Illuminating Social Life

Classical and Contemporary Theory Revisited

Peter Kivisto

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781483321226
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

The sixth edition of Peter Kivisto's popular anthology, Illuminating Social Life, continues to demonstrate to students how social theories can help them make sense of the swirling events and perplexing phenomena that they encounter in their daily lives. A perfect complement for sociological theory courses, this updated edition includes 13 original essays by leading scholars in the field that help students better understand and appreciate the relevance of social theory. Once again, Peter Kivisto?s collection illuminates the connection between sociological theory and the realities that students are faced with every day —from the Internet, alcohol use, and body building to shopping malls, the working world, and fast-food restaurants.

Contributor to the SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development Award

Find out more at www.sagepub.com/sociologyaward

PART I

Classical Sociological Theory

Introduction

Peter Kivisto

Of all the many early figures in the history of sociology, four stand out as the most enduringly important: Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel. In different ways, the members of this quartet both shaped the discipline during its formative period and continue to influence sociological thinking today. Although their respective understandings of modern society overlapped in many ways, each of these scholars nonetheless emphasized certain features of contemporary life at the expense of others. Each developed a distinctive theoretical approach that served to provide a novel way of interpreting facets of social life. The course of events since their deaths has proven time and time again that this foursome possessed remarkable insight into the nature and the dynamics of the modern age. Indeed, their insights are crucial to understanding recent social changes associated with the economic transformations brought about by advanced industrial capitalism, the cultural dynamics of modernity and postmodernity, and the political transformations under way as a result of globalization. None of the essays in Part I pretend to capture the fullness of any of the theorists under consideration. Rather, the authors have attempted to extract from the work important elements that can be treated on their own terms but manage at the same time to reveal something of the overall thrust of the particular theorist’s intellectual legacy.

Chapter 1, by Stephen Adair, explores the contemporary relevance of a person who historically preceded the other three scholars: Karl Marx (1818–1883). Unlike the others, Marx never held an academic appointment but instead lived his life as a revolutionary outsider. His ideas—or at least particular interpretations of his ideas—had a profound impact on the history of the 20th century, from the success of the Russian Revolution to the collapse of communism in the late 1980s.

Marx, in a unique synthesis of German philosophy, French political ideas, and British economics, sought to understand the dynamics of capitalism. Key to understanding Marx is a realization that he was not concerned with understanding industrial society in general but rather with revealing the unique dynamics of capitalist industrialization. Indeed, the major sociological question he sought to answer was, How does capitalism work? In addressing this question, Marx also addressed three corollaries: (a) Is capitalism an economic system that necessarily exploits some classes in the interests of another class? (b) If it is exploitative, is a nonexploitative industrial system possible? and (c) If a nonexploitative system is possible, how can it come about?

Marx thought that capitalism, being driven by the quest for profits, necessarily placed that quest above the quest for a just, humane, and equitable society. His writings are an attempt not only to claim that capitalism inevitably exploits the working class but also to show why and how this is so. These questions were the ones that most preoccupied him. Marx wrote far less about the alternatives, in part because he had a decided aversion to utopian dreamers. Thus, although Marx thought that a nonexploitative system—which he called socialism or communism—was possible, he had far less to say about what this type of economy would look like and how it would be established than he did about the character of existing capitalism.

What the chapter by Adair seeks to illustrate is that, today, during a major transformation that has given rise to what has been called the information economy, key elements from the core of Marx’s analysis of the dynamics of capitalism are as relevant as they were in the 19th century. Specifically, the author contends that information as a commodity has grown in significance in recent decades, and celebrities have taken on a new and distinctive role. He argues that, although there is much that is unique about this situation, nonetheless Marx’s conceptual apparatus remains relevant in helping us to understand developments taking place in the 21st century.

In Chapter 2, George Ritzer explores and updates one of the central theoretical concerns of the great German social thinker Max Weber (1864–1920): his theory of the rationalization of modern life. Weber was one of the most important academics responsible for the development of sociology in Germany. The scope of topics he studied was encyclopedic. Thus, he wrote about economics, politics, culture, and religion. Within these arenas, his interests were equally far ranging. In economics, for example, he wrote about the agrarian economies of the ancient world as well as about current events, such as the emergence of a socialist economy in revolutionary Russia after World War I. In perhaps his most famous and provocative thesis, on the relationship between what he called the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Weber argued that there was an elective affinity between Protestant theology and the worldview of capitalism, and this affinity served to account for the fact that capitalism arose in countries where the Protestant Reformation had proven to be successful.

