Intro and Marx

Nordlinger

• Embedded view!

• Political sociology: interrelationships of political + social phenomenon

• The necessity of a sociological approach in accounting for certain political phenomena

• Importance of social factors

• Marx: all political/social phenomena are caused by the economic substructure of society

• Religion = helps maintain the structure of capitalist society

• European sociology: societies = totalities, attempted to understand relationships as a whole

  • Still relevant today

• American sociology: attempted to understand particular institutions

• Gemeinschaft relations: individuals interact in a face-to-face manner

• Gesellschaft relations: interactions take place in an impersonal fashion, involving only 1 aspect of one’s self

• Rise of comparative sociology in the 2nd half of the 19th century = due to the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution

  • 2 problems: integration of societies + protection of individual liberties

• Overlap between political philosophers + sociologists

Glasberg & Shannon

• Power view!

• Oppression: attitudes, behaviours, and pervasive and systematic social arrangements by which members of one group are exploited and subordinated while members of another group are granted privileges

• Structure of power inequalities

• Economics: central feature to the patterns of inequality

  • Political economy: the economy is not a neutral institution

    • Capitalism

      • Inequality = whether one is an owner of the means of production or an owner only of labour-power

    • Socialism: social cooperation between workers to create wealth, means of production are controlled by the state

    • Communism: means of production are collectively owned by the workers themselves

• Most political economies are a hybrid of these types

• Patriarchy

  • Sexism, discrimination

  • Rape culture: rape and violence against women are accepted as a common feature of society

• Racism

  • White-skin privilege/superiority

• Heteronormativity

  • Sexual orientation, monogamy

Orum

• Marx: proletariat (working class) would emerge victorious from a revolutionary confrontation with the capitalists

  • Thought that change was imminent

  • Determinism: inevitability of historical change

  • Revolution

• Alienation

• Men continually create social institutions

• Predicted a collapse of capitalism and the emergence of a communist society

• Substructure = economy; it shapes all institutions

• Superstructure = politics, state, religion, philosophy

• Capitalism limits the freedom and exercise of power by the state

• Ideology: ideas or ideals that sustain a regime

  • False consciousness

• Antecedents of revolutions

  • Economic

    • Overabundance of commodities

    • Centralization of capital

    • Proletarization (capitalists join the working class)

    • Worsening financial conditions of the average worker → verelendung: increasing misery

  • Social

    • Opposition between town and countryside

    • Communication

    • Politicization (trade unionism)

  • Class consciousness: the working class becomes aware of itself as a class

  • Political organization

Weber and Power

Orum II

• Weber

  • Emphasis on great figures making history → charismatic personalities

  • Strength of the state: law and administration + great leadership figures

  • No social laws!

  • Politics: a continuous conflict over the control of scarce material and symbolic

  • Rationalization of life → Western society

    • Rational bureaucracy: alienation, no freedom

  • Status groups: people who share a common occupational/professional position + values/lifestyle

    • The basis for political action

  • Political associations + Parties

  • Authority = central to modern societies

  • Iron cage, we are prisoners

  • Rule of law

Poggi

• Power: the probability, within a social relationship, of realizing one’s own even against resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests

• Weber: class, status groups, parties

• Stratification - power

  • Society’s goods can be allocated through:

    • Custom: status, status group, ideological/normative power

    • Exchange: wealth, classes, economic power

    • Command: rulership, party, political power

• The tendency for power forms to enhance one another, and together to enhance society’s power-at-large