Theory of Imperialism

School of Distance Education
CHAPTER : I
MATERIALIST THEORY AND POSITIVISM
GEORGE WILHELM FRIERICH HEGEL (1770 – 1831)
Hegel is one of the greatest thinkers of the modern world whose philosophical
system influenced the development of existentialism, Marxism, Positivism and analytical
philosophy. He was born at Stuttgart in the suburbs of Berlin (Germany).His father was a
revenue officer. He learned the elements of Latin from his mother before he went to the
grammar school. As a school boy he made a collection of extracts from classical authors,
newspapers, treatises on morals and from the standard works of the period. He studied
philosophy at Tubingen from where he took his Ph.D. in 1790. Thereafter he took to the
theological course but was impatient of the orthodoxy of his teachers. He enjoyed reading
Greek tragedies and the glories of the French Revolution. He became a tutor at Berne
where he read Gibbon and Montesquieu. He was greatly stimulated by Kant and was
highly immersed in the philosophy of religion. He was influenced by Spinoza. In 1801 he
was appointed to a post at the University of Jena where he completed his first major
work, ‘The Phenomenology of Mind’ in 1807. After the battle of Jena he met Napoleon
whom he called ‘world:soul on horseback’. He lost his teaching position and became an
editor of a newspaper in Bavaria. He completed his second book ‘the Science of Logic’
during 1812 –16. He was then appointed to the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg where
he published his Encyclopedia of Philosophy in 1817 in which he propounded his
philosophical system comprising of logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of the
spirit. In 1812 he brought out his Philosophy of Right which made him a foremost figure
in the realm of philosophy. He died in November 1831 during a cholera epidemic. His
death precipitated the dissolution of his school into conflicting liberal and conservative
factions.
Hegel is noted for his philosophy of history. It was he and not Karl Marx who
first expounded in Phenomenology that the prime motive force of the historical process is
human labour, or the practical activity of men in society. Hegel is the chief originator of
‘process thought’ which became the bedrock for the concept that historians and
sociologists should look upon history not as a field governed by immutable ‘laws’ but as
a process in which something fresh is created at every moment. This philosophy finds
room for the efflorescence of the higher forms of culture. Hegel presupposes that the
whole of history is a process through which mankind is making spiritual and moral
progress. That is what the human mind has done in the course of its advance to
self:knowledge. In other words, history has a plot, and the philosopher’s task is to
discover it. Many eminent historians have been unable to discern any plot, and have
contented themselves with recording what has happened. A few others have found the
key to history in the operation of natural laws of various kinds. Hegel’s attitude is based
on the faith that history is the carrying out of God’s purpose, and that the advancement of
Theory and Method in Historiography 5

knowledge has reached the point where man can discern what that purpose is. The
purpose in question is the gradual realization of human freedom.
Man has passed through several stages to reach the present level of culture. He
was there at first in the natural life of savagery. Gradually he built up institutions and
ultimately came to a state of law and order. The whole process was not an easy one, as
the full price had to be paid at every stage for every step of progress. Man had to suffer
force and violence, but there was no other way to make men law:abiding before they
advanced far enough mentally to accept an orderly and rational life. This process cannot
succeed all at once. Those who accept law become free but others may refuse to do so and
will suffer. All men are free in essence, which was the concept so loudly pronounced by
the revolutionaries in France. The task of civilized people is to frame institutions under
which they could be free. Hegel was a realist in the sense that he maintained against Kant
that to eliminate war was impossible. Each nation:state was an individual, sovereign in
its own right, and so long as this position continued, war would also remain a constant
source of friction. Disputes between sovereigns could be settled by violence alone. He
agreed with Hobbes that pacts without the sword were but words. Hegel was not far
wrong in holding this opinion, as the entire European history subsequent to him is
replete with instances to support his point.
Hegel’s system was to unify the opposites, spirit and nature, universal and
particular, ideal and real. The combination of these two would result in a synthesis. He
stood both for idealism and realism all at once. Hegel developed his dialectical system in
which logic, nature and mind figured prominently. The dialectic means ‘discussion’. In a
discussion between two people a debate would arise in which both would seek the truth
from the diametrically opposite points of view. Each party will ultimately understand
better the other’s point of view. Both may agree to reject their own views and accept a
new and broader view which does justice to the subject. The original opposition has been
reconciled in a higher synthesis. Imagine a dispute of two people each claiming that he is
right, one demanding a higher amount for the settlement of the alleged debt and the
other offering a lower amount. Ultimately a third person would wisely settle the dispute,
not by accepting the figures of either, but suggesting a third figure in between. This is the
basis of the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, anti:thesis and synthesis. Hegel believed that
thinking always proceeded according to this pattern. It begins by laying down a positive
thesis which is at once negative by its anti:thesis; then further thought produces the
synthesis. Culture has come into existence by the interplay of these two forces. One is the
positive aspect of growth which emerges in something new, and the other is the negative
aspect of rejection which discards the old. We give up childish habits to acquire more
mature conduct as we grow up but in old age childish tastes are again revived to some
extent. The challenges of life are negative aspects and responses become positive steps.
The presence of this negative step or challenges is the clue to the development of all
kinds. The power of the mind is infinite, but to produce something real and concrete the
mind has to think of something definite.
Hegel’s philosophy of history is a part of his analysis on the human mind. Man
has consciousness which produces rational will. This rational will is at the root of human

institutions and human history. History is nothing but the embodiment or the
objectification of the rational will, which also produces art, religion and philosophy. In
bringing about these institutions man knows himself as spirit. This spirit is God which is
absolute truth, and man is drawn to think in terms of his own essence. This essence is
nothing but the thoughts expressed in ‘logic’. In other words rationality and
consciousness are something unique which partake of the nature of divinity. Thought is
nothing but spirit, and spirit is nothing but pure activity. Human mind objectifies itself in
its endeavour to find something identical with itself. The result of this activity is history.
Hegel took seriously Plato’s saying that a philosopher is ‘the spectator of all time and all
existence’. Since history is the drama of our existence, Hegel could not very well ignore
history. His philosophy is to comprehend the entire universe. The system is grounded in
faith, in the Christian religion, where God has been revealed as truth and as spirit. Man is
spirit, and spirit can comprehend spirit. In other words, man can know God and he can
know absolute truth. Hegel’s system is a spiritual monism. Hegel applied his profound
philosophy to man’s experience. Adam and Eve were innocent in the Garden of Eden, but
their fall was necessary if man was to attain moral goodness. It is in this logic that the
interpretative aspect of historical phenomena is developed by Hegel. What makes the
universe intelligible is to see it as the eternal cyclical process whereby the absolute spirit
comes to knowledge of itself as spirit (1) through its own thinking; (2) through nature; (3)
and through self:expression in history, art and philosophy.
Hegel’s desire to unify world history was truly a scientific achievement. He
endeavoured to explain history not by its own laws but by the weapons of philosophy
and by means of such concepts as the struggle between freedom and bondage and the
realization of the absolute spirit in history. Hegel’s main attention was centered on the
State. In a way he revived the Aristotelian or Hellenic conception of the State as the
organized life of culture. He glorifies the national state and is cold towards the Kantian
cosmopolitan ideal of perpetual peace founded on a world federation of republics.
According to Hegel each national state is an absolute and war among them is inevitable.
He says that war is even spiritually good. Since ethics is embodied in the State and there
is no sovereign over all states they are in relation to each other in ‘a state of nature’ not
subject to any genuine moral laws. They are not, for instance, obliged to keep their
agreements. If things were to be carried to their logical extent, anarchy would be the only
result. Therefore, Hegel gets out of the difficulty by suggesting that history is a court in
which providence passes judgment and hence nations are warned accordingly. This
makes history a theodicy. It agrees with Napoleon’s dictum that God is on the side of the
heaviest artillery. This point is explained by Hegel through logic and not theology.
According to Hegel history completes itself in the Prussia of his day.
On religion Hegel has interesting remarks to make. He attempts to get rid of the
multiplicity of diverse religions by arranging them in a dialectically progressive order
which begins with magic and natural religion. He then takes up the religions of China,
Egypt, Judea, India, Persia, (which he calls the religion of sublimity), Greece (the religion
of beauty) and Rome (the religion of utility), and culminates in Christianity as the
absolute religion. In this list he has forgotten Islam altogether. Hegel’s idea of religion is
that it is a continuous development, something historically coherent.
Hegel has expounded the idealistic theory which has attempted to reconcile the
theological and rational view of history through his metaphysical concept of idealism.
According to this theory, ideal is the final cause, not the material or formal or efficient
cause, which is at the root of causation. The final cause is the high ideal a society fixes to
achieve and that ideal determines all its conduct. Hegel brings religion into the picture for
furnishing the ideal, and says that the entire human culture has been conditioned by the
type of ideal each of the great religions has placed before its votaries. Judaism typifies
duty, Confucianism stands for order, Islam for justice, Christianity for love, Buddhism for
patience and Hinduism for tolerance. The pattern of culture evolved by each of the
societies that professed these religions conformed to a great extent to the ideals they had
fixed. Everything good and great these societies were able to achieve the ideal which was
the motivating force. Their cultural became a farce the moment they departed from their
ideal. Their ideal was their prime:symbol and the guiding spirit which had given them
identity and individuality. This metaphysical thesis is true only to a limited extent. Ideals
could never be attained. According to Hegel’s own logic of dialectics, the force of one
ideal produces a reaction and offers a negative response, which neutralizes the original
ideal and something quite different, emerges disturbing the entire balance. Hence Hegel’s
theory of idealism to explain the cause and growth of culture is defeated by its own
inherent contradictions.
In short the Hegelian philosophy of history created a stir in the entire 19 th century.
Some of his basic ideas are very noteworthy indeed. His ‘process thought’ is almost the
sheet anchor of positivism in which the idea of progress was mooted that something fresh
is created every moment. This process set the people thinking to discover the chain of
ideas how they are closely linked one with the other, and how their action and reaction
produce a new development. The key:note of his philosophy lies in his dialectics, the
application of which to problems of history brought about extraordinary results. It was a
surgical knife in the skilful hands of Karl Marx who used it to cut all those parts of
body:politic which he thought unhealthy and retain only that – the materialist part –
which he regarded as the motivating force for human activity. Hegel’s philosophy of
history emerged as a product of his larger analysis of the human mind, in which the
rational will plays a very vital part. History is nothing but the objectification of this will,
which is the spirit, the bedrock of all human activity and the fountain source of all
history. The linkage he has shown from thought:process to history is surely brilliant –
rationality is consciousness; consciousness results in thought; thought is impulsive spirit;
spirit is pure activity; and pure activity (of unique type) is history. The metaphysical
abstractions in the explanations of these processes make Hegel’s philosophy a theodicy,
but he has used pure reason and logic to substantiate his point. Hegel reached the
Himalayan peak of fame for a time for his remarkable ideas, but such was the torrent of
ideas in the nineteenth century that his philosophy too could not remain unruffled in the
turbulent waves of more forceful theories. But all those theories, whether Marxism,
Positivism, Historicism, or Existentialism, all found the material from the Hegelian shop.

KARL MARX (1818 – 1883)

Karl Marx, the thinker and prophet, the scientist and moralist, is undoubtedly the
most controversial German philosopher of history, who brought about a radical change
in the history of socialist thinking. He was born on 5th May 1818 of Jewish parents in Trier
in Prussian Rhineland, and in 1824 the whole family was baptized as Protestants. Marx
was so precocious from his childhood that his father, a lawyer, called him a ‘demonic
genius’. He had a passionate love for poetry and philosophy. He studied history and
philosophy and received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in
1841.He was greatly influenced by the works of Hegel, who left a permanent imprint on
him. In 1842 he became editor of a paper, but it did not provide him with a stable source
of income, for which he depended on his friend, Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy
cotton manufacturer. In 1843 Marx left Germany and except for a period in Cologne in
1848 – 49 he lived all his life in exile abroad. He was in Paris from 1843 to 1845, in
Brussels from 1845 to 1848 and finally in London. In 1845 he renounced his Prussian
citizenship and despite his efforts failed to secure British citizenship by naturalization. In
1847 Marx wrote his ‘Poverty of Philosophy’ in reply to Proudhon’s book ‘Philosophy of
Poverty’. It was in this work that Marx developed the fundamental proposition of his
economic interpretation of history. His Communist Manifesto of 1848 is the most
celebrated work which contains a summary of his whole social philosophy. It appeared at
a psychological period when the whole of Europe was at ferment because of the
revolutions that took place in 1848.Marx spent his life in utter poverty and escaped
starvation only because of the generosity of his friend, Engels. Despite poverty and
illness, Marx was a prolific writer. His most famous book was ‘Das Capital’, in which he
developed the theory of the capitalist system and its dynamism, with emphasis on its
self:destructive tendencies.
Marxism is a philosophy of history impregnated by an elaborate economic theory.
It implies that history is governed by laws which the human mind can recognize or
determine. Therefore the first principle of Marxism is determinism, which is as solid and
concrete as ‘the granite foundation’. Its nature is objective historical necessity which is at
the root of every causation. This is the foundation on which Marxism has built the
socialist creed in contrast to the theological and metaphysical ideas of the past. With
historical necessity as the basis of determination, Marx proceeded to his economic
interpretation of history. He says that history is governed by certain laws. The first of
these laws is to determine the direction of the historical process. We may recall that it was
Hegel who had first conceived of ‘process thought’ which invited us to look upon history
as governed not by any immutable laws but as a process in which something fresh is
created at every moment. This idea is pursued further but for an entirely different
purpose. Marx emphasized that economic developments are basic to social change. Ideas
and institutions, law and politics and even religion and art are greatly affected by
economic factors. In an ever growing industrial set:up, only the community at large will
be able to provide the organizational framework of production. In other words the
means of production must be nationalized.

Secondly, Marxism does not deny the influence of ideas on history, but merely
states that they are not independent agents, but only intermediary links. The greatest
philosopher or thinker or scientist is not above monetary pressures. Religious devotion,
patriotism and all other idealistic feelings are themselves the product of economic
conditions. It cannot be denied that technological progress is the cause of some very
important aspects of cultural and institutional development. To a great extent the
Renaissance was the product of improved shipping, increased trade, improved crafts,
new discoveries, new trade routes and perfection of all sorts of tools. But the Marxists
have failed to recognize that there was a new intellectual and spiritual effort.
Thirdly, Marx believed that important historical progress is achieved through an
all:out conflict between an old and a new principle of social organization. This idea is
related to the Hegelian concept of dialectics, where a discussion is involved between
thesis and antithesis to produce synthesis. Marx applied this dialectics to his theory as
well and says that progress is the result of the tension between the old and the new
principle of social organization. If the tension is reduced prematurely through limited
reforms, progress will be retarded. According to Marx it is futile to impose higher
taxation to meet the labour demands, for in that case the incentive of the entrepreneur
will be destroyed. Since true reform, which does not destroy the present system but
gradually transforms it, is ruled out, revolution become necessary. The suffering and the
sacrifices of the labour class would be the price the society has to pay to have essential
progress.
Fourthly, Marx believed that there was always a clash of interest among social
groups which he called class struggle. This conflict of interests is often seen in
antagonistic political creeds. He calls this class struggle as the great motivating power of
history. There is close connection between the class struggle and the dialectic philosophy.
There has always been in history such a struggle, between feudalism and the serfdom,
capitalism and trade unions and so on. There is a perpetual war between two groups.
Democracy is no answer to this struggle. Progress will always be the result of a victory of
the new class over its oppressors and the struggle will go on until the last vestiges of the
old order disappear. In the struggle of the workers against the capitalists, this repression
will result in the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ during the interval of transition from
capitalism to fully communism.
Fifthly, Marx has defined value in his own way and says that value is labour
crystallized. The value of a commodity depends on the amount of labour time necessary
for its production. Labour power is the only power that can produce a value greater than
its own, because a worker can work more hours than necessary to keep him alive. The
production of this ‘surplus labour’ is ‘surplus value’.
Thus Marx has contributed very radical ideas in several sectors of human life. The
originality of his thought lies in his immense efforts to synthesis the entire legacy of social
knowledge since Aristotle. His purpose was to achieve a better understanding of the
conditions of human development and his answer for such a development was a
communist society based on rational planning, cooperative production and equality of
distribution, which was all possible if private property, were to be abolished and the
means of production nationalized. Liberation from all forms of political and bureaucratic
hierarchy was absolutely necessary. During his time he was confronted with this dual
commitment, between scholarly understanding and political action. He repudiated
Hegelian and post:Hegelian speculative philosophy, and developed a humanist ethics
based on sociological approach to historical phenomena. He drew freely from French
materialism and British empiricism, and came out with a mature sociological conception
of human societies. He made much of the ‘alienation’ concept in which the ‘dead labour’
(capital) dominates ‘living labour’ (the worker).Communist Manifesto boldly declared,
‘what the bourgeoisie produces, above all, are its own grave diggers’, and gave the
clarion call, ‘Working men of all countries, unite’! It should be remembered that Marxism
was a response to the economic and social hardships accompanying the growth of
industrial capitalism. Marxism may be described as a synthesis of radicalism, optimism
and a commitment to science. It is radical in criticizing the contemporary social and
political institutions. It is optimistic in expecting a thorough change which would be the
victory of the workers. It is committed to science because it has faith in technological
advancement which would help social forces to achieve a better standard of life.
Marxism regards history as the development of man’s effort to master the forces of
nature, and hence of production. History is the succession of changes in social systems
and also the development of human relations geared to productive activity. History is
progress because man’s ability to produce continually increases. Many a time this
progress is checked by oppressive social organizations which seemed to be beyond
human control. Inevitably society divides into classes and a struggle starts between the
ruling class and the labour class, who are really the producers. Those who are
property:less are forced to work as the labour class. Marx thought that there would be no
democracy as long as there are inequalities and special interests. From a promoter of
progress the ruling class turns into a useless parasite, a dead shell, but making would not
spare them for long. A resolution takes place in which they are all destroyed. Leadership
is given to the class which is most advanced in production. According to Marx, mankind
has gone through three or four major modes of production namely ancient slave society,
feudalism and capitalism. Capitalism represented the peak of human development in
production. It had amassed unprecedented wealth which was not spent for the well:being
of man, but was productive of more misery and chaos to man. Capitalism had reduced
man to the position of a commodity, whose labour power; talent and personality are for
sale in the free market.
The main contention of the materialist conception of history is that the
development of the economic structure of society is a natural process, which appears to
be the most dominant activity of man. Marx used the word ‘materialist’ to make a
contrast with what is supernatural, metaphysical or speculative. It was in the sense of
most real, concrete, fundamental and comprehensible. He believed that a general science
of human society could be worked out only by describing and explaining society in
empirical terms. At least the French and the English historians had taken up the themes
of commerce, industry, trade, agriculture and social behaviour.Marx regarded industry
and commerce as ‘material’ in contrast with religion and morals, and even in contrast
with politics and law. Therefore, the materialist conception of history is intended to be a
naturalistic, empirical and scientific account of historical events, which takes industry
and economics as basic factors.
Marx proceeded to criticize Hegel’s ideas which described the development of the
human mind as a process of externalizing its ideas in order to transform the material
world and to ‘humanize’ it. According to Hegel the work of labor’s hand does not stand
in the way of history development, but human development itself takes place because of
that labour. Hegel had used the word ‘alienation’ to indicate the work of externalizing
ideas into the natural world. On the other hand Marx did not think that in a capitalist
society the work of labour was instrumental in the development of the human
mind.Labour itself had become a commodity to be bought and sold, and there were
labour agents who did this job of labour supply. The worker himself was ‘alienated’, and
his work resulted in the creation of a social system, that was hidden from him.The wage
system and his struggle every time to upgrade it had degraded labour to the level of a
machine.
‘Estrangement’ is another word used by Hegel that Marx took over in this context.
True human dignity would be restored only when private property, competition, money
and wages are all abolished through a communist social order. Marx says that a
Communist society is the only ‘solution to the riddle of history’. Marx agreed with Hegel
that the human mind could develop only by the conquest of nature, but in the capitalist
system the efforts of the workers, who are really responsible for the transforming of the
natural world, are so much distorted that labour is completely out of the picture. This
state of affairs would naturally not last long and hence in the metaphysical sense
capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. In his analysis of the social structure
he called the productive forces as ‘the material conditions of life’. The primary social
activity is production, which always involves relations with other men, both in the work
itself and in the distribution of the product. It is upon these relationships that the
political, legal and ideological superstructures are built. To understand any aspect of
society whether religious, moral, artistic, legal, political or social, we have to know the
nature of its productive force and economic structure. The productive forces determine
certain social structures into which men are forced to fit their activities.
The next step in Marxian analysis is property and power. The main power in a
society belongs to those who own means of production. In a tribal society property is
jointly owned, and hence power is diffused throughout the society and there is no
dominant class. In a feudal society, the feudal lords are the ruling class who get what they
want from the serfs and even from the rich merchants whose wealth is subordinated to
the landed interests. The interests of the lords, the merchants and the serfs are not the
same. In a capitalist society the owners of the means of production are those with capital
or money who enjoy the fruit of the work of the labour class although their own labour is
very marginal. All important social changes must originate in productive activities and
the organization in which they take place. This is the central element of the theory of
historical materialism. Historical materialism makes two main predictions. The first is
that the capitalist system will break down as a result of its internal contradictions. The

second is that after a period of proletarian dictatorship it will be succeeded by a

communist society.
No one has become as controversial in the world as Marx. His theory has attracted
the most numerous and the most virulent critics. The argument of Marx is that men
cannot engage themselves in art, politics, philosophy and religion without economic
backing, but how they make their economic living does not determine their art, politics,
philosophy and religion. If they are economically well off, it does not follow that they will
surely contribute to art, politics, philosophy and religion. There is no correlation between
the two. If food, shelter and clothing are so essential for human development and if all
these are available in a jail, nobody would prefer to go there. Secondly, Marx himself
had another argument suggesting that there is something obvious in the view that the
productive forces determine history. Tool:making is what distinguishes man from other
animals. But beavers and bees do this too, but their hives and dams do not suggest any
improvement upon their device. Man is not the only animal that makes its means of life.
What makes the difference is that man constantly improves his method of production but
beavers and bees do not. It was the Hegelian view that men create their lives through
labour.Technology is regarded as the concrete embodiment of the process by which
nature is controlled and humanized. Marx and Engels lived during the industrial
revolution when several inventions were affecting social life. They saw that a new society
was coming up because of the steam engine, the railroad, and the cotton mills. They were
so overwhelmed by its impact that they exaggerated the economic factors. Although
important technological changes often change the mode of life, thought and law, it does
not follow that society itself would be decisively altered as a result of the technological
change. Toynbee goes to the extent of saying that the technological advance is more a
sign of retardation than progress, for the basic values of life might undergo a change.
Thirdly, according to Marx development takes place as a result of the clash of
opposites. The fundamental thesis of Marxist dialectics is that everything is in movement.
The doctrine of the class struggle is regarded by Marxists as a vital feature of historical
materialism. Changes in the means of production produce class struggle, which may
result in social revolutions out of which new forms of life and thought are born. This is
not true in every case, as we know that the French Revolution was not the product of any
change in the means of production but because of social unrest. The revolution of 1688 in
England and the Renaissance of the 19th century in India were not owing to any change in
the economic structure but on account of other factors. The Meiji revolution of Japan is
yet another example.
Fourthly, Marx appears to be highly influenced by Hegel; but Hegelian dialectics
had quite the opposite effect on Marx. The most fundamental feature of the dialectical
method as understood by Marx is its distrust of abstraction. This is also a Hegelian
legacy, but whereas Hegel regarded the Absolute Spirit as the concrete reality, for Marx
reality was the material world. Whatever Hegel touched was turned into spirit, and
whatever Marx touched was turned into matter. Both are in the extreme, but truth is
somewhere in between, and hence neither pure Hegelianism nor pure Marxism can fully
explain the phenomena. Philosophers who talk of spirit and economists who talk of land,

labour and capital obscure the real basis of human life, and substitute abstract categories
for the concrete realities of human association. Abstraction becomes mystification which
blurs the vision and intoxicates so that nothing else is seen. Both Hegel and Marx seem to
have been misled into the belief that what is true of a part is also true of the whole.
None can deny the influence of Marxian thought on modern society. Undoubtedly
he introduced into the social sciences of his day a new method of inquiry, new concepts
and a number of bold hypotheses to explain the rise and fall of human society. The entire
19th century was vastly affected in the realm of historical writing, political science and
sociology. Marx was a visionary, a revolutionary, a Romanticist and a doctrinaire whose
political creed abounded in contradiction with his scientific investigations. However, on
the side of the scientific method he made two important contributions. One was the view
that human societies are wholes or systems in which social groups, institutions, beliefs
and doctrines are interrelated and have to be studied in their interrelations rather than
treated in isolation, as in the conventional separate histories of politics, law, religion and
thought. Thucydides had said this long ago in some other way, namely historical events
are related one to the other in a systematic, rational and permanent manner. Secondly,
Marx held the view of societies as inherently mutable systems, in which changes are
produced largely by internal contradictions and conflicts, and these changes could be
reduced to general statements and principles in order to explain their causes and
consequences. In short Marx should be credited as the only person who performed the
miraculous task of synthesizing in a critical way the entire legacy of social knowledge
since Aristotle.
THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Theories that influence social change : Social change is a complicated process

which is the result of various factors. These factors operate according to certain rules and
regulations. These rules and regulations have certain directions. In fact there is one theory
or the other which determines the social change, and its directions. That is why it is
known as deterministic theory. MacIver and Page has explained it in the following
words:
“By deterministic theory we mean here in a doctrine that regards human
behaviour and changes in human behaviour as primarily to be explained by
environmental, external or material conditions”.
Apart from the deterministic theory of social change, there are other theories of
social change. Prominent amongst these theories are: (A) Linear theory of social change
(B) Cyclic theory of social change. These various theories of social change have their
various forms and various social thinkers have come out with their views in this regard.
It would be worthwhile if all these theories of social change are discussed a bit in detail.
(A) Linear theory of social change : According to the advocates of this theory the changes
that take place in the society are not repeated. Social thinkers who have contributed to
this theory include :( 1) Auguste Comte, (2) Herbert Spencer, (3) Hobhouse, and (4) Karl

Marx. Discussion of these social thinkers will make the various aspects of these theories a
clearer.
1. August Comte and his views regarding social change : According to Auguste Comte,
the human mind develops through three stages:(1)Theological State, (2) Meta Physical
State, and (3) Positive State. In this respect Auguste Comte has remarked: “In the
theological state, human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings the first and the
final causes (origin and purpose) of all facts, in short absolute knowledge supposes all
phenomena to be produced by immediate action of supernatural beings”. After the
theological state, comes the Metaphysical State which acts as a bridge between the
theological and positivistic state. Like the state of mental development, Comte has
divided the stages of material development into three categories :( 1) Conquest, (2)
Defense, and (3) Industry.
2. Herbert Spencer and his views regarding social change : There is element of evolution
in every aspect of life. The society like the man passes through various stages of
development and ultimately the full development of the society takes place.
3.Hobhouse and his views regarding social change : Hob house was influenced by
Comte and Spencer but differs from them in the sense that he did not recognize the
processes of evolution as the complete process or a process of independent by itself.
According to him, with the development of human mind change in moral values also
take place. In his book ‘Morals in Evolutions’ he has said that the developing sense of
morality is an attempt to provide proper direction to the stage of development.
4. Karl Marx and his theory of social change : Karl Marx has come forward with a very
important theory of social change which is known as “theory of economic determinism”.
He has put forward his theory of dialectical materialism, economic interpretation of
history and so on. In this respect he has himself remarked: “The mode of production in
material life determines the general character on social, political and spiritual process of
life”. According to the Liner Theory of social change, it advocates the direction of change.
This forces and elements of change are material as well as non:material.
(B) Cyclic Theory of social change : Advocates of this theory are of the view that social
changes in the society take place in a cyclic manner which means the changes that have
taken place today are repeated after one stage or the other. Spengler, Toynbee, Pareto,
Sorokin are the main exponents of this theory in order to have a clear idea about the
cyclic theory of social change. It would be proper if the views of all the advocates of this
theory are discussed a bit in detail.
(1) Oswald Spengler and his cyclic theory of social change : Oswald Spengler in his
famous work the ‘Decline of the best’ has written that the social changes instead of taking
place in a particular direction take place in a cyclic manner. He has said that the soul of
the culture is inherent in a particular age and like the growth of an individual into
various stages and that infancy, childhood, adolescence, old age etc., the culture also
passes through various stages and changes after every stage. The progress of the society
is the civilization. He has said that the culture declines and action comes up in a cyclic
order. This theory of Spengler has been bitterly criticized by various social thinkers
although he has described it the most scientific theory. The social thinkers have described
the theory of cyclic order of social change as a theory of passed on false analogy.
(2) Arnold Toynbee’s cyclic theory of social change : Arnold Toynbee has interpreted
history in his own manner. According to his persons interpretation, every age has certain
challenges and a group of which is in minority is prepared to respond to that challenger
as a result of this responsive challenge, the intellectual thinkers, which Toynbee has
described as creative minority, bring about the progress of the culture. According to
Toynbee in the present age, the thinkers are busy in preparing themselves to face the
challenge of the third World War. Toynbee has said that these intellectuals who are
known as creative minority have certain Godly qualities. According to Toynbee the
struggle between good and bad always goes on in the society and as a result of this
struggle, the society and the culture progresses.
(3) Pareto’s cyclic theory of social change : Wilfredo Pareto is an important advocate of
the cyclic theory of social change. He has tried to explain the social change on the basis of
cyclic changes in the society. According to Pareto, there is direction in every society and
due to which the society is normally divided into two groups :(a) Social elite and (b) the
lower class.
Members of social elite because of their qualities and abilities are placed at high
position, while people of the lower class are placed at a lower status. The position of the
social elite is not static. It changes and people who acquire those qualities enter the class
of the elite. On the other hand, those members of the social elite who lose their qualities
come down to the lower status. Though the members of the elite try to check the entry of
others into their class, while those who acquire these qualities try to enter in that
class.Bogardus has clarified this theory of Pareto in the following words:
“The theory of elite is that in every society there are people who possess any mark
degree of the qualities of intelligence, characters, skill, capacity, of whatever kind that
there are two classes of elite with the two groups are disjunctive at any given time and
that there is a up and down circulation of the elite”.Pareto’s theory of residues – Pareto’s
theory of residues says that social change is caused by two residues viz. one, residues of
combination and two, residues of persistent aggregates.
Every member of the society possesses both these residues. The first category of
residues i.e. residues to combination are meant for the fulfillment immediate needs of an
individual while the residues of the persistence of aggregates lay stress on idealism and
values. They make the individual idealistic and considerate about values. Both these
types of residues are responsible for change in the social set up or social order. In other
words these residues are responsible for social change. An aspect of the residues of social
change – According to Pareto the cycle of social change which is caused by residues has
three aspects:
(1) Political aspect, (2) Economic aspect, and (3) Ideological aspect.
Political aspect : Pareto’s cyclic theory of social change acts according to Pareto, changes
in the political set up takes place when the Govt. is run by the people who have more of
residues persistence of aggregates. They are more concerned about ideals and values and
try to achieve them. Pareto has sometime called them lions. When these lions forces and
forget about the importance of the values, they de:generate these lions into foxes and the
people of the lower class who have more of the residues of combination take advantage
of the situation and capture power, then again these foxes are replaced by lions. Thus the
cyclic of a change passes on from lions to the foxes:
2) Economic aspect of the Pareto’s cyclic theory of social change : According to Pareto,
from economic point of view, every society has two groups; Speculators who have a
indefinite income. This income sometime goes down while on other occasions it goes
very high. The second group from economic point of view is society called ‘Rentiers’ who
have fixed income. In the first group i.e. the group of speculators has more residues of
combination and the second group i.e. the group of rentiers has more of the residues of
the persistence aggregate. Sometimes it is the group of speculators that dominates the
society but sometimes it is rentiers who dominate it. Speculators have leaders,
businessmen, inventors etc. While the rentiers consist of idealist, thinkers, etc. The need
is that both these groups should combine and work together so that the development of
the society may take place.
(3) Ideological aspect of the Pareto’s cyclic theory of social change : In the world
ideology also changes take place. Sometimes people have faith in certain ideas and
sometimes they have faith in these ideas. Sometimes conservatives dominate society,
while on other occasion; it is the progressives who dominate the society. The dominance
of one group is sometimes replaced by the other group and this brings a change in
ideology. According to Pareto, there are two groups in every society: (1) the social elite or
the aristocracy and the other one lower group. Both these groups go on any one group
may go into the other. In this cyclic change from one group to the other, people take to
wrong methods also. According to Pareto the cyclic change which means sometimes
dominance to one group while on the other dominance of the other group goes on.
(4) Pirim Sorokin’s cyclic theory of social change : Sorokin has also propounded the
theory of socio:cultural dynamics of change in a cycle manner. He has said that every
society passes through the following stages and the cycle of change from one stage to the
other takes place in a cyclic manner. According to Sorokin every society passes through
the following three stages of culture:
(1) Sensate culture, (2) Ideational culture, and (3) Idealistic culture.
(1) Sensate culture : In this type of culture, every thing is material or that can be seen
through senses is accepted final. In this stage of culture, the faith in God spiritualism and
higher values goes down. Outlook of the members of the society is materialistic and they
are only interested in changing the material structure of the society.
(2) Ideational culture : This is the stage of culture from which faith pre:dominates. In
this culture stage people have faith in eternal values, God Soul etc. They believe in
changing the society not through material means but by spiritual methods.
(3) Idealistic culture : A state midway is between sensate and ideational stage of culture.
In this type of culture both the things are found. At one end, people are interested in

gains, fulfillment of their selfish ends on the other they are also prepared to make
sacrifices for fulfilling the needs of others.
According to Sorokin, in every stage of culture, a point is reached when certain
changes take place on account of inherent conditions.
A type of the theories of Sorokin is cyclic theory of social change : Socio:cultural Cyclic
theory of social change of Sorokin may be categorized under the following three heads:
(1) Externalist or environmental theory of social change,
(2) Integral theory of social change.
(3) The immanent theory of social change.
It would be worthwhile if all these theories of social change are studied in detail.
(1) Externalist or environmental theory of social change : According to this theory of
socio:cultural change, the causes of changes are inherent in the external atmosphere and
not in the order itself. In this context it has to be borned in mind that Sorokin has said,
more external factors bring about social change if the elements of change are not present
in the social order of the order itself. Sorokin does not agree with the behaviorists who
say that every stimulus has a response and the whole process is the result of stimulus and
response. He says that unless the potentiality of change is inherent in the system or the
object itself, the change can not take place. According to this theory he does not give
importance to the external factors of social change.
(2) Integral theory of social change : This theory that integrates both the external and
internal factors. According to Sorokin, although both external and internal factors of
social change are important but it is internal potentialities of change that are more
important.
(3) The immanent theory of social change : According to Sorokin if all the external
conditions are static or they are not present even then, because of internal factors, the
change takes place. In fact social organization is a continuous or going process or
concerned. That is why the changes take place because of internal factors. External or
environmental factors may also be important but they only act as supplementary. In this
respect Sorokin has himself pointed out: “My answer is in favour of the numbers of
immanent change of each socio:cultural system supported by externalistic number,
within certain conditions and limits.”Sorokin has made a study of the civilization and
culture and its various aspects such a Art, Philosophy, Politics, Economic Structure of the
last 2500 years and has come out with the conclusion changes that have taken place are
the result of internal factors. His main points in this respect are:
1. Every social structure or culture is responsible for its own destiny : According to
Sorokin we have already seen that there are certain factors that are responsible for social
change and these factors are inherent in the social structure itself. These factors frame the
destiny of the society.
2. Social change is limited : Social change is limited which means that it changes to
extent, the potentialities are present in the structure itself. There is no limitless change.

3. There is a swing or rhythm of change : According to Sorokin the change after reaching
a particular point gets exhaust and after that it takes a new turn. The change according to
Sorokin Linear or it does not take place of a along a line. It fluctuates and changes.
4. Culture repeats themselves : Materialistic and idealistic cultures and continuation
repeat themselves. They do not exhaust after one change.
Critism of Sorokin’s theory of socio:culture cyclic order of social change : Sorokin’s
theory of social change was very much recognized by a group of thinkers while it was
criticized by a large number of thinkers like Sapier etc. Critics of Sorokin say that
socio:cultural change is quantitative in statistics or relative and is not factual. They have
said that Sorokin has tried to prepare frame work of culture know as “Materialistic or
Sensual and Idealistic or extract.
Sorokin’s theory of social change is more subjective and valuational than objective and
scientific : According to Sorokin, the materialistic culture is not at all good while
idealistic culture is extremely good. He has further said that as a result of integration of
these two cultures and integral culture shall be borned which shall by really helpful for
the society. This type of concept of Sorokin is not scientific. It is more Utopian.
Sorokin does not believe in the progress of the society : Sorokin says that t he society
does not progress while modern thinkers are of the view that it is constantly changing.
Karl Marx says that dialectical materialism is responsible for the progress and
development of the society. He further says that society after reaching a particular point
starts decaying while modern thinkers are of the view that the world and the society are
continually changing.
Not based on historical facts : Sorokin’s of cyclic change is not at all based on historical
facts. It is like historical imagination to historical poetry. His ideas are more like the
ideas of Christian thinkers. It seems that what St. Augustine said in the mediaeval ages
has been repeated by Sorokin in the 20th century.
Sorokin’s theory is based on morality than scientific facts : Critics of Sorokin’s point out
that he firstly build his theory than realizes it. He quotes history only to start his
predominate theory. This is not the correct process. In this respect Hans Spellers views
are very pertinent: “Sorokin’s basic philosophy may be regarded as modern
Vulgarization of Christian thinking.”
Various thinkers have come out with various theories in regard to the social
change. These is inevitable and every society changes. Theories are only attempt to
explain this fundamental process.
KARL MARX AND HIS THEORY OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Basis of the theory of social change and economic determinism: According to Karl
Marx all social institutions are governed by the mode production. It is the economic
factors that result into changes in social institutions and social factors. As a result of
material forces to the economic factors, development in techniques and modes of
production takes place. All this leads to establishment of new economic relationship.

Normally the social institutions do not accept these changes and so struggle leads to a
new social order which replaces the other social order. In simple phraseology it may be
said that as a result of changes in the modes of production new classes come into being
and these new classes create new situations and new history. That is why Karl Marx has
said that: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of classes struggle.
Karl Marx concept of social change is based of the fact that mode of production in
material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual process
to life. He has in his book ‘Critic of political Economy asserted: “The general conclusion
at which I arrived and which, once reached continued to serve as the leading thread in
my studies, may be briefly summed up as follows: In the social production which men
carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their
will; these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society the real
foundation on which rise legal and political superstructure ad to which correspond
definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines
the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social
existence determines their consciousness. At a certain change if the development the
material forces of production to what is but a legal expression for the same thing with
the property relating within which they had been at work before. From forms of
development of the forces of production these relations turn into the fetters. Then come
the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundations the entire
immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such
transformations the distinction should always be made between the material
transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with
the precision of natural science and the legal political religious, aesthetic of philosophic in
short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and it pit. Just as
our opinion of an individual is not based ion what he thinkers of himself so can we not
judge of such a period of transformation by its own explained form the contradictions of
material life? From the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the
relations of production.”
Economic Structure is the variable factors of social change :
According to Karl Max it is the economic factor which is based on mode of production
and is responsible for culture, social and spiritual institutions. This economic relation
Marx has himself said: “In acquiring new productive forces may change in social
relations. The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lords the steam mill’s society
with the industrial capitalists.”Karl Marx’s theory of social change is based on the
material interpretation of history class struggle can economic determinism According to
Karl Marx theory of social change is based on the material interpretation of history class
struggle and economic determinism. According to Karl Marx the economic factor or
economic determinism is mainly responsible for social change.
Basis of social changes : According to Karl Marx the mode of production has two aspects:
(a) the force of the power of production, and (b) relationship of the production.

Forces of production include machines, tools, laborers, techniques, etc. This is an

ever: changing force and changes according to the needs and the situation. Production
relationship determines the normal, religious, political and constitutional relations.
According to Marx the moral, religious, constitutional and other factors that get
influenced by force of production which is called ‘superstructure’ are currently called
‘substructure’. It may be explained with the help of the following diagram.
‘Social change of Marx’ at a glance
Plant Means of Religion Politics Morality Substructure

Production
Art Literature Thoughts
Through
Production ……….. Other fields Superstructure
Relations
Economic Structure
Social change is the spontaneous result of social structure. Once the means of
production change, the relations are established, a new social structure is established. As
a result of this, a spontaneous social change takes place. In other words it means that
development of the society in a particular direction leads to a particular change. Karl
Marx has accepted that he seeds of the social change or new social order are present in
the old social order or the existing social order.
Role of revolution in social change : According to Karl Marx, social change takes place as
a result of revolution. Karl Marx does not rule out a bloody revolution for social change.
According to Marx, once a change in the mode of production takes place, new production
relations are established leading to social changes as a result of which political power
undergoes certain changes. He has said that as the new social class tires to bring about
the social change, the exploiters try to stop is by the use of forces of the State. However,
social change takes place as a result of revolution. This revolution can be bloodless also
as envisaged by Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. According to these thinkers revolution is the
maximum of evolution in the shortest possible time. In does not mean that new relations
can be established or new social orders can be established without any difficulty or
change, but the fact remains that social change does not take place easily. It is resisted by
the forces ‘status:quo’ and those who want to maintain the institution of the exploiters.
Change under definite circumstances : Social change or revolution takes place under
definite circumstances. No social structure is done away with unless it has assumed
fullest development and its allied forces have assumed fullest possible development and
a definite stage. In other words, it means that unless objective conditions are fulfilled a

revolution or social change does not take place. Capitalism can be overthrown when the
proletariats have become extremely prepared for it. It means that there should be
poverty, workers should be properly organized, they should be politically conscience ad
there things are there the death nail of the capitalist private property sound and
expropriations are expropriated.
No doubt material and economic actors are responsible for social change but new
things and principles are also responsible for it. They create new conditions and fresh
objectives and material conditions. These are responsible for sowing the seeds of
revolution. In other words, it means that social change is spontaneous development
which takes place under definite circumstances. It is the definite outcome of the struggle
between the forces of ‘status:quo’ and change the force of exploitation and force of
emancipation of exploiters. Furies of status – quo try to stop change by using the State
Machine and the force. But it can not be stopped. It is caused as a result of blood
revolution and also sometimes through peaceful means or in a democratic manner.
1. Critical evaluation of Karl Marx’s theory of social change based on economic
determinism : Those who have criticized Karl Marx’s theory of social change based on
economic determinism say that it is not possible to explain the social change on the basis
of economic factors. The social order is quite complicated and various factors are linked
with it. In this respect they cite the example of the 1942 revolution when people tried to
change the political control of the Britishers and the 15th August, 1947 when India became
free without any bloodshed.
2. Simply economic needs are not the sole governing factors : According to the critics of
Karl Marx’s theory of social change are based on economic determinism, and all the social
events are not governed by the economic factors alone. Sometimes there are they who are
interested other than the economy that determines the activities of man. In this respect
they say that people take part in religious and cultural activities and other activities are
not governed by an economic factor. They say that even Marx Weber has recognized
importance of religion in determining the human behaviour. They also say that sex needs
also could influence human behaviour.
3. Critics of Karl Max’s theory of social change say that this theory is not practical,
because it does not say as to what are those factors which bring about changes in social
forces. They also say that it is not a scientific principle because there is no consistence of
cause and effect relationship. There are various contradictory situations in making social
situations.
4. These critics say that a particular type of means of production gives birth to a
particular type of economic situation is not invariably correct. Sometimes a particular
type of industrial development or a particular stage of industrial development gives a
different type of economic situation. There are various countries in the world that have
different stages in industrial and technological development but they have the same
capitalist society in spite of difference in the stages of industrialization.
5. They also say Marx has not clearly and categorically stated what he means be
‘economic determinism’ Sorokin has in this respect remarked: “It becomes a kind of bag

filled with geographic conditions, techniques and evolutionary science and by the whole
conversion machinery of trade, commercial and distribution which involves judicial and
political institutions and what not.”
6. Social changes are not necessarily the result of revolution.
The critics are of the view that social changes are not necessarily the result of revolution
and struggle. They sometimes result from revolution of economic and material welfare.
According to Trade: “Since the beginning of history classes and armies could have
struggled with one another endlessly and they could have created either geometry
mechanism or chemistry without which it would be impossible for man to subdue nature
and makes progress in industry and military area”.
The theory if economic determinism and social change as propounded by Karl Marx
in spite of its sound footing suffers forms various weakness and drawbacks. Karl Marx
himself and his friend Engels have tried to correct them. They have recognized the
importance of religious, political and intellectual factors along with social factors, but
they have no doubt, said that economic factor is the most important factor. Sorokin has in
this respect very candidly remarked: “To hope of an extension of the most complex
dynamics of social life and history through only one factors amounts to nothing but
idiocy”.
COMTEAN POSITIVIST LOGIC
French positivist philosopher, Comte’s full name was Isidore Auguste Marie
Francois Xavier Comte (1798-1857) He is the father of the basic social science of sociology.
He was born at Montpellier on 19 January, 1798. He abandoned the Catholic faith at the
age of 13. In 1814 he entered the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris which was the centre of
political liberalism and of progressive thought in France. He became a professor of
mathematics, and very soon came into contact with Saint:Simon the radical of the age
who contributed much to the shaping of Comte’s thoughts. In 1826 Comte started a
course of lectures in Paris to expound his ideas as they were developed at this time. From
1832 to 1842 he was a teacher at the Ecole Polytechnique, but lost his job owing to his
quarrel with the Director of the school. During the rest of his life he was supported by his
numerous friends, one of whom was John Stuart Mill. Although self:centered and
egocentric in life, Comte had a zeal for the welfare of humanity. He worked indefatigably
to systematize his ideas into a plan for the betterment of humanity. He died in Paris on 5
September, 1857.
Comte was deeply influenced by Saint:Simon who contended that ‘political
phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws as other phenomena……the rule
destination of philosophy and science must be social, and the true object of the thinker
must be the interpretation and reorganization of society by means of the application of
the methods of the positive sciences to the study of society’. Fourier sowed the seeds of
the idea of social sciences, Saint:Simon nourished it with enthusiastic zeal and Comte
reaped the fruit. Comte’s purpose was the study and understanding of what he called
‘social physics’. This term itself is very significant. The aim of positive philosophy was to

liberate history from the hold of theology and metaphysics, and to make history stand on
its own base of historical laws. Comte wanted to introduce into the study of history the
same scientific observations which prevail in chemistry, physics and physiology. In 1822
he published his first work ‘A Plan for the Scientific Works Necessary to Reorganize
Society’ which roughly forecasts his intellectual career. This was the charter of the
positive philosophy. It described the intellectual trends of the time and suggested the
needed reforms in ideology and social planning. The first volume of his ‘Course of
Positive Philosophy’ appeared in 1830 and the sixth and the final volume in 1842.He then
proceeded to his still more ambitious project, ‘System of Positive Polity’, the first volume
foreign which was published in 1851 and the fourth and final in 1854. This work
contained his sociological theories as well as his plan for an ideal society.
Comte heavily drew from Aristotle, David Hume and Immanuel Kant for his
conception of Positivism. The repudiation of Christianity and the installation of the
Goddess of Reason by the French Revolution stimulated his ideas that the religious order
should be secular in nature.Comte developed the ideas of historical determinism, the idea
of progress and the law of the three stages – theological, metaphysical and scientific. The
main contributions of Comte’s positive philosophy fall into five parts; (1) the adoption of
the positive or the scientific method to history, (2) the law of the three stages of
intellectual development, (3) the classification of the sciences, (4) the conception of the
philosophy of each of the sciences prior to sociology and (5) the synthesis of the system of
positive philosophy. Of these parts the law of the three stages appears to be very
important.Comte’s positive philosophy emerged from his historical study of the progress
of the human mind, which passed through three stages, namely theological, metaphysical
and scientific. The progress of each stage was not only inevitable but also irreversible. In
the theological stage man views everything as animated by a will and a life similar to his
own. Man makes God in his own image. This stage has three sub:stages – animism,
polytheism and monotheism. In animism each object is viewed as having its own will.
Polytheism believes that many divine wills impose themselves on objects. Monotheism
conceives of only one Supreme Will imposing itself on objects. In the second stage
metaphysical thought substitutes abstractions for a personal will. Causes and forces
replace desires, and one great entity Nature emerges as a potent factor. In the third
positive stage, scientific ideas explain the phenomena. The study of laws is undertaken
which take into account ‘relations of successions and resemblance’ as the true object of
man’s research. Each stage exhibits not only a particular form of mental development but
also of material development. In the theological stage military life dominates, in the
metaphysical stage the legal forms achieve dominance, and in the positive stage
industrial growth gains primacy. All sciences depend for their growth on the previous
sciences. There cannot be any effective physics without astronomy, or biology without
chemistry.
Comte’s classification of the sciences was based upon the hypothesis that the
sciences must inevitably develop in the order of decreasing generality and increasing
complexity. The several sciences in the order of their importance are mathematics,
astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology. Each of these sciences depends
upon and draws from those which preceded it in the series. Sociology not only completes
the series but also reduces social facts to laws and synthesizes the whole of human
knowledge, thus acting as a guide in the reconstruction of society. He laid the basis for
social history through his emphasis on the social conditioning of human actions and
motives. He greatly stimulated the search for possible laws and stages of historical
development. His main philosophy centers on the idea ‘nature becomes conscious of itself
in man’, and thus man sums up in himself all the laws of the world. One who has
understood this subjective synthesis will also understand its objective synthesis.Comte
calls the metaphysical stages a negative stage, whose importance lies in the destruction of
the old conceptions. Thus intellectual development of mankind had necessarily to pass
through ages of anarchism and revolutionary restlessness. The final stage is Positivism
because a new order cannot be attained before the remains of the old system have been
completely erased.
Comte thought that it would be possible to discover ‘determined laws’ which
governed human society, as the world of nature is governed by physical laws. With
regard to history Comte said ‘The prevailing tendency to specialization in study would
reduce history to a mere accumulation of unconnected delineations, in which all ideas of
the true filiations of events would be lost amid the mass of confused descriptions. If the
historical comparisons of the different periods of civilization are to have any scientific
character, they must be referred to the general social evolution’. Comte and his disciples
believed that an understanding of the laws of society would enable the state not only to
control the direction of history but to predict the course of history. The aim of the
Positivists in short was to discover a set of working hypotheses or laws for the
interpretation of history. Positivists would do the same job to history as what Newton
had done to physics. Their problem was ‘what is the ultimate explanation of history, or
more modestly what are the forces which determine human events and according to what
laws do they act’? One of the most influential of Comte’s ideas borrowed from science
and applied to history and social sciences was the application of the world ‘milieu’. It
became a very flexible word. In the final analysis it means environment.
Positivism was a reaction to Romanticism. Positivism tells us that human
knowledge cannot go beyond human experience and that any inquiry into historical
phenomenon should be restricted to the scientific mode. It emphasized the fact that the
purpose of historical study was to discover the motives and explain the processes of
events through which they have passed. Such an inquiry would result in finding the rules
governing the relations that exist among facts that are connected one with the other in a
permanent order. This school regarded history as ‘Social Physics’. It means the scientific
aspect of historical events which could be reduced to a general principle. It held the view
that the historical course is subject to a certain direction, and if this course were to be
intelligently traced it should be possible to predict the future. Because of causal
connection past events could be explained on the basis of which laws could be framed
that would predict the future. But this prediction can never be done in respect of isolated
events or unique personalities. Laws require general tendencies, a larger scheme of
things, totality and the masses. The Positivists felt that the philosophies of history
touched historical consciousness at three points, namely the integrity of historical events,
the unity of the narration with the document and the imminence of development. These
are the three important stages which the Positivists brought out, and these three aspects
were covered by three different types of thinkers, namely the historians, the philologists
and the philosophers.
The historians were those who had a special disposition for the investigation of
particular facts rather than theories, and a greater acquaintance with and in the practice
of historical studies than with speculative literature. Their main job was to write history
which was a reflective process and the re:enactment of the past experience in their own
minds. This involved the utilization of every bit of relevant data, drawing or proper
inferences, furnishing an intelligent analysis, and the exposition of these facts in a suitable
style. All these operations indicate that history is different from philosophy, which
historians relegated to the background, and undertook merely to reconstruct the past in
such a way as to make it reflect reality. They did not believe in the dictum that history is
philosophy teaching by examples. They believed that historical events are unique in their
own way, and they should be studied not for the sake of framing any laws or theories but
for merely knowing and understanding what the past was. The reality and not the value
of the fact were held to be the province of the historian. History should not be a partisan
propaganda but an objective and faithful record of the past which should reflect how
things had really happened. Leopold Von Ranke is the expounder of this view and he is
known as the father of modern history. He combated the intrusion of philosophy into
history, especially Hegelian philosophy. He vehemently attacked the view that historical
causality could be explained in terms of any single concept. He popularized the idea that
it was not necessary for a historian to indulge in the speculative job of advancing theories.
The job of a historian is merely to present all the facts in their correct perspective and
leave the readers to draw their own conclusions. Ranke inaugurated the writing of a kind
of history wherein national, religious, sectarian, and racial or any other type of prejudice
would have no place, and history would come as nearly as possible to the concept of
science, ‘no less and no more’.
The second groups of scholars were philologists. Their job was to make sure that
the narrative was quite reflective of the facts contained in a document. They did not write
history but supplied the right material for writing history. This activity was called
‘erudite’ scholarship. They undertook on a large scale the work of compiling the sources,
editing the material, checking their authenticity, applying the canons of criticism to the
document, and publishing this material with elaborate notes. They would compile
volumes in which there would be nothing except what was contained in the texts ‘torn
from the contexts and repeated without being thought by the philologist narrator’. This
activity was something like serving the historical dishes with raw commodities without
cooking them in any way. The object was to collect every bit of useful data and edit them
into comprehensive volumes. A few took up classical studies, others languages,
literature, philosophy, political, economic, or social aspects. It was all philological study,
which laid great stress on textual criticism; emendation and compilation. They were more
scientific than the historian and more septic of philosophy than the historian. They were
not interested either in critical analysis or interpretation of the dam or inquiry into the
causes, conditions and processes of events or in the synthesizing of the material to draw
any principle.
The third group is the philosophers, and yet they opposed the term philosophy of
history. They chose other terms which were less open to suspicion and appeared to be
more objective. They styled themselves as positivists, naturalists, sociologists, empiricists
and critics. Their purpose was to achieve something different from what the philosophers
of history had done. Since the latter had proceeded from the conception of the end, the
former were determined to work with the conception of the cause. They would search out
the cause of every fact and thus would concentrate more and more widely on the causes
of the entire course of history. Others had attempted a dynamic of history, but they
worked with a mechanic of history, and they called history ‘a social physics’. A special
science arose which was opposed to the philosophy of history in which naturalistic and
positivistic tendencies became exalted in its own eyes namely sociology. Sociology
classified facts of human origin and determined the laws of mutual dependence which
regulated them furnishing the narratives of historians with the principles of explanation
by means of these laws. Historians, on the other hand, diligently collected facts and
offered them to sociology, that it might press the juice out of them. In other words
sociology deducted laws from the material furnished by history. History and sociology
stood to one another in the same relation as zoology and physiology, physics and
mineralogy. They differed from the physical and natural sciences only by their great
complexity. The introduction of mathematical calculation seemed to be the condition of
progress for history as for all the sciences, physical and natural.
Apart from sociology, statistics came to the assistance of history in processing
innumerable facts to a common degree of generality. The computer has become today a
great tool to reduce data to our purpose. Since statistics acts as a factory of condensation,
the synthesis invoked and outlined for history showed at a glance causes and facts which
arose from the laws. The supporters of this school were Comte, Buckle, Taine,
Lamprecht, Breysig and Bordeaux. Their contention is that true history is to be
reconstructed by means of the naturalistic method, and that causal induction should be
employed. There are many naturalistic conceptions like race, heredity, degeneration,
imitation, influence, climate and other historical factors which should be taken into
consideration.
Comte propounded his famous positivist philosophy which consisted in the law of
the three stages, namely the theological stage, the meta:physical stage and the positive
stage. In the first stage man resigned himself to the will of God, in the second, he used
higher philosophy (metaphysics) to discover through reason the essence of the
phenomenon, and in the third stage the mind abandoned the search for essence, and
contented itself with the discovery of relationships that exists among phenomena. This
concerned itself with the construction of science; Positivism reveals that there is
decreasing generality and increasing complexity in history. In short the essence of
positivist thought is that political phenomena are as capable of being grouped under laws
as other phenomena, that the true destination of philosophy and science must be social,
and that the true objective of an intellectual exercise is to reorganize society through the
application of positive sciences to the study of society. The aim of positive philosophy is
to liberate history from the hold of theology and metaphysics, and to introduce into the
study of society the same scientific observation of the laws which prevail in physics,
chemistry and physiology. When the positive method is applied to history, the social facts
become quite apparent. In 1822 Comte published his plan for the re:organization of
society, (already noted) which became the charter of positivist philosophy. In this plan he
rejected metaphysical idealities, and preferred the ground of observed realities by
systematic subordination of imagination to observation. This was his technique to obtain
‘determined laws’ which governed human societies as the world of nature is ruled by
physical laws. An understanding of the laws of society would enable the State not only
to control the direction of history but also to predict the course of history. The aim of the
Positivists was to discover a set of working hypothesis or laws for the interpretation of
history, as Newton had done for physics.
Thus the historiography of the post:Romantic era falls into three categories of
diplomatic, philological and positivist history. There was rivalry among these three
branches. A diplomatic historian had contempt for erudition or the philological school.
The Positivists looked down upon both the historian and the philologist. The diplomatic
historian agreed with the Positivists that history was not a mere collection of data but at
the same time he frowned upon the Positivist for his attempt to generalize events into
laws. The net result was that all these three schools negated the unity of history with
philosophy but in different degrees and ways. A strange situation arose in which history
was not to be philosophical but at the same time could not deny philosophy.
Finally, a comparative study of Positivism and Romanticism appears to be
interesting. Positivism made historical work less abstract and more plentiful.
Romanticism had made it more imaginative and theoretical. Positivism took all facts into
consideration, but Romanticism picked up only those that were sensational. Positivism
stood for tracing the events in their evolutionary order. Romanticism jumped into the
middle when the events were in their full bloom. Positivism worked with the causes as
their means, Romanticism were to the end:product for its study. Positivism rejected
individualism, but Romanticism made individuals the centre of attraction. Positivism
talked of masses, races, societies and tendencies. Romanticism dwelled in ideal values,
conceived of organic connections and studied ideas, the spirit, the concept of liberty and
progress. Positivism insisted upon the interdependence of social factors and upon the
unity of the real and attempted to fill up the gaps of the various histories by means of the
history of civilization and of culture. Romanticism had overthrown instructive,
moralizing and serviceable history, in its effort to make history a pure art. Positivism
boasted that it made history a science, and end in itself, and like every other science gave
it a set of laws. Romanticism enhanced the esteem of erudition, but Positivism tried to
seek out the causes of history, the series of historical forces, the unity of the factors, and
their dependence upon a supreme cause. In short both Romanticism and Positivism were
mutually complementary, and the two together form an interesting phase of historical
development. However, Positivism was an improvement to the extent that it took into
account factors which had been neglected by Romanticism. For example, Positivism made
much of the disposition called psychological, the interests called material, the facts of
force and violence called revolutionary power, and the daily activities of necessity called
economics. The Positivists attempted to discover in what way heterogeneity and
historical diversity came into existence. Positivism was no doubt an advance in thought.
It is worth noting how these three schools of thought found an echo in some of the
leading countries of Europe.
A few criticisms are leveled against Comte. J.S. Mill took serious objection to
Comte’s omission of psychology as a science. Secondly, Comte has not indicated how we
can be sure that the positive stage is the final one. Since the human mind can only be
known through experience, it is at least theoretically possible that another stage may be
reached. Thirdly, the application of the positive method to human phenomena is not
convincing, as the historical laws are quite different from those of natural or physical
sciences. Fourthly, sociology of history is not the final science of humanity, for without
ethics man will not have the final cause to motivate all his progressive and cultural
activities. It is not certain that with the advance of natural sciences man’s moral
disposition would also improve. Some of his views are also questionable, for example
that Protestantism was anti:scientific, and that Catholicism was a non:aggressive religion.
Speaking of the Crusades he says that all great expeditions were defensive in nature. This
is not borne out by historical facts.
Nevertheless, the influence of Comte on his age could hardly be exaggerated. He
grasped the notion that knowledge in the various sciences is unified and related. His law
of three stages offered us a new way of viewing the world that men at different stages of
history have emphasized one way of ordering society more than another. But his greatest
contribution is the establishment of a new science, sociology, which helps us to study the
interrelations of men in society, and how these interrelations change in the course of
history. His main and vital interest was the systematization of the social background of
human history into one body of knowledge, in preparation of a practical approach to
social reform based on a lasting order, the theoretical and moral aspects of which he
adumbrated in his new science, sociology. Comte had considerable influence all over
Europe on social reform movements. His religion of humanity not only encouraged
reform tendencies but also stimulated secular religious movements such as humanism.
His instance upon universal education aided the educational reformers. What we
appreciate most in Comte is his ultimate purpose, namely the political reorganization of
the society on rational basis. Believing that the evolution of the human mind proceeded
according to definite laws he regarded it as his first task to isolate and demonstrate them
by scientific processes assisted by historical verification. He indicated that in the positive
stage the mind abandons the research for essence of the phenomena which is the feature
of the metaphysical stage and concerns itself with the discovery of relationships among
the phenomena. His second great general law that of decreasing generality and increasing
complexity signifies that sciences could develop only in a particular order. Each science
depended upon those preceding it for its positive content. Whatever the value of Comte’s
specific scheme for social reorganization, his treating of all social thought as an
interrelated whole had a profound influence upon the subsequent development of the
various social sciences. Historians felt the impulse of his work both because he
demonstrated the methodological importance of history in the discovery of social laws,
and because he emphasized the variety of phenomena into which it must penetrate.

RANKE’S POSITIVIST APPROACH

Leopold Von Ranke (21 December 1795 – 23 May 1886) was a German historian of
the 19th century, considered one of the founders of modern source:based history. Ranke
set the tone for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on
primary sources (Empiricism), an emphasis on narrative history and especially
international politics (aussenpolitik).Ranke was born in Wiehe, Electorate of Saxony. He
was educated partly at home and partly in the Gymnasium of Schulpforta.His early years
engendered a life:long love of Ancient Greek and Latin and of the Lutheran Church. In
1814, Ranke entered the University of Leipzig, where his subjects were Classics and
Lutheran Theology. At Leipzig, Ranke became an expert in philosophy and translation of
the ancient authors into German. As a student, Ranke’s favourite authors were
Thucydides, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Barthold
Georg Niebuhr, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and
Friedrich Schlegel.Ranke showed little interest in the work of modern history because of
his dissatisfaction with what he regarded as history books that were merely a collection
of facts lumped together by modern historians. Between 1817:1825, Ranke worked as a
Classics teacher at the Friedrichs Gymnasium in Frankfurt an der Oder. During this time,
Ranke became interested in History in part because of his desire to be involved in the
developing field of a more professionalized history and in part because of his desire to
find the land of God in the workings of history.
Beginning with his first book in 1824, the Geschichte der romanischen und
germanischen Volker von 1494 bis 1514(History of the Latin and Teutonic peoples from
1494 to 1514), Ranke used an unusually wide variety of sources for a historian of the age,
including “memoirs, diaries, personal and formal missives, government documents,
diplomatic dispatches and first:hand accounts of eye:witnesses”. In this sense he leaned
on the traditions of Philology but emphasized mundane documents instead of old exotic
literature.
Ranke began his book with the statement in the introduction that he would show
the unity of the experiences of the “Teutonic” nations of Scandinavia, England and
Germany and the “Latin” nations of Italy, Spain and France through the great
respirations of the volkerwanderung (great migration), the Crusades and colonization
that in Ranke’s view bound all of the nations together to produce modern European
civilization. Despite his opening statement, Ranke largely treated all of the nations under
examination separately until the outbreak of the wars for the control of Italy starting in
1494. However, the book is best remembered for Ranke’s comment that “To history has
been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of
future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire: It wants only to show what
actually happened. Ranke’s statement that history should embrace the principle of wie es
eigentlich gewesen ist (literally, “how it actually has been”) is taken by many historians as
their guiding principle. There has been much debate over the precise meaning of this
phrase. Some have argued that adhering to the principle of wie es eigetlich gewesen ist
means that the historian should only document facts without offering any interpretation
of these facts. Following George Iggers, Peter Novick has argued that Ranke, who was
more a romantic and idealist than his American contemporaries understood meant
instead that the historian should discover the facts and find the essences behind them.
Under this view, the word ‘eigentlich’ should be translated as ‘essentially’, the aim then
being to “show what essentially happened”. Ranke went on to write that the historian
must seek the “Holy hieroglyph” that is God’s hand in history, keeping an “eye for the
universal” whilst taking “pleasure in the particular”.
Following the success of Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Volker von
1494 bis 1514, Ranke was given a position in the University of Berlin. At the university,
Ranke became deeply involved in the dispute between the followers of the legal professor
Friedrich Carl von Savigny who emphasized the varieties of different periods of history
and the followers of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who saw history as
the unfolding of a universal story. Ranke supported Savigny and criticized the Hegelian
view of history as being a one:size:fits:all approach. Also during his time in Berlin, Ranke
became the first historian to utilize the forty:seven volumes that comprised the
diplomatic archives of Venice from the 16th and 17th centuries. Ranke came to prefer
dealing with primary sources as opposed to secondary sources during this time. Ranke
later wrote “I see the time approaching when we shall base modern history no longer on the
reports even of contemporary historians, except in:so:far as they were in the possession of personal
and immediate knowledge of facts; and still less on work yet more remote from the source; but
rather on the narratives of eyewitnesses, and on genuine and original documents “.
Starting in 1831 at the behest of the Prussian government, Ranke founded and
edited the Historisch – Politische Zeitschrift journal. Ranke, who was a conservative, used
the journal to attack the ideas of Liberalism. In his 1833 article “The Great Powers” and
his 1836 article “Dialogue on Politics “ Ranke claimed that every state is given a special
moral character from God and individuals should strive to best fulfill the “idea” of their
state. Thus, in this way, Ranke urged his readers to stay loyal to the Prussian state and
reject the ideas of the French Revolution, which Ranke claimed were meant for France,
not Prussia. Between 1834:1836 Ranke produced the multi:volume Die romischen Papste,
ihre kircke und ihr Staatim sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (History of the Popes, their
Church and the State in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) As a Protestant, Ranke was
barred from viewing the Vatican archives in Rome, but on the basis of private papers in
Rome and Venice, Ranke was able to explain the history of Papacy in the 16 th century. In
his book, Ranke coined the term the Counter Reformation and offered colorful portrayals
of Pope Paul IV, Ignatius of Loyola, and Pope Pius V. The Papacy denounced Ranke’s
book as an anti: Catholic while many Protestants denounced Ranke’s book as too neutral.
However, Ranke has been generally praised by historians for placing the situation of the
Catholic Church in the context of the 16th century. In particular, the British Catholic
historian Lord Acton defended Ranke’s book as the most fair – minded balanced and
objectives study ever written on the `16th century Papacy. Ranke followed this book up
with multi:volume Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (History of the
Reformation in Germany) in 1845:1847. Ranke used the ninety – six volumes from
ambassadors at Imperial Diet in Frankfurt to explain the Reformation in Germany as the
result of both politics and religion.
In 1841, Ranke was appointed Royal Historiographer to the Prussian Court. In
1849; Ranke published Neun Bucher pressicher Geschichte (translated as Memoirs of the House

of Brandenburg and History of Prussia, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) where
Ranke examined the fortunes of the Hohenzollern family and states from the middle
Ages to the reign of Frederick the Great. Many Prussian nationalists were offended by
Ranke’s portrayal of Prussia as a typical medium:sized German state rather than as a
Great Power. In a series of lectures given to the future King Maxmilian of Bavaria, Ranke
argued that “every age is next to God “. By which Ranke meant that every period of
history is unique and must be understood in its own context. He argued that God gazes
over history in its totally and finds all periods equal. Ranke rejected the teleological
approach to history where every period is inferior to the period that follows. Thus the
middle Ages were not inferior to the Renaissance; only different. In Ranke’s view, the
historian had to understand a period on its own terms, and seek to find only the general
ideas which animated every period of history. For Ranke, then, history was not to be an
account of man’s “progress” because, “After Plato, there can be no more Plato”. For Ranke
Christianity was morally most superior and could not be improved upon. Ultimately,
“History is no criminal court “
In 1865 Ranke was ennobled, in 1882 appointed a Prussian Privy Councilor and
1885 he was given an honorary citizenship of Berlin. In 1884, he was appointed the first
honorary member of the American Historical Association. After his retirement in 1871,
Ranke continued to write on a variety of subjects relating to German history such as the
French Revolutionary Wars, Albrecht von Wallenstein, Karl August von Hardenberg, and
King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Starting in 1880, Ranke began a huge six volume
work on World History, which began with ancient Egypt and the Israelites. By the time
of Ranke’s death in Berlin in 1886, aged 90, he had only reached the 12th century.
Subsequently his assistants used his notes to take the series up to 1453.
Methodology and Criticism
At the core of his method, Ranke did not believe that general theories could cut
across time and space. Instead, he made statements about the time using quotations from
primary sources. He said, “My understanding of ‘leading ideas’ is simply that they are
the dominant tendencies in each century. These tendencies however, can only be
described; they can not, in the last resort, be summed up in a concept”. Ranke objected to
philosophy of history, particularly as practiced by Hegel, claiming that Hegel ignored the
role of human agency in history, which was too essential to be “characterized through
only one idea or one word” or “circumscribed by a concept”. This lack of emphasis on
unifying theories or themes led some to denigrate his “mindless empiricism”. In the 19 th
century, Ranke’s work was very popular and his ideas about historical practice gradually
became dominant in western historiography. However, he had critics among his
contemporaries, including Karl Marx, a former Hegelian who suggested that Ranke
engaged in some of the practices he criticized in other historians.
Nevertheless, Ranke’s general method remains standard practice in published
histories. It was also dominant within academia and historiography until the 1960s, when
it was challenged by historians such as E.H. Carr and Fernand Braudel.Carr opposed
Ranke’s ideas of empiricism as a naïve, boring and outmoded, saying that historians did
not merely report facts – they choose which facts they use, Braudel’s approach was based
on the histoire probleme.
CHAPTER : II
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES
SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
It is a sociological term coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959
describing the process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one’s
place in history. Sociological imagination is the ability to connect seemingly impersonal
and remote historical forces to the incidents of an individual’s life. It suggests that people
look at their own personal problems as social issues and, in general, try to connect their
own individual experiences with the workings of society. The sociological imagination
enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. By this
perspective; people in poverty might link their personal circumstances to the social forces
relevant to their present condition. One of the primary goals of sociological imagination is
to help develop the ability to participate in social life and step back and analyze broader
meanings of what is going on in the world around us. There are three key questions that
constitute the core of Mills’ sociological imagination:
1. What is the structure of a particular society and how does it differ from other
varieties of social order? What are its essential components and how are they
related to one another? Within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for
its continuance and for its change?
2. Where does this society stand in human history? What are the mechanics by which
it is changing? What is its place within and it’s meaning for the development of
humanity as a whole? How does any particular feature we are examining affect,
and how is it affected by, the historical period in which it moves? And this
period:what are its essential features? How does it differ from other periods? What
are its characteristic ways of history:making?
3. What varieties of women and men prevail in this society and in this period, and
what varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they selected and formed,
liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of “human
nature” are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in society and in this
period? And what is the meaning for “human nature” of each and every feature of
the society we are examining?
Mills argued that ‘nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of
traps. Mills maintained that people are trapped because ‘their visions and their powers
are limited to the close:up scenes of job, family [and] neighbourhood’, and are not able to
fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles.
Underlying this feeling of being trapped are the seemingly uncontrollable and continuous
changes to society. Mills mentions unemployment, war, marriage and life in the city as
examples where tension between private trouble and public issues becomes apparent.

The feeling that Mills identified in 1959 is still present today, and many examples
can be found in popular media. One example is the tension that present:day women
experience regarding their perceived housekeeping responsibilities, as discussed in a
2004 broadcast of Life Matters (Radio National 2004).The discussion focused on the rising
popularity of domestic advice and support services, in particular the immensely popular
American website Fly Lady net (Chilley 2004), which provides advice to people (mainly
women) who are not able to deal with their perceived roles as home maker. Sociologist
Susan Maushart argues that second:wave, White middle:class feminism has ‘thrown out
the baby with the bathwater’ (Radio National 2004) because, although the victories of
feminism have ensured that women are not restricted to being homemakers, they have
devalued the home in their wake. Many women thus feel trapped between the social
change achieved by feminism and the cultural expectations of being home makers.
Another example of the “sociological imagination” discussed by Mills and still present
today is ones reaction to being unemployed. An individual may attribute his/her
inability to find a job to his personal characteristics rather than the larger social forces at
work such as the economy and job market. Individuals who feel this way are, as Mills
describes, “trapped” due to their narrowed vision of the problem of unemployment.
Mills offers a solution to this feeling of being trapped. He argues that because:
“neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without
understanding both”, we need to develop a way of understanding the interaction
between individual lives and society. This understanding is what Mills calls Sociological
Imagination: the ‘quality of mind’ which allows one to grasp “history and biography and
the relations between the two within society”. Mills believed, however, that “ordinary
people do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and
society, of biography and history, of self and world”.
Sociological imagination is much more part of contemporary society than in the
days when Mills wrote his book. Programs like Life Matters mainly deal with issues
located on the crossroads between private trouble and the public sphere. Many people,
however, do not seem to be interested in developing the ‘quality of mind’ that Mills
envisaged. Most remain focused on private issues, without realizing the social reality in
which the issues are embedded.
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
A theory is a set of ideas which provides an explanation for something. A

sociological theory is a set of ideas which provides an explanation for human society.
Critics of sociology sometimes objects to the emphasis which sociologists place on theory
and suggest it might be better to let ‘the facts’ speak for themselves. But there are no facts
without theory. For example, in Western society, the generally accepted facts that the
world is round and orbits the sun are inseparable from theories which explain the nature
and movement of heavenly bodies. However, in some non:Western societies whose
members employ different theories, the view that the world is flat and the solar system
revolves around it is accepted as a statement of fact. Clearly the facts do not speak for
themselves.
Like all theory, sociological theory is selective. No amount of theory can hope to
explain everything, account for the infinite amount of data that exist or encompass the
endless ways of viewing reality. Theories are therefore selective in terms of their
priorities and perspectives and the data they define as significant. As a result they
provide a particular and partial view of reality. There are various sociological theories.
Each presents a distinctive explanation of the social world. There is no firm agreement as
to the actual number of theories in sociology. Here we examine four which are generally
considered to be among the more important.
Functionalism :
Functionalist analysis has a long history in sociology. It is prominent in the work
of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, two of the founding fathers of the discipline. It
was developed by Emile Durkheim and refined by Talcott Parsons. During the 1940s and
1950s functionalism was the dominant social theory in American sociology. Since that
time it has steadily dropped from favour, partly because of damaging criticism, partly
because other approaches are seen to answer certain questions more successfully and
partly because it simply went out of fashion. Functionalism views society as a system,
that is as a set of interconnected which together form a whole. The basic unit of analysis is
society and its various parts are understood primarily in terms of their relationship to the
whole. Thus social institutions such as the family and religion are analyzed as a part of
the social system rather than as isolated units. In particular, they are understood with
reference to the contribution they make to the system as a whole. The early functionalists
often drew an analogy between society and an organism such as the human body. They
argued that an understanding of any organ in the body, such as the heart or lungs,
involves an understanding of its relationship to other organs and in particular, of its
contribution towards the maintenance of the organism. In the same way, an
understanding of any part of society requires an analysis of its relationship to other parts
and most importantly, of its contribution to the maintenance of society. Continuing this
analogy, they argued that just as an organism has certain basic needs which must be
satisfied if it is to survive, so society has basic needs which must be met if it is to continue
to exist.
These basic needs or necessary conditions of existence are sometimes known as
functional prerequisites of society. Various approaches have been used to identify
functional prerequisites. Some sociologists have examined a range of societies in an
attempt to discover what factors they have in common. For example, Davis and Moore
claim that all societies have some form of social stratification and George Peter Murdock
maintains that the family exists in every known human society. From these observations
it is assumed that institutional arrangements such as social stratification and the family
meet needs which are common to all societies. Thus from the universal presence of social
stratification it is argued that all societies require some mechanism to ensure that social
positions are adequately filled by motivated persons. From the universality of the family
it is assumed that some mechanism for the reproduction and socialization of new
members is a functional prerequisite of society. However, the problem with this approach
is its assumption that the presence of the same institution in every society indicates that it

meets the same need. Simply because a form of stratification exists in all societies does
not necessarily mean it reflects ‘the universal necessity which calls forth stratification in
any social system’, as Davis and Moore claim. Put another way, it cannot be assumed that
stratification systems perform the same function in all societies.
An alternative approach to the identification of functional prerequisites involves
an analysis of those factors which would lead to the break:down or termination of
society. Thus Marion J. Levy argues that a society would cease to exist if its members
became extinct, if they became totally apathetic, if they were involved in a war of all
against all or if they were absorbed into another society. Therefore in order for a society
to survive it must have some means of preventing these events from occurring. These
means are the functional prerequisites of society. For example, to ensure that members of
society do not become extinct, a system for reproducing new members and maintaining
the health of existing members is essential. This involves role differentiation and role
assignment. Individuals must be assigned to produce food and to reproduce and care for
new members of society. In order for these essential services to be maintained,
individuals must be sufficiently motivated to perform their roles. If they were totally
apathetic, the social system would collapse through lack of effort. A system of goals and
rewards is necessary to motivate members of sociology to want to do what they have to
do in order to maintain the system. By specifying the factors which would lead to the
termination of society, Levy claims to have identified the basic requirements which must
be met if society is to survive. The problem with this approach to the specification of
functional prerequisites is its reliance on common sense and ingenuity. In the case of a
biological organism it is possible to identify basic needs since it can be shown that if these
needs are not met, the organism dies. However, societies change rather than die. As a
result it is not possible to identify unequivocally those aspects of a social system which
are indispensable to its existence. Functionalists using Levy’s approach have drawn up
lists of functional prerequisites which are often similar in content but never quite the
same.
A related approach involves the deduction of functional prerequisites from an
abstract model of the social system. For example, if society is viewed as a system, certain
survival needs can be deduced from an abstract model of a system. Any system is made
up of interconnected parts. If a system is to survive, there must be a minimum amount of
integration between its parts. There must be some degree of fit which requires an
element of mutual compatibility of the parts. From this type of analysis, the functional
prerequisites of society may be inferred. Thus any social system requires a minimum
amount of integration between its parts. From this assumption, functional analysis turns
to an examination of the parts of society to investigate how they contribute to the
integration of the social system. In this respect religion has often been seen as a powerful
mechanism for social integration. Religion is seen to reinforce the basic values of society.
Social norms which derive from these values structure and direct behaviour in the
various institutions of society. The parts of the social system are integrated in that they
are largely infused with the same basic values. Were the various institutions founded on
conflicting values, the system would tend to disintegrate. Since religion promotes and
reinforces social values, it can be seen as an integrating mechanism. But the problem of
deducing functional prerequisites such as integration from an abstract model of the social
system is that they are inferred rather than unequivocally identified.
The concept of function in functionalist analysis refers to the contribution of the
part to the whole. More specifically, the function of any part of society is the contribution
it makes to meet the functional prerequisites of the social system. Parts of society are
functional in so far as they maintain the system and contribute to its survival. Thus a
function of the family is to ensure the continuity of society by reproducing and
socializing new members. A function of religion is to integrate the social system by
reinforcing common values. Functionalists also employ the concept of dysfunction to
refer to the effects of any social institution which detract from the maintenance of society.
However, in practice they have been primarily concerned with the search for functions
and relatively little use has been made of the concept of dysfunction.
Functionalist analysis has focused on the question of how social systems are
maintained. This focus has tended to result in a positive evaluation of the parts of society.
With their concern for investigating how functional prerequisites are met, functionalists
have concentrated on functions rather than dysfunctions. This emphasis has resulted in
many institutions being seen as beneficial and useful to society. Indeed some institutions,
such as the family, religion and social stratification, have been seen as not only beneficial
but indispensable. This view has led critics to argue that functionalism has a built in
conservative bias which supports the status quo.The argument that certain social
arrangements are beneficial or indispensable provides support for their retention and
rejects proposals for radical change. Response to this criticism will be examined in a later
section. This section has presented a brief outline of some of the main features of
functionalist analysis. The following sections will consider the views of some of the major
functionalist theorists.
EMILE DURKHEIM
Critics of functionalism have often argued that it pictures the individual as having
little or no control over his own actions. Rather than constructing their own social world,
members of society appear to be directed by the system. For example, they are organized
into families and systems of stratification because society requires these social
arrangements in order to survive. Many have questioned the logic of treating society as if
it were something separate from its members, as if it shaped their actions rather than
being constructed by them. Durkheim rejects this criticism. He argues that society has a
reality of its own over and above the individuals who comprise it. Members of society are
constrained by ‘social facts’, by ‘ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the
individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him’.
Beliefs and moral codes are passed on from one generation to the next and shared by the
individuals who make up a society. From this point of view it is not the consciousness of
the individual which directs his behaviour but common beliefs and sentiments which
transcend the individual and shape his consciousness. Having established to his own
satisfaction that social facts can, at least for purposes of analysis, be treated separately

from social actors, Durkheim is free to treat society as a system which obeys its own laws.
He is now in a position to ‘seek the explanation of social life in the nature of society itself’.
Durkheim argues that there are two ways of explaining social facts. In both cases
the explanation lies in society. The first method involves determining the cause of a social
fact, of seeking to explain it origin. In Durkheim’s view, ‘The determining cause of a
social fact should be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states
of individual consciousnesses. The causes of variations in suicide rates are to be found in
social facts, in society rather than the individual. However, the explanation of a social fact
also involves an analysis of its function in society, of its contribution to ‘the general needs
of the social organism’ of its ‘function in the establishment of social order’. Durkheim
assumes that the explanation for the continuing existence of a social fact lies in its
function that is in its usefulness for society. He is at pains to point out the distinction
between cause and function. Thus the cause of the Christian religion lies in the specific
circumstances of its origin amongst a group of Jews under Roman rule. Yet its functions,
the reasons for its retention over a period of nearly 2000 years, require a different form of
explanation. Durkheim argues that ‘if the usefulness of a fact is not the cause of its
existence, it is generally necessary that it be useful in order that it might maintain itself’.
Social facts therefore continue in existence because they contribute in some way to the
maintenance of society, because they serve ‘some social end’.
Much of Durkheim’s work is concerned with functional analysis, with seeking to
understand the functions of social facts. He assumes that society has certain functional
prerequisites, the most important of which is the need for ‘social order’. Durkheim begins
with the question of how a collection of individuals can be integrated to form an ordered
society. He sees the answer in consensus, in a ‘collective conscience’ consisting of
common beliefs and sentiments. Without this consensus or agreement on fundamental
moral issues, social solidarity would be impossible and individuals could not be bound
together to form an integrated social unit. Without social obligations backed by moral
force, the cooperation and reciprocity which social life requires would be absent. If
narrow self:interest rather than mutual obligation was the guiding force, conflict and
disorder would result. In Durkheim’s words, ‘For where interest is the only ruling force
each individual finds himself in a state of war with every other’. The collective conscience
constrains individuals to act in terms of the requirements of society. Since the collective
conscience is a social fact and therefore external to the individual, it is essential that it be
impressed upon him. Thus Durkheim argues that, ‘society has to be present in the
individual’.
Durkheim’s functionalism is set in the framework of the above argument. It may
be illustrated by his analysis of the functions of religion. Social order requires that
individuals experience society within themselves realize their dependence upon it and
recognize their obligations which are fundamentally social. By symbolizing society and
so making it sacred religion meets these requirements. It makes social life possible by
expressing, maintaining and reinforcing the sentiments or values which form the
collective conscience. Social obligations are represented in sacred terms and so
transformed into religious duties. Thus Peter Berger, commenting on Durkheim’s views

notes. ‘To marry becomes a sacrament, to work becomes a duty pleasing to the gods, and
to die in war, perhaps, becomes a passport to a happier afterlife’. In symbolizing society,
religion awakens in the individual an appreciation of his reliance on society. By
recognizing his dependence on supernatural power, the individual recognizes his
dependence on society. Religion integrates the social group since those who share
religious beliefs ‘feel themselves united to each other by the simple fact that they have a
common faith’. The highly charged atmosphere of religious rituals serves to dramatize
this unity and so promotes social solidarity.In this way religion functions to meet the
essential requirements of social life. It ensures that society is ‘present with the individual’.
TALCOTT PARSONS
Today the name of Talcott Parsons is synonymous with functionalism. Over a period
of some 50 years, Parsons published numerous articles and books and during the 1940s
and 1950s he became the dominant theorist in American sociology. Like Durkheim,
Parsons begins with the question of how social order is possible. He observes that social
life is characterized by ‘mutual advantage and peaceful cooperation rather than mutual
hostility and destruction’. A large part of Parson’s sociology is concerned with explaining
how this state of affairs is accomplished. He starts with a consideration of the views of the
17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who claimed to have discovered the
basis of social order. According to Hobbes, man is directed by passion and reason. His
passions are the primary driving force, reason being employed to devise ways and means
of providing for their satisfaction. If man’s passions were allowed free reign, he would
use any means at his disposal, including force and fraud, to satisfy them. The net result
would be ‘the war of all against all’. However, fear of this outcome is generated by the
most basic of man’s passions, that of self:preservation. Guided by the desire for
self:preservation man agrees to restrain his passions, give up his liberty and enter into a
social contract with his fellows. He submits to the authority of a ruler or governing body
in return for protection against the aggression, force and fraud of others. Only because of
this sovereign power is the war of all against all prevented and security and order
established in society.
Hobbes presents a picture of man as rational, self:interested and calculating. He
forms an ordered society with his fellows through fear of the consequences if he does not.
This is very different from Durkheim’s view of man acting in response to moral
commitments and obeying social rules because he believes them to be right. Parsons
shares Durkheim’s views. He argues that Hobbes’s picture of man pursuing personal
ends and restrained only by sovereign power fails to provide an adequate explanation for
social order. Parsons believes that only a commitment to common values provides a
basis for order in society. He illustrates this point by reference to social relationships
which at first sight would appear to exemplify Hobbes’s view of man as self:interested
and calculating. He examines transactions in the market place. In a business transaction,
the parties’ concerned form a contract. In order for the conduct of business to be orderly,
it is essential that contracts be bound by a ‘system of regulatory, normative rules’. In
Parsons’s view fear of the consequences is insufficient to motivate men to obey the rules.

