Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics [6 ed.] 154439621X, 9781544396217

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Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots Sixth Edition

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Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots The Basics Sixth Edition

George Ritzer University of Maryland

Jeffrey Stepnisky MacEwan University

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Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ritzer, George, author. | Stepnisky, Jeffrey, author. Title: Contemporary sociological theory and its classical roots : the basics / George Ritzer, University of Marylan, Jeffrey Stepnisky, MacEwan University. Description: Sixth edition. | Los Angeles : SAGE, [2022] | Includes index.| Identifiers: LCCN 2021052558 | ISBN 9781544396217 (paperback) | ISBN 9781544396224 (epub) | ISBN 9781544396255 (epub) | ISBN 9781544396231 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Sociology. | Sociology—History. Classification: LCC HM586 .R58 2022 | DDC 301.01—dc23/ eng/20211102 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021052558

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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22 23 24 25 26 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

DETAILED CONTENTS

List of Boxes About the Authors

xi xv

Preface xvii

CHAPTER 1  •  Introduction to Sociological Theory

1

Creating Sociological Theory

2

Defining Sociological Theory

5

Creating Sociological Theory: A More Realistic View

6

Overview of the Book

8

Summary 13 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 2  •  Classical Theories I

14

17

Émile Durkheim: From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity 17 Two Types of Solidarity 17 Changes in Dynamic Density 18 Collective Conscience 20 Law: Repressive and Restitutive 20 Anomie 21 Karl Marx: From Capitalism to Communism 23 Human Potential 25 Alienation 26 Capitalism 27 Communism 32 Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society Social Action Behavior and Action Types of Action Types of Rationality The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Confucianism, Hinduism, and Capitalism Authority Structures and Rationalization

33 33 33 35 36 38 40 41

Summary 45 Suggested Readings

47

CHAPTER 3  •  Classical Theories II

49

Georg Simmel: The Growing Tragedy of Culture 50 Association 50 Forms and Types 50 Consciousness 52 Group Size 54 Distance and the Stranger 55 Distance and Value 56 Objective and Subjective Culture 57 Division of Labor 58 Thorstein Veblen: Increasing Control of Business Over Industry 58 Business 58 Industry 61 George Herbert Mead: Social Behaviorism 61 The Act 62 Gestures 63 Significant Symbols and Language 64 The Self 64 I and Me 67 W. E. B. Du Bois: Race and Racism in Modern Society 69 Race 70 The Veil and Double-Consciousness 72 Economics and Marxism 74 Summary 75 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 4  •  Contemporary Grand Theories I Structural Functionalism The Functional Theory of Stratification and Its Critics Talcott Parsons’s Structural Functionalism Robert Merton’s Structural Functionalism

76

79 79 80 83 96

Conflict Theory 101 The Work of Ralf Dahrendorf 103 Authority 104 Groups, Conflict, and Change 107 General Systems Theory 108 The Work of Niklas Luhmann 108 System and Environment 108 Autopoiesis 110 Differentiation 111 Summary 114 Suggested Readings

116

CHAPTER 5  •  Contemporary Grand Theories II

119

Neo-Marxian Theory Critical Theory and the Emergence of the Culture Industry Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis

119 119 128

The Civilizing Process Examples of the Civilizing Process Explaining the Changes: Lengthening Dependency Chains A Case Study: Foxhunting

136 136 137 140

The Colonization of the Lifeworld Lifeworld, System, and Colonization Rationalization of System and Lifeworld

141 142 144

The Juggernaut of Modernity 144 Space and Time 145 Reflexivity 146 Insecurity and Risks 148 Summary 149 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 6  •  Contemporary Theories of Everyday Life Symbolic Interactionism

150

153 154

Dramaturgy 158 Dramaturgy 158 Impression Management 164 Emotion Management 167 Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis 170 Defining Ethnomethodology 170 Accounts 171 Some Examples 173 Exchange Theory The Exchange Theory of George Homans Basic Propositions

175 175 178

Rational Choice Theory A Skeletal Model Foundations of Social Theory

182 182 183

Summary 188 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 7  •  Contemporary Integrative Theories A More Integrated Exchange Theory Exchange Relationships and Networks Power-Dependence Theory A More Integrative Exchange Theory

190

193 193 194 196 196

Structuration Theory Elements of Structuration Theory

197 199

Culture and Agency

201

Habitus and Field 202 Bridging Subjectivism and Objectivism 203 Habitus 205 Field 208 Summary 213 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 8  •  Contemporary Feminist Theories

214

217

Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

000

The Basic Theoretical Questions

218

The Classical Roots

221

Contemporary Feminist Theories Gender Difference General Feminist Theories of Difference Sociological Theories of Difference Gender Inequality Gender Oppression Structural Oppression

222 223 223 225 227 231 236

Challenges to Feminism 250 Feminism and Postmodernism 250 Neoliberalism 252 Summary 253 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 9  •  Theories of Race and Colonialism Fanon and the Colonial Subject Black Skin, White Masks The Wretched of the Earth

255

257 260 260 262

Postcolonial Theory 266 Orientalism 268 Critical Theories of Race and Racism

270

Racial Formation

274

A Systematic Theory of Race The Structure of the Racial Field Structure and Agency in the Field

