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Introduction To Sociology: DR - Tania Saeed Seminar 10

Here are 3 key questions about sociological perspectives: 1. To what extent do social structures determine human behavior and opportunities, versus how much freedom and agency do individuals have to make their own choices? Different sociological theories emphasize structure versus agency to varying degrees. 2. How do power and inequality shape social life? Sociologists study the distribution of resources and privileges within a society, and how certain groups become dominant over others. Understanding power dynamics is important for explaining social change. 3. How can sociology be used to create a better society? Many early sociologists believed the field could be used scientifically to reform institutions and address social problems. Later theorists debate whether sociology should aim to influence social policy or remain more objective in

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150 views29 pages

Introduction To Sociology: DR - Tania Saeed Seminar 10

Here are 3 key questions about sociological perspectives: 1. To what extent do social structures determine human behavior and opportunities, versus how much freedom and agency do individuals have to make their own choices? Different sociological theories emphasize structure versus agency to varying degrees. 2. How do power and inequality shape social life? Sociologists study the distribution of resources and privileges within a society, and how certain groups become dominant over others. Understanding power dynamics is important for explaining social change. 3. How can sociology be used to create a better society? Many early sociologists believed the field could be used scientifically to reform institutions and address social problems. Later theorists debate whether sociology should aim to influence social policy or remain more objective in

Uploaded by

Ayla Shoaib
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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

Dr.Tania Saeed
Seminar 10
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Critique of individualism:
• ‘Society’ – ‘a name for the other individuals in relationship
with whom a given individual co-exists.’
• You can understand society, by understanding ‘the general
nature of all those individuals as an aggregate.’
• Believed society could be studied scientifically.
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Scientific study of society:


• Society may not be ‘directly observable, perhaps, but it is observable
in its effects.’
• ‘It does exist; it may not be detected by the conscious awareness of
those individuals, yet it casually affects their actions.’
• ‘Criteria for reality
• ‘external’ – ’exists outside our individual consciousness’
• ‘constraining’ – ‘its existence sets limits to our actions’
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Social Facts:
• Things – ‘include all objects of knowledge that cannot be
conceived by purely mental activity, those that require for
their conception data from outside the mind, from
observations and experiments, those which are built up from
the more external and immediately accessible characteristics
to the less visible and more profound.’ (195)
EMILE DURKHEIM

• The example of a contract


• ‘A framework of moral understandings and of social
arrangements of enforcement is presupposed in the making of
a contract. The parties to the contract do not establish this
framework, but it is necessary if their action of making a
contract is to have any sense.’
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Simple societies – self-sufficiency is the rule


• ‘mechanical solidarity’
• ‘little interdependence within the society’
• ‘solidarity from such a group derives from likeness, not
interdependence; the members feel bonds of unity because
they are much alike in their pattern of life and also in outlook’
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Organic solidarity
• As society grows there is greater competition for resources.
• Diversity in specialization and interdependence
• Social division of labour ‘held together by their need for one
another’
• The important role of law ‘to reconcile results of differences’
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Notion of the ‘conscience collective,’ i.e. ‘the varying nature of


moral obligations’ dependent on four dimensions:
• Volume – extent to which individual conscience is wholly permeated
by collective feelings and standards.
• Intensity – energy or sincerity with which individuals observe
collective sentiment.
• Rigidity – relative sharpness or vagueness in collective moral ideas.
• Content- actual nature of the moral ideas themselves. (199)
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Individuality is only the result of a certain kind of society.


• Thereby, ‘society creates ‘the individual’ and not the other
way about.’
• Example Religion – ‘a collective’ phenomenon
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Anomie as related to abnormal forms of the division of labour:


• ‘the absence of regulation or rules so that the parts of the social
order are insufficiently co-ordinated.’
• ‘Consequence of this state of affairs for individual life in producing a
sense of isolation and meaninglessness of life and work.’
• Psychological factors are linked to the condition of the
collective.
• Results in the breakdown of social bonds, or standards or
values.
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Study of suicide
• Result of two dimensions: integration and regulation
• Integration: ‘the extent to which individuals experience a
sense of belonging to the collectivity.’ – Egoistic or altruistic.
• Regulation: ‘the extent to which the actions and desires of
individuals are kept in check by moral values.’ – Anomic
(though fatalistic is also mentioned)
Emile Durkheim

• Limitations of his study on suicide?


