SESSION 2007/2008
SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, CRIMINOLOGY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Sociological Debates
Handbook
Contents
The Harvard System
Course Specification (the official version)
Understanding Sociological Debates
Lecture List
Reading List and Seminar Topics
Coursework Guide
Lecture Notes
Sample Examination Paper
UNIT CO-ORDINATOR:
Thomas Acton
Room Queen Mary 207
Phone: 0208 331 8923
E-mail: T.A.Acton@gre.ac.uk
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Inside Front Cover
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THE COURSE SPECIFICATION 1
COURSE SUBJ CODE: SOCI 0055
SCHOOL: Humanities
SOCIOLOGICAL DEBATES
Effective Term: Autumn and Spring
Course Coordinator: Prof.T.A.Acton
General Level: UG
Specific Level: 2
Credit: 30
University Department: Sociology, Criminology and Cultural Studies
Specific Entry Requirements: 120 credits at Level 1 on a designated Sociology programme
Introduction and Rationale:
This course deals with the theoretical framework of Sociology as a discipline and cognate disciplines such
as Psychology, Anthropology and History, through the medium of explanations of substantive issues that
address fundamental concerns about the nature of human social life and individual behaviour. It builds
upon work at foundation level; covers a number of concepts and forms of theorizing in sociology and
related disciplines; addresses a number of competing explanations, and begins to raise the question of the
object of sociological work and the matter of disciplinary boundaries. As one half of the core at Level 2,
Sociological Debates is designed to pave the way for students to undertake the Sociology Project at Level 3
by making them aware of the structure of sociological and other forms of explanation and beginning to
build in them the skills to construct a sustained explanation of their own.
Aims:
The purpose of the course is for students to examine how explanations, in sociology and in cognate
disciplines like History and Anthropology, are put together. As such, it is designed to identify for them the
fact that explanations necessarily involve theories (in other words, relatively stable accounts of what the
world is like), concepts (in other words descriptions of things or ideas), that may or may not derive from
these theories, an evidential base (which may or may not be successfully related to those concepts and
theories and may or may not be well founded) and forms of argumentation (in other words strategies for
persuading people of the value of a particular way of accounting for, analysing or describing something).
Sociological Debates seeks to do this by giving students the opportunity to examine in depth fundamental
issues surrounding human social life: the social character of and significance given to the body; the nature
of the human person and of human agency; the role that knowledge and beliefs play in the ordering of the
human world and the structuring and regulation of conduct; the question of the nature of individuality,
moral regulation and sociality; the question of human universals and social relativity, and the nature and
limits of the social. It will accomplish this by presenting students with a number of substantive areas of
investigation which provide discussion points for such issues.
Learning Outcomes2:
On completion of the course, students will
 be able to show an awareness of the way in which sociological and other forms of argumentation,
belonging to different disciplinary frameworks, are constructed (6.1.8; 6.3.1);
 have an understanding of the ways in which such argumentation deploys evidence in the discussion of
substantive issues and be able to review and evaluate such evidence (6.1.7; 6.2.3);
 appreciate the potentially wide range of theoretical frameworks and disciplinary approaches – both
competing and complementary – that might be able to be deployed in the discussion and explanation
of particular issues (6.1.4; 6.2.1);
 have acquired an understanding of some key concepts in contemporary sociological discourse (6.1.1);
1
This is the best version I have of what has been officially validated. Details can be checked against the definitive version in the
Humanities School Office, pending official circulation of the outcome of the Programme Review in Sociology of 2005. As an
official version, of course, its prime function is not enlightening students, but to satisfy the powers that be that we are doing the
right thing, and so blandness and generality are more or less inevitable. For a more specific account of what will happen in the
course refer to later sections in the handbook.
2
You may be mystified by the sets of numbers following each of the “outcomes”. These are references to a set of “benchmarks”
of what a Sociology Degree is supposed to achieve in terms of giving you generable “transferable skills” to make you a better
and more competent person. These are also written in terms of great generality to avoid the disappointment that might result
from expectations that are too specific!. But the more benchmark numbers that can be crammed into a set of learning outcomes,
then in theory, the more rounded and capable a citizen you will be on completion of the course.
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have begun to consider the nature of human individuality, sociality and group life (6.1.4);
be able to reflect on the question of knowledge and beliefs and their implication in the ordering of
human existence and the social institutions that flow from this (6.1.4);
begin to be able to reflect on the nature and limits of the social realm (6.1.3; 6.1.8);
appreciate some of the complexity surrounding the question of human universals and cultural
variability and the value of comparative analysis (6.1.3);
have developed their capacity to gather, retrieve and synthesize information (6.2.2)
be capable of constructing a reasoned argument and of presenting it in a scholarly manner (6.2.4;
6.3.6)
Indicative Content3:
The Human Body and Social Life; The Person; Power, Authority and Knowledge; Living in Other
Worlds; Human Instincts and Social Life; The Nature of the Social Bond; Understanding Genocide: the
Holocaust; Rethinking ‘Individual’ and ‘Society’.
Assessment Details4:
Methods of Assessment
Word Length
Weighting %
Outline Details
Coursework Exercise
2,5 00 – 4,000
25%
“The celebrated
obscure” 25%
and
Coursework Essay
2,500 – 4,000
25%
Essay from question list.
Examination
n/a
50%
3 hours including reading time
the
Key5 texts:
Author
Date
Title
Publisher
1993
The Essential Frankfurt School Reader
Continuum International
Hannah Arendt
2004
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Random House
Zygmunt Bauman
1991
Modernity and the Holocaust
Polity
Robert Darnton
1988
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes
in French Cultural History
Penguin
Mary Douglas
2002
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts
of Pollution and Taboo
Routledge
Michel Foucault
1991
Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison
Penguin
Norbert Elias
2000
The Civilising Process
Blackwell
Sigmund Freud, S.
1930
Civilisation and its Discontents (in Standard
Edition [SE], vol. XXI)
Hogarth Press
Harrington A. ed
2005
Modern Social Theory
OUP
Paul Hirst and Penny Woolley
1982
Social Relations and Human Attributes
Tavistock
Claude Lévi-Strauss
1999
Structural Anthropology
Basic Books
Marcel Mauss
1979
Sociology and Psychology: Essays
Routledge and Kegan
Paul
Andrew Arato
Gebhardt
and
Eike
Discerning students will realise that this list reflects an original orientation towards the “Cultural Studies” side of current
sociological debates. This year’s course leader will argue that one cannot understand these topics without the context provided
by classical sociological theory, and therefore, in a strict sense, it can be argued that this list is still a fair representation of what
the course will cover.
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This work will be assessed both formatively, during the year, and summatively at the end of the year. The Summative deadline
for all courseworks will be Wed.23rd April 2008. For formative deadlines see the handbook below.
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While these books all illustrate aspects of the course of sociological debates, please refer to the booklist in the handbook for
other works essential to contextualise particular debates within the framework of the discipline of sociology as it emerged in the
20th century.
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3
Understanding Sociological Debates
This course is not about society, except indirectly. It is about an activity called
“sociology” which gradually became perceived as a distinct academic discipline in the
century between 1840 and 1940, and has been practised by a tiny minority of
intellectuals in industrialised societies up to the present.
Although tiny, its scientific pretensions have been vast. Where historians had largely
been content to record and classify human actions retrospectively, sociologists
endeavoured (largely unsuccessfully) to synthesize history with other “human
sciences” like biology, anthropology, psychology and political economy to explain,
predict and even enable policy to modify the way society works, in the way that an
understanding of physics and chemistry enables the engineering of matter.
The heyday of the social acceptability of sociology came in the 30 years after 1945,
when the memory of the devastation of the second world war prompted governments
to look at sociology, and the social sciences more generally to try to engineer a better
world in which the horrors of the past could not be repeated. Sociology spread
throughout the universities of the capitalist industrial world, and its technical
methodologies were appropriated to enrich the official Marxism of the Soviet bloc.
Government funding of research enabled a brief flowering of “big sociology”, and
the subject even began to be taught in some British schools for GCSE and A-level.
For the last 25 years, however, sociology has been in a curious kind of retreat.
Governments have lost confidence; research funding has dried to a trickle. Although
“sociology” remains a component in the training of teachers, nurses and doctors, what
they study bears ever less relation to what is done in the remaining “sociology
degrees”. One consequence of this loss of confidence is that that postwar sociology is
seen as having failed in its promises, and not even to be worth studying. So if you
actually look at the sociologists to who you have been introduced so far, you will
remember a number of “founding fathers” of whom the last is perhaps Parsons – and
then there is no-one until the emergence of Giddens in the 1970s who put together a
modern sociology textbook for modern students (not!), and Turner in the 1980s. If
you look at most contemporary Sociological Theory courses, there is little reference
to any sociological writing between 1930 and 1970.
So one of the first question we need to ask in the course is “Why has contemporary
British sociology written such a huge chunk of its past out of its own historical
understanding of itself?” What happened in the missing years?
We will be studying sociological debates not just as an abstract tool for looking at the
nature of argument in society – although it can be that. We will be trying to identify
the important debates which shaped the history of sociology, as well as their
connection with clashes and arguments in society itself. We will assume that the most
important starting point for understanding the work of any writer is to understand
with whom it is they disagree and why. Sometimes this is easy: Marx, for example is
only too eager to tell you what is wrong with the writers he criticises. Sometimes it is
hard: synthesists like Durkheim and Giddens, who present themselves as bringing
together the best of previous writers, make it very hard to work out what alternatives
they fear their readers might prefer to their own understandings. Most writers are
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somewhere in between, sometimes attacking their targets/opponents, sometimes
ignoring them.
So the first key to understanding the history of ideas (in sociology or any disciplinary
theory) as a social process, is to understand with whom the key thinkers were
debating. Sometimes this may be camouflaged. For example Adorno after 1950 is
invariably polite in writing about Heidegger, but really rude and contemptuous about
the official Marxism of the Soviet bloc and much of the old Left in Europe; but he
continues to use Marxian arguments as part of a devastating demolition of Heidegger
and his philosophical tradition, and in the end his most telling accusation against the
communists is that their vicious authoritarianism in government is morally no better
than that of the Nazis supported by Heidegger.
You have been taught that there are no right or wrong answers to the interesting
questions in sociology; only more or less plausible arguments. Yet, as the arguments
get stale, conventional positions emerge which are criticised only by a minority.
“Scientific racism” was the conventional wisdom until the late 1940s. Today as big a
majority opposes scientific racism as supported it in the 19th century. Yet if we look
back we can find individual thinkers, like the almost forgotten German philologist
Johann Rüdiger, who in 1782 spotted the nonsense in scientific racism without
thinking twice about it. Even if there are no right or wrong answers in theoretical
debates, there are big winners and big losers in the history of ideas, and winning or
losing is not necessarily related to what we now understand as the truth. There are a
number of social scientists and sociologists who were hugely influential in their own
day, but today are ignored, or their names are remembered only because they are
briefly cited in some book which has become a classic text. So in this course, for
every writer we look at who is still a hot topic in contemporary debates, we will try to
look at one who has been neglected, and ask why the great majority of pre-1970
sociological thinkers (including all the women) have been more or less forgotten. And
we will speculate on who among today’s big names will still be read 30 years from
now, and who will be forgotten.
Is this way of teaching/studying sociological debates itself just taking sides in a big
ongoing clash between classical sociological theory and contemporary cultural
analysis? I hope not. It seems to me that neither classical embedding or contemporary
relevance are as fascinating as the very fragility and ephemerality of sociological
debate. Only when we face up to that can we judge how the questions formulated by
sociology may help us to study and to change the world in which we live.
The Process of Teaching and Learning
This course will be taught by lectures, seminars and workshops. All students will be
expected to make presentations in seminars, either of their proposals for exercises and
essays, or of successful achievements if asked. This is the third time the present
lecturer has taught the course, and experience shows the lecture programme set out
below is subject to constant slippage; but we can live with that.
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LECTURE LIST
Topic No.
Lecture Title
1
Introduction
2
What do we mean by “a debate”?
3
Who now reads ………..?
4
Are there alternatives to the Parsonian account of the start of Sociology?
Medical men, synthesists, Critics and Prophets
5
Making Social Change the problem
6
Making Theorising Change the problem (I). Marx and the Past
7
Making Theorising Change the problem (II). Marx and the Future
8
Theorising Change III: Durkheim
9
And back to the theory of Order: Max Weber
10
And were they part of one story? Functionalism as Synthesis.
11
Variants of Functionalism
12
A pigeonhole for Women?
13
The Missing Years I: The Nemesis of the Paradigm Shifters:. British
Sociology from the L.S.E. to the E.S.R.C.: Ghosts of the Welfare State
14
The Missing Years II: Sociology under State Socialism and NeoMarxism: Which one was the Evil Twin?
