Contents

1. Karl Marx
2. Emile Durkheim
3. Max Weber
4. Talcott Parsons
5. Robert K. Merton (RK Merton's Conformity and Deviance covered under Emile Durkheim)
6. G. H. Mead

Karl Marx

Alienation

Alienation is a socio-psychological condition in which man becomes estranged to himself. He is not able to identify his true character.

Hegel – Alienation is inherent in the nature of all spiritual creation. Marx – Alienation is man-made.

According to Marx root of all alienation is economic alienation. Economic alienation in Bourgeoisie society is attributed to two modalities – private ownership and anarchy of market forces.

Alienation of proletariat

1. Alienation from product – due to lack of control over the disposal of his product. What he produces is appropriated by others. The more the worker produces the less he has to consume, the more he creates the more worthless he becomes.

2. Alienation from the process – due to extreme division of labour. The repetitive nature of the work does not satisfy the worker. Work becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

3. Alienation from human being – in capitalist mode of production workers become commodity of exchange. Instead of creating objects it becomes object itself

4. Alienation from species being – human productive activity is reduced to the level of adaptation to nature rather than active mastery of nature.

Alienation of bourgeoisie: Bourgeoisie is also alienated due to anarchy of market forces.

Solution: Alienation can be overcome only with the establishment of communism.

Measures to reduce alienation are;

1. Condition imposed in work is humanized.

2. The labour time reduced so that the workers get time to

Weber on alienation: Weber sees world heading towards greater bureaucratization putting man in an iron cage from which he will be unable to come out. Division of labour needs coordination and command which leads to bureaucracy and consequently alienation.

C. W. Mills: Study of the American middle class titled white collar.

Expansion of the tertiary sector of the economy in the advanced capitalist societies has led to a shift from skills with things to skills with persons. In the salesroom, boardroom, staffroom, conference room, men and women are prostituting their personalities in pursuit of personal gains.

Andre Gomez; Herbert Marcuse – Alienation from work and leisure: Andre Gomez argues that alienation at work leads to seek self-fulfillment in leisure. Just as capitalism shapes his working day, it also shapes his leisure activities. Leisure simply provides a means of escape and oblivion, a means of living with problems rather than an active solution to it. Thus in capitalist society man is alienated from both work and leisure.

Herbert Marcuse in One Dimensional Man sees the potential of personal development crushed in advanced industrial society. Work is exhausting, stupefying human slavery. Leisure simply involves modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefaction. The industrial man is alienated from every sphere of life. Relative affluence and the extension of leisure have simply changed the chains of iron into the chains of gold. False needs serve to divert attention from the real source of alienation. Their satisfaction simply coats the bitter pill with sugar.

Criticism

1. Tends to ignore the meanings held by the members of the society.

2. Based on a vague picture of what man could and ought to be.

3. Robert Blauner – Alienation and technology:

Robert Blauner has associated the degree of alienation with the type of technology rather than the relations of production.

Powerlessness – the degree of control workers have over their work

Meaninglessness – the degree of meaning and sense of purpose they find in work

Isolation – the degree to which they are socially integrated in their work

Self-estrangement – the degree to which they are involved in their work

Robert Blauner — degree of alienation by industrial sector.

4. Goldthorpe and Lockwood – Work alienation:

Goldthorpe and Lockwood from their study of affluent workers in Luton do not see workers’ attitude and behaviour as a function of production technology. Instead the way the workers define and give meaning to their work largely accounts for their attitudes and behaviour.

5. M. Seeman – believed that it is an individualistic phenomenon rather than depending upon the system.

Mode of Production

Forces of Production (FOP) are a given society’s capacity to produce which are a function of scientific knowledge, technological equipment and the organization of collective labour.

Relations of Profuction (ROP) is the relation between owner and non-owner of the means of production. MOP is the relationship between FOP and ROP.

According to Marx, whenever new source of energy is invented, FOP tends to develop. NFOP develops in the womb of old society. But the OROP is incompatible to NFOP i.e. there exists a contradiction between NFOP and OROP which Marx calls as internal contradiction. This internal contradiction is the main mechanism of change in MOP. Marx also says that each society contains the seeds of its own destruction. The emerging dominant class cannot function efficiently within the fold of OROP therefore they will try to establish NROP. Due to this contradiction the struggle between the 2 minority classes will begin and in this conflict or struggle according to Marx, progressive class always wins.

Historical Materialism (Marx’s theory of social change)

According to Hegel, history progresses in a dialectical process. Thesis – antithesis – synthesis - synthesis – new thesis. Hegel perceived truth in ideas; hence his dialectical process is called dialectical idealism.

