advancement of Weberian sociology is his multi-causal conception of social class. Unlike Marx’s posing of social class in strict relationship to the means of production, Weber understood the interaction of shared life chances as the defining factor in social class. Dimensions of social class included power (found in property), wealth or property (indicated by one’s economic position) and prestige (related to one’s integration in high status groups). Weber identify social conflict as occurring particularly when these dimensions coincided. In addition to acknowledging the contributions of Weber’s as they relate to social class and economics, we should also state that his search for complex explanations of social behavior ushered in the concern with multi-causality that continues to inform sociology of the present day.
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930), Weber considered how the dominant values of Protestantism—asceticism, this-worldly orientation, systemic ordering of the individual’s lifeworld and relationships, individualism, the value of hard work, and the goal of material success, to name a few—influenced the spirit of capitalism. His conclusions remain fascinating to this day, especially as they orient us in recognizing the functionality of social institutions and their associated value systems. Weber’s conceptualization of the normative system of capitalism is also expressed in his influential studies of the nature of bureaucracy—a form of capitalism quite familiar to us today. Weber identified the expansion of forms of bureaucracy as a key facet of the growth of industrialization. In a later chapter we will focus on the specific features of bureaucracy, but because of our contemporary familiarity with the prevalence of it in our lives, it is worth noting at least one of these features—impersonality. In my years as a trainer in a major theme park, I often discovered that the major complaint expressed by workers in a bureaucracy of 2,500 individuals was the impersonal nature of the workplace. For many of the workers with whom I had spoken, the centralized nature of the corporation—the fact of the few leading the many—left suspicion about the oligarchic nature of the organization. If Weber were to analyze the theme park as I have stated it, he might express how its bureaucratic structure is but a symptom of the general processes of rationalization—the use of science, technical knowledge, and western ends-directed philosophy resulting in the loss of the essential mystery of the world—that have come to characterize industrial society.
The scope of Max Weber’s contributions to sociology are difficult to list in a short summary, but like the work of Durkheim and Marx, we will return to the specific contributions of Weber’s as they relate to future chapters of this textbook.
• Exercise: Consider Max Weber’s understandings of the characteristics of bureaucracy as they relate to our contemporary world. Specifically, create a list of the ways in which working in a corporation or a place of employment have left you feeling good and the ways in which it has left you feeling bad. What specific characteristics of the structure or the functioning of the corporation can you identify in creating your assessment?
• Weber Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Weber’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Massive Max Weber Resources
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/weber.html
• Web Reading: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Entire text)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/cover.html
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963)
W.E.B. Du Bois represented progressive, reformist and reflexive sociology that was less appreciated in his time and is today much the norm of the discipline. The African-American sociologist Du Bois was born in Massachusetts, the son of a domestic worker and a barber. The longevity of his life and the circumstances that came to bear upon it established W.E.B. Du Bois as a sociologist of global perspective. As an activist for African-Americans and Africans, he may be considered the single greatest influence on the modern civil rights movement, and as a sociologist he was simply unparalleled in his humanistic perspective—a view that a primary concern of the social sciences is the acknowledgement and support of human well-being.
At fifteen Du Bois worked as a correspondent for the New York Globe, and shortly thereafter he led a prestigious academic career, achieving a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. (in history) at Harvard University. He accepted a challenge from Booker T. Washington and attended the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) where he studied economic history. Because of residency requirements, Du Bois was unable to complete his doctorate which he received later at Harvard. His thesis The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United Stated of America, 1638-1870, was published in 1896 as the first volume in the Harvard Historical Studies series. In the same year he was offered to lead a study of a ward in Philadelphia for the University of Pennsylvania. Du Bois’ urban research included nearly one thousand hours of door-to-door interviews in 2,500 households. In addition to providing Du Bois with a personal and pragmatic connection to the plight of African-Americans in the United States, the study solidified the sociologist as a preeminent social researcher. In the years following this seminal research, Du Bois gave numerous lectures and authored publications dealing with the reformist goal of understanding race through historical analysis and contemporary pragmatic strategies.
