sociology theory methods by fulcher chapter 2

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Pioneers of social theory 22

Social development and evolution 23Hegel: society as spirit 23

Comte and Saint-Simon 24A positive science of society 25

Spencer and social evolution 27

Karl Marx 28Marxs model of society 28

Historical materialism 30

A theory of knowledge 30

Summary points 31

The classic period of sociology 32

mile Durkheim 33

The nature of social facts 33Studying social facts 34

Social differentiation and social solidarity 36

Suicide and social solidarity 37

Max Weber 39Concepts, values, and science 39

Understanding social actions 41

Traditionalism and rationality 42

Summary points 42

Academic sociology established 43

Structural-functionalist theories 45The action frame of reference 46

Social structure 47Functional analysis 49

The evolution of modern society 51

Systems theory 51

Interaction theories 52 Symbolic interactionism 52

Phenomenological approaches to interaction 55

Rational choice theory 56

Conflict theories 58Authority, resources, and conflict 58

Critical theory 59

Summary points 61

Sociology moves on 63

Feminist theories 63

Post-modernism and theory 65

Summary points 67

Key concepts 68

Revision and exercises 69Theories of structure 69

Theories of interaction 69

Theories of conflict 70

Further reading 70

Web links 71

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2

Theories andtheorizing

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For as long as people have lived in societies, theyhave tried to understand them and to constructtheories about them. So far as we know, people havealways lived in societies, and so social theory has a

long history. For much of this history, however, theseattempts at understanding have looked very differentfrom what we currently mean by the word sociology.Early attempts at social understanding had a greatersimilarity to myths or to poetry than they did toscience, and many of these attempts were religious orhighly speculative in character. The creation of a dis-tinctively scientific approach to social understandingis, in fact, a very recent thing. Only since the seven-teenth century, and then mainly in Europe, has therebeen anything that could truly be called a science ofsociety.

The origins of a scientific perspective on sociallife can be traced to the European Enlightenmentof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. TheEnlightenment marked a sea change in the whole

cultural outlook of European intellectuals. In onefield after another, rational and critical methods wereadopted and religious viewpoints were replaced byscientific ones. It was in this period that the very ideaof science first emerged.

The greatest of the early achievements of theEnlightenment were the philosophy of Descartesand the physics of Newton. Writing in the middledecades of the sixteenth century, Descartes set out aview of intellectual enquiry as the attempt to achieveabsolutely certain knowledge of the world, usingonly the rational and critical faculties of the mind.

22 2:Theories and theorizing

Pioneers of social theory

For the present, then, different theories must be seen, in principle, as complementary to

one another. We must emphasize that we are not proposing that all theories are of equal

value, or that they can simply be hashed together in some unwieldy mixture. Some theories

are bad theories that have received no support from empirical research. Even the usefultheories have their particular strengths and, of course, their particular weaknesses. Each

theory must be assessed against the facts that are relevant to its particular concerns, not

against those that are more relevant to some other theory. By the end of this chapter

you should have some appreciation of how the various sociological theories do, indeed,

complement one another. You should begin to see how, collectively, they provide a picture

of the social world that is far better than any of them can provide alone.

In this chapter we place great emphasis on the historical development of sociolo-

gical theory. Theories constructed over 100 years ago are, of course, likely to have been

superseded, in many respects, by more recent theories. Many of them, however, still have a

great deal of relevance for us today, and most contemporary theories have developed out of

the ideas of the nineteenth-century theorists. It is possible to gain a better understandingof them if these lines of development are traced.

We begin with an overview of the earliest attempts to establish a science of sociology,

and we go on to show how these attempts were the basis of the classical statements of

sociology produced around the turn of the twentieth century. The section on Academic

sociology established looks at the three main theoretical traditions of the twentieth

century: structural-functionalist theories, interaction theories, and conflict theories. We con-

clude the chapter with a sketch of the feminist, post-modernist, and globalization theorists

whose arguments have moved sociological debates on to a broader set of issues. We con-

sider these arguments at greater length in the various chapters of Part Two. In this chapter

and throughout the book you will find that we consider both classic and contemporary

theorists, treating them as participants in the same great intellectual enterprise that issociology.

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From this point of view, science was the attemptto construct theories that could be assessed againstthe evidence of the human senses. Observation anddirect experience of the world provided the rawmaterials for scientific work. The rational and criticalfaculties of the scientist guided the way that thesewere accounted for. In Newtons physics, this methodled to the construction of elegant mathematicaltheories that saw the behaviour of physical objectsin relation to their mass, volume, and density, and tothe forces of gravity and magnetism.

During the eighteenth century, the scope of sci-entific knowledge in physics was enlarged, and thesame scientific method led to advances in chemistry,biology, and many other specialist fields. Progress inthe construction of a scientific sociology was much

slower. At first, social life was understood in almostexclusively individual terms. Those who exploredsocial life tried to explain it as resulting from thebehaviour of rational, calculating individuals whosought only to increase their own happiness andsatisfaction. They were aware that individuals livedin societies, but they saw societies only as collectionsof individuals. They had not grasped what mostpeople now take for granted: that individuals cannotbe understood in isolation from the social relationsinto which they are born and without which theirlives have no meaning.

In Britain and France, and later in Germany, a more

properly social perspective was gradually developed.British theorists were particularly concerned witheconomic activities and economic relations andhave often been described as taking a materialistview of social life. For them, the central features ofsocial life were the struggle over economic resourcesand the inequalities and social divisions to whichthis gave rise. French and German writers, on theother hand, highlighted the part played by moralvalues and ideas, and they have been described asidealist theorists. These theorists saw societies aspossessing a cultural spirit that formed the foundationof their customs and practices.

Social development and evolutionThe first systematic theories of social life were thoseof Hegel and Comte. Hegel built on the work of hisGerman predecessors to construct a comprehensiveidealist theory of society and history. Similar con-cerns are apparent in the work of Comte, though hewas a more self-consciously scientific writer whoowed a great deal to the economic analyses of theearlier materialists. Where Hegel remained satisfied

with a very general account of the nature of thedistinctive social element in human life, Comte triedto analyse this into its constituent elements. Thesewere, he said, aspects of the structure of social sys-tems. Both writers identified long-term processes ofsocial change that they described as processes ofsocial development. Spencer, writing later in thenineteenth century, carried all these themes forward.He saw society as a social organism that developedover time through a process of social evolution.

Hegel: society as spirit

The stimulus behind Georg Hegels ideas was thephilosophy of Immanuel Kant, the next great land-mark in philosophical thought after Descartes. Kantscentral argument was that scientific knowledge was

an active and creative production of the humanmind. All observations, Kant argued, depended uponthe particular ways in which experiences wereinterpreted in relation to current cultural concerns.According to Hegel, the interpretation of experiencereflects the spirit of the culture. This term, takenfrom Montesquieu (1748), referred to the generalprinciples and underlying ideas that lay behind theparticular customs and practices of a society. Thespirit of a culture shapes the subjective ideas andmeanings on which individuals act, and so Hegel sawindividuals as the mere embodiments of the culturalspirit. There was, then, a one-to-one relationship

between cultural spirit, social institutions, and socialactions. Hegel saw actions and institutions as simplythe means through which cultural ideas and valueswere formed into a social reality.

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Hegels ideas are complex and his works are dibcult to read. Atthis stage, you should not try to track down his books. If you everdo feel able to tackle him, you should start with his Philosophyof Right(Hegel 1821). Do not expect an easy ride!

Hegel saw history as involving a gradual shiftfrom local to more global social institutions. In theearliest stages, family and kinship defined the basicsocial pattern. Peoples lives were contained withinlocalized communities that were tied tightly togetherthrough bonds of kinship and family obligations.The family spirit prevailed. These communal formsof social life were followed in Europe and in certainof the great civilizations of the world, by societies inwhich the division of labour and market relationstied local communities into larger societies. Hegelsaw these societies as marked by deep divisions into


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unequal social classes and as driven by the commer-cial spirit of property-owners and merchants.

In his own time, Hegel identified the beginningsof a new stage of social development. The nationstate was becoming the key social institution. Incontemporary societies, he held, the state embodiedthe spirit of the people as a whole and not just thespirit of a particular class or kinship group. This waswhat he called the world spirit, a universal and all-embracing cultural spirit that marked the end pointof historical development.