According to Feuerbach, divine (idea) is the illusory product of reality.

Juxtaposing Hegel’s dialectical idealism and Feuerbach’s primacy of material reality, Marx founded material conception of history.

Inherent in his material conception of history is the idea of historical materialism and dialectical materialism.

According to Marx, whenever new source of energy is invented, FOP tends to develop. New Forces of Production (NFOP) develops in the womb of old society. But the Old Relations of Production (OROP) is incompatible to NFOP i.e. there exists a contradiction between NFOP and OROP which Marx calls as internal contradiction which is the main mechanism of change in MOP and hence the establishment of new social order which is dominated by progressive class of old social order.

Marx applies historical materialism and traces the evolution of human history. He identified the following stages of development:

1. Primitive Communism – Absence of property, Egalitarian

2. Ancient Society / Slave Society – Surplus, Master and slave

3. Feudal Society – Feudal lord and serf

4. Capitalist Society – Bourgeoisie and proletariat

5. Communism - Egalitarian

History is thus a process of continuous creation, satisfaction and recreation of human needs. This is what distinguishes men from animals, whose needs are fixed and unchanging.

Criticism

1. Weber – presence of middle class in the industrial society was ignored by Marx.

2. Robertson – the interpretation of history by Marx is wrong. History follows facts, dates and other objective method but Marx has not mentioned the periods of different stages and factual evidences.

3. It is an economic deterministic theory which believes that economy changes the society, but social change itself is a complex phenomenon.

Class struggle

History of all societies up to the present is the history of class struggle.

Conflict may happen in 2 ways

1. Owner v/s non-owner (Minority v/s Majority)

2. Owner of existing FOP v/s owners of emerging FOP (Minority v/s Minority)

The class struggles of history have been between minorities. Example: class struggle between the feudal aristocracy and the emerging capitalist class.

Marx believed that the class struggle that would transform capitalist society will have the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the protagonists, a minority v/s a majority. Private property would be replaced by communally owned property and since all members of the society will have same relations to the FOP, a classless society would result. Since history is the history of class struggle, history would now end.

However before the downing of this Utopia certain changes must occur.

Marx distinguished between class-in-itself and class-for-itself:

When a member of class who are similarly related to forces of production lack subjective awareness of their common identity and interest, and lack that conscious to realize a common interest, such a class is a mere category which is often identified by an observer. This is class in itself. No conflict will unfold because there is no self-consciousness with the non-owner group, example - peasants. As long as the conscious doesn’t develop deprived class suffers from false consciousness.

Once this awareness comes, which he calls ‘class consciousness’, acquire consciousness of common identity and join hands for collective action to someday, the situation, then become class-for-itself. Example - Proletariats. In other words, ‘class-in-itself’ and ‘class for- itself’ reflects the movement from a class potential self awareness to actual self-awareness.

Certain factors in the natural development of a capitalist economy will hasten its downfall:

1. Increasing use of machinery will result in a homogenous working class.

2. Even though the real wages and living standards of the proletariat may rise, its members will become poorer in relation to the bourgeoisie. This process is known as pauperization.

3. The process of obliteration of the differences in labour, pauperization of the working class and the depression of the intermediate strata into proletariat will result in polarization.

Criticism

1. Ralf Dahrendorf – Contrary to Marx’s prediction, the manual working class has become increasingly heterogeneous or dissimilar.

2. Weber – there are 4 classes and not 2 classes as said by Marx. Weber sees no possibility of homogenization, pauperization and polarization.

3. Lenski – the reason for inequality lies in unequal power. Marx did not probe this.

Emile Durkheim

Social Fact

Social facts are values, cultural norms and structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control. Social Facts are things which have the characteristics of;

1. Exteriority - in the sense that it is an independent reality which neither he nor any other individual has created nor which literally forms a part of his objective environment. Example, Moral rules and moral principles exist by their own.

2. Constrain - they do not conform to the volition of individuals. On the contrary, they impose themselves on individuals regulating their behaviour. This is a compelling force.

3. Generality - Social facts are general because they are collective. Shared and deference feelings. Example, Law, patriotism (Indo-Pak match) etc.

Social fact approach:

In pursuance of differentiating sociology from psychology and giving it a special status Durkheim concluded that sociology is essentially the study of social facts. Study of social fact is a methodological tool of Durkheim Durkheim advocates study of only those social facts which have the characteristics of exteriority and constraints. Durkheim further says the social fact is general because it is collective.