279 280 282

Southern Theory and Indigenous Resurgence Ibn Khaldun Southern Theory

283 284 285

Indigenous Theories 287 Resurgence 289 Summary 292 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 10  •  Postmodern Grand Theories

294

297

The Transition From Industrial to Postindustrial Society

298

Increasing Governmentality (and Other Grand Theories) Increasing Governmentality Other Grand Theories

301 301 306

Postmodernity as Modernity’s Coming of Age Learning to Live With Ambivalence? Postmodern Ethics

308 308 311

The Rise of Consumer Society, Loss of Symbolic Exchange, and Increase in Simulations 315 From Producer to Consumer Society 315 The Loss of Symbolic Exchange and the Increase in Simulations 318 The Consumer Society and the New Means of Consumption

326

Queer Theory: Sex and Sexuality The Heterosexual/Homosexual Binary Performing Sex

332 333 335

Summary 337 Suggested Readings

CHAPTER 11  •  Globalization Theory

340

343

Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization 349 Anthony Giddens on the “Runaway World” of Globalization 349 Ulrich Beck and the Politics of Globalization 350 Zygmunt Bauman on the Human Consequences of Globalization 351 Cultural Theory Cultural Differentialism Cultural Convergence Cultural Hybridization

353 353 357 363

Economic Theory 366 Neoliberalism 367 Critiquing Neoliberalism 371 Neo-Marxian Theoretical Alternatives to Neoliberalism 375 Political Theory

382

Summary 385 Suggested Readings

386

CHAPTER 12  •  Science, Technology, and Nature

389

Affect Theory and the New Materialism The Affective Field Affect and Social Control

391 394 397

Science Studies and Actor-Network Theory ANT and Society Translation, Mediation, and the Modern Constitution Haraway’s Hybrids

399 399 402 405

Theories of the Anthropocene Time, Space, and the Anthropocene Naming the Anthropocene Capitalism and the Anthropocene

409 409 411 416

Summary 420 Suggested Readings

421

Glossary 425 Source Acknowledgments

451

Index 453

LIST OF BOXES

Biographical/Autobiographical Vignettes Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

4

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)

19

Karl Marx (1818–1883)

28

Max Weber (1864–1920)

34

Georg Simmel (1858–1918)

51

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)

60

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931)

65

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)

73

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)

95

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003)

99

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)

102

Ralf Dahrendorf (1929–2009)

105

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998)

111

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)

123

Norbert Elias (1897–1990)

138

Jürgen Habermas (1929–)

141

Anthony Giddens (1938–)

146

Erving Goffman (1922–1982)

165

Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011)

172

George Caspar Homans (1910–1989)

177

James S. Coleman (1926–1995)

184

Richard Emerson (1925–1982)

195

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002)

204

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

220

Dorothy E. Smith (1926–)

240

Raewyn Connell (1944–)

244

Patricia Hill Collins (1948–)

246

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)

263

Kimberlé Crenshaw (1959–)

272

Michel Foucault (1926–1984)

306

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)

325

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017)

352

   xi

George Ritzer (1940–)

360

Bruno Latour (1947–)

400

Donna Haraway (1944 –)

413

Key Concepts Social Facts

22

Anomic (and Other Types of) Suicide

24

Exploitation 29 Verstehen 39 The Ideal Type and the Ideal-Typical Bureaucracy

43

Secrecy

52

Space

56

Conspicuous Consumption and Conspicuous Leisure

59

Definition of the Situation

66

Romanticism 70 Social Structure and Anomie

100

The Functions of Social Conflict

106

The Knowledge Industry

126

The Modern World-System

135

Figurations 139 Ideal Speech Situation

143

Risk Society

147

The Conceptual Contributions of Charles Horton Cooley

155

Role Distance

160

Stigma

164

The Commercialization of Feeling

169

Reflexive Sociology

207

Standpoint 248 Colonialism 259 Color-Blind Racism

277

Postmodern Sociology, Sociology of Postmodernity

309

The Prosumer and Prosumption

323

Phantasmagoria and Dream Worlds

329

Globalization 345 Civil Society

348

Realism and Critical Realism

390

Assemblage 396

Contemporary Applications Does Marx’s Theory Have Any Relevance to a Postcommunist World? 30 Have We Become Obsessed with the Self?

xii    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

68

Is the “War on Terror” Functional?

113

The Occupy Movement and Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis

130

Antidepressants: A Symbolic Interactionist View

156

The Stigmatization of Muslims after September 11, 2001

166

The “Field” of American Higher Education Today

212

The #MeToo Movement

249

Anticolonialism, Antiracism, and the Destruction of Statues

265

Fake News

313

The Death of Consumer Culture? If So, What Next?

319

The Bathroom Problem

337

Is Global Neoliberal Capitalism Dead?

