Ðåôåðàò: Basic perspectives and schools of developing sociology in the XX century
Ðåôåðàò: Basic perspectives and schools of developing sociology in the XX century
MINISTERY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS
Belarus State Economic University
REFERAT:
«Basic
perspectives and schools of developing sociology in the XX century»
Minsk 2008
In the XX
century sociological science has undergone considerable changes. Modern
sociology presents an extremely complex system of theories, conceptions,
hypotheses, methods and ways of investigating social phenomena. Of importance
is the fact that the evolution of main perspectives and schools of modern
Western sociology went along simultaneously on its three levels: theoretic,
applied and empiric. Empiric researches had been carried out before but they
didn’t bear a systematic character; neither had they some developed methodology
and methods of research.
An empiric
direction that appeared in the XX century can be considered an opposition to
the theoretic constructions of classical sociology of the XIX century. It was
given birth by the attempts to overcome theorizing of social philosophy, on the
one hand, and by the necessity to solve practical issues of governing social
processes, on the other hand.
Most actively
sociology developed in the USA to meet some significant needs; first, to extend
beyond the framework of the European tradition, second, due to the necessities
required by a fast development of American industrial society and practical
implementation of newly appeared social problems.
American
sociology is represented by numerous schools and directions and the Chicago school is one of them. When the University of Chicago was
founded in 1892, it established the nation’s first department of sociology. The
study of sociology was still a relatively undeveloped field, but by the 1920s
the department had become nationally famous as the department pioneered
research on urban studies, poverty, the family, the workplace, immigrants,
ethnic and race relations, and developed important research methods using
mapping and survey techniques. From the 1920s to the 1930s, urban sociology was almost
synonymous with the work of the Chicago school.
The major
researchers in this school included William Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, Robert
Park, Louis Wirth, Ernest Burgess, Everett Hughes, and Robert McKenzie. The
books which opened the school were The City: Suggestion for the
Investigation of Human Behaviour in the City Environment by R. Park and a
big monograph Polish peasant in Europe and America 1918-1920 by F. Znaniecki and W. Thomas.
Florian
Znaniecki (1882-1958) is a philosopher and sociologist who taught and wrote in Poland
and the United States. He gained international fame as the co-author with William
Thomas (1863-1947) of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America that
is considered the foundation of modern empirical sociology and humanist
sociology. In this work, analyzing private documents (letters, diaries, memoirs
etc.) the sociologists investigated the problems of migrants’ adaptation to a
new social and cultural milieu.
The
Chicago School of Sociology grew to prominence under Robert E. Park (1864-1944).
Along with E. Burgess and L. Wirth, Park created a theoretical basis for a
systematic study of the society. Along with W. Thomas, he gave major impetus to
the movement which shifted sociology from social philosophy to an inductive
science of human
behaviour. A
partial list of the fields in which Park made significant contributions
includes social psychology and the theory of personality; studies on the
community; the city; human ecology (he coined the term); the social survey (as
an institution); crowd and public – the field of collective behaviour (R. Park is often called
the sociologist of collective behaviour); and most of all, race relations and conflicts of cultures.
In the field of method he made valuable contributions as to the use of life
histories, guided and unguided, for the investigation of personality.
But in the
1940-50s the leadership in developing empiric sociology was captured by Columbia and Harvard Universities. An important role was played by Robert Merton, a
student of P.A. Sorokin who was actively engaged in applied sociological
researches at Columbia University. His activities greatly encouraged the growth
of prestige of empiric sociology in the USA as being unity of theory and
method.
At
Harvard University Elton Mayor (1880-1949) and his colleagues
were also actively engaged in applied sociological researches. They conducted
experiments at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant outside Chicago, starting in
1924 and running through 1936. The Hawthorne experiments or Hawthorne Studies
were intended to bring about a greater understanding of the effects of working
conditions, wages and other social factors on worker productivity. The results
of the experiments were contrary to the management theory of the time and were
a key in understanding motivation factors in employment.
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to
calendar). ...They were:
·
revision
of the role of the human factor in production and retreat from the previous
conception of a worker as an “economic” man whose pragmatic aims were of
primary importance;
·
discovery
of the informal organization within the labour collective that became indicative of complex mechanisms of
social life in the organization;
·
people’s
work performance is dependent on both social issues and job content;
·
tension
between workers’ “logic of sentiment” and managers’ “logic of cost and
efficiency” could lead to conflict within organizations.
