Main Conceptual Definitions Flashcards
Theory of Alienation
Alienation is the disruption in the self’s capacity to meaningfully relate to the world. This involves powerlessness.
Marx asserts that although capitalism increases our access to amenities and luxuries, it does so at the price of a deeper satisfaction.
The capitalist division of labour does not allow us to express our creative capacities in our labour. This goes against human nature and prevents us from reaching our human potential, since our purpose is not reflected in our products.
There are four types of alienation owing to the capitalist structure:
1. Process of work: Wage workers do not know how or what is produced. They are reduced to objects in the production process.
2. The product: What you make is not yours and is taken by capitalist for thier profit.
3. Fellow workers: Capitalist pits workers against each other, inter-work competition, specialized tasks done in isolation.
4. Human potential: Strips workers of instrinsic human meaning and potential to express creativity. Reduced to animal-like status.
Marx’s Theory of Alienation was part of his early critique of capitalism
Historical Materialism
How people provide for their material needs determines their cultural, political, and social institutions.
Materialist conception of history involving the base (mode of production, consisting of productive forces and relations of production) which conditions the superstructure (culture).
Marx’s theory of history unfolds through different stages of modes of production which are structured by internal class conflicts and changing divisions of labour.
For example, the shift from feudal to capitalist society and the shift of oppressor vs. the oppressed being feudal lord vs. serf to bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat.
Ultimately, Marx asserted that class conflict in capitalism would lead to communist revolution, and bring in a “classless society.”
Commodity Fetishism
The mystification of capitalist production whereby we inject commodities with special properties beyond what they really are, while remaining ignorant of the exploited labor that underlies the production process.
In capitalism, there is a split between a commodity’s exchange value (relative value to others on market, quantitative) and use-value (use to satisfy needs, qualitative). Products acquire a mystical quality with a life of their own and we become subservient to them.
For example, a shoe’s exchange value is the price, use-value is protecting your feet, and mystical quality would be the prestige that comes with owning a rare pair of Nikes.
Marx argues that beneath these mystical signifiers lies exploited labour which is the real source of value.
Capitalist Commodity Exchange
Capital production is distinguished from petty commodity production since it is fundamentally exploitative.
Petty commodity production involves a commodity being sold for money, and that money being used to purchase other commodities. This is oriented to the satisfaction of needs.
Capitalist circulation of commodities involves money purchasing commodities which is exchanged for more money. This is oriented to the pursuit of profits.
For example, the capitalist buys labor power and ensures labourer creates value which is over and above the cost of reproduction. This generates surplus value, which is reinvested into means of production to make more profit.
Therefore, Marx asserts the capitalist formula is fundamentally exploitative since it relies on systemtically paying workers less than the value they produce.
Protestant Ethic
Weber argues that the economic discrepancies between Catholic and Protestants is due to Protestant asceticism (self discipline and frugality).
Idea of predestination creates an anxiety and need for reassurance. Economic success became a sign of salvation, therefore providing religious sanction for economic gain.
This legitimized unequal stratification as a special dispensation of Divine Providence. Weber says religious foundations are left behind, leaving a secularized ethic of efficiency.
Theory of Stratification
In response to Marx’s theory of class, Weber argues that class is too reductive. Classes are not communities and they rarely translate into collective action.
He adds another important category of stratification: social status.
Social status denotes groups having distinctive lifestyles which provide basis for their social standing and prestige and in turn, a power to gain better life chances. You can be positively or negatively priveleged.
This is less about your place in the market or production prcoess, and more about your consumption.
Class and social status are not necessarily in sync. For example, you can have power by virtue of class but low prestige like influencers. Or you can have power by virtue of prestiige while in a marginal class position.
For Weber, stratification is more multi-dimensional than for Marx.
Authority
Weber acknowledges “power” as the ability to impose one’s will on another, regardless of the other’s wishes or resistance.
When power is legitimized, it gains authority and is in turn obeyed and internalized.