Hegels work, while pioneering, was not yet socio-logy. He saw history as the automatic and inevitableexpression of an abstract spirit into the world. Spirititself was seen as the active, moving force in sociallife. Yet spirit was an unsatisfactory idea and was not

analysed in a scientific way. Hegel personified spirit,seeing it as some kind of active and creative force.Furthermore, when Hegel looked to what it is thatdrives the human spirit itself, he discovered God. Theholy spirit lies behind the human spirit, and socialdevelopment is seen as the progressive realization ofGods will.

Hegels work drew together many of the insightsof the French idealists and put them into a com-prehensive general framework. Its religious character,however, meant that he had few direct followers.Some aspects of his thought were taken ahead, in avery different direction, by Marx, as we will shortly

show. Idealism had its greatest impact on thedevelopment of sociology in France. The key writerhere was Auguste Comte, who was the first to set outa comprehensive, if flawed, account of a theoreticalscience of society.

Comte and Saint-Simon

It is thanks to Comte that the science of societyis called sociology, as it was he who invented theword in 1839 to describe the system of ideas thathe had developed. Comte, however, was carryingforward and enlarging some of the ideas that hehad learned from his teacher and first employer,

Saint-Simon. Comtes intellectual and personalrelationship to Saint-Simon was very close, but adisagreement between the two men led Comte todeny the importance of Saint-Simon and to exag-gerate the originality of his own work. Despite this,it is undoubtedly Comtes efforts at systematizingand unifying the science of society that madepossible its later professionalization as an academicdiscipline.

Saint-Simon was a radical, but eccentric aristocratwho popularized the idea of what he called posit-ive science. The term positive means definite and


THEORY

Auguste

Comte

. . . inventor of theword sociology.

Isidore Auguste Marie Franois Xavier Comte (17981857)

was born in Montpellier. After an unspectacular education,during which his political interests led him into conflict

with the authorities, he settled in Paris. He was a dogmatic

and self-important individual, whose arrogance made it

dibcult for him to establish secure relationships. His

intellectual relationship to Saint-Simon was stormy, and

ended a year before the death of Saint-Simon in 1825.

His personal life was equally unstable. Comtes early life

was marked by periods of depression and paranoia,

and his marriage broke down because of his extreme

jealousy.

Comte decided on the plan for his life work while still

working for Saint-Simon. He planned a Course in Positive

Philosophy, which he delivered in public lectures and

published in serial form between 1830 and 1842. The

Course eventually ran to six volumes, covering the whole of

what he took to be established knowledge in mathematics,

astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology.

The part on sociology (which he originally called social

physics) was its centrepiece and took up three of the six

volumes.

Having completed this task, Comte went on to write

what he considered to be even more important, the

System of Positive Politics. This, too, was a multi-volume

work and was completed in 1854, just 3 years before his

death. TheSystem

set out a summary of his position andhis programme for the social reconstruction of European

society. This reconstruction involved the establishment of a

Religion of Humanity, a religion that abandoned dogma

and faith and was itself constructed on a scientific basis.

Sociology was to be the core of this religion, with

sociologists replacing priests as the expert teachers

and policy-makers.

Comtes works are dibcult to get hold of in English

editions, but you might like to scan some of the extracts

reprinted in K. Thompson (1976).

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While many of the details of Comtes sociologyare no longer accepted by sociologists, his main prin-ciples have largely been accepted and they now forma part of the mainstream of the subject. His keyinsight was that societies had to be understood ascomplex systems. They are organic wholes with a unitysimilar to that of biological organisms. The humanbody, for example, is a biological system of parts thatare connected together into a living whole. Similarly,a society may be seen as a cohesive and integratedwhole. The parts of a society are not simply indi-

viduals, but social institutions. A society consists offamily and kinship institutions, political institutions,economic institutions, religious institutions, and so on.These do not exist in isolation but are interdepend-ent parts of the whole social system. Change in anyone institution is likely to have consequences for theother institutions to which it is connected.

Comte identified two broad branches of sociology,corresponding to two ways in which social systemscould be studied:

social statics: the study of the coexistence ofinstitutions in a system, their structures and theirfunctions;

social dynamics: the study of change in institutionsand systems over time, their development andprogress.

The study of social statics is similar to the studyof organization or anatomy in biology. It looks atthe structure of a social system, at the way in whichthe institutions that make up the system are actu-ally connected to each other. Comte argues that theaim of social statics is to produce laws of coexistence,principles concerning the interdependence of socialinstitutions.


unquestionable, and Saint-Simon used it to describethe precise or exact sciences based on observationand mathematics that he saw emerging in one intel-lectual field after another. This led him to advocatethe building of a positive science of man, a psycho-logical and social science of the human mind. Oncethis science had been achieved, he held, we wouldbe well on the way to possessing a complete know-ledge of everything that exists. At this point, thevarious positive sciences could be unified into asingle positive philosophy.

The work of Saint-Simon was confused and unsys-tematic, and he recognized that he needed a collabor-ator. Comte, who had been convinced by the workof Montesquieu and Condorcet that there was apressing need for a social science, took on this task

and worked closely with Saint-Simon from 1817 to1824. It was this period of intellectual apprenticeshipthat gave Comte the confidence to begin to constructthe outlines of the positive philosophy and its posit-ive science of society.

A positive science of society

Comtes importance in the history of sociology isdue to the particular method that he proposed andhis general view of the subject matter of sociology.The method that Comte proposed for sociology wasthat of positive science. He held that sociology couldadvance human understanding only if it emulated

the other positive sciences in its approach. Comtewas not saying that sociology had slavishly to followthe natural sciences. On the contrary, he was veryconcerned to emphasize that each of the major dis-ciplines had its own distinctive subject matter, whichhad to be studied in its own right and could not bereduced to the subject matter of any other science.His point was simply that there was only one way ofbeing scientific, whatever the subject matter of thescience.

Comtes positivism presented science as the studyof observable phenomena. The scientist must makedirect observations of those things that are of inter-

est, examining their similarities and differences, andinvestigating the order in which they occurred. Theseobservations had then to be explained by theoreticallaws, or logical connections. These laws stated causalrelationships between observed events, so allowingthe scientist to predict the occurrence of events. If,for example, we have a law stating that intellectualunrest is a cause of political instability, then theobservation of intellectual unrest would lead us topredict a period of political instability. The task of thescientist is to produce theories that are able to arriveat just these kinds of laws.

BRIEFING

For Comte, the positivist approach in science simply

involves an emphasis on rational, critical thought andthe use of evidence. In many contemporary discussions,however, it is presented as a much narrower and morerestricted idea. Positivist is often used almost as a termof abuse, and is applied to those who use mathematicsor social surveys. This kind of distortion is not helpful.

You will find it much easier to handle sociologicaldebates if you avoid trying to label people as positivistsand non-positivists. If you must use the word, try to use itas Comte intended. Bear in mind, however, that Comtetied positive science to positive politics and his religionof humanity.

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The main elements of a society, according toComte, are its division of labour, its language, and itsreligion. It is through their division of labour thatpeople organize production and satisfy their mater-ial needs. Through their language they communicatewith each other and pass on the knowledge and valuesthat they have learned. Through their religion, theycan achieve a sense of common purpose and ofworking towards a common goal. These elementsare all cemented together into the overall socialstructure.

The connections between the parts of a social sys-tem are studied by identifying their functions. Wewill come back to this idea later in this chapter. Ingeneral terms, however, Comte used the term func-tion to refer to the contribution that particular insti-

tutions or practices make to the rest of the society,the part that they play in reproducing or maintain-ing it in existence by contributing to its solidarityor coherence. Comte saw a coherent society as ahealthy society. Those systems that show a highlevel of solidarity, consensus, or coherence workmore smoothly and are more likely to persist thanthose with only a low level of coherence. Coherentsocieties are in a healthy state of balance or equi-librium, with all their parts working well together.In some situations, however, societies, like otherorganisms, may be in a pathological condition ofimminent breakdown or collapse. If their parts are

not functioning correctly, they will not have the kindof coherence that they need to survive.The study of social dynamics is concerned with the

flow of energy and information around a social sys-tem and, therefore, with the ways in which societieschange their structures in certain ways. Structuralchange is what Comte calls development or progress.The aim of social dynamics is to produce laws of suc-cession that specify the various stages of developmentthrough which a particular social system is expectedto move.

