Soc 100 - Ch. 2 - Social Theory

Richard Westernman Sociology 100 Course University of Alberta

Empirical Discipline 

tries to examine objective facts about the world outside, based on carefully-gathered data.

• based on observation and measurement of the world

• rely on evidence for validity'

• shows evidence that there is inequality (gender and classes)

Theoretical

• Focused on abstraction, identifying general

  principles, and deduction from principles

• Mathematics and philosophy are theoretical:

  claims are true because of logic.

• Explains e.g. why this inequality exists,

  explaining relation between cause and effect.

• help decide on categories to use

Positivism - Auguste Comte 

• observable, measurable, and empirically-verifiable facts count as knowledge

• Rejection of metaphysical or ethical speculation.

• ignore value judgement - don’t moralize or claim

• statistics allows for objective impartial study of society - help break down data into measurable parts

Social Theory 

Explanation of empirical evidence, identifying how different phenomena are connected, what caused them, and what might happen. Usually implies methodological approaches.

Critical Theorists

Karl Marx, C Wright Mills, Max Weber, Feminism.

Symbolic Interactionists

Max Weber, George Herbert Mead, C. H. Cooley

Structural Functionalists 

Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons

What do Critical Theorists explore?

• Which social group is dominant? Who do they exploit? How?

• Social structures seen as way strong dominate weak: society is unfair.

• Inequality is a site of social conflict & disorder: we should change social order.

What do symbolic interactionists explore?

• how social interactions shaped by symbols, meanings, and intent or participants?

• social structures are products of repeated regular acts of individuals

• inequality is rooted in beliefs people hold

What do structural functionalist explore?

• how society is held together whole. What sustains them overall?

• social structures serve for functionality of a group to benefit

• inequality may help society to preserve social order

Critical Theory 

• Social theory paradigm that assumes society contains unjust inequalities between groups engaged in constant struggle for power & control. - power imbalances

• Examines reasons for inequality, explaining it in terms of social structures or group strategies.

• assume that this benefits one particular group at the expense of others

What question do critical theorists ask?

– What hierarchies are there? Could these hierarchies occur

‘naturally,’ or should we assume they were created?

– Who is on top? How did they get there? How do they keep

their position on top?

– Who’s at the bottom? How can we describe or measure their

disadvantages? What chances are there for resistance?

Forms of inequality

• legal equality

• political equality

• social equality

Legal equality

same laws applied to ever run, regardless of class and gender

Political equality 

All citizens are equal with same right vote and no hereditary power

Social equality

similar levels of wealth, influence, prestige and opportunity for all

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• legal and political equality masked massive social inequality

• Is political equality ‘real’ when the poor are obliged to go

  work for the rich? What justifies large inequalities of wealth or

  status? Were these inequalities established ‘fairly’?

• he believed that society created artificial inequalities, such as private property, which led to a system where the wealthy and powerful could exploit the poor

Descriptive 

Concerned with what works, what’s effective, how things are.

Normative/prescriptive

Concerned with what is morally good, worthwhile, how things ought to be.

Social sciences, like all sciences, claim to be morally-neutral

tell us how society actually works, rather than starting with ideas of justice, fairness etc

Karl Marx

• founder of critical theory 

• tried to explain inequality and exploration within society

• social theoretical analysis of capitalism

• it’s bad because it leads to social instability, not because it’s ‘unfair.’ 

Conflict Theory

Interprets society in terms of conflicts between groups struggling for position.

• type of critical theory

Karl Marx: Class - Conflict Theory

• economic class is a form of social inequality

• ownership of means of production is what give power - capitalism

• Bourgeoisie own factories; proletariat do not own factories therefore forced to work under them

• class conflict built into system; Bourgeoisie exploit proletariat to make profit

• history and society governed by continual systematic class conflict

Max Weber: Power - Conflict Theory

• Power hungry

• social inequality takes 3 main forms: economic class, social status, or political power/authority

• different groups define themselves in different ways without relation to others. Religion, nation, etc.

• Social groups continually fight for position, no predictable logic

• History and Society will always contain diverse conflicts as groups fight for power

Elite Theory

Argues society is an Oligarchy, i.e. ruled by minority ‘elite’ who have control over levers of power & decision making in economy, politics, and military.

• always ruled by a powerful fit individual like a king

• Hard to join the elite, focuses mainly on them

• rejects that everyone has an equal chance to succeed

• Identifies networks of personal connections between decision makers, showing they are drawn from a relatively homogenous background.