He says causes of social facts should be analyzed on the basis of pre-existing social facts and not by individual facts.

Suicide

Every case of death resulting directly (gunshot at the temple) or indirectly (refusing nourishment) from a positive (shoot oneself) or negative (remain in a sinking ship) act performance by the victim himself and which strives to produce this result is suicide.

• Suicide – individual phenomenon

• Suicide rate – social phenomenon

Durkheim identifies 2 social facts present in the society and describing the nature of collective conscience and as a link to suicide.

1. Integration – level of attachment of individual to society

2. Regulation – degree of external control on people

On basis of these two social facts, Durkheim develops his theory of ‘Suicide’, which are of four types;

1. Egoistic Suicide: For individuals, suicide is a way through which individual conscience asserts its superiority over collective conscience. That is why Durkheim calls it ‘egoistic suicide’.

Example: Current of depression and disillusionment, unmarried men, protestant communities.

2. Altruistic Suicide: The individual is so rigorously governed by customs and traditions that there is repeated tendency among individuals to subordinate personal interests and sacrifice one’s life in order to achieve social ends. Societal goals are more important than individual, hence Durkheim calls it ‘Altruistic Suicide’. Example: Army (soldier), LTTE bombers, fidayeen in Islam, Hara-kiri in Japan, and Kavalya in Jains, Sati Roop Kanwar in India etc.

3. Anomic Suicide: It is because normative deregulation exists in society.

Example, when Nazis took over Germany, lot of suicides occurred. Industrial or financial crisis. Sudden implementation of Mandal commission report resulted in many suicides among upper castes.

4. Fatalistic Suicide: Where there is overregulation and leaving no scope for choice or freedom; where passions and desires are choked to the extent of being oppressive. Example, ancient Greek and Roman Slaves societies had high rates of suicide. Example: widowhood in India, couple suicide after Inter-caste marriages etc.

Criticism

J. D. Douglas – In built bias for data in Durkheim’s theory. In societies of high integration, there is low reporting. But in societies of low integration there is high reporting.

J. Maxwell Atkinson – He questions the data itself. Officials cannot decide nature of suicide or even say whether it is a suicide or not. Official records can be manipulated.

Distinction between normal and pathological phenomenon

According to Durkheim, social facts can be judged normal for a given society only if it is looked at in relation to the stage of that society’s development. In a healthy state all phenomenon, including social ones, assume two distinct forms;

1. A normal state by which the social conditions are most widely distributed and occur in other societies under general conditions.

2. A morbid or pathological state which occurs when social phenomenon departs from what is widespread or normative.

Crime as a normal phenomenon

Durkheim states that a phenomenon is to be considered morbid or unhealthy only if it does not maintain its proper relationship to the dominant social institutions.

If a condition serves a function in relation to the larger social framework, then it is not to be judged as pathological. Occasional crime or deviance helps society in two ways;

1. Give a chance to for the society to strengthen its solidarity.

2. It helps the society to identify the causes of crises so that the corrective measures can be taken before it can make some bigger damage.

Anomie - Normlessness

Anomie is a pathological trait meaning absence if norms or disintegration of norms. Infact norms are not absent but individual perceives it so.

Causes – Division of labour and consequent increase in individualism

Solution – reintegration into collectivity.

Not reintegration into family, politics (state) or religion but into professional organization (corporation)

Anomie – R. K. Merton (Conformity and deviance)

Any behaviour which follows the norms is called conformist behaviour and any behaviour which fails to do so is called deviance. No behaviour ever conforms in totality but the deviance is within tolerant limit of the society. When deviation is beyond tolerance level, it is deviance.

Cause – According to R. K. Merton, deviance results not from pathological personalities but from the culture and structure of the society itself.

The value system of a society glorifies certain goals and people in the society internalize these goals. But their position in the social structure is such that it does not give access to these goals. Structurally they are held back but culturally they are pushed forward. This is what is called as a state of anomie.

5 possible ways in which the American society responds to success goals.

R. K. Merton — five modes of individual adaptation (+ acceptance, − rejection, −/+ rejection of old and substitution of new).

Criticism

1. Albert Cohen - Delinquency is a collective rather than an individual response. Merton fails to account for non-utilitarian crime such as vandalism, joy-riding which does not produce any monetary rewards.

2. Walter B. Miller – lower class delinquency results from lower class sub-culture.

3. Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd E. Ohlin – Merton fails to explain the different forms that deviance takes. Merton has explained deviance in terms of the legitimate opportunity structure but failed to consider the illegitimate opportunity structure.

