QN: Sociological theories
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES
Introduction
Sociologists develop theories to explain social
phenomena. A theory is a proposed relationship between two or more concepts.
In other words, a theory is explanation for why a phenomenon occurs. An example
of a sociological theory is the work of Robert Putnam on the decline of civic engagement. Putnam found that
Americans involvement in civic life (e.g., community organizations, clubs, voting,
religious participation, etc.) has declined over the last 40 to 60 years. While
there are a number of factors that contribute to this decline (Putnam's theory
is quite complex), one of the prominent factors is the increased consumption of
television as a form entertainment. Putnam's theory proposes: he more
television people watch, the lower their involvement in civic life will be.
Importance of Theory
In the theory proposed above, the astute reader
will notice that the theory includes two components: The data, in this case the
findings that civic engagement has declined and TV watching has increased, and
the proposed relationship, that the increase in television viewing has
contributed to the decline in civic engagement. Data alone are not particularly
informative. If Putnam had not proposed a relationship between the two elements
of social life, we may not have realized that television viewing does, in fact,
reduce people's desire to and time for participating in civic life. In order to
understand the social world around us, it is necessary to employ theory to draw
the connections between seemingly disparate concepts.
Another example of sociological theorizing
illustrates this point. In his now classic work, Suicide, Emile Durkheim was interested in explaining a social
phenomenon, suicide,
and employed both data and theory to offer an explanation. By aggregating data
for large groups of people in Europe , Durkheim
was able to discern patterns in suicide rates and connect those patterns with
another concept (or variable): religious affiliation. Durkheim found that Protestants
were more likely to commit suicide than were Catholics.
At this point, Durkheim's analysis was still in the data stage; he had not
proposed an explanation for the different suicide rates of the two groups. It
was when Durkheim introduced the ideas of anomie
and social solidarity that he began to explain
the difference in suicide rates. Durkheim argued that the looser social ties
found in Protestant religions lead to weaker social cohesion and reduced
social solidarity. The higher suicide rates were the result of weakening social
bonds among Protestants.
While Durkheim's findings have since been
criticized, his study is a classic example of the use of theory to explain the
relationship between two concepts. Durkheim's work also illustrates the
importance of theory: without theories to explain the relationship between
concepts, we would not be able to understand cause and effect relationships in
social life. And to find the cause and effect relationship is the major
component of the sociological theory.
STRUCTURE FUNCTIONALISM
Structural Functionalism is a sociological
theory that attempts to explain why society functions the way it does by
focusing on the relationships between the various social institutions that make
up society (e.g., government, law, education, religion,etc).
Structural Functionalism is a theoretical
understanding of society that posits social systems are collective means to
fill social needs. In order for social life to survive and develop in society
there are a number of activities that need to be carried out to ensure that
certain needs are fulfilled. In the structural functionalist model, individuals
produce necessary goods and services in various institutions and roles that
correlate with the norms of the society.
Thus, one of the key ideas in Structural
Functionalism is that society is made-up of groups or institutions, which are
cohesive, share common norms, and have a definitive culture. Robert K. Merton
argued that functionalism is about the more static or concrete aspects of
society, institutions like government or religions. However, any
group large enough to be a social institution is
included in Structural Functionalist thinking, from religious denominations to
sports clubs and everything in between. Structural Functionalism asserts that
the way society is organized is the most natural and efficient way for it to be
organized.
History of Structural functionalism
Functionalism developed slowly over time with the
help of many sociologists in different parts of the world. Perhaps the most
significant contributors to the initial development of this theory are Émile
Durkheim and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. However, we begin
with Herbert Spencer.
Herbert Spencer, an English sociologist, was a
forerunner of formalized Structural Functioanlism. He is best known for coining
the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his book Principles of
Sociology (1896). Spencer’s intention was to support a societal form of
natural selection. One of the primary focii in Spencer's work was societal
equilibrium. Spencer argued that there is a natural tendency in society towards
equilibrium. Thus, even when the conditions of the society are altered, the
resulting changes to the social structure will balance out, returning the
society to equilibrium.
In the late 19th century French Sociologist Émile
Durkheim laid the primary foundations of Structural Functionalism. Durkheim's
theory was, at least in part, a response to evolutionary speculations of
theorists such as E.B.
Taylor. Durkheim originally wanted to explain social
institutions as a shared way for individuals in society to meet their own
biological needs. He wanted to understand the value of cultural and social
traits by explaining them in regards to their contribution to the operation of
the overall system of society and life. Later the focus for structural
functionalism changed to be more about the ways that social institutions in
society meet the social needs of individuals within that society.
Durkheim was interested in four main aspects of society:
(1) why societies formed and what holds them together, (2) religion, (3)
suicide, and (4) deviance and crime. Durkheim addressed his first focus in his
book, The Division of Labor in Society. Durkheim noticed that
the division of labor was evident across all societies and wanted to know why.
Durkheim’s answer to this question can be found in his idea of "solidarity".
In older, more primitive societies Durkheim argued that "mechanical solidarity kept everyone together. Mechanic
Solidarity here refers to everyone doing relatively similar tasks. For
instance, in hunting and gathering societies there was not a substantial
division of labor; people hunted or gathered. Durkheim theorized that shared
values, common symbols, and systems of exchange functioned as the tools of
cohesion in these societies. In essence, members of society performed similar
tasks to keep the community running. In more modern and complex societies
individuals are quite different and they do not perform the same tasks.