The Hawthorne Effect originally referred to the increase in
worker productivity observed when a worker is singled out and made to feel
important. ... Western Electric (sometimes abbreviated
WECo) was a US electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of the Bell
Telephone Company from 1881 to 1984 . ... Scientific
management or Taylorism is the name of the approach to management and
Industrial/Organizational Psychology initiated by Frederick Winslow Taylor in
his 1911 monograph The Principles of Scientific Management. ..The
Hawthorne studies had a profound effect on the field of organizational
development and with publishing Mayor’s book, The Human Problems of an
Industrialized Civilization, The field of
organizational development (OD) is concerned with the performance, development,
and effectiveness of human organizations. ..initiated development of industrial
sociology, in particular, sociology of management, the human relations
movement in management and organizational thinking.
Structural functionalism. Another important direction in sociology of the XX
century became structural functionalism headed by Talcott Parsons (1902-1979), a central figure at Harvard University who was the
best-known sociologist in the United States, and one of the best-known
celebrities in the world for many years. Structural functionalism occupies an intermediate
position between classical and contemporary sociology. But T. Parsons and his
functional approach became so influential and dominant that by the late 1950s sociology and
functionalism became more or less identical. This meant that sociology studied
the roles of institutions and social behaviour in the society, the way these are related to other
social features, and developed explanations of the society in social terms. It was developed in T.
Parsons’ major publications such as The Structure of Social Action (1937),
The Social System (1951), Structure and Process in Modern Societies
(1960) etc.
Structural
functionalism
is built on two emphases: application of the scientific method to the objective
social world and use of an analogy between the human’s organism and society.
The emphasis on the scientific method leads to the assertion that one can study
social world in the same way as one can study physical world. Thus,
functionalists see social world as “objectively real”, observable with such
techniques as social surveys and interviews. In this way functionalism was not
new as many of these ideas go back to E. Durkheim who was one of the first
sociologists to make use of scientific and statistical techniques in
sociological research.
The second
emphasis, a key to T. Parsons’ theory, is on the organic unity of the society, i.e. each society is a system of social
structures (economic, legal, educational, gender ones) with certain needs which
must be met by social institutions for a social system to exist. Goods and
services must be produced and distributed in order for people to survive, there
must be some administration of justice, a political system must exist, and some
family structure must operate to provide a means to reproduce the population
and maintain social life on a daily basis. In the structural functional model,
individuals carry out these tasks in various institutions and roles that are
consistent with the structures and norms of the society.
Four “functional
imperatives” that every group or society tends to fulfill are often coded as
AGIL:
·
adaptation
to the physical and social milieu;
·
goal
attainment, which is the need to define primary goals and enlist people to
strive to attain these goals;
·
integration,
the coordination of the society or group as a cohesive whole;
·
latency,
maintaining the motivation of people to perform their roles according to social
expectations.
In the society
the function of adaptation is fulfilled by economy, that of goal-attainment –
by politics, integration – by law and culture and latency – by family, school,
church etc.
One of
the central categories in T. Parsons’ theory is the category of social action
the components of which are an actor, a situation and the actor’s orientation
toward the situation. T. Parsons sees an actor – an individual or a
collectivity as motivated to spend energy in reaching a desirable goal, as
defined by the cultural system. So the actor operates in a situation with
conditions he can’t control and means as things he can have control over, but
within a certain normative framework. The norms have been internalized by the
actor so that the actor is “motivated to act appropriately”. T. Parsons
asserted that action is rooted in norms and bounded by values.
So,
functionalist analysis often focuses on the individual, usually with the intent
to show how individual behaviour is moulded by broader social forces. Though individual actors are spoken
about as decision-makers, some critics suggested that functionalists treated
individuals as puppets, whose decisions are a predictable result of their
location in the social structure and of the norms and expectations they have
internalized. In any case, functionalists tended to be less concerned with the
ways in which individuals can control their own destiny than with the ways in
which the limits imposed by the society make individual behaviour scientifically predictable.
As
for T. Parsons, he also contributed to the field of social evolutionism.
He divided evolution into four subprocesses:
1)
division, which creates functional subsystems from the main system,
2)
adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient versions,
3)
inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems and
4)
generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the ever more
complex system.