373

The Great Global Economic Meltdown

381

The Coronavirus Pandemic

404

LIST OF BOXES   xiii

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

GEORGE RITZER, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher there and received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. He holds an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University and was awarded the Robin William Lectureship by the Eastern Sociological Society. He has chaired four sections of the American Sociological Association: Theoretical Sociology, Organizations and Occupations, Global and Transnational Sociology, and the History of Sociology. He has written many refereed articles, but he is best known for his monographs dealing with sociological theory, consumption, and globalization. The McDonaldization of Society (9th ed., 2018) has been his most widely read and influential work. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and overall his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Most of his writing over the past decade has been in the form of articles and essays on prosumption. JEFFREY STEPNISKY is Associate Professor of Sociology and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Community and International Development at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada. He regularly teaches classes in classical and contemporary sociological theory and has published in the area of social theory, especially as it relates to questions of subjectivity, in journals such as the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior,Social Theory & Health, and Space and Culture. He is coauthor of Sociological Theory, Classical Sociological Theory, and Modern Sociological Theory and coeditor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, all with George Ritzer.

   xv

PREFACE

This sixth edition of Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots was revised during the global coronavirus pandemic. That event has demonstrated the ongoing relevance of sociology and social theory to understanding our world. Social theory helps us think about the social forces that influence the spread, management, and social response to disease. Cutting-edge theories also help us reflect upon the relation between society and nature (and of course health and illness) in ever new and interesting ways. Several chapters now reference the pandemic, although a new chapter, “Science, Nature and Technology” (Chapter 12), provides the most developed conceptual tools for understanding the relationships among science (including medical science), technology, and nature. The contemporary application box in Chapter 12 draws special attention to the relevance of actor-network theory for analyzing the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 (the official name of the virus that causes COVID-19) and society. Chapter 12 is also significant because it includes a lengthy discussion of one of the newest areas of sociological theory—theories of the Anthropocene. These theories address the relationship between humans and the planet Earth, especially the impact that human activity plays in changing the climate and affecting the biosphere more generally. Given the pressing problem of climate change and its implications for social organization, this is likely to become one of the most important areas of theoretical development in coming years. This chapter also includes new biographies (on Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway) and new key concepts (on assemblage and realism). In addition, Patricia Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge have significantly revised their chapter on feminist theory (Chapter 8). This includes updates to sections on psychoanalytic feminism, liberal feminism, radical feminism, and structural oppression. They have also added new sections on hegemonic masculinity, postcolonial theory, and neoliberalism and introduced a new contemporary application box on “The #MeToo Movement” and a new biography on Raewyn Connell. Chapter 9 includes a new application box on “Anticolonialism and the Destruction of Statues.” Chapter 10 includes a new application on “Fake News” and a significantly revised application box on “The Death of Consumer Culture.” There are additional smaller changes including minor edits and additions to the suggested readings throughout. Beyond these changes, the structure of the book remains as it was before. As always, our aim is to provide an accessible, readable introduction to the most

   xvii

important ideas in sociological theory with a focus on contemporary relevance and applicability. Resources for instructors are available at http://study.sagepub.com/ritzertheory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Patricia Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge for the continuing inclusion of their chapter on feminist theory. Thanks also to Michelle Meagher for ongoing support and Alex Castleton for feedback on theories of science, technology, and nature. We are also grateful to students in MacEwan’s Soci 333 (Contemporary Sociological Theory) with whom Stepnisky piloted instruction on Latour’s and Haraway’s challenging ideas. We’re also grateful for conversations with David Ilkiw and Kilian LaBonté-Bon that helped Stepnisky figure out how to present Latour’s Down to Earth. At SAGE we would like to thank the entire team included but not limited to Jeff Lasser, Tiara Beatty, Vishwajeet Mehra, and our copy editor, Pam Schroeder.

xviii    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

CHAPTER

ONE

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

Creating Sociological Theory Defining Sociological Theory Creating Sociological Theory: A More Realistic View Overview of the Book Summary Suggested Readings

Everyone theorizes about the social world (and many other things—natural events, supernatural possibilities) virtually all of the time. Most generally this means that people think about, speculate on, social issues. We might think about our parents’ relationship with each other or speculate about the chances that our favorite team will win the league championship or whether China will go to war with Taiwan. On the basis of such speculation, we are likely to develop theories about our parents (e.g., they get along well because they have similar personalities), our team (they will not win the championship because they lack teamwork), or the possibility of war (China will not go to war because war would threaten China’s recent economic advances). These theories deal with social realities and social relationships—for example, the personalities of our parents and how those personalities affect the way they relate to each other, teamwork and the ability to win a championship, and the nature of China and its relationship to other nations in an era in which national economies are increasingly tightly intertwined with the global economy.

1

CREATING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY Social theorists, including those discussed in this book, do much the same kind of thing—they speculate and develop theories, and their theories deal with social realities and social relationships. Of course, there are important differences between everyday theorizing and that of social theorists: 1. Social thinkers usually theorize in a more disciplined and self-conscious manner than do people on an everyday basis. 2. Social thinkers usually do their theorizing on the basis of the work of social thinkers who have come before them. Thus, virtually all social theorists have carefully studied the work of their forebears, whereas most laypeople operate largely, if not totally, on their own. To paraphrase Isaac Newton and, more recently, the sociologist Robert Merton, if social theorists have developed better theories, it is because they have been able to build upon the ideas of those thinkers who came before them. 3. In addition, social theorists also often rely on data, either gathered by themselves or collected by others, on the social realities or relationships of interest to them. Laypeople may have some data at their disposal when they theorize, but these data are likely to be far less extensive and to be collected much less systematically. 4. Unlike laypeople, social theorists seek to publish their theories (major examples of such writings will be examined in this book) so that they can be critically analyzed, more widely disseminated, used as a basis for empirical research, and built upon by later theorists. The rigors of the review process help ensure that weak theories are weeded out before they are published. 5. Most important, social theorists do not, at least professionally, think about specific relationships involving their parents, their favorite teams, or even particular nations. Social theorists generally think in a more inclusive manner about broad social issues, whereas the layperson is more likely to speculate about much narrower, even personal, issues. Thus, in terms of the three examples already mentioned, although a layperson is likely to speculate about the relationship between their parents, the social theorist thinks about the more general issue of, for example, the changing nature of spousal relations in the early 21st century. Similarly, the layperson who thinks about the chances of success of their favorite team contrasts with the social theorist who might be concerned with issues such as the unfairness of competition between sports teams in the era of large salaries and budgets. Finally, rather than theorizing about China, a social theorist might think about the contemporary nation-state in the era of global capitalism (see Chapter 11).