1. Criminal sub-culture - where there is an established pattern of organized adult crime.

2. Conflict sub-culture –where adolescents have little opportunity for access to illegitimate opportunity structures.

3. Retreatist sub-culture – when lower class adolescents have failed to succeed in both the legitimate and illegitimate opportunity structures.

Division of Labour

It is arrangement whereby complex tasks are divided into number of simpler tasks and allocated among members.

Utilitarian theory – human action is guided by maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain. DOL brings happiness in society.

Durkheim’s criticizes and argues that there is no objective scale to measure happiness. Impossible to argue that people of yesteryears were less happy than the people of modern capitalist society.

According to Durkheim DOL is a social fact so its causes should be sort in pre-existing social facts and not individual happiness (individual facts)

Mechanical solidarity – solidarity of resemblance

Organic solidarity – solidarity results from or is expressed by differentiation. Based on the analogy of organisms. Parts of living organisms do not resemble each other; each performs a function; heart and lungs are different from the brain but are equally indispensible to life.

Causes of DOL

DOL being a social phenomenon is a combination of;

1. Volume - number of individuals belonging to the given collectivity

2. Material density (physical density) – number of individuals on a given ground surface

3. Moral density (dynamic density) – frequency of contacts of previously unrelated segments

Religion and society

E. B. Tylor – Animism is the earliest form of religion.

Max Muller – Earliest form of religion must have been the worship of objects of nature.

Durkheim refutes animism and naturism on the ground that fear of soul or god is unreal whereas religion and religiosity is reality of human group.

Among the Australian aborigines, in their totemic practice, there does not exist the idea of super natural god. Thus by assuming totemism as a religious practice, Durkheim pronounces, god is not necessary for the existence of religion.

Durkheim follows Fustel de Coulanges’ typification of the sacred and profane.

Existence of super natural divinities is not necessary for the existence of religion.

According to Durkheim, religion is a unified system of belief and practices relative to sacred things.

According to this definition, totemism is a form of religion inspite of the fact that it has no personalized spirits or gods.

Totemism recognizes 3 sorts of objects as sacred;

1. The totem.

2. The totemic emblem

3. The totemic member of the clan themselves

The representation of totem is regarded as more sacred than the totemic object itself. To the sacred – profane distinction, a few more conditions are needed to make religion.

(i) Belief: - which express the nature of sacred things and relationship between sacred things, and sacred things and profane.

(ii) Rituals: - The code of conduct while one is in presence of sacred things.

(iii) Church: - an overarching (dominant) moral community.

By worshipping the totem, the members of the clan worship the clan itself.

Hence, religion is nothing but the worship of the society transfigured and worshipping god brings solidarity.

Criticism

1. Edmund Leach – Durkheim’s theory is over-functionalist theory. Durkheim never discussed dysfunctional aspect of religion.

2. Raymond Firth – Religion is a mysterious phenomenon whose evolution cannot be identified by a particular theory.

3. Alexander Goldenweiser – How can Durkheim claim that Arundta tribe and their religion is most ancient? In many of the primitive communities, totem is different than what society worships. Distinguishness between sacred and profane can be made in simple societies, not in complex.

4. Raymond Aron – if religion brings solidarity, it will bring partial solidarity in modern pluralistic society and by the same token hostility among them.

5. Merton – Using the concept of manifest and latent function, concept of Eu-function, Non-function and Dysfunction he argues that an institution will not be functional for the society as a whole. It may be functional for some and dysfunctional for others.

Max Weber

Social action

Social action for Weber can be defined as occurring when the acting individual attaches subjective meaning to an act and when it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course.

Characteristics of Weber’s social action

1. At least 2 individuals are needed.

2. Individual’s action should be intended towards others

3. It is meant to affect others

4. For the individual that social action must have some significance

Types of social action

1. Traditional action – actor reacts automatically to habitual stimuli which guide behaviour in a course which has been repeatedly followed.

2. Affetual action – actor is directly motivated by an emotional response dictated by the state of mind of the actor.

3. Value rational or wert rational action – the meaning of the action does not lie in the achievement of the result ulterior to it, but in carrying out the specific type of action for its own sake. Sole aim is the realization of value.

4. Instrumentally rational or zweck rational action – the ends, the means and the secondary results are rationally taken into account and weighed. Actor is free to choose the means of action purely in terms of their rational efficacy.

Criticism

1. Talcott Parsons – social actions do not require two individuals. It may be performed singularly when it is performed in a socially defined situation.