He
shows those processes on three stages of evolution: 1) primitive, 2) archaic
and 3) modern. Archaic societies have the knowledge of writing, while modern
have the knowledge of law. T. Parsons viewed the Western civilisation as the
pinnacle of modern societies, and out of all Western cultures he declared the United
States as the most dynamically developed. This caused him to be attacked as an ethnocentrist.
T. Parsons’
late work focused on a new theoretical synthesis around four functions common
to all systems of action, from behavioural to cultural, and a set of symbolic
media that enable communication across them. This attempt to span the world
with four concepts was too much for many American sociologists, who were then
undergoing a retreat from the grand pretensions of the 1960s to a more
empirical approach.
Another
prominent
functionalist Robert Merton (1910-2003) proposed a number of
important distinctions to avoid potential weaknesses in the basic perspective.
First, he distinguishes between manifest and latent
functions: respectively, those which are recognized and intended by actors in
the social system and hence may represent motives for their actions, and those
which are unrecognized and, thus, unintended by the actors. Second, he
distinguishes between consequences which are positively functional for a
society, those which are dysfunctional for the society, and those which
are neither. Third, he distinguishes between levels of the society, that is,
the specific social units for which regularized patterns of behaviour are functional or
dysfunctional. Finally, he concedes that the particular social structures which
satisfy functional needs of the society are not indispensable, but that structural
alternatives may exist which can also satisfy the same functional needs.
Sociological positivism of P.A. Sorokin. Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (1889-1968),
a migrant from Russia, was one of the most colorful, erudite and controversial
figures in American sociology. His merit consisted in formulation of scientific
principles of the system of sociology. After coming to the USA P.A. Sorokin
started working at the University of Minnesota. Fame came to him there after he
had written six books in six years; four of them defined their fields at the
time: Social Mobility (1927), Contemporary Sociological Theories
(1928), Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology (1929) and A Systematic
Source Book in Rural Sociology (1929).
Then
P.A. Sorokin worked at Harvard University where he explored a lot of different
directions. He came to Harvard as a positivistic, comparative and scientific
sociologist that’s why his doctrine is called sociological positivism.
Later he moved towards philosophy of history. His monumental work, Social
and Cultural Dynamics (1937-1941) spanned over 2,500 years and attempted to
isolate the principles of social change. The problems described in Dynamics
took P.A. Sorokin to the analysis of civilization’s crisis and social,
political and economic calamities inherent in modern culture. Diagnosing the
times as those of a decaying sensate civilization, the sociologist speculated
that world was moving towards a difficult and bloody period of transition. With
these concerns in mind his research turned to the analysis of conflict, war and
revolution, to the search for a comprehensive philosophical foundation for
knowledge and to a direct means for dealing with social problems and improving
the human condition. For the next twenty years he wrote mainly on war, integralism
and altruism. As a humanistic scholar, he wanted to understand the conditions
which led to war and the methods by which they could be treated and reduced.
Similar values informed his later works on revolution and institutional
violence.
Another merit by P.A. Sorokin is his theory of social
stratification and social mobility. It states that the society is
divided into strata (layers) that differentiate from each other by their
wealth, activities, political views, cultural orientations etc. Thus, they
serve as the basis for identifying the main forms of social stratification such
as economic, political and occupational ones.
Social mobility is understood as any transition of an individual or
social object from one social position to another. There are two principal
types of social mobility, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility,
or shifting, is a transition of a person or social object from one social group
to another situated on the same level. Transitions of individuals from one family
(as a husband or wife) to another by divorce and remarriage, from one factory
to another in the same occupational status, are all instances of horizontal
mobility. So, too, are transitions of social objects, such as fashion,
scientific or political ideas from the country of origin to other ones. In all
these cases, “shifting” may take place without any noticeable change of the
social position of a person or social object in the horizontal direction. Vertical
mobility is a transition of a person or a social object from one
social stratum to another which is accompanied with noticeable changes in his
or its characteristics.
One more problem P.A. Sorokin tried to solve is that of social
equality. He considered necessary to provide an individual with as much
material and spiritual wealth as much socially useful labour he invested (or by
his merit). The egalitarian system of any society (social equality) suggests
everybody’s equality to be subject to law, equal rights to occupy public posts,
equal political rights (as those of freedom of speech, conscious, union etc.)
and equal rights to education.