Comte saw the emergence of positive science itselfas something that could be explained by the most

important law of succession that sociologists possess.This was what he called the law of the three stages.According to this law, the religious ideas producedby the human mind pass through three successivestages, and particular types of social institutionscorrespond to each of them. These three stages arethe theological, the metaphysical, and the positive.In the theological stage, people think in exclusivelysupernatural terms, seeing human affairs as resultingfrom the actions of gods and other supernaturalbeings. In the metaphysical stage, theological ideasare abandoned and people begin to think in terms of

more abstract spiritual forces such as Nature. Finally,the positive stage is one in which these abstractionsgive way to scientific observation and the construc-tion of empirical laws.

Comte saw the theological stage as having lastedin Europe until the fourteenth century. This periodinvolved a vast range of human societies from thesimplest tribal societies to more complex kingdoms.The metaphysical stage lasted from the fourteenthcentury until about 1800, and Comte saw its devel-opment as having been closely linked with the riseof Protestantism. Societies in the metaphysical stagewere militaristic and feudal societies that dependedon a vast agricultural base. The positive stage beganearly in the nineteenth century and corresponds towhat Comte called industrial society. This term,

now so taken for granted, was first used by Saint-Simon and was taken up by Comte to describe thetype of society that was gradually maturing in theEurope of his day. The term industrial was initiallycontrasted with earlier militaristic types of society,and was intended to suggest that social life hadbecome organized around the peaceful pursuit ofeconomic welfare rather than the preparation forwar. More specifically, an industrial society is oneorganized around the achievement of material well-being through an expanding division of labour anda new technology of production. This kind of societyis headed by the entrepreneurs, directors, and man-

agers who are the technical experts of the new indus-trial technology.As it developed, however, industrial society created

great inequalities of income. The resentment that thepoor felt towards the wealthy was responsible for apathological state of unrest and social crisis. The onlylong-term solution to this, Comte argued, was for arenewed moral regulation of society through theestablishment of a new, rational system of religionand education. This would establish the moral con-sensus that would encourage people to accept theinevitable inequalities of industrialism.

Comtes political aspirations were unfulfilled, and

his religion of humanity inspired only small andeccentric groups of thinkers. His view of the need fora critical and empirical science of society, however,was massively influential and secured the claimsof his sociology to a central place in intellectual dis-cussions. His particular view of the development ofmodern industrial society rested on a rather inade-quate historical understanding of pre-modern societ-ies, but he accurately identified many of its mostimportant characteristics. His concept of the indus-trial society has continued to inform debates aboutthe future development of modern societies.


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Spencer and social evolution

The materialist tradition in Britain had its majorimpact on the growth of economic theory (usually

termed political economy), where a long line of the-orists attempted to uncover the way in which theproduction of goods is shaped by the forces of supplyand demand. In the work of Herbert Spencer this wascombined with ideas drawn from the work of Comteto form a broader sociological theory. Spencer wasseen by many people as the direct heir to Comte,although this was certainly not how he saw himself.Although he gave far less attention to religious andintellectual factors than did Comte, there is, never-theless, a great similarity in their views. It is alsotrue to say, however, that Spencer remained very closeto the British tradition in giving a great emphasis

to individual action. Spencer took forward Comtesidea that societies were organic systems, but he alsoemphasized that they must be seen in terms of indi-viduals and their actions.

Spencer adopted Comtes distinction between socialstatics and social dynamics as the two main branchesof his sociology. His social statics stressed the ideaof society as an organism. Each part in a societyis specialized around a particular function and somakes its own distinctive contribution to the whole.A society is an integrated and regulated system ofinterdependent parts. Much of Spencers work insociology consisted of the attempt to describe these

interdependencies in general terms and as they arefound in actual societies.

His most distinctive contribution to sociology, how-ever, was his emphasis on the principle ofevolutionin his social dynamics. Evolutionary ideas achieved agreat popularity in Victorian Britain following thepublication of Darwins Origin of the Species in 1859.The debate over Darwins work made widely knownthe idea that biological species evolve through a con-stant struggle for existence in which only the fittestcan survive. Those species that are best adapted tothe biological conditions under which they live aremore likely to survive than those that are only weaklyadapted or not adapted at all. In fact, the phrase sur-vival of the fittest had been introduced by Spencersome years before Darwin published his work, and

both Darwin and Spencer acknowledged that the ideaof a struggle for existence came from Malthuss (1798)work on population.

Spencers great contribution to the debate overevolution, however, was his advocacy of the principleofsocial evolution. This consisted of two processes:

structural differentiation;

functional adaptation.

Structural differentiation was a process through whichsimple societies developed into more complex ones.This idea was modelled on the biological processthrough which, as Spencer saw it, advanced organ-

isms had more differentiated and specialized partsthan less advanced ones. In all spheres of existence,he held, there is an evolution from the simple tothe complex. In the social world, structural differ-entiation involves the proliferation of specializedsocial institutions.

Spencer saw simple societies as organized aroundfamily and kinship relations, and as achieving theirmaterial needs through hunting and gathering. Fewaspects of social life are specialized, and everythingis, ultimately, organized through kinship. Gradually,however, separate governmental and economic insti-tutions are formed and systems of communication

are established. Many activities previously organizedthrough the family come to be organized throughthese specialized institutions. As a result, the familyloses some of its functions, which have been differ-entiated into the specialized institutions. Over time,the specialized institutions are themselves subject tostructural differentiation. Governmental institutions,for example, become differentiated into separatepolitical and military institutions.

The reason why structural differentiation occurs,Spencer held, is that it allows societies to cope withthe problems and dibculties that they face in their


THEORY

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (18201903) was born in Derby and was

privately educated in mathematics and physics. He started

work in the new railway industry, and became a successful

railway engineer. His intellectual interests in geology and

biology, and his interest in political issues, led him to

publish a number of articles, and in 1848 he decided to

move into journalism. His first book wasSocial Statics. This

and a series of papers on population and evolution were

followed by a major work that was to take the whole of the

rest of his life to complete. Like Comte, he aimed at an

encyclopaedic summary of human knowledge; a synthetic

philosophy. He published this work in his Principles of

Biology, Principles of Psychology, Principles of Sociology,

and Principles of Ethics.

Spencers sociological works are dibcult to get hold of

and it is probably better to approach him through the

extracts reprinted in Andreski (1976).

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material environment (physical conditions, climate,natural resources) and from other societies. This pro-cess of coping with the environment is what Spencercalled functional adaptation. Structural differentiationallows societies to become better adapted, and so achanging environment is associated with an increas-ing level of structural differentiation.

The nineteenth century, according to Spencer, wasa period in which industrial societies were beginningto evolve. These societies were well adapted to theconditions under which people then lived. They werehighly differentiated social systems with only a veryloose degree of overall regulation. Individuals had agreat degree of autonomy in an industrial society, andfurther evolution depended on the maintenanceof their intellectual, economic, and political free-

doms. Spencer tried to explore what he saw as thebalance between individual freedom and collectivewelfare in industrial societies. Adam Smith hadargued that the economic market operated as ahidden hand to ensure that the greatest level ofeconomic happiness resulted from individually selfishbehaviour. Spencer extended this argument and heldthat all the structurally differentiated institutions ofcontemporary societies could be seen as working,generally in unintended ways, to produce the greatestcollective advantages. There was a natural harmonyor coherence that resulted only from the rational,self-interested actions of free individuals. Spencer

was, therefore, opposed to state intervention of anykind, whether in the sphere of education, health, orthe economy. Individuals had to be left to strugglefor existence with each other. The fittest would sur-vive, and this was, he argued, in the best interest ofsociety as a whole.