However, the diversity actually leads to a different form of solidarity -
interdependence. Durkheim referred to this as "organic
solidarity."Organic solidarity leads to a strong sense of individuals
being dependent on one another. For instance, while a construction worker may
be able to build homes for people, if he is injured on the job, he will turn to
a doctor for treatment (and probably a lawyer to sue his employer). The
division of labor in society requires specialization, and the result is organic
solidarity.
Durkheim's work on suicide was also tied to
structural functionalism. In his book, Suicide, Durkheim hypothesized
that social relationships reduced the likelihood of suicide. By collecting data
across large groups in Europe , Durkheim was
able to distinguish patterns in suicide rates and connect those patterns with
other variables.Throughout the book, Durkheim explained that the weaker social
ties a society possessed the more likely they were to commit suicide.
Inversely, the greater the cohesive bond between individuals the less likely
one was to commit suicide. One concrete example Durkheim explored was the
difference in solidarity between Protestants and Catholics. Due to a variety of
factors, Durkheim argued that Protestants had lower social solidarity than
Catholics, and their weaker bonds resulted in higher rates of suicide. Thus,
solidarity helped maintain societal order.
Another thread in the development of Structural
Functionalism comes from England
Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism focused
on social structure. He argued that the social world constituted a separate
"level" of reality, distinct from those of biological forms (people)
and inorganic forms. Radcliffe-Brown argued that explanations of social phenomena
had to be constructed at the social level.To Radcliffe-Brown this meant that
people were merely replaceable, temporary occupants of social roles, that were
of no inherent worth. To Radcliffe-Brown, individuals were only significant in
relation to their positions in the overall structure of social roles in
society.
In the United States
Parsons saw social systems as "a plurality of
individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least
a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a
tendency to the "optimization of gratification" and whose relation to
their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a
system of culturally structured and shared symbols.” The foundation of Parsons’
social system is the status-role complex, which consists of structural elements
or positions that individuals hold in a system.
These positions are referred to as statuses
and are occupied by individuals who must carry out the roles in order to
maintain the order of the system. Therefore, within this social system
individuals perform certain roles to fulfill the system’s functions; these
roles are a function of their statuses. As society progresses there are new
roles and statuses that occur, allowing individuals to express their unique
personalities resulting in individualism.
Another important aspect of Parsons’ social
systems argument is his theory of action. Parsons developed the theory of action
based on the idea that the decision making of an individual in a social system
has motivational significance to himself. The individual is constantly reminded
of the norms and values of society, which binds him to society. The individual
is, therefore, motivated to reach personal goals that are defined by their
cultural system and simultaneously these goals benefit society as a whole.
Structural functionalism was the dominant approach
of sociology between World War II and the Vietnam War.
In the 1960’s Structural Functionalism was quite
popular and used extensively in research. It was “… perhaps the dominant
theoretical orientation in sociology and anthropology”. However, by the 1970’s,
it was no longer so widely credited. "Structural Functionalism has lost
much importance, but modified it directs much sociological inquiry."http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sociological_Theory/Structural_Functionalism
Limitations
Structural-functionalism has been criticized for
being unable to account for social change because it focuses so intently on
social order and equilibrium in society. For instance, in the late 19th
Century, higher education transitioned from a training center for clergy and
the elite to a center for the conduct of science and the general education of
the masses. In other words, education did not always serve the function of
preparing individuals for the labor force (with the exception of the ministry
and the elite). As structural-functionalism thinks about elements of social
life in relation to their present function and not their past functions,
structural-functionalism has a difficult time explaining why a function of some
element of society might change or how such change occurs. However,
structural-functionalism could, in fact, offer an explanation in this case.
Also occurring in the 19th Century (though begun in the 18th) was the industrial revolution. The industrial
revolution, facilitated by capitalism, was increasingly demanding technological
advances to increase profit. Technological advances and advanced industry both
required more educated workforces. Thus, as one aspect of society changed - the
economy and production - it required a comparable change in the educational
system, bringing social life back into equilibrium.
Another philosophical problem with the
structural-functional approach is the ontological
argument that society does not have needs as a human being does; and
even if society does have needs they need not be met. The idea that society has
needs like humans do is not a tenable position because society is only
alive in the sense that it is made up of living individuals. Thus, society
cannot have wants and/or needs like humans do. What's more, just because a
society has some element in it at the present that does not mean that it must
necessarily have that element. For instance, in the United Kingdom
Another criticism often leveled at
structural-functionalist theory is that it supports the status quo.
According to some opponents, structural-functionalism paints conflict and
challenge to the status quo as harmful to society, and therefore tends to be
the prominent view among conservative thinkers.
NEO-FUNCTIONALISM
Neofunctionalism is a
theory of regional integration, building on the work of Ernst B. Haas,
an American
political scientist and also Leon Lindberg, an American
political scientist. Jean Monnet's approach to European integration, which aimed at integrating
individual sectors in hopes of achieving spill-over effects to further the
process of integration, is said to have followed the neofunctional school's
tack. Haas later declared the theory of neofunctionalism obsolete, after the
process of European integration started stalling in the 1960s, when Charles de Gaulle's
"empty chair" politics paralyzed the institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Community, and European Atomic Energy Community. The
theory was updated and further specified namely by Wayne Sandholtz, Alec Stone Sweet,
and their collaborators in the 1990s and in 2000s (references below). The main
contributions of these authors was an employment of empiricism.
Neofunctionalism describes and
explains the process of regional integration with reference to how three causal
factors interact with one another: (a) growing economic interdependence between
nations, (b) organizational capacity to resolve disputes and build
international legal regimes, and (c) supranational market rules that replace
national regulatory regimes.