Though P.A.
Sorokin had a lasting influence on methods and theory in social sciences and
his views were respected, academic conflicts affected his career. His professional
interactions also brought him into conflict with Talcott Parsons. He set
himself in direct opposition to both the Chicago School and Social Darwinism,
considering them too philosophical and too unconcerned with real-world issues.
Social conflict theory. Conflict theory is an extension of the
sociological theory that discusses various social issues leading to conflict in
any society. Numerous theorists worked on different issues and provided their
conflict theory, which is directly or indirectly related to the society.
Conflict theory was elaborated, for instance, in Britain by M. Gluckman and J.
Rex, in the USA by Ch. Mills, L. Coser and R. Collins, and in Germany (later
the UK) by R. Dahrendorf, all of them being more or less influenced by K. Marx,
L. Gumplovicz, V. Pareto, G. Simmel and other founder fathers of European
sociology.
Social
conflict is
a confrontation of social powers. So, conflict theory is related to the society and
organization whereby each individual participates with his group in the struggle
to maximize its benefit to bring any social change in the society. Such changes
include political change, social change or revolutions. Hence conflict theory
is best applied to explain the conflicts between social classes and clash of
ideologies within the society like socialism. The theory attempts to refute functionalism
that considers societies and organizations function harmoniously so that each
individual and group plays a specific role, like organs in the body.
Modern
conflict theory is built on three assumptions which are the basic elements of
conflict within a class society:
·
interests commonly presented in
various groups of the society,
·
power that develops
inequalities and leads to coercion among various groups of the society,
·
coercion related to the unequal
distribution of resources within various classes of the society that develops
different power groups. This aspect is related to the clash of ideologies and
conflicting values among various classes of the society.
Charles
Mills
(1916-1962), a professor of Columbia University, is the one who elaborated the
methodological principles of conflict theory. In his works, The Power Elite
(1956), The Sociological Imagination (1959) Ch. Mills was especially
critical of structural functionalism because it rejected the idea of
antagonism, rebel, revolution, and suggested the idea that harmony of interests
was natural for any society. He didn’t deny that order, stability, harmony are
needed by a class in power but social life is full of both disorders and
conflicts, and is always instable. He considered social conflict as struggle
for social power, values and status benefits, struggle whereby the opposite
side tries not only to acquire benefits but neutralize or even liquidate the
opponent. Its basic functions are seen in integration of the social structure,
maintenance of solidarity within the group, strengthening of relations between
humans and governing of social changes. In other words, Ch. Mills considers
social conflict a natural component of the social organism.
Another
elaborator of social conflict Lewis Coser (1913-2003) put forward
the goal of making structural functionalism deeper and more perfect. In
contrast to classical theorists of the functional approach who analyze harmony,
not conflict, L. Coser proves that conflicts and confrontations are products of
the internal life of the society and order of things and relations between
people and groups existing in this society. If functionalists see in conflict a
manifestation of disorder in the society, L. Coser makes a focus on its
positive functions trying to show its integrative and stabilizing role there.
He believes that taking place in the society struggle of interests on
redistribution of means of production, public wealth and share of this wealth,
bears a positive character. Thus, in his theory conflicts perform a number of
positive functions which are described in the book, The Functions of Social
Conflict (1956). For example, conflict within a group frequently helps to
resolve tension between antagonists, revitalize existent norms; or it
contributes to the emergence of new norms or it may help to establish unity or re-establish
unity and cohesion where it has been threatened by hostile and antagonistic
feelings among the members.
Another
contribution into development of conflict theory was made by Ralf
Dahrendorf (born in 1929), a German-British sociologist. His theory is
deeply rooted in the Marxist theory but it is also an extension according to
the contemporary sociological theory of class and class conflict in an
industrial society.
R. Dahrendorf
assumes that various elements of the society directly or indirectly participate
in conflicts of any society, so conflicts exist between these elements of the
society. Therefore, social change is ubiquitous that instigates conflicts
between different classes and among various elements of the society. So his
theory states that conflict occurs in every society and class but the roots of
conflict in any society or class lies in integration. When two groups or
classes are living in a society, they cohere either due to a clash of
interests, ideologies or any other reason. This ultimately results in conflict
within a society.