Karl MarxWe have looked at two writers who were engaged in acommon intellectual exercise. Despite the differencesin their views, Comte and Spencer both produced pion-

eering versions of a science of sociology. Karl Marxtoo aspired to build a science of society, but he wasvery much on the margins of the intellectual worldand he did not describe himself as a sociologist. Tothe extent that he took any account of the work ofthe sociologists, he was critical of it. This failure ofMarx to identify himself as a sociologist reflects thefact that the word was still very new and, for manypeople, it still described only the specific doctrines ofComte and Spencer. As we will see in The ClassicPeriod of Sociology, pp. XXXX, it was only in thenext generation of social theorists that Marxs ideas

began to receive any proper recognition as a part ofthe same sociological enterprise as the works of Comteand Spencer.

The inspiration for Marxs work was the growthof the European labour movement and of socialistideas. He tried to tie his philosophical and scientificinterests to the needs of this labour movement. Marxwas trained in the tradition of Hegels philosophy,studying at Berlin just a few years after Hegels death,but he was also influenced by the British materialisttradition. He saw the work of writers such as Fergusonand Millar as providing the basis for an understand-ing of the power and significance of the labourmovement, but only if combined with the historicalperspective of Hegel.

Marxs model of society

The central idea in Marxs early work was alienation.This described the way in which the economicrelations under which people work can change theirlabour from a creative act into a distorted and de-humanized activity. As a result, people do not enjoytheir work or find satisfaction in it. They treat it as amere means to ensuring their survival (by providingthemselves with a wage) and therefore their abilityto turn up the next week to work once more. In thisway, work and its products become separate or alienthings that dominate and oppress people.

Marx accounted for alienation in terms of property

relations and the division of labour. The economy,he held, was central to the understanding of humanlife. He argued that the existence of private propertydivides people into social classes. These are categor-ies of people with a specific position in the divi-sion of labour, a particular standard of living, and adistinct way of life. The basic class division was thatbetween property-owners and propertyless workers.The existence of classes and of social inequality wasfirst highlighted by the British materialists, and Marxsaw his own contribution as showing how and whythese classes were inevitably drawn into conflict witheach other. This he did in his later work for Capital.

Classes, he argued, were involved in relations ofexploitation. The property-owning class benefits atthe expense of the propertyless, and this leads theclasses to struggle over the distribution of economicresources.

Marx saw societies as social systems that could bedivided into two quite distinct parts: the base andthe superstructure. The economy and class relationscomprised what he called the material base orsubstructure of society. The base always involves aparticular mode of production. By this term, Marxreferred to the technical and human resources of


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production and the specific property relations anddivision of labour under which they are used. Thiseconomic base is the foundation upon which asuperstructure of political, legal, and customary so-cial institutions is built. It is also the basis of variousforms of consciousness and knowledge. The ideas that

people form, Marx said, are shaped by the mater-ial conditions under which they live. They must beregarded as what he called ideologies.

There has been much controversy as to howMarxs division of the social system into a base anda superstructure is to be interpreted. In its most gen-eral sense, it is simply a claim that only those soci-eties that are able to ensure their material survival,through an ebciently organized system of produc-tion, will be able to sustain any other social activities.People must eat and have adequate clothing andshelter before they can stand for parliament, write

poetry, or engage in sociology. The economic systemacquires a compulsive power that shapes all othersocial activities because of the priority that has to begiven to meeting basic economic needs.

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Young Marx and old Marx

There is some controversy about the relationship between theworks of the older, mature Marx of the 1860s and those of theyouthful Marx of the 1840s. For some commentators, the earlyworks on alienation were immature exercises that he laterabandoned. For others, however, exploitation and alienationare closely related ideas. A close reading of Marxs texts showsthat there is a great deal of continuity and that the so-calledGrundrisse (Marx 1858) is a key link between the two phasesof his work.


THEORY

Karl Marx

. . . highlighted theimportance of classconflict in socialchange.

Karl Marx (181883) was born in Trier, Germany. He studied

law at Bonn and Berlin. His radical political views led him into

a journalistic career, but this was cut short by the suppressionof the various journals for which he wrote. He fled tJzo Paris

in 1843, to Brussels in 1845, and, finally, to London in 1848.

It was in London that he spent the rest of his life. His massive

tomb can still be seen in Highgate cemetery.

Marx began to work on a series of philosophical and

economic books while in Paris, and he spent the rest of his life

studying, engaging in radical politics, and writing articles for

newspapers and periodicals. He was able to use his time in this

way only because of the financial support from his friend and

collaborator Friedrich Engels.

Engels (182095) was the son of a wealthy cotton

manufacturer. Like Marx, he was involved in radical politics and

intellectual work, but he was sent to Manchester by his father to

manage the English branch of the family firm. This gave him the

financial independence to support both himself and Marx.

Engels wrote an important study of poverty, The Condition of

the Working Class in England in 1844 (Engels 1845), and hecollaborated with Marx on a number of works, including The

Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels 1848).

Marx found it dibcult to complete books. A number of his

most important studies were published long after his death,

thanks to the editorial work of Engels and others. The most

important of his early works, where he set out a theory of

alienation, was the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

(Marx 1844), published only in 1932. After The Communist

Manifesto, he went on to produce a series of massive drafts for

Capital, a critical study of economic theory and the economic

basis of society. Only volume i (Marx 1867) was published in

his lifetime.

The details of Marxs work are discussed in various parts ofthis book. You will find them in the following chapters:

alienation and the nature of work Chapter 15

poverty Chapter 16

class relations and class polarization Chapter 17

labour organization, ruling class, politics, and the state Chapters 18, 19

religion and ideology Chapter 11

Useful discussions of Marxs ideas can be found in

Giddens (1971) and Craib (1997). There is more detail in

McLellan (1971), which contains some extracts from Marxs

own work. A good biography is McLellans Karl Marx: His Life

and Thought(McLellan 1973). If you want to try to understand

Marxs economic theory, you should try Mandels (1967)

The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx.

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Some of Marxs followers, along with his critics,have claimed, however, that he was setting out aform of economic determinism that allowed noautonomy at all for politics and culture. Accordingto this view, political institutions and cultural ideassimply reflect economic divisions and struggles.While Marx did sometimes seem to suggest that theeconomy should be seen in this way, he was toosophisticated to accept such a deterministic position.Indeed, the claims for his work made by some of hisfollowers led him to make the famous remark I amnot a Marxist.

Comte and Spencer saw social systems, in theirnormal states, as characterized by harmony and co-hesion. Marxs view, on the other hand, recognizedconflict and division as normal features of all

societies. There are divisions not only within theeconomic base (between classes), but also betweenbase and superstructure. While a superstructure norm-ally reinforces and supports the economic base, itcan frequently come into contradiction with it. Bythis, Marx meant that the form taken by the super-structure obstructs the further development of themode of production. If production is to expand anyfurther, the superstructure must be transformed to re-establish a closer correspondence with the economicbase.

Historical materialism

Social systems develop over time as a result of thecontradictions that develop within their economies.Marxs materialism, then, was a specifically histor-ical materialism, the name by which Marxism isoften known. Historical materialism is a theory ofthe transition from one mode of production toanother.

Marx distinguished a number of modes of produc-tion that he used to chart the sequences of historicaldevelopment that resulted from increases in thelevel and scale of production. The simplest, least-developed forms of society were those in which themode of production could be described as primitive

communism. In this type of society, property is ownedby the community as a whole, and the communityitself is organized around bonds of kinship.

Marx argued that, as technology develops andproduction expands, so the property relations mustchange. If they do not, societies will not be able tocontinue to expand their powers of production. Outof the simple form of primitive communism, then,systems with private property and more complexdivisions of labour evolve. In these societies, thereare distinct political institutions and, in many cases,centralized states.

Marx often suggests that the evolutionary line inwestern Europe led from the primitive communismof the Germanic and Celtic tribes, through the slave-owning systems of ancient Greece and Rome, and onto the feudal states of the medieval period. Feudalsocieties centred on the division between landownersand unfree labourers, who must work for the land-lord as well as for themselves. Eastern Europe and theNear East followed a similar progression, but passedthrough an Asiatic stage instead of a feudal one. Itis to feudalism that Marx traced the emergence ofthe capitalist societies to which he gave his greatestattention.