Early Neofunctionalist theory assumed
a decline in importance of nationalism and the nation-state;
it predicted that, gradually, elected officials, interest groups, and large
commercial interests within states would see it in their interests to pursue
welfarist objectives best satisfied by the political and market integration at
a higher, supranational level. Haas theorized three mechanisms that he thought
would drive the integration forward: positive spillover, the transfer of
domestic allegiances and technocratic automaticity.
Positive spillover effect is the
notion that integration between states in one economic sector will create
strong incentives for integration in further sectors, in order to fully capture
the perks of integration in the sector in which it started.
Increased number of transactions and
intensity of negotiations then takes place hand in hand with increasing
regional integration. This leads to a creation of institutions that work
without reference to "local" governments.
The mechanism of a transfer in domestic
allegiances can be best understood by first noting that an important
assumption within neofunctionalist thinking is of a pluralistic society within
the relevant nation states. Neofunctionalists claim that, as the process of
integration gathers pace, interest groups and associations within the
pluralistic societies of the individual nation states will transfer their
allegiance away from national institutions towards the supranational European institutions.
They will do this because they will, in theory, come to realise that these
newly formed institutions are a better conduit through which to pursue their
material interests than the pre-existing national institutions.
Greater regulatory complexity is then
needed and other institutions on regional level are usually called for. This
causes integration to be transferred to higher levels of decision-making
processes.
Technocratic automaticity described
the way in which, as integration proceeds, the supranational institutions set
up to oversee that integration process will themselves take the lead in
sponsoring further integration as they become more powerful and more autonomous
of the member states. In the Haas-Schmitter model, size of unit, rate of transactions,
pluralism, and elite complementarity are the background conditions on which the
process of integration depends.
Just as Rosamond put it (Rosamond: Theories
of European Integration), political integration will then become an "inevitable"
side effect of integration in economic sectors.
Neofunctionalism was modified and
updated in two important books that helped to revive the study of European
integration: European Integration and Supranational Governance (1998),
and The Institutionalization of Europe (2001). Wayne Sandholtz and Alec Stone Sweet
describe and assess the evolution of Neofunctionalist theory and empirical
research in their 2009 paper, Neo-functionalism and Supranational Governance.
FEMANISM THEORY
Feminist theory is the
extension of feminism
into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality.
It examines women's social roles and lived experience, and feminist politics in a
variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology,
communication,
psychoanalysis,
economics,
literary criticism, education,
and philosophy.
While generally providing a critique of social relations,
much of feminist theory also focuses on analyzing gender inequality
and the promotion of women's rights, interests, and issues. Themes
explored in feminism include art history and contemporary art,
aesthetics,
discrimination,
stereotyping,
objectification
(especially sexual objectification), oppression,
and patriarchy.
"Feminism deconstructs established systems of
knowledge by showing their masculine bias and the gender politics framing and
informing them." Feminism is also
being "deconstructed" from within--varieties of experience are
challenging the "established" perspective, and postmodernism is
challenging the concepts of gender and self.http://www.dmacc.cc.ia.us/instructors/gdtitchener/Welcome_files/Therorists/bernard.jpg
History of Feminist theory
Feminist theories have emerged as
early as 1792 (– 1920s) in such publications as “The Changing Woman”, “Ain’t I
a Woman”, “Speech after Arrest for Illegal Voting”, and so on. “The Changing
Woman” is a Navajo Myth that gave credit to a woman who, in the end, populated
the world. Footnote with citation. In 1851, Sojourner Truth
addressed women’s rights issues through her publication, “Ain’t I a Woman.”
Sojourner Truth addressed the issues surrounding limited rights to women based
on the flawed perceptions that men held of women. Truth argued that if a woman
of color can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men, then any woman
of any color could perform those same tasks. After her arrest for illegally
voting, Susan B. Anthony gave a speech within court in
which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented
in her publication, “Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting” in 1872. Anthony
questioned the authoritative principles of the constitution and its male
gendered language. She raised the question of why women should be punished
under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection (women could not
vote, own property, nor themselves in marriage). She also critiqued the constitution
for its male gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by
laws that do not specify women. Although there were not any feminist
terminologies based on their arguments, all of these women have founded a
lexicon of debates that contribute to feminist theory. For example, Sojourner
Truth raised the issue of the intersectionality debate and Susan B. Anthony
raised the issue of the language debate.
Nancy Cott makes a distinction between
modern feminism and its antecedents, particularly the struggle for
suffrage. In the United States she places the turning point in the decades
before and after women obtained the vote in 1920 (1910–1930). She argues that
the prior woman movement was primarily about woman as a universal
entity, whereas over this 20 year period it transformed itself into one
primarily concerned with social differentiation, attentive to individuality
and diversity. New issues dealt more with woman's condition as a social construct,
gender identity,
and relationships within and between genders. Politically this represented a
shift from an ideological alignment comfortable with the right, to one more
radically associated with the left.