15
Restoring Synthesis: From Interactionism to Post-Structuralism: The
Curse of Amnesia
16
From Psycho-Analysis to Post-Modernism: The Grandest Weirdest
Narrative Ever Told.
17
Summary and Conclusion
18
Revision
6
Reading List and Seminar Topics
The main textbook for this course, as is evident below, is
Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP
This doesn’t mean that I agree with what it says.
Conveniently the writers in this book have put questions for students at the end of
their chapters. Sometimes these are a good alternative to the questions given below:
sometimes they are rather noddy. Further reading, and allegedly useful websites are
also given for each topic. Not all the contributors have equally good judgment in their
choice of websites, (they clearly were told by the publisher that without e-learning
they wouldn’t be up-to-date, ) so just watch out!
A quick crib to ideas you may find puzzling or that you read about once and have
half-forgotten is :
Crossley, N. 2005 Key Concepts in Critical Sociology London: Sage.
It also has sections of relevance to most of the topics below and often good advice on
primary and secondary sources. It is not a good starting point for any topic – but it
may rescue you if you get stuck.
There are a lot of books below. I don’t need to tell you can’t read them all. This list
serves also as a reference list for books I might quote in the lectures. Have I read them
all? Of course not – but when preparing this course I was surprised to find how much
I had read over 40 years – perhaps about half of what follows. But the other half I
have skimmed, looked at, trawled their indices : I think I know what’s in them – but
extra marks to anyone who shows me I’ve got any of them wrong! And you need to
know how to skim books too. Get as many as you can from the library shelves, and
give them 5 or 10 minutes of your time (and a couple of notes in your file) before you
decide which ones not to borrow.
To help you choose, I have marked primary texts with two asterisks **. This means
the texts referred to are important original historical contributions to the development
of sociological thought.. They are not usually the last word on their own subject. All
the other texts are secondary, in that they are conceived as critical discussions of the
ideas of others. But of course, sometimes these are themselves seen as having
original ideas, which are then discussed by others. Such works I mark with a single
asterisk*. The unasterisked remainder are seen as more purely secondary, aimed at
explaining sociological debates, carried on by others, to students. If you seek a boring
route to a safe lower second, best stick to ones like this published after 1990, - and
hope they don’t become as useless as the older ones, eh?
It is not planned to show any videos.
WEBSITE
A good guide to internet searches is at
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/sociology/
And follow the link to Sociological theory Sites
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Seminar Topic Reading Lists
1
Introduction:
What is Sociology – What happened in Sociology? How are the two questions
related?
Collins R. 1994 Four Sociological Traditions Oxford:OUP pp.3-46, 291-295
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
Part One
Harrington A. 2005 “Introduction: What is social theory” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.1-15
Hughes, J.A., Martin, P.J and Sharrock W.W. 1995 Understanding Classical
Sociology, London Sage pp. 1-17
*Parsons T. 1937 The Structure of Social Action NY:McGraw-Hill, Vol.2 ch.18
Scott J. 2006 Social Theory: Central Issues in Sociology London:Sage, Chapter 2
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.1
2
What do we mean by “a debate”?
i) What was at issue between a) Empiricism and Rationalism
b) Positivism and Dialectics
ii) Did “The Enlightenment” really happen?
**Adorno, T. 1973 Negative Dialectics London: Routledge Kegan Paul
*Chomsky, N. 1966 Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist
Thought New York: Harper and Row 1966
**Descartes R. (Originally 1649) 1968 Discourse on Method Harmondsworth:
Penguin
*Edmonds, D. and Eidinow J 2006 Rousseau’s Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in
the Age of Enlightenment, London: Faber (c.f also Edmonds, D. and Eidinow J
2006, “Enlightened Enemies”, Guardian Saturday Review, 29 April, p.4
Harrington A. 2005 “Classical Social Theory: Contexts and Beginnings” in
Harrington A. ed. 2005 Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.16-23
**Hegel G.W.F. (Originally 1817) 1892 Logic Oxford: OUP
**Hume D. (originally 1777) 1975 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Oxford: Clarendon Press
Jenks C. ed. 1998 Core Sociological Dichotomies London:Sage
*Marcuse H. (Originally 1963) 1991 2nd Ed. One-Dimensional Man London:
Routledge
*Merton R.K. 1968 (enlarged ed.) Social Theory and Social Structure London:
Collier Macmillan Ch.1
Porter R. 1990 The Enlightenment Basingstoke: Macmillan
**Rousseau, J-J
(Originally 1762) 1973 The Social Contract London:Dent
(Everyman) or http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.16
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3 Who now reads Goldthorpe/Parsons/Brinton/Spenser/the Scottish Hegelians/
any women who wrote before 1965?
Who are Sociology’s forgotten writers? Why are they forgotten?
**Addams, J. 1902 Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: Macmillan,
Anon. 1895 Editorial American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 1, No.1
*de Beauvoir, S. 1953 The Second Sex London: Cape
Bernard L. & Bernard J., 1933 “A century of Progress in the Social Sciences” Social
Forces Volume 11, Issue 4 pp.488-505, available at
http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/Anno%20Bernard%20&%20Bernard
%20Century%20of%20Progress%20in%20Social%20Science%201933.htm
Brinton, C.C. 1933 English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century
London:Benn
Goldman, L. 1998 “Exceptionalism and Internationalism: The Origins of American
Social Science Reconsidered” The Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume
11, Number 1, , pp. 1-36
Goldthorpe J.E., 1974 (3rd Ed 1985) An Introduction to Sociology Cambridge CUP
Layder D. 1994 Understanding Social Theory London: Sage pp.13-33
**McDougall (originally 1908) repr. 1960, An Introduction to Social Psychology,
London, Methuen
**McTaggart J.M.E., 1908 “The Unreality of Time” Mind: A Quarterly Review of
Psychology and Philosophy 17 (1908): 456-473.
*Parsons T. 1968 The Structure of Social Action Vol.1 3rd Ed. NY: Free Press,
“Introduction to the Paperback Edition” (and previous prefaces) + ch.1
*Rowbotham S. 1973 Hidden from History London:Pluto
Scott J. 2006 Social Theory: Central Issues in Sociology London:Sage, Chapter 1
**Various:, 1862-1884 Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of
Social Science Vols.6-28 (in the Archives of the Royal Society)
.
4. Are there alternatives to the Parsonian account of the start of Sociology?
Medical men, Synthesists, Critics and Prophets
Is modern sociology a by-product of the birth of scientific medicine?
Is reflection on the body the source of all human categorical thought?
*Cealey Harrison, W., and Hood-Williams, J., 2002, Beyond Sex and Gender,
London: Sage Ch, ch 1-3
*Foucault M., 1971 Madness and Civilisation: A history of insanity in the age of
reason, London: Tavistock
*Foucault M., 1973 The Birth of the Clinic London, Tavistock
Jones C, & Porter R. 1994 Reassessing Foucault London: Routledge
Porter, R..1987 Disease, medicine and society in England, 1550-1860 Basingstoke :
Macmillan Education, 1987
**Sorokin P. 1928 Contemporary Sociological Theories New York: Harper (See also
Sorokin P. 1966 Sociological Theories of Today, N.Y. Harper & Row)
*Turner B.1984 The Body and Society Oxford, Blackwell
9
Turner B.1987 Medical Power and Social Knowledge London: Sage
Turner B.1992 Regulating Bodies London, Routledge
5
Making Social Change the problem
In what sense was change a “new problem” in the 19th century?
** Comte A., (Originally 1842 )1970 Course of Positive Philosophy Indiana: BobbsMerrill (or abridged version, London Croom Helm, 1974)
Harrington A. 2005 “Classical Social Theory: Contexts and Beginnings” in
Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.24-37
*Foucault M., 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock
**Maine H. (Originally 1861) New ed. 1917 Ancient Law London: Dent
(Everyman’s)
**Spenser H. ( originally1892-8) 1969 New ed. The Principles Of Sociology Vols.IIII, London: Macmillan
6
Making Theorising Change the problem I: Marx and the Past
Marx believed that social institutions were functional in various ways for various
groups which emerge during the complex development of social stratification.
How come no text books put it this way?
Elster, J. 1985 Making Sense of Marx Cambridge:CUP
**Marx K and Engels F. (Originally 1847-8) 1985 New Ed. The Communist
Manifesto Harmondsworth, Penguin
**Marx K. (Originally 1867-1894) 1976-81, Capital 3 Vols, with intro by E.Mandel
Harmondsworth: Pelican/Penguin
Palumbo A. and Scott A. 2005, Classical Social Theory II in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.40-50
7: Making Theorising Change the problem II: Marx and the Future
Has History disproved Marxism?
*Althusser L. 1977 2nd Ed. For Marx London: NLB
*Callinicos A. 1989 Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique Cambridge: Polity
Press
**Marx K (Originally 1852) 1951,(3rd. Ed). The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Napoleon Moscow: Progress, OR find it in Marx K. 1973 Political Writings
Vol..2 Surveys from Exile, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Wallace, R.A. & Wolf A. 2005, 6th ed. Contemporary Sociological Theory Pearson
N.J, pp. 67-99
10
8 Theorising Change: III Durkheim
How does Durkheim’s account of social change differ from Marx’s
**Durkheim, E. (originally 1893) New ed. 1984 The Division of Labour in Society,
Basingstoke: Macmillan
**Durkheim E. (Originally 1897) 1952 Suicide London: Routledge
Palumbo A. and Scott A. 2005, Classical Social Theory II in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.51-62
*Parsons T. 1968 The Structure of Social Action Vol.1 3rd Ed. NY: Free Press ch.ch.
8-12
Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.5
9.
And back to the theory of Order
Is “Left Weberianism”a valid interpretation of Weber?
Collins R. 1994 Four Sociological Traditions Oxford:OUP pp.81-120
** Gerth H.H, and Mills, C.W. (originally1948), New Ed. 1991 From Max Weber:
Essays in Sociology, with an Introduction by Bryan S.Turner, London:
Routledge. [Be careful, however, these chunks of Weber are often taken out of a
context which is more nuanced.]
**Levine D. ed. 1971 On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings of Georg
Simmel, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
*Parsons T. 1968 The Structure of Social Action Vol.1 3rd Ed. NY: Free Press, chch.
13-17
Poggi, G. 2005, Classical Social Theory III in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern
Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.63-86
*Rex.J. 1973 Discovering Sociology London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
**Simmel G. (originally 1900) 1990 The Philosophy of Money London: Routledge
**Simmel G. (originally 1908) 1950 The sociology of Georg Simmel translated,
edited and with an introduction by K. H. Wolff, New York: Free Press
**Tönnies F. (Originally 1887) 2001 Community and Civil Society (tr.M.Hollis, ed.
J.Harris) , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NB it is also possible to get
earlier translations entitled just Community and Society
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.2-4, 8
**Weber, M. (orig. 1904-5) 1992 (New ed. of T.Parsons’ trans of Rev. Ed of 1920)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London:Routledge
** Weber M. (Originally 1920-22)1979 Economy and Society: An Outline of
Interpretative Sociology, Berkeley: University of California Press
Whimster S. & Lash S. 1985 Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity, London: Allen
and Unwin
11
10 And were they part of one story? Functionalism as Synthesis.
Is Sociology one discipline?
Collins R. 1994 Four Sociological Traditions Oxford:OUP pp.198-203
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
Part Two
Holmwood J., 2005, “Functional Theory and its Critics” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.87-99
*Mills, C.W. (Originally 1959) 1970 The Sociological Imagination Harmondsworth:
Penguin
**Parsons, T. 1951 The Social System NY: Free Press
**Sorokin P. (Originally 1956) 1976 Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and
Related Sciences Westport:Greenwood
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.9
11. Variants of Functionalism
Can the survival and evolution of functionalist ideas be explained by their own
functionality?
** Coleman, J.S 1990, Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP
*Davis K. and Moore, W.E., 1945 “Some Principles of Stratification” American
Sociological Review, Vol.10, pp.242-9 It is reprinted in Bendix, R and S. M.
Lipset eds. Class, Status and Power. New York: The Free Press, 1966: pp.4753.
*Davis K. 1959 “The Myth of Functionalism as a Special Method in Sociology and
Anthropology” American Sociological Review Vol.24, pp 757-72
Holmwood J., 2005, “Functional Theory and its Critics” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.100-109
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
ch.11
*Mauss M. (Originally 1925) 1966 The Gift London:Routledge & Kegan Paul
*Merton R.K. 1968 (enlarged ed.) Social Theory and Social Structure London:
Collier Macmillan Ch.Ch.2-5
Tiryakian, E. ed. 1963 Sociological theory, values, and sociocultural change: Essays
in honor of Pitirim A. Sorokin NY: Free Press
Wallace, R.A. & Wolf A. 2005, 6th ed. Contemporary Sociological Theory Pearson
N.J, pp. 45-66
12.