On the other
hand, when two groups or classes integrate in the society, one becomes dominant
over the other due to the unequal distribution of resources. This results into
difference of division of power and authority. So the powerful and the weak
become principle conflicting groups, and this stimulates conflict among
classes.
R. Dahrendorf
asserted that conflict can be regulated through negotiations, mediation,
arbitrage etc. The acuteness of the conflict and efficiency of its regulation
depend on the type of the social structure and level of its openness. A
democratic, open, highly mobile society is most adequate for the regulation of
conflicts as in such a society conflicts are extremely formalized.
Although
conflict theory of R. Dahrendorf is depicted from the Marxist theory of class
struggle which relates to the class conflict in an industrialized society, his
theory differs from the theory of K. Marx in many aspects. For instance, R.
Dahrendorf disagrees to the principle that economic interests are the only
interests among classes in the industrialized society that lead to a conflict.
He does not agree either that revolution is the only way to abolish a class
conflict. Moreover, he does not believe that the upper class is the only class
that owns and controls the means of production of any society.
Therefore, R.
Dahrendorf believes in a system where managers belonging to various classes of
the society actually control economy of various industries and business
corporations. At the same time, he believes that in modern society economic
division of power is altered due to unequal distribution of resources, and that
allows the middle class to grow side by side. This is basically a result from
changing trends of globalization and regionalism.
Social
psychology is a sub-discipline of both sociology and psychology. If sociology deals
with social categories and groups, psychology – with individuals, social
psychology involves the intersection of the social and the individual where the
individual is influenced by the social and, in turn, interacts with the social
and influences on it as well.
Another way of
looking at social psychology is that it is the study of how micro- and
macro-social phenomena – the individual and society – interact. Social
psychology tries to answer the following questions: How does an individual
develop his self-concept or personality? Or, how do social situations affect
the way a person thinks or acts?
Two of the
many perspectives in social psychological thought are symbolic interaction and
social exchange. Such perspectives are of importance because they are based on
the assumption that people, in order to meet their basic needs and fulfill
their desires, must interact with others in the process of social exchanges.
For example, very few people produce the food they eat but obtain it in
exchange for goods, services, and money they provide through a network of
others in roles and organizations that specialize in one or another aspect of
food production and distribution. Without these complex, interdependent social
exchanges most of people would starve. From the symbolic interaction and social
exchange perspectives in social psychology, one might say that individuals are
able to interact – and indeed must interact with each other as individuals and
as members of social groups – through shared meanings and values that they
learn. They also play various social roles in the process of social exchanges
with others.
Symbolic interactionism, or theory of symbolic interaction, has a long
intellectual history, beginning with the German sociologist and economist Max
Weber and American philosophers Charles Cooley (1864-1929) and
George Mead (1863-1931), who emphasized the subjective meaning
of human
behaviour,
the social process and pragmatism. It was later developed by Herbert
Blumer, who is responsible for coining the term, “symbolic
interactionism”, as well as for formulating the most prominent version of the
theory. It also continues to develop and grow popular today.
Symbolic
interactionism explains how individuals are socialized through social
interactions with others. In the process of developing a self, or personality,
language and other symbols and values become meaningful through social
interaction with significant others, primary groups, reference groups and
generalized others. Through this process of interactions, individuals also
learn roles that they play as they act in their social groups and in the larger
society. For instance, if a lecturer sees a student’s raised hand, he interpret
it as a sign to stop the lecture and get to know whether the student wants to
ask a question on the issue or ask for permission to leave the class.
Somebody’s raised hand in another situation or in another culture may be
interpreted in a different way.
For
interactionists, humans are pragmatic actors who must continually
adjust their behaviour to the actions of other actors. We can adjust to these
actions only because we are able to interpret them, i.e., to denote them
symbolically and treat the actions and those who perform them as symbolic
objects.
The social
exchange perspective complements symbolic interaction but emphasizes
the exchanges that cohere individuals with each other and with groups. It has
been influenced by many including B. F. Skinner, John Thibaut, Harold Kelly
etc. but its main contributors were George Homans (1910-1989) and
Peter Blau (b. 1918). Social exchange concepts include value,
punishment, sanctions, cost, profit, reward, and behaviour.