Susan Kingsley Kent says that Freudian
patriarchy was responsible for the diminished profile of feminism in the
inter-war years, others such as Juliet Mitchell
consider this to be overly simplistic since Freudian theory
is not wholly incompatible with feminism. Some feminist scholarship
shifted away from the need to establish the origins of family, and towards
analyzing the process of patriarchy. In the immediate postwar period, Simone de Beauvoir stood in opposition to an
image of "the woman in the home". De Beauvoir provided an existentialist
dimension to feminism with the publication of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex)
in 1949. As the title implies, the starting point is the implicit inferiority
of women, and the first question de Beauvoir asks is "what is a
woman"? Woman she realizes is always perceived of as "other",
"she is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he
with reference to her". In this book and her essay, "Woman:
Myth & Reality", de Beauvoir anticipates Betty Friedan
in seeking to demythologise the male concept of woman. "A myth invented
by men to confine women to their oppressed`state. For women it is not a
question of asserting themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human
beings." "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", or
as Toril Moi
puts it "a woman defines herself through the way she lives her embodied
situation in the world, or in other words, through the way in which she makes
something of what the world makes of her". Therefore, woman must regain
subject, to escape her defined role as "other", as a Cartesian point of departure. In her examination
of myth, she appears as one who does not accept any special privileges for
women. Ironically, feminist philosophers have had to extract de Beauvoir
herself from out of the shadow of Jean-Paul Sartre
to fully appreciate her.While more philosopher and novelist than activist, she
did sign one of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes manifestos.
The resurgence of feminist activism in
the late 1960s was accompanied by an emerging literature of what might be
considered female associated issues, such as concerns for the earth and
spirituality, and environmental activism. This in turn created an atmosphere
conducive to reigniting the study of and debate on matricentricity, as a
rejection of determinism, such as Adrienne Rich
and Marilyn French
while for socialist feminists like Evelyn Reed,
patriarchy held the properties of capitalism.
Elaine Showalter
describes the development of Feminist theory as having a number of phases. The
first she calls "feminist critique" - where the feminist reader
examines the ideologies behind literary phenomena. The second Showalter calls "Gynocritics"
- where the "woman is producer of textual meaning" including
"the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics
and the problem of a female language; the trajectory of the individual or
collective female literary career and literary history".
The last phase she calls "gender theory" - where the "ideological
inscription and the literary effects of the sex/gender system" are explored."
This model has been criticized by Toril Moi who sees it as an essentialist
and deterministic
model for female subjectivity. She also criticized it for not taking account of
the situation for women outside the west. From the 1970s onwards,
psychoanalytical ideas that has been arising in the field of French feminism
has gained a decisive influence on feminist theory. Feminist psychoanalysis
deconstructed the phallic hypotheses regarding the Unconscious. Julia Kristeva,
Bracha Ettinger
and Luce Irigaray
developed specific notions concerning unconscious sexual difference, the
feminine and motherhood, with wide implications for film and literature analysis.
CONFLICT THEORY
According
to Karl Marx in all stratified societies there are two major social groups: a
ruling class and a subject class. The ruling class derives its power from its
ownership and control of the forces of production. The ruling class exploits
and oppresses the subject class. As a result there is a basic conflict of
interest between the two classes. The various institutions of society such as
the legal and political system are instruments of ruling class domination and
serve to further its interests. Marx believed that western society developed
through four main epochs-primitive communism, ancient society, feudal society
and capitalist society.
Primitive
communism is represented by the societies of pre-history and provides the only
example of the classless society. From then all societies are divided into two
major classes - master and slaves in ancient society, lords and serfs in feudal
society and capitalist and wage labourers in capitalist society. Weber sees
class in economic terms. He argues that classes develop in market economies in
which individuals compete for economic gain. He defines a class as a group of
individuals who share a similar position in market economy and by virtue of
that fact receive similar economic rewards. Thus a person's class situation is
basically his market situation. Those who share a similar class situation also
share similar life chances. Their economic position will directly affect their
chances of obtaining those things defined as desirable in their society. Weber
argues that the major class division is between those who own the forces of
production and those Conflict theories are perspectives in social
science that emphasize the social, political or material inequality of a social
group, that critique the broad socio-political system, or that otherwise
detract from structural functionalism and ideological
conservativism.
Conflict theories draw attention to power differentials, such as class
conflict, and generally contrast historically dominant ideologies.
Certain conflict theories set out to highlight the
ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought. Whilst many of these
perspectives hold parallels, conflict theory does not refer to a unified
school of thought, and should not be confused with, for instance, peace and conflict studies, or any other
specific theory of social conflict.
Of the classical founders of social science,
conflict theory is most commonly associated with Karl Marx
(1818-1883). Based on a dialectical materialist account of history,
Marxism
posited that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would
inevitably produce internal tensions leading to its own destruction. Marx
ushered in radical change, advocating proletarian revolution and freedom from
the ruling
classes.
The history of all hitherto existing society is
the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord
and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now
hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary
re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes.
Limitations
Not surprisingly, the primary limitation of the
social-conflict perspective is that it overlooks the stability of societies.
While societies are in a constant state of change, much of the change is minor.
Many of the broader elements of societies remain remarkably stable over time,
indicating the structural-functional perspective has a great deal of merit.
As noted above, sociological theory is often
complementary. This is particularly true of structural-functionalism and
social-conflict theories. Structural-functionalism focuses on equilibrium and
solidarity; conflict-theory focuses on change and conflict. Keep in mind that
neither is better than the other; when combined, the two approaches offer a
broader and more comprehensive view of society.
KARL MARX’S EVOLUTION THEORY
When it comes to Marxism and Science, Karl Marx gives us the
core of his theory, “Darwin’s [Origin of Species] is very important and
provides me with the basis in natural science for the class struggle in
history.”
While Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were developing their communistic worldview, Charles Darwin was presenting his theory of evolution and creating quite a stir among the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. Many people perceived thatDarwin Darwin
In a letter to Engels, Marx writes, “During . . . the past four weeks I have read all sorts of things. Among others Darwin’s work on Natural Selection. And though it is written in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural science for our view.”
