Showing papers on "Social theory published in 1981"

Working papers in the theory of action

Abstract: In the hope of provoking discussion among sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, and psychiatrists interested in social theory, the authors have made available here a set of working papers which constitute an attempt to develop more intensively a systematic theory of action. The papers include discussions of the concept of the superego, the theory of symbolism, and the problem of equilibrium in small groups.

Advances in social theory and methodology : toward an integration of micro- and macro-sociologies

Abstract: The micro-sociological challenge of macro-sociology / K. Knorr-Cetina -- Notes on the integration of micro- and macro-levels of analysis / A.V. Cicourel -- Micro-translation as a theory-building strategy / R. Collins -- Intermediate steps between micro- and macro-integration / T. Duster -- Philosophical aspects of the micro-macro problem / R. Harre -- Agency, institution and time-space analysis / A. Giddens -- Social ritual and relative truth in natural language / G. Fauconnier -- Transformational theory and the internal environment of action systems / V. Lidz -- Communication about law in interaction systems / N. Luhmann -- Toward a reconstruction of historical materialism / J. Habermas -- Unscrewing the big Leviathan / M. Callon and B. Latour -- Men and machines / P. Bourdieu.

Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context

Abstract: "Rules and Processes" is at once a compelling essay in social theory and a pathbreaking ethnography of dispute in an African society. On the basis of a sensitive study of the Tswana of southern Africa, John Comaroff and Simon Roberts challenge most of the orthodoxies of legal anthropology. They argue that the social world, and the dispute processes that occur within it, are given form and meaning by a dialectical relationship between sociocultural structures and individual experience. The authors explore in a novel way the relations between culture and ideology, system and practice, social action and human intention. They develop a model that lays bare the form and content of "legal" and "political" discourse in all its variations-a model that accounts for the outcome of conflict processes and explains why the Tswana, like people in other cultures, conceive of their world in an apparently contradictory manner-as rule-governed yet inherently open to pragmatic individualism; orderly yet inherently fluid and shifting. "Rules and Processes" offers a fresh and persuasive approach to our understanding of the dialectics of social life. "A work of impressive scholarship in which theoretical sophistication and ethnographic richness are convincingly matched."-Ian Hamnett, "Times Higher Education Supplement."

State, Civil Society, and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment

Abstract: Three books published during the seventies, by Michel Foucault, Michael Ignatieff, and David Rothman, greatly revised the history of the penitentiary. Contrary to the received wisdom which located the penitentiary's origin in the altruism of Quakers and other humanitarian reformers, and portrayed it as a humane advance from the squalid jails and workhouses, corporal and capital punishment, and transportation that preceded it, the revisionist accounts characterized the penitentiary, and other nineteenth-century "asylums" as weapons of class conflict or instruments of "social control." Social theories on a grand scale, such as Marxism or structural-functionalism, however, claim too much. The revisionist historiography of the prison followed these theories into three major misconceptions: that the state controls a monopoly over punitive regulation of behavior, that the state's moral authority and practical power are the major sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in terms of...

Forms of explanation : rethinking the questions in social theory

Abstract: "What makes one explanation better than another? How can we tell when an explanation has really answered our question? In a lively and readable discussion, Garfinkel argues that the key to understanding an explanation is to discover what question is really being answered. He then suggests criteria for a good explanation and goes on to examine some classic explanations in social and natural science."