The form of society that was emerging in westernEurope at the time that Marx was writing was notsimply an industrial society (as Comte had argued)

but a specifically capitalist society. Beginning in thetowns and commercial centres of the feudal world,a class of private property-owners had become themost important economic force. Since at least thesixteenth century, these capitalists had built plants,workshops, and factories in which they employedlarge numbers of workers. Capitalist entrepreneursgenerated profits for themselves through a systemof market exchange and the employment of wagelabour. Marx held that these capitalists eventuallybecame the ruling classes of their societies. Theydisplaced the old feudal landowners, often throughviolent revolutions such as that in France from 1789

to 1799. They were responsible for the alienation,exploitation, and oppression of the workers whoactually produced the goods that provided them withtheir profits.

As capitalist societies developed, Marx argued,exploitation grew and their superstructures no longerencouraged economic growth. If production was tocontinue to expand, property relations and the wholesuperstructure had to be swept away in a revolu-tion. This time, however, it would be a revolutionof the workers, who would displace the capitalistruling class. Workers, Marx held, would becomeconscious of their alienation and of the need to

change the conditions that produced it. They wouldjoin together in radical political parties and, indue course, would overthrow the capitalist system.A workers revolution, Marx rather optimisticallythought, would abolish alienation, exploitation, andoppression, and it would establish a new and moreadvanced form of communist production.

A theory of knowledge

Marx derived a distinct philosophical position fromhis social theory. He accepted that the natural sci-ences might produce absolute and certain knowledge


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about the physical world, as Descartes and Kanthad argued, but he held that this was not possiblefor the social sciences. The social world could not beknown objectively, but only ever from particularstandpoints. These standpoints were those providedby the class backgrounds of the observers. Membersof a dominant class do, quite literally, see the socialworld differently from those who stand below themin the class hierarchy.

All social knowledge, then, is relative or ideolo-gical. It is historically determined by the class posi-

tion of the knower. There is no standpoint outside theclass structure, and so there can be no impartial orcompletely objective knowledge of the social world.For Marx, commitment is unavoidable. Social know-ledgeand therefore social sciencereflects a politicalcommitment to one side or another in the struggleof classes.

Marx accepted the logical conclusion that his owntheories were relative. They were relative, not tothe standpoint of his own class, but to that of hisadopted class. This was the proletariat, the subordin-ate class of the capitalist system. He believed that

theorists who adopted the standpoint of this sub-ordinate class, the oppressed and exploited class,were able to achieve a deeper and more adequateunderstanding of their society than those who weretied to the standpoint of the ruling class. It was forthis reason that he did not hesitate to present hiscore ideas in a political manifesto for the communistmovement (Marx and Engels 1848).

By contrast, he saw the ideas of almost all othersocial theorists as adopting the standpoint of theruling, capitalist class. Classical economics and thesociologies of Comte and Spencer were, for Marx,uncritical expressions of the capitalist or bourgeoisworld-view. Their ideas could serve the labourmovement only if they were subjected to rigorouscriticism. Hence, he subtitled his major work on

economics (1867) A Critique of Political Economy.Unless bourgeois thought was subjected to criticismfrom the standpoint of the proletariat, it wouldremain simply an intellectual defence of the existingsocial order.

Marxs work provides a powerful challenge to theideas of Comte. Where Comte emphasized thatmodern societies were industrial societies ruled bybenign industrialists, Marx saw them as capitalist soci-eties ruled by an oppressive capitalist class. Marx alsodiffered from Comte in his stress on the importanceof conflict and struggle in human history and inhis emphasis on the economic basis of social life.

Marxs claim to have produced a complete and com-prehensive social theory cannot be upheld, but it isundoubtedly true that he highlighted many factorsthat had been minimized or ignored by Comte andSpencer.

Marx saw all social knowledge as relative to the classstandpoint of the observer. What social divisions, other thanclass, could he have seen as providing distinctive standpointson the social world? Do you agree with his rejection of thepossibility of objectivity? Come back and consider thisquestion again when you have read our discussions ofMax Weber and of feminist theories.

Summary pointsThis section has traced the early stages of scientificsociology from the Enlightenment thinkers throughto the pioneering statements of Comte, Spencer, andMarx. Although you are not expected to understandor recall everything that we have written about them,you should try to make sure that you have somefamiliarity with their key ideas.


BRIEFING

Modes of production

Marx recognized six main modes of production, eachdefined by a particular type of property ownership andlabour:

primitive communismrelatively egalitarian,communal property;

ancientslave-owning systems;

Asiaticdespotic and bureaucratic control;

feudalismserfdom, combined with urban commercialcentres;

capitalismwage labour and private property;

advanced communismre-establishes communalproperty.

In each of these modes of production, the productiveforces are developed to a different level. Before the stageof advanced communism they are also marked bygrowing levels of exploitation and alienation.

Do not worry about the details of this scheme. Wewill introduce some of these, where relevant, in otherchapters. You might like to compare Marxs scheme withthe stages of development identified by Hegel, Comte,and Spencer.

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The idea of a science of society was a product of theEuropean Enlightenment of the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries.

Only gradually was an understanding of the dis-tinctively social features of human life separatedfrom an understanding ofindividuals.

Social thought is diverse, each theoretical frame-work emphasizing particular aspects of social life.We looked at the way in which early social thoughttended to follow distinct materialist and idealisttraditions.

The pioneering statements of a specifically soci-ological approach are found in the works of Comteand Spencer. An alternative approach, that of Marx,broadened out this emerging form of social thought.

Comte established the idea of sociology as apositivescience that explained empirical observations throughcausal laws.

Both Comte and Spencer used a distinctionbetween social statics and social dynamics. Socialstatics is concerned with the structure and func-tioning of social systems. Social dynamics is con-cerned with their development over time.

The contrast between contemporary industrial soci-eties and earlier militaristicsocieties was importantfor both Comte and Spencer.

The classic period of sociology

The period from the 1880s to the 1920s was onein which sociology began to be established as ascientific discipline in the universities of Europe andNorth America. Increasing numbers of professorsbegan to call themselves sociologists or to take soci-ological ideas seriously. Both Spencer and Marx hadtheir heirs and followers. In Britain, Spencers ideas

were developed in a more flexible way by LeonardHobhouse, the first person to hold a sociology pro-fessorship in a British university. In the United States,William Sumner developed versions of Spencersideas that had a considerable influence, and LesterWard developed a sociology that owed rather more toComte.

Marxs ideas were taken up in the leading Com-munist parties of Europe and, even before his death,they began to be codified into Marxism. Those whoregarded themselves as Marxists shared his identi-fication with the proletariat. Marxism was seen not

simply as a theoretical framework but as the basis forthe political programme of the labour movement.The country in which Marxism had the greatestimpact was Russia, where the revolution of 1917 ledto the dominance of the Communist Party and theenshrinement of Marxism as the obcial ideology ofthe Soviet Union. The political content of Marxism

limited its influence in academic sociology. Whilethere was some attempt to grapple with his ideasespecially in GermanyMarxism was a neglectedtradition of thought until the 1960s.

Sociology thrived most strongly in France andGermany, where a number of important theoristsbegan to construct more disciplined and focusedtheoretical frameworks that could be used in detailedempirical investigations. In France, there was thework of Le Play, Tarde, and, above all, Durkheim.In Germany, the leading theorists were Tnnies,Simmel, and Weber. In terms of their impact on the

Spencer saw social development as a process ofstructural differentiation, shaped by functionaladaptation.

While Marx also saw societies as systems thatcould be studied in terms of their structures anddevelopment over time, he placed more emphasison the part played by conflict and struggle in socialdevelopment.

Marx saw economic activity as fundamental tosocial life. Work, property, and the division oflabour form the economic base of society, its modeof production.

Work and property ownership are the basis of classdivisions that result in the alienation and exploita-tion of labour.

Social development has followed a sequence ofmodes of production from primitive communismthrough feudalism to contemporary capitalistsocieties.

Political and legal institutions, together with cul-tural values and ideologies form the superstructureof society and are shaped by the economic base.

Revolutionary change, resulting from class conflict,will transform the base and the superstructure ofcapitalist society and will introduce a new systemof communist production.


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later development of sociology, it is Durkheim andWeber who must be seen as the key figures.

mile Durkheimmile Durkheim saw one of his principal academictasks as the construction of a philosophical basis fora science of sociology. He wanted to show that soci-ology could be a rigorous scientific discipline that wasworthy of a place in the university system. An under-standing of Durkheims thought, then, must beginwith this philosophy of science and his attempt toproduce a distinctive view of the nature of sociology.