The first
problem is that of names. George Homans’s famous work, “Social
Behaviour as Exchange” led sociologists to refer to it as exchange theory.
Anyway, the researcher never liked this term, preferring instead “social behaviourism”. He wanted to emphasize
the behaviourist
aspect of his
work. That is, he wants the theory to explain whether observable behaviours increase or decrease
based on actors’ rewards and costs. So his interest is the individual who
enters into exchange relationships, in which social rewards and costs determine
individual choices.
G. Homans
interprets social behaviour as an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less
rewarding or costly, between at least two people. According to his point of view,
actors are profit seekers who want to maximize their wealth while interacting
with others with minimum efforts. It follows from it that social exchange is
based on a rational principle: a rewarded action tends to repeat, and the
higher is the reward, the more possible is the action. G. Homans developed
several propositions on success, stimuli, value, satiation and aggression that
explain how social exchange works at the individual level. By doing it the
researcher tried to bring sociology nearer to economy by estimating behaviours in the context of a
number of economic categories such as cost, profit, reward etc.
On the other
hand, P. Blau does offer an exchange theory. His interest is in
how exchange as a form of social activity gives rise to different forms of
association and different organizational forms. He supplements the exchange
concepts to understand a more complex social process of institutionalization.
Therefore, he attaches great importance on the abstract concepts such as value,
conscience, ideas, and impression, strains and social norms that bind the
society together. It is through P. Blau’s works that account of the emergence
of large-scale organizations and institutions governed by cultural norms and
values.
According to
P. Blau, rewards that are exchanged can be either intrinsic (love, affection,
respect) or extrinsic (money, physical labor); the parties cannot always reward
each other equally; when there is inequality in the exchange, a difference of
power will emerge within an association. The theorist is concerned with what
holds large-scale social units together and what tears them apart. Therefore,
he takes pains in discussing groups, organization, collectivities, societies,
norms and values. That’s why P. Blau’s exchange theory is usually regarded as
macro-theoretical perspective.
Sociometry.
The
word sociometry comes from Latin “socius” (social) and “metrum” (measure).
As the roots imply, sociometry is a way of
measuring a degree of interpersonal relationships between people. The term
was coined by the psychiatrist Jacob Levi Moreno
(1892-1974). A student of S. Freud, J. Moreno migrated from Rumania to the USA and in New York conducted the first long-range sociometric study (1932-1938). As
part of this study, J. Moreno used sociometric techniques to assign residents
to various cottages. He found that assignments on the basis of sociometry
substantially reduced the number of runaways from the facility.
Sociometry is
based on the fact that people make choices in interpersonal relationships.
Whenever people gather, they make choices – where to sit or stand; choices
about who is perceived as friendly and who is not, who is central to the group,
who is rejected, who is isolated. So measurement of relationships can be useful
not only in assessment of behaviour within a group, but also for interventions
to bring about positive change. For a labour group, sociometry can be a
powerful tool for reducing a conflict and improving communications because it
allows the group to see itself objectively and analyze its own dynamics. It can
also be applied to identify informal leaders, social rankings and isolated
individuals as it shows the patterns of how individuals associate with each
other when acting as a group toward a specified end or goal.
Among sociometric tools of
frequent use are various tests, sociomatrix and sociograms. When members of a
group are asked to choose others in the group, everyone in the group makes a
choice and describes why he does so. From these choices a description (a
drawing, like a map) called a sociogram emerges. The data for the
sociogram may also be displayed as a table or matrix of each person’s choices.
There are
other important trends and perspectives in sociology of the XX century
developed by theorists of all continents.
Phenomenology is another approach to
sociological theory that has been gaining popularity. The approach is based on
the ideas of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), a German philosopher,
who insisted that the phenomena we encounter in sensory perceptions are the
ultimate source of all knowledge. His perspective was brought to the United States by sociologist Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) and developed further
by Harold Garfinkel (b. 1917). Another important development in
phenomenological thinking can be found in works by Thomas Luckmann
(b. 1927) and Peter Berger (b. 1929), whose landmark book, The
Social Construction of Reality (1966), has been widely influential,
especially among contemporary feminists. P. Berger is perhaps best known for
his view that sociology is a form of consciousness. Central to his work is the
relationship between the society and the individual. In his book, The Social
Construction of Reality P. Berger develops a sociological theory “society
as objective reality and as subjective reality”. His analysis of the society as
subjective reality studies how reality has produced and keeps producing
individuals. He writes about how new humans concepts or inventions become a
part of our reality (a process he calls reification). His conception of social
structure resolving around the importance of language “the most important sign
system of human society,” is similar to G. Hegel’s conception of Geist.