2    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Although social theorists think in general terms, this is not to say that the issues of concern to them are only of academic interest. In fact, the issues that theorists choose to examine are often of great personal interest to them (and many others) and are frequently derived from issues of import in their personal lives. Thus, the stresses and strains in their parents’ marriage, or even in their own, might lead a sociologist to theorize about the general issue of the modern ­family and the difficulties that abound within it. The best sociological theories often stem from the deep personal interests of theorists. However, this poses an immediate dilemma. If the best theory stems from powerful personal interests, isn’t it likely that such a theory could be biased and distorted by those interests and personal experiences? The bad experiences that a theorist had as a child in their own home, or their own marital problems, might bias them against the nuclear family and give them a distorted view of it. This, in turn, might lead them in the direction of a theory critical of such a family. This is certainly possible, even likely, but theorists must and usually do manage to keep their personal biases in check. Yet bias is an ever-present danger that both theorists and those who read theory must keep in the forefront of their thinking. Balancing this is the fact that feeling strongly about an issue is a powerful motivator. Sociologists with strong feelings about the family or any other topic are likely to do sustained work on it and to feel driven to come up with useful theoretical insights. As long as biases are kept in check, strong personal feelings often lead to the best in social theory. For example, in this volume we will have a number of occasions to mention Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his pioneering work on capitalism (see Chapter 2). In many ways, Marx’s theory of capitalism is one of the best in the history of social theory, and it was motivated by Marx’s strong feelings about the capitalist system and the plight of the workers in such a system. It is true that these feelings may have blinded Marx to some of the strengths of the capitalist system, but that is counterbalanced by the fact that these feelings led to a powerful theory of the dynamics of capitalism. One can theorize about any aspect of the social world, and social theorists have speculated about things we would expect them to think about (politics, family) as well as others that we might find quite surprising (e.g., one of the authors of this textbook, George Ritzer, has done work on things like fast-food restaurants, credit cards, and shopping malls). Every aspect of the social world, from the most exalted to the most mundane, can be the subject of social theory. Individual social theorists find different aspects of the social world important and interesting, and it is in those areas that they are likely to devote their attention. Some might find the behavior of kings and presidents interesting, whereas others might be drawn to that of homeless persons and sex workers. Furthermore, still others, often some of the best social theorists, are drawn to the relationship between highly exalted and highly debased behavior. For example, Norbert Elias (1897–1990) focused on the period between the 13th and 19th centuries and how mundane behaviors such as picking one’s nose at the dinner table, blowing one’s nose, and expelling wind were related to changes in the king’s court (see Chapter 5). In terms of mundane

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    3

behaviors, he found that over time people grew less and less likely to pick their noses at the table, to stare into their handkerchiefs at the results of blowing their noses, and to noisily and publicly expel wind. These shifts in behavior were linked to changes in the king’s court that were eventually disseminated to the rest of society. Basically, the members of the king’s court became dependent on a wider and wider circle of people with the result that they became more sensitive about the impact of at least some of their behaviors (e.g., violence against others) and more circumspect about those behaviors. Eventually, as circles of dependence widened, this greater sensitivity and circumspection made their way to the lower reaches of society, and to put it baldly, people generally stopped picking their noses at the dinner table and noisily expelling wind in public. (The exceptions are now quite notable.)

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805–1859) A Biographical Vignette There are several ironies associated with the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. First, he was a French scholar, but his best-known work deals with the United States. Second, he was an aristocrat, but he is famous for his work on democracy. Third, he is most often thought of as a political scientist, but he made important contributions to sociology and sociological theory (see, e.g., the Key Concept box “Civil Society” in Chapter 11). His best-known work, Volume 1 of Democracy in America (published in 1835), is largely political in nature. It deals with the American political system and how it compares to others, particularly the French political system. The second volume of that work (published in 1840) is less well-known and was less well received, but it is far more sociological. Among other things, it deals broadly with culture, social class, “individualism” (Tocqueville is often credited with having invented the term, now popular in sociological theory), and social change. Finally, by the time of his later work The Old Regime and the French Revolution (published in 1856), Tocqueville had grown nostalgic for the aristocratic system (he wrote of the “catastrophic downfall of the monarchy”) and increasingly critical of democracy and socialism. He saw both as involving far too much centralization of decision making. He felt that in his younger years aristocrats were freer and made more independent decisions. Such aristocrats served as a counterbalance to the power of centralized government. In spite of this, Tocqueville was enough of a realist to understand that there was no going back to an aristocratic system. Rather, he argued that “associations of plain citizens” should form bodies that would serve to counter the power of centralized government and protect freedoms. Such bodies are close to those that make up what we now think of as civil society.