A pigeonhole for Women?
How far has feminism changed sociology as a whole?
Adkins L., 2005, “Feminist Social Theory” in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern
Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.233-251
12
*Beechey, V. 1987 Unequal Work: London: Verso
Campbell, K, 2004, Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology London:Routledge
*Cealey Harrison, W., and Hood-Williams, J., 2002, Beyond Sex and Gender,
London: Sage ch ch 4-11
Delamont S. 2003 Feminist Sociology London:Sage
*Greer, G., (Originally 1970) 1993 The Female Eunuch, London: Flamingo
*Millett, K. 1971 Sexual Politics, London: Hart-Davis
*Oakley A. 1974 The Sociology of Housework London:Martin Robertson
*Smith D., 1988 The Everyday world as Problematic Milton Keynes Open UP
Wallace, R.A. & Wolf A. 2005, 6th ed. Contemporary Sociological Theory Pearson
N.J, pp. 247-260, 292-300,
13 The Missing Years I: The Nemesis of the Paradigm Shifters: Ghosts of the
Welfare State
A. British Sociology from the L.S.E. to the E.S.R.C.
How could Titmuss write a book entitled “The Gift Relationship” of which
“altruism” is the main concept, and argue that Mauss is irrelevant, and not
even mention Sorokin?
To what extent did some British empiricist sociologists of the 20th century take up
an anti-theoretical position similar to the anti-rationalist position of British
empiricist philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries?
Does British sociology show a distinctive British class consciousness?
*Anthias, Floya 2001, 'The concept of ‘social division’ and theorising stratification:
looking at ethnicity and class', Sociology, Nov.
*Bott E., (Originally 1957) 1971 Family and Social Network London: Tavistock
*Cherns A. 1979 Using the Social Sciences Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
*Cherns A. 1972 Social Science and Government, London:Tavistock
Compton Rosemary 1998, Class and Stratification, Cambridge, Polity
*Giddens, A, and Held, David 1982, Classes, power and conflict, London:
Macmillan: sections II, IV, VII
Goldthorpe, J. 1980 Social Mobility Oxford: Clarendon Press
*Halmos P. 1978 The Personal and the Political London, Hutchinson
Halsey, A,H. 2004 A History of Sociology in Britain Oxford:OUP
*Hayek F.A, 1944 The Road to Serfdom London:Routledge
*Marshall TH 1965 Social Policy London, Hutchinson
*Marshall T.H. 1950 Citizenship and Social Class Cambridge, C.U.P.
*Platt J. 1971 Social Research in Bethnal Green London:Macmillan
*Popper K. (Originally 1945) 1966 5th ed. The Open Society and its Enemies London:
Routledge
*Rex J and Moore R. 1967 Race, Community and Conflict, Oxford:OUP
*Rex J.1961 Key problems of sociological theory London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Rex J. ed. 1974 Approaches to sociology : an introduction to major trends in British
sociology London:Routledge and Kegan Paul
13
*Titmuss R.M.1973 The Gift Relationship London, Penguin
*Townsend P. 1980 Poverty in the United Kingdom London, Pelican
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.15
*Winch P. (Originally1958) 1990, 2nd ed. The Idea of a Social Science and its
relation to Philosophy, London:Routledge
B. Historical Sociology and Paradigm-Changing
Is knowledge a matter of fashion?
How far did Anglo-American Sociology of Knowledge anticipate Foucauldian
Discourse Analysis?
How far does Asimov’s Foundation trilogy reflect the confidence of mid-20th
century American sociology in its own potential for social engineering?
**Asimov I. (Originally 1951) Foundation, London:Grafton (Novel)
**Eisenstadt S. ed. 1986 The Origins and Diversities of The Axial Age Civilisations
NY: SUNY Press
**Elias, N. (Originally 1939) 1994 The Civilising Process Oxford: Blackwell
**Feyerabend, P, (Originally 1975) 1993 Against Method London:Verso
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
ch.9
**Kerr, C. 1983 The future of industrial societies : convergence or continuing
diversity? Cambridge:Mass, Harvard UP
**Mannheim K. (Originally 1929) 1991 New ed. Ideology and utopia : an
introduction to the sociology of knowledge London:Routledge (Intro by
B.S.Turner)
*Mills, C.W. 1959 The Sociological Imagination, Oxford, OUP
**Popper, K. (Originally 1935) 1992 The Logic of Scientific Discovery
London:Routledge
Dennis Smith 2005, “Historical Social Theory” in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern
Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.132-152
*Turner B.S. 1999 Classical Sociology London: Sage Ch.15
**Kuhn T. (Originally 1962) 1996 New ed. The Structure of Scientific Revolution,
Chicago: Chicago University Press
14
The Missing Years II: Sociology under State Socialism and Neo-Marxism:
Which One was the Evil Twin?
A. ‘Communist Sociology’
How far did some ethnography and Marxist analyses in ‘Communist’ states
reproduce the methods of western sociology?
14
*Fei, H-T. 1980 “Ethnic Identification in China” Social Sciences in China, Vol.1,
No.1 pp.94-107
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
Ch.12
**Stahl, H H 1980 Traditional Romanian Village Communities Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press
Wong, S-L, 1979 Sociology and Socialism in Contemporary China, London:
Routledge
B. ‘Neo-Marxism’
Can Marxism be resurrected, not just as a series of insights or a starting-point, but
as a system of thought?
**Althusser L., 1984 Essays on Ideology London:Verso
Benton, T. 1984 The rise and fall of structural Marxism : Althusser and his influence
London: Macmillan
*Anderson P., 1977 “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” New Left Review, 100,
pp.5-80
*Castells M. 1978 City, Class and Power Macmillan, London
Kellner, D. “Western Marxism”, 2005, in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social
Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.154-174
Layder D. 1994 Understanding Social Theory London: Sage pp.34-55
Mandel E., (Originally 1972) 1999 Late Capitalism London:Verso
*Miliband, R. 1969 The State in Capitalist Society London: Weidenfield and
Nicholson
*Wallerstein I., 1991 Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of 19th Century
Paradigms
15
Restoring Synthesis:
Curse of Amnesia.
From Interactionism to Post-Structuralism: The
A. Interactionism
Can true understanding only result from micro-sociology?
**Cicourel, A.V. 1973 Cognitive sociology : language and meaning in social
interaction Harmondsworth: Penguin
**Berger P, and Luckmann T. 1967 The Social Construction of Reality
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Collins R. 1994 Four Sociological Traditions Oxford:OUP pp.242-290
**Garfinkel H. (Originally 1967) 1984 Studies in Ethnomethodology, Cambridge:
Polity
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
Ch.10
15
**Goffmann, E. 1972 Interaction ritual : essays on face-to-face behaviour ,
Harmondsworth: Penguin
Layder D. 1994 Understanding Social Theory London: Sage pp.57-90
Outhwaite.W, 2005, “Interpretivism and Interactionism” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.110-131
Scott J. 1995 Sociological Theory: Contemporary Debates Aldershot: Edward Elgar
ch. 4
B. Forgetting interactionist roots: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
Dobedobedo?
Ashenden S. , 2005, “Structuralism and Post-Structuralism” in Harrington A. ed.
(2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.196-215
*Castells, M. 1983, The City and the Grassroots, London: Edward Arnold
*Giddens A 1984 The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration.
Cambridge: Polity Press
*Habermas, J. 1984 2nd Ed. The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, Reason and
the Rationalisation of Society Cambridge, Polity Press
*Habermas, J. 1987 2nd Ed. The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 2, Lifeworld
and System Cambridge, Polity Press
*Habermas J. 1988 2nd ed. Theory and Practice, Cambridge, Polity Press
*Joas H. 1996 Creativity of Action Cambridge: Polity Press
*Joas H. 2004 “The Changing Role of the Social Sciences: An Action-Theoretical
Perspective” in International Sociology, Vol.19 (No.3)
King A., 2005, “Structure and Agency” in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social
Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.215-232
Layder D. 1994 Understanding Social Theory London: Sage pp.114-157
Scott J. 2006 Social Theory: Central Issues in Sociology London:Sage, Chapters 4-6
*Wallerstein I. 2004“The Changing Role of the Social Sciences: A Reply to Hans
Joas” in International Sociology, Vol.19 (No.3)
16. From PsychoAnalysis to Post-Modernism: The Grandest Weirdest Narrative
ever told
A
Forgetting Marxist roots: neo-Psychoanalytic Theory
Are Freudians more reliable prophets of resistance to conventional wisdom then
Marxists?
**Deleuze G. and Guattari F., 2004, New ed., tr. Hurley R, Seem M, and Lane H.R
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Continuum Introduction
by M.Foucault
Elliott, A., 2005, “Psychoanalytic Social Theory” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.175-195
16
Elliott, A. 2004 Social Theory since Freud, Traversing Social Imaginaries,
London:Routledge
B. Post-modernism and the demise of the paradigm
What is a post-modern turn?
How far does internal evidence support the view that the works attributed to
Manuel Castells are in fact by three different authors?
Does post-modernism remain a variety of post-modernism, in the same way that
“Death of God” theory remains a variety of theology?
**Barth, J. 1967 Giles Goat Boy, London: Secker and Warburg (A novel)
*Castells M. 2002 The Internet Galaxy Oxford: OUP
Crook S. , Pakulski J., Waters M., 1992 Postmodernization: Change in Advanced
Society, London: Sage
Hollinger R. 1994 Postmodernism and the Social Sciences: A Thematic Approach
London: Sage
**Lyotard, J-F., 1986 2nd. Ed. The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
Manchester: Manchester University Press
Nicholson L., and Seidman S. eds 1995 Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity
Politics Cambridge: Cambridge UP
Scott J. 2006 Social Theory: Central Issues in Sociology London:Sage, Chapters 7-8
Smart, B., 2005, “Modernity and Post-Modernity Part I” in Harrington A. ed. (2005)
Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.252-271
17
Summary and Conclusion
Which contemporary sociologists will endure?
Delanty G., 2005, “Modernity and Post-Modernity Part II” in Harrington A. ed.
(2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.273-291
*Eisenstadt, S. ed. 2002 Multiple Modernities New Brunswick N,J.: Transaction
*Giddens, A. 1998 The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy, Cambridge:
Polity
*Gouldner, A. 1970 The Coming Crisis of western Sociology London Heinemann,
Ch.13
Harrington A., 2005, “Conclusion: Social Theory for the 21st Century” in Harrington
A. ed. (2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP pp.313-316
Holton R., 2005, “Globalization” in Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social Theory,
Oxford: OUP pp.292-312
*Mouzelis N. 1995 Sociological Theory: What went wrong? London: Routledge
Wallace, R.A. & Wolf A. 2005, 6th ed. Contemporary Sociological Theory Pearson
N.J, pp. 415-437
17
Coursework for Sociological Debates –
Summative Deadline: Wednesday 23rd April 2008
The Coursework for Sociological Debates will be carried out under the portfolio
system, that is to say, we will work on it through formative assessment, then hand
them all in for summative assessment on or (preferably) before Wednesday 23rd April
2008. Each one will have an individual headersheet. For formative assessment, hand
(with headersheet) directly to Prof.Acton6 by the formative deadline; for summative
assessment hand them into registry in the normal way. Remember if you miss the
final deadline you get an automatic 0%.
Exercise “The celebrated and the obscure”: 2,500- 4,000 words 25%. Formative
deadline: November 29th 2007
Pick two dead7 sociologists, or thinkers important to sociology, one still well-known,
the other more or less forgotten (It’s your judgment as to what “forgotten” means, but
you have to justify this judgment!). For each writer summarise,
a) who or what was an important theory or theorist they disagreed8 with
b) why what they wrote that might (or might not) still be of importance in
understanding how people do sociology today.
Finally, indicate why you think one of your choices is still famous and the other is
not.
I do know this is a difficult exercise, and you won’t be able to find a textbook to tell
you how to answer it. You’ll have to go and read books or articles actually written by
the 2 dead sociologists you choose. And you have to choose them – I’m not going to
choose them for you.
After getting optional feedback from oral presentation, write it up in 2500 - 4000
words total Approximately one third of your text should be on each writer, and and
one third on the comparison.) Use the Harvard system for referencing. Write your
own title for the piece.
NOTE 1: Gross failure to use the Harvard system will result in a mark of 50% or less.
NOTE 2: I don’t expect to see downloads from the internet or other plagiarism in
formative work. I WILL catch you and there is no point, and I will be really annoyed.
Those I catch I will normally refuse any further formative feedback to.
3 “The Essay” 2500 – 3,000 words 30%
Formative deadline 7th February 2008
Either write an essay on one of the questions listed under the topics in the handbook,
OR write on one of the following questions:
This means DON’T HAND FORMATIVE WORK TO THE REGISTRY, or you’ll freak them out, and mess up the whole
point of formative feedback, which is that you get comments, and this helps you to do better work.