A moral commitment is essential. Thus rules governing business transactions must

ultimately derive from shared values which state what is just, right and proper. Order in
the economic system is therefore based on a general agreement concerning business
morality. From this agreement stem rules which define a contract as valid or invalid. For
example, a contract obtained by force or fraud is not binding. Parson argues that the
world of business, like any other part of society, is, by necessity, a moral world.
Value consensus forms the fundamental integrating principle in society. If
members of society are committed to the same values, they will tend to share a common
identity which provides a basis for unity and co:operation. From shared values derive
common goals. Values provide a general conception of what is desirable and worthwhile.
Goals provide direction in specific situations. For example, in Western society, members
of a particular workforce will share the goal of efficient production in their factory, a goal
which stems from the general value of economic productivity. A common goal provides
an incentive for cooperation. Roles provide the means whereby values and goals are
translated into action. A social institution consists of a combination of roles. For instance
a business firm is made up of a number of specialized roles which combine to further the
goals of the organization. The content of roles is structured in terms of norms which
define the rights and obligations applicable to each particular role. Norms can be seen as
specific expressions of values. Thus the norms which structure the roles of manager,
accountant, engineer, and shop:floor worker owe their content partly to the value of
economic productivity. Norms tend to ensure that role behaviour is standardized,
predictable and therefore orderly. This means that from the most general level, the central
value system, to the most specific, normative conduct, the social system is infused with
common values. This provides the basis for social order.
The importance Parsons places on value consensus has led him to state that the
main task of sociology is to analyze the ‘institutionalization of patterns of value
orientation in the social system’. When values are institutionalized and behaviour
structured in terms of them, the result is a stable system. A state of ‘social equilibrium’ is
attained, the various parts of the system being in a state of balance. There are two main
ways in which social equilibrium is maintained. The first involves socialization by means
of which society’s values are transmitted from one generation to the next and internalized
to form an integral part of individual personalities. In Western society, the family and the
education system are the major institutions concerned with this function Social
equilibrium is also maintained by the various mechanisms of social control which
discourage deviance and so maintain order in the system. The processes of socialization
and social control are fundamental to the equilibrium of the social system and therefore
to order in society.
Parsons view society as a system. He argues that any social system has four basic
functional prerequisites – adaptation, goal attainment, integration and pattern
maintenance. These can be seen as problems which society must solve if it is to survive.
The function of any part of the social system is understood as its contribution to meeting
the functional prerequisites. Solutions to the four survival problems must be

institutionalized if society is to continue in existence. In other words, solutions must be

organized in the form of ordered, stable social institutions which persist through time.
The first functional prerequisite, adaptation, refers to the relationship between the
system and its environment. In order to survive, social systems must have some degree of
control over their environment. At a minimum, food and shelter must be provided to
meet the physical needs of their members. The economy is the institution primarily
concerned with this function. Goal attainment refers to the need for all societies to set
goals towards which social activity is directed. Procedures for establishing goals and
deciding on priorities between goals are institutionalized in the form of political systems.
Governments not only set goals but allocate resources to achieve them. Even in a
so:called free enterprise system, the economy is regulated and directed by laws passed by
governments. Integration refers primarily to the ‘adjustment of conflict’. It is concerned
with the coordination and mutual adjustment of the parts of the social system. The law is
the main institution which meets this need. Legal norms define and standardize relations
between individuals and between institutions and so reduce the potential for conflict.
When conflict does arise it is settled by the judicial system and does not therefore lead to
the disintegration of the social system. Pattern maintenance refers to the maintenance of
the basic pattern of values, institutionalized in the society’. Institutions which perform
this function include the family, the educational system and religion. In Parsons’s view,
‘the values of society are rooted in religion’. Religious beliefs provide the ultimate
justification for the values of the social system. Parsons maintains that any social system
can be analyzed in terms of the functional prerequisites he identifies. Thus all parts of
society can be understood with reference to the functions they perform in the adaptation,
goal attainment, integration and pattern maintenance systems.
Functionalism has often been criticized for failing to provide an adequate
explanation for social change. If the system is in equilibrium with its various parts
contributing towards order and stability, it is difficult to see how it changes. Parsons
approaches this problem in the following way. In practice no social system is in a perfect
state of equilibrium although a certain degree of equilibrium is essential for the survival
of societies. The process of social change can therefore be pictured as a ‘moving
equilibrium’. This may be illustrated in the following way. The adaptation, goal
attainment, integration and pattern maintenance systems are interrelated. A change in
one will therefore produce responses in the others. For example, a change in the
adaptation system will result in a disturbance in the social system as a whole. The other
parts of the system will operate to return it to a state of equilibrium. In Parsons’s words,
‘Once a disturbance has been introduced into an equilibrated system there will tend to be
a reaction to this disturbance, which tends to restore the system to equilibrium’. This
reaction will lead to some degree of change, however small, in the system as a whole.
Though social systems never attain complete equilibrium, they tend towards this state.
Social change can therefore be seen as a ‘moving equilibrium’.
Parsons view social change as a process of ‘social evolution’ from simple to more
complex forms of society. He regards changes in adaptation as a major driving force of
social evolution. The history of human society from the simple hunting and gathering

band to the complex nation:state represents an increase in the ‘general adaptive capacity’
of society. As societies evolve into more complex forms, control over the environment
increases. Whilst economic changes might provide an initial stimulus, Parsons believes
that in the long run, cultural changes, that are changes in values, determine the ‘broadest
patterns of change’. For example, he argues that the structure of modern societies owes
much to values inherited from ancient Israel and classical Greece. Social evolution
involves a process of social differentiation. The institutions and roles which form the
social system become increasingly differentiated and specialized in terms of their
function. Thus religious institutions become separated from the state, the family and the
economy become increasingly differentiated, each specializing in fewer functions. This
produces a problem of integration. As the parts of society become more and more
specialized and distinct, it becomes increasingly difficult to integrate them in terms of
common values. This problem is solved by the generalizing of values with reference to
religion. Values become more general and diffuse, less specific and particular. In Western
society, for example, the highly generalized values of universalism and achievement can
be applied to all members of society despite the wide variation in their roles. Universal
standards of achievement are generally accepted and provide the basis for differential
reward and role allocation. Thus despite increasing social differentiation, social
integration and order are maintained by the generalizing of values. Parsons admits that
his views on social evolution represent little more than a beginning. However, they do
offer a possible solution to the problem of explaining social change from a functionalist
perspective.
ROBERT K.MERTON
In a closely reasoned essay, originally published in 1949, the American

sociologist Robert K. Merton attempts to refine and develop functionalist analysis. He
singles out three related assumptions which have been employed by many functionalists
and questions their utility. The first he terms the ‘postulate of the functional unity of
society’. This assumption states that any part of the social system is functional for the
entire system. All parts of society are seen to work together for the maintenance and
integration of society as a whole. Merton argues that particularly in complex, highly
differentiated societies, this ‘functional unity’ is doubtful. He provides the example of
religious pluralism to illustrate this point. In a society with a variety of faiths, religion
may tend to divide rather than unite. Merton argues that functional unity is a matter of
degree. Its extent must be determined by investigation rather than simply beginning with
the assumption that it exists. The idea of functional unity implies that a change in one
part of the system will automatically result in a change in other parts. Again Merton
argues that this is a matter for investigation. It should not simply be assumed at the
outset. He suggests that in highly differentiated societies, institutions may well have a
high degree of ‘functional societies, institutions may well have a high degree of
‘functional autonomy’. Thus a change in a particular institution may have little or no
effect on others.
Merton refers to the second assumption as the ‘postulate of universal
functionalism’. This assumption states that ‘all standardized social or cultural forms have
positive functions’. Merton argues that the assumption that every aspect of the social
system performs a positive function is not only premature, it may well be incorrect. He
suggests that functionalist analysis should proceed from the assumption that any part of
society may be functional, dysfunctional or non:functional. In addition, the units for
which a particular part is functional, dysfunctional or non:functional must be clearly
specified. These units may be individuals, groups or society as a whole. Thus poverty
may be seen as dysfunctional for the poor but functional for the non:poor and for society
as a whole. Merton suggests that the postulate of universal functionalism should be
replaced by ‘the provisional assumption that persisting cultural forms have a net balance
of functional consequences either for the society considered as a unit or for subgroups
sufficiently powerful to retain these forms intact, by means of direct coercion or indirect
persuasion’.
Merton’s third criticism is directed towards the ‘postulate of indispensability’. This
assumption states that certain institutions or social arrangement are indispensable to
society. Functionalists have often seen religion in this light. For example Davis and
Moore claim that religion ‘plays a unique and indispensable part in society’. Merton
questions the assumption of indispensability arguing that the same functional
prerequisites may be met by a range of alternative institutions. Thus there is no
justification for assuming that institutions such as the family, religion and social
stratification are a necessary part of all history societies. To replace the idea of
indispensability, Merton suggests the concept of ‘functional equivalents’ or ‘functional
alternatives’. From this point of view, a political ideology such as communism can
provide a functional alternative to religion. It can meet the same functional prerequisites
as religion. However, Merton is still left with the problem of actually identifying
functional prerequisites.
Merton argues that the postulates of the functional unity of society, universal
functionalism and indispensability are little more than articles of faith. They are matters
for investigation and should not form prior assumptions. Merton claims that his
framework for functionalist analysis removes the charge that functionalism is
ideologically based. He argues that the parts of society should be analyzed in terms of
their ‘effects’ or ‘consequences’ on society as a whole and on individuals and groups
within society. Since these effects can be functional, dysfunctional or non:functional,
Merton claims that the value judgment present in the assumption that all parts of the
system are functional is therefore removed.
Functionalism : a critique
Functionalism has been subjected to considerable criticism. Part of this criticism is

directed to the logic of functionalist inquiry. In particular, it is argued that the type of
explanation employed is teleological. A teleological explanation states that the parts of a
system exist because of their beneficial consequences for the system as a whole. The main
objection to this type of reasoning is that it treats an effect as a cause. Thus Davis and
Moore’s theory of stratification outlines the positive effects or functions of social
stratification and then proceeds to argue that these effects explain its origin. But an effect

cannot explain a cause since causes must always precede effects. Therefore the effects of
stratification cannot occur until a system of social stratification has already been
established. It may be argued that members of society unconsciously respond to social
needs and so create the institutions necessary for the maintenance of society. However,
there is no evidence of the existence of such unconscious motivations.
Functionalism is on stronger logical ground when it argues that the continued
existence of an institution may be explained in terms of its effects. Thus once an
institution has originated, it continues to exist if it has, on balance, beneficial effects on
the system. But there are problems with this type of explanation. It is extremely difficult
to establish that the net effect of any institution is beneficial to society. Knowledge of all
its effects would be required in order to weigh the balance of functions and dysfunctions.
As the debate on the functional merits and demerits of stratification indicates, there is
little evidence that such knowledge is forthcoming. The problems involved in assessing
the effects of a social institution may be illustrated in terms of the analogy between
society and a physical organism. Biologists are able to show that certain parts of an
organism make positive contributions to its maintenance since if those parts stopped
functioning life would cease. Since societies change rather than die, sociologists are
unable to apply similar criteria. In addition standards exist in biology for assessing the
health of an organism. In terms of these standards, the contribution of the various parts
can be judged. There are no comparable standards for assessing the ‘health’ of a society.
For these reasons there are problems with the argument that a social institution continues
to exist because, on balance, its effects are beneficial to society.
Functionalists such as Parsons who see the solution to the prom of social order in
terms of value consensus have been strongly criticized. Firstly, their critics argue that
consensus is assumed rather than shown to exist Research has failed to unequivocally
reveal a widespread commitment to the various sets of values which are seen to
characterize Western society. Secondly, the stability of society may owe more to the
absence rather than the presence of value consensus. For example a lack of commitment
to the value of achievement by those at the bottom of stratification systems may serve to
stabilize society. Thus Michael Mann argues that in a society where members compete
for unequal rewards, ‘cohesion results precisely because there is no common commitment
to core values’. If all members of society were strongly committed to the value of
achievement, the failure in terms of this value of those at the base of the stratification
system may well produce disorder. Thirdly, consensus in and of itself will not
necessarily result in social order. In fact it may produce the opposite result. As Pierre van
den Bergh notes, ‘consensus on norms such as extreme competition and individualistic
laissez:faire, or suspicion and treachery……or malevolence and resort to witchcraft is
hardly conducive to social solidarity and integration’. Therefore the content of values
rather than value consensus as such can be seen as the crucial factor with respect to social
order.
Functionalism has been criticized for what many see as its deterministic view of
human action. Its critics have argued that in terms of functionalist theory, human
behaviour is portrayed as determined by the system. In particular, the social system has

needs and the behaviour of its members is shaped to meet these needs. Rather than
creating the social world in which he lives, man is seen as a creation of the system. Thus
David Walsh argues that Parsons treats human action ‘as determined by the
characteristics of the system per se’. By means of socialization man is programmed in
terms of the norms and values of the social system. He is kept on the straight and narrow
by mechanisms of social control which exist to fulfill the requirements of the system. His
actions are structured in terms of social roles which are designed to meet the functional
prerequisites of society. Man is pictured as an automaton, programmed, directed and
controlled by the system. Walsh rejects this view of man. Arguing from a
phenomenological perspective, he claims that man actively constructs his own social
world rather than being shaped by a social system which is somehow external to his
being. Walsh maintains that the concept of a social system represents a ‘reification’ of the
social world. Functionalists have converted social reality into a natural system external to
social actors. In doing so they have translated the social world into something that it is
not. They have tended to portray the social system as the active agent whereas, in reality,
only human beings act.
Critics of functionalism have argued that it tends to ignore coercion and conflict.
For example, Alvin Gouldner states, ‘While stressing the importance of the ends and
values that men pursue, Parsons never asks whose ends and values these are. Are they
pursuing their own ends or those imposed upon them by others?’ Few functionalists give
serious consideration to the possibility that some groups in society, acting in terms of
their own particular interests, dominate others. From this point of view social order is
imposed by the powerful and value consensus is merely a legitimation of the position of
the dominant group. In his criticism of one of Parsons’s major works – The Social System
– David Lockwood argues that Parsons’s approach is ‘highly selective in its focus on the
role of the normative order in the stabilization of social systems’. In focusing on the
contribution of norms and values to social order Parsons largely fails to recognize the
conflicts of interest which tend to produce instability and disorder. Lockwood argues that
since all social systems involve competition for scarce resources, conflicts of interest are
built into society. Conflict is not simply a minor strain in the system which is contained
by value consensus. Instead it is a central and integral part of the system itself.
Lockwood’s view of society is strongly influenced by Marxian theory which forms the
subject of the following section.
Marxism :
Marx regards man as both the producer and the product of society. Man makes
society and himself by his own actions. History is therefore the process of man’s
self:creation. Yet man is also a product of society. He is shaped by the social relationships
and systems of thought which he creates. An understanding of society therefore involves
an historical perspective which examines the process whereby man both produces and is
produced by social reality. A society forms a totality and can only be understood as such.
The various parts of society are interconnected and influence each other. Thus economic,
political, legal and religious institutions can only be understood in terms of their mutual
effect. Economic factors, however, exert the primary influence and largely shape other

aspects of society. The history of history society is a process of tension and conflict. Social
change is not a smooth, orderly progression which gradually unfolds in harmonious
evolution. Instead it proceeds from contradictions built into society which are a source of
tension and ultimately the source of open conflict and radical change.
It is often argued that Marx’s view of history is based on the idea of the dialectic.
From this viewpoint any process of change involves tension between incompatible forces.
Dialectical movement therefore represents a struggle of opposites, a conflict of
contradictions. Conflict provides the dynamic principle, the source of change. The
struggle between incompatible forces grows in intensity until there is a final collision. The
result is a sudden leap forward which creates a new set of forces on a higher level of
development. The dialectical process then begins again as the contradictions between this
new set of forces interact and conflict, and propel change. The idea of dialectical change
was developed by the German philosopher Hegel. He applied it to the history of human
society and in particular to the realm of ideas. Hegel saw historical change as a dialectical
movement of men’s ideas and thoughts. He believed that society is essentially an
expression of these thoughts. Thus in terms of the dialectic, conflict between incompatible
ideas produces new concepts which provide the basis for social change. Marx rejects the
priority Hegel gives to thoughts and ideas. He argues that the source of change lies in
contradictions in the economic system in particular and in society in general. As a result
of the priority he gives to economic factors, to ‘material life’, Marx’s view of history is
often referred to as ‘dialectical materialism’. Since men’s ideas are primarily a reflection
of the social relationships of economic production, they do not provide the main source of
change. It is in contradictions and conflict in the economic system that the major dynamic
for social change lies. Since all parts of society are interconnected, however, it is only
through a process of interplay between these parts that change occurs.
History begins when men actually produce their means of subsistence, when they
begin to control nature. At a minimum this involves the production of food and shelter.
Marx argues that, ‘The first historical act is, therefore, the production of material life’.
Production is a social enterprise since it requires cooperation. Men must work together to
produce the goods and services necessarily for life. From the social relationships involved
in production develops a ‘mode of life’ which can be seen as an expression of these
relationships. This mode of life shapes man’s nature. In Marx’s words, ‘As individuals
express their life so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production,
with what they produce and how they produce it’. Thus the nature of man and the nature
of society as a whole derive primarily from the production of material life.
The major contradictions which propel change are found in the economic
infrastructure of society. At the dawn of human history, when man supposedly lived in a
state of primitive communism, those contradictions did not exist. The forces of
production and the products of labour were communally owned. Since each member of
society produced both for himself and for society as a whole, there were no conflicts of
interest between individuals and groups. However, with the emergence of private
property, and in particular, private ownership of the forces of production, the
fundamental contradiction of human society was created. Through its ownership of the

forces of production, a minority is able to control command and enjoy the fruits of the
labour of the majority. Since one group gains at the expense of the other, a conflict of
interest exists between the minority who own the forces of production and the majority
who perform productive labour.The tension and conflict generated by this contradiction
is the major dynamic of social change.
For long periods of history, men are largely unaware of the contradictions which
beset their societies. This is because man’s consciousness, his view of reality, is largely
shaped by the social relationships involved in the process of production. Marx maintains
that, ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary
their social being determines their consciousness’. The primary aspect of man’s social
being is the social relationships he enters into for the production of material life. Since
these relationships are largely reproduced in terms of ideas, concepts, laws and religious
beliefs, they are seen as normal and natural. Thus when the law legitimizes the rights of
private property, when religious beliefs justify economic arrangements and the dominant
concepts of the age define them as natural and inevitable, men will be largely unaware of
the contradictions they contain. In this way the contradictions within the economic
infrastructure are compounded by the contradiction between man’s consciousness and
objective reality. This consciousness is false. It presents a distorted picture of reality since
it fails to reveal the basic conflicts of interest which exist in the world which man has
created. For long periods of time man is at most vaguely aware of these contradictions,
yet even a vague awareness produces tension. This tension will ultimately find full
expression and be resolved in the process of dialectical change.
The course of human history involves a progressive development of the forces of
production, a steady increase in man’s control over nature. This is paralleled by a
corresponding increase in man’s alienation, an increase which reaches its height in
capitalist society. Alienation is a situation in which the creations of man appear to him as
alien objects. They are seen an independent from their creator and invested with the
power to control him. Man creates his own society but will remain alienated until he
recognizes himself within his creation. Until that time he will assign an independent
existence to objects, ideas and institutions and be controlled by them. In the process he
loses himself, he becomes a stranger in the world he has created, he becomes alienated.
Religion provides an example of man’s alienation. In Marx’s view, ‘Man makes religion,
religion does not make man’. However, members of society fail to recognize that religion
is of their own making. They assign to the gods an independent power, a power in
religion, the more he loses himself. In Marx’s words, ‘The more man puts into God, the
less he retains of himself’. In assigning his own powers to supernatural beings, man
becomes alienated from himself. Religion appears as an external force controlling man’s
destiny whereas, in reality, it is man:made. Religion, though, is a reflection of a more
fundamental source of alienation. It is essentially a projection of the social relationships
involved in the process of production. If man is to find himself and abolish the illusions
of religion, he must ‘abandon a condition which requires illusions’. He must therefore
eradicate the source of alienation in the economic infrastructure.

In Marx’s view, productive labour is the primary, most vital human activity. In
the production of objects man ‘objectifies’ himself, he expresses and externalizes his
being. If the objects of man’s creation come to control his being, then man loses himself in
the object. The act of production then results in man’s alienation. This occurs when man
regards the products of his labour as commodities, as articles for sale in the market place.
The objects of his creation are then seen to control his existence. They are seen to be
subject to impersonal forces, such as the law of supply and demand, over which man has
little or no control. In Marx’s words, ‘the object that labour produces, its product,
confronts it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer’. In this way man
is estranged from the object he produces, he becomes alienated from the most vital
human activity, productive labour.
Alienation reaches its height in capitalist society where labour is dominated by the
requirements of capital, the most important of which is the demand for profit. These
requirements determine levels of employment and wages, the nature and quantity of
goods produced and their method of manufacture. The worker sees himself as a prisoner
of market forces over which he has no control. He is subject to the impersonal
mechanisms of the law of supply and demand. He is at the mercy of the periodic booms
and slumps which characteristic capitalist economies. The worker therefore loses control
over the objects he produces and becomes alienated from his product and the act of
production. His work becomes a means to an end, a means of obtaining money to buy the
goods and services necessary for his existence. Unable to fulfill his being in the products
of his labour, the worker becomes alienated from himself in the act of production.
Therefore the more the worker produces, the more he loses himself. In Marx’s words, ‘the
greater this product the less he is himself’.
In Marx’s view, the market forces which are seen to control production are not
impersonal mechanisms beyond the control of man, they are man:made. Alienation is
therefore the result of human activity rather than external forces with an existence
independent of man. If the products of labour are alien to the worker, they must therefore
belong to somebody. Thus Marx argues that, ‘The alien being to whom the labour and the
product of the labour belongs, whom the labour serves and who enjoys its product, can
only be man himself. If the product of labour does not belong to the worker but stands
over against him as an alien power, this is only possible in that it belongs to another man
apart from the worker’. This man is the capitalist who owns and controls the forces of
production and the products of labour, who appropriates for himself the wealth that
labour produces. Alienation therefore springs not from impersonal market forces but
from relationships between men. An end to alienation thus involves a radical change in
the pattern of these relationships. This will come when the contradiction between man’s
consciousness and objective reality is resolved. Then man will realize that the situation in
which he finds himself is man:made and therefore subject to change by human action.
Given the priority Marx assigns to economic factors, an end to alienation involves
a radical change in the economic infrastructure. In particular, it requires the abolition of
private property and its replacement by communal ownership of the forces of production
that is the replacement of capitalism by communism. Marx saw communism as ‘the

positive abolition of private property and thus of human self:alienation and therefore the
real re:appropriation of the human essence by and for man. This is communism as the
complete and conscious return of man himself as a social that is human being’. In
communist society conflicts of interest will disappear and antagonistic groups such as
capitalists and workers will be a thing of the past. The products of labour will no longer
be appropriated by some at the expense of others. With divisions in society eradicated;
man will be at one with his fellows, a truly social being. As such he will not lose himself
in the products of his labour.He will produce both for himself and others at one and the
same time. In this situation ‘each of us would have doubly affirmed himself and his
fellow man’. Since he is at one with his fellows, the products of man’s labour in which he
objectifies himself will not result in the loss of self. In productive labour each member of
society contributes to the well:being of all and so expresses both his individual and social
being. The objects which he produces are owned and controlled at once by himself and
his fellow man.
In Marx’s view man is essentially a social being. He writes that, ‘society does not
consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of inter:relations, the relations within which
these individuals stand’. An understanding of human history therefore involves an
examination of these relationships, the most important of which are the relations of
production. Apart from the communities based on primitive communism at the dawn of
history, all societies are divided into social groups known as classes. The relationship
between classes is one of antagonism and conflict. Throughout history opposing classes
have stood in ‘constant opposition to one another, carried on an in interrupted, now
hidden, now open fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstruction of
society at large, or in the common ruin of contending classes’. Class conflict forms the
basis of the dialectic of social change. In Marx’s view, ‘The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of the class struggle’.
Class divisions’ result from the differing relationships of members of society to the
forces of production. The structure of all societies may be represented in terms of a
simplified two class model consisting of a ruling and subject class. The ruling class owes
its dominance and power to its ownership and control of the forces of production. The
subjection and relative powerlessness of the subject class is due to its lack of ownership
and therefore lack of control of the forces of production. The conflict of interest between
the two classes stems from the fact that productive labour is performed by the subject
class yet a large part of the wealth so produced is appropriated by the ruling class. Since
one class gains at the expense of another, the interests of their members are incompatible.
The classes stand opposed as exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed.
The labour of the subject class takes on the character of ‘forced labour’. Since its
members lack the necessary means to produce for themselves they are forced to work for
others. Thus during the feudal era, landless serfs were forced to work for the landowning
nobility in order to gain a livelihood. In the capitalist era, the means necessary to
produce goods – tools, machinery, raw materials and so on – are owned by the capitalist
class. In order to exist, members of the proletariat are forced to sell their labour power in

return for wages. Ownership of the forces of production therefore provides the basis for
ruling class dominance and control of labour.
Members of both social classes are largely unaware of the true nature of their
situation, of the reality of the relationship between ruling and subject classes. Members
of the ruling class assume that their particular interests are those of society as a whole,
members of the subject class accept this view of reality and regard their situation as part
of the natural order of things. This false consciousness is due to the fact that the
relationships of dominance and subordination in the economic infrastructure are largely
reproduced in the superstructure of society. In Marx’s words, the relations or production
constitute ‘the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures and to
which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in
material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual
processes of life’. Ruling class dominance is confirmed and legitimated in legal statutes,
religious proscriptions and political legislation. The consciousness of all members of
society is infused with ruling class ideology which proclaims the essential rightness,
normality and inevitability of the status quo.
While the superstructure may stabilize society and contain its contradictions over
long periods of time, this situation cannot be permanent. The fundamental contradictions
of class societies will eventually find expression and will finally be resolved by the
dialectic of historical change. A radical change in the structure of society occurs when a
class is transformed from a ‘class in itself’ to a ‘class for itself’. A class in itself refers to
members of society who share the same objective relationships to the forces of
production. Thus, as wage labourers, members of the proletariat form a class in itself.
However, a class only becomes a class for itself when its members are fully conscious of
the true nature of their situation, when they are fully aware of their common interests and
common enemy, when they realize that only by concerted action can they over:throw
their oppressors, and when they unite and take positive, practical steps to do so. When a
class becomes a class for itself, the contradiction between the consciousness of its
members and the reality f their situation is ended.
A class becomes a class for itself when the forces of production have developed to
the point where they cannot be contained within the existing relations of production. In
Marx’s words, ‘For an oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself, it is essential that
the existing forces of production and the existing social relations should be incapable of
standing side by side’. Revolutionary change requires that the forces of production on
which the new order will be based have developed in the old society. Therefore the ‘new
higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their
existence have matured in the womb of the old society’. This process may be illustrated
by the transition from feudal to capitalist society. Industrial capitalism gradually
developed within the framework of feudal society. In order to develop fully, it required,
‘the free wage labourer who sells his labour:power to capital’. This provides a mobile
labour force which can be hired and fired at will and so efficiently utilized as a
commodity in the service of capital. However, the feudal relations of production, which
involved ‘landed property with serf labour chained to it’, tended to prevent the

development of wage labourers. Eventually the forces of production of capitalism gained

sufficient strength and impetus to lead to the destruction of the feudal system. At this
point the rising class, the bourgeoisie, became a class for itself and its members united to
overthrow the feudal relations of production. When they succeeded the contradiction
between the new forces of production and the old relations of production was resolved.
Once a new economic order is established, the superstructure of the previous era is
rapidly transformed. The contradiction between the new infrastructure and the old
superstructure is now ended. Thus the political dominance of the feudal aristocracy was
replaced by the power of the newly enfranchised bourgeoisie. The dominant concepts of
feudalism such as loyalty and honour were replaced by the new concepts of freedom and
equality. In terms of the new ideology the wage labourer of capitalist society is free to
sell his labour power to the highest bidder. The relationship between employer and
employee is defined as a relationship between equals, the exchange of labour for wages
as an exchange of equivalents. But the resolution of old contradictions does not
necessarily mean an end to contradictions in society. As in previous eras, the transition
from feudalism to capitalism merely results in the replacement of an old set of
contradictions by a new.
The predicted rise of the proletariat is not strictly analogous with the rise of the
bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie formed a privileged minority of industrialists, merchants
and financiers who forged new forces of production within feudal society. The proletariat
forms an unprivileged majority which does not create new forces of production within
capitalist society. Marx believed, however, that the contradictions of capitalism were
sufficient to transform the proletariat into a class for itself and bring about the downfall of
the bourgeoisie. He saw the magnitude of these contradictions and the intensity of class
conflict steadily increasing as capitalism developed. Thus there is a steady polarization of
the two major classes as the intermediate strata are submerged into the proletariat. As
capital accumulates, it is concentrated more and more into fewer hands, a process
accompanied by the relative pauperization of the proletariat. Production assumes in
increasingly social and cooperative character as larger and larger groups of workers are
concentrated in factories. At the same time the wealth produced by labour is
appropriated by fewer and fewer individuals as greater competition drives all but the
larger companies out of business. Such processes magnify and illuminate the
contradictions of capitalism and increase the intensity of conflict. It is only a matter of
time before members of the proletariat recognize that the reality of their situation is the
alienation of labour. This awareness will lead the proletariat to ‘a revolt to which it is
forced by the contradiction between its humanity and its situation, which is an open,
clear and absolute negation of its humanity’.
The communist society which Marx predicted would arise from the ruins of
capitalism will begin with a transitional phase, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’. Once
the communist system has been fully established, the reason for being of the dictatorship
and therefore its existence will end. Bourgeois society represents ‘the closing chapter of
the prehistoric stage of human society’. The communist society of the new era is without

classes, without contradictions. The dialectical principle now ceases to operate. The
contradictions of human history have now been negated in a final harmonious synthesis.
Judging from the constant reinterpretations, impassioned defenses and vehement
criticisms of Marx’s work, his ideas are as alive and relevant today as they ever were.
Many of his critics have argued that history has failed to substantiate Marx’s views on the
direction of social change. Thus they claim that class conflict, far from growing in
intensity, has become institutionalized in advanced capitalist society. They see little
indication of the proletariat becoming a class for itself. Rather than a polarization of
classes, they argue that the class structure of capitalist society has become increasingly
complex and differentiated. In particular, a steadily growing middle class has emerged
between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Turning to communist society, critics have
argued that history has not borne out the promise of communism contained in Marx’s
writings. Significant social inequalities are present in communist regimes and there are
few, if any, signs of a movement towards equality.The dictatorship of the proletariat cling
stubbornly to power and there is little indication of its eventual disappearance. Particular
criticism has been directed towards the priority that Marx assigns to economic factors in
his explanation of social structure and social change.
Max Weber’s study of ascetic Protestantism argued that religious beliefs provided
the ethics, attitudes and motivations for the development of capitalism. Since ascetic
Protestantism preceded the advent of capitalism, Webber maintained that at certain times
and places aspects of the superstructure can play a primary role in directing change. The
priority given to economic factors has also been criticized by elite theorists who have
argued that control of the machinery of government rather than ownership of the forces
of production provides the basis for power. They point to the example of communist
societies where, despite the fact that the forces of production are communally owned,
power is largely monopolized by political and bureaucratic elite.
Critics have often rejected Marxism on this basis though they admit that the charge
of economic determination is more applicable to certain of Marx’s followers than to Marx
himself. It is possible to select numerous quotations from Marx’s writings which support
the views of his critics. In terms of these quotations, history can be presented as a
mechanical process directed by economic forces which follow ‘iron laws’. Man is
compelled to act in terms of the constraints imposed by the economy and passively
responds to impersonal forces rather than actively constructing his own history. Thus the
proletariat is ‘compelled’ by its economic situation to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The
contradictions in the capitalist infrastructure will inevitably result in its destruction. The
superstructure is ‘determined’ by the infrastructure and man’s consciousness is shaped
by economic forces independent of his will and beyond his control. In this way Marx can
be presented as a crude positivist who sees causation solely in terms of economic forces.
On closer examination, however, Marx’s writings prove more subtle and less
dogmatic than many of his critics have suggested. Marx rejects a simplistic,
one:directional view of causation. Although he gives priority to economic factors, they
form only one aspect of the dialectic of history. From this perspective the economy is the
primary but not the sole determinant of social change. The idea of the dialectic involves
interplay between the various parts of society. It rejects the view of unidirectional
causation proceeding solely from economic factors. Instead it argues that the various
parts of society are interrelated in terms of their mutual effect. Marx described the
economic infrastructure as the ‘ultimately determinant element in history’. Yet he added
that, ‘if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only
determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract and
senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the
superstructure ….also exert their influence upon the course of the historical struggle and
in many cases preponderate in determining their form’. Thus the various aspects of the
superstructure have a certain degree of autonomy and parts to play in influencing the
course of history.They are not automatically and mechanically determined by the
infrastructure.
Marx consistently argued that ‘man makes his own history’. The history of human
society is not the product of impersonal forces; it is the result of man’s purposive activity.
In Marx’s view, ‘It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving – as if it were
an individual person – its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit
of their ends’. Since men make society only men can change society. Radical change
results from a combination of consciousness of reality and direct action. Thus members of
the proletariat must be fully aware of their situation and take active steps in order to
change it. Although a successful revolution depends ultimately on the economic
situation, it requires human initiative. Men must make their own utopia.
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Symbolic interactionism, usually referred to as interactionism in the main part of

the text, is a distinctly American branch of sociology. It developed from the work of a
group of American philosophers who included John Dewey, William I.Thomas and
George Herbert Mead. It is sometimes described as a phenomenological perspective
because of its emphasis on the actor’s views and interpretations is concerned with ‘the
“inner” or phenomenological aspects of history behaviour’.However,it developed
separately from the phenomenological tradition in European philosophy and differs in
certain respects from sociological perspectives which are more closely linked to that
tradition. Of the various philosophers who contributed to the growth of symbolic
interactionism, George Herbert Mead is usually regarded as the major figure.
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD (1863:1931).
In Mead’s view, human thought, experience and conduct are essentially social. They
owe their nature to the fact that human beings interact in terms of symbols, the most
important of which are contained in language. A symbol does not simply stand for an
object or event: it defines them in a particular way and indicates a response to them. Thus
the symbol ‘chair’ not only represents a class of objects and defines them as similar; it also
indicates a line of action that is the action of sitting. Symbols impose particular meanings
on objects and events and in doing so largely exclude other possible meanings. For
example, chairs may be made out of metal, cane or wood on this basis be defined as very
different objects. However such differences are rendered insignificant by the fact that
they are all categorized in terms of the symbol ‘chair’. Similarly, chairs can be stood on,
used as a source of fuel or as a means for assaulting another but the range of possible
activities that could be associated with chairs is largely excluded by the course of action
indicated by the symbol ‘chair’. Symbols provide the means whereby man can interact
meaningfully with his natural and social environment. They are man:made and refer not
to the intrinsic nature of objects and events but to the ways in which men perceive them.
Without symbols there would be no human interaction and no human sociology.
Symbolic interaction is necessary since man has no instincts to direct his behaviour.He is
not genetically programmed to react automatically to particular stimuli. In order to
survive he must therefore construct and live within a world of meaning. For example he
must classify the natural environment into categories of food and non:food in order to
meet basic nutritional requirements. In this way men both define stimuli and their
response to them. Thus when hunters on the African savannah categorize antelope as a
source of food, they define what is significant in the natural environment and their
response to it. Via symbols, meaning is imposed on the world of nature and human
interaction with that world is thereby made possible.
Social life can only proceed if the meanings of symbols are largely shared by
members of society. If this were not the case meaningful communication would be
impossible. However, common symbols provide only the means by which human
interaction can be accomplished. In order for interaction to proceed each person involved
must interpret the meanings and intentions of others. This is made possible by the
existence of common symbols, but actually accomplished by means of a process which
Mead terms ‘role:taking’. The process of role:taking involves the individual taking on the
role of another by imaginatively placing himself in the position of the person with whom
he is interacting. For example, if he observes another smiling, crying waving his hand or
shaking his fist, he will put himself in that person’s position in order to interpret his
intention and meaning. On the basis of this interpretation he will make his response to
the action of the other. Thus if he observes someone shaking his fist, he may interpret this
gesture as an indication of aggression but his interpretation will not automatically lead to
a particular response. He may ignore the gesture, respond in kind, and attempt to defuse
the situation with a joke and so on. The person with whom he is interacting will then take
his role, interpret his response and either continue or close the interaction on the basis of
this interpretation. In this respect human interaction can be seen as a continuous process
of interpretation with each taking the role of the other.
Mead argues that through the process of role:taking the individual develops a
concept of ‘self’. By placing himself in the position of others he is able to look back upon
himself. Mead claims that the idea of a self can only develop if the individual can ‘get
outside himself (experientially) in such a way as to become an object to himself’. To do
this he must observe himself from the standpoint of others. Therefore the origin and
development of a concept of self lies in the ability to take the role of another. The notion
of self is not inborn, it is learned during childhood. Mead sees two main stages in its
development. The first, known as the ‘play stage’, involves the child playing roles which

are not his own. For example the child may play at being mother or father, a doctor or a
nurse. In doing so he becomes aware that there is a difference between himself and the
role that he is playing. Thus the idea of a self is developed as the child takes the role of
make:believe other. The second stage in the development of self is known as the ‘game
stage’. In playing a game, the child comes to see himself from the perspective of the
various participants. In order to play a game such as football or cricket, the child must
become aware of his relationship to the other players. He must place himself in their roles
in order to appreciate his particular role in the game. In doing so he sees himself in terms
of the collective viewpoint of the other players. In Mead’s terminology he sees himself
from the perspective of ‘the generalized other’.
In Mead’s view, the development of a consciousness of self is an essential part of the
process of becoming a human being. It provides the basis for thought and action and the
foundation for human society. Without an awareness of self, the individual could not
direct action or respond to the actions of others. Only by acquiring a concept of self can
the individual take the role of self. In this way thought is possible since in Mead’s view,
the process of thinking is simply an ‘inner conversation’. Thus unless the individual is
aware of a self, he would be unable to converse with himself and thought would be
impossible. By becoming ‘self:conscious’, he can direct his own action by thought and
deliberation. He can set goals for himself, plan future action and consider the
consequences of alternative courses of action. With an awareness of self, the individual is
able to see himself as others see him. When he takes the role of others, he observes
himself from that standpoint and becomes aware of the views of himself that others hold.
This provides the basis for cooperative action in society. The individual will become
aware of what is expected of him and will tend to modify his actions accordingly. He will
be conscious of the general attitudes of the community and judge and evaluate himself in
terms of this generalized other. From this perspective thought becomes ‘an inner
conversation going on between this generalized other and the individual’. Thus a person
is constantly asking what will people think and expect when he reflects upon himself. In
this way conduct is regulated in terms of the expectations and attitudes of others. Mead
argues that, ‘It is in the form of the generalized other that the social process influences the
behaviour of the individuals involved in it…..that the community exercises control over
the conduct of its individual members’.
Mead’s view of human interaction sees man as both actively creating the social
environment and being shaped by it. The individual initiates and directs his own action
while at the same time being influenced by the attitudes and expectations of others in the
form of the generalized other. The individual and society are regarded as inseparable for
the individual can only become a human being in a social context. In this context he
develops a sense of self which is a prerequisite for thought. He learns to take the roles of
others which is essential both for the development of self and for cooperative action.
Without communication in terms of symbols whose meanings are shared, these processes
would not be possible. Man therefore lives in a world of symbols which give meaning
and significance to life and provide the basis for human interaction.

HERBERT BLUMER
Blumer, a student of George Herbert Mead, has systematically developed the

ideas of his mentor. In Blumer’s view, symbolic interactionism rests on three basic
premises. Firstly, human beings act on the basis of meanings which they give to objects
and events rather than simply reacting either to external stimuli such as social forces or
internal stimuli such as organic drives. Symbolic interactionism therefore rejects both
societal and biological determinism. Secondly, meanings arise from the process of
interaction rather than simply being present at the outset and shaping future action. To
some degree meanings are created, modified, developed and changed within interaction
situations rather than being fixed and preformed. In the process of interaction actors do
not slavishly follow preset norms or mechanically act out established roles. Thirdly,
meanings are the result of interpretive procedures employed by actors within interaction
contexts. By taking the role of the other, actors interpret the meanings and intentions of
others. By means of ‘the mechanism of self:interaction’, individuals modify or change
their definition of the situation, rehearse alternative courses of action and consider their
possible consequences. Thus the meanings that guide action arise in the context of
interaction via a series of complex interpretive procedures.
Blumer argues that the interactionist perspective contrasts sharply with the view of
social action presented by mainstream sociology. He maintains that society must be seen
as an ongoing process of interaction, involving actors who are constantly adjusting to one
another and continuously interpreting the situation. By contrast, mainstream sociology
and functionalism in particular have tended to portray action as a mechanical response to
the constraints of social systems. This view fails to see ‘the social actions of individuals in
human society as being constructed by them through a process of interpretation. Instead
action is treated as a product of factors which play on and through individuals’. Rather
than actively creating his own social world, man is pictured as passively responding to
external constraints. His actions are shaped by the needs of social systems and the values,
roles and norms which form a part of those systems. Blumer rejects this view arguing
that, ‘the likening of human group life to the operation of a mechanical structure, or to the
functioning of a system seeking equilibrium, seems to me to face grave difficulties in
view of the formative and explorative character of interaction as the participants judge
each other and guide their own acts by that judgment’.
Although he is critical of those who see action as a predictable and standardized
response to external constraints, Blumer accepts that action is to some degree structured
and routinized.He states that, ‘In most situations in which people act towards one
another they have in advance a firm understanding of how to act and how other people
will act’. However, such knowledge offers only general guidelines for conduct. It does
not provide a precise and detailed recipe for action which is mechanically followed in
every situation. Within these guidelines there is considerable room for manoeuvre,
negotiation, mutual adjustment and interpretation. Similarly, Blumer recognizes the
existence of social institutions and admits that they place limits on human conduct, but
even in situations where strict rules prevail, there is still considerable room for human
initiative and creativity. Evidence in support of this view is presented in the chapter on
organizations and bureaucracy. Even when action appears particularly standardized and
structured, this should not be taken as an indication that actors are merely responding to
external forces.Blumer argues that, ‘The common repetitive behaviour of people in such
situations should not mislead the student into believing that no process of interpretation
is in play; on the contrary, even though fixed, the actions of the participating people are
constructed by them through a process of interpretation’. Thus standardized action is
constructed by social actors, not by social systems.
Much of Blumer’s work has been concerned with developing an appropriate
methodology for his view foreign history interaction. He rejects what he regards as the
simplistic attempts to establish causal relationships which characterize positivist’s
methodology. As an example, Blumer refers to the proposition that industrialization
causes the replacement of extended with nuclear families. He objects to the procedure of
isolating variables and assuming one causes the other with little or no reference to the
actor’s view of the situation. He argues that data on the meanings and interpretations
which actors give to the various facets of industrialization and family life are essential
before a relationship can be established between the two factors. Blumer claims that
many sociologists conduct their research with only a superficial familiarity with the area
of life under investigation. This is often combined with a preoccupation for aping the
research procedures of the natural sciences. The net result is the imposition of
operational definitions on the social world with little regard for their relevance to that
world. Rather than viewing social reality from the actor’s perspective, many sociologists
have attempted to force it into predefined categories and concepts. This provides little
chance of capturing social reality but a very good chance of distorting it.
In place of such procedures Blumer argues that the sociologists must immerse
himself in the area of life which he seeks to investigate. Rather than attempting to fit data
into predefined categories, he must attempt to grasp the actor’s view of social reality. This
involves ‘feeling one’s way inside the experience of the actor’. Since action is directed by
actors’ meanings, the socialists must ‘catch the process of interpretation through which
they construct their action’. This means he ‘must take the role of the acting unit whose
behaviour he is studying’. Blumer offers no simple solutions as to how this type of
research may be conducted. However, the flavour of the research procedures he
advocates is captured in the following quotation: ‘It is a tough job requiring a high order
of careful and honest probing, creative yet disciplined imagination, resourcefulness and
flexibility in study, pondering over what one is finding, and a constant readiness to test
and recast one’s views and images of the area’.
FRED DAVIS
Fred Davis examines interaction situations involving physically handicapped and

‘normal’ persons. Davis obtained his data from lengthy interviews with people who were
blind, facially disfigured or crippled and confined to wheelchairs. He was concerned with
interaction situations which lasted longer than a passing exchange but not long enough
for close familiarity to develop. Such situations would include a conversation with a
fellow passenger, getting to know someone at work and socializing at a party. The

handicapped person wishes to present himself as ‘someone who is merely different

physically but not socially deviant’. He seeks to achieve ease and naturalness in his
interaction with others since this will symbolize the fact that they have accepted his
preferred definition of self, but his handicap poses a number of threats to the type of
sociability he desires. This stems from the fact that he is defined as ‘different’, ‘odd’ and
something other than normal by those who do not share his disability.
The first threat to sociability involves the possibility that others will become
preoccupied with the handicap. The norms of everyday, casual sociability require an
individual to act as if the other were a whole person rather than expressing concern or
interest in a particular aspect of his person. However, there is a danger that the visible
handicap will become the focal point of the interaction. Davis’s respondents stated that
the normal was unlikely to make explicit references to their handicap but it appeared to
be ‘uppermost in his awareness’. They sensed the normal’s discomfort and felt it placed a
strain on the interaction. In particular they noted ‘confused and halting speech, the fixed
stare elsewhere, the artificial levity, the compulsive loquaciousness, and the awkward
solemnity’. Such responses disrupted the smooth flow of interaction.
A second threat to sociability arises from the possibility that the handicap will lead
to displays of emotion which exceed acceptable limits. Thus normal may be openly
shocked, disgusted, pitying or fearful. Such emotional displays overstep what is usually
considered appropriate and so place a strain on the interaction. Even if the normal
manages to contain his emotion, sociability may be further threatened by what Davis
terms the ‘contradiction of attributes’. This involves an apparent contradiction between
the normal attributes of the handicapped person such as his job, interests and other
aspects of his appearance, and his handicap. This contrast often appears discordant to
others and can result in remarks such as, ‘How strange that someone so pretty should be
in a wheelchair’. According to Davis’s respondents, such remarks ‘almost invariably cast
a parallel on the interaction and embarrass the recovery of smooth social posture’.
Finally, sociability may be threatened by uncertainty concerning the ability of
handicapped persons to participate in particular activities. For example, normals are
unsure whether a blind person should be invited to the theatre or a crippled person asked
to play a game of bowls. This uncertainty can place a strain on the interaction when the
handicapped person is invited to participate in such activities. If he refuses the normal
person will wonder whether he is simply being polite or whether his handicap actually
prevents participation. Similarly, the handicapped person wonders whether the normal
genuinely wants his communalism or is merely acting out of pity. Such uncertainties
threaten to mar the ease and smoothness of the interaction process.
Having examined the threats that a visible handicap poses to the ‘framework of
rules and assumptions that guide sociability’. Davis then looks at the way handicapped
persons cope with these threats. He argues that the handicapped attempt to ‘disavow
deviance’, to present themselves as normal people who happen to have a handicap. Davis
identifies three stages in the process of ‘deviance disavowal and normalization’. The first
stage, ‘fictional acceptance’, follows the standard pattern of interaction when two people
meet. There is a surface acceptance of the other which involves polite conversation and

no apparent recognition of important differences between them. In the case of the visibly
handicapped however, ‘the interaction is kept starved at a bare subsistence level of
sociability’. The handicapped person is treated like the poor relative at a wedding
reception. Yet, he must maintain this polite fiction, no matter how ‘transparent and
confining it is’, in order to move to the next stage which involves ‘something more
genuinely sociable’. If he exposed the polite fiction, the interaction might cease and the
next stage would not be reached.
In order to move beyond ‘fictional acceptance’, the handicapped persons must
redefine himself in the eyes of others. He must project ‘images, attitudes and concepts of
self’ which encourage the other to accept him as a normal person. Davis’s respondents
used a number of strategies to disavow deviance and project their desired self:image. For
example they talked about their involvement in normal, everyday activities, joked about
their disability to imply it was relatively insignificant and tried to give the impression
that they were not offended by the unease of others. In this way they attempted to
symbolize their normality.
Once others have accepted the handicapped person as normal, the relationship can
then move to a third stage which Davis terms the ‘institutionalization of the normalized
relationship’. This can take two forms. In the first, the handicapped person is fully
accepted into the world of normals who largely forget his disability. This can cause
problems, however, since at certain times special consideration is needed for the
handicap. Thus the handicapped person must achieve a delicate balance between ‘special
arrangements and understandings’ and normal relationships. A second form of
institutionalization involves a process whereby the normal person becomes rather like an
adopted or honorary member of the handicapped group. In this way he vicariously
shares the experiences and outlook of the handicapped and gains a ‘strictly in:group
license to lampoon and mock the handicap in a way that would be regarded as highly
offensive were it to come from an uninitiated normal’. Once a normalized relationship is
institutionalized the strains which previously beset the interaction process are largely
removed.
Davis’s study provides a classic example of the type of research which typifies
symbolic interactionism.It focuses on small:scale face to face interaction. It portrays the
complex process of role:taking and shows how interaction develops via a series of
interpretive procedures. It emphasizes the importance of symbols and reveals how a
phrase or a gesture can symbolize a set of attitudes. It illustrates the priority which
interactionists assign to the concept of self. The handicapped are shown interacting with
self, projecting images of self and managing the impressions of self which others receive.
Davis’s study subtly portrays the flexibility, creativity and mutual adjustment which
interactionists see as the essence of human interaction.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM : A CRITIQUE
Integrationists have often been accused of examining human interaction in a vacuum.

They have tended to focus on small:scale face to face interaction with little concern for its
historical or social setting. They have concentrated on particular situations and
encounters with little reference to the historical events which led up to them or the wider
social framework in which they occur. Since these factors influence the particular
interaction situation, the scant attention they have received has been regarded as a
serious omission. Thus in a criticism of Mead, Ropers argues that, ‘The activities that he
sees men engaged in are not historically determined relationships of social and historical
continuity; they are merely episodes, interactions, encounters, and situations’.
While symbolic interactionism provides a corrective to the excesses of societal
determinism, many critics have argued that it has gone too far in this direction. Though
they claim that action is not determined by structural norms, interactionists do admit the
presence of such norms. However, they tend to take them as given rather than explaining
their origin. Thus Fred Davis refers to the ‘framework of rules and assumptions that
guide sociability’, in other words the norms of sociability. Yet he simply assumes their
existence rather than attempting to explain their source. As William Skidmore comments,
the interactionists largely fail to explain ‘why people consistently choose to act in given
ways in certain situations, instead of in all the other ways they might possibly have
acted’. In stressing the flexibility and freedom of human action the interactionists tend to
downplay the constraints on action. In Skidmore’s view this is due to the fact that
‘interactionism consistently fails to give an account of social structure’. In other words it
fails to adequately explain how standardized normative behaviour comes about and why
members of society are motivated to act in terms of social norms.
Similar criticisms have been made with reference to what many see as the failure
of interactionists to explain the source of the meanings to which they attach such
importance.Interactionism provides little indication of the origins of the meanings in
terms of which individuals are labeled by teachers, police and probation officers. Critics
argue that such meanings are not spontaneously created in interaction situations. Instead
they are systematically generated by the social structure. Thus Marxists have argued that
the meanings which operate in face to face interaction situations are largely the product
of class relationships. From this viewpoint, interactionists have failed to explain the most
significant thing about meanings: the source of their origin.
Symbolic interactionism is a distinctly American branch of sociology and to some
this partly explains its shortcomings. Thus Leon Shaskolsky has argued that
interactionism is largely a reflection of the cultural ideals of American society. He claims
that, ‘Symbolic interactionism has its roots deeply imbedded in the cultural environment
of American life, and its interpretation of society is, in a sense, a “looking glass” image of
what that society purports to be’. Thus the emphasis on liberty, freedom and
individuality in interactionism can be seen in part as a reflection of America’s view of
itself. Shaskolsky argues that this helps to explain why the interactionist perspective
finds less support in Europe since there is a greater awareness in European societies of

the constraints of power and class domination. By reflecting American ideals, Shaskolsky
argues that interactionism has failed to face up to and take account of the harsher realities
of social life. Whatever its shortcomings however, many would agree with William
Skidmore that, ‘On the positive side, it is clearly true that some of the most fascinating
sociology is in the symbolic interactionist tradition’.
Ehtnomethodology :
The term was coined by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel who is generally
regarded as its founder.Garfinkel’s book, Studies in Ethnomethodology, which provided
the initial framework for the perspective, was published in 1967.Roughly translated;
ethnomethodology means the study of the methods used by people. It is concerned with
examining the methods and procedures employed by members of society to construct,
account for and give meaning to their social world. Ethnomethodologists draw heavily
on the European tradition of phenomenological philosophy and in particular
acknowledge a debt to the ideas of the philosopher – sociologist Alfred Schutz (1899 –
1959).Many ethno methodologists begin with the assumption that society exists only in so
far as members perceive its existence. (The term member replaces the integrationist term
actor). With this emphasis on members’ views of social reality, ethnomethodology is
generally regarded as a phenomenological approach. Ethnomethodology is a developing
perspective which contains a diversity of viewpoints. The following account provides a
brief and partial introduction.
Ethnomethodology and the problem of order :
One of the major concerns of sociology is the explanation of social order. From the
results of numerous investigations it appears that social life is ordered and regular and
that social action is systematic and patterned. Typically the sociologist has assumed that
social order has an objective reality. His research has apparently indicated that it actually
exists. He then goes on to explain its origin, to provide causal explanations for its
presence. Thus from a functionalist perspective, social order derives ultimately from the
functional prerequisites of social systems which require its presence as a necessary
condition of their existence. Social action assumes its systematic and regular nature from
the fact that it is governed by values and norms which guide and direct behaviour. From
a Marxian perspective social order is seen as precarious but its existence is recognized. It
results from the constraints imposed on members of society by their position in the
relations of production and from the reinforcement of these constraints by the
superstructure. From an interactionist perspective, social order results from interpretive
procedures employed by actors in interaction situations. It is a ‘negotiated order’ in that
it derives from meanings which are negotiated in the process of interaction and involves
the mutual adjustment of the actors concerned. The net result is the establishment of
social order, of an orderly, regular and patterned process of interaction. Although the
above perspectives provide very different explanations for social order, they nevertheless
agree that some form of order actually exists and that it therefore has an objective reality.
Ethno methodologists either suspend or abandon the belief that an actual or
objective social order exists. Instead they proceed from the assumption that social life

appears orderly to members of society. Thus in the eyes of members their everyday
activities seem ordered and systematic but this order is not necessarily due to the intrinsic
nature or inherent qualities of the social world. In other words it may not actually exist.
Rather it may simply appear to exist because of the way members perceive and interpret
social reality. Social order therefore becomes a convenient fiction, an appearance of order
constructed by members of society. This appearance allows the social world to be
described and explained and so made knowable, reasonable, understandable and
‘accountable’ to its members. The methods and accounting procedures used by members
for creating a sense of order form the subject matter of ethno methodological enquiry.
Zimmerman and Wieder state that the ethno methodologist is ‘concerned with how
members of society go about the task of seeing, describing, and explaining order in the
world in which they live’.
This view of social order is illustrated by Atkinson’s research on suicide. Coroners
are in the business of producing order. They are presented with a series of ambiguous
and equivocal deaths, required to provide an explanation for them and to define them as
suicide or non:suicide. They are therefore asked to construct order by categorizing and
classifying deaths and providing acceptable explanations for those deaths. Atkinson
argues that in this way coroners make ‘otherwise disordered and potentially senseless
events ordered and sensible’. However, the coroners’ construction of order does not
necessarily reflect the existence of an objective order. Thus deaths categorized as suicide
may have little or nothing in common. They may simply be given the appearance of
similarity by the interpretive procedures and methods of reasoning employed by
coroners. If this is so, it makes little sense for sociologists to regard suicide statistics as
‘facts’ and then proceed to examine the causes of suicide. Suicide is a member’s
construction rather than an objective reality. The job of the sociologist is not to explain
suicide as if it actually existed but to examine the methods and procedures employed to
categorize deaths as suicide. More generally, sociologists should not regard social order
as a fact but rather as an appearance of order constructed by members. The job of the
sociologist then becomes the discovery of the methods and accounting procedures used
by members to construct the appearance of order. The above points will now be
illustrated and developed by examining two studies conducted from an ethno
methodological perspective.
Harold Garfinkel – an experiment in counseling :
Garfunkel argues that members employ the ‘documentary method’ to make sense
and account for the social world and to give it an appearance of order. This method
consists of selecting certain aspects of the infinite number of features contained in any
situation or context, of defining them in a particular way and seeing them as evidence of
an underlying pattern. The process is then reversed and particular instances of the
underlying pattern are then used as evidence for the existence of the pattern. In
Garfunkel’s words, the documentary method ‘consists of treating an actual appearance as
“the document of”, as “pointing to”, as “standing on behalf of” a presupposed
underlying pattern. Not only is the underlying pattern derived from its individual
documentary evidences, but the individual documentary evidences, in their turn, are

interpreted on the basis of “what is known” about the underlying pattern. Each is used to
elaborate the other’. For example, in the case of Atkinson’s study of coroners, those
deaths defined as suicide was seen as such by reference to an underlying pattern.This
pattern are the coroner’s common:sense theory of suicide. However, at the same time,
those deaths defined as suicide were seen as evidence for the existence of the underlying
pattern. In this way particular instances of the pattern and the pattern itself are mutually
reinforcing and are used to elaborate each other. Thus the documentary method can be
seen as ‘reflexive’. The particular instance is seen as a reflection of the underlying pattern
and vice versa. Garfinkel argues that social life is ‘essentially reflexive’. Members of
society are constantly referring aspects of activities and situations to presumed
underlying patterns and confirming the existence of those patterns by reference to
particular instances of their expression. In this way members produce accounts of the
social world which not only make sense of and explain but actually constitute that world.
Thus in providing accounts of suicide, coroners are actually producing suicide. Their
accounts of suicide constitute suicide in the social world. In the respect accounts are a
part of the things they describe and explain. The social world is therefore constituted by
the methods and accounting procedures, in terms of which it is identified, described and
explained. Thus the social world is constructed by its members by the use of the
documentary method. This is what Garfinkel means when he describes social reality as
‘essentially reflexive’.
Garfunkel claims to have demonstrated the documentary method and its reflexive
nature by an experiment conducted in a university department of psychiatry. Students
were invited to take part in what was described as a new form of psychotherapy. They
were asked to summarize a personal problem on which they required advice and then
ask a counselor a series of questions. The counselor sat in a room adjoining the student;
they could not see each other and communicated via an intercom. The counselor was
limited to responses of either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Unknown to the student, his advisor was not a
counselor and the answers he received were evenly divided between ‘yes’ or ‘no’, their
sequence being predetermined in accordance with a table of random numbers.
In one case a student was worried about his relationship with his girl:friend. He
was Jewish and she was a Gentile. He was worried about his parents’ reaction to the
relationship and the problems that might result from marriage and children. His
questions were addressed to these concerns. Despite the fact that the answers he received
were random, given without reference to the content of questions and sometimes
contradicted previous answers, the student found them helpful, reasonable and sensible.
Similar assessments of the counseling sessions were made by the other students in the
experiment. From comments made by the students on each of the answers they received.
Garfinkel draws the following conclusions. Students made sense of the answers where no
sense existed; they imposed an order on the answers where no order was presumed that
the counselor was unaware of the full facts of their case. The students constructed an
appearance of order by using the documentary method. From the first answer they
perceived an underlying pattern in the counselor’s advice. The sense of each following
answer was interpreted in terms of the pattern and at the same time each answer was
seen as evidence for the existence of the pattern. Thus the students’ method of
interpretation was reflexive. Not only did they produce an account of the counseling
session but the account became a part of and so constituted the session. In this way the
accounting procedure described and explained and also constructed and constituted
social reality at one and the same time. Garfinkel claims that the counseling experiment
high:lights and captures the procedures that members are constantly using in their
everyday lives to construct the social world.
This experiment can also be sued to illustrate the idea of ‘indexicality’, a central
concept employed by Garfinkel and other ethnomethodologists. Indexicality means that
the sense of any object or activity is derived from its context; it is ‘indexed’ in a particular
situation. As a result any interpretation, explanation or account made by members in
their everyday lives is made with reference to particular circumstances and situations.
Thus the students’ sense of the counselor’s answers was derived from the context of the
interaction. From the setting – a psychiatry department – and the information they were
given, the students believed that the counselor was what he claimed to be and that he
was doing his best to give honest and sound advice. His answers were interpreted within
the framework of this context. If identical answers were received to the same set of
questions from a fellow student in a coffee bar, the change of context would probably
result in a very different interpretation. Such responses from a fellow student may be
seen as evidence that he had temporarily taken leave of his senses or was having a joke at
his friend’s expense or was under the influence of alcohol and so on.Garfinkel argues that
the sense of any action is achieved by reference to its context. Members’ sense of what is
happening or going on depends on the way they interpret the context of the activity
concerned. In this respect their understandings and accounts are indexical: they make
sense in terms of particular settings.
Don H. Zimmerman – The Practicalities of Rule Use
Studies of bureaucracies have often been concerned with the nature of rules in
bureaucratic organizations. The bureaucrat is usually seen as strictly conforming to
formal rules or else acting in terms of a system of informal rules. In either case his
behaviour is seen to be governed by rules. Zimmerman’s study suggests an alternative
perspective. Rather than seeing behaviour as governed by rules, he suggests that
members employ rules to describe and account for their activity. Part of this activity may
be in direct violation of a stated rule yet it is still justified with reference to the rule. This
paradox will be explained shortly.
Zimmerman studied behaviour in a US Bureau of Public Assistance. Clients
applying for assistance were assigned to caseworkers by receptionists. Officially, the
assignment procedure was conducted in terms of a simple rule. If there were four
caseworkers, the first four clients who arrived were assigned one to each caseworker. The
next four clients were assigned in a similar manner, providing the second interview of the
day for each caseworker and so on. However, from time to time the rule was broken. For
example a particular caseworker may have had a difficult case and the interview may
have lasted far longer than usual. In this situation a receptionist may have reorganized
the assignment list and switched his next client to another caseworker.

Such rule violations were justified and explained by the receptionists in terms of
the rule. In their eyes by breaking the rule they were conforming to the rule. This
paradox can be explained by the receptionists’ view of the intention of the rule. From
their viewpoint, it was intended to keep clients moving with a minimum of delay so that
all had been attended to at the end of the day. Thus violating the rule to ensure this
outcome can be explained as following the rule. This was the way receptionists justified
and explained their conduct to themselves and their fellow workers. By seeing their
activity as conforming to a rule, they created an appearance of order. However, rather
than simply being directed by rules, Zimmerman argues that the receptionists were
constantly monitoring and assessing the situation and improvising and adapting their
conduct in terms of what they saw as the requirements of the situation. Zimmerman
claims that his research indicates that, ‘the actual practices of using rules do not permit an
analyst to account for regular patterns of behaviour by invoking the notion that these
practices occur because members of society are following rules’. He argues that the use of
rules by members to describe and account for their conduct ‘makes social settings appear
orderly for the participants and it is this sense and appearance of order that rules in use,
in fact, provide and what the ethnomethodologists , in fact study’.
Zimmerman’s research highlights some of the main concerns of ethno
methodology. It provides an example of the documentary method and illustrates the
reflexive nature of the procedures used by members to construct an appearance of order.
Receptionists interpret their activity as evidence of an underlying pattern – the intent of
the rule – and they see particular actions, even when they violate the rules, as evidence of
the underlying pattern.
Ethnomethodology and mainstream sociology :
Garfunkel argues that mainstream sociology has typically portrayed man as a
‘cultural dope’ who simply acts out the standardized directives provided by the culture
of his society. Garfinkel states that, ‘By “cultural dope” I refer to the
man:in:the:sociologist’s society who produces the stable features of society by acting in
compliance with pre:established and legitimate alternatives of action that the common
culture provides’. In place of the ‘cultural dope’, the ethno methodologist pictures the
skilled member who is constantly attending to the particular, indexical qualities of
situations, giving them meaning, making them knowable, communicating this
knowledge to others and constructing a sense and appearance of order. From this
perspective members construct and accomplish their own social world rather than being
shaped by it.
Ethno methodologists are highly critical of other branches of sociology. They
argue that ‘conventional’ sociologists have misunderstood the nature of social reality.
They have treated the social world as if it had an objective reality which is independent of
members’ accounts and interpretations. Thus they have regarded aspects of the social
world such as suicide and crime as facts with an existence of their own. They have then
attempted to provide explanations for these ‘facts’. By contrast, ethnomethodologists
argue that the social world consists of nothing more than the constructs, interpretations
and accounts of its members. The job of the sociologist is therefore to explain the methods
and accounting procedures which members employ to construct their social world.
According to ethnomethodologists, this is the very job that mainstream sociology has
failed to do.
Ethno methodologists see little difference between conventional sociologists and
the man in the street. They argue that the methods employed by sociologists in their
research are basically similar to those used by members of society in their everyday lives.
Members employing the documentary method are constantly theorizing, drawing
relationships between activities and making the social world appear orderly and
systematic. They then treat the social world as if it had an objective reality separate from
themselves. Ethno methodologists argue that the procedures of conventional sociologists
are essentially similar. They employ the documentary method, theorize and draw
relationships and construct a picture of an orderly and systematic social system. They
operate reflexively like any other member of society. Thus when a functionalist sees
behaviour as an expression of an underlying pattern of shared values, he also uses
instances of that behaviour as evidence for the existence of the pattern. By means of their
accounting procedures members construct a picture of society. In this sense the man in
the street is his own sociologist. Ethno methodologists see little to choose between the
pictures of society which he creates and those provided by conventional sociologists.
Ethnomethodology – a critique
Ethno methodology’s criticism of mainstream sociology has been returned by
those it has labeled as conventional or ‘folk’ sociologists. Its critics have argued that the
members who populate the kind of society portrayed by ethnomethodologists appear to
lack any motives and goals. As Anthony Giddens remarks, there is little reference to ‘the
pursuance of practical goals or interests’. What, for example, motivated the students in
Garfunkel’s counseling experiment or the receptionists in Zimmerman’s study? There is
little indication in the writings of ethnomethodologists as to why people want to behave
or are made to behave in particular ways. Nor is there much consideration of the nature
of power in the social world and the possible effects of differences in power on members’
behaviour. As Gouldner notes, ‘The process by which social reality becomes defined and
established is not viewed by Garfinkel as entailing a process of struggle among
competing groups’ definitions of reality, and the outcome, the common sense conception
of the world, is not seen as having been shaped by institutionally protected power
differences’. Critics have argued that ethnomethodologists have failed to give due
consideration to the fact that members’ accounting procedures are conducted within a
system of social relationships involving differences in power. Many ethno methodologists
appear to dismiss everything which is not recognized and accounted for by members of
society. They imply that if members do not recognize the existence of objects and events,
they are unaffected by them. But as John H. Oglethorpe pointedly remarks in his criticism
of ethno methodology. ‘If for instance, it is bombs and napalm that are zooming down,
members do not have to be oriented towards them in any particular way or at all in order
to be killed by them’. Clearly members do not have to recognize certain constraints in
order for their behaviour to be affected by them. As Oglethorpe notes, with reference to
the above example, death ‘limits interaction in a fairly decisive way’. Finally, the

ethnomethodologists’ criticism of mainstream sociology can be redirected to themselves.

As Giddens remarks, ‘any ethno methodological account must display the same
characteristics as it claims to discern in the accounts of lay actors’. Ethnomethodologists’
accounting procedures therefore become a topic for study like those of conventional
sociologists or any other member of society. In theory the process of accounting for
accounts is never ending. Carried to its extreme, the ethno methodological position
implies that nothing is ever knowable. Whatever its shortcomings, however,
ethnomethodology asks interesting questions. This comment is equally applicable to
sociology as a whole.
EMILE DURKHEIM’S SOCIAL THEORY
David Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist
and pioneer in the development of modern sociology and anthropology. (A brief picture
has given above) He is considered as the founding father of the French positivist school
of sociology and an early proponent of solidarism. His work and editorship of the first
journal of sociology, L’Année Sociologique, as well as his creation of the first European
department of sociology, helped establish sociology within academia as an accepted
social science. During his lifetime, Durkheim gave many lectures, and published
numerous sociological studies on subjects such as education, crime, religion, suicide, and
many other aspects of society.
Durkheim was born in Epinal in Lorraine, coming from a long line of devout French
Jews; his father, grandfather, and great:grandfather had been rabbis. At an early age, he
decided not to follow in his family’s rabbinical footsteps. Durkheim himself would lead a
completely secular life. Much of his work, in fact, was dedicated to demonstrating that
religious phenomena stemmed from social rather than divine factors. While Durkheim
chose not to follow in the family tradition, he did not sever ties with his family or with
the Jewish community. Many of his most prominent collaborators and students were
Jewish, and some were blood relations. The exact influence of Jewish thought on
Durkheim’s work remains uncertain; some scholars have argued that Durkheim’s
thought is in fact a form of secularized Jewish thought, while others argue that proving
the existence of a direct influence of Jewish thought Durkheim’s achievements is difficult
or impossible.
A precocious student, Durkheim entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in
1879. The entering class that year was one of the most brilliant of nineteenth century and
many of his classmates, such as Jean Jaurés and Henri Bergson would go on to become
major figures in France’s intellectual history. At the ENS, Durkheim studied under the
direction of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social scientific outlook,
and wrote his Latin dissertation on Montesquieu. At the same time, he read Auguste
Comte and Herbert Spencer. Thus Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to
society very early on in his career. This meant the first of many conflicts with the French
academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found
humanistic studies uninteresting, and he finished second to last in his graduating class
when he aggregated in philosophy in 1882.There was no way that a man of Durkheim’s

views could receive a major academic appointment in Paris. Thus in 1885 he decided to
leave for Germany, where he studied sociology in Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig. As
Durkheim indicated in several essays, it was in Leipzig that he learned to appreciate the
value of empiricism and its language of concrete, complex things, in sharp contrast to the
more abstract, clear and simple ideas of the Cartesian method.
Durkheim traveled to Bordeaux in 1887, which had just started France’s first
teacher’s training center. There he taught both pedagogy and sociology (the latter had
never been taught in France before).From this position Durkheim helped reform the
French school system and introduced the study of social science in its curriculum.
However, his controversial beliefs that religion and morality could be explained in terms
purely of social interaction earned him many critics. The 1890s were a period of
remarkable creative output for Durkheim. In 1892 he published ‘The Division of Labour
in Society’, his doctoral dissertation and fundamental statement of the nature of human
society and its development. Durkheim’s interest in social phenomena was spurred on by
politics. France’s defeat in the Franco:Prussian War led to the fall of the regime of
Napoleon III, which was then replaced by the Third Republic. This in turn resulted in a
backlash against the new secular and republican rule, as many people considered a
vigorously nationalistic approach necessary to rejuvenate France’s fading power.
Durkheim, a Jew and a staunch supporter of the Third Republic with a sympathy
towards socialism, was thus in the political minority, a situation which galvanized him
politically. The Dreyfus affair of 1894 only strengthened his activist stance.
In 1895 he published ‘Rules of the Sociological Method’, a manifesto stating what
sociology is and how it ought to be done, and founded the first European department of
sociology at the University of Bordeaux. In 1898 he founded the journal L’Année
Sociologique in order to publish and publicize the work of what was by then a growing
number of students and collaborators (this is also the name used to refer to the group of
students who developed his sociological program). And finally, in 1897, he published
Suicide, a case study which provided an example of what the sociological monograph
might look like. Durkheim was one of the founders in using quantitative methods in
criminology during his suicide case study. By 1902 Durkheim had finally achieved his
goal of attaining a prominent position in Paris when he became the chair of education at
the Sorbonne. Because French Universities are technically institutions for training
secondary school teachers, this position gave Durkheim considerable influence – his
lectures were the only ones that were mandatory for the entire student body. Despite
what some considered, in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, to be a political
appointment, Durkheim consolidated his institutional power by 1912 when he was
permanently assigned the chair and renamed it the chair of education and sociology. It
was also in this year that he published his last major work, The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life.
The outbreak of the First World War was to have a tragic effect on Durkheim’s life.
His leftism was always patriotic rather than internationalist – he sought a secular, rational
form of French life. But the coming of the war and the inevitable nationalist propaganda
that followed made it difficult to sustain this already nuanced position. While Durkheim

actively worked to support his country in the war, his reluctance to give in to simplistic
nationalist fervor (combined with his Jewish background) made him a natural target of
the now:ascendant French Right. Even more seriously, the generations of students that
Durkheim had trained were now being drafted to serve in the army, and many of them
perished in the trenches. Finally, Durkheim’s own son, André, died on the war front in
December 1915 – a psychological blow from which Durkheim never recovered.
Emotionally devastated and overworked, Durkheim collapsed of a stroke in Paris in 1917
and now lies buried at the Cimetiére Dutch Montparnasse in Paris.
Durkheim was familiar with several foreign languages and reviewed academic
papers in German, English, and Italian at length for L’Aneé Sociologique.It has been
noted, however, at times with disapproval and amazement by non:French social
scientists, that Durkheim traveled little and that, many French scholars and the notable
British anthropologist Sir James Frazer, he never undertook any fieldwork. The vast
information Durkheim studied on the aboriginal tribes of Australia and New Guinea and
on the Inuit was all collected by other anthropologists, travelers, or missionaries. This
was not due to provincialism or lack of attention to the concrete. Durkheim did not
intend to make venturesome and dogmatic generalizations while disregarding empirical
observation. He did, however, maintain that concrete observation in remote parts of the
world does not always lead to illuminating views on the past or even on the present. For
him, facts had no intellectual meaning unless they were grouped into types and laws. He
claimed repeatedly that it is from a construction erected on the inner nature of the real
that knowledge of concrete reality is obtained, a knowledge not perceived by observation
of the facts from the outside. He thus constructed concepts such as the sacred and
totemism exactly in the same way that Karl Marx developed the concept of class. In
truth, Durkheim’s vital interest might throw on the present.
THEORIES AND IDEAS : SOCIAL FACTS
Durkheim was concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their
integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such as shared religious and
ethnic background could no longer be assumed. In order to study social life in modern
societies, he sought to create one of the first scientific approaches to social phenomena.
Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first people to explain the existence and
quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in
maintaining the quotidian (i.e. how they make society “work”), and is thus sometimes
seen as a precursor to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than
the sum of its parts. Thus unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber,
he focused not on what motivates the actions of individuals (an approach associated with
methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts, a term which he
coined to describe phenomena which have an existence in and of themselves and are not
bound to the actions of individuals.
Durkheim argued that social facts have, sui generis, an independent existence
greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that compose society. Being
exterior to the individual person, social facts may thus also exercise coercive power on

the various people composing society, as it can sometimes be observed in the case of
formal laws and regulations, but also in phenomena such as church practices or family
norms. Unlike the facts studied in natural sciences, a “social” fact thus refers to a specific
category of phenomena: it consists of ways of acting, thinking, feeling, external to the
individual and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.
According to Durkheim, these phenomena cannot be reduced to biological or
psychological grounds.
Hence even the most “individualistic” or “subjective” phenomena, such as suicide,
would be regarded by Durkheim as objective social facts. Individuals composing society
do not directly cause suicide: suicide exists independently in society, whether an
individual person wants it or not. Whether a person “leaves” a society does not change
anything to the fact that this society will still contain suicides. Sociology’s task thus
consists of discovering the qualities and characteristics of such social facts, which can be
discovered through a quantitative or experimental approach (Durkheim extensively
relied on statistics). One can thus argue that Durkheim defended a form of sociological
positivism, often going as far as treating social facts from a medical point of view by
looking for normal versus pathological characteristics.
METHOD AND OBJECTIVITY
In his ‘Rules of the Sociological Method’ (1895), Durkheim expressed his will to
establish a method which would guarantee sociology’s truly scientific character. One of
the questions raised by the author concerns the objectivity of the sociologist: how may
one study an object which, from the very beginning, conditions and relates to the
observer? According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and impersonal as
possible, even though a “perfectly objective observation” in this sense may never be
attained. Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of
singular independent facts. Consequently, a social fact must always be studied according
to its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it.
SOCIOLOGICAL STUDIES : EDUCATION
Durkheim was also interested in education. Partially this was because he was
professionally employed to train teachers, and he used his ability to shape curriculum to
further his own goals of having sociology taught as widely as possible. More broadly,
though, Durkheim was interested in the way that education could be used to provide
French citizens the sort of shared, secular background that would be necessary to prevent
anomie in modern societies. It was to this end that he also proposed the formation of
professional groups to serve as a source of solidarity for adults. Durkheim argued that
education has many functions:
1. To reinforce social solidarity
 History: Learning about individuals who have done good things for the many
makes an individual feel insignificant.

 Pledging allegiance: Makes individuals feel part of a group and therefore less
likely to break rules.
2. To maintain social role
 School is a society in miniature. It has a similar hierarchy, rules, and
expectations to the “outside world”. It trains young people to fulfill roles.
3. To maintain division of labour.
 School sort’s students into skill groups, encouraging students to take up
employment in field’s best suited to their abilities.
CRIME
Durkheim’s views on crime were a departure from conventional notions. He
believed that crime is “bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life” and
serves a social function. He stated that crime implies, “not only that the way remains
open to necessary change, but that in certain cases it directly proposes these
changes……crime [can thus be] a useful prelude to reforms”. In this sense he saw crime
as being able to release certain social tensions and so have a cleansing or purging effect in
society. He further stated that “the authority which the moral conscience enjoys must not
be excessive; otherwise, no:one would dare to criticize it, and it would too easily congeal
into an immutable form. To make progress, individual originality must be able to express
itself…. [even] the originality of the criminal…….shall also be possible” (Durkheim,
1895).
LAW
Beyond the specific study of crime, criminal law and punishment, Durkheim was
deeply interested in the study of law and its social effects in general. Among classical
social theorists he is one of the founders of the field of sociology of law. In his early work
he saw types of law, distinguished as repressive versus restitutive law (characterized by
their sanctions), as a direct reflection of types of social solidarity. The study of law was
therefore of interest to sociology for what it could reveal about the nature of solidarity.
Later, however, he emphasized the significance of law as a sociological field of study in
its own right. In the later Durkheimian view, law (both civil and criminal) is an
expression and guarantee of society’s fundamental values. Durkheim emphasized the
way that modern law increasingly expresses a form of moral individualism – a value
system that is, in his view, probably the only one universally appropriate to modern
conditions of social solidarity. Individualism, in this sense, is the basis of human rights
and of the values of individual human dignity and individual autonomy. It is to be
sharply distinguished from selfishness and egoism, which for Durkheim are not moral
stances at all. Many of Durkheim’s closest followers, such as Marcel Mauss, Paul
Fauconnet and Paul Huvelin also specialized in or contributed to the sociological study of
law.