Among
other current sociological theories one can note postmodernism, globalization
theory by I. Wallenstein, European industrial sociology, feminism, ecological
movement, communicative theory by N. Lumann etc. Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), a leading
German sociologist, Anthony Giddens (b. 1938), a leading British
sociologist, and American sociologist Randall Collins (b. 1913)
are all noted for having constructed theories which synthesize ideas drawn from
several theoretical traditions.
Postmodernism is a perspective developed on the French intellectual scene,
that has had considerable influence on American sociologists in recent years.
Contrasted by modernism, whose authors attempted to come to new terms with old
ideas in attempt to find the “deep structure” of the human experience,
postmodernism is identifiable by authors who were highly skeptical
of any “deep
structure,” regarding all structures as subjective and ideologically tainted.
Feminism, though not a unified theory, is
among the most influential of current theoretical perspectives. Focusing their
analyses on gender inequalities and on the institution of patriarchy, feminists
have sought to understand the society from the standpoint of women. Feminists
have criticized all three of the traditionally dominant theoretical
perspectives – functionalism, symbolic interactionism and conflict theory – as
biased toward male points of view. However, the feminist movement has also had
its limitations. Most feminists have been white middle-class women, and
feminist literature from the early days of the movement (1965-1985) often
neglected the concerns of working-class women and women of colour. In recent
years, however, some feminists have begun to analyze the ways that race, class,
and gender inequalities intersect. For instance, Patricia Hill Collins in her
book, Black Feminist Thought (1990), argues that the common experiences
of African American women have given them a unique perspective on social
theory. Feminists come in a variety of theoretical stripes. Early feminists
divided themselves up into liberal, radical, or socialist camps, depending on
their political points of view. Today, many feminist sociologists continue to
draw heavily on the conflict theory tradition, while many others have been
influenced by symbolic interactionism. A few even call themselves
functionalists or rational choice theorists.
So
modern sociology can be viewed not as an integral mono-science but as a broad
scientific movement aimed at studying various social problems faced by
industrialized countries. Sociology is in a theoretical ferment, as
sociologists seek new ways to understand the formidable complexity of the
social world. So the student’s point is not to memorize all these names, but to
be aware of the multiple points of view and theoretical differences among
contemporary sociologists.
BASIC CONCEPTS
AGIL – Adaptation, Goal
attainment, Integration, Latency (by T. Parsons).
Anarchism – a political belief that the society should have no
government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association
of all its members.
Behaviourism – a movement which sees human
behaviour as something which can be moulded by punishment and reward.
Chicago
school
of sociology – refers to a group of sociologists at the University of Chicago who made the first major attempt to
study the urban environment by combined efforts of theory and ethnographic fieldwork
in Chicago. They pioneered research on urban studies, poverty, the family, the workplace,
immigrants, ethnic and race relations, developed important research methods
using mapping and survey techniques. In 1920-30s, urban sociology was almost synonymous with the
work of the Chicago school. The major researchers in this school included William
Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, Robert Park, Louis Wirth, Ernest Burgess, Everett
Hughes, and Robert McKenzie.
Discrimination – unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of
prejudice.
Elite – a selected group of people whose personal abilities, specialized
training or other attributes place them at the top of any field.
Elitism – a belief or attitude that elite are the people whose views
on a matter are to be taken most seriously, or who are alone fit to govern.
Feminism – a doctrine that advocates social equality of the sexes; political,
social, and cultural movement dedicated to promoting equal rights for women in
all aspects of life.
Gemeinschaft (by F. Toennis) – a group formed around an essential will of
an actor who sees himself as a means to serve the goals of the social group;
community.
Gesellschaft (by F. Toennis) – a group formed around the arbitrary will
of an actor who sees a social group as a means to further his individual goals,
so it is purposive and future-oriented; society.
Goal
attainment – the need to define primary goals and enlist individuals to strive to
attain these goals.
Hawthorne experiments – studies at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant outside Chicago (1924-1936), which were intended to bring about a greater understanding of the
effects of working conditions, wages and other social factors on worker
productivity.
