*Social Theory is a wide-ranging system of ideas that deals with the centrally important issues of social life.

*A Theory is often thought of as a set of interrelated propositions that allow for the systematization of knowledge, explanation and prediction of social life that generates new research hypotheses and ideas.

*There is, however, no true or absolutely acceptable definition of theory:

1. Theory as formal propositions which are testable

2. Theory as an intellectual framework which allow the framing of questions

3. Theory as discursive framework which helps to establish a general, grounded frame

4. Theory as "explanation" to social phenomena

*A test of a theory is 1. satisfactoriness

2. generation of new observations

3. empirical testing

4. creation of understanding

5. investigation of new phenomena/new slant on...

*There is a question regarding the observation of social phenomena. Philosophy of science sees two central problems in testing theories. There is a great proliferation of theories in sociology. Many of them are interested in and test different questions. All of these theories depend upon different assumptions. In the last 30 years more and more competing theories have arisen.

*Most generally, we think of theories as probable explanations.

* Theological explanations (religious) are focused on knowledge for the sake of the divine (god). What were gods plans and intentions? (God's progress...) (the logic of god)

* "Science" was guarded and highly specific

* The sacred ruled the scientific and philosophical. Faith was the major concern not logic or observation. Trust in the supernatural. Focus on the abstract-- explicitly anti-empiricism = focus on supernatural, other world.

* Themes of harmony were dominant.

* Social thought is static, hierarchical. Order in which all things have a place, a purpose, part of a larger plan

*human behavior is explained in terms of an overall structure -- natural and moral -- of the universe

* divingly created and ordered universe. The natural and the social worlds were viewed as spiritually iinfused with value, meaning, and purpose.

examples: Aristotle

Plato

Thucyidides

* What allowed Galileo to move beyond the Aristotelian scholasticism of his time? This was a paradigm based on the harmony (music) of the spheres, wherein all phenomena fell into a uniform theory of knowledge and perception, and all physical phemomena were colored by a metaphysical participation in God's plan. The Church certainly maintained the position that all things are held under God of whom they are a part, and God as the Church could maintain its power and influence.

* There were some who followed the writings of Euclid, the geometrist, who found a new logic based on mathematical measurement and practical experiment. The world of phemomena were liberated from the speculations of theologians, and defined through the practice of mathematical analysis. Galileo, the rebel, was the architect of the rebirth of this scientific impulse in the Renaissance, and, needless to say, was branded a heretic by the Church and stripped of his status. Those shifts are hard to take.

* The Euclidian view was/is based on the idea that to know that the most basic physical observations were/are well defined and stable. Scientific and technological revolutions have been born from a committment to quantification.

-criticism of Chrisitianity, of status quo

-secular orientation

-philosophical

-the logic of facts

*All aspects of life are open to criticism

*Self-explanation

*Use of Reason (reason+observation=scientific Method)

*Intellectual progress leads to general progress

*focus on experience, observation--empirical method

*focus on the real world

The enlightenment follows the natural science position and approach (positivism).

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Whether progress is a 'good thing' depends both upon ones standpoint and the direction in which history is moving. If I were a peasant in the late Roman Republic or in 17th century England then progress would have to be judged a bad thing, since the direction of history led towards the elimination of the free peasantry as a class

either in favor of slave operated latifundia in the one case or capitalist farms in the other. If I were a Naative American of the 18th or 19th century, progress would be a total disaster.

To those who are its beneficiaries progress always seems a good thing and acquires a moral connotation. For the present period for example, the overthrow of socialism and the capitalist counter-revolution in the USSR is, from the standpoint of its beneficiaries both morally laudable and identified with progress. The question for those who identify with the cause of the workers is whether the current direction of progress is a long term one or a short term reversal of a longer trend : is the system moving into a local potential minimum or a global one.

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:. Order, progress, rationality all come together

Reason - Intellectual interpretation

arguments and conclusions based on interpretations of evidence derived in an empirical manner that can be duplicated or replicated -- in other words, we can know the cause

:. Order, progress, rationality all come together

Knowledge can rest only on fact and scientific method

social world view becomes that humans create society, we create the social world

reason over faith, reason over opinion, prejudice...yet important are issues of freedom and morality.

The enlightenment then promotes a liberal human social values view

The question of morality and objectivity remains a concern

neutral instrument vs. vehicle for social progress

what are the enlighteners values?

social motivations vs. social strata of the time

Questions of social control remain. Just as the enlightment thinkers critizied the Church as a form of collection of social power, could not the same idea be applied to the enlightenment and its use of objectivity and reason?

Social Science --> social knowledge

* no attempt to generate a comprehensive philosophy of spirituality and life

* universe as a mechanical system composed of matter in motion that obeyed natual laws

* creators of scientifc world-view

15th-17th century

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Euclid

* The early and key thinkers in sociology were influenced by the important social conditions of the 19th and early 20th century (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Spencer, Comte, St. Simon, Vico):

political revolution+industrial revolution+rise of capitalism+

transformation from rural to urban life+technological advances+

rise of bureaucracies+rise of social movements, in partincular--

socialism+religious change and growing secularism+rise of science

Social Theory was not really part of the feudal revolution found in most early enlightenment thinkers due to religious dogma. However, the enlightenment did open the door to science in a new form. Science instead of religion as center to theory was a new idea. Sociologists were very preoccupied to harness the principles of science to the study of society not other realms.

Sociology as the first attempt to construct a social theory regarding industrial society

* Emergence of sociology as an intellectual discourse

1. application of science to studying social phenomena and society

2. The society to be studied was the newly emerging European society.

3. Questions of "the new society"--inequality and politics

4. Most of these arguments were based on a moral philosophy

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Thinkers who illustrate the Enlightenment: Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)

Rousseau (1712-1778)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

-An Italian Jurist and philosopher as well as a professor of Latin at the University of Naples.

-Vico took the principles of science at the time and applied them to the studying of society. He argued that humans made society not a divine god. Isolated from the enlightenment thinkers. His writings were banned by the Church. Because of this he did not get an appointment at a local university (where the major focus was upon the memorization of the bible).

-He founded the study of linguistics in Italy. He argued that language changes because society changes.

-He did employ an evolutionary framework and some degree of cultural relativism.

*Concerned with the laws of nature

natural condition versus social condition

These conditions need to be reconciled--by performing a though experiment: What is the natural state of humanity--the state of nature?

* Rousseau sought an objective, non-ideological way of evaluating society

-What are we left with if we take all socio-cultural elements away (remove civilization, so to speak).

* the notion of the state of nature is a theoretical and methodological device by which one might lay bare basic humanity.

Hobbes--didn't go far enough in removing the veneer of society.

Natural state= war, corruption

Social State= peace

Rousseau

Natural State=peace

Social State= war, corruption

* Influenced by Rousseau but criticized his view toward the education of women. In Rousseau's Emile he proposed a form of education for women that would maintain the status quo.

* Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was written in response to Rousseau. (we have broken from theology, but sexism is another matter)

* The advances in 18th century philosophy and science left the status of women untouched and uncritiqued. This was tied to the general and specific submission of women. This submission has a historical context dating back to the Bible and classic Greece.

* Wollstonecraft argued against Rousseau that Women deserve social equality with men and should be given the education necessary to achieve it. If women appear to be inferior that is because they are indoctrinated with an ideology that supports a submissive orientation. The infeiorority of women is socially constructed--an artificial inferiority.

* At the time that Wollstonecraft was writing women had little or no standing in law--the common law of England ruled that whatever property a woman owmed before the marriage or might receive thereafter became the property of her husband automatically.

* Wollstonecraft is focused on the position of M-C women (thinking that both the rich and the poor are beyond help). She also doesn't see a reason to abolish the servant class.

* Not beyond social inequalities of class, position, and occupation!

The Romantic-Conservative Reaction (response to the enlightenment)

* The enlightenment synthesized rationalism and empiricism and in so doing overthrew theologically oriented theory.

* Thinkers who came after the enlightenment questioned the foundations of the enlightenment:

1. Immutable laws

2. Simple Progress

3. Simple Rationality

* While these ideas did and have become cornerstones of social science, there were some thinkers who questioned the naive optimism and rationalism of the 1800s.

* These thinkers turned toward the irrational side of human behavior:

Tradition, imagination, emotion, religion--they considered the ideas of the enlightenment thinkers as foolish.

* The stress was on--the group, the community, the nation, the state; the stresess were on the proper nature of society and its institutions.

* Thinkers such as Hume who questioned the nature of causality (simply an idea); Kant who argued against the notion of the mind as a blank slate but rather as an active entity separate from its experiences; and Hegel.

*Probably the most important romantic-conservative

*Tried to combine history and reason

*Reason is inherent in the process of development itself. ("What is rational is real and What is real is rational") Reason is not some abstract capacity of humans it is an immanent force which determine the structure and development of everything. (refered to as "Geist" spirit, Idea, God, Absolute)

* Reason is not an unchanging essence, but is continually developing and becoming. It is impersonal, logical, and cosmic. It is a process that unties all ideas, all realms.

* Reason unfolds in human institutions which change because of contradicions embedded within them--these contradictions are resolved which then create a new institution with contradictions and on....

The Philosposhy of Science as a body of literature looks at the consequences of "how we look" in partially determining what answer we get. On the practical level, if you look through an electron microscope, you will see electrons, not full cells.

The reason I'm having a problem following you is because the terms you use are left unspecified. For example, what constitutes as "explanation"? There is literature in science that talks about the difference between explaining "what" and explaining "Why". "What" may indeed provide a necessary cause for an action by the thing so defined. Quantum physics, for example does take the explanation of an atom's state as data. Do you mean "definition"? That would make more sense, as "atom" does have a definition.

But reductionism is bad science. On the social level, *if* one accepts one of the fundamental ideas of symbolic interactionism--that we construct daily life, personal identity, and social definitions of things through our everyday interaction with each other and the society we find ourselves in, the it is precisely the case that some things *may* be explained by the constituent parts of their definitions, or social constructions.

For example, until recently, the fact that most most firemen are *men* is in part explained by the fact that our word "fireman" clearly denotes maleness, that men are pictured in most children's books and alphabets when the "fireman" concept is taught, and that most TV shows and books portay firefighters as men--thereby constructing a norm of firefighter=man. Of course this is explaining "why", which also explains how "what" is defined.

If you want to move the analogy to the level of theoretical physics, you get a similar dynamic. The definition, or "what" of an atom, changed with the "discovery" of subatomic particles, which then explained the "why" of some atomic behavior.

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At the turn of the century--rise of empiricism and positivism, there was a great deal of consensus over the important issues of the day. The hierarchy of the sciences was firmly established as was the one central method:

* Positivism

--the knowledge that that which can be determined with scientific certainty. Certainty here relates to sense perception--what is known is known through the senses (observation, touch, smell, hearing). "knowledge is the knowledge of things." Science is knowledge which is anchored in perception.

* Critique of Positivistic approach to science--it is naive. It assumes a rather simple and uncomplicated view of objects, people, etc. Naive view of the accumulation of facts (consensus).

* Appeal of Positivism--1. Knowledge is certain knowledge (certain scientific knowledge) 2. scientific knowledge does not contradict or surprise your experience of the everyday world (what you observe is your fact/common sense).

*The rationalizing of scientific thought and practice eventually became rationalizing science's place in society. Science has been accorded a privileged position....

* Theology VS. Science*

ideological clash

direct competition

both claim a special and unique interpretation of reality

*Positivism and the theory of science that it engenders confirms the social order.

How do you test a proposition to determine that it is true?

According to his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) one verifies a theory through observation. Popper argued that Einstein's theory damages Newton's mechanics and has become so well established that it has in a sense overthrown the old view. It promises more certainty.

"There are so finite a number of observations which can prove a universal statement (theory)" There is always the possibility of refutation. There is no logical reason for assuming that the truth is always seen and understood. We should always strive to demonstrate the falsity in theories.

*Popper is essentially critiquing the inductive emphasis in positivism. Theories should be seen as conjecture, anything can be a theory. According to Popper the point where you test theories is by drawing out their implications. Scientists should be interested in refutation! "Theories can not be confirmed, they can only be disproved." If one can disprove an old theory than the new theory is better. (Popper--#1)

How does science get done? What is the process by which new theories replace older theories? What is the nature of this replacement? According to Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) there are periods of revolutionary science and normal science. The transformation of one theory for another occurs through dramatic breakthroughs.

-everyday science

-accepted beliefs, values, techniques (what Kuhn calls Paradigms)

*Problems arise when a paradigm is unable to cope with questions and anomalies that accumulate that the currently reigning theory and paradigm can not explain or answer in a meaningful manner. Hence, normal science breaks down and is replaced by a period of revolutionary science in which there is a historical transformation from one theory and paradigm to another.

*For example, one could argue that with the growing acceptance of Chaos theory in the disciplines of Physics and mathematics that we are experiencing a paradigm shift. (Kuhn--#4)

How do we determine that science is a rational enterprise? Lakatos argues that science is governed more by anomalies than anything else. There are always problems with any theory. With any observation there are always anomalies. It is difficult to know what a theory predicts because of all the clauses and contradictions especially for sociology and the social sciences due to a lack of control. It is hard to know if a theory has been tested in pure form.

In history, for example, there are always competing theories with a set of facts to back it's position. Falsification of a theory is always replaced with a competing theory. Falsification should not lead to the abandonment of a theory but rather to it's refinement. Theories are constantly being modified and rearranged. Just because a theory has anomalies is no reason to abandon it. A good theory needs to take anomalies into account.

1. A theory is to be abandoned if it has less explanatory power than another and

2. A theory leads one to look in a whole new/ novel way at the "facts."

*Science does not exist around hypotheses testing as it focuses around general principles a.k.a. research programs. Is it progressive--does it generate novel ideas and facts? or Is it degenerative--no longer capable of new theoretical work. (Lakatos--#2)

-->In his book Against Method critiqued both Kuhn and Lakatos. He agrees with Kuhn that it is personal and, often, irrational drives that propel the process of theory transformation. With Lakatos, if his position is correct or true, then it is unwise to throw away or reject any theory or paradigm because a so-called degenerative research program might recover. Than if that is true, the philosophy of science cannot tell us anything regarding rules and methods because we can do away with nothing. One rule or method has no greater claim than any other.

Science is more sloppy and irrational than its image. Scientists are viewed as priests or science as religion. Thinkers who refuse to be bowed by the "rules" or are poorly trained "don't know the rules." Science is anarchistic and there is no philosophy of science. *This position is not readily accepted in mainstream positions, it is considered a radical fringe of philosophy of science. (Feyerbend--possibly #3)

Carl Sagan died Friday. Saturday evening, A&E presented his biography.

It had, obviously, been in production for some time...Carl Sagan was and will remain a milestone in the sociology of science. It was his 13-part series on PBS which marked both the apogee and the transform- ation of the knowledge process. For the first time in human history, the man and the series brought the arcane knowledge of the universe out of the dusty files of academia into the living minds of millions who had neither degree nor honorific role in the production of science.

Sagan's life is tribute to the transformation of the knowledge process from the province of remote scholars to the provenance of public discussion and debate. This essay is one effort in explication of the impact of this new way to do the knowledge process; in the public media as much as in the specialized Institute.

More than that, the life of Sagan marks a major step in the integration and evaluation of science in the public interest.

Let us begin this tribute by a brief look at Sagan's life...again from the A&E Biography:

**Sagan was born in 1934; he was 62 when he died.

**Sagan graduated with honors from his high school where the Year Book

held that he would win fame for his study of the stars.

**Sagan taught at Harvard for a while; until his role in the politicizing

of science worked to his disadvantage. He had been very visible in the media working on behalf of Space Exploration and, to the dismay of more modest astro-physicists, on behalf of a lobby for exploration of deep space.

**Sagan went to Cornell to direct its new center for the study of

astro-physics. It was there that he came to national prominence.

**Sagan became deeply involved in the politics of science in several

ways most interesting to the sociology of science:

***He insisted that we didn't know for sure whether there was intell-

igent life on Mars or indeed, anywhere in the Universe other than the Earth...that neither faith nor logic could answer such question; only research and that meant exploration of other planets and other galaxies.

***Sagan said that not only where we not at the end of the knowledge

process but that we were only ankle-deep in a vast sea of knowledge yet to be explored. This view brought into question the finality of the truth claims made by the current crop of scientists who, in turn held that both method and mission of the knowledge process was in its last, final stage of completion. If Sagan was gently arrogant in his views; those who saw the end of science are mad. 'Tis better to be a bit arrogant than fundamentally stupid.

***Sagan held that science should be framed by and within the public sphere; that while experts could do basic work, science had a politics which must be oriented to human interests and humane politics.

***To that end, Sagan worked assiduously for a nuclear policy reoriented from the ends of war to the ends of justice. He joined those who protested and picketed. Not an act well calculated to endear him to the American Academy of Science....an institution whose fame and fortune depended upon the twinned sponsorship of the State and private corporations...making billions and billions from the militarization of the knowledge process in America.

**Sagan was married three times. He had five children by the three unions. Parenthood brought a personal transformation. As his children grew in number and age, Sagan turned his attention from deep space and the quest for intelligent life in other regions of the Cosmos to the quest for humane policy in the USA and the public sphere.

**Sagan was diagnosed with a rare form of luekemia some four years

ago. He needed bone marrow transplant. His only sibling, a sister, proved a perfect match. He underwent two such procedures...with every chance of recovery.

**Sagan died at age 62 of pneumonia in hospital. About 1 of four

people who enter hospital contact a disease there not present at admission. Hospitals are most convenient to physicians since they can practice mass medicine and profit greatly from the concentration of ill-health in one location.

-Concerned with preserving the traditional order

-Methods and theories were positivist (should follow the examples of the Natural Sciences)

-Saw needs for socialist reforms--that is, centralized planning of the economic system. The political institutions in france could not sustain themselves.

-What is needed is a new society based on science, industrialism, and Bourgosie. Universal industrialism would end all war and territorialism. To carry out needed production the industrial powers would need peace. There are clear elements of socialism here--the need to reestablish a new economic order. (technocracy)

-Saint-Simon was very much a utopian thinker ina sense.

-Saint-Simon was very much influenced by the example of the French Revolution because it brought the "mass of people" into interplay into society with an ability to act upon it. To organize on a large scale.

-Student of St. Simon, Comte stole ideas from St.-Simon. Very much a positivist. Coined term "Sociology."

-Science is to be concerned with social statistics (existing structures) and social dynamics (social Change). Dynamics are the most important.

-Evolutionary theory (which Comte called the Law of Three Stages)

1. Theological stage (world prior to 1300) "god"

2. Metaphysical stage (1300 to 1800) "nature"

3. Positivistic stage (1800- ) "observation"

-Comte was concerned with intellectual factors

-He emphasized large structures and attributed great importance to consensus. His method focused upon comparative historical analysis over abstract theorizing.

-English aristocrat who wrote over 100 books and was a best selling author

-His works were famous because they captured the "spirit of the times"

-Positivist (notion of Modern Science)

-Articulated the notion that "we are living in a new age"

-His evolutionary model was quite simple--the times and transition is creating new men (note gender). HIs ideology was widely popular at the time...

-His preoccupation was with order--how would society reestablish order and what would be its organization and structure. Spencer was the most modern of Comte, St.-Simon, and VIco. Spencer believed that the old order was limiting to the individual, the new order would be laisez faire and promote individualism.

-Spencer critiqued socialism from an individual subordination argument where as other thinkers saw it as freeing the individual.

-Order was clearly seen as the preservation of what we have.

-Elite theory of Social Change--Cyclical

-Society was conceived of as a system in equilibrium, a whole consisting of interdependent parts. Pareto's thought was central to functionalism in the U.S. in the 1930s.

-Mosca, like Pareto, offered an elite theory in opposition to Marxism

*Historical Materialism

1. Labor Power as a Commodity

a. Exploitation

b. Circulation of Commodities

c. Alienation

2. Class Relations

a. Actors represent their position to the mode of production

3. Class Relations and Life Chances

a. Struggle

4. Base and Superstructure

5. Contradictions of Capitalism

6. Emergence of Class Consciousness

*Division of Labor

1. Solidarity

a. Mechanical and Organic

b. The Nature of the Actor

c. Collective Conscience

d. Moral Order/Social Order

2. Social Facts as science, discipline, and methodology

a. The Study of Suicide

3. Religion

a. The Sacred and the Profane

b. Reflection of Society

Example: Totemism

*Methodology

1. Ideal Types

2. Vershten

*Rationality/Rationalization

1. Growth of Bureaucracies

2. Nature of Social Action

3. Nature and Types of Leadership

4. Religion as a social factor in the rise of capitalism

5. Class, Status, Party

*Social Formation

1. Social Interaction

a. Form

b. Content

c. Sociation

1. social geometry

a. numbers

b. size

c. distance

2. Dialectics

a. Fashion

3. Social Types

a. The Stranger

4. Culture and Reification

a. Philosophy of Money

b. The Metropolis and Mental Life

*Marx mini-Bio*

*Marx was born into a comfortable conservative M-C home. Lived in the Rhineland area of Germany where he was exposed to liberal French thinking. Father was a minor government official and was a non-practicing Jew who came from a long line of Rabbis but became secularized and eventually converted to Chritianity--potestant. Marx has been characterized as a precocious and bright child.

*Initially Marx was not a serious student but rather he was out for a good time (his father paid for his indulgences). In 1835 he went to study at Hamburg University and left a year later to study at Gena University where he received a PhD in philosophy under the direction of Professor Bruno Bauer. Marx saw radical politics as connected to philosophy. Marx's main intellectual influence was Georg Hegel, who at this time was influencial on German University students.

*Marx was quite a forceful personality--stamping feet, turning over table. He had several affairs. In one instance he impregnated a maid while in England and had her dismissed before any signs showed. Marx and his wife were quite puritan in their views of acceptable behavior. When Marx's collaborator and life long friend Frederick Engels would visit Marx with his partner, because they were not married she was forced to stay at a hotel.

*Hegel's theory was (and is) dense in detail and universal in scope. Hegel argued "what is rational is real." Which was perceived as a "call to action" for German university students--that is, to use reason and rational thinking to critique the political and social order. To call for radical reforms.

*Marx moved from Germany where his radical philosophical ideas kept him out of an academic post he received small teaching jobs until the government began to crack down on radical/liberals. Marx's second interest was journalisms and he went to Paris where he met Parisians who liked democracy but needed to address the needs of the people, so went a step beyond to socialism. Marx also adopted this philosophy. Marx elaborated socialism into a theory that discussed society as it "SHOULD BE."

1845 Marx publishes: The German Ideology

*1848 series of political uprisings and radical democratic revolutions influenced Marx to write what would become the Communist Manifesto. Traditional aristocracy and unresponsive governments were being thrown out of power. Marx edited a Cologne newspaper during this time. After time the gains of the revolutions were rolled back which placed social and political conservatives back in power.

1848 Marx Publishes: The Communist Manifesto

*1849 following this conservative ascendancy Marx was placed in involuntary exile in Great Britain. Marx refered to his travails as "15 years of suffering" Revolutions which appeared just a short time ago to be in the beginning were now seen to be a long way off. Marx spent his time working on social theory--academic theorizing.

*Marx married Jenny and she always had a maid, even though Marx was not rich. Marx lived good on the support of Engels who helped him with his writings. Engels was rich by inheriting mnufacturing factories located in various areas of Europe.

*While in England, Marx was a free lance writer (as were many) acting as a foreign correspondent for New York Herald Tribune. Marx spent all his remaining time in the British Museum looking at/reading economic statistics and reports.

*In the 1850s Marx elaborated on his social theories. He published the first volume of Capital in 1867--almost no reaction. The second edition was compiled by Engels, third edition was compiled by Karl Kotsky.

*Marx's later years were spent in scholarly work and political work (First International Workingmen's Association) to initiate beginning of labor unions (1850s-1860s unions were illegal). Forming a labor union was against the law at the time. However, Marx continued to advance socialist platforms. The international was broken by political infighting between Marx and Bakunin.

*Uprisings in Paris that occured at the end of the Franco-Prussian war (which was the last major political uprising that Marx saw before his death) was seen as a radical political uprising, and it was. It had a socialist underpining and was seen as a socialist sign of hope. Heavy bloodshed was used by the French government between 20,000 and 200,000 killed. Many thousands were arrested. The crushing of the commune had a sobering impact because France and Prussia cooperated to put down this uprising.

*Marx's political writings were adopted, a few years after the crushing of the commune, as the positions of the social democratic party in Germany.

*Marx never articulated an entire or complete social system. In his work the German Indeology he sketches a system while critiquing German philosophy. Marx developed his scheme over time, changed his mind on several occasions. Interpretation can be difficult because of this and open nature of his writings.

*As Marx gets older he becomes more aware of the democratic role in the possible achievment of socialism. Marx was, contrary to belief, fond of democracy.

*In his conceptual logic Marx is assuming a number of ideas:

1. History--Struggle--New System Each new social system arises from a change in the economic system which is produced via the struggle of human actors. The struggle is always centered on the mode of production which exists until the social formations that it has created create contradictions large enough to necessitate its change. Such as increasing contradictions between material forces of production and their growth and implementation. Each period, or epoch as Marx stated it, comes from this struggle. The capitalist struggle, for example, is the struggle between capitalists and laborers. Class struggle is the motor of change. This is the process of social change.

*All of Marx's propositions are based on the logic of dialectics. Dialectics is a method of understanding developmental processes. The word itself is dervied from the Greek meaning 'dialogue' refering to argue or contend. Ancient philosophers applied the dialectic to arrive at truth, a system of argument which brings out the contradictions in an opponent's reasoning. The Catholic Church did not approve of dialectics and outlwaed the practice. It was not renewed until Hegel.

*"everything changes" observed the ancient Greek Heraclitus. It was he who pointed out that a person cannot step twice into the same river--for the person, nor the river is quite the same. This principle of change applies to every phenomenon know to humans, so argues dialecticians.

*Hegel saw dialectics as two inflections--1. as a logical process and 2. more narrowly, as the dynamo of this process. Hegel believed that in the principle of idealism, the speculative understanding of reality as (absolute) spirit, unites the notions of reason and process.

-Hegel argues that we can know the basis of ultimate reality. However, so long as we continue to dichotomize reality we can't know. He argues that humans can create a Pantheism that transcends dichotomization--we are products of the one substance, hence we can become aware of this. This is not just some simple pantheism--humans are at the center of this scheme. The purpose is to become aware. How to become aware of experience and existence itself. This can only be accomplished in rationality. For Hegel, "the rational is real, the real is rational"--whatever does exist is the way that it is supposed to be. It is only through the consciousness of humanity that the (absolute) spirit, which is often translated as the movement of history, can know itself.

*For Marx his explanations are dialectical--in which opposing forces, tendencies, or principles are explained in terms of a common causal condition of existence and critiques--in which inadequate theories, phenomena, etc. are explained in terms of their historical conditions, which are distinctive. A new theory will always set out to explain by the theories it is seeking to supersede. But in saving the phenomena theoretically Marx radically transforms their descritptions, creates a new critical-explanatory system, and contributes to ideas of political transformation.

THESIS------------><-----------ANTITHESIS

(theory one) ^ (theory two)

^

SYNTHESIS

(new theory)

*Marx's dialectic is scientific because it explains the contradictions in thought and the crises of socio-economic life in terms of the particular contradictory essential relations which generate them. And Marx's dialectic is historical because it is both rooted in, and (conditionally) an agent of, the changes in the relations and circumstances it describes.

*As Marx himself put it in a letter to J.B. Schweitzer (January 24, 1865):

"the secret of scientific dialectics depends on comprehending economic categories as the theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding to a particular stage of development of material production."

BUT Was Marx truly dialectical? I have to point out that there are at least three meanings to that word:

(1) in epistemology: a dialectical interaction between theory and empirical reality, as described in the introduction to the GRUNDRISSE;

(2) in ontology: assertions that reality is a totality, in which the parts interact to mutually determine each others' character, and the whole is different from the sum of the parts;

(3) in mode of presentation: as in CAPITAL, where Marx first looks at the shared aspects of capitalist production (vol. 1), then at differences among capitalists (vol. 2), and then at the relationships among the diverse capitalists (vol. 3), a kind of thesis-antithesis-sythesis pattern.

After trodding on all sorts of philosophical toes, I think it's quite possible that parts of Marx's theory could be undialectical. For example, there is his historical description of the struggle over the length of the working day. But IMHO, to really understand what Marx is saying one has to put such fragments into the context of the whole of CAPITAL.

*In Marx's Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy (1859), he outlines many of his basic propositions:

1. There are different stages in the division of labor(organization of prod)

2. Each stages of development in the D-O-L is a different form of society

The D-O-L is the same idea as the mode of production. It implies capitalism, capitalism is the nearly final product of an evolutionary progress. For Marx, societies took fundamental forms (social organization and laws, social structure, universal laws of human nature that are tied to their economic structure).

3. You don't start the study of society with grand ideas, you want to understand society in its historical context. To begin you look at the production of human life.

4. Humans attempt to satisfy material life. This requires the use of instruments, tools. New needs emerge out of the satisfaction of old needs. This is not some crude technological determinism but rather the notion of "creation of need." People always want new things. Needs are historically created. However, resources are limited while needs are unlimited.

5. The production of material life leads to social life. Social relations are produced, not an "act of god". The mode of production creates social organization.

6. Complexity of production leads to the complexity of social structure. Not fair to reduce to technological determinism. Level of technique will determine social structure. A feed-back loop: production determines social life and the constitutent social life determines production.

7. Consciousness is not a pure idea it is a social product. Language develops at the same time. Ideas are molded by the way of life. Conditioned thought. Limited ideas due to this social condition--consequences. Ideas can not exceed their social setting but rather arise from it.

8. Manual labor versus mental labor corresponds to stratification system. Implicit in this is conflict due to this division because of inequality.

*Humans make their own history weighted by the influences from the past.

*The first clear exposition of historical materialism is 1845 with the publication of the German Ideology.

1. The D-O-L creates contradictions:

-unequal distribution of the fruits of labor which become property

-contradiction between individual property and communal property

-form of the state--institution that represents commonality, actually only represents the interests of the dominant class. Based on real community but this does not represent all the interests of all the people. An illusory sense of community.

-capitalism turns the labor of individuals into an alien power that enslaves them. Labor as it is constructed under capitalism dehumanizes, alienates.

-humans have lost sight over the fact that they make society and its various aspects, i.e., the economic...thus attaining conscious control.

Communism is a way of reestablishing control over the economic. The state will take a democratic form and the means of production will be publicly owned.

Defense of the Labor Theory of Value

1. Everybody knows that human labor is a special process and labor-power a very special commodity. But a certain sort of hard-nosed theorist is very unwilling to grant labor any special theoretical privilege. This attitude, although I think it is ultimately theoretically debilitating, is understandable. One doesn't want to be caught sneaking into one's basic economic *theory* a privileging of labor that is based on scientifically "extraneous" ideological, political or humanitarian concerns. If the LTV acquires its "validity" *only* from, say, a standpoint of political-ideological sympathy with the labor movement, this seems like sufficient reason for rejecting it.

2. I will attempt to allay this fear, showing that the granting of a special privilege to human labor time, and the commodity labor power, is *not in the least* (or need not be) the effect of the intrusion of extraneous factors into the realm of theory.

3. Here is a very broad first pass: The economy is "about" the production of goods that serve certain human purposes, by human beings, via their labor time. (The stipulation that the goods "serve human purposes" -- though those purposes may be quite various -- is necessary to distinguish economic production from, e.g., the production by humans of carbon dioxide and other bodily wastes.) Is this an "ideological" statement, extraneous to science? Not at all. Some such statement is absolutely required to prevent the "economy" from *vanishing* as a specific object of theoretical investigation. Otherwise how can one make a principled distinction between the economy, and all the other stuff going on in the biosphere (with which, of course, the economy is intricately linked)?

4. One could try delimiting the economy as the set of activities that earn (and participate in the determination of) the equalized rate of profit. But strictly speaking, this would be the empty set. Or "the set of activities involving the allocation of scarce resources by and on behalf of humans." But that, is too broad to isolate the economy as such; and besides, it skirts the point -- to be defended shortly -- that labor is the *key* "scarce resource."

5. There follow three quotations, one from each of the classical proponents of the LTV. No, this is not an appeal to authority. It is a limbering-up exercise, a preliminary to presenting some further angles on the "specialness" of labor. If you are interested in this topic, I would ask you to try to look at these quotes with fresh eyes -- to ignore the fact that they are almost cliches, and to see if they suggest any interesting implications.

A. Smith:

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. ... Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased...

B. Ricardo:

Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.

There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scare books and coins, wines of a peculiar quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess them.

These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily exchanged in the market. *By far the greatest part of those goods which are the object of desire, are procured by labour; and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.* (emphasis added)

C. Marx:

Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society's aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation.

Marx and Engles Online Library

All these Marx/Engels etexts now have one, cozy, communal home.

You will find the collection at csf.colorado.edu. You can either gopher

in, or ftp in. (Gopher is easier for file transfer, naturally).

Once in colorado.edu, you will find the Marx directory in the Progressive

Sociologist Network directory. This collection will, of course, be constantly added to and tinkered with, so check in every two week or five for changes/additions.

Marx and Engels

1. 1843--Ruge.letters(M)/

2. 1844--Intro.Critique.of.Hegel's.Philosophy.of.Right(M).

3. 1844--On.the.Jewish.Question(M).

4. 1845--Theses.on.Feuerbach(M).

5. 1847--Principles.of.Communism(E).

6. 1848--Communist.Manifesto(ME)/

7. 1848--On.the.Question.of.Free.Trade(M).

8. 1849--Wage-Labor.and.Capital(M)/

9. 1857--Intro.Critique.of.Political.Economy(M)/

10. 1868--Synopsis.of.Capital.vol.1(E)/

11. 1871--Marx's.Daughters.in.Post-Commune.France(Jenny.Marx).

12. 1871--Marx.Interview:New.York.World.

13. 1871--The.Civil.War.in.France(M)/

14. 1875--Critique.of.the.Gotha.Program(M).

15. 1877--Socialism:Utopian.and.Scientific(E)/

16. 1879--Marx.Interview:Chicago.Tribune.

17. 1882--Bruno.Bauer.and.Early.Christianity(E).

18. 1894--Peasant.Question.in.France.and.Germany(E)/

19. 1895--Law.of.Value.and.Rate.of.Profit(E).

Meaning, each of those works listed above is available in complete ascii transcription.

I hope you find this useful, whether for research, self-education, or simply entertainment.

T.B. Bottomore. 1966. "Karl Marx: Sociologist or Marxist?," from Marx: Sociology, Social Change, Capitalism. Edited by Donald McQuarie, 1978.

*Essay focuses upon Marx and contemporary sociology.

*Distinction between Marx's theoretical and intellectual work--"the sociologist" and his political work (or maybe more correctly put, as the political creeds and agendas that have arisen from his work--a "Marxist" an expounder of a creed.).

*Marxism Versus Functionalism

*Many diverse social thinkers follow Marx in the sense that they are influenced and argue with him (Simmel, Weber, others...).

*Bottomore emphasizes the tentative and heuristic nature of Marx's theory, the value of Marx's work for contemporary sociological research is seen mainly to be as a source for theoretical and methodological departures.

*The most interesting research according to Bottomore has been that research that has been influenced by Marx.

*The contemporary value of Marx's work lies more in the nature of the questions which it poses than in the answers which it offers to those questions. However, the reevaluation of Marx's work is a process with which we will never be done.

*Marx bridges questions of social relations, history, structure, conflict, economy, societal transformation, and methods of inquiry

*Marx's theory is often split into: 1. the historical interpretation of a unique series of events (Capitalism) 2. the frmaing of universal laws covering repeatable events (Historical Materialism)

but in actuality it covers both. Marx moved from a philosophy of history towards a scientific theory of society (in the sense that he articulated a body of general laws and detailed empirical statements). In fact, Marx's entire work...p. 285.

*There are relations between--

theoretical judgements judgements of fact judgements of value

*Does the theory or the broader scheme of thought, contain within itself a theory of knowledge which eliminates the distinction between fact and value? "It may, indeed, be argued that one of the virtues of Marx's social theory is that it makes a much greater allowance for the creative work of human reason in the fashoning of social institutions" (p.289).

*The problem of moralism (p.289-291) Resolved? (p.291)

One can say Marxism is "over" and still embrace a lower-case marxism what does one plan to replace it with?

Problem with lower case "marxism" is it has at least four versions:

1.) A general term for militancy, as represented by Karl Marx in life;

2.) The "young Marx" of the journals that turned up in Germany in the 1930's;

3.) The economist of Volumes II and III of _Capital_, two books which turned up in a cardboard box under his bed after his death, and are not representative of his views publicly expressed in his lifetime, either by him or by any of the Internationales while they were Marxist; and

4.) Doctrines held by Marx which happen to be popular: colonialism sucks, unorganized workers often get screwed, where you stand depends on where you sit, etc. etc.

Each of these strikes me as dishonest in a different way, and none of them, nor any combination of them, seems to me useful. It seems to me that "Marxism" refers unambiguously to the views around which Marx organized people during his lifetime, and perhaps "neo-Marxism" refers to the views of the varieties of people who use 1 to 4 above.

*D established French Sociology

*D was a contemporary of Max Weber. He was aware of Weber's work and was influenced by it.

*Father of structural-functional theory!!

*National focus of theorists--British school (Spencer), German School (Marx, Weber, Simmel), French Schhol (Durkheim and his followers). This territorialism changed after world war II. Early American sociology had same terrritorial bias until Talcott Parsons introduced European sociology to America in the early 1930s (particularly Simmel and Durkheim).

* D was the first academic sociologist as a sociologist.

* D grew up in a modest bourgeois setting. He studied to be a rabbi until the age of 13. He then converted to Catholicism. In his later teens he was an agnostic. He was always interested in Religion, never lost that interest. Much of his work can be understood as an attempt to understand religious meaning.

* D was schooled at very elite and important French schools which focused on service to the community as well as rigourous academics. D's early interests were philosophical. Some of his earlies work is on ancient Greek philosophy. He later totally rejected this opting for what he tought was a more scientific study of society. What he called "a contribution to themoral and political consolidation of the French Republic."

--> influence of history and economy felt by D

1. Destruction of the Paris Commune--during D's life this was the major event in history.

2. Working class upheval, felt betrayed by the aristocracy

3. D believed wholeheartedly in the third republic

He saw his contribution to society in the form of an attempt to found a science of society. Akin to Comte and Saint-Simon. Scientific understanding as a salve for healing French society. Sociology was conceived as moral and scientific. Akin to Marx.

*D began his career by teaching philosophy, was called to chair social science.

1893 He wrote his disseration on the division of labor /

1894 Published "Rules of Sociological Method" / For D this is all related!

1895 Published "Suicide" /

--> division of labor is the theory of society

--> rules is how to conduct scientific, sociological methods

--> suicide combines the theory with the methods

*In 1898 D founded the first French sociological journal

--> from his position as chair of social science and editor/publisher of the journal

D had incredible control over French sociology. He approved dissertation topics,

controlled admissions of students, he possessed total control over sociology in France

until his death.

* In 1906 the Dreyffus Affair. A military officer who was from w-c background and was Jewish was accused of being a German spy. This was a contest between the military and the civillian government.

D was active in the government's side. D was a member of the solidarist movement (which has been an organization that was fighting anti-semitism). D saw anti-semitism as a moral illness which relflected a lack of collective morality.

* During World War I D wrote propaganda...as did Weber.

* In 1912 he published his Elemetary forms of the religious Life.--> very important work in soc, anth...

* D died in 1917 leaving many works and essays unfinished.

*The basic theoretical problem is the relationship between the individual and society.

--> 1. Moral problem--individual freedom vs. traditional moral order--can the two be reconcilled?

2. Sociological problem--how does one demonstrate societal reality distinct from parts of society? (#2 is the most important for Durkheim)

3. Political problem--how to assure individual freedom and social solidarity?

* D was infatuated with Saint-Simon's and Comte's notion of the science of society? BUT what is it that makes sociology worth doing, worth funding? Why should sociology be seen as any different from social psychology? This theme is present in all of D's methodological writings. How do we create a niche for sociology?

--->D was very much concerned with separating psychology from sociology. Understandings come from social facts, these "social facts" are not reducible to individuals. They, in fact, work act on one in cercive ways--that is, to limit one's behavior. For example, the legal rules of a society are a manifestation of society but are not reducible to any one individual.

*Sociology studies universal social facts. Social facts have an element of universality in the common underlying social structures common to societies at a given/same evolutionary stage. Thus, social facts can be seen as the social structures and cultural norms/values. Social facts have material and nonmaterial aspects. Social facts must be studied by external measures--arguing here for statistics as objective, scientific, measures.

---> Material--seen in the physical manifestations of a society--i.e., the division of labor

---> Nonmaterial--psychological--morality, values, collective understandings

scientifc study of individual study of social facts

reflection of the mind characteristics of social interaction cannot be reduced to individual psyc reflection of society

*Division of Labor

-->society becomes more specialized and complicated as it develops (the degree to which tasks and responsibilities are complex, sophisticated, specialized).

--> How is one going to look at social solidarity? Through the manifestation of social solidarity--law, which can be measured objectively. Many of D's ideas are abstract so he examines society's reflections. The development of law is a means to look at social solidarity. Social solidarity is the degree of cohesion within a society.

[REPRESSIVE LAW] [RESTITUTIVE LAW]

Repressive--> the more homogeneous the solidarity of a society, the more likley individuals will be severly punished for minor offenses.

Restitutive--> the more diverse a society, the more likely the use of restitution and milder punishments, minor correctives.

evolution of--> low division of----------------->High division of

society Labor Labor

Mechanical solidarity------------>Organic solidarity

(primitive society) (Modern society)

Every society evolves at its own rate, technologically speaking.

Law of Society--> Retribution-------------------> Restitution

"Eye for an Eye" Rehabilitation and treatment of victims/make them "whole again"

Law as a division---->one law---->constable and--> regional-->networks-->sophisticated

of labor persepective judge depts. world-wide local,

regional, & national

branches

*D saw religion as evaolving from primitive to modern state like division of labor

*D was worried that all this individualism would cause one to be so specialized that everyone would be independent of others at the same time that one is interdependent.

*Every society has what D called a "Collective conscience"--> which is the "totality" of a peoples' beliefs and sentiments. This is the determinate of a cultural system, according to Durkehim. Greater division of labor causes the demise of the collective conscience. Via the approach of social facts we can see objectively the collective conscience.

The collective conscience has four dimensions:

1. Volume (the number of people)

2. Intensity (depth of emotions)

3. Rigidity (how clearly defined and understood)

4. Content (the form the collective conscience takes)

Collective conscience changes in rates due to changes in social facts.

• Soc is distinguished from psyc:

1. Operationalization--gives objective measure for what you're tryint to study

2. Scientists must be objective, put all biases aside

3. Cause (--what is it that brings about social facts?) of social fact can be distinguished from social fact's function (use). This is an emphasis on cause and effect.

4. Any social fact can only be explained by another social fact (can't be explained by psyc).

There are more rules but these are the significant ones.

• This is the combination of D's ideas on the Rules of soc method, Division of Labor, and his ideas on social facts.

D's interest in suicide is in seeing it as a social fact. The changes in the rates due to changes in social facts. He is interested in why one group had higher suicide rates than others or why higher or lower in one time period to another.

D ruled out racial influence and rejected imitation theory.

Early sociologists assumed that suicide was a single phenomenon rather than-->

Argued that what was happening with suicide was in reality four social facts, i.e., four types of suicide:

Integration

degree which collective sentiments are shared

Low integration: Egoistic suicide

--> one not integrated well w/larger group, feel all is hopeless

High integration: Altruistic suicide

--> when social integration is too strong, feel its one's duty to do so

ex. Jonestown

Regulation

degree of external constraint on the individual

Low regulation: Anomic suicide

--> when regulative powers of society are disrupted, we feel adrift

ex. economic boom (less suicide)

ex. depression (more suicide)

High regulation: Fatalistic suicide

--> when regulation is excessive, coercive over the individual

-->oppression, futures blocked, passions chocked

Social currents-- is a set of meanings shared by members collectively

--> i.e., norms, values, culturally-shared phenomena

Religion--the beliefs, rites, associated with a church or place where meetings occur

--> The "Glue" of society

-->the aim of studying religion is to discover the symbolic and psychological meanings of religious ritual and beliefs. What does the practice do for us?

-->ultimate non-material social fact

In the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life D is studying Totemism of the Arunta of Australia. --> Pure, basis of humanity, less developed so have less obsfuscation

Distinctions of Practice

-->sacred and profane

religion done collectively; communal

Function of religion

1 give meaning

2 explain important aspects of physical and social environment

3 cosmology- world view

--explains aspects of the physical and social environment not understood by normal human experience.

4 reducing anxiety

5 maintaining the social order

--according to Emile Durkheim in his book: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, religions origins was in increasing social solidarity, getting people together, shared beliefs, shared emotions, shared perceptions-- collective worship. Reinforcing society--that is what we are really studying!

BIO:

Born at Erfurt, Germany on April 21, 1864 into an upper-middle class family. Father was a government bureaucrat in the Legal department who craved material possessions and status. Mother was a devout Calvinist who "lived and breathed" her religion. The home was characterized with a great deal of religious and material tension. As Runciman argues this dichotomy in the home had a profound influence on Weber. In 1882 (at the age of 18) Weber studied at the University of Heidelberg. Here like Marx before him, Weber opened up to a wilder side of life (Beer drinking, dueling, fencing, promiscuity).

After three years of the univeristy Weber joined the military. In 1884 he returned home to Berlin to study at the university. He studied at Berlin for eight years eventually finishing his doctorate on Medieval trading companies. His scholarly interests were wide--economics, history, psychology, sociology, law.

While working on his dissertation Weber developed a compuslive workaholism. Father died in 1897 following a violent argument between them. Weber has a nervous breakdown. Weber is unable to work until 1902. Recurring breakdowns occur throughout his life. It took him over six years before he could function at a university again.

In 1904 Weber delivers papers in the U.S. and publishes many essays on religion, economy, and law. From the period of 1902 until his death Weber published at an incredible rate. Dies of influenza in Munich in 1920.

*pessimistic social theorist (as opposed to Marx and Durkheim)

*dynamic concepts, importance of change...

*The sociology of Weber is not as social structural as Marx or Durkheim.

*Weber's sociology is interpretive

*W's primary focus was on the subjective meanings that human actors attach to their actions in their mutual orientations within specific social-historical contexts.

*W's work is historic and systematic

is concerned with social action

is concerned with which social factors have brought about the rationalization of Western Civilization.

*Weber argued that characteristic shifts in human action are associated with characteristic shifts in the social and historical situations.

*Where Marx and Durkheim focused primarily on social structure, Weber's unit of analysis was the person and one's action. For Weber the task of sociology was to understand these actions.

*Weber's sociology sees that social meanigns that are prescribed to actions by the actor are critical. Neither a grab=nd method (Durkheim) nor particular specific (Marx) are superior.

* one is to understand human action by penetrating to the subjective meanings that actors attach to their own behavior and to the behavior of others.

*Sociology is the science which attempts interpretive understanding of social behavior in order to gain an explanation of its causes, its course, and its effects.

*Weber was opposed to a morality based on science (Versus Marx and Durkheim)

*The method employed was to be verstehen (Sympathetic understanding) and the ideal method

--> the ideal method is an analytical construct that serves the investigator as a measuring rod to ascertain similarities as well as deviations. Used in comparative study.

*Relationship between sociology and history (Go to notes)

I've come to interpret Weber as pretty much putting rationalization, the ever intensifying and spreading of instrumental rationality (and formal rationality) as a kind of social precondition for capitalism. Oversimplifying this, capitalism requires rational behaviors and rational procedures and rational values -- without self-interest, bureaucratic administration, and the secular devotion to efficiency, capitalism cannot prosper or expand. But for Weber, capitalism didn't cause rationalization; it didn't create its own conditions of existence. And rationalization wasn't necessarily something tied to the sphere of economics.

The real heart and soul (!) of rationalization is control which is where Marxists find some use for Weber. Since Weber seemed to see "society" a more more loosely or contingently grafted thing, Weber's or Weberian thinking on rationalization will always appear to be something too idealistic, something vaguely floating in the air, ever encroaching into the ways and means of a multitude of social relationships. But I think much of Weber's historical work was aimed at investigating the contingent and various conditions under which rational practices arose. Controlling the uncertainty produce by nature, by people seems a recurring theme, though this may be influenced by projecting Weber into folks like Foucault or Braverman.

As I consider it, without any at hand evidence or citations to back it up, Weber sees the three major institutions of modernity, capitalism central state administration, and science as being revolutionized through rationalization (pursuing efficiency in adopting means to achieve goals and intensifying control over things), but each of these institutions are themselves rationalizing agents in society. And all along the way more substantive practices or values, nonrational ways of organizing people or pursuing collective goals are dumped into the ash-heap of history. And Weber's mistrust of socialism as he saw it may also illuminate his thinking, since for him rationlization was maximized in a planned economy/planned society. It was the bureaucratization of everything.

BUREAUCRACY OF A SORT ARISES OFTEN IN HISTORY

...ANY TIME AN ELITE USES SOME PEOPLE TO CONTROL/EXPLOIT OTHERS. BUREAUCRACY IS FOUND IN ANCIENT HYDRAULIC SOCIETIES, IN MANY RELIGIOUS EMPIRES AND IN MOST COLONIAL REGIMES. THE BRITS USED THE BAGANDA TO CONTROL THE OTHER 18 TRIBES IN 'UGANDA.' RATIONALITY TURNS OUT TO BE THE CLOSE CORRESPONDENCE TO ORDERS OR RULES SET BY ELITES; WEBER, OF COURSE, THOUGHT OF SUCH AS AN IRON CAGE AND DIRECTED ONE'S ATTENTION TO SUBSTANTIVE RATIONALITY OR THE LARGER PURPOSES OF SOCIAL ACTION. ACTUALLY THERE IS A LARGER IRRATIONALITY OF WHICH WEBER DID NOT KNOW. THE NEW SCIENCE OF COMPLEXITY AND NONLINEAR SOCIAL DYNAMICS MAKES IT CLEAR THAT VARIATION,

SURPRIZE, QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT CAUSAL PATTERNS ARISE IN EVERYDAY LIFE; IN SUCH DYNAMICS, NONLINEARITY IS PREFERRED SINCE, AS ASHBY PUT IT, ONLY VARIETY CAN COPE WITH VARIETY. REASON IS USUALLY PREFERABLE TO RATIONALITY.

The contrast between Marx's condemnation and Weber's celebration of Western capitalism could hardly be more vivid. Weber, of course, was aware of the "blood and dirt" of which Marx wrote, but Weber analyzed them as phenomena common throughout history that had no intrinsic relationship to the spirit and nature of capitalism. Weber's repeated invocation of the uniquely rational character of Western culture is ethnocentric, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate.

• Theory textbooks misrepresent the differences between Marx and Weber when they claim that Weber rounded out Marx's one-sided economic determinist interpretation of the rise of capitalism by giving more attention to the role of ideas in historical change.

Both Marx and Weber clearly recognized that ideas or culture played an important role in the transformation from feudalism to capitalism. Analysis of the Protestant Reformation figured prominently in both Marx's and Weber's interpretations of the rise of European capitalism.

Weber identified"rational organization" as the decisive unique characteristic of Western capitalist civilization, and he suspected that this cultural phenomenon would prove to be biologically determined. Weber argued that there was an "elective affinity" between the Protestant Ethic and the "spirit of capitalism;" thus the Protestant Reformation instilled in early capitalists an ascetic work ethic that compelled them to acquire wealth through the rational organization of production. Marx interpreted the Protestant Reformation as an aspect of the struggle of the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal ruling class. He saw the Protestant ethic as an ideological weapon used by capitalists to convince workers that hard work and obedience to their bosses was demanded by god. The Protestant ethic was meant to control the behavior of the working class, not the behavior of the bourgeoisie, who never led the ascetic life Weber described. Thus, British historian E. P. Thompson (1963) verified Marx's analysis by describing the "ideological terror" unleashed by capitalists against workers during the industrial revolution in England. U.S. historian Gabriel Kolko (1961), showed that Benjamin Franklin, portrayed by Weber as an ideal typical embodiment of the spirit of capitalism, was no ascetic; he was fond of food, drink, and mistresses. Marx and Weber thus analyzed the role of ideas and the nature of capitalism very differently.

Marx was a dialectical materialist who insisted that ideologies arise out of material conditions and serve the interests of contending social classes. Weber was an idealist who insisted that ideologies have an independent or autonomous existence, and that there may be an "elective affinity" between ideologies and class interests.

Marx said that early capitalists got their wealth through genocide and slavery, while Weber says that they got their wealth through ascetic living and rational organization of production.

Marx and Weber had very different views of how capitalists extract profits and of how European hegemony was established.

Marx said that profits come from exploitation; Weber said that profits are derived from rational organization.

Marx said that European global hegemony resulted from military conquest and economic plunder. Weber said that European global hegemony resulted from the unique cultural values of Western Civilization.

Marx saw capitalism as an exploitative and alienating system that should be condemned and overthrown, while Weber celebrated it as a unique Western invention.

ON THE OTHER HAND:

That mechanism is the privatisation and concentration of economic decision

making, and the legitimation of that privatisation and concentration through

ideology (or false consciousness). However, the difference between Marx and

Weber lies not as much in the explanatory mechanism they use to explain

modernity, but the narratives they construct for that purpose.

MECHANISMs. Both Marxian "accumulation" and Weberian "rationality" refer to

one an the same process: the separation of human activities into two

spheres: the private sphere where the accumulation is taking place, and the

public sphere where the costs of that accumulation are being shifted. In

fact, the enclosures or the rise of the manufacture reprsent that process

quite clearly. Early manufactures in England did not add any new technology

to the processing of wool; all they did was moving the production process

from the cottage industry -- which although relied on "private" individuals

and their families as far as the supply of labour is concerned, were

nonetheless regulated by "public" norms governing the production process,

e.g the division of labour in the family, the size of the family (=labour

force) itself, the the pattern of work (work vs. rest) the workload per

person, and the output of work -- were all governed by some traditional

"community norms."

Of course, the same held for agricultural production. Both lord and peasant

were subjected to the same community norms governing the distribution of

wealth and responsibilities. To be sure, the peasant got the short end,

but that did not mean that the lord could not arbitrarily alter the rules

specifying his own and the peasasant obligations and entitlements.

That changed with the advent of capitalism, as the production was moved to

to the private sphere represented by the manufacture. Again, the success of

manufacture lied not in technological innovation (that came later) but in

the mode of accumulation, as specified in Marx's theory of value. To make a

long story short, the trick was the separation of workers' activities into

two different spheres "work" and "outside work."

The work sphere was the private domain of the owner of the manufacture, and

thus it was governed by the owners interessts and will rather than some

community norms (no matter how slanted). The worker sold a part of his

everyday life to the owner; that is he agreed to enter the owner's private

domain of production (the manufacture) for a specified period of time, and

during that time he or she was subjected to the owner's control. The owner

had the right to tell the worker what to do, how much of it, etc. as well as

take the product manufactured by the worker. The only regulator of that

process was the maximization of the owner's profit otherwise defined as

rational behaviour (that is, rational from the point of view of the owner,

not the worker).

What made the process of accumulation possible was that the privatisation of

the production spher, because it released the owner form the obligation of

bearing the cost of externalities. That is clear when we contrast

capitalism with its predecessor - feudalism. Under feudalism the lord,

while getting the longer end of the stick, had also certain obligations

toward the peasant he could not drop. For example, if the crops were

falling for several consecutive years due to the poor weather condition (a

major determinant of agricultural output) -- the lord could not just let his

peasants go, but he had to re-distribute part of previously accumulated

surplus, if the need be. Failing to do so would result in canibalistic

practices (e.g. peasant consuming the tools of production, such as the

livestock or grain stored for sowing in the spring) that would undermine the

whole mode of production. In other words, the lord could NOT externalize

his losses or pass them on the peasant, or at least not to the degree the

capitalist could (that analysis is based on A.V. Chayanov, _The Theory of

Peasant Economy_ Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1986; and W. Kula, _An

Economic Theory of the Feudal System_ London: NLB, 1976 -- both marxist

accounts).

With moving the production process to the private sphere (the manufacture)

that externalization became possible. That is, the owner paid the worker

only for his/her labour power i.e. the time he/she was obliged to work for

the owner. The owner did NOT have to pay for sustaining the worker's labour

power. That work was performed without a pay by women who rendred personal

services to men (OK, that is a feminist interpretation of marxism).

Moreover, the owner could let the workers go as soon as their labour power

became too costly in relation to the owner's returns. That could happen

either because of the worker's resistance or because the business did not go

as well as expected, but the point is that the owner had no obligation

whatsover excpet paying the contracted price for labour power. Finally, the

owner could externalize the costs of maintaining the manufacture (e.g.

protection of his property by the state, infrastructure, and later education

of the labour force) to the public sphere.

In short, the separation of the sphere of production from the sphere of

everyday activities made the accumulation possible by externalizing the

costs while keeping the surplus by the owner.

As I understand Weber, this is precisely what he argues when he discusses

the nature of modern bureaucracy. Modern bureaucracy has superior

efficiency, beacuse it rests on the separation of the officie from the

person of the office holder. The official sphere is the subject of rational

rules and regulations that are not supposed to personally benefit the office

holders (as opposed to traditional systems of authority). While the

language condemning that arrangement is missing from Weber's prose, the

mechanism he identifies is very similar to that identified by Marx.

Of course, both writers use the ideological component in pretty much the

same way. For Marx, ideology is part of the superstructure that legitimizes

the priviled position of those in power. For WEber, ideology is an element

that legitimizes the privileged position of those in power as well. Wher

these two dead white men differ is the process whereby ideologies come to

play that role. Marx, IMHO, focuses on functional relationship between

ideology and material interests, but is less concerned in the process how

ideologies attain that functionality. That is, all he claims is that

ideologies serve the interests of the ruling classes without paying much

attention how ideologies are manufactured and disseminated. Thus, the class

which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control ove

the means of mental production, hence it rules as producers of ideas, and

regulates the production and distribution of ideas of their age."

Weber, by contrast, focuses on that process itself. He argues that there

are many ideologies floating around (e.g. heresies in the middle ages).

Most of them come and go without leaving much impact. However, when a

particular ideology coincides with material interests of a group that, using

Marx's language, "has the means of material production at its disposal", or

in Weber's termiology, if an ideology has an elective affinity to the

material interests of a group of people who control material resources, that

ideology becomes a legitmation myth for that group. That is, the ideology

becomes dominant becausae of the power and material resources of the group

that advicate it, not the other way around. That is precisely what Marx

argued in the passage quoted above.

NARRATIVES. I think where Marx and Weber differ the most is the historical

narratives they construct. Marx essentialy married 19th century

evolutionism with Christian eschatology. That is, his narrative is not only

the account of the past, but also that of the future (even though the future

is described rather vaguely). Moreover, his narrtive has the structure of

eschatological narratives: the misearble past will be reversed in the future

-- the poor and misearble will enter the kingdom of heaven or communist

future, but sooner a camel will pass through the eye of a needle than a rich

man will get there.

For Weber, by contrast, the narrative does not end in the future, it ends in

the present. He tries to explain the present and the dominat position of

Western countris in it. His explanation is superior rationality of

capitalism, just as it is for Marx. But the process whereby Western

countries gained their domination is not universal. It is a historical

accident that cannot be extrapolated into the future.

If anything, Weber's view of the future is that of an iron cage, cf. the

following passage form the _Protestant Ethic_ "Of the latest stage of

[WEstern] cultural development it might wsell be truly said 'Specialists

without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has

attained a level of civilization never before achieved.'"

In addtion to dropping eschatology (future), Weber also drops evolutionism.

His vision of past events and history in general is not that of continuous

progress toward higher stages of perfection, but that of historical

contingencies. There is no progress in history (by by, Hegel), just

historical coincidences that may or may not give competitive advantage to

one group or another (for a more detailed analyis of these two concepts of

history see W. Schluchter, _ The Rise of Western Rationalism_ Berkeley: U of

California Press, 1981?). On the surface, it is a much more pessimistic

narrative, there is no heaven or a bright future, no provident hand guiding

the narrtive to a happy end. In fact, there is no end of history, just

constant struggle for power.

But underneath that gloomy picture, that narrative offers some optimism --

the conditions that gave a competitive advantage to the corporate class

today may disappear tomorrow, and then the ruling corporate class wil tumble

down and perish just as the feudal aristocracy perished on the guilotines of

the bourgeois revolution in France.

That, BTW, reminds of a story of a certain Jewish professional in Poland

during the World War II who comitted suicide when he learned that the Nazis

captured Paris. Apparently, he has a linear view of history, just as Marx

did. This person construed the fall of Paris, that epitome of Western

culture, as a point on a linear trend, and since that point lied below the

standards of the past, he construed that trend as a regress. With that

viewpoint, ending one's life now was better than ending that latter.

However, had this guy held a Weberian concept of history, he would have

anticipated taht he Nazis finally would finally arrive to Stalingrad, and

there their competitive advantage (armor, supply lines) would disappear.

IN my view, the evolutionist-eschatological narrative is the weakest point

of Marxism. Not only the failure to accurately poredict the future can lead

to the summary dismissal of the entire theoretical apparatus (as the

bourgeis hacks are now trying to do); but the narrative itself if very

bourgeois itself. Evolutionist and eschatological narrtives have been

building blocks of managerial mythologies, from the survival of the fittest

to the human relation school viewing corporate careers as sechula

eschatologies (cf. Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" that are attained

throughout the life course or corporate careers.). Dumping this narrative

can only help Marxist analysis. But dimping it also means eliminating the

boundary that separates Marx from WEber.

*Philosopher turned social theorist

*Born on March 1, 1858 to a middle class Jewish family. Studied severa;l subjects at the University of Berlin. His work was considered substandard by his peers and professors. He still managed to work hard and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1881. For most of his life he functioned as a lecturer whose meager income was taken from student fees. However, because he was a popular lecture he survived. His lectures were so popular they became more like events than classes. He even wrote much of his work in a lecture format.

*Unlike many academics Simmel thought that social arguements and theories should be read by the public so he published quite frequently in newspapers and magazines.

*Simmel was a contemporary of Max Weber and they had an influence on each other.

*Unlike M, D, or W--Simmel had little or no nostalgia for the "good old days" and his theory held elements of pessimism and optimism.

*Simmel constructed to evolutionary scheme, in fact such concerns are completely absent from his ideas.

*More modern than M, D, and W (which were all very much 19th century writers)

*Personal career was a failure (unlike W and D). One of the reasons for this was that he failed to cite sources.

*He was active in Berlin's intellectual life and was a passionate supporter of the war (wrote propaganda).

*Simmel's work was less systematic than M or D. His concerns were less with an attempt to build a comprehensive theory than an approach to sociology. While Simmel was weary of the notion of schools of thought he did build a number of ideas that other built on. Robert Park and the American sociologists at the University of Chicago followed and expnaded on many of Simmel's ideas. In fact, much of symbolic interactionism owes itself to Simmel.

*The most important element of Simmel's thought is the notion of patterns of social interaction and the conflicts and contradictions that exist between the individual and the larger social and cultural structures that individuals construct. And these structures ultimately come to have a life of their own, over which the individual can exert little or no control [REIFICATION]!

*Simmel conceived of an approach called 'formal sociology' which isolates "form" from the hetrogenity of "content" of human "sociation." Simmel sees society as a "web of patterned interactions" and further "that it is the task of sociology to study the forms of these interactions as they occur and reoccur in diverse historical and cultural settings" (Coser 1971 p.177). Thus, unlike other German sociologists who considered society as a rough label, Simmel thought that "society is merely the name for a number of individuals, connected by interaction," (Wolff 1950 p.10) and the study of these particular patterns and forms in which people associate and interact with one another is called "sociation."

*Social Geometry is one of the ways in which Simmel attempted to understand social interactions.

--> Numbers--number of people in an interaction (Dyad, Triad; group size)

--> Distance--the manner and level of the relative distance between individuals, groups, and things

*Simmel's approach is a micro-sociological one, which is quite distinct from the theories of Marx and Durkheim. Both Marx and Durkheim constructed macro-sociological models that dealt with grand trans-historical schemes. Simmel was not so much concerned with the uniqueness of historical events but with their underlying uniformities. This approach is on an abstract level that uses "social types" as explanations that demonstrate specific attributes and characteristics.

*The use of these illustrations are similar to Max Weber's use of ideal types. Social types are "pure" forms or constructions that may not be typical relationships and in fact may never be completely realized in reality, although they illustrate some basis of reality. Both Weber's and Simmel's constructs are used to measure the distance between a "phenomenon and the type." Simmel's concept of "form" is used to mark the relation of the particular type from the real world.

*Sociology is the study of interactions and their different forms.

--> this is very ahistorical and culturally elitist. For S these forms exist accross all cultural systems

--> many similarities with French Structuralism

*With the notion of sociation Simmel is searching for basic forms and patterns of interaction

*Simmel's Formal Sociology

--> The distinction between content and form

--> content is the culture, meaning, and actual social content

--> form is the foundation, frame, or structure

*Simmel conceives of several social types (the stranger, the poor, the adventurer, etc......) and each is cast by the particular reactions and expectations of the others (the central group-society). The specific characteristics of each type are seen as "attributes of the social structure" (Coser 1971 p.182). These types are assigned their position through their particular "interactive relations." in other words, societal perspective creates these types. This illustrates the dialectical thinking in Simmel's sociology.

--> For many thinkers (including Ritzer) what is important is not the details of Simmel's theory but how it is conducted. Dialectics!!

--> multi-causal and multi-directional; integrates fact and value; argues against strong delineation between social phenomena; emphasizes social relations

--> Simmel was always focused on relationships and often saw dualisms, conflicts, and contradictions.

--> An example of Simmel's dialectical method--Fashion

Fashion allows individuality and group conformity. And at the same time fashion has a historical and contradictory nature. What is fashionable always changes and always grows out of deviation of the once accepted fashion.

--> "even non-fashion is fashion"

--> Influence of Cultural products

--> Individual (Subjective) Culture--capacity to absorb and control objective culture

--> Objective Culture--those things that people produce (D.O.L, art, science, philosophy)

--> The problem is that objective culture overwhelms us [REIFICATION]

*"The fundamental categories, for Simmel, are in terms of which human experience may be viewed are: society, objective culture, individual personality and humanity" (Levine p.37-38). Society and humanity are seen dialectically; "the individual is, at the same time, within society and outside it; he exists for society as well as for himself"" (Coser 1971 p.184). There is evidence of a dual categorization for all "contents of life:" the principle of life and the principle of form. Life is seen as variable and full of vitality and form is fixed and "destroys vitality."

*The problematic aspects of sociology as interpreted by Simmel becomes quite clear; Simmel's philosophical nature interfered with his attempts to build a cohesive concrete sociology. The term "form" reads as a metaphysical term perhaps the term social structure as suggested by Lewis Coser would be more appropriate to what Simmel is referring to. According to Coser, "such modern sociological terms as status, role, norms, and expectations as elements of social structure are closer to the formal conceptualizations that Simmel employed" (1971 p.181). Therefore, one can say that the term "form" is ambiguous.

*inability to talk about greater social structures. Where Durkheim is strongest, Simmel is weakest.

--> social reality is all important (social fact for D), (mode of production for M)

--> social reality is intangible for Simmel

--> Weber asks cultural questions, Simmel is interested in crude construct of social forms.

*lacks a rigorous method--his method is not scientific...very flexible, social psychologically oriented

Sociology is an art-form--a source of insight or approach rather than science.

* First published in 1907--it lays out Simmel's view of society (extremely pessimistic).

*Simmel's interest is in the impact of money on actors and objective culture. That by analyzing money one could understand the society. The problems of society come down to a form of alienation that lie with objective and subjective culture--the increasing powerlessness of individuals against objective culture. For Simmel this is a timeless, trans-historical process.

*Simmel's analysis is quite different than Marx (econ. problems are the result of a particular set of relations in capitalist society). For Simmel the problem is inherent in social life itself and thus, there is no hope for betterment. Socialism would not fix the problem but would only make it worse.

*Relation of money and value: People create value by producing objects that are then distanced from themselves. The greater the difficulty in obtaining an object, the greater its value. But there is a limit--things that are too far away, impossible to reach become less valuable. Those things that we can never possess become of no value to the individual. Distance is determined by all the elements needed to make it and acquire it. (We don't want to be too close or too far away).

*Money serves to create distance and the means to overcome distance. Which helps and hurts us--we have more choices, activities while we focus only the things that we want to. Money frees us from overly constrictive social social ties. However, money is external to the actor(s) unlike previous times in which one could barter or trade. Now, one must possess money and thus, one can access things. The problem is that money reifies the social world--it rationalizes (quantification) the world into set rules that are coercive over the actor(s) and the entities of the capitalist market acquire a reality distinct from the human actors that created them.

*Individuals becomes less important--the money and things that one possesses and can acquire access to become more important. Money becomes a means and an end unto itself. This creates (1) cynicism--we can buy anything... (2) dulls social life--all things are reducible to money nothing is special, (3) society becomes increasingly impersonal, (4) individual freedom becomes diminished, (5) reduction of all values to money

--> Calculating Character--"The lives of many people are absorbed by such evaluating, weighing, calculating, and reducing of qualitative values to quantitative ones"

*Objective culture grows and entraps us while at the same time it allows more freedom but that freedom, for Simmel, is a Relatvistic Existence: Money allows everything to be transformed into money.

* The stranger is reminiscent of the social position of central European Jews--not trusted, anti-semitism, tenuous connection to larger groups in society. The stranger is a personal essay for Simmel because he saw himself as a stranger. He lived the anguish of being outside of academia although he wanted in and acceptance.

*The stranger never wholly becomes part of society and as such is characterized as an individual with more objectivity, impartiality, is often victimized, but has great freedom--not subject to as many rules, norms, or expectations of the group. The stranger comes from outside of the defining group or society and stays with or near the group. However, according to Simmel over time it is possible for the stranger to become a trusted confident but the stranger will always experience estrangements in close personal relationships.

* The social definition of the majority as well as the perception of the majority means little to the stranger.

* Problem--may be overly narrow? Validity is often found in smaller communities and rural areas rather than in large areas.

* For Simmel "The Stranger" is tied to his work on "Metropolis and Mental Life."

* Similarity to Durkheim's Mechanical and Organic Solidarity.

* The metropolis is characterized by the following:

Simmel describes a social setting from the perspective of affects on social interactions

• Apathy is a survival tactic--a way to deal with the overstimulation of urban life

intensification of life, fast-paced

complex environment

intensification of emotional life

intensification of mental life

Open the Social Sciences

While I share the report's recommendations to abolish the institutional boundaries in social science, I also believe that the narrative of the social science development, as told by the report's authors, ends too soon, namely in the late 1970s and then only selectively focuses on the input of

feminist and pomo critique of positivism. By so doing, it misses an important and extremely onerous development that occurred, or rather accelerated, during the 1980s and 1990s. Had they taken those developments seriously, their optimism for the development of a universalistic science

would have been muted, and the report would have taken a more alarming flavour.

The development in question is what call "epistemological privatisation of knowledge." To understand what epistemological privatisation of knowledge is, let us contrast it with its opposite, the ontological privatisation of subject matter -- as described in the historical narrative of the report.

The development of idiosyncratic sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften, was accomplish through the following theory-building strategy. First, certain areas of the subject matter were ontologically separated from other areas of the subject matter. The former which, using Max Weber's terminology, can be described as "historical individuals" called for the use of different

methods of study (namely historical analysis and description, focus on their uniqueness, etc.) than the other subject matter area that can be characterised, using Leibniz terminology, as the "population of monads" or virtually identical elements which required nomothetic methods of analysis (i.e. aiming at uncovering universal laws governing the behaviour of those monads). However, these two different methodologies were supposed to produce a universally valid and recognised knowledge.

This theory building approach, known as hermeneutics or learning something that is universal from the insight into what is particular, can be schematically represented as follows:

ontological separation of subject matter:

Historical individuals vs. population of monads

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produces two different methodological approaches:

idiographic methods vs. nomothetic methods

(Geisteswissenchaften) (natural sciences)

which merge of the epistemological level as:

universal and intersubjectively accepted knowledge

(even if pretences to universalism are parochial).

This is the process the Gulbenkian Comission describes in its historical narrative. The narrative ends in late 1970s when the challenges to the ontological (and institutional) separation of the subject matters were challenged from the epistemological positions. That is: different viewpoints produce different classification of what is, in fact, a single subject matter. Therefore, why do not we pull those different point of view together is a form of a dialog to produce a better, that is, more

universalistic, knowledge of that single subject matter?

While based on their historical narrative, Wallerstein & Co. call for a greater universalism in social sciences, the production of science itself took a sharp turn in the opposite direction to that depicted in the narrative -- toward the epistemological privatisation of knowledge.

Unlike the hermeneutical approach described above, the anti-hermeneutic approach of episemological privatisation of knowledge reverses the the hermeneutic process "from particular subject to universal knowledge" and goes "from universal subject to particular knowledge." The epistemological privatisation claims no special subject matter, in fact, it studies the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary (cf. the marketing studies of everyday shopping behaviour, or public opinion polls). What it aims to accomplish, however, is knowledge that is not universal, but PROPRIETARY. That is, knowledge whose main value lies not that it is shared by others, but in that it is NOT shared by others. In fact, the dissemination of that knowledge to others would strip it of its value to the owner.

The proprietary knowledge gives the owner a strategic advantage over

competitors, to be sure, but its epistemological importance goes well beyond

its short-term market utility. It is the mode of knowing that ultimately

epitomizes the Foucauldian ideal of "seeing without being seen." My power

comes from my knowledge and from my material resources. Both are my private

property. Just as no-one can question what I choose to do with my material

possessions, nobody can question what I choose as knowledge. Proprietary

knowledge guides the owner's actions -- perhaps in the right way, perhaps in

a wrong one -- but that is for no one but the owner himself to decide.

Proprietary knowledge is exempt from any public scrutiny not just on the

level of application (e.g. the owner may decide to use his knowledge of

atomic theory to build a bomb or a power plant), but on the level of

production and verification as well. It is the owner, not the public, who

decides not only what knowledge is to be produced, but how the validity of

that knowledge is to be judged.

The eptiome of epistemologically privatised knowledge is marketing research.

Marketing research is devoid of any theorizing, save for the most

rudimentary assumptions about human behaviour. In fact, marketing research

is nothing more than a collection of measurement techniques and a collection

of measurements that are sold, in chunks, to the clients. Each measurement

(e.g. a study of market appeal of a product) does not have a slightest

pretence of being universally valid, in fact, such an assumption would

quickly put the marketing researchers out of business, as their clients

would say "since I bought from you what is universally valid, why should I

buy more of the same?" Furthermore, the study has a value if an only if its

results are known to the client but are NOT known to her competitors. Had

the competitors known the results, the competitive advantage of proprietary

knowledge would disappear.

More importantly, the proprietary character of marketing research results in

a situation that goods and services are manufactured solely on what the

owner of the knowledge in question knows, without any input from the public

(other than being "laboratory humans" manipulated by the researchers). That

is, the marketing researcher may be utterly wrong (or not) in how she

determines "public tastes" -- but because the knowledge is declared and sold

as private -- it is not subject to any public scrutiny, as the universal

knowledge hitherto produced in universities is. Therefore, the corporate

execs' claims that the shit their companies produce serves some "public

demand" should be (but is NOT) qualified "public demand as depicted in

private knowledge that is exempt form any scrutiny, except by its owner."

Of course, private knowledge was not an invention of the 1980s. It is a

well known fact that professions (especially doctors) use a different set of

principles to diagnose cases than the formal body of knowledge taught at

universities (A. Abbott, _The System of Professions_, 1988). The

"diagnostic knowledge" is a private property of the doctor, or perhaps the

medical profession. The fact that the language of medieval theology was

Latin means NOT that that Latin was a lingua franca, but that using language

different from that of everyday discourse effectively made medieval theology

a private property of the experts, while the populace was effectively

excluded in participating in theological discourse.

The same principle is used in modern economics. Its use of incomprehensible

jargon to discuss matters that can be explained by common-sense discourse

without losing any of the contents, effectively bars non-expert from

participation and renders economics a private knowledge of the experts.

However, both medieval theology and modern economics can be, in principle,

understood by anyone who takes the effort to learn the jargon. This,

however, is not the case of knwoledge that has been privatised by

classifying it as off limits to the public by the so-called "public"

authorities. Thus, national security policy decisions are based almost

exclusively on private knowledge gathered by intelligence agencies, and that

knowledge is declared off limits and cannot be verified by anyone. A CIA

report may be a result of an honest and meticulous study, or a fiction

concocted by operatives with literary talents -- but the public and its

so-called "representatives" have no way of knowing that, because that

knowledge has been classified as private property of a supposedly "public" agency.

The privatisation of the US universities is a well documented fact (see, for example an article in the last issue of Dollars&Sense on that subject). By providing research grants to universities, private corporations are given, by university administrators, the right not just to use the findings for their own profits, but also to:

- have a say what research are being pursued; and

- decide whether and how the results of that research can be published.

That such practices are not wide-spread (yet) in social sciences is mainly a

result of the relative insignificance of these sciences in the political and

commercial arenas. In bio-medical research the corporate control of the

production and dissemination of knowledge is much more widely-spread and

tight, as some serious corporate interests are at stake. Those interested

in details can read the article in the last issue of Dollars & Sense on that

subject.

Another example of private knowledge is the whole area of research

pertaining to tobacco smoking. What private tobacco companies know about

the addictive properties of tobacco is declared proprietary knowledge and is

exempt from any public scrutiny. In other words, tobacco manufacturers are

*LEGALLY PROTECTED* by "our" government from disclosing any information

about the product they are selling to the public. Other examples may

include public domain data (statistics, legal information) handed over by

"our" government to provate distributors who become the private gatekeepers

of what used to be public knowledge, or various credit-worthiness report

that are collected without public knowledge and with only nominal oversight

by private agencies.

With recent trends toward privatisation of both, institutions producing

knowledge (universities and research institutes) and the knowledge itself,

the history of scientific development comes to a full circle when it began

in prehistoric or medieval times. Back then, knowledge was jealously guarded

secret of shamans and priests, and handed down to the masses in a simplified

pictorial form ˆ e.g. as myths and legends depicted on the stained glass of

medieval churches. Today we approach that stage, as knowledge again is

being jealously guarded by private corporations, and handed down to the

stupefied public in the form of color graphs, charts and ads on the "stained

glass of the modern church" ˆ the TV screen.

>From that perspective, the institutional divisions among social sciences

Wallerstein & Co. write in the Gulbenkian Commission report are of secondary

importance. What we face here is a disappearance of social sciences

altogether, as the privatisation of universities progresses. That is, the

research of human collective behaviour is increasingly carried not as a part

of building a universally accepted body of knowledge (regardless of how

parochial those claims to universality are) ˆ but as a part of private

research endeavour designed to produce private knowledge of interest to the

paying clients: how to affect the outcome of the upcoming election, how to

manipulate public opinion on this or that issue, how to boost the market

appeal of a product, etc.

That proprietary knowledge, legally exempt from any public scrutiny, is the ultimate form of the Foucauldian knowledge-power, a fusion of knowledge and the ability to intervene into the subjects of that knowledge (both their lives and their bodies). What bio-medical and, increasingly, social science researchers are producing is what Max Horkheimer (the founder of the Frankfurt School for Social Research) aptly called the "Herrenwissenschaft"- or the science of the master race (a clear reference to the Nazi ideology of "herrenvolk" or "master race" ) - a knowledge about us produced and applied without us and serving as a tool of the ruling corporate class to control us.

That probably does not concern academic superstar celebrities like

Wallerstein (whose work I otherwise highly respect) who have a secure place in the academia, can pursue their own research agenda, and publish the results in the medium of their choice. But for the academic peons like

myself and thousands of others who toil as temporary mental workers in

private teaching and research factories called universities ˆ this is a

serious concern. An that concern did not even get an honorary mention in

the Gulbenkian Commission report.

Part two of course:

Ernest Becker has the best analysis of sociology ever written in "The

Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man."

Becker talks of the two sociologies. One is the superordinate science of

humanity which calls us to action and to change the world. It is an ideal

science concerned with not just "what is" but what "ought to be." The

postmodernists have re-taught us that any version of "what is" contains its

own recommendation of "what ought to be." August Comte and Lester Ward, in

particular, knew this.

The second sociology is the narrow academic discipline content to color

within the lines and seek only journal articles, research grants, and

tenure. This first sociology is the original sociology of Comte, Marx,

Ward, Small, and it is the sociology to which Lynd, Sorokin, and C. Wright

Mills invited us to return. It is the bold quest change the world.

Armchair musings over society's puzzles and predicaments are a positive

menace. Armchair theorizing and coffee house speculation can paralyze in

inaction. A perpetual agenda of more research means action can be delayed

forever. Lester Ward understood that piling up more and more facts will

never get us to a science of humanity. Implementing a science of humanity

is a matter of envisioning an ideal society and integrating the disciplines

in the service of humanity. All knowledge is a power strategy. The

question is: what do you want to make. As Ernest Becker understood,

sociology is an ideal type science -- not in the narrow Weberian sense, but

in the bold Comteian and Marxian sense of envisioning a better world. It

is a utopian science

Becker contrasts the "two sociologies" -- the one that would analyze

(scientific) and the other that would change the world (humanistic/action).

The scientific stance was expressed in Ogburn's 1929 ASA presidential

address: "sociology is not interested in making the world a better place."

This was a far cry from the ambitions of Albian Small when he founded the

American Journal of Sociology. Ernest Becker quotes Albian Small in the

platform on which was launched The American Journal of Sociology:

".....to translate sociology into the language of ordinary life, so it will

not appear to be merely a classification and explanation of fossil fact....

to so far increase our present intelligence about social utilities that

there may be much more effective combination for the promotion of the

general welfare... to insure the good of man." (AJS, 1895, pp. 13-14; both

quoted in Becker, 1968: 73-74)

Becker notes: "If this platform were to be printed on the cover of the

Journal today it would appear grotesque to its readers -- the contents of

most of the Journal would mock each sentence." (Becker, 1968: p. 73-74)

John Eaton, 1886: "Let the warning cry fill the air of scientific

associations, from meeting to meeting, that science is our means, not our

end..." (quoted in Becker, 1968: 73)

Becker uses Giddings as the archetype of the flaw of building sociology

into a narrow academic discipline.

It is easy to sum up Giddings fallacy: "... by lifting an activist

humanitarianism to the detached scientific heights of an opportunistic

inductivism, we have lifted it right out of the world of contemporary

social problems." (Becker, 1968: 77)

"The humanistic criticism of social values -- radical in intent -- bogs

down practically into a conservatism of method that is self-defeating.

.. Sociology would thus be in the business as a disinterested discipline

for a long time, and life would go on -- and right by it. This is exactly

what is happening today -- Giddings own legacy confirms the criticism of

his orientation, and the penalty of the loss of an active, superordinate

social science." (Becker, 1968: 77)

Lester Ward had "a very clear idea of what a systematic sociology should

comprise; he saw that it should be an active science, but a systematic,

exploratory, and careful science."

To quote Becker: "[Ward] saw science as a continuing moral problem, as a

problem of social reconstruction and direction. He was against the

disciplinary quest for its own sake, the blind subservience to fact

gathering, the aimless piling up of more and more information... He saw

that sociology was not a descriptive science in search of facts, and he

understood better than we do today that facts by themselves can impede the

progress of science. The job of descriptive fact gathering belonged to the

'ancillary, special social sciences,' that is, to the various disciplines

such as ethnography, demography, history, statistics, etc. ..He held that

this kind of scientific fact gathering represented a rudimentary stage in

science. It was the job of sociology to transcend this stage, and take its

place as a mature science, that is using correlating, generalizing,

synthesizing the work of the various disciplines. In Ward's view, sociology

called for broader, deeper, keener, more synthetic intellectual powers than

did the various ancillary disciplines. When Ross wanted to leave economics

and become a sociologist, Ward encouraged him, saying he had a big enough

mind for it. Needless to say, we are far from this view of sociology today;

practically anyone who can come in off the street and master its techniques

can pass as a sociologist -- synthetic mental powers would even be a

positive disadvantage in most of our graduate schools." (Becker, 1968: p.

71)

The conflict school emerged in the 1950s

Counter to the Parsonian paradigm of Structual-Functionalism

Gouldner - study found in 1968 found that 65% of the sociologists at the ASA meeting were conflict-oriented.

Conflict fragmented in the 1960s

Race

Gender

Class

Others

Marxist

Today there is no one dominant conflict school or paradigm

Why did conflict emerge when it did?

- criticism of Parsoniam approach to theory building (the idea that theory construction should be exhasutive and systems based, est. sociology as a "true" science, gradniose-comprehensive theory)

In his day, Parsons’ approach fit the mood of society

- Parsons and his students saw no conflict as legitimate, a dysfunction - a disease. Conflict was extraneous to the social system.

- Marxism disappeared in the 1940s with the cold war and McCarthyism.

- 1950s Coser, Lockwood, Dahrendorf (European style thinkers) introduced conflict and Marx to American audiences again

- conflict identified itself by stating what it was against - Parsons, S-F and consensus based theory

- Parons tried to explain conflict by turning to a crude version of Freud

In the Social System - Parsons used Freud’s argument that conflict is only intrinsic because of bad/poor parenting.

Lewis Coser

- 1956 The Functions of Social Conflict

-Used Simmel by way of S-F

-Conflict as a normal part of society

- Used Simmel’s ideas about forms of Association

institutional context is superflous because the basic forms of interaction remain throughout - such as the size of the interacting group, characteristics of interaction, social types, leadership, superordinate and subordinate status

- Coser, in effect, borrows from Simmel’s conflict sociology (date?)

Simmel is simply restated in functional terminology. Simmel is being distorted and misused by Coser to make his points.

Coser did not want to give up on S-F entirely but to add conflict to it!

- Main points of Coser

1. Conflict can be functional

2. Conflict can also be unhealthy

3. Conflict must be institutional to be manageable

4. Conflict promoting integration/problem-solving

-Problems with Coser

1. Problems are too abstract??!!!

2. Funcionality depends on the unit of analysis

3. Turning a conflict approach into something else - S-F?

4. Simmel’s work is often distorted - Coser doesn’t understand the dialectical nature of Simmel’s work. "fitting a square peg into a round hole"

Ernest Horton

- Conflict sociology is not a coherent discipline

- Maintainance of the Status quo makes deviation seem bad

- order vs conflict approaches (Ideal types)

order -> shared agreement on values

-> anomie

-> consensus

conflict -> alienation

-> exploitation/adaptive failures

-> strategies of ruling group/rationalizations

-> disagreement

Ralf Dahrendorf

- "Toward a theory of social Conflict" (1957)

- argues for a conflict approach vs. S-F

Anthony Giddens

- Weberian conflict theory/perspective

Fordism

The 'fordist state' makes reference to the role of the state in mediating the ups and downs of the economy; to manage conflict between workers and owners; to appropriate some of the surplus value of the gross domestic product to low-profit lines of production and to encourage growth within the nation and competition of US firms in the global economy. All this comes out of a 'fordist form' of production...the idea that problems can be managed rationally; that order and progress comes out of bureucratic organization, lines of authority, specialization and close control of labor, markets and raw material supply.

Post-Fordism

The post-fordist view is that all these things become most difficult in a globalized economy since the nation-state cannot manage the New World Order dominated by some 1500 Trans-National Corporations beyond the reach of both law and order.

• Race as an important social determinant

Alabama State Senator Charles Davidson, a Republican candidate

for the United States House of Representatives, defends slavery

as God's will, citing the Bible (Leviticus: "You may acquire

male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around

you"). In a speech he said: "People who are bitter and hateful

about slavery are obviously bitter and hateful against God and

his word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere

humans say concerning slavery...This humanistic thinking is what

the abolitionists embraced."--June 17, 1996 issue of The Nation magazine

• Connections to feminism

Similarities to the FEMINIST movement:

1. response to failed promises of autonomy and equality

2. racism and sexism as systems of domination based on perceived attributes

3. racism and sexism stymied individual and group expectations

Differences to the FEMINIST movement:

1. Women's movement was a white, middle class movement

2. racism is found within the early feminist and Women's movement

3. Black/African-Am social movements were poor, working class movements

4. Black/African-Am social movements were divided by region and locality

Both are IDENTITY based movements because:

They invoke a unity based on personal identity with a larger social community

• The focus on race as a significant social factor (and/or variable) much like gender is a recent theoretical event.

• The idea of a "black" or "African-American" sociology was created in the 1960s from the view that the black community is more than a social problem to be studied.

• In the early 1970s, Robert Staples (a black sociologist) published a book called 'Black Sociology'

• Issues of focus to African-American social thought include:

1. Slavery

Blacks were forced to come to this country, while the majority of European immigrants were welcomed and assimilated (note not all, esp in early years...) far more peacefully.

2. White Supremacy

The historic preservation of white priviledge

3. Paradigmatic/Ideology

How are the social concepts of race, ethnicity, nation(alism) constructed?

4. Distribution of Power

Minority group status

• The classic sociological literature was written in a time period of accepted overt racism (and sexism, of course):

Examples:

1. Polygenism (1815-1859)

A position that argues that all races belong to different origins

2. Henry Huges (1880) wrote "Essays in Sociology" in which he wrote that slavery was "morally, politically, and socially" important to society

3. George Fitzhughes (1880s) wrote a series of essays that Slavery and Chritianity were and are necessary for social and political development

4. William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) wrote in the 1880s until the turn of the century that slavery is culturally inherent and unchangeable, we need it, we ought to have it (consistent with social Darwinism...)

Counter:

Lester Ward (1841-1913) challenged Sumner and argued that people could change, there is no one ethnic group that should suppress blacks or any other ethnic group.

Ward advocated a moral, compassionate rejection to Spencerian theory, Sumner, and most popular Evolutionary models and theories

Examples:

Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) believed that racial situations are biologically determined and cannot be tempered with. He advocated immigration controls and limits. Cooley believed that the American government should restrict the immigration of "Oriental groups" to maintain "ethnic purity."

These few examples demonstrate clearly prejudice, if not outright white supremacy.

In the 1960s, African-American sociologists argued that these theorists have so badly polluted sociology that the only way to have an unbiased sociology was to create a body of sociology from an African-American perspective.

Think about how much sociology has been based on European history and culture. Many sociologists have and continue to deny African-American contributions to society and culture. Note: Ralph Linton's 100% American.

A new article, `Marcus Garvey: The Forgotten Giant of Black Liberation' is now available at the webite of the Stewards Planetary House.

Marcus Garvey, and the movement he founded, are largely forgotten today. But in its time in the early part of this century, UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) assembled the largest number of people *ever* organized in a progressive militant Black liberation movement in the United States. Moreover, the all-sided totality of this movement in successfully integrating political, cultural, economic, racial, and psycholigical concerns of Black people has never been equalled by any organization before or since.

The URL for the article is: http://www.InstantWeb.com/P/Planet/sphgarvy.htm

W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Massachusetts in 1868. He died 95 years later after living through more ages and epochs with more insight more courage than most of us in most of history. A remarkable man made more remarkable by the forces of racism and state power arrayed against him. To W.E.B. Du Bois, we pause and pay tribute.

**Du Bois graduated from Fisk in 1888.

**Du Bois was the first Afro-American Ph.D. at Harvard.

**His book on the Slave Trade was the first in the Harvard Historical

Series.

**His book on the Philadelphia Negro were early efforts in both the sociology of racism and in urban sociology.

**He was one of the Founders of the NAACP and lived to see it captured by complacent 'leaders' and turned against his effort to make visible the political economy of racism and discrimination.

**He founded and contributed to the influential journal, Crisis, from which much of this tribute comes.

**Du Bois joined the socialist party in 1911 and, as he grew in age and experience, became a full-blown marxist by the 1950's.

**Du Bois joined the Communist Party, USA, in 1960.

**Du Bois founded the Peace Information Center and, along with many other such creative and original sources of inspiration gave much to America and much to the world.

Much of what follows comes from the W.E.B. Du Bois Reader put together by DAVID LEVERING LEWIS...to which we refer the reader interested in learning more about this learned man. We begin with a paper from 1897.

ON RACE: Du Bois accepted the naive racial categories of his time. He posited 8 such races early on, and attributed to each its own message and its own particular ideal. But Du Bois was observant enough to note that, as great waves of warfare and migration occured, race as a concept was replaced by membership in geographical region...cities. Much of the physical basis for race disappeared but still Du Bois spoke of and worked for a time when; '...among the gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilization...' a Black one, fashioned by Black hands, 'hallowed by the travail of 200,000,000 black hearts', should raise and fly proudly with those of the other seven races.

Du Bois saw Afro-Americans as the vanguard of the development of the black race and worked to create a 'talented tenth' to lead the way in art, music, science, politics, literature and poetry as well as in the professions.

As the carrier of this Black awakening and empowerment, Du Bois saw the need for Negro Organizations, Negro Colleges, Negro Newspapers, Negro Businesses, Negro schools of art and literature as well as an 'intellectual clearing house which we might call an Academy.'

Du Bois called for the relentless and honest criticism of Black Americans by Black Americans...not to humble and degrade but to help and transform.

In that essay, written nearly one hundred years ago, Du Bois set forth a Creed for his new Academy:

1. The Black Race has a contribution to make to civilization and

humanity that can be made by no other race.

2. Americans of Negro descent should maintain racial identity

and militant activity until a time that the ideal of human

brotherhood can be realized.

3. It is possible for whites and colored people in the USA to

live together in peace and mutual happiness. Political,

religious and economic harmony is requisite for this.

4. Without calling for social equality which dismissed all

'human likes and dislikes', Du Bois called for a 'social

social equilibrium' which would give due consideration for

talent, ability and moral worth whether they be found under

a white or a black skin.

5. The first place to start is with the social problems created

by slavery...immorality, crime and laziness of the Negroes

themselves.

6. The second great step is recognition and selection on the

basis of ability in economic and intellectual life, regardless

of race.

7. On the basis of the foregoing Declaration and firmly believing

in our high destiny, we, as American Negroes, are resolved to

strive in every honorable way for...the rearing of a race

ideal in American and Africa...to the Glory of God and the

uplifting of the Negro people.

As Du Bois grew and learned from his efforts to lead American Negroes to the fullness of their humanity, his efforts soon expanded to include all of what he called the Black

Race...the effort became to create a 'talented tenth' in the USA to lead all Blacks to the fullness of their humanity and, in his view, take their place among the other 7 races of the world.

In his later years, Du Bois expanded his mission and his means. He began to include class, gender and nationalism along race as the source of much mischief to the human project:

Later, in WWII, Du Bois urged Blacks to close ranks and fight against Hitler and fascism. He said, 'This is our Country; we worked for it, we have suffered in it, we have tinged its ideals, its poetry, its religion, its dreams...and nothing, humanly speaking, can prevent us from eventually reaching here the full stature of our [humanity].

Finally, Du Bois said he was less sure of war and warfare; 'I was, perhaps, thinking too narrowly of the interest of my group and letting the world go to hell, if the black man went free.

At the same time, longevity increased for Blacks, race hate, lynching has decreased. The dogma of race has been widely challenged and the existence of 'inferior' races denied. Intermarriage more widely accepted. There is not a single field on American Culture in which some Negro is not outstanding. All this in 1943.

But, in a 1947 essay, 'Behold the Land,' Du Bois finally accepted that working class solidarity across class lines had been too long delayed. His early objections to class struggle was more with the racism among white socialists than in socialism itself. In a 1953 essay, 'Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States,' Du Bois echoed the sweeping language of the Manifesto. He concluded that, '...when the whole caste structure finally does fall, Negroes will be divided into classes even more sharply than now, and the main mass will become a part of the working class of the nation and the world, which will surely go socialist.'

We will leave Du Bois on this most trenchant of marxian insights. Had he lived to deploy his great genius and deep compassion today, he would have much to say about the collapse of bureaucratic socialism and much to say about democratic socialism.

* Technology

• We, for example, have grown in our understanding of Nature to such a degree that we no longer need to exploit it. Our position of being "other" than nature, superior or dominating of it, is becoming untenable as we see even ourselves dissolve into the cybernetwork. We have created a mind much greater than ours, greater even than our collective mind, a mind that encompasses all eco-psycho-systems with a subtlety that none of us as individuals could command.

* What mathematics did for observing the natural world, it has now created in and of itself. The medium is the message, in that all things, physical, psychological, imaginative and electronic are made of the same stuff, the same language of electrons. The nuclear structure reflects itself at all scales, micro and macro, and theories of indeterminacy leave open the creative growth of these systems. Where mathematics seemed to offer a stable model for knowledge of our own perceptions of Nature, it now gives us the mercurial nuances of cyberspace. Nothing separates real and imagined, potential and actual, except our insistance on making a separation between ourselves and technology ( on top of the old split with Nature).

* As long as we see technology as an entertainment or service, we can distance ourselves from its power over us. We can continue to seize on Nature and the Spiritual as healing alternatives to the loss of our subjectivity. We can seek to debase technological products and procedures as in-human, and fail to see their evolutionary inevitability.

* Out of this ironic knowledge, we have begun to tie together the observed systems, for the sake of the whole. This tying-together has come in the form of electronic information systems and digital replication. The mixture of physical, emotional and imaginative information within the electronic matrix is the new nature, much larger than our perception of Nature, the old classical "other". We can be simulataneously in it and outside it. We are modified by it, and our singular minds are enfolded into its greater mind.

Sheila Rowbotham (in _Oz_ in 1971!) contends that the word "virgin" originally denoted not "(1) a person (esp. a woman) who has never has sexual intercourse" [Concise Oxford] but a person who was not betrothed, who was a free agent not having been the subject (or object) of the property transaction of marriage.

This certainly makes more sense of, for example "the Vestal virgins" than the 19th-century version does. And it serves as a warning against looking at past events with a "modern" world-view.

Marxist Feminism

Marxist Feminism- in "Feminist Theories" a distinction was made by people with whom I spoke between Marxist feminists and socialist feminists, the latter hewing less to the Marxist line and focussing on both capitalism AND patriarchy, but there was disagreement on where to draw the line e.g. Dorothy Smith considered herself a Marxist feminist, although in terms of the definition would be a socialist feminist. In the discussions on the list radical feminists are omitted (Daring to be Bad is NOT held in high esteem by radical feminists) Christine Delphi is a radical feminist. Most serious social scientists who are feminists use Marx-that doesn't make us Marxist feminists. What I see as the main difference is that Marxist feminists try to fit feminism into a Marxist procrustean bed (e.g. talking about reproducing the labor force as well as reproduction in its biological sense) while I, at least, and other radical feminists (I don't want to speak for them) use the Marxist variables to enhance our feminist analysis-e.g. we use the sociology of knowledge (MacKinnon does so particularly effectively) ask cui bono, focus on power, and have a profound distrust of existing institutions. We are the only group that has always focusssed on violence against women and speak of misogyny as endemic.

Marxist-feminist analysis evolved as a feminist-inspired critique of the shortcomings of traditional Marxist approaches to the 'women's question'. Viewing marxist categories as 'sex-blind' and thus incapable of addressing the analysis of gender-related issues, authors such as Heidi Hartmann and Z. Eisenstein (who call themselves 'socialist feminists') argued for a synthesis of Marxist and feminist theory, coining the term 'capitalist patriarchy'. Others (such as Michele Barret, Maxine Molyneux, Flora Anthias, Patricia Connelly, etc), argueing that it is not marxism but actually the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production which is blind to sex-categories (which does not mean that capitalists are blind to the advantages of exploiting women's subordinate position) have opted instead for a more historical approach to the question of the articulation of gender divisions and the economy.

These authors have argued both against the 'reductionism' inherent in attempts to explain the gender divide in terms of the mechanics of the capitalist system (as traditional marxists did), as well as the 'dualism' inherent to synthetic theories (such as implicit in the expression 'capitalist patriarchy'). They suggest instead, that the analysis of the dynamics of gender and class (and gender and the economy) is better posed not at the abstract level of capitalism as a mode of production, but of capitalism as a system of production developing, articulating, and transforming relations/ structures of gender and class in historically determined social totalities, that is, in given social and economic formations.

Theorists and social thinkers who are Marxist sustain an analytical (and political) primacy of the mode of production in laying bare the basic social, economic, and political structures/relations in which women and men enter or find themselves in struggling for their life means and in putting in motion the process of succession of generations. The focus on the analysis of the articulation of social relations (of gender, class, race/ethnicity, kinship, generation, etc), and how they define the situation of women in different/specific class instances. Politically, many of these thinkers are involved in the feminist and wider women's movements, as well as in class-based social movements, fighting against gender, racial, and class oppression.

Some other points to add:

1. I wonder if we should not be clear about what the term "Marxism" might mean.

a. Related to writings by Marx and how they relate to feminism.

b. As a political movement which covers a wide spectrum of interpretation about Marx's writings and the relationship of those interpretations and political parties (movements) and feminism.

c. As an example of the science/philosophy of dialectical materialism.

Many thinkers keep themselves in the "c" category because the first is too specific and historically time bound and the second is too fluid and changes with historical developments. Of course both are important for feminist theory.

diamat (dialectical materialism) helpful in research/theory and in feminist theory/practice. An example of this--attempt to use diamat in discussing oppression-- is in Journal of Social Issues, l994, 21, 221-244.

P.S. Let us not forget poor old Frederick Engels (see Leacock's wonderful introduction to origin of the family.

___________

This replies to the recent inquiry by Brent McClintock concerning the "non"-origins of the state in Marxist theory. Jim Devine has already presented a similar response, so there is some redundancy here.

I cannot recall precisely the work of Pitelis, but the idea that the initial development of the state is not contained in Marxist theory is rather bizarre, unless Pitelis is asserting that Karl Marx himself didn't elaborate the development of such states. (I will leave it to the archivists to disprove that assertion.) The "ex ante" attribution suggests a linear determination which of course doesn't fit into anything short of pure instrumentalism.

In a more practical manner, the historical works of E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson both illuminate the development of the state, as does the contemporary work of Nicos Poulantzas. In this there is a theory of the development of the state, as there has been in recent theoretical works (e.g., Jessop, inter. alia.).

We could summarize the general Marxist argument very simply as suggesting that human society is an historical system in which the development of the capitalist class led to an adaptive response on the part of emergent fractions of capital to generate state structures congenial to their interests. While this state was neither strictly functional to capital in particular, nor determined precisely by the needs of capital, nor "nascent" in a micro-foundations manner, it was nonetheless explicable in terms of the historical conditions under which capitalism arose, the class boundaries, rivalries, and antagonism which are encumbent to class society, and the contingencies of its social structures. While most of this applies primarily to the __capitalist__ state, the same processes apply to previous class society. And of course, the capitalist state built on those pre-capitalist states.

This explanation doesn't say much without it historical underpinnings, but then the development of institutions doesn't mean much without the historical relationships which compose them.

feminist scholars don't ignore class! A good book to start with is _Working-Class Women in the Academy:Laborers in the Knowledge Factory_ Michelle M Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds. The work of bell hooks _Teaching to Transgress_ and _Feminist Theory from Margin to Center_ and especially the work of Dorothy Smith (_Conceptual practices of Power_ and _Everyday Life as Problematic_) on how class and gender structured the academic discipline of sociology, mental health and other areas is good. For the way that class and gender shaped the "hard" sciences, look at Sandra Harding's _Whose Science? Whose Knowledge_? What is being ignored is the work of feminist scholars, not the use of class, race, and gender in constructing epistemologies! Aronowitz, Stanley. "The Decline and Rise of Working Class Identity". in The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture, Social Movements. Routledge, 1992.

The lead article is by Myra Marx Ferree and Elaine J. Hall, "Rethinking Stratification from a Feminist Perspective: Gender, Race, and Class in Mainstream Textbooks.

The authors make many excellent points; I want to mention only a few. First, they point out that what constitutes the "mainstream sociology" paradigm is based on assumptions that males are the only important players in the social structure, partly (mainly?) because males have been the ones to have a formal (i.e., paid) role in the economic stratification system.

That is, mainstream sociology has not done a very good job in explaining the structure of paid and unpaid forms of labor. They also point out that what constitutes mainstream sociology is a "moving target" and has been defined by textbook publishers so as to include as much of the discipline as possible.

Second, they argue that the statuses and standings of women are multidimensional not easily reducible to a unitary concept. Important dimensions include autonomy, power, and economic resources available to women.

Third, gender is discussed from a socialization perspective, as opposed to race and social class. Race is often presented from a "social relations" perspective, while class is presented from a structural perspective.

The authors further argue that if sociology would use feminist theories in a more inclusive way, sociology would have a more informed view of stratification.

Is there anything intrinsicly liberating or critical about sociology as an intellectual endeavor?