4    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Social thinkers may focus on particular behaviors because they find them important and interesting, but they also may do so because such study provides them with a point of entry into the social world. This idea is based on the perspective of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) that the social world comprises an endless series of social relationships (see Chapter 3). Each social act, in this view, is part of a social relationship, and each relationship, in turn, is ultimately related to every other social relationship. Thus, a focus on any given act or relationship can serve as a way of gaining a sense of the entirety of the social world, even the essential aspects and meanings of that world. Thus, Simmel chose to concentrate on money and relationships based on money as a specific way of gaining insight into the entirety of modern society. Although there is a great gap between the theories discussed in this book and the theories we all create every day, the point is that there is no essential difference between professional and lay theorizing. If, after you read this book, you study previous theorizing and then theorize in a more systematic and sustained manner about general social issues, you will be a social theorist. Of course, being a social theorist does not necessarily mean that you will yield high-quality theories. Your first efforts are not likely to be as good as the theories discussed in this book. In fact, the theories discussed in the following pages are the best of the best. Further, the work of many social theorists, some quite well-known in their time, is not discussed here because it has not stood the test of time, and the resulting social theories are no longer considered important. Thus, many have tried but only a few have succeeded in creating high-quality and important social theories.

DEFINING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY Standing the test of time is one characteristic of the theories discussed in this book. Another is that they have a wide range of applicability. For example, they explain behavior not simply in your family but in a large number of similar families in the United States and perhaps even in other nations around the world. Still another characteristic of these theories is that they deal with centrally important social issues. For instance, climate change (see Chapter 12) and the impact that human society has on planetary systems is a key issue that has attracted the attention of a growing number of theorists. Finally, the theories discussed in this book were created either by sociologists or thinkers in other fields whose work has come to be defined as important by sociologists. For example, we devote a great deal of attention to feminist sociological theory in this book, but although some feminist theorists are sociologists (e.g., Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins), the vast majority are social thinkers from a wide variety of other fields, such as philosophy and literary theory. Whether or not they were created by sociologists, the theories discussed here have been built upon by others who have refined them, expanded on them, or tested some of their basic premises in empirical research.

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    5

Sociological theory can be more formally defined as a set of interrelated ideas that allow for the systematization of knowledge of the social world, the explanation of that world, and predictions about the future of that world. Although some of the theories discussed in the pages that follow meet all of these criteria to a high degree, many others fall short on one or more of them. Nonetheless, they are all considered full-fledged sociological theories for purposes of this discussion. Whether or not they meet all the criteria, all the theories discussed here are considered by large numbers of sociologists (as well as scholars in many other fields) to be important theories. Perhaps most important, all of these are big ideas about issues and topics of concern to everyone in the social world.

CREATING SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: A MORE REALISTIC VIEW Up to this point, we have offered an idealized picture of sociological theory and the way it is created. In recent years a number of sociological theorists have grown increasingly critical of this image and have sought to create a more accurate picture of theory and theory creation. They point out that at least some theorists are undisciplined (if not downright casual): they don’t always study the work of their predecessors in detail, they aren’t always careful about collecting data that bear on their theories, their work is not always reviewed rigorously prior to publication, they allow their personal experiences to distort their theories, and so on. Overall, the point is made that the creation of sociological theory is far from the perfect process described previously. In addition to critiquing the work of individual theorists, the critics have also attacked the general state of sociological theory. In the past, like many other academic disciplines, sociological theory has been organized around a series of canonical texts. This sociological canon is made up of those theories, ideas, and books that are considered to be the most important in the field of sociology. Critics have pointed out that the canon is not necessarily a neutral or unbiased creation. It has favored some kinds of social theory over others. Thus, the best theories are not necessarily the ones that survive, become influential, and are covered in books like this one. They contend that sociological theory is not unlike the rest of the social world—it is affected by a wide range of political factors. What does and does not

sociological theory–A set of interrelated ideas that allow for the systematization of knowledge of the social world, the explanation of that world, and predictions about the future of that world. sociological canon–The theories, ideas, and texts that at least in the past, have been considered the most important in the field of sociology. Critics have argued that the canon is not a neutral construction; rather, it is affected by political factors.