Du Bois eventually settled at Atlanta University where he taught sociology, much of which focused on the lives of African-Americans living in the South. Many years later he would become the chair of Atlanta University’s department of sociology. Though he once supported Booker T. Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” speech of 1895, Du Bois later moved away from the position that advocated economic rights first and civil rights second. In fact the series of political disputes with Washington led to Du Bois’ founding of the successful Niagara Movement in 1905—the group that would later become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His differences with Washington were addressed in what amounts to a critique of the famous leader’s positions on race in The Souls of Black Folk (1989)—a major work that merged poetics, autobiography and social analysis to understand the social position of African-Americans in the United States. In one of his most famous sociological analyses of race in America, he developed the concept of double-consciousness:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (Du Bois 1989:2).
Du Bois’ conception of double-consciousness parallels the recognition of the contradictions found in industrial society by Karl Marx. In The Souls of Black Folk and many other of his major works, Du Bois developed the reflexive approach in sociology. The reflexive approach acknowledges the significance of personal experience as a sort of critical lens through which one views society. Like Jane Addams, Du Bois soon realized that his calling as a sociologist was at the public level. His organization of the first Pan-African conference in London in 1900 led him to the position of taking sociology to a global level. His comprehension of the plight of African-Americans allowed him to take an even more macro view of the development of the global slave trade and the issue of the relegation of Africa to an inferior cultural and political status. Much of this work was detailed in his The World and Africa (1979). Du Bois’ advocacy for Pan-Africanism led him to famous disputes with Marcus Garvey and eventually a position as President of the Fifth Pan-African Congress. It was Pan-Africanism that would guide Du Bois until the end of his life.
In 1910 Du Bois left Atlanta University to work as an officer for the NAACP. During his tenure he edited the progressive magazine the Crisis which allowed him to develop his voice as a progressive and public sociologist. Leading up to World War I Du Bois was responsible for advocacy that led to African-American officer training schools, legal action against lynching and federal work plans for returning veterans. His increasingly global perspective on world problems led him to admire the force behind the Russian Revolution, and though he traveled to Russia to focus on global workers’ issues, he soon found his name and that of his wife, Shirley Graham, on suspected radicals lists. He was denied passports to travel abroad on many occasions—a circumstance that testifies to the harsh political climate of McCarthyism and the true status of Du Bois as a progressive and a dangerous public academic. Du Bois continued to take anti-establishment positions, including a critique of the atomic arms race. He eventually settled in Ghana, where he became a citizen and member of the communist party, to work on a Pan-African encyclopedia. In an ironic historical note, Du Bois passed away on the day of the civil rights march on Washington. Consider the following exercise:
• Exercise: Do an Internet search with your favorite search engine using the keyword “Pan-Africanism” or “Panafricanism.” Study at least five websites related to the topic. Then, consider the extent to which Du Bois’ work with Pan-Africanism is discussed in each website in an attempt to consider the legacy of Du Bois.
• Du Bois Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Du Bois’ name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual University
http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois/index.htm
• Web Resource: Du Bois Writings
http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois/libr.html
• Web Resource: Du Bois Bibliography
http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois/bibl.html
• Web Reading: Du Bois’ Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Du Bois’ name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
• Web Reading: The Souls of Black Folk (Entire Text from University of Virginia)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DUBOIS/cover.html
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
Living in a time of robber barons like Rockefeller, the Vanderbilts and the Goulds, and apologist economists who offered little criticism of a society of increasing wealth and social stratification, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen offered a critical view of society, its economic underpinnings, and social values that most people of the time considered to be sacred. Many have described Veblen as strange, satirical, comic and even mad (cf. Heilbroner 1953:205; Mills 1953:vi), in part because of his personal eccentricities and in part because of elusive rhetorical style displayed in his academic works. What is clear about Veblen’s contributions to sociology is that he helped establish a powerful normative (values-based) focus on society and the ills associated with consumerism, and he provided an impetus for the development of a successful cultural critique movement within and outside academic sociology. One social critic has described Veblen’s personal characteristics as the professional outsider as the keys to his distinct form of sociological analysis: “The goings on which appeared so natural in the eyes of his contemporaries appeared to him as piquant, exotic, and curious” (Heilbroner 1953:205).