SUICIDE
In Suicide (1897), Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and
Catholics, explaining that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide
rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while
Protestant society has low levels. There are at least two problems with this interpretation.
First, Durkheim took most of his data from earlier researches, notably Adolph Wagner
and Henry Morselli, who were much more careful in generalizing from their own data.
Second, later researchers found that the Protestant:Catholic differences in suicide seemed
to be limited to German:speaking Europe and thus may always have been the spurious
reflection of other factors. Despite its limitations, Durkheim’s work on suicide has
influenced proponents of control theory, and is often mentioned as a classic sociological
study.
Durkheim’s study of suicide has been criticized as an example of the logical error
termed the ecological fallacy. Indeed, Durkheim’s conclusions about individual
behaviour (e.g. suicide) are based on aggregate statistics (the suicide rate among
Protestants and Catholics). This type of inference is often misleading, as is shown by
examples of Simpson’s paradox. Durkheim stated that there are four types of suicide:
1. Egoistic Suicides are the result of a weakening of the bonds that normally integrate
individuals into the collectivity: in other words a breakdown or decrease of social
integration. Durkheim refers to this type of suicide as the result of “excessive
individuation”, meaning that the individual becomes increasingly detached from
other members of his community. Those individuals who were not sufficiently bound
to social groups (and therefore well:defined values, traditions, norms and goals) were
left with little social support or guidance, and therefore tended to commit suicide on
an increased basis. An example Durkheim discovered was that of unmarried people,
particularly males, who, with less to bind and connect them to stable social norms and
goals, committed suicide at higher rates than married people.
2. Altruistic suicides occur in societies with high interaction, where individual needs are
seen as less important than the society’s needs as a whole. They thus occur on the
opposite interaction scale as egoistic suicide. As individual interest was not
important, Durkheim stated that in an altruistic society there would be little reason
for people to commit suicide. He stated one exception, namely when the individual is
expected to kill themselves on behalf of society – a primary example being the soldier
in military service.
3. Anomic suicides are the product of moral deregulation and a lack of definition of
legitimate aspirations through a restraining social ethic, which could impose meaning
and order on the individual conscience. This is symptomatic or a failure of economic
development and division of labour to produce Durkheim’s organic solidarity.People
does not know where they fit in within their societies.
4. Fatalistic suicides occur in overly oppressive societies, causing people to prefer to die
than to carry on living within their society. This is an extremely rare reason for people

to take their own lives, but a good example would be within a prison; people prefer to
die than live in a prison with constant abuse.
These four types of suicide are based on the degree of imbalance of two social forces:
social integration and moral regulation. Durkheim noted the effects of various crises on
social aggregates – war, for example, leading to an increase in altruism, economic boom
or disaster contributing to anomie.
Religion
In classical sociology, the study of religion was primarily concerned with two broad
issues:
1. How did religion contribute to the maintenance of social order?
2. What was the relationship between religion and capitalist society?
These two issues were typically combined in the argument that industrial capitalism
would undermine traditional religious commitment and thereby threaten the cohesion of
society. More recently the subject has been narrowly defined as the study of religious
institutions. In his article, ‘The Origin of Beliefs’ Émile Durkheim placed himself in the
positivist tradition, meaning that he thought of his study of society as dispassionate and
scientific. He was deeply interested in the problem of what held complex modern
societies together. Religion, he argued, was an expression of social cohesion. His
underlying interest was to understand the existence of religion in the absence of belief in
any religion’s actual tenets. Durkheim saw totemism as the most basis form of religion. It
is in this belief system that the fundamental separation between the sacred and the
profane is most clear. All other relations, he said, are outgrowths of this distinction,
adding to it myths, images, and traditions. The totemic animal, Durkheim believed, was
the expression of the sacred and the original focus of religious activity because it was the
emblem for a social group, the clan. Religion is thus an inevitable, just as society is
inevitable when individuals live together as a group. Durkheim thought that the model
for relationships between people and the supernatural was the relationship between
individuals and the community. He is famous for suggesting that “God is society, writ
large”. Durkheim believed that people ordered the physical world, the supernatural
world, and the social world according to similar principles.
Durkheim’s first purpose was to identify the social origin of religion as he felt that
religion was a source of camaraderie and solidarity. It was the individual’s way of
becoming recognizable within an established society. His second purpose was to identify
links between certain religions in different cultures, finding a common denominator.
Belief in supernatural realms and occurrences may not stem through all relations, yet
there is a clear division in different aspects of life, certain behaviours and physical things.
In the past, he argued, religion had been the cement of society – the means by which men
had been led to turn from the everyday concerns in which they were variously enmeshed
to a common devotion to sacred things. His definition of religion, favoured by
anthropologists of religion today, was, “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things, i.e. things set apart & forbidden – beliefs them”.

Durkheim believed that “society has to be present within the individual”. He saw
religion as a mechanism that shored up or protected a threatened social order. He
thought that religion had been the cement of society in the past, but that the collapse of
religion would not lead to a moral implosion. Durkheim was specifically interested in
religion as a communal experience rather than an individual one. He also says that
religious phenomena occur when a separation is made between the profane (the realm of
everyday activities) and the sacred (the realm of the extraordinary and the transcendent);
these are different depending what man chooses them to be. An example of this is wine
at communion, as it is not only wine but represents the blood of Christ. Durkheim
believed that religion is ‘society divinized’, as he argues that religion occurs in a social
context. He also, in lieu of forefathers before who tried to replace the dying religions,
urged people to unite in a civic morality on the basis that we are what we are as a result
of society. Durkheim condensed religion into four major functions:
1. Disciplinary, forcing or administrating discipline
2. Cohesive, bringing people together, a strong bond
3. Vitalizing, to make livelier or vigorous, vitalize, and boost spirit
4. Euphoric, a good feeling, happiness, confidence, well:being
MAX WEBER’S SOCIOLOGICAL MATERIALISM
Max Weber (1864:1920) is known as one of the “founding fathers” of modern

sociology. He worked in the Hermeneutic tradition, which insisted that the study of man
is very apart from the study of nature. Whilst nature could be understood in strict causal
terms, Hermeneutics held that human behavior had to be “interpreted” in a way that had
no counterpart in the natural sciences. In Germany this was very much intertwined with
the Idealist tradition, which stressed the primacy of spirit over matter. Weber is best
known for his work on the sociology of religion, something he saw as a study of the
rationalization of modern society (a recurrent theme through The Protestant Ethic).The
Protestant Ethic is just a small fragment of his study of other World religions: Hinduism,
Judaism, Buddhism and Confucianism. (He planned a study of Islam, but didn’t complete
it).The Protestant Ethic was published in 1905:05 in Archiv fur sozialwissenschaft und
Sozialpolitik in Germany. It first appeared in English in 1920:21 in Weber’s Collected
Essays on the Sociology of Religion (Gesammelte Aufasatza zur Religionassoziologie).The
English translation thus contains some footnotes discussing the debate on the essay
which had taken place since its first German publication. The Protestant Ethic is highly
polemical and appears to have been written with such intent. The first thing a modern
reader will notice in the introduction is Weber’s constant insistence of the “superiority”
(in terms of scientific progress) of Occidental civilization. Architecture, art, medicine,
scholarship – in all he esteems the Occident highest. The object of his study is one
particular aspect of Occidental culture which Weber says has not developed elsewhere:
modern capitalism, in the form of the rational organization of formally free labour.The

emergence of this institution is the object of his study, particularly the part which the
ascetic branches of Protestantism have had to play in it. Let us follow his discussion.
Capitalism and Traditionalism: the Importance of definition
It would be foolish to suggest that the drive to acquisition is not part of the human
state of nature, but it is equally foolish to suppose that every man is engaged in a drive to
acquire as much as possible (such is the nature of rational, methodological capitalist). Nor
should we regard every drive to profit as “capitalism” – the Merchant Adventurers of the
Middle Ages had a conception of profit, but they were not engaged in rational, capitalistic
enterprise. The attitude of swashbuckling opportunist that laughs at all ethical limitations
in the drive to booty is not the same as that of rational capitalist. Speculators, who invest
opportunely in war, state monopoly and political ends do so in a necessarily irrational
manner, and the conception of constantly renewed profit does not exist. Capitalism is the
rational organization of labour attuned to a particular market, seeking renewed profit
from this market. This thrifty bourgeois attitude shall be examined in detail below, but
first we must compare capitalism to the societies and environment’s it’s developed in and
take a brief look at the interplay between it and the “traditional “attitude.
Weber regards as “traditionalism” the attitude of the worker who does not view his
labour as an end in itself, but rather the means to the end of satisfying his traditional
needs. This attitude was demonstrated to Weber by the complaints of capitalists who
offered piece:rates to their workers. A piece rate is an agreement whereby a worker’s
wages increase by increment with the amount of work he accomplishes. For instance, a
factory worker might be offered one pound for every widget he produces. Say that by
exerting himself fully he may produce ten widgets a week, and so is accustomed to an
income of ten pounds per week. In an effort to increase the factory’s output to meet a
large order, the capitalist ups the piece Rate to two pounds per widget. Anyone viewing
their labour as an end in itself would doubtlessly keep their exertion at the same level as
before, and those driven by avarice for the largest earning might increase it further – but
the attitude of “traditionalism” would drive a worker to reduce his output to five
widgets, hence maintaining the wage he is accustomed to. The drive of such a worker is
to satisfy his traditional needs with the maximum amount of comfort. Such a labour
force is not conducive to capitalist development.
An ethos of capitalism
Weber quotes Benjamin Franklin as “undeniably” expressing the “spirit of capitalism”.

He quotes from two of Franklin’s works – Necessary Hints to Those that would be Rich and
Advice to a Young Tradesman. Weber says that these words sum up the attitude of the
capitalist ethos – that the increase of one’s capital is an end in itself, and in fact a duty one
owes to it. Franklin implores the young tradesman to take no rest, to not neglect his duty
by letting his capital sit idle. As an ethos, this is quite detached from any enjoyment of
life, or any pleasure:seeking with the fruits of one’s earnings. It seems in fact highly
irrational – why would a gentleman wish to spend his life in pursuit of profit, and not
dispose of it for his own pleasure? This was not some mere crude avarice or greed (auri
sacra fames) which was distinct to the rest of society, as the romanticists of today claim.
It was an ethical maxim, a duty. And from whence came this duty? It appeared in a
society hostile to it. The most highly:developed capitalistic center of the fourteen and
fifteenth centuries, Florence, would have regarded a moral attitude such as Franklin’s
unthinkable. The aristocracy of blood only tolerated the aristocracy of capital because of
taxes that could be extracted from it, and regarded it as “necessary” at best. In England in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the people were inordinately proud of their
commerce but opposed to the bourgeois on a personal level. There was a conception of
scarce resources in the world that England must act viciously to acquire (often with the
help if the Royal Navy – such activity belongs perhaps in the category of capitalist
adventuring), but no particular respect was afforded to those who did it. But meanwhile,
in Pennsylvania, where there was virtually no banking, small bourgeois and little money,
capitalistic activity was seen as a duty to oneself and to one’s people. It is this ethos of
capitalism as a calling, so alien to the world from which it sprang, which Weber considers.
Lutheranism – a Stepping stone
Martin Luther first expounded the idea of a religious “calling” to fulfill duty, and
Lutheranism was differentiated from Catholicism in several important ways which
encouraged this. It may be considered a platitude, says Weber, that Luther stressed the
importance of worldly activity in a calling as inspired by God. Catholicism of course
encouraged good works, but these were of an essential irrational character – there was no
need for them to be sustained for the Catholic to achieve salvation. The very human cycle
of sin, repentance, absolution (through the confessional) and then renewed sin was the lot
of the Catholic, and this provided no imperative for the individual to organize his “good
works” in any sustained, rational manner. To Luther, worldly duty was a labour of
brotherly love, and to repudiate it was to repudiate one’s duty to God. To the great mass
of Catholic believers, this imperative was alien – their salvation was gained through the
mysticism of the Church. To a Lutheran, this salvation came between the believer and
God. But then we see, in a bizarre twist, that Lutheranism was in some way a step
backwards in the rationalization of daily life. Luther was compelled to stress the issue
less as he saw it encroaching on Sola fide (justification by faith alone), and his opposition
to Monasticism (which he saw as a dereliction of worldly duties to God) was in fact a
set:back for rationalism. The monks in their Monasteries had practiced the rational
organization of their deeds in a closed environment. The fact this took place in a closed
environment meant that the Monastic ideal could never have led to the projection of
rational action applied to the real world, was the first breakaway from Catholic doctrine
on the matter. No similar concept existed in Antiquity or Catholicism, but nor was it
wholly present in Luther’s teachings. Puritanism approached the matter more
consistently, and the ascetic branches of Puritanical Christianity are where the spirit of
capitalism sprang from.

Ascetic Puritanism – Calvinism
It is well:known that one of the fundamental features of John Calvin’s theology is

the doctrine of double predestination. The doctrine holds that God does not exist for the
sake of men, but men for the sake of God – and God is the only being outside of normal
moral law. As He is omniscient and omnipowerful.He has elected a small minority for
salvation and a larger majority for damnation. To question the “darkness” of such a God
is futile, for He is not subject to any human standard – we are subject to His. This creates
what Weber calls an “unprecedented inner loneliness “in the individual – no act can help
him attain salvation, and no priest can help him. The psychology of such a religion is to
transfer the emphasis from earning salvation to convincing oneself that one is a member
of the elect, and so acting outwardly as the elect would be expecting of doing. Not only
would this help a man convince himself that he was elected for salvation, but also to
convince others, and so secure a standing in the community. The first result of this
doctrine which is worthy of note is the elimination of mysticism from the world of the
Calvinist. The trappings and ceremonies of the Church, in which the Catholics placed
their faith, were now to be avoided like the plague – no trust could be placed in them, for
this surely would be the sign of the desperate damned.
And whilst Luther had maintained that a sinner could absolve himself before God
(although not through the Church), Calvinist doctrine had no such emotional discharge
of sin, which was important in the psychology of the Catholic and Lutheran. No action
whatsoever could be taken to absolve oneself and the very fact one had sinned was taken
to be a sign of damnation. The logical result of this was a rational organization of one’s
entire life in a manner which would show oneself to be a member of the elect – an ascetic
life that shunned self – pleasure and dedicated itself to demonstrating grace. And sooner
or later, every believer would have to face up to the question of whether there existed
absolute criteria for demonstrating a state of grace, and what these were. To many
Calvinists, the answer was to be found in the glorification of God’s World, which existed
solely for Him. And because rational labour was not done for the purpose of brotherly
love (as with Luther), but for the glorification of God, it took on an impersonal and
isolated character. This encouraged as rational an organization of the social environment
as possible. To ensure one’s grace – to be as the Saints – required such conduct in all one’s
life. This is not to say this was inherent in Calvin’s teachings (he was sure of his own
salvation), but was necessary result of their use by a less self:confident generation. So
Calvinism provided the essential of proving one’s faith in worldly activity, as an end in
itself. To this doctrine, man must do the duty God sends him – calling – to the glory of
God, and waste no time in rest or leisure. Indolence, and thus the pursuit of wealth for its
enjoyment, is alien to the Calvinist – he pursues wealth as a secondary motive, finding his
goal instead in the glorification of God through his calling.
Ascetic Puritanism and Capitalism
Our task is now to join the dots, and find a possible path from the above to the
doctrine of Franklin. The opposition to idleness is perhaps not an expression of the
maxim that “time is money”, but that time wasted is time that could have been spent in

God’s labour. Neglecting His glorification through leisure, wastefulness, or even

excessive sleep, is the cardinal sin. Even contemplation which does not bear fruit is
wasteful – and Sunday is provided for that. Thus one’s life must be dedicated to constant,
productive mental or bodily labour. Sexual ascetism is based on the idea that sexual
intercourse for personal pleasure and not for God’s glory is wasteful, and sexual
intercourse may only be engaged in for Gods’ glory (“Go forth and multiply”). Neither
are the rich exempted from their duty – for God’s Providence has provided a calling for
everyone, and he must complete it to God’s glory. As society stratified into classes and
the division of labour became a fact, the secular literature of the time saw this as a good in
utilitarian terms. It was providing the greatest good for the greatest number. The Puritan
approach was largely similar, but justified in religious terms – that such activity was
pleasing to God. Regular, rational labour was held to be the most efficient way to work
for God’s glory.
There was another moral imperative to the making of a profit. If God had given one of
His elect the chance to profit, surely He expected an individual of perfection to take it.
His Providence had surely provided this opportunity for a reason, and thus it was not to
be squandered. The Parable of the Talents seemed to confirm this. The aim of this was not
to make profit for the sake of oneself, but for the sake of God. Pleasure seeking with this
profit would be idolatry of the flesh – and the Puritans opposed any activity which
seemed slothful to serve no purpose (it’s a lie that they were opposed to sport per se – it
was accepted as a means to achieving physical fitness). And so, to capitalism. The idea
that a man is only a trustee of God’s Providence – which he must work to enlarge God’s
glory by taking advantage of opportunities presented to him by God, has obvious
implications for the development of capitalism. Their struggle against the irrational
disposal of wealth only furthered empowered their belief in the idea of its rational
employment in modern capitalistic enterprise (both for the entrepreneur whose burden of
wealth compelled him to employ it all the more diligently, and the labourer to work
within the division of labour at his calling).The ascetic ideal of accumulating wealth but
not irrationally wasting it led to concentration of capital as people sought to save it in
banks (which would invest it in capitalistic activity). Thus the drive to capitalistic activity
for God’s glory and not personal gain was established, and the means to it followed
shortly.
Weber’s critique of Marx in the Protestant Ethic
Noung has outlined Weber’s main argument in the Protestant Ethic in his excellent
write up. Our purpose in this write:up is not to offer another description of Weber’s
classic work. We focus on one of the most interesting aspects of the Protestant Ethic –
Weber’s historical method and his critique of historical materialism
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is the conception of history formulated by Marx. The clearest

exposition of it is to be found in the Preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy and the German Ideology’. A some what more simplistic materialist theory is
presented by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. According to historical
materialism, ideas – and indeed everything in the superstructure – are determined, at

least in the ‘last instance’, by the economic base. The German Ideology is worth quoting on
this point: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas i.e. the class
which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual
force. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant
material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the
relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its
dominance. It is this theory of ideas being reflections of material circumstances and more
generally the doctrine that there is one fundamental causal factor in history that Weber
Challenges in the protestant Ethic.
Weber’s historical method
Marx asserts that there is one fundamental causal factor in history, the economic base.
Though Weber does not deny that the economic has often been of crucial causal
importance in history, he denies that it is always the ultimate causal factor. There are
many possible factors which may in any particular historical case be the decisive one.
What the decisive factor is in given historical situation is left for empirical research to
determine. The question cannot be answered a priori.This methodological pluralism is at
the heart of the Protestant Ethic. The point of the work is not to show that Protestantism
‘caused’ capitalism, but rather that it was a significant factor in its development. Weber
does not deny that the economic had a crucial role to play in the transition from
feudalism to capitalism. He is merely arguing that an economic reductionist account of
the transition is inadequate.
Weber’s diversion from Marx’s approach is perhaps clearest his insistence that ideas
should be taken seriously as causal factors in history. For Marx, causation always runs
ultimately from the economic to everything else. Weber asserts that ideas can have a
profound influence on the economic sphere itself. Weber reverses the direction of
causality that Marx presents. For Weber, a certain ideology or world view is a necessary
precondition for a mode of production. In order that a manner of life so well adapted to
the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all. i.e. should come to dominate others,
it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life
common to whole groups of men. For capitalism to succeed, groups within society had to
adopt ways of life compatible with it. Those ways of life were not caused by capitalism;
rather they enabled its rise.
What kind of world view does capitalism require? Weber argues that the elimination
of traditionalism is crucial. This is well covered in the above write up, and repetition is
not necessary. Suffice it to say that traditionalism means that workers are complacent
with their standard of living. They cannot be induced to work harder by the introduction
of piece rates, for instance. This kind of populace is not well suited for capitalism, since
capitalism requires a constant improvement in productivity. In capitalism, profits are
continually reinvested – something that doesn’t make sense to people who only wants to
uphold their current standard of living.

Capitalism requires that Labour be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a

calling. Such an attitude does not come about simply because the economic base requires
it (for a functionalist account of Marx’s theory of history which argues that “bases get the
superstructures they need because they need them”. Rather…such an attitude … can
only be the product of a long and arduous process of education. The spirit of capitalism
makes capitalist activity intelligible. Where the spirit does not exist, capitalist activity
makes no sense. This is essentially the reason why the spirit of capitalism is a
precondition of capitalism itself. It is just that (the bourgeois lifestyle) which seems to the
pre:capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious. That anyone should be able to
make it the sole purpose of his life:work, to sink into the grave weighed down with a
great material load of money and goods, seems to him explicable only as the product of a
perverse instinct.
Weber does not simply present a theoretical argument against historical materialism,
he also presents empirical evidence. He places considerable importance on his example of
colonial Massachusetts. According to Weber, the spirit of capitalism was present in
Massachusetts before the advent of capitalism itself. There are complaints of peculiarity
calculating sort of profit – seeking in New England, as distinguished from other parts of
America, as early as 1632.It is further undoubted that capitalism remained far less
developed in some of the neighbouring colonies, the later Southern States of the United
States of America, in spite of the fact that these latter were founded by large capitalists for
business motives, while the New England colonies were founded by preachers and
seminary graduates with the help of small bourgeois, craftsmen and yeomen, for
religious reasons. In this case the casual relation is certainly the reverse of that suggested
by the materialistic standpoint. In the backwoods small bourgeois circumstances of
Pennsylvania in the 18th century, where business threatened for simple lack of money to
fall back into barter, where there was hardly a sign of large enterprise, where only the
earliest beginnings of banking were to be found, the same thing (rational capitalist
accumulation a la Franklin) was considered the essence of moral conduct, even
commanded in the name of duty. To speak here a reflection of material conditions in the
ideal superstructure would be patent nonsense.
Weber or Marx?
Especially in American social science, often hostile to Marxism, Weber has been
presented as the ‘bourgeois Marx’, the more acceptable of the two profound social
theorists because of his more conservative politics. In reductionist. So, is Weber’s critique
of Marx successful? This is one of the classical questions of the social sciences, and we do
not pretend to have an answer to it. The most profound differences of Marx and Weber
do not lie in empirical investigations – which could be verified or falsified by further
investigation – but in the theoretical foundations of their historical method. Weber seems
the more attractive theorist, since he repudiates Marxist reductionism which most of us
would reject. We think his critique of Marx is persuasive, though we doubt the
controversy can be ultimately decided. Marx is not as reductionist as is often thought.
For instance, in the 18th Brumaire he describes a situation where the state has

considerable autonomy from class forces in society. And even in the Preface, considerable
latitude is left for the superstructure to exert causal influence in history. So, is Weber right
in arguing that a certain world view is a necessary precondition of the rise of capitalism
or Marx in arguing that such a world view is merely a consequence of the development of
capitalism? Personally, we do not think there is an answer. The problem cannot be
resolved by looking at historical facts, since it is precisely about how such facts should be
interpreted. However, even if this question is unanswerable – or because of that – it is one
of the most fascinating problems in the social sciences.
STRUCTURALISM
One development that we have said little about up to this point is the increase in
interest in structuralism. Usually traced to France (and Often called French structuralism,
structuralism has now become an international phenomenon. Although its route lies
outside sociology, structuralism in sociology still is so undeveloped that it is difficult to
define with any precision. The problem is exacerbated by structuralism’s more or less
simultaneous development in a number of fields; it is difficult to find one single coherent
statement of structuralism. Indeed, there are significant differences among the various
branches of structuralism. We can get a preliminary feeling for structuralism by
delineating the basic differences that exist among those who support a structuralist
perspective. There are those who focus on what they call the “deep structures of the
mind.” It is their view that these unconscious structures lead people to think and act as
people do. The work of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud might be seen as an example of
this orientation. Then there are structuralists who focus on the invisible larger structures
of society in general. Marx is sometimes thought of as someone who practiced such a
brand of structuralism, with his focus on the unseen economic structure of capitalist
society. Still another group sees structures as the models they construct of the social
world. Finally, a number of structuralists are concerned with the dialectical relationship
between individuals and social structures. They see a link between the structures of the
mind and the structures of society. The anthropologist Claude Levi:Straus is most often
associated with this view.
Structuralism obviously involves a focus on structures, but they are not in the main the
same structures that concern the structural functionalists. While the latter, indeed most,
sociologists are concerned with social structures of primary concern to structuralists are
linguistic structures. This shift from social to linguistic turn which dramatically altered
the nature of the social sciences. The focus of a good many social scientists shifted from
social structure to language.
ROOTS IN LINGUISTIC
Structuralism emerged from diverse developments in various fields. The source of

modern structuralism and its strongest bastion to this day is linguistics. The work of the
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857:1913) stands out in the developments of
structural linguistics and, ultimately structuralism in various other fields. Of particular
interest to us is Saussure’s differentiation between langue and parole, which was to have
enormous significance. Langue is the formal, grammatical system of language. It is a

system of phonic elements whose relationships are governed, Saussure and his followers
believed, by determinate laws. Much of linguistics since Saussure’s time has been
oriented to the discovery of those laws. The existence of langue makes parole possible.
Parole is actual speech, the way that speakers use language to express themselves.
Although Saussure recognized the significance of the people’s use of language in
subjective and often idiosyncratic ways, he believed that the individual’s use of language
cannot be the concern of the scientifically oriented linguist. Such a linguist must look at
langue, the formal system of language, not at the subjective ways in which it is used by
actors.
Langue, then, can be viewed as a system of signs:a structure:and the meaning of each
sign is produced by the relationship among signs within the system. Especially
important here are relations of difference, including binary oppositions. Thus, for
example, the meaning of the word “hot” comes not from some intrinsic properties of the
world, but from the word’s relationship with, its binary opposition to the word, “cold.”
Meanings, the mind, and ultimately the social work are shaped by the structure of
language. Thus instead of an existential world of people shaping their surroundings we
have here a world, are being shaped by the structure of language.
The concern fro structure has been extended beyond the language to the study of all
sign systems. This focus on the structure of sign systems has been labeled “semiotics”
and has attracted many followers. Semeiotics is broader than structural linguistic,
because it encompasses not only language but also other sign and symbol systems, such
as facial expressions, body language literary texts, indeed all forms of communication.
Roland Barthes is often seen as the true founder of semiotics. Barthes extended
Saussure’s idea to all areas of social life. Not only language but also social behaviors as
representations, or signs: “Not just language, but wresting matches are also signifying
practices, as are TV shows, fashions, cooking and just about everything is else in
everyday life”. The “linguistic turn” came to encompass all social phenomena which, in
turn, came to be reinterpreted as signs.
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
A Swiss linguist who founded the Geneva School of Linguistic Structuralism,

Saussure emphasized the collective nature of language: like culture, language is a
collectively produced and shared system of meaning. He was influenced by E.
Durkheim. In his Course in General Linguistics (1916) he distinguished between speech or
language:behavior (parole) and language as a system of regularities (langue). Language
is a system of signs. Structuralism is only concerned with the structure and history of
language. The meaning of language is determined by a structure of mutually defining
units, which is a self:referential and conventional system. The linguistic unit or sign has
two dimensions: the signifier and the signified. The radical nature of Saussurian
linguistics was to claim that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary:
there is no necessary, natural or intrinsic relationship between linguistic forms and their
designated meanings.

Anthropological Structuralism: Claude Levi :Strauss

A Central figure in French structuralism – indeed Kurzweil (1980:13) calls him “the
father of structuralism”: is the French anthropologist Clause Levi:Strauss. While
structure takes various forms in Levi:Strauss’s work, what is important for our purpose is
that he can be seen as extending Saussure’s work on language to anthropological issues:
for example, to myths in primitive societies. However, Levi Strauss also applied
structuralism more broadly to all forms of communication. His major innovation was to
reconceptualize a wide array of social phenomena (for instance, kinship systems) as
systems of communication, thereby making them amenable to structural analyses. The
exchange of spouses, for example, can be analyzed in the same way as the exchange of
words; both are social exchanges that can be studied through the use structural
anthropology.
We can illustrate Levi:Strauss’s (1967) thinking with the examples of the similarities
between linguistic systems and kinship systems. First terms used to describe kinship, like
phonemes in language, are basic units of analysis to the structural anthropologist. Second
neither the kinship terms nor the phonemes have meaning in themselves. Instead, both
acquire meaning only when they are integral part of a larger system. Levi:Strauss even
used a system of binary oppositions in his anthropology (for example, the raw and the
cooked) much like those employed by saucier in linguistics. Third Levi Strauss admitted
that there is empirical variation from setting to setting in both phonemic and kinship
systems, but even these variations can be traced to the operation of general, although
implicit laws.
All of this is very much in line with the linguistic turn, but Levi:Strauss ultimately
went off in a number of directions that are odd s with that turn. Most importantly, he
argued that both phonemic systems and kinship systems are the products of the
structures of the mind. However, they are not the products of a conscious process.
Instead, they are the products of the unconscious, logical structure of the mind. These
systems, as well as the logical structure of the mind from which they are derived, operate
on the basis of general laws. Most of those who have followed the linguistic turn have
not followed Levi:Strauss in the direction of defining the underlying structure of the
mind as the most fundamental structure.
GRAMSCI’S THEORY OF HEGEMONY
Antonio Gramsci (January 22, 1891 – April 27, 1937 was an Italian philosopher,
writer, politician and political theorist. A founding member and one time leader of the
Communist Party of Italy, he was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. His
writings are heavily concerned with the analysis of culture and political leadership and
he is notable as a highly original thinker within the Marxist tradition. He is renowned for
his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist
society.
Gramsci was born in Ales, Italy, on the island of Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven
sons of Francesco Gramsci, a low:level official from Gaeta. He was of Albanian descent,

his father’s family was Arbëreshë and the family name was related to Gramsh, an
Albanian town. Francesco’s financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the
family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in
Ghilarza.In 1898 Francesco was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned, reducing his
family to destitution and forcing the young Antonio to abandon his schooling and work
at various casual jobs until his father’s release in 1904.The boy suffered from health
problems: a malformation of the spine owing to a childhood accident left him
hunch:backed and underdeveloped, while he was also plagued by various internal
disorders throughout his life.Gramsci completed secondary school in Cagliari, where he
lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had
made him a militant socialist. However, Gramsci’s sympathies at the time did not lie
with socialism, but rather with the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and
miners, who saw their neglect as a result of the privileges enjoyed by the rapidly
industrializing North and who tended to turn to Sardinian nationalism as a response.
A brilliant student, in 1911 Gramsci won a scholarship that allowed him to study at the
University of Turin, sitting the exam at the same time as future cohort Palmiro Togliatti.
At Turin, he read literature and took a keen interest in linguistics, which he studied under
Matteo Bartoli.Gramsci found the city at the time going through a process of
industrialization, with the Fiat and Lancia factories recruiting workers from poorer
regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started
to emerge. Gramsci had a close involvement with these developments, frequenting
socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants, which gave him
continuity with his native culture. His worldview shaped by both his earlier experiences
in Sardinia and his environment on the mainland, Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist
Party in late 1913.
Despite showing talent for his studies, Gramsci’s financial problems and poor health,
as well as his growing political commitment, forced him to abandon his education in
early 1915. By this time, he had acquired an extensive knowledge of history and
philosophy. At university, he had come into contact with the thought of Antonio
Labriola, Rodolfo Mondolfo, Giovanni Gentile and, most importantly, Benedetto Croce,
possibly the most widely respected Italian intellectual of his day. Such thinkers espoused
a brand of Hegelian Marxism to which Labriola had given the name “philosophy of
praxis”. Though Gramsci would later use this phrase to escape the prison censors, his
relationship with this current of thought was ambiguous throughout his career.
From 1914 onward Gramsci’s writings for socialist newspapers such as II Grido del
Popolo earned him a reputation as a notable journalist, and in 1916 he became co:editor of
the Piedmont edition of Avanti!, the Socialist Party official organ. An articulate and
prolific writer of political theory, Gramsci proved a formidable commentator, writing on
all aspects of Turin’s social and political life. Gramsci was, at this time, also involved in
the education and organization of Turin workers: he spoke in public for the first time in
1916 and gave talks on topics such as Romain Ralland, the French Revolution, the Paris
Commune and the emancipation of women. In the wake of the arrest of Socialist Party
leaders that followed the revolutionary riots of August 1917, Gramsci became one of

Turin’s leading socialists when he was both elected to the party’s Provisional Committee
and made editor of II Grido Del Popolo.
In April 1919 with Togliatti, Angelo Tasca and Umberto Terracini Gramsci set up the
weekly newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo (The New Order). In October of the same year,
despite being divided into various hostile factions, the Socialist Party moved by a large
majority to join the Third International. The L’Ordine Nuovo group was seen by Vladimir
Lenin as closest in orientation to the Bolsheviks, and it received his backing against the
anti:parliamentary programme of the extreme left Amadeo Bordiga.
Amongst the various tactical debates that took place within the party, Gramsci’s group
was mainly distinguished by its advocacy of workers’ councils, which had come into
existence in Turin spontaneously during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci
these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of
organizing production. Although he believed his position at this time to be in keeping
with Lenin’s policy of “All power to the Soviets”, his stance was attacked by Bordiga for
betraying a syndicalist tendency influenced by the thought of Georges Sorel and Daniel
Deleon. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost
alone in his defense of the councils.
The failure of the workers’ councils to develop into a national movement led Gramsci
to believe that a Communist Party in the Leninist sense was needed. The group around
L’Ordine Nuovo declaimed incessantly against the PSI’s centrist leadership and
ultimately allied with Bordiga’s far larger”abstentionist” faction. On January 21, 1921, in
the town of Livorno, the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d’Italia – PCI) was
founded. Gramsci supported against Bordiga the Arditi del Popolo, a militant anti:fascist
group which struggled against the Blackshirts.Gramsci would be a leader of the party
from its inception but was subordinate to Bordiga, whose emphasis on discipline,
centralism and purity of principles dominated the party’s programme until the latter lost
the leadership in 1924.In 1922 Gramsci traveled to Russia as a representative of the new
party. Here, he met Julia Schucht, a young violinist whom Gramsci later married and by
whom he had two sons.
The Russian mission coincided with the advent of Fascism in Italy, and Gramsci
returned with instructions to foster, against the wishes of the PCI leadership, a united
front of leftist parties against fascism. Such a front would ideally have had the PCI at its
centre, through which Moscow would have controlled all the leftist forces, but others
disputed this potential supremacy: socialists did have a certain tradition in Italy too,
while the communist party seemed relatively young and too radical. Many believed that
an eventual coalition led by communists would have functioned too remotely from
political debate, and thus would have run the risk of isolation.
In late 1922 and early 1923, Benito Mussolini’s government embarked on a campaign
of repression against the opposition parties, arresting most of the PCI leadership,
including Bordiga. At the end of 1923, Gramsci traveled from Moscow to Vienna, where
he tried to revive a party torn by factional strife. In 1924 Gramsci, now recognized as
head of the PCI, gained election as a deputy for the Veneto. He started organizing the

launch of the official newspaper of the party, called L’Unità (Unity), living in Rome while
his family stayed in Moscow. At its Lyons Congress in January 1926, Gramsci’s theses
calling for a united front to restore democracy to Italy were adopted by the party. In 1926
Joseph Stalin’s manoeuvres inside the Bolshevik party moved Gramsci to write a letter to
the Comintern, in which he deplored opposition led by Leon Trotsky, but also underlined
some presumed faults of the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party,
received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult
conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti which they never completely resolved.
On November 9, 1926 the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws,
taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini’s life that had occurred several days
earlier. The fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his parliamentary immunity, and
brought him to Regina Coeli, the famous Roman prison. At his trial, Gramsci’s prosecutor
famously stated. “For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning”. He
received an immediate sentence of 5 years in confinement (on the remote island of
Ustica); the following year he received a sentence of 20 years of prison (in Turi, near Bari).
His condition caused him to suffer from constantly declining health, and he received an
individual cell and little assistance. In 1932, a project for exchanging political prisoners
(including Gramsci) between Italy and the Soviet Union failed. In 1934 his health
deteriorated severely and he gained conditional freedom, after having already visited
some hospitals in Civitavecchia, Formia and Rome. He died in Rome at the age of 46,
shortly after being released from prison; he is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.
In an interview with archbishop Luigi de Magistris, former head of the Apostolic
Penitentiary of the Holy See, which deasl with confessions and forgiveness of sins, he
stated that during Gramsci’s final illness, he “returned to the faith of his infancy” and
“died taking the sacraments”. However Italian State documents on his death show that
no religious official was sent for or received by Gramsci. Other witness accounts of his
death also do not mention any conversion to Catholicism or renouncement by Gramsci of
his socialist ideals.
Thought
Gramsci is seen by many as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20th
century, in particular as a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote
more than 30 notebooks and 3000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment.
These writings, known as the prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci’s tracing of Italian
history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and
educational theory associated with his name, such as:
 Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the capitalist state.
 The need for popular workers’ education to encourage development of
intellectuals from the working class.
 The distinction between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.)
which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society (the family, the
education system, trade unions, etc.) where leadership is constituted through
ideology or by means of consent.
 ‘Absolute historicism’.
 The critique of economic determinism.
 The critique of philosophical materialism.
Hegemony
Hegemony was a concept previously used by Marxists such as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
to indicate the political leadership of the working:class in a democratic revolution, but
developed by Gramsci into an acute analysis to explain why the ‘inevitable’ socialist
revolution predicted by orthodox Marxism had not occurred by the early 20 th century.
Capitalism, it seemed, was even more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci
suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic
coercion, but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the
bourgeoisie became the ‘common sense’ values of all. Thus a consensus culture
developed in which people in the working:class identified their own good with the good
of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
The working class needed to develop a culture of its own, which would overthrow the
notion that bourgeois values represented ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ values for society, and
would attract the oppressed and intellectual classes to the cause of the proletariat. Lenin
held that culture was ‘ancillary’ to political objectives but for Gramsci it was fundamental
to the attainment of power that cultural hegemony be achieved first. In Gramsci’s view,
any class that wishes to dominate in modern conditions has to move beyond its own
narrow ‘economic –corporate’ interests, to exert intellectual and moral leadership, and to
make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this union of
social forces a ‘historic bloc’, taking a term from Georges Sorel. This bloc forms the basis
of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re:produces the hegemony of the
dominant class through a nexus of institutions, social relations and ideas. In this manner,
Gramsci developed a theory that emphasized the importance of the superstructure in
both maintaining and fracturing relations of the base.
Gramsci stated that, in the West, bourgeois cultural values were tied to religion, and
therefore much of his polemic against hegemonic culture is aimed at religious norms and
values. He was impressed by the power, Roman Catholicism had over men’s minds and
the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the
religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci believed that it was
Marxism’s task to marry the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance
humanism to the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For
Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people’s spiritual needs, and to
do so people would have to recognize it as an expression of their own experience. For
Gramsci, hegemonic dominance ultimately relied on coercion, and in a “crisis of
authority” the “masks of consent” slip away, revealing the fist of force.
Intellectuals and education
Gramsci gave much thought to the question of the role of intellectuals in society.
Famously, he stated that all men are intellectuals, in that all have intellectual and rational

faculties, but not all men have the social function of intellectuals. He claimed that
modern intellectuals were not simply talkers, but directors and organizers who helped
built society and produce hegemony by means of ideological apparatuses such as
education and the media. Furthermore, he distinguished between a ‘traditional’
intelligentsia which sees itself (wrongly) as a class apart from society, and the thinking
groups which every class produces from its own ranks ‘organically’. Such ‘organic’
intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules, but
rather articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the
masses could not express for themselves.
Gramsic’s central concept, and one that reflects his Hegelianism, is hegemony.
According to Gramsci,”the essential ingredient of the most modern philosophy of praxis
[the linking of thought and action] is the historical:philosophical concept of ‘hegemony’.
Hegemony is defined by Gramsic as cultural leadership exercised by the ruling class. He
contrasts hegemony to coercion that is “exercised by legislative or executive powers or
expressed through police intervention”.
Whereas economic Marxists tended to emphasize the economy and the coercive
aspects of state domination, Gramsci emphasized “hegemony’ and cultural leadership”.
In an analysis of capitalism, Gramsci wanted to know how some intellectuals, working on
behalf of the capitalists, achieved cultural leadership and the assent of the masses.
Not only does the concept of hegemony help us to understand domination within
capitalism, nut it also serves to orient Gramsci’s thoughts on revolution. That is, through
revolution it is not enough to gain control of the economy and the state apparatus it is
also necessary to gain cultural leadership over the rest society. It is here that Gramsci see
a key role for communist intellectuals and the communist party.
Gramsci’s Hegemony Theory and the Ideological
Role of the Mass Media by Stuart Hains
A look at Gramsci’s theory on governing bodies, their ability to control the masses,
and the means employed to do so.Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is born from the basic
idea that government and state cannot enforce control over any particular class or
structure unless other, more intellectual methods are entailed. The reason and motive
behind the concept has been noted to be the way society is structured and exists on a
power and class base. Gramsci defined the State as coercion combined with hegemony
and according to Gramsci hegemony is political power that flows from intellectual and
moral leadership, authority or consensus as distinguished from armed force. A ruling
class forms and maintains its hegemony in civil society, i.e. by creating cultural and
political consensus through unions, political parties, schools, media, the church, and
other voluntary associations where hegemony is exercised by a ruling class over allied
classes and social groups. Gramsci argues in his Prison Notebooks (which were written
whilst he was incarcerated by Mussolini in Fascist Italy) that the way society is controlled
and manipulated is of direct consequence of the practice of a ‘false consciousness’ and the
creation of values and life choices that are to be followed. Gramsci argues that the system
of hegemony can be classified as “social basis of the proletarian dictatorship and of the

Workers State”. It is this process which Gramsci refers to when he tries to explain the
way in which organization of people, media and information controls the thought and
actions to create a state of domination though the creation of dominant ideologies.
Another aspect of the theory of hegemony includes the economic determination and
intellectual and moral leadership, which degenerates into a domination and consensual
managing of life choices. The media has a central role in this theory and the practice of
the process has become more and more to the fore in study of the way the ideological
media are at the centre of the struggle for consumers’ minds and central views. The role
of the media has to be taken into account within the context of the theory of hegemony
due to the value of the media and the public:imposed powers it yields. Communication
from government, between and inside classes, is now controlled by the media and any
text consumed by the state has to be considered to be potentially open to the practice of
manipulation and therefore, the process of hegemony. It could be argued that the media
exists as a vehicle and tool for consumerism to grow and for society to engage in the
current purchase:dominated way. If people are not consumers then they may be
considered by some areas of society to be outcasts and different from the ‘norm’. It is this
state of affairs where the media can be key to influencing the people it informs and
instilling the thought that one must be a consumer and if not then at least aspire to be.
Gramsci may argue that the way in which the media operates could equate to what he
envisaged when he talked about a ‘class struggle’ and the creation of values that others
must follow. It is this situation where the ideological role of the media can be seen to
influence the way in which people can decode and read advertisement, features,
television programmes and any text which may hold a hidden meaning, therefore
creating the possibility for media to become very powerful in terms of ideological control
and leadership. It could be said that the media has become the dominant class in a
Western society full of semiotic and hegemonic traits. No longer can the world be seen
through one’s own single apathetic eye. Cultural Theory author Andrew Edgar states:
“Due to the rise of trade unions and other pressure groups, the expansion of civil rights
(including the right to vote), and higher levels of educational achievement, rule must be
based in consent. The intellectuals sympathetic to the ruling class will therefore work to
present the ideas and justifications of the class’s domination coherently and persuasively.
This work will inform the persuasion of ideas through such institutions as the mass
media, the church, school and family”. Recently, the proliferation and exploitation of
press and interactive media has led to the creation of super media existence, threatening
the objective viewpoints society relies upon to keep an ‘open’ state if one were ever to
exist. Gramsci was mainly concerned with the determinism within the state of Italy in the
early part of the 20th Century. He saw the potential for manipulation and the practice of
domination growing in Mussolini Italy. Within the current theoretical climate, the theory
has been adapted to include the theory of ‘consent’. This allows the scope for many
theorists to argue that the way society is now run, with the increasing emphasis on
education, makes the leadership and decision making process less easy to quantity. The
theory of consent exists to try and explain the way in which government policy;
legislation and international policy are made and enforced.

GEORG LUKACS’S (1885 - 1971)

ANALYSIS OF HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
The attention of Marxian scholars of the early 20th century was limited mainly to
Marx’s later largely economic works such as Capital. The early work especially the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, which was more heavily influenced by
Hegelian subjectivism, was largely unknown to Marxian thinkers. The rediscovery of the
Manuscripts and their publication in 1932 was a major turning point. However, by the
1920’s Lukacs already had written his major work, in which he emphasized the subjective
side of Marxian theory. As Martin Jay puts it, “History and Class Consciousness
anticipated in several fundamental ways the philosophical implications of Marx’s 1844
Manuscripts whose publications it antedated by almost a decade”.
Lukacs major contribution to Marxian theory lies in his work on two major ideas –
reification and class consciousness. Lukacs made it clear from the beginning that he was
not totally rejecting the work of the economic Marxists on reification, but simply seeking
to broaden and extend their ideas. Lukacs commended with the Marxian concept of
commodities which he characterized as “the central structural problem of capitalist
society”. A commodity is at base a relation among people that they come to believe takes
on the character of a thing and develops an objective form. People in their interaction
with nature in capitalist society produce various products or commodities (for example
bread automobiles motion pictures). However people tend to lose sight of the fact that
they produce by a market that is independent of the actors. The fetishism of commodities
is the process by which commodities and the market for them are granted independent
objective existence by the actors in capitalist society. Marx’s concept of the fetishism of
commodities was the basis for Lukacs’s concept of reification.
The crucial difference between the fetishism of commodities and reification is in the
extensiveness of the two concepts. Whereas the former is restricted to the economic
sector. The same dynamic applies in all sectors of capitalist society: people come to
believe that social structure have a life of their own, and as a result they do come to
believe that social structures have a life of their own, and as a result they do come to have
an objective character. Lukacs delineated this process: ‘Man in capitalist society confronts
a reality “made” by himself (as a class) which appears to him to be a natural phenomenon
alien to himself; he is wholly at the mercy of its “laws” his activity is confined to the
exploitation of the inexorable fulfillment of certain individual laws for his own (egoistic)
interests. But even while “acting” he remains in the nature of the case the object and not
the subject of events’. In developing his ideas on reification, Lukacs integrated insights
from Weber and Simmel. However, because reification was embedded in Marxian, it was
seen as a problem limited to capitalism and not as it was to Weber and Simmel, the
inevitable fate of humankind.
The second major contribution of Lukacs was his work on class consciousness, which
refers to the belief systems shared by those who occupy the same class position within
society.Lukcas made it clear that class consciousness is neither the sum nor the average of
individual consciousness: rather it is a property of a group of people who share a similar

place in the productive system. This view leads to a focus on the class consciousness of
the bourgeoisie and especially of the proletariat. In Lukacs’s work there is a clear think
between objective economic position class consciousness, and the “real, psychological
thoughts of men about their lives”. The concept of class consciousness necessarily implies
at least in capitalism, the prior state of false consciousness. That is classes in capitalism
generally do not have a clear sense of their true class interests. For example, until the
revolutionary stage, members of the proletariat do not fully realize the nature and extent
of their exploitation in capitalism. The falsity of class consciousness is derived form the
class’s position within the economic structure of society:”class consciousness implies a
class conditioned unconsciousness of one’s own socio: historical and economic
condition...... The ‘falseness, ‘the illusion implicit in this situation is in have been unable
to overcome false consciousness and thereby achieve class consciousness. The structural
position of the proletariat within capitalism, however gives it the peculiar ability to
achieve class consciousness.
The ability to achieve class consciousness is peculiar to capitalist societies. In
pre:capitalist societies, a variety of factors prevented the development of class
consciousness. For one thing, the state, independent of the economy affected social strata;
for another status (prestige) consciousness tended to mask class (economic)
consciousness. As a result Lukacs concluded “There is therefore no possible position
within such a society from which the economic basis of all social relations could be made
conscious”. In contrast the economic base of capitalism is clearer and simpler. People
may not be conscious of its effects, but they are at least unconsciously aware of them. As
a result, “class consciousness arrived at the point where it could become conscious”. At
this stage, society turns into an ideological battle ground in which those who seek to
conceal the class character of society are pitted against those who seek to expose it.
Lukacs compared the various classes in capitalism on the issue of class consciousness. He
argued that the petty bourgeoisie and the peasants cannot develop class consciousness
because of the ambiguity of their structural position within capitalism. Because these two
classes represent vestiges of society in the feudal era, they are not able to develop a clear
sense of the nature of capitalism. The bourgeoisie can develop class consciousness, but at
best it understands the development of capitalism as something external, subject to
objective laws, that it can experience only passively.
The proletariat has the capacity to develop true class consciousness, and as it does the
bourgeoisie is thrown on the defensive. Lukacs refused to see the proletariat as simply
driven by external forces but viewed it instead as an active creator of its own fate. In the
confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat the former class has all the
intellectual and organizational weapons, whereas all the latter has at least at first is the
ability to see society for what it is. As the battle proceeds, the proletariat moves from
bring a “class conscious of its position and its mission. In other words, “the class struggle
must be raised form the level of economic necessity to the level of conscious aim and
effective class consciousness”. When the struggle reaches this point the proletariat is
capable of the action that can overthrow the capitalist system.Lukacs had a rich
sociological theory, although it is embedded in Marxian terms. He was concerned with
the dialectical relationship among the structures (primarily economic) of capitalism, the
idea systems (especially class consciousness), individual thought, and ultimately,

individual action. His theoretical perspective provides an important bridge between the
economic determinists and more modern Marxists.
STRUCTURAL MARXISM
Another variant of structuralism that considerable success in France ( and many other
part of the world) was structural Marxism, especially the work of Louiss Althusser, Nicos
Poulantzas, and Maurice Godelier.Although we have presented the case that modern
structuralism began with Saussure’s work in linguistics, there are those who argue that it
started with the work of Karl Marx: “when Marx assumes that structure is not to be
confused with visible relations and explains their hidden logic, he inaugurates the
modern structuralist tradition”. Although structural Marxism and structuralism in
general are both interested in “structures,” each field conceptualizes structure differently.
At least some structural Marxists share with structuralists an interest in the study of
structure as a prerequisite to the study of history. As Maurice Godelier said, “The study
of the internal functioning of a structure must precede and illuminate the study of its
genesis and evolution”. In another work Godelier said, “The inner logic of these systems
must be analyzed before their origin is analyzed”. Another view shared by structuralists
and structural Marxists is the are formed out of the interplay of social relations. Both
schools sees structure as real (albeit invisible), although they differ markedly on the
nature of the structure that they consider real. For Levi:Strauss the focus on the structure
of the mind, whereas for structural Marxists it is on the underlying structure of society.
Perhaps most important, both structuralism and structural Marxism reject empiricism
and accept a concern for underlying invisible structures. Godelier argued: “What both
structuralists and Marxist reject are the empiricist definitions of what constitutes a social
structure”. Godeler also made this statement: For Marx as for Levi:Strausss a structure is
not a reality that is directly visible, and so directly observable, but a level of reality that
exists beyond the visible relations between men, and the functioning of which constitutes
the underlying logic of the system, the subjacent order by which the apparent order is to
be explained. Godelier went even further and argued that such a pursuit defines all
science: “What is visible is a reality concealing another, deeper reality, which is hidden
and the discovery of which is the very purpose of scientific cognition”.
In spite of these similarities, structural Marxism did not in the main participate in the
linguistic turn then taking place in the social sciences. For example the focal concern
continued to be social and economic, not linguistic, structures. Moreover, structural
Marxism continued to be associated with Marxian theory, and many French social
thinkers were becoming at least as impatient with Marxian theory as they were with
existentialism.
FRENCH HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology in France has a less clear genealogy than the British and American
traditions, in part because many French writers influential in anthropology have been

trained or held faculty positions in sociology, philosophy, or other fields rather than in
anthropology. Most commentators consider Marcel Mauss (1872:1950), nephew of the
influential sociologist Emile Durkheim to be the founder of the French anthropological
tradition. Mauss belonged to Durkheim’s Annee Sociologique group; and while
Durkheim and others examined the state of modern societies, Mauss and his
collaborators (such as Henri and Robert Hertz) drew on ethnography and philology to
analyze societies which were not as ‘differentiated’ as European nation states. Two works
by Mauss in particular proved to have enduring relevance: Essay on the Gift a seminal
analysis of exchange and reciprocity, and his Huxley lecture on the notion of the person,
the first comparative study of notions of person and selfhood cross:culturally.
Throughout the interwar years, French interest in anthropology often dovetailed with
wider cultural movements such as surrealism and primitivism which drew on
ethnography for inspiration. Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris are examples of people
who combined anthropology with the French avant:grade. During this time most of what
is known as ethnologie was restricted to museums, such as the Musee de l’Homme
founded by Paul Rivert, and anthropology had a close relationship with studies of
folklore.
Above all, however, it was Claude Levi:Strauss who helped institutionalize
anthropology in France. Along with the enormous influence his structuralism exerted
across multiple disciplines, Levi:Strauss established ties with American and British
anthropologists. At the same time he established centers and laboratories within France
to provide an institutional context within anthropology while training influential
students such as Maurice Gode lier and Francoise Heritier who would prove influential
in the world of French anthropology. Much of the distinct character of France’s
anthropology today is a result of the fact that most anthropology is carried out in
nationally funded research laboratories (CNRS) rather than academic departments in
universities.
Other influential writers in the 1970s include Pierre Clastres, who explains in his books
on the Guayaki tribe in Paraguay that “primitive societies” actively oppose the institution
of the state. Therefore, these stateless societies are not less evolved than societies with
states, but took the active choice of conjuring the institution of authority as a separate
function from society. The leader is only a spokesperson for the group when it has to deal
with other groups (“international relations”) but has no inside authority, and may be
violently removed if he attempts to abuse this position. The most important French social
theorist since Foucault and Levi:Strauss is Pierre Bourdieu, who trained formally in
philosophy and sociology and eventually held the Chair of Sociology at the College de
France. Like Mauss and others before him, however, he worked on topics both in
sociology and anthropology. His field works among the Kabyles of Algeria places him
solidly in anthropology, while his analysis of the function and reproduction of fashion
and cultural capital in European societies places him as solidly in sociology.

CRITICAL THEORY
Critical theory is the product of a group of German neo:Marxists who were

dissatisfied with the state of Marxian theory, particular tendency towards economic
determinism. The organization associated with critical theory, the Institute of Social
Research, was officially founded in Frankfurt, Germany, on February 23, 1923, although a
number of its members had been active prior to that time. With the coming to power of
the Nazis in 1933, the institute was confiscated and many of the major figures immigrated
to the United States and continued their work at an institute affiliated with Columbia
University in New York City. Following the Second World War some of the critical
theorists gradually returned to Germany; others (Macuse) remained in the United States.
Critical theory has spread beyond the confines of the Frankfurt School. Critical theory
was and is largely a European orientation, although its influence in American sociology
has grown.
The Major Critiques of Social and Intellectual Life :
Critical theory is composed largely of criticisms of various aspects of social and
intellectual life. It takes its inspiration from Marx’s work which was shaped first by a
critical analysis of Philosophical ideas and later by critiques of the nature of the capitalist
system. The critical school constitutes a critique both of society and various systems of
knowledge .Much of the work is in the form of critiques but its ultimate goal is to reveal
more accurately the nature of society. First we focus on the major criticisms offered by the
school all of debunking various aspects of social reality.
Criticisms of Marxian Theory : Critical theory is a variant of Marxian theory that takes
as its starting point a critique of Marxian theories. The critical theorists are most
disturbed by the economic determinists : the mechanistic or mechanical, Marxists. Some
criticize the determinism implicit in parts of Marx’s original work, but most focus their
criticisms on the neo:Marxists primarily because they had interpreted Marx’s work too
mechanistically. The critical theorists do not say that economic determinists were wrong
in focusing on the economic realm but that they should have been concerned with other
aspects of social life as well. As we will see, the critical school seeks to rectify this
imbalance by focusing its attention on the cultural realm. In addition to attacking other
Marxian theories, the critical school critiqued societies like the former Soviet Union, built
ostensibly on Marxian theory.
Criticisms of Positivism Critical theorists also focus on the Philosophical underpinnings
of scientific inquiry; especially positivism. The criticism of positivism is related at least in
part, to the criticism of economic determinism because some of those who were
determinists accepted part or all of the positivistic theory of knowledge. Positivism is
depicted as standing for various things. Positivism accepts the idea that a single scientific
method is applicable to all fields of study. It takes the physical sciences as the standard of
certainly and exactness for all disciplines. Positivists believe that knowledge is inherently
neutral. They feel that they can keep human values out of their work. This belief in turn
leads to the view that science is not in the position of advocating any specific form of
social action.

Positivism is opposed by the critical school on various grounds. For one thing
positivism tends to reify the social world and see it as a natural Process. The critical
theorists prefer to focuses on human activity as well as on the ways in which such activity
affects larger social structures. In short, positivism loses sight of the actors, reducing
them to passive entities determined by “Natural forces.” Given their belief in the
distinctiveness of the actor, the critical theorists would not accept the idea that the general
laws of science can be applied without question to human action. Positivism is assailed
for being content to judge the adequacy of means toward given ends and for not making
a similar judgment about ends. This critique leads to the view that positivism is
inherently conservative, incapable of challenging the existing system. As Martin Jay says
of positivism, “The result was the absolutizing of ‘facts’ and the reification of the existing
order”. Positivism leads the actor and the social scientist to passivity. Few Marxists of any
type would support a perspective that does not relate theory and practice. Despite these
criticisms of positivism, some Marxists (for example, some structuralists, analytic
Marxists) espouse positivism, and Marx himself was often guilty of being overly
positivistic.
Criticisms of Sociology : The critical school also has taken on sociology as a target
(Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, 1973). Sociology is attacked for its “scientism,
“that is, for making the scientific method an end in itself. In addition, sociology is
accused of accepting the status quo. The critical school maintains that sociology does not
seriously criticize society, nor does it seek to transcend the contemporary social structure.
Sociology, the critical school contends, has surrendered its obligation to help people
oppressed by contemporary society. In addition to such political criticisms, the critical
school has a related substantive criticism: it is critical of sociologists’ tendency to reduce
everything human to social variables. When sociologists focus on society as a whole
rather than on individuals in society, they ignore the interaction of the individual and
society. Although most sociological perspective is not guilty of ignoring this interaction,
this view is a cornerstone of the critical school’s attacks on sociologists. Because they
ignore the individual, sociologists are seen as being unable to say anything meaningful
about political changes that could lead to a “just and humane society” as Zoltan Tar put
it, Sociology becomes “an integral part of the existing society instead of being a means of
critique and a ferment of renewal”.
Critique of modern Society : Most of the critical School’s work is aimed at a critique of
modern society and a variety of its components. Whereas much of early Marxian theory
aimed specifically at the economy, the critical school shifted its orientation to the cultural
level in light of what it consider the realities of modern capitalist society. That is the locus
of domination in the modern world shifted from the economy to the cultural realm. Still,
the critical school retains its interest in domination, although in the modern world it is
likely to be domination by cultural rather than economic elements. The critical school
thus seeks to focus on the cultural repression of the individual in modern society.
The critical thinkers have been shaped not only by Marxian theory but also by
Weberian theory, as reflected in their focus on rationality as the dominant development
within the modern world. As Trent Schroyer (1970) made clear, the view of the critical

school is that in modern society the repression produced by rationality has replaced
economic exploitation as the dominant social problem. The critical school clearly has
adopted Weber’s differentiation between formal rationality and substantive rationality, or
what the critical theorists think of as reason. To the critical theorists, formal rationality is
concerned unreflectively with the question of the most effective means for achieving any
given purpose. This is viewed as “technocratic thinking,” in which the objective is to
serve the forces of domination not to emancipated people form domination. The goal is
simply to find the most efficient means to whatever ends are defined as important by
those in power. Technocratic thinking is contrasted to reason which is, in the minds of
critical theorists, the hope for society. Reason involves the assessment of means in terms
of the ultimate human values of justice, peace and happiness. Critical theorists identified
Nazism in general, and its concentration camps more specifically, as example of formal
rationality in mortal combat with reason. Thus, as George Friedman puts it, “Auschwitz
was a rational place, but it was not a reasonable one”.
Despite the seeming rationality of modern life, the critical school views the modern
world as rife with rationality. This idea can be labeled the “irrationality of rationality”, or
more specifically then irrationality of formal rationality. In Herbert Marcuse’s view,
although it appears to be the embodiment of rationality, “this society is irrational as a
whole”. It is irrational that the rational world is destructive of individuals and their needs
and abilities; that peace is maintained through a constant threat of war; and that despite
the existence of sufficient means, people remain impoverished, repressed, exploited, and
unable to fulfill themselves. The critical school focuses primarily on one form of formal
rationality : modern technology. Marcuse (1964), for example, was a serve critic of
modern technology at least as it is employed in capitalism. He saw technology in modern
capitalist society as leading to totalitarianism. In fact, he viewed it as leading to new,
more effective, and even more ”pleasant” methods of external control over individuals
.The prime example is the use of television to socialize and pacify the population (other
examples are mass sports, and sex). Marcuse rejected the idea that technology in neutral
in the modern world and saw it instead as a means to dominate people. It is effective
because it is made to seem neutral when it is in fact enslaving. It serves to suppress
individuality. The actor’s inner freedom has been “invaded and whittled down’ by
modern technology. The result is what Marcuse called “one: dimensional society,” in
which individuals lose the ability to think critically and negatively about society.Mercuse
did not see technology per se as the enemy, but rather technology as it is employed in
modern capitalist society: “Technology, no matter how pure sustains and streamlines the
continuum of domination. This fatal link can be cut only by a revolution which makes
technology and technique subservient to the need and goals of free men”. Mercuse
retained Marx’s original view that technology is not inherently a problem and that it can
be used to develop a “better” society.
Critique of culture : According to Friedman, “the Frankfurt School focused its most
intense attention on the cultural realm”. The critical theorists level significant criticisms at
what they call the “culture industry,” the rationalized, bureaucratized structures (for
example, the television networks) that control modern culture. Interest in the culture
industry reflects their concern with the Marxian concept of “superstructure” rather than
with the economic base. The culture industry producing what is conventionally called
“mass culture.” is defined as the “administered.....no spontaneous, reified, phony culture
rather than real thing” .Two things worry the critical thinkers most about this industry.
First, they are concerned about its falseness. They think of it as a prepackaged set of ideas
mass:produced and disseminated to the masses by the media. Second, the critical
theorists are distributed by its pacifying repressive and stupefying effect on people.
Douglas Kellner has self:consciously offered a critical theory of television. While he
embeds his work in the cultural concerns of the Frankfurt school, Kellner draws on other
Marxian traditions to present a more rounded conception of the television industry. He
critiques the critical school because it “neglects detailed analysis of the political economy
of the media, conceptualizing mass culture merely as an instrument of capitalist
ideology”. Thus in addition to looking at televisions as part of the culture industry,
Kellner connects it to both corporate capitalism and the political system. Furthermore,
Kellner does not see television as monolithic or as controlled by coherent corporate
forces, but rather as a “highly conflictual mass medium in which competing economic,
political, social and cultural forces intersect”. Thus, while working within the tradition of
critical theory, Kellner rejects the view that capitalism is a totally administered world.
Nevertheless, Kellner sees television as a threat to democracy. Individuality, and freedom
and offers suggestions (for example, more democratic accountability, greater citizen
access and participation, greater diversity on television) to deal with the threat. Thus,
Kellner goes beyond a mere critique to offer proposals for dealing with the dangers posed
by television. The critical school is also interested in and critical of what are calls the
“knowledge industry,” which refers to entities concerned with knowledge production
(for example. universities and research institutes (that have become autonomous
structure in our society. Their autonomy has allowed them to extend themselves beyond
their original mandate. They have become oppressive structure interested in expanding
their influence throughout society.
Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism led him to have hope for the future, but many
critical theorists have come to a position of despair and hopelessness. They see the
problems of the modern world not as specific to capitalism but as endemic to a
rationalized world. They see the future. In Weberian terms, as an “iron cage” of
increasingly rational structure form which hope for escape lessens all the time. Much of
critical theory (like the bulk of Marx’s original formulation) is in the form of critical
analyses. Even though the critical theorists also have a number of positive interests, one
of the basic criticisms made of critical theory is that it offers more criticisms than it does
positive contributions. This incessant negativity galls many, and for this reason they feel
that critical theory has little to offer sociological theory.
The Major Contributions
Subjectivity : The great contribution of the critical school has been its effort to reorient
Marxian theory in a subjective direction. Although this constitutes a critique of Marx’s
materialism and his dogged focus on economic structures, it also represents a strong
contribution to our understanding of the subjective elements of social life. The subjective
contribution of the critical school is both the individual and the cultural levels. The
Hegelian roots of Marxian theory are the major source of interest in subjectivity. Many of
the critical thinkers see themselves as returning to those roots, as expressed in Marx’s
early works, especially the Economic and Philosophic manuscripts of 1844. In doing so,
they are following up on the work of the early 20th century Marxian revisionists, such as
Karl Kosch and George Luckacs, who sought not to focus on subjectivity but simply to
integrate such an interest with the traditional Marxian concern with objective
structures.Korch and Luckacs did not seek a fundamental restructuring of Marxian
theory, although the later critical theorists do have this broader and more ambitious
objective.
We begin with the critical school interest in culture. As pointed out above, the critical
school has shifted to a concern with the cultural “superstructure” rather than with the
economic “base”. One factor motivating this shift is that the critical school feels that
Marxists have overemphasized economic structures and that this emphasis has served to
overwhelm there interest in the other aspects of social reality, especially the culture. In
addition to this factor, a series of external changes in the society point to such a shift. In a
particular, the prosperity of the post Second World War period in America Seems to have
led to a disappearance of internal economic contradictions in general and class conflict in
particular. False consciousness seems to be nearly universal: all social classes including
the working class appear to be beneficiaries and ardent supporters of the capitalist
system. In addition, the former Soviet Union despite its socialist economy was at least as
oppressive as capitalist society. Because the two societies had different economies the
critical thinkers have had to look elsewhere for the major source of oppression. What
they looked toward initially was culture.
To the previously discussed aspects of the Frankfurt school’s concerns rationality the
culture industry and the knowledge industry: can be added an additional set of concerns,
the most notable of which is an interest in ideology. By Ideology the critical theorists
mean the idea systems, often false and obfuscating, produced by societal elites. All these
specific aspects of the superstructure and the critical school’s orientation to them can be
subsumed under the heading “critique of domination”. This interest in domination was at
first stimulated by fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, but it has shifted to a concern with
domination in capitalist society. The modern world has reached a stage of unsurpassed
domination of individuals. In fact, the control is so complete that it no longer requires
deliberate actions on the part of the leaders. The control pervades all aspects of the
cultural world and more important is internalized in the actor. In effect, actors have
come to dominate themselves in the name of the larger social structure. Domination has
reached such a complete stage that it no longer perceived as personally damaging and
alienating, it often seems as if the world is the way it is supposed to be. It is no longer
clear to actors what the world ought to be like. Thus, the pessimism of the critical thinkers
is buttressed, because they no longer can see rational analysis can help after the situation.
One of the critical school’s concerns at the cultural level is with what Habermas (1975)
called legitimations. These can be defined as systems of ideas generated by the political
system, and theoretically by any other system, to support the existence of the system.
They are designed to “mystify” the political system, to make it unclear exactly what is

happening. In addition to such cultural interests, the critical school is also concerned with
actors and their consciousness and what happens to them in the modern world. The
consciousness of the masses came to be controlled by external forces (such as the culture
industry).As a result the masses failed to develop a revolutionary consciousness.
Unfortunately, the critical theorists, like most Marxists and most sociologists, often fail to
differentiate clearly between individual consciousness and culture, not do they specify
the many links between them. In much of their work, they move freely back and forth
between consciousness and culture with little or no sense that they are changing levels.
Of great importance here is the effort by critical theorists, most notable Marcuse, to
integrate Freud’s insights at the level consciousness (and unconsciousness) into the
critical theorists ‘interpretation of the culture. Friedman (1981) argues that critical
theorists derive three things form Frue’s work: 91) a psychological structure to, work with
in developing in their theories. (2) A sense of psychopathology that allows them to
understand both the negative impact of modern society and the failure to develop
revolutionary consciousness; and (3) the possibilities of psychic liberation. One of the
benefits of this interest in individual consciousness is that it offers a useful corrective to
the pessimism of the critical school and its focus on cultural constraints. Although people
are controlled, imbued with false needs and anesthetized, in Freudian terms they are also
endowed with a libido (broadly conceived as sexual energy), which provides the basic
source of energy for creative action oriented toward the overthrow of the major forms of
domination.
Dialectics : The second main positive focus of critical theory is an interest in dialectics
(this idea is critique form the viewpoint of analytical Marxism later in this chapter) in
general, as well as in a variety of its specific manifestations. At the most general level, a
dialectical approach means a focus on the social totality. Paul Connerton gave a good
sense of the critical approach to the social totality: “no partial aspect of social life and no
isolated phenomenon may be comprehended unless it is related to the historical whole, to
the social structure conceived as a global entity’. This approach involves rejection of a
focus on any specific aspect of social life, especially the economic system, outside of its
broader context. This approach also means a concern with the interrelation of the various
levels of social reality: most important, individual consciousness, the cultural
superstructure, and the economic structure. Dialectics also carries with it a
methodological prescription: one component of social life cannot be studied in isolation
from the rest.
This idea has both diachronic and synchronic components. A synchronic view leads us
to be concerned with the interrelationship of components of society within a
contemporary totality. A diachronic view carries with it a concern for the historical roots
of today’s society as well as for where it might be going in the future. The domination of
people by social and cultural structures: the “one dimensional” society, to use Marscue’s
characteristic of humankind. This historical perspective counteracts the common:sense
view that emerges in capitalism that the system is a natural and inevitable phenomenon.
In the view of the critical theorists (and other Marxists), people have come to see society
as “second nature”; it is “perceived by common - sensical wisdom as an alien,

uncompromising, demanding and high:handed power:exactly like non:human nature.

To abide by the rules of reason, to behave rationally, to achieve success, to be free, man
now had to accommodate himself to the ‘second nature”.
The critical theorists also are oriented to thinking about the future, but following
Marx’s original lead, they refuse to be utopian; rather, they focus on criticizing and
changing contemporary society. However, instead of directing their attention to society’s
economic structures as Marx had done, they concentrate on its cultural superstructure.
Their dialectical approach commits them to work in the real world. On one level, this
means that they are not satisfied with seeking truth in scientific laboratories. The ultimate
test of their ideas is the degree to which they are accepted and used in practice. This
process they call authentication, which occurs when the people who have been the
victims of distorted communication take up the ideas of critical theory and use them to
free themselves form that system. Thus we arrive at another aspect of the concerns of the
critical thinkers : the liberation of humankind.
In more abstract terms, critical thinkers can be said to be preoccupied with the
interplay and relationship between theory and practice. The view of the Frankfurt school
was that two have been served in capitalist society. That is, theorizing is done by one
group, which is delegated or more likely takes, that right, whereas practice is relegated to
another less powerful group. In many cases, the theorists work is uniformed by what
went on in the real world, leading to an impoverished and largely irrelevant body of
Marxian and sociological theory. The point is to unify theory and practice so as to restore
the relationship between them. Theory thus would be informed by practice whereas
practice would be shaped by theory. In the process, both theory and practice would be
enriched.
Despite this avowed goal, most of critical theory has failed abysmally to integrate
theory and practice. In fact, one of the most often voiced criticisms of critical theory is
that i it is usually written in such a way as to be totally inaccessible to the mass of people.
Furthermore, in its commitment to studying culture and superstructure, critical theory
address a number of very esoteric topics and has little to say about the pragmatic day to
day concerns of most people.
One of the best:known dialectical concerns of the critical school is Jurgen Habermas’s
interest in the relationship between knowledge and human interests: an example of a
broader dialectical concern with the relationship between subjective and objective factors.
But Habermas has been careful to point out that subjective and objective factors cannot be
dealt with in isolation form one another. To him, knowledge systems exist at the objective
level whereas human interests are more subjective phenomena. Habermas differentiated
among three knowledge systems and their corresponding interests. The interests that lie
behind and guide each system of knowledge are generally unknown to laypeople, and it
is the task of the critical theorists to uncover them. The first type of knowledge is analytic
science, or classical positivistic scientific systems. In Habermas’s view, analytic science
lends itself quite easily to enhancing oppressive control. The second type of knowledge
system is humanistic knowledge and its interests are in understanding the world. It
operates form the general view that understanding out past generally helps us to
understand what is transpiring today. It has a practical interest in mutual and self
understanding. It is neither oppressive nor liberating. The third type is critical
knowledge, which Habermas and the Frankfurt school in general espoused. The interest
attached to this type of knowledge is human emancipation. It was hoped that the critical
knowledge generated by Habermas and others would raise the self consciousness of the
masses (through mechanisms articulated by the Freudians) and lead to a social
movement that would result in the hoped for emancipation.
Criticisms of Critical Theory :
A number of criticisms have been leveled a critical theory. First, critical theory has
been accused of being largely a historical, of examining a variety of events without
paying much attention if their historical and comparative contexts (for example, Nazism
in the 1930s, anti:Semitism in the 1940s, student revolts in the 1960s). This is damning
criticism of any Marxian theory, which should be inherently historical and comparative.
Second, the critical school as we have seen already generally has ignored the economy.
Finally, and relatedly, critical theorists have tended to argue that the working class has
disappeared as a revolutionary force, a position decidedly in position to traditional
Marxian analysis. Criticisms such as these have led such traditional Marxists as
Bottomore to conclude, “The Frankfurt School in its original form, and as a school of
Marxism or sociology, is dead”. Similar sentiments have been expressed by Greisman,
who labels critical theory “the paradigm that failed”. If it is dead as a distinctive school, it
is because many of its basic ideas have found theory way into Marxism, neo:Marxian
sociology, and even mainstream sociology. Thus, as Bottomore himself concludes in the
case of Habermas, the critical school has undergone a rapprochement with Marxism and
sociology, and “at the same time some of the distinctive ideas of the Frankfurt School are
conserved and developed”. Although critical theory may be on the decline, Jurgen
Habermas and his theories are very much alive.
JURGEN HABERMAS’S SOCIAL THEORY
Jurgen Habermas (born in 1929 at Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social

theorist in the tradition of critical theory who has integrated into a comprehensive
framework of social theory and philosophy the German philosophical thought of
Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Hegel, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl,
and Harappans:Georg Gadamer, the Marxian tradition, both the theory of Karl Marx
himself as well as the critical neo:Marxian theory of the Frankfurt School, i.e. Max
Horkheimer (1895:1973), Herbert Marcuse (1898:1979) and Theodor W. Adorno
(1903:1969), the sociological theories of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and George Herbert
Mead, the linguistic philosophy and speech act theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John
Langshaw Austin, and John R. Searle, the American pragmatist tradition of Charles
Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, and the sociological systems theory of Talcott Parsons.
Habermas’s work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the
analysis of advanced capitalist industrial society and of democracy and the rule of law in
a critical social:evolutionary context, and contemporary (especially German) politics.

Jurgen Habermas considers his own major achievement the development of the
concept and theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality, which
distinguishes itself from the rationalist tradition by locating rationality in structures of
interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in the structure of either the cosmos
or the knowing subject. He carries forward the tradition of Immanuel Kant and the
Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for
transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society
through the realization of the human potential for rationality. Habermas works
equally comfortably in the fields of sociology and philosophy, and his magnum opus, The
Theory of Communicative Action (in two volumes) addresses not only philosophies of
agency and rationality, but the theories of sociologists like Max Weber, George Herbert
Mead, Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. In this work, Habermas counter poses the
traditional idea of an objective cognitive:instrumental (functionalist) reason to other
reasoning capacities that perform subjective and intersubjective duties within the rich
fabric of societal interactions. From the ideas of intersubjectivity developed here,
Habermas and fellow Frankfurt critic Karl:Otto Apel developed the distinctive theory of
discourse ethics.One of Habermas’ earliest important philosophical exchanges were with
Harappans:Georg Gadamer over the applicability of Gadamer’s idea of interpretation to
the critique of ideology, one of Habermas’ prime foci. Because of the varied applicability
of Habermas’s work, from psychoanalysis to action theory to epistemology to
hermeneutics, he is called one of the “four or five most important philosophers of the
twentieth century” and akin to Karl Marx in the variety of interpretations that his ideas
have spawned in many fields, including literary theory, economics, and public policy.
As a second:generation member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, Habermas
was a student of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In his wide:ranging and varied
works, he had broken with the anti:rationalist, anti:Westernist stance of the previous
generation of Frankfurt theorists and taken a different route in his critical appraisal of
Western institutions and rationality. Habermas stresses the humanist side of Karl Marx’s
work as a critic, and has written on the Hegelian tensions between theory and practice in
philosophy. Habermas is particularly notable for his defense of a Kantian conception of
rationality, which have been assailed by other postmodern thinkers.
For many years there has been a gulf between German and Anglo:Saxon social theory.
German thinkers have always been fond of constructing arcane philosophical systems of
awesome complexity. As Professor Skinner points out in his Introduction, until recently
most social thinkers and philosophers in the English:speaking world have, by contrast,
been highly suspicious of Grand Theory. If they are today more receptive to it, it is in
some considerable part a result of the writings of Jurgen Habermas. Habermas is very
much a ‘grand theorist’ in the traditional German manner. But he has made a conscious
attempt to connect British and American trends in social science and philosophy with
those deriving from German social theory. Those weaned upon Anglo:Saxon social
thought can find much in Habermas’s work that is recognizable to them, and this helps
make what he is trying to accomplish more easily accessible than it would otherwise
be.Habermas is a relatively young man for someone who has attained a widespread
international eminence. He is only in his middle fifties, and still at the most creative stage
of his career. He is the most prominent latter:day descendant of what has come to be
known as the ‘Frankfurt School’ of social theory. The Frankfurt School was a group of
philosophers associated with the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt, originally
founded in the late 1920s. It included among its number Max Horkheimer, for many
years the administrative director of the Institute, and a remarkable thinker named
Theodor Adorno. But the member of the group who became most famous: or infamous,
according to one:shot of view – was Herbert Marcuse, the leadingfigure in the New Left
in the late 1960s.The members of the Frnkfurt School were Marxists, or regrded
themselves as such; however they were very far from being Marxists of an orthodox
persuasion. They regarded Marxism as a flexible, critical approach to the study of society,
not as a fixed and inviolable set of doctrines. They were prepared to jettison ideas that to
most other Marxists are essential to what Marxism is as a body of thought and a guide to
political practice. Thus they held, for example, that the working class has become
integrated into capitalist society, ad is no longer a revolutionary force. Nothing might
seem more obvious to those not persuaded of the attractions of Marxism, but to many
more orthodox Marxists it was – and still is – shockingly heretical. The Frankfurt School
argued that capitalism has changed so much since Marx’s time that many of Marx’s
concepts have to be discarded or at least radically altered. These are Habermas’s views
too. He also regards himself as a Marxist, although his detractors on the Left would claim
that he has departed so far from Marxism that he has lost touch with it
altogether.Habermas claims that he is engaged in a ‘reconstruction of historical
materialism’, producing a version of Marxism relevant to today’s world: although no
doubt he would not say so, he is trying to be a Marx for our times. The ideas he has come
up with are inevitably very controversial, and do not lend themselves to easy summary,
but there can be no doubt of their originality and importance. In spite of his direct links
with the Frankfurt School, Habermas cannot be seen merely as the purveyor of received
notions; he has created a system of thought – whatever one might think of it: which is
highly distinctive.
The guiding thread of all Habermas’s work, according to his own testimony, is an
endeavour to reunite theory and practice in the 20th century world. In the 19th century,
Marx believed that his theory provided both an analysis of capitalist society ad the means
of changing it in practice, through the revolution of the proletariat. The revolution has not
come about, and will not do so, Habermas accepts, in the manner anticipated by Marx.
Habermas agrees with the Frankfurt School that the Soviet Union is at best a very
deformed version of a socialist society. We cannot use the Eastern European countries
either as a model of what the desirable form of society should be like, or as indicating the
likely direction in which the capitalist societies will move in the future. But for these
reasons Marx’s conception of the unity of theory and practice is hopelessly inadequate in
the late twentieth century. It needs to be rethought in several quite fundamental respects.
These concern both philosophical limitations of Marx’s thought and more concrete
innovations that need to be made in characterizing the nature of modern capitalism.
On the philosophical level, Habermas sees Marx’s writings as deficient in respects
shared by many non:Marxist forms of philosophy from the nineteenth century through to
the present day. Although there are many ambiguities in Marx’s work, for the most part
he thought of what he was doing as science. According to Habermas, this will not do at
all, for reasons which, once understood, allow us to develop a critique of a good deal of
modern philosophical thought, and of the broader culture of society too. There are two
things wrong with regarding the study of human social life as a science o a particular
with the natural sciences. One is that it produces a mistaken view of what human beings
are like as capable, reasoning actors who know a great deal about why they act as they
do. The other is that it contributes to a tendency which Habermas sees as general in
modern intellectual culture, an overestimation of the role of science as the only valid kind
of knowledge that we can have about either the natural or the social world.
The second of these points is very important for Habermas, and connects with his
analysis of ideology. But let me take them in succession. Treating the study of society like
a science led Marx, ad later Marxists, Habermas says, to a characteristic dilemma. If
capitalisms changes – as Marx himself wrote – according to ‘iron laws’ which have all the
determinism of laws of natural science, where is there any room for the active interaction
of history beings I their own fate? Why should anyone bother to become a Marxist at all?
For if human behaviour is governed by ineluctable laws, there is nothing we can do to
shape our own history by actively intervening in it. When understood as a science,
Marxism ignores what Habermas calls the ‘self:reflection’, or ‘reflexivity’ of human
agents. That is to say, it cannot cope with one of the defining features which make us
human. This is the fact that we are capable of reflecting upon our own history, as
individuals and as members of larger societies; ad of using precisely that reflection to
change the course of history. This insight is lost in all forms of philosophy and social
theory – usually referred to as ‘positivism’ – which try to fashion the social upon the
natural sciences.
Now Habermas is not the first to make this kind of criticism of positivism. It has often
been associated with those belonging to what Continental philosophers call the
‘hermeneutic’ tradition. Hermeneutics means the theory of interpretation. Those who
have written in the hermeneutic tradition – who include H.G. Gadamer, whose work is
also discussed in this book – have stressed that to understand human behaviour we have
to interpret its meaning. Rather than seeing human conduct s governed by laws, or as
caused, like events in nature, we have to grasp the intentions and reasons which people
have for their activity. According to those in the hermeneutical tradition, the study of
human conduct is essentially quite different from studying events in nature. Therefore,
they say that natural science is irrelevant as a model for how we should study human
behaviour.One of Habermas’s most interesting contributions to philosophy is his attempt
to reconcile hermeneutics and positivism and thereby overcome this division between
them. There are circumstances in which human social life is conditioned by factors of
which those involved know little – in which social forces resemble forces of nature. To
that degree, the advocates of a natural science model are correct. But they are wrong to
suppose that such social forces are immutable, like laws of nature. The more human
beings understand about the springs of their own behaviour, and the social institutions in
which that behaviour is involved, the more they are likely to be able to escape from
constraints to which previously they were subject.

