Chapter 1: Sociological Theory & Approaches Sociology Pg 1- 43

Question 1

What is a theory?

Answer 1

• when we think & theorise we use concepts. According to one of the founders of sociology, Max Weber, the concept is “one of the great tools of all scientific knowledge.” Concepts are basic to all theory.

Question 2

Describe the origin & meaning of “theory”

Answer 2

• theory comes from the Greek word for God- theos.
• they made sense of & offered explanations for what happens in the world in terms of Gods they believed in.
• Theos: no life was possible without the daily rising and setting of the sun which gave light.
• development of natural religion with one God.
• theory: “story”, narrative, account, mental picture or linked set of concepts.
• a concept picks out a phenomenon in the world around us for understanding.
• the theory helps us in this process.
• theories them are built & formed out of linking concepts coherently together to create a “picture” or explanation of an aspect of the world we observe around us.

Question 3

What did Sociologist Charles Lemert (1993) establish?

Answer 3

Sociological competence.

Question 4

What is sociological competence?

Answer 4

Our own “theories” which shape the opinions & views about the world we live in.

Question 5

Describe the social vs sociological theory:

Answer 5

• If you cannot provide evidence for your theory about the world, you’re probably thinking in the realm of social theory.
• However, if you provide evidence for your social theory about social matters, then you have a sociological theory- one that explicitly rests on the evidence of facts informed by the theory.

Question 6

Describe the dominance of “Western” sociological theory:

Answer 6

• Western thinkers founded sociology, influenced by the enlightenment & the Industrial Revolution.
• They aimed to explain societal changes brought about by the invention of machines and the Industrial Revolution.
• New sociological theories emerged to understand how the individuals perceived & influenced the evolving world.

Question 7

Describe the 4 major perspectives or approaches in sociology, the first one being:

Answer 7

1. Abdul al- Rahman ibn Khaldun:

• He emphasized the importance preconceptions in intellectual debates and used historical data to establish social laws.
• His approach was based on actual events rather than idealistic notions, distinguishing his work in medieval Islam.
• His work analyses his religion critically, facing challenges due to the dominant culture of his time.
• His work characterized by a realist & materialistic perspective, was influenced by the context of religious absolutism.

Question 8

Who is the 2nd major perspectives or approaches in sociology:

Answer 8

2. Al- Muqaddimah (Introduction or prolegomena):

• He developed a distinctly sociological perspective to understand history informed by sociological concepts.
• His work was rational, analytical & encyclopedic, providing not just historical accounts but explanations of history.
• He focused on explaining society’s actual occurrences & traditions rather than eternal ideas.

Question 9

Who is the 3rd major perspectives or approaches in sociology:

Answer 9

3. Asabiyyah & cyclical social change:

• Assabiyyah referring to group cohesion, was crucial for establishing strong leadership & dynasties in nomadic tribes.
• Assabiyyah’s decline weakened dynasties, leading to their replacement by tribes with stronger cohesion.
• Ibn Khaldun believed dynasties followed cyclical patterns based on the strength of their Asabiyyah.

Question 10

Who is the 4th major perspectives or approaches in sociology:

Answer 10

4. Range & scope of Khaldunian sociology:

• To appreciate Ibn’s work, consider his contributions to social science disciplines such as conflict theory, labour theory of value & ideas echoed by notable thinkers.
• His concepts influenced luminaries like Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and his Toynbee.
• His work spans economics, physics, chemistry, theology and psychology. Khaldun’s insights remain relevant today.

Question 11

Explain racial difference:

Answer 11

• Ibn as discussed in “the principles of general sociology” addressed issues such as racial differences by attributing biological variations among people to their interaction with environmental conditions.
• He argued that personality traits & national characteristics are shaped by culture, experience, & historical context rather than innate differences.

Question 12

Who founded positivism?

Answer 12

August Comte.

Question 13

Describe Comte & positivism:

Answer 13

• Positivism emphasized evidence based knowledge.
• While his strict positivist views have limitations in complex human & social contexts, the focus on evidence remains crucial in natural & social sciences.
• The example of unaffordable university fees for many tertiary students aligns with Comte’s emphasis on evidence based statements.

Question 14

What are Comte’s theory of 3 stages: (human intelligence development)

Answer 14

1. The theological stage.
2. The philosophical stage.
3. The scientific stage.

Question 15

Describe the theological stage:

Answer 15

• Comte described the theological stage as necessary for human development to break free from circular thinking traps.
• Early human thinking required concepts to make sense of observations but needed observations to form concepts.
• The theological stage involved belief in Gods or a single divine being, providing answers about the world’s origin & human existence.