Thorstein Veblen was born in Wisconsin in 1857, the son of Norwegian parents. His mother would often read Icelandic sagas to him, and early on it was clear that he had a penchant for literary and academic pursuits. As a child he would often eschew chores in order to spend time in his attic reading the works of famous philosophers and authors. His poor upbringing in Wisconsin included wearing homemade clothes, and he experienced many difficulties with learning what was a second language for Veblen. In his adult years he expressed a capacity for womanizing and had a distinctive peasant-looking appearance with flat hair and a lanky disposition. He attended Carleton College Academy in Minnesota and soon made a reputation with his professors for his sense of wit, dark humor and capacity for critical learning—he once stood up in his class and made pronouncements about the social values of cannibalism. As an agnostic he felt comfortable sharing his views on the ills associated with religion with his students and colleagues. Once he called ecclesiastical organizations “chainstores” and individual churches “retail outlets,” while another time asked a religious student the value of a particular church in kegs of beer (Heilbroner 1953:207, 214). His liveliness of discourse was paralleled by an eccentric personal lifestyle. He made it a point of not owning a telephone and would allow all of his dishes to pile up in his kitchen until he would hose them off all at once.
Veblen attended Johns Hopkins and then Yale, where he received his Ph.D. in 1884. He later returned home during a bout with malaria to pester his relatives while he read the works of Comte, Spencer and Kant. After working in odd jobs Veblen secured a position as a railway economist, but his true calling was for academia. As he would discover, attaining an academic position was no easy matter. His agnosticism led to him being denied positions at the University of Iowa, St. Olaf’s College and this stint of academic misfortune would end in a seven-year period of depression and inactivity. He finally secured a job at the University of Chicago in 1892 and in the years following he would teach at Stanford, the University of Missouri and the New School for Social Research. His students found him incredibly hard to understand, and generally they held low opinion of him, perhaps due in part to his policy of giving all students the same grade.
The epitome of Veblen’s academic research is found in his Theory of the Leisure Class (1953). The work is comparative as the author reflects on a number of world societies, and his ultimate goal was to understand the peculiar nature of the leisure class—why was it the case that the actions of the elites of society were carried on in full view of society? Why would the have-nots not be more inclined to speak out against the thing that Veblen named conspicuous consumption? In attempting to address these complex questions, Thorstein Veblen looked at the issues that classical economists failed to comprehend—the social meaning of leisure itself. Veblen’s approach was historiographic, especially as he addressed the movement of his contemporary capitalists away from the methods of seeking booty and the like to the methods of a capitalist leisure system. Ultimately he viewed the time in which he lived as a savage society in which the wealth of the society exceeds basic subsistence needs, and in this society he illustrated the inability of the workers to revolt. This inability, he argued, was the result of the workers’ emulation of the wealthy; after all, they were living in an era in which prestige wealth was dignified while everyday labor was undignified. Workers, like the wealthy, were part of a system of private enterprise in which wealth and power were on social display. Unlike Marx, whose political orientation was expressed in both his theoretical and political writing, Veblen displayed a peculiar literary style that concealed his true political feelings; in one sentence he would praise Marx, while in the next he would condemn him. As many theorists have commented, Veblen’s style as a writer was difficult to pin down, especially as satire was such a part of his sociological analysis. Here is one sample of this style:
The current situation in America is by way of being something of a psychiatric clinic. In order to come to an understanding of this situation there is doubtless much else to be taken into account, but the case of America is after all not fairly to be understood without making due allowance for a certain prevalent unbalance and derangement of mentality, presumably transient but sufficiently grave for the time being. Perhaps the commonest and plainest evidence of this unbalanced mentality is to be seen in a certain fearsome and feverish credulity with which a large proportion of the Americans are affected (Mills 1953:viii).