Immanent critique as the core of critical theory: its origins and developments in Hegel, Marx and contemporary thought*

Abstract: My goal is to explain the intellectual and historical basis of critical theory-a term with vague and imprecise meaning for sociologists. Confusion about the approach is more fundamental than that usually attributed to its difficult, philosophical terminology. The central issue is that critical theory is not a general theory, but is instead a method of analysis deriving from a nonpositivist epistemology. The focus will be upon the method of immanent critique, its Hegelian-Marxist roots and its development as the central mode of critical theoretic analysis. Immanent critique is a means of detecting the societal contradictions which offer the most determinate possibilities for emancipatory social change. The commentary on method cannot be separated from its historical application, since the content of immanent critque is the dialectic in htstory. Jayl suggests that critical theory is opposed to closed philosophical systems and that the precise shape of the approach is elusive because it is 'expressed through a series of critiques of other thinkers and philosophical traditions'. Jay's book describes the highly diverse works of critical theorists (in social theory, philosophical speculation, aesthetic critique, and historical description) and the broad variety of thinkers they address (e.g., Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Weber, Husserl and Heidegger). It is understandable why Susan BuckMorss concludes that critical theory is 'a term which lacks substantive precision'.2

The Emergence of Sociological Theory

Abstract: 1 The Rise of Theoretical Sociology The Enlightenment and New Ways of Thinking Early Sociological Theory, 1830-1930 The First Masters Conclusion 2 The Origin and Context of Auguste Comte's Sociology The Strange Biography of Auguste Comte The Intellectual Origins of Comte's Thought Conclusion 3 The Sociology of Auguste Comte Comte's Early Essays Comte's Course of Positive Philosophy Critical Conclusions 4 The Origin and Context of Herbert Spencer's Thought Biographical Influences on Spencerian Sociology The Political Economy of -Nineteenth-Century England The Scientific Milieu of Spencer's England Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and the Sociology of Comte Why Read Spencer? 5 The Sociology of Herbert Spencer Spencer's Moral Philosophy: Social Statics and Principles of Ethics Spencer's First Principles Spencer's The Study of Sociology A Note on Spencer's Descriptive Sociology Spencer's Principles of Sociology The Analysis of Societal Institutions Critical Conclusions 6 The Origin and Context of Karl Marx's Thought Biographical Influences on Marx's Thought G. W. F. Hegel and Karl Marx Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx Adam Smith and Karl Marx Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx 7 The Sociology of Karl Marx The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto Capital Critical Conclusions 8 The Origin and Context of Max Weber's Thought Biographical Influences on Weber's Thought The Early Years Karl Marx and Max Weber The Methodenstreit and Max Weber Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber Heinrich Rickert and Max Weber Weber's Theoretical Synthesis 9 The Sociology of Max Weber Weber's Methodology of the Social Sciences Weber's Image of Social Organization Weber's Analysis of Domination Weber on Capitalism and Rationalization Weber's Study of Religion Weber's Outline of the Social System Critical Conclusions 10 The Origin and Context of Georg Simmel's Thought Biographical Influences on Simmel's Thought Intellectual Influences on Simmel's Thought The Enigmatic Simmel 11 The Sociology of Georg Simmel Simmel's Methodological Approach to the Study of Society The Web of Group Affiliations Conflict The Philosophy of Money Critical Conclusions 12 The Origin and Context of Emile Durkheim's Thought Biographical Influences on Durkheim's Thought Charles Montesquieu and Durkheim Jean Jacques Rousseau and Durkheim Auguste Comte and Durkheim Alexis de Tocqueville and Durkheim Herbert Spencer and Durkheim Karl Marx and Durkheim Anticipating Durkheimian Sociology 13 The Sociology of Emile Durkheim The Division of Labor in Society The Rules of the Sociological Method Suicide The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life A Science of "Morality" Critical Conclusions 14 The Origin and Context of George Herbert Mead's Thought Biographical Influences on Mead's Thought Mead's Synthesis of Schools of Thought Wilhelm Wundt and Mead William James and Mead Charles Horton Cooley and Mead John Dewey and Mead Mead's Synthesis 15 The Sociology of George Herbert Mead Mead's Broader Philosophy Mind, Self, and Society The Philosophy of the Act Critical Conclusions 16 The Emergence of Contemporary Theoretical Perspective Nine Theoretical Traditions and Perspectives Conclusion