John Hoffman tells us that Marx so admiredDarwin ’s
work that he “sent Darwin Darwin
While Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were developing their communistic worldview, Charles Darwin was presenting his theory of evolution and creating quite a stir among the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. Many people perceived that
In a letter to Engels, Marx writes, “During . . . the past four weeks I have read all sorts of things. Among others Darwin’s work on Natural Selection. And though it is written in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural science for our view.”
John Hoffman tells us that Marx so admired
Evolution is a key term in Marxist theory and
like Darwinism and Utopianism it partakes in the
legacy of scientific and social thought of the nineteenth century. Some critics
observe that, given the nature of the human species, Marx's thought is essentially
Utopian. He believed, for example, that human beings (as opposed to other
species) should not be burdened by one monotonous form of work, which (as
automobile assembly-line workers will tell you) produces not a pride or
satisfaction in their work, but rather a sense of alienation. Marx believed
(many would say "idealistically") that a person could and should be
something of a philosopher in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon, and
perhaps a poet in the evenings. Whatever his utopian traits, Marx thought of
himself as a social scientist, and his writings illuminate important aspects in
the history of human societies, from pre-Christian times to the nature of
capitalist society in nineteenth-century England
Marx's "materialist conception of history" is based on the following premises: that human beings,
in all historical eras, enter into certain productive relations (hunting and
gathering food, the relation of lord and serf, the contract between labor and capitalãthat
is, certain economic foundations) and that these relations give rise to a
certain form of social consciousness. He maintained that: "It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their
social being that determines their consciousness. . . ." Perhaps Marx's
greatest contribution to modern thought (as opposed to his economic theories
which have been subject to various revisions) is his comprehensive
investigation into the role of Ideology,
or how social being determines consciousness, which results in certain (for the
most part unconscious) belief and value systems depending on the particular
economic infrastructure pertaining at the time. From a Marxian point of view
all cultural artifactsãreligious systems, philosophical positions, ethical
valuesãare, naturally enough, products of consciousness and as such are subject
to these ideological pressures.
As
far as literature is concerned, a Marxian analysis would attempt to look at the
work as a highly mediated "reflection" of the social conditions
(which are in turn subject to the particular economic structure) of its
particular epoch. Good Marxist criticism addresses not only the content of a
given text, but also its form. For example, one might argue that Pope's poetry
"reflects" (betrays, illustrates, refracts) in its content the stable
union of "a bourgeois class in alliance with a bourgeoisified
aristocracy," and that its form, the circumscribed, balanced heroic
couplet, underlines the equilibrium of such a social structure. To take an
extreme contrary example, Eliot's The Waste Land: here
the content relates to the spiritual bankruptcy and ennui brought about by the
failures of Imperialist capitalism, the end result of which was the catastrophe
of the First World War. The form of the poem is also historically determined as
a consequence of its content: the fragmented vision of the poem demands new
forms to give it expression. The important thing to remember is that neither
Pope nor Eliot were consciously trying to mirror the economically determined
social structure of their era, but each, a Marxist would argue, are trapped
within the ideological confines of their time, (http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/phil2.html).
Evolutionary theory and the political left have had a complicated relationship with one another. The majority of those on the left do not oppose evolution
per se, but are critical of interpretations of evolutionary
theory that, in their view, overemphasize the role of competition
and ignore elements of co-operation in nature such as symbiosis.
Many important political figures on the left have never publicized
their views on biology,
and so their opinions of evolutionary theory are unknown. To some extent, Marxists
are the exception. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
spoke favorably of evolutionary theory, arguing that it mirrored their view of
the progress of human society by class struggle
and revolution. Most later Marxists agreed with them, but some - particularly
those in the early Soviet Union - believed that evolutionary theory conflicted
with their economic and social ideals. As a result, they came to support Lamarckism
instead, which led to Lysenkoism and caused disastrous agricultural problems, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_theory_and_the_political_left).
Among
other groups on the political left, the most significant work related to
evolutionary theory is Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, a
book authored by anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin.
Kropotkin argued that co-operation and mutual aid are as important in the
evolution of the species as competition and mutual strife, if not more so.
Scientific theories of evolution developed at approximately the
same time as left-wing political theories. The Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 — 1829) published
his theory of evolution in Philosophie Zoologique in 1809. Although he
supported the then novel views that the Earth was ancient and
organisms evolved through common descent, his mechanism was one of
advancement, not natural selection (which would come later).
This mechanism of advancement fitted in with cultural ideas of the Great chain of being, up which organisms would
advance. While in France these ideas fitted with revolutionary philosophy and
were accepted by the scientific establishment, in the United Kingdom
such ideas were taken up by socialist agitators who stirred the mob to overthrow the
social order and Chartists who even demanded the vote for working men. In England
the scientific establishment was dominated by university clergymen who sought
to demonstrate divine rule and justify the existing social hierarchy.
Karl Marx
(1818 — 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 — 1895) published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, with
Marx's work Das Kapital published in three volumes in 1867, 1885 and
1894. These works established the principles of communism,
which had at its core the evolution of societies by advancement between
different states. This, they argued, was caused by class struggle,
and the proletariat
should co-operate to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
When Karl Marx read Darwin Darwin
an autographed copy of his Das Kapital; Darwin Darwin Darwin
In 1861 Karl Marx wrote to his friend Ferdinand Lassalle, "Darwin
The radical economist Herbert Spencer
(1820 — 1903) coined the phrase survival of the fittest in his 1851 work Social Statics
to describe his revolutionary liberal economic theory, which in 20th century
terms would be considered right-wing. Spencer supported the Whig Malthusian
argument that programmes to aid the poor,
(i.e. the proletariat)
did more harm than good, in direct contrast to Tory paternalism, and to communism
which advocated "to each according to their needs, from each according to
their ability".