In his introduction to one version of Theory of the Leisure Class, noted sociologist C. Wright Mills, who himself critiqued contemporary society in the classic The Power Elite (1956), suggests that Thorstein Veblen was a social thinker in the grand tradition of Marx, Hegel, Comte and Spencer, especially as he sought to “grasp the essentials of an entire society and epoch…delineate the characters of the typical men within it…[and] determine its main drift” (Mills 1953:x). Mills’ point is well taken, but interesting given the fact that Veblen is discussed infrequently in many sociology textbooks.
Veblen’s next significant social analysis was The Theory of Business Enterprise (1978), which might be viewed as the most conventionally written of his texts. In this work Veblen connected the theory of the leisure class with the theory of business enterprise (cf. Mills 1953:xiii). As an understanding of modern economics and society, it is truly controversial—its major premise is that American businesspeople are the saboteurs, not the driving force behind, of capitalism. Veblen developed his earlier critique of the American robber barons and suggested that they, and all businesspeople, were uninterested in producing goods for the success of their companies. In fact, each wanted “to cause break-downs in the regular flow of output so that values would fluctuate and [they] could capitalize on the confusion to reap a profit” (Heilbroner 1953:223). Veblen’s work suggests that the structure of capitalism was one of speculation—a sort of make-believe financial system of bonds and stocks. Like Saint-Simon, Veblen praised producers and scorned the parasitical, and many of his later works, such as The Engineers and the Price System (1983) and Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise (1996), envisioned a world of the future of machines and engineers against the business leaders. His obsession with the idea of society running as a smooth and precise machine is odd, but one might contextualize this romanticism through the populist current that ran through Veblen’s mind and life, as well as his background in the railway industry.
During World War I the author volunteered to assist in any way possible; he eventually landed a position with the Food Administration where he wrote obscure texts on the necessity of rural business reorganization in America. These writings were largely ignored. In 1918 he wrote a number of pieces for the liberal New York magazine Dial. His social critique of the academic world is to be found in The Higher Learning in America (1992). In his time at the University of Chicago Veblen had a tumultuous relationship with the university’s President, William Rainey Harper, and perhaps his contempt for university administration was much of the source for his critique of the ways in which the business spirit of the United States found its way into academe. The man who became the United States’ most serious and ironic social critic spent his last days in a shack in California.
• Exercise: One of the most important points made in Thorstein Veblen’s work was the presence of speculation and investment in modern American economics. A number of the analyses of September 11th have included discussion of the motives behind the terrorist attacks as well as the responses to the attacks in the invasion of Afghanistan. Do some background work on the Internet to find sources of conspiracy theories and analyses that suggest some of the motives behind the attacks. What can be said of rumors of cutting specific airline stocks prior to the events of 9/11? What motives are behind the military and political operations in Afghanistan? The exercise for you is to assess the applicability of Veblen’s theory of business and economics as it applies today, so use the Internet to attempt to answer the following questions, (1) Were there non-terrorist motives behind the attacks of September 11th, such as economic ones? (2) Were there non-defense and security motives behind the invasion of Afghanistan following September 11th?
• Web Resource: The Guardian’s Archives on the War in Afghanistan
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/0,1501,573451,00.html
• Veblen Biography and Resources: For a good biographical portrait and other resources, have a look at the following link (Scroll to find Veblen’s name).
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML
• Web Resource: Veblen Links
http://www.mnc.net/norway/veblen.html
• Web Resource: Veblen Bibliography
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/veblen.htm
• Web Resource: Essays on the Work of Veblen
http://villa.lakes.com/eltechno/TVcorhis.html
• Web Reading: Veblen’s Writings and other Resources at “Famous Sociologists” (Scroll down to find Veblen’s name).