Sociological Impressionism : A Reassessment of Georg Simmel's Social Theory

Abstract: 1. Georg Simmel: A Kind of Introduction to a Man without Qualities? 2. A Foundation for Sociology, 3. A Sociological Flaneur 4. "Snapshots sub specie aeternitatis" ? 5. "A Philosophy of the Times",

Max Weber and Robert Michels

Abstract: This paper investigates the unique intellectual parthership of Max Weber and Robert Michels. Drawing on published work and unpublished correspondence, it shows the extent and nature of the influence exerted by Weber on Michels's inquiry into the sociology of parties and organization. Beginning as a syndicalist and renegade Marxist, Michels sharpened his critical perspective under Weber's guidance. The "structural" and sociological analysis in his major work, Political Parties, developed within the categories and norms of Weberian social science. However, substantive disagreement arose over the central "problematic" of modern social theory: for Michels it was "democracy," for Weber "domination." This disagreement accounts for their contrasting interpretations of the organizational phenomenon. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the import of Weber's critique.

Thinking Disputes: An Essay on the Origins of the Dispute Industry

Abstract: ion called power as an explanation will not wash. It leads, however, to the same cycle of problems as dispute theorizing itself-indeed, as all inductive theorizing does: i.e., is the power of a feudal chief the same as the power of a lawyer, or an international company, or a highly respected village woman. .. ? So while the techniques reveal the need for theoretical elaboration, the methodology itself, caught on the idealist horns of the induction vs. deduction dilemma, and incapable of transcending it, cannot yield a way out. For both approaches, as we have seen, start with a concept of dispute, and a concern about these "disputes," rather than with a concept of the social formation, and a concern about social structures and social orders. The attempt to work from the dispute to the social formation is doomed to failure, for the concept of dispute itself is not and cannot be, if so formulated, an integral part of a social theory, a theory which should have itself created the space for such a concept. Thus to substitute the study of disputes for the study of law, as Roberts (1979) for example encourages us to do, simply replaces one problem with another

Social and Scientific Method or What Do We Make of the Distinction Between the Natural and the Social Sciences

Abstract: Ever since the rise of the social sciences, social science methodology has been a much disputed issue among social scientists and philosophers of the social sciences. 1 Much like the history of social theory, the history of social science methodology is a history of controversy, and this tradition is quite naturally renewed with every appearance of a new conception of social life. Most recently, methodological discussions have centered around the discrediting of received 'positivistic' procedures by showing their essential inadequacy in dealing with the social world. In these discussions, established methodological procedures such as survey research or laboratory experimentation were linked to a model of scientific method identified with the natural sciences, and new social methodologies continuously emphasized their rejection of this model. In fact, new rules of social science method have been developed, displayed and defended in a constant dispute with the standard set by this natural science model, and they have made the departure from this standard the declared goal of an indigenuous social methodology. Perhaps not surprisingly, the standard itself has found little attention in the dispute. While the 'positivistic' conception is vigorously rejected as a model for social science methodologies, it is more or less taken at face value when it refers to the natural and technological sciences. Philosophical investigations which for some time now have directly questioned this model as correctly describing the natural sciences appear to be either ignored or declared irrelevant for the discussion. When they are introduced into the picture, they serve as some sort of back-

Racism, Society, and Disease: An Exploration of the Social and Biological Mechanisms of Differential Mortality

Abstract: Racial differentials in mortality provide important insight into the nature of mass disease in capitalist society. Not only are the differentials sizable in magnitude, they are consistent for multiple causes of death and appear to evolve in response to social development. The relationships among social factors and the biological and physical agents of disease can be identified through racial contrasts and a pattern of causation which applies to both the minority and majority populations described. Furthermore, the impact of exploitation as the primary disease-mediating factor under capitalist social relations can be estimated. This paper attempts to combine an analysis of bio-medical mechanisms with Marxist social theory in a comprehensive framework for the study of the social origins of racial differentials.