The nature of social facts

According to Durkheim, the subject matter of soci-ology is a distinctive set ofsocial facts. These are notjust any facts that happen to concern peoples livesin societies. They are quite specific phenomena thatcan be sharply distinguished from the facts studiedby other scientists. They are, in particular, distinctfrom the facts of individual consciousness studied bypsychology and the organic facts of individual bodiesstudied by biology. They are the things that definethe specific intellectual concerns of sociology.

Durkheim characterizes social facts as ways ofacting, thinking, or feeling that are collective, ratherthan individual, in origin. Social facts have a reality

sui generis. This is a Latin phrase that Durkheim usesto mean of its own type or distinctive to itself.Because this was a dibcult idea for others to under-standand it is still not completely understood bymany critics of sociologyhe set out his views atsome length.

Durkheim gives as an example of a social fact whatlater writers would call a role. There are, he says, cer-tain established ways of acting, thinking, or feelingas a brother, a husband, a citizen, and so on. Theyare, in the most general sense, expected, required, orimposed ways of acting, thinking, or feeling for thosewho occupy these positions. They are conventional

ways of behaving that are expected by others andthat are established in custom and law.

Social facts are collective ways of acting, thinking,or feeling. They are not unique to particular indi-viduals, but originate outside the consciousness ofthe individuals who act, think, or feel in this way.They most often involve a sense of obligation.Even when people feel that they are acting throughchoice or free will, they are likely to be following apattern that is more general in their society and thatthey have acquired through learning and training.We learn what is expected of us quite early in life,

and these expectations become part of our ownpersonality.

Social facts, then, are external to the individual.They do not, of course, actually exist outside indi-vidual minds, but they do originate outside the mindof any particular individual. They are not created


THEORY

mile

Durkheim

. . . saw sociology asthe study of socialfacts.

mile Durkheim (18581917) was born in pinal, France.

He studied social and political philosophy at the coleNormale Suprieure in Paris, reading deeply into the works

of Montesquieu and Rousseau. He studied for a year in

Germany. He taught educational theory at Bordeaux from

1887 to 1902, after which he moved to a professorship at

the Sorbonne in Paris. He made a close, but critical study

of the work of Comte, and he produced a number of

exemplary sociological studies. In 1913, only 4 years

before his death, he was allowed to call himself Professor

of Sociology.

Durkheims key works appeared regularly and became

the basis of a distinctive school of sociology. His major

writings were The Division of Labour in Society(1893),

The Rules of the Sociological Method(1895),Suicide: AStudy in Sociology(1897), and The Elementary Forms of the

Religious Life (1912). He founded a journal that became a

focus for his work. One of his principal followers was his

nephew, Marcel Mauss, who produced some important

work (Durkheim and Mauss 1903; Mauss 1925).

You will find more detailed discussions of Durkheims

principal ideas in various parts of this book:

religion Chapter 11

education Chapter 9

anomie and the division of labour Chapter 15

The texts by Giddens (1971) and Craib (1997) give

useful discussions of Durkheim. More detail and abiographical account can be found in Lukes (1973).

A good brief introduction is K. Thompson (1982).

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anew as each individual chooses what to do. Theyare passed from generation to generation and arereceived by particular individuals in a more or lesscomplete form. Individuals are, of course, able toinfluence them and contribute to their development,but they do so only in association with other indi-viduals. It is in this sense that social facts are thecollective products of a society as a whole or ofparticular social groups.

Because they are matters of expectation, obliga-tion, or deep commitment, social facts also have acompelling and coercive power, which Durkheimsummarizes by the term constraint. This constraintmay be expressed in punishment, disapproval, rejec-tion, or simply the failure of an action to achieveits goal. Thus, someone who breaks the law by

killing another person is likely to face arrest, trial,and imprisonment or execution. On the other hand,someone who misuses language is simply likely tobe misunderstood. Durkheim remarks, for example,that he is not forced to speak French, nor is hepunished if he does not, but he will be understoodby his compatriots only if he does in fact use the rulesand conventions of French vocabulary and grammar.

Durkheim emphasizes that social facts are verydibcult to observe. Indeed, they are often observableonly through their effects. We cannot, for example,observe the role of husband, but only particularindividuals acting as husbands. Similarly, we cannot

observe the grammar of a language, but only thespeech of particular individuals. Social facts are, ingeneral, invisible and intangible and their properties

have to be discovered indirectly. By observing theactions of large numbers of people who act in similarways, for example, we may be able to infer the exist-ence of the role of husband. By observing a largenumber of conversations, we may be able to infer theexistence of particular rules of grammar.

In some cases, however, social facts may appearto be more visible. They may, for example, be codi-fied in laws, summarized in proverbs, set down inreligious texts, or laid down in books of grammar.Durkheim makes clear, however, that these laws,proverbs, texts, and books are not themselves thesocial facts. Social facts are mental, not physical, andwhat we have are simply the attempts that indi-viduals have made to bring these social facts to con-sciousness and to make them explicit. These explicit

formulations can, nevertheless, be useful sources ofevidence about social facts and can be employedalongside the direct observation of actions in anyinvestigation into social facts.

Studying social facts

Durkheims approach to the study of social factsowes a great deal to Comtes positivism. It was set outas a set of rules or principles that Durkheim thoughtshould guide the scientific sociologist. The first ofthese directly reflected Comtes contrast betweenmetaphysical thought and positive science, thoughDurkheim cast it in a more convincing form. The first

rule simply says consider social facts as things.What Durkheim meant by this was that it wasnecessary to abandon all preconceived ideas and tostudy things as they really are. He held that all sci-ences must do this if they are to be objective and ofany practical value. The transformation of alchemyinto chemistry and of astrology into astronomyoccurred because the practitioners of the new sci-ences abandoned the common-sense preconceptionsthat they relied on in their everyday lives. Instead,they made direct observations of natural phenomenaand constructed theories that could explain them.Sociology, Durkheim argued, must move in the same

direction. It must treat its objectssocial factsasthings.

Our natural, everyday attitudes towards socialfacts tend to be shaped by religious and political pre-conceptions and by personal prejudices. We use awhole range of everyday concepts such as the state,the family, work, crime, and so on, and we tend toassume (with little or no evidence) that these areuniversal features of human life. We assume, forexample, that all families in all societies are moreor less the same as the families that we are familiarwith in our own social circle. Such ideas, as Marx


BRIEFING

Social facts

Social facts consist of manners of acting, thinking andfeeling external to the individual, which are vested witha coercive power by virtue of which they exercise controlover him (Durkheim 1895: 52). Social facts are

characterized by externality

constraint.

Some social facts are institutions. These are beliefsand modes of behaviour that are long established ina society or social group. Others are collectiverepresentations: shared ways of thinking about a groupand its relations to the things that affect it. Examplesof collective representations are myths, legends, andreligious ideas.

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recognized, are ideological. They reflect our particu-lar social position. While Marx simply accepted thatall thought was ideological, Durkheim saw a funda-mental distinction between ideology and science.Those who adopt the scientific attitude, he said, mustabandon all the accepted ideas of their social groupand attempt to construct new concepts that directlygrasp the real nature of things. Preconceived ideascome from outside science; scientific concepts aregenerated from within scientific practice itself.

Durkheims claim that we need to study things,rather than rely on preconceptions, is, perhaps, toosimple. While he correctly identified the need toavoid the prejudice and distortion that often resultsfrom preconceived ideas, he was mistaken in hisbelief that it was possible to observe things independ-

ently ofall concepts. Marxs philosophy, for all itsproblems, recognized that the things that exist in theworld can be known only through concepts. As wewill see, Max Weber, too, recognized this and pro-duced a rather better account of scientific knowledgethan did Durkheim.

Nevertheless, the core of what Durkheim wastrying to establish remains as a valuable insight. Hestressed that, if sociology is to be a science, it mustengage in research that collects evidence through thedirect observation of social facts. This must be donethrough the adoption of an attitude of mind that isas open as possible to the evidence of the senses. We

cannot substitute prejudice and ideology for scientificknowledge.