In order to illustrate this, Habermas makes what has become a celebrated comparison
between psychoanalysis and social theory. Psychoanalysis involves a hermeneutic
element. After all, the task of analyst is to interpret the meaning of what the patient
thinks and feels. Interpretation of meaning – as in decoding the content of dreams – is
inherent in psychoanalytic therapy. But the analyst reaches the limits of interpretation
where repressions block off access to the unconscious. Psychoanalytic language then
tends to shift to talk of ‘unconscious forces’, ‘unconscious constraints’ and so on. It tends
to become more like the language of the natural sciences. Why? Because the analysis at
that point becomes concerned with things that happen to the individual, rather than
things which the individual is able autonomously to control. It is in such circumstances,
and only in such circumstances, Habermas argues, that concepts analogous to those of
natural science are relevant to the explication of human conduct. The more successful the
psychoanalytic procedure is, the less these kinds of concepts are appropriate, because the
individual is able to expand the scope of rational control over his or her behaviour.The
appropriate language then becomes hermeneutic. Note a further very important
consequence of all this. Psychoanalytic therapy aims to change behaviour, by the very
process of transmuting what happens to the individual into what the individual makes
happen. Habermas suggests this is the same role as that which a critical theory of society
should fulfill. Marxism is inadequate as a basis for accomplishing social change, insofar
as it is solely concerned with ‘iron laws’, ‘inevitable trends’, etc. It is then only the science
of human unfreedom. A philosophically more sophisticated critical they must recognize
that an emancipated society would be one in which human beings actively control their
own destinies, through a heightened understanding of the circumstances in which they
live.
It is very important, according to this standpoint, to see that there is no single mould
into which all knowledge can be compressed. Knowledge can take three different forms,
according to differing interests which underlie its formulation. These three
‘knowledge:constitutive interests’ each correspond to an aspect of human society. All
societies exist in a material environment, and engage in interchanges with nature – this
relation involves what Habermas calls generically ‘labour’. Such interchanges promote
an interest in the prediction and control of events. It is precisely this interest which is
generalized by positivism to all knowledge. Insofar as Marxism relapses into positivism,
it supposes that social life is governed by developments in the ‘forces of production’,
operating mechanically to influence social change. But all societies also involve ‘symbolic
interaction’ – communication of individuals with one another. The study of symbolic
interaction creates an interest in the understanding of meaning – always the main
preoccupation of hermeneutics, which has mistakenly sought to generalize this to the
whole of human activity. Finally, every human society involves forms of power or
domination. The third knowledge:constitutive interest, that I emancipation, derives from
a concern with achieving rational autonomy of action, free from domination: whether it
be the domination of nature over human life, or the domination of some individuals or
groups over others. Each of the knowledge:constitutive interests is linked to a particular
type of discipline, as the table indicates. An interest in prediction and control is the
pre:eminent concern of the ‘empirical:analytic sciences’ (which includes sociology as well

as natural science). An interest in the understanding or interpretation of meaning is the

prime guiding theme of the historical:hermeneutic disciplines’. Concern with the
emancipation of human beings from systems of domination is the interest to which
‘critical theory’ is attached.
Aspects of human Knowledge:constitutive Type of study

society interest
Labour Prediction and control Empirical:analytic sciences
interaction Understanding of meaning Historical:hermeneutic

disciplines
Domination(Power) Emancipation Critical theory
The foregoing ideas are set out principally in Habermas’s work translated under the
title of Knowledge ad Human Interests (Habermas has substantially revised and
expanded upon the ideas contained therein. In the psychoanalytic encounter, the
communication between therapist and patient is ‘systematically distorted’: repressions
block and deform what the patient says to the analyst. But what is the positive goal of
psychoanalysis as envisaged here? What would ‘undistorted communication’ be like,
and how might this be connected to the ambitions of critical theory? In his more recent
work, Habermas has devoted a good deal of attention to exploring possible answers to
these questions, and has written extensively upon problems of communication and
language in general. Two ideas are particularly important in grasping his views on these
matters. One is the notion that all human linguistic communication involves
‘validity:claim’, implicitly made by all speakers. The other is the contention that an ‘ideal
speech situation’, is presumed in the use of language.
According to Habermas, when one person says something to another, that person
implicitly (sometimes explicitly) makes the following claims: (1) That what is said is
intelligible – that is to say, that it obeys certain syntactical and semantic rules so that there
is a ‘meaning’ which can be understood by the other. (2) That the propositional content
of whatever is said is true. The ‘propositional content’ refers to the factual assertions
which the speaker makes as part of what he or she says. (3) That the speaker is justified
in saying whatever is said. In other words, certain social rights or ‘norms’ are invoked in
the use of speech in any given context of language:use. (4) That the speaker is sincere in
whatever is said – that he or she does not intend to deceive the listener. Thus put, the
argument sounds very abstract, but what Habermas has in mind can readily be illustrated
by means of an example. Suppose, in answer to an enquiry from a traveler, a ticket clerk
at the railway station says ‘that’ll be £xo for a cheap day return’. The passenger might
not initially know what a ‘cheap day return’ is, and if so may appear puzzled. In then
explaining what the phrase ‘cheap day return’ means, the clerk is justifying the first claim

– that what he or she said was intelligible ad meaningful, even though the traveler was
first of all perplexed by it. It is implicit in what the clerk systems that the factual content
of the statement is true – that it actually does cost £xo for the ticket (the second
validity:claim). The passenger is also likely to take it for granted that the clerk has the
right to make such an authoritative pronouncement about the railway fare (the third
validity:claim); and that the clerk sincerely believes what he or she says (the fourth
validity:claim).Note, however, that there may be circumstances in which any or all of
these last three validity:claims may be contested by the passenger – in which case the
clerk would be expected to justify r back up the statement that was made. Suppose, for
example, the passenger suspected that the person standing on the other side of the
counter was someone temporarily standing in for the usual clerk. Because the real clerk
was away from work. The passenger might then be inclined to check on the factual
validity of the statement. And perhaps question the individual’s right to be distributing
tickets when not authorized by the railway to do so.
Undistorted communication is language:use in which speakers can defend all four
validity:claims – where what is said can be shown to be meaningful, true, justified and
sincere. Compare communication between analyst and patient, which may be
‘systematically distorted’ in various ways. What the patient says in free association may
not be intelligible, either to the patient or, initially, to the analyst. Its factual content may
be in some part false (as in fantasies).The patient may make claims in an unjustified way –
for example, blaming others for acts for which they could not reasonably be held
responsible. Finally, the patient may either consciously or unconsciously attempts to
deceive the analyst in order to resist or evade the implications to which the process of
analysis is leading. The aim of psychoanalytic therapy can thus be construed as that of
making it possible for the patient to escape whatever psychological limitations inhibit the
successful justification of validity:claims in day:to:day discourse.
Habermas argues that, of the four validity:claims, only the second and their can
actually be defended in discourse – that is to say, by means of the speaker elaborating
verbally upon whatever he or she says. The meaningfulness of speech can only be
justified by the speaker actually showing that an utterance is intelligible – which is
usually done by means of expressing that utterance in a different way. A speaker can
only show himself or herself to be sincere by demonstrating sincerity in action (fulfilling
promises, honouring commitments, and so on). Truth and justification, however, can be
‘discursively redeemed’: the speaker can elaborate upon why a given claim is true, or is
normatively justified.Habermas’s theory of truth has been quite widely influential in the
philosophical literature, and leads on directly to his concept of an ideal speech situation,
so it is worth sketching out what it involves.
For Habermas ‘truth’ is a quality of propositional assertions contained within
language:use. Truth is a validity:claim which we attach to the factual content of
statements. The simplest way to understand how Habermas develops this view is to
begin from what is sometimes called the ‘redundancy theory’ of truth. According to the
redundancy theory, the term ‘truth’ is a superfluous one, empty of any significance which
is not already carried in the assertion of a factual proposition. Thus we might say, ‘This

table is three feet long’. If we say instead ‘It is true that this table is three feet log’, the
words’ It is true’ seem to add nothing to the statement that the table measures three feet.
‘It is true’ is redundant. Now in a certain sense Habermas agrees with this. In ordinary
conversation we would say. In response to a question about the table’s measurements,
‘This table is three feet long’, not ‘It is true that this table is three feet long’. But in
Habermas’s view this is into because the concept of truth is a redundant or unnecessary
one. It is because in most contexts of communication the claim to truth is implicit in what
the speaker says. It is only when that claim is questioned by another person that the
speaker is likely to invoke ‘truth’ and cognate terms. ‘Truth’, in other words, is a term
brought into play in factual disputes or debates, and the concept of truth can only be
properly understood in relation to such processes of argumentation. When we say
something is true, we mean we can back up what we say with factual evidence and
logical argument – that a claim can be ‘warranted’ as Habermas says. Truth refers to
agreement or consensus reached by such warrants. A statement is ‘true’ if any disputant
faced by those warrants would concede its validity. Truth is the promise of a rational
consensus.
It follows from this that truth is not a relation between an individual perceiver and the
world – although it depends upon evidence based on perceptions. Truth is agreement
reached through critical discussion. Here Habermas’s standpoint seems to face a major
difficulty. How are we actually to distinguish a ‘rational consensus’ – one based upon
reasoned argument – from a consensus based merely upon custom, or power? We may
gauge the seriousness of the difficulty by considering the problems that have arisen from
Kuhn’s use of the concept of paradigms in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn
1970). Kuhn proposes that a field of study only becomes a science when it acquires a
paradigm – when there is a consensus among its practitioners about the basic premises
and methods of their activity. But as Kuhn’s critics quickly pointed out, the existence of a
science cannot only depend upon the attainment of a consensus, or else science would be
little more than a form of ‘mob rule’.
Although Habermas does not directly analyze the controversies surrounding Kuhn’s
writings, his response to the difficulty is certainly relevant to them. A rational consensus
– I any area of factual discussion, including but not limited to science – is one reached
purely ‘by the force of the better argument’. A claim to truth, in other words, is an
assertion that any other person able to weigh the evidence would reach the same
conclusion as the individual making that claim. This in turn means that the notion of
truth is tied to presumptions about the circumstances in which it is possible for
arguments to be assessed in such a way that (1) all pertinent evidence could be brought
into play, and (2) nothing apart from logical, reasoned argument is involved in an
ensuing consensus. It is these circumstances which Habermas calls an ideal speech
situation. An ideal speech situation is one in which there are no external constraints
preventing participants from assessing evidence and argument, and in which each
participant has an equal and open chance of entering into discussion.
Plainly, most actual conditions of social interaction and communication are not like
this. What, then, is the point of attaching so much importance to an ideal speech

situation? The answer to the question is twofold. First, for Habermas the ideal speech
situation is not an arbitrarily constructed ideal. It is inherent in the nature of language.
Anyone who uses language thereby presumes that they can justify the four types of
validity:claim, including that of truth. A single utterance holds out the possibility of the
existence of a form of social life in which individuals would live in free, equal and open
communication with one another. Second, since this is the case, it follows that the ideal
speech situation provides a critical measure of the insufficiencies of currently existing
forms of interaction and social institutions. Any consensus based either on the sheer
weight of tradition, or on the use of power or domination, would be exposed as deviating
from a rational consensus. The ideal speech situation hence supposedly provides an
‘objectively given’ basis for critical theory.
For Habermas the concept of ‘rationality’ has less to do with the foundations of
knowledge than with the manner in which knowledge is used. To say either that a
statement or an action is ‘rational’ is to claim that the statement or action could be in
principle justified in procedures of argumentation. Argumentation, in Habermas’s term,
is a ‘court of appeal’ of the rationality inherent in communication, making possible the
continuance of communicative relations when disputes arise, without recourse to duress.
It is on the basis of the notion of communicative rationality that Habermas attempts to
counter relativism, and in terms of which he seeks to interpret the over:all evolution of
human society. There may be no universally valid foundations of knowledge – in this
respect, as in various others, what Habermas has to say parallels the views of Popper. But
procedurally the canons of rationality – that is to say, the modes of reaching warranted
conclusions – are the same everywhere.
According to Habermas, we are therefore able to rank both individuals and over:all
cultures on a scale of evolutionary development, in which the criterion of evolutionary
advancement is ‘cognitive adequacy’. By ‘cognitive adequacy’ Habermas means the
range and depth of the defensible validity:claims which they incorporate. In formulating
these ideas, Habermas draws heavily from the writings of Piaget.Piaget distinguishes
three stages in the cognitive development of children, which progressively expand their
learning capacities. These correspond, Habermas suggests, to three main phases of social
evolution: the ‘mythical’, ‘religious:metaphysical’ and the ‘modern’. For Piaget, cognitive
development is associated with a ‘de:centering’ process, in which the child gradually
moves away from a primitive concentration upon its own immediate concerns and needs,
towards an expanded awareness of the world and of the needs of others. Something
similar is the case with social evolution. Small:scale, traditional cultures are dominated
by myth. Myths are concretized and particular modes of thought, tending to see both
other cultures and the material world from the vantage:point of the society in question.
They are characteristic of societies which have not developed distinct intellectual arenas
within which argumentation can be carried on. The pervasiveness of tradition means that
most social activity is organized according to principles sanctified by time, not worked
out on the basis of rational discussion and understanding. In Habermas’s view, the
development of more encompassing religions, more broadly founded than myth, signifies
a movement towards the expansion of rationality. The formation of the major ‘world

religions’ – such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam or Christianity – tends to be associated

with the differentiation of science, law and art as partly separable spheres of activity.
Never loath to utilize a wide variety of intellectual resources, Habermas at this
juncture makes appeal to the writings of Max Weber. But he does so with a critical eye.
Weber placed a strong emphasis upon what he called the ‘rationalization’ of culture,
furthered by the world religions, and finding its maximal development in modern
Western capitalism. Weber stead:fastly refused to identify the expansion of
rationalization with heightened rationality; a more rationalized form of social life has
nothing to commend it over a less rationalized one. For Habermas, of course, this is not
acceptable. Where ‘rationalization’ means the furthering of procedures and opportunities
for argumentation, its development is convergent with the growth of rationality. Weber
did not indicate clearly enough the ways in which the rationalization of the modern West
differs from that characteristic of preceding civilizations. According to Habermas, the
West aloe is marked by the pre:eminence of ‘post:conventional’ cognitive domains.’
Post:conventional’ forms of institutional order are those which have not only freed
themselves from the dominance of traditional codes of conduct, but have become
organized according to warranted principles. The most notable institutional sectors in
which this process first comes to the fore are those of science and law.
For Habermas, therefore, there is a real sense in which West is best. In advocating
such a view, he self:consciously stands in opposition not only to relativism – in whatever
sense may be attributed to that term – but also to those schools of social thought which
hold the development of Western capitalism to be fundamentally a noxious phenomenon.
But he by no means accords unequivocal approval to Western society. On the contrary,
modern capitalism as he represents it is a form of society risen by tensions and
conflicts.Habermas seemingly still wants to retain elements of the Marxist notion that
capitalism is a type of society whose transcendence holds out the possibility of the
achievement of a superior type of social order. But both his analysis of the nature of
modern capitalism, and the avenues of social change to which it leads, differ very
substantially from the classical Marxist conception.
An updated critical theory, Habermas suggests, involves seeing the wider role which
science has played in developments since Marx’s day – meaning by ‘science’ here the
natural sciences. We live in a society in which science and technology have become
inextricably fused, in which science ranks foremost among what Marx called the forces of
production. But science has also in a certain sense become extended to the realm of
politics. In the capitalist societies, science and technology are harnessed to the aim of
delivering stable and extended economic growth. The scope of politics becomes basically
reduced to a question of who can run the economy best – a matter of technical
decision:making. We can see again that orthodox Marxism offers no critical alternative in
this respect. For the chief goal of the Soviet Union to catch up with, and surpass, the West
in terms of economic development. What Habermas calls rather inelegantly the
‘scientisation of politics’ has preceded just as far in the East European societies as in the
West?

In Habermas’s view, the fact that politics has become a sort of technology like any
other is one of the chief ideological features of modern capitalism. What other writers
have seen as the end of ideology – the draining away of over:all values and ideals in
favour or pragmatic, technocratic government – Habermas regards as the very core of
what ideology is. For politics should concern struggles over just those values and ideals
which can make life meaningful for us.The repression of meaning in positivism, in the
more technical spheres of philosophy and social theory, has as its counterpart the
repression of meaning in many spheres of modern life.
This is a theme central to Habermas’s analysis of the tensions and conflicts involved in
capitalist society today. Habermas retains sufficient of the Marxist view to hold that
capitalism is still a class society, divided between dominant and subordinate classes. But
just as the proletariat is no longer the harbinger of revolution, class conflict is no longer
the main source of tension threatening the stability capitalism, or offering the most likely
source of the transformation of the society. Marx’s view of class conflict, in Habermas’s
eyes, was more or less valid for nineteenth:century capitalism. In the 19th century,
economic life was not yet very highly structured, and was dominated by wide
fluctuations of prosperity and slump; capitalists and workers faced one another in the
market place as potentially violent antagonists. We live now in an era of technocratically
managed capitalism. There still re economic cycle, but they have been substantially
diminished by the intervention of governments in economic life. The strains produced by
class division have correspondingly been alleviated by the introduction of standardized
modes of industrial bargaining and arbitration.
Marx lived and wrote in the phase of ‘liberal capitalism’ – in which the role of the State
in economic life was a restricted one, and where competitive markets held sway.
Capitalism today is ‘organized capitalism’. Various factors re involved in the transition
from the one to the other, including particularly the expanded part played by the State in
regulating economic activity, and the stabilizing of class relations which results from the
existence of standardized modes of industrial arbitration. Competitive markets have been
undercut by the increasing dominance of the very large corporations, and by the
co:ordination with State planning that a much more highly centralized economy permits.
By means of price guarantees, subsidies, the balancing of budgets and forms of fiscal
control, together with direct ownership of industry in the shape of the nationalized
sector, the State helps to sustain conditions for the stable accumulation of capital. State
intervention in economic life, when conjoined to the integration of science with
technology, means that Marx’s theory of surplus value is no longer applicable in current
conditions. Marx based the core of his analysis of capitalism upon the theory that only
labour:power creates value, and that profit derives from the surplus of value which
capitalists are able to wrest from workers. But government control of education, science
and technology injects a new influence, making it possible to affect the value of
commodities in ways which cannot adequately be analyzed according to the theorems of
classical Marxism.
In Marx’s time, Habermas accepts, class conflict was a major source of social
tension and potential social transformation. But over the course of the past century or so,

the disruptive consequences of class division have become moderated. There has come
into being in Western countries what he terms a ‘classic compromise’, a compact between
the labour movements, big business ad government. Unions and business leaders tend to
negotiate wage increases and other contractual conditions in a direct way, rather than
leaving them open to be determined by the market. There is no longer anything like fully
competitive labour markets; any more than there are competitive product markets.
Organized labour, in the shape of socialist parties, also has an important political role in
the modern State. Partly as a result of this, organized capitalism is also aptly called
‘welfare capitalism’. A range of welfare schemes protect the less privileged from the
vagaries of the market – illness and injury benefits, unemployment payments and so on.
Class relations thus no longer have the hard edge they did in the nineteenth century; and
the labour movement is not today the leading agency of social change. In reaching this
conclusion Habermas’s views are in line with those of the Frankfurt School, referred to
briefly earlier.
However, here Habermas’s ideas take an interesting twist. The tensions involved in
class division do not merely disappear, he suggests, they are displaced elsewhere, and
reappear in different guise, shaping new forms of oppositional movement.
Contemporary capitalist societies are still subject to economic crisis, but conflicts on the
purely economic level are less important than those which occur in other institutions.
Because economic life is today in considerable degree administered by government, in
conjunction with the larger corporations, economic crises rapidly tend to become political
ones. In Habermas’s view, these are more threatening to the system than are economic
problems, because the technocratic character of modern politics cannot generate deep and
abiding loyalty to the political order. Politics having become a largely pragmatic affair,
the mass of the population feels no real commitment to the political system, and easily
becomes alienated from it if that system fails to maintain its narrow brief – i.e. to guide
sustained economic growth. In such circumstances, which Habermas believes to be
becoming more and more widespread, the political system faces what he terms ‘crises of
legitimation’.That is to say, because of its confined, technocratic character, the political
order lacks the legitimate authority which it needs to govern. Rather than economic
contradiction, the tendency to legitimation crisis is for Habermas the most deep:lying
contradiction of modern capitalism. Just as class division and economic instability give
rise to the labour movement in the nineteenth century, so this emerging contradiction
tends to spawn new social movements in the twentieth century. These are movements
which attempt to inject backs into political life the values it has lost – to do, for example,
with the relations between human beings and the natural world, ad human individuals
with one another. Such relation involves fundamental moral values, ad thee are limits to
the degree to which they can be subordinated to technocratic imperatives. At those limits,
oppositional movements arise which fight back, to recover lost values or change existing
ones. Ecological and religious revivalist movements are given by Habermas as examples,
as is in some part the women’s movement.
The scope of Habermas’s writings is extraordinary, ranging as they do from the most
abstract problems of philosophy through to quite concrete analyses of social ad political
issues. It would be out of the question to attempt an overall assessment of them in as
concise an account as this. There is no doubt that Habermas has shifted intellectual
ground over the course of his career, ad this presents commentators on his work with
some considerable difficulties. He has admitted to having abandoned some of the notions
involved in Knowledge and Human Interests, but the discrepancies between the
theorems advocated there and his later interpretations of cognitive development and
social evolution seem greater than he has publicly accepted to date. Since his work does
range so widely, Habermas is often tantalizingly sketchy just at the points where the
reader is likely to require special reassurance about the plausibility which generate
knowledge:constitutive interests? Is the idea of knowledge:constitutive interests in fact
compatible with the orientation of Habermas’s later work on validity:claims, which do
not seem to be tied to such interests? Why does Habermas refer so little to the
psychoanalytic model of critical theory in his more recent writings? How can he depend
so much upon Piaget’s writings in developing a theory of social evolution, when the
empirical basis of those writings is notoriously insecure? None of these questions, or
ones of equivalent importance that could be posed, are to my mind satisfactorily
discussed in Habermas’s works.
But rather than pursuing any such queries further, let me conclude by briefly taking
up again the relation between Habermas and Marxism, which we have used as the main
organizing thread of this essay. Habermas’s ideas evidently stand at a very substantial
distance from Marxism in its original form. How far has he succeeded in reuniting theory
ad practice in a way relevant to the demands of our era? And do we really need a Marx
for our times at all? Perhaps Marxism is best forgotten about altogether, as a 19th century
theory which is today simply archaic? So far as the first of these questions goes, it would
seem that considerable skepticism is in order. The practical implications of Habermas’s
writings are not in fact at all easy to discern – although they would presumably involve
lending support to the new social movements. But it seems very doubtful whether any
such movements would be capable of playing the sort of world:historical role that Marx
envisaged for the proletariat. Moreover, Habermas never lets us know – or at least has
not so far let us know – how his views relate to traditional conceptions of socialism.
Although it is clear that the East European societies are not regarded by him as exemplars
for others to follow, it is by no means apparent how much – if anything – Habermas
wishes to retain of a vision of socialism comparable to that held by Marx.
Critical theory as Habermas portrays it has certainly lost the direct tie which Marx saw
between the rise of the proletariat and the inevitable demise of capitalism. In Habermas’s
works it is as apparent neither what social forces will overthrow capitalism, nor what
type of society will supplant it. In any opinion, however, it would be a mistake to see this
as wholly a defect in what Habermas has to say. Rather, it should be regarded as
signaling a shortcoming in Marx and in Marxism. For In Marx the so:called ‘union of
theory and practice’ was bolstered by a sort of historical guarantee. The triumph of the
proletariat, in other words, was supposed to be the necessary culmination of the whole
sweep of world history, which had prepared the way for social Islam. If Marxism means
a dogmatic certitude in the true course of history, the last thing we want is a Marx for our
times. In the shape of Stalinism, a version of this doctrine has already made a dreadful
impact in the present century. Habermas‘s work, informed by a radical defense of human
freedom, and by an attempt to confront honestly some of the perplexities of the modern
world, is happily fundamentally different from any such view.
NORBERT ELIAS (1897 – 1990) AND CIVILISING PROCESS
Norbert Elias had an interesting and instructive career. He produced his most
important work in the 1930’s but it was largely ignored at the time and for many years
thereafter. However, late in his life Elias ad his works were “discovered’” especially in
England and the Netherlands. Today Elias reputation is growing and his work is
receiving increasing attention and recognition throughout the world. Elias lived until he
was 93(he died in 1990), long enough to bask belatedly in long:delayed recognition of the
significance of his work.
Elias was born on June 22, 1897 in Breslau in Silesia (Germany) to Hermann and
Sophie Elias. His father was a businessman in the textile industry and his mother a
homemaker. He fought in the Prussian army during the First World War and then
completed his PhD under Richard Hönigswald at the Johannes gymnasium in Breslau in
1924, then taught at Heidelberg. Elias received no pay at Heidelberg, but he did become
actively involved in sociology crisis at the University, Max Weber had died in 1920, but a
salon headed by his wife, Marianne, was active, and Elias become involved in it. He also
associated with Max Weber’s brother. Alfred, who held a chair in sociology at the
university, as well as with Karl Mannheim, who was slightly ahead of Elias in terms of
careers progress. In fact, Elias became Mannheim’s friend and unpaid, unofficial
assistant. When Mannheim was offered a position at the University of Frankfurt in 1929,
Elias went with his as his paid and official assistant.
Elias served in the German army in the First World War and returned after the war
to study philosophy and medicines at the University of Breslau. Although he progressed
quite far in his medicine gave him as sense of the interconnections among the various
parts of the human body, and that view shaped his orientation to human
interconnections:his concern for figurations. A Jew, Elias’ career was delayed when he
fled Nazi Germany in 1933. After two years in Paris, he fled to England where he
remained as a refugee for most of his life. Not until 1954 did he again attain a university
position at Leicester. He began an active retirement in 1962.
Norbert Elias was a European sociologist whose work focused on the relationship
between power, behaviour, emotion, and knowledge over time. He influenced the
Figurational Sociology or Process Sociology research traditions within sociology. His
great book, which marked his emergence as a major figure in sociology, was the
republication in paper back of The Civilizing Process (Über den Prozess der Civilization,
published in 1939 but virtually ignored, republished in the 1960s when it was also
translated into English).The first volume traced the historical developments of the
European habitus, or “second nature”, the particular individual psychic structures
molded by social attitudes. Elias traced how post:medieval European standards applied
to violence, sexual behavior, bodily functions, table manners and forms of speech were
transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and repugnance, working outward from a
nucleus in court etiquette. The internalized “self - restraint” imposed by increasingly
complex networks of social connections developed the “psychological” self - perceptions

that Freud recognized as the “super:ego”. The second volume of The Civilizing Process
looked into the causes of these processes and found them in the increasingly Centralized
Early Modern state and the increasingly differentiated and interconnected web of society.
Ironically, Elias’ work was published in 1939, the year that the entire structure he
described collapsed in a paroxysm of barbarism. When Elias’ work found a larger
audience in the 1960s, at first his analysis of the process was misunderstood as an
extention of discredited social Darwinism, the idea of upward “progress” and was
dismissed by reading it as consecutive history rather than a metaphysic for a social
process.
If Weber can be seen as being concerned with the rationalization of the West,
Elias’s focal interest is in the Civilization of the Occident. By the way, Elias is not arguing
that there is something inherently good or better about civilization as it occur in the west,
or anywhere else for that matter. Nor is he arguing that civilization is inherently bad
although he does recognize that various difficulties have arisen in Western civilization.
More generally, Elias is not arguing that to be more civilized to be better or conversely
that to be less civilized is worse. In saying that people have become more civilized, we are
not necessarily saying that have become better (or worse); we are simply stating a
sociological fact. Thus, Elias is concerned with the sociological study of what he calls the
“sociogenesis” of civilization in the West.
Specifically, Elias is interested in the gradual changes that took place in the behavior
and psychological makeup of people in the west. It is an analysis of these changes that is
his concern in The History of Manners. In the second volume of the civilizing process,
Power and Civility, Elias turns to the societal changes that accompany, and are closely
related to, these behavioral and psychological changes. Overall, Elias is concerned with
“the Connections between changes in the structure of society and changes in the structure
of behavior and psychical makeup”.
In his study of ‘the history of manners’ Elias is interested in the gradual, historical
transformation of a variety of very mundane behaviors in the direction of what we would
now call civilized behavior. Although he begins with the Middle Ages, Elias makes it
clear that there is not, and cannot be, such a thing as a starting (or ending) point for the
development of civilization: “Nothing is more fruitless, when dealing with long term
social processes than to attempt to locate an absolute beginning”. That is, civilizing
processes can be traced back to ancient times, continue to this day, and will continue in to
the future. Civilization is an ongoing development process that Elias is picking up, for
convenience, in the middle Ages. He is interested in tracing such things as changes in
what embarrasses us, our increasing sensitivity, how we’ve grown increasingly observant
of others, and our sharpened understanding of others. However, the best way of gaining
an understanding of what Elias is doing is not through abstractions, but through a
discussion of some of his concrete examples.
Adolph Hitler came to power in February 1933, and soon after, Elias like many other
Jewish Scholars (including Mannheim), went into exile at first in Paris and later in

London (it is believed that Elias’s mother died in a concentration camp in 1941). It was in
London that he did most of the work on The Civilizing Process which was published in
German in 1939. There was no market in Germany that for books written by a Jew, and
Elias never received a penny of royalties form that edition. In addition the book received
scant recognition in other parts of the World.
Both during the war and for almost a decade after, Elias bounced around with no
secure employment and remained marginal to British academic circles. However, in 1954
Elias was offered two academic career at the age of 57! Elias’s career blossomed at
Leicester, and a number of important publications followed. However, Elias was
disappointed with his tenure at Leicester because he failed in his effort to institutionalize
a developmental approach that could stand as an alternative to the kind of static
approached ( of Talcott Parsons and others) that were then preeminent in sociology. He
was also disappointed that few students adopted his approach he continue to be a voice
in the wilderness, even at Leicester, where the students tended to regard his as an
eccentric “voice from the past”. Reflective of this feeling of being on the outside is a
recurrent dream reported by Elias during those years in which a voice on the telephone
repeats, “Can you speak louder? I can’t hear you”. It is interesting to note that throughout
his years at Leicester none of his books was translated into English and few English
sociologists of the day where fluent in German. However, on the Continent, especially in
the Netherlands and Germany, Elias’s work began to be rediscovered in the 1950’s and
1960’s.In the 1970’s Elias began to receive academic, but public, recognition in Europe.
Throughout the rest of his life Elias received a number of significant awards, an honorary
doctorate, a Festschrift in his honor, and a special double issue of Theory, Culture and
Society devoted to his work.
Interestingly, while Elias has now received wide recognition in sociology, his work has
received that recognition during a period in which sociology is growing leas receptive to
his kind of work. That is, the rise of postmodern thinking has led sociologists to question
any grand narrative, and Elias’s major work. The Civilizing Process, is, if nothing else, a
grand narrative in the old style. That is, it is concerned with the long:term historical
development (admittedly with ebbs and flows) of civilization in the West. The growth of
postmodern thinking threatens to limit interest in Elias’s work just as it is beginning to
receive wide attention.

CHAPTER : III
ANNALES
Deriving its name from the French historical journal entitled the Annales founded
in Paris in 1929, the Annales school comprises an international group of leading
historians who apparently do not strictly adhere to any commonly well developed theory
of history and are generally known as critical historians; nevertheless, they have a kind of
distinct philosophy of history, a system of analysis and explanation, literary style and,
above all, corporate loyalty to its founding fathers, namely, Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre,
and Fernand Braudel. Borrowing generously from newly developed disciplines of the
early 20th century like sociology, economics, geography, law, these historians ventured
into new areas of knowledge without any intention of deserting their own discipline and
in the process nourished, nurtured and refreshed history giving a new lease of life.
Rejecting compartmentalization and specialization in spheres separated from others, as in
their opinion it presented a deformed, narrow and isolated view of history, the Annales
School emphasized upon the recreation of dynamic, total and as such human and animate
past. Such a marathon effort to write history requires rigorous methodology, textual
analysis and robust imagination. Moreover, it takes a holistic view of history as it
integrates, rather synthesizes, philosophic history, historicism, and illuminates and
illustrates both of them rather with uniqueness by detailed historical findings.
Unlike the traditional historians who write history of the happenings of histoire
evenementielle in isolation from the physical and social environment which surrounds
and conditions them, the historians of the Annales school are interested in all the minor
and major human activities and are of the view that in totality they are all connected and
illuminate the significance of one another, and are conditioned by time and space, i.e.,
their happening is unique and cannot happen outside their time and circumstances. Being
unique and specific and not general they, therefore, describe history as science of
humanity. Aware of what they mean by the term science of humanity, the Annales
elaborate their point of view by suggesting that these circumstances or conditions are not
merely temporal or physical as is the nature of their happening but they are determined
by economy, population, political organization which constitute man in society and that
is conditioned by external force such as geographical and climatic matrix. To entangle
them for a relatively objective understanding is the function of a historian though not
new or controversial, as this was the general view of the orthodox historians to some
extent, the Annales School puts special emphasize on the organic nature of society and
the validity of man. According to the Annales School, the theoretical elements of any
historical explanation are divided into four parts:
(a) that history can be grasped only in totality but it is animated by human action. In
his relation to the totality man is microcosm of the macrocosm:
(b) that the macrocosm i.e. the force external to man partly determine the latter’s
actions; they are not independent or one dependent on the other, but are inter -
dependent;

(c) that the human activity emanates from human motivation and the external forces
limit or parameterize the are of human action; and
(d) that despite complexity both the external forces and human actions are rationally
explainable, the historian’s task is to rationally pursue, measure, calculate and
qualify the human actions for internal certainty, where it is not possible then
external comparisons are conducted without dogmatism of the determinists or
abnegation of the specialists. It means that the Annalist does not declare absolute
judgements in his conclusions as is done in physical and biological sciences. He is to
confine to limited suggestions, suspended judgements and open conclusions, the
measurement of human aims and actions is to be conducted with sophisticated
techniques of a mathematician and econometrician elevating historian to the status
of cliometrician.
The Annales School has wrought a major conceptual change on the subject of ‘history
which has fascinated many scholars all over the world. They do not consider time as
having one single dimension, as in the case of narrative history, in which an event is
contained, and events are distributed and arranged in series. The Annalestes believe that
there is not one historical time, in fact many, according to Furets, “Not only do societies at
different rhythms but even within a given society the different levels of reality that
compose it are not governed by an all:embracing and homogenous temporality”. For
example, demographic changes are much slower than changes in international relations.
This clearly shows that historical periods are not absolute and autonomous, therefore
Furet suggests that problems become more important than period.
From the above discussion it may be deduced that unlike the Marxists or the Social
Darwinists Annalestes do believe that the idea of historical does not indicate changes,
and unlike the narrativists history does not mean event. History as in sciences, embraces
structures but not resulting in ‘immobile history’, it is, in fact, the interplay of three
durees.The new model of three hierarchical durees and interplay of cycles has expanded
the scope of historical enquiry and “has transformed history as well by overturning the
classical Europocentric division of social study into the noble genre of history”. The
new genre has been described as the ‘inventory of time’, which combines both time and
space - time as it studies change, progress and civilized societies, and space as it imbibes
the genre of travel narrative giving details about the material life of the people, in other
words, it is a methodology which combines diachronic and synchronic approaches.
Finally, the Annales theory of historical explanation clearly suggests that historians are
interested in the res:gestac of the great. Their main task is not to point out the major
events of history and ignore millions of everyday activities of ordinary people as if the
former are ‘determinants and limits of action’. For the Annalestes historical study is more
empirical and their main professional obligation is to discern what underlies (individual)
choices…..What determines them and makes the inevitable despite the appearinc’e of
freedom – deepermends rather than superficial changes……collective behaviour rather
than individual choice…..economic and social determinants rather than institutions and
government decisions”. It is a historical enterprise of such a colossal scale that has
captured the imagination of the historians. After establishing itself in France under the
able leadership of such scholars as Marc Bloch, Lucien Fabvre, Fernand Braudel,
Friedmann, Moraze, Le Goff, Le Roy Ladurie, Ferro Leulliot, Mandrow, and Burguiere
etc.It has spread across to the USA, Russia, Italy, Romania, and Portugal even to India. It
has led to the establishment of a large number of journals of economic and social history.
It has brought to the notice of historian such source material as they had never earlier
cared to consult for the construction of the past history of mankind.
THE ROOTS
The roots of Annales School can be traced in the positivist method of historical
research. Influenced by the growth of natural sciences, positivism strived for a unified
view of world phenomena, both physical and human, conceived in polemical opposition
to the metaphysical abstraction or deductive reasoning of philosophy. The positivist
method stresses upon:
(a) the reliance on factual data as facts are things of immediate perception;
(b) the rigorous critique of sources i.e. inductive procedure; and
(c) the discovery of relations and uniformities which means accent from particular to
general without, of course, transcending and mutilating experience for achieving
exactness and objectivity of natural sciences.
The positivist trends began in England with Bacon and later on with the Utilitarians
but the foundation of definite positivist methodology as against speculative and
metaphysical as laid down by Auguste Comte who died a year before the birth of Emile
Durkheim in 1858.In an effort to achieve the certainty of the natural sciences, Comte’s
methodology placed emphasis on the positive principles of explanation in which its are
understood in the empirical certainty and in their phenomenal connections. But it is
Emile Durkheim born of French Jewish parents who forms a link between the positivists
and the moderns of Annales School. The link was established by the sociological
periodical, L’ Annee Sociologique which fascinated founders of the Annales schools such
as Henri Berr and Lucien Fabvre. Believing that history and sociology are not two distinct
points of view which are not mutually exclusive but supplementing, Durkheim in his
Rules of sociological Method not only defined the methodology of sociology but also
provided a fresh dimension to the methodology of all the social sciences by imparting
elements of precision and objectivity. Following Cartesian frame of reference i.e., action
denies uniqueness to actor as it is oriented to environment is developed fully by
Durkheim in his writings. Thinking that not action but environment or milieu is the
reality which is sui generis should be studied and explained “in its own terms and not in
terms that are taken from other sciences”. It means social facts can be explained “only by
other social facts and not by psychological or biological facts”. The reality is Sui generis
because the principal object of its investigation society is a phenomenon that is also sui
generis”.Thus he treats reality as factual and subjects the facts to the method of positive
sciences, ’which reject both reductionism i.e. deductionism and evolutionism. Obviously
Durkheim rejects both autonomy and inevitability of the historical process as fact is free
from process but signifies only function. In Durkheim’s opinion, facts are never given;

they are always taken from the phenomena, and are subjected to scientific method. Here
it may be pointed out that for him science is not subject of study but a method of
measurement, classification and categorical propositions, avoiding reductionism.
Proposing that society or a social group is a category, which represents collective
consciousness, Durkheim convincingly proves that society like a clan or a tribe on the
basis of collective consciousness regulates or puts constraints on the action of individual
members. Individuals have no identity of their own as they internalize the social
structure in three distinct phases, namely, exteriority or givenness of empirical existence
as in the case of physical environment, constraints or effect of normative rule to which
sanctions are attached and moral authority or values and norms which are internalized.
As all these aspects antedate in appearance of individual in his own society the social
constraints, norms and values are external to him, hence exteriority criterion of the social
fact. Since individual is socialized in accordance with the social structure, and as such he
is placed under a constraint external to him which is not inside his body nor in his
consciousness, social fact therefore is a thing, not an idea or a concept, hence measurable
as they form objective reality, objectified in written codes, daily routines, fashions in
costumes, weights, measures, so on and so forth.
Durkheim is aware of the stupendous nature of the task. It requires a rigorous
discipline and methodology which briefly is as follows:
(a) that the primary obligation is to define the phenomenon “in terms of their inherent
properties” and “elements essential to their nature”;
(b) that the subject matter of every study is group of phenomena decided upon on the
basis of common external characteristics;
(c) that the investigation must be based on observation i.e. the investigator “must
endeavour to consider” the facts “from an aspect that is independent of their
individual manifestation”.
(d) that the investigator should separate pathological from normal and base his study
on the latter. In case empirical proof is difficult to acquire in certain cases, it is better
to rely on rational arguments. He must keep in mind that rational is different from
common sense. Based on limited and subjective experience, the common sense is no
substitute for rational thinking.
(e) that Durkheim for favours a middle path as he accepts uniqueness of all social
species and generalization of human nature. He nevertheless, does not believe in the
evolution theory or the theory of historical phases, therefore he prefers that the
analysis should be founded on functions rather than ends or purposes because
human existence may not have determined ‘end’ or ‘purpose but it certainly has
functions.
(f) Demonstrating his methodology Durkheim resorts to statistical analysis. In his book
Suicide he shows how statistical information can be related to the whole system of
society. Similarly in the Division of Labour, he “defines dynamic density as a
function of the number of individuals who are having social – as distinguished from

purely commercial – relations with one another, as the degree of fusion in the social
segments, as a degree of participation in social life”.
(g) Aware of the fact that the experimental method of natural sciences is not possible for
the study of society, Durkheim opts for comparative method by, of course,
detaching social phenomena from its chronological sequence, by comparing
functions and structures of different societies. How Durkheim’s ‘scientific’ method
is closely related to those of the Annales school is clear from the fact that Lucien
Fabvre, a pioneer of the Annales school, among many of his contemporaries in other
disciplines was his disciple. Durkheim defines collective consciousness as the
totality of beliefs and sentiments, common to the average members of the same
society, a totality that forms its own determinate system and has its own life”. How
close this is to the Annales concept of total history.
Being independent of any philosophical system, the scientific method as given by
Durkheim is capable of explaining reality independently, objectively and naturally. Not
deterministic being neither evolutionary nor reductionist, it is not bound by socialism or
even individualism, ipso:facto it gives freedom of analysis to the investigator. However,
by virtue of being liberated his system primarily rests upon rigorous methodology and
precision for its sustenance and as such grows into a very comples and multi:dimensional
system – a system which takes in to consideration all theoretical and practical questions
as instruments of analysis. Disregard of preconceptions and adherence to theoretical
formulation make the system capable of achieving relatively greater degree of objectivity.
The Founders of Annales School :
The founding of the Annales school has generally been associated with the
establishment of Annales d’histoire economique et sociale (1929), a journal which was
given a slightly different nomenclature in 1947 i.e., Annales: economics, societies,
civilizations. More concretely they are the group of historians, French in origin and
inspiration who found the base of historiographical theory in the sixth section of the
Ecole Partique described Hautes Etudes in Paris. They published their works under the
imprint of SEV PEN, Paris and whose regular journal was the Annales……, as mentioned
above, the origin of the Annales school can be traced to three men namely Henri Berr,
Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch besides Durkheim, their guild master.
Fernand Braudel acknowledges Henri Berr as “a bit of the Annales”. In France he is
known for his humble contribution to the philosophy of history for he wrote in 1898,
Synthesis of Historical Knowledge: Essays on the Future of Philosophy and Of the
Scepticism of Grassendi.Though a student of humanities, literature and Latin and Greek,
he was philosopher by vocation and temperament. Emile Durkheim who created a
sensation in France after Auguste Comte founded a review Annee Sociologique in 1897
which gained instant fame. Deeply impressed by this, Berr synthesized his ideas and
gave birth to a philosophy of history which is distinguished by minute analysis and
intellectual prudence. He was in favour of application to history all those ideas which
illuminate history and rejected all those which were gratuitous and
nondemonstrable.Henri Berr was the first to think of writing the diverse branches of
knowledge of history like social, political, economics, science, and aesthetics etc., what
later on the Annales proclaimed the science of man. Total in scope, conception and
execution, this philosophy of history was inspired by the influence of Durkheim and
shocked so much the traditionalist and orthodox minded scholars that Henri Berr had to
pay the price of losing a prestigious appointment offer at college de wrance. But his ideas
survived. He emphasized the quality of Datient analysis, appreciation of the actual
conditions and a scholarly system of historical synthesis, a synthesis of philosophical
mind with method of learned research.
The Review de Synthese historique (1900) and Henri Berr brought together the
intellectual threads of the age to weave a fine fabric to clothe history. Economists,
geographers, sociologists, biologists, and anthropologists confluenced to make perennial
torrent river by the end of 1920s. They were, according to Lucien Fabvre, a “group of
active, lively, combative, conquering men”. And their collective effort made men
conscious of fundamental unity of human spirit. This concrete new research more based
on patient analysis but less philosophical laid the foundation of the Annales. But for its
birth it required two mid:wives, namely – Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, pure historians
for safe delivery. The two had collaborated with Henry Berr during the decade preceding
Annales in 1929. The idea of the Annales School had been formed and nourished by
Marc Bloch and Lucien Fabvre who took over from Henri Berr.
The establishment of Annales inaugurated a new era in the growth of historical
scholarship and a break with the Review de synthese historique, a break between Henri
Berr and Lucien Fabvre or between father and son in the true intellectual tradition teacher
and disciple. The Syntheses was obsessed by two much theoretical discussion and floated
like clouds whereas the Annales had its feet firmly planted on the ground and head in the
clouds. But the two – the Syntheses and the Annales collaborated in evolving a new
model of historical explanation with distinct demeanor and tone.
Going back to Lucien Fabvre and Marc Bloch, the two contemporaries of Berr from
eastern France, the former about 8 years senior in age being born in 1878, their
unparalleled friendship and constant collaboration from 1919 to 1944 when Marc Bloch
was shot dead (June 16, 1944) by the Germans during the war, resulted in the
establishment of a school of historical studies which provoked Charles Seignobos,
impressed to enemies instilled awe among the traditionalists and achieved tacit approval
of the Marxists.
The very first issue of the Journal made a claim, penned by Lucien Fabvre that the aim
of Annales is to transform history into human science by incorporating ideas, concepts,
methods, results and points of view of the auxiliary sciences and save it from isolated
specialized research which had created so high walls of separation within the discipline
of history that they are incomprehensible to one another. Fragmented historical view that
historical explanation presented, history gradually began losing its identity as a
discipline. It was the beginning of a simple science of history not confronting other social
sciences but incorporating them into one thought, one discipline, one view, one
knowledge, and the human sciences. The Annales in the sense was the successor of
syntheses.
The Annales owe its birth, growth and early popularity to Marc Bloch and Lucien
Fabvre.Though friends; they were different from each other in character, temperament,
intelligence, and personal taste but not in their dedication to the subject and enthusiasm
for the Annales. Marc Bloch, the son of a great historian Gustave Bloch, a specialist in
Roman history was a brilliant student. Trained in Berlin and Leipzig, he published his
thesis Kings and Serf: A Chapter in Capetian History. He established himself as a great
economic historian. His sophisticated study of the problem of gold in the middle ages, of
slavery and of institutional and social character of feudalism combined with his
competence in textual interpretation and modern non:historical techniques made him
capable of presenting the middle Ages as the living past, besides, he wrote a general
work on research methodology. He became the editor of the Annales in 1929. His
collaborator Lucien Fabvre born in Lorraine was the son of a teacher of grammar.
Graduating in history in 1902, he worked very hard to become a scholar of history.
Greatly impressed by Henri Berr, in whose intimate contact he always remained, he was
very fond of cultivating friendship with men of other disciplines and was always keen to
pick up whatever could illuminate past. He wrote a thesis Philip II and the French Comte
in 1911.His work was ahead of this time as it predates the Annales School by almost two
decades. If Marc Bloch was a medievalist, Lucien Fabvre was a nearly modernist. He was
the great propagandist of the Annales School. A new historian, he defended his school
and proseitied many and evolved and popularized a new style, which after the murder of
Marc Bloch achieved nearly tabloid form. Taking over from March Bloch, Lucien Fabvre
was the sole editor of Annales from 1946 to 1956 who was ten succeeded by Fernand
Braudel, the person who furnished a model of historical explanation.
Fernand Braudel was born in 1902 in a small village of east France in the family of a
teacher who was proficient in mathematics. But the son Fernand for his photographic
memory was much fascinated by history.Marvellously intelligent; he was attracted by
everything which charmed intelligence and ingenuity. Starting his career as teacher, he
soon realized that the history he was teaching was superficial, so he began dabbling in
diverse disciplines of scholarship, challenging topics and unexplored regions of historical
interest such as the French Revolution, then the Spaniards and North Africa. On reaching
Algiers to join the new assignment, he made himself familiar with the Mediterranean of
the two flanks of the sea. Seeing Europe from the opposite side, from other side of
telescope, he found his vision transformed. How he saw the Mediterranean extending
into the European land mass and began to view France as the pivot of Europe. For the
purposes of research, he thought of France, then the German states, Spain and finally the
Mediterranean. Since Lucien Fabvre had done work on Philip II, he advised Braudel to
explore more about the Mediterranean. There seems to be a definite purpose in his
suggestion. In his own study of Philip II, he had seen the Mediterranean as a part of the
European continent, and now desired Braudel to reverse the process. In a way Lucien
Fabvre desired to make a complimentary, but more exhaustive and comprehensive study
of his own work.
So, for the next decade or so, atleast till the beginning of the Second World War,
Braudel remained passionately involved in digging and marshalling source material of
the subject of his study. During the Second World War his imprisonment by the Germans
gave him the much needed seclusion and period for introspection and deep
contemplation. In captivity, through his phenomenal memory, he rolled like a film reel all
the sources he had studied, scanned them, planned the thesis and wrote it down on the
school note books. He contemplated on the Mediterranean day in and out and drew a
picture on the space and time of limitless memory which no traditional historical account
seemed to have encompassed. It may be premised that Braudel’s account was direct
existential response to those tragic events of the Great War. His monumental work was
made possible perhaps because he was not tramped by the notes and sources which he
had collected. Facing isolation and misery of the prison life, he patiently, slowly and
deeply contemplated on the Mediterranean, which yielded the most significant model of
explanation of the Annales School. His book on the Mediterranean in the Time of Philip
II is recognized as a historical classic and, as Hexter remarks, “launched him on his career
as a central figure in French historical studies…..” Braudel’s whole model makes his
study deterministic because of the following reasons.
1. His concepts rather codes such as globality, structure, depth, shape etc., direct the
concrete observation.
2. Space is conceived as an entity having, centres and edges, at all times and necessarily,
it is apparently inconceivable simply as unorganized, or loosely lattice:like.
3. Time has depth and height, that is, it is invariably presented as a movement through
space, with fast and slow forms; it is never considered as chaotic, as discontinuous, as
possessing unitary force, or as nothing at all except a coordinate system created by
historians for ideological conveniences of varying kinds. So society must be thought
about as heights and lows. Such a deterministic system excludes tribal societies as
they hardly show heights and lows. In fact, they show very low technology with very
slow movement.Kinser in his article “Annales Paradigm” refers to economic material
structures as historically conceived. They are, therefore, materialistically
deterministic. He further adds that the order in which and by which things change
ultimately is determined by the order of categories. These materialistic categories
obviously preclude the application of ideology. Having scientific pretensions some
historians call their historical works as scientific mythology.
But it is not so easy to dismiss Braudel’s work as a scientific mythology without
under:estimating the grandeur and brilliance of his design. It may in brief be mentioned
that his is a work quite complex and all embracing. He brings under scrutiny for the
purposes of analysis massive data, compiles details about trade, taxes, weights, measures,
prices, gold, silver, rivers, valleys, paths, in brief, geographic, economic, and social
details, and in an effort to reach definite conclusions adopts statistical method and
establishes causal relationships. But his drawback is that his variables are limited and
causal relations not that sound as his treatment of figures which are limited and
uncertain. It is a history without motivation, life and action. It is cold, inert and lifeless
as the statistics with which Braudel overwhelms his readers. Nonetheless it is scientific,
magnificent and picaresque.

It is an epochial swing of geo:historical production and a break with the past historical
tradition and true in spirit and letter to the tradition set by the Annales school. Lucien
Fabvre who had earlier made study of Spain, Ottoman Empire and – the Mediterranean,
had not viewed changes in the fortunes of continent from the point of view of
geographical unity – the Mediterranean and its tributaries imparted unity to the region
sea and land. They, however, could not indicate a shift from Mediterranean Sea to the
Atlantic Ocean as a consequence of changes. They either emphasized or elaborated the
drama of the conflict emerging between western European powers and Ottoman Empire
of highlighted personal qualities of individuals. It was only the founders of Annales
School. Marc Bloch and Lucien Fabvre who attempted at reconstructing the
Mediterranean sea of the sixteenth century in its own context as the determinant as well
the background of human history. This helped Braudel to see unity of region which
transcended political fracture of the 16th century. The culturally, ideologically and
politically broken region growing into nationalities of the sixteenth century was
gradually collapsing into the debris of history, which Braudel clearly saw, and in it he
saw the effort of the European to shift from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic from the
old to the brave new world. It shall not be far from truth if we say that inspired by his
masters, Braudel not only perfected their method by doing what Marx had done to the
Hegelian dialectics (by putting it upside down) but effected methodological
transformation from geo:histoire to histoire evenementielle, symptomatic of what is
happening underneath. There are also multi:dimensional and haphazard movements but
directly known. Most of the historians have written about these movements but the real
history lies in the substrata beneath this layer which requires a tremendous skill reading
and scholarship to study.
Braudel’s Model
“A general history always requires an overall model, good or bad, against which events
can be interpreted”……says Braudel. He agrees with Warner Sombart who says ‘No
theory, no history”. As regards his explanatory model, Braudel has himself mentioned in
the prefatory remarks of the book on the Mediterranean that he has divided his work into
three durees which means duration or unit of time.
(a) There is a slow long drawn movement that explains the history of man in relation to
geography and climatic environment. These changes are so slow that these are
almost imperceptible. They are known as long:range durees for they signify long
units of enduring continuities and sweeping movement s of time.
(b) There are then medium range durees which are more mobile than the above
mentioned and demonstrate themselves the stage of life history in social forms of
various sizes and varied durations, some more stable than others, but all equally
determined at least in part, by the obstinate physical matrix which encloses them.
(c) The last duree is of the shortest duration, called the histoire evenementielle, i.e. the
history of events, “surface disturbances”, or foam that the tide of history carries on
their strong backs”. The form is the political events which Braudal thinks are
significant to the extent that it is superficial in character, and in method which

contrasts history into narrow frame of human lives to the organic method evolved
by Bloch and Fabvre.
Three durees are in fact three levels or spheres: “everyday material life, very wide -
spread, concerned with basic necessities and short:range, economic life calculated,
articulated emerging as a system or rules and almost natural necessities, and finally the
more sophisticated catalyst mechanism which encroaches on all forms of life, whether
economic or material, however, little they lend themselves to its maneuvers”. The
trinitarianism of Braudel’s design emphasizes upon the “near autonomy of each level
compared with the next”. Explaining the concept of structure Braudel writes “Every
economy, society and civilization is a world into itself, divided internally and shared
unequally among its members. Each of these individual mechanisms must therefore be
taken to pieces and put together gain to bring out the resemblances, similarities,
recording features and hierarchies among their components”.
After the perusal of records in French, not accessable to the English knowing
scholars, J.H. Hexter traces the origin of the Annales School in reaction against the
popular school of French historians known as Sorbonnistes who had in their endeavour,
earnest enough, rejected reality and that had made history both unscientific and hence
superficial. Their effort to live a serious turn to system of historical i.e. from political and
diplomatic to social and economic is described as mentalite, and what we call by the
name Annales School…….this mentalite became structure, a controlling habit of thought
so deeply embedded in the minds of the believers that they scarcely subjected it to critical
examination”, says J.H. Hexter. This statement is given here not to suggest that the
Annales approach is accepted by historians as the most perfect one, but with view to
project that it is quite a significant one for it assisted in founding a school of new history
by rejecting the Sorbonnistes and wide:opening history as a discipline to all social
sciences. Here in, this of course, nothing was new; nonetheless the novelty lay in the
structure it had offered to the scholars of history.
The first mattresses i.e. the long range duree relates more to institutions in historical
studies than to conceptual apparatus, guidelines, general theories or rational
generalization. Here it may be pointed out that it is not intrinsically different from the
middle duree for both have institutional framework and the middle duree, Moreover, is
the seminal and germinal bedrock of the ideas of long duree. But the latter is concerned
with structures which appear slowly and are imperceptible to the generations who
experience them. They may be broadly equated with hegemonic ideas of Gramsci or
superstructure. So in its essence it is not a new idea except that in methodological terms,
it relates history to social sciences which yield general theories and conceptual apparatus.
In this respect Braudel has done a remarkable work La Mediterranei in which he
effectively shows the intricate relationship of history with disciplines like economics,
geography and sociology. In defense of their methodology and explanation the
Annalestes have following arguments to offer:
First, rejecting the idea of bounded human sciences, they metaphorically explain
that every subject of social science is a floor of the house of human science. Any study of
man in the absence of any floor of the house of history or, in other words, exclusive of
economic, social, geographic mane would amount to falsification of human history.

Human science, as history is, must deal with the totality of his phenomenon, suggesting
that all social sciences must avoid slicing up the man, “however skillful and artistic the
carving”. It is not incorporation of ideas of social sciences but their, appropriation. All
social sciences tend to be imperialistic and encroach upon other disciplines in an effort to
grasp the total reality. Brandt rejects both horizontal or vertical division of science and
asserts though sometime dictatorially, the avion of diverse sciences of man “to subject
them less to a common market than to a common problematique, which would free them
from many illusory problems and useless acquirements……. (and) would open the way
for a future and new divergence, capable at that point of being fruitful and creative. For a
new forward thrust of the sciences of man is in order”. In Braudel’s view this elevates
history to the pedestal of science of sciences of man “Mingling with them, lending them
its own impetus, and its own dialectic, it feeds itself on their multiple and indispensable
movement”. This in the opinion of Annalestes would not make history a science but only
scientific and place it either at the apex of all social sciences or at their centre and would
not permit other social sciences to use it as an instrument, laboratory or a mere door:mat.
Instead history provides a structure, economic and social trends, which require long
periods of slow development and are imperceptible, as they unfold themselves slowly.
These structures show fixed relations between realities and social masses and are not
easily grasped diachronically; though synchronic analysis is generally performed by
economists and sociologists, historians do see slow transformation from tribalism to
civilized way of living.
Secondly, these structures are indications of parameters which impose constraints
on the human movements of all kinds, physical and intellectual. In his view structures,
not only geographic, but also technical, social, economic and administrative act as
obstacles. This gives the impression, teleologically of course, that history follows a
determined or a given path which is certainly not a new philosophical view. But when by
the close of 1950s structure became a catchword he began to disclaim being a
structuralist.But being essentially a structuralists, Braudel in the Laterite Meditterance
asserts that man is essentially in contraction made of long durees which destroy masses
of events which do not conform to their historical currents or thrusts. Therefore, events
have no meaning for they cannot stand on their own, isolated but dependent as they are,
therefore, to Braudel in history of conjoncture of historical rhythms of moyenne duree
fascinates for it is that grouping of events which carry the same sign, and is real tour de
force of historical explanation.
Aware of the fact that structural system of analysis provides most motionless
inflexible framework, Braudel, however, sees slow moving waves caused by the
interaction between man and his environment, in form superimposed and not separated.
The structure, in this limited way is able to choose an area where it wants and is able to
meddle, the area it will leave to their fate, incessantly reconstructing its own structures
from these components, and thereby little by little transforming those of others”.
Therefore, in his opinion, the primary function of historian, aware of three durees, is to
discern and set forth the dialectic that takes place among them”. It is not a difficult task
for material life complies with these slow evolution even more easily than the other
sectors of man’s history”, because Braudel does not regard the slowness of evolution as
constraint but laws depicting a kind of arrangement between thousands of actually
disparate cultural possessions, at first glance foreign to one another – from those that
emanate from religion and intellect to the objects and tools of daily life”.
The moyenne duree i.e., middle duree has special fascination for Braudel. Known
as conjonture for lack of any other satisfactory equivalent, Braudel suggests that it is a
second layer or tier of history of the type of rhythmic or cyclic pattern similar to economic
cycles or conjunctures. Less precisely, these changes in society over time conform to the
phenomena. Economic historian have identified these cycles of change of intermediate
length with price curves, demographic progress, movements of wages, changes in
interest rates. They may be of the duration of five to fifty years. Braudel has extended the
notion of cyclic movement from economic to social phenomena, these movements occur
for a few times in the life time of people, they also remain imperceptible, though they
profoundly affect human life.
The last act of waves called courte duree or short waves consist of everyday
experience, immediate problems, immediate actions and immediate awareness. They are
part and parcel of individual’s consciousness, unlike the other two.Simiand predecessor
of Braudel and a philosopher:economist describes such actions as evenementielle having
to do with events therefore appropriately follows him in designating this duree. In their
character they are absolutely temporary but they have a multidimensional character.
They are numerous and diverse. Residual in character”, these facts are like dust particles
of history ‘micro:history’ each one of them testifies thousands of others enduring through
the depth of silent time”. Braudel further suggests that the material life first “appears in
this anecdotal form which should not be called event as that would inflate their
importance, to grant them a significance they never had”. They are “explosive”,
“resounding” in form of news; nonetheless, they are like deceptive vapors which fill the
consciousness of the contemporaries. As they do not last at all, they are conspicuously
temporary, of course, they are total in themselves combining subject and substance,
therefore, considering them as complete, the past historians have been basing their
account on these events which are political in nature they are so complex and repetitive
that it is very difficult to establish linkages between the evenetnentielle and conjunctures.
One opinion which explains the reason of Braudel’s hostility towards histoire
evenementielle was that its major proponents were the sorbonnistes who before the
Annalestes dominated the historiography. But more logical explanation given by Hexter
is wrapped in the comparison of experience of the Second World War by the two greatest
minds of France, namely, Jean Paul Sartre and Fernand Braudel, the former organized
resistance against the Nazi occupation of France and was facing daily risk of life and
instant decision: therefore, for him daily string of events were very important as they
were the tests of his being. While on the other hand, Braudel, languishing in the German
prison did not require him to prepare himself each day. Helpless as he was, his jail
experience billowed him to escape from “the chronicle of those difficult years”. By
rejecting the events and the time of their happening, he was able to put himself beyond
them. This provides historian a shelter or a strategy to look at the events from a little
distance to judge them better. He is not too close to them to believe in them as
determinant forces of history. Logically explaining his view, Braudel writes that “man is
locked in an economic condition” which reflects “his human condition”. Being
unconscious of the “inflexible boundaries between the possible and the impossible”,
between hope of future and despair of present, both the man and the historian are the
integral part the present, therefore they tend to suffer and give the events due
significance than the conjunctures and slow movement.
It is in this contemplative mental make up that Braudel asked back to his study of
the Mediterranean and wrote his book primarily with a view to avoid the short view of
immediate present i.e., evenementielle, because the immediate present was full of despair
and pessimistic and determined, at it for him, by the walls of prison. This enabled him to
see past in its fullness i.e. panoramic part not on the basis of gion but histoire probleme,
histoire totale which transcend histoire enementielle. If one is asked to define the histoire
problems one in simple words, say that the history is which goes beyond and men, but
addresses itself to or history at is grasped within the framework of a living problem or a
terries of living problems. Being true to his master Lucien Fabvre, he complemented
problematic. They are not conceived as mutually hostile, conflicting or contradictory. But
did Braudel realize that what is problematic just a part of the totality and in it he was
asking for too much.
In two volumes of Capitalism Braudel deals with short ways small duree first, and
then the second and the third.In the first volume explains people, their movements, diets,
houses, things, the technology, sources of power, communication, money, economies,
towns etc., to prove that the methods down to the eighteenth century appeared to be
static which in reality were not so. In fact, they were imperceptibly slow that they
required violent upheavals of the 19th century to bring about any significant change.
Moreover, Braudel argues that social and economic realities not mutually exclusive.
These two coordinate society and economy – affect and disturb social relationships and
put up constraints upon the material reality. But at the same time man “assents himself in
his customary complexity”.Braudel regards man’s assertion constituting the
evenementielle as the foundation of the other two durees as without exploring this Layer
one cannot reach the other two storeys.He argues that it “is the inequalities, the injustices,
the conditions, large or small, which ceaselessly transform its upper structure”.
Braudel has many detractors and equal numbers of admirers.His own predecessor
Lucien Fabvre describes his work as the perfect historical work, a professional
masterpiece. Within fifteen years of its publication, it was ranked as a classic requiring no
modification. One is amazed at the amount of labour which must have gone into the
preparation of the volumes. The treatment of subject, the details of minute events, and its
expanse contribute greatly to taking it a master:piece of picaresque Rabelaisian history. A
seminal work of the Annalestes, it is brilliantly conceived and beautifully documented.
The author impresses as a master craftsman of history who has enormous knowledge and
colossal pile of ideas. To Kinser, a critical reviewer, Braudel’s Capitalism appears a
“synoptic yet synthetic, vast, mountain high views, a fine filigree of totality and hierarchy
crafted with unique less and charm which would for a long time remain unsurpassed and
as far as delightful fresh perceptions are concerned. Nonetheless no work whatever its

merit is so absolutely perfect that does not merit any criticism. In this connection let us
first take up the tripartite model or three tier structures which Braudel claims to have
discovered empirically.
More metaphorical in nature than a well:knit theory as the inter:connections in the
hierarchically structured duree system are clearly missing, Braudel’s model apparently is
quite arbitrary, as there can be as many durees as the time:change equations. This is true
because change in history is constant fluid and integrated whole. Any kind of division
may be a convenient methodological device, cannot be a sound theoretical formulation
because such a device tends to distort, mutilate and fragment the unity and totality of the
historical phenomenon. Arbitrarily associated with three types of subject matter with the
longue, moyenne and courte, the Braudel’s model is a vulnerable proposition as the
dialectics of durees is conspicuously missing. But Braudel is bold enough to accept
‘Preface’ of his second edition that the absence of commingling of events conjuncture and
structure and causal relationship is primarily due to sociological inspiration and
methodology of the work. The Braudellian model highlights the material culture, the
trade, industry, mountains valleys, routes, paths, goods, seas etc., but with equal degree
ignores person’s politics and events imbedded in the time sequence. Chronology is no
doubt, an essential aspect of tile placement of change on the arrow:line of history which
Lo a degree is sacrificed. According to this model everything is explained with structures
conjunctures as primary units for the organization of material. As a result Braudel does
not fully justify his claim that he succeeds in linking the durable phenomenon of history
with the ever:changing immediate conditions.
That durable phenomenon is the long duree i.e. structure. As a reaction to the
Sorbonnites Braudel gives more importance to the moynne and courte and in the process
fails to bring out the importance of longue duree in his analysis. Rather superimposition
makes description inert, inflexible and unrelated. According to one of his uncharitable
reviewers, “He approaches a problem by enumerating its elements, savoring its ironies,
contradictions and complexities, confronting the various theories scholars have proposed,
and giving each theory its historical due the sum of all theories, alas, is no theory”. But
Kinser looks at the Braudellian three:duree structure from another angle. He points out
that there is a basic contradiction in his conviction that is the structure always prevails
upon the conjuncture and events, and by virtue of that human action form a scientific
analyzing totality. On the one hand he sets whole prior to the parts while on the other he
suggests conjunctures and events as sub:wholes which beckon his historical explanation
onward. This contradiction makes his explanation of social change both open and closed,
and deterministic and vague. Moreover, his analysis of various hierarchical cycles or
what Kinser “ensemble of ensembles” cannot lead history to global for the process
involves limitless expansion. To bring delight to the reader of human past is not the aim
of the Annalestes, notwithstanding some of the narrativists attempt at proving that
Braudel is more of a narrativist than an explainer, for he does not dabble into in many
pages of his monumental work on the Mediterranean the question of ‘why’.
The second part of critical appraisal of Braudel’s work is concerned with histoire
probleme and histcire totale. The histoire probleme as a basis of historical study is, no

doubt, laudable in itself, but poses many problems to scholars. One, it avoids region or
specific space entity or even group, people and community as the basic parameters of a
happening. Here it may be mentioned that selection of Mediterranean does not absolve
Braudel of this charge as the Mediterranean has complex, awkward and confusing
character. It is a vast and undifferentiated historical entity. Two, Braudel’s model
provides a steel framework to which histoire evenementelle is ruthlessly subordinated.
Not events, human actions but problem provides the framework of historical explanation.
Three, one is confronted with logical fallacy how histoire probleme can be connected with
histoire totale or global history, as probleme is a part of totale histoire; the vice:versa is
certainly not true for in that case Braudel’s model would defy the definition of histoire
totale.The appropriate explanation of histoire totale is endless history or a phenomenon
which is infinite. It is problem or a set of problems which help in marking a limit to the
subject matter of history, and consequently makes it explainable. Taking the
Mediterranean as model for this purpose, Braudel’s histoire totale means it encompasses
entire region and its historical past which unfolds itself in terms of the civilization of
Europe, including the entire range of human activity. Even in this sense histoire totale is a
myth for, one, as mentioned above, the subject matter of historical study sets its own limit
in terms of a problem or a set of problems, two since historian has to be selective, he
would exclude the mention of many events and deal with some. Braudel’s work suffers
from both these defects; consequently his study has clearly defineable part, fixed region
and no clearly explaine probleme.Kinser, therefore, concludes that Braudel is
“condemned continually to resort to illustration more than to analysis, to exhibit more
than to critical interpretation, and in sum to ex post facto argument, argument which
stands and falls with the soundness of others research”. He jumps with tremendous ease
from general to specific, and vice versa. He rarely pushes forward hypothesis and testing.
He is “content to outlive a problem rather than to prove it”. By giving detail he impresses
to be an empiricist in reality, the persuades, rather forces readers to accept his capitalism
which was formulated in considerable measure before research was begun”.
Critical Appraisal
Before writing a critique of the Annales School of historical writing, it has to be

accepted without grudge or grievance that it developed under the aegis of brilliant
scholars; and has now acquired unrivalled international reputation and popularity
among the historians. Not averse to the Marxists, the Annales School has in recent years,
encouraged infinite variety of scholarly practices because of the simple fact that it does
not furnish, nor is based on any doctrine. Its followers share among themselves a
common and unified concept of a discipline clearly in contrast to the traditional
practitioners of history writing. The unorthodox approach, in other words critical
approach, to history writing has led to the liberating process from sham or symbolic
intellectual trappings. As it does not impose any one in principle of coherence, the
Annalestes do not permit intellectual or interpretative regimentation. Emancipated to
graze in the pasture of other academic disciplines, they freely borrow from them,
enriching analysis, transforming explanation into a more empirical than a structural or
doctrinal based. Evidently, it has pulled history out of the narrow mores of states, races,
peoples, communities, ideologies, religious prejudices and national prides. Wider in

perspective and total in scope, the Annalestes explore total social phenomenon in bold
bid to save history from the rapidly developing process of disintegration and
fragmentation under the pressure of specialization. Moreover, being open and generous
to other disciplines, the Annales School offers infinite range of topics and methods to the
historians. Creating fertile soil for the germination of new ideas generating new
confidence never witnessed before, the Annales School has liberated the Euro:Marxist
from the contraction of the midwar years of Stalino:Marxist historism.At one state it had
no rivals to compete and no specific adversary to counter, the Annales school, as Francois
Furet observes, was “lauded for being both conceptual and narrative, concerned with
individual and searching for laws, being open to Marxism and well disposed towards the
opponents of Marxism and so on”.
Failing to find out doctrinal parameters and contours of a well developed discipline,
Furet defines the Annales School as “polymorphous discipline”. Of course, with complex
methodology, intriguing subject:matters, borrowed vocabulary imparting heightened, but
in some cases pretentious intellectual sense of adventure. To the critics of Annales School,
it gave a false sense of satisfaction to suggest that it was a mere reaction to the orthodox
history. The enthusiastic response to this school transformed the territory of history into
a public domain – a home into a hotel.
From the above discussion it is evident, at least to Furet, that the Annales schools
imbibes two incompatible ideas, one, of borrowing methods, subject matters and concepts
from other disciplines and the other of presenting itself as autonomous discipline for the
complete explanation of historical phenomenon. Borrowing does not impart intellectual
unity which is an essential constituent of any doctrine or a discipline, and as such devoid
it of being a valid academic system of analysis, instead it adds to diversity of approach,
expands fields of enquiry to unmanageable limits, and provides greater methodological
eclecticism. These factors do not necessarily guarantee deeper understanding of the
phenomenon. “By borrowing right and left, history does not tie itself to any one of the
creditors; on the contrary, it claims to bestow its own permanent dignity on all of them”.
Thus argues Furet, “in its comprehensive embrace, history absorbs social sciences instead
of simply representing the temporal dimension of those sciences.
Attempts at explaining history on the basis of specialized approaches of other social
science is not acceptable to many historians for they do not have disciplinary consensus.
To them these approaches form a corpus of interpretation hardly homogenous and
united. Moreover, social sciences like economics, sociology, and psychology base
themselves on purely empirical data and display apparent distrust of philosophy of
history. For total explanation which the Annales School claims to aim at, it is necessary to
have an independent singular theory for social forecasting. But the Annalestes are
predominantly the empiricist like August Comte – and Durkheim whose ideas provide
the possibility of study of man in society and not the so determinants without which it is
impossible to grasp the essence of man. Another serious objection to the system of
explanation offered by the Annales School is that its protagonists tend to borrow
generously ideas of structural anthropologists who grasp the social manifestation more in

space than in time, being more synchronic than diachronic in approach. They adhere to
the idea that man has the capacity to transgress time.Putting chronology at the side line,
the structural anthropologists, unlike the evolutionaries, give premium to space and
periods. Although the Annales’ explanation falls short of presenting history in terms of
organized time yet it provides history the potential of studying historical phenomenon
exhaustively and in the process saves it from epistemological loss.
If history based on specialized and isolated problems is fragmented, the total
history of the Annales school is illusive and beyond man’s capabilities of grasp and
explanation hence tantamount to a mere wish or at the most ambition. Moreover, no
history based on the sacrifice of continuity of time is considered to be true history. Period
is no substitute of time sequence; for period is insignificant as problem or set of problems
constitutes a period resulting periods lose their autonomous absolute stratus.
A brief comment, in addition to what has been discussed in connection with the
appraisal of Braudel’s model on the concept of total history would not be out of place
here. The concept of total history embraces a study of a large number of problems over a
long period, explaining and analyzing series of changes involving transformation of a
historical phenomenon, implicitly indulging in comparative analysis for the elaboration
of the concepts and ideas applied in the making of historical explanation of the subject
under study, which itself is nothing but a problem parameterized by time and space and
as such it can never be total in its nature. Therefore, history as total science of social
sciences which the Annalestes wish to achieve remains a mere myth or at the most a goal.
Furet aptly remarks: “Having been enticed out of its position as the soothsayer of national
destiny and prophet of human progress, history has studied the social sciences to
appropriate for its own advantage the ambition of Durkheimian sociology”.
Finally, it may be summed up that Annalestes attempt at constructing research
programmes incorporating and approximating as many variables and proms as possible,
while rejecting the autonomy of individual facts and periods means total history. Without
dilating much upon certain limitations of the Annales School which have already been
mentioned in connection with the criticism of Braudel’s model, the attention may be
drawn to some of the following significant aspects:
1. This school rejects the genealogical construct of history i.e., the effort of historian is
to trace the origin of things in terms of time.
2. It ignores the role of state in establishing social and economic hegemony of the
ruling elite, ipso facto; it presents, so to say, the anti:Marxist view of historical
development.
3. It does not approve of micro:studies such as tribes, communities, races, states,
nations, towns, villages, markets, and happenings in their completeness and
autonomous entities.
4. It tends to subordinate time to space. Being based on inductive method, the allied
social sciences cannot adopt in its fullest sense the deductive reasoning,
consequently social scientist cannot adequately assign prior significance determined
by time, whereas the dimension of time is the essence of historical explanation.
Moreover, time is not homogenous with space or object. It is constant element

injecting new dimension to every event. Time imparts specificity to event which
transforms ordinary happening into a historical event.
5. Its immense open:ended character creates the problem of intelligibility of the subject
matter and the terminology which are not familiar modes of explanation or
historiographical models and intellectual landscape to the most historians, or
general readers’ interest in knowing the past.
6. It gives priority to periods and homogeneity of facts and events and drive
significance not from within the individual events but from external source. Being
true to its sociological origins, structure of phenomenon determines the functions of
things.
7. Scholars tend to believe that the history of Annalestes is essentially narrative as it
narrates and not involves itself in establishing causal sequence of events.
8. Social sciences simplify historical phenomena and generalize the specific. This often
tends to contradict each other.
We may here conclude the discussion with a note of clarification i.e. the Annales
school to be just in our appraisal, is a scholarly effort and scientific method with
unconventional format adopted to acquire a deeper understanding of historical
phenomenon. It generously harmonizes the methods and concepts of other disciplines
not with a view to multilate and distorts historical explanation, but to enrich its
methodology and enlarge it scope so that it can be given the status of science of all social
sciences. Therefore, history in the hands of Annalestes acquires a new dignified status –
the status of being mother of all social sciences.
HISTORY OF MENTALITIES
In K. Marx, the division between mental and manual labour was a marked feature of
the division of labour in capitalist society and related to human alienation. In Marxist
literature, the dichotomy between hand and head in the labour process has a variety of
meanings: (1) the emergence of supervisory roles within the factory which manage the
labourer, whose activities become devoid of imagination, choice or intellect; (2) the
development of machinery and computers in which human intelligence is stored with the
consequent de:skilling of labor in internal divisions within the working class (4) the
social denial of the unity of hand and heads as the natural condition of the human
species. While this distinction has been an important feature of Marxist analyses, some
sociologists argue that it is difficult to see how in practice it can be distinguished from
more conventional notions such as manual/non manual occupations.
HISTORY OF EMOTIONS
In the 19th century, research on the emotions focused on their physical and
psychological characteristics.C.Darwin (1872) developed comprehensive and influential
classifications of emotions. W. James produced a peripheral theory of emotions in which
the perception of arousing stimuli brought about changes in the peripheral organs such

as the viscera and the voluntary muscles. From this perspective, an emotion is the
perception of these physical changes. In James’s theory, we run not because we are
afraid; rather we are afraid because we run. James’s theory was criticized by W.B
Cannon who argued that the bodily changes to distinguish between specific emotions.
Researchers subsequently became interested in the individual’s cognitive interpretation
of emotional states. These cognitive and motivational components have been described
by K.R.Scherer (1984) as the functions of emotions. Opinion in psychological research is
still divided between those who believe that there are distinctive, innate physiological
changes of neural, facial and motor activity, awareness of which produces a subjective
experience of emotions, and those who believe that in the absence of specific
physiological states, cognitive awareness of emotion is crucial. There is also no
agreement concerning the classification of separate emotions, nor about the distinction
between emotions and other affective states such as feelings or sentiments.
These psychological theories are not interested in cultural variations in emotions,
nor in their historical development or collective nature. For example, anthropologists
have been concerned to differentiate between shame and guilt culture. Shame involves a
public, external means of control; guilt is individualized and private. Sociologist such as
N. Elias have been concerned to understand emotions within a historical context by
arguing that emotions is no longer thought to be civilized to give expressions in public to
violent emotions of rage or passion; the exception might be in modern sport where such
violent emotions are thought permissible or appropriate. Modern societies require a high
level of control over the emotions. Thus sociological theories suggest that emotions are
not simply an awareness of arousal, because they are shaped by culture and social
situations. For example, in her influential study of emotional labour. A Hochschild (1983)
has shown that women in service industries, such as air hostesses, are taught to
manufacture emotions to make their customers feel pleased about the services they are
receiving. She regards this artificial production of affect as a feature of alienation at
work.
It is also argued that these changes in the social context of emotions are closely
associated with the changing nature of family life, courtship and intimacy. Partly as a
consequence of romanticism and the women’s movement, according to A. Giddens (1992)
there has been a transformation of intimacy. A democratization of the private sphere has
followed the democratization of the public realm, and this had put a greater emphasis on
trust, mutual respect, reciprocity and affection. The stability of affectual ties in both
heterosexual and homosexual relationships is now dependent on the mutual satisfaction
of intimacy. Thus family life is no longer merely dependent on property relations, legal
enforcement or sexual reproduction. Without a continuous satisfaction of intimacy, such
familial relations are likely to be short:lived. This argument suggests that, while violent
emotions related to violent encounters are rejected in modern society, men are forced to
accept the expectations of women for sensitive, intimate and affectual partnerships.
Whereas feminists might argue that the household is still dominated by the values of the
patriarchal family, the continuity of domestic violence could be seen as evidence of the
inability of men to adapt to these changes in the emotional relationships between men
and women.
HISTORY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
The analysis of the practices, reciprocities and cultural arrangements of everyday

life is part of micro:sociology. It provides a critique of the anonymity, alienation and
remoteness of macro:institutions such as the economy and the state. There are various
traditions in sociology of the study of everyday world. The study of everyday life has
been fundamental to the development of German social theory. A.Schutz attempted to
analyses the taken:for:granted assumptions of commonsense thought in everyday
interaction which depend on routine typifications of reality. In the work of J.Haberms
there is thus an important contrast between life:world and social system, in which the
process of modernization and rationalization brings about a colonization of the life:world.
The life:world is regarded as authentic, while the institutions of the rationalized social
system are false and manufactured. In Marxism H. Lefebvre (1947) argued that we must
understand how capitalism brings about an alienation of daily life through the separation
of work, household and leisure. The consumer society resulted in the commodification of
daily life. Postmodern studies of culture have claimed that there has been an
aestheticization of everyday life in which mundane objects in the everyday world are
increasingly influenced by style and fashion. Ordinary objects are not developed merely
for their utility but are influenced by fashion: they are now designed.
In contemporary sociology, P.Bourdieu has developed the notion of habitus to
describe the everyday world as a system of practices which embody our fundamental
preferences or taste for objects, values and people. Thus habitus determines our response
to reality by organizing these preferences into a system of distinctions which structure
social reality. The habitus is a cultural organization of everyday practices which include
taste and the emotions.