He posits “authority” as the probability that command’s will be obeyed by a group, requiring a minimum level of consent.
Weber distinguishes between three types of authority: Traditional (customs, rituals, sacred artifacts), Legal-Rational (rules, ex. bureaucracy), and Charismatic (personal characteristics, problem of routinization).
Disenchantment
Loss of mystical and scared elements giving life meaning.
When everything has reason and there is no mysteries, there is a sense of meaninglessness.
Weber was concerned that the rationalization of society (connected to Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism) led to disenchantment of the world.
Verhstehen
When actors go about the world, they do so in a subjective way (non-neutral).
Our job as sociologists is to interpret these wordviews.
For example, the protestant ethic is an interpretation for the subjective experience of an ethos of efficiency.
For example, authority is subjective and can be experienced based on various types.
Social Fact
The norms regulations, rules, and institutions that are external to us, and coerce us regardless of individual wishes.
The task of sociology is to explain interrelations
between social facts.
Main types of social facts include: Existing Institutions (rules/conventions), Social Currents (ex. fashion trends), and Education (how they are taught).
For example, Durkheim treats morality as a social fact, regulating our conduct and promoting collective attachment. Society makes it possible for us to live moral lives since it limits otherwise boundless appetites and binds us to collective over personal interests.
Solidarity
Durkheim’s concept of solidarity refers to the ways in which individuals are integrated and connected within a society.
He asserts that strong social solidarity is a precondition for social justice and human flourishing.
Durkheim argues that the form of solidarity transforms in modern society with changes in the division of labour.
Mechanical solidarity is based on homogeneity; common roles, beliefs, etc. Pre-modern.
Organic solidarity is based on complimentary and mutual interdependence. Modern/industrial.
Specialization therefore promotes wider solidarity since it cultivates our personalities/differences.
When the division of labour doesn’t produce solidarity, Durkheim says this is due to abnormalities.
Anomic (lack of regulation, isolated and don’t know how to interact), Forced (stunts aspirations, creating resentment), and Uncoordinated (mismatch between skill and role occupied).
This concept is central to understanding how social cohesion is maintained in different types of societies.
Suicide
Durkheim was interested in explaining group differences in suicide rates using social facts.
Four types of suicide derived from two dimensions of integration and regulation.
Altruistic (high integration), Fatalistic (high regulation), Egoistic (low integration), and Anomic (low regulation).
Anomie is the lack of moral regulation, leading to unhappiness.
For example, egoistic suicide can explain the high rates of suicide among Protestant and unmarried people snice there are lower levels of integration for those groups.
Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Durkheim asks, what are the fundamental elements of religion?
By studying Australian Aboriginal totemic societies, he concludes that religions involve classificatory frameworks premised on a distinction between the sacred (reverence/awe) and profane (mundane).
Religion requires beliefs (representations expressing nature of sacred things and the relations they sustain), rituals (rules on how to act around sacred things), and a church or a single overarching moral community.
Collectively, these three dimensions make up religion: A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things which unite into one single moral community all those who adhere to them.
Totemism
Durkheim pursues the origins of sacredness in totemism.
Totems represent clans and are employed in religious ceremonies/rituals. They are treated as sacred, embodying an anonymous impersonal force in both the physical and moral sense.
Durkheim posits society as the originator of the divinity of the totem. Since society is a superior external and coercive force, the object of respect gives clan members the idea that a superhuman principle exists.
Collective Effervescence
Experience of society (of superior impersonal force) gives rise to “collective representations”: symbol intuiting common intellectual and emotional meanings that bind a group.
The power of collective representations stems from how they embody the sacre, and a force experienceable by the group in social practice.
These collective representations rely on effervescent practices that transport participants into the world of the sacred.
Collective effervescence occurs when you lose yourself in a collective ecstasy, but feel unity with the group. Groups are vitalized and sustained through periodic gatherings of this sort.