Durkheims approach to the study of social factsmakes a distinction between two complementaryaspects of sociological explanation. These are causalexplanation and functional analysis. Of the two,causal explanation is the more fundamental. In acausal explanation, the origins of a social fact areaccounted for in relation to the other social facts thatbrought it into being. The punishment attached to acrime, for example, may express an intense collectivesentiment of disapproval. The collective sentiment,then, is the cause of the punishment. If the sentimentdid not exist, the punishment would not occur.

Showing causal relationships is not quite asstraightforward as Durkheim implies. The fact that variationsinA are followed by variations in B may not indicate thatB is

caused byA. The variations could indicate that bothA and Bare caused by some other, as yet unknown, third factor. Welook at this problem in Chapter 16, pp. XXXX, where weconsider it in relation to occupational achievement.

Functional analysis is concerned with the effects ofa social fact, not with its causes. It involves looking atthe part that a social fact plays in relation to the needsof a society or social group. The term need referssimply to those things that must be done if a soci-ety is to survive. More generally, the function ofsomething is the part that it plays in relation to theadaptation of a society to changing circumstances.

The nature of functional analysis is shown inFigure 2.1. This model simplifies Durkheims account


Social solidarityReligious observance

reduce

high

low

increase

Figure 2.1

Functional analysis

Source: J. Scott (1995: fig. 6.2).

This model is based on Durkheims account of suicide, which we discuss on pp. XX below, and the view of social solidarity that we set out onpp. XXXX. You might find it useful to come back to this diagram after you have read our account of social differentiation and social solidarity.

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of the function of religion in a society. Durkheimargued that religion helps to meet a societys need forsocial solidarity. High levels of religious observancetie people together and so increase the level of socialsolidarity; low levels of religious observance, on theother hand, reduce the level of social solidarity. Thisis matched by the effects of social solidarity on reli-gion. If the level of social solidarity is too low, thenindividualistic impulses may threaten the survivalof the society. Stability can be maintained only ifreligious observance increases and a higher level ofsocial solidarity is re-established. If, on the other hand,the level of social solidarity becomes too high, indi-vidual creativity may be stifled, and a reduction in thelevel of religious observance may be required. Reli-gion and social solidarity are, then, interdependent.

There is much in this view of functional analysisthat remains unclear. In particular, it does notshow what mechanisms actually ensure that increasesor reductions in religious observance take place.Durkheim minimizes this problem by equating needwith goal or purpose. That is, he assumes thatpeople consciously and deliberately act to meet socialneeds. Most later writers have rejected this view andhave tried to show that the meeting of needs is oftenan unintended and unrecognized consequence ofsocial action.

frontiersRules of the sociological method

Durkheim (1895) set out a number of rules or principles. We haveconsidered only the most important of these. A simplified andslightly shortened version of his list is:

consider social facts as things;

cause and function must be investigated separately;

a particular effect always follows from the same cause;

a full explanation of a social fact involves looking at itsdevelopment through all the stages of its history;

social facts must be classified according to their degree of

organization; a social fact is normal for a given type of society when it is found

in the average example of the type;

a social fact is normal when it is related to the generalconditions of collective life in a type of society.

Reread the discussion of Durkheims philosophy and identifythe paragraphs in which we discuss each of these rules.

In the title of his book, Rules of the Sociological Method,Durkheim uses the word method in the sense of a philosophy ofscience or methodology of science. He is not talking about thespecific research methods that we discuss in Chapter 3.

Social differentiation and social solidarity

Durkheim applied his scientific method in hisgreat book on the development of modern society(Durkheim 1893). This book, the first that he wrote,was an attempt to examine social differentiation,the specialization of activities into a complex struc-ture of occupations. Durkheim labelled this thedivision of labour, using this term to refer not onlyto the differentiation of economic activities, but alsoto the specialization of political, administrative, legal,scientific, and other tasks. The division of labour wasa principal topic of investigation for economists, butDurkheim wanted to show that their understandingof it was limited. The division of labour, which hadachieved an unprecedented scale in modern society,

was not simply an economic matter. It was central tothe very cohesion and integration of modern societies.Durkheims book is divided into two parts: the first

is concerned with the causal explanation of the divi-sion of labour and the second with its functionalanalysis. Durkheims discussion of the causes of thedivision of labour is the shorter part of the book andcan be dealt with briefly. He argued that the divisionof labour can occur only when communal societiesgive way to more organized societies. Communalsocieties are divided into segments (families, clans,local villages) and have little or no division of labour.Each segment is self-subcient. As segments break

down, however, individuals are brought into greaterand more intimate contact with those in other partsof their society. This expansion in the scale of socialinteraction depends on increasing population dens-ity and on the emergence of cities and commercialcentres. These all bring about an increase in whatDurkheim called dynamic density. This refers to anincrease in the number of social relationships andtherefore in the amount of communication and inter-action between the members of a society.

A growing population density leads to moreand more people carrying out the same activities.This results in growing competition and an ever-

increasing struggle to survive. The only way that thiscompetition can be reduced is by people becomingmore specialized in their activities. Self-subcienthouseholds may, for example, become specialized infarming, milling, brewing, weaving, and other tasks.They begin to form a division of labour. The divisionof labour, Durkheim argues, develops in direct pro-portion to the dynamic density. As the dynamic dens-ity of a society increases, so the division of labourbecomes more marked. Hence, growth in the scale ofsocieties over time produces ever more complex anddifferentiated societies.


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Far more attention has been given to Durkheimsfunctional analysis of the division of labour. In thispart of the book, he looks at the consequences thatthe division of labour has for the wider society. In adivision of labour, he argues, peoples actions arecomplementary and interdependent. The divisionof labour creates not simply exchange relationshipsin a market system, but a feeling ofsolidarity thatbecomes an essential factor in the integration of thesociety as a whole.

Social solidarity consists of the integration of indi-viduals into social groups and their regulation byshared norms. As a social fact, solidarity cannot beobserved directly, but only through its external indi-cators. Durkheim argued that the most importantexternal indicator of social solidarity is the system of

law. In societies with an extensive division of labour,he argued, the law tends to be restitutive rather thanrepressive. Legal procedures attempt to restore thingsto the way that they were before a crime occurred.Punishment for its own sake is less important. This,Durkheim says, indicates a sense of solidarity thatis tied to cooperation and reciprocity. Durkheimcalls this organic solidarity. People are tied togetherthrough relations of trust and reciprocity that cor-respond to their economic interdependence, and eachsphere of activity is regulated through specific typesof norms.

The organized, organic solidarity that is produced

by the division of labour is contrasted with themechanical solidarity of traditional, communalsocieties. In these undifferentiated societies thatare characteristic of the pre-modern, pre-industrialworld, social solidarity revolves around a sense ofsimilarity and a consciousness of unity and com-munity. Conformity in such a society is maintainedthrough the repressive force of a strong system ofshared beliefs.

Organic solidarity is a normal or integral feature ofmodern society, but it may fail to develop in some. Inthe early stages of the transition from pre-industrialto industrial society, Durkheim argued, there is a par-

ticular danger that abnormal forms of the division oflabour will develop. The normal condition of organicsolidarity encourages a high level of individual free-dom, controlling this through the normative systemsthat Durkheim called moral individualism. Theabnormal forms of the division of labour, however,lack this moral framework, and individual actions areleft uncontrolled. The two abnormal situations thathe describes are egoism and anomie.

Egoism is that situation where individuals are notproperly integrated into the social groups of whichthey are members. Anomie is the situation where

individual actions are not properly regulated byshared norms. Durkheim saw anomie and egoismas responsible for the economic crises, extremes ofsocial inequality, and class conflict of his day. As weshow below, he also saw them as responsible for highrates of suicide. All of these problems, he held, wouldbe reduced when the division of labour was properlyestablished and organic solidarity instituted in itsnormal form.

