SOCI0024 Modern Social Theory

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• SOCI0024 Modern Social Theory
• SOCI6008 Modern Theory and Sociological Analysis
• A Review and a Preview
• Modernity the agenda and the answers in the
  classical theories
• Socio-economic changes in the 20th century
• Political changes characterizing the modern
  society
• Changes as they bear on the individual level
• Preview of the persistent and new issues, and
  contemporary ways of theorizing them

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Review and Preview
1. One sentence capture of the founding
fathers responses to the onset of modern society
(birth of modern society as also birth of
sociology)
Agenda Answers

Source of tension or contradictions in modern
capitalist societies is the key to its eventual
transformation into a modern advanced stage of
development, namely socialism
What is both progressive and repressive about
modern capitalist society is its system of
production, a social organization of production
that locked two increasingly homogeneous groups
in an unequal and permanent/inevitable
relationship, and which entails increasingly
intensive conflicts
Marx
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Review and Preview
Classical theories, contd
Agenda
Answers
What is distinctive about modern society is the
emergence and combination of ideas and interests
that propel a methodical/rational way of
organizing all domains of social life when
everything is subject to calculation, everything
undertaken for instrumental and impersonal
reasons what does this imply for our values as
human beings
Weber
Rationalization is the dominant trend in modern
societies such rational/bureaucratic control
will persist in both capitalist and socialist
societies at an individual level, the use of the
means-end schema to conduct our social life leads
to disenchantment of the world
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Review and Preview
Classical theories, contd
Agenda
Answers
Durkheim
What is distinctive is the heterogeneity of
social interactions, with social density (urban
living) matched by moral density, with people
interdependent in a more complex way, with their
moralities evolving (or fail to evolve) to meet
the needs of such complexity failing that,
social disorder
Social solidarity in modern society is undermined
not by inequalities as such, but by the effect of
such inequalities on peoples moralities (norms
of justice)
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Review and Preview
Classical theories, contd

• The classical theories as providing different
  and distinctive approaches to the economic,
  social and cultural aspects of modernity? Yes
  and No
• The classical theories as proffering either
  optimistic or pessimistic views of the future of
  human society? Yes and No
• The classical theories as a product of their
  times, and their relevance to 20th century
  changes is limited? Yes and No
• The classical theories as delineating the main
  areas of sociological analysis from then on, and
  as also providing for these areas the key
  concepts and approaches, with these concepts and
  approaches adopted, adapted, modified and
  developed by modern social thinkers.

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Review and Preview
Classical theories, contd

• Two sets of questions contained in the classical
  theories
• How should one conceptualize the relations
  between individual and society (and other related
  dichotomies, e.g., actor/agent and structure,
  subjective and objective) and the relative
  importance or place of the various dimensions of
  power/domination

Men make their own history but they do not make
it just as they please they do not make it under
circumstances chosen by themselves (Marx)
Social being determines social consciousness, or
the infrastructure/base vs. the superstructure
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Social being and social consciousness, contd
In the social production which men carry on they
enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will.the
sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure of society
the real foundation, on which rise legal and
political superstructures. (Marx)

• Meta-theories on the agency of the individual
  vis-à-vis society or structure conceptualizing
  the morphology of power (images such as
  base/economics vs. superstructure, or economic
  power as the ultimate determinant of social
  action)

The first set of questions bequeathed to us by
the classical heritage is thus the more abstract,
more philosophical issues of human agency and
social conditions/constraints
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Review and Preview
Classical theories, concluded

• What are the major issues confronting modern
  society what could one say are the defining
  features of modernity, and the things that leave
  the most important imprint on the human
  conditions in the 20th century?