2. Albert Cohen – freak (lose one's nerve) action is also a social action which was not mentioned by Max Weber in his analysis.

3. Vilfredo Pareto – illogical actions which are very much integral part of social life has not been mentioned by Weber.

Ideal types

“An ideal type is formed by the one sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffused, discrete, more or less present and vocationally absent concrete individual phenomenon, which are arranged according to those one sidedly emphasized viewpoints into an unified analytical construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality”

Characteristics of ideal type

1. Mental type

2. Not an exhaustive description of reality.

3. Pure type. No case of reality wholly resembles it, but all within the analytical degree, resembling it to various degrees.

4. Ideal type is a constructive type and not a destructive type.

5. It is not ideal in ethical sense or normative sense.

Limitations of ideal type

1. Sociologists can manipulate its construction to suit their hypothesis.

2. It is also value of the observer.

3. It speaks of partial reality.

4. Due to flexibility historical comparison becomes difficult.

Criticism

1. As Weber calls it, ideal type is a one sided accentuation of reality, at best a partial model.

2. Personal choices of researcher may influence.

3. Talcott Parsons – ideal type is not derived from any general theory. There is a great deal of subjectivity while building the ideal type.

4. Hample – ideal types are atomized types. It is a small isolated part not connected with other.

5. It is not a method. It is just the way human mind works

Types of ideal types

1. Ideal type of historical particularism (unique phenomenon) – Those phenomena happened in the past which are unique and one of its own kind like, rise of capitalism in the west, the Protestant Ethic etc.

2. Ideal type related with the abstract element of social reality – This ideal type studies those phenomena or social reality which are found in many societies. (That may be found in a variety of historical and cultural contexts.) By picking some of its aspects, researcher studies how it is different than the other part of society. Example, bureaucracy and feudalism.

3. Ideal type of economic motivation – This ideal type investigates why some individual, groups or communities are more economically ambitious than others.

Authority

Weber defines power as the probability that actor will be able to realize his own objectives even against the will of the other with whom he is in a social relationship.

When force is used in the exercise of power, it is called coercion.

If domination of a person is acceptable to those who are subjected to it, it is called legitimate domination or authority.

Types of authority

1. Traditional authority – based on the belief in the sanctity of age old rules and powers.

1. Gerontocracy – authority is held by village elders.

2. Patriarchalism – head of the household possess authority that is transmitted from generation to generation.

3. Patrimonialism – patriarchal authority accompanied with specialized administrative staff.

2. Rational legal authority - an individual holds authority by the virtue of impersonal norms which are not the residue of tradition, but which have been consciously established within a context of either purposive (goal) or value rationality.

3. Charismatic authority – authority lies with a person because he is thought to express or possess extra ordinary qualities which separate him from the rest.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a rational action in institutional form. It is a system of control. A hierarchical organization designed rationally to coordinate the work of many individuals in the pursuit of large scale administrative tasks and organizational goals.

Elements of ideal type bureaucracy

1. Responsibility – responsibility distributed in a fixed way as official duties.

2. Hierarchy - the organization of offices follows the principle of hierarchy.

3. Rules - governed by consistent system of abstract rules and its application to particular cases.

4. Impersonality - ideal official performs his duties in a spirit of formalistic impersonality.

5. Appointment - officials are appointed on the basis of technical knowledge and expertise.

6. Separation - strict separation of private and official income.

Criticism

1. Merton – the dysfunction of bureaucracy.

Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism

Weber studied different sects of Protestantism – baptism, Calvinism, Methodism and pietism.

Tenets of Calvinism

1. There exists a transcendent god who created the world and rules it, but who is incomprehensible, inaccessible to the finite mind of men.

2. God has created the world for its own glory.

3. God has predestined each of us to salvation or damnation. We cannot by our works alter the divine decree which was made before we were born.

4. Whether he or she is to be saved or damned, man is obliged to work for the glory of god and to create the kingdom of god on earth.

5. Earthly things, human nature and flesh belong to the order of sin and death, and salvation can come to man only through divine decree.

Question the believer asks – am I the chosen one for salvation? 2 responses:

1. Individual should consider it obligatory to deem himself one of the chosen. Any doubt reflects lack of grace of god.

2. Intense worldly activities are the most appropriate means to develop and maintain this necessary self confidence. Thus performance of good works became regarded as a sign of election not a method of attaining salvation but rather of eliminating doubts of salvation.