6    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

come to be seen as important theory (as part of the canon) is the result of a series of political processes: 1. The work of those who studied with the acknowledged masters of sociological theory—people (historically, men) who came to occupy leadership positions within the discipline—is likely to be seen as more important than the work of those who lacked notable and powerful mentors. 2. Works reflecting particular political orientations are more likely to become part of the canon than those done from other perspectives. Thus, in the not-too-distant past in sociology, politically conservative theories (e.g., structural functionalism; see Chapter 4) were more likely to win acceptance than those that were radical from a political point of view (e.g., theories done from a Marxian perspective; see, especially, Chapter 5). 3. Theories that lead to clear hypotheses that can be tested empirically are more likely to be accepted, at least by mainstream sociologists, than those that produce grand, untestable points of view. 4. Theories produced by majority group members (i.e., white males) are more likely to become part of the canon than those created by minorities. Thus, the works of black theoreticians have rarely become part of the canon (for one exception, see the discussion of Du Bois in Chapter 3). The same has been true, at least until recently, of the work of female theorists (see Chapter 8). The theoretical ideas of those associated with cultural minorities (e.g., members of the LGBTQ+ community) have encountered a similar fate. Thus, sociological theory has not, in fact, always operated in anything approaching the ideal manner described earlier in this chapter. However, in recent decades there has been growing awareness of the gap between the ideal and the real. As a result, a number of perspectives that previously were denied entry into the heart of sociological theory have come to attain a central position within the field. Thus, Marx’s theory (see Chapter 2) and a variety of neo-Marxian theories (Chapter 5) have become part of the canon. Similarly, feminist theory and queer theory have become powerful presences, as reflected in Chapters 8 and 10 of this book. Finally, although sociologists have for a long time conducted research on questions of race and racism, it is only in recent years that sociological theories about processes such racialization and colonization (see Chapter 9) have become important to social theory. This expansion of the sociological canon has also influenced the ways in which sociologists define theory. For example, in the past theory was often thought of in scientific terms, as the description of laws of social behavior. From this perspective, it was possible to use the scientific method to develop broad,

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    7

universal theories that could be applied to explain and predict the behavior of all people, irrespective of their unique histories and life circumstances. This is sometimes referred to as the positivist approach to science and theory. Although this approach continues to shape some contemporary theories (see, e.g., the discussion of exchange theory and rational choice theory in Chapter 6), the p ­ erspectives that are newer to the canon frequently challenge the assumptions of traditional theory and theory creation. For example, standpoint theorists (Chapter 8), queer theorists (Chapter 10), some postmodern theorists (Chapter 10), and Indigenous theorists (Chapter 9) often • reject universalistic theories and focus on theories that reflect local, experience-based accounts of social life; • develop theories that take into account the perspectives of those without power; • seek to change social structure, culture, for the betterment of all persons but especially those on the periphery of society; • try to disrupt not only the social world but also the intellectual world, seeking to make it far more open and diverse; • exhibit a critical edge, both self-critical and critical of other theories and, most important, the social world; and • recognize that their work is limited by the particular historical, social, and cultural contexts in which they happen to live. In other words, alongside a range of more traditional approaches to theory, the current canon includes perspectives that regularly question the foundations of knowledge creation. These perspectives encourage theorists to ask: How are ideas and theories made? Who makes these theories? Whose point of view do these theories represent? The goal is to develop sociological theories that address the diversity of experiences and social forms that make up the contemporary world.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK Although this book is primarily about contemporary sociological theory, no single date can be named as the point of separation between clearly classical sociological theory and contemporary sociological theory, and no particular characteristics can be said to separate the two definitively. Nonetheless, we can take as the starting point of classical sociological theory the early 1800s, when Auguste Comte, the French social thinker who coined the term sociology (in 1839), began theorizing sociologically. (By the way, thinkers long before that time, in both ­Western and

8    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

non-Western cultures, developed idea systems that had many elements in common with sociological theory; see, e.g., the discussion of Ibn Khaldun in Chapter 9.) The 1920s and 1930s mark the close of the classical period. By that time virtually all the great classical thinkers had passed from the scene, and new theorists were beginning to replace them. Thus, the beginnings of the contemporary theories discussed in this book can be traced back many decades, although most were produced in the last half of the 20th century and remain important, and continue to be developed, in the early years of the 21st century. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the major theories and theorists of sociology’s classical age—roughly the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chapter 2 covers three thinkers—Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber—who are often acknowledged as the major figures in the history of sociological theory. Chapter 3 begins with a theorist—Georg Simmel—who is often included with the other three in the pantheon of classic theorists. This chapter also deals with three ­American thinkers, each of whom adds a unique focus to classical theory (­Durkheim was French; Marx, Weber, and Simmel were German). Thorstein Veblen, like the others mentioned to this point, had a broad social theory. His theorizing has received increasing recognition in recent years for the fact that whereas all of the above focused on issues related to production, he also concerned himself with, and foresaw, the increasing importance of consumption (especially in his famous idea of “conspicuous consumption”) in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Unlike the other theorists addressed to this point, George Herbert Mead focused more on everyday life and less on broad social phenomena and social changes. Finally, W. E. B. Du Bois was an African American sociologist. He argued that race and racism were the most important problems facing the 20th century and constructed a social theory that explained the significance of race for social life. His ideas also anticipate those now addressed by theorists working in the area of critical theories of race and racism. Chapters 4 and 5 shift the focus to our main concern with contemporary sociological theories. These two chapters deal with contemporary grand theories (as contrasted to the contemporary theories of everyday life, discussed in Chapter 6). A grand theory is defined as a vast, highly ambitious effort to tell the story of a great stretch of human history and/or a large portion of the social world. In fact, all of the theorists discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 can be seen as doing grand theory. However, our focus in Chapters 4 and 5 is more contemporary grand theories. In Chapter 4 we deal with two of the best-known contemporary theories—­structural functionalism and conflict theory—along with systems theory, a perspective developed by a contemporary German thinker, Niklas Luhmann. Chapter 5 deals with both another well-known contemporary theory, neo-Marxian theory, and

grand theory–A vast, highly ambitious effort to tell the story of a great stretch of human history and/or a large portion of the social world.