CHAPTER : 1V
POST : STRUCTURALIST THEORIES
POST : STRUCTURALISM :
A form of analysis, primarily in literary criticism, particularly associated with the
French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It is often opposed to structuralism although
Derrida sees his work as consistent with the real principles of structuralism. The
fundamental idea is that we cannot apprehend reality without the intervention of
language. This prioritizes the study of language or texts. Texts can only be understood in
relation to other texts, not in relation to an external reality against which they can be
tested or measured.
While it is impossible to pinpoint such a transition with any precession, Charles
Lement traces the beginning of post structuralism to a 1966 speech by Jacques Derrida,
one of the acknowledgement leaders of this approach, in which he proclaimed the
dawning of a new poststructuralist age. In contrast to the structualists, especially those
who followed the linguistic turn and who saw people constrained by the structure of
language, Derrida reduced language to “writing” which does not constrain its subjects.
Furthermore, Derrida also saw social institution as nothing but writing and therefore
unable to constrain people. In contemporary terms, Derrida deconstructed language and
social institutions, and when he had finished, all he found there was writing. While there
is still a focus here on language, writing is not a structure that constrains people.
Furthermore, while the structuralists saw order and stability in the language system,
Derrida sees language as disorderly and unstable. Different contexts give words different
meanings. As a result, the language system cannot have the constraining power over
people that the structuralist think it does. Furthermore it is impossible for scientists to
search for the underlying laws of language. Thus, Derrida offers what is ultimately a
subversive, deconstructive perspective. As we will see, subversion and deconstruction
become even more important with the emergence of postmodernism and it is
post:structuralism that laid the groundwork for postmodernism.
The object of Derrida’s hostility is the logo centrism (the search for a universal
system of thought that reveals what is true, right, beautiful, and so on) that has
dominated Western social thought. This approach has contributed to what Derrida
describes as the “historical repression and suppression of writing since Plato”. Logo
centrism has led to the closure not only of philosophy, but also of the human
sciences.Derrida is interested in deconstructing, or “dismantling,” the source of this
closure –this repression: thereby freeing writing from the things that enslave it. An apt.
phrase to describe Derrida’s focus is “the deconstruction of logo centrism”. A good
concrete example of Derrida’s thinking is his discussion of what he calls the “theatre of
cruelty.” He contrasts this concept against the traditional theater, which he sees as
dominated by a system of thought that he calls representational logic (a similar logic has
dominated social theory).That is, what takes place on the stage “represents” what takes

place in “real life,” as well as the expectations of writers, directors, and so on. This
“representationalism” is the theatre’s god, and it renders the traditional theater
theological. A theological theater is a controlled, enslaved theater: ‘The stage is
theological for as long as its structure, following the entirety of tradition, comports the
following elements: an author:creator who, absent and from afar, is armed with a text and
keeps watch over, assembles, regulate the time or the meaning of representation.... He lets
representation represent him through representatives, directors or actors, enslaved
interpreters ... who...more or less directly represent the thought of the ‘creator.’
Interpretive slaves who faithfully execute the providential designs of the ‘master.’....
Finally, the theological stage comports a passive, seated public, a public of spectators, of
consumers, of enjoyers’.
Derrida envisions an alternative stage (an alternative society?) in which “speech
will cease to govern the stage”. That is, the stage will no longer be governed by, for
example, authors and texts. The actor will no longer take dictation; the writers will no
longer be the dictators of what transpires on the stage. However, this does not mean that
the stage will become anarchic. While Derrida is not crystal clear on his alternative stage,
we get a hint when he discusses the “construction of a stage whose clamor has not yet
been pacified into words”. Or, “the theatre of cruelty would be the art of difference and
expenditure without economy, without reserve, without return without history”. It is
clear that Derrida is calling for a radical deconstruction of the traditional theater. More
generally, he is implying a critique of society in genera, which is in the thrall of logo
centrism. Just as he wants to free the theater from the dictatorship of the writer, he wants
to see society free of the ideas of all the intellectual authorities who have created the
dominant discourse. In other words, Derrida wants to see us all be free to be writers.
Implied here is another well:known concern of the poststructuralists (and post
modernists): decentering. In a sense, Derrida wants the theater to move away from its
traditional “center,” its focus on writers (the authorities) and their expectations, and to
give the actors freer play. This point, too, can be generalized to society as a whole.
Derrida associates the center with the answer and therefore ultimately with death. The
center is linked with the absence of that which is essential to Derrida: “play and
difference”. Theater or society without play and difference:that is, static theater or
society:can be seen as being dead. In contrast, a theater or a world without a center would
be one which is infinitely open, ongoing, and self:reflexive. Derrida concludes that the
future “is neither to be awaited nor to be refound”. His point is that we are not going to
find the future in the past, nor should we passively await our fate. Rather, the future is to
be found, is being made, is being written, in what are doing. Having debunked Western
logo centrism and intellectual authority, in the end Derrida leaves us without an answer;
in fact, there is no single answer. The search for the answer, the search for logos, has been
destructive and enslaving. All we are left with is the process of writing, of acting, with
play and with difference.
As structuralism grew within sociology, outside of sociology a movement was
developing beyond the early premises of structuralism: post:structuralism. The major
representative of post:structuralism is Michel Foucault. In his early work, Foucault

focused on structures, but he later moved beyond structures to focus on power and the
linkage between knowledge and power. More generally, poststructuralists accept the
importance of structure but go beyond it to encompass a wide range of other concerns.
GRAND THEORY
A term coined by C.W.Mills to refer pejoratively, to sociological theories couched at a

very abstract conceptual level, like those of T.Parsons. He similarly criticized abstracted
empiricism, the practice of accumulating quantitative data for its own sake. Instead he
advocated sociology as the study of the relationship of the individual’s experience to
society and history.
DECONSTRUCTION
Originally a critical method for the analysis of the meaning of philosophical and
literary works by breaking down and reassembling their constitutive parts (‘sentences’).
It claims that conventional interpretations of texts concentrate on the author and the overt
meaning of the work. Deconstructionism attempts (1) to undermine the importance of the
author by concentrating on the structure of texts and on their membership of literary
genre, which is seen to exist independently of the author, and (2) to grasp the implicit
meaning of texts by exposing their underlying and hidden assumptions. The method is
associated with the idea of ‘decentring’, i.e., attacking the assumption that the structure of
a text has a unifying centre, providing an overarching significance. Decentring aims to
disperse, not to integrate meaning. These implicit meanings are often exposed by (1)
discovering the gaps or absences (aporias) and (2) concentrating on the minor details or
peripheral aspects of texts (margins) such as the footnotes and digressions, where it is
argued that significant meanings are often obscured or hidden.
Deconstruction brings about a reversal of the overt and official meanings of a text in
favour of a subversive reading. This reversal is achieved by identifying and then
reorganizing the explicit contrasts or differences of a text (such as good/bad,
male/female, rational/irrational) which are the key elements of a narrative.
Deconstructionists such as P. deMan (1983) and J. Derrida (1982) often claims that
deconstructionism can not be reduced to a simple recipe or method for reading texts.
However, deconstructive literary method have in fact begun to influence sociologists who
claim that ‘society’ is a text that can be deconstructed in order to expose its implicit
meanings. Critics claim that deconstructive methods are arbitrary, random and
subjective, and that society has an objective character which is non:textual and
non:discursive.
POST : MODERNISM
A movement in painting, literature, television, film and the arts generally. There is
disagreement as to what its main features are but they include the following. (1) Pastiche:
a putting together of elements of style from radically different contexts and historical
epochs (2) Reflexivity: the capacity to be self aware, often accompanied by a sense of

irony. (3) Relativism: the absence of objective standards of truth (4) An opposition to
certain classical artistic techniques such a narrative – telling a story in an ordered
sequence closed off at the end – and representation – attempting to depict reality (5) A
disrespect for, and a wish to cross, traditional artistic boundaries such as those between
popular and high culture and between different artistic forms. (6) A lessened belief in the
importance of the author as the creator of the text.
Postmodernism is often opposed to modernism. However, the two movements
share many of the features listed above and they are probably both best seen as artistic
avant:grades which have to separate themselves off from conventional artistic practice
only to become conventional themselves in time. Sociologically, the interesting question
is the relationship of post modernity – whether the former is the culture of the latter. The
issue for both is whether they represent genuinely new cultural and social forms or
whether they are merely transitional phenomena produced by rapid social change.
Sociology today faces a situation that a number of fields, mainly in the liberal arts,
confronted a decade ago: The postmodern moment had arrived and perplexed
intellectuals, artists, and cultural entrepreneurs wondered whether they should get on the
bandwagon and join the carnival, or sit on the sidelines until the new fad disappeared
into the whirl of cultural fashion. While many sociologists, and some sociological
theorists, still consider postmodernism to be a fad (and it continues to look to some more
like a carnival than a serious scholarly endeavor), the simple fact is that postmodernism
can no longer be ignored by sociological theorists. In contemporary social theory, it has
been “the hottest game in town”. (It has been s hot, in fact, that at least one theorist has
urged that we stop using the term because it has been “worn frail by overexertion”. That
is, it has been abused by both supporters and detractors, as well as in the course of the
overheated debate between them.
Postmodernism is a social theory that originated among a group of post:war French
philosophers who rejected the philosophy of existentialism which was prevalent in
France in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Postmodernism did not enter international until
the 1980s, however. A leading postmodern theorist in international is Richard Ashley
.Like critical theorists, postmodernists seek to make scholars aware of their conceptual
prisons .The most important conceptual prison is that of modernity itself and the whole
idea that modernization leads to progress and a better life for all .Postmodernists cast
doubt on the modern belief that there can be objective knowledge of social phenomena.
They are critical of classical liberals who believe in ‘enlightenment’: e.g. Kant. They are
also critical of contemporary positivists who believe in ‘science’: e.g. Waltz. Both Kant
and Waltz are wedded to a belief in the advancement of human knowledge which
postmodernists regard as erroneous and unfounded. Postmodernists see neorealism as
the epitome of intellectual error and academic arrogance. Neorealism is the prime
example of an intellectual prison that postmodernists see themselves breaking out of.
Postmodern international theorists reject the notion of objective truth. They dispute the
idea that there is or can be an ever:expanding knowledge of the human world. Such
beliefs are intellectual illusions—i.e. they are subjective beliefs, like a religious faith. The
neorealists may think that they have found the truth about international, but they are

mistaken. Postmodernists pour cold water on the belief that knowledge can expand and
improve, thus giving humans increasing mastery over not only the natural world but also
the social world including the international system. They are deeply skeptical of the idea
that institutions can be fashioned that is fair and just for all of humankind: men and
women everywhere. They debunk the notion of universal human progress.
Postmodernism has been defined as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’.Metanarratives
are accounts such as neorealism or neoliberalism that claim to have discovered the truth
about the social world. Postmodernists consider such claims to be far:fetched and lacking
in credibility. The great theoretical constructions of international such as realism or
liberalism are houses of cards that will fall down with the first breeze of deconstructive
criticism. Postmodernists argue, for example, that neorealist claims about the unchanging
anarchical structure of international politics cannot be sustained because there are no
independent and impartial grounds for judging them. There are no such grounds because
social science is not neutral; rather, it is historical, it is cultural, it is political and therefore
biased. Every theory, including neorealism, decides for itself what counts as ‘facts.’ There
is no neutral or impartial or independent
Standpoint to decide between rival empirical claims. Empirical theory is myth. In
other words, there is no objective reality; everything involving human beings is
subjective. Knowledge and power are intimately related; knowledge is not at all ‘immune
from the workings of power’. Postmodernists are deconstructivists who speak of theories
as ‘narratives’ or ‘metanarratives’. Narratives or Meta narratives are always constructed
by a theorist and they are thus always contaminated by his or her standpoint and
prejudices. They can thus be deconstructed: i.e. taken apart to disclose their arbitrary
elements and biased intentions. The main target of postmodernist deconstruction in
international is neorealism. Here is a theory which claims that only a few elements of
information about sovereign states in an anarchical international system can tell us most
of the big and important things we need to know about Postmodernist view of
knowledge and power
All power requires knowledge and all knowledge relies on and reinforces existing
power relations. Thus there is no such thing as ‘truth’, existing outside of power. To
paraphrase Foucault, how can history have a truth if truth has a history? Truth is not
something external to social settings, but is instead part of them . . . Postmodern
international theorists have used this insight to examine the ‘truths’ of international
relations to see how the concepts and knowledge:claims that dominate the discipline in
fact are highly contingent on specific power relations.
METHODOLOGICAL DEBATES
International relations. And the theory even claims to validly explain international
politics ‘through all the centuries we can contemplate’. Postmodernist critiques of
neorealism target the anarchical structure and a historical bias of the theory. The theory is
a historical and that in turn leads to a form of reification in which historically produced
social structures are presented as unchangeable constraints given by nature. Emphasis is
on ‘continuity and repetition’ .Individual actors are ‘reduced in the last analysis to mere
objects who must participate in reproducing the whole or . . . fall by the wayside of
history’ .It follows that neorealism has big difficulties in confronting change in

international relations. This discloses a poverty of theoretical imagination. Any thought

about alternative futures remains frozen between the stark alternatives of either domestic
sovereign statehood or international anarchy or the (unlikely) abolition of sovereign
statehood and the creation of world government. What is the contribution of
postmodernist international methodology? One benefit is the deflation of academic egos
and conceits: scholars typically claim too much for their theories. Neorealism is a good
example of that: it does not really live up to its billing; it provides less knowledge of
international than it claims to provide. Another benefit is the skepticism that
postmodernism attaches to the notion of universal truths that are said to be valid for all
times and places. That is typical of realism and also of much liberal idealism. Pouring
cold water on academic or scientific pretensions can be a good thing.
But there is also a negative side. Why should we accept the analysis of the
postmodernists if theory is always biased in some way? Why should the deconstruction
be believed any more than the original construction? If every account of the social world
is arbitrary and biased, then postmodernism cannot be spared: its critique can be turned
upon itself. Postmodernist Richard Ashley says there is no ‘positionality’—i.e. there are
no stable platforms or certitudes—upon which social speech, writing, and action can be
based. Yet, ironically, what makes postmodernism intelligible, including the work of
Ashley, is its conformity to the basic conventions of intellectual and academic inquiry
which are the foundations of all knowledge, including social knowledge. His own writing
conforms to the conventions of English grammar and vocabulary, and no doubt he lives
his own life as we live our lives within the compass of interpersonal standards of time,
space, etc., which are marked and measured by calendars, clocks, miles, kilometers, etc.
There are similar conventions of international law, politics, and economics. These
measures and standards are some of the most fundamental elements of the modern
world. A more worrying problem is that postmodernism can deteriorate into Nihilism—
i.e. negativism for its own sake. Criticism can be made merely for the sake of criticism.
Narratives can be taken apart with nothing to take their place. Ultimately, postmodernists
can become estranged from the social and political world that they seek to understand. A
world exclusively of contingency and chance, rather than choice and reason, may cease to
be either intelligible or meaningful. In short, there is something about postmodernism
which may appeal to nihilists. But nihilism cannot provide any foundations of knowledge
because it rejects the possibility and the value of knowledge. There is a moderate
postmodernism that is premised on the notion that our ideas and theories about the
world always contain elements of both subjectivity and objectivity. The subjective
element is tied to our adherence to different values and concepts and the inescapable fact
that each and every one of us looks out upon the world from his or her own personal
standpoint. The objective element is tied to the fact that we can actually agree about very
substantial insights about what the real world is like. We speak the same language. We
calculate in the same units of weights and measures. All that is solid does not melt into
air. At the core of this middle ground is the notion of intersubjectively transmissible
knowledge. Such knowledge is bound by standards of documentation and clarity of
exposition; put differently, such knowledge is compelled to demonstrate that it is not the
result of wishful thinking, guesswork or fantasy; it must contain more than purely

subjective valuations. Moderate postmodernism approaches the position of the

constructivists, which is based on the concept of intersubjectivity.
Moderate Postmodern Social Theory : Fredric Jameson
The dominant position on the issue of post modernity is clearly that there is a radical
disjuncture between modernity and post modernity. However, there are some
postmodernists who argue that while post modernity has important differences from
modernity, there are also continuities between them. The best:known of these arguments
is made by Fredric Jameson (1984) in an essay entitled “Postmodernism, or The Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism”, as well as later in a book of essays with the same title
(Jameson, 1991). That title is clearly indicative of Jameson’s Marxian position that
capitalism, now in its “late” phase, continues to be the dominant feature in today’s world,
but it has spawned a new cultural logic – postmodernism. In other words, while the
cultural logic may have changed, the underlying economic structure is continuous with
earlier forms of capitalism. Furthermore, capitalism continues to be up to its same old
tricks of spawning a cultural logic in order to help it maintain itself.
In writing in this vein, Jameson is clearly rejecting the claim made by many
postmodernists (for example, Lyotard, Baudrillard) and Marxian theory is perhaps the
grand narrative par excellence and therefore has no place in, or relevance to,
postmodernity.Jameson is not only rescuing Marxian theory, but endeavoring to show
that it offers the best theoretical explanation of postmodernity.Interestingly, while
Jameson is generally praised for his insights into the culture of postmodernism, he is
often criticized, especially by Marxists, for offering an inadequate analysis of the
economic base of this new cultural world. Also consistent with the work of Marx,
and unlike most theorists of postmodernism, Jameson sees both positive and negative
characteristics, “catastrophe and progress all together”, associated with postmodern
society. Marx, of course, saw capitalism in this way; productive of liberation and very
valuable advancements and at the same time the height of exploitation and alienation.
Jameson begins by recognizing that postmodernism is usually associated with a
radical break, but then after discussing a number of things usually associated with
postmodernism, he asks, “Does it imply any more fundamental change or break than the
periodic style – and fashion – changes determined by an older high modernist imperative
of stylistic innovation?”. He responds that while there certainly have been aesthetic
changes; those changes continue to be a function of underlying economic dynamics: What
has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity
production generally; the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever
more novel:seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover,
now assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic
innovation and experimentation. Such economic necessities then find recognition in the
institutional support of all kinds available for the newer art, from foundations and grants
to museums and other forms of patronage. The continuity with the past is even clearer
and more dramatic in the following: This whole global, yet American, postmodern
culture is the internal and super structural expression of a whole new wave of American

military and economic domination throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout
class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death and horror.
Jameson (following Ernest Mandel) sees three stages in the history of capitalism. The
first stage, analyzed by Marx, is market capitalism, or the emergence of unified national
markets. The second stage, analyzed by Lenin, is the imperialist stage with the
emergence of a global capitalist network. The third stage, labeled by Mandel (1975) and
Jameson as “late capitalism”, involves “a prodigious expansion of capital into hitherto
uncommodified areas”. This expansion, “far from being inconsistent with Marx’s great
19th century analysis, constitutes on the contrary the purest form of capital yet to have
emerged”. Said Jameson, “The Marxist framework is still indispensable for
understanding the new historical content, which demands not modification of the
Marxist framework, but an expansion of it”. For Jameson, the key to modern capitalism is
its multinational character and the fact that it has greatly increased the range of
commodification.These changes in the economic structure have been reflected in cultural
changes. Thus, Jameson associates realist culture with market capitalism, modernist
culture with monopoly capitalism, and postmodern culture with multinational
capitalism. This view seems to be an updated version of Marx’s base:superstructure
argument, and many have criticized Jameson for adopting such a simplistic perspective.
However, Jameson has tried hard to avoid such a “vulgar” position and has described a
more complex relationship between the economy and culture. Nonetheless, even a
sympathetic critic like Featherstone concludes, “It is clear that his view of culture largely
works within the confines of a base:superstructure model”.
Capitalism has gone from a stage in monopoly capitalism in which culture was at least
some degree autonomous to an explosion of occur in multinational capitalism: A
prodigious expansion of culture throughout the social realm, to the point at which
everything in our social life – from economic value and state power to practices and to
the very structure of the psyche itself – can be said to have become ‘cultural’ in some
original and as yet untheorized sense. This perhaps starting proposition is, however,
substantively quite consistent with the previous diagnosis of a society of the image or the
simulacrum, and a transformation of the ‘real’ into so many pseudo:events. Jameson
describes this new form as a “cultural dominant”. As a cultural dominant,
postmodernism is described as a “force field in which very different kinds of cultural
impulses…..must make their way”. Thus, while postmodernism is “a new systematic
cultural norm”, it is made up of a range of quite heterogeneous elements. By using the
term “cultural dominant”, Jameson also clearly means that while postmodern culture is
controlling, there are various other forces that exist within today’s culture.
Fredric Jameson offers a comparatively clear image of a postmodern society composed
of four basic elements (a fifth, its late capitalistic character). First, postmodern society is
characterized by superficiality and lack of depth. Its fundamental products are satisfied
with surface images and do not delve deeply into the underlying meanings. A good
example is Andy Warhol’s famous painting of Campbell soup cans which appear to be
nothing more than perfect representations of those cans. To use a key term associated
with postmodern theory, the picture is a simulacrum in which one cannot distinguish

between the original and the copy. A simulacrum is also a copy of a copy; Warhol was
reputed to have painted his soup cans not from the cans themselves, but from a
photograph of the cans. Jameson describes a simulacrum as “the identical copy for which
no original ever existed”. A simulacrum is, by definition, superficial, lacking in depth.
Second, postmodernism is characterized by a waning of emotion or affect. As his
example, Jameson contrasts another of Warhol’s paintings – another near:photographic
representation, this time of Marilyn Monre – to a classic modernist piece of art – Edward
Munch’s The Scream. The Scream is a surreal painting of a person expressing the depth
of despair, or in sociological terms, anomie or alienation. Warhol’s painting of Marilyn
Monroe is superficial and expresses no genuine emotion. This reflects the fact that to the
postmodernists, the alienation and anomic that caused the kind of reaction depicted by
Munch is part of the now:past modern world. In the postmodern world alienation has
been replaced by fragmentation. Since the world and the people init have become
fragmented, the affect that remains is “free:floating and impersonal”. There is a peculiar
kind of euphoria associated with these postmodern feelings, or what Jameson prefers to
call “intensities”. He gives as an example, a photorealist cityscape “where even
automobile wrecks gleam with some new hallucinatory splendour”. Euphoria based on
automobile disasters in the midst of urban squalor is, indeed, a peculiar kind of emotion.
Postmodern intensity also occurs when “the body is plugged into the new electronic
media”.
Third, there is a loss of historicity. We cannot know the past. All we have access to be
texts about the past, and all we can do is produce yet other texts about that topic. This
loss of historicity has led to the “random cannibalization of all styles of the past”. The
result leads us to another key term in postmodern thinking – pastiche. Since it is
impossible for historians to find the truth about the past, or even to put together a
coherent story about it, they are satisfied with creating pastiches, or hodgepodges of
ideas, sometimes contradictory and confused, about the past. Further, there is no clear
sense of historical development, of time passing. Past and present are inextricably
intertwined. For example, in historical novels such as E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, we see
the “disappearance of the historical referent. This historical novel can no longer set out to
represent historical past; it can only “represent’ our ideas and stereotypes about that
past”. Another example is the movie Body Heat, which while clearly about the present,
creates an atmosphere reminiscent of the 1930s.
Fourth, there is a new technology associated with postmodern society. Instead of
productive technologies like the automobile assembly line, we have the dominance of
reproductive technologies, especially electronic media like the television set and the
computer. Rather than the “exciting” technology of the industrial revolution, we have
technologies like television, “which articulates nothing but rather implodes, carrying its
flattened image surface within itself” (Jameson, 1984:79). The implosive, flattening
technologies of the postmodern era give birth to very different cultural products than the
explosive, expanding technologies of the modern era did.
In sum, Jameson presents us with an image of post modernity in which people are
adrift and unable to comprehend the multinational capitalist system or the explosively
growing culture in which they live. As a paradigm of this world, and of one’s place in it,
Jameson offers the example of Los Angele’s Hotel Bonaventure, designed by a famous
postmodern architect, John Portman. One of the points that Jameson makes about the
hotel is that one is unable to get one’s bearings in the lobby. The lobby is an example of
what Jameson means by hyperspace, an area where modern conceptions of space are
useless in helping us to orient ourselves. In this case the lobby is surrounded by four
absolutely symmetrical towers which contain the rooms. In fact, the hotel had to add
color coding and directional signals in order to allow people to find their way. But the
key point is that as designed, people had great difficulty in getting their bearings in the
hotel lobby.
This situation in the lobby of the Hotel Bonaventure is a metaphor for our inability to
get our bearings in the multinational economy and cultural explosion of late capitalism.
Unlike many postmodernists, Jameson as a Marxist is unwilling to leave it at that and
comes up with at least a partial solution to the problem in living in a postmodern society.
What we need, he says, are cognitive maps in order to find our way around. Yet, these
are not, cannot be, the maps of old. Thus, Jameson awaits a Breakthrough to some as yet
unimaginable new mode of representing….[late capitalism], in which we may again
begin to grasp our positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity
to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spatial as well as our social
confusion. The political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its
vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as
a spatial scale. These cognitive maps can come from various sources – social theorists
(including Names on himself, who can be seen as providing such a map in his work),
novelists, and people on an everyday basis who can map their own spaces. Of course, the
maps are not ends in themselves to a Marxist like Jameson, but are to be used as the basis
for radical political action in postmodern society.
The need for maps is linked to Jameson’s view that we have moved from a world that
is defined temporally to one that is defined spatially. Indeed, the idea of hyperspace, and
the example of the lobby of the Hotel Bonaventure, reflects the dominance of space in the
postmodern world. Thus, for Jameson, the central problem today is “the loss of our
ability to position ourselves within this space and to cognitively map it” Interestingly,
Jameson links the idea of cognitive maps to Marxian theory specifically the idea of class
consciousness: “’Cognitive mapping’ was in reality nothing but a code word for ‘class
consciousness’…..only it proposed the need for class consciousness of a new and hitherto
undreamed of kind, while it also inflected the account in the direction of that new
spatiality implicit in the postmodern”.
The great strength of Jameson’s work is his effort to synthesis Marxian theory and
postmodernism. While he should be praised for this effort, the fact is that his work often
displeases both Marxists and postmodernists. According to Best and Kellner, “His work
is an example of the potential hazards of an eclectic, multiperspectival theory which
attempts to incorporate a myriad of positions, some of them in tension or contradiction
with each other, as when he produces the uneasy alliance between classical Marxism and
extreme postmodernism”. More specifically, for example, some Marxists object to the

degree to which Jameson has accepted postmodernism as a cultural dominant, and some
postmodernists criticize his acceptance of a totalizing theory of the world.
Extreme Postmodern Social Theory: Jean Baudrillard
If Jameson is among the more moderate of postmodernists, then Jean Baudrillard is

one of the most radical and outrageous of this genre. Unlike Jameson, Baudrillard was
trained as a sociologist, but his work has long since left the confines of that discipline;
indeed, it cannot be contained by any discipline, and Baudrillard would in any case reject
the whole idea of disciplinary boundaries. Following Kellner, we offer a brief overview of
the twists and turns in Baudrillard’s work.His earliest work, going back to the 1960s, was
both modernist (Baudrillard did not use the term “postmodernism” until the 1980s) and
Marxian in its orientation. His early works (several, as yet, untranslated) involved a
Marxian critique of the consumer society. However, this work was already heavily
influenced by linguistics and semiotics, with the result that Kellner contends that it is best
to see this early work as “a semiological supplement to Marx’s theory of political
economy”. However, it was not long before Baudrillard began to criticize the Marxian
approach (as well as structuralism) and ultimately to leave it behind. In The Mirror of
Production, Baudrillard came to view the Marxian perspective as the mirror image of
conservative political economy. In other words, Marx (and the Marxists) bought into the
same world view as the conservative supporters of capitalism.In Baudrillard’s view,
Marx was infected by the “virus of bourgeois thought” .Specifically, Marx’s approach
was infused with conservative ideas like “work” and “value”. What was needed was a
new, more radical orientation.
Baudrillard articulated the idea of symbolic exchange as an alternative to – the
radical negation of – economic exchange. Symbolic exchange involved and uninterrupted
cycle of “taking and returning, giving and receiving”, a “cycle of gifts and countergifts”.
Here was an idea that did not fall into the trap that ensnared Marx; symbolic exchange
was clearly outside of, and opposed to, the logic of capitalism.The idea of symbolic
exchange implied a political program aimed at creating a society characterized by such
exchange. For example, Baudrillard is critical of the working class and seems more
positive to the new left, or hippies. However, Baudrillard soon gave up on all political
objectives. Instead, Baudrillard turned his attention to the analysis of contemporary
society, which, as he sees it, is dominated no longer by production, but rather by the
“media, cybernetic models and steering systems, computers, information processing,
entertainment and knowledge industries and so forth”. Emanating from these systems is
a veritable explosion of signs. It could be said that we have move from a society
dominated by the mode of production to one controlled by the code of production. The
objective has shifted from exploitation and profit to domination by the signs and the
systems that produce them. Furthermore, while there was a time when the signs stood
for something real, now they refer to little more than themselves and therefore signs;
signs have become self:referential. We can no longer tell what is real; the distinction
between signs and reality has imploded. More generally, the postmodern world (for now
Baudrillard is operating squarely within that world) is a world characterized by such

implosion as distinguished from the explosions (of productive systems, of commodities,

of technologies, and so on) that characterized modern society. Thus, just as the modern
world underwent a process of differentiation, the postmodern world can be seen as
undergoing dedifferentiation.
Another way that Baudrillard, like Jameson, describes the postmodern world is
that it is characterized by simulations; we live in “the age of simulation”. The process of
simulation leads to the creation of simulacra, or “reproductions of objects or events”.
With the distinction between signs and reality imploding, it is increasingly difficult to tell
the real from those things that simulate the real. For example, Baudrillard talks of “the
dissolution of TV into life, the dissolution of life into TV”. Eventually, it is the
representations of the real, the simulations that come to be predominant. We are in the
thrall of these simulations, which “forms a spiralling, circular system with no beginning
or end”.Baudrillard describes this world as hyper reality. For example, the media cease
to be a mirror of reality, but become that reality, or even more real than that reality. The
tabloid news shows that are so popular on TV these days (for example, Inside Edition) are
good examples (another is “infomercials”) because the falsehoods and distortions they
peddle to viewers are more than reality – they are hyper reality. The result is that what is
real comes to be subordinated and ultimately dissolved altogether. It becomes impossible
to distinguish the real from the spectacle. In fact, “real” events increasingly take on the
character of the hyper real. For example, the arrest of former football great O.J. Simpson
for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman seems hyper real and is perfect
fodder for the hyper real TV shows like Inside Edition. In the end, there is no more
reality, only hyper reality.
In all of this, Baudrillard is focusing on culture, which he sees as undergoing a
massive and “catastrophic” revolution. That revolution involves the masses becoming
increasingly passive, rather than increasingly rebellious, as they were to the Marxists.
Thus, the mass is seen as a “black hole’[that] absorbs all meaning, information,
communication, messages and so on, thereby rendering them meaningless….masses go
sullenly on their ways, ignoring attempts to manipulate them”. Indifference, apathy, and
inertia are all good terms to describe the masses saturated with media signs, simulacra,
and hyper reality. The masses are not seen as manipulated by the media, but the media
are being forced to supply their escalating demands for objects and spectacles. In a sense,
society itself is imploding into the black hole that is the masses. Summing up much of this
theory, Kellner concludes: Acceleration of inertia, the implosion of meaning in the media,
the implosion of the social in the mass, the implosion of the mass in a dark hole of
nihilism and meaninglessness; such is the Baudrillardian postmodern vision.
As extraordinary as this analysis may seem, Baudrillard was even more bizarre,
scandalous, irreverent, promiscuous, playful, or as Kellner says, “carnivalesque”, in
Symbolic Exchange and Death. Baudrillard sees contemporary society as a death culture,
with death being the “paradigm of all social exclusion and discrimination”. The emphasis
on death also reflects the binary opposition of life and death. In contrast, societies
characterized by symbolic exchange end binary oppositions in general and more
specifically the opposition between life and death (and, in the process, the exclusion and

discrimination that accompanies a death culture). It is the anxiety about death and
exclusion that leads people to plunge themselves even more deeply into the consumer
culture. Holding up symbolic exchange as the preferred alternative to contemporary
society began to seem too primitive to Baudrillard and he came to regard seduction as the
preferred alternative, perhaps because it fit better with his emerging sense of
postmodernism. Seduction “involves the charms of pure and mere games, superficial
rituals”. Baudrillard is extolling the power and virtues of seduction, with its
meaninglessness, playfulness, depthlessness, “non:sense” and irrationality, over a world
characterized by production.
In the end, Baudrillard is offering a fatal theory. Thus, in one of his later works,
America, Baudrillard says that in his visit to that country, he “sought the finished form of
the future catastrophe” (1986/1989:5). There is no revolutionary hope as there is in
Marx’s work. Nor is there even the possibility of reforming society as Durkheim hoped.
Rather, we seem doomed to a life of simulations, hyperreality, and implosion of
everything into an incomprehensible black hole. While vague alternatives like symbolic
exchange and seduction can be found in Baudrillard’s work, he generally shies away
from extolling their virtues or articulating a political program aimed at their realization.
Postmodernism and Sociological Theory
There are those who believe that postmodernism, especially in its more radical
forms, represents an incommensurable alternative to sociological theory. In one sense, it
is seen as not being theory, at least in the sense that we conventionally use the term. At
the beginning of this book, sociological theory was defined as “the ‘big ideas’ in sociology
that have stood the test of time (or promise to), idea systems that deal with major social
issues and are far:reaching in scope”. It seems to me that the radical ideas of a
postmodernist like Baudrillard fit this definition quite well. Baudrillard certainly offers a
number of “big ideas” (simulations, hyper reality, symbolic exchange, seduction). They
are ideas that show every promise of standing the test of time. And Baudrillard certainly
deals with major social issues (for example, the control of the media); his ideas have
implications for a substantial part, if not all, of the social world. Thus, I would say that
Baudrillard is offering a sociological theory, and if that can be said of Baudrillard, it can
certainly be said of Jameson and most other postmodernists.
The real threat of postmodernism is more in its form than in its substance. In
rejecting grand narratives, postmodernists are rejecting most of what we usually think of
as sociological theory. Baudrillard (and other postmodernists) do not offer grand
narratives, but rather bits and pieces of ideas that often seem to contradict one another. If
the postmodernists win the day, the sociological theory of the future will look very
different from today’s theory. But even if the form is nearly unrecognizable, the content
will still involve important, wide:ranging ideas about social issues. Whatever the future
may hold, at the moment postmodernists are producing an unusually large number of
important and exciting ideas. Those ideas cannot be ignored and may, as they are
internalized in sociology, push sociological theory in some new and unforeseen
directions.

CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEORY
Feminist theory is a generalized, wide:ranging system of ideas about social life

and human experience developed from a woman:centered perspective. Feminist theory is
woman:centered – or women:centered – in three ways. First, its major “object” for
investigation, the starting point of all its investigation, is the situation (or the situations)
and experiences of women in society. Second, it treats women as the central “subjects” in
the investigative process; that is, it seeks to see the world from the distinctive vantage
points of women in the social world. Third, feminist theory is critical and activist on
behalf of women, seeking to produce a better world for women – and thus, it argues, for
humankind.
Feminist theory differs from most sociological theories in a number of ways. First,
it is the work of an interdisciplinary community, which includes not only sociologists but
also scholars from other disciplines, such as anthropology, biology, economics, history,
law, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, and theology; people best
recognized as creative writers; people who see themselves primarily as political activists;
spokespersons for women of color; and writers from various European or Third World
intellectual communities. Second, feminist sociologists, like other feminist academics,
work with a double agenda; to broaden and deepen their discipline of origin – sociology,
in this case – by reworking disciplinary knowledge to take account of discoveries being
made by feminist scholars; and to develop a critical understanding of society in order to
change the world in directions deemed more just and humane. A double agenda of this
type is the hallmark of any critical theory. In the 1990s, feminist sociological theory may
well be the most dynamic of the schools of critical theory having an impact on sociology.
This is so not only because of the dynamism of its expanding general theory, but also
because of the use of feminist sociological theory to re pattern such sociological subfields
as family, work, organizations, law, criminology, violence, and theories of the global
order. Third despite these developments, many – perhaps a majority of – sociologists are
still hesitant to incorporate feminist theory into their work, in part because that theory
seems so radical, in part because so many of its creators are not sociologists in part
because of suspicions about the scientific credentials of a scholarly undertaking so closely
linked to political activism, and in part because so many of its creators are women.
Fourth, feminist theory is not anchored in any one of the three paradigms that have long
patterned sociology’s orientation to its subject matter – the social:facts paradigm, the
social:definition paradigm, and the social:behavior paradigm. This departure from the
usual paradigms occurs because feminist theory has gone a long way toward effectively
integrating, and thus transcending, the micro:social vs. macro:social debate, which is one
of the major causes of this paradigmatic division. This transcendence of the
macro:versus:micro issue may make it difficult for sociologists based in one of the
discipline’s long:standing theories to work out their relation to feminist theory. Yet at the
same time, this transcendence is one of the most exciting implications of feminist theory
for those working on the frontiers of contemporary sociological theory.

THE BASIC THEORETICAL QUESTIONS.
The impetus for contemporary feminist theory began in a deceptively simple

question: “And what about the women?” In other words, where are the women in any
situation being investigated? If they are not present, why? If they are present, what
exactly are they doing? How do they experience the situation? What do they contribute
to it? What does it mean to them? The consequences of trying to answer feminism’s basic
question: “And what about the women?”: have been revolutionary. Dramatically, the
contemporary scholarly community discovered that what it had assumed to be the
universe of experience was really a particularistic account of male actors and male
experience. The recognition of a whole new set of actors called for a reworking of our
understanding and patterning of every social situation. Women, feminists exulted, could
lay claim to “half the firmament”. And indeed, the effect was rather like discovering,
through the lens of a new telescope, a multitude of hitherto undetected stars in the
universe, a fundamentally new configuration for each constellation.
25 years of posing this question have produced some generalizable conclusions.
Women are present in most social situations. Where they are not, it is not because they
lack ability or interest but because there have been deliberate efforts to exclude them.
Where they are present, women have played roles very different from the popular
conception of them (as, for example, passive wives and mothers). Indeed, as wives and as
mothers and in a series of other roles, women have, along with men, actively created the
situations being studied. Yet though women are actively present in most social situations,
scholars, publics, and social actors themselves, both male and female, have been blind to
their presence. Moreover, women’s role in most social situations, although essential, has
been different from, less privileged than, and subordinate to those of men. Their
invisibility is only one indicator of this inequality.
Feminism’s second basic question is: “Why then is all this as it is?” As the first
question calls for a description of the social world, this second question requires an
explanation of that world. Description and explanation of the social world are two faces
of any sociological theory. Feminism’s attempts to answer these questions have therefore
produced a theory of universal importance for sociology. Over the 25 year period the
circle of feminists exploring these questions has become steadily larger and more
inclusive of people from diverse backgrounds, both in the United States and
internationally. This has led to what is now called “third:wave feminism”, a movement
characterized by its focus on the implications of monolithic sameness that comes from
speaking about “woman” or “the women” and from an intense interest in the issue of
differences among women. This interest has given rise to a third basic question guiding
feminist theoretical work today:“And what about the differences among women?” We
call this third question feminism’s qualifying question, because it leads to a general
conclusion that the invisibility, inequality, and role differences in relation to men which
generally characterize women’s lives are in their particularities profoundly affected by a
woman’s social location – that is, by her class, race, age, affectional preference, marital
status, religion, ethnicity, and global location.

How general is this theory? Some might argue that because the questions are
particular to the situation of a “minority group”, women, the theory that is produced will
also be particular and restricted in scope, equivalent to sociology’s theories of deviance,
or small:group processes. But in fact feminism’s basic questions have produced a theory
of social life universal in its applicability. The appropriate parallels to feminist theory are
not theories of small groups or deviance, each of which is created when sociologists turn
their attention away from the “whole picture” and to the details of a feature of that
picture. Rather, the appropriate parallel is to one of Marx’s epistemological
accomplishments. Marx helped social scientists discover that the knowledge people had
of society, what they assumed to be an absolute and universal statement about reality, in
fact reflected the experience of those who economically and politically ruled the social
world. Marxian theory effectively demonstrated that one could also view the world from
the vantage point of the world’s workers, those who, though economically and politically
subordinate, were nevertheless indispensable producers of our world. This new vantage
point gelatinized ruling:class knowledge and, in allowing us to juxtapose that knowledge
with knowledge gained from taking the workers’ perspective, vastly expanded our ability
to analyze social reality. A century after Marx’s death we are assimilating the
implications of this discovery.
Feminism’s basic theoretical questions similarly produce a revolutionary switch in
our understanding of the world. These questions, too, lead us to discover that what we
have taken as universal and absolute knowledge of the world is, in fact, knowledge
derived from the experiences of a powerful section of society, men as “masters”. That
knowledge is relativized if we rediscover the world from the vantage point of a hitherto
invisible, unacknowledged “underside”: women, who in subordinated but indispensable
“serving” roles have worked to sustain and re:create the society that we live in. This
discovery raises questions about everything that we thought we knew about society. This
discovery and its implications constitute the essence of contemporary feminist theory’s
significance for sociological theory.
Feminism’s radical challenge to established systems of knowledge, by contrasting

them with women:centered understandings of reality, not only relativizes established
knowledge, but also “deconstructs” such knowledge. To say that knowledge is
“deconstructed” is to say that we discover what was hitherto hidden behind the
presentation of the knowledge as established, singular, and natural – namely, that
presentation is a construction resting on social, relational, and power arrangements.
Feminism deconstructs established systems of knowledge by showing their masculinist
bias and the gender politics framing and informing them. But feminism itself has become
the subject of relativizing and deconstructionist pressures from within its own theoretical
boundaries especially in the last decade. The first, and still the more powerful of these
pressures, comes from third:wave feminism, which opposes feminism’s initial unitary
view of “woman” with the claims that there are many differently situated women, and
there are many women:centered knowledge systems which oppose both established,
male:stream knowledge claims and any hegemonic feminist claims about a woman’s
standpoint. The second deconstructionist pressure with feminism comes from post

modernist theory and from a growing feminist postmodernist literature, which, having
developed first in literary studies, philosophy, and history, is now flowing steadily into
social science feminism. Postmodernist feminism works to destabilize and deconstruct all
existing conceptual schemas, situating them within the discoveries of power:infused
communities. Significantly, postmodernist feminism raises questions about the stability
of gender itself as a way of seeing the world, and about the individual self as a stable
locus of consciousness and personhood from which gender and the world are
experienced. The potential impact of these questions falls primarily on feminist
epistemology – its system for making truth claims.
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF GENDER: 1960 – PRESENT
In this section we look at the work of sociologists attempting to address feminist

concerns within the structure of existing theories. We organize our discussion of existing
theories into macro:social theories of gender and micro:social theories of gender.
Macro:Social Theories of Gender
Feminism’s first question, “And what about the women?” has produced significant
responses from theories working out of three major macro:social perspectives that are
more fully presented elsewhere in this section: functionalism, analytic conflict theory, and
neo:Marxian world:systems theory. These theorists all use the same analytic process in
placing gender in their generalized theoretical account of large:scale social phenomena.
First, they define those phenomena as a system of interrelated and interacting structures,
which are understood as “patterned regularities in people’s behaviour”.Functionalists
and analytic conflict theorists focus on nation:states or, on occasion, especially within
analytic conflict theory, on pre:modern cultural groupings; world:systems theory treats
global capitalism as transnational system within which nation:states are important
structures. The variations between these theories invisibility, inequality, and role
differences in relation to men which general characterize women’s lives are in their
particularities profoundly affected by woman’s social location—that is, by her class, race,
age, affectional preference marital status, religion, ethnicity, and global location.
How general is this theory? Some might argue that because the questions
particular to the situation of minority group,” women, the theory that is product will also
be particular and restricted in scope, equivalent to sociology’s theories deviance, or
small:group processes. But in fact feminism’s basic questions produced a theory of social
life universal in its applicability. The appropriate parallels to feminist theory are not
theories of small groups or deviance, each which is created when sociologists turn their
attention away from the “whi8t picfure”and to the details of a feature of that picture.
Rather, the appropriate paral is to one of Marx’s epistemological accomplishments. Marx
helped social science discover that the knowledge people had of society, what they
assumed to be absolute and universal statement about reality, in fact reflected the
expense those economically and politically ruled the social world Marxian the effectively
demonstrated that one could also view the world from the vantage post of the world’s
workers, those who, though economically and politically subordinate were nevertheless
indispensable producers of our world. This new vantagepo relativized ruling:class

knowledge and, in allowing us to juxtapose that knowledge with knowledge gained from
taking the worker’s perspective, vastly expanded ability to analyze social reality. A
century after Marx’s death we are assimilate the implications of this discovery.
Feminism’s basic theoretical questions similarly produce a revolutionary :::::: in our
understanding of the world. These questions, too, lead us to discover that we have taken
as universal and absolute knowledge of the world is, in knowledge derived from the
experiences of a powerful section of society, “masters.”That knowledge is relativized if
we rediscover the world from vantage point of a hitherto invisible, unacknowledged
“underside”: women, in subordinated but indispensable “serving” roles have worked to
sustain re:create the society that we live in. This discovery raises questions about
everything that we thought we knew about society. This discovery and its implication
constitute the essence of contemporary feminist theory’s significance for so logical theory.
Feminism’s radical challenge to establish a system of knowledge by coming them
with women:centered understandings of reality, not only relative established knowledge
but also “deconstructs” such knowledge. To say that knowledge is “deconstructed” is to
say that we discover what was hitherto hidden behind the presentation of the knowledge
as established, singular and natural::::::: that the presentation is construction resting on
social, relational, and ::::arrangements. Feminism deconstructs established systems of
knowledge by ::: their masculinist bias and the gender politics framing and informing
them. ::: feminism itself has become the subject of relativizing and
deconstructionist:::surest from within its own theoretical boundaries especially in the last
decade, first, and still the more powerful of these pressures, comes from third feminism,
which opposes feminism’s initial unitary view of “woman” with the aims that there are
many differently situated women, and there are many women:centered knowledge
systems which oppose both established, male:steam knowledge claims and any
hegemonic feminist claims about a woman’s standpoint. He explores this development
more fully in the section “Third:Wave Feminism”. The second deconstructionist pressure
within feminism comes postmodernist theory and from a growing feminist modernist
literature, which, having developed first in literary studies, philosophy and history, is
now flowing steadily into social science feminism. Modernist feminism works to
destabilize and deconstruct all existing concept schemas, situating them within the
discoveries of power:infused communities. Significantly postmodernist feminism raises
questions about the stability of gender :::: as a way of seeing the world, and about the
individual self as a stable locus consciousness and personhood from which gender and
the world are experienced. A potential impact of these questions falls primarily on
feminist epistemology:system for making truth claims. We will explore the implications
of modernist feminism more fully in the section”A Feminist Sociology of knowledge,”
which introduces the synthesis of feminist sociological theory.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF GENDER: 1960 : PRESENT
This section we look at the work of sociologists attempting to address feminist ::::::
within the structures of existing theories. We organize our discussion of :::: theories into
macro:social theories of gender and micro:social theories of gender.
Micro : Social Theories of Gender
Feminism’s first question, “And what about the women?” has produced significant
responses from theorists working out of three major macro:social perspective that more
fully presented elsewhere. These theorists all use the same analytic process in placing
gender in generalized theoretical account of large:scale social phenomena. First, they use
those phenomena as a system of interrelated and interacting structures, which
understood as patterned, regularizes people’s behavior. Nationalists and analytic conflict
theorists’ focus on nation:states, or on occasion, world systems theory treats global
capitalism as a transnational system within nation:states are important structure. The
variations between these theories centre on the particular structures and systemic
processes they see as important. Second, these theorists move to situate women within
the system described. All these theories arrive at the same conclusion: women’s primary
location – in the sense that it is a location seen within all cultures as the distinctive
“sphere” for women – is the household/family. From that primary location, and always
with it as a framing condition, women may have other significant structural sites for
activity, most notably in the market economy. The issue then becomes that of
understanding the functions of the functions of the household/family in the social system
and of charting the relationship between household and economy. Third, each of these
groups of gender theorists seeks to explain gender stratification – viewed as the near
universal social disadvantage of women – in terms of the triangulated structural
alignment of household/family, economy, and general social:system needs and
processes.
Functionalism :
The major proponent of a functionalist theory of gender is Miriam Johnson.
Speaking as a functionalist and a feminist Johnson first acknowledges the failure of
functionalism to adequately explore women’s disadvantage in society. She accepts that
there is an unintentional sexist bias of social inequality, domination, and oppression: a
tendency originating in functionalism’s primary concern with social order. Yet Johnson
cogently demonstrates that the analytic variety and complexity of Parsonsian
functionalism should be retained in analyses of gender because of the tremendous
analytic range and flexibility of such a multifaceted theory – reiterating the position of
many neo functionalists. Johnson’s work explores the relevance for gender of many of
Parson’s key typologies; role as the basic unit in the social system expressive versus
instrumental role orientations, family as an institutions in relation to other institutions,
the functional prerequisites of the social system (adaptation, goal attainment, integration,
and latency), the analytic levels of social action (social cultural, personality, and
behavioral), the stages of societal change (differentiation adaptive upgrading, integration,
and value generalization).

Most significant for a functionalist understanding of gender is Johnson’s

application of Parson’s concepts to other institutions, and his model of the functional
prerequisites. Johnson locates much of the origin of gender inequality in the structure of
the patriarchal family, in place in almost all known societies. The family has functions
distinct from those of the economy and other “public” institutions it socializes children
and emotionally renews its adult members, activities essential to social cohesion and
value reproduction (integration and latency). Women’s primary social location in the
structure of the family is as the principal producer of those essential functions. In these
activities she must orient expressively, that is with emotional attunement and relational
responsiveness. Women’s functions in the family and orientation toward expressiveness
affect their functions in all other social structures, especially the economy. Women, for
example, are channeled toward occupations typed as expressive; in male:dominated
occupations they are expected to be expressive but are simultaneously sanctioned for this
orientation; and always the responsibility toward family frames and intrude upon
economic participation.
None of the functions described above would, however, necessarily result in a
gender stratification system which devalues and disadvantages women. To understand
why gender stratification is produced we must return to the patriarchal family. Here in
their expressively oriented care of children, women act with strength and authority,
giving both boys and girls their sense of “common humanity.” Institutional and cultural
constraints require that the woman be weak and expressively complaint in relation to her
husband, whose instrumentally mediated competitiveness in the economy earns for his
family its level of economic security. Seeing her in the “weak wife” role, children learn to
revere patriarchy and to devalue expressiveness as a relational stance against which
instrumentality seems more powerful and valuable. This valuing of male instrumentality
as more effective than female expressiveness is diffuse in the culture. But this valuational
stance has no practical basis:except when framed by patriarchal ideology. One of
Johnson’s hopes is that the women’s movement will produce the societal and cultural
changes that lead to a system wide reevaluation of expressiveness.
In the meantime, Johnson must deal with the question of how patriarchal structures
are functional in the production of system equilibrium and social order. Johnson suggests
that we ask’ “functional for whom?” But with this question she moves beyond Parsons in
functionalism, which argues that functionality is to be understood in terms of the system
per se. The Question “functional for whom?” opens up issues of unequal power and
conflicting interests, and points to critical rather than a value:neutral stance for the
theorist, a stance antithetical to functionalism. The question about women, the issue of
gender, has, as it always does, made “the pot boil over.”
Analytic Conflict Theory :
The most influential theorist working on the issue of gender from the perspective of
analytic conflict theory is Janet Chafetz, who, unlike Johnson, works in a network of
similarly framed theoretical work. Her approach is cross:cultural and trans:historical and
seeks to theorize gender in all its particular societal patternings.More specifically; she
focuses on gender inequality, or as selabelsit, sex stratification. In starting with sex
stratification, Chafetz is consistent with analytic conflict theory practices; she finds a
recurrent form of social conflict and sets out to analyze, from a value:neutral stance, the
structural conditions producing the conflict in greater or lesser degrees of intensity.
Chafetz then explores the social structures and conditions which affect the intensity
of sex stratification:or the disadvantaging of women:in all societies and cultures. These
include gender role differentiation, patriarchal ideology, family and work organization,
and framing conditions such as fertility patterns, separation of household and work sites,
economic surplus, technological sophistication, population density, and environmental
harshness:all understood as variables. The interaction of these variables determines the
degree of sex stratification, because they frame the key structures of household and
economic production and the degree to which women move between the two
areas.Chafetz’s positions is that women experience the least disadvantage when they can
balance household responsibilities with a significant and independent role in marketplace
production. The household family is viewed not as an area outside foreign work, a zone
of emotions and nurturance but as an area in which work occurs – child care, housework,
and sometimes also work (as on the family farm) for which there are extra:household
material rewards Women’s access to those rewards either through household or
marketplace production becomes the mitigation against social disadvantage, and the
form of the household – resulting from the interplay of many other variables – is the key
structure facilitating or obstructing this access.
Chafetz goes on to focus on how gender equity may be purposively pursued,
seeking to identify key structural points where change might improve women’s
condition. In her proactive stance toward gender equity Chafetz moves beyond the value
neutrality which has been the hallmark of analytic conflict theory since Weber. The
exploration of gender again leads the theorist – in this case a most disciplined practitioner
– beyond the theory to issues of power and politics.
World :Systems Theory :
World:systems theory takes global capitalism in all its historical phases as the
system for sociological analysis. National societies and other distinct cultural groupings
(for example, colonies and indigenous peoples) are significant structures in the
world:system of global capitalism, as are the economic stratification of those societies and
groupings (core, semi peripheral, and peripheral economies); the division of labor,
capital, and power among and within them, and class relations within each societal unit.
Since the defining process framing this theory’s investigation is capitalism, individuals in
all societal units typically are understood in terms of their role within capitalist
arrangements for the creation of surplus value. This theory thus typically understands
women’s role in the social system only to the degree that their labor is part of capitalism –
that is, when they are workers within capitalist production and markets. But a full and
direct engagement with the issue of gender immediately throws this model of the social
system into question.
Kathryn B. Ward argues that (1) the world:system cannot be understood until the
labor of the household and the labor of the informal economy are properly factored in

and (2) that because women compose much of this labor, women must be given special
attention in world:systems theory and not simply subsumed under the title “worker”.
The household constitutes all the work done at home to maintain and reproduce the
worker; the informal economy is that organization of work in which there is no clear
separation between labor and capital and no regulation of labor by law or capitalist
organization. Ward argues that perhaps as much as sixty:six percent of the world work is
done in these two largely ignored, non:capitalist economies and that proportion of the
world’s work done in these two economies is expanding precisely as capitalism itself
expands globally. Answering the question “And what about the women?”In the
world:system thus reveals a vast “subcontinent” of non:capitalist production coexisting,
expanding, and interacting with global capitalism. In women’s pattern of work globally –
where the exigencies of household work are always present, and where women out of
that base engage with informal and capitalist economies in an ever:shifting calculus – we
find one point of entry for theorizing the structures of work within the world:system.
Further, Ward argues that the particular contributions of women’s unpaid labor to the
world economy and male dominance over women must be understood and explained not
simply as products of capitalism but as “distinctive phenomena properties with their own
logic”.
Micro : Social Theories of Gender
Micro sociological theorists have focused less on explaining women’s social

disadvantage than on explicating the phenomenon of gender as it enters into their
understanding of society as human beings interaction; they ask how gender is present in
interactions and how interactions produce gender. The two main micro sociological
theories of gender are symbolic interactionism and ethno methodology. Symbolic
interactionism’s theory of gender begins with a proposition central to any symbolic
interactionist analysis: “Gender identity, like other social identities, emerges out of social
interaction and is incorporated into the individual’s Tran situational self [and] must be
continually confirmed cross varying interactional situations……because the self is subject
to constant empirical tests”. Symbolic interactionism reverses Freud’s contention that
identification with the same:sex parent is the key element in developing gender identity;
it argues rather that in acquiring language the child learns that it is identified, and thus,
to self - identify, as a “boy” or “girl” and thus, in turn, to identify with “mommy” or
“daddy”. Symbolic:interactionist accounts show individuals engaged in maintaining the
gendered self in various situations; at the core of these accounts is a knowing individual
who has a collection of ideas, of words in one’s inner and outer conversations, about
what it means to be a man or woman. The person brings a gendered self into situations
and tries to act according to this internalized definition, which may be modified through
interaction from situation to situation but is the repository of the gender component of
people’s Tran situational behaviour.
Ethno methodology questions the stability of gender identity and looks at “how
gender is done.”That is, gender as an accomplishment by actors in various
situations.Ethnomethodologists begin from Zimmerman’s proposition that “properties of

social life which seem objective, factual and Tran situational, are actually managed
accomplishments or achievements of local processes”.Ethnomethodologists make the
theoretically important distinction among sex (biological identification as male or
female), sex category (social identification as male or female), and gender (behaviour that
meet social expectations for being male or female). Where the emphasis upon
internalization of a fixed gender identity may reduce gender to as individual an attribute
as sex – something that is inherently part of the individual – the ethno methodological
argument is that gender does not inhere in the person but is achieved in interaction in the
situation. Because sex category is potentially an ever:present quality of an individual, the
achievement of gender is potentially an ever:present quality in social situations. People’s
normative conceptions of appropriate male or female behaviour are situationally
activated. People in a situation know that they re “accountable” for gender performance
to the degree that the situation permits a person to behave as a man or a woman within it
and have other people so recognize her or his behaviour. It is possible for people from
different cultures—including class and race cultures—to find each other’s behaviour
incomprehensible in terms of gender identity; what the other is doing is not recognized as
being male:or female:appropriate behaviour.On the other hand, ethno methodological
research has shown that divisions of household labour that appear vastly unequal from
outside the household situation may be seen as fair and equal by both men and women in
the situation because both parties accept and conform to normative expectations for
doing gender within the household.
Both symbolic interactionism and ethno methodology allow for and assume an
institutional milieu of normative conceptions about gender. Goff man noted early, and
symbolic interactionists, under the influence of postmodernism, increasingly affirm that
these conceptions are not accessed solely or perhaps even primarily, through interaction
with other people. Mediated messages:that is, media images in advertising, television,
movies, books, magazines :tell both adults and children quite directly, without
interactional intervention, how gender is enacted. These mediated messages offer what
Goff man labels “displays” of gender: “simplified, exaggerated, stereotyped” information
about the appropriate “alignments” for man and women in given interactions. This
analysis produces a casual puzzle: is media imitating life or life, media? Here as in other
instances, micro sociological explorations of gender work successfully within their given
paradigms without touching the essential male, privileged elite biases in those
paradigms, challenges we raise in our discussion of feminist sociological theory later.
VARIETIES OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEORY
The basis for any feminist sociological theory, including the one developed in the
last part of this chapter, lies in contemporary feminist theory, that system of general ideas
designed to describe and explain human social experiences from a woman:centered
vantage point. In this section, we present the themes that feminist theory offers for
constructing feminist sociological theories. Contemporary feminist scholars continue to
produce a growing, rich, and diverse collection of theoretical writings, a demonstration of
effective intellectualism, termed by Jessie Bernard “the feminist enlightenment”. The

range and continuous expansion of this literature makes it difficult to map. The “map” of
feminist theory presented here is one construct, or ideal type, for patterning this complex
body of intellectual work.
TABLE 8.1
OVERVIEW OF VARIETIES OF FEMINIST THEORY
Basic varieties of feminist they – answers Distinctions within theories – answers to

to the descriptive question, “What about the explanatory question, “Why is
the women”? women’s situation as it is”?
Gender difference
Women’s location in, and experience of, Cultural feminism Biological institutional
most situations is different from that of and socialization Social:psychological
men in the situation
Gender Inequality
Women’s location inmost situations is not Liberal feminism

only different from but also less Marxian Marx and Engel’s
privileged than or unequal to that of men
explanations
Contemporary Marxian explanations
Gender oppression
Women are oppressed, not just different Psychoanalytic feminism

from or unequal to, but actively Radical feminism
restrained, subordinated, molded, and
used and abused by men Socialist feminism
Third : wave feminism
Women’s experience of difference, Diversity

Inequality, and oppression varies by their Critique
social location
Vectors
Our typology of feminist theory is based on the three basic questions (discussed
earlier) that unite all these theories: the descriptive question and what about the women?
The explanatory question, Why then is all this as it is? And the qualifying question, What

about the differences among women? The pattern of response to the descriptive question
generates the main categories for our classification (see Table 8.1). Essentially we see four
answers to the question “And what b the women?” The first is that women’s location in,
and experience of, most situations is different from that of the men in those situations.
The second is that women’s location in most situations is not only different from but also
less privileged than or unequal to that of men. The third is that women’s situation also
has to be understood in terms of a direct power relationship between men and women.
Women are oppressed, that is, restrained, subordinated, molded, and used and bused by
men. The fourth possibility is provided by the central thesis of third:wave feminism; that
women’s experience of difference, inequality, and oppression varies according to their
total locatedness within societies’ straificational arrangements or vectors of oppression
and privilege – class race, ethnicity, age, affectional preference, marital status, and global
location. Each of the various types of feminist theory can be classified as a theory of
difference, or of inequality, or of oppression, or of third:wave feminism. In our discussion
we make distinctions within these basic categories – difference, inequality, and
oppression – in terms of their differing answers to the second or explanatory question.
“Why then is all this as it is?” (The various types of answers are summarized in Table
8.1) In addition, we note how all the answers are affected by the qualifying question at
the heart of third:wave feminism. “What about the differences among women?”
This classification method gives one way to pattern the general body of
contemporary feminist theory and the expanding literature on gender that has developed
within sociology since the 1960s.This expansion reflects the reactivation of visible
feminist protest in society and the unparalleled movement of women into higher
education, as students and faculty, since 1960. Feminist questions have thus been injected
directly into the academic discourse of professional sociology. As sociologists have
turned their efforts to an exploration of feminist issues, they have typically used some
portion of the existing body of sociological theory as a point of departure for what is
called in the discipline the sociology of gender. Although the term gender is often used
euphemistically in sociology for “women”, the sociology of gender is, more precisely, the
study of socially constructed male and female roles, relations, and identities and there is
now a growing sociological literature on masculinity. This focus on the relationship of
men and women is not equivalent to a feminist theory which presents a woman:centered
patterning of human experience. Nevertheless, some sociologists who begin from a
sociology:of:gender standpoint have produced works of significance for feminist theory,
and many sociologists are directly involved in producing feminist theory.
The remainder of this section explores the feminist theories of difference, of
inequality, of oppression, and of third:wave feminism, describing in each case the general
features of the approach, some key lines of variation within it, and its recommendations
for change. Two notes of caution are, however, important. First, many theorists’ work
resists neat categorization. One must either talk about their main theoretical emphasis or
distinguish among several of their theoretical, statements. Second, this is a selective
review. Given the volume of recent feminist and sociological writings on women’s
situation, comprehensiveness is beyond them.

Gender Difference
At this point in the history of feminist thought, “difference” is an issue in five
important debates. The first is whether themselves term “difference” itself is more
appropriately used to describe differences between men and women, that are gender
differences, the focus of discussion in this section, or to theorize on the issue of
differences among women, the central concern of third:wave feminism. Second, as we
have seen, is the possibility raised by postmodernists that gender is not an essential
feature of human personhood but is instead a fluid and processual enactment within
specific or contextualized interactions. The third debate is over the policy implications for
feminists of a stand on the principle of gender difference – that is, of an argument about
policies that address women’s special needs, for example, for maternity leave or breast
cancer research. Historically, this has been a significant argument used by feminists, but
many contemporary feminists, like some in the past, are concerned about the need to
move beyond “women:and:children:first” policies to policies which address inequities
that affect all people, such as capitalism’s org of work or of health care. The fourth is the
debate on gender differences which has most resonance in popular engagements with
feminism: the question over whether “male:specific” or “female:specific” traits are more
appropriate “templates” for individual and social org.Beginning with the unanticipated
best:seller status of Carol Gilligan’s in A Different Voice (1982), the move in the last
decade has been toward the feminine as a mode for communicating, relating, and
organizing – witness foreign example the phenomenal success of Deborah Tannen’s
study of men and women in conversation, You Just Don’t Understand (1990). Fifth is the
issue of whether theories of gender difference are ipso facto “essentialist”. “Essentialism”
means that a thing or person possesses or lacks a particular quality as a part of the very
terms of nature of its/her/his being. Most feminist theorists are uncomfortable with
“essentialism” because they take s the purpose of their work the critical imperative “not
to theorize the world but to change it”, and essentialism denies the possibility of change.
The response to essentialism is one way of distinguishing among the various theories of
gender difference.
Cultural Feminism
The argument of immutable gender difference was, of course, first used against
women in male patriarchal discourse to claim that women were inferior ad subservient to
men. But the argument enters feminism in the second wave in the nineteenth century as
extolling the positive aspects of what was seen as the “female character” or “feminine
personality”. Writers and thinkers such as Margret Fuller, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and
Jane Addams were all proponents of a cultural feminism which argued that society
needed in the governing of the state such women’s virtues as cooperation, carig, pacifism,
and nonviolence in the settlement of conflicts. This tradition has continued to the present
day arguments about women distinctive standards for consciousness developed through
mothering, about different achievement motivation patterns, about a female style of
communication about women’s capacity for openness to emotional experience, about
women’s fantasies of sexuality and intimacy, and about their lower levels of aggressive
behaviour and greater capacity for creating peaceful coexistence. Cultural feminism is

typically though not exclusively more concerned with promoting the values of women’s
difference than with explaining its origins. But some explanations of origins of gender
difference offered by feminists include; biology, institutional structures and socialization
experiences, interactive practices, and social:psychological processes.
Biological Explanations
Although biological explanations have been the standby of conservative thinking on
gender differences from the Old Testament to Fred to Herrnstein and Murray (1994), the
biological argument also has been used in writings much more sympathetic to feminism.
Sociologist and feminist Alice Rossi have given serious attention to the biological
foundations of gender:specific behaviour.Rossi has linked the different biological
functions of males and females to different patterns of hormonally determined developed
over the life cycle and this development, in turn, to sex:specific variation in such traits as
sensitivity to light and sound and to differences in left and right brain connections. These
differences, she feels, feed into the different play patterns in childhood noted by Gilligan,
Lever, and Best; the well:known female “math anxiety”; and the apparent fact that
women are more predisposed to care for infants in a nurturing way than are men. Rossi’s
feminism leads her to argue for socio:cultural arrangements that make it possible for each
gender to compensate, through social learning, for biologically “given” disadvantages,
but as a biosociologist she also argues for rational acknowledgement of the implications
of biological research.
Institutional and Socialization Explanations :
These two types of explanation are based on a belief that gender differences result
from the different roles that women and men are taught to play (socialization) or simply
come to play (institutional) within various institutional settings. A major determinant of
difference is seen to be the sexual division of labour that likes women to the functions of
wife, mother, and household worker, to the private sphere of the home and family, and
thus to a lifelong series of events and experiences very different from those of men.
Women’s roles as mothers and wives in producing and reproducing a female personality
and culture have been analyzed by theorists as diverse as Berger and Berger, Bernard,
Chodorow, Johnson, Leonard and Allen, and Thompson and Walker. Most of these
theorists move beyond a statement of institutional role assignment to other perhaps more
complex causes and results, but all of them recognize institutional placement as one
potential source of gender difference. Socialization theories look at the ways that
children in particular (but also adults readying themselves, for instance, for marriage or
motherhood) are prepared for playing their various life roles according to a gendered
script.
Interactional Practices or “Doing Gender” Explanations :
Socialization theories of gender often seem to suggest that fairly permanent
gendered ways of behaving or gendered traits of personality may be put in place,
particularly during primary socialization. Responding to uneasiness with this emphasis
on permanent dichotomies between men and women, some theorists (Connell, Thorne,
West and Zimmerman,) have begun to look at gender differences as contextualized,

interactional practices – not as differences in personality but as ways of “doing”, that is,
enacting or performing the existing cultural typification “gender”.
Social : Psychological Explanations :
Social psychological explanations of gender look at the ways that deep structures in
the culture – fundamental typifications and language – are so gendered that people find
themselves unable not to think gender, not to do gender. These theories are of two broad
types:phenomenological and poststructuralist. Phenomenological theories emphasize the
cognitive ways that typifications, often encoded in language, make it impossible for
women to express their own experiences, because these typifications are drawn from
male experience. Human action then can be seen as work done in the context of and to
reproduce these gendered typifications of reality. Poststructuralist theories have had their
fullest articulation in the work of French feminist theories – Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray,
and Julia Kristeva. Trained in a rigorous philosophic tradition, these thinkers have taken
as a starting point an idea central to French psychoanalysis, that all presently existing
languages are phallocentric – anchored and reflective of the experiences and
conceptualizations of dominant males – and that this relation between language and
maleness is structured into the child’s discovery of both language and identity through
learning the patronymics of its society. Beginning with this idea, these theorists have
posed in the most dramatic form in feminism the question: How then can women ever
give voice to their experience? Whereas the more cognitively oriented phenomenologist
argue for a female:based vocabulary, these French feminists call for rejecting male
culture, with its emphasis on singularity and uniformity, and for turning to a deeply
female - centered culture. Except for conservative, non:feminist theorists who argue
simply for the inevitability of difference and therefore for the need to yield to its
demands, the recommendations about women’s situation that flow from these theories of
gender difference center on the need for respect. Theorists of difference typically demand
that women’s distinctive ways of being be recognized not as departures from the normal
but as viable alternatives to male modes and that public knowledge, academic
scholarship, and the very patterning of social life adjust to take serious account of female
ways of being. Indeed at the most militantly feminist end of the continuum of this
theoretical approach, we find a centuries:old claim of feminism: that when a major
infusion of women’s ways becomes part of public life, the world will be a safer, more
humane place for all of us.
Gender Inequality
Four themes characterize the theories of gender inequality. First, men and women
are situated in society not only differently but also unequally. Specifically, women get
less of the material resources, social status, power, and opportunities for self:actualization
than do men who share their social location – be it a location based on class, race,
occupation, ethnicity, religion, education, nationality, or any other socially significant
factor. Second, this inequality results from the organization of society, not from any
significant biological or personality differences between women and men. Third,
although individual human beings may vary somewhat from each other in their profile of
potentials and traits, no significant pattern of natural variation distinguishes the sexes.
Instead, all human beings are characterized by a deep need for freedom to seek
self:actualization and by a fundamental malleability that leads them to adapt to the
constraints or opportunities of the situations in which they find themselves. To say that
there is gender inequality, then, is to claim that women are situationally less empowered
than men to realize the need they share with men for self:actualization. Fourth, all
inequality theories assume that both women and men will respond fairly easily and
naturally to more egalitarian social structures and situations. They affirm, in other words,
that it is possible to change the situation. They affirm, in other words, that it is possible to
change the situation. In this belief, theorists of gender inequality contrast with the
theorists of gender difference, who present a picture of social life in which gender
differences are, whatever their cause, more durable, more penetrative of personality, and
less easily changed.
Explanations of gender inequality vary around this common core of interpretation.
Two major variants are reviewed here: liberal feminism and Marxian feminism.
Liberal Feminism :
Within contemporary feminist theory, liberal feminism is a minority position. Yet
at the same time, liberal feminism is the most widely diffused approach within the
contemporary women’s movement in America : it undergirds much popular writing on
careers for women, equal parenting, and the need for gender:free schooling for young
children; it guides many of the policies initiated by the movement and is embodied in the
programmatic statement of the most powerful of women’s organizations, the National
Organization for Women (NOW).An easy complementarities between liberal feminism
and the main:stream of American political beliefs helps to make understandable the
popularity of this variant on feminist theory.
Liberal feminism’s explanation of gender inequality begins where theories of
gender differences leave off: with an identification of the sexual division of labour, the
existence of separate public and private spheres of social activity, men’s primary location
in the former and women’s in the latter, and the systematic socialization of children so
that they can move into the adult roles and spheres appropriate to their gender. In
contrast to theorists of difference, however, liberal feminists see nothing of particular
value about the private sphere, except perhaps that it permits emotional openness.
Instead, the private sphere consists of the endless round of what they see as the
demanding, mindless, unpaid, and undervalued tasks associated with housework, child
care, and the emotional, practical, and sexual servicing of adult men. The true rewards of
social life – money, power, status, freedom, opportunities for growth and self:worth—are
to be found in the public sphere. The system that restricts women’s access to that sphere,
burdens them with private:sphere responsibilities, isolates them in individual
households, and excuses their mates from any sharing of private:sphere drudgeries is the
system that produces gender inequality.
When asked to identify the key forces in this system, liberal feminists point to
sexism, an ideology similar to racism, which consists partly of prejudices and
discriminatory practices against women and partly of taken:for:granted beliefs about the

“natural” differences between women and men that suit them to their different social
destinies. Because of sexism, females are, from childhood on, limited and maimed, so that
they can move into their adult roles and in those roles “dwindle” from full humanness
into the mindless, dependent, subconsciously depressed beings created by the constraints
and requirements of their gender:specified roles.
The description of women dwindling from full humanness is taken from Jessie
Bernard’s The Future of Marriage (1982). Bernard is a sociologist who has been writing
about the issue of gender since the 1940s, long before it was perceived as a significant
topic by sociologists. The Future of Marriage, her best:known book, is a modern classic of
liberal feminism. In the dispassionate voice of mainstream, institutionally oriented,
empirically anchored sociology, Bernard presents sociologists with a novel and
devastating portrait of the institution of marriage. Marriage is at one and the same time a
cultural system of beliefs and ideals, an institutional arrangement of roles and norms, and
a complex of interactional experiences for individual women and men. Culturally,
marriage is idealized as the destiny and source of fulfillment for women; a mixed blessing
of domesticity, responsibility, and constraint for men, and for American society as a
whole an essentially egalitarian association between husband and wife. Institutionally,
marriage empowers the role of husband with authority and with the freedom, indeed, the
obligation, to move beyond the domestic setting; it meshes the idea of male authority
with sexual prowess and male power; and it mandates that wives be compliant,
dependent, self:emptying, and essentially centered on the activities and chores of the
isolated domestic household. Experientially then there are two marriages in any
institutional marriage; the man’s marriage, in which he holds to the belief of being
constrained and burdened, while experiencing what the norms dictate – authority,
independence, and a right to domestic, emotional, and sexual service by the wife; ad the
wife’s marriage, in which she affirms the cultural belief of fulfillment, while experiencing
normatively mandated powerlessness and dependence, an obligation to provide
domestic, emotional, and sexual services, and a gradual “dwindling away” of the
independent young person she was before marriage. The results of all this are to be found
in the data that measure human stress: married women, whatever their claims to
fulfillment, and unmarried men, whatever their claims to freedom, rank high on all stress
indictors, including heart palpitations, dizziness, headaches, fainting, nightmares,
insomnia, and fear of nervous breakdown; unmarried women, whatever their sense of
social stigma, and married men rank low on all the stress indictors. Marriage then is
good for men and bad for women and will cease to be so unequal in its impact only when
couples feel free enough from the prevailing institutional constraints to negotiate the kind
of marriage that best suits their individual needs and personalities.
To liberal feminists, American society, anchored in it’s constitutionally given
institutions and rights, permits more individual freedom and equality than most other
societies. Even here, however, equal opportunity is limited by both racism and sexism.
These belief systems are functionless carryovers from earlier times, supported by little
more than tradition, convention, and unsubstantiated prejudice. Sexism, like racism,
forces men and women into rigid character logical molds, denies the community the full
range of talents available in the population, diminishes women, and poses a constant
denial of our most cherished cultural values of individual worth and freedom. Because of
all this, liberal feminists maintain, contemporary American society must be changed to
eliminate sexism, and they believe that most people can be educated to see the
reasonableness of the feminist critique. Liberal feminists propose a series of strategies for
eliminating gender inequality; mobilizing to use existing political and legal channels for
change; developing equal economic opportunities; reorganizing family life to share the
responsibilities of maintenance among all parties; monitoring messages in the family,
education, and mss media so that people are no longer socialized into rigidly
compartmentalized sex roles; supporting individuals in challenging sexism wherever it is
encountered in daily life. In the last decade two key themes in this feminist paradigm
have been explored with probing effectiveness by feminist academics – pay equity in
wage work and gender inequities in housework, as well as the interconnections in
women’s lives of these two issues. In the same period a third liberal feminist theme,
reproductive choice, has been the crucial mobilizing issue for feminist activities.
For liberal feminists, the ideal gender arrangement is one in which each individual
chooses the lifestyle most suitable to her or him and has that choice accepted and
respected, be it for housewife or househusband, unmarried careerist or part of a
dual:income family, childless or with children, heterosexual or homosexual. Liberal
feminists see this ideal as one that enhances the practice of freedom and equality, central
cultural ideals in America. Liberal feminism then is consistent with the dominant
American ethos in its basic acceptance of America’s institutions and culture, its reformist
orientation, and its appeal to the values of individualism, choice, freedom, and equality of
opportunity.
Marxian Feminism :
Marxism presents one of the best:known and intellectually most elaborate theories
of social oppression. Beginning with Marx and Engels and continuing through the whole
body of neo:Marxian literature, this perspective develops the theory of social class
oppression, focusing on the domination of workers in the interests of the ruling class and
on the pervasiveness of class domination, oppression, and conflict in patterning both
international and international social relations. Marxian feminism brings together
Marxian class analysis and feminist social protest. Yet this amalgam produces not an
intensified theory of oppression but rather a more muted statement of inequality, that is,
of gender inequality. While pure Marxian feminism is a relatively dormant theory in
contemporary feminism, the tradition is important because of its influence on socialist
feminism, which is probably the ascendant theory in academic feminism.
Marx and Engels :
The foundation of this theory was laid by Marx and Engels. Their major concern
was social class oppression, but they frequently turned their attention to gender
oppression, Their most famous exploration of this issue is presented in The Origins of the
Family, Private Property and the State, written and published by Engels in 1884 from
extensive notes made by Marx in the years immediately preceding Marx’s death in
1883.The major arguments of this book are:

1. Woman’s subordination results not from her biology, which is presumably

immutable, but from social arrangements that have a clear and traceable history,
arrangements that presumably may be changed.(This claim alone, taken in the
context of 19th century beliefs about women, makes The Origins a feminist text).
2. The relational basis for women’s subordination lies in the family, an institutions
aptly named from the Latin word for servant, because the family as it exists in
complex societies is overwhelmingly a system of dominant and subordinate roles.
Key features of the family in Western societies are that it centers on a mating pair
and its offspring, typically located within a single household; and it is patrilineal,
with descent and property passing through the male line, patriarchal, with authority
invested in the male household head, and monogamous at least in the enforcement
of the rule that the wife have sexual relations only with her husband. The double
standard allows men far greater sexual freedom. Within such an institutions,
particularly when, as in the middle:class family, the woman has no job outside the
house and no economic independence, women are in fact the chattels or possessions
of their husbands.
3. Society legitimizes this family system by claiming that such structure is the
fundamental institutions in all societies. This is in fact a false claim, as much
anthropological and archaeological evidence shows. For much of human prehistory
there were no family structures of this type. Instead, people were linked in
extensive kin networks – the gens, large:scale associations among people sharing
blood ties. Moreover these ties were traced through the female line because one’s
direct link to one’s mother was far more easily demonstrable than one’s ties to one’s
father – the gens were, in other words, matrilineal. It was also matriarchal, with
significant power resting in the hands of women, who, in those primitive
hunting:and:gathering economies, had an independent and crucial economic
function as the gatherers, crafters, stores, and distributors of essential materials. This
power was exercised in collective and cooperative communal living arrangements,
commodity use, child rearing, and decision making and through the free and
unencumbered choice of love and sexual partners by both women and men. This
type of society, which Marx and Engels describe elsewhere as primitive
communism, is associated in The Origins with a free and empowered social status
for women.
4. The factors that destroyed this type of social system, producing what Engels calls
“the world historic defeat of the female sex” are economic, specifically the
replacement of hunting and gathering by herding, horti:culture, and farming
economies. With this change emerged property; the idea and reality of some group
members’ claiming as their own the essential resources for economic production. It
was men who asserted this claim, as their mobility, strength, and monopoly over
certain tools gave them economic ascendancy. With these changes men also, as
property owners, developed enforceable needs both for a compliant labour force –
be it of slaves, captives, women:wives, or children – and for heirs who would serve
as a means of preserving and passing on property. Thus emerged the first family, a

master and his slave:servants, wife:servants, children:servants – a unit in which the

master fiercely defended his claim to sole sexual access to his wives and thus to
certainty about his heirs. And the sons, too, would support this system of sexual
control, because on it would rest their property claims.
5. Since then, the exploitation of labour has developed into increasingly complex
structures of domination, most particularly class relations; the political order was
created to safeguard all these systems of domination; and the family itself has
evolved along with the historic transformations of economic and property systems
into an embedded and dependent institution, reflecting all the more massive
injustices of the political economy and consistently enforcing the subordination of
women. Only with the destruction of property rights in the coming communist
revolution will women attain freedom of social, political, economic, and personal
action.
The Origins has been challenged by anthropologists and archaeologists on questions
of evidence and by feminists for failing in various ways to grasp the full complexity of
women’s oppression. But in making the claim at all that women are oppressed, in
analyzing how this oppression is sustained by the family, an institution regarded as
almost sacred by powerful sectors of society, and in tracing the ramifications of this
subordination for women’s economic and sexual status. The Origins presents a powerful
sociological theory of gender inequality, one that contracts dramatically with Parson’s
mainstream sociological theory.
Contemporary Marxian Feminism :
Contemporary Marxian feminists embed gender relations within what they
consider to be the more fundamental structure of the class system and particularly within
the structure of the contemporary capitalist class system. From this theoretical vantage
point, the quality of each individual’s life experiences is a reflection first of his or her class
position and only second of his or her gender. Women of markedly different class
backgrounds have fewer life experiences in common than women of any particular class
have with the men of their class. For example, in both their class:determined experiences
and their interests’ upper:class wealthy women are antagonistic to blue:collar or poor
welfare women but share many experiences and interests with upper:class wealthy men.
Given this starting point, Marxian feminists acknowledge that within any class, women
are less advantaged than men in their access to material goods, power, status, and
possibilities for self:actualization. The causes of this inequality lie in the organization of
capitalism itself.
The embeddedness of gender inequality within the class system is most simply and
starkly visible within the dominant class of contemporary capitalism, the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeoisie’s own the productive and organizational resources of industrial production,
commercialized agriculture, and national and international trade. Women of the
bourgeois class are not propertied but are themselves property, the wives and
possessions of bourgeois men, men who understand at the deepest level the art of
possession. Bourgeois women are attractive and distinctive commodities in an ongoing

process of exchange between men and often are a means of sealing property alliances
among men. Bourgeois women produce and train sons who will inherit their fathers’
socioeconomic resources. Bourgeois women also provide emotional, social, and sexual
services for the men in their class. For all this, they are rewarded with an appropriately
luxurious lifestyle. Bourgeois women are, to use Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase, “the parasite
of a parasite”.
Gender inequality in the wage:earning classes also is functional for capitalism and
therefore is perpetuated by capitalists. Women as wage earners are, because of their
lower social status, more poorly paid and, because of their sense of wage:sector
marginality, difficult to unionize. Thus they serve as an unresisting source of profit for
the ruling classes. Moreover, women’s marginality to the wage sector makes them an
important part of the reserve labour force that, as a pool of alternative workers, acts as a
threat to and a brake on unionized male wage demands. As housewives, wives, and
mothers, women unwittingly further support the process of bourgeois profit making
consumers of goods and services for the household and as unpaid care givers who
subsidize and disguise the real costs of reproducing and maintaining the work force.
Finally, but for Marxian’s least significantly, the wage earner’s wife provides her spouse
with a minuscule experience of personal power, compensation for his actual
powerlessness in society. She is, in other words, “the slave of a slave”. As we saw earlier,
Marxian feminist insights have applied to the Marxian:based “world:systems theory”
developed most especially by Immanuel Wallenstein, Marxian feminist world:systems
theory describes and explains how women’s experiences of class:based inequality is
affected and intensified by their position in the global system. Women in peripheral (that
is, economically dependent or controlled) global locations have a different experience of
class:based inequality than women in core (that is, economically controlling) locations.
Women, then, are unequal to men not because of any basic and direct conflict of
interest between the genders but because of the working out of class oppression, with its
attendant factors of property inequality, exploited labour, and alienation. The fact that
within any class women are less advantaged than men, rather than vice versa, seems in
Marxian feminism to have no immediate structural cause. Rather, as in liberal feminism,
this fact results from a historic carryover from the collapse of primitive communism that
Engels described. Consequently, the solution for gender inequality is the destruction of
class oppression. This destruction will come through revolutionary action by a united
wage - earning class, including both women and men. Any direct mobilization of women
against men is counter revolutionary, because it divides the potentially revolutionary
working class. A working:class revolution that destroys the class system by making all
economic assets the assets of the entire community also will free society from the by -
product of class exploitation, gender inequality.
Gender Oppression
All theories of gender oppression describes women’s situation as the consequence of
a direct power relationship between men and women in which men have fundamental
and concrete interests in controlling, using, subjugating, and oppressing women – that is,
in the practice of domination. By domination, oppression theorists mean any relationship
in which one party (individual or collective), the dominant, succeeds in making the other
party (individual or collective) the subordinate’s independent subjectivity. Or conversely,
from the subordinate’s viewpoint, it is a relationship in which the subordinate’s assigned
significance is solely as an instrument of the will of the dominant. Women’s situation,
then, for theorists of gender oppression, is centrally that of being used, controlled,
subjugated, and oppressed by men. This pattern of oppression is incorporated in the
deepest and most pervasive ways into society’s org, a basic structure of domination most
commonly called patriarchy. Patriarchy is not the unintended and secondary
consequence of some other set of factors – be it biology or socialization or sex roles or the
class system. It is a primary power structure sustained by strong and deliberate intention.
Indeed, to most theorists of oppression, gender differences and gender inequality are
by:products of patriarchy.Whereas earlier feminist theorists focused on issues of gender
inequality, one hallmark of contemporary feminist theory is the breadth ad intensity of its
concern with oppression. A majority of contemporary feminist theorists in some measure
subscribe to oppression theory, and many of the richest and most innovative theoretical
developments within contemporary feminism have been the work of this cluster of
theorists. We turn now to three major variants of oppression theory; psychoanalytic
feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism.
Psychoanalytic Feminism :
Contemporary psychoanalytical feminists attempt to explain patriarchy by using
the theories of Freud and his intellectual heirs. These theories, broadly speaking, map
and emphasize the emotional dynamics of personality, emotions often deeply buried in
the subconscious or unconscious areas of the psyche; they also highlight the importance
of infancy and early childhood in the patterning of these emotions. In attempting to use
Freud’s theories, however, feminists have to undertake a fundamental reworking of his
conclusions, for Freud himself was notoriously patriarchal. He acknowledged gender
differences and gender inequality but not gender oppression. Women to him were
second:class human beings whose basic psychic nature fit them only for a lesser life than
that experience by men. Feminist theorists, therefore, have had to follow through on
directions implicit in Freud’s theories while rejecting his gender:specific conclusions.
Psychoanalytical feminists operate with a particular model of patriarchy. Like all
oppression theorists, they see patriarchy as a system in which men subjugate women, a
universal system, pervasive in its social organization, durable over time and space, and
triumphantly maintained in the face of occasional challenge. Distinctive to psychoanalytic
feminism, however, is the view that this system is one that all men, in their individual
daily actions, work continuously and energetically to create and sustain. Women resist
only occasionally but are to be discovered for more often either acquiescing in or actively
working for their own subordination. The puzzle that psychoanalytical feminists set out
to solve is why men bring everywhere enormous, unremitting energy to the task of
sustaining patriarchy and why there is an absence of countervailing energy on the part of
women.
In searching for an explanation to this puzzle, these theorists give short shrift to the
argument that a cognitive calculus of practical benefits is sufficient for male support for

patriarchy. Cognitive mobilization does not seem a sufficient source for the intense
energy that men invest in patriarchy, especially because, in light of the human capacity to
debate and second:guess, men may not always and everywhere be certain that patriarchy
is of unqualified value to them. Moreover, an argument anchored in the cognitive pursuit
of self - interest would suggest that women would as energetically mobilize against
patriarchy. Instead, these theorists look to those aspects of the psyche so effectively
mapped by the Freudians; the zone of human emotions, of half:recognized or
unrecognized desires and fears, and of neurosis and pathology. Here one finds a
clinically proven source of extraordinary energy and debilitation, one springing from
psychic structure so deep that they cannot be recognized or monitored by individual
consciousness. In searching for the energic underpinnings of patriarchy, psychoanalytical
feminists have identified two possible explanations for male domination of women: the
fear of death and the socio:emotional environment in which the personality of the young
child takes form.
Fear of death, of the ceasing of one’s individuality, is viewed in psychoanalytic
theory as one of those existential issues that everyone, everywhere, must on occasion
confront and as one that causes everyone, in that confrontation, to experience terror.
Feminist theorists who develop this theme argue that women, because of their intimate
and protracted involvement with bearing and rearing new life, are typically far less
oppressed than men by the realization of their own mortality. Men, however, respond
with deep dread to the prospect of their individual extinction and adopt a series of
defenses all of which lead to their domination of women. Men are driven to produce
things that will outlast them – art and architecture, wealth and weapons, science and
religion. All these then become resources by which men can dominate women (and each
other). Men also are driven – partly by envy of women’s reproductive role, partly by
their own passionate desire for immortality through offspring – to seek to control the
reproductive process itself. They claim ownership of women, seek to control women’s
bodies, and lay claim through norms of legitimacy and paternity to the products of those
bodies, children. Finally, driven by fear, men seek to separate themselves from everything
that reminds them of their own mortal bodies, birth, nature, sexuality, their human
bodies and natural functions, and women, whose association with so many of these
makes them the symbol of them all. All of these aspects of existence must be denied,
repressed, and controlled as men seek constantly to separate from, deny, and repress
their own morality. And women, who symbolize all these forbidden topics, also must be
treated as Other: feared, avoided, controlled.
The second theme in psychoanalytic feminism centers on two facets of early
childhood development: (1) the assumption that human beings grow into mature people
by learning to balance never:resolved tension between the desire for freedom of action –
individuation – and the desire for confirmation by another – recognition; and (2) the
observable fact that in all societies infants and children experiences their earliest and most
crucial development in a close, uninterrupted, intimate relationship with a woman, their
mother or mother substitute. As infants and young children, for considerable periods
lacking even language as a tool for understanding experience, individuals experience
their earliest phases of personality development as an ongoing turbulence of primitive
emotions; fear, love, hate, pleasure, rage, loss, desire. The emotional consequences of
those early experiences stay with people always as potent but often unconscious “feeling
memories”. Central to that experiential residue is a cluster of deeply ambivalent feelings
for the woman/mother/caregiver: need, dependence, love, possessiveness, but also fear
and rage over her ability to thwart one’s will. Children’s relationship to the father/man is
much more occasional secondary, ad emotionally uncluttered. From this beginning, the
male child, growing up in a culture that positively values maleness and devalues
femaleness and increasingly aware of his own male identity, attempts to achieve an
awkwardly rapid separation of identity from the woman/mother. This culturally induced
separation is not only partial but also destructive in its consequences. In adulthood the
emotional carryover from early childhood toward women – need, love, hate,
possessiveness – energizes the man’s quest for a woman of his own who meets his
emotional needs and yet is dependent on and controlled by him – that is, he has an urge
to dominate and finds mutual recognition difficult. The female child, bearing the same
feelings toward the woman/mother, discovers her own female identity in a culture that
devalues women. She grows up with deeply mixed positive and negative feelings about
herself and about the woman/mother and in that ambivalence dissipates much of her
potential for mobilized resistance to her social subordination. She seeks to resolve her
emotional carryover in adulthood by emphasizing her capacities for according
recognition – often submissively with males in acts of sexual attraction and mutually with
females in acts of kinship maintenance and friendship. And rather than seeking mother
substitutes, she re:creates the early infant:woman relationship by becoming a mother.
Psychoanalytical feminist theorists have successfully extended their explanations
beyond individual personality to culture – or, at least, to Western culture. The emphases
in Western science on a distinct separation between “man” and “nature”, on “man” as the
“dominator” of “nature” and on a “scientific method” derived from these attitudes and
promising “objective” truth have been challenged and reinterpreted as the projection by
the over individuated male ego of its own desire for domination and its own fear of
intersubjective recognition of its own desire for domination and its own fear of
intersubjective recognition. This critique has been carried not only into social science but
into the more sacrosanct regions of “objective” natural science. What has been presented
as sound method – objectivity, distance, control, absence of affect – is now interpreted as
a working out of the gendered personality. Further, motifs in popular culture – such as
the repeated positioning in both plot and image of the male as dominant over the female
– are interpreted by psychoanalytical theorists as a sign of a breakdown in the requisite
tensions between a need for individuation and a need for recognition. When this
breakdown reaches, in a culture or personality, severe enough proportions, two
pathologies result – the over individuated dominator, who “recognizes” the other only
through acts of control, and the under individuated subordinate, who relinquishes
independent action to find identify only as a mirror of the dominator.
Psychoanalytical feminists, then, explain women’s oppression in terms of men’s deep
emotional need to control women, a drive arising from near:universal male neuroses
centering on the fear of death and on ambivalence toward the mothers who reared them.
Women either lack these neuroses or are subject to complementary neuroses, but in either
case they are left psychically without an equivalent source of energy to resist domination.
Much clinical psychiatric evidence supports the argument that these neuroses re in fact
widespread, at least in Western societies. But these theories, in drawing a straight line
from universal human emotions to universal female oppression, fail to explore the
intermediate social arrangements that link emotion to oppression and fail to suggest
possible lines of variation in emotions, social arrangements, or oppression. In particular,
several theorists have discussed the unacknowledged ethnic, class, and nationality
assumptions in these theories, their generalization from white upper middle:class, North
Atlantic family experience. We return to these concerns in our discussion of third:wave
feminism. Moreover, and partly because of these omissions, psychoanalytic feminist
theory suggests very few strategies for change, except perhaps that we restructure our
childbearing practices and begin some massive psycho cultural reworking of our
orientation toward death. These theories thus give us some provocative insights into and
deepen our understanding of the roots of gender oppression, but they require a great deal
more elaboration of both sociological factors and change strategies. Both of these tasks
are taken up more fully by the other variants of oppression theory – radical feminism and
socialist feminism.
Radical Feminism :
Radical feminism is based on two emotionally charged central beliefs: (1) that
women are of absolute positive value as women, a belief asserted against what they claim
to be the universal devaluing of women; and (2) that women are everywhere oppressed –
violently oppressed – by the system of patriarchy. In this passionate mixture of love and
rage, radical feminists resemble the more militant mode of racial and ethnic groups, the
“black is beautiful” claims of African Americans or the detailed “witnessing” of Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust. Building on these core beliefs, radical feminists elaborate a
theory of social organization, gender oppression, and strategies for change. Radical
feminists see in every institution and in society’s most basic structures –heterosexuality,
class, caste, race, ethnicity, age, and gender – systems of oppression in which some people
dominate others. Of all these systems of domination and subordination, the most
fundamental structure of oppression is gender, the system of patriarchy. Not only is
patriarchy historically the first structure of domination and submission, but it continues
as the most pervasive and enduring system of inequality, the basic societal model of
domination. Through participation in patriarchy, men learn how to hold other human
beings in contempt, to see them as nonhuman, and to control them. Within patriarchy
men see and women learn what subordination looks like. Patriarchy creates guilt and
repression, sadism and masochism, manipulation and deception, all of which drive men
and women to other forms of tyranny. Patriarchy, to radical feminists, is the least noticed
and yet the most significant structure of social inequality.
Central to this analysis is the image of patriarchy as violence practiced by men and
by male - dominated organizations against women. Violence may to always take the form
of overt physical cruelty. It can be hidden in more complex practices of exploitation and
control - in standards of fashion and beauty; in tyrannical ideals of motherhood,
monogamy, chastity, and heterosexuality; in sexual harassment in the workplace; in the

practices of gynecology, obstetrics, and psychotherapy; in unpaid household drudgery

and underpaid wage work. Violence exists whenever one group controls in its own
interests the life chances, environments, actions, and perceptions of another group, as
men do women. But the theme of violence as overt physical cruelty lies at the heart of
radical feminism’s linking of patriarchy to violence; rape, sexual abuse, sexual slavery in
enforced prostitution, spouse abuse, incest, sexual molestation of children,
hysterectomies and other excessively radical forms of surgery, and the explicit sadism in
pornography are all linked to the historic and cross:cultural practices of witch burning,
the stoning to death of adulteresses, the persecution of lesbians, female infanticide.
Chinese foot:binding, the forced suicides of Hindu widows, and the savage practice of
clitorectomy.Through the radical lens, we are given an image of women mutilated and
bleeding as the visual representation of what patriarchy does.
Patriarchy exists as a near:universal social form ultimately because men can muster
the most basic power resource, physical force, to establish control. Once patriarchy is in
place, the other power resources – economic, ideological, legal, and emotional – also can
be marshaled to sustain it. But physical violence always remains its last line of defense,
and in both interpersonal and intergroup relations, that violence repeatedly is used to
protect patriarchy from women’s individual and collective resistance. Men create and
maintain patriarchy not only because they have the resources to do so but because they
have real interests in making women serve as compliant tools. Women are, for one thing,
a uniquely effective means of satisfying male sexual desire. In addition, their bodies are
essential to the production of children, who satisfy both practical and, as psychoanalysts
have shown, neurotic needs for men. Women are a useful labour force, as the Marxian’s
have noted. They also can be ornamental signs of male status and power. As carefully
controlled companions to both the child and the adult male, they are pleasant partners,
sources of emotional support, and useful foils who reinforce, over and over again, the
males’ sense of their own central social significance. These useful functions mean that
men everywhere seek to keep women compliant. But differing social circumstances give
different rank orders to these functions and therefore lead to cross:cultural variations in
the patterning of patriarchy. Radical feminists, unlike psychoanalytical feminists, give us
both an explanation of universal gender oppression and a model for understanding
cross:cultural variations in this oppression.
How is patriarchy to be defeated? Radicals hold that this defeat must begin with a
basic reworking of women’s consciousness so that each woman recognizes her own value
and strength; rejects patriarchal pressures to see herself as weak, dependent, and second -
class; and works in unity with other women, regardless of differences among them, to
establish a broad:based sisterhood of trust, support, appreciation, and mutual defense.
With this sisterhood in place, two strategies suggest themselves; a critical confrontation
with any facet of patriarchal domination whenever it is encountered; and a degree of
separatism as women withdraw into women:run businesses, households, communities,
centers of artistic creativity, and lesbian love relationships. Lesbian feminism, as a major
strand in radical feminism, is the practice and belief that “erotic and/or emotional
commitment to women is part of resistance to patriarchal domination”.

How does one evaluate radical feminism? Emotionally each of us will respond to it
in light of our own degree of personal radicalism, some seeing it as excessively critical
and others as entirely convincing. But in attempting a theoretical evaluation, one should
note that radical feminism incorporates arguments made by both Marxian and
psychoanalytical feminists about the reasons for women’s subordination and yet moves
beyond those theories. It is the broadest of the variants of feminism that we have thus far
encountered. Radical feminists, moreover, have done significant research to support
their thesis that patriarchy ultimately rests on the practice of violence against women.
They have a reasonable though perhaps incomplete program for change. They have been
faulted in their exclusive focus on patriarchy. This focus seems to simplify the realities of
social organization and social inequality and thus to approach the issues of ameliorative
change somewhat unrealistically. The third group of gender oppression theories, socialist
feminism, sets out explicitly to address this criticism of radical feminism’s
unidimensional.
Socialist Feminism :
Socialist feminism is a diverse cluster of writings unified more by a theoretical
agenda than by substantive conclusions. Three goals guide socialist feminism’s
theoretical synthesis of Marxian, radical feminism and phenomenological theory; (1) to
achieve a combination of breadth and precision so that all forms of oppression are
explored and that exploration is altered in women’s experience; (2) to develop explicit
and adequate methods for social analysis by standing in an expanded notion of historical
materialism; and (3) to treat ideas as equal to material production in the determination of
human affairs. Socialist feminists have set themselves the formal project of achieving both
a synthesis of and a theoretical step beyond extant feminist theories. More specifically,
socialist feminists seek to bring together what they perceive as the two broadest and most
valuable feminist traditions; Marxian and radical feminist thought.
Out of this project of synthesis have flowed two distinctive sub varieties of socialist
feminism. The first focuses exclusively on women’s oppression and on understanding it
in a way that bring together knowledge (from Marxism) of class oppression and (from
radical feminism) of gender oppression. Through this theoretical intersection, these
theorists seek to map the commonalities and variations in women’s experiences of
subordination. The term most frequently used by these theorists for the system they
describe is capitalist patriarchy.
The second variant of socialist feminism sets out to describe and explain all forms of
social oppression, using knowledge of class and gender hierarchies as a base from which
to explore systems of oppression centering not only on class and gender but also on race,
ethnicity, age, sexual preference, and location within the global hierarchy of nations. The
term most frequently used by these theorists for the system they describe is domination.
Women remain central to this theoretical approach in two ways. First, as with all
feminism, the oppression of women remains a primary topic for analysis. The theorists of
domination can map even more elaborately than those of capitalist patriarchy the
variations and permutations in that oppression. Second, women’s location and
experiences of the world serve as the essential vantage point on domination in all its
forms. Ultimately, though, these theorists are concerned with all experiences of
oppression, either by women or by men. They even explore how some women;
themselves oppressed, and may yet actively participate in the oppression of other
women, as, for example, white women in American society who oppress black women.
Indeed, one strategy of all socialist feminists is to confront the prejudices and oppressive
practices within the community of women itself. This exploration blends with arguments
in third:wave feminism.
Both the focus on capitalist patriarchy and that on domination are linked to a
commitment, either explicit or implicit, to historical materialism as an analytical strategy.
Historical materialism, a basic principle in Marxian social theory, refers to the position
that the material conditions of human life, inclusive of the activities and relationships that
produce those conditions, are the key factors that pattern human experiences,
personality, ideas, and social arrangements; that those conditions change over time
because of dynamics imminent within them; and that history is a record of the changes in
the material conditions of a group’s life and of the correlative changes in experiences,
personality, ideas, and social arrangements. Historical materialists hold that any effort at
social analysis must trace in historically concrete detail the specifics of the group’s
material conditions and the links between those conditions and the experiences,
personalities, events, ideas, and linking historical materialism to their focus on
domination, socialist feminists to realize their goal of a theory that probes the broadest of
human social arrangements, domination, and yet remains firmly committed to precise,
historically concrete analyses of the material and social arrangements that frame practice
situations of domination.
The historical materialism that is a hallmark of socialist feminism shows clearly the
school’s indebtedness to Marxian thought. But in their use of this principle, socialist
feminists move beyond the Marxian in three crucial ways: their redefinition of material
conditions, their reevaluation of the significance of ideology, and their focus on
domination. First, they broaden the meaning of the material conditions of human life.
Marxian typically means by this idea the economic dynamics of society, particularly the
ways in which goods of a variety of types are created for and exchanged in the market.
In the various exploitative arrangements here, which make some wealthy and others
poor, they locate the roots of class inequality and class conflict. Socialist feminist analysis
includes economic dynamics and also, more broadly, other conditions that create and
sustain human life; the human body, its sexuality and involvement in procreation and
child rearing; home maintenance, with its unpaid, invisible round of domestic tasks;
emotional sustenance; and the production of knowledge itself. In all these life:sustaining
activities, exploitative arrangements profit some and impoverish others. Full
comprehension of all these basic arrangements of life production and exploitation is the
essential foundation for a theory of domination.
This redefinition of the concept of material conditions transforms the Marxian
assumption that human beings are producers of goods into a theme of human beings as
creators and sustainers of all human life. This shift brings us to the second point of
difference between Marxian historical materialism and historical materialism as it is

developed in socialist feminism, namely, the latter perspective’s emphasis on what some
Marxian’s might call, dismissively, mental or ideational phenomena: consciousness,
motivation, ideas, social definitions of the situation, knowledge, ideology, the will to act
in one’s interests or acquiesce to the interests of others. The socialist feminists all these
factors deeply affect human personality, human action, and the structures of domination
that are realized through that action. Moreover, these aspects of human subjectivity are
produced by social structures that are inextricably intertwined with, and as elaborate and
powerful as, those that produce economic goods. Within all these structures, too,
exploitative arrangements enrich ad empower some while impoverishing and
immobilizing others. Analysis of the processes that pattern human subjectivity is vital to
a theory of domination and that analysis also can be honed to precision by applying the
principles of historical materialism.
The third difference between socialist feminists and Marxian’s is that the object of
analysis for socialist feminists is not primarily class inequality but the complex
intertwining of a wide range of social inequalities. Socialist feminism develops a portrait
of social organization in which the public structures of economy, polity, and ideology
interact with the intimate, private processes of human reproduction, domesticity,
sexuality, and subjectivity to sustain a multifaceted system of domination, the workings
of which are discernible both ad enduring and impersonal social patterns and in the more
varied subtleties of interpersonal relationships. To analyze this system, socialist feminists
shuttle between a mapping of large:scale systems of domination and a situationally
specific, detailed exploration of the mundane daily experiences of oppressed people.
Their strategy for change rests in this process of discovery, in which they attempt to
involve the oppressed groups that they study and through which they hope that both
individuals and groups, in large and small ways, will learn to act in pursuit of their
collective emancipation.
An important criticism of socialist feminism, and indeed of all the varieties of
feminism described so far, is that despite their emancipatory claims they tend to be
located in the assumptions and aspirations of white, middle:class, North Atlantic women.
There is a growing concern within feminist theory over the practical and theoretical
problematic posed by the exploitation of women of one class, race, ethnic group, and
global position by women of another. This problematic is the focus of the theorists
discussed in the following section.
Third : Wave Feminism
The term “third:wave feminism” is used to identify what is seen as a new stage in
the history of feminist theorizing, a stage contrasting with the “first wave” of feminist
writing, which accompanied the mobilization for women’s suffrage from the
mid:nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, and the “second wave” of
expanded scholarship, which began in the late 1960s and continues to the present. Most
of the varieties of feminist theory reviewed up to now in this section have grown out of
this “second wave”, though radical and socialist feminism are, in part, moving in
directions suggested by the more recent development of third:wave feminism. At present,

these theories of the second wave coexist in time and space and are engaged in a lively
interchange with the arguments of third:wave feminists.
The significance of a third wave of feminist theory became apparent in the 1980s and
presently constitutes one of the most dynamic and central areas of intellectual growth
within feminism. This development is indeed one sign of the success of the contemporary
women’s movement, which in an increasingly interconnected global order, now touches
the lives and imaginations of women in many sectors of U.S. society and most countries
of the world. Third:wave feminism’s focal concern is with differences among women.
Anchored in this concern, third:wave feminists reevaluate and extend the issues that
second:wave feminists opened for general societal discourse while at the same time
critically reassessing the themes and concepts of those second:wave theories. Third:wave
feminism looks critically at the tendency of work done in the 1960s and 1970s to use a
generalized, monolithic concept of “woman” as a generic category in stratification and
focuses instead on the factual and theoretical implications of differences among women.
The differences considered are those that result from an unequal distribution of socially
produced goods and services on the basis of position in the global system, class, race,
ethnicity, age, and affectional preference as these factors interact with gender
stratification.
This focus on difference has produced at least three areas of concretized intellectual
work in third:wave feminist theory; a depiction of the diversity of women’s experiences; a
critique of many of the most basic categories common to both modern feminist and social
analyses; and an attempt to map the world in terms of how the vectors of subordination
and privilege – gender, class, race, age, ethnicity, global location, and affectional
preference – both interact structurally and intersect dynamically in people’s lives to create
oppression and inequality.
Diversity :
The literature on diversity is based on the belief that truth about social relations is
discovered best from the vantage point of oppressed peoples (both women and men),
whose accounts must therefore be uncovered. Third:wave feminists probe the intricacies
of this system of domination by exploring the position of women who are most
subordinated, that is, least privileged. One particularly revealing source of knowledge of
the social relations of domination has proved to be that of North Atlantic women of color,
who find themselves intimately linked to those who control and exploit them in
situations of domestic employment, poorly paid service work, and sexual, emotional, and
reproductive work, both paid and unpaid. Women of color find themselves closely
linked to those who oppress them – as women, as people of color, and as poor people.
They have the experience of “the stranger within” the circles of domination. The
literature giving voice to diversity may be seen as being of three main types. First, there is
an extraordinary body of work about women from non:privileged backgrounds, women
“on the margins”. This literature includes statements on African:American women.
Second, there is a body of studies that positions these women within institutions such as
family and work. Third, there are works which juxtapose or interweave accounts of
women’s diversity.
Critique :
The studies that attempt to critique existing concepts in feminist theory are partly
in debt to postmodernism. But that debt can be much overstated. Long before the
postmodernist debate and the deconstructive method became academic by words,
feminists on the margins – women of color, lesbians, and working:class women – were
questioning not only sexual ideology and the unequal status of women, but more broadly
all systems of domination – sexist, racist, classist, heterosexist, and imperialist and the
particular false consciousness that let middle:class white heterosexual women use the
term woman as monolithic category in opposing male domination while ignoring their
own acts of domination toward women who do not share their class, race, and affectional
preference. This critique has produced questions about what we mean by categories such
as “woman”, “gender”, and “race” and has redefined “whiteness” as a social construct
rather than an absolute from which other “races” depart. These questions have forced
white women to reevaluate the feminism they produced as a feminism and not feminism
per se; in this reevaluation they try to see the revolution they made and failed to make.
This critique has also focused on the diversity of experiences in such seemingly universal
behaviours as “mothering” and extended theoretical works like the sociological -
psychological studies of Chodorwo and Benjamin. Chodorow herself has responded to
third:wave critique by reevaluating her work in a cross:cultural perspective.
Vectors of Oppression and Privilege :
No amount of academic questioning of what is meant by “women”, “gender” and
“difference” has removed from the heart of third:wave feminism the deep conviction that
“not all suffering is equal, that there is a calculus of pain”. That calculus is determined by
the intersection in one’s individual life of global location, class, race, ethnicity, age,
affectional preference, and other dimensions of stratification. Many feminist studies now
are devoted to describing and explaining the intersection of these vectors of oppression
and privilege as a macro phenomenon and as an individual lived experience. Themes in
the studies include the relationships of gender and race; of gender and global location of
gender and class; of race and affectional preference; of gender, class, and race; and of
gender, class, race, and global location. Ultimately these studies show an intricately
interwoven system of class, race, gender, and global oppression and privilege. They
show that this oppressive system produces pathological attitudes, actions, and
personalities within the ranks of both the oppressor and the oppressed. They show that
resistance to both oppression and pathology is located first in the unquenchable need of
human beings for full, individuated self:actualization and second, and dialectically, by
membership in one’s particular community of oppressed people, whose culture,
nurturance, and survival strategies are essential to the well:being of its individual
members. Theories of the vectors of oppression and privilege feed directly into the
feminist sociological theory presented in the next section.

A FEMINIST SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
One principle of feminist intellectual practice which we take as a starting point for a
feminist sociological theory is that there can be no disinterested observers. For example,
sociologists observe social organization from a position of relative social advantage.
Therefore, we should identify our position as feminists. We re oppression theorists who
fall somewhere between radical and socialist theory. We work in the interface between
oppression theory and third :wave feminism, but from the relatively privileged position
of social scientists living in the contemporary United States yet not untouched as women
by racist, ageist, and heterosexist discriminations. From that perspective, we identify four
distinctive features of a feminist sociology.
1. A distinctive sociology of knowledge
2. A distinctive model of the organization of society at the macro:social level
3. An exploration of the relational situation of women that alters the traditional
sociological understanding of micro interaction
4. A revision of sociology’s model of subjectivity.
What we present here is our synthesis of fundamental principles of an emergent
feminist sociological theory. The scope of this theory is suggested best by identifying the
theorists who are its major sources. First and foremost this theory is indebted to Dorothy
E.Smith’s pioneering women:centered work. Other significant feminist contributors to
this synthesis include Anzaldua, Benjamin, Bernard, Chodorow, P. Collins, Gardiner,
Gilligan, Haraway, Harding, Helibrun, Lorde, MacKinnon, Rich, and Stacey ad Thorne
.Nearly all works of feminist theorizing are “grounded” theory; that is, they explicate
women’s lived experiences in terms of macro:structural arrangements, micro or
interpersonal relations, and individual consciousness. In addition, there are some
significant research works that apply and extend the theory developed below.These
include studies of gender and organizations; of women’s paid and unpaid work; of body
and consciousness, and of women’s consciousness in a historical moment. In the last
decade, feminist postmodernist theory has begun to flow, in significant ways, from the
disciplines of literature, philosophy and history into sociological feminist discussions –
especially of epistemology and gendered subjectivities. Our discussions of the impact of
this recent development draw on Barrett and Phillips, Butler, Flax, Fraser and Bartsky,
Hartsock, Irving and Longino.
A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge
Feminist sociological theory is based on a distinctive sociology of knowledge, that
branch of sociology which studies how knowledge is itself a product of social relations. A
feminist sociology of knowledge sees everything that people label “knowledge of the
world” as having four characteristics: (1) it is always discovered from the vantage point
of an embodied actor situated in a social structure; (2) it is, thus, always partial and
interested, never total and objective; (3) it varies from persons to person because of
differences in embodiment and social situation; (4) it is always affected by power
relations – whether it is discovered from the vantage point of the dominant or that of the
subordinate. Thus, from a feminist sociological perspective, knowledge is the key

problematic, the issue that is yet to be determined, that frames further inquiry. For
feminist sociological theory, the framing tasks for any inquiry are (1) to identify and
describe the complexity of the actor’s social situation as a “vantage point” on reality; (2)
to establish the standards by which the sociologist working with admittedly partial
accounts can lay claim to producing any knowledge, to knowing anything at the end of
the study; and (3) to analyze how power relations become manifest in knowledge claims.
Above all, teachings unpardonable error from the standpoint of feminist epistemology is
to perform, speak, or write in the stance of “the god eye”, that is, to act as though you
were a disembodied, distant, omniscient observer, outside and above but all:knowing
about your research subject.
The first task is to identify the social actors who construct their knowledge on the
foundations of their situated experiences and interests. Feminists, starting where Marx
left off, identified three crucial groups – owner, workers, and women – whose life
circumstances and relations with each other are only in part patterned by economic
factors. Then, as feminists have explored the differences among women, they have
discovered a multiplicity of differently situated groups of people. In tracing the
relationships among all these groups, feminists have moved beyond a class model of
domination to a vision of a complex system of unequally empowered groups relating
through shifting arrangements of coalition and opposition. Further, feminists have
realized that actors are embodied people whose social vantage point shifts over time and
by issue; thus, there is no abstract locus for knowledge – no “Third World woman” or
“disinterested biologist” or “religious mystic”. There are people for whom these labels
may signify part of their identity, but the total human is someone infinitely more complex
– because embodied – than such terms imply.
The second task is to explain on what basis one can, as sociologist, make any truth
claims if the foregoing is an accurate account, that is, if knowledge is discovered by social
actors whose positions must be unstable if only because of human mortality alone.
Feminist sociological theorists try not to collapse into a relativism in which one account
cancels out another. Instead, they provide several bases for asserting knowledge. One is
asserting the validity of what Haraway terms (1988) “webbed accounts”, that is, accounts
woven together by reporting all the actors’ versions of an experience and describing the
situations from which the actors came to create these versions. This approach, pursued in
various ways in feminist empirical studies, demands that both reader and researcher hold
in mind, and work with, a complex understanding of knowledge. It concretizes the
complexity of the ideal of recognizing vantage points. A corollary to this approach is one
in which the researcher identifies her or his partiality add takes responsibility for
asserting knowledge gained from a particular location. In a third approach, the feminist
researcher takes as a primary task the analysis of how things work to produce what is
called knowledge. She or he looks at the processes by which an account becomes “fact”,
that is, becomes accepted by a majority of people as the way that an event occurred. She
or he may offer a webbed account of what “actually” occurred and a procedural account
of how the event becomes fact. In all this, the researcher is drawn to an analysis of power

relations and of her or his complicity as a social scientist transforming accounts into facts
in sustaining these relations.
The third epistemological task is to analyze the relations between knowledge and
power because what finally happens to any actor’s account of any event depends on the
actor’s location within a social system in which power determines placement and
placement, power. This conception of the relation between knowledge and power
provides the philosophic basis for feminists’ insistent valuation of the viewpoints of less
privileged groups, for a major factor in privilege is that the viewpoints of favorably
situated actors become “the viewpoints of the society” (an expansion of Marx’s dictum,
“The ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling class”). This awareness presses
feminists constantly to call attention not only to the “women’s” view of a situation but to
the views among differing groups of women and, by extension, to the views of people
whose placement by race, age, affectional preference, or global location makes them less
privileged.
As we have said, all this stems finally from women’s daily experiences. Women’s
social situation traditionally has made them, on the one hand, balancers of a variety of
views and, on the other hand, parties who have seen their own views discounted or
distorted by male power. They are, in the first instance, expected – in their roles as wives,
mothers, and daughters and in the larger, slightly less gender:prescribed world of
economic, educational, religious, and political production – to serve as moderators who
ensure that all positions receive a “fair” hearing. But if they reflect at all, they are also
ware of how many times, in the second instance, they and other disempowered persons –
children, the elderly, the poor, racial minorities, and women s women – are not allowed
to have their participation in discourse taken seriously. Women thus find knowledge not
by accepting unilateral claims to truth but by balancing and weighing the accounts of
reality presented to them by a variety of others.
The discussion of knowledge just presented is essentially a summary of the
feminist position christened “standpoint epistemology”.Standpointism argues that a
social observer can arrive at a truth about a situation by weaving together the situated
accounts of the variously located actors, including the account of the social observer
herself, in the situation. A feminist social observer begins by trying to see the world from
the standpoint of women, that is, from a position of marginalization and oppression.
Third:wave feminism extends standpointism to include the complex of positions in which
an actor may stand at a given moment – woman, working:class, racial:minority, old,
lesbian. Feminist epistemology privileges the knowledge of persons whose standpoints
arise from positions of intense subordination in the intersection of the vectors of
oppression. Standpointism is challenged within feminism today by proponents of
postmodernism, who “deconstruct” the very categories out of which feminist
epistemology is fashioning a standpoint – categories such as “woman”, “gender”,
“difference”, “class”, and “race”. Deconstruction is a primary method of postmodernism
and much feminism; it involves so placing a concept in its historical and power relations
that the essential permeability or relativity of the concept becomes clear; that is, it is no
longer seen having a definite, fixed meaning. Many feminists take issue with this final

turn of postmodernism because it leads to a relativising of all positions so that no

knowledge is privileged, no values re absolute; thus, postmodernism in its most extreme
from leaves no “standpoint” from which to mount political critique. Standpoint feminists
in part respond by interpreting postmodernism itself as a product of a specific historical
moment in power relations – that is, of a moment when women and other oppressed
people are claiming the right to speak as subjects: “Why is it that just at the moment
when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name
ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then the concept of
subject hood becomes problematic?”.
The Macro : Social Order
Certainly one can extract much from feminist theory that relates to one or other of
these established sociological concepts – although, as we shall see, much of what is
extracted poses a fundamental critique of existing sociological assertions about these
topics. But the critique goes even deeper. Feminist theory is in the process of articulating
a new conceptual vocabulary for sociology which moves outside and away from the
bifurcation of macro:social versus micro:social/subjective, making that vision of social
reality obsolete. For this reason, although in the interest of effective communication we
use the traditional mileposts – macro, micro, subjective – as a point of entry into feminist
theory, we turn in the final part of this section to the newer concepts, with which feminist
sociologists re beginning to move beyond the older model of social reality. Feminist
sociology’s view of the macro:social order emphasizes the impact of both social structure
(and macro:objective productions) and ideology (or macro subjectivity) on actors’
perceptions of social reality. Feminist sociology begins by expanding the Marxian concept
of economic production into a much more general concept of social production, that is,
the production of all human social life. Along with the production of commodities for the
market, social production for feminists also includes arrangements like the organization
of housework, which produce the essential commodities and services of the household; of
sexuality, which pattern and satisfy human desire; of intimacy, which pattern and satisfy
human emotional needs for acceptance, approval, love, and self:esteem; of state and
religion, which create the rules and laws of a community; and of politics, mass media,
and academic discourse, which establish institutionalized, public definitions of the
situation.
Thus framed and expanded, the Marxian model of intergroup relations remains
visible in feminist theory’s model of social organization. Each of the various types of
social production is based on an arrangement by which some actors, controlling the
resources crucial to that activity, act as dominants, or “masters’, who dictate and profit
from the circumstances of production. Within each productive sector, productivity rests
on the work of subordinates, or “servants”, whose energies create the world ordered into
being by their masters and whose exploitation denies them the rewards and satisfactions
produced by their work. Through feminist theory, we see, more vividly than through
Marxian theory, the intimate association between masters and servants that lies at the
heart of all production and the indispensability of the servant’s work in creating and
sustaining everything necessary to human social life. Social production occurs through a

multidimensional structure of domination and exploitation that organizes class, gender,

race, sex, power, and knowledge into overlapping hierarchies of intimately associated
masters and workers.
Turning to another aspect of the macro order, feminist research shows that women
and other non:dominants do not experiences social life as a movement among
compartmentalized roles, as structural functionalists assert. Instead, they are involved in
a balancing of roles, a merging of role:associated interests and orientations, and, through
this merging, in a weaving together of social institutions. This is true of the working
mother as well as working women in “typically female” job categories like secretary or
nurse. It is also true when women link the activities of housewife and economic
consumer or of mother of school:age children and spouse of wage:sector participant.
Moreover, in the classic double bid, or “no:win situation”, which marks women’s
experiences of subordination, this blending and balancing is expected of women while
used as a basis of invidious comparisons between women’s role behaviour and “typical”
or compartmentalized role performance. Thus it is said disparagingly that women” bring
outside concerns into the office”, “let their emotions affect their performance “and”
cannot keep the fact that they are women out of situation”.
The feminist model of stratification in social production offers a direct critique of
the structural:functionalist vision of a society composed of a system separate institutions
and distinct though interrelated roles. Feminist theory claims that this image is not
generalizable but that it depicts the experiences and vantage points of a particular
situated group – white, male, upper:class, and adult. Indeed, one indicator of this group’s
control over the situations of production may be that its members can achieve this kind of
purposive compartmentalization in their role behaviour, a condition that serves to
reproduce their control over situations. But feminist sociology stresses that this condition
depends on the subordinate services of actors who cannot compartmentalize their lives
and actins. Indeed, were these subordinate actors to compartmentalize similarly, the
whole system of production in complex industrialized societies would collapse. In
contrast to the structural:functional model, the feminist model emphasizes that the
role:merging experiences of women may be generalizable to the experiences of many
other subordinate “servant” groups whose work produces the fine:grained texture of
daily life. The understandings that such subordinated groups have of the organization of
social life may be very different from the understanding depicted in
structural:functionalist theory; even their identification of key institutional spheres may
differ. Yet their vantage point springs from situations necessary to society as it is
presently organized and from work that makes possible the masters’ secure sense of an
institutionally compartmentalized world.
Further, feminism emphasizes the centrality of ideological domination to the
structure of social domination. Ideology is an intricate web of beliefs about reality and
social life that is institutionalized as public knowledge and disseminated throughout
society so effectively that it becomes taken:for:granted knowledge for all social groups.
Thus what feminists see as “public knowledge of social reality” is not an overarching
culture, a consensually created social product, but a reflection of the interests and

experiences of society’s dominants and one crucial index of their power in sociology.
What distinguishes this view from most Marxian views is that for feminists ideological
control is the basic process in domination, and the hierarchical control of discourse and
knowledge is the key elements in societal domination.
Central to feminist concerns about the macro:social order, of course, is the macro -
structural patterning of gender inequality. Ideology plays a crucial role in the
maintenance of this societal vector of dominance and subordination. Gender inequality is
reproduced by a system of institutionalized knowledge that reflects the interests and
experiences of men. Among other things, this gender ideology identifies men as the
bearers of socio cultural authority and allocates to the male role the right to dominate and
to the female role the obligation to serve in all dimensions of social production. Gender
ideology also systematically flattens and distorts women’s productive activities by (1)
trivializing some of them, for example, housework; (2) idealizing to the point of
unrecognizability other activities, for example, mothering; and (3) making invisible yet
other crucial work, for example, women’s multiple and vital contributions to the
production of marketplace commodities. These ideological processes may be
generalizable to the macro:structural production of all social subordination.
The Micro : Social Order
At the micro:interactional level, feminist sociology focuses on how individuals
take account of each other as they pursue objective projects or subjectively shared
meanings. Feminist sociology differs in five important ways from social definitionism
and social behaviorism both of which focus on the micro:interactional order. A review of
these five differences reveals important aspects of the feminist model of the micro order.
Responsive Action versus Purposeful Action :
Most mainstream micro sociology presents a model of purposive human beings
setting their own goals and pursuing these in linear courses of action in which they
(individually or collectively) strive to link means to ends. In contrast, feminist research
shows, first, that women’s lives have a quality of incidentalism, as women find
themselves caught up in agendas that shift and change with the vagaries of marriage,
husbands’ courses of action, children’s unpredictable impact on life plans, divorce,
widowhood, and the precariousness of most women’s wage:sector occupations. Second,
in their daily activities, women find themselves not so much pursuing goals in linear
sequences but responding continuously to the needs and demands of others. This theme
has been developed from Chodorow’s analysis of the emotional and relational symbiosis
between mothers and daughters, through Lever’s and Gilligan’s descriptions of intensely
relational female play groups, to analyses of women in their typical occupations as
teachers, nurses, secretaries, receptionists, and office helpers and accounts of women in
their roles as wives, mothers, and community and kin coordinators. In calling women’s
activities “responsive”, we are not describing them as passively reactive. Instead, we are
drawing a picture of beings that are oriented not so much to their own goals as to the
tasks of monitoring, coordinating, facilitating, and moderating the wishes, actions, and
demands of others. In place of micro sociology’s conventional model of purposeful actors,

then, feminist research presents a model of actors who are in their daily lives
responsively located at the center of a web of others’ actions and who in the long term
find themselves located in one or another of these situations by forces that they can
neither predict nor control.
Intermittent Interaction versus Continuous Interaction :
Micro sociology’s typical picture of social life shows purposive actors who are
almost continuously in face:to:face interactions in which they orient to each other and in
which they assume that all the other actors in teachings situation are fundamentally like
them. Feminist theory describes a world in which women experiences highly variable
interactions that seldom assume all the interactive qualities of that model. For long
periods of each day, adult women located in households work in isolation from
face:to:face interactions and orient to others only subjectively and responsively rather
than purposively. In other settings, particularly in low:status office, factory, or service
jobs, women find themselves working at structurally patterned routines in proximity to,
but not in interaction with, each other. In many of their most significant interactive
situations, they find themselves relating to other beings whom they do not assume to be
fundamentally like themselves: children so young that they must be treated as less than
self and adult men whom they know to be fundamentally different from them in
personality, experience of life, and social situation—their existential “other”. Only when
they come together in spontaneous and open associating with other adult women does
their interactive experience meet assumptions built into the conventional Micro
sociological model of typical interaction. Feminist theory then raises these questions;
whose experiences of interaction provide sociology with its model of prototypical
interaction? What, from the standpoint of women, constitutes prototypical interaction?
Feminists answer these questions by claiming, first, that the experiences of dominant men
is mirrored in sociology’s basic model of interaction and, second, that women’s
relationship to these men is, at least in its frequency and practical consequences, women’s
crucial and prototypical interaction. Feminists’ exploration of male:female interactions
takes us further into the feminist model of micro interaction.
The Assumption of Inequality versus the Assumption of Equality :
Conventional micro:social theory assumes that the pressures in interactive
situations toward collaboration and meaning construction are so great that actors,
bracketing considerations of the macro structure, orient towards each other on an
assumption of equality. Feminist research on interactions between women and men flatly
contradicts this idea, showing that these social interactions are pervasively patterned by
influences from their macro:structural context. In their daily activities, women are
affected by the fact that they are structurally subordinate to the men with whom they
interact in casual associations, courtship, marriage, family, and wage work. Any
interpersonal equality or dominance that women as individuals may achieve is effectively
offset, with the interactive process itself, by these structural patterns – of which the most
pervasive is the institution of gender. The macro:structural patterning of gender
inequality is intricately woven though the interactions between women and men and
affects not only its broad division of labour, in who sets and who implements projects,
but also its processual details, which repeatedly show the enactment of authority and
deference in seating and seating:standing arrangements, forms of address and
conversation, eye contact, and the control of space and time.
Stratified Meanings versus Common Meanings :
Conventional micro sociology either brackets the issue of meaning (the social
behaviorists) or assumes that the activities and relationships that occur in situated
interactions become the basis and focus of collaborative meaning construction (the social
definitionists).Actors, seeing each other in activity and interaction, form shared
understandings through communication and ultimately a common vantage point on their
experiences. Feminists argue that this assumption must be drastically qualified by the fact
that micro interactions are embedded in and permeated by the macro structure. Women’s
everyday actions and relationships occur against a backdrop of public or institutionalized
understanding of everyday experience, that is, as we have said, a macro structural layer
of ideology that flattens and distorts the reality by trivializing, idealizing, or making
invisible women’s activity and experience. This ideology patterns the meanings assigned
to activities in interaction. Men (dominants) in interaction with women are more likely to
assign to women’s activity meanings drawn from the macro structure of gender ideology
than either to enter the situation with an attitude of open inquiry or to draw on any other
macro:level typing for interpreting women’s activity. Women, immersed in the same
ideological interpretation of their experiences, stand at a point of dialectical tension,
balancing this ideology against the actuality of their lives. A great diversity of meanings
develops out of this tension.
As everything that has been said so far indicates, social definiteness assume that
actors, relating and communicating intimately and over long periods of time, create a
common vantage point or system of shared understanding. Feminists’ research on what
may be the most intimate, long:term, male:female association, marriage, shows that, for
all the reasons reported above, marriage partners remain strangers to each other and
inhabit separate worlds of meaning. Moreover, Dorothy Smith argues convincingly that
this “stranger:ness” may be a variable in which the dominant man, in the interests of
effective control, is more a stranger to women’s meanings than women as subordinates
can afford to be to the dominant’s meanings.
Constraint versus Choice in Meaning:Creating Locations :
A profoundly democratic ethos shapes both social:definitionist and social
behaviorist descriptions of interaction. Conventional models consistently imply that
people have considerable equality of opportunity and freedom of choice in moving in
and out of interactional settings. Feminist research shows that the interactions in which
women are most free to create with others meanings that depict their life experiences are
those which occur when they are in relationship and communication with similarly
situated women. Moreover, these associations can be deeply attractive to women because
of the practical, emotional, and meaning:affirming support that they provide. Women,
however, are not freely empowered to locate in these settings. Law, interactional
domination, and ideology restrict and demean this associational choice so that,

insidiously, even women become suspicious of its attractions. Under these circumstances,
the association becomes not a free and open choice but a subterranean, circumscribed,
and publicly invisible arena for relationship and meaning.
What does all this add up to in a feminist sociology of the micro order? First, it
suggests not that the conventional models re wholly inaccurate but that they are only
partial models. But if we return to our starting point, that truth lies at the intersection of
vantage points, and then a partial model must have elements of distortion – especially
when that partial model is allowed to stand unchallenged. The conventional model of
interaction may depict how equals in the macro:structural, power:conferring categories
create a vantage point. It may also depict how, from the vantage point of structural
dominance, one experiences interaction with both equals and subordinates. And it may
well suggest a strain or tendency in all interactional arrangements. But, and second,
when structural unequal interact, there are many other qualities to their association than
those suggested by the conventional models. Indeed, these other features suggest another
model that better captures the realities of the subordinate’s experiences: incidentalism of
project, responsiveness of action, movement in and out of very different interaction
experiences, continuous enactment of power differentials, activities whose meanings are
invisible or obscured, estrangement from the meanings of others involved in the
interaction, and restricted access to those settings where meaningfulness is most likely to
be a genuinely shared experience. Third, we need to ask whether this latter model is not
generlizable to the experience of all subordinates and whether sociologists must not plot
the reality of the micro:interactional order at the dialectical intersection of all these
models of interpersonal association.
Subjectivity
One of the most striking features of feminist sociology is its insistence on a third
level of social activity – the subjective. Most sociological theories subsume this level
under micro:social action (micro subjectivity) or as “culture” or “ideology” at the macro
level (macro subjectivity).Feminist sociology, however, insists that the actor’s individual
interpretation of goals and relationships must be looked at as a distinct level. This
insistence, like so much of feminist sociology, grows out of the study of women’s lives
and seems applicable to the lives of subordinates in general. Women (and perhaps other
subordinates) are particularly aware of the distinctiveness of their subjective experience
precisely because, as we have indicated, their own experiences so often runs counter to
prevailing cultural and micro:interactionally established definitions.
When sociologists do look at the subjective level of experience, usually as part of
the micro - social order, they focus on four major issues: (1) role taking and knowledge of
the other; (2) the process of the internalization of community norms; (3) the nature of the
self as social actor; (4) and the nature of the consciousness of everyday life. This section
explores the feminist thesis on each of these issues.
The Issue of Role Taking and the Sense of Other :
The conventional sociological model of subjectivity assumes that in the course of
role taking, the social actor learns to see the self through the eyes of others deemed more

or less the same as the actor. But feminist sociology shows that women are socialized to
see themselves through the eyes of men. Even when significant others are women, they
have been so socialized that they too take the male view of self and of other women.
Women’s experience of learning to role:take is shaped by the fact that they must, in a way
men need not, learn to take the role of the genuine other, not just a social other who is
taken to be much like oneself. The other for women is the male and is alien. The other for
men is, first and foremost, men who are to some degree like them in a quality that the
culture considers of transcendent importance: gender. Third:wave feminist emphasizes
that this formula is complicated by the interaction of the various vectors of oppression
and privilege within individual lives.
The Internalization of Community Norms :
Role taking usually is seen as culminating in the internalization of community
norms via the social actor’s learning to take the role of “the generalized other”, a
construct that the actor mentally creates out of the amalgam of macro and micro:level
experiences that form her or his social life. The use of the singular other indicates that
micro sociologists usually envision this imagined generalized other as a cohesive,
coherent, singular expression of expectations. But feminists argue, first, that in a
male:dominated patriarchal culture, the generalized other represents a set of
male:dominated community norms that force the woman to picture herself as “less than”
or “unequal to” men. To the degree that a woman succeeds in formulating a sense of
generalized other that accurately reflects the dominant perceptions of the community; she
may have damaged her own possibilities for self:esteem and self:exploration.
Second, the insights of feminism call into question the very existence of a unified
generalized other for the majority of people – indeed, a postmodernist critique would
argue for all people. The central point with which we began this section is that the truth
of a given social situation lies in the intersection of vantage points. Presumably any of
these vantage points could constitute a generalized other by which a person might view
herself or himself as an object and judge her or his performance. Only with the awareness
of how a multiplicity of others affects an individual’s sense of self can we begin to capture
the potential complexity of having or being a self. The subordinate, in particular, does
not have the luxury or the illusion of the existence of a single standardized other (unless
the subordinate has been so oppressed as to have surrendered all powers of separate
reflection).
The Nature of the Self as a Social Actor :
Micro sociologists describe the social actor as picturing the everyday world as
something to be mastered according to one’s particular interests. Feminist sociologists
argue that women may find themselves so limited by their status as women that the idea
of projecting their own plans onto the world becomes meaningless in all but theory.
Further, women may not experience the life:world as something to be mastered according
to their own particular interests. They may be socialized to experience that life:world as a
place in which one balances a variety of actors’ interests. Indeed, Gilligan has been at
pains to assure women that one mark of maturity is an ability to have and protect one’s

own interests as a way of protecting oneself for others. Women may not have the same
experience of control of particular spheres of space, free from outside interference.
Similarly, their sense of time rarely can follow the simple pattern of first things first
because they have as a life project the balancing of the interests and projects of others.
Thus, women may experience planning and actions as acts of concern for a variety of
interests, their own and others, and as acts, above all, of cooperation and not mastery.
This idea ties in with the idea discussed earlier of women’s role experience as one of “role
merging”. In combination, these ideas suggest the need for renaming role conflict as role
balancing (to stay within the confines of the present language).Then the ability to role -
balance, one of women’s and other subordinates’ primary abilities and experiences of
space and time, would come to be explored as a positive social value. Compartme-
ntalization then might be seen as a sign of the “less than” functional personality.
Consciousness of Everyday Life :
Feminist sociologists have critically evaluated the thesis of a unified consciousness
of everyday life that traditional micro sociologists usually assume. Feminist sociologists’
stress that for women the most pervasive feature of the cognitive style of everyday life is
that of a bifurcated consciousness. Women experience what Dorothy Smith has called “a
line of fault” between their own personal, lived, and reflected:on experience and the
established types available in the social stock of knowledge to describe that experience.
Everyday life itself thus divides into two realities for subordinates: the reality of actual,
lived, reflected:on experience and the reality of social types. Often aware of the way that
their own experience differs from that of the culturally dominant males with whom they
interact, women are less trusting of the ease of shared subjectivity. And as biological and
social beings whose activities are not perfectly regulated by patriarchal standard time,
they are more aware of the demarcation between time as lived experience and time as a
social mandate. A feminist sociology of subjectivity perhaps would begin here: How do
people survive when their own experience does not fit the established social typifications
of that experience? We know already that some do so by avoiding acts of sustained
reflection; some by cultivating their own series of personal types to make sense of their
experience; some by seeking community with others who share this bifurcated reality;
some by denying the validity of their own experience.
What we have generalized here for women’s subjectivity may be true for the
subjectivity of all subordinates. (1) Their experience of role taking is complicated by their
intense awareness that they must learn the expectations of an other who by virtue of
differences in power is alien. (2) They must relate not to a generalized other but to many
generalized others, many subcultures, both the subculture of the powerful and the
various subcultures of the less empowered and the disempowered, (3) They do not
experience themselves as purposive social actors who can chart their own course through
life – although they may be constantly told that they can do so, especially within the
American ethos.(4) Most pervasively, they life daily with a bifurcated consciousness, a
sense of the line of fault between their own lived experiences and what the dominant
culture tells them is the social reality.

Everything in this discussion has assumed a unified subject, that is, an individual
woman or man with an ongoing, consistent consciousness and a sense of self. The unified
subject is important to feminist theory because it is that subject who is posited as
experiencing pain and oppression, making value judgments, and resisting or accepting
the world in place – the unified subject is the primary agent of social change. Yet, our
discussion of subjectivity also raises questions about how unified this subject is; there are
the problems of a subject whose generalized other is truly “other” or “alien”, who
experiences not a generalized other but many generalized others, whose consciousness is
bifurcated, and whose self in its capacities for development and change may be viewed
more as a process than a product. All these tendencies toward an understanding of the
self as fragmented rather than as unified are inherent in feminist theorizing of the self –
indeed, they are at the heart of feminist ideas about resistance and change. This sense of
fragmentation is much theoretical position which raises questions about the very
possibility of “a unified subject or consciousness”, if a self, any self, is subject to change
from day to day or even moment to moment, if we can speak of “being not myself”, then
on what basis do we posit self? Yet, feminist critics of postmodernism respond by
beginning in the experience of women in daily life, who when they say “I was not
myself” or “I have not been myself”, still assume a stable self from which they have
departed and, further, by those very statements, some self that knows of the departure.
The attempt to redefine the nature of the self, to balance the dynamics for stability with
those of process and fragmentation, is one of the major challenges of contemporary
feminist theory.
A MICRO : MACRO SYNTHESIS
The picture of social organization that emerges in feminist sociologist theory is

highly integrative. It combines economic activity with other forms of human social
production (child rearing, emotional sustenance, knowledge, home maintenance,
sexuality, and so on); it sees material production as elaborately linked with ideological
production; it describes the interpretation of apparently autonomous social institutions
and apparently voluntary individual actions and relations; it connects structure to
interaction and consciousness. Recently, in the effort to devise a vocabulary for talking
about these various and simultaneous realities at one, socialist feminists, particularly in
the work of Dorothy Smith, have introduced the concepts of “relations of ruling”,
“generalized, anonymous, impersonal texts”, and “local actualities of lived experience”.
Relations of ruling refer to the complex, non:monolithic but intricately connected social
activities that attempt to control human social production. Human social production
must by its material nature occur at some moment in the local actualities of lived
experience – that is, the places where some actual person situations while writing or
reading a book (or plants food or produces clothing).The relations of ruling in late
capitalist patriarchy manifest themselves through texts that are characterized by their
essential anonymity, generality, and authority. These texts are designed to pattern and
translate real:life, specific, individualized experience into a language form acceptable to
the relations of ruling. This criterion of “acceptability” is met when the text imposes the
dominants’ definition on the situation. The texts may range from contracts to police
reports to official boards:of:inquiry statements to school certificates to medical records.

Everywhere they later the material reality – reinterpreting what has occurred,
determining what will be possible. Thus, in seeking to interact with the relations of
ruling, even at a fairly local level, a given individual (such as a student applying for a
summer job in a restaurant owned by a family friend) finds that she or he must fill out
some texts (tax information cards, for instance) which have been established not by the
face:to:face employer but by part of the apparatus of ruling. These texts continuously
create intersection between the relations of ruling and the local actualities of lived
experience. It is important to observe that this intersection works both ways: to some
series of moments in historic time, embodied actors, situated in absolutely individual
locations, sit at desks or computer workstations or conference tables generating the forms
that will become part of the apparatus of ruling.
All three aspects of social life – relations of ruling, local actualities of lived
experience, and texts – are widespread, enduring, constant features of the organization of
social life and of domination. All three features at the same time can and must be studied
as the actions, relationships, and work of embodied human beings. Each dimension has
its distinctive internal dynamic – the drive for control in the relations of ruling, the drive
for production and communication in the local actualities, the drive toward objectivity
and the claim of facticity in the generalized texts. Each dimension is determining of and
yet is determined by the others. Through this lens the micro:versus:macro split becomes
irrelevant. The elements of structure and interaction are fused. Domination and
production as defined by feminists become the problematic, and their manifestations
involve and thus absorb the age:old sociological distinctions of the macro:social,
micro:social, and subjective aspects of social reality. In this, feminist theory is in accord
with much of the work, discussed in Part Three of this book, on micro:macro and
agency:structure integration.
SUMMARY
Feminist sociological theory grows out of feminist theory in general, that branch of
the new scholarship on women that seeks to provide a system of ideas about human life
that features woman as object and subject, doer and knower. One effect of the
contemporary feminist movement on sociology has been to expand the significance of the
sociology of gender relations and of women’s lives. Many sociological theories currently
work to explore these issues. The macro:social theories of functionalism, analytic conflict
theory and neo:Marxian world:systems theory all explore the place of the household in
social systems as a means of explaining women’s social subordination. Symbolic
interactionism and ethno methodology, two micro:social theories, explore the ways in
which gender is produced and reproduced in interpersonal relations. The feminist
questions so rich in possibility for sociological theory today have been kept alive in the
body of feminist theory formulated between 1960 and the present. This body of ideas can
be classified according to the three basic questions of feminist scholarship: And what
about the women? Why is women’s situation as it is? And what about the differences
among women? The answers to the first and third questions provide our major

categories of varieties of feminist theory. In our system, there have been four main
descriptions of women’s social situation (1) It is different from men’s; (2) it is unequal to
men’s; (3) it is that of an oppressed group and the oppressors are men or the
male:constructed patriarchal social system, and (4) it is further stratified by vectors of
oppression and privilege that mark differences among women.
Within each of these broad categories – difference, inequality, oppression, and
third:wave theories of differences among women – there are further variations based on
the answers to the question of why women’s situation is as it is. Theorists who see
women’s situation as essentially different from men’s explain that difference in four basic
ways: biosocial conditioning, institutional socialization, social interaction, and social-
psychological interfacing. Theorists who emphasize inequality explanations account for
women’s positions in terms of liberal feminism’s view of unequal opportunity structures
and Marxian accounts of women’s position as part of a complex class:system of
exploitation in which women exploit and are exploited partly in terms of gender and
partly in terms of class position. Some theorists who emphasize oppression explain such
oppression in terms of psychoanalytic theories that see males as having an innate need to
subjugate women in order to achieve deep psychological goals. Others offer a radical
feminist answer that sees the root of patriarchal oppression in males’ greater ability and
willingness to use brute force to subjugate others. Still others offer a socialist feminist
analysis that attempts to synthesize various forms and theories of oppression, using
terms such as capitalist patriarchy and domination to describe the multifaceted system of
oppression based on arrangements of production, class, age, ethnicity, affectional
preference, and global position, as well as gender:a system oppressing all women and
most men. Most recently, third:wave feminists focused on the implications these
differences – class, age, ethnicity, affectional preference, and global position – made for
relations among women at both the micro and macro levels.
Feminist theory offers a basis for a revision of standard sociological theories of
social organization. The feminist sociological theory that we present as an exemplar of
what feminist theory can offer to general sociological theory may be summarized in terms
of six main propositions, which draw on and synthesize the varieties of feminist theory.
First, the practice of sociological theory must be based in a sociology of knowledge that
recognizes the knower as embodied and socially located, the partiality of all knowledge,
and the function of power in affecting what becomes knowledge. Second, macro:social
structures are based in processes controlled by dominants acting in their own interests
and executed by subordinates whose work is made largely invisible and undervalued
even to themselves by the social ideology. Thus even the understanding of what
constitutes production is distorted. Focusing on women’s position can give particular
insights into these macro structures of subordination because women, whatever their
class position, are primary doers of invisible work; housework, childbearing and rearing
emotional and sexual service and coordinating activities (such as waiting, adjusting,
being interrupted) in wage:sector work.
Third, micro-interactional processes in society make real these dominant:subordinate
power arrangements and the non acknowledgement or distortion of the subordinates’

contribution. Thus, women find their contributions to social production either

disregarded, as in housework or wage:sector coordinating activities, or idealized beyond
any recognition of actual experience, as in mothering. Fourth, these conditions create in
women’s subjectivity a constant “line of fault” that they must navigate. This line of fault
separates the patriarchal ideology and women’s reflected:on experience of the actuality of
their roles in producing social life at the macro and micro levels. Women navigate this
line of fault in various ways – by repression, by acquiescence, by rebellion, and by
attempts at micro and macro organization for reform. Fifth, what has been said for
women may be applicable to all subordinate people in some parallel, although not
identical, form. Sixth, one must question the use of any categories developed by an
essentially male:dominated discipline, and most particularly the divisions between
micro:and macrosociologies.Current feminist conceptualizations of the social order have
transcended this classic sociological dichotomy, using concepts like “relations of ruling”,
“local actualities of lived experience”, and “generalized texts”. The closing question of
feminist sociological theory raises for everyone this issue: Can we stay within the
established disciplinary categories for describing and explaining the world, or must we
create new concepts if we are to describe and explain the world as viewed by its
subordinate, disadvantaged, and often invisible members?
The Challenge of feminist theory :
Beginning in the late 1970s, precisely at the moment that Marxian sociology gained
significant acceptance from American sociologists, a new theoretical outsider issued a
challenge to established sociological theories – and even to Marxian sociology itself. This
later brand of radical social thought is contemporary feminist theory, which has
continued to grow in range and complexity and to influence sociology into the mind –
1990s.The growth of contemporary feminist theory is based in the new activism of
women for full civil equality: the so: called “second” wave of the women’s movement
which sprang into being in the 1960s.(The first stage or wave of this mobilization
occurred in the early years of this century and the last decades of the last, and culminated
in 1920 with women winning the right to vote.).Three factors helped create this new wave
of feminist activism: the general climate of critical thinking that characterized the period;
the anger of women activists who flocked to the antiwar, civil rights, and student
movement only to encounter the sexist attitudes of the liberal and radical men in those
movements; and women’s experience of prejudice and discrimination as they moved in
ever larger numbers onto wage work and higher education. For these reasons,
particularly the last, the women’s movement in this new second phase continued to
expand during the 1970s and into the 1990s, even though the activism of many other
1960s movement faded. Moreover, during these years activism by and for women
became an international phenomenon, drawing in women from many societies and from
most stratificational locations in North America. This growing inclusiveness has
produced a “third wave’ of feminist activism and writing.
A major feature of this internationals women’s movement has been an explosively
growing new literature on women that makes visible all aspects of women’s hitherto
unconsidered lives and experiences. This literature, which is popularly referred to as

women’s studies or the new scholarship on women, is the work of an international and
interdisciplinary community of writers, located both within and outside universities and
writing for both the general public and specialized academic audience. In what must be
one of the more impressive examples of sustained intellectual work in recent times,
feminist scholars have launches a probing, multifaceted critique that makes visible the
complexity of the system that subordinates women.
Feminist theory is theoretical strand running through this literature: sometimes
implicit in writings on such substantive issues as work or rape or popular culture;
sometimes centrally and explicitly presented as in the analyses of motherhood by
Adrienne Rich ( 1976), Nancy Chodorow (1978), and Jessica Benjamin (1988); and
increasingly the sole, systematic project of a piece of writing. Of this recent spate of
wholly theoretical writing, certain statements have been particularly silent to sociology
because they are directed to sociologists by people well versed in sociological theory.
Journals that bring feminist theory to the attention of sociologists include Sings, Feminist
Studies, Sociological Inquiry, and gender and Society as does the professional association
Sociologists for women in society (SWS) and the National Women’s Studies Association
(NWSA).
Feminist theory looks at the world from the vantage points of a hitherto
unrecognized and invisible minority, women with an eye to discovering the significant
but unacknowledged ways in which the activities of women:subordinated by gender and
variously affected by other stratificational practices, such as class, race, age, enforced
heterosexuality, and geosocial inequality –help to create our world. This viewpoint
dramatically reworks our understanding of social life from this base; feminist theorists
have begun to challenge sociology theory. Those issuing this challenge argue that
sociologists have persistently refused to incorporate the insight of the new scholarship on
women into their discipline’s understanding of the social world. Instead, feminist
sociologists have been segregated from the main stream, and feminism’s comprehensive
theory of social role pattern, gender. To date these charges seem valid. Reasons for
sociology’s avoidance of feminist theory may include deep anti:woman and antifeminist
prejudices, suspicion of the scientific credentials of a theory so closely associated with
political activism, and caution born of half recognition of the profoundly radical
implication of feminist theory for sociological theory.
MICHEL FOUCAULT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Although Derrida is an extremely important post:structuralist, the most important

thinker associate with this approach is Michel Foucault. Foucault’s work illustrates yet
another difference between post:structuralism and structuralism. While structuralism
was overwhelmingly influenced by linguistics, Foucault’s approach, and post
structuralism more generally, shows a variety of theoretical inputs. This variety makes
Foucault’s work provocative and difficult to handle. Furthermore, the ideas are not
simply adopted from other thinkers but are transformed as they are integrated into
Foucault’s unusual theoretical orientation.Thus, Weber’s theory of rationalization has an
impact, but to Foucault it is found only in certain “key sites,” and it is not an “iron cage”;

there is always resistance. Marxian ideas are found in Foucault’s work, but Foucault does
not restrict himself to the economy; he focuses on a range of institutions. He is more
interested in the “micro-politics of power” than in the traditional Marxian concern with
power at the societal level. He practices hermeneutics in order to better understand the
social phenomena of concern to him. Moreover, Foucault has no sense of some deep,
ultimate truth; there are simply ever more layers to be peeled away. There is a
phenomenological influence, but Foucault rejects the idea of an autonomous, meaning –
giving subject. There is a strong element of structuralism but no formal rule:governed
model of behavior. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Foucault adopts Nietzsche’s
interest in the relationship between power and knowledge, but that link is analyzed
much more sociologically by Foucault. This multitude of theoretical inputs is one of the
reasons that Foucault is thought of as a poststructuralist. There is yet another sense in
which Foucault’s work is clearly poststructuralist. That is, in his early work Foucault was
heavily influences by structuralism, but as his work progressed that influence declined
and other inputs moved his theory in a variety of other directions
At first sight it might seem paradoxical to include Michel Foucault in a collection
devoted to the resurgence of Grand Theory. For all Foucault’s novel philosophical and
historical insights, his work is above all iconoclastic in intent. His major concern is neither
to offer new solutions to hoary philosophical problems, nor to provide a more adequate
historical account of our current difficulties. He does both, but only in passing. His
primary objective is to provide a critique of the way modern societies control and
discipline their populations by sanctioning the knowledge:claims and practices of the
human sciences; medicine, psychiatry, psychology, criminology, sociology and so on.
The sciences of man have, he argues, subverted the classical order of political rule based
on sovereignty and rights, and have instituted a new regime of power exercised through
disciplinary mechanisms and the stipulation of norms for human behaviour.In
workplaces, schoolrooms, hospitals and welfare offices; in the family and the community,
and in prisons, mental institutions, courtrooms and tribunals, the human sciences have
established their standards of ‘normality’. The normal child, the healthy body, the stable
mind, the good citizen, the perfect wife and the proper man – such concepts haunt our
ideas about ourselves, and are reproduced and legitimated through the practices of
teachers, social workers, doctors, judges, policemen and Administrators. The human
sciences attempt to define normality; and by establishing this normality as a rule of life
for us all, they simultaneously manufacture – for investigation, surveillance and
treatment – the vast area of our deviation from this standard.
Foucault offers us histories of the different modes by which human beings in our
culture have been made subjects; and we should note the ambiguity of the term ‘subject’.
The human sciences have made Man both a subject of study and a subject of the State and
have thereby subjected us to a set of laws which they claim define our very being –laws of
speech, economic rationality, biological functioning and social behaviour. Through the
practices of these ‘sciences’ we have become divided selves, treating sanity, health and
conformity to social mores as components of our ‘real selves’, and repudiating as foreign
to us our diseases, irrationalities and delinquencies. Man, as a universal category,
containing within it a law of being, is, for Foucault, an invention of the Enlightenment –
and his much discussed prediction of the dissolution of Man is arguably best understood
as nothing more or less than the claim that the attempt to establish a political order upon
a scientific understanding of human nature is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly
unstable.
We can see, then, why speaking of Foucault in terms of a return to Grand Theory is
ambiguous. Although he offers us novel philosophical positions and an often intriguing
analysis of power and its place in maintaining political and social order, his primary
concern is to aid the destruction of Western metaphysics and the sciences of man. He
would deny that he is offering a new theory of social and political order because, above
all, his concern is with the destruction of such theories, and their normalizing and
subjecting attempts to define some single, cohesive human condition. If Foucault’s
comments on the future are at best evasive; if he undercuts his own works by modestly
disclaiming them as fictions; and if he frequently spends more time making clear what he
is not saying that with stating his own position, it is because his aim is to attack great
systems, grand theories and vital truths, and to give free play to difference, to local and
specific knowledge, and to rupture, contingency and discontinuity. For Foucault, to act
as a grand theorist is to commit the undignified folly of speaking for others – of
prescribing to them the law of their being. It is t offer a new orthodoxy, and thus a new
tyranny.
This general theme dominated Foucault’s work throughout his thirty years as a
writer. In that time he produced books on the history of the management of mental
illness, the birth of clinical medicine, the development of biology, philology and
economics, the methodology of the history of ideas, the origins of the prison and the
history of sexuality. By 1970 his work had earned him sufficient reputation for him to be
awarded a personal chair at the College de France in the History of Systems of Thought.
His subsequent work, on the prison and on sexuality, was marked by a new concern with
the functioning of power within social life. Although strong threads of consistency can be
recognized through his works, he repeatedly went back over his earlier works and
reworked his ideas –much to the delight of his many followers, and to the confusion and
irritation of his equally numerous critics.
Foucault’s primary unit of analysis is the discourse. A discourse is best understood
as a system of possibility for knowledge. He rejects the traditional units of analysis and
interpretation – text, euvre ad genre – as well as the postulated unities in science –
theories, paradigms and research programmes. Foucault’s analysis is not meant to offer a
definitive tie of the elusive meaning of a text, or does he seek to reconstruct the rationality
of scientific discovery. Rather his approach is more skeptical and nominal sot than this;
his attention is focused on statements and objects of analysis. His method is to ask what
rules permit certain statements to be made; what rules order these statements; what rules
permit us to identify some statements as true and some as false; what rules allow the
construction of a map, model or classificatory system; what rules allow us to identify
certain individuals as authors; and what rules are revealed when an object of discourse is
modified or transformed – as when homicidal monomania becomes viewed as moral
degeneration or paranoid schizophrenia. Whenever sets of rules of these kinds can be

identified, we are dealing with a discursive formation or discourse. Thus, Foucault is not
especially concerned with those statements which are held as true in a given field of
knowledge. Rather, he is attempting to reveal the sets of discursive rules which allow the
formation of groups of statements which are what Ian Hacking calls ‘true or false’:
statements, that is, which can only be seen as true or false because we have ways to
reason about them (Hacking 1982:49). That is why a discourse can be seen as a system of
possibility: it is what allows us to produce statements which will be either true or false –
it makes possible a field of knowledge. But the rules of a discourse re not rules which
individuals consciously follow; a discourse is not a method or a canon of enquiry.
Rather, these rules provide the necessary preconditions for the formation of statements,
and as such they operate ‘behind the backs’ of speakers of a discourse. Indeed, the place,
function and character of the ‘knower’s’, authors and audiences of a discourse are also a
function of these discursive rules.
A simple way to see something of the nature and force of Foucault’s line of
approach is to consider systems of classification. At the beginning of The Order of Things
he quotes a passage from the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, purportedly taken
from a certain Chinese encyclopedia, which divides animals into the following categories;
(a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (Europe) sirens,
(f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) innumerable, (k)
drawn with a fine camelhair brush, (language) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water
pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies .As Foucault points out, what this
fictitious classification suggests, by the stark impossibility of thinking it, is the limitation
of our own system of thought. Because we are locked in our own discourse we simply
cannot see how the animal world could be mapped in this way. When we classify objects
we operate within a system of possibility – and this system both enables us to do certain
things, and limits us to this system ad these things.
There have been numerous classificatory systems for animals throughout history,
each rooted in a different conception of the natural order of the world. However, we tend
to assume that previous classifications are contaminated by religious and primitive forms
of thinking and that only ours is truly free from error. But it is precisely this move which
Foucault will not allow. Truth for Foucault is simply an effect of the rules of a discourse –
we cannot claim that our classificatory systems mirror certain enduring features of the
natural world which previous classifications distorted. There can be no question of the
overall truth or falsity of a classification or of a discourse – the relationship between
words and things is always partial and rooted in discursive rules and commitments
which cannot themselves be rationally justified.
In his earlier work Foucault undermined the truth:claims of discourses by stressing
the arbitrary nature of discursive changes. He emphasized rupture and discontinuity in
the history of ideas because doing so highlighted the fact that logic and rationality played
no part in providing the foundations for discourses. In this earlier work, discourses often
seemed to be highly abstract structures of thought which were unaffected by
non:discursive elements such as social and political events and institutions or economic
processes and practices. In his more recent work, however, he has increasingly

emphasized the constitutive role which power plays in knowledge. Once again, part of
his point is to show that the human sciences are rooted in non:rational, contingent and
frequently unsavory origins. However, we should note that Foucault’s claim that truth is
merely what counts as true within a discourse is not easy to accept.If what Foucault says
is true, then truth is always relative to discourse; there cannot be any statements which
are true in all discourses, nor can there be any statements which are true for all discourses
– so that, on Foucault’s own account, what he says cannot be true! This is a complex and
far from trivial problem and we can recognize moves in Foucault’s more recent work to
avoid it. In particular, he has engaged in some judicious equivocation over the question
of whether he is saying that truth is always relative to discourse, or whether he is
claiming that truth has a political as well as an epistemological status: for example,
whether he is claiming that psychiatric knowledge has no basis in truth, or whether he is
simply claiming that psychiatric knowledge has become a part of an oppressive system of
political rule. However, as I shall suggest in my concluding remarks, it may be that this
equivocation is itself an important part of Foucault’s argument.
It will be useful at this point to consider more precisely how and hwy Foucault
puts the truth - claims of psychiatry and the human sciences into doubt. Take, for
example, his discussion of Henriette Cornier and Catherine Ziegler:In Paris in1827,
Henriette Cornier, a servant, goes to the neighbour of her employers and insists that the
neighbour leaves her daughter with her for a time. The neighbour hesitates, agrees, and
then, when she returns for the child Henriette Cornier has just killed her and has cut off
her head which she had thrown out the window. In Vienna, Catherine Ziegler kills her
illegitimate child. One the stands, she explains that her act was the result of an irresistible
force. She is acquitted on grounds of insanity. She is released from prison. But she
declares that it would be better if she were kept there, for she will do it again. Ten months
later, she gives birth to a child whom she kills immediately, and she declares at the trial
that she became pregnant for the sole purpose of killing her child. She is condemned to
death and executed. (Foucault 1978:3)
Foucault draws our attention to the fact that in their discussions of these and
similar cases at the beginning of the nineteenth century, psychiatrists broke with a
number of conventions. They broke with the eighteenth:century practice of referring to
madness only in cases of dementia or imbecility (which disqualified the subject from
inheritance in civil law) and furor – all of which were easily recognized by the layman.
These ‘new’ cases were ones in which the crimes committed were not preceded,
accompanied or followed by any recognizable form of insanity. Yet psychiatrists refused
to follow the earlier conventions which held that it was inappropriate to refer to insanity
in more serious cases of crime. They presented these ‘new’ crimes as crimes against the
laws of nature – as crimes which were too horrific to be regarded simply as
straightforward instances of the infringement of conventional codes and rules. They
emphasized that these crimes were committed without profit, passion, reason or motive,
and they argued that this made the crimes unintelligible, or insane. Yet the only evidence
that they had for this insanity was the crime itself. Given these facts, Foucault claims:
‘Nineteenth century psychiatry invented an entirely fictitious entity, a crime which is
insanity, a crime which is nothing but insanity, an insanity which is nothing but crime’.
They called their creation ‘homicidal monomania’ – category rooted in the preposterous
claim that there are some kinds of insanity which are manifested only in outrageous
crimes.
Although homicidal monomania has been consigned to the history books of
psychiatry, we should not assume that our interpretations of crime have escaped the
conflation of natural, rational and legal orders which originally produced this bizarre
category of insanity. Homicidal monomania, by appealing to a natural order, produced a
category which predicated both a set of crimes and a form of madness. It thereby
provided an opening in the judicial system for psychiatric expertise which resulted in a
shift in the focus of judicial practice from the crime to the criminal – from a concern with
the criminal code and its infringement to a concern with the rationality of the criminal act,
and thus to a concern with the character of the criminal and with his or her treatment or
reform. Once a class of criminal acts was interpreted as arising from a form of insanity,
once the questions of rationality, motive and reasons for action were posed, other crimes
were also gradually opened up to questions about the character and the state of the
criminal’s mind. It was then only a short step to the concept of ‘the criminal mind’. Also,
once we allow a form of insanity which manifests itself only in crime, we also create the
threat of the ‘dangerous individual’ – the individual who may suddenly erupt in a
transgression of the natural and legal orders. As psychiatry moves into the judicial
system, the courtroom moves into the community in an attempt to detect this threatening
pathology. As crime increasingly becomes interpreted as a function of personality,
character and mental states, we increasingly concern ourselves with the potential for
deviance among those who have not yet transgressed the legal order, but who may do so.
There is, the, a shift from the application of the legal penalty to the investigation and
treatment of personality, and an associated shift from the enforcement of legal rules to the
treatment of the community and its sources of delinquency. With the replacement of the
category of homicidal monomania by that of moral degeneracy, and subsequently the
replacement of this category by the study of the social pathology of delinquency, we have
gradually shifted from the rule of law to an obsession with the creation of a normal and
healthy population.
This shift has also brought about other curious consequences. The identification of
a category of madness manifested only in horrific crimes, and the associated lesson that
some crimes are too horrible to be performed by fully rational, psychologically normal
agents, gave rise to interpretations of cause, action and responsibility which still
dominate judicial practice, despite the fact that they are fundamentally flawed. We have
adopted a conception of responsibility for action which not only presupposes the
existence of an unclouded consciousness, but also fixes on the rational intelligibility of the
ct and makes reference to the conduct, character and antecedents of the individual. We
have also accepted the axiom that only free acts can be punished – so, to be responsible
for an act, that act must have been free. Yet, paradoxically, the more psychologically
determined the act – that is, the more consistent it is with who and what the individual is:
the more legally responsible the actor is held; while the more incomprehensible the act –
the more out of character and the less determined by motive or reason it is – the more it is
excused. Psychological determinism thus becomes the index both of legal freedom and of
legal and moral responsibility – while to act out of character is to act unfreely.The law
thus becomes fraught with recurrent problems of motives, reasons and causes. And at
the heart of the judicial process lies the belief that if an act is to be punishable it must be
free, yet if it is to be free it must be necessary! Out of this conceptual mélange has grown
the territory of the non:legal expert I the moral, social and psychological sciences who
scrutinizes character, consistency and personality, who regulates the application of
punishment and who exercises the apparatus of social surveillance; the psychiatrist, the
probation officer, the welfare worker.
Foucault’s argument is that our contemporary classifications of delinquency,
indeed our entire way of thinking about crime and criminality, arise from a discursive
formation which involves us in a morass of confused conceptual commitments. He had
no special concern with the truth:values of individual statements to be found in
psychiatry and its associated disciplines. What interests him is the way in which
statements which are ‘true or false’ rest on a way of thinking about and reacting to
criminality, and that this way of thinking, contrary to its claims to scientific standing,
cannot be rationally justified. We also get a sense of why Foucault is concerned with the
functioning of power in modern society. Psychiatry and the other non:legal disciplines
which police normality within the social order form a disciplinary force which has
increasingly come to superintend the mores and life of our communities. But to
appreciate fully the thrust of Foucault’s argument we need to look in more detail at his
discussion of the power/knowledge relation.
Foucault’s view of power has changed since he first introduced the concept into
his analysis. Fortunately, his more recent statements have been much more clearly
formulated than his early comments (compare Foucault 1971, 1979 and 1982). He now
sees power as a relationship between individuals where one agent acts in a manner which
affects another’s actions. Power relationships are to be distinguished from relationships
based on consent or on violence – ‘which acts upon a body or upon things; it forces, it
bends, it breaks on the wheel, it destroys, or it closes the door on all possibilities’. So
power describes those relationships in which one against is able to get another to do what
he or she would not otherwise have done: it is always a way of acting upon an acting
subject or acting subjects by virtue of their being capable of action’. And power ‘is
exercised only over free subjects, and only in so far as they are free’. Power operates to
constrain or otherwise direct action in areas where there are a number of possible courses
of action open to the agents in question.
While much of what Foucault now says about power seems to fit comfortably
enough with much liberal ad radical thought, he departs from these standard accounts of
his discussions of the power/knowledge relation. Contrary to the liberal view that
power is essentially a force which impedes the development of knowledge by repression
and constraint, Foucault argues that power is an integral component in the production of
truth: ‘Truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power….Truth is a thing of this world: it is
produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces the regular
effects of power’. Thus, for example, the existence of the human sciences presupposes the
simultaneous existence of sets of power relations which have enabled their practitioners

to structure the fields of possibility within which criminals, madmen, the sick, the old, the
delinquent and the putatively normal have had to act. Through their power to put others
into action, these practitioners have been able to observe, order, classify, experiment with
and practice on these agents so as both to put their knowledge into practice, and to derive
further ‘knowledge’ from their practices. We might say that once psychiatry had gained
control of that esoteric class of agents classified as homicidal monomaniacs, they were
able, through experimentation and surveillance, to develop new concepts and categories
which were then taken back into the judicial arena and used to claim further areas and
subjects for practice. This is not to say that their demands were uncontroversial – indeed,
in these controversies we find specialists relying on their claims to specialized
knowledge. That is, their claims to knowledge were also claims to power – the two
become inextricably bound together.
We must also recognize that power, for Foucault, is not something delegated to the
human sciences from the body traditionally seen as the central repository of power – the
State. O the contrary, power is an inherent feature of social relations (because it must
exist whenever we can act in a manner which will affect the way that others act). Because
of this, power relations are always potentially unstable and potentially reversible.
However, while claiming that power relations are of this volatile form, Foucault goes
onto argue that in modern society the human sciences, through their claims to knowledge
and expertise, have transformed these unstable relations into general patterns of
domination. As he says, ‘We are subjected to the production of truth through power, and
we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth’. The modern State is
not simply the 18th century State plus the practices of the human sciences, which it has
seen fit to legitimate so as to extend its control over its population. On the contrary, the
human sciences grew out of Enlightenment demands for a rational order to governance:
an order founded on reason and norms of human functioning, rather than on State power
and the rule of law – and it was through the gradual growth and consolidation of their
knowledge and practices that they colonized, transformed, and greatly extended the
areas of State activity; with the result that State power mutated into its current
disciplinary and normalizing form. It is from the human sciences that we have derived a
conception of society as an organism which legitimately regulates its population and
seeks out signs of disease, disturbance and deviation so that they can be treated and
returned to normal functioning under the watchful eyes of one or other policing system.
State power, for Foucault, is the end point of analysis; it is built up from innumerable
individual exercises of power which are consolidated and co:ordinated by the
institutions, practices and knowledge claims of the ‘disciplines’. Without these
knowledge-claims the co:ordination of power relations into patterns of domination could
only be temporary and unstable. Once we recognize this, we can more easily see what
Foucault is trying to do in his accounts of these discourses.
Foucault describes his accounts as genealogies. Genealogy involves a painstaking
rediscovery of struggles, and attack on the tyranny of what he calls ‘totalizing
discourses’, and a rediscovery of fragmented, subjugated, local and specific knowledge.
It is directed against the great truths, great systems and great syntheses which mark the
power/knowledge matrix of the modern order. It aims to unmask the operation of
power in order to enable those who suffer from it to resist. The modern encoding of
power, in discourses which discipline their participating populations and impose norms
upon them, what is suppressed is local, differential knowledge – knowledge which is
incapable of unity because it expresses the specific experiences of individuals and
communities. Foucault gives voice to the anarchic urge, rather than to the urge for a new
system (which is why he distrusts Marxism). His support is lent to those who resist the
subjugating effects of power: those who, like some feminists, refuse to surrender their
bodies to the established practices of medicine; those who resist professionals’ attempts to
claim specialized knowledge (as in the anti:psychiatry movement); those who demand
the right to have a say in the manner of their death; those who resist ethnic, social,
religious, sexual or economic domination or exploitation; and those who resist the
identities imposed upon them by others – as women have begun to resist their subjection
to me, children to parents, the sick to doctors, ad as sections of the population have
resisted interferences in their lives and environment by central and local authorities.
These struggles are immediate responses to local and specific situations. Above all, they
spring from the sheer recalcitrance of individuals; and Foucault’s works are intended as a
stimulant to this recalcitrance: they attempt to offer new spaces for the emergence of
subjugated knowledge and for the organization of resistance.
But does this mean that Foucault wishes to liberate, for example, the
twentieth:century equivalents of Henriette Cornier and Catherine Ziegler? That he
helped establish and run prison groups in the early 1970s might suggest that this is so;
but his purpose is not quite so direct. His critique of the prison is meant to open up its
doors and allow the prisoner the right to be heard. The prison has not worked as
intended – no prison even approximates Bentham’s vision of, and hopes for, the
panopticon – and Foucault’s view is that it merely serves as a void into which to cast the
delinquent. The prison shuts the prisoner up (in both senses), and the resulting silence
allows the professionals to make what claims they like as to the curative process being
enacted. Foucault’s criticism is directed against these professional claims. His aim is not
a plan of reform but the liberation of the prisoners’ voices through the practice of
genealogical criticism:
If prisons and punitive mechanisms are transformed, it won’t be because a plan of
reform has found its way into the heads of the social workers; it will be when those who
have to do with that penal reality, all those people, have come into collision with each
other and with themselves, run into dead:ends, problems and impossibilities, been
through conflicts and confrontations; when critique has been played out in the real, not
when reformers have realized their ideals. Critique does not have to be the premise of a
deduction which concludes: this then is what needs to be done. It should be an
instrument for those who fight, those who refuse and resist what is. Its use should be in
processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. On the one hand then,
genealogy aims to stimulate the criticism and struggles which are suppressed by our
current penal discourse, where the prisoner’s only right is to obey the order of discipline.
But there is also another purpose to work. In many ways Foucault’s point in focusing our
attention on Ziegler or Cornier, or on the many comparable cases which appear in his
works, is not to denounce us for what we have done to them, but to show us what we
have done to ourselves by doing these things to them. To show, that is, that we have
made ourselves mad, sick and delinquent by seeking to treat the madness, sickness and
delinquencies of others. By directing our surveillance beneath the surface of events to the
hearts, minds and souls of the individuals before the bench, we have simultaneously
opened ourselves to that gaze and accepted our subjection to it. And genealogy above all
involves the repudiation of the truth:claims and the pretence of omniscience of the
disciplines which now watch over us.
At the heart of Foucault’s work lies the conviction that there is no constant human
subject to history – that there is no valid philosophical anthropology – and thus no basis
for claiming that we can identify a coherent and constant human ‘condition’ or ‘nature’.
Certainly, history does not reveal any such condition or nature. Nor is there any rational
course to history: there is no gradual triumph of human rationality over nature – our own
or otherwise –nor is there any over:arching purpose or goal to history (as Marx
supposed). So the study of history can offer us no constants, no comfort and no
consolation: history is both uncontrolled and directionless. In describing Nietzsche’s
historical work Foucault effectively describes his own: Effectively history differs from
traditional history inbeing without constants. Nothing in man – not even his body – is
sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for this self:recognition or for understanding other
men….History becomes effective to the degree that it introduces discontinuity into our
very being – as it divides our emotions, dramatizes our instincts, multiplies our body and
sets itself against itself.
The ‘course’ of history, the narrative of human agency from past to present, is an
illusion. Our past is always an invention of our present – and our present, it seems, must
always see itself as a peak preceded by the lowly foothills of our imagined past. Foucault
attacks this progressive view of history. Against order he sets haphazard conflicts –
against consensus, incessant struggle. There is and can be no end to struggle; individuals
remain caught in webs of contingency from which there is no escape because there is no
constant human nature, no essential human ‘being’ that can stand outside this web and
act to counterpoise this flux and impose a narrative order. Struggle is both demanded by
and is a condition of this pattern less process. It is necessary to avoid domination, and
yet it cannot guarantee liberation since the exercise of power over others is built on the
premise that the tables can always be turned, dissolved or reconstituted. History,
knowledge and the human subject are fundamentally rooted in contingency,
discontinuity and iniquitous origins. For Foucault, we are poor things, and rarely our
own.
Our criticism concerns Foucault’s abandonment of the human subject and his
attempt to stimulate resistance and struggle. The problem is to understand why people
should struggle and what they should struggle for. On Foucault’s account, the sheer
recalcitrance of individuals, what he calls their ‘agonism’ or thirst for struggle, ensures
that they will struggle; but he offers us no grounds for encouraging resistance, nor for
distinguishing between different struggles. To move from a claim that explains resistance
to a claim that justifies and encourages it in certain contexts requires that we make some
commitment to a conception of the human good, and this usually rests on some view of

human nature and human subjectivity. We cannot see how Foucault can avoid doing
something similar if he wishes to retain a critical dimension to his analysis – but doing so
clearly sits uncomfortably with his repudiation of the human subject and his denial of a
constant human nature. It is easy to see why Foucault does not want to talk about human
nature, but not doing so leaves him open to the charge that his perspective simply
encourages us to struggle for power regardless of how we wish to use it.
This criticism, and my earlier comments on Foucault’s account of truth, provides
typical examples of the way in which philosophical considerations are taken as decisive
in the evaluation of historical method or in social and political they. Yet these criticisms
do not stick easily to Foucault because it is precisely this view of philosophy which
Foucault attacks (and it is not at all clear what considerations can be taken as decisive
between conceptions of philosophy). Foucault’s philosophy is rooted in story:telling and
in action. His histories, he says, are fictions which seek to forge connections, establish
relationships and transgress the established order and unity of discourse. His intention is
to throw our assumptions and certainties into question; to allow variety and difference
their rightful place – a place obliterated by the subjugating sciences of man which have
grown up under the dogmatic ad scientific tutelage of Western metaphysics, and which
have established themselves as the agents of power within the modern State. It is, then,
difficult to criticize Foucault without associating oneself with the system which he attacks
– we either stand with him, or we stand condemned of subjugation. Yet it is possibly the
great strength of Foucault’s work that it makes neither course attractive: much of what he
says is sufficiently close to reality to be discomfiting, and yet his own view offers no
attractive certainties. If this is so, then Foucault has achieved his chief end, which he
describes as being:
EDWARD SAID’S ORIENTALISM
Orientalism is the 1978 book by Edward Said that has been highly influential in
post:colonial studies...In the book, Said says that Orientalism, especially the academic
study of, and discourse, political and literary, about the Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East
that primarily originated in England, France, and then the United States actually creates a
divide between the East and the West. Said summarized his work in these terms:"My
contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient
because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with
its weakness. . . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment,
will-to-truth, and knowledge". Said also wrote "My whole point about this system is not
that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental essence — in which I do not for a moment
believe:but that it operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a
tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting".
Principally a study of 19th:century literary discourse and strongly influenced by

the work of thinkers like Chomsky, Foucault and Gramsci, Said's work also engages
contemporary realities and has clear political implications as well. Orientalism is often
classed with post:modernist and post-colonial works that share various degrees of
skepticism about representation itself (although a few months before he died, Said said
he considers the book to be in the tradition of "humanistic critique" and the

Enlightenment).The book is divided into three chapters:
Chapter 1 : THE SCOPE OF ORIENTALISM
In this section Said outlines his argument with several caveats as to how it may be
flawed. He states that it fails to include Russian Orientalism and explicitly excludes
German Orientalism, which he suggests had "clean" pasts (Said 1978: 2&4), and could be
promising future studies. Said also suggests that not all academic discourse in the West
has to be Orientalist in its intent but much of it is. He also suggests that all cultures have a
view of other cultures that may be exotic and harmless to some extent, but it is not this
view that he argues against and when this view is taken by a militarily and economically
dominant culture against another it can lead to disastrous results.
Said draws on written and spoken historical commentary by such Western figures as
Arthur James Balfour, Napoleon,Causer,Shakespeare,Byron,Henry Kissinger, Dante and
others who all portray the "East" as being both "other" and "inferior."He also draws on
several European studies of the region by Orientalists including the Bibliotheque
Orientale by French author Barthelemy d’Herbelot de Molainville to illustrate the depth
of Orientalist discourse in European society and in their academic, literary and political
interiors.One apt representation Said gives is a poem by Victor Hugo titled "Lui" written
for Napoleon:
By the Nile I find him once again.