Criticism

1. Kautsky (Marxist sociologist) – early capitalism preceded and largely determined Protestantism.

2. Goldner, Mauller, Wallerstein – colonialism is responsible for the rise of capitalism in the West.

3. Peter Sombart – capitalists came from all ranks and files of society.

Talcott Parsons

Social System

Talcott Parsons and the early approaches to the concept of Social System

Mitchell – A social system consists of a plurality of all actors interacting directly or indirectly with each other in a bounded situation.’ Example - families, political parties, kinship groups, even whole societies.

Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is a school of thought, which believes in the fact that pleasure, is better than pain. According to this outlook utility is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Positivism: The positivists on the other hand believe that social actors have complete knowledge of their social situation. This leaves no room for error on the part of actors or variation among actors They believed in the central idea that the meaning of a statement lay in the method of its verification. Any statement, which could not be verified, therefore, becomes meaningless.

Idealism: Idealism is the school of thought, which believes that the mind plays a key role in the constitution of the world as it is experienced. Its most radical form has been rejected because it is equivalent to solipsism. Solipsism is the view that all reality is nothing but the activity of one’s own mind and that in reality nothing exists but one’s own self

The Point of View of Talcott Parsons

The utilitarian approach treated social systems as products of rational impulses of human beings (individuals) to integrate their needs and urges as orderly systems. But the orderly systems according to Parsons, neglect the role of values.

Idealism places too much emphasis on values and ideas and not enough on social practice.

The positivists insist that true human action is born out of full information of the situation. Consequently there is no room for values, error and variations in social action.

Parsons’ Action Approach

Action, according to Parsons does not take place in isolation. It is not “empirically discrete but occurs in constellations” which constitute systems. The concept of action, according to Parsons, is derived from behaviour of human beings as living organism. Behaviour becomes action when four conditions are present.

1. Oriented to attainment of ends or goals or other anticipated affairs,

2. Occurs in situations,

3. Regulated by norms and values of society,

4. Involves an investment of ‘energy’ or motivation or effort.

Orientation of action can be divided into two components;

1. Motivational orientation refers to a situation in which action takes place taking into account needs, external appearances and plans.

2. Value orientation - considerations of standards of values, aesthetics, morality and of thinking.

According to Parsons Action occurs in constellations. These constellations of action constitute systems.

These systems of action have three modes of organizations;

1. The personality system - refers to those aspects of the human personality, which affect the individual’s social functioning.

2. The cultural system - encompasses instead, the actual beliefs, concrete systems of values and symbolic means of communication.

3. The social system - refers to the forms and modes of interaction between individuals and its organization. Example: authority structure of an organization or the division of labour in a family.

Characteristics of a social system

1. It involves an interaction between two or more actors, and the interaction process is its main focus.

2. Interaction takes place in a situation, which implies other actors or alters.

3. There exists in a social system collective goal orientation or common values and a consensus on expectations in normative and cognitive (intellectual) senses.

Basic Unit of Organization of a Social System

The social system has a mode of organisation of action, which is called role. It is the basic conceptual unit of the social system and it incorporates the individual actor’s total system of action.

The primary element of role is role-expectation. It implies reciprocity between the actor and his/her alter (the other persons), and is governed by a range of motivational and value orientations.

The organisation of unit acts into social systems therefore involves the motives and values, which link it to the personality system in the first case and to the cultural system in the second.

The motivational orientation

The range of motivational orientations is three;

1. The cognitive orientation - makes actors see their environment or object in relation to their need dispositions as a mental object.

2. The cathectic orientation - involves emotional attitude of actors towards their object.

3. The evaluative orientation - leads the actors to organise their effort in realisation of their object with optimum efficiency.

The value orientation

The range of value orientations also comprises three parts.

1. The cognitive orientation - relates to the issue of validity of judgment.

2. The appreciative orientation - makes it possible for actors to judge their emotional response to object, its appropriateness or consistency.

3. The moral orientation - refers to value commitment of an actor towards his or her objects.

Pattern Variables

In relation to the motivational orientation and value orientation in the performance of roles each actor faces dilemmas. These dilemmas are called by Parsons as pattern variables.

1. Affectivity v/s affective neutrality – dilemma of role performance where evaluation is involved in relation to a situation in emotional terms or with emotional neutrality.

2. Self-orientation v/s collective orientation – main issue is that of moral standard in the procedure of evaluation. Actor has to make a choice between his or her own gratification and its deferment for the good of a large number of people, a collectivity.

3. Particularism v/s universalism – role situation where the actors dilemma is between cognitive v/s the cathectic (emotional standards) evaluation

4. Ascription v/s achievement – whether or not the actor defines the object of his or her role in terms of quality or performance.