Charles Darwin (1809 — 1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 — 1913) published
their theory of evolution by natural selection
in 1858, with Darwin's Origin of Species
following a year later.
Darwin
Spencer became a strong advocate of Darwinism, and the phrase survival
of the fittest was included in the 6th edition of The Origin of Species
published in 1872. Darwinism thus became associated with Spencer's economics
and social philosophy.
Despite the new emphasis on natural selection, Darwin Darwin
Other noted left-wing thinkers in the late 19th century weighed in
on the subject including Sir George Archdall Reid (1860 — 1929) in 1896 who
published a work The Present Evolution of Man, and the Russian anarchist
Peter Kropotkin
(1842 — 1921) in 1902 published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,
which particularly opposed the "nature red in tooth and claw"
concept.
The great British evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane
(1892 —1964) and his esteemed pupil John Maynard Smith, (1920 — 2004) were both
communists, and both worked for the
British governments during the first and second world wars respectively, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_theory_and_the_political_left.
SIMMEL’S PHYLOSOPHY OF MONEY, STENGE. & SECRECY
PHYLOSOPHY
OF MONEY
In
The Philosophy of Money, Simmel assesses the impact of the money economy
on the inner world of actors and the objective culture as a whole. Simmel saw
money as linked with social phenomena such as exchange, ownership, greed, extravagance,
cynicism, individual freedom, style of life, culture, and the value of
personality. In general, he argued that people create value by making objects,
separating themselves from those objects, and then seeking to overcome
distance, obstacles, and difficulties. Money serves both to create distance
from objects and to provide the means to overcome it. Money provides the means
by which the market, the economy, and ultimately society, acquire a life of
their own that is external to and coercive of the actor. Simmel saw the
significance of the individual declining as money transactions became an
increasingly important part of society. A society in which money becomes an end
in itself can cause individuals to become increasingly cynical and to have a
blasé attitude. In this major work, Simmel saw money as a component of life that helped us understand the
totality of life.
Simmel believed people created value by making
objects, then separating themselves from that object and then trying to
overcome that distance. He found that things that were too close were not
considered valuable and things that were too far for people to get were also
not considered valuable. What was also considered in determining value was the
scarcity, time, sacrifice, and difficulties involved in getting the object.
For Simmel, city life leads to a division of labor
and increased financialization. As financial transactions
increase, some emphasis shifts to what the individual can do instead of who the
individual is. Finanical matters are in play in addition to emotions.
The
central thesis of Cantó Milà's book is that Simmel's diverse reflections on
money, society and modernity in The Philosophy of Money have to be
understood in the context of his sociological theory of value. Contra the
economists who debated whether money itself or only the commodities it could
buy were intrinsically valuable, the neo-Kantians who sought transcendental
criteria to ground the validity of values, and Marx who saw labour as the
source of value, Simmel argued that value has no stable, objective or
transcendental determinants. Value of any sort (economic, aesthetic, moral,
etc.) is purely "relational" in the sense that it emerges and becomes
stable only on the basis of its place within the reciprocal exchanges that
constitute social relations. The value attributed to money is derived from its
function as a special type of tool or medium that enables exchange between
individuals (p. 106). Money in fact is simply the "reification of the
social function of exchange" (p. 174). Thus money becomes the paradigmatic
case which enables Simmel to explore the social sources of value/valuation in
general and in the end to formulate a theory of "the ultimate significance
and values of all that is human" (p. 120). It is with respect to the
specific qualities of money as a measure of value — its generality,
characterlessness, impersonality, divisibility, etc. — that Simmel is able to
develop a diagnosis of the culture of modernity from the point of view of the
money economy that binds it together.
developing
sociological concepts, the 19th century schools and thinkers that influenced him
(Cantó Milà discusses Kant, Marx, Spencer, Rickert, V–lkerpsychologie, and
National Economy) and in particular his attempts to work out a position that
could respond to (and against) the problem of value as it was articulated by
the dominant neo-Kantian school in Germany
Cantó
Milà constructs a hierarchy of Simmelian concepts which she follows with some
rigour to show amongst other things that his sociological theory of value is a
sub-category of a much broader and more ambitious theorization of the social.
In fact as Simmel's goal in The Philosophy of Money is to understand
"the ultimate significance and values of all that is human,"
understanding money is only a means to account for human evaluation more
generally. This hierarchy begins with what for Simmel is the primary instance
of sociality: the Wechselwirkung, or the "reciprocal actions and
effects" (p. 44) that constitute human social existence within the process
of exchanges of various sorts. This in turn is the basis of Simmel's
ontological "relationism" (Cantó Milà's term). Relationism is the
idea that the meaning, place or stable existence of any social phenomenon at all
(e.g. money, value, poverty) has to be understood in terms of its relation to
the other elements in the social exchange. What is specifically social is the
relations between people rather than the people themselves or the products of
these relations (values, institutions, society itself, etc.). In this
perspective, social phenomena have no independent or absolute basis of
existence, nor values validity, outside these relations and they are therefore
subject to flux (p. 43).
From
these premises Simmel argued that the proper object of sociology was not the
individual nor society sui generis but the famous "forms of
sociation" of his formal sociology. Society is the sum of these forms, not
an object in itself nor the sum of its individual members (p. 45). Forms are
the immanent or emergent rules that come to
THE STRANGER
Once again Simmel’s concept of distance comes into
play. Simmel identifies a stranger as a person that is far away and close at
the same time.
The Stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel
between him and ourselves common features of a national, social, occupational,
or generally human, nature. He is far from us, insofar as these common features
extend beyond him or us, and connect us only because they connect a great many
people.
— Georg
Simmel The Stranger 1908,
A stranger is far enough away that he is unknown
but close enough that it is possible to get to know him. In a society there
must be a stranger. If everyone is known then there is no person that is able
to bring something new to everybody.
The stranger bears a certain objectivity that
makes him a valuable member to the individual and society. People let down
their inhibitions around him and confess openly without any fear. This is
because there is a belief that the Stranger is not connected to anyone
significant and therefore does not pose a threat to the confessor’s life.
More generally, Simmel observes that because of
their peculiar position in the group, strangers often carry out special tasks
that the other members of the group are either incapable or unwilling to carry
out. For example, especially in pre-modern societies, most strangers made a
living from trade, which was often viewed as an unpleasant activity by
"native" members of those societies. In some societies, they were
also employed as arbitrators and judges, because they were expected to treat
rival factions in society with an impartial attitude.
Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the
objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his
perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.
Georg Simmel The Stranger 1908,
On one hand the stranger’s opinion does not really
matter because of his lack of connection to society, but on the other the
stranger’s opinion does matter because of his lack of connection to society. He
holds a certain objectivity that allows him to be unbiased and decide freely
without fear. He is simply able to see, think, and decide without being
influenced by the opinion of others.
SIMMEL ON SECRECY
In small groups secrets are not needed because
everyone is so similar. In larger groups secrets are needed because everyone
is so different. In a secret society the society is held together by the need
to maintain the secret, which also causes tension because without the secret
the society does not exist. Even in marriage secrecy must exist. In revealing
all, marriage becomes dull and boring and loses all excitement. Sharing a
common secret allows for there to be a strong “we feeling.” The modern world
depends on honesty and therefore a lie can be considered more devastating than
it ever has been before. Money allows there to be a level of secrecy that has
never been attainable before it allows for “invisible” transactions, because
now money is such an integral part of human values and beliefs. It is possible
to buy silence.
EVOLUTION THEORY
Evolution is any
change across successive generations in the heritable
characteristics
of biological
populations.
Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species,
individual
organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.
Life on Earth originated
and then evolved from a universal common ancestor approximately 3.7
billion years ago. Repeated speciation and the divergence
of life can be inferred from shared sets of biochemical and morphological
traits, or by shared DNA sequences. These homologous traits and sequences are more
similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used
to reconstruct
evolutionary histories, using both existing
species and the fossil record. Existing patterns of biodiversity
have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction.
Charles Darwin
was the first to formulate a compelling scientific argument for the theory
of evolution by means of natural selection.
Evolution by natural selection is a process that is inferred from three facts about populations:
1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among
individuals, leading to differential rates of survival and reproduction, and 3)
trait differences are heritable. Thus, when members of a population die they are
replaced by the progeny of parents that were better adapted
to survive and reproduce in the environment in which natural selection
took place. This process creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted
for the functional roles they perform. atural
selection is the only known cause of adaptation,
but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution
include mutation
and genetic drift.
In the early 20th century, genetics was integrated with Darwin
History of evolutionary thought
The proposal that one type of animal
could descend from an animal of another type goes back to some of the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, such as Anaximander and Empedocles.
In contrast to these materialistic views, Aristotle understood all natural things,
not only living
things, as being imperfect actualizations of different fixed natural possibilities, known
as "forms", "ideas",
or (in Latin translations) "species".
This was part of his teleological
understanding of nature in which all things have an intended
role to play in a divine cosmic
order. Variations of this idea became the standard understanding of the Middle Ages,
and were integrated into Christian learning, but Aristotle did not demand that
real types of animals corresponded one-for-one with exact metaphysical forms,
and specifically gave examples of how new types of living things could come to
be.
In the 17th century the new method
of modern science
rejected Aristotle's approach, and sought explanations of natural phenomena in
terms of laws of nature which were the same for all
visible things, and did not need to assume any fixed natural categories, nor
any divine cosmic order. But this new approach was slow to take root in the
biological sciences, which became the last bastion of the concept of fixed
natural types.
John Ray
used one of the previously more general terms for fixed natural types,
"species", to apply to animal and plant types, but unlike Aristotle
he strictly identified each type of living thing as a species, and proposed
that each species can be defined by the features that perpetuate themselves
each generation. These species were designed by God, but showing differences caused
by local conditions. The biological classification introduced by Carolus Linnaeus
in 1735 also viewed species as fixed according to a divine plan.
Other naturalists of this time
speculated on evolutionary change of species over time according to natural
laws. Maupertuis
wrote in 1751 of natural modifications occurring during reproduction and
accumulating over many generations to produce new species. Buffon suggested that
species could degenerate into different organisms, and Erasmus Darwin
proposed that all warm-blooded animals could have descended from a single
micro-organism (or "filament").
The first fully-fledged evolutionary
scheme was Lamarck's
"transmutation" theory of 1809 which envisaged spontaneous generation
continually producing simple forms of life developed greater complexity in
parallel lineages with an inherent progressive tendency, and that on a local
level these lineages adapted to the environment by inheriting changes caused by
use or disuse in parents. (The latter process was later called Lamarckism.)