Egypt shines with the fires of his dawn;
His imperial orb rises in the Orient.
Victor, enthusiast, bursting with achievements,

Prodigious, he stunned the land of prodigies.
The old sheikhs venerated the young and prudent emir.
The people dreaded his unprecedented arms;
Sublime, he appeared to the dazzled tribes
Like a Mahomet of the Occident.
Chapter 2 : ORIENTALIST STRUCTURES AND RESTRUCTURES
In this chapter Said outlines how Orientalist discourse was transferred from
country to country and from political leader to author. He suggests that this discourse
was set up as a foundation for all (or most all) further study and discourse of the Orient
by the Occident. He states that: "The four elements I have described : expansion, historical
confrontation, sympathy, classification : are the currents in eighteenth:century thought on
whose presence the specific intellectual and institutional structures of modern
Orientalism depend”. Drawing heavily on 19th century European exploration by such

historical figures as Sir Richard Francis Burton and Chateaubriand, Said suggests that this
new discourse about the Orient was situated within the old one. Authors and scholars
such as Edward William Lane, who spent only two to three years in Egypt but came back
with an entire book about them (Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians) which
was widely circulated in Europe. Further travelers and academics of the East depended
on this discourse for their own education, and so the Orientalist discourse of the West
over the East was passed down through European writers and politicians (and therefore
through all Europe).
Chapter 3 : ORIENTALISM NOW

This chapter outlines where Orientalism has gone since the historical framework
Said outlined in previous chapters. The book was written in 1978 and so only covers
historical occurrences that happened up to that date. It is in this chapter that Said makes
his overall statement about cultural discourse: "How does one represent other cultures?
What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or
civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self:congratulation
(when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the
'other')?”While there is much criticism centered on Said's book, the author himself
repeatedly admits his study's shortcomings both in this chapter, chapter 1 and in his
introduction.
Influence
Orientalism is considered to be Edward Said's most influential work and has been
translated into at least 36 languages. It has been the focus of any number of controversies
and polemics, notably with Bernard Lewis, whose work is critiqued in the book's final
section, entitled "Orientalism Now: The Latest Phase." In October 2003, one month after
Said died, a commentator wrote in a Lebanese newspaper that through Orientalism
"Said's critics agree with his admirers that he has single:handedly effected a revolution in
Middle Eastern studies in the U.S." He cited a critic who claimed since the publication of
Orientalism "U.S. Middle Eastern Studies were taken over by Edward Said's postcolonial
studies paradigm". Even those who contest its conclusions and criticize its scholarship,
like George P. Landow of Brown University, call it "a major work." However, Orientalism
was not the first to produce of Western knowledge of the Orient and of Western
scholarship: "Abd:al:Rahman al Jabarti, the Egyptian chronicler and a witness to
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, for example, had no doubt that the expedition was
as much an epistemological as military conquest." Even in recent times the writings and
research of V.G. Kiernan, Bernard S. Cohn and Anwar Abdel Malek traced the relations
between European rule and representations.
Nevertheless, Orientalism is cited as a detailed and influential work within the
study of Orientalism. Anthropologist Talal Asad argued that Orientalism is “not only a
catalogue of Western prejudices about and misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims”.
but more so an investigation and analysis of the "authoritative structure of Orientalist
discourse – the closed, self:evident, self:confirming character of that distinctive discourse
which is reproduced again and again through scholarly texts, travelogues, literary works
of imagination, and the obiter dicta of public men [and women] of affairs." Indeed, the
book describes how "the hallowed image of the Orientalist as an austere figure
unconcerned with the world and immersed in the mystery of foreign scripts and
languages has acquired a dark hue as the murky business of ruling other peoples now
forms the essential and enabling background of his or her scholarship."
Criticism
In his book ‘Dangerous Knowledge’ British historian Robert Irwin criticizes what
he claims to be Said's thesis that throughout Europe’s history, “every European, in what
he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally
ethnocentric.” Irwin points out that long before notions like third:worldism and
post:colonialism entered academia, many Orientalists were committed advocates for
Arab and Islamic political causes.Goldziher backed the Urabi revolt against foreign
control of Egypt. The Cambridge Iranologist Edward Granville Browne became a
one:man lobby for Persian liberty during Iran’s constitutional revolution in the early 20th
century. Prince Leone Caetani, an Italian Islamicist, opposed his country’s occupation of
Libya, for which he was denounced as a “Turk.” And Louis Massignon may have been
the first Frenchman to take up the Palestinian Arab cause.
Another recent critical assessment of "Orientalism" and its reception across
disciplines is provided by anthropologist and historian Daniel Martin Varisco in his
"Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid". Using judicious satirical criticism to defuse
what has become an acrimonious debate; Varisco surveys the extensive criticism of Said's
methodology, including criticism of his use of Foucault and Gramsci, and argues that the
politics of polemics needs to be superseded to move academic discussion of real cultures
in the region once imagined as an "Orient" beyond the binary blame game. He concludes:
The notion of Oriental homogeneity will exist as long as prejudice serves political ends,
but to blame the sins of its current use on hegemonic intellectualism mires ongoing
mitigation of bad and biased scholarship in an unresolvable polemic of blame. It is time
to read beyond "Orientalism."
While acknowledging the great influence of Orientalism on postcolonial theory
since its publication in 1978, George P. Landow - a professor of English and Art History at
Brown University in the United States - finds Said's scholarship lacking. He chides Said
for ignoring the non:Arab Asian countries, non:Western imperialism, the Occidentalist
ideas that abound in East towards the Western, and gender issues. Orientalism assumes
that Western imperialism, Western psychological projection, "and its harmful political
consequences are something that only the West does to the East rather than something all
societies do to one another." Landow also finds Orientalism’s political focus harmful to
students of literature since it has led to the political study of literature at the expense of
philosophical, literary, and rhetorical issues. Landow points out that Said completely
ignores China, Japan, and South East Asia, in talking of "the East," but then goes on to
criticize the West’s homogenization of the East. Furthermore, Landow states that Said
failed to capture the essence of the Middle East, not least by overlooking important works
by Egyptian and Arabic scholars. In addition to poor knowledge about the history of
European and non:European imperialism, another of Landow’s criticisms is that Said sees
only the influence of the West on the East in colonialism. Landow argues that these
influences were not simply one:way, but cross:cultural and that Said fails to take into
account other societies or a factor within the East.He also criticizes Said’s "dramatic
assertion that no European or American scholar could `know` the Orient." However, in
his view what they have actually done constitutes acts of oppression .Moreover, one of
the principal claims made by Landow is that Said did not allow the views of other
scholars to feature in his analysis; therefore, he committed “the greatest single scholarly
sin” in Orientalism.
In his criticism of Orientalism, author Ibn Warraq complains Said's belief that all
truth was relative undermined his credibility. In response to critics who over the years
have pointed to errors of fact and detail so mountainous as to destroy his thesis, [Said]
finally admitted that he had "no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true
Orient and Islam really are." Other critics discuss Said’s background when considering
his point of view and his ability to give a balanced academic assessment of Orientalism.
Edward Said was born in the British Mandate of Palestine to a wealthy family who sent
him to the Anglican school of St George in Jerusalem then to Victoria College in Cairo
which Said himself referred to as “designed by the British to bring up a generation of
Arabs with natural ties to Britain.” After studying at Victoria College he went to live in
America at the age of 15 and then went on to study at numerous academic institutions,
and critics cite this as placing him outside the issues he writes about in his book. Edward
Said had an exceptionally privileged upbringing from a financial perspective financed by
his father whom Said described as “overbearing and uncommunicative” in his book “Out
of Place” (1999). This upbringing would place Said in the “system” that forms much of
the focus of his book and which depicts Orientalism as facilitator of British and French
white man’s burden in the Arab world.
CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION
'Democracy', as Winston Churchill, famously said: "is the worst form of government,
except for all the others". It would of course be much better if we, ordinary myopic
citizens, would delegate our lives to the care of our betters and elders. But these
super:lucid caretakers seem to have disappeared in the turmoil of the last century,
together with the dream of a superior caste, superior avant:garde, superior science of
history. Recently, even confidence in the benevolent invisible hand of superhumanly wise
market forces has waned somewhat. Of course, it would be much more comfortable if we
could still confide our biology, our ecology, our industry, our computers, our economies
and our politics to scientists and engineers who know better and see farther. But the
sciences that were part of the solution have become one after the other, part of the
problem. The objects of science and technology have become so controversial and so
entangled that the delegation of power to experts appears no easier than the older
delegation of power to members of parliament. This is has been diagnosed as the 'crisis
of representation'.

CRITIQUE OF EUROCENTRISM
The critique of Euro centrism has gone through several rounds. The first round
was primarily a critique of Orientalism. Edward Said and Martin Bernal, among others
focused on cultural bias and racism in Eurocentric history. Others addressed Eurocentric
biases in development thinking (Samir Amin, Paul Bairoch, Stavrianos) and
historiography (Eric Wolf, James Blaut, Jack Goody).In the second round, history from
the viewpoint of the global South such as Subaltern Studies in India and revisionist
history of Africa contributed different Perspectives. In addition, global history generated
critical historical studies that document the significance of in particular Asia and the
Middle East in the making of the global economy and world society. Janet Abu:Lughod
focused on the Middle East, Marshall Hodgson on the world of Islam, K. N. Chauduri on
South Asia, Andre Gunder Frank on East and South Asia, Kenneth Pomeranz, Robert
Temple and Bin Wong on China, Eric Jones on Japan, and Anthony Reid on Southeast
Asia along with many other studies. This body of work not merely Critiques but
overturns conventional Eurocentric perspectives and implies a Profound rethinking of
world history that holds major implications for social Science and development studies.
These studies break the mold of Eurocentric globalization that dominates the
globalization literature. Eurocentric globalization is geographically centered on the West
and preoccupied with recent history: post:war (in most economics, political science,
international relations and cultural studies), post:1800 (most sociology), or post:1500
(Marxist political economy and world system theory). In history curricula the latter
periods figure as the ‘modern’ and ‘early modern eras. In this view, the radius of
globalization is typically if not invariably from the West outward. The oriental
globalization literature adopts a longer time frame and reverses this relationship: the
radius is principally from the East outward.
Oriental globalization past
Arguably, the recent global history literature converges on a single major thesis:
the Orient came first and the Occident was a latecomer. Andre Gunder Frank.sRe Orient
settles on 1400:1800 as the time of ‘Asian hegemony. ‘The two major regions that were
most .central. To the world economy was India and China.
This centrality was based on ‘greater absolute and relative productivity in
industry, agriculture, (water) transport, and trade. And was reflected in their favorable
balance of trade, particularly of China.Pomeranz.s The Great Divergence offers meticulous
comparisons of developments in China and Britain that confirm this thesis and argues
that the great divergence of Europe from the rest of the world is a myth. Geoffrey Gunn
draws attention to exchanges between Southeast Asia and Europe from the 16th century
onward as part of ‘first globalization. While A. G. Hopkins. and John Hobson synthesize
this literature. In general outline the Orient first thesis runs as follows. Global connections
may go back to 3500 BCE or earlier still, but 500 CE may rank as the start of oriental
globalization and 600 as the beginning of the big expansion of global trade. This timing is
based on the revival of camel transport between 300and 500. At the time the global
economy was centered on the Middle East with Mecca as a global trade hub. For instance,

in 875 Baghdad ranked as a ‘waterfront to the world linked to China .Other sources
concur:’ Around 900 C.E. ibn Khordãdbeh, postmaster of the Arab province of al:Jabil in
Persia, compiled his eight:volume Book of the Roads and Countries as a guide for the postal
system. He described roads and sea routes as far as Korea, giving detailed directions,
distances, weather conditions, and road security. The Middle East remained the ‘Bridge
of the World. Through the second millennium, but by 1100 (or later, by some accounts)
the leading edge of accumulation shifted to China, where it remained until well into the
19th century. According to Hobson, in China’s ‘first industrial miracle. ‘Many of the
characteristics that we associate with the 18th century British industrial
Revolution had emerged by 1100, with major advances in iron and steel
production, agriculture, shipping and military capabilities. From Japan to the Middle
East, the East was the early developer. Far ahead of Europe in agriculture, industry,
urbanization, trade networks, credit institutions and state institutions. Many historians
concur that ‘none of the major players in the world economy at any point before 1800 was
European. Europe was not only a late developer, but Eastern ideas and technologies
enabled European feudalism, the financial revolution in medieval Italy and the
Renaissance: ‘oriental globalization was the midwife, if not the mother, of the Medieval
and modern West. This much had been established in studies of science and technology,
as in the work of Needham andGoonatilake .The profound influence of the Islamic world
on the European Renaissance is on record as well. Many studies such as Donald Lach on
the role of Asia in the making of Europe document the Asian influences on Europe and
the Enlightenment.
What the recent studies add to this picture is an emphasis on political economy
and economic institutions. In Marshall Hodgson.s words, the Occident was ‘the
unconscious heir of the industrial revolution of Sung China. Hobson dates China. Central
role earlier, to about 1100, and extends it later than Andre Gunder Frankdoes.In shares of
world manufacturing output, according to Hobson, China outstripped Britain until 1860
and ‘the Indian share was higher than the whole of Europe’s in 1750 and was 85 percent
higher than Britain’s as late as 1830. In terms of GNP the West only caught up with the
East by 1870; in terms of per capita income, a less representative measure, the West
caught up by 1800. We can discuss three specific critiques of Euro centrism that the recent
studies contribute and then give an assessment of this literature. One of the cornerstones
of Euro centrism is the idea that in the 15th century after the return of Zheng. His naval
expeditions China turned away from maritime trade and that this caused its gradual
decline and opened the way for the expansion of European trade in Asia. The revisionist
literature argues that the closure of China (and also Japan) is a myth and the diagnosis of
decline is likewise mistaken. It is true that China did not choose for the path of maritime
expansion or empire, but western historians have mistaken the official Chinese imperial
legitimation policy of upholding the Confucian ideal and condemning foreign trade with
the actual trade relations, which continued and flourished. That China remained the
world’s leading trading power shows in the ‘global silver recycling process, in which
‘most of the world’s silver was sucked into China.

Another cornerstone of Euro centrism is Oriental despotism (and variations such

as Weber’s patrimonialism). In contrast, the revisionist literature argues that states such
as China and Japan had at an early stage achieved ‘rational. Institutions including a
‘rational:legal, centralized bureaucracy, minimalist orlaissez faire policies in relation to
the economy and democratic propensities, while the European states during the
1500:1900 ‘breakthrough period were far less rational, more interventionist and
protectionist, and less democratic:’ 18th century China (and perhaps Japan as well)
actually came closer to resembling the neoclassical ideal of a market economy than did
Europe. Light taxation and laissez faire attitudes to enterprise were common in the East
long before the West, and throughout the period of comparison trade tariffs were
consistently far higher in the West than in the East, which shows that the Oriental
despotism thesis is faulty. A centerpiece of Euro centrism is the judgment that other
cultures lacked the European commitment to enterprise and accumulation. Weber
highlighted the Protestant ethic and described Islam and Confucianism as obstacles to
modern development. But many observers since then have noted the origins of Islam
amid a trading culture and the penchant for commerce in the Islamic world .Viewing
Confucianism as an obstacle to development involves historical ironies too: what ranked
as an obstacle in the early twentieth century was recast in the late 20th century as the
Confucian ethic hypothesis to account for the rise of the Asian Tigers. An additional irony
is the influence of Confucianism on European thinking. That behind Adam Smith stood
Francois Quesnay and the Physiocrats is a familiar point; but the Physiocrats. Critique of
mercantilism was inspired by Chinese policies and the philosophy of wu:wei or
non:intervention, which goes back to well before the Common Era. Thus, Confucius (or
rather, a European version of Confucius)ranks as a patron saint of the Enlightenment.
What is the significance and status of the oriental globalization literature at this
stage? There are echoes of dependency theory in this body of work for if it was not
European genius or other endogenous factors that turned the tide, the role:played by
colonialism and imperialism in changing the global equation must be larger than is
acknowledged in Eurocentric perspectives. One thinks of Eric Williams’ work on slavery,
Walter Rodney on Africa and other studies. But recent global history generally interprets
the nineteenth century advance of the West in terms of wider combinations of geography
and history. Dependency theory was structuralist, while the recent revisionist history
rejects a global structural approach (such as world system theory) and reckons with
contingency and devotes attention to agency and identity formation: ‘material power in
general and great power in particular, are channeled in different directions depending on
the specific identity of the agent. Dependency thinking came out of the era of
decolonization, while the allegiance of revisionist history is to global history rather than
to history viewed through the lens of a particular region and time period. It looks past
Fernand Braudel.s ‘Mediterranean world. and past world:system theory and its
preoccupation with the Low Countries and the Baltic, to wider horizons in the tradition
of Philip Curtin’s work and William McNeill’s global history. This literature is part of a
wider literature that situates globalization in the longue durée. At times there is a
rhetorical surcharge to this literature, which reflects its character as a polemical position.
This comes across in a recurrent problem: though the portée of its findings is that the

East:West divergence is a fiction and is really a continuum, at times the oriental

globalization literature reverses the current of Euro centrism by centering the East and
marginalizing the West, thus replaying East:West binaries in reverse. Addressing this
problem and taking global history beyond East:West binaries is the thrust of other
studies. The oriental globalization literature is uneven in that it represents a kind of
retroactive Sino centrism and Indocentrism. For various reasons China, India and the
Middle East have been more extensively studied and are more salient than other areas.
There is frequent mention of the ‘Afro:Asian global economy. But the African part
remains sketchier than the Asian side. Also Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Mongol
Empire often fall between the cracks of the world major zones. The oriental globalization
thesis needs to integrate finer grained regional histories. Janet Abu:Lughod also suggests
triangulation with local histories, but notes ‘We can never stand at some Archimedean
point outside our cultures and outside our locations in space and time. No matter how
outré we attempt to be, our vision is also distorted..It is interesting to note how the
paradigms of the present are the lenses through which history is read and re:read. 18th
century Europeans admired China for its ‘enlightened despotism. While in twenty:first
century accounts what matters is ‘rational institutions and laissez:faire economic policies,
thus echoing the current status of rational choice and neoclassical economics.
While the oriental globalization literature has grown rapidly and is increasingly
substantial, it is by no means dominant. Mainstream thinking continues to view the West
as the early developer and the East and the global South as laggards or upstarts. At the
turn of the millennium following the Soviet demise, the Asian crisis and neoconservative
belligerence in Washington. American triumphalism, though increasingly hollow, sets the
tone as part of an entrenched ‘intellectual apartheid regime..The Washington consensus is
as steeped in Orientalist stereotypes and historical myopia as the neoconservative
mission to bring freedom and democracy to the world. Eurocentric economic history à la
David Landes (The Wealth and Poverty of Nations) and Roberts (Triumph of the West)
rhymes with Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations, Bernard Lewis’s account of Islam
(What Went Wrong?), Fukuyama.s ideological history (The End of History) and
Mandelbaum (The Ideas that Conquered the World). A general mindset of western
triumphalism informs IMF and World Bank policies (economics without history, without
anthropology) as well as American aspirations in the Middle East (politics without
memory), as if development and democracy are virtues that the West chanced upon first
and only. Besides the usual ignorance and arrogance, there is something deceptive about
Euro centrism:as:policy, a trait that Ha:Joon Chang summed up as kicking Away the
Ladder. In the nineteenth century free trade was used as a means todeindustrialize
colonial economy and now WTO statutes and free trade agreements that uphold the
intellectual property rights of multinational corporations seek to short:circuit
industrialization in the global South. In this regime of truth institutionalized amnesia and
intellectual apartheid serve as instruments of power. As the oriental globalization
literature overtakes the indulgent west:centric view of globalization, perhaps the global
realignments that are now gradually taking shape will also catch up with the material
side and the political economy of American supremacism. This diagnosis of the ‘global
confluence arrives on the scene at the time that China, India and East Asia are reemerging

as major forces in the global economy; historiography catches up with the present just
when the present is coming full circle with past trends in the world economy. But a
synthesis that is yet to take shape is that of the historical oriental globalization thesis with
the cutting edge of contemporary globalization in the making.
Oriental globalization present
‘We have had a couple of hundred bad years, but now we.re back. Globalization
isn’t what it used to be. Paul Kennedy noted, ‘we can no more stop the rise of Asia than
we can stop the winter snows and the summer heat. According to cautious IMF estimates,
China’s GDP is likely to pass that of Japan around 2016 and approach the size of the US
by 2040, or earlier in terms of its domestic purchasing power. The Indian economy is also
moving ahead swiftly. In a structural fashion economic advantages are moving east and
to newly industrializing societies. Asian demographics include young populations.
Unlike in Europe, the US and Japan. With great social densities and fast rising levels of
education, growing technological capabilities and rising levels of development. Other
variables in the rise of Asia are geographic proximities and what Abdel:Malek calls ‘the
depth of the historical field.. At times there is mention of the possibility of hegemonic
rivalry and American military intervention; but let’s note that these are generally not
variables that are amenable to geopolitical intervention. A different global equation is in
the making and Asia plays a central role in this along with the emerging BRIC countries,
including Brazil and Russia, countries such as South Africa and the wider radius of
oriental globalization. The question we want to ask is what is the relationship between
oriental globalization past and present. To what extent and in which ways does oriental
globalization in the past form the basis of, shape and inform oriental globalization in the
present? To what extent and in what sense is the rise of Asia not just a rise but a
comeback? This is a question of limited status for obviously the discontinuities are as
interesting as the continuities. New patterns, combinations and hybridities arising from
the interactions with western societies and the adoption of new technologies are as
interesting as continuities with the past. Yet they are also enabled by continuities with the
past, so there is merit to raising this question. With respect to culture and civilization,
continuities between oriental globalization past and present are commonly recognized.
Confucianism in the circle of Sinic influence and the idea of a neo:Confucian ethic are part
of this. The Teen Murti School in New Delhi has been concerned with Indic civilization
rather than just India. Continuities with regard to nationhood and states are also widely
recognized. China ranks among the ‘continuous nations with a national identity and state
existence stretching back to well before the Common Era. Besides these fairly common
points of reference, we can consider the role of trade routes and migrations and
Diasporas. These are brief notes, pending the patient revisiting of regional histories,
focusing on Asia rather than on the wider radius of oriental globalization.
This kind of inquiry is not uncommon. In the Annales School and Braudel.swork
the longue durée refers to long:term structural and institutional changes. Evolutionary
economics and institutional economics address institutional legacies as part of economic
dynamics; a strong instance of this is path dependence. Robert Putnam argues that the
success of administrative decentralization in northern Italy and its failure in southern

Italy since the 1970s was in large measure attributable to the history from medieval times
onward of city states in the North in contrast to kingdoms in the south and other forms of
governance that involved less civic allegiance. Thus, configurations going back to
medieval and Renaissance times account for contemporary dynamics even though other
political and economic configurations have intervened. State capability and
‘bureaucratically coordinated capitalism is widely recognized as a crucial component in
the rise of East Asia. Dedicated public service and skillful civil servants cannot be fully
understood without the long legacy of political Confucianism. In language, culture and
arts, the civilizational interconnections persist. The Indo:European languages are a case in
point .History is part of the cultural and institutional capital of nations. The theme of
continuity is well on the map in Asia and overseas. References to the depth of civilization
and the interspersion of the traditional and the modern, and the idea that the rise of Asia
is a Renaissance (Ibrahim 1996) are common. These continuities are symbolically
acknowledged or intimated in the recurrent use of the Silk Routes metaphor, which is
often more than a metaphor and also a memory and a future project. ‘From silk to oil is a
recurrent motif and both center on Eurasia and Central Asia. At the opening ceremony of
the new oil pipe line from Baku at the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan at the Mediterranean in
May 2005, the President of Turkey said ‘This is the Silk Road of the 21st century. The
Asia:Europe intergovernmental meetings have also been viewed as ‘new Silk Routes. The
‘new Silk Roads images that reinvoke historic continuities and geographic contiguities
remind us that the links of past times ramified widely and that the ripples of past waves
of globalization still linger. Traces of old accumulation treasure and savvy persist in
collective memory, circumstances and artifacts. In many places the remnants of old trade
infrastructures and institutions still exist and at times the new trades reactivate ancient
trade routes and old nodal points. From Kaifeng in China to Damascus and Istanbul,
remnants of the Silk Roads still exist: the actual roads and ports, the caravanserais, the
ruins or remains of forts, palaces and temples. Through most of Asia and the Middle East,
as in much of Europe, the physical traces of thousands years past, are just around the
Corner. The current industrial and commercial buzz in Asia has been foreshadowed in
the great Asian bazaar of old times. The industriousness and savvy of Asian markets,
abuzz with merchants and workshops, trade emporia and far flung trade networks, is
part of a deep infrastructure of social densities that predates capitalism. Migration and
Diaspora routes serve as two:way carriers of knowledge and technology, language, skills,
goods and investments. They also play major role in Asia’s resurgence. In China’s rapid
rise as an industrial exporter, investments by the Chinese Diaspora from the Pacific Rim
back into the mainland play significant part, notably from Taiwan. In India, the role of
the NRIs or non:resident Indians as investors and intellectual and social capital is also
rapidly growing and actively courted. These relations reactivate old migration links that
wire Asian countries with worldwide links. Scholars and entrepreneurs in India are
rediscovering their many civilization land economic links with the Arab world and with
Persia and Central Asia. The trails of the Mughals and the Parsi traders were two:way
routes then and may be so again. India now seeks to reestablish its links with Central
Asia as an avenue of commerce and energy supplies. In mapping the Southwest Silk
Road, Bin Yang discusses the ancient confluence of China, India and Persia in trading and

civilizational networks. The ancient trading links between Yunnan, Burma and India go
back to200 BCE. Routes of trade and migration between China and Southeast Asia also
have great historical depth and carry over into present times (e.g. Yamashita and Eades
2003). Xiangming Chen focuses on the role of cross border and regional social capital in
Asian economies and maps processes of de:bordering and re:bordering over time. He
traces trade and migration routes back to the seventeenth century and finds that some
areas of high activity in the past such as the Pearl River delta are active also now. These
inquiries show that cultural and economic efflorescence, past and present, has been
typically a cross border or regional phenomenon. Yet most history, particularly since the
nineteenth century, is the history of nation states and statistics record data primarily in
nation state units.
Arif Dirlik criticizes Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations. Thesis and
contends that the tensions refer instead to capitalist competition between different
cultural centers. Dirlik.s view is certainly more pertinent than that of Huntington; but it
invites two qualifications. One is obvious; of course the relations are not just those of
rivalry but also of collaboration. The second is that capitalism and capitalist rivalry
themselves are categories with limited or contingent explanatory validity. Andre Gunder
Frank.s historical work eventually led him to look beyond capitalism as a central
explanatory category: Far from arguing that capitalism is five thousand years old, we
suggest that we should dare to abandon our belief in capitalism as a distinct mode of
production and separate system. Why? Because too many big patterns in world history
appear to transcend or persist despite all apparent alterations in the mode of production.
It therefore cannot be the mode of production that determines overall development
patterns. World history since 1500 may be less adequately defined by capitalism than by
shifts in trade routes, centers of accumulation, and the existence/ nonexistence and
location of hegemonic power. Earlier we noted that ‘This implies a profound challenge to
critical political economy; it suggests that many explanations that are held to be
fundamental are in fact conjectural and reflect not just limitations of geography but also
limitations of the time frame. Global political economy may overcome the limitations of
geography, but the limitations of time are of a different order; it makes a profound
difference whether the time frame of explanation is from 1800or from 1000 BCE or 500
CE.The study of oriental globalization past and present shows that in economics and
technology just as in culture and civilization, the taken for granted units of analysis. such
as nation states, capitalism are but provisional approximations, conceptual conventions
that in seeking to map the ebb and flow in time and space may lead us astray as much as
guide us. It is not surprising that history of the longue durée should unsettle our analytical
categories, such as the nation state and capitalism, for concepts are embedded in time.
Decolonization involves epistemic decolonization (‘emancipate yourself from
mental slavery.) and the decolonization of imagination. It is interesting that the road to
epistemic emancipation runs as often via history as via theory. The idea of regional
technological independence, past or present, is probably a fiction. Silk production was
exported from China to the Ottoman Empire and Europe, porcelain making traveled from
China to Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.(Witness Delft, Wedgwood, Sèvres),
Chinese agricultural technologies revolutionized English agriculture, and Indian textile
crafts imbued British textile production (as in Paisley, Scotland). In the late nineteenth
and 20th centuries, industrial skills and technologies journeyed from West to East. In the
late:20th and 21st centuries, Asian technologies travel West again (such as Japanese
Toyotism and Indian software). This back and forth motion of technologies and the
overlaps between old and new routes of trade and migration in the longue durée suggest
underlying affinities. Between oriental globalization in the past and the present, oriental
globalization has circled the globe. Eurasia was part of the terrain that was traversed and
Eurasia makes a come:back in the present, in discussions of capitalisms and
Asian:European dialogue. Seen from the viewpoint of oriental globalization past and
present, European development, Euro centrism and occidental globalization appear as
episodes and phases in a much wider multicentric global process.
HAYDEN WHITE AND META HISTORY

Major Publications:
 Metahistory: The Historical imagination in Nineteenth:Century Europe, Johns
Hopkins UP, 1973.
 Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.
 The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Johns
Hopkins UP, 1987.
 Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect, Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.
Theories of Historiography
Metahistory
In his book Meta History, White suggests that historical discourse is a form of
fiction writing that can be classified and studied on the basis of its structure and its
language. To White, modern history texts are anything but objective and accurate
representations of the past. Historians and philosophers, White believes, operate under
vague assumptions in arranging, selecting, and interpreting events: “Historiography is an
especially good ground on which to consider the nature of narration and narrativity
because it is here that our desire for the imaginary, the possible, must contest with the
imperatives of the real, the actual. If we view narration and narrativity as the instruments
with which the conflicting claims of the imaginary and the real are mediated, arbitrated,
or resolved in a discourse, we begin to comprehend both the appeal of the narrative and
the grounds for refusing it” (The Content of the Form 4).
The term “metahistory” has largely been associated with White. In general,
Metahistory is the philosophy of history, and it examines the various principles giving
rise to the notion of historical progression and the narratives that describe it. White sees
metahistory as a term and as a form of writing that is similar to metafiction and
metanarrative, and that objective history is impossible.

The Problem of Historiographical Styles
In Metahistory, pages 5 – 38, White states that historical discourse can be classified
in literary, argumentative, ideological, and language categories:
EMPLOYMENT ARGUMENT IDEOLOGY TROPES
Romantic Formist Anarchist Metaphor

Tragic Mechanistic Radical Metonomy
Comic Organicist Conservative Synecdoche
Satirical Contextualist Liberal Irony
Employment : Historians combine numerous brief stories into the “completed story” and
use various plot techniques.
 Romance : Drama of the triumph of good over evil, virtue over vice, light over
dark, and of the ultimate transcendence of man over the world.
 Tragic : No festive occasions. Man is enmeshed in a struggle that ultimately results

in the resignation of men to the conditions under which they must labor in the
world.
 Comic : Hope is held out for the temporary triumph of man over his world.
Comic history used festive occasions to terminate his dramatic accounts of change
and transformation.
 Satire : Man is a captive of the world rather than its master, and that the human
consciousness is inadequate in overcoming the dark force of death.
Argument : Four paradigms that account for the different notions of the nature of
historical reality.
 Formist : A historian who classifies or identifies objects or events
 Mechanistic: Believes that objects and events belong to set classes or phenomenon.
 Organicist : Reduces all objects or events to parts of a larger process.
 Contextualist : Reveals the relations of any specific event to other events of the
same time period in order to explain it.
Ideology : “The ideological dimensions of a historical account reflect the ethical element
of the historian’s assumptions of a particular position on the question of the nature of
historical knowledge and the implications that can be drawn from the study of past

events for the understanding of present ones”. Anarchist: Belief in the necessity of
structural transformations by abolishing society and substituting it with a community.
 Radical : Reconstituting society on new bases.
 Conservative: Sees historical evolution as a progressive elaboration on the

institutional structure that currently prevails.
 Liberal : Seeing a Utopian society in the distant future and trying to realize it.
Tropes : The use of the poetic language by historians to imagine and construct a
particular history.
EMPLOYMENT ARGUMENT IDEOLOGY TROPES
Romantic Formist Anarchist Metaphor

Tragic Mechanistic Radical Metonomy
Comic Organicist Conservative Synecdoche
Satirical Contextualist Liberal Irony

CHAPTER : V
EPISTEMOLOGY
Epistemology (from Greek : episteme:, “knowledge, Science” + “logos”) or theory of
knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations)
of knowledge. It addresses the questions:
 What is knowledge?
 How is knowledge acquired?
 What do people know?
 How do we know? what we know?
Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and
how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with
the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge
claims. The term was introduced into English by the Scottish philosopher James
Frederick Ferrier (1808 – 1864)
Knowledge
Distinguishing knowing that from knowing how
Epistemology the kind of knowledge usually discussed is prepositional
knowledge, also known as “knowledge:that” as opposed to “knowledge:how”. For
example; in mathematics, it is known that 2 + 2 = 4, but there also knows how to add two
numbers. Many (but not all) philosophers therefore think there is an important
distinction between “knowing that” and “knowing how”, with epistemology primarily
interested in the former. This distinction is recognized linguistically in many languages,
though not in modern Standard English (N.B. some languages related to English still do
retain these verbs, as in Scots: “wit” and “ken”).In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polany
articulates a case for the epistemological relevance of both forms of knowledge; using the
example of the act of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical
knowledge of the physics involved in maintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for
the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important to understand how both
are established and grounded.
In recent times, some epistemologists (Sosa, Greco, Kvanvig, and Zagzebski) have
argued that we should not think of knowledge this way. Epistemology should evaluate
people’s properties (i.e., intellectual virtues) instead of propositions’ properties. This is, in
short, because higher forms of cognitive success (i.e. understanding) involve features that
can’t be evaluated from a justified true belief view of knowledge.
Belief
Often, statements of “belief” mean that the speaker predicts something that will
prove to be useful or successful in some sense – perhaps the speaker might “believe in”
his or her favorite football team. This is not the kind of belief usually addressed within

epistemology. The kind that is dealt with is when “to believe something” simply means
any cognitive content held as true. For example, to believe that the sky is blue is to think
that the proposition “The sky is blue” is true. Knowledge entails belief, so the statement,
“I know the sky is blue, but I don’t believe it”, is self:contradictory. On the other hand,
knowledge about a belief does not entail an endorsement of its truth. For example, “I
know about astrology, but I don’t believe in it” is perfectly acceptable. It is also possible
that someone believes in astrology but knows virtually nothing about it. Belief is a
subjective personal basis for individual behaviour, while truth is an objective state
independent of the individual. On occasion, knowledge and belief can conflict producing
“cognitive dissonance”.
■ Belief ■ Certainty ■ Determinism ■ Doubt
■Epistemology ■ Justification ■ Estimation ■ Fallibilism
■ Fatalism ■ Nihilism ■ Probability ■Solipsism ■Uncertainty
Truth
Whether someone’s belief is true is not a prerequisite for someone to believe it. On
the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. For
example, a person believes that a particular bridge is safe enough to support them, and
attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under their weight. It could be
said that they believed that the bridge was safe, but that this belief was mistaken. It
would not be accurate to say that they knew that the bridge was sage, because plainly it
was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported their weight then they might be
justified in subsequently holding that he knew the bridge had been safe enough for his
passage, at least at that particular time. For something to count as knowledge, it must
actually be true. There is a sense that makes us feel that the truth should command our
belief. The Aristotelian definition of truth states: “To say of something which is that it is
not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something
which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true”.
Justification : Plato
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates considers a number of theories as to what

knowledge is, the last being that knowledge is true belief that has been “given an account
of” – meaning explained or defined in some way. According to the theory that
knowledge is justified true belief, in order to know that a given proposition is true, one
must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but one must also have a good reason
for doing so. One implication of this would be that no one would gain knowledge just by
believing something that happened to be true. For example, an ill person with no medical
training, but a generally optimistic attitude, might believe that they will recover from
their illness quickly. Nevertheless, even if this belief turned out to be true, the patient
would not have known that they would get well since their belief lacked justification. The
definition of knowledge as justified true belief was widely accepted until the 1960s. At

this time, a paper written by the American philosopher Edmund Gettier provoked
widespread discussion. See theories of justification for other views on the idea.
The Gettier problem.
In 1963 Edmund Gettier called into question the theory of knowledge that had
been dominant among philosophers for thousands of years. In a few pages, Gettier
argued that there are situations in which one’s belief may be justified and true, yet fail to
count as knowledge. That is, Gettier contended that while justified belief in a proposition
is necessary for that proposition to be known, it is not sufficient. As in the diagram above,
a true proposition can be believed by an individual (purple region) but still not fall within
the “knowledge” category (yellow region).
According to Gettier, there are certain circumstances in which one does not have
knowledge, even when all of the above conditions are met.Gettier proposed two thought
experiments, which have come to be known as “Gettier cases”, as counterexamples to the
classical account of knowledge. One of the cases involves two men, Smith and Jones, who
are awaiting the results of their applications for the same job. Each man has ten coins in
his pocket. Smith has excellent reasons to believe that Jones will get the job and,
furthermore, knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (he recently counted them).
From this Smith infers, “the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket”.
However, Smith is unaware that he has ten coins in his own pocket. Furthermore, Smith,
not Jones, is going to get the job. While Smith has strong evidence to believe that Jones
will get the job, he is wrong. Smith has a justified true belief that a man with ten coins in
his pocket will get the job; however, according to Gettier, Smith does not know that a
man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job, because Smith’s belief is”……true by
virtue of the number of coins in Smith’s pocket, while Smith does not know how many
coins are in Smith’s pocket, and bases his belief…..on a count of the coins in Jones’s
pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job”. These cases fail to
be knowledge because the subject’s belief is justified, but only happens to be true in
virtue of luck.
Responses to Gettier
The responses to Gettier have been varied. Usually, they have involved
substantive attempts to provide a definition of knowledge different from the classical
one, either by recasting knowledge as justified true belief with some additional fourth
condition, or as something else altogether.
Infallibilism and indefeasibility
In one response to Gettier, the American philosopher Richard Kirk ham has
argued that the only definition of knowledge that could ever be immune to all
counterexamples is the infallibilist one. To qualify as an item of knowledge, so the theory
goes, a belief must not only be true and justified, the justification of the belief must
necessitate its truth. In other words, the justification for the belief must be infallible. Yet
another possible candidate for the fourth condition of knowledge is indefeasibility.
Defeasibility theory maintains that there should be no overriding or defeating truths for
the reasons that justify one’s belief. For example, suppose that person Ѕ believes he saw
Tom Grabit steal a book from the library and uses this to justify the claim that Tom Grabit
stole a book from the library. A possible defeater or overriding proposition for such a
claim could be a true proposition like, “Tom Grabit’s identical twin Sam is currently in
the same town as Tom”. So long as no defeaters of one’s justification exist, a subject
would be epistemic ally justified.
The Indian philosopher B.K. Matilal has drawn on the Navya:Nyaya fallibilism
tradition to respond to the Gettier problem.Nyaya theory distinguishes between know p
and know that one knows p – these are different events, with different causal conditions.
The second level is a sort of implicit inference that usually follows immediately the
episode of knowing p (knowledge simpliciter).The Gettier case is analyzed by referring to
a view of Gangesha (13th c.), who takes any true belief to be knowledge; thus a true belief
acquired through a wrong route may just be regarded as knowledge simpliciter on this
view. The question of justification arises only at the second level, when one considers the
knowledge hood of the acquired belief. Initially, there is lack of uncertainty, so it
becomes a true belief. But at the very next moment, when the hearer is about to embark
upon the venture of knowing whether he knows p, doubts may arise. “If, in some
Gettier:like cases, I am wrong in my inference about the knowledge hood of the given
occur rent belief (for the evidence may be pseudo:evidence), then I am mistaken about the
truth of my belief – and this is in accord with Nyaya fallibilism: not all knowledge:claims
can be sustained”.
Reliabilism
Reliabilism is a theory that suggests a belief is justified (or otherwise supported in
such a way as to count towards knowledge) only if it is produced by processes that
typically yield a sufficiently high ratio of true to false beliefs. In other words, this theory
states that a true belief counts as knowledge only if it is produced by a reliable
belief:forming process. Reliabilism has been challenged by Gettier cases. Another
argument that challenges reliabilism, like the Gettier cases (although it was not presented
in the same short article as the Gettier cases), is the case of Henry and the barn façades.
In the thought experiment, a man, Henry, is driving along and sees a number of buildings
that resemble barns. Based on his perception of one of these, he concludes that he has just
seen barns. While he has seen one, and the perception he based his belief on was of a real
barn, all the other barn:like buildings he saw were façades. Theoretically, Henry doesn’t
know that he has seen a barn, despite both his belief that he has seen one being true and
his belief being formed on the basis of a reliable process (i.e. his vision), since he only
acquired his true belief by accident.
Other responses
The American philosopher Robert Nozick has offered the following definition of
knowledge:
Ѕ knows that P if and only if:
 P;

 Ѕ believes that P;
 If P were false, Ѕ would not believe that P;
 If P is true, Ѕ will believe that P.
Nozick believed that the third subjunctive condition served to address cases of the
sort described by Gettier.Nozick further claims this condition addresses a case of the sort
described by D.M. Armstrong; A father believes his son innocent of committing a
particular crime, both because of faith in his son and (now) because he has seen presented
in the courtroom a conclusive demonstration of his son’s innocence. His belief via the
method of the courtroom satisfied the four subjunctive conditions, but his faith:based
belief does not. If his son were guilty, he would still believe him innocent, on the basis of
faith in his son; this would violate the third subjunctive condition.
The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized this formulation by
suggesting that we do not want to accept as knowledge beliefs which, while they “track
the truth” (as Nozick’s account requires), are not held for appropriate reasons. He says
that “we do not want to award the title of knowing something to someone who is only
meeting the conditions through a defect, flaw, or failure, compared with someone else
who is not meeting the conditions”. In addition to this, externalist accounts of knowledge,
like Nozick’s, are often forced to reject closure in cases where it is intuitively valid.
Timothy Williamson has advanced a theory of knowledge according to which
knowledge is not justified true belief plus some extra condition(s).In his book Knowledge
and its Limits. Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be analyzed into
a set of other concepts – instead, it is Sui generis.Thus, though knowledge requires
justification, truth, and belief, the word “knowledge” can’t be, according to Williamson’s
theory, accurately regarded as simply shorthand for “justified true belief”.
Externalism and internalism
Part of the debate over the nature of knowledge is a debate between
epistemological externalists on the one hand, and epistemological internalists on the
other. Externalists think that factors deemed “external”, meaning outside of the
psychological states of those who gain knowledge, can be conditions of knowledge. For
example, an externalist response to the Gettier problem is to say that, in order for a
justified, true belief to count as knowledge, it must be caused, in the right sort of way, by
relevant facts. Such causation, to the extent that it is “outside” the mind, would count as
an external, knowledge:yielding condition. Internalists, contrariwise, claim that all
knowledge:yielding conditions are within the psychological states of those who gain
knowledge.
René Descartes, prominent philosopher and supporter of internalism wrote that,
since the only method by which we perceive the external worlds is through our senses,
and that, since the senses are not infallible, we should not consider our concept of
knowledge to be infallible. The only way to find anything that could be described as
“infallibly true”, he advocates, would be to pretend that an omnipotent, deceitful being is
tampering with one’s perception of the universe, and that the logical thing to do is to

question anything that involves the senses. “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) is
commonly associated with Descartes’ theory, because he postulated that the only thing
that he could not logically bring himself to doubt is his own existence: “I do not exist” is a
contradiction in terms; the act of saying that one does not exist assumes that someone
must be making the statement in the first place. Though Descartes could doubt his
senses, his body and the world around him, he could not deny his own existence, because
he was able to doubt and must exist in order to do so. Even if some “evil genius” were to
be deceiving him, he would have to exist in order to be deceived. However from this
Descartes did not go as far as to define what he was. This was pointed out by the
materialist philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592:1655) who accused Descartes of saying that
he was “not this and not that”, while never saying what exactly was existing. One could
argue that this is not an edifying question, because it doesn’t matter what exactly exists, it
only matters that it does indeed exist.
Acquiring knowledge
The second question that will be dealt with is the question of how knowledge is
acquired. This area of epistemology covers:
1. Issues concerning epistemic distinctions such as that between experience and apriori
as means of creating knowledge.
2. Further that between synthesis and analysis used as a means of proof
3. Debates such as the one between empiricists and rationalists.
4. What is called “the regress problem?”
A priori and a posteriori knowledge
The nature of this distinction has been disputed by various philosophers; however, the
terms may be roughly defined as follows:
 A priori knowledge is knowledge that is known independently of experience (that
is, it is non:empirical, or arrived at beforehand).
 A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that is known by experience (that is, it is
empirical, or arrived at afterward).
Analytic / synthetic distinction
Some propositions are such that we appear to be justified in believing them just so
far as we understand their meaning. For example, consider, “My father’s brother is my
uncle. “We seem to be justified in believing it to be true by virtue of our knowledge of
what its terms mean. Philosophers call such propositions “analytic”. Synthetic
propositions, on the other hand, have distinct subjects and predicates. An example of a
synthetic proposition would be, “My father’s brother had black hair”. Kant held that all
mathematical propositions are synthetic. The American philosopher W.V.O. quine, un his
‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism, “famously challenged the distinction, arguing that the two
have a blurry boundary.

Specific theories of knowledge acquisition

Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is generally a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role
of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the five senses.
Certain forms treat all knowledge as empirical, while some regard disciplines such as
mathematics, economics and logic as exceptions.
Rationalism
Rationalists believe that knowledge is primarily (at least in some areas) acquired
by a priori processes or is innate – for example, in the form of concepts not derived from
experience. The relevant theoretical processes often go by the name “intuition”. The
relevant theoretical concepts may purportedly be part of the structure of the human mind
(as in Kant’s theory of transcendental idealism), or they may be said to exist
independently of the mid (as in Plato’s theory of Forms).The extent to which this innate
human knowledge is emphasized over experience as a means to acquire knowledge
varies from rationalist to rationalist. Some hold that knowledge of any kind can only be
gained a priori, while others claim that some knowledge can also be gained a posteriori.
Consequently, the borderline between rationalist epistemologies and others can be vague.
Constructivism.
Constructivism is a view in philosophy according to which all knowledge is
“constructed” in as much as it is contingent on convention, human perception, and social
experience. Constructivism proposes new definitions for knowledge and truth that form a
new paradigm, based on inter:subjectivity instead of the classical objectivity, and on
viability instead of truth. Piagetian constructivism, however, believes in objectivity –
constructs can be validated through experimentation. The constructivist point of view of
pragmatic; as Vico said: “The norm of the truth is to have made it”. It originated in
sociology under the term “social constructionism” and has been given the name
“constructivism” when referring to philosophical epistemology; though
“constructionism” and “constructivism” is often used interchangeably. Constructivism
has also emerged in the field of International Relations, where the writings of Alexander
Wendt are popular. Describing the characteristic nature of International reality marked
by ‘anarchy’ he says, “Anarchy is what states make of it”.
The regress problem
Suppose we make a point of asking for a justification for every belief. Any given
justification will itself depend on another belief for its justification, so one can also
reasonably ask for this to be justified, and so forth. This appears to lead to an infinite
regress, with each belief justified by some further belief. The apparent impossibility of
completing an infinite chain in reasoning is thought by some to support skepticism. The
skeptic will argue that since no one can complete such a chain, ultimately no beliefs are
justified and, therefore, no one knows anything.” The only thing I know for sure is that I
do not know for sure”.

Response to the regress problem

Many epistemologists studying justification have attempted to argue for various
types of chains of reasoning that can escape the regress problem.
Infinitism
It is not impossible for an infinite justificatory series to exist. This position is
known as “infinitism”.Infinitists typically take the infinite series to be merely potential, in
the sense that an individual may have indefinitely many reasons available to him,
without having consciously thought through all of these reasons when the need arises.
This position is motivated in part by the desire to avoid what is seen as the arbitrariness
and circularity of its chief competitors, foundationalism and coherentism.
Foundationalism
Foundationalists respond to the regress problem by claiming that some beliefs that
support other beliefs do not themselves require justification by other beliefs. Sometimes,
these beliers, labeled “foundational”, are characterized as beliefs of whose truth one is
directly aware, or as beliefs that are self:justifying, or as beliefs that are infallible.
According to one particularly permissive form of foundationalism, a belief may count as
foundational, in the sense that it may be presumed true until defeating evidence appears,
as long as the belief seems to its believer to be true. Others have argued that a belief is
justified if it is based on perception or certain a priori considerations. The chief criticism
of foundationalism is that it allegedly leads to the arbitrary or unjustified acceptance of
certain beliefs.
Coherentism
Another response to the regress problem is coherentism, which is rejection of the
assumption that the regress proceeds according to a pattern of linear justification. To
avoid the charge of circularity, coherentists hold that an individual belief is justified
circularly by the way it fits together (coheres) with the rest of the belief system of which it
is a part. This theory has the advantage of avoiding the infinite regress without claiming
special, possibly arbitrary status for some particular class of beliefs. Yet, since a system
can be coherent while also being wrong, coherentists face the difficulty in ensuring that
the whole system corresponds to reality.
Foundherentism
There is also a position known as “foundherentism”. Susan Haack is the
philosopher, who conceived it, and it is meant to be a unification of foundationalism and
coherentism.One component of this theory is what is called the “analogy of the crossword
puzzle”. Whereas, say, infinists regard the regress of reasons as “shaped” like a single
line, Susan Haack has argued that it is more like a crossword puzzle, with multiple lines
mutually supporting each other.

What do people know?

The last question that will be dealt with is the question of what people know. At
the heart of this area of study is skepticism, with many approaches involved trying to
disprove some particular form of it?
Skepticism
Skepticism is related to the question of whether certain knowledge is possible.
Skeptics argue that the belief in something does not necessarily justify an assertion of
knowledge of it. In this skeptics oppose foundationalism, which states that there have to
be some basic beliefs that are justified without reference to others. The skeptical response
to this can take several approaches. First, claiming that “basic beliefs” must exist,
amounts to the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance combined with the slippery
slope. While a foundationalist would use Munchhausen Trilemma as a justification for
demanding the validity of basic beliefs, a skeptic would see no problem with admitting
the result.
Developments from skepticism
Fallibilism
For most of philosophical history, “knowledge’ was taken to mean belief that was
true and justified to an absolute certainty. Early in the 10th century, however, the notion
that belief had to be justified as such to count as knowledge lost favour. Fallibilism is the
view that knowing something does not entail certainty regarding it. Charles Sanders
Peirce was a fallibilist and the most developed form of fallibilism can be traced to Karl
Popper (1902:1994) whose first book Logik Der Forschung (The Logic of Investigation),
1934 introduced a “conjectural turn” into the philosophy of science and epistemology at
large. He adumbrated a school of thought that is known as Critical Rationalism with a
central tenet being the rejection of the idea that knowledge can ever be justified in the
strong form that is sought by most schools of thought. His two most helpful exponents
are the late William Were Bartley and David Miller, recently retired from the University
of Warwick. A major source of on:line material is the Critical Rationalist website and also
the Rathouse of Rafe Champion.
Practical applications
Far from being purely academic, the study of epistemology is useful for a great
many applications. It is particularly commonly employed in issues of law where proof of
guilt or innocence may be required, or when it must be determined whether a person
knew a particular fact before taking a specific action (e.g. whether an action was
premeditated).Another practical application is to the design of computer interfaces. For
example, the skills, rules, and knowledge taxonomy of human behavior has been used by
designers to develop systems that are compatible with multiple “ways of knowing”:
abstract analytic reasoning, experience:based ‘gut feelings’, and ‘craft’ sensor motor skills.

Other common applications of epistemology include:

■ Artificial Intelligence ■ Product testing (How can we know
that the product will not fail?)
■ Austrian School of economics ■ Psychology
(in the form of praxeology, the
Discovery of economic laws valid
for all human action)
■ Cognitive Science ■ Philology
■ Cultural Anthropology ■ Linguistics
(Do different cultures have
different systems of knowledge?)
■ History and archaeology ■ Literature
■ Intelligence (information) gathering ■ Religion and apologetics
■ Knowledge Management ■ Sociology
■ Mathematics and science ■ Testimony
■ Medicine (diagnosis of disease)
THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
It can hardly be doubted that Hegel’s and Marx’s historicist philosophies are
characteristic products of their time – a time of social change. Like the philosophies of
Heraclitus and Plato, and like those of Comte and Mill, Lamarck and Darwin, they are
philosophies of change, and they witness to the tremendous and undoubtedly somewhat
terrifying impression made by a changing social environment on the minds of those who
live in this environment. Plato reacted to this situation by attempting to arrest all change.
The more modern social philosophers appear to react very differently, since they accept,
and even welcome, change; yet this love of change seems to me a little ambivalent. For
even though they have given up any hope of arresting change, as historicists they try to
predict it, and thus to bring it under rational control; and this certainly looks like an
attempt to tame it. Thus it seems that, to the historicist, change has not entirely lost its
terrors.
In our own time of still more rapid change, we even find the desire not only to
predict change, but to control it by centralized large:scale planning. These holistic views
represent a compromise, as it were, between Platonic and Marxian theories. Plato’s will to
arrest change, combined with Marx’s doctrine of its inevitability, yield, as a kind of
Hegelian ‘synthesis’, the demand that since it cannot be entirely arrested, change should
at least be ‘planned’, and controlled by the state whose power is to be vastly extended.
An attitude like this may seem, at first sight, to be a kind of rationalism; it is closely
related to Marx’s dream of the ‘realm of freedom’ in which man is for the first time
master of his own fate. But as a matter of fact, it occurs in closer alliance with a doctrine
which is definitely opposed to rationalism, one which is well in keeping with the
irrationalist and mystical tendencies of our time. We have in mind the Marxist doctrine
that our opinions, including our moral and scientific opinions, are determined by class
interest, and more generally by the social and historical situation of our time. Under the
name of ‘sociology of knowledge’ or ‘socialism’, this doctrine has been developed
recently (especially by M. Scheler and K. Mannheim) as a theory of the social
determination of scientific knowledge.
The sociology of knowledge argues that scientific thought, and especially thought
on social and political matters, does not proceed in a vacuum, but in a socially
conditioned atmosphere. It is influenced largely by unconscious or subconscious
elements. These elements remain hidden from the thinker’s observing eye because they
form, as it were, the very place which he inhabits, and his social habitat. The social habitat
of the thinker determines a whole system of opinions and theories which appear to him
as unquestionably true or self:evident. They appear to him as if they were logically and
trivially true, such as, for example, the sentence ‘all tables are tables’. This is why he is not
even aware of having made any assumptions at all. But that he has made assumptions
can be seen if we compare him with a thinker who lives in a very different social habitat;
for he too will proceed from a system of apparently unquestionable assumptions, but
from a very different one; and it may be so different that no intellectual bridge may exist
and no compromise be possible between these two systems. Each of these different
socially determined systems of assumptions is called by the sociologists of knowledge a
total ideology.
The sociology of knowledge can be considered as a Hegelian version of Kant’s
theory of knowledge. For it continues on the lines of Kant’s criticism of what we may
term the ‘passivist’ theory of knowledge. It means by this the theory of the empiricists
down to and including Hume, a theory which may be described, roughly, as holding that
knowledge streams into us through our senses, and that error is due to our interference
with the sense:given material, or to the associations which have developed within it; the
best way of avoiding error is to remain entirely passive and receptive. Against this
receptacle theory of knowledge (we can usually call it the ‘bucket theory of the mind’),
Kant argued that knowledge is not a collection of gifts received by our senses and stored
in the mind as if it were a museum, but that it is very largely the result of our own mental
activity; that we must most actively engage ourselves in searching, comparing, unifying,
generalizing, if we wish to attain knowledge. We may call this theory the ‘activist’ theory
of knowledge. In connection with it, Kant gave up the untenable ideal of a science which
is free from any king of presuppositions. He made it quite clear that we cannot start from
nothing, and that we have to approach our task equipped with a system of
presuppositions which we hold without having tested them by the empirical methods of
science; such a system may be called a ‘categorical apparatus’. Kant believed that it was
possible to discover the one true and unchanging categorical apparatus, which represents
as it were the necessarily unchanging framework of our intellectual outfit, i.e. human
‘reason’. This part of Kant’s theory was given up by Hegel, who, as opposed to Kant, did
not believe in the unity of mankind. He taught that man’s intellectual outfit was
constantly changing, and that it was part of his social heritage’ accordingly the
development of man’s reason must coincide with the historical development of his
society, i.e. of the nation to which he belongs. This theory of Hegel’s and especially his
doctrine that all knowledge and all truth is ‘relative’ in the sense of being determined by
history, is sometimes called ‘historism’.The sociology of knowledge or ‘sociologism’ is
obviously very closely related to or nearly identical with it, the only difference being that,
under the influence of Marx, it emphasizes that the historical development does not
produce one uniform ‘national spirit’, as Hegel held, but rather several and sometimes
opposed ‘total ideologies’ within one nation, according to the class, the social stratum, or
the social habitat, of those who hold them.
But the likeness to Hegel goes further. According to the sociology of knowledge, no
intellectual bridge or compromise between different total ideologies is possible. But this
radical scepticism is not really meant quite as seriously as it sounds. There is a way out of
it, and the way is analogous to the Hegelian method of superseding the conflicts which
preceded him in the history of philosophy. Hegel, a spirit freely poised above the
whirlpool of the dissenting philosophies, reduced them all too mere components of the
highest of syntheses, of his own system. Similarly, the sociologists of knowledge hold
that the ‘freely poised intelligence’ of an intelligentsia which is only loosely anchored in
social traditions may be able to avoid the pitfalls of the total ideologies; that it may even
be able to see through, and to unveil, the various total ideologies and the hidden motives
and other determinants which inspire them. Thus the sociology of knowledge believes
that the highest degree of objectivity can be reached by the freely poised intelligence
analyzing the various hidden ideologies and their anchorage in the unconscious. The way
to true knowledge appears to be the unveiling of unconscious assumptions a kind of
psycho:therapy, as it were, or if I may say so, a socio:therapy. Only he who has been
socio:analyzed or who has socio:analyzed himself, and who is freed from this social
complex, i.e. from his social ideology, can attain to the highest synthesis of objective
knowledge.
The sociology of knowledge belongs to this group, together with psycho:analysis
and certain philosophies which unveil the ‘meaninglessness’ of the tenets of their
opponents. The popularity of these views lies in the ease with which they can be applied,
and in the satisfaction which they confer on those who see through things, and through
the follies of the unenlightened. This pleasure would be harmless, was it not that all
these ideas are liable to destroy the intellectual basis of any discussion, by establishing
what is called a ‘reinforced dogmatism’. (Indeed, this is something rather similar to a
‘total ideology’). Hegelianism does it by declaring the admissibility and even fertility of
contradictions. But if contradictions need not be avoided, then any criticism and any
discussion becomes impossible since criticism always consists in pointing out
contradictions either within the theory to be criticized, or between it and some facts of
experience. The situation with psycho:analysis is similar; the psycho:analyst can always
explain away any objections by showing that they are due to the repressions of the critic.
And the philosophers of meaning, again, need only point out that what their opponents
hold is meaningless, which will always be true, since ‘meaninglessness’ can be so defined
that any discussion about it is by definition without meaning. Marxists, in a like manner,
are accustomed to explain the disagreement of an opponent by his class bias, and the
sociologists of knowledge by his total ideology. Such methods are both easy to handle
and good fun for those who handle them. But they clearly destroy the basis of rational
discussion, and they must lead, ultimately, to anti:rationalism and mysticism.
For just like the psycho:analysts, the people to whom psycho:analysis applies best,
the socio:analysts invite the application of their own methods to themselves with an
almost irresistible hospitality. For is not their description of an intelligentsia which is
only loosely anchored in tradition a very neat description of their own social group? And
is it not also clear that, assuming the theory of total ideologies to be correct, it would be
part of every total ideology to believe that one’s own group was free from bias, and was
indeed that body of the elect which alone was capable of objectivity? Is it not, therefore,
to be expected, always assuming the truth of this theory, that those who hold it will
unconsciously deceive themselves by producing an amendment to the theory in order to
establish the objectivity of their own views? Can we, then, take seriously their claim that
by their sociological self:analysis they have reached a higher degree of objectivity; and
their claim that socio:analysis can cast out a total ideology? But we could even ask
whether the whole theory is not simply the expression of the class interest of this
particular group; of an intelligentsia only loosely anchored in tradition, though just firmly
enough to speak Hegelian as their mother tongue.
How little the sociologists of knowledge have succeeded in socio:therapy that is to
say, in eradicating their own total ideology, will be particularly obvious if we consider
their relation to Hegel. For they have no idea that they are just repeating him; on the
contrary, they believe not only that they have outgrown him, but also that they have
successfully seen through him, socio:analyzed him; and that they can now look at him,
not from any particular social habitat, but objectively, from a superior elevation. This
palpable failure in self:analysis tells us enough.
But, all joking apart, there are more serious objections. The sociology of knowledge
is not only self:destructive, not only a rather gratifying object of socio:analysis, it also
shows an astounding failure to understand precisely its main subject, the social aspects of
knowledge, or rather, of scientific method. It looks upon science or knowledge as a
process in the mind or ‘consciousness’ of the individual scientist, or perhaps as the
product of such a process. If considered in this way, what we cal scientific objectivity
must indeed become completely ununderstandable, or even impossible; and not only in
the social or political sciences, where class interests and similar hidden motives may play
a part, but just as much in the natural sciences. Everyone who has an inkling of the
history of the natural sciences is aware of the passionate tenacity which characterizes
many of its quarrels. No amount of political partiality can influence political theories
more strongly than the partiality shown by some natural scientists in favour of their
intellectual offspring. If scientific objectivity were founded, as the sociologistic theory of
knowledge naïvely assumes, upon the individual scientist’s impartiality or objectivity,
then we should have to say good:bye to it. Indeed, we must be in a way more radically
skeptical than the sociology of knowledge; for there is no doubt that we are all suffering

under our own system of prejudices (or ‘total ideologies’, if this term is preferred); that
we all take many things as self:evident, that we accept them uncritically and even with
the naïve and cocksure belief that criticism is quite unnecessary; and scientists are no
exception to this rule, even though they may have superficially purged themselves from
some of their prejudices in their particular field. But they have not purged themselves by
socio:analysis or any similar method; they have not attempted to climb to a higher plane
from which they can understand, socio:analyze, and expurgate their ideological follies.
For by making their minds more ‘objective’ they could not possibly attain to what we call
‘scientific objectivity’. No what we usually mean by this term rests on different grounds.
It is a matter of scientific method. And, ironically enough, objectivity is closely bound up
with the social aspect of scientific method, with the fact that science and scientific
objectivity do not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an individual scientist to be
‘objective’ but from the friendly:hostile co:operation of many scientists. Scientific
objectivity can be described as the inter:subjectivity of scientific method. But this social
aspect of science is almost entirely neglected by those call themselves sociologists of
knowledge.
Two aspects of the method of the natural sciences are of importance in this
connection. Together they constitute what is term the ‘public character of scientific
method’. First, there is something approaching free criticisms. A scientist may offer his
theory with the full conviction that it is unassailable. But this will not impress his
fellow:scientists and competitors; rather it challenges them; they know that the scientific
attitude means criticizing everything, and they are little deterred even by authorities.
Secondly, scientists try to avoid talking at cross:purposes. They try very seriously to
speak one and the same language, even if they use different mother tongues. In the
natural sciences this is achieved by recognizing experience as the impartial arbiter of their
controversies. When speaking of ‘experience’ we have in mind experience of a ‘public’
character, like observations, and experiments, as opposed to experience in the sense of
more ‘private’ aesthetic or religious experience; and an experience is ‘public’ if everybody
who takes the trouble can repeat it, in order to avoid speaking at cross:purposes,
scientists try to express their theories in such a form that they can be tested, i.e. refuted
(or else corroborated) by such experience.
This is what constitutes scientific objectivity. Everyone who has learned the
technique of understanding and testing scientific theories can repeat the experiment and
judge for himself. In spite of this, there will always be some who come to judgments
which are partial, or even cranky. This cannot be helped, and it does not seriously disturb
the working of the various social institutions which have been designed to further
scientific objectivity and criticisms; for instance the laboratories, the scientific periodicals,
the congresses. This aspect of scientific method shows what can be achieved by
institutions designed to make public control possible, and by the open expression of
public opinion, even if this is limited to a circle of specialists. Only political power, when
it is used to suppress free criticism, of when it fails to protect it, can impair the
functioning of these institutions, on which all progress, scientific, technological, and
political, ultimately depends. In order to elucidate further still this sadly neglected aspect

of scientific method, we may consider the idea that it is advisable to characterize science
by its methods rather than by its results.
Let us first assume that a clairvoyant produces a book by dreaming it, or perhaps by
automatic writing. Let us assume, further, that years later as a result of recent and
revolutionary scientific discoveries, a great scientist (who has never seen that book)
produces one precisely the same. Or to put it differently, we assume that the clairvoyant
‘saw’ a scientific book which could not then have been produced by a scientist owing to
the fact that many relevant discoveries were still unknown at that date. We now ask: is it
advisable to say that the clairvoyant produced a scientific book? We may assume that, if
submitted at the time to the judgment of competent scientists, it would have been
described as partly ununderstandable, and partly fantastic; thus we shall have to say that
the clairvoyant’s book was not when written a scientific work, since it was not the result
of scientific method. We can call such a result, which, though in agreement with some
scientific results, is not the product of scientific method, a piece of ‘revealed science’.
In order to apply these considerations to the problem of the publicity of scientific
method, let us assume that Robinson Crusoe succeeded in building on his island physical
and chemical laboratories, astronomical observatories, etc., and in writing a great number
of papers, based throughout on observation and experiment. Let us even assume that he
had unlimited time at his disposal, and that he succeeded in constructing and in
describing scientific systems which actually coincide with the results accepted at present
by our own scientists. Considering the character of this Crusonian science, some people
will be inclined, at first sight, to assert that it is real science and not ‘revealed science’.
And, no doubt, it is very much more like science than the scientific book which was
revealed to the clairvoyant, for Robinson Crusoe applied a good deal of scientific method.
And yet, I assert that this Crusonian science is still of the ‘revealed’ kind; that there is an
element of scientific method missing, and consequently, that the fact that Crusoe arrived
at our results is nearly as accidental and miraculous as it was in the case of the
clairvoyant. For there is nobody but himself to check his results; nobody but himself to
correct those prejudices which are the unavoidable consequence of his peculiar mental
history; nobody to help him to get rid of that strange blindness concerning the inherent
possibilities of our own results which is a consequence of the fact that most of them are
reached through comparatively irrelevant approaches. And concerning his scientific
papers, it is only in attempts to explain his work to somebody who has not done it that he
can acquire the discipline of clear and reasoned communication which too is part of
scientific method. In one point – a comparatively unimportant one – is the ‘revealed’
character of the Crusonian science particularly obvious; I mean Crusoe’s discovery of his
‘personal equation’ (for we must assume that he made this discovery), of the
characteristic personal reaction:time affecting his astronomical observations. Of course it
is conceivable that he discovered, say, changes in his reaction:time, and that he was led,
in this way, to make allowances for it. But if we compare this way of finding out about
reaction:time, with the way in which it was discovered in ‘public’ science – through the
contradiction between the results of various observers – then the ‘revealed’ character of
Robinson Crusoe’s science becomes manifest.

To sum up these considerations, it may be said that what we call ‘scientific

objectivity’ is not a product of the individual scientist’s impartiality, but a product of the
social or public character of scientific method; and the individual scientist’s impartiality
is, so far as it exists, not the source but rather the result of this socially or institutionally
organized objectivity of science.
Both Kantians and Hegelians make the same mistake of assuming that our
presuppositions (since they are, to start with, undoubtedly indispensable instruments
which we need in our active ‘making’ of experiences) can neither be changed by decision
nor refuted by experience; that they are above and beyond the scientific, methods of
testing theories, constituting as they do the basic presuppositions of all thought. But this
is an exaggeration, based on a misunderstanding of the relations between theory and
experience in science. It was one of the greatest achievements of our time when Einstein
showed that, in the light of experience, we may question and revise our presuppositions
regarding even space and time, ideas which had been held to be necessary
presuppositions of all science, and to belong to its ‘categorial apparatus’. Thus the
skeptical attack upon science launched by the sociology of knowledge breaks down in the
light of scientific method. The empirical method has proved to be quite capable of taking
care of it. But it does so not by eradicating our prejudices all at once; it can eliminate them
only one by one. The classical case in points it again Einstein’s discovery of our prejudices
regarding time. Einstein did not set out to discover prejudices; he did not even set out to
criticize our conceptions of space and time. His problem was a concrete problem of
physics, the re:drafting of a theory that had broken down because of various experiments
which in the light of the theory seemed to contradict one another. Einstein together with
most physicists realized that this meant that the theory was false. And he found that if we
alter it in a point which had so far been held by everybody to be self:evident and which
had therefore escaped notice, then the difficulty could be removed. In other words, he
just applied the methods of scientific criticisms and of the invention and elimination of
theories, of trial and error. But this method does not lead to the abandonment of all our
prejudices; rather, we can discover the fact that we had a prejudice only after having got
rid of it.
But it certainly has to be admitted that, at any given moment, our scientific theories
will depend not only on the experiments, etc., made up to that moment, but also upon
prejudices which are taken for granted, so that we have not become aware of them
(although the application of certain logical methods may help us to detect them). At any
rate, we can say in regard to this incrustation that science is capable of learning, of
breaking down some of its crusts. The process may never be perfected, but there is no
fixed barrier before which it must stop short. Any assumption can, in principle, be
criticized. And that anybody may criticize constitutes scientific objectivity. Scientific
results are ‘relative’ (if this term is to be used at all) only in so far as they are the results of
a certain stage of scientific development and liable to be superseded in the course of
scientific progress. But this does not mean that truth is ‘relative’. If an assertion is true, it
is true for ever. It only means that most scientific results have the character of hypotheses,
i.e. statements for which the evidence is inconclusive, and which are therefore liable to
revision at any time. These considerations, though not necessary for a criticism of the
sociologists, may perhaps help to further the understanding of their theories. They also
throw some light, to come back to my main criticism, on the important role which
co:operation, intersubjectivity, and the publicity of method play in scientific criticisms
and scientific progress.
It is true that the social sciences have not yet fully attained this publicit of method.
This is due partly to the intelligence:destroying influence of Aristotle and Hegel, partly
perhaps also to their failure to make use of the social instruments of scientific objectivity.
Thus they are really ‘total ideologies', or putting it differently, some social scientists are
unable, and even unwilling, to speak a common language. But the reason is not class
interest, and the cure is not a Hegelian dialectical synthesis, nor self:analysis. The only
course open to the social sciences is to forget all about the verbal fireworks and to tackle
the practical problems of our time with the help of the theoretical methods which are
fundamentally the same in all sciences. We mean the methods of trial and error, of
inventing hypotheses which can be practically tested, and of submitting them to practical
tests. A social technology is needed whose results can be tested by piecemeal social
engineering.
The cure here suggested for the social sciences is diametrically opposed to the one
suggested by the sociology of knowledge. Sociologism believes that it is not their
unpractical character, but rather the fact that practical and theoretical problems are too
much intertwined in the field of social and political knowledge, that creates the
methodological difficulties of these sciences. Thus we can read in a leading work on the
sociology of knowledge: The peculiarity of political knowledge, as opposed to “exact”
knowledge, lies in the fact that knowledge and will, or the rational element and the range
of the irrational, are inseparably and essentially intertwined’. To this we can reply that
‘knowledge’ and ‘will’ are, in a certain sense, always inseparable; and that this fact need
not lead to any dangerous entanglement. No scientist can know without making an effort,
without taking an interest; and in his effort there is usually even a certain amount of
self:interest involved. The engineer studies things mainly from a practical point of view.
So does the farmer, Practice is not the enemy of theoretical knowledge but the most
valuable incentive to it. Though a certain amount of aloofness may be becoming to the
scientist, there are many examples to show that it is not always important for a scientist to
be thus disinterested. But it is important for him to remain in touch with reality, with
practice, for those who overlook it have to pay by lapsing into scholasticism. Practical
application of our findings is thus the means by which we may eliminate irrationalism
from social science, and not any attempt to separate knowledge from ‘will’.
As opposed to this, the sociology of knowledge hopes to reform the social sciences
by making the social scientists aware of the social forces and ideologies which
unconsciously beset them. But the main trouble about prejudices is that there is no such
direct way of getting rid of them. For how shall we ever know that we have made any
progress in our attempt to rid ourselves from prejudice? Is it not a common experience
that those who are most convinced of having got rid of their prejudices are most
prejudiced? The idea that a sociological or a psychological or an anthropological or any
other study of prejudices may help us to rid ourselves of them is quite mistaken; for

many who pursue these studies are full of prejudice; and not only does self:analysis not
help us to overcome the unconscious determination of our views, it often leads to even
more subtle self:deception. Thus we can read in the same work on the sociology of
knowledge the following references to its own activities: “There is an increasing tendency
towards making conscious the factors by which we have so far been unconsciously
ruled…..Those who fear that our increasing knowledge of determining factors may
paralyze our decisions and threaten “freedom” should put their minds at rest. For only
he is truly determined who does not know the most essential determining factors but acts
immediately under the pressure of determinants unknown to him’. Now this is clearly
just a repetition of a pet idea of Hegel’s which Engels naïvely repeated when he said:
‘Freedom is the appreciation of necessity’. And it is a reactionary prejudice. For are those
who act under the pressure of well:known determinants, for example, of a political
tyranny, made free by their knowledge? Only Hegel could tell us such tales. But that the
sociology of knowledge preserves this particular prejudice shows clearly enough that
there is no possible short:cut to rid us of our ideologies. (Once a Hegelian, always a
Hegelian.) Self:analysis is no substitute for those practical actions which are necessary for
establishing the democratic institutions which alone can guarantee the freedom of critical
thought, and the progress of science.
STRUCTURE AND AGENCY
The debate concerning the primacy of structure and agency on human thought
and behavior is one of the central issues in sociology, political science, and the other
sciences. In this context, “agency” refers to the capacity of individuals to act
independently and to make their own free choices. “Structure “, by contrast, refers to the
recurrent patterned arrangements which seem to influence or limit the choices and
opportunities that individuals possess. The term “reflexivity” is commonly used by social
scientists to refer to the ability of an agent to consciously alter his or her place in the social
structure; thus globalization and the emergence of the ‘post:traditional’ society might be
said to allow for greater “social reflexivity”.
Agency in a diverse society
The debate over the primacy of structure or agency relates to an issue at the heart
of both classical and contemporary sociological theory; the question of social ontology:
“What is the social world made of?”, “What is a cause of the social world, and what is an
effect?” “Do social structures determine an individual’s behavior or does human
agency?” “Some theorists put forward that what we know as our social existence is
largely determined by the overall structure of society. The perceived agency of
individuals can also be explained by the operation of this structure. Theoretical systems
aligned with this view include; structuralism, and some forms of functionalism and
Marxism (all of which in this context can be seen as forms of holism – the notion that “the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts”). In the reverse of the first position, other
theorists stress the capacity of individual “agents” to construct and reconstruct their
worlds. Theoretical systems aligned with this view include; methodological
individualism, social phenomenology, interactionalism and ethno methodology.