5. Specificity v/s diffuseness – concerns the role of the object of role performance.

Criticism

1. C. W. Mills – doctors wants closeness with VIP patients.

Functional pre-requisites

Social systems, Parsons argues, also have a self-adjustive and self-maintaining quality. These adjustment processes which maintain the social system internally and through its boundary conditions are called functions. Functions are processes of system’s self-maintenance.

There are certain functions without which a social system cannot subsist. These are called ‘functional prerequisites’ by Talcott Parsons. There are four such functional prerequisites.

Talcott Parsons — the four functional prerequisites (AGIL), by external / internal orientation.

Criticism

1. Dahrendorf – compares it to utopia. The absence of change and universal consensus.

2. Percy Cohen – all the elements of society are seen to reinforce one another as well as the system as a whole.

3. I. L. Horowitz – Parsons tends to see conflict as necessarily destructive which is a wrong assumption.

Types of structures of Social Systems

Parsons has dealt primarily with four types of structures of social systems in his sociological analysis. These are the economic system, the family system, the political system and the personality system.

Social system is manifested through the totality of the principles through which roles and related elements of social interaction are organised. Social structure, on the other hand, reflects the specific manner in which these roles in an interaction situation are configurated or composed together. For instance, family is a social system but its social structure can be seen in the empirical clustering of kinship roles. Similarly, the economic system can be treated as another example of a social system, but its social structure is characterised by roles related to production, marketing, management, etc. Pattern variables illustrate in a precise manner the principal types of clustering of social structures.

Parsons mentions four such types

1. Universalistic-achievement pattern

2. Universalistic-ascription pattern

3. Particularistic-achievement pattern

4. Particularistic-ascription pattern

Social change by Parsons

Parsons’ concept of Functionalism

In Parsons’ view the stability of a social system is maintained not only through the rules and regulations that society imposes upon its members or through other measures of social control but in a more enduring manner, by internalization of socially approved values, expected behaviour patterns and codes of social existence. This internalization takes place in society through the process of socialization of its members.

The vital functions of the human body have the purpose of maintaining the survival of the body and if any foreign infection threatens the body, its internal system reacts to save it from such invasions and continues to do so until the threat has been neutralized. There is a self-regulatory role that such processes play in human body. It is called homeostasis.

Functionalism and Social Change

The direction of orientation of motives and values generates harmony and strain in the social system. The first leads to stability, the second to change.

Parsons views social change at two levels;

1. Changes within Social Systems:

Primary factor – increase in population, its density and aggregation.

According to Parsons changes did not come about smoothly but almost invariably through the need for re-establishing equilibrium in the system.

Each social system develops vested interests of different kinds over a period of time as it integrates itself with functional pre-requisites.

But the demands of new ideas from within or mere pressure of external factors of the system force social system to shed pre-existing vested interests and give way to new ideas.

These contributes to disturbances in the older mode of equilibrium and to its replacement by a new equilibrium in the social system

Factors causing strain towards change:

1. Changes in the demographic character of population

2. Changes in the physical environment

3. Changes in population

4. Changes in technology

5. Development of new cultural configuration

Cultural factors which bring about change within social system

1. Social movement and social change:

Parsons discussed social change within social system, at two levels:

1. Social change through role differentiation, socialization and institutionalization – slow, continual and inherently adaptive in nature.

2. Social change through revolutionary movements – sudden alteration of change in the balance of equilibrium of the social system

2. Changes of Social Systems – Evolutionary Universals:

Parsons called the direction and nature of the historical process of social evolution of all societies as evolutionary universals.

Evolutionary universals are defined as any organizational development sufficiently important to further evolution.

Parsons identified 3 evolutionary stages in Western European society;

1. Primitive or archaic societies:

2. Intermediary society:

3. Modern societies:

Lead Society

Parsons’ concept of lead society is embedded in the historical interpretation of social change.

According to Parsons structural changes follow evolutionary pattern.

There are 4 basic mechanisms of evolution;

1. Differentiation

2. Adaptive upgrading

3. Inclusion

4. Value generalization

Evolution follows discernible stages;

1. Primitive

2. Advanced primitive

3. Intermediate

4. Modern

According to Parsons’ Modern type of society has emerged in a single evolutionary arena, the West which is essentially the area of Europe that fell heir to the Western half of the Roman Empire of the Mediterranean.

Parsons’ image of evolution was criticized for its pro-Western bias.

