SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

CHAPTER 3

Sociological Theory

Understanding complex phenomena (the impact of industrialization on societies, how does racism interact with capitalism, how do crime rates vary with poverty…)

Factual research shows how things occur but sociology does not just consist of collecting facts.

Why things happen?

Explanatory theories

Industrialization What are the origins of and preconditions

for industrialization? Differences between societies

industrialization processes. Why is industrialization associated with

changes in forms of criminal punishment or in family structures and marriage systems?

Theories involve constructing abstract interpretations that can be used to explain a wide variety of empirical/factual situations.

A theory of industrialization is concerned with identifying the main features that processes of industrial development share in common and shows which are of importance in explaining industrial development.

We can only develop valid theoretical explanations if we can test them by means of factual research.

However, facts do not speak for themselves! Unless they are guided by some knowledge of theory, they are unable to explain the complexity of societies.

Theoretical thinking must respond to general problems posed by the study of human social life (including issues that are philosophical in nature).

Founders of Sociology

Systematic study of society – late 1700s and early 1800s. Enlightenment French Revolution Industrial Revolution in Europe

What is human nature? Why is the society structured the way it is? How and why do societies change?

Which events made sociological perspective possible?

The Industrial Revolution Radically transformed material conditons of

life and ways of making living. New social problems such as urban

overcrowding, poor sanitation and accompanying diseases, industrial pollution.

French Revolution Marked symbolic endpoint of the older

European agrarian regimes and absolute monarchies.

Republican ideals of freedom, liberty and citizenship rights came to the fore.

Can be regarded as partly being the outcome of European Enlightenment ideas.

Enlightenment (Age of Reason) Challenged religious and traditional

authorities Promoted philosophical and scientific

notions of reason, rationality and critical thinking as the key to progress in human affairs.

Saw the advancement of reliable knowledge in the natural sciences, and as showing the way for the study of social life.

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) Invented the term “sociology”. First had

“social physics” in mind but it was taken. A science of society that could explain

the laws of the social world just as natural science explained functioning of the physical world.

Uncovering the laws that govern human society could help shape our destiny and improve the welfare of humanity.

Sociology as a positive science. Positivism: science should be concerned

with observable entities that are known directly to experience.

On the basis of careful observation, one can infer laws that explain the relationship between the observed phenomena.

By understanding causal relationships between events, scientists can predict future events.

Comte’s Law of Three Stages Human efforts to understand the world

have gone through three stages: Theological (religious ideas and the belief that

society was an expression of God’s will) Metaphysical (Renaissance, society came to be

known in natural not supernatural terms) Positive (application of scientific techniques to

the social world)

Reconstruction of the society Religion of humanity that would abandon

faith and dogma in favor of a scientific grounding (with sociology at the heart of this new religion).

Inequalities produced by industrialization and the threat they posed to social cohesion.

Solution? Production of a new moral consensus that would regulate/hold together the society, despite new patterns of inequality.

Canonical Sociology

Marx (dynamics of the capitalist economy and causes of social inequality)

Durkheim (character of industrial society and the process of secularization)

Weber (emergence of capitalism and the consequences of modern bureaucratic forms of organization)

What is common in their concerns?

They were all concerned to understand what was unique about modern societies and where they were heading.

Good theories help us arrive at a deeper understanding of societies and to explain the social changes that affect us all.

Classical (Canonical) Sociologists Karl Marx (1818-1883) Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Max Weber (1864-1920)

Why is classical sociology classical? (R.W. Connell) Who are left out and why?

“Why Is Classical Theory Classical?” (1) Sociology arose out of the concerns and observations

of European colonial empires, which led to the concepts of progress, evolution, and the primitive/modern contrast.

(2) For all the evils of this beginning, early sociology had at least a central concern for gender and race, later forgotten. Gender, sexuality, and race relations, which were core issues for evolutionary sociology, were pushed to the margins in the process of canon formation.

(3) These concerns broke down because of World War I, with the shift of sociology’s center to the United States and to concerns for inequality and disorder in urban society.

(4) Because this empirical work failed to legitimate itself, a classical canon was adopted.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) Today credited with

introducing sociology to Britain through her translation of Comte’s Positive Philosophy.

Systematic study of the American Society during extensive travels throughout the US, Society in America (1837).

When one studies a society, one must focus on all key aspects (political, religious and social institutions).

An analysis of a society must include an understanding of women’s lives.

Sociological study of previously ignored issues such as marriage, children, domestic and religious life and race relations.

“The nursery, the boudoir and the kitchen are all excellent schools in which to learn the morals and manners of a people.”

Sociologists should do more than just observe, they should also act in ways to benefit a society.

Proponent of women’s rights and emancipation of slaves.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

Historical, sociological and political economic studies.

Muqaddimah (Introduction, 1378)

Muqaddimah (Introduction, 1378) Criticized existing historical approaches and

methods as dealing only with description. Claimed instead the discovery of a “new

science of social organization” or “science of society” capable of getting at the underlying meaning of events.

Devised a theory of social conflict based on understanding the central characteristics of nomadic and sedentary societies of his time.

Central to his theory was asabiyyah (group feeling/solidarity).

Attempted to explain the rise and decline of Maghribian and Arab states. Hence, studied the process of state formation.

Nomadic Bedouin tribes – strong group feeling

Sedentary town-dweller weak group feeling (internal solidarity)

Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

Saw sociology as a new science that can elucidate traditional philosophical questions by examining them in an empirical manner.