Question 16

Describe the philosophical stage:

Answer 16

• The human mind develops into a metaphysical stage, transitioning from theological thinking.
• Abstract reasoning about natural forces like the seasons & human instincts replaces belief in unseen God’s.
• This metaphysical stage leads to a unified understanding of nature as the cause of all phenomena.

Question 17

Describe the scientific stage:

Answer 17

• In the final stage, the mid realizes absolute knowledge is unattainable & shifts to a form of knowledge based on certainty through reason & observation, known as positivism.
• This scientific knowledge is open to questioning & progressive, particularly in the current South African intellectual climate.

Question 18

What is the static & dynamic social analysis:

Answer 18

• Comte’s theory of the 3 stages includes static & dynamic social analysis. It integrates stability & change in society, recognizing that stages influence each other.
• Comte emphasized the importance of reaching the final scientific stage for an ordered society, driven by rational thought & evidence- based knowledge.
• He believed individuals should evolve through these stages to achieve mature thinking based on evidence & facts.

Question 19

Describe Comte’s influence:

Answer 19

• Various influential theories emerged from explaining disorder & achieving social progress, including functionalist & consensus theories.
• Functionalists analyse how society functions, while consensus theories focus on agreement & social cohesion.
• Comtean sociology aimed to address disorder through theory & methodology, serving as a knowledge arbiter for a more orderly society.
• The contemporary focus remains on science, knowledge constitution & societal order.

Question 20

Who is Karl Marx?

Answer 20

• Conflict theories, exemplified by Karl Marx, suggest society changes through interactions & conflicts between social classes.
• Marx’s historical materialism theory focuses on material forces in history for social change, contrasting Comte’s evolutionary view (believed sociology could unite all sciences and improve society).
• A critique of capitalism and its shortcomings. Marx thought that the capitalistic system would inevitably destroy itself. The oppressed workers would become alienated and ultimately overthrow the owners to take control of the means of production themselves, ushering in a classless society.
• Marx’s ideas have sparked extensive debate & criticism.

Question 21

Describe the starting point of materialistic social analysis:

Answer 21

• Marx emphasized the importance of society’s mode of production in shaping social life & relations.
• He highlighted the division between those who own resources & those who provide labour, leading to class conflict.
• History is driven by class struggle, with capitalism intensifying the conflict between the lower class & middle to higher classes.
• Marx’s social class stratification includes the lower class & middle to higher classes. .
• The economy’s organization is based on these class dynamics, especially in capitalist societies.

Question 22

Describe the exploitation & revolutionary theory:

Answer 22

• Marx thought a capitalist society was based on exploitation.
• Exploitation occurs in the capitalist mode of production as the wage workers earn is worth less than the economic value they produce.
• Workers, those actively engaged in the economic base of society, were alienated from:
• exercised little or no control over their own work.
• each others as they had to compete with other workers.
• what they produced as they did not own their own product.
• He wanted his ideas to be weapons in the proletarian workers & the bourgeois capitalist class.

Question 23

Discuss historical materialism & materialistic dialectics:

Answer 23

• Marx used Hegelian dialectics to develop his historical materialistic perspective, emphasizing material forces over ideas.
• He applied his dialectics to analyze contradictions like capital vs labour.
• This method led to a grand theory of history & society, explaining global development patterns within a capitalist system.
• Critics question the ability to such totalising narratives to explain modern complexity.

Question 24

Describe the human consciousness:

Answer 24

• Marx emphasises how human consciousness is shaped by social experiences & the stages of production throughout history.
• He highlights that social being determines consciousness.
• Humans evolve through shaping the world with advanced tools, impacting knowledge & self- awareness.
• Transformation occurs as people assert collective agency amid past influences.

Question 25

Describe the social classes & the mode of production:

Answer 25

• Karl Marx studied society’s evolution during the rise of capitalism in the Industrial Revolution.
• The shift from agricultural to capitalist societies led to the emergence of the middle to higher class as a revolutionary entrepreneurial class.
• Marx praised their role in societal progress & the transition to industrial economies.

Question 26

Describe analyzing capitalism & the secret of labour- power:

Answer 26

• Marx’s analysis in “Capital: critique of political economy” challenged classical economists by explaining profit through labour & introducing concepts like labour- power & private property.
• He critiqued bourgeois ideology, highlighting the exploitative nature of labour- power exchange & the conflict between bourgeoisie & proletariat in capitalist society.