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    9

three of the more specific contemporary efforts at grand theory: the civilizing process (Norbert Elias), the colonization of the lifeworld (Jürgen Habermas), and the juggernaut of modernity (Anthony Giddens). Whereas Chapters 4 and 5 deal with grand theories involving large-scale structures and changes, Chapter 6 focuses on the major contemporary varieties of theories of everyday life: symbolic interactionism (building heavily on the work of Mead discussed in Chapter 3), dramaturgy (especially the contributions of Erving Goffman), ethnomethodology (shaped most heavily by Harold ­Garfinkel), exchange theory (with a focus on the contributions of George Homans), and rational choice theory (especially that of James Coleman). In Chapter 7 we address the major efforts to integrate the kinds of largescale concerns discussed in Chapters 4 and 5 with the everyday (small-scale) issues that are the focus of Chapter 6. We start with the efforts to create an exchange theory that goes beyond the micro-issues covered in Chapter 6 to integrate more macro-level issues (primarily in the work of Richard Emerson). We then move on to a series of more encompassing integrative efforts, including structuration theory (Anthony Giddens’s most general theoretical contribution to sociology), an attempt to integrate culture and agency (Margaret Archer), and Pierre B ­ ourdieu’s ambitious integration of what he calls habitus and field. Many of the concerns detailed in Chapter 7 are evident in Chapter 8 (authored by Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge) on feminist theory, but that theory is so wide-ranging, involves so many thinkers, and is so important that it requires a chapter to itself. Four broad types of contemporary feminist theories are covered in the chapter: theories of gender difference, gender inequality, gender oppression, and structural oppression. Chapter 9 introduces theories of race and colonialism. This chapter introduces theories that describe the central role that race has played in the development of modern societies. To provide context for the development of the concept of race, we start by discussing colonialism. First, we look at Frantz Fanon’s work on colonial consciousness and anticolonial movements; we then turn to postcolonial theory, in particular Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism. Next, we address specific theories of race and racism, such as critical race theory, Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s social constructionist theory of racial formation, and Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond’s theory of the racial order. The chapter ends with a review of theories developed by Indigenous scholars and theorists from the Global South. In contrast to most of the theories covered in this book, which are based on Western knowledges, these theories are based in the lived experiences and knowledges of Indigenous peoples.

theories of everyday life–Theories that focus on such everyday and seemingly mundane activities as ­individual thought and action, the interaction of two or more people, and the small groups that emerge from such interaction.

10    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    11

Lévi–Strauss (1908–2009)

Symbolic Interactionism Blumer (1900–1987) M. Kuhn (1911–1963)

Sartre (1905–1980)

Schutz (1899–1959)

Skinner Du Bois (1904–1990) (1868–1963) Parsons Sorokin (1902–1979) (1889–1968) Weber Mannheim Critical School (1864–1920) (1893–1947) Horkheimer Veblen Hegelian (1895–1973) (1857–1929) Marxism Adorno Schumpeter Lukács (1903–1969) (1883–1950) (1885–1971)

Small (1854–1926) Park (1864–1944) Mead (1863–1931) Cooley (1864–1929)

Husserl (1859–1938) Simmel (1858–1918)

Freud (1858–1939) Economic Determinism Kautsky (1854–1938)

Source: Author created

Marx (1818–1883)

Durkheim (1858–1917)

Social Darwinism Sumner (1840–1910) Ward (1841–1913)

Spencer (1820–1903)

Figure 1.1  Sociological Theory: A Chronology

Actor-Network Poststructuralism Theory Foucault (1926–1984) Latour Agamben (1942– ) (1947– ) Network Theory Rational Choice Theory Exchange Theory Coleman Blau Postmodern Homans (1926–1995) (1918–2002) Social Theory (1910–1989) Baudrillard Emerson Structural Functionalism (1929–2007) (1925–1982) Merton Systems Theory Queer Theory (1910–2003) Luhmann Butler Radical Sociology Conflict Theory (1927–1998) (1956–2007) Mills Dahrendorf Spatial Marxism (1916–1962) (1929–2009) Affect Theory Structural Marxism Micro-Macro and Feminist Agency Structure Althusser Sociological Theory Integration Theory (1918–1990) Habermas D. Smith Theories of Economic Marxism (1929– ) (1926– ) Critical Theories Consumption Sweezy Honneth of Race and and Prosumption (1910–2004) (1949– ) Ethnicity Braverman Indigenous and (1920–1976) Intersectionality Southern Theory Phenomenological Theory Historical Marxism Sociology P. Collins Berger Wallerstein Theories of (1948–1998) (1929–2017) (1930–2019) Modernity Giddens Luckmann Postcolonial Theories of Race (1938– ) (1927–2016) Theory and Colonialism Bauman Said Fanon Ethnomethodology (1925–2017) (1935–1964) (1925–1961) Garfinkel (1917–2011) Globalization Theory Existential Sociology Robertson Dramaturgical Sociology (1938– ) Goffman (1922–1982)