C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite (USA)

American society ruled by three institutions:

(1) 200-300 corporations; (2) federal govt; (3) military establishment; dominated by White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, (WASPs)

• rejects that US is a open and democratic society in which people have a chance to succeed - “American dream”

John Porter: Vertical Mosaic (Canada)

Canadian society ruled by small number of families of British origin, particularly in Toronto & Montreal; barriers to access by other ethnicities & working class.

• rejects that all Canadians are equal in their possessions, the amount of money they can make, and the oppertunities in which their children have 

Achieved status 

Social rank that you have earned by your actions, you can gain or lose this rank or position

• class, political power

• Marx and Weber

Ascribe Status

Social rank that you have been born into that are unchangeable within the hierarchy

• categories them into groups based on inborn characteristics

• hard to escape

• natural and unalterable

Feminist theory 

• focuses on male advantages over females

• husband owns all of wife property and has the ability to vote

• Statistics include wage gaps, rate of victims of crime

• Qualitative evidence - different media portrayals of female and male sexuality, code of law, etc. 

Critical Race theory

• focuses on systemic structural advantages of one racial or ethnic group, often rooted in historical exclusion

• Statistics include: incarceration rates, poverty rate, etc.

• Qualitative evidence: portrayals of different ethnicities in the media, surveys of social attitudes

What are feminist and race theories trying to do?

identify the overarching social structures that produce such outcomes

Social Action 

• ‘Action’ is conscious, motivated, non-instinctual behavior

• ‘Social Action’ is action oriented towards shared meanings and actions of others.

Max Weber - Social Action

• looks at rationality of people’s actions – i.e., what reason or motive is behind their act

  • Animals act on unconscious instinct: not sociological!

  • Humans act consciously; we can say why we did something.

• sympathetic understanding, or Verstehen

• motives are sociological as part of a shared culture

  • When people’s socially act, they each assume the other has values, symbolic knowledge etc in common with them.

Methodological Individualism

Method of explaining broad features of society by first understanding what individuals do, and seeing how millions of such actions produce social consequences.

• Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism - Weber

Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism  - Max Weber

• protestants are richer than catholics

• reasons why is that protestants values

  • sprit of capitalism - needs calculation, organized work, and profit to be reinvested and not spent on fun

  • Believe in working hard and not wasting time

• rise of capitalism, act to survive - don’t have to be religious to act this way

• Catholics tend to give their money to charities to look good in the eyes of the lord

Iron Cage

Weber - describes the trapping of individuals in modern, rationalized, and bureaucratic social systems

Symbolic Interactionism

Theoretical paradigm focused on microsociological interactions between individuals, looking at symbolic meanings we attach to objects and our actions.

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)

• pragmatic explanation for human motivations

• learn responses from others about what is acceptable behaviour

• values get entrenched in us as fixed beliefs and values

Herbert Blumer (1900-87)

• Symbolic Interactionism

• focus on both the interactions of individuals and the symbolic meanings we attach to action

Dramaturgical Method

method of understanding individuals as ‘actors’ portraying specific ‘roles’ in interactions.

• taking on roles and living up to the expectations of those roles

• teacher, king, professor, student, prisoner, etc.

• Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

• dramaturgical method

• Presentation of Self in Everyday Life explores how individuality is expressed in terms of certain pre-existing social roles

• we are expected to behave in a certain way depending on your role

• try to meet expectation of the roles such as being a teacher or politician etc. 

• Personal self has several roles, how think about ourselves, individuality takes social form

Social Constructionism

• One type of symbolic interactionism.

• Interprets society as the product of numerous regularised interactions of individuals – i.e. constructed by them.

• Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann

The Social Construction of Reality

• Peter Berger & Thomas Luckmann

• looks at ways people interact to create shared social reality explain structures as products of individual action 

• how repeated actions and interactions over time create stable images, beliefs, and roles

• people have beliefs, morals and presuppositions

• society’s have habituated standards - all share the same expectations about one’s behaviour 

Situation

• predict how others will react to us

• generate expectations about their behaviour

• partner that we are interacting with observes what were doing and in return regulate their actions accordingly

• schemas are produced/fixed set of rules about how to behave in particular situations

A well-defined, regular interaction between people, with unspoken expectations/rules about how each behaves – e.g. how to approach someone in a bar.

Structuration

Giddens’s term for production & reproduction of social structures by individual acts: how does a way of acting get fixed as a structure that restricts individuals in future?

• how symbolically-mediated interactions generate social structures that then shape the interactions.