Lastly, a third option, taken by many modern social theorists (Bourdieu 1977,
1990), is to attempt to find a point of balance between the two previous positions. They
see structure and agency as complementary forces – structure influences human behavior
and humans are capable of changing the social structures they inhabit. Structuration is
one prominent example of this view.“The first approach (emphasizing the importance of
social structure) was dominant in classical sociology. Theorists saw unique aspects of the
social world that could not be explained simply by the sum of the individuals present.
Emile Durkheim strongly believed that the collective had emergent properties of its own
and that there was a need for a science which would deal with this emergence. The
second approach (methodological individualism, etc.), however, also has a
well:established position in social science. Many theorists still follow this course (eg,
economists are very prone to disregarding any kind of holism).
“The central debate, therefore, is between theorists committed to the notions of
methodological individualism. The first notion, methodological holism, is the idea that
actors are socialized and embedded into social structures and institutions that constrain,
or enable, and generally shape the individual’s dispositions towards, and capacities for,
action, and that this social structure should be taken as primary and most significant. The
second notion, methodological individualism, is the idea that actors are the central
theoretical and ontological elements in social systems, and social structure is an
epiphenomenon, a result and consequence of the actions and activities of interacting
individuals”.
MAJOR THEORISTS
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 –September 28, 1918, Berlin, Germany) was one of
German nonpositivist sociologist. His studies pioneered the concepts of social structure
and agency. His most famous works today include The Metropolis and Mental Life and The
Philosophy of Money.
Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias (June 22, 1987 –August 1, 1990) was a German sociologist of Jewish
descent, who later became a British citizen. His work focused on the relationship
between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time. He significantly shaped
what is called “process sociology “or “figurational sociology”.
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was the main theorist of action theory (misleadingly called
“structural functionalism”) in sociology from the 1930s in the United States. His works
analyzed social structure but in terms of voluntary action and through pattern of
normative institutionalism by codifying its theoretical gestalt into a system – theoretical
framework based on the idea of living systems and cybernetic hierarchy. For Parsons
there is no “structure” – “agency” problem. It is a pseudo:problem.

Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu presented his theory of practice on the dichotomical
understanding of the relation between agency and structure in a great number of
published articles, beginning with An Outline of the Theory of Practice in 1972, where he
presented the concept of habitus.His book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment
of Taste (1979), was named as one of the 20th century’s 10 most important works of
sociology by the International Sociological Association. The key concepts in Bourdieu’s
work are habitus, field, and capital. The agent is socialized in a” field” (an evolving set of
roles and relationship in a social domain, where various forms of “capital” such as
prestige or financial resources are at stake). As the agent accommodates to his or her
roles and relationships in the context of his or her position in the field, the agent
internalizes relationships and expectations for operating in that domain. These
internalized relationships and habitual expectations and relationships form over time, the
habitus.
Bourdieu’s work attempts to reconcile structure and agency as external structures
are internalized into the habitus while the actions of the agent externalize interactions
between actors into social relationships in the field. Bourdieu’s theory, therefore, is
dialectic between “externalizing the internal”, and “internalizing the external”.
Berger and Luckmann
Peter L.Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their Social Construction of Reality
(1966) saw the relationships between structure and agency as a dialectical one. Society
forms the individuals who create society – forming a continuous loop.
Roy Bhaskar
Roy Bhaskar developed the “Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA)”
in his The Possibility of Naturalism (1979) and Reclaiming Reality (1989). He put forward a
critical realist approach. Going further than Berger and Luckmann he focused on the
“relational” and “transformational” view of the individual and society: “society is both
the ever present condition and the continually reproduced outcome of human agency.
Anthony Giddens
Anthony Giddens developed “Structuration Theory “in such work as The
constitution of Society (1984).He presents a developed attempt to move beyond the dualism
of structure and agency and argues for the “duality of structure”: where social structure
is both the medium and the outcome of social action.
Recent developments.
The critical realist structure/agency perspective embodied in the TMSA has been
further advocated and applied in other social science fields by additional authors for
example in economics by Tony Lawson and in sociology by Margeret Archer. Kenneth
Wilkinson in the ‘Community in Rural America’ took an international/field theoretical
perspective focusing on the role of community agency in contributing to the emergence of
community. The structure/agency debate continues to evolve, with contributions such as

Nicos Mouzeli’s Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? And Margaret Archer’s Realist
Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach continuing to push the ongoing development of
structure/agency theory.
A European problem?
While the structure /agency debate has been a central issue in social theory, and
recent theoretical reconciliation attempts have been made, it should be noted that
structure/agency theory has tended to develop more in European countries, while
American social theorists have tended to focus instead on the issue of integration
between macro sociological and micro sociological perspectives. George Ritzer examines
these issues (and surveys the structure agency debate) in greater detail in his book
Modern Sociological Theory (2000.)
EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING
It is clear that understanding and explanation are related. It is unclear exactly how
they are related. We speak both of explaining:why and understanding:why some event
occurred. Explanations typically produce understanding in those who consider them, and
the sense of increased understanding typically comes from consideration of an
explanation. Consideration of an explanation can, however, fail to produce in someone an
increased level of understanding of the explanandum. Further, the subjective sense of
gaining increased understanding of an event can come from an account that is not the
explanation of that event. Hence, we cannot say that anyone's sense of understanding is
either necessary or sufficient for an account to be an explanation. However, we cannot
completely avoid all reference to understanding in a correct theory of explanation. This
situation presents a pressing problem for philosophical studies of the nature of
explanation, for many theorists relegate the sense of understanding to a strictly derivative
position by claiming that the subjective sense of understanding of an event comes, under
appropriate (articulable) conditions, from consideration of a potential explanation, and
that genuine understanding comes, under appropriate conditions, from consideration of
the true explanation. According to such philosophers we should rely on a proper theory
of explanation to delineate potential explanations from non:explanatory accounts and a
delineation of understanding will follow. We shall argue that this is not a workable
option. One can also express the issue at hand in terms of the relative subjectivity or
objectivity of explanation. Some theorists of explanation state an objectivity criterion for
an account of explanation, and many others implicitly employ one. Wesley Salmon, for
example, states clearly that the identifying criteria for scientific explanations must be
objective, independent of personal, psychological considerations.
First, we must surely require that there be some sort of objective relationship
between the explanatory facts and the fact:to:be:explained. Even if a person were
perfectly content with an explanation of the occurrence of storms in terms of falling
barometric readings, we should still say that the behavior of the barometer fails
objectively to explain such facts. We must, instead, appeal to meteorological conditions.
Second, not only is there the danger that people will feel satisfied with scientifically
defective explanations; there is also the risk that they will be unsatisfied with legitimate
scientific explanations. A yearning for anthropomorphic explanations of all kinds of

natural phenomena for example, the demand that every explanation involves conscious
purposes sometimes leads people to conclude that physics doesn't really explain anything
at all.... Some people have rejected explanations furnished by general relativity on the
ground that they cannot visualize a curved four:dimensional space:time. The
psychological interpretation of scientific explanation is patently inadequate.
Salmon's rejection of the psychological interpretation of explanation can, when

pushed, lead one to eliminate all considerations of the subjective sense of understanding
from theorizing about the nature of explanation. We shall argue against this extreme
position and clarify the proper place of considerations of understanding within
theorizing about explanation. We shall follow the common distinction between a
potential explanation and a genuine explanation, or simply an explanation. A potential
explanation is a set of propositions having all the characteristics of an explanation except,
possibly, for truth. A genuine explanation, then, has all the characteristics of an
explanation, and it is true. We should distinguish the mere sense of understanding from
genuine understanding. One can get a sense of understanding from an account that is not
wholly true. Genuine understanding can come only from a genuine explanation. By
contrast, the sense of understanding one gets from a potential explanation containing
false statements is not genuine. We can refer to it as sham understanding. At this point,
the distinction between genuine understanding and sham understanding depends
entirely on the distinction between a true explanation and a merely potential explanation.
It is, in this sense, derivative. It depends on the notion of truth, however, not on any
particular theory of explanation.
A sense of understanding can be sham understanding also because it is caused by

an account that is not at all explanatory, regardless of whether its statements are true or
false. Someone can claim to understand an event in virtue of considering a certain set of
propositions but fail to have genuine understanding because those propositions, even if
all true, do not explain the event. Hence, many philosophers would claim that criteria for
what is explanatory (in a theory of explanation) are more basic, and criteria for
understanding derive from them. If one has in hand an acceptable theory of explanation,
one can impugn a sense of understanding as sham understanding either by showing (a)
that it comes from an account that fails to measure up as being explanatory, or (b) that it
comes from an account that is a potential explanation but untrue.
The foregoing description of the relationship between explanation and

understanding sounds unassailable. It seems that one of the necessary conditions for
understanding is that it be caused by consideration of an account that is at least
potentially explanatory. The other necessary condition is that it comes from consideration
of a true account. One might go on to explain cases of sham understanding by finding, for
example, similarities (perhaps only superficial similarities) between the accounts that
generate the sham understanding and the genuine explanations of the relevant events or
relevantly similar events. It would then appear that we can explain cases of sham
understanding by reference to the true explanation, which is, to repeat, identified via a
proper theory of explanation. This cannot be the whole story about the relationship
between understanding and explanation, however. Complications arise from a more
careful consideration of the connections between the sense of understanding and
explanation. We have noted that the sense of understanding need not come from an
explanation or even from a potential explanation. A person might feel a sense of
understanding a famine in terms of the appearance of a comet, for example, but this
would be only sham understanding. Similarly, one can consider the true explanation for
an event and fail to gain from it understanding of why the event occurred. Explanations
citing very complex, abstract, or counter:intuitive principles of physics, for example,
might fail to produce a sense of understanding. Looking only at these two points about
the separability of explanation and understanding leaves the foregoing story about the
conceptual primacy of a theory of explanation undisturbed. We must note, in addition,
that explanation and the sense of understanding cannot be completely isolated from each
other. Consider the claim that some account, some set of propositions, is the explanation
of an event E although no one ever has or could gain a sense of increased understanding
of why E occurred by considering that account. We can imagine this account consisting
only of true propositions, and we can imagine that the propositions are all topically
relevant to E. What reason is there for calling the account an explanation of E rather than
merely an accurate description of some facts related to E? We can find none.
Consider now an account consisting of propositions relevant to an event E such

that nearly all of the very many psychologically healthy, intelligent, well:educated adults
who think about it claim to gain an increased level of understanding of why E occurred.
What reason could there be for denying that this account is at least a potential
explanation of E? What good reason might one have for insisting that the account is
merely a set of descriptive propositions somehow relevant to E? We can think of none.
We see no reason for calling some account an explanation of E if one has no idea even of
how it could produce in someone an increased sense of understanding of E. And we see
no reason for denying that an account is at least a potential explanation of E if many
people claim that it provides them with an increased sense of understanding of E. A
theorist of explanation might respond that the reasons we stubbornly fail to see come
from an acceptable theory of explanation. We should call an account an explanation, such
a theorist would claim, if it satisfies the criteria of a preferred theory of explanation,
although we see no way for the account to increase anyone's understanding of the
explanandum. Likewise, if an account fails to satisfy the conditions of some preferred
theory of explanation, then it does not count as a potential explanation, even if many
people seem to receive greatly increased understanding from it. This last bold assertion of
the conceptual priority of explanation over understanding clarifies why this strategy
ultimately fails. To accept the ruling from a theory of explanation that a certain account is
explanatory when one gains no sense of understanding from it, one needs reasons for
accepting that theory of explanation as a correct theory. We therefore need to examine
how a theory of explanation is justified, or defended against competing theories of
explanation. The justification of a theory of explanation relies essentially, we shall argue,

on using the sense of understanding as a guide to what accounts are potentially

explanatory and what accounts are not.
There have been competing theories of explanation. Carl Hempel proposed the
deductive:nomological model, the inductive:statistical model, and the
deductive:statistical model as collectively capturing all the forms of scientific explanation.
Richard Jeffrey, James Greeno, and Wesley Salmon objected to Hempel's claim that
scientific explanations must take the form of an argument. Each proposed a competing
theory of explanation (statistical:relevance or information:theoretic) as a correct account
of scientific explanation. Later, Salmon revised his thinking about scientific explanation
and proposed his causal theory of explanation with a statistical:relevance basis, thereby
joining a long list of causal theorists of explanation. Criticisms and competing
refinements have come from Peter Railton, Philip Kitcher, Peter Achinstein, Bas van
Fraassen, and many others. The history of competing theories of explanation is complex,
but a common theme lies in the methodology of defending a theory. A classic example
will clearly illustrate the standard method of argumentation regarding theories of
explanation.
The case of the flagpole and its shadow is an argument against Hempel's
deductive - nomological theory of explanation. The example is attributed to Sylvain
Bromberger, although he claims never to have published it. The argument states that one
can deduce the height of a flagpole from the length of its shadow and the elevation of the
sun (and appropriate laws regarding the propagation of light). The argument shows that
such a deduction satisfies the conditions put forth in Hempel's D:N model of explanation
for an acceptable scientific explanation of the height of the flagpole. The argument
concludes that, since the length of its shadow clearly does not explain the height of the
flagpole, Hempel's model does not present a set of sufficient conditions for scientific
explanation. The method illustrated here is the familiar method of counterexample. One
argues against a theory of explanation either by presenting a set of propositions satisfying
the criteria of the theory although it is not an explanation, or by presenting an
explanation that fails to fit the criteria of the theory. The former method shows that the
theory does not present a set of sufficient conditions for explanation, the latter shows that
the theory does not present necessary conditions for an explanation. This method
obviously requires some determination, independent of the theory under dispute, that
the counterexample either is or is not an explanation. This determination depends, I
claim, on the presence or absence of a sense of understanding generated in the
counterexample.
A similar point applies to the defense of a theory of explanation. Theorists typically
argue for their theory of explanation by demonstrating how it applies to a stock set of
examples of explanation and a stock set of non:explanations, giving the right
determination in every case. One might argue for the D:N model of explanation, for
example, by showing that it does capture the sense in which one can explain the length of
the flagpole's shadow by deducing it from the height of the flagpole, the elevation of the
sun, and the appropriate laws. Such a defense of a theory of explanation must rely on

some prior set of criteria for distinguishing explanations from non:explanations, and this
set of criteria must be independent of the theory of explanation being tested in order to
avoid an obvious circularity in the justification of the theory. It is of no use to show that
one's theory of explanation succeeds in counting all explanations in a certain sample as
explanations and all non:explanations in a certain sample as non:explanations if the
samples were prepared using that theory of explanation itself.
The determination of stock examples of explanation and non:explanation,
independent of a theory of explanation, must be based on the sense of understanding one
gets from explanations but not from non:explanations. This follows from the peculiar
nature of explanations as a class of statements. Explanations consist of descriptive
statements. There is dispute about whether an explanation must take the form of an
argument, whether an explanation must invoke laws, whether an explanation must cite
causes. And there are many other disputes about the form explanations must take. To my
knowledge, however, there is no dispute over the claim that explanations must consist of
descriptive statements. They do not contain normative claims. They do not consist of
questions (except perhaps as elliptical expressions of statements). They do not consist of
imperative statements. A true explanation consists only of true descriptive propositions.
Consequently, we cannot identify explanations as a class by syntactic means similar to the
way we distinguish normative claims, questions, or orders.
Explanation is not merely true description, however. That is, explanation is
description of a particular sort. So we cannot identify explanations as a class just by the
syntactic means we use to distinguish descriptive statements as a class together with the
semantic distinction of truth. A prima facie determination that a set of propositions is
explanatory for some event must rely on intuitions about the potential for those
statements to produce a sense of understanding of why the event occurred. The
determination cannot be made merely on the basis of topical relevance. For any event,
there are many sets of topically relevant and true descriptive claims that are not
explanatory. Using any criterion based on causal relevance, considerations of statistical
relevance, unification, or any similarly controversial features will clearly beg the question
against some theories of explanation. We require a more nearly neutral means of
identifying explanations prior to theorizing, and this can come only from the subjective
and, to some extent, relative sense of understanding. The in eliminable function of a sense
of understanding in theorizing about the nature of explanation poses the threat of a
dangerous sort of subjectivity infecting our thinking about explanation. Subjectivity is
indeed dangerous here, given the central place of inference to the best explanation in all
scientific theorizing. The fear is that our distinguishing explanatory from non:explanatory
hypotheses (and our assigning considerably more importance to explanatory hypotheses
in science) might be based ultimately in a species:specific peculiarity in the way we
humans happen to process information, rather than in any objective and natural features
of the world. This fear is not unfounded, for peculiar conceptions of the nature of
explanation have led people to accept bizarre views of the world. Some metaphysical
theories, regarded as untenable even by strong defenders of metaphysics generally, have
been defended on the basis of highly idiosyncratic views about what is required for
adequate explanation of some aspect of experience.
This fear can be allayed, however. The subjective sense of understanding is

necessary as an initial guide to the nature of explanation, but it is by no means the final
word. There is a complex system of social correction of notions of explanation. An initial
notion of explanation leads to and supports theories about the world by way of inference
to the best explanation. But theories about the world in turn refine our notions of
explanation. We expect that this process of refinement and correction leads us closer to an
objectively accurate picture of the world and of the natural relationship of explanation.
Filling in the details of how this process of refinement and correction works requires
much work and obviously extends far beyond the scope of this paper. We must
nonetheless fill in these details in order to secure objective validity for an inferential
process that necessarily originates in relatively unconstrained subjective impressions but
also serves to ground our theoretical advances in a scientific understanding of the world.
METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM
This is the doctrine that all sociological explanations are reducible to the
characteristics of individuals. It was originally formed in opposition to the work of such
sociologists as E. Durkheim who argued that the characteristics of individuals could
safely be ignored in sociological explanations; ‘social facts’ have an existence of their own
and can be studied independently of individuals whose actions they determine. Less
radically, many functionalists argue that social groups have emergent properties that is,
characteristics that are produced when individuals interact but are not reducible to
individuals. Against this, methodological individualists claim that all such functionalist
arguments rest ultimately on assumptions about individual behavior.
Debates about methodological individualism are not as popular as they were some
twenty years ago. In discussion of the relationship of individual to society, or of
psychology to sociology, attention has shifted to other issues such as agency and
structure. While it may be trivially said that societies are collections of individuals, this
does not show that sociological explanations are reducible to psychological or biological
ones. Furthermore, it is quite possible that individual characteristics are socially derived
in the interaction between individuals.
METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM VS .HOLISM
This entry speaks to the nature of the individual element. Individualism says that
the individual element is an independent entity that has self:contained properties,
though, of course, it draws on resources around it. An example is the popular idea that
the individual is responsible for his/her own fate. Your success and failure depend
ultimately on how hard you work. Holism says that the individual element is inextricably
tied to other individuals. Individuals are interdependent, and they are internally related
in the sense that each is imbued with, and constituted by, the qualities of others. An
example is a child in a family. The child's psychology depends utterly on the way he/she
is treated. Any intrinsic tendencies are modulated and mediated by experience. From this
perspective, the child is not entirely responsible for his/her behavior. Holism regards
individuals or elements as reciprocally influencing each other. The child affects the family
while being affected by it. This dialectical relation of individuals/elements comprises a

system, or a whole. The whole is composed of individuals and affected by them. It is not
independent of individuals. However, the whole is not simply a sum of independent
individuals sequentially summed together, one after the other. The whole is more than
the sum of the parts.
Solomon Asch explains the holistic nature of social interactions in the case of two
boys carrying a log. The boys adjust their actions to each other and to the object. The two
do not apply force separately. There is a unity of action that embraces the participants
and the common object. This performance is a new product, unlike what each participant
would do singly and also unlike the sum of their separate exertions. What each
contributes is a function of his relation to the other, how the other acts. The other's actions
lead to changes in the self's behavior. Self is permeated by other. Larger social units, such
as teams and institutions, manifest other kinds of emergent properties. Emergence is
central to holism. It denotes the fact that the whole is different from the sum of the
individual constituents. This whole then affects the qualities of the constituents. They are
not self - sufficient, independent qualities. These examples illustrate how the two
approaches construe the nature, or existence, of the individual. These ontological
perspectives of individualism and holism entail corresponding epistemologies, or ways of
acquiring knowledge.
An ontology that construes individual elements as self:contained and self -
determining, and as combining arithmetically to form groups, necessarily insists that
knowledge of things consists of reducing complexity to simple, separate individual
elements : e.g., a group is simply a collection of individuals co:existing. An ontology that
construes elements as part of a system of relations that constitute them, insists that
knowledge of things requires understanding elements as complex, multifaceted entities
that are dialectically related to other things and embody their features. Individualistic
and holistic ontologies and epistemologies also entail distinctive methodologies.
METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM
Positivism
Methodological individualism is the hallmark of positivism. Positivism construes
phenomena as simple, homogeneous, separate, variables. A variable is defined as
qualitatively invariant, and only quantitatively variable. The reason it is qualitatively
invariant is because it is separate from other variables. This prevents others from imbuing
it with their qualities, altering its quality, and complicating it. Intelligence, depression,
aggression, and all other psychological phenomena are construed as separate variables
with simple, fixed qualities. Only their degree varies in different conditions. This
ontology leads positivists to concentrate on measuring quantities of variables. They
eschew investigating, or theorizing about, their qualities which are taken for granted as
obvious, simple, and fixed. Methodological individualism is also evident in positivistic
instruments such as questionnaires. Each item on a questionnaire is a separate (discrete)
element that supposedly taps a discrete psychological attribute. Items are randomly
presented in order to prevent any association among them that would bias the subject
away from responding to each one independently. In addition, each response is treated as
a separate element that is accorded equal weight, and can be summed with the others.
Sums are indifferent to the order of the elements. 5 + 3 + 1 is the same sum as 1 + 3 + 5.
Sums presume that items are independent of each other, and that a 5 at the beginning is
the same as a 5 at the end of a sequence. Of course, responses are statistically correlated
together (e.g., in factor analysis). However, it is a correlation of separate, independent
items.
Qualitative methodology
One might suppose that methodological individualism, or atomism, is the basis of
positivistic methodology, while holism is the basis of qualitative methodology. However,
this would be a simplification. In fact, individualism is pervasive in qualitative research,
along with holism. Individualism in qualitative methodology takes the form of treating
individual subjects as self:contained individuals who create their own meanings and
behaviors. Researchers focus on recording and reporting individuals' subjective accounts.
They do not attempt to understand an individual's subjectivity as influenced by other
people and conditions. (See entry on subjectivism).This is characteristic of a good deal of
discourse analysis. While some analysts relate discourse to cultural values and practices,
many emphasize discourse as an invention of the individual speaker. Margaret Wetherell
and Jonathan Potter advocate this position. It appears in Wetherell's analysis of 17:year
old boys' sexuality. She analyzes the discourse Aaron had with his friends about a
weekend during which he slept with four girls. At one point, his friend Paul wondered
whether Aaron had deliberately set out to have lots of sex ("out on the pull") that
weekend. Wetherell analyses the conversation as follows:
What I wish to note is Paul's new description of Aaron's activities as "out on the pull".
This account seems to be heard [by Aaron] as an uncalled for accusation in relation to the
events of Friday night and Aaron and Phil issue denials ä in attempting to reformulate
and minimize the actions so described :: `just out as a group of friends'.
Wetherell construes dialogue as a way that individuals represent themselves to each
other and themselves. She focuses on the mechanics of how individuals accomplish this:
Paul describes Aaron, Aaron hears the description, he responds. This methodology does
not go beyond identifying sequential conversational acts. It does not utilize long patterns
of dialogue to interpret statements, code them, organize them, make inferences or
deductions from them concerning psychological or cultural issues. This restriction
conforms to discourse theory that speech is an invention that expresses the individual, it
is not a reflection of cultural or psychological processes. Wetherell is not interested in the
nature of Aaron's sexual desire :: i.e., whether it is impersonal, egocentric, loving,
considerate, domineering, instrumental, etc. :: and how these sexual qualities might
reflect macro cultural factors. She is concerned with how individuals voluntaristically
present sex in discourse.
Methodological Holism
Holistic methodology is only found in qualitative methodology. It does not appear
in positivism. One of the most important applications of holism in qualitative
methodology is Dilthey's hermeneutics. The central idea is that the psychological

significance of any behavioral expression can only be discerned by relating that response
to other responses. The significance of a response is not transparent in a single behavior.
For example, to know whether a remark is a joke or an insult, you must situate it in a
context of other comments, the speaker's countenance, and other behaviors. By itself, the
comment is ambiguous. The context disambiguates the element. This relating of
behaviors in order to disclose psychological phenomena is known as the hermeneutic
circle.
If we want to hermeneutically interpret the psychology of a mother who spanks her
child, we must know how the child acted before he was spanked, how the mother
behaves toward him in other situations, what she says to him during and after the
spanking, how she behaves toward him after the spanking, her facial expression during
the spanking, how she explains the spanking to her husband and friends, etc. Only this
complex configuration of related behaviors reveals whether her spanking was motivated
by concern for the child's well:being, hatred for the child, revenge against the child, or by
frustration which was provoked by an event unrelated to the child. Similarly, the
cognitive processes which enable a student to perform well on a math test is only known
by observing her extended solution to several math problems in different situations. Test
performance may express a number of psychological phenomena. It may reflect the
student's ability to memorize material, it may reflect test taking ability, anxiety, or
mathematical reasoning. Which of these possibilities is operative is only disclosed by
observing the pattern of steps which the pupil takes to solve problems in different
situations.
Kurt Goldstein used a hermeneutic analysis to diagnose neurological deficits. He
observed the pattern of responses by which patients match a colored stimulus with
objects of similar color. Normal and impaired subjects often find the same number of
objects that match the hue of the stimulus; however their pattern of responses is quite
different. The patient proceeds sequentially by first matching the stimulus to an object
that most closely resembles it (O1), then matching another object (O2) to (O1), then
matching (O3) to (O2), and so on. In contrast, normal subjects compare each color directly
with the stimulus color. The qualitative difference in the behavioral patterns reveals the
patient's deficit. This is a hermeneutical, holistic analysis because it examines patterns of
interrelated responses which indicate the quality and significance of each. The fact that O 3
is matched to O2 rather than to the stimulus hue makes it a different (impaired) kind of
response and indicates it to be a different kind of response. Hermeneutic methodology
that elucidates patterns is holistic. In contrast, counting the number of correct matches,
and comparing the sums for normal’s and patients obscures patterns and the qualitative
differences of responses within them. As we have mentioned, sums of responses are
indifferent to their order and their interrelationship. A sum treats each response
as separate and independent. Sums are individualistic forms of methodology, while
patterns are holistic.

Cultural hermeneutics
The highest form of methodological holism not only elucidates patterns of
behaviors among individuals, it additionally recognizes the internal relationship between
psychological phenomena and cultural phenomena. This cultural:hermeneutical
interpretation of psychology was actually the crux of nineteenth century German
hermeneutics. It has been largely overlooked as hermeneuticists focus on the behaviors of
individuals apart from culture. However, Dilthey<span style='mso:element:
field:begin'>XE"Dilthey" span style='mso:element: field:end'> maintained that the
interpretation of meaning belongs to the larger science of history. To understand means
to understand historically. It means to understand that psychological phenomena such as
self concept, sexuality, motivation, reasoning, memory, emotions, perception, mental
illness, and developmental processes are integral components of macro cultural factors
such as institutions, artifacts, and cultural concepts, and embody their features. Cultural
hermeneutics elucidates this cultural quality of psychological phenomena, as Carl Ratner
explains in his writings.
A Synthesis
In their current forms, holism and individualism approach psychological
phenomena very differently, and are antithetical. However, a synthesis is possible. This
cannot be an eclectic, unprincipled, combining together. For this would combine
weaknesses as well as strengths. Nor can the synthesis take the form of a golden mean
that is in between the extremes. For that negates the strengths of the positions by
watering them down with their opposites. A workable synthesis requires a reformulation
that makes holism and individualism logically consistent through a set of common
principles. Lev Vygotsky explained what this involves. He said that an analysis of
complex patterns into units is necessary and workable. It requires construing the part as
embodying qualities of related parts, patterns, wholes. This reformulates the
individualistic concept of an element as an independent entity with a self:contained
quality. It makes the unit logically consistent with its holistic existence, internally related
to other units.
Vygotsky explained this as follows: "A psychology concerned with the study of the
complex whole must replace the method of decomposing the whole into its elements with
that of partitioning the whole into its units in which the characteristics of the whole are
present." "In contrast to the term `element,' the term `unit' designates a product of
analysis that possesses all the basic characteristics of the whole. The living cell is the real
unit of biological analysis because it preserves the basic characteristics of life that are
inherent in the living organism.” These units can be studied, counted, and added. The
benefits of analysis can thus be integrated into methodological holism. This enables
holism to become a precise, rigorous, scientific approach. It loses its pejorative
connotation as a mystical, ineffable, impractical methodology.

PIERRE BOURDIEU AND REFLEXIVE SOCIOLOGY
Pierre Bourdieu’s “epistemic reflexivity” is the cornerstone of his intellectual

enterprise, underpinning his claims to provide distinctive and scientific knowledge of the
social world. Many reflexive research practices are sociological, individualistic, and
narcissistic, and the article contrasts this to Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity as
epistemological, collective, and objective. The author then illustrates how, despite
Bourdieu’s intentions, this conception when enacted tends toward the very pitfalls it is
intended to avoid. Building on a developing conceptualization of the relations of
knowledge, the author identifies this problem as intrinsic to Bourdieu’s framework,
showing how it bypasses the significance of knowledge structures and so provides the
social but not the epistemological conditions for social scientific knowledge. Bourdieu’s
reflexivity objectifies objectification but needs development to help achieve objective
knowledge. It concludes by introducing the notion of “epistemic capital” as a first step
towards developing a properly epistemic reflexivity and so realizing the potential of
Bourdieu’s enterprise. In the social sciences, the progress of knowledge pre:supposes
progress in our knowledge of the conditions of knowledge.
For any understanding of Pierre Bourdieu’s work, the notion of “epistemic
reflexivity” is central. In the early 1990s an influential introduction to Bourdieu’s work
contended: If there is a single feature that makes Bourdieu stand out in the landscape of
contemporary social theory, it is his signature obsession with reflexivity. Although the
increasing popularity of Bourdieu’s work within Anglophone social science during the
past decade has contributed to making this focus less singular, one could still argue that
what remains distinctive is ‘s “signature obsession” with the epistemological potential of
reflexivity.Bourdieu consistently argued that his conception of epistemic reflexivity
provided not only a means of developing richer descriptions of the social world but also
the basis for a more practically adequate and epistemologically secure social science.
Moreover, it underpins his entire relational sociology. Here we can critically examine
Bourdieu’s conception of “epistemic reflexivity”, addressing its distinctive contribution to
research and how it needs to be further developed to underpin future progress in social
science. Our focus is primarily the implications of this reflexivity for research rather than
its capacity for synthesis or closure of philosophical positions and problems, for as
Wacquant went on to state, “Bourdieu’s concern for reflexivity, like his social theory, is
neither egocentric nor logo centric but quintessentially embedded in, and turned toward,
scientific practice” For Bourdieu, the fundamentals, the three Rs, are thus: reflexivity,
relationism, and research.
Reflexivity in Research
To contextualize Bourdieu’s distinctiveness, it is useful to first consider the position
and nature of reflexivity within social science. In the late 1980s, an introduction to the
topic could describe how reflexivity was viewed with antipathy and “ignored, evaded,
diminished” by most social scientists. Its current position in the lexicon of Anglophone
social science, however, is one of near universal approval. Indeed, it has now become a
sin to not be reflexive. The term is used as a marker of proclaimed distinction and

originality, with position:takings effectively claiming, “I am a reflexive actor producing

reflexive accounts of reflexive modernity, while you are unreflexive and inadequate, an
outdated relic of a bygone era”. One effect of such a position is a proliferation of
theoretical definitions and taxonomies of the high status term. Accordingly, the genus
reflexivity now possesses many different species (endogenous, referential, indexical,
constitutive, etc.) and a host of proclaimed parents. Underlying this heterogeneity,
however, most discussions of reflexivity share versions of a basic argument that authors
should explicitly position themselves in relation to their objects of study so that one may
assess researchers’ knowledge claims in terms of situated aspects of their social selves
and reveal their (often hidden) doxic values and assumptions. How reflexivity may be
enacted in research practice, however, is less clear. Not only are these protean normative
prescriptions typically theoreticist in discourse, neglecting research practice, but research
proclaiming itself “reflexive” is also often undertheorised.
In short, the current condition of reflexivity within the social sciences represents a
conundrum. On one hand, almost everyone agrees on the virtue of reflexivity in theory
and research practice; the term has become part of the “bad faith” of the social scientific
field. On the other hand, there is little agreement as to what comprises reflexivity.
Reflexivity has become, in other words, a hegemonic value of the social scientific field
and a weapon in struggles over status and resources within the intellectual field. Rather
than enjoin the struggle between delineated theoretical and normative positions, we shall
begin by outlining some forms of actually existing reflexivity.
Enacted Reflexivity.
Perhaps one of the most common forms of actually existing reflexivity in research,
and certainly its least theorized form, is autobiographical reflection, comprising a brief
narrative of the author’s journey to the research. For example, at a recent conference a
presentation on the history of history teaching in secondary schools began with the
author announcing that reflexivity demanded they outline their background of having
undertaken teacher training, 3 years of school teaching, and so forth. In this form, one
gives a (typically brief and disconnected) biography so that the audience “knows where
you’re coming from”. How this personal history relates to the object, methodology,
methods, data, or analysis is left unexplained. A similar form is exhibited by what can be
characterized as the virtuous researcher, a researching relative of the “reflective
practitioner”. Here reflexivity is synonymous with thinking critically about one’s research
practices and typically made explicit as a conspicuous display of acute self:awareness.
For example, one might make public aspects of one’s social identity (as, say, a White,
heterosexual male) or provide a “travelogue” or “reflections on fieldwork” wherein one
identifies possible sources for the anxiety of influence.
Two further examples, with more radical chic, of how reflexivity is enacted in
research may be described as hermeneutic narcissism and authorship denial. Both begin
from the argument that facts are inseparable from the observer and the culture which
supplies the categories of description. Both are also characterized by an uneasy
awareness of social differences between the observer and the observed and of the
symbolic violence perpetrated by the observer’s objectifying gaze. This academic guilt (a
self:aware and apologetic version of Bourdieu’s “scholastic reason”) is typically played

out in two ways. In hermeneutic narcissism, knowledge claims shrink into
ever:decreasing circles, leading to authors telling us only about themselves, for they feel
unable to tell us anything about anyone else. Alternatively, one may find authorship
denial, where the researcher attempts to become a neutral conduit or relay by “giving
voice to” the observed. As Greener described: ‘It all seems to amount to a kind of
collage…..with a vacillation between the hope that this multiplicity of voices somehow
excludes the bias of the external researcher, and a pleasurable return to a guilty
recognition that the subject, the author, is still there. Here, reflexivity is enacted as a game
of hide:and:seek; one may in effect play “hunt the author” amid the textual play of voices
(or, where these voices are the entire author’s own, one may have difficulty ascertaining
the author’s position).Both forms thereby begin by recognizing objectification but end by
denying it, either through self:absorption or self:denial’.
There are, of course, many other forms taken by actually existing reflexivity. We
choose these to heuristically and illustratively highlight some of the basic outlines of
enacted reflexivity in research distinct from their informing and legitimating theories.
What is important is the understanding featuring these forms share and which, we would
argue, are widely prevalent within reflexive research, namely that they are sociological,
individualistic, and narcissistic.
Sociological Reflexivity :
Enacted reflexivity typically addresses the social relation of knowledge rather than
its epistemic relation, that is, the subject’s relation to knowledge (who does the
objectifying) rather than the object’s relation to knowledge (what is being objectified and
how). They offer, in effect, a sociological (or anthropological) rather than an
epistemological account of knowledge. Moreover, these forms tell us little about how
one’s social position may affect the practical adequacy of one’s knowledge claims and,
indeed, may become more about the process of doing the research than any specific
results. They thus represent good research practices rather than revelatory bases for
knowledge claims – thicker methodology (or, more accurately, method) but thin
epistemology.
Individualistic Reflexivity :
Reflexive research often tends to construct reflexivity as an individual effort to
overcome one’s own biases, with a romantic and humanist emphasis on subjective
commitment to transcending the effects on knowledge of one’s social and cultural
positioning rather than on the super:subjective consequences of research practices. At
times, it may appear more important that the individual knower show his or her heart to
be in the right place than to help establish the collective conditions for providing
practically adequate knowledge.
Narcissistic Reflexivity :
In doing so, such research often focuses on the individual author to the exclusion
of everything else – the subject can thereby come to usurp the ostensible object of study.
There is, indeed, no logical reason for why anything about the author should be excluded
from the discussion. For example, autobiographical reflection might include one’s
childhood or what one did on holiday. Such practices do not, of course, exhaust the
realizations of reflexive research in social science, but they are sufficiently common (more
so than might be garnered from theoreticist surveys of the field) to warrant critical
attention. For despite the relative sophistication of theoretical accounts of reflexivity,
many ways in which it is routinely practiced are problematic. The road to reflexive
practice is paved with good intentions. However, theoretical intentions are one thing
research effects are another. In short, these types of reflexivity in research represent what
one could call reflexivity. That is, they comprise (more or less) critical reflections on the
author’s history, social position, and practices. Here the author looks into the data and
typically sees little more than his or her own reflection; they often tell us more about the
knower than about any nominal object to inquiry. This is to not to say they are without
merit; they open up, for example, new vistas of the research process and the researcher
for critical examination. However, whatever their benefits, they are not the
epistemological tools they are often proclaimed to be in theoretical discussion. This
difference between intention and effect is also reflected in their political stances.
Reflexivity has typically been proclaimed as critical and progressive. However, by
reducing reflexivity to individualized reflection, the above research practices represent
strategies for maximizing symbolic capital within the intellectual field at minimal cost.
They emphasize individual status (particularly when allied to claims about the
“unreflexive” nature of past work in the field) without disturbing the social position and
structure of the field as a whole. Ironically, such practices are thereby more oriented
toward conserving the status quo than their frequently professed “critical” appellations
might suggest. They also fit the wider contemporary individualist political climate,
whatever their proclaimed radical credentials. It was against such sociologically
reductive, individualistic, and narcissistic forms of reflexivity that Bourdieu posited his
notion of epistemic reflexivity, to which we now turn.
Bourdieu’s Epistemic Reflexivity
The role that epistemic reflexivity plays within Bourdieu’s work is difficult to
overstate. Perhaps more than anything, Bourdieu’s voluminous analyses of varied arenas
of social practice have shown the structuring effects of social fields on the beliefs,
dispositions, and practices of their members. Taking as one starting point a Durkheimian
analysis of social change under an increasing division of labour, Bourdieu’s conception of
society as comprising a series of overlapping social fields of activity or “relatively
autonomous ‘worlds’” enables a sophisticated analysis of social positionality.Bourdieu’s
approach refines sociological conceptions of social space and culture. The question of the
location of actors within social space is redefined in terms of the more subtle issue of their
relational positions within their specific field(s) of practice. Each actor is relationally
positioned within a field, this position determining his or her situated viewpoint of the
activities of this and other fields. Thus, each actor has only a partial view of the game,
acting accordingly. In the academic field, Bourdieu argued, actors attempt to impose this
“specific, situated, dated viewpoint” on others in struggles for status and resources. For
intellectuals unwilling to capitulate to relativism this raises the question of developing
analyses of the world that represent more than merely strategic struggles for economic
and symbolic capital: How can one overcome the gravitational effects of the intellectual
field? This goes to the very heart of Bourdieu’s enterprise. To put it another way,
Bourdieu’s theory begs the (reflexive) question of the extent to which his analyses of the
partial and positioned nature of knowledge produced by actors within intellectual fields
are more than merely the reflection of his own partial and positioned viewpoint. What
prevents Bourdieu’s analysis from being merely another strategic attempt to maximize
capital in the struggles of the intellectual field? For Bourdieu it is epistemic reflexivity
that enables this transcendence. Against phenomenological, postmodern, and other
idealist versions of reflexivity, Bourdieu (1994) views epistemic reflexivity as a means of
underwriting rather than undermining scientific knowledge; without this deus ex
machina, his work becomes just another viewpoint among many equally partial and
equally valid views.
THREE RELATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
One way of clarifying Bourdieu’s distinctive contribution is to conceive knowledge

claims as comprising three interrelated but analytically distinguishable relations; the
social relation between the subject or author and the knowledge claim, the epistemic
relation between the knowledge claim and its object, and the objectifying relation
between subjects and object (see Figure 1).Bourdieu’s main innovation can be
understood as an emphasis on the objectifying relation of knowledge. The reflexive
practices discussed earlier focus (as do sociologies of knowledge) on the social relation
between knowledge and knower; Philosophical approaches to knowledge typically
address the epistemic relation between knowledge and its object. These two approaches
have dominated our understanding of knowledge. Bourdieu, in contrast, highlights the
significance of knowledge claims of the neglected objectifying relation between subject
and object, knower and known. Bourdieu’s epistemic reflexivity comprises making the
objectifying relation itself the object for analysis; the resultant objectification is, he argues,
the epistemological basis for social scientific knowledge.
Bourdieu characterizes this epistemic reflexivity as collective and non:narcissistic.
First, he argues for “objectifying objectification” on a collective basis.Bourdieu identifies
three principal sources of potential bias in knowledge claims: the social origins and
coordinates of the researcher; the researcher’s position in the intellectual field; and the
‘intellectualist bias”, the results of viewing the world as a spectacle. It is not merely the
individual researcher who is of interest to Bourdieu here but rather the intellectual field.
In other words, the “knower” in Figure 1 is pluralized and sociologised. In particular, the
focus becomes how the social position and structure of the field in relation to objects of
study shape knowledge claims. The aim is to uncover not the individual researcher’s
biases but the collective scientific unconscious embedded in intellectual practices by the
field’s objectifying relations. Bourdieu strongly dissociates himself from “a complacent
and intimist return upon the private person” of the intellectual and “self:fascinated
observation of the observer’s writings and feelings” that encourage “a thinly veiled
nihilistic relativism” opposed to “a truly reflexive social science”. Rather, it is the field

that must be analyzed: One is better off knowing little things about many people,
systematically bound together, than everything about an individual.
Second, the analysis of collective objectifying relations must, for Bourdieu, itself be
a collective enterprise conducted by the social scientific field as a whole. It is not simply a
research practice for the individual but “the inclusion of a theory of intellectual practice
as an integral component and necessary condition of a critical theory of society”. So, both
the object and the subject of reflexivity are collective (the intellectual field as a whole)
rather than individual, and this collective reflexive analysis of collective objectifying
relations will, Bourdieu argues, provide an epistemological basis for social scientific
knowledge. Thus, whereas many forms of reflexivity are sociological, individualistic, and
narcissistic, Bourdieu claims his epistemic reflexivity to be epistemological, collective,
and “fundamentally anti:narcissistic”.
Problems of Enacting Epistemic Reflexivity
The fruits of epistemic reflexivity are, however, not easily reaped. There is an
intrinsic potential for the enacting of Bourdieu’s ideas to tend towards a new (albeit
subtler) form of narcissistic, individualist, and sociological reflexivity. This tendency
arises from two main sources, which in turn to reveal the focus for future development of
Bourdieu’s ideas. First, discussions of epistemic reflexivity of ten tend to interpret its
practice in terms of methodological individualism, which when enacted results in
recursive regression and narcissism. Second, this individualist interpretation itself
follows from the lack of a collective means for undertaking epistemic reflexivity that is
not based on the social field of positions of a field. Bourdieu’s approach highlights the
objectifying relation between subjects and objects of study at the expense of bypassing
knowledge and the epistemological gains its structuring may enable. In short, Bourdieu’s
emphasis on the objectifying relation of knowledge contributes greatly to notions of
reflexivity but comprises an objectifying reflexivity rather than an epistemic reflexivity.
Thus, he highlighted something of great significance and pointed the way; what is now
required is to continue his work in the direction he has shown and so fully realize it’s
potential.
REFLEXIVE REGRESSION
Epistemic reflexivity as currently formulated may lead in practice to recursive

regress and narcissism. This result prima facie less from Bourdieu’s formulations than
from how his substantive work is interpreted as exemplifying epistemic reflexivity. For,
while emphasizing its collective imperative, commentators often illustrate enacted
epistemic reflexivity in individualistic terms. For example, emphasized how Bourdieu
“continually turned that instruments of his science upon himself”, most notably in
analyzing his own intellectual field in Homo Academicus (1988).Similarly, commentators
as insightful as Barnard (1990), Swartz (1997), and Robbins (1998) typically describe
epistemic reflexivity as exemplified by Bourdieu’s analyses of his own social fields. The
exercise, such accounts imply, is to analyze one’s relation to the object and so place
oneself in the picture. Of course, a collective reflexivity has to begin somewhere and
exemplars help light the way. However, the problems arise when one takes these
analyses by an individual (however gifted) as guides to practice. For, as Bourdieu argues,
an aggregate of individual reflexive studies (even when of the field as a whole) does not
equate to a fully collective reflexivity.
That such individual analysis cannot fulfill the epistemological function Bourdieu
desires becomes clear when one recognizes that one always conducts such analyses from
a position. Imagine, for example, an author or knower A, who analyses an object of study
B to produce knowledge C (see Figure 2, No. 1). Following Bourdieu’s example, this
budding reflexive author conducts an analysis of the relation between himself or herself
and the object so as to produce a more reflexive account, that is, the objectifying relation
A:B becomes an object of inquiry (see No. 2). Objectifying objectification in this way,
however, raises the question of the relation of A to this new object of inquiry (A:B): In
what ways does the objectifying relation between A and A:B shape the resultant
knowledge claims, C? It becomes, in other words, a further possible focus for reflexive
analysis. This recurs, for at each stage the product of reflexive analysis becomes a new
object for objectification; it is always produced by a socially positioned actor in an
objectifying relation, providing the potential for reflexive regression (see No. 3). This
form of reflexivity also quickly becomes narcissistic. Although concerned with
‘objectifying objectification”, the original object of inquiry tends to recede into the
background as author A takes centre state (see the heuristic formulae of No. 3).
Interestingly, when discussing epistemic reflexivity, commentaries often give way to
biographical accounts of Bourdieu. Epistemic reflexivity as currently understood may
thus avoid intellectualist bias only by succumbing to intellectualist preoccupation. It is
important to note that the stages of reflexive analysis need not be understood as discrete
analyses or moments in time for reflexive regression to remain a tendency of this
approach.
In response to this point, one could argue that it is more a question of vigilance and
degree of epistemological reflexivity. This, however, begs the question of when to stop:
At what point are one’s unintended, tacit assumptions sufficiently reduced and
knowledge claims sufficiently bolstered by reflexivity? Why should knowledge C”
(produced by nth:order reflexivity) be less contaminated than knowledge C? Indeed, one
could argue that C” involves more objectifying relations and so more potential sources of
bias, so that far from reducing the effects of objectification, one may actually multiply
them. It is also likely that knowledge C’ will be critiqued as relatively unreflexive by
actors proclaiming reflexive knowledge C – a battle of the reflexes. Thus, rather than
providing a basis for progress in social science, it lends itself to avant:gardist struggles
and recurrent breaks with the past, for there is always room for more reflexivity.
Suggestions (often implied in commentaries) that collective reflexivity comprises
everyone emulating Bourdieu as individuals – an aggregated form of methodological
individualism :do not, however, result from misunderstanding Bourdieu’s approach.

No. Form of analysis Analysis as a heuristic formula
1 A analyses B to produce knowledge C A <:>B = >C
2 A analyses objectifying relation A:B, to A<:>(A:B) = >C1

produce more ‘reflexive’ account C1
3 Reflexive regression A<:>[A:(A:B)] = >C2
A<:>{A:[A:(A:B)]} :>C3
A,:.(A:{A:[A:(A:B)]}) = >C4
Figure 2 . The development of reflexive regression
Rather, they reflect the lack in Bourdieu’s framework of a collective means for
reflexive analysis of collective practices which transcends social positioning. To explore
this is to question the status of knowledge within Bourdieu’s approach and to ask
whether epistemic reflexivity is indeed epistemological.
BY PASSING KNOWLEDGE
Bourdieu’s proposed solutions to the problem of reflexive individualism are

primarily twofold; the scientific habitus and the autonomy of the intellectual field. Both, it
should be noted, focus on social rather than intellectual conditions of social scientific
knowledge. First, Bourdieu argued the need for inculcating a scientific habitus, “a system
of dispositions necessary to the constitution of the craft of the sociologist in its
universality”. The emphasis is thus on the socialized gaze of people rather than explicit
procedures, knower’s rather than knowledge. The question remains as to what one is to
be socialized into, the structuring of knowledge and practice that gives rise to and is
realized by the scientific habitus. Second, Bourdieu argued for the autonomy from
determination of members of the intellectual field. He proposed the “collective
intellectual”, whereby knowledge producers assert their autonomy as a group, as a
means of escaping extra:field influence, and emphasized the role of the organization of,
for example, journals and committees in enabling intra:field autonomy.
In both cases, the focus is one the social properties of the field – habit uses and
organization – rather than the structuring of knowledge itself. Scientific knowledge is
viewed as flowing from a scientific organization of the social position and relations of the
field. However, this reproduces rather than overcomes the problems of narcissism and
regression resulting from individualist reflexivity. For whatever the habit uses of actors
or organization of the field, reflexivity is always conducted from a social position. Even if
actors share the same habitus and occupy a level playing field, there remains the
tendency to regress: Analysis of the effects of social position is always conducted from a
social position. In short, the solution to the effects of social positioning on knowledge

does not lie wholly with social positioning; we cannot transcend the effects of a field by
pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
This highlights the neglected role of knowledge itself in Bourdieu’s reflexivity. It
shows, in effect, that Bourdieu’s relational sociology requires development to include
another, crucial relation of knowledge. Epistemic reflexivity emphasizes the objectifying
relation between subject and object as the source of various biases and the focus for
reflexive analysis (see Figure 1). “The important thing”, according to Bourdieu, “is to be
able to objectify one’s relation to the other”. The form of knowledge itself is thereby
bypassed, short:circuiting relations between knower and known in the production of
knowledge. (In terms of Figure 1, C is viewed as simply the outcome of A:B). In effect,
knowledge is viewed as the product of subject:object relations rather than having a
structuring significance of its own in shaping the validity of knowledge claims. The
epistemic relation between a knowledge claim and its (constructed) object of study is thus
not part of the equation. Bourdieu’s reflexivity is thereby less “epistemic” than
“objective” in terms of focus and “social” in terms of basis. In short, Bourdieu’s
methodological relationism misses the key epistemic relation of knowledge and so
provides a sociological account of knowledge rather than an epistemology. Without some
form of (Albert provisional and transitive) anchor in the world, the epistemological
question of how knowledge itself may be specialized by its objects, one is left with the
results of sociological reductionism: narcissism and regress.
Conclusion
It is argued that Bourdieu conception of epistemic reflexivity reproduces the
problems it aims to overcome because it lacks a supra:subjective, non:social basis for
transcending the effects of fields. This is to say that the roots of the problem lie not with
method but deep down in the theory itself. The question this raises is how it might be
developed to realize its potential for epistemologically underpinning social scientific
knowledge. Here we wish to highlight, above all, the necessity for notions of the intrinsic
and the essential for an approach otherwise fixated on the arbitrary. Such a move is
necessary because a fully collective reflexivity requires something that, although socially
produced by the field, transcends any particular positions within it.
First and foremost, this requires recognizing the role of non:social interests in
producing knowledge. Bourdieu rightly highlighted the social interestedness of
intellectuals and argued that there is no absolute standpoint outside of fields of struggle.
However, this does not mean that reflexivity should be reduced to viewing intellectual
practices as being solely oriented (consciously or otherwise) by social interests –
intellectual commitments are more than this .While acknowledging the will to power, one
need not deny the will to truth. To do so would be to argue that every form of interest
counts except for cognitive interest and those we research, teach, present, and read
papers only in order to maximize capital. As Bourdieu’s critique of externalism implies,
knowledge is socially laden rather than socially determined, whether the “social” here be
taken as the extra : or intra:field positions of actors. Perhaps we suffer from “bad faith”
or “misrecognition”, but we believe we use Bourdieu’s ideas not simply because of their
strategic value but also because they exhibit practical adequacy to what we know of the
social world. Indeed, their strategic value at least partly results from their cognitive
power. Thus, one must not lose sight of the way in which intellectuals have cognitive as
well as social interests and the “simple truth”, as Luntley (1995) put it, that some theories
are better at explaining the social world than others. To avoid the intellectualist bias by
seeing bias everywhere is to know the symbolic profit of everything and the truth value
of nothing.
In arguing this, we are rubbing against the grain of Bourdieu’s work, which focused
its critique more firmly against claims to disinterestedness than against reductionist
accounts of social interest. However, Bourdieu himself described his focus on social
interest as “an instrument of rupture…….the means of a deliberate (and provisional)
reductionism”. Bourdieu’s critique of intellectual claims to disinterestedness and to
universal forms of knowledge must be understood (as his own approach emphasizes)
within the context of its intellectual field. Now that Bourdieu’s ideas have currency in
British social science, the “provisional” nature of this reductionism represents the next
stage for the development of his ideas. Otherwise, should this “instrument of rupture”
become institutionalized; the problems Bourdieu sought to overcome would simply be
reproduced in reverse. This does not mean that capital theory need be eschewed; we need
not throw the baby out with the bath water, as the competitive logic of the intellectual
field tends to encourage. Rather, we suggest we can add to economic and cultural capital
the concept of epistemic capital, the ability to better explain the (social) world. This
captures the way in which actors within the intellectual field engage in strategies aimed
at maximizing not merely resources and status but also epistemic profits, that is, better
knowledge of the world.
To acknowledged cognitive interests and epistemic capital requires reinstating the
significance of the epistemic relation to the production of knowledge, alongside (rather
than instead of) its objectifying and social relations. This implies assuming social realist
notions of a world independent of fallible knowledge and a focus on the relations
between knowledge and these objects of study, in terms of the procedures required to
access and achieve practical adequacy to this world”. The conditions for progress in social
science are, in other words, not only to be found in the social field and habit uses of
knower’s, but also in the structuring of knowledge itself. This is, however, not to argue
for a social approach. As Popper argued, if science relied on individual scientists to be
objective, it would never be so; they “have not purged themselves by socio:analysis or
any similar method” Rather, the practical adequacy of knowledge is underpinned by the
intersubjective nature of the scientific method – it is socially produced and maintained.
So, ironically, a focus on non:social interests also restores a crucial social aspect of
intellectual practice.
Additionally, it is not the virtuous nature of scientists that maintains this state of the
field. Indeed, as the sociology of science has frequently shown, scientists can indulge in
strategies that would make Machiavelli blush. Nonetheless, selfish, egoistic, and
calculating strategies may lead to disinterested outcomes (practically adequate
knowledge), for scientists have an interest in disinterestedness, in applying the
inter:subjective, more or less consensual procedures of their field. That is to say that an

individual’s social interests may also bring epistemic profit. Bourdieu rightly argued
that: A field is all the more scientific the more it is capable of channeling, of converting
unavowable motives into scientifically proper behaviour.
In the terms presented here, this is to say that a field is more scientific the more it is
capable of generating epistemic profits. This, however, is not achieved simply through
the social organization of the field. The intrinsic structuring of knowledge formations
have a structuring significance for intellectual fields – temple form taken by knowledge
claims helps shape the social relations of a field. Bourdieu, for example, highlighted
mathematics as a field where actors wishing to triumph over opponents are “compelled
by the force of the field to produce mathematics to do so” Moore and Maton (2001)
showed how this is achieved partly by the way in which mathematics is structured as a
knowledge formation rather than by its social field.
To conclude, one may return to ABC (see Figure 1). We argue that many
“reflexive” research practices represent sociological reflexivity, focusing solely on the
social relation between an author A and knowledge C. we showed how Bourdieu’s
epistemic reflexivity as currently formulated tends toward analysis of relations between
author(s) A and object(s) of study B: objective reflexivity. To achieve a properly epistemic
reflexivity, these need to be supplemented by a focus on relations between the object of
study B and knowledge claims C. In other words, a full reflexivity that is collective rather
than individualist, procedural rather than narcissistic, and epistemological as well as
sociological comprises analyses of the social, objectifying, and epistemic relations (ABC).
To put it another way, we began by highlighting that Bourdieu’s three Rs comprise
reflexivity, relationism, and research. We argue that to enable reflexivity to be realized in
research, Bourdieu’s relational approach needs to embrace analysis of the epistemic
relation. This is the next phase for Bourdieu’s conception of reflexivity, and one in which
we can happily declare both social and cognitive interest in the accumulation of both
symbolic and epistemic capital.
CRITICAL REALISM
In the philosophy of perception Critical realism is the theory that some of our
sense:data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent
external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense:data (for example, those
of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external
objects, properties and events. Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to
a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar whose thought combines a general
philosophy of science (transcendental realism)with a philosophy of social science (critical
naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. Critical
realism can, however, refer to several other schools of thought, such as the work of the
American critical realists (Roy Wood Sellars, George Santayana, and Arthur Lovejoy).The
term has also been appropriated by theorists in the science:religion interface community.
The Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan developed a comprehensive critical realist
philosophy and this understanding of critical realism dominates North America’s
Catholic Universities.

Locke and Descartes

According to Locke and Descartes, some sense:data, namely the sense:data of
secondary qualities, do not represent anything in the external world, even if they are
caused by external qualities (primary qualities).Thus it is natural to adopt a theory of
critical realism. By its talk of sense:data and representation, this theory depends on or
presupposes the truth of representationalism.If critical realism is correct, and then
representationalism would have to be a correct theory of perception.
American Critical realism
The American critical realist movement was a response both to direct realism
(especially in its recent incarnation as new realism), as well as to idealism and
pragmatism. In very broad terms, American critical realism was a form of representative
realism, in which there are objects that stand as mediators between independent real
objects and perceivers. One innovation was that these mediators aren’t ideas (British
empiricism), but properties, essences, or “character complexes”.
British realism
Similar developments occurred in Britain. Major figures included Samuel
Alexander, John Cook Wilson, H.A.Prichard, H.H.Price, and C.D.Broad.
CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL REALISM
General philosophy
Critical realism is presently most commonly associated with the work of Roy
Bhaskar.He developed a general philosophy of science that he described as
transcendental realism, and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called
critical naturalism. The two terms were combined by other authors to form the umbrella
term critical realism. Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for
scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real,
manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualized to produce particular outcomes.
This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist
scientists claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and
effect. Whilst empiricism and positivism more generally, locate causal relationship at the
level of events. Critical Realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism,
arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunctions of
David Hume’s doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between
events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship.
The implication of this that science should be understood as an ongoing process in
which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they
study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a
coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable.
Positivism/falsification are also rejected due to the observation that it is highly plausible
that a mechanism will exist but either (a) go inactivated, (b) be activated, but not
perceived, or (c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms, which results in it

having unpredictable effects. Thus, non:realization of a posited mechanism cannot (in

contrast to the claim of positivists) be taken to signify its non:existence.
Critical naturalism argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally
applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, when we study the
human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical
world and must therefore adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism therefore
prescribes social scientific method which seeks to identify the mechanisms producing
social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than
they are in the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those
of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by
social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain
action/pre:conditions.Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are
capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing the actions that produce them – a
practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research. Critical realism has become
an influential movement in British sociology and social science in general as a reaction to
and reconciliation of so called “postmodern” critiques.
Developments
Since Bhaskar made the first big steps in popularizing the theory of critical realism in
the 1970’s.It has become one of the major strands of social scientific method:rivaling
positivism/empiricism, and post:structuralism/relativism/interpretivism.An edited
volume, Critical Realism: Essential Readings, is currently the most appreciated and
available reader in critical realism. There is also a Journal of Critical Realism, which
publishes articles on the theory and results of the practice of critical realist social science.
Since his development of critical realism, Bhaskar has gone on to develop a philosophical
system he calls dialectical critical realism, which is most clearly outlined in his weighty
book, Dialectic: the pulse of freedom
Bhaskar is frequently criticized for the density and obscurity of his writing. That
said, some readers may actually appreciate his meticulous linguistic precision, which can
be time consuming to read, but read properly, it is possible to understand the precise and
unambiguous meaning behind his writing. An accessible introduction was written by
Andrew Collier. Andrew Sayer has written accessible account. Margaret Archer is
associated with this school, as is the ecosocialist writer Peter David Graeber relies on
critical realism, which he understands as a form of ‘heraclitean’ philosophy, emphasizing
flux and change over stable essences, in his anthropological book on the concept of value,
toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our dreams. Robert Wilmot
has developed the realist (“morphogenetic”) social theory of Margaret Archer in his
Education Policy and Realist Social Theory: primary teachers, child – centered philosophy
and the new managerialism published by Routledge.
Theological Critical Realism
Critical realism is employed by a community of scientists turned theologians. They
are influenced by the scientist turned philosopher Michael Polanyi. Polanyi’s ideas were
taken up enthusiastically by T.F Torrance whose work in this area has influenced many

theologians calling themselves critical realists. This community includes John

Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour and Arthur Peacocke.The aim of the group is to show that the
language of science and Christian theology are similar forming a starting point for
dialogue between the two.Alister McGrath and Wentzel van Huyssteen (the latter of
Princeton Theological Seminary) are recent contributions to this strand. N.T.Wright, New
Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop of Durham also write on this topic.
“I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of “knowledge”
that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence
“realism”) while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the
spiraling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known
(hence “critical”). (The New Testament and the People of God, p.35)
N.T.Wright’s fellow biblical scholar – James Dunn – encountered the thought of
Bernard Lonergan as mediated through Ben Meyer. Much of North American critical
realism – later used in the service of theology – has its source in the thought of Lonergan
than Polanyi.
Critical Realism in economics
Heterodox economists like Tony Lawson, Frederic Lee or Geoffrey Hodgson are
trying to work the ideas of critical realism into economics, especially the dynamic idea of
macro:micro interaction. According to critical realist economist, the central aim of
economic theory is to provide explanations in terms of hidden generative structures. This
position combines transcendental realism with a critique of mainstream economics. It
argues that mainstream economics (i) relies excessively on deductive methodology, (ii)
embraces an uncritical enthusiasm for formalism, and (iii) believes in strong conditional
predictions in economics despite repeated failures. The world that mainstream economist
study is the empirical world. But this world is “out of phase” (Lawson) with the
underlying ontology of economic regularities. The mainstream view is thus a limited
reality because empirical realists presume that the objects of inquiry are solely “empirical
regularities” – that is, objects and events at the level of the experienced. The critical realist
views the domain of real causal mechanisms as the appropriate object of economic
science, whereas the positivist view is that the reality is exhausted in empirical’ i.e.
experienced reality. Tony Lawson argues that economics ought to embrace a “social
ontology” to include the underlying causes of economic phenomena.
Critical Realism and Marxism
A development of Bhaskar’s critical realism lies at the ontological root of
contemporary streams of Marxist political and economic theory. Notably, Alex Allinicos,
whom Goran Therborn calls “most prolific of contemporary Marxist writer’s in the UK
has argued for a critical realist ontology in the philosophy of social science and explicitly
acknowledges Bhaskar’s influence (while also rejecting the latter’s ‘spiritualist turn’ in his
later work).The relationship between critical realist philosophy and Marxism has also
been discussed in an article co:authored by Bhaskar and Callinicos and published in the
Journal of Critical Realism.

ELIADE’S HERMENEUTICS
On 28th February, 1907 in the capital of Romania was born the man who was going
to become the worldwide:known scientist and writer whose Renaissance:like personality
has built the background of his becoming. When we speak of Mircea Eliade we think of the
historian of religions, the Orientalist, the ethnologist, the sociologist, the folklorist, the
essay, short story, novel and memoirs author, the playwright Mircea Eliade, if we are to
stop at enumerating the defining dimensions of his monumental activity. He became an
outstanding specialist in the history of religions in1925:1926, an obviously early stage of
his life for such a bold enterprise; topics such as orthodoxy, Taoism, Buddhism, Orphism,
Tantrism have been a concern even since before the “Indian experience” that
systematized and deepened his knowledge. For this great Romanian thinker, the history
of religions is a complete discipline, which he places in the foreground of cultural life;
linguistics, literature, etymology, ethnology, the philosophy of history, esthetics,
anthropology, sociology, psychology, all combine in harmony, synchronically, to
complete the field of the history of religions. From his concerns with the field of the
history of religions could not miss the “working” coordinates necessary to the specialist
in the mentioned field. Therefore, the historian of religions must recompose, first of all,
the history of religious forms, and only afterwards develop the social, political and
cultural context of each of these forms. Without exaggerated claims, we can state that the
historian of religions is, from certain points of view, an anticipator in the field, since he
observes the results of the research of Orientalists and ethnographers, as the great Asian
religions or the religions of people without a writing system represent important sources
for the culture of humanity. Religious phenomenology must be placed outside the sphere
of the specialist’s concerns with the history of religions, and we refer to the
phenomenology of the sacred, and respectively with enlarging the research sphere from
the known important religions to archaic religions.
Another significant specific element that characterizes a historian of religions is the
fact that he has to place the religious phenomenon within the spiritual field, identifying
that “something” that the religious act denotes as trans:historic. This clearly refers to
hermeneutic research that consists, on the one hand, in the understanding of the message
by the religious person, a witness to the hierophantic experience, and on the other hand
in the message that the religious person transmits to modern world. Explaining the
encounters of man with the sacred, starting from pre:history until present – as a way of
solving the requirements promoted by contemporary history – the cultural and spiritual
invigoration of the peoples of Australia, Africa and Asia, all are included in the subject
field of the history of religions. The Hermeneutic Perspective of the Renewal of the Religious
Phenomenon In a work published in Paris in 1971, Mircea Eliade tells us that the religious
phenomenon should use complete hermeneutics. He considers necessary for the activity of
the historian of religions to be based on both the phenomenological and the
hermeneutical approach: “Concerned with, and often overwhelmed by collecting,
publishing and analyzing religious data, a work without any doubt both urgent an
indispensable, scientists have often forgotten to study their meaning. But this data is the
expression of varied religious experiences; in a final analysis, they represent positions
and situations assumed by man during his history. Whether he likes it or not, the

historian of religions has not completed his work after having retraced the history of a
religious form or after having determined its sociological, economical or political context.
Apart from all these, he must understand his own meaning – in other words – identify
and clarify the situations and positions that made possible his appearance or triumph in a
specific moment of his history”. The fact that the author adopts such explicit positions
places him in favor of a unitary approach, and within this frame, phenomenology fulfills
one of the most important functions.
The author believes in the necessity of renewing the religious phenomenon from a
hermeneutical perspective; although he does not minimize any of the scientific fields
accessory to religion, acknowledging the applicability of each of them, Eliade states
however that, irrespective of the nature of the information provided by one or another of
these fields, it cannot account for the religious phenomenon as a whole. Therefore, a
hermeneutic of the religious phenomenon would be characterized mainly by the fact that,
by studying the variety of religious aspects, the discipline of religions must identify the
universal religious configurations whose action frame is represented by unique facts. It is
necessary to mention that Eliade’s attempt to present the morphology of the sacred takes
place beyond the religious phenomenon. Considering the efforts to grasp and understand
meanings, Mircea Eliade’s exegesis intensifies, including the forms characterized by
permanence and constancy, brought “to light “through myths and symbols. Eliade’s
hermeneutics acquires a creative dimension as it allows speaking of a structure of the
forms of religious expression; this poses the problem of presenting the stages in the
individual’s trans:conscience, which “exhales” forms of religious expression. Actually, we
can speak of a tremendous interest of the author in seeing and knowing homo religious.
Starting with the Paleolithic until nowadays, symbols have offered to the religious person
– who has lived the sacred dimension of his existence during all this time – openness
towards the trans:historical world, connecting him with the transcendent dimension.
Moreover, Eliade considers that myth is a universal phenomenon on which reality is
structured; detailing – at the same time –the existence of supernatural creatures.Eliade
faces the individual, as a subject of the religious experience, with the object of this
experience, a context in which he speaks of hierophany or the manifestation of the sacred.
The place of encounter of the religious person with the sacred is directly determined
(conditioned) by the behavior of the religious persons themselves.Julien Ries noted that
all hierophany is based on three important elements: the natural object, placed (and
mentioned) in its normal context; the invisible reality that forms the presented contents; the
mediator, which is nothing else but the object consecrated through a new dimension, the
sacred.
1) The sacred is qualitatively different from the profane, however it can appear anytime
anyhow in the profane world, with the power to transform any cosmic object into a
paradox through hierophany (meaning that the object stops being itself as a cosmic
object, but still remains apparently unchanged);
2) This dialectics of the sacred is valid for all religions, not only for the so:called
“primitive forms”. This dialectics is verified both in the “worship” of stones and
trees and in the scientific view on Indian metamorphoses or in the supreme
mystery of incarnation;
3) Purely elementary hierophanies are impossible to find, they are combined with
religious forms considered, from the evolutionary perspective, superior (Supreme
Beings, moral laws, mythologies, etc.);
4) We can find everywhere, even outside these superior religious forms, a system in
which elementary hierophanies are ordered.”Douglas Allen believes that Mircea
Eliade’s methodology is characterized by two essential ideas: “the dialectics of the
sacred and the profane and the dominant character of symbolism or of symbolic
structures.”In his paper Introduction to the phenomenon of religion, the Spanish author
J. Martin Velasco, referring to what is called interpretation, from the point of view
of the analysis of the religious phenomenon, considers that a structure cannot be
conceived if it is not evaluated, interpreted – and especially – understood from the
inside. Therefore, phenomenological research has, implicitly, a hermeneutic
component or dimension. Together with renowned representatives such as J. Wach
and G. Van derLeeuw, Eliade will contribute to enriching this approach:
considering himself both a historian and a phenomenology researcher of religions,
we can speak of a combination of the two perspectives, which defines the
originality of his contribution to a fascinating field such as that of religions.
The Primordial Dimension of the Sacred in the Becoming of the Human Being
The approach of religious phenomenology is, in its essence, a meditation as well as
a reference to the idea of the time factor. We will find this meditation on time specific to
Eliade in most of the work of the Romanian scientist, as the holistic reach o the meanings
of the religious depends on it. Indeed, we can say that the problem of time dominates
Eliade’s creations. As we will demonstrate later, human objects and actions can represent
hierophanies (ontophanies); what we wish to mention here is that not only they can
acquire such an attribute, but also even space and time receive the valences of the sacred.
For the man in archaic cultures, space is not homogenous, as it is the case for the space in
which the modern scientific man lives, meaning that certain areas of this space differ
from one another from a qualitative point of view. Sacred spaces exist and, therefore,
there also exist significant non:sacred amorphous spaces, lacking structure and
consistency. Moreover, this lack of spatial homogeneity determines the religious person
to experience an opposition between the sacred, unique, real space, with a significant
existence, and the completing amorphous ambient around it: “We will see to what extent
the discovery, that is, the revelation of the sacred space has existential value for the
religious person: nothing can start without a prior orientation, and any orientation
implies setting a fixed point. This is why the religious persons strive to set themselves at
“the Center of the world.” The condition for us to be able to live in a world must be
created, “and no world can be born in the “chaos” of homogeneity and relativity of the
profane space. Discovering or designing a fixed point : «the Center» : means creating the
World.”
The phenomenological premise according to which the sacred is irreducible
characterizes the work of Mircea Eliade, for whom the sacred imposes itself both as an
explanatory principle of religion and as an absolute concept of a unique ontology, which
we can also find in the religious act, irrespective of its nature: “But it is maybe too late to
look for another word, and «religion» can still be a useful term, with the condition that
we always remember that it does not necessarily imply the belief in a God or in spirits,
but it refers to the experience of the sacred and is therefore related to the ideas of being,
sense and truth.” Speaking in terms of the position of the sacred as an ontological basis,
Eliade explains: “Through the exception of the sacred, the human spirit has apprehended
the difference between what proves to be real, strong, rich and significant, and what does
not have these qualities, that is, the chaotic and dangerous flow of things, their random
and meaningless appearances and disappearances.”All this leads to the idea that, if in the
becoming of the human being, there is something with a primordial character, that
“something” is, without a doubt, the appearance of the sacred; therefore, the sacred
proves to be an immense force and its act, its manifestation, is included in the term
hierophany. Actually, the evolution of the history of religions – from the most rudimentary
to the most advanced ones – is made up of a large sum of hierophanies, that is, of
manifestations of the sacred reality. In this entire frame, what would be the role of
phenomenology? JulienRies offers a possible explanation according to which this role is
played in understanding the religious structures and phenomena, in interpreting the
meaning of each hierophany, as well as in extracting the revealed meaning and the
religious sense. Anything that existed or still exists can be a receiver of the sacred: “After
all, we do not know if there is anything– object, gesture, physiological function or game,
etc. – that has never been transformed into hierophany, somewhere, during the history of
mankind.”
In the conception of Eliade, religious imaginary is wide open for any object of the
cosmos or of human life, with the necessary and only condition that, during its evolution,
it had been transformed intohierophany.The religious person can become, systematically,
contemporary with the gods, through myths and rituals; this occurs if the person is able
to update the primordial Time when the divine works took place. We must remember
that this rhythmical return to the sacred Time of origins does not represent a refuse of the
concrete world, as it is neither an escape from dreams and imagination but, on the
contrary, it is what Mircea Eliade pointed out as an essential characteristic of man in
primitive and archaic societies, using the phrase ontological obsession. If we start from the
basic idea that everything comes down to an archetypal model, which appears in
different avatars, the natural consequence is to compare these manifestations of the
sacred. Hence we witness the creation of a structure based on this exact comparison as
well as on the common elements with a repetitive character. For Eliade, structure is not
the final consequence in the analysis of the religious fact; it is formed based on this
comparison and is prior to the meaning that results from it. The meaning of hierophanies
in the world has a trans historical character; that is why, for the Romanian scientist, the
primary role is played by meaning, which transcends time and history seen as an
existential level of man, as well as a structure. Therefore, we can say that everything
starts from historic facts, which are manifestations with a much deeper significance than
a simple common apparition. We must also mention that history does not contradict the
idea of reversibility, as the comparative approach sends us to very different moments
from a chronological perspective. If we were to analyze the “consequences” of such a fact,
we could state that the methodological dimension is actually manifested in a scenario of a
real spiritual adventure. The ability to decipher a hierophany is beyond history, acquiring

– in the case of MirceaEliade:connotations that surpass habitual research. We should

remember that the problematic of time is immanently related to the system of
deciphering the meaning of all religious phenomena. In other words, meaning is – as the
author himself explains – beyond time, and not in the actual historical time. In what
concerns the historian of religions, this is just a starting point, and not a final result. The
aspiration of integration in the origin time is perfectly comparable to the aspiration of
recovering a strong, ideal and ingenuous world, the world of illo tempore. Therefore,
religious imagination is inspired from the thirst of being, from the ontological dominant
of the archaic man, which determines the latter to sanctify religiously the entire universe,
modeling its structure and symbolic consistency in a strict relation with the personal
ontological need and to a re:dimensioning of space and time. But man does not
ontologically sanctify only the universe, but equally himself or some of his fellows.
Myth, a Connection between Present and Primordial Time good knowledge of myths
and hence an exemplary accomplishment of rituals places the religious person at the
beginning of time. The function of myth is of enthronement, as it makes a connection
between the present and the primordial time, showing how present behavior should
reanimate the primordial event. As Julien Ries pertinently states, Mircea Eliade “has truly
renewed the study of myth”. Trying to define myth, Eliade says: “From my point of view,
the definition that seems the least imperfect, since it is the broadest, is the following:
myth tells a sacred story; it speaks about an event that took place in the primordial time, a
fabulous time of the «beginning». In other words, myth tells about how, thanks to the
actions of supernatural beings, a reality was born, a complete reality, the Cosmos, or mere
fragments: an island, a vegetal species, a human behavior, an institution. Therefore, it is
always the story of a «birth»: we are told how something was produced, how it started to
exist. Myth only tells about what has been completed. The characters of myths are
supernatural beings. They are known especially because of what they did in the
prestigious time of the beginning. Consequently, myths present their creative activity and
the sacred (not only supernatural) character of their work. Actually, myths describe the
various and sometimes dramatic bursts of the sacred (or supernatural) into the world.
This very burst of the sacred is in fact the basis of the world and makes it what it looks
like today. What is more: precisely as a result of the interventions of supernatural beings,
man is what he is today, a mortal sexed and cultural being?”
The universe is compared to an aging organism that loses its vitality and becomes
senile; this is the moment that demands destruction in order to be able to be born again as
a young vigorous world. In this context we can point out the idea of a cyclic time
previously mentioned by Eliade and related to other aspects that characterize archaic
thought. A significant part is played in this context by the ritual of initiation, which
consists in the experience of death (be it that of the shaman or of the individual arrived at
puberty, an experience followed by that of the rebirth at a new higher ontological level.
For boys (and sometimes even for girls), puberty rituals presuppose completing an
initiating period; this implies assuming death and requires the presence of signs that
indicate the fact that they are dead: they live inside a forest, which is by definition a land
of death and darkness, they paint their bodies using colors specific to corpses, or they are
not allowed to speak or use their hands to eat, and in winter time they are willingly

forgotten by their friends and families. Death is followed by rebirth at a new higher level.
What is the role of this complex process, and especially why must the individual tend
towards completing the initiation process, towards its end? Because, during initiation, the
beginner has the chance to discover myths, respectively the sacred history of the world
and of the community he lives in, of the origin of institutions and behaviors, discovers
names of gods, and sometimes his own secret name. An important result of the efforts
made by the Romanian scientist in the direction of “perfecting” the field of the history of
religions is to be found at the highest point of his career, between 1976:1983, when the
author published in Paris, in three volumes, the work entitled Histoire descroyances et des
idées religieuses (The History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas). It represents a synthesis of the
main actions of the religious person, starting from pre:history until present, and its
incontestable originality resides precisely in its approach and in the perspectives it offers.
Dedicated to the analysis of what represents the fundamental unit of religious
phenomena, Mircea Eliade draws the reader’s attention to the infinite indivisibility of the
expressions included in them. The famous historian of religion suggests a new mentality
that explains the message based on the sacred and perceived through symbols and
myths, and following this “path” he gets to the understanding of the religious person.
Mircea Eliade is the only historian of religions of his predecessors who wrote a
history of religious ideas and beliefs. What differentiates him from the rest is that he makes a
distinction between a history analysis lacking a generalizing perspective and a history of
religious ideas, although we should remember that he was once criticized for being an
anti:historian. The Romanian scientist, unlike his predecessors in the field, used a more
detailed approach of history and therefore of time, far from satisfied with their being
placed in parentheses and considering that this way he has fulfilled his complex mission.
Eliade considers that it is not at all normal for the time when religious phenomena
appeared to be ignored; on the contrary, the identification of the structures and meanings
specific to religion requires them to be correctly placed in time and space. Adrian
Marino’s work Hermeneutica lui Mircea Eliade (The Hermeneutics of Mircea Eliade)
includes a very detailed analysis of Mircea Eliade’s relation to history. A. Marino stresses
the hermeneutic character of Eliade’s approach, placing him on the orbit of the best
known hermeneutic scientists. As it happens with any representative name in a field,
Eliade could not have stayed in the readers’ “reserve”. They have always existed and
definitely will always exist; in the end nobody denies their value and usefulness. All in
all, with criticisms and appreciations, Mircea Eliade’swork is one of reference for the
science of religions, and his contribution to investigating the religious imaginary is –
without a doubt – remarkable. We mention only Gilbert Durand, who, discussing the
exceptional personality of the Romanian scientist, compared him to Henry Corbin:“The
difficulty of historicist explanations of the sacred determined in the first years of our
century an entire flow of phenomenological analyses of the sacred (that is, sticking to the
thing itself, to the object specific to homo religious). To this trend belong two of the main
restorers of the role of imagery in religious apparitions /hierophanies in human thought:
the Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907:1986) and the French Henry Corbin (1903:1978).
*****

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School of Distance Education

MATERIALIST THEORY AND POSITIVISM

GEORGE WILHELM FRIERICH HEGEL (1770 – 1831)

Theory and Method in Historiography 5

Theory and Method in Historiography 6

Theory and Method in Historiography 8

KARL MARX (1818 – 1883)

Theory and Method in Historiography 9

Theory and Method in Historiography 12

second is that after a period of proletarian dictatorship it will be succeeded by a

Theory and Method in Historiography 13

THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Theories that influence social change : Social change is a complicated process

Theory and Method in Historiography 14

Theory and Method in Historiography 17

Theory and Method in Historiography 18

KARL MARX AND HIS THEORY OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Theory and Method in Historiography 19

Economic Structure is the variable factors of social change :

Theory and Method in Historiography 20

Forces of production include machines, tools, laborers, techniques, etc. This is an

‘Social change of Marx’ at a glance

Plant Means of Religion Politics Morality Substructure

Theory and Method in Historiography 21

Theory and Method in Historiography 22

COMTEAN POSITIVIST LOGIC

Theory and Method in Historiography 23

Theory and Method in Historiography 29

RANKE’S POSITIVIST APPROACH

Theory and Method in Historiography 31

Theory and Method in Historiography 33

A theory is a set of ideas which provides an explanation for something. A

Theory and Method in Historiography 35

Theory and Method in Historiography 37

Theory and Method in Historiography 38

Theory and Method in Historiography 39

A moral commitment is essential. Thus rules governing business transactions must

Theory and Method in Historiography 40

institutionalized if society is to continue in existence. In other words, solutions must be

Theory and Method in Historiography 41

In a closely reasoned essay, originally published in 1949, the American

Functionalism has been subjected to considerable criticism. Part of this criticism is

Theory and Method in Historiography 43

Theory and Method in Historiography 44

Theory and Method in Historiography 45

Theory and Method in Historiography 46

Theory and Method in Historiography 47

Theory and Method in Historiography 48

Theory and Method in Historiography 49

Theory and Method in Historiography 50

development of wage labourers. Eventually the forces of production of capitalism gained

Theory and Method in Historiography 51

Symbolic interactionism, usually referred to as interactionism in the main part of

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD (1863:1931).

Theory and Method in Historiography 54

Theory and Method in Historiography 55

Blumer, a student of George Herbert Mead, has systematically developed the

Fred Davis examines interaction situations involving physically handicapped and