7
Check that they are dead – if they are still living you get no marks for them. People may be obscure just because they haven’t
had time to get famous yet. A couple of useful websites (thankyou, 2006 students) are:
www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/DEADSOC.HTML
www.sociosite.net/topics/sociologists.php - 299k
8
You don’t get any marks for telling me what they agreed with, or just what they thought themselves – not in this exercise you
don’t!.
6
18
l) Is a non-feminist sociology still possible?
2) Can we tell the story of society without grand narratives?
3) Do the functions of institutions shape the structure of society, or is it the other way
round?
4) Discuss the difficulties of bringing dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis into
a single discursive framework. Will the result be sociology?
5) If the person who invented the word “sociologie” is not the parent of the discipline,
are there any other plausible candidates for the latter role.
6) Are histories of sociology history or sociology?
7) Discuss Parsons’ view that Weber systematised all that was valuable in Marx.
8) What is the “problem of order”? Why is it a problem?
19
Lecture 1: Introduction
l) Where does the subject “Sociological Debates” come from ?
The Theory – Institutions divide in post-war British L.S.E. Sociology –
With Institutions being more important
- Theory (from abroad) as the hand-maiden to practical enquiry
- And getting the welfare-state up and running Titmuss, Townsend, Cherns,
Halsey, Goldthorpe (Elias and Baumann – uninfluential outsiders before their
retirements)
2) – and where does TA come from?
Originally a sceptic about sociological theory – studying institutions, not theory.
Taught to grab a theory and then get down to real work. (The reification of theory.)
Looking for a succession of adequate theories – functionalism, interactionism, neoMarxism, interactionism again, cultural analysis, neo-classicism, trying to make each
of them synthetic, following a series of fashions
Slowly and reluctantly realising how classical sociological enquiry had underpinned
his work.
But not realising – till re-reading Parsons and Merton, the difference between the
History of Sociology (the fashions and the Schools of Thought approach embodied in
Haralambos) and systematics.
- but still puzzled by Giddens – an a-historical synthesizer?
Enthused by the 2005 Stockholm IIS Congress. The need to recover work that has
been “hidden from history”.
3) The need to reconnect the “The Theory Course” with sociology as a whole. So this
is not “The Theory Course” (The Sociological research course is nearer to that if we
make an analogy with “theory” in the natural sciences). It is an unabashed history of
sociology course – but at the same time an exercise in reflexive sociology.
4) But before we can get there we need to do a bit of generalised philosophical
systematics – next week.
To discuss:
The use of Harrington A. ed. (2005) Modern Social Theory, Oxford: OUP as a textbook and as a source of questions and further resources.
How Seminars should work in support of preparing assignments.
How we will organise deadlines and feedback on assessments.
20
Lecture Two: What do we mean by a debate? What is a counterfactual?
1) Problem – we are not agreed on what we mean by a debate!
Incremental views of the growth of knowledge
Vs
Dialectical views of the growth of knowledge.
Even within the anti-dialectical positivist tradition there is recognition of the
assymmetry of affirmation and negation (Strawson), leading to Popper’s revision of
Ayer’s falsificationist criterion of meaningfulness:
A proposition is as meaningful as the specificity with which you can specify the
conditions under which it could be refuted.
But how might that proposition itself be refuted?
A more sociological view suggests that whatever view we adopt about how we ought
to argue, in real life it really helps to understand what someone is arguing if you know
who they are arguing against.
2) An example : Empiricism and Rationalism
Rationalism – the secular heir of medieval dogmatic theology (vs what would become
biblical theology), and of idealism (vs nominalism/realism).
Descartes and the project of a universal grammar (as part of a Universal system)
Empiricist resistance to rationalism: Locke and Hume
(footnote : is Berkeley a possible synthesis of rationalism and empiricism?)
Chomsky and the defence of system-building as an aspiration.
The attempt of later French idealists to synthesis empiricism and rationalism: the
myth of the enlightenment
3) Hegel and Dialectics:
Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis
Matter as the Antithesis of Spirit: Systematising theology to the point of extinction?
The Social order – state and church –overcoming alienation:
The first sociology of knowledge ?
4) Positivism as an alternative to Hegelian Negationism
Comte’s Postive Sociology (backed up by Quetelet’s “probabilistic statistics”)9
An incrementalist, but still idealist approach
Reifying negation as social change – a phenomenon to be studied (and brought under
control) scientifically.
To Discuss:
In what sense is there, or can there be “a science of society”? How do arguments in
sociology differ from debates in (a) other social sciences, and (b) ‘natural’ sciences’?
9
Quetet, L.A.J (originally 1835) 1842, tr. Knox, J. A Treaty on Man and the Development of his Faculties, Edinburgh:/
repre.1969 Gainesville:Scholars Facsimiles
21
Lecture 3. Who now reads…?
l) Inventing ancestors as a rhetorical device:
- We all do it: few did it as memorably as Talcott Parsons, but even he was quoting
Crane Brinton’s “Who now reads Herbert Spencer?” (as Halsey 2004 points out) :
Goldthorpe did it in the first theory lecture TA ever attended. I’m doing it to you
now. You think I’m making it up as I go along? No, I’m part of the grand tradition!
But why do we all go back to Parsons? (and not Crane Brinton?)
2) Did Parsons (1937) invent the contemporary discourse of sociology?
His whole case is that he did not: he just consolidated it:
Spenser had posed the questions – but gave “the wrong answers” (ie “positivistic
utilitarianism”)
BUT – 4 great authors had given the right answer between them.
Durkheim (contextualising social change, with his positivist heritage toned down).
Marshall (Alfred, NOT T.H!!) (with the economic reductionism screened out)
Weber (specialising on his account of rationality, and downplaying his account of
economic conflict, except to assert that Weber incorporated everything worthwhile
from Marx)
Pareto: the aristocratic Italian godfather of right-wing economics and sociology
(and Parsons’ real hero, at least before 1939? - The role of “The Pareto Circle”)
(Note: Pareto and Marshall are today both better remembered as economists)
3) Parsonian Functionalism:
Parsons (1937) suggests that between them these 4 authors
*bring together subjective and objective elements and thus
*create a “voluntaristic theory of action”
Parsons (1951) consolidates this theory to show how it
* explains the persistence of order and
* explains institutions through their functionality for actors and society and
* allows explanations of social change through pattern variables (eg
achievement/ascription and affectivity/affective-neutrality).
Apart from Spenser, Parsons’ fiercest criticism is of Pitirim Sorokin (1928) for
suggesting there were many sociologies: Parsons insists there is but one.
4) Is Parsons’ real debate with Spenser and Sorokin – or with Marx?
The conventional wisdom till the 1960s (and the earliest editions of Haralambos)
was that the real debate was between revolutionary socialism (Marx) and evolutionary
reformism (Durkheim, as the heir of Comte, the man credited with inventing the word
sociology.) Then interactionism comes to be seen as an in-between perspective –
eventually formalised by Giddens as “The third way” – and Haralambos has for 20+
years given 3 views of everything, of which “functionalism” is just one. You were
taught “there are no right answers in sociology.”
So did Parsons lose?
22
At one level yes – as we will see from all the criticisms poured upon his “abstracted
empiricism.” (Mills 1959) But at another level, Parsons (1937) remains the man to
beat, the man who set the terms of the debate, the man who sets in train the search for
commonality in sociology in a way that will always make the Haralambos/Schools of
Thought approach unsatisfying.
And (in the US and the UK at least – until Foucault) we have tended to read both
Durkheim and Weber through Parsons’ eyes, as the most important early thinkers.
We may disagree with Parsons – but before Foucault we tended to take for granted his
account of how and why sociology became important.
5) So – which debates in Social Science got missed out of the history of
sociology?: some suggestions




women and feminists (c.f. Addams, de Beauvoir, Rowbotham) – sociology
was about science, not about women!
“Christian Sociology” in the USA: Sociology was about science, not religion.
The National Association for the Promotion of the Social Sciences (18561884 in the UK) – amazingly reminiscent of the British Sociological
Association – but could not satisfy the workers (Samuel Caldwell Nicholson,
print worker, after hearing of a rough ride given to trade unionists at the 1865
Congress of Social Science, says “Why not have a Congress of our own?” –
and goes on to found the TUC in 1868. )
Why did NAPSS dissolve itself in 1884?
The Scottish Hegelians – an intellectual tradition that became unpatriotic in
1914 – but lived on in McDougall’s Social Psychology – an important source
of the persistent racism in contemporary Psychology.
6) So, if we look again at the 19th century, can we find an alternative explanation of
why sociology became an important new discipline? And why it was so androcentric
(male-oriented) – See next week’s lecture.
23
Sociological Debates - Lecture 4
Two possible alternatives to the Parsonian account of the start of Sociology
A. Is there a common “classical” account of the start of sociology ?
Parsons’ later Marxist, Marxisant and Interactionist opponents tend to accept his
account of sociology being a good idea,
- a scientific model
- named by Comte
- developed in different ways (on the basis of economics – Marx and Parsons both
say this even if they have different concepts of economics) by 19th century
thinkers
- synthesised in the 20th century
Neo-Marxists, Weberians and Interactionists (in varying combinations) in the mid –
and late twentieth century – share this view of sociology as a science, except that
each tends to present themselves as having produced the adequate synthesis, of which
early writers only achieved a part.
Are there alternatives?
B. The history that Parsons argued against
Parsons may have defined his theory of social action against Spencer’s utilitarianism
- but his view of the history of sociology is defined against Sorokin (1928), quietly
at first (Sorokin was his HoD) but increasingly explicitly (once he was Sorokin’s
HoD – c.f. Parsons in Tiryakian ed. 1963, Topic 10).
Sorokin saw the history of ideas as cyclical, and ideologies as always containing their
own sociologies, which were alternative answers to the sociological questions.
Parsons (like Comte and Durkheim) sees the history of ideas as (contingently)
progressive and cumulative, creating the unified body of knowledge (wissenschaft).
[Query Is a Science/Wissenschaft a set of questions or a set of answers?]
C . Foucault – and now for something completely different
Foucault sees Comte’s “naming” of Sociology as the accidental attachment of a label
to a tradition of social enquiry already well-established, and deriving from the
discourse of scientific medicine from the 16th century which
* empiricises itself through anatomy (OHPs of Vesalius 1543, Rembrandt’s anatomy
lesson)
* conforms to and extends the promise of science to enable the control of society
(NOT something Comte thought of first!)
* extends its control over madness as it medicalises it
* embodies itself in the architecture of the prison/hospital (theorised within
utilitarianism as Bentham’s “Panopticon”)
* leads to professionalisation of doctors and the growth of medical technique
* moves from individual therapy to the political economy of public health which
requires a knowledge of society (e.g. through the English Congresses of Social
Science 1856-1884)
24
D. The Body and Society
Turner (1984) and Porter (1987) popularise Foucault’s ideas to the English-speaking
world in the 1980s.
The new knowledge of society in the 18th century turns on a new sense of what it is to
be human – what are human attributes:
Knowledge of anatomy became a popular metaphor for all knowledge and all social
control (c.f. OHP of Hogarth’s the Reward of Cruelty, 1751)
The Body is retheorised as a kind of natural mechanics (OHP from Keith’s Engines of
the Human Body, 1919) – which can then be re-tooled.
Thinking about the relation between the “individual” and society is first of all a new
way of thinking about the relation between the embodied person and his environment.
E. Sex and Gender
A topic problematised by re-thinking the (inevitably gendered) body
- leading to a sociology which only slowly learns not to be androcentric ?
Or is the discourse of sex and gender itself a social construction which is then visited
on the body? (c.f. Cealey Harrison and Hood-Williams 2002)
F. Points in common between Foucault’s medical discourse analysis and Parsons’
analysis of the sick role
- the doctor as an agent of social control in industrial society
- do they really contradict each other – or are they just starting from different
standpoints?
G. A rapprochement between post-modernism and classical sociology?
Is Bryan Turner’s rediscovery of classical sociology a bizarre betrayal or a return to
pre-Parsonian roots?
25
Lecture Five: Making Social Change the Problem
-
Looking more closely at the Sociology Comte is supposed to have started
1. A qualitative change in the nature of change?
* The French Revolution – the first regime change legitimating itself by reference to
the future rather than to tradition? (Any counter-examples?)
* The privatisation of land (Agricultural capitalism) and the Industrial Revolution
* Liberalisation of trade, urbanisation and population growth.
In the 1830s it still took a fast messenger as long to get from London to Paris as it had
one of Julius Caesar’s. Steam does not just make mass production possible: it shrinks
the world.
2. Reflecting on the nature of a new society
* Making the most of production: Adams Smith and Political Economy: The free
market needs people to get on their bikes (Acts of Settlement/ Poor Law Reform)
rather than go back to their villages (Elizabethan Poor Law/Oxfam in Ethiopia).