No matter how controversial this thesis would subsequently prove itself to be, what is clear from his argument is that Weber thought that the various institutional spheres that make up society are interconnected. This is certainly the case in his discussion of the topic of central concern to Ritzer: rationalization. Weber thought that a rational, scientific worldview increasingly came to characterize the modern age, with its emphasis on reason. When applied to a capitalist economy, rationalization entailed, as Ritzer notes, such features as predictability, calculability, efficiency, and control. All of these are employed by capitalist managers intent on increasing profitability and control over the market.

Weber was one of the great pessimists of his day, and he felt that the progressive advance of rationalization (and its subsidiary, bureaucratization) threatened our freedom. In perhaps the most widely quoted passage from his writings, he contended that our futures would come to resemble an “iron cage.” Ritzer’s article is an attempt to use this insight by analyzing what is, to all of us, an altogether familiar and taken-for-granted feature of our social landscape: the fast-food restaurant. The concept of McDonaldization is designed to update and specifically apply the Weberian idea of rationalization to this phenomenon. In the spirit of Weber, Ritzer seeks to explore the darker side of this pervasive phenomenon.

Regarding the third classic theorist, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), we discover someone with a far more optimistic view of what the modern world holds in store for us. Insofar as he was a pivotal figure in the establishment of sociology in the French university system, Durkheim was the contemporary counterpart of Weber. His ideas had a profound impact on sociology, not only in France but also internationally. Indeed, it is fair to say that, in the long run, Durkheim’s ideas played a larger role in shaping American sociology than did the ideas of the three other people discussed in Part I.

Durkheim was concerned with understanding differing forms of human community and the distinctive bases of solidarity that undergirded them. In a rather sweeping fashion, he sought to illustrate how preindustrial, premodern communities were, in significant ways, different from industrial, modern ones. He described earlier societies as being based on mechanical solidarity, whereas contemporary society was predicated on organic solidarity. Central to Durkheim in his attempt to distinguish mechanical from organic societies is the division of labor. In earlier societies, this division was rather minimal because people—or kin units—performed a wide array of tasks necessary to sustain their lives. In stark contrast, in modern industrial society, the division of labor is highly developed. The size and complexity of such societies necessitates the specialization of work. Because people are unable to perform all the tasks associated with sustaining their lives, they are highly dependent on others. Modern society thus fosters interdependency.

Reviewing these ideas and building on them in Chapter 3, Anne M. Hornsby examines the novel phenomenon of Net communities. She is interested in seeing whether these cyberspace communities are merely extensions of modern organic communities or can be seen—because of the lack of physical proximity and the disembodied character of Internet social interactions—as a new form of community. In other words, she questions whether Durkheim’s ideas can adequately grasp the world of the Internet or whether we need to build on, but go beyond, his original contributions to social theory.

The final person discussed in Part I is the German sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918). During his lifetime, Simmel’s career was consistently stymied because of his Jewish background. Anti-Semitism was chiefly responsible for preventing him from rising to the heights of the German academic world. Nonetheless, his body of thought was held in high regard by his contemporaries in both Europe and America. Weber was especially impressed by his intellectual achievements. Disturbed by the injustice that befell his colleague, Weber used his considerable influence to try to advance Simmel’s career. This proved in the long term to be helpful because Simmel eventually was able to obtain a professorship that he richly deserved.

Simmel had a substantial impact on what was known as the Chicago School of sociology, the most influential center for the development of sociology in the United States during the early part of the 20th century. After his death, Simmel’s reputation grew, albeit slowly and somewhat fitfully. Today, his ideas are not only seen as key to sociologists of modernity but also embraced by theorists who describe themselves as postmodernists.

As a student of contemporary social and cultural life, Simmel’s thinking frequently appeared to reflect what he described as a central trait of the modern world: its fragmentary nature. Known as a fine essayist, Simmel provided finely textured descriptions, or snapshots, of social relations and individual types. He was interested in conflict, which he saw as potentially both destructive and creative. Simmel was not a systematic social theorist, but his ideas do reflect a carefully articulated and coherent theoretical framework.