Legal and Informal Land Tenures in Thailand

Abstract: All too often the study of land tenure in agrarian states is treated either as a dimension of economic organization or, with respect to its more specifically formal characteristics, as pertaining to the sphere of law. With both approaches there is the danger of ignoring or at least underplaying the fact that the formulation and regulation of tenural arrangements is an expression of the political order of society. Paradoxically, familiarity with this idea has tended to limit its appreciation. Awareness of the ‘classic’ and explicit example of feudalism and its place in grand social theory may well direct attention away from the detailed examination of more diffuse forms of the relation between land tenure and political structures. Such a lack of interest is readily observable in the case of Thailand where the history of the relationship is both unusual and highly significant for the analysis of contemporary social change.

Karl Polanyi's Social Theory: A Critique

Abstract: IF current social science can boast of anything remotely resembling a paradigm, then utilitarianism is its leading candidate. This doctrinewhether in the guise of neoclassical economics or game, exchange, or rational-choice theory-assumes the theoretical primacy of individual actors rather than of pre-existent social groups. These actors are conceived to have particular goals that cannot all be equally realized, for men live in a world of scarcity and uncertainty and therefore must select between alternative courses of action. The hallmark of utilitarian

Body and Soul: sources of social change and strategies of education

Abstract: In the past decade, the United States has experienced a deepening economic crisis and a decline in the quality of life (Castells, 1980). The search for security in material reward and in cultural meanings which offer consolation for material deprivation and uncertainty speeds up and appears in a caricatured and bifurcated form. Careerism in work and fundamentalism in belief are the most evident expressions of the frantic fashion in which individuals try to solve dilemmas posed by the current character of social change. The social theory of education, despite its claim of detachment as science or critique, is an integral part of these social and cultural changes. The liberal or progressive view of faith in education as the basis of social reform developed during an earlier period of social expansion and belief in a democratic culture (Welter, 1962; Wexler, 1976). The current view of education as cultural reproduction began as a critique of the liberal social theory of education. Cultural reproduction theory belongs to a later time, when commitment to a common culture has become less tenable as a result of the salience of social fragmentation and class division. The most insightful intellectuals see prevailing social arrangements and patterns of culture as partial, deceptive, and socially oppressive. Withdrawal of faith in education is an aspect of this more general removal of commitment from a system of symbolic interpretation that has lost its claim to universality and its capacity to compensate for socioeconomic deprivation with cultural consolation. Cultural meanings, and the institutions through which they are are transmitted, are identified with social domination. The intellectual work of this period is the work of the critique of culture as ideology, and the demonstration of ways in which the acceptance of ideology in general, and through schooling in particular, blocks the realisation of the interests and needs of deprived, and potentially ascendant, social groups (Young, 1971; Brown, 1973; Bourdieu, 1977; Apple, 1979a). This disenchantment is connected to an affirmation, among intellectuals, of the endogenous cultures of the oppressed as more authentic and socially accurate than the official culture. It is also marked by a withdrawal of faith in cultural institutions which

