Social theory is a crucial resource for the social sciences. It provides rich insights into how human beings think and act, and how contemporary social life is constructed. But often the key ideas of social theorists are expressed in highly technical and difficult language that can hide more than i...
David Inglis: An invitation to social theory
Introduction: extending an invitation
Structure of the book
Social theory: alien and unfamiliar more familiar start to feel comfortable with it no longer feel intimated by it.
Chapters with different ‘paradigm’ of social theory: but overlap between different paradigms (borrow, take up or criticize).
Ideas of earlier thinkers borrowed by later (transformed, new purposes); new elements (Freud) added, but mostly response
to ideas of classical authors (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel). Classical thinkers also had their sources: Kant and Hegel.
Not understand modern theory, without ‘classical theory’, and not understand them without basic knowledge of Hegel and Kant.
Recurring themes: 3 key items
Knowledge: social theory makes claims about what it understands as the ‘real world’ knowledge.
Ontology: about what the real world is like, what is in it, and what makes it up.
- E.g. ‘structuralism’ (functio): structures basic and most fundamental aspects of human social life (influence one’s thinks and acts).
- E.g. individualism: the ‘real’ things in human life are individual people.
Epistemology: how intends the theory to study what it thinks of as the ‘real world’.
- Interpretivism: understand social life by interpreting the meanings to be found in the heads of individuals.
- Positivism: social theory and sciences should be modelled on natural sciences (general laws).
Epistemology is intimately connected to its ontology, the one leading to the other and vice versa.
Positivism ontology: facts are out there, and they exist outside of any particular person’s consciousness.
Interpretivism ontology: most important things in world: meanings found in people’s heads (shaped by cultural systems or forms).
Structure and action (or agency):
Views on relative importance of ‘social structure’ or individuals’ actions’ in analysis of how social world works. Relates to
ontological issue, as to whether or structures or individuals are the most important aspects of human social existence.
Note 1: power of individuals to shape their own lives vs. capacity of social structures to influence people’s acts.
Note 2: not all forms of social theory explicitly formulate ‘structure’ an ‘action’ as their focus of concern.
Nature of ‘subjectivity’ (mind shaped by social/cultural factors) and ‘identity’ (way person thinks about himself and his place in world).
Modernity: what about contemporary society, development of it, what is made up of, how it operates, how it’s changing.
‘Modernity’ to describe what it is centrally about: replaced feudalism (> 16th century).
Classical theorists produced ideas about modernity that in some ways shared similar assumptions and in other ways were
quite different from each other: in terms of how enthusiastic or not they were about the new kind of society.
‘New modernity’ different from modernity of classical theorist. Called in different ways: post-modernity, late modernity, risk society,
network society, globalized society: reflect the epistemological and ontological commitments.
1. Classical Paradigms
‘Classics’ (till 1920-1930s) and ‘moderns’ (since 1920-1930s)
Fundamental difference classical and modern social theory: pre-Freudian vs. world where ideas Freud could not be ignored.
Last classics (Durkheim, Weber) died before revolutionary ideas Freud (1920s).
Difference marked by some of earliest modern theorists; dividing line ‘classics’ – ‘moderns’, but: moderns have to learn from classics!
Parsons: one of the first to claim the ‘classical tradition’ in social thought; there was now a post-classical (modern) field.
Distinctive of classics, but inspiration from the classics and reworking them for new purposes.
Included Weber and Durkheim among his classics, but not Simmel and Marx!
Really to understand modern social theory, you have to know about what modern theorists have done with classical theories.
Classical theories = building-blocks for modern theories (using, rejecting classical theories for example).
Classical theory must inform modern theory, but it is not a crushing domination by the old over the new.
A foundational thinker: Kant
Kant: the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and reality (ontology); avoid extremism of 2 earlier philosophical positions:
Realism: world exists wholly independently of my mind’s perception of it.
Idealism: world is merely a projection of what my mind imagines it to be.
Kant’s middle way between these positions involved claiming that each object in the world has 2 sides:
Noumenal side: beyond human perceptions; limited, because cannot grasp on world of ‘things in themselves’.
Phenomenal side: the object as it appears in human perception (the world shaped for us by our minds).
, Never gain direct access to ‘real’ world (noumena), because mind shapes phenomenal side, and so creates the world as we perceive it.
All human minds are alike, and so the world as perceived by me is the same world as perceived by you (or anyone else).
Post-Kantian thinking:
Tending towards denial of the existence of noumena and seeing the world primarily/only as series of phenomena.
The root of the central theoretical idea that the world and everything in it are ‘socially constructed’.
Kept Kantian idea that world is constructed by our minds, adds: how human brain works varies in social/cultural context:
different societies/cultures shape world differently (through culture world not only perceived, but also constituted).
Classical social theory developed these ideas in multiple directions:
Romanticism (early 19th c): each culture is unique, so not 1 single ‘human anture’ (divergent thinking and acting).
