Theorists Pt 1 Flashcards
August Comte- social context
- b. 1798-1857
- France during the revolution
- smart and educated
- influenced by natural sciences
- “naturally ceased” believing in God
- opposed to monarchy/divine right
August Comte- central concerns
-positivism: scientific approach to society
-experiments but they’re not like now, they’re based on observation
-how to have change without upheaval
-
Auguste Comte- nature of social change
- wants gradual change w/o upheaval
- individuals should bring about change in a non-self serving way
Auguste Comte- human nature
- individuals have a duty to society
- people can’t be their best selves without society
- we need society
Emile Durkheim- social context
- raised Jewish but left all religion
- saw religion as an institution but valued some parts of it ie family cohesion
- very intellectual, was educated in philosophy and later taught as a professor
- went against religious order
- society was very stable during his lifetime
Emile Durkheim- central concerns
- VERY focused on maintaining social order
- morality
- structural functionalist
- applying scientific approach to society (positivist)
- identifying social facts: we can identify, categorize, develop causal relationships
- rising suicide rates and connection to modernity
- collective consciousness and social solidarity
Emile Durkheim- social change
Occurs when collective conscious is out of step with other institutions
Emile Durkheim- human nature
- people need society
- humans are emotionally linked to eachother
- the benefit of society involves conformity
Max Weber- historical context
- born Prussia 1864-1920
- oldest of 8
- sick as a child and throughout his life
- very intellectual
- mother was Calvinist, father was not
- Weber left religion, focused on academics
- served in military and experiences in WW1 lead him to question modern govt
- family conflict weighed heavily on him
Max Weber- central concerns
- meso psychologist- not interested in theories of everything
- against grand truth
- religion, the state, the economy
- Rationalization
- Social action
- Ideal Type
- hermeneutics and symbolic representation
- Stratification
Max Weber- human nature
- neutral view of human nature
- focus on human relationships: to others, society, themselves
- we all make our own meaning
Verstehen
- Max Weber
- interpretative understanding
- we can’t understand what’s happening until we understand how people interpret things
Max Weber- indirect vs. direct understanding
- direct: what happened
- indirect: the why
Ideal Type
- Max Weber
- an analytical construct we have in our heads about what should be
- need to be aware that we all have ideal types through which we view reality
Max Weber and Social Action
- positivists focus on cause and effect but Weber also cares a/b meaning and interpretation
- meaningful action
Max Weber: 4 types of meaningful action
- emotional
- traditional
- value-rational: motivated by commitment to values
- instrumental rational: motivated by cost benefit
*cares about value rational and instrumental rational the most
Max Weber: Rationalization
- drive towards objective reason and rational thought
- this movement drives social change
- Weber sees +ves of this but also says it can lead to disenchantment, less emotion, losing part of our humanity
- positivism can overshadow individual experience
Max Weber: social change
- marked by movement towards rational thinking
- combo of social climate and type of leadership
- can lead to disenchantment
Disenchantment
- Max Weber
- rationality and scientific thought valued more than belief and emotion
Weber: The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism
- one of Weber’s works
- argues that specific features of Western culture allowed capitalism to emerge
- Calvinism and Protestantism contributed to capitalism
- Martin Luther’s individualism (individual relationships with God) and concept of calling
- people are supposed to work individually at whatever God calls them to and do their best bc they’re working for God
- predestination: good work is seen as evidence that you’re saved
- separated from the religious aspect and you have capitalism
Weber and Class
- class is based on your ability to buy/sell goods and services that bring satisfaction and increase life chances
- based on control of property and control of market
- both on a continuum with negative privilege, positive privilege, and middle class positions
- class is only one of three systems of stratification
Max Weber: Stratification
3 factors: class, status, party
Class- life chances and access to resources
Status- social honour or prestige, cultural capital
Party- political power, having your interests realized
Karl Marx- social context
- born in Germany 1818-1883
- grandfather was a lawyer, father a rabbi
- converted to lutheranism bc of Jewish oppression
- family friend was Baron Johann Ludwig von Westphalen: a govt official/aristocrat who had a big influence on Marx
- very intellectual, studied philosophy at university
Karl Marx- human nature
- human nature is survival through economic production
- human nature is perverted/destroyed through capitalism
- human nature is social, made up of our social relations
- we create our world
- we change the environment and our creations show us our nature
Karl Marx- central concerns
- power, inequality, social change
- the economy
- class struggles
- conflict
- religion as a source of alienation
Karl Marx- influences
Henri de Saint-Simons
- society is based on industry
- centrality of economy
- socialism
German idealism
- materialism vs idealism
- Immanuel Kant’s unsocial sociability
Hegel
- consciousness
- sense-certainty: pure experience
- hegel’s alienation: humans create meaning and impose it on the world, and then say that this created meaning is reality
- hegel’s dialectic: contradiction
Ludwig Feuerbach
- naturalism: the spiritual world is created by humans and is a reflection of them
- religion a projection of mankind
Karl Marx- value and exploitation
labor- capitalists pay less for labor than what its worth in order to make a profit
2 types of labor- necessary labor and surplus labor
-a worker is paid $75 ( necessary labor) and creates $200 of product. The $125 is surplus labor and allows the owner to profit.
-Marx calls the difference between necessary labor and surplus labor exploitation
Karl Marx- species being
- humans survive through production
- human consciousness is people seeing themselves in what they have created
Karl Marx- Material Dialectic
- accurate history focuses on the means of production
- change occurs through tension around production and the economic system
- conflict resulting from economics/production is the guiding force of history
- shifts in economic systems
Karl Marx- Class
- class involves the means and relations of production
- means: the methods and materials used
- relations: the people involved and their relationships
Karl Marx- Capitalism and Class
Capitalism creates unique class structure bc-
1) work/economic relations are no longer embedded with religious/family/political relations. Work is a separate sphere of life
2) Only two classes- proletariat (workers) and bourgeoisie (owners)
Herbert Spencer- 4 societal types
- simple societies: form a single working whole
- compound societies: merging of simpler
- doubly societies: have more complex political structure
- trebly compound societies- great civilized nations
Karl Marx- Capitalism
-a necessary evil: better than feudal system & eventually leads to classless society
Evil b/c it involves:
Exploitation: owners profiting more than workers
Alienation: humanity’s estrangement from their human essence
False consciousness: humans defining themselves by anything other than their relationship to production and thus missing the truth of existence
Karl Marx- Class Consciousness
Workers becoming aware that their fate in life is determined by class
-happens as alienation and exploitation increase and workers come together
Herbert Spencer- social context
- born in England 1820-1903
- no formal training, learned from networking
- industrial revolution: technological growth
- lived during unprecedented political/economic growth
- clear positive effects of modern life
Emile Durkheim- collective consciousness
-individual minds contain their desires plus collective representations from society
Herbert Spencer- central concerns
- functionalism
- positivism (knowable laws govern the universe)
- relationship btwn individual and government
- freedom (ability to do what you want) and liberal utilitarianism
- society as a system
- social types
- social institutions
- modernity
August Comte- three stages of knowledge
Theological- rigid religious
Metaphyscial- vague, transitional
Scientific- positivist, empirical
Herbert Spencer- The Social System
- society is a system
- organism analogy: society has structures and systems just like a living thing, and has needs that are met by institutions
- system: a whole made of interconnected parts
- systems tend towards equilibrium and move towards balance
Herbert Spencer- Social Change
- change is a result of social responses to system pressures
- not any individual’s decisions but the system adjusting
- survival of the fittest- evolution/change is a matter of survival. Systems/societies have to adapt to survive
Herbert Spencer- modernity vs postmodernity
Modernity
-high levels of structural differentiation
-increased complexity which gives societies more adaptability and ability to survive
Post Modernity
-institutional and cultural fragmentation
*difference is unity. differentiation still has unity while fragmentation doesn’t
Herbert Spencer- Liberal Utilitarianism
- liberty for each and liberty for all
- freedom is doing what you want
- your freedom shouldn’t interfere with other’s freedoms (law of equal freedom)
- 2 individual rights: to ignore the state and to universal suffrage
Herbert Spencer- human nature
- people are rational
- people have the right to freedom
Herbert Spencer- militaristic vs. industrial societies
militaristic: state is dominant and controls all aspects of society
industrial: less controlled by the state and oriented towards economic freedom and innovation
* societies become more complex over time and in general evolve from militaristic to industrial
Emile Durkheim- influences
Rousseau
- savage man
- general will
- created society because of social cooperation and now we need society to not fall back into our savage ways
Emile Durkheim- anomie
Anomie is to be without norms or laws
-we need norms or life becomes meaningless
Emile Durkheim- social solidarity
- level of integration in society
- individuals having a sense of belonging to the group
- individuals limit their own desires for the good of the group
- social units/groups organized into a single system
Emile Durkheim- The Division of Labor (1892)
- the division of labour creates solidarity bc individuals depend on eachother
- social solidarity:
- belonging
- constraints
- coordinated action
- collective consciousness allows for social solidarity
- diversity threatens collective consciousness
- we need a moral framework to guide the collective consciousness and create social solidarity
Emile Durkheim: morality
- characteristic of society not individuals
- how we live with eachother
- to live in groups we need to think about others- needs to be some sort of morality and agreement on what’s important
Durkheim: religion
presence of:
- sacred things
- beliefs and practices
- a moral community
Emile Durkheim- Suicide
- the shift to modern society was leading to higher suicde rates
- traditional society had higher social integration and a stronger colelctive consciousness
- modern socity had a loss of communal life (decreasing importance of religion) and less social integration which was influencing the individual
- loss of place in society
Emile Durkheim- 4 types of suicide
Egoistic: low group attachment and extreme individualism
Altruistic: extremely high social integration and a sense of duty
Anomic: not enough regulation caused by anomie, when a culture can’t keep up with social changes
Fatalistic- too much regulation