Parsons envisages single main stem if evolutionary advance, namely the Western (from Israel and Greece through Rome to the modern West) all the rest it is cleared have proved to be evolutionary failures, however well adapted to their environment they maybe.

The bias is strongest when Parsons closes his discussion of evolution with a conclusion that in his times there has appeared a lead society, culminating the evolutionary process and this society is United States.

Robert K. Merton (RK Merton's Conformity and Deviance covered under Emile Durkheim)

Latent and manifest function

Merton questioned 3 basic postulates of functional analysis.

1. Functional unity of social system.

2. Functional universality of social system.

3. Indispensability of functional items.

Manifest functions are those which are intended and recognized by the participants.

Latent functions are unintended consequence of an action.

Purpose of latent function;

1. What appear irrational becomes rational.

2. New horizon of enquiry begins to emerge.

3. Realm of sociological knowledge expands.

4. Established morals get challenged.

Criticism

1. Colin Campbell – latent function is a tool to justify wrong doing.

Reference groups

Concept of reference group: A reference group is one to which you always refer in order to evaluate your achievements, your role performance, your aspirations and ambitions.

Concept of relative deprivation: Research titled American Soldier – comparing himself with his unmarried associates in the army, the married man could feel that induction demanded greater sacrifice from him than from them; and comparing himself with the married civilian, he could feel that he had been called on for sacrifices which they were escaping altogether.

It is precisely the kind of reference group with which the married soldier compares himself that he feels deprived.

Concept of group and group membership: 3 characteristics of group and group membership;

1. There is an objective criterion i.e. frequency of interaction. In other words, the sociological concept of a group refers to a number of people who frequently interact with one another.

2. Interacting persons define themselves as members. They feel that they have patterned expectations or forms of interaction which are morally binding on them and on other members.

3. Response in interaction is defined by others as they belong to the group. These others include fellow members as well as non-members.

Concept of non-membership: Non-members can be divided into 3 categories;

1. Aspiring for membership in group.

2. Indifferent towards such affiliation.

3. Motivated to remain unaffiliated to the group.

Anticipatory socialization: It is like preparing oneself for the group to which an individual aspires but does not belong.

Positive and negative reference groups

Positive reference group – which one likes and takes seriously in order to shape one’s behaviour and evaluate one’s achievements and performance.

Negative reference group – which one dislikes and rejects and which, instead of providing norms to follow, provokes one to create counter norms.

Determinants of reference group

1. Reference individuals

2. Selection of reference groups among membership group

3. Selection of non-membership groups as reference group

G. H. Mead

Self and identity

Mead in his book “Mind, Self and Society” has developed the concept of ‘I’ and ‘Me’.

‘I’ represents the unsocialised self of the individual which develops at the early age of child. Over the periods unsocialised ‘I’ convert into ‘Me’ and over the period the difference between ‘I’ and ‘Me’ disappears and individual develops the real ‘self’. And ‘self’ is basically the ability to take oneself as an object; the self is the peculiar ability to be both subject and object.

Prerequisite of ‘self’ is social process i.e. communication among humans. Lower animals do not have selves, nor do human infants at birth. The ‘self’ arises with development and through social activity and social relationships.

It is impossible to imagine a ‘self’ arising in the absence of social experience.

Once a ‘self’ has developed, it is possible for it to continue to exist without social contact.

He further elaborates the evolutionary process of development of ‘self’ by identifying two types of ‘Me’;

1. Significant others – important for individuals. Their perception suggestions etc, gets importance in the process of development of self. Based on two aspects i.e value and expertise

2. Generalized others – do not play a significant role in the process of development of self in the initial stage but gradually with the passage of time it plays a dominant role in development of self.

Self and identity emerged in 3 evolutionary stages.

1. Stage of imitative acts

2. Play stage or playing at a role

3. Game stage or role playing

Criticism

1. Manford Kuhn and Bernard Meltzer – vague, imprecise and testable logic cannot be generated.

2. Weinstein and Tanur - tendency to downplay or ignore large scale structure. The concept of social structure is necessary to deal with the incredible density and complexity of relations through which episodes of interaction are interconnected.

3. Petras - ignores the importance of factors such as unconscious and emotions as well as needs, motives, intentions and aspirations.

4. Peter Hamilton - Mead is overly optimistic about contemporary man’s capacity for reflective intelligence. He may also have been unrealistic or naïve in regard to divisive categories and habits of thought hold and constrain the self-realization process of the ordinary man. We live in a world of racism, sexism, nationalism and a hundred of other ‘isms’ which serve to retard Mead’s prophecy.