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Summary Review Practicing Spatial Theories
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Review of the course Practicing Spatial Theories, given at the Radboud University.
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Hoofdstuk 1 – Classical paradigmsAny use of classical authors involves interpretation, and the work of interpretation never stops. Our
senses of what social theory is, and of what it can achieve, change too.
Classical theorists were form a pre Freudian intellectual universe. Modern theorists lived in a world
where the ideas of Freud could not be ignored.
To understand modern social theory, you have to know about what modern theorists have done with
classical theories.
Both classical and modern social theory can be seen as responses to, and transformations of, the
ideas of 2 foundational thinkers: Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel.
Foundational thinker: Kant
Contribution about the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and reality (ontology). He wanted to
avoid realism (the idea that the world exists wholly independently of my mind’s perception of it) and
idealism (the world is merely a projection of what my mind imagines it to be)
He claims that every object in the world has 2 sides:
- Noumenal side the world of objects in themselves, always out of our grasp
- Phenomenal side the world shaped for us by our minds
Post Kant thinkers wanted to deny the existence of the noumenal side.
Kant’s idea that was kept: different societies create different realities for the people that live within
them.
Post Kant thinkers took the direction of claims as to society and culture shaping reality. They also had
concepts of social power: the social and cultural forms which shape a particular group’s world for
the, are seen themselves to be shaped by power relations (ideologies by Karl Marx and philosophy of
power by Friedrich Nietzsche).
Foundational thinker: Hegel
The most important element that later thinkers have taken up, is the notion of dialects: processes of
movement and change. It refers to situations where opposing forces clash with each other.
Later thinkers: social structures and actions of individuals are dialectically intertwined: each has
effects on the other, each could not exist without the other, each makes the other.
For most versions of social theory, the division philosophy makes between pure individual free will
and complete determinism.
Summary of Kant and Hegel:
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 then seem to them to be real and to have great
power over them.
Weber: Criticism on the evolutionary theory: the western world had become more and more highly
rationalized, dominated both by rational forms of thought.
Hegel’s idea were later developed by Marx commodity fetishism created by capitalism: workers
make things in factories. These are then sold by capitalists for profit. The workers are alienated from
their work and from the things they make. A human product comes to seem as if it has a life and
mind of its own.
Georg Simmel believed human life is more tragic than Hegel or Marx would admit: the divide
between the human subject and the objects it makes can never be fully transcended. Money is
impersonal, money is also universalizing: it brings more and more people under its sway. Things and
people become evaluated not in terms of their qualities but in terms of their monetary value and
usefulness.
Modernity for Simmel is also alienating: it mass produces objects on a scale unheard-of before.
Not all classical theory sees modern society as an inescapable trap. For Marx it is dynamic and
constantly changing.
Freud says that the individual human mind is created by social and cultural forces that operate
beneath the level of conscious awareness. One part of the mind is called the ‘id’: instinctual drives
which produces desires for gratifying them (violence, sexual)
Other part in called ‘ego’: conscious human being, torn between gratifying the desires of the id and
suppressing them.
Final part of the mind is the ‘superego’: the internalization of the morality and demands of society.
Varieties of social analysis
French authors enlightment thinking
German authors romantic thinking
Enlightment thinking: emphasis on scientific thinking, on rational thought to expose how social
relations and cultural phenomena are formed by powerful groups. Thought that human nature is
uniform everywhere. Object of analysis: social factors (structures and institutions).
Positivism: how norms, rooted in institutions and social structures, exist outside of individual minds
but are internalized by individuals thus guiding their actions in patterned ways. Starts with
institutions
Romanticism: response to enlightment thinking. Produces by artists and poets. Values as poetic
expression and artistic imagination. Glorified the past/tradition. Variance in human nature. Object of
analysis: cultural phenomena (ideas, values, experiences). Geisteswissenschaften: the study of the
human spirit. The German tradition of social theory is about hermeneutics: the interpretations of
meanings. Especially the meanings that motivate people to do what they do. How cultures implant
values that are drawn upon by people in their actions. Starts with individuals.
Materialism/idealism
Social order driven by material factors (economy, technology, production of goods) or by more ideal
phenomena (culture, ideas, values)
, Marx (historical materialism): sees human nature as being both fixed and changing. The economic
element of human life is about humans transforming the natural environment to make goods for
their own use.
Production of goods property relations: which groups own which things. Key factors which can be
owned are: raw materials, the means (tools), the finished objects themselves.
Marx’ base and superstructure
Economic base: production of material objects. Control by a ruling glass over a class that makes those
objects
Social superstructure, government, law, education, family, culture, ideologies
Economic factors are the most important aspects of social order and social change.
Weber rejected mono-causal explanations: those which privilege only one set of factors He was in
favor of poly-causal explanations: those which try to combine more materialist and more idealist
factors and which show that each informs the other.
Wahlverwandtschaft: particular phenomena have intertwined material and ideal elements, each
influencing the other.
One of Nietzsche’s central notions: the will to power the natural drive by stronger individuals and
groups to dominate weaker ones.
Nietzsche’s epistemological relativism: There is no ultimate truth. There are only multiple forms of
knowledge , each fabricating their own truth.
Materialism: the primacy in social life of the material production of objects (economy) Idealism: the
primacy in social life of ideas and values, derived from culture, in people’s minds, motivating their
actions.
Hoofdstuk 2: Functionalist and Systems Theory Paradigms
Functionalisme was een van de belangrijks zienswijzen in de klassieke theorie. Het is in principe
ontwikkeld door Emile Durkheim en Herbert Spencer. Later is het functionalisme uitgebreid door
Talcott Parsons en daar gaat het in dit hoofdstuk over. Parsons heeft sommige ideeën veranderd
binnen de sociale theorie en zijn nieuwe ideeën demonstreerden de essentiële functionele processen
en mechanismen die de social order produceren.
Echter, vanaf vanaf 1950 kreeg de visie van Parson veel kritiek. Zijn ideeën zouden teveel nadruk
leggen op ‘consensual nature of social order’ en te weinig aandacht besteden aan issues als conflict
of ‘dissensus’. Zijn bedoeling en de poging om algemene en allesomvattende zienswijze voor sociale
theorie faalde. Daarna probeerden ander theoretische benaderingen Parson te vervangen want
uiteindelijk leidde tot een sterke fragmentatie van de sociale en het sociologische veld. Later nadat
de kritiek was gezakt, werd er geprobeerd om de belangrijkste thema’s die door Parson werden
geïdentificeerd en behandeld te redden en te herschrijven (re-work).
Classical Evolutionism
Functionalisme stamt voor een groot deel af van de evolutie. Hiermee wordt niet Darwins survival of
the fittest bedoeld waarin competitie tussen verschillende soorten centraal staat. Integendeel, de
klassieke evolutionism gaat over de toenemende structurele complexiteit, of het nu om organismen
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