Bentham’s Utilitarianism tries to turn political economy in a general social theory,
making all happiness quantifiable.
* Making the most of freedom – described by A.de Tocqueville from the outside
(Democracy in America, 1835) and from inside the English liberal elite (J.S.Mill, On
Liberty, 1859)
3. Dealing with the problem of social change
* A.Comte, 1830s-50s: sociology as a positivistic science, using the methods of social
science to control the threat of disorder. and take control of progress.
* H.Spencer Principles of Sociology (1892-8) elaborates rather than develops Comte,
with a teleological [= attributing purposes as explanation] reductionist evolutionism.
4. Some 19th century variants of the “then and now” [modernity vs olden times] twostroke approach to time
Comte: Theological stage > Metaphysical Stage >> Scientific Stage
Marx: Ancient Society> Feudal Society>> Capitalism
Durkheim: Mechanical Solidarity>> Organic solidarity
Tönnies: Gemeinschaft [=community] >> Gesellschaft [= corporation/societal
relations]
Maine: Status>> Contract
Spencer: Tyranny> Oligarchy>>Democracy
26
Only Max Weber really avoids a bipolar characterisation of modernisation with the
idea of “rationalisation”; but he still sees history as going one way.
5. Problems with the concept of modernity
*the circularity of the chronological essentialism as an explanation (cf Molière Le
Malade Imaginaire (1673-4)
* doesn’t explain the psychological motivations of elites, who may not faithfully
represent the interests of social classes or interest groups (cf Mosca, Pareto, Michels)
* does the self-awareness of modernity mean that history has stopped? Or do we
move onto something else “after” modernity?
*How wrong (and how Eurocentric) was the notion that
modernity+industry+science = progress?
How come the holocaust?
27
Lecture 6 : Making Theorising Change the Problem I: Marx and the Past
Suppose change is inevitable; and the problem those who try to resist or take control
of it? Is the answer to the problems thrown up by revolution just to take revolution
further?
l) Karl Marx (1818-1883):
* seen as the key defender of the inevitability of revolution: but unites it with a kind
of scientific action theory, by calling for action to lessen the birth-pangs of a new age.
So, in criticising Feuerbach, he says we need to go beyond understanding the world to
changing it. (Despite the assertions of Marxists, he is not always consistent).
*As a Ph.D student, he switches to a lesser university to get his thesis through, then
edits a liberal newspaper, which gets closed down after it sides with workers’
struggles. In Paris, 1842-8 co-writes “The German Ideology” with Engels, while
trying to work out philosophically what is right and wrong with capitalism, and
decides that (following Feuerbach) he is a materialist, and this mean that the
fundamental social science is Political Economy (nearly the same as contemporary
economics). Ideology and culture are dependent on the material base.
*He gets involved in the Revolutions of 1848 – writes “The Communist Manifesto”
with Engels - and after these collapse spends the rest of his life looking on from afar
in London.
2) Marx’s theories of economic and historical change
Like most of the 19th century social thinkers, Marx turns the main social change that
they could see – the industrial revolution – into a model for all social change.
The shift from feudalism to capitalism is seen as a switch between two different
modes of production. A mode of production is a stable arrangement of
a) the relations of production i.e, how men and women organise working together,
and who tells who to do what, via co-operation, enslavement employment etc.
b) the forces/means of production, i.e. land, labour and capital (“congealed labour –
i.e. products used only to make other products), i.e. technology and raw materials.
In the transition from feudalism to capitalism, three main classes are defined by their
relationship to the means of production:
The Aristocracy – who own large swathes of land and organise its military defence.
The Bourgeoisie/Capitalists – who own capital, and use it for production
The Proletariat/Working Class – who own only their own labour power
NOTE: Marx does NOT say there are only three classes, still less that there are only
two. There are
a) Many others e.g. Peasants, who own or rent small amounts of lands, but have no
servants, Usurers who own money and lend it to Aristocrats or Capitalists
28
b) Divisions within the bigger classes, e.g. Finance Bourgeoisie, Manufacturing
Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie (But the Capitalist Finance Bourgeoisie is a bit like
the usurers under feudalism.)
BUT at times when there is acute social, inter-ethnic or class conflict, classes tend
into two great alliances, just because in a battle it makes sense only to have two sides.
So Feudalism gets established when agriculture is under attack from marauding
nomads or seafarers. Without soldiers well-fed and in charge of defence, agricultural
settlements cannot survive.
BUT as Towns develop, and non-agricultural production becomes a bigger part of the
economy, the townsfolk get to think with big walls, constables and a decent militia,
who needs the aristocrats and their taxes?
i.e. Under Feudalism, Aristocratic domination of the relations of production is
essential – But as urbanism and capitalism develops, Aristocratic domination becomes
a restraint on trade (e.g. all the castles along the Rhine), and has to be thrown off for
capitalism to develop its full potential.
So the “bourgeois” revolution occurred when the relations of production got to be out
of synch with the development of the forces/means of production.
3) Projecting the theory backwards
Marx suggests that similar revolutions must have occurred hunters and gatherers
(“primitive communism”) were over thrown by early agriculturalists and their kings
and emperors (the ancient and Asiatic modes of production), and when the ancient
Empires were in turn overthrown by “barbarians” who carved out feudal states.
But in each case their are cultural residues from earlier eras: the barbarians took the
titles of King and Emperor, and the religion of the old Roman Empire, while the
bourgeoisie just love to get knighthoods and peerages, still.
29
Lecture 7 : Making Theorising Change the Problem II: Marx and the Future
1. Projecting the theory forwards
Even though the class conflict between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie is resolved
by the bourgeoisie taking over, there is still a class conflict between them and the
proletariat (who had previously backed their employers against the aristos.)
Like the aristocracy before them, the bourgeoisie n(like all ruling classes) use their
political power to extract surplus value from the workers. So long as their
organisation of capital means rising production, they can get away with this.
BUT says Marx – there is a law of the declining rate of profit, which means in the
long run capitalists can only keep up their living standards by increasing exploitation
of the workers. So in the long run, like the aristos before them , instead of increasing
production, they will be restraining it, BUT if the workers take over with a socialist
mode of production, then production can increase indefinitely, because the workers
have no-one to exploit, and therefore their thinking about how to organise production
will be scientific, rather than ideological.
2) How does it happen in practice?
a) The role of ideology
- ideology and false consciousness – religion
- hegemony of the ideas of the ruling class: repressive liberalism
- selling (alienating) one’s labour power leads to spiritual alienation from the process
of production: instead of being creative joy, work becomes instrumental drudgery.
b) The role of class consciousness
– why peasants don’t develop it (they are only a class in themselves)
– why trade unions do (workers become a class for themselves)
- why revolutionary organisations are necessary
3) A Case Study: the failure of French Revolutions (Marx, 1852)
-
the first time as tragedy (Napoleon 1st)
-
the second time as farce (Napoleon III)
30
Why was the clown Napoleon III able to get away with his dictatorship for 19 years?
Marx argues it is because he was tolerated by the bourgeoisie, because otherwise the
conflicts between the Finance-Bourgeoisie and the Manufacturing-Bourgeoisie would
have led to civil war (a little bit like the drys and the wets in the Tories under Mrs
Thatcher).
Why was the main class conflict between 2 sections of the bourgeoisies? Because
neither the peasantry not the proletariat presented a threat:

the peasantry essentially represented the class basis of Bonapartist rule –
grateful to Bonaparte for consolidating the land reforms of the revolution, and
proud to offer their soldiers for his army (so long as they didn’t have to fight
anyone tough like the Prussians). Instead of becoming a class for themselves,
they support Napoleon III as a symbol of national pride.

The workers were not yet numerous or strong enough to take on bourgeois
state armies – as was to be shown again in the tragic failure of the Paris
Commune in 1870.
The idea of the vicarious representation of class interests is a fruitful one for
Marxists:
e.g. it can be suggested that fascist parties use sectional ethnic interests and racist
ideology to get the support of members of the working class against their true class
interests.
OR that prohibition in America was the vehicle for petty bourgeois revolt
OR that state socialism in USSR failed, because it attacked the peasants, but failed to
deliver the benefits of world capitalism to its growing working class, while state
socialism in Communist China persists, because through land reform it won peasant
loyalty, and was able to use a peasant army (like the Bonapartists) at Tienanmen
Square to resist bourgeois and working class pressure.
31
Lecture 8: Theorising Change III: Durkheim
l.) Why did all conventional British Sociology courses before the 1980s start with
suicide?
Because it fitted the UK empiricist model just right as a mythical ancestor.
a) It WAS theoretical (and approved by Parsons, and linked to “continental”
philosophy) and internationally comparative, and therefore not parochial,
BUT
b) It led straight to a counter-intuitive empirical finding and
c) This in turn leads back into the heart of Durkheim’s theory of how societies –
any societies work, or create their own solidarity.
2) What was sociology about for Durkheim? (The Rules of Sociological Method)
Sociology was about Social Facts. Only Social Facts explain other social facts.
Explanations about why individuals commit suicide may be biological, psychological
or historical (she had a brain tumour/was depressed/was too proud/was subject to
suttee) but none of these work to explain rises or falls in the suicide rate.
To find what might explain suicide rates we can look at what other social factors
correlate with them, e.g religious affiliation, civil/military status/gender/age etc.
Although others before (Karl Marx, Florence Nightingale) looked at official statistics,
Durkheim is the first to carry out systematic multivariate analysis to try to arrive at
multi-factorial explanations.
Some of his analysis is questioned (eg do Catholics really commit fewer suicides) but
his method is unavoidable in empirical analysis: Halsey suggests it is what
distinguishes real sociology (thus placing himself in the empiricist tradition!)
3) So – what does explain Suicide?
Durkheim suggests that in modern industrial societies, the different factors he looks at
come together to increase or decrease anomie (a sense of “normlessness” not knowing
where you fit into society, and therefore what the purpose of life is anyway). Anomie
is the opposite of solidarity.
Query. Can “Anomie” be identified as the same as what Marx calls “Alienation”
4) How to create solidarity
Mechanical and Organic solidarity : Two REALLY BAD translations of similarsounding French words!
“Mechanical” – really means automatic or reflexive – in agricultural societies people
understand what other people are up to, because they see them at it. Religion helps
build common sentiments.
“Organic” means complex, like a complicated organism; in industrial society people
will not understand their place unless they are well-educated (morally and
scientifically).
32
Lecture 9: And back to the theory of Order
1) Max Weber – The two headed monster of sociology
If Parsons is the prophet that failed, is there an earlier prophet, a more reliable one we
can go back to, to tell us why society carries on as it does?
Weber is the obvious candidate – but which Weber?
Why should Weber appeal to sociology students? Because, unlike Marx and Parsons
who knew all the answers, but like you, he found sociological theory really, really
difficult. You’d never guess from text-books which just use short quotes from his
work, but in almost all of the big recurrent debates of sociology you can find different
parts of his work putting him on different sides.
2) Weber as Methodologist
Value-free scientist (but not positivist enough for the objectivist historians)
OR
The father of interpretativism, emphasising verstehen, the understanding of action as
meaningful behaviour (but still too positivist for interactionsts like Schutz.)
The value-free scientist inspires Gouldner’s “New Objectivity”; the interpretativist
under-writes the Frankfurt school and Habermas’ explorations of the lifeworld.
3) The theorist of Action
Is he a rationalist, building conceptual schema of ideal-types? (i.e. blue-prints,
patterns) “Ideal-type” is another really bad English translation of the original OR
an empiricist , looking for evidence as to how values affect actions in complex ways?
4) Idealist or Materialist?
Is he an idealist suggesting that human ideas have an independent causal role (e.g he
criticises Marx, and suggests Protestantism is something which enables the rise of
capitalism , and isn’t simply a result of it)
BUT
In his study of stratification in society, he suggests that although class is moderated
by all sorts of other statuses, he follows Marx in suggesting that class, based on
economic interest, is a key starting point for understanding ‘economy and society’.
THEN, just to complicate matters,
He suggests that politics may be formed in an indeterminist way by contingent
alliances of class and status groups, so that political parties may come to be
autonomous interest-groups in their own right?
5) Left-winger or Right-winger?
Sources of legitimacy: Charisma > Tradition > Legal-rationality (democracy +
bureaucracy).
Is the “real Weber” the colonel in the reserves who rode to war in 1914? Or the
disillusioned anti-war invalid who was sent back?
When he says that he isn’t “religiously musical”, does he imply others are? Or is he
genuinely agnostic?
33
Is he prophesying the “triumph of the will”, or warning against it? If his account of
bureaucracy seems to show the “führerprinzip” as inevitable, would he have rolled
over for it in 1933 like Heidegger, or would he have run away from it like the
Frankfurt School? Or would he just have had another nervous breakdown?
