sociology class 9

institutions - power and religion

1. power and social movements

a. definitions

power (Weber): the ability to achieve desired ends despite resistance from others

  • informal power and

    formal power: backed up by a position

authority: legitimate powerpeople wnat to follow that person, leads to stability

types:

  • traditional: give people authority because it has always been that way

  • charismatic: give people authority because of the individual, we like them

  • rational-legal: give people authority because they have a position

b. explaining formal power

  1. the pluralist model

    • structural-functionalist roots: explains stability

    • power is diffused between interest, poltiical and lobby groups

    • sources of power also diffused

    • extremes pulling it out of balance, resulting in policy covering middle ground

    • no segment of society rules everything, might be (dis)advantage

  2. the power elite (Mills)

    • one elite, 3 sectors:

      1. politics

      2. corporate

      3. military

    • interlinkage (they know each other) and circulation (they stay at the top, even when moving sectors)

      • quasi-hereditary caste (from father to son)

      • the elite is actually unaware of this happening

      • they have a common belief system

        rational-legal authority: they get the position

      • they think they’re working for the common good

  3. the ruling class

    • no political equality (Marx)

      • state favours ruling class

      • legitimation: parliaments, government, pressure groups…

    • hegemony (Gramsci)

      • state = political society (police, politics,…) + civil society (public sphere)

      • rule = force + consent

      • this means ruling through force, but also through people’s minds

      • concessions and seduction to gain economic control

    • the independent state (Poulantzas)

      • state not controlled by capitalists

      • capitalists not interested in power of the class, only interested in competing with each other

      • state’s only interest is stability, they favour the status quo

      • the status quo is capitalism

      • state has to keep divided classes together

        • repressive apparatus

        • ideological apparatus: rule through people’s minds

          → nationalism: state binds together culturally similar people; people believe they belong together, they’ll stay together

        • fragmentation of class: alliances and new petty bourgeoisie (middle class)

c. social movements

non-institutionalized practices (what they can do) and discourses (what they can say) that aim to invoke social change in subparts of society

  • formal politics (= top-down) and subpolitics (= bottom-up, politics of everyday life) (Beck)

  • new social movements

    • part of identity, good and virtuous, feel better than non-activists

    • materialistic qualities evolution to human rights as goal; post-materialism

stages of social movements

  1. emergence: goal identification; something is wrong in society

  2. coalescence: strategy how to go public and draw attention, thinking stage

  3. bureaucratisation: they go public and to sustain, they need to bureaucratise, organize themselves so tehy can keep existing without the original starters of the movement

  4. decline: different reasons

    • goals achieved (maybe choose new ones)

    • internal events (insufficient funding or conflict)

    • external reaction (cross boundaries, go to far society reacts negatively)

    • cooptation (people from movement are taken into formal politics)

2. religion

a. definitions

Durkheim: 2 types of objects

  1. profane objects: mundane, instrumentally understood, everyday items; like a water bottle

  2. sacred objects: transcendental, non-instrumental, objects with deeper meaning, they’re a symbol; like a wedding ring

object of religion: religion is a social institution involving beliefs and practices based upon a conception of the sacred

→ rituals: tell us what we should do, moral rules

→ morality

b. explaining religion

  1. the functions of religion (Durkheim)

    • totemism: the group becomes the totem

      people celebrate the clan animal, the clan animal = the clan, the clan = the social, religion celebrates the social

    • functions:

      • social cohesion → religion as collective cosciousness

      • social control

      • gives meaning, purpose → stability

  2. the power of the symbol (Berger)

    we use religion to converse with others with it, it keeps it alive

    • social construction of religion

      • human product

      • used to give meaning, guiding actions

    • cosmic frame of reference

      • to catch immortality → gives deeper meaning

      • in terms of crisis

        • Thomas Theorem: wether it’s real or not doesn’t matter

  3. the conflicts of the spirit (Marx)

    religion is a light in the darkness of oppression

    • religion legitimates capitalist rules, but also makes it tolerable

    • religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, the soul of soulles conditions. It’s the opium of the masses (oppressed turn to religion like people would turn to drugs)

    • illusory happiness (real happiness can only happen without oppression)

    • must be abolished

c. types of religious organisation

the nature of religious organisations (Troeltsch)

2 axes: more of a continuum

  • is religion accepted by the wider society? deviant vs conform

  • do they put themselves as having the only truth or as having 1 truth of many? dogmatic vs pluralistic

4 organizations:

  1. church: conform, but deviant

    • well-established, bureaucratically organised

      membership by birth

    • avoids controversy, don’t want to be deviant and get wider society against them

      → abstract rules so chances of opposition small

  2. denomination: conform but pluralistic

    • pluralistic churches like protestant countries: you can shop kind of between diferent groups, they won’t force you to believe their truth, there are multiple truths out there

  3. sect: dogmatic, but deviant

    • often revolve around people

    • you often get converted into one, because quite young organizations

    • bureaucratically organised, but less formal

    • basically young churches and can evolve into churches in the long run

  4. cult: pluralistic, but deviant

    • often individual leader

    • revolve often around 1 idea/dimension

    • not yet a structure

    • looser organised

d. religion in the 21st c

  1. secularisation (sociologists in 20thc thought this, but they were quite wrong)

    • forms of secularisation

      • decline of need for sacral and supernatural explanations

      • religious organisations redirect to profane issues (world issues)

      • religion to the private sphere OR only in public sphere

    • why?

      • social differentiation (Durkheim)

        many different positions in society - collective consciousness erodes, religion part of collective consiousness so erodes too

      • rationalisation (Weber-Berger)

        less need for religion, people think more rationally, uprising of science

  2. desecularisation

    constant need for the sacral

    • religious ‘market place’

    • sect-churc-sect (church back to side of society)

    • succesful sects can convert into churches to replace the declining churches

  3. fundamentalism

    a conservative religious doctrine that opposes intellectualism and worldly accomodation in favour of restoring traditional, other-worldly spirituality

    • features

      • extreme reaction against secularisation

        • conservative, study sacred texts literally

        • good vs evil

        • reject pluralism

      • emerging out of social marginalisation, people turn back to what they know when they feel threatened