• world is symbols and structures

• structures are not fixed and unchanging and are constantly evolving due to individual actions

Anthony Giddens

• structuration

• how symbolically-mediated interactions generate social structures that then shape the interactions

• exist in a world of symbols and structures

• society is structured by our actions 

• can’t ignore symbols unilaterally - E.g. impossible to decide money is worthless!

• social structure limit individuals

• structures are not fixed and unchanging, constantly evolving by individual actions 

Collective Consciousness

The shared, ‘taken-for-granted’ moral beliefs or values that almost all members of a society agree on without really questioning them.

• the shared beliefs, ideas, values, and moral attitudes that operate as a unifying force within a society, creating a collective identity and guiding individual behavior

• Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim

• Structural functionalist

• collective or common consciousness

• beliefs and values common to members of society

• how we should dress, eat, treat others, etc.

• offences at our collective consciousness is faced with horror and disbelief feel like we were attacked

  • beliefs about Donald Trump

• we all need the broader context of society to provide meaning to our lives

Collective Consciousness of Crime

tend to be defined in the conscience collective: we all tend to assume that stealing and murder are wrong, and something like cannibalism is particularly bad.

Solidarity

Durkheim’s term for the social force that holds all members of society together, keeping us united with one another and distinct from other societies.

Mechanical solidarity 

Solidarity by similarities: united by what we have in common, e.g, similar clothing, shared beliefs.

Organic solidarity

Solidarity by differences: united by reliance on other people for what we lack.

Symbolic Interactionists

see society as the product of individuals coming together to achieve own goals: still individual above all

• focus on small scale interactions 

• social structures are produced by repeated actions

Critical Theorists opinion on social unity

is enforced by the powerful

What do structural functionalist believe about social unity?

• they think there’s something ‘social’ about us

• difference between a crowd and soceity

• may belong to a group even when you leave it

  • e.g. you’re always ‘Canadian’ even if you move to Italy

Suicide as a social problem

• Durkheim examines the apparently-individual decision to commit suicide

• Some groups have significantly higher suicide rates: Protestants

  more than Catholics, unmarried more than married etc.

• Durkheim rejected the psychological/individualized explanation as it does not explain suicidal difference between groups

• Symbolic interactionist explanations would fail: Protestantism

  and Catholicism are equally strict in forbidding suicide

• something about these groups independently of the individuals that make them up  - Social facts

Anomie

• Lacking social regulation or structure leaving people hanging with a world without meaning, Lack of social bond

  • Structural functionalists - society feels depressed with no regular interactions

• Prevalent in modern world (for Durkheim).

• major problem anomie and social disintegration as well

• society by default be unified, if not unified something has to be resolved

• Contrast with conflict theorists who see disunity as the norm,

  and think any unity is just imposed by the dominant group

Function (Durkheim)

• term for the role any social relation or institution (e.g. religion) has for maintaining society as a whole.

• Each social institution or form of social organization has such a function.

• argues we should analyze society as a complete system and thus explain its parts as having a function in it

• He uses analogy of organs in an animal: heart, lungs, eyes serve a

  function for the whole

Manifest function (Merton) 

An ‘obvious’ purpose – what a social institution is explicitly for.

Example: function of education is to prepare you for employment, but its hidden or latent function is to transmit social values to us.

Latent function (Merton)

The ‘hidden’ purpose of an institution – a (useful) side-effect of the institution.

Robert Merton

• Institutions may serve multiple functions, not all of which are obvious or explicit

– This is still positively functional, even though hidden: helps society.

Structural Functionalism

• analyses society as a whole, in which every structure serves a function/operation that keeps the whole together.

• Inspired by Durkheim, emerged in 1940s US.

• society has developed from simpler and more homogeneous to a more complex society of highly-differentiated and interdependent parts

  • In the past societies made up of a lot of very similar, quasi-

    independent parts. (Each village was microcosm of whole.)

  • Now, different regions or parts of society fulfill different

    functions. (Alberta provides oil; Saskatchewan produces

    wheat.) Different individuals have very different jobs.

•  interdependent parts, each relying on all the others

Adaptation 

Can this society adapt to its material environment, and ensure everyday

subsistence for its members?

Integration 

Does this society successfully integrate all

its members into a coherent, relatively-

similar whole?

Goal Attainment

Is this society able to identify goals for the

future and figure out how to achieve

them?

Latency

Can this society sustain certain patterns or values over time?

Talcott Parsons

• every society have four basic key functions to continue existing

• structural-functionalist account: the AGIL system

• – Political State goes toward Goal Attainment.

  – Educations system helps with Integration

AGIL System

Adaptation, Goal Attainment, Integration, Latency

• 4 basic kinds of functions for a society to keep existing

• Talcott Parsons