34
Lecture 10: And were they part of one story? Functionalism as synthesis
A. A Unified General Theory?
If the 19th century sociologists were all heading in the same direction, (as Parsons
1937 asserts), what was the basic structure of society created by social action?
In "The Social System" Parsons (1951) takes the concept of "function" which had
been kicking around for some time in social anthropology, and had been borrowed by
Merton for Sociology, and turns it into an "ism". [Note: the book is 1951: bits came
out before.]
B. The function of "function”?
A term (meaning whatever aids the survival of the fittest to survive) borrowed from
biological evolutionism, which thus brings together an explanation of change with an
explanation of continuity.
If survival is among the purposes of individual and collective action, then all actions
can be judged on how they help us survive (which anthropologists saw in terms of
structures persisting).
But surely, not all human action is rational? What is the difference between a
"function" and a "purpose" or a "reason"? Merton's (1947) distinction between
"manifest" and "latent" function tries to make explanation by "function" avoid the
"teleological fallacy"?
C. Parsonian functionalism
Where Radcliffe Brown sees structure determining function, Parsons saw function
creating structure. (But both try to cover this difference up!):
The emergent properties of systems of social action create social order - not just laws
enforced by the police, but the ordinary politeness of everyday co-operation. (Thus
solving Hobbes' "Problem of Order" without relying totally on co-ercive power.)
Socialisation > norms > values > legitimation of power > shape of socialisation,
which operates at 3 levels:
personality - culture social system
which is composed of 4 sub-systems:
A - Adaptive the economy) - adapting the environment to feed us
G - Goal-attainment (government/politics) - getting things like we want
I - Integrative - (law) regulates relations between system parts
L - Latency (cultural pattern-maintenance) - our yardstick of what ought to be
(c.f.diagram, Holmwood (2005) p.97)
35
Social Change can be explained (or at least described) via the pattern variables
Affectivity <> Affective Neutrality (Are our emotions involved?)
Diffuseness <> Specificity
Particularism <> Universality
Ascription <> Achievement
(How specialised are our relationships?)
(Is it who you are or what you know that matters?)
( sometimes called Quality versus Performance)
Collectivity Orientation <> Self-Orientation
An example
An example of social change Parsons tried to explain was the alleged growing
importance of nuclear family, (needed to stabilise the personality) and the decline of
the extended family (no longer needed to run the economy) - interesting, because
despite its initial plausibility, all empirical data (Townsend & Shils, Laslett etc.) more
or less completely disprove it. Throughout history it has been the rich and powerful
who operate the extended family (and still do – the Kennedys, the Windsors etc) and
the poor and powerless who live in their tiny shacks and one-family homes and just
have to get on with life (which mostly means working for the rich and powerful.)
36
Lecture 11. Variants of Functionalism
Almost from the beginning Parsons' theory was subjected to both friendly and
unfriendly criticism, with critics that start friendly becoming more unfriendly as they
go on.
Friendly variants
a) Persistance of the anthropological viewpoint, often built around Mauss (1925) The
Gift which is more plausible than the colonial reports of Radcliffe-Brown. This sets
up post-war structuralism in Levi-Strauss and Chomsky, where structure is seen as
determining function
b) Mertonian functionalism which
i) Disclaims the objective of grand theory for “theories of the middle range”
ii) Suggests the we can analyse “the functions of social conflict” (i.e. does not
see functionalist theory as incompatible with conflict theory)
Unfriendly criticism
a) P. Sorokin: Continues to attack the very notion of a unified general theory as
conflating reason with intention, and ignoring altruism and ethics. This anticipates
b) C.Wright Mills and “conflict theorists” drawing on Weber and (less obviously
Simmel, via Park and the Chiago School) to criticise Parsons
i) Methodologically for “a priori empiricism,”
ii) Politically for the conservatism of emphasising the functionality of the
status quo,
Conflict theorists interact with interactionists (and rational action theory cf
G.Homans) And prepare the way via Gouldner, for
c) neo-Marxist critiques from the 1970s, which concentrate their fire on theories of
social stratification (esp. Davis and Moore 1945) which ignore class conflict.
A re-emergence of functionalism?
Interactionists eventually come to see that most macro-social theory is functionalist to
some extent: the difference between Marx and Parsons is that Parsons’ functionalism
is societal, Marx’s fragmented.; both can be seen as positing rational action based on
interest, as in Adam Smith (1776).
As action theory becomes more macrosocial (Habermas, Joas) , theorists tend to
accuse each other of becoming more Parsonian.
Parsons today?
Counterfactuals show that he didn’t produce an adequate unified general theory, but:
i) this doesn’t stop system-builders trying to do so
37
ii) doesn’t mean that functionalist explanations don’t still pop up all over the place
iii) the “discrediting” of Parsons as over-systematic and conservative for his
functionalist theory of the social system disguises the fact that his version of the
history of sociology is only seriously (and partially) challenged by Foucault. We are
still doing sociology to the Parsonian agenda even if we follow him in trying to root
that agenda in Durkheim and Weber (and through Weber, Marx).
38
Lecture 12. A pigeonhole for Women?
Is feminism an after-thought in the history of sociology? Or should awareness of
gender-difference be built in from the beginning of any Sociology? But if it’s built in,
how can we make a special study of gender without re-doing the whole of sociology
(in which case the special study ceases to be special.)
1. Be clear at what level we are talking:
a) Women and Men: the difference that almost denies othering.
b) Women in Society: “gendered roles” rather than sexual difference
c) Sociology: Describing role-systems and also shaped by their history so far
d) Feminist/post-Feminist Sociology: able to transcend the shaping of analysis of
roles by existing and past social practice by problematising their taken-forgrantedness.
2. i Explanations There have always been
(a) practices of female solidarity (eg ways of faking virginity)
(b) social strategies for advancing women in general not just individually
2.ii BUT these in the past have tended to be
(a) “hidden from history” (cf Rowbotham 1973)
(b) dependent on prevailing analyses of why men and women are different
2.iii Some possible explanations
(a) theological > religious strategies of female organisation
(b) biological > resignation, accommodation and compensation
(c) psychological > individual self-actualisation strategies
(d) functional > rational realignment of gendered tasks
(e) economic > dual labour market theory > unionisation + wages for
housework
3. Feminist strategies in society depend on what combination of the above
explanations
is accepted.
Historical periodisation reflects
more general
“malestream” “theories” of citizenship and social policy:
a) Pre 1800 CE – Making the most of traditional roles/ exploiting difference
b) 19th century – demanding formal political equality (the vote)
39
c) 20th century - demanding social equality in welfare and work
d) 1970 + - demanding cultural equality/ an end to patriarchy/ male chauvinism
e) 1980 + - coming to terms with the critique from Black Feminism
f) 1990+ Post-feminism ????
4. Feminism in Sociology
There have been feminists in sociology since its beginning – Jane Addams, Beatrice
Webb etc.. But is it true that only in phase (d) above they’ve been re-making
sociology? And if so how ?
i)
A mere correction of past errors (whether reformist or Marxist? Or a
retreat into irrationalist, post-modernism (the latter is a more meaningful
sneer if you accept Adkins’ reified concept of “the enlightenment”)
ii)
A radical re-conceptualisation of sociology causing (rather than just taking
advantage of) the re-problematisation of the body by Foucault and others
to expose androcentrism in sociology, and so make new problems central
e.g.
* “seeing the project of modernity as gendered”
* moving “beyond sex and gender”
* seeing all forms of social divisions and exclusion as gendered
* starting from gender in discussion of class and ethnicity, rather than tacking it
on afterwards.
5) How does this leave the commensurability of male and female experience.
We may change our bodies, but can we ever truly be sure we know what it is like to
be born another kind of person? Are anonymous texts gendered?
40
Lecture 13 The Missing Years I The Nemesis of the Paradigm-Shifters OR The
ghosts of the Welfare state.
British Sociology from the L.S.E. to the E.S.R.C.+ Historical Sociology
1. The L.S.E. Responding to the needs for the teaching of sociology: dividing the
syllabus into:
“Theory” (foreigners and their funny ideas) and
“Institutions” (the real world, i.e. Britain)
Dominates sociology teaching till the 1970s.
2. The servant of the Welfare State:
Titmuss, and the demographic approach to inequality and class; altruism as the
motivator of democratic socialism
Marshall: Citizenship as a “theory” to underpin Social Policy (still being used by
Turner and some feminists)
Endless controversies over class analysis and social stratification
3. Research: Empirical or Empiricist?
Urban ethnography in Bethnal Green: untheorised ideal-typism? (cf Platt)
The foundation of the SSRC – Cherns and the non-utilisation of Research Utilisation
Studies
The last “Big Sociology” in England: Goldthorpe and Halsey on Social Mobility and
Townsend on Poverty
4. The Backlash : Bringing Theory back into research
Left Weberianism (Rex and Moore in Birmingham) and neo-Marxism
Feminism: Marxist Feminism & Radical Feminism, themselves critiqued by Black
Feminism
Conservative critiques – Hayek, Popper, Halmos, Digby Anderson
Under Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, the SSRC becomes the ESRC.
- and the Haralambos approach to “Schools of thought” becomes semi-official
5. Historical Sociology and the theory of Knowledge
Does analysis of history (including the history of social thought) require a theory of
knowledge that stands outside history?) Eisenstadt, Schumpeter (& Asimov?)
Mannheim and the “free-floating intellectuals”
American critiques of scientism and positivism: Kuhn and Feyerabend.
41
The implausibility of modernisation theory.
The perception of sociology as being in crisis and losing authority: problems of
relatavism
Some minor sociologists, reading Kuhn, boldly declare themselves “paradigm
shifters” – while Giddens, boldly and deceptively just goes ahead and writes a new
paradigm (and rewrites it at intervals) in a synthetic text-book – the perfect antiHaralambos – but just as unreliable.
6: A possible summary:
THESIS: The LSE Approach: there is one sociology, and it’s what we do at LSE.
ANTITHESIS: The Haralambos Approach: Actually there are 3 schools of thought
(starts off as 2, but becomes 3 after interactionists establish themselves)
SYNTHESIS: The Giddens textbook: everyone had a lot to contribute, and now I’ve
got it right. (At least for now.)
A possible exam question: “Textbooks are the soft underbelly of any intellectual
paradigm” – Discuss.
42
LECTURE 14. The Missing Years II: Neo-Marxism and Sociology under State
Socialism OR Which one was the evil twin?
l) Marxism as the official alternative to Sociology
a) 1917-1947
Lenin and Stalin :
Dislike the bourgeois idealism of Durkheim and Weber, but
Like time-and-motion study and industrial planning i.e. pinch the content of
American empirical sociology.
b)1949 to 1989
Huge expansion of numbers of countries ruled by communism
Incorporation of the legacy of Marxists and "progressive" thinkers from 1930s
struggles in other countries:
e.g.
A.Gramsci - theory of hegemony and the need for "organic intellectuals of the
working class" - an alternative sociology of knowledge. (Imprisoned by Mussolini)
G.Lukacs - "reification" defeatable by proletarian consciousness
H.Stahl - combines the methods of fieldwork anthropology and local archival history
to show the reality of resistance to serfdom and slavery in Romania
Fei Hsiao-Tung - detailed anthropology of one village in China over 40 years – and
bringing fieldwork methods to humanise Stalinist National Minorities policy
All are just too big to be submerged by dictatorships, even if they suffer sometimes.
c) Late Communist government responses
i) realisation that somehow class analysis also has to be applied to "actually existing
socialism" eg. Milovan Djilas on "the new class",
Mao Tse-Tung on "non-antagonistic contradictions"
ii) Kruschev appropriates survey methodology as part of planning and denounces
Stalinism in 1956 - but also invades Hungary.
iii) The dream of reforming Communism - as a revolutionary movement - from
within continues - until the Prague spring of 1967.
43
2. Neo-Marxism as opposition in the West
a) How to deal with dislillusion with Stalinism?
i) Trotskyism: opposition to "socialism in one country" and world-system analysis:
Mandel and Wallerstein. Continues, like a broken record.
ii) Drifting to the right: Adorno, the Frankfurt school and the "missed opportunity" taking refuge in psychoanalysis. [NB Marcuse is the anarchistic exception]. The
origins of "Cultural Studies".
iii) Hoping for communist renewal with Gramsci and Lukacs, and a combination of
left-wing social-democrats/democratic socialists, and reforming Euro-communists.
Leads to creation of "The New Left" post 1956.
3. The possibility of Neo-orthodoxy ?
L.Althusser : The "Epistemological rupture" of 1846-8
The relative autonomy of ideology and "over-determination in the last
instance"
M.Castells (Mark One) turns collective consumption into the justification of socialism
in one municipality (cf the young Ken Livingstone drawing inspiration from Turin)
4. The end of Marxism???
But will "collective consumption" make the state ever more socialist? - No!