Suicide and social solidarity

Durkheims best-known book is his study of suicide(Durkheim 1897). His aim in this book was not onlyto provide an account of suicide but also to illustratehow his methodology could be applied to even themost individual of acts. The book was intended to

serve as a model of sociological explanation.Durkheim demonstrated that the taking of onesown life, apparently the most individual and per-sonal of acts, was socially patterned. He showed thatsocial forces existing outside of the individual shapedthe likelihood that a person would commit suicide.Suicide rates were therefore social facts. He demon-strated this by showing how suicide rates varied fromone group to another and from one social situationto another. Some of the main variations that heidentified were as follows:

Religion. Protestants were more likely to commit

suicide than Catholics. The suicide rate was muchhigher in Protestant than Catholic countries.Similar differences could also be found betweenProtestant and Catholic areas within the samecountry.

Family relationships. Those who were married wereless likely to commit suicide than those who weresingle, widowed, or divorced. Whether people hadchildren or not was also very important. Indeed,the suicide rate for married women was lower thanthat for single women only if they had children.

War and peace. The suicide rate dropped in time

of war, not only in victorious but also in defeatedcountries. Thus, Germany defeated France inthe war of 1870 but the suicide rate fell in bothcountries.

Economic crisis. Suicide rates rose at times of eco-nomic crisis. It might be expected that a recessionthat caused bankruptcies, unemployment, andincreasing poverty would send up the suicide rate.Suicide rates also rose, however, when economiesboomed. It was not worsening economic con-ditions but sudden changes in them that causedsuicide rates to rise.


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This demonstration of systematic variations in thesuicide rate showed that suicide cannot be explainedsolely in terms of the psychology of the individual.Even the taking of ones own life is socially organ-ized behaviour and therefore requires sociologicalexplanation.

In order to provide an explanation, Durkheim putforward a sociological theory of suicide that wouldaccount for these variations. Durkheims theory ofsuicide was based on the idea that it was the degreeof social solidarity that explained variations insuicide rates. If a person is only loosely connectedinto a society or social group, he or she is more likelyto commit suicide. If their level of solidarity is toostrong, then this, too, could lead to a higher suiciderate.

His theory went further than this, however, forhe distinguished between two aspects of social con-nection, which he called integration and regulation.Integration refers to the strength of the individualsattachment to social groups. Regulation refers tothe control of individual desires and aspirations bygroup norms or rules of behaviour. This distinctionled him to identify four types of suicide, which cor-responded to low and high states of integration andregulation:

egoistic suicide;

anomic suicide;

altruistic suicide; fatalistic suicide.

Egoistic suicide results from the weak integration ofthe individual that we have shown he described asegoism. The higher suicide rate of Protestants isone example of it. Protestantism is a less integrativereligion than Catholicism, for it places less emphasis

on collective rituals and emphasizes the individualsdirect relationship with god. Those who are single orwidowed or childless are also weakly integrated andtherefore more prone to suicide. War, on the otherhand, tends to integrate people into society andtherefore reduces the suicide rate. This form of sui-cide was called egoistic because low integration leadsto the isolation of the individual, who becomesexcessively focused on the self or ego.

Anomic suicide results from the lack of regulationthat Durkheim described as anomie. Durkheim be-lieved that people would only be content if theirneeds and passions were regulated and controlled, forthis would keep their desires and their circumstancesin balance with each other. Changes in their situ-ation, such as those brought about by economic

change or divorce, could upset this balance. In thesecircumstances, the normal regulation of a personslife breaks down and they find themselves in a stateof anomie. This word means normlessness, lackingany regulation by shared norms.

Altruistic suicide is the opposite of egoistic suicide.In this case, it is not that social bonds are tooweak but, rather, that they are too strong. Peopleset little value on themselves as individuals, or theyobediently sacrifice themselves to the requirementsof the group. Durkheim saw this form of suicide ascharacteristic of primitive societies, though it wasalso found among the military, where there is a

strong emphasis on the importance of loyalty tothe group. He used the term altruistic to convey theidea that the individual self is totally subordinatedto others.

Fatalistic suicide is the opposite of anomic suicideand results from an excessively high regulation thatoppresses the individual. Durkheim gives as anexample the suicide of slaves, but he considered this


Figure 2.2

Durkheims typology of suicide

Type Degree of solidarity Social situation Psychological state Examples

Egositic Low Lack of integration Apathy, depression Suicides of protestants and single people

Anomic Low Lack of regulation Irritation, frustration Suicides during economic crisis

Altruistic High Excessive integration Energy and passion Suicides in primitive societies; military suicides

Fatalistic High Excessive regulation Acceptance and resignation The suicide of slaves

There has been much discussion in the media about the motives of Palestinian suicide bombers. How do you think that Durkheim wouldclassify these suicides?

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type to be of little contemporary significance and helimited his discussion of it to a footnote.

Durkheim recognized that egoism and anomiewere often found together, as, for example, whena divorce occurred. This both isolated people andleft their lives in an unregulated state. He was,however, careful to distinguish between the socialprocesses involved in egoism and anomie, on theone hand, and the states of mind that each produced,on the other hand. One of the most notable fea-tures of Durkheims theory of suicide, and one thatis often overlooked by commentators, is that heshows the consequences of social conditions for anindividuals psychological state. He demonstratednot only that the behaviour of the individual wassocial but also that the individuals internal world

of feelings and mental states was socially produced.Thus, Durkheim argued that the social isolationcharacteristic of egoistic suicide results in apathy ordepression. Anomic suicide is associated with a muchmore restless condition of irritation, disappoint-ment, or frustration. When lack of regulation leadsdesires and ambitions to get out of control, peoplebecome upset and frustrated by their inability toachieve them. Altruistic suicide is generally accom-panied by an energy and passion quite opposite tothe apathy of egoism. Durkheim did not discuss thepsychological state characteristic of fatalistic suicidebut it would seem to involve a mood of acceptance

and resignation.Since Durkheim, the study of suicide has movedon and later sociologists have pointed to problemswith the methods that he used. The main problemwas that the suicide rates on which he based hisstudy were calculated from obcial statistics. Thesedepended on coroners decisions on the classificationof deaths as suicides and it has been shown that theirpractices vary (Douglas 1967; J. M. Atkinson 1978).For a death to be suicide, it must be intentional, andthe assessment of intention is dibcult, particularlyif no suicide note is left. This leaves a lot of roomfor interpretation and considerable scope for others,

such as friends and relatives of the dead person, toinfluence coroners decisions. The existence of socialvariations in suicide rates cannot, however, bedenied, and Durkheims fundamental point, that theapparently most individual of acts requires sociolo-gical explanation, stands.

We discuss general problems with the use of obcialstatistics in Chapter 3, pp. XXXXX.

Max WeberMax Weber worked as an economic historian and alawyer, but he also worked along with other socialscientists in Germany to develop a distinctively soci-ological perspective on these issues. His approachto sociology, however, was very different from thatof Durkheim. Weber argued that sociology had tostart out not from structures but from peoples actions.This contrast between a sociology of structure anda sociology of action, two complementary perspect-ives on social life, was to mark the whole of thesubsequent development of sociology.

We will begin by discussing Webers generalapproach to social science, and we will then look athis application of this approach in his investigations

into the development of European societies.

Concepts, values, and science

Durkheim said that the sociologist must considersocial facts as things, disregarding all preconceptions.Weber set out a more complex position, arguingthat observation was impossible without conceptsof some kind. In his principal essay on this subject(Max Weber 1904), he set out to show that this wasperfectly compatible with the production of object-ive scientific knowledge.

Taking his lead from Kant, Weber argued that therecan be no knowledge of things as they actually exist,

independently of thought. To have knowledge is togive meaning to the world and to interpret it in someway. The world does not simply present itself to oursenses already interpreted. It must be interpreted inthe light of what is significant to the observer. Anarea of land, for example, may be of interest as a placefor physical exercise, an environment for flora andfauna, a beautiful landscape, the site of a historicalruin, and so on. The particular interest that we bringto our observation leads us to focus on differentaspects of the world and to use different concepts tointerpret it. All observers, scientists included, carveout particular aspects of reality to give them meaning

and significance.The concepts that are used to give this meaning to

the world, Weber argued, derive from cultural values.It is our values that tell us which aspects of reality aresignificant and which are insignificant. All conceptsare value relevant. They are relative to particular cul-tural values. Those who hold on to feminist values,for example, are likely to focus on the relationshipsbetween men and women and to develop such con-cepts as patriarchy to describe the domination ofwomen by men. Those who

sociology theory methods by fulcher chapter 2

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