The French New Left: An intellectual history from Sartre to Gorz

Abstract: PrefaceThis study is not a history of the new left itself, but rather of its theoretical dimension as it evolved in its most developed form --i.e., in France. For it is in France that the intellectual origins of new left social theory are most obvious in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and others. And it is also in France that the clearest political expression of the new left occurred -- the May 1968 upheaval. Thus, an intellectual history of the French new left covers a rich field of experience. It surveys the efforts by radical social theorists both to confront the historically experienced limitations of marxism as a liberating social theory and to continue and extend the critical role of marxism by analyzing the new contradictions engendered in advanced industrial societies, as well as proposing strategies for liberating social change.The study begins, in Part I, with a critical appraisal of the intellectual origins of French new left social theory as it emerged from the radical critiques of traditional marxism carried out by Sartre, Henri Lefebvre, and Cornelius Castoria- dis in the period 1945 to 1968. Sartre's existentialist critique revolved around what he considered to be the lack of a marxist theory of subjectivity. Lefebvre's revisionist critique questioned the validity of the traditional marxist view of advanced industrial society. Castoriadis' gauchiste critique denied marxism revolutionary status, claiming it had been transformed into a bureaucratic ideology.The existentialist, the revisionist, and the gauchiste critiques developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, and converged in the 1960s as a French new left social theory. Its main themes focused on the project of discovering egalitarian solutions to the problems of alienation and bureaucracy in advanced industrial society. The explosion of May 1968 -- which is discussed in Part II -- appeared to confirm the relevance of this project and opened a new era of social contestation. In this sense May 1968 was an important turning point. It represented the culmination of new left social theory and opened the way for the incorporation of its assumptions and themes into the political and social movements of the 1970s.In Part III I survey the legacy of the French new left in the aftermath of May 1968. On the one hand, we witness the resurgence of structuralism in the domain of theory, and the rise of Eurocommunism and left electoralism in the political arena. But more significantly, the social movements of selfmanagement, feminism, and ecology emerge to continue the new left project and expand its meaning. It is toward these movements, I argue, that radical social theory must turn if it is to move beyond its present fragmentation and confusion to achieve a coherent vision capable of inspiring progressive social change.As an essay in intellectual history, this work does not claim to be exhaustive of all the material which could conceivably be classified under the heading of the French new left. Rather, I have attempted to select what I think are the basic themes and to develop them in the context of a broad survey of recent French social theory. It is hoped that the result of such an approach is a work that may be of use for the general reader as well as for specialists in social theory and intellectual history.

Communism and the fall of man : the social theories of Thomas More and Gerrard Winstanley

Abstract: The thesis examines the thought of Thomas More and Gerrard Winstanley, emphasizing the concern of both theorists with the prevailing moral depravity of human nature attributable to the Fall of Man, and their proposals for the amendment of men's conduct by institutional means, especially by the establishment of a communist society. The thesis opens with a conceptual exploration of 'utopianism' and 'millenarianism' before discussing the particular forms of these concepts employed by More and Winstanley. The introductory section also includes an investigation of the context which constituted the background to the ideas of More and Winstanley. More's theology, his conception of human nature, and his view of contemporary civil society are examined in detail. It is argued that the conclusions More derived from this aspect of his thought formed his basic conception of the situation to which the institutional amendments outlined in Utopia were directed. These proposals, regarding communism, the state, family and community life, education, religion, and ethics, are discussed. It is argued that Utopia constitutes More's model of a society designed to facilitate the salvation of man. Winstanley's appreciation of man's nature, prevailing condition, and potential for spiritual regeneration, are outlined. The development of Winstanley's thought, and the impression his active involvement with the Diggers made upon him, is described. It is argued that Winstanley renounced millenarianism and ultimately assumed utopian social theory as a medium for the articulation of his proposals for the restoration of man to spiritual regeneracy on earth. The institutional aspects of this scheme, regarding communism, the state, patriarchalism, labour, and education, which he outlined in The Law of Freedom, are evaluated. The thesis concludes, with a brief comparative analysis before setting the ideas of More and Winstanley'in the context of the changing worldview, appreciation of man's potential and progress, and the emphasis upon aspiration, which evolved in the early modern period.

Another Step Toward A Social Theory Of Disaster

Abstract: Since the first systemic social study on disaster, the "Halifax-Explosion" by Prince (1920) and the study by Carr (1932) on a general disaster-stage-model, the sociological research on disasters has mushroomed not only linearly but exponentially (Quarantelli,1978: 2). To a certain extent, this growth might have been induced by the auto-dymanics of academia (see Kreps, 1979; Quarantelli, 1979), but in the main it reflects the fact that the traditional modes of explaining and coping with disasters had become meaningless and insufficient. "Modern" societies, characterized by perpetual social change and cultural development, were facing the need for new modes of explanation and better ways of coping with disasters. The reasons for this need are described by B. A. Turner: