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WOLF - CHAPTER 3
Wallace and Wolf concluded their discussion of functionalism by telling
us that functionalism can help those who are dedicated to radical social
change to a fuller understanding of how the system operates. Nor, to
appreciate functionalism, need one take sides with Parsons when he argues
that is general. Of action encompasses conflict theory as two different
sides of the coin.
in summary they say functionalism tends to stress values over interests,
and although it shows the independent importance of ideas and the links
between power and social consent, it neglects the coercive aspects of
power and the significance of peoples conflicting objectives. (All on
page 65)
in chapter 3 they developed the two traditions of conflict theory.
They note that functionalists look at societies as social institutions as
systems in which all the parts depend on each other and work together to
create equilibrium. They do not deny the existence of conflict; but they
believe society develops ways to control it, and that is what they
analyze. All on page (68 )
they use the example of a modern airport to illustrate functionalism. A
functionless perspective points out the way the different parts of an
airport work together to keep the system functioning. Conflict areas
interested in the rivalries among different workers and management and in
the position each group is in to do well for itself. I conflict theorist
might point out that the air traffic controllers want more staff and more
expensive equipment, that pilots are always trying to restrict intrigue to
the profession to keep salaries high, that Porter is and maintenance staff
and cleaners all the lawn to militant unions, and that all of these groups
are at odds with the airlines and terminal management who want to keep
costs down and profit up.
Conflict view has three central and connected assumptions:
first people have a number of basic interests, things they want, and
attempt to acquire things that are not always defined by societies but
rather common to them all. Conflict theorists are not always explicit
about this but it is present in their work.
Second power is the core of social relationships, it's a source of
conflict but it is also a course of mechanism.
The third aspect of conflict. Is that values and ideas are seen as
weapons used by different groups to advance their own ends rather than as
a means of defining a whole society's identity and goals.
There are two basic traditions and conflict their the first is the
tradition in which social scientists have a moral obligation to critique
society. This view refuses to separate that that analysis can separate
judgments or facts from values.
theorists in this group include Marx, Bourdieu, C. Wright Mills, and
the Frankfurt school.
The second group considers conflict to be an inevitable and permanent
aspect of social life it also rejects the idea that social sciences
conclusions are necessarily value late in. Instead, its proponents are
interested in establishing a social science with the same objectivity as
the natural sciences. (Dahrendorf, Collins, Coser).
INTELLECTUAL ROOTS
Power, Position, and legitimacy: Marks and cap Weber
Wallace and Wolf begin with Marx
(See Marx outline)
Max Weber (1864 -- 1920).
like Karl Marx, Weber saw people's activities as largely self-interested.
However, he believed that a historian or sociologist must recognize in
addition to how universal interests as the acquisition of wealth, the
importance of goals, and values specific to society.
He formulated IDEAL TYPES by extracting the typical or necessary
properties of a concept from a variety of concrete instances. Real-life
examples need not correspond exactly to the stylized ideal type: for
example it may be possible to find any examples of bureaucracy that
correspond in every particular to Weber's model. (Page 73).to the
AN IDEAL TYPE is often described as a model that serves as a measuring
around against which specific cases can be identified.
Weber also address the issue of POWER and the ways by which some people
secure domination over others.
for Weber there were three basic types of power the first CHARISMATIC
depended on the leaders characteristics were the quality of the specific
person. Examples include James Jones, Jesus, or bin laden.
TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY, is the second kind of power. Second, TRADITIONAL
AUTHORITY is enjoyed because it is handed down from the past, such as a
king or a tribal chief. The individual may not him or herself be capable,
but the tradition on which their authority rests gives them the power.
RATIONAL LEGAL AUTHORITY, comes from formal rules. For example
bureaucrats are obeyed because statutes or rules you've been the power to
do certain things and because people in government or in organizations
such as NIU, or General motors, have the authority because they hold
certain positions. According to Weber, the anchoring of legitimacy in
particular source of rules is central to modern societies ongoing
RATIONALIZATION of everything. (Page 73)
Weber did not disagree with Marxist view that economic interests underlie
people's behavior, but he believed marks wrong in identifying economic
characteristics as the sole crucial determinant of both social structure
and people's life chances. Weber argued that someone's religion,
education, or political position may be as important resource of power and
success as their position in the class structure.
Weber defined class as people who shared the same position in economic
life whether this involved property as marks argued or marketable skills.
For Weber SES, or socio- economic-status, were crucial. That is these are
the status and other resources on which people draw.
POWER, POLICE, AND CLASSES
ELITE THEORY. Several elite theorists include Vilfredo Pareto
(1848-1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) and Robert Michels (1876-1936).
These theorists shared several key ideas.
first, their central argument was that only a small number of people in
any organization can hold authority and that their occupation of these
positions automatically places them at odds with those subjected to it.
The league scoring control generally share a common culture and they are
organized although not always formally but in the sense that they act
together to defend their position as well as using their position to their
own individual advantage. (P. 75).
Michel's mainly concerned was with what he called the iron law of
oligarchy, the view that small groups in authority come to run political
parties essentially for their own hands.
Mosca was concerned with the conflict between the holders of power and
those whom they dominate. Unlike Marx, Mosca saw political positions as
the source of domination and all other spheres including the economic.
Pareto recognize the existence of other nonpolitical elites, but he
emphasized the governing elites to rule a society and the existence of
ruling subject classes who face each other like alien nations.
Thorsten Veblen space was another important theorist who lived from about
1857 to 1929. His primary contribution to conflict theory lies in the
fact that he was one of the few early American sociologists to analyze the
roots of power and the roots of conflict and abroad the store call
context. Early American sociologists were essentially empiricists
pragmatists. Veblen, like Marx, believed that modern society is
characterized by the conflict between opposing economic groups. In this
case they are the INDUSTRIAL CLASS who actually make the goods and the
PECUNIARY CLASS who are involved in finance and sales
whom he characterized as parasites living off the innovation and
productiveness of the rest of the population.
THE WEB OF CONFLICT: SIMMEL AND THE CHICAGO SCHOOL
Georg Simmel (1958-1918), was looking for universal patterns in human
behavior. Marx and Weber wanted to understand what made a particular
society operate. Simmel by contrast concentrated on developing what is
almost a mathematical model of society: a collection of statements about
human relationships and social behavior that apply regardless of the
historical setting. He asked how human relationships forming change, a
question related to his own backgrounds and feelings of insecurity and
rootlessness. he argued that association and conflict between groups and
individuals can exist side-by-side but are intimately related. We cannot
divide people into neatly self-contained groups with common interests that
are different from those of other people with their self-contained
antagonistic interests. Unlike Marxist and HMO society divided
horizontally into two antagonistic blocks, Simmel saw society has
integrated by numerous crosscutting conflicts in which those who stand
together in one respect are opposed in another (page 77).
NOTE: THE AUTHORS INTRODUCE THE CHICAGO SCHOOL AND ROBERT PARK HERE AS
PART OF CONFLICTS VERY BUT THIS IS MISLEADING SO WE WILL BRING THEM UP
AGAIN WHEN WE DISCUSS SYMBOLIC INTERACTION.
REMEMBER, THE AUTHORS DIVIDEDspace CONFLICT THEORY INTO TWO GROUPS FIRST
WITH THOSE WHO LOOKED AT AND CRITIQUED THE FOUNDATIONS OF POWER IN
SOCIETY, AND SECOND WITH THOSE WHO THEY ARGUE FOLLOWED MAX WEBER AND
LOOKED AT ELITES IN AN EMPIRICAL MANNER.
PART 1
they see Karl Marx as the dominant influence of this group. As we have
seen, Marx divided the world in tool pressers and oppressed on the basis
of property and whether you sold or bought your labor.
Neo-marxist and to Marxist sociology
especially in the 1960s and 1970s, many scholars influenced by Marxist
were more political and more ideological than they were empirical. This
meant that they often said some very goofy things that seem to define the
evidence. But in the mid 1970s and 1980s a number of scholars attempted
to develop and refine Marxist ideas or to integrate them with other
perspectives. People who refine to Marxist and tried to remain faithful
to his core ideas we call NEO MARXISTS.
The book identifies a number of these read. Read this material, and if
you're interested pursuant. At this point you're responsible primarily
for knowing that there is something called Neo-marxist research, who some
of the key people are, and what a few of the core ideas are.
CRITICAL THEORY: THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
critical theory emerged especially in the1920s and 1930s, in Germany.
They are guided by two basic propositions FIRST is that people's ideas are
a product of the society in which they live. Because our thought is
socially formed it is impossible for us to reach objective knowledge and
conclusions free of the influence of our particular era and its conceptual
patterns (page 101).
The second proposition is that intellectuals should not try to be
objective and to separate fact from value in their work with a should
adopt instead is a critical attitude to the society they are examining,
and attitude that makes people aware of what they should do and has as its
name social change. (P. 101)
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962). Mills is considered the most ambitious of
the early conflict theorists. He gave us the term THE SOCIOLOGICAL
IMAGINATION. The sociological imagination he said "enables its possessor
to understand the large historical scene in terms of its meaning for the
inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals."
That is we take into account how people in all of the daily experience
often become falsely conscious of the social positions. The point is that
we have to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two
within our society. Mills distinguished between PERSONAL TROUBLES and
PUBLIC ISSUES. Personal troubles are troubles that occur within our
individual biography and within our immediate life situation. personal
troubles include relations with other people. Public issues by contrast
to our matters that have to do with the institutions of a historical
society as a whole and with the various factors that penetrate our
structures and our life situation. (P. 106-107).
Mills developed several concepts that are consistent with Marx.
for example alienation and bureaucracy were intertwined. It alienation
from work turns people to leisure and especially in large bureaucracies
they became detached from the impersonalization of their means of
livelihood.
THE POWER ELITE
Mills argued that the growth of large structures had been accompanied by
centralization of power and that the people who had the government
corporations and Armed Forces and labor unions are closely linked. He
called this the POWER ELITE. He tended to see a single or at least a
highly unified power elite, which may have criticized and rejected in
recent years. however this doesn't detract from the utility of his
theory. (Elaborate that)
PIERRE BOURDIEU
several key concepts from Bourdieu:
first is his theory of class reproduction, or how one generation of an
economic class ensures that reproduces itself and passes on its privileges
to the next generation. He argued that education for example is one way
this occurs because educational success reflects a set of culture
behavior. It is this culture behavior that carries you confidently
through higher education, job interviews, the board rooms, and the like.
(P. 112)
for example the children of metal and upper class families have learned
this behavior, the working class peers have not. Therefore the former
succeed the latter fail.
Bourdieu argued that there are many forms of capital lease their other
forms of capital than the economic version identified by Marx. He
identified symbolic capital, cultural capital, social capital, and
economic capital.
INSERT ADDITIONAL MATERIAL HERE LATER
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PART TO: CONFLICT. AND ANALYTIC SOCIOLOGY--THE LEGACY OF MAX WEBER
Here the authors identify three major theorists:
Lewis Coser, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Randall Collins.
Page maintained by: Jim Thomas - jthomas@sun.soci.niu.edu