Social theory in France: different societies involve different ‘mental structures’ (radically different experiences of world).
Developed later (just before WWI), Durkheim: perceptions phenomena rooted in classifying structures of social groups.
Germany: culture shapes human sensory experience.
Weber: culture projects ‘meaning and significance’ onto the ‘meaningless infinity’; culture makes world meaningful.
Particularly important were 2 innovations:
The account of ideologies by Marx: cultural forms shaped by ideologies, which express ideas of ruling class (domination).
Philosophy of power by Nietzsche: cultural forms embody the will to power: desire to have control over other people.
Both: the ways each group looks at the world shaped by power relations within that group and in its relations with other groups.
Another foundational thinker: Hegel
Dialectics: the processes of movement and change.
Opposing forces clash with each other: clash transform both forces: new natures (comprising elements of each other).
Also new situations: taking elements from both forces, but goes beyond each force: novel situation (also dialectical).
Dialectical processes in human history will eventually reach an end-point, where all conflicts have been resolved.
Marx used this to understand how human history changed through the antagonism of opposing social classes.
Ruling and subordinate classes in conflict: changes both. New sit: powerful class weakened/disappears, subordinate class
becomes dominant, and new class appears which enters in conflict with new powerful one (new dialectical movement).
Final class conflict occurs in modernity: capitalists vs. revolutionary working class: new society (communism): no longer
any class conflicts, because all people in working class (so no class to oppose it).
Dialectical irony: capitalist class created society which produced enemy class (working class); destroyed that very society.
Social order involves dialectical processes: forces produces effects that rebound on those forces, changing them as result
Irony: people tend do things which have consequences what no one could foresee/control; ‘unintended consequences’
Also: dialectical relationships that pertain between the actions of individuals and social structures/institutions.
Actions cohere over time into fixed patters of (inter)action: social structures/institutions; people see these as ‘real’ and with
own; shape individual’s further (inter)actions. In this way social order based around these reproduced/maintained over time.
‘social structures’ and ‘actions’ dialectically intertwined: each has effects on other, could not exist without other, make other.
Structures and institutions may produce forces (ways of thinking/acting) which unintentionally come to change/destroy them.
Division between pure individual will and complete determinism (circumstances force you) is too abstract.
Marx: people make history but not in conditions of their own choosing.
Thought/actions (re)make structures and institutions, which (re)make thought and actions etc.; never-ending process. = structuration.
Kant: noumena and phenomena: the human mind shapes the world of perceptions (phenomena).
Hegel: dialectial processes and alienation:
People unconsciously create enduring social structures and institutions, which then come to impact on those people.
Modern society and Alienation (Hegel)
Alienated condition: people create things that seem to them to be ‘real’ and have great power over them.
Product of human activity is thought to have its own reality and not to be a product of human actions alienating.
Marx and religion:
God invented by people, but this has been forgotten; God seems to have life of His own and power to control people.
Only way to get out: realize that what controls people was in fact made by people themselves.
Once they realize, they can regain control, taming that thing and putting it to their own uses.
, Revolutionary class would realize that institutions/ideologies of capitalists’ society which oppressed them were not objective, natural
or inevitable, but in fact were merely human products that could be the altered way and done away with.
What is unique and specifically ‘modern’ about ‘modern society’? The nature of pre-modern and modern society.
Pre-Modern society Modernity
Marx Feudalism Capitalism
Economy centred around exploitation of peasants Economy centred around exploitation of industrial workers
by aristocratic lords. by capitalists.
Tönnies Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft
Social order centred around tightly knit communities Social order centred around self-seeking individuals with little
or no community sense.
Spencer Military Society Industrial Society
Violent conflicts within and between states; forced Peace and social harmony; voluntary associations of
regulation of the population by elites. individuals.
Durkheim Mechanical Solidarity Organic Solidarity
Simple division of labour; individual members of a Complex division of labour; individuals very different;
group all alike. different occupational groups all reliant on each each other.
Weber Society based on Substantive Rationality Society based on Instrumental Rationality
Individual’s actions motivated by values and ideas Individuals’ actions motivated by purely ‘instrumental’
e.g. religious beliefs. concerns e.g. making profit; highly bureaucratized social life.
Positive about nature and future of modernity: Durkheim, Spencer.
Negative about nature and future modernity: Weber, Tönnies.
Dialectical, seeing modernity as a mixture of good and bad elements: Marx.
Ideas to whether modernity was a good or a bad thing were based in different general understandings of social change.
Durkheim, Spencer: social evolution (1000s yrs): from small, simple social orders to modernity’s large-scale complexity.
Marx: also evolutionary thinker, but dialectical.
Weber: rejected evolutionary thought, regarding human history as much more disordered and contingent than
evolutionists thought. But: western world had become more and more highly rationalized, dominated by both rational
norms of thought and by rational forms of social control (seemed like evolutionary story struggled by the back door.
Almost all classical thinkers thought modernity had very alienating aspects (Hegel).