Remember, sociology as an intellectual discipline was established on rather conservative assumptions. Although sociology has come to age in various national/intelectual cultures

through various trajectories, I don't see progressives maintaining an intellectual hegemony any where. In the United States sociology is dominated by the positivists-empiricists.

However, compared to several other disciplines, sociology offers more hope in atleast two ways.

Especially since the breakdown of the "orthodox consensus" (Kinsley Davis's 1957 ASA presidential speech- sociology is functionalism, thus there is no separate functionalist school

bla.. bla.. bla... is a text book, farcical example of that consensus), sociology, albeit in a limited way, has become more pluralized.

Although progressives have a marginal physical presence in the discipline, the conservative orthodoxy can not claim a monoploy on the theoretical/empirical discourse in the field any more. Along with anthropology, communications, literary critique (philosophy-by and large, are rather obtuse - many of the interesting philosophical polemics have found home in the literary critique departments), there have been marginal, yet loud, exciting presence of subversive discourses in sociology.

Of course, the conservatives don't like that polyvocality (Bakhtin?) in sociology. Thus we see the neoconservative rhetoric of anti-sociology (See Peter Berger's "Disinvitation to Sociology," Irving Horowitz's *Decomposition of Sociology*, the distrust of sociology among the political establishment etc.). Habermas did an intersting paper on the neoconservative anti-sociology in Germany.

Within that context, we progressive sociologists find ourselves in an interesting position. On the one hand, we are troubled by the bourgeois character of academic sociology. But on the other hand, within the context of the academic power struggles, we also need to defend the discipline, and focus on its critical potential.

What is the defining feature of sociology? We assume that its emphasis on group behavior - other social scientists to some extent do that as well. Sociology's claim to uniqueness lies in its focus on society as a "totality" (with a small, miniscule t). Sociology, no matter how implicitly, contains the enlightenment project of comprehending life in its whole dimension. The parallel (at least potentially) between Marxism and sociology in this regard is striking. Sociology, without the

exception of anthropology, (Toynbee pointed out the division between sociology and anthropology as scandalous... on the other hand modernist sociologists like Giddens thrive on that unfortunate division of labor) is the only social science that somehow tolerates the claim that a social science is possible that elaborates the complex interfaces of economy, power, culture, language, agency, historicity etc. I don't know whether we will ever be able to "unthink social scienecs" (*Unthinking Social Sciences*, the title of one of Wallerestein's recent books) by subverting /fading their specialized terrains, but sociology offers the promise to come real close to that task.

- born in 1926 (Poitiers, a provinicial city) died in 1984. Named for Paul-Michael Foucault, his

father, who was a surgeon, grandfather was a surgeon. So guess what Papa wanted young

Paul-Michael to be?

- when he was 17, Foucault decided that he could not be a doctor, despite his father’s wishes he

focused on school. Lived through WWII Received an incredible Jesuit education. In fact, he

started school in a sense when he was four. He did not want to be separated from his older

sister, so he sat in the back of the class with crayons and listened. He eventually did so well

that he scored fourth among all students in the country and received admission into the most

exclusive college level school in France.

However, he became depressed at the school and even attempted suicide - which was related to his sexual interest in men. At the time Psychiatrists then tended to treat homosexuality as an illness, didn’t help Foucault. Maybe Psychiatrists were actually Mental Police.

- joined the communist party from 1950-1953

- French instructor job, 1955 in Upsala, Sweden and conducted research in a huge library of

medical works from 16th - 20th century. This research would become Madness and Civilization

and The Birth of the Clinic

- French intellectual

- a generation before Foucault, Jean-Paul Sarte was the premire intellectual

- Foucault was part of the generation of intellectuals that Roland Barthes - literary critic

Jacques Lacan - radical psychiatrist

C.Levi-Strauss - structural anthro

- Foucault worked in so many different fields that it is hard to characterize his thought

philosophy, history, psychology, sociology, medicine, gender, literary critcism

- what held Foucault’s wide area of interest together was his interest in power and knowledge and how they work together. Knowledge is power - Foucault took this idea apart, analyzed it, and put it back together. He was particularly interested in knowledge OF human beings and Power that acts ON human beings.

- power for Foucault is defined as: "the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization"

take as an example the truism that war is politics pursued by other means and turn it around: politics is war pursued by other means. That is true as well, right? Physical force stands unspoken behind much of society’s relations. If we don’t steal, is it because we know it is wrong, or because we don’t want to get beat up in jail? Perhaps it is both.

In the traditional sense, power is monolithic, zero-sum, hierarchical, and clearly visible. Power is embodied in the law, is written down, and is wholly negative, consisting of prohibtions and taboose ("Thou shalt not...").

But the new methods of power have emerged that are not ensured by right but by technique, not by law but by normalization, not by punishment but by control, methods that are employed on all levels and in forms that go beyond the state and its arrangements (apparatus).

this new form of power is much more subtle than the older traditional notion, thus it is much easier to overlook and much harder to resist.

- if there is no absolute truth...what does knowledge mean? It becomes an idea that a group of people support and decide is true.

might makes right = physical force

knowledge is power = mental force

imposed on a majority by a minority. If we look at the social sciences then what we define as knowledge is literally defining what human beings are. If we can get enough people to accept these ideas as true then they become more important than other alternative ideas.

But hang on! How do we get some people to accept these ideas? This is where power comes in. The same people that create these ideas create beliefs - this involves power. They become experts - that they are more knowledgable than the rest of us. And because we are talking about social science - they define the rest of us - what it means to be human.

we have all been on the receiving end of physical power and know what it feels like

but how does knowledge power work?

1. it still can be physical - as when a child is spanked

2. primarily it works through language - soon when a child learns language s/he learns the basic rules of the culture

think about how all social sciences define people into two basic categories: normal and abnormal

Foucault’s books study different forms of abnormality (and where abnormality comes from)

madness

criminality

perverted sexuality

illness

- what is abnormal is normally defined as everything which differs significantly from the normal

--> normal is the basic term and what is normal should be perfectly obvious because it’s all around us. We also assume that the difference is easy to tell, and tends to remain the same over time.

--> BUT by looking at a wide variety of historical documents, Foucault challenges all of these assumptions about normality:

1. madness, illness, criminality, and perverted sexuality all vary over time!

behavior that got people locked up or put in hospitals at one time was glorified in another.

2. social sciences, knowledge/power, and society created definitions of normality and abnormality are used to regulate behavior. While the difference between the two looks natural and easy, it is actually hazy and highly contested borders.

3. society has increasingly locked up, excluded, and hidden abnormal people, while nevertheless watching, examining, questioning them carefully. It has not always been this way. In earlier times madmen were an accepted part of the community, sick people were treated at home, no one expected disabled or disfigured people to stay out of sight, and criminals were punished as publicly as possible.

We define the normal through the abnormal; only through abnormality do we even know what normal is. Even though we hide it away, abnormality is something that the "normal" people obsess over becaue it helps define who and what we "normals" are...

abnormality is one of the main ways that power relations are established in society. The normal person always has power over the abnormal.

Psychologist - defines and discusses the insane (madmen)

Physician - defines and discusses the ill

Criminologist - defines and discusses the criminal

doesn’t matter what insane, ill, criminal, etc... say about the Psychologist, Physician, Criminologist anything that they say has been ruled out as irrelevant because they have no power.

- 600 page book

- Why is madness opposite to reason?

suppose - 1. a man who has violent outburss at no one in particular for no apparent reason

2. a man who tells you that the FBI has planted a radio receiver in his brain

3. a man who is catatonic

look at these three men, forget that you heard that they are insane. Clearly each of them has a probelm that may keep him from functioning well in our society. BUT would you say

that they are all suffering from different versions of the same disease?

would you say that there reason is broken? would you assume that a similar approach could be taken to cure all three? we might say that they all appear to have emotion problems - BUT which emotions are specifically involved in any of their actions?

the category of madness exists apriori and is used by you to categorize these people.

- madness has more to do with excluding some people from society by locking them up,

separating them from so-called "normal" people.

middle ages - separate people with leprosy

14th century - leprosy disappeared

15th century - ship of fools

17th century - locking up people "like crazy" (used the old leprosy houses)

17th and 18th century - madness was know shameful and must be hidden

- wanted to figure out what the idea of madness meant

18th century - madness was seen as more than something physically wrong

patterns of judgement had to be internalized

Doctor becomes the center of healing, everything centers on the doctor-patient relationship that is where sickeness will be understood.

- what is a clinic like? What is a training hospital like? objectification of the patient.

Important conclusions: 1. teaching is united with practice

2. the clinic becomes the basis for the licensing of doctors

3. professor of medicine - examines patients & students

4. patients accept the training nature of the clinic, they may get lousy doctoring but they will add to medical knowledge

5. disease is more important than the patient, diseases are layed out spatially

Gaze - an active vision, doctor’s perception is key

but not enough is known about the disease - too much is hidden from the eye, the gaze

dissecting bodies opens up the body to the doctor’s gaze. This leads to a new view of death. Death becomes a kind of culmination of life rather than a lack of life. So, as we enter the 19th century, death through science becomes the beginning of taking the individual into account.

the doctor’s power comes from a view of things rather than from abstract theories

- Foucault looked at the history of the human (social) sciences as a whole

- enormously complex and difficult book became a huge hit in France

- what is it about certain categories that some make sense and others don’t? what is it that we all

know that make it possible to form categories, and how would it be different in different times?

- what is the structure of knowledge and how does this organize our lives?

Foucault begins before the 18th century when God was the organizing principle of knowledge. Social science arises as the centrality of God is called into question. But this recentering of knowledge around "man" will not last. Just as Nietzsche predicted the "death of God", Foucault predicted the "death of man." "Man" is an invention.

- Foucault is challenging what Sarte had to say about meaning not being trancendent. Becuase no

meaning is transcendent, predetermined, each person is free to create one’s own meaning

through one’s actions. We have a kind of essential freedom. Foucault believed that

organization, structure, and knowledge all conveyed limitations and coercion on people.

Language becomes a dominating structure.

- discourse is the center

- discourse is anything that is written or communicated using signs, writings in an area of

technical knowledge, each era will define its own discourses over time, and these definitions

may vary radically over time. Technicans work together to establish the field and its dominant

ideas - which leads to power

- right and wrong get translated} normal and pathological

good and sin into }

- methods of punishment vary over the years and how we think of them varies as well. What

once seemed as reasonable punishment becomes perverse later. For Foucault this represents a

change in the use of power and authority in a society. Note that a modern form of punishment

might not indicate a lesser use of power. Careful control of every aspect of a life can represent

a more complete exercise of power than the massive display of a death.

- the importance of pain as the centrality of punishment...

- science of dsicpline:

1. spacialization - a place for everyone and everyone in its place

2. minute control of activity - timetables

3. repetitive exercises

4. detailed hierarchies - a complex authority and training

5. normalizing judgements

laws are spelled out in negative terms. Limits on behavior and decide what is unacceptable. Laws rarely talk about what behavior is desired. Law prevents but does not specify. Disciplinary power is very different: it not only punishes, it rewards. Normality is used as a technique.

Panopticon - Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) a form of architecture where every person can be observed at all times. Bentham envisioned the same basic concept and layout for factories, barracks, hospitals, insane asylums, and especially prisons.

Overtime punishment became centralized in the form of prisons or some form of watched incarceration. However, the panopticon provided a model for using discipline in prisons. Disciplinary activity became the standard to all criticims of prisons. Prisons were seen as reforming the prisoners because discipline remakes the individual. Constant observation and penalities for the smallest infractions would start the process. Every minute of every day would be monitored and controlled. As prisoners become better behaved, they could gradually be granted more priviledges.

But does prison really succeed in remaking the individual? What kind of person is being made? A docile worker who does as ordered without question. An automaton, the perfect fodder for the capitalist factory. What about the failures? RECIDIVISTS They come back over and over again - so, they can be separated from the rest of society.

- three volumes, volume one talked about the last two centuries, volumes II (the use of pleasure)

and III (care of the self) talked about Greece and Rome. The sexual system is not the same in

different time periods and places.

- beginning in the 19th century, discourses about sex proliferated. Suddenly sex became a

scientific object of study - truth, defining, and cultural meanings of sexuality - scientia sexualis

- he engaged in S/M. He did not believe that S/M revealed any deep subconcious tendencies,

instead he saw S/M a a game. A way of playing and experimenting with the nature of power.

- critics say that his analysis of power is simply a dead issue because it disallows any possibility

of political action. Foucault argued that political resistance was not just possible but a necessary

part of the equation. Large political parties and organizations for reform do more to stabilize

power relations than to change them. Play, whether sexual or overtly political, challenges

society’s rules on a deeper and less predictable level, opening up possibilities.

Historical critique: Where is the agency? Who are the people exercising this power? Who are the people creating this system of power? Why are they doing it? Grand schemes are all very well, but history alway boils down to individual people doing things. Foucault is describing some enourmous conspiracy.

Foucault is not interested in the individual and individual will, he would say that our society became focused on the individual at the same time that it became a normalizing society, and perhaps the individual, individual rights, is the alibi of power. If there is no one in charge of power, no one to blame...is there any way to resist power???

For Foucault there is no resistance outside of the system of power relations. Political resistance can be uncooperative behavior against the system.

What has the purpose of this class been?

The class should ultimately be about how to improve the world. If it becomes a class about how to improve the bottom line through humanism, we have failed. A humanistic vision of the world cannot center itself around profit or production. A truly humanistic workplace might BE profitable, but making this the desired end traps us in conventional modes of thinking and

limits our ability to be humanistic. Limits are imposed on humanism when humanistic reform (and, by extension, those people for whom it is meant) are treated as one more link in the chain of industrial production. When people become the means, not the end, then we're not being humanistic. We are ultimately limited in our ability to build a social structure that is not

profoundly alienating to the persons who live within it. Humanistic approaches to building social forms must be people centered.

Note that i am equating humanism to feminist insight, which i feel is the most important and fundamental insight which has arisen from our first few weeks of class. What we have done to this point in class leads naturally and inevitably to this simple insight.

I think the class should NOT be about 'how do we effectively incorporate feminist insight and leadership to make things better for our company?' such a view makes people the tools by which profits and production are increased, and holds within it an assumption that makes true humanism

impossible: that the workers must be led to participate in a structure that is created for them in a humanistic fashion. You don't create humanistic social forms FOR people, you create them WITH people. creating them FOR people, and then leading them through it, removes the participatory,

empowering element that is the very goal of those structures. 'workers' are not cattle who must be guided into a pre-arranged humanistic structure, no matter how noble the intentions of those who design that structure. It just doesn't work that way. We need to allow room, allow participation, and ultimately allow indeterminacy in order to overcome alienation and build a feminist/humanistic vision of the workplace. We have to abandon notions of 'us/them' 'managers/workers' or 'boss/subordinate.'

This doesn't necessarily mean we give up on the idea of organization, on the contrary, nothing works without it. The question we should be exploring is how we create that organization in such a way that the needs of human beings for meaning and a sense of control and power over their lives are met. If we can do this, good will inevitably flow for persons and for the organization. We will have created a humanistic social form. We must be careful not to ask, 'what's the best way to create a humanistic structure for workers?', and instead ask, 'what's the best way to work with each other to create a structure that is open, participatory, and allows for growth of the human spirit?' Its a vital distinction.