Structuralism

Chapter 10 deals with some of the most exciting theoretical developments of the late 20th century, grouped under the heading of postmodern grand theories. Included here is Daniel Bell’s work on the transition from industrial to postindustrial society, Michel Foucault’s thinking on increasing governmentality, Zygmunt Bauman’s work on postmodernity as the coming of age of modernity, the interrelated work of Jean Baudrillard on the rise of consumer society, and George Ritzer on the new means (or cathedrals) of consumption, and finally a section on queer theory that includes discussion of important queer theorists such as Michel Foucault, Eve Sedgwick, and Judith Butler. Chapter 11 deals with a theory of particular importance for an understanding of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—globalization theory. We begin by looking at the thinking of several important contemporary theorists on ­globalization—Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to three broad types of theorizing about globalization. The first is cultural theory, which itself is subdivided into three subtypes. Cultural differentialism sees lasting, if not eternal, differences among cultures that are little affected by globalization. A major example of this approach is Samuel Huntington’s work on civilizations. Cultural convergence focuses on areas in which cultures are becoming increasingly alike. We use Ritzer’s work on McDonaldization as a global force and the increasing “globalization of nothing” to exemplify this approach. Finally, cultural hybridization sees globalization as characterized by unique mixtures of the global and the local. Arjun Appadurai’s work on globalization in general, and especially his thinking on disjunctures among what he calls “landscapes,” is a good and important example of this approach. The second type of theorizing about globalization is economic theory. Although there is a wide array of work under this heading, the focus here is on neoliberalism as well as on two neo-Marxian approaches—Leslie Sklair on transnational capitalism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri on empire—that represent critiques of neoliberalism and alternatives to it. Finally, we discuss political approaches to globalization with a special focus on the decline of the nation-state in the global age. Chapter 12 looks at theories that address the relationships among society, technology, and nature. It also considers how contemporary theorists are using ideas from the natural sciences to develop their ideas about society. Although historically sociologists have drawn on evolutionary theories, in recent years social theorists have engaged with systems theories, neuroscience, climate science, and other natural science disciplines. In this chapter we look at some of the most prominent among these perspectives. Affect theory is an outgrowth of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Poststructuralism and postmodernism emphasize the role that language and culture have played in constructing society. Although they share many of the assumptions of the earlier poststructuralists, affect theorists also describe the role that biological bodily energies (affect) play in the construction of social life. This chapter also talks about science and technology studies, especially the work of actor-network theorist Bruno Latour and feminist science

12    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

studies scholar Donna Haraway. Both of these theorists point out that science and technology play central roles in the organization of contemporary social life. In particular they share the view that societies are constructed not only through relationships among humans, but also through relationships between humans and nonhumans (animals, technology, natural objects, etc.). The final section of this chapter introduces one of the newest developments in social theory—theories of the Anthropocene. The Anthropcene is a term used to describe a new geological era in which human societies have an unprecedented impact on planetary ecosystems. Sociologists and social theorists consider how this development affects our understanding of what society is, especially how we conceive of our relationship to nature.

SUMMARY 1. We all theorize, but a number of characteristics distinguish the theorizing of sociologists from that of laypeople. 2. The issues of interest to sociological theorists are usually of great personal and social concern. 3. Every aspect of the social world, from the most exalted to the most mundane, can be the subject of social theory. 4. Social thinkers may focus on particular behaviors because they find them important and interesting, but they also may do so because these behaviors offer them points of entry into the larger social world. 5. The theories discussed in this book have a number of characteristics in common, including having stood the test of time and having a wide range of applicability, dealing with centrally important social issues, and being created by sociologists or those who have come to be defined as important by sociologists. 6. Sociological theory may be formally defined as a set of interrelated ideas that allow for the systematization of knowledge of the social world, the explanation of that world, and predictions about the future of that world. It must be acknowledged, however, that few theories measure up to this definition fully. 7. Although there is an idealized image of the way in which sociological theory operates (e.g., the best ideas become part of the canon), the fact is that reality is different and political factors play critical roles in theory.

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    13

8. Criticisms of the ideal model and revelations about the real world of sociological theory have made it possible for a number of perspectives that were previously marginalized (e.g., Marxian, feminist, and queer theories) to gain attention and even become part of the canon. 9. This book deals with contemporary sociological theory (and its classical roots) under several general headings: classical theories, grand theories (including postmodern), theories of everyday life, integrative theories, feminist theories, theories of race and colonialism, theories of globalization, and theories of science technology and society.

SUGGESTED READINGS SYED FARID ALATAS and VINEETA SINHA. Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. A set of essays about classical theorists and theories from a wider set of backgrounds than is typically represented in mainstream textbooks, including essays about women theorists (Martineau, Nightengale, Sarswati) and essays about theories developed by scholars from North Africa (Ibn Khaldun), the Philippines (Rizal), and India (Sarkar). GEORGE RITZER, ed. The Encyclopedia of Social Theory. 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. The first full encyclopedia of social theory that covers most of the major topics and theorists, both classical and contemporary. The entries are written by well-known experts from around the world. GEORGE RITZER and BARRY SMART, eds. The Handbook of Social Theory. London: Sage, 2001. A compendium of essays dealing with many of the most important people and issues in the history of social theory. GEORGE RITZER and JEFFREY STEPNISKY, eds. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists. 2 vols. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. A collection of 41 essays on leading classical and contemporary theorists authored by widely recognized scholars. GEORGE RITZER and JEFFREY STEPNISKY Sociological Theory. 10th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2018. Deals with classical and contemporary sociological theory much more widely and in greater detail than this volume. MARY ROGERS, ed. Multicultural Experiences, Multicultural