William J. Staudenmeier, Jr., an expert in alcohol studies, reveals the varied ways that Simmel’s ideas can be employed to examine the role of alcohol in society. In the spirit of Simmel, Staudenmeier approaches his topic from several different perspectives, showing in the process the many ways that Simmel’s ideas can be employed to shed light on its various facets.

Together, these four chapters reveal the ongoing relevance to us, as we move into the second decade of the 21st century, of ideas first formulated during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is for this reason that sociologists continually return to the ideas of their forebears. They do so not simply to understand something about the history of the discipline but also because these ideas still have much to say to us about contemporary society.

CHAPTER 1

Celebratory Capitalism and the Commodification of Information

Stephen Adair ¹

Stephen Adair is a Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Central Connecticut State University, where he teaches courses in Sociological Theory, Social Inequality, Social Movements, and Quantitative Analysis. His recent scholarly activities include publications on topics in classical sociological theory as well as methodological work for the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness (CCEH) to evaluate programs and to administer their annual homeless count. He is a longtime member of the Association for Humanist Sociology and has been nominated to serve as the association’s president in 2014. He received his PhD in Sociology from Northeastern University in 1993 and his BA in English from the University of Vermont in 1983.

Promises of greater social equality and collective prosperity with the advent of an information economy stretch back more than three decades. In the mid-1970s, the growth in the service sector and the relative decline of workers in manufacturing helped to foster this view. Bell (1976) argued that, in an emergent “post-industrial society,” knowledge and education would become more important than wealth, inheritance, or relation to the means of production in determining social position. This idea that an information economy weakens the divide between capital and labor, diminishes class conflict, and yields greater social equality has been remarkably enduring (cf. Castells, 2000; Drucker, 1994; Thurow, 1999 Toffler 1990). Robert Reich (1991) suggested that the wealth of nations increasingly depends on “symbolic workers” who use educational resources to increase productivity, create flexible systems of production, and improve living standards. In Grusky’s (2001, p. 8–12) widely used text on stratification, he claimed we have shifted from a “class-based” industrial society, where the principal assets were economic to an “advanced” industrial system, where the principal assets are rooted in human expertise and educational resources.

The political writer George Gilder (1989, p. 18) initiated a new ideological twist suggesting that the world was no longer tied to material things, as if we no longer had to eat real food or be sheltered in a physical home: “The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.” Gilder described how this transition expands entrepreneurial opportunities and improves economic well-being. Microsoft’s Bill Gates (1995, p. 250) similarly imagined a bright future:

It [new technology] will relieve pressures on natural resources because increasing numbers of products will take the form of bits rather than manufactured goods.... Citizens of the information society will enjoy new opportunities for productivity, learning and entertainment. Countries that move boldly and in concert with each other will enjoy economic rewards.

Writing from a very different perspective, critical theorists Hardt and Negri (2000) also lose touch with the material world, maintaining that the era of social classes associated with the industrial age has passed and that we have entered a new period characterized by immaterial labor that operates through communicative networks. They (2000, p. 302) write,

The concept of private property itself, understood as the exclusive right to use a good and dispose of all wealth that derives from the possession of it, becomes increasingly nonsensical in this new situation.... The foundation of the classic modern conception of private property is thus to a certain extent dissolved in the postmodern mode of production.

The rhetoric abounds. In the virtual bounties of what was termed the new economy of the late 1990s, images multiplied of a prosperous, “weightless world” no longer restricted by geography, gravity, or the qualities of material things (cf. Cairncross, 1997; Coyle, 1997; Meyer & Davis, 1998; Neef, 1998; Quah, 2001). Recently, Tapscott and Williams (2006, p. 17) argued we have entered a new era of “Wikinomics” based on mass collaboration that will “make governments more accountable and lift millions of people out of poverty.”

There are good reasons to suppose that an economy increasingly reliant on the production and distribution of ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editor
• Preface
• Part I. Classical Sociological Theory
• Part II. Contemporary Theories And Their Connections To The Classics
• Index