EMILE DURKHEIM

• Religion:
• World is divided into two spheres, the sacred and the profane.
• Religious systems consist of compulsory beliefs and compulsory rules.
• Compulsory beliefs: “which express the nature of sacred things and
the relations which they sustain, either with each other or with
profane things.”
• Compulsory rules: “rules of conduct which prescribe how a man [i.e.
a person] should comport himself in the presence of these sacred
objects”
p. 213
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Totemism

• Limitations to his study of religion?


EMILE DURKHEIM

• ‘the purpose of a scientific sociology was very much to


guide social reform along effective lines, based on an
objective understanding of society and its problems.’
• The role of Education
• central to the ‘spirit of discipline’ within society.
• The classroom reinforced a ‘moral order’
• Student-teacher relationship; student-student relationship
EMILE DURKHEIM

• Concerns about the ‘breakdown of order and collective


morality’ because of the expansion of capitalism
• Professional associations – a solution
• Pursuing ‘common interests on the basis of shared values’
• Why are sociological theories important?
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

• “Sociological theories are necessary because without theory


our understanding of social life would be very weak. Good
theories help us to arrive at a deeper understanding of societies
and to explain the social changes that affect us all.”
• Grand theories: explain large scale social structures or historical
development of modern societies.
• Middle ranged theories: try to explain a specific aspect of social
life.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the French


Revolution, and the resulting changing conditions.
• Auguste Comte: “gain reliable knowledge of the social world in
order to make predictions about it, and, on the basis of those
predictions, to intervene and shape social life in progressive
ways.”
• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): “just as the world of nature was
subject to biological evolution, so societies were subject to
social evolution.”
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Karl Marx: long, but structured, historical development of


human societies>>> Primitive Communism – Feudalism –
Capitalism – Communism
• Max Weber: Protestant Ethic>>> Bureaucratization
• Emile Durkheim>>> from a Functionalist perspective
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Talcott Parson: Structural Functionalism – “social rules are not


merely an external force acting on individuals, but have become
internalized via the continual process of socialization.”
• How to understand the functioning of the social system? AGIL
paradigm
• Social system capable of adapting to its environment (economic)
• Put in place Goals to be attained and the mechanism to achieve
it. (political)
• System is integrated and coordinated (community)
• Preserve and transmit its values to the new generation. (school)
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Robert Merton: argued for middle range theories


• Manifest and latent functions: “the former are observable
consequences of action, the latter are those aspects that
remain unspoken.”
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Interactionism:
• Herbert Mead: interactionism – “social interactions
amongst individuals.” Individual as a “social self” goes
through stages of development.
Symbolic Interactionism:
• Herbert Blumer: “all talk of social structures or social
systems is unjustified, as only individuals and their
interactions can be said really to exist at all.”
• Erving Goffman: work in mental asylums, stigmitization.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Interactionism
• Phenomenology: “the systematic study of phenomena; things
as they appear in our experience.”
• Alfred Schutz: “taken-for-granted” “everyday” experiences.
Typifications, and how they may lead to stereotypifications.
• Ethnomethodology: “the systematic study of the methods
used by 'natives’ (members of a particular society) to
construct their social worlds.”
DILEMMAS

1. How far are we creative human actors, actively controlling


the conditions of our own lives?
2. The extent of conflict and consensus in society
3. Gender dimensions
4. The role of economic forces in shaping modern society.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Structuration
• Anthony Giddens: “Societies, communities or groups only
have 'structure' insofar as people behave in regular and
fairly predictable ways. On the other hand, 'action' is only
possible because each of us, as an individual, possesses an
enormous amount of socially structured knowledge.”
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Feminism
• “Feminist perspectives in sociology emphasize the
centrality of gender in analysing the social world.”
• Judith Butler: “Butler, gender is not a fixed category, an
essence, but a fluid one, exhibited in what people do rather
than what they are.”
• Susan Faludi: crisis of masculinity
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Poststructuralism and Postmodernism


• Globalization
QUESTIONS

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