These ideas were condemned by establishment naturalists as speculation lacking
empirical support. In particular Georges Cuvier
insisted that species were unrelated and fixed, their similarities reflecting
divine design for functional needs. In the meantime, Ray's ideas of benevolent
design had been developed by William Paley
into a natural theology which proposed complex
adaptations as evidence of divine design, and was admired by Charles Darwin.
In 1842 Charles Darwin
penned his first sketch of what became On the Origin of Species.
he critical break
from the concept of fixed species in biology began with the theory of evolution
by natural selection, which was formulated by Charles Darwin. Partly influenced
by An Essay on the Principle of
Population by Thomas Robert Malthus, Darwin
Precise mechanisms of reproductive
heritability and the origin of new traits remained a mystery. Towards this end,
Darwin Darwin
August Weismann
made the important distinction between germ cells (sperm
and eggs) and somatic cells of the body, demonstrating that heredity passes
through the germ line only. Hugo de Vries connected Darwin 's
pangenesis theory to Wiesman's germ/soma cell distinction and proposed that Darwin
To explain how new variants originate, De
Vries developed a mutation theory that led to a temporary rift between those who
accepted Darwinian evolution and biometricians who allied with de Vries. At the
turn of the 20th century, pioneers in the field of population genetics, such as
J.B.S. Haldane,
Sewall Wright,
and Ronald Fisher,
set the foundations of evolution onto a robust statistical philosophy. The
false contradiction between Darwin
In the 1920s and 1930s a modern
evolutionary synthesis connected natural selection, mutation theory, and
Mendelian inheritance into a unified theory that applied generally to any
branch of biology. The modern synthesis was able to explain patterns observed
across species in populations, through fossil transitions in palaeontology, and
even complex cellular mechanisms in developmental biology.
The publication of the structure of DNA by James Watson
and Francis Crick
in 1953 demonstrated a physical basis for inheritance. Molecular biology
improved our understanding of the relationship between genotype and phenotype.
Advancements were also made in phylogenetic
systematics,
mapping the transition of traits into a comparative and testable framework
through the publication and use of evolutionary trees.
In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky penned that "nothing
in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", because it has
brought to light the relations of what first seemed disjointed facts in natural
history into a coherent explanatory body of knowledge that describes and predicts many
observable facts about life on this planet.
Since then, the modern synthesis has
been further extended to explain biological phenomena across the full and
integrative scale of the biological hierarchy, from genes to species.
This extension has been dubbed "eco-evo-devo".
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
In contrast to the rather broad
approach toward society of structural-functionalism and conflict theory, Symbolic
Interactionism is a theoretical approach to understanding the relationship
between humans and society. The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that
human action and interaction are understandable only through the exchange of meaningful
communication or symbols. In this approach, humans are portrayed as acting
as opposed to being acted upon.The main principles of symbolic
interactionism are:
- human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them
- these meanings arise of out of social interaction
- social action results from a fitting together of individual lines of action
This approach stands in contrast to
the strict behaviorism of psychological theories prevalent at the time it
was first formulated (in the 1920s and 1930s). According to Symbolic
Interactionism, humans are distinct from infrahumans (lower animals) because
infrahumans simply respond to their environment (i.e., a stimulus evokes a
response or stimulus -> response) whereas humans have the ability to
interrupt that process (i.e., stimulus -> cognition -> response).
Additionally, infrahumans are unable to conceive of alternative responses to
gestures. Humans, however, can. This understanding should not be taken to
indicate that humans never behave in a strict stimulus -> response
fashion, but rather that humans have the capability of not responding in that
fashion (and do so much of the time).
This perspective is also rooted in
phenomenological thought (see social constructionism and phenomenology).
According to symbolic interactionism, the objective world has no reality for
humans, only subjectively-defined objects have meaning. Meanings are not
entities that are bestowed on humans and learned by habituation. Instead,
meanings can be altered through the creative capabilities of humans, and
individuals may influence the many meanings that form their society.[11]
Human society, therefore, is a social product.
Neurological evidence based on EEGs supports the idea
that humans have a "social brain," that is, there are components of
the human brain that govern social interaction.[13]
These parts of the brain begin developing in early childhood (the preschool
years) and aid humans in understanding how other people think.[13]
In symbolic interactionism, this is known as "reflected appraisals" or "the looking glass self" and refers to our
ability to think about how other people will think about us. A good example of
this is when people try on clothes before going out with friends. Some people
may not think much about how others will think about their clothing choices,
but others can spend quite a bit of time considering what they are going to
wear. And while they are deciding, the dialogue that is taking place inside
their mind is usually a dialogue between their "self" (that portion
of their identity that calls itself "I") and that person's
internalized understanding of their friends and society (a "generalized other"). An indicator of
mature socialization is when an individual quite accurately predicts how other
people think about him/her. Such an individual has incorporated the "social"
into the "self."
It should also be noted that symbolic
interactionists advocate a particular methodology. Because they see meaning
as the fundamental component of human and society interaction, studying human
and society interaction requires getting at that meaning. Thus, symbolic
interactionists tend to employ more qualitative
rather than quantitative methods in their research.
Limitations
The most significant limitation of the
symbolic-interactionist perspective relates to its primary contribution: it
overlooks macro social structures (e.g., norms, culture) as a result of
focusing on micro-level interactions. Some symbolic interactionists, however,
would counter that if role theory (see below) is incorporated into
symbolic interactionism - which is now commonplace - this criticism is
addressed.
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POWERED BY CHIWAMBO AUSI R. TEOFILO KISANJI UNIVESITY (TEKU), JUNE, 2, 2012
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