Must study social life with same objectivity as natural sciences (Comte).

“Study social facts as things” Social life could be analyzed as rigorously as

objects or events in the nature. Durkheim’s themes

Sociology as an empirical science The rise of the individual and formation of a

new social order The sources and character of moral

authority in society

Sociology is the study of social facts. Rather than applying sociological methods

to the study of individuals, sociology should examine social facts that shape our actions as individuals (such as the state of the economy or the influence of religion)

Individualism that resisted all social limits is socially and personally destructive. Individualism is a social good only when it occurs within a social and moral framework.

There is more to society than the actions and interests of its individual members.

Social institutions and social forms (ie. social movements, family) outlive the individuals who inhabit them and have a reality of their own.

The “social” is a level of reality in its own right and cannot be reduced to mere action nor to aggregate of individual consciousnesses.

Society is more than the sum of its parts!

Durkheim’s liberalism fused respect for individualism with moral order and civic virtue. Economic freedom, only if socially

regulated Individualism, only if individual rooted in

social institutions Cultural pluralism, only in a society that

had a clear moral center.Social vision that integrates spirit of

liberalism (individualism), radicalism (social justice) and conservatism (moral order).

Social Facts Ways of acting, thinking, feeling that are

external to individuals and have their own reality outside the lives and perceptions of individual people.

They exercise a coercive power over individuals (though not recognized as coercive, people generally comply with social facts freely, as if they are acting out of choice).

People follow patterns that are general to their society.

What if they don’t? How do social facts constrain human

action? Outright punishment (crime) Social rejection (unacceptable behavior) Misunderstanding (misuse of language)

How can one study social facts? Hard to observe directly; their properties must be revealed indirectly

by analyzing their effects considering attempts made at their expression

(laws, religious texts, written rules) abandon prejudice and ideology (a mind

free of preconceived ideas and open to evidence).

Changes transforming society Social morality and solidarity

SOLIDARITY What holds the society together and keeps

it from descending into chaos How individuals successfully integrate into

social groups How individuals are regulated by a set of

shared values and customs

Division of Labor in Society

An analysis of social change The advent of industrial era meant the

emergence of a new type of solidarity Mechanical solidarity Organic solidarity

Mechanical Solidarity

Traditional cultures with a low division of labor

Many members involved in similar occupations

Bound by common experience and shared beliefs

Strength of shared belief is repressive (community punishes those who challenge conventional ways of life)

Grounded in consensus and similarity of belief.

Organic Solidarity

Industrialization and urbanization lead to a growing division of labor (breakdown of former form of solidarity) in advanced societies

Specialization of tasks Increasing social differentiation Held together by economic interdependence Recognition of the importance of others’

contributions Economic reciprocity and mutual dependency

replace shared beliefs in creating social consensus.

Anomie

Rapid social change gives rise to social difficulties

Disruptive effects on traditional lifestyles, morals, religious beliefs and everyday patterns

Absence of new clear values These unsettling conditions lead to anomie

( feelings of aimlessness, dread and despair provoked by modern social life)

Lack of meaning in the absence of traditional moral controls and standards (religion) due to modern social development

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)

A calculated and provocative decision with two main purposes: Establish sociology as a recognized social science

Suicide, an act explained by individual psychology, is actually a social fact.

First ever Professor of Sociology in an academic establishment (Sorbonne, The University of Paris, 1913)

Show social dangers of unbridled individualism Does not deny that psychological distress

prompts taking of own life, however, social conditions provide the suicidal disposition.

Even though individuals see themselves as exercising free will and choice, their behaviors are socially patterned and shaped.

Even a highly personal act like suicide is influenced by what happens in the social world.

First sociological analysis, previous explanations resorted to race, climate or mental disorder to explain likelihood of suicide.

Suicide is a social fact that can be explained by other social facts.

Suicide rate is more than aggregate of individual suicides – a phenomenon with patterned properties.

Certain categories of people are more likely to commit suicide. Men – women Protestant – Catholic Single – married Wealthy - poor

Lower suicide rates during times of war. Higher rates during times of economic

change or instability.

There are social forces external to the individual that affect suicide rates. Social solidarity Social integration Social regulation

People who are strongly integrated into the social groups, and whose desires and aspirations are regulated by social norms are less likely to commit suicide.

Suicide types according to the presence or absence of integration and regulation: Egoistic Anomic Altruistic Fatalistic

Egoistic Suicide low integration in society individual is isolated ties to a group are weakened or broken

Religion Marriage Wartime

Anomic Suicide Lack of social regulation People rendered normless as a result of rapid

change or instability Lack of a reference point for norms and

desires Loss of balance between people’s

circumstances and their desires.

Economic upheaval Divorce

Altruistic Suicide Individual is over-integrated Social bonds too strong Society valued more than self Mechanical solidarity prevails

Kamikaze pilots Suicide bombers

Fatalistic Suicide Little contemporary relevance Individual over-regulated by society Oppression results in feeling of

powerlessness before society or fate

Dictatorships

Suicide rates vary between societies but show regular patterns within societies over time.

Durkheim took this as evidence that there are consistent social forces that influence suicide rates.

An examination of suicide rates reveals how general social patterns can be detected within individual actions.

Critical points Uncritical use of official statistics Dismissal of non-social influences Classifying all types of suicide together