Why is it that modern society is particularly alienating in comparison to others?
Capitalism replaced any sense of morality/compassion, focus on money and profits, previously values replaced by rational thinking of
society centred around money and knowledge; modern people were alienated by ideas/institutions that they had created.
Hegel: humans (full of life/creativity) create objects that come to control them, threatening to snuff out all life/creativity.
Capitalist system: irrational in operations, ‘dead’ because mechanism is made by humans, but became oppressively upon
them. These are social structures created by living human beings but now running mechanically, devoid any human spirit.
Marx: ‘commodity fetishism’
Workers make things, sold by capitalists for profit; alienated from work, thus from human nature (creative & free work).
When objects workers made are sold for money: commodities. Transactions look like relation between things, but involves
human relations (making & selling); human product (market) seem to have life/mind of its own.
If people took back full control over their social relationships, then they would no longer be enslaved to alienated and
alienating products like the capitalist market.
Simmel
Human life is more tragic: divide between human subject and object it makes can never be fully transcended, with objects
made by subjects always coming to shape profoundly what those subjects subsequently do.
Modern society accentuates this; social relations centred around use of money (shape how people who use it think and feel).
Money is impersonal: not tied to any group of people, anyone can use it.
Money is universalising: brings people under its sway (invloed) regardless of their social position.
Money economy always comes down to ‘bottom line’: how much one makes or loses (not about morals, values etc.).
, It creates a culture based around purely rational calculations; things/people not evaluated in terms of qualities, but in terms
of their monetary value and rational usefulness. Relationships become like money itself: impersonal, formal and transient.
Thus money is a mechanism that alienates people from each other and from themselves.
Mass-produced cultural objects (‘objective culture’) threaten to smother the individual’s mind (‘subjective culture’) with too
much info, which cannot be ignored.
Freud
Idea that human minds wasn’t a coherent/stable entity wouldn’t have surprised thinkers such as Marx, Nietzsche, Durkheim.
All: individual human mind (‘subjectivity’) is created by social and cultural forces that operate beneath level of conscious awareness.
Id: part of the mind which produce desires for gratifying unruly instinctual drives (towards violence and sexual gratification).
Ego: conscious human being; torn between gratifying the desires of the ‘id’ and suppressing them.
Superego: demands suppression; the internalization of morality and demands of society (through childhood socialization).
Id and superego are constantly at war within the ego and the unconscious.
To reach social order: superego must tame id (in line with social expectations), but if superego tames too much, this causes psychic
turbulence in the unconscious. Too much repression person becomes neurotic.
Healthy society creates balance bin the ego and unconscious between id and superego.
Freud: Western society with culture what has created overly repressive superegos, with often devastating effects on the psychic
health (condition of alienation fostered by modern society).
Varieties of social analysis: how should nature of modern society be studies?
Enlightenment (France):
Scientific thinking; rational thought to expose how phenomena are formed by powerful groups.
Past and tradition enemies: faith in better future society.
Progress: move from simpler social orders towards more complex and to more egalitarian political and eco systems.
Natural science: ‘laws’ of social life (with the assumption that human nature is uniform everywhere).
Object of analysis: social factors (structures and institutions). Social and cultural phenomena as part of nature.
Humans endowed with reason; equally shared among all people, thus predictable outcomes.
Positivism: observable patterns of interaction between people, which form institutions and are formed by them.
Romantic (Germany):
Ideas primarily produced by artist and poets.
Glorified the past, regarding tradition in positive ways and reject Enlightenment ideas of social progress.
Worried about future: emerging capitalist/industrial social order (destruction of good; replaced with materialist values).
Scientific rationality as a threat to other values (like beauty, religious ideals).
Cultural variance among different groups of people: no one single ‘human nature’.
Interpretative and imagination-driven methods, deriving not from natural science, but humanities disciplines (criticism).
Object of analysis: cultural phenomena (ideas, values, experiences).
Strong distinction between nature (life-less or non-human) and culture.
Geisteswissenschaften: study of human ‘spirit’ of groups (cultures)/individuals; each culture different, so unpredictable.
Verstehen: the interpretive understanding of social action.
Hermeneutics: interpretation of meaning (meanings that motivate people to do what they do).
Overlaps between hermeneutics and positivism:
Why do people act as they do? This is to do with mental functioning.
Why are actions and interactions patterned, leading to social order?
Differences between hermeneutics and positivism:
Positivism:
Starts with institutions and norms they create; these motivate individuals to act in ways that reproduce those institutions.
Durkheim: assume the existence of social structure, then examine how individual’s actions reproduce them. Structures have own
independent existences.
Hermeneutics/interpretivism:
Starts with individuals; culturally derived values can lead multiple individuals to do the same sorts of things, thus creating
social institutions that guide their further action.
Weber: starts with actions, and examines how cultural values can shape repeated actions that then may stabilize into structures.
Structures are nothing more than the actions of individuals repeated over time.
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