Ideal type (by M. Weber) – a type formed of characteristics and
elements of the given phenomena but it is not meant to correspond to all of the
characteristics of a particular case.
Integration – the coordination of the
society or group as a cohesive whole.
Latency – maintaining the motivation
of individuals to perform their roles according to social expectations.
Marxist sociology – materialistic interpretation of history influenced by G.
Hegel’s claim that reality (and history) should be viewed dialectically,
through a clash of opposing forces.
Pareto index – a measure of the inequality of income distribution.
Phenomenology – a philosophical doctrine proposed by Edmund Husserl based on
the study of human experience in which considerations of objective reality are
not taken into account.
Populism – a doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the
common people in their struggle with the privileged elite.
Positivism – a dominant theory in sociology of the XIX century that
genuine knowledge is acquired by science and that metaphysical speculation has
no validity. It was based largely on the ideas of the French philosopher
Auguste Comte, which were further elaborated in works of D. Mills, H. Spenser
and other researchers.
Postmodernism – contrasted by modernism, whose authors attempted to come to
new terms with old ideas in attempt to find the “deep structure” of the human
experience, postmodernism is identifiable by authors who were highly skeptical
of any “deep
structure,” regarding all structures as subjective and ideologically tainted.
Rationalization – the move away from supernatural to rational and empirical
modes of thought.
Social conflict – a confrontation of social powers.
Social Darwinism – an attempt to adapt Charles Darwin natural selection
principles to human society, thus producing a culture that embraces the
“survival of the fittest”. Natural selection, when applied to a society, also
includes such factors as organizational ability, talent to inspire others,
creativity, perseverance, mental flexibility, etc., in addition to physical
fitness.
Social exchange theory – a theory that focuses on the
exchanges that cohere individuals with each other and with groups; it is based
on a central premise that the exchange of social and material resources is a
fundamental form of human interaction.
Social equality – everybody’s equality to be subject
to law, equal rights to occupy public posts, equal political rights (as those
of freedom of speech, conscious, union etc.) and equal rights to education (by
P.A. Sorokin).
Social mobility – any transition of an individual or
social object from one social position to another.
Social psychology – a sub-discipline of both sociology
and psychology which involves the intersection of the social and the individual
where the individual is influenced by the social and, in turn, interacts with
the social and affects it as well.
Social stratification – division of the society into strata
(layers) that differentiate from each other by their wealth, activities,
political views, cultural orientations etc.
Sociometry
– the
quantitative study of social relationships; a
way of measuring the degree of interpersonal relationships between people.
Structural
functionalism – a theoretical perspective headed by T. Parsons with a
particular emphasis on function, interdependence, consensus, equilibrium, and
evolutionary change. The structure part of the approach is that institutions
and structures exist in the society as a whole. The functional part is that
different parts of each society contribute positively to the operation or
functioning of the system as a whole. These parts usually work together in an
orderly manner, without great conflict. Different parts are usually in
equilibrium, or moving toward equilibrium, with consensus rather than conflict
governing the inter-relationships of the various parts. Change tends to be
orderly and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary or with dramatic structural
breaks.
Symbolic interactionism – a sociological perspective which studies how
individuals and groups interact, focusing on the creation of personal identity
through interaction with others. Of particular interest is the relationship
between individual action and group pressures.
Weberian sociology – a doctrine elaborated by M. Weber which is based on the
concept of social action understood as behaviour to which humans attach a specific meaning or set of
meanings; it is to interpret and suggest understanding of what subjective
motives of human actions are, that’s why Weberian sociology is called Interpretive
or Understanding sociology.
Additional
literature
·
Blau
P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). – New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. – 354 p.
·
Bourdeiu
P. Logic of Practice. – Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. – 382 p.
·
Coser L.
The Functions of Social Conflict. – Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. – 188 p.
·
Durkheim
E. The Division of Labour in Society. – New York, NY: Free
Press; 1997. – 272 p.
·
Durkheim
E. Suicide. – New York, NY: Free Press;
1951. – 345 p.
·
Goldthorpe
J. H. Class Analysis and the Reorientation of Class Theory. – British
Journal of Sociology, 1996, # 47.
·
Homans
G. Elementary Forms of Social Behavior. (2nd edition) – New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.