Within any mode of production the division of
labour did not separate individuals randomly into
isolated social atoms, but systematically into
social classes. (Abrams on Marx)
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Classical theories, concluded
And more The division of labour (as fundamental
source of inequality) separates individual
interests from the common interests, but it also
re-groups interests along the lines of class. In
doing so, it gives the powerful classes the means
of consolidating their power the surplus they
have appropriated can be used to create legal,
religious and cultural institutions in which
class domination is legitimated and enforced.
(Abrams on Marx)

• Domination (forms, ways, means, basis,
  legitimacy and reproduction)

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Or The tendency of industrialization was to make
people increasingly different from one another
and morally to encourage them to emphasize
differences rather than similarities. Given a
powerful tendency in that direction, how could
society continue to cohere? (Abrams on Durkheim)

• Social Integration, Community and Morality (the
  nature and implications of individualism, the
  bearing of modern social relationships on things
  such as trust and commitment

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Classical theories, concluded
And more from Abrams on Weber For him, modern
society was above all a society pervaded by
rationalism, and its history was a history of
rationalization.rationality was the peculiar
historical fate of the world, and
By rationalization, Weber meant the processes
by which explicit, abstract, intellectually
calculable rules and procedures are increasingly
substituted for sentiment, tradition and rule of
thumb in all spheres of activity.
Rationalization leads to the displacement of
religion by specialized sciencethe substitution
of the trained expert for the cultivated man of
letters, the ousting of the skilled handworker by
machine technologyIt means that there are no
mysterious, incalculable forces that come into
playThis means that the world is disenchanted.

• Modernity and postmodernity (if modernity is
  the iron cage of rationality, does postmodernity
  mean anything goes?)

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Classical theories, concluded
The second set of questions bequeathed to us by
the classical heritage is thus about
power/domination, social cohesion, cultural
values, as they are manifested at two levels at
the system (institutional) level (e.g., do we
still have polarized classes in the late 20th
century capitalism? Or is economic power still
the dominant form? Are there other means,
channels, and basis of power?), and at the
individual level (e.g., with the compression of
time and space by modern information technology
and transport system, are we experiencing a
richer emotional life and more satisfying social
relationships?)
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Review and Preview

• Mapping these questions to Modern Social Theories
• Old issues and new languages (eclectic character
  of modern theorizing)
• Old issues and new context (e.g. self and
  others as undergoing changes as a result of new
  social movements such as feminism, or the idea of
  the modern family)
• New issues and new theorizing (e.g., global
  village and cyber culture as impacting on the
  meanings of social relationships)

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New issues needing new theorizing an example
Modernity.. Is a double-edged phenomenon. The
development of modern social institutions and
their worldwide spread have created greater
opportunities for human beings to enjoy a secure
and rewarding existence than any type of
pre-modern system.On the whole, the opportunity
side of modernity was stressed most strongly by
the classical founders of sociology. Marx and
Durkheim both saw the modern ear as a troubled
one. But each believed that the beneficent
possibilities opened up by the modern era
outweighed its negative characteristics.Weber
was the most pessimistic among the three founding
fathers Yet even he did not fully anticipate how
extensive the darker side of modernity would turn
out to be. (Giddens, The Consequences of
Modernity, p. 7)
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Review and Preview
2. Socio-economic changes in the late 20th
century (Craig Calhoun)

• Quality of social relationships in the compressed
  and accelerated age

Traditional
(Gemeinschaft) Modern (Gesellschaft)
Post-Modern?
Relationships Primary, secondary
Mediated primary as now compartmentalized
Indirect, extended in space and time, abstract,
needing co-ordination
Mode of integration
Interpersonal, concrete, everyday
Key institutions
Family, community
Market, corporations, state
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Review and Preview

• The insights and inadequacies of the classical
  theories on social relationships, as we
  experience them in the late 20th century

Marx social relationships as mediated and
hidden by commodity exchange
Weber the market as the epitome of indirect and
impersonal relationships in capitalist society
Durkheim social relationships multiplied and
differentiated, thus requiring a new mode of
integration different modes of social solidarity
have different implications for conceptions of
mutuality and for individuals socio-psychological
makeup
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To Calhoun, the classical responses to social
relationships in modern society are inadequate,
because