http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/sociosite/topics/sociologists.html
• Web Reading: Entire Text of Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (University of Virginia)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7EHYPER/VEBLEN/veblenhp.html
One of the major questions asked of sociologists is to what extent the classical theorists of the past impact present-day studies of society (cf. Lemert 1993:28-9). This is an important question that reflects on the foundations of the discipline. Of the ten thinkers presented in this section, we can certainly identify specific foci of each that allows contemporary sociologists to understand the complex nature of contemporary sociology. But beyond the specific influences we can locate a more global influence of these thinkers. Many of them identified the problematic nature of the transition of traditional society into a modern one, and as such they indicated the need to study the social consequences of social change. In our contemporary world we can pinpoint similar forms of social change that can be more eloquently studied because of the work of these early sociologists. In our minds one of the most important influences of these classical sociologists is their sense of suspicion—we might call this the characteristic doubting that is the spirit of sociology of the past and the present. Charles Lemert hints at this idea when he says that the classical sociologists “were great social theorists because they did not buy the official story of the modern world uncritically” (Lemert 1993:13). It is the critical spirit of sociology that these thinkers portended in their diverse work into the nature of understanding society, its institutions, and its people. It is this spirit which we hope to impart on you as a student of sociology.
Key Terms
Reflexivity—an approach that acknowledges the significance of personal experience as a sort of critical lens through which one views society.
Organicism—the perspective that society should be understood in the manner of it resembling an organism.
Cultural Critique—a contemporary approach in the social sciences that points out the problems and failures of society while also offering solutions to improve society.
Materialism—a perspective that emphasizes the real, objective, material conditions of the world as they are founded in economic, political and technological structures, as the determining factors behind our social structure and our individual actions.
Mode of Production—the economic system characteristic of a society, be it socialist, capitalist, feudalist, etc.
Means of Production—the technology, energy, and resources of capitalist economics.
Ideology—justifications for existing social relations.
Conflict Perspective—the perspective that discusses the organization of society as composed of those with power and those with less power, especially in economic and ideological senses.
Functionalist Perspective—a perspective that emphasizes the necessity of understanding the relationships of the parts of society.
Social Facts—conditions of social reality that exist independently of and impact individuals.
Realism—a perspective that emphasizes the existence of a social reality independent of human understanding of it; the world forms a basis of social relations and social organization which must be understood by the sociologist in order to comprehend the nature of social reality.
Comparative Approach—a perspective that emphasizes that the meaning of one part of society, or one whole society, can only be understood as it this part (or society) is placed in relationship to other parts (or other societies).
Public Sociologist—a sociologist who in addition to focusing on the traditional theoretical and methodological concerns of the discipline, attempts to establish widespread interest in sociology and its applicability to everyday life
Anomie—a social condition of normlessness in which the rules of everyday life are uncertain.
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective—an approach in sociology that focuses on the significance of human meaning as developed in symbolic interactions among members of society.
Constructivism—the perspective that emphasizes that the ideas, actions, symbols and mental constructions of humans form the basis of the reality in which all humans exist.
Macro Approach—a large-scale approach to understanding society.
Micro Approach—a small-scale approach to understanding society.
Determinism—a perspective that states that one primary factor or force is the explanation for the nature of reality.
Praxis—a focus on the application of sociological concepts to everyday settings.
Idealism—a view that emphasizes the intersubjective realm of human experience through investigations of meanings, ideas and actions of people and how they reflect the world in which we exist.
Ideal Type—generalized sociological concepts that encompass both subjective and objective realms of life.
Multi-Causality—as opposed to mono-causality, a view of the world that considers the cause of a given social situation or social problem to be multiple.
Rationalization—the use of science, technical knowledge, and western ends-directed philosophy resulting in forms of bureaucracy that impact everyday life.
Humanistic Perspective—a view that a primary concern of the social sciences is the acknowledgement and support of human well-being.
Characteristic Doubting—a result of sociological thinking in which an individual doubts the stories told to her or him by society.
• Have a second look at Section II of the chapter, The Major Sociological Thinkers, and write a critical essay that addresses your understanding of sociology through two of the ten foundational thinkers. The theme of your essay is: “The thinker to whom I can most closely relate is ____, while the thinker to whom I cannot connect is ____.” In writing the essay discuss specific aspects of the two thinkers’ work that led you to choosing each. As well, consider perspectives from your own life that led you to making the decision.
• Review section III of the text, The Classical Thinkers Today, and write an essay in which you focus on the relevance of sociology in our society. Why should people study sociology? What can be gained from a critical study of our contemporary world?
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