Monetarists successfully turn the clock back in the 1980s, and the New Left loses
confidence in over-determination and starts deserting to psychoanalysis and cultural
studies; Castells Mark One is replaced by Castells Mark Two on Social Movements.
44
Lecture 15. From Interactionism to Post-Structuralism
OR The curse of amnesia!
1. Restoring Synthesis : interactionism.
a) When did it start ? In the 1970s it was “realised” it had started in the 1920s: a new
synthesis that at first was thought of as an alternative to Marxism and functionalism
(as in the Haralambos version) – but in Giddens’ hands takes its own claims to
synthesis seriously enough to drop it’s name and assert it is sociology.
b) the claimed ancestors:
Weber’s “methodological individualism
Shutz’s phenomenology – I, you and the other
G.H.Mead: pragmatism
- and arguably all draw on the late 19th century social psychology of William
McDougall and William James
1937 Herbert Blumer ( seeing himself as part of the Chicago school) elaborates
“social interactionism” as an alternative to functionalism, with little success at the
time, but in the 1950s and 1960s this provides a vaguely progressive base for
sociologists like
Anselm Strauss (founder with B.Glaser of “Grounded Theory” – very popular with
Nursing sociologists,
Howard Becker ( “Whose side are we on?”, “On becoming a Marijuana User”)
They all claim that a macro-sociology can be built up on the basis of aggregating
microsociologies
c) Ethomethodology – a dead end?
Cicourel and Garfinkel argue that one does not even need a macro-sociology: that
understanding other people’s own micro-sociologies is the best we can do.
This produces brilliant ethnographies – but doesn’t actually dissolve the big questions
about social order and social change – so it gets combined with other perspectives.
Erving Goffmann never really says whether he’s an ethnomethodologist or not.
d) An interactionist sociology of knowledge – the social constructionism of Berger
and Luckmann. – suggests we have to understand how the structure of society is put
together in social interaction.
45
2 Forgetting Interactionist roots – Structuralism and Post-structuralism
a) This idea (interactionism) is borrowed by Giddens as an answer to the “problem” of
the relation between structure and agency (i.e the problem of which determines which
out of structure and function) in his theory of structuration – which so thoroughly
solves the old problems of sociology it doesn’t even have to be mentioned in his big
text book.
b) It also provides an answer to the perceived problem of the classical structuralism of
Levi-Strauss and the English Anthropologists either
through the use of historical counter-factuals to suggest structures are structures of
discourses rather than reality, (e.g. Foucault)
or by looking at the autonomy or creativity of actors within their own life-worlds
(like late Frankfurt school sociologists Habermas or Joas)
or by suggesting that social movements can create their own reality (eg Castells Mark
II, 1983)
At first this current of ideas is called post-structuralism (with the suggestion it has
gone beyond Marxism, functionalism and classical structuralism) but, as it presents
itself as synthesis it loses interest in defining itself against other “schools” – until it
itself is challenged by post-modernism.
46
Lecture 16. From Psychoanalysis to Postmodernism OR The weirdest, grandest
story ever told.
l) Reasons for not reading Freud – the confessions of a sociologist
a) A broad current of social thought that both seems to excite little controversy of
interpretation, AND to stand as a coherent trajectory of thought (Freud changed his
ideas as he grew older, eg on the occurrence of child abuse) that both post-Freudians
and anti-Freudians can define themselves against
b) A way of talking about the self/personality (id, ego, superego) which seems to
restore the complexity screened out by rationalists from Descartes on, that is a staple
of religious theorisation of the self (e.g.Paul)
But is psychoanalysis science? Its evidence/truth criteria seem to be pragmatic
rather than positivistic or dialectical.
This means it conflicts with positivistic psychology (eg Skinner, Descartes) - but
has rather a good fit for interactionist followers of W.James (pragmatists) and
A,Schutz (phenomenologists) – if they choose to take it up.
2) The Freudian legacy within Interactionism (often unstated)
Civilisation and its Discontents 1930
The “death drive” and repression as the foundation of culture –
a) Ties up nicely with social-evolutionary idea of “Sublimation” as the foundation
of progress (the “Chimpanzees’ testicles” theory of history)
b) Proposes that by understanding, we can take control, thus freeing ourselves from
constraints which are no longer necessary
3) Freudianism and Marxism
a) The Frankfurt School: cramming Freud into Marxism: explaining fascism via
“the authoritarian personality”
b) Structuralist psychoanalysis (J.Lacan) : Cramming Marx into Freudianism :
The mirror stage and the construction of identity > new ways of viewing class (&
ethnic, & gender) consciousness
– taken by L. Althusser to help explain the ideological “subjection” of the subject.
4) Beyond Freud and Marx
a) Marcuse (the primacy of negation) Foucault (the triumph of the counterfactual ?)
b) G.Deleuze and F.Guattarri Anti-Oedipus (originally 1972) – using a selfproclaimedly schizophrenic disintegration of the theories which dominate our mind,
and our understanding of our own desires (which reflect the structures of the very
capitalism which forms them). So the names of the “policemen in our head” who keep
us running round the same old grooves can actually be Marx and Freud, and they too
47
must be dethroned in order to liberate ourselves (cf Foucault’s introduction to AntiOedipus).
5) Post-Modernism
a) J-F Lyotard The Post-Modern Condition (originally 1979). The idea of the end of
the grand narrative (Marx, Freud, Parsons etc). The advantage of reifying modernity
is that we can then get over it.
b) Theorisation of Post-Modernity as the current condition of society, liberated by
information technology at the same time that it abandon the illusion of progress. (c.f
Barth J , 1967 Giles Goat-Boy; Castells 2002) The Internet Galaxy.
Relationship with Giddens’ “Late Modernity” ?
Emphasis on choice and risk as guiding principles of social action, as old constraints
fall away.
48
Sample Examination papers
Candidates should answer :
ALL questions in Part A,
ONE question from Part B
EITHER one question from Part C OR the other Question not yet attempted from Part
B
Part A gets ten marks; Parts B and C get 45 marks each
Candidates should write any essay plans or rough works they require in a separate
booklet so that they may consult them easily while writing their answers. These plans
should be written only for the benefit of the candidate, and not elaborated to impress
the examiner. They should, however, be handed in, attached to the other answer books
by a treasury tag.
Sample Paper 1
PART A: Multiple Choice Questions:
Tick the option you consider correct.
You get 2 marks for a correct answer, 0 marks for leaving the question blank, or an
incorrect answer
A1) Which of the following is the accepted formulation of the Hegelian dialectic?
a) Analysis – Dialysis - Paralysis
b) Synthesis – Crisis - Analysis
c) Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis
d) Digression – Regression – Progression
e) Hypothesis – Prosthesis - Enuresis
A2) According to Marx , the landed aristocracy was the ruling class in which of the
following?
a) The Capitalist Mode of Production
b) The Functionalist Mode of Production
c) The Asiatic Mode of Production
d) The Feudal Mode of Production
e) The Artificial Mode of Production
A3) Which of the following attempted to bring together the insights of Marx and
Freud?
a) The Shakers
b) The Hamburg School
c) The Frankfurt School
d) The Pre-Raphaelite School
e) The Chicago School
49
A4) Which one of the following books by Talcott Parsons is best described as
presenting critical discussions of four leading thinkers which he argues lays the basis
for a common sociology?
a) The Structure of Social Action (1937)
b) The Social System (1951)
c) Essays in Sociological Theory: Pure and Applied (1954)
d) Social Structure and Personality (1964)
e) Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (1966)
A5) Who wrote The Female Eunuch (1970)?
a) Kate Millett
b) Germaine Greer
c) Toni Giddens
d) Jane Addams
e) Anne Oakley
PART B CLOSE READINGS (forty-five marks)
Attempt EITHER Part B1 or PartB2
PART B1
Read the following passage carefully and answer all the questions following it in your
own words.
‘It would be a mistake to read Anti-Oedipus as the new theoretical reference (you
know, that finally encompasses everything, that finally totalises and reassures, the one
we are told we “need so badly” in our age of dispersion and specialisation where
“hope” is lacking). One must not look for “philosophy” amid the extraordinary
profusion of new notions and surprise concepts: Anti-Oedipus is not a flashy Hegel. I
think that Anti-Oedipus can best be read as an “art” in the sense that is conveyed by
the term “erotic art,” for example. Informed by the seemingly abstract notions of
multiplicities, flows, arrangements, and connections, the analysis of relationship of
desire to reality and to the capitalist “machines” yields answers to concrete questions.
Questions which are less concerned with why this or that than with how to proceed.
How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and
must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the
process of overturning the political order? Ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica.10
‘Whence the three adversaries confronted by Anti-Oedipus. Three adversaries who
do not have the same strength, who represent varying degrees of danger, and whom
the book combats in different ways.:
1. The political ascetics, the sad militants, the terrorists of theory, those who
would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourse. Bureaucrats of
the revolution and civil servants of Truth.
10
This sentence is in mock-Latin, and means “Erotic art, theoretical art, political art”.
50
2. The poor technicians of desire – psychoanalysts and semiologists11 of every
sign and symptom – who would subjugate the multiplicity of desire to the
twofold law of structure and lack.
3. Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas
Anti-Oedipus’ opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And
not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini – which was
able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively – but also the
fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism which
causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits
us.’
(from Michel Foucault (1972) “Preface” to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari AntiOedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Paris : Minuit (tr. Hurley R., Seem M. and
Lane H.R, 1977 NY:Viking Penguin))
Questions
B1a Briefly say what is meant by the phrase “not a flashy Hegel”. (5 marks)
B1b “Bureaucrats of the revolution and civil servants of Truth.” How fair is this as
a characterisation of Marxist and Positivist thought in the 20th century? (fifteen
marks)
B1c In your own words explain why Foucault is so enthusiastic for the work of
Deleuze and Guattari. (twenty-five marks)
PART B2
Read the following passage carefully and answer all the questions following it in your
own words.
‘The movement of progressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through
all its course it has been distinguished by the gradual dissolution of family
dependency and the growth of individual obligation in its place. The individual is
steadily substituted for the family as the unit of which civil laws take account. The
advance has been established at varying rates of celerity12, and there are societies not
absolutely stationary in which the collapse of the ancient organisation can only be
perceived by careful study of the phenomena they present. But, whatever its pace, the
change has not been subject to reaction or recoil, and apparent retardation13 will be
found to have been occasioned through the absorption of archaic14 ideas and customs
from some entirely foreign source. Nor is it difficult to see what is the tie between
man and man which replaces by degrees those forms of reciprocity in rights and
duties which have their origin in the Family. It is Contract. Starting as from one
terminus of history, from a condition of society in which all relations of Persons are
11
Scholars who study the relation between signs (eg words, pictures) and the things they represent
12
Celerity: speed
13
Retardation: delay
14
Archaic: old-fashioned, outdated
51
summed up in the relations of Family, we seem to have steadily moved towards a
phase of social order in which all these relations arise from the free agreement of
Individuals. In Western Europe the progress achieved in this direction has been
considerable. Thus, the status of the Slave has disappeared – it has been superseded
by the contractual relationship of the servant to his master. The status of the female
under Tutelage15, if the tutelage be understood of persons other than her husband, has
also ceased to exist; from her coming of age to her marriage all the relations she may
form are relations of contract. So too the status of the Son under Power 16 has no true
place in the Law of modern European societies. If any civil obligation binds together
the parent and the child of full age, it is one to which only contract gives its legal
validity. The child before years of discretion, the orphan under guardianship, the
adjudged lunatic, have all their capacities and incapacities regulated by the Law of
Persons. But why? The reason is differently expressed in the language of different
systems, but in substance it is stated to the same effect by all. The great majority of
Jurists17 are constant to the principle that the classes of persons are subject to extrinsic
control on the single ground that they do not possess the faculty of forming a
judgment on their own interests; in other words that they are wanting in the first
essential of an engagement by Contract.
‘The word status may be usefully employed to construct a formula expressing the
law of progress thus indicated, which, whatever may be its value, seems to me to be
sufficiently ascertained. All the forms of status taken notice of in the Law of Persons
were derived from, and to some extent are still coloured by, the powers and privileges
anciently residing in the Family. If then we employ Status, agreeably with the usage
of the best writers, to signify these personal conditions only, and avoid applying the
term to such conditions as are the immediate or remote result of agreement, we may
say that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from
Status to Contract.