• either they focus too much on the system (how
  parts/institutions (e.g., economy vs. polity, or
  social inequality vs. normative order of social
  justice) relate to one another, and not
  sufficient attention on social relationships
• or they have focused too much on one or the
  other factor or dimension of power/force
  (commoditization of relationships, or the market
  as representing the dominant mode of rationality)
• or they have not foreseen further dramatic
  changes since their time, viz. information
  technology and advancements in transportation

To Calhoun, these theories need to be further
developed (new context gt old issues gt theorizing
gt new issues)
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Calhoun, contd

• Where to go next? Calhouns understanding of
  modernity and its future

• Transformations in technology infrastructure and
  transportation systems led to changing nature of
  indirect social relationships manifested in
• market as nodes of economic behaviour, the
  scope, scale and reach of market have
  dramatically extended market is treated as if it
  is something objective (e.g., predicting market
  behaviour is like predicting weather)
• corporations proliferation of these
  organizations corporations are like actors,
  endowed with autonomy and responsibility as an
  aggregate of indirect relationships, it is both
  familiar (as we associated a corporation with an
  icon, a figure, a personality) and remote
  (something above and beyond us, we know little
  about its workings)

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• These new social relationships enveloping us in
  manifold structures and affecting our social
  lives in many contexts could not be characterized
  as primary, secondary, etc.
• These new aggregates of social relationships
  need a lot of information going through them, and
  they are sets or ensembles of ties that stretch
  across space and people, using modern means of
  communications and transportation they are thus
  very powerful control mechanisms

• Calhoun developed two concepts to characterize
  these social relationships
• tertiary relationships (client writing to the
  bank, or voter voting for a party invisible but
  still intentional one seems to know the other)
• quaternary relationships (even more remote,
  more abstract, more indirect relationships not
  intended but are pirated over and over, falling
  into manifold parties examples like PayPal on
  eBay, or discussion groups with moderators on the
  Web)

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• Calhoun, concluded
• Overall conclusions
• New information technology may be used in
  these ways to organize more of social life
  through indirect relationships, to extend the
  powers of various corporate actors, to coordinate
  social actions on a larger scale, to intensify
  control within specific relationships. (p.221)
• Social organization is automated (e.g.
  production automated now not just in the sense of
  robot replacing workmen for producing things, but
  also in the sense that say a barcode on a product
  tells us where it is produced, from which batch,
  for which destination, information about
  procuring of raw materials, etc.) automation
  extends to information, organization,
  coordination of raw materials and finished
  products in different parts of the world.

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• The question then is what is the impact of
  this on everyday human experience (e.g., is
  intimacy possible on internet?), and what is the
  future of a society where social integration is
  increasingly dependent on these virtual
  indirect relationships?
• This takes us beyond the classical theories.
• Alan Touraine

During the last 50 years, we have discovered
that we can not only organize the exchange of
material goods and produce them more efficiently
on the basis of the division and mechanization of
labour we can also produce symbolic goods,
languages and informations and modify our
relationships to ourselves, most obviously
through the progress of biology and medicine..
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and
The social philosophers were interested in the
preconditions of social order sociology, born of
the industrial revolution, was concerned with
ways and means of reimposing order on the great
transformation. Today we can no longer rely on
principles of order or images of the just
society we can only think in terms of actions,
change and social relations, and theorize in
terms of strategies, politics, or .. .the
conflictual self-production of society.
(Touraine 198985)
Classical sociology hesitated between the study
of social integration and the construction of a
meaning of history. Society was seen as existing
in history and as moved by it from tradition to
modernity its main task was to defend its
cohesion while completing the mutation. Today
the idea of evolution has disappeared and been
replaced by the more neutral concept of change.
Actors are now recognized as more than simply the
components of society or the limbs of a social
body they are real actors who transform the
increased ability of society to act upon itself
into actions, conflicts and negotiations.
(198989)