Question 27

What is the concept of class?

Answer 27

• Marx defined class based on ownership of means of production.
• Social classes shapes members’ experiences.
• Proletariat needed to grasp exploitation by the bourgeoisie to achieve Revolution.
• False consciousness led workers to believe hard work would bring prosperity.
• Marx’s “immiseration thesis” predicted working class poverty, relevant even today.

Question 28

What is the contradiction in capitalism?

Answer 28

• Marx’s economic theories & concepts on capital & capitalist societies remain controversial.
• He believed in the decline of profit rates in capitalism due to market competition.
• Marx predicted that Capitalisms inherent contradictions would lead to crises & eventually its downfall, paving the way for socialism & communism where the working class controls the means of production.

Question 29

What is Dictatorship?

Answer 29

• When workers replaced the employers there would need to be a political arrangement that Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
• This was envisioned as a collective democratic dictatorship, not the rule of a single person.
• Marx’s vision was that socialism would be a society where people were put before profits & that this form of society would be a transitional social arrangement.
• This, he thought would lead to communism- a classless society where everybody had a say & were different but equal.

Question 30

Examples of people involved in dictatorship:

Answer 30

Hitler & Stalin.

Question 31

What is the idealistic vision of Marx?

Answer 31

• Marx’s theories embody idealism & envision societal improvement without detailing specific future structures.
• The uncertainty of society’s evolution over centuries raises questions about achieving a classless, exploitation- free community.
• The balance between technological advancements & persistent social issues under capitalism prompts reflections on moral integrity & inequality.
• The sociological perspective of C. Wright Mills & Robert Bellah is characterized as “moral sociology.”

Question 32

Describe the emergence of ethical & moral questions in sociology:

Answer 32

• Sociology, while aspiring to be a science, delves into ethical & moral questions, beyond facts.
• It intertwines science & belief, sparking thoughts on ethics & mortality.
• The discipline raises complex issues in the social sciences, blurring the lines between science & belief.

Question 33

What is the sociology of knowledge?

Answer 33

A theory approach to talk about how knowledge itself emerges in specific social contexts.

Question 34

What is modernity?

Answer 34

The period from the last eighteenth century in Europe onwards.

Question 35

What are the assumptions flowing from the social context of classical sociological theory of Marx, Durkheim & Weber?

Answer 35

Marx: this period signaled the rise of the proletariat who usher progress to a classless society.

Durkheim: modernity signaled the end of mechanical solidarity between small groups of people marked by heterogeneity and the emergence of organic solidarity characterized by heterogeneity as the division of labour diversified immeasurably.

Weber: The emergence and institutionalization of bureaucracy and the process of increasing rationalization that would dominate industrial industry.

Question 36

What is structural functionalism:

Answer 36

Parsons sought to combine the stress Weber laid on the individual and the science of Durkheim which aimed at an overarching holism- a unified & universal theory which explained society as a whole.

Question 37

What is symbolic interactionism:

Answer 37

Emphasizes the micro scale interaction of humans & their process of creating meanings.

Question 38

What is the difference between post structuralism & post modernity?

Answer 38

Post modernity: the era replacing modernity & its characteristic belief in rationality, progress & truth.
Post structuralism: broad based inter- disciplinary perspective showing that words & signs represent an autonomous system independently of reference to reality or the social world. Eg) language.

Question 39

What is the difference between post colonialism & anti- colonialism:

Answer 39

Post colonialism: Articulates the perspectives & experience of colonized peoples as opposed to the colonizer.

Anti- colonialism: a broad term used to describe the various resistance movements directed against colonial and imperial powers.

Question 40

What is black consciousness?

Answer 40

Philosophy of Steve Biko stressing reassertion of dignity, pride & self- assertion of black people; has psychological liberation from racial discrimination as key focus.
1. Being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
2. Fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you as a subservient being just by admitting you’re black.

Question 41

What is decolonization?

Answer 41

The process whereby a colonial power relinquishes control over another territory; an epistemic, political & cultural projects for decolonial theorists.

Question 42

What is false consciousness?

Answer 42

False consciousness is a concept in Marxist theory referring to a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation. It suggests that the working class (proletariat) may hold beliefs and values that are contrary to their own best interests, influenced by the dominant ideology propagated by the ruling class (bourgeoisie). This ideological manipulation can lead workers to support or accept conditions that exploit them, such as capitalism, rather than recognizing and challenging their oppression and working towards class solidarity and revolution.