( Sir Henry Maine, 1861, Ancient Law: Its connection with the Early History of
Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas, London: Routledge, conclusion to Chapter
5)
Questions
B2a) Briefly explain what Maine means by “the gradual dissolution of family
dependency and the growth of individual obligation in its place” (5 marks)
B2b) When Maine writes about “The status of the female under Tutelage” he is
referring to the older English common law under which women were legally
controlled by either their father, or their husband (until they became widows). How
far do you think he is right to suggest that increased personal and legal rights for
women are the result are the result of the declining importance of the family as a legal
entity? (15 marks)
15
Tutelage: The status of being under the control of someone whose job it is to socialise you, e.g
parent, teacher or apprentice-master
This refers to the duty of sons in the old Roman Empire to obey their fathers as
long as the father was alive.
16
17
Jurists: lawyers who write books as guides to the law
52
B2c) How well does Maine’s idea of the most important change in the creation of
modern society match later social theory in the writing of Marx, Durkheim, Weber
and others? (twenty-five marks)
PART C
EITHER attempt whichever part of QUESTION TWO you have not attempted,
OR
Answer ONE of the following Questions.
C1). Speculate as to whether the work of Anthony Giddens will still be widely cited
or read in the year 2106, giving reasons for your speculation.
C2). Parsons in the first volume of “The Structure of Social Action” (1937) suggests
that a general theory of sociology needs to emerge in opposition to Herbert Spencer’s
Utilitarianism. Did he pick a fight with the right guy?
C3) Is it social structure which determines how institutions function, or the other way
round?
C4). Discuss the impact of feminism on sociological theory since the 1960s.
C5) How far is the story of Manuel Castells one of a gradual loss of confidence in the
ability of humans to make an impact on their own history?
C6) Why has Durkheim’s Suicide been so important in the teaching of Sociology?
C7) Was Parsons right when he suggested that Weber took over most of what was
important in the work of Marx?
C8) How far is it possible to bring psychoanalytic theory into sociology?
53
Sample Paper 2
PART A: Multiple Choice Questions (10 marks)
Write down in your answer book which options you consider correct for each of
the questions A1-A5.
You get 2 marks for each correct answer.
A1. Which of the following is inscribed on Karl Marx’s gravestone ?
a) Hitherto politicians have only investigated the world; the point however is to
save it.
b) Hitherto political economists have only castigated the world; the point,
however, is to chasten it.
c) Hitherto philosophers have only sought to interpret the world; the point,
however, is to change it.
d) Hitherto polymaths have only sought to accumulate the world; the point ,
however, is to derange it.
e) Hitherto, philosophers have only sought to change the world; the point,
however, is to understand it.
A2. Which of the following died in 1979?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Max Weber
Talcott Parsons
Émile Durkheim
Anthony Giddens
Gilles Deleuze
A.3 The question “Who now reads Herbert Spencer?” was originally asked in print
by which of the following?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Talcott Parsons
Alfred Marshall
Robert K.Merton
Crane Brinton
C.Wright Mills
A.4. Sir Henry Maine described the movement of progressive societies as being which
of the following?
a) From feudalism to capitalism
b) From mechanical to organic solidarity
c) From community to corporation
d) From status to contract
e) From oligarchy to democracy
54
A.5 The original author of the book “The Gift” was which of the following?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Richard Titmuss
Mary Douglas
Marcel Mauss
Robert Burns
Félix Guattari
And, for a bonus mark, what was the book’s original title?
PART B: CLOSE READINGS (45 marks)
Attempt EITHER Part B1 or Part B2
PART B1
Read the following passage carefully and answer ALL the questions following it
in your own words.
Extracts from Chapter Two of Weber, M. (1920) Die Protestantische Ethik und
der Geist des Kapitalismus,translated by Talcott Parsons as : Max Weber, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: London: Allen and
Unwin 1930,
The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the
individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an
unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as
he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of
action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as
inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will
not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job.
Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has come to dominate economic life, educates
and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic
survival of the fittest. But here one can easily see the limits of the concept of selection
as a means of historical explanation. In order that a manner of life so well adapted to
the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate
others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a
way of life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really needs
explanation. Concerning the doctrine of the more naive historical materialism, that
such ideas originate as a reflection or superstructure of economic situations, we shall
speak more in detail below. At this point it will suffice for our purpose to call
attention to the fact that without doubt, in the country of Benjamin Franklin's birth
(Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism (in the sense we have attached to it) was
present before the capitalistic order. There were complaints of a peculiarly calculating
sort of profit-seeking in New England, as distinguished from other parts of America,
as early as 1632. It is further undoubted that capitalism remained far less developed in
55
some of the neighbouring colonies, the later Southern States of the United States of
America, in spite of the fact that these latter were founded by large capitalists for
business motives, while the New England colonies were founded by preachers and
seminary graduates with the help of small citizen, craftsmen and yeomen, for religious
reasons. In this case the causal relation is certainly the reverse of that suggested by the
materialistic standpoint.
But the origin and history of such ideas is much more complex than the theorists of
the superstructure suppose. The spirit of capitalism, in the sense in which we are using
the term, had to fight its way to supremacy against a whole world of hostile forces.
……….
The most important opponent with which the spirit of capitalism, in the sense of a
definite standard of life claiming ethical sanction, has had to struggle, was that type of
attitude and reaction to new situations which we may designate as traditionalism. In
this case also every attempt at a final definition must be held in abeyance. On the
other hand, we must try to make the provisional meaning clear by citing a few cases.
We will begin from below, with the labourers. One of the technical means which the
modem employer uses in order to secure the greatest possible amount of work from
his men is the device of piece-rates. In agriculture, for instance, the gathering of the
harvest is a case where the greatest possible intensity of labour is called for, since, the
weather being uncertain, the difference between high profit and heavy loss may
depend on the speed with which the harvesting can be done. Hence a system of piecerates is almost universal in this case. And since the interest of the employer in a
speeding up of harvesting increases with the increase of the results and the intensity of
the work, the attempt has again and again been made, by increasing the piece-rates of
the workmen, thereby giving them an opportunity to earn what is for them a very high
wage, to interest them in increasing their own efficiency. But a peculiar difficulty has
been met with surprising frequency: raising the piece-rates has often had the result
that not more but less has been accomplished in the same time, because the worker
reacted to the increase not by increasing but by decreasing the amount of his work.
…….He did not ask: how much can I earn in a day if I do as much work as possible?
But: how much must I work in order to earn the wage… which I earned before and
which takes care of my traditional needs? This is an example of what is here meant by
traditionalism. A man does not "by nature" wish to earn more and more money, but
simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that
purpose. Wherever modem capitalism has begun its work of increasing the
productivity of human labour by increasing its intensity, it has encountered the
immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labour.
……….it is one of the fundamental characteristics of an individualistic capitalistic
economy that it is rationalized on the basis of rigorous calculation, directed with
foresight and caution toward the economic success which is sought in sharp contrast
to the hand-to-mouth existence of the peasant, and to the privileged traditionalism of
the guild craftsman and of the adventurers' capitalism, oriented to the exploitation of
political opportunities and irrational speculation.
It might thus seem that the development of the spirit of capitalism is best understood
as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, and could be deduced from the
56
fundamental position of rationalism on the basic problems of life. In the process
Protestantism would only have to be considered in so far as it had formed a stage prior
to the development of a purely rationalistic philosophy. But any serious attempt to
carry this thesis through makes it evident that such a simple way of putting the
question will not work, simply because of the fact that the history of rationalism
shows a development which by no means follows parallel lines in the various
departments of life. The rationalization of private law, for instance, if it is thought of
as a logical simplification and rearrangement of the content of the law, was achieved
in the highest hitherto known degree in the Roman law of late antiquity. But it
remained most backward in some of the countries with the highest degree of
economic rationalization, notably in England, where the Renaissance of Roman Law
was overcome by the power of the great legal corporations, while it has always
retained its supremacy in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe. ………………
In fact, one may--this simple proposition, which is often forgotten, should be placed
at the beginning of every study which essays to deal with rationalism--rationalize life
from fundamentally different basic points of view and in very different directions.
Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a whole world of different things. It
will be our task to find out whose intellectual child the particular concrete form of
rational thought was, from which the idea of a calling and the devotion to labour in
the calling has grown, which is, as we have seen, so irrational from the standpoint of
purely eudamonistic self-interest, but which has been and still is one of the most
characteristic elements of our capitalistic culture. We are here particularly interested
in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every
conception of a calling.
QUESTIONS
B1a Briefly say what is meant by the phrase “rationalised on the basis of rigorous
calculation” (5 marks)
B1b “Concerning the doctrine of the more naïve historical materialism, that such
ideas originate as a reflection or superstructure of economic situations ….”: How is
Weber differentiating his analysis from that of the Marxists of his day? (15 marks)
B1c How far does the first paragraph of the passage quoted above justify Parsons’
attempts to present Weber’s thought as basically congruent with Durkheim’s view
that social facts constrain individual choice?
57
PART B2
Read the following passage carefully and answer ALL the questions following it
in your own words.
Extract from Clarke, J., Newman J. , Smith N, Vidler E., and Westmarland, L. ,
2007, Creating Citizen-Consumers: Changing Publics and Changing Public
Services, London: Sage, pp. 140-141
We have tried to address the ways in which New Labour connected national or global
discourses of modernisation through the repertoire of competition, choice and
consumerism. But marking the public dominance of certain discourses – their capacity
to organise mediated political framings – is not the same as assessing their popular
reach or embeddedness.
There are different sorts of analytical resources that might help with this issue. Here
we begin the sketch an account of this process of relational reasoning that draws on
Antonio Gramsci’s conception of ‘common-sense’ as a heterogeneous field of ideas –
a field with which specific political and ideological strategies attempt to construct
connections. This Gramscian view is different from more sociological conceptions of
common-sense as the realm of everyday knowledge colonised by dominant
understandings. Gramsci was insistent about its multiplicity and the implications for
the possibilities of political work and engagement:
“The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what
one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical
process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces without
leaving an inventory… Moreover, common sense is a collective noun,
like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product
of history and a part of the historical process.”
( Gramsci, A. 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London,
Lawrence and Wishart, pp 324-5)18
Ideological or discursive work attempts to articulate selected elements from the stock
of popular or common-sense ones – and, of course, to de-articulate or de-mobilise
other elements less favourable to the would-be dominant way of thinking. Gramsci’s
discussion of common sense was allied with a conception of everyday or practical
philosophising, implying that people were actively engaged in the work of
representing themselves and their conditions. This combination – heterogeneous
‘traces’ of discourses and practical philosophising – points towards the sort of
relational reasoning about public services that we explored ….. People drew on a
variety of discursive resources as the basis for conceptualising their actual and desired
relationships to public services. The persistence of such resources and their perceived
relevance provided a strong basis for constructing a sceptical distance from
consumerist reforms and their implied relationships.
In particular, collective or solidaristic conceptions of the public remain powerful
organising principles for thinking about relationships with public services. Clearly
these imply different bases or locations of solidarity – some imply a national public,
18
Originally written in prison in Italy between 1926 and 1937.
58
others a more local collectivity. While our study was not designed to draw out the
different forms of solidarity and exclusion that may be at stake in conceptions iof the
public, we can see their traces. Collective attachments to local or national bodies
expressed through ‘membership’ seemed a more desirable or meaningful attachment
than the formal status of citizen. Membership seemed to be derived from different
types of connection:




entitlement through material contributions (being a tax payer);
location (especially in the ‘local community’);
reciprocal obligation (to other members); and
identity (a localised, nationalised, racialised or ethnicised sense of belonging).
QUESTIONS
B2a Briefly say what is meant by the phrase “ideological or discursive work.” (5
marks)
B2b How do the authors draw on Gramsci to suggest that “common sense” can
actually be a foundation for criticizing dominant ideologies? (15 marks)
B2c (25 marks)
EITHER
B2ci How typical is this passage of the way in which the academic study of Social
Policy in Britain makes use of sociological theory?
OR
B2cii “Identity (a localised, nationalised, racialised or ethnicised sense of
belonging)”: Discuss the ommission by the authors of gender, class and disability
from their list of sources of identity.
PART C. (45 marks)
EITHER attempt whichever question from PART B you have not attempted.
OR
Answer ONE of the following questions:
C1. Is it still helpful to contemporary sociologists to contemplate the difference
between the approaches of Marx and Durkheim to social change?
C2. Discuss the view that feminism has only been able to have an effect on sociology
because it first had an effect on society itself.
C3. Discuss the view that although Parsons’ functionalism may have been discredited,
his account of the history and origins of sociology is almost unchallenged.
C4. Why does Foucault think that the growth of scientific medicine is crucial for the
development of the social scences?
59
C5. Did Giddens’ theory of structuration solve the age-old problem of the relation
between agency and structure?
C6. Critically discuss the role of text books in the teaching of sociological theory,
with examples from any area of theory.
C7. How far is the discourse of post-modernism dependent on a reification of
modernity ?
C8. Discuss the work of any one sociologist (from any country) whose work you
think is unjustly neglected within contemporary sociology in the English language,
and say why you think she or he has been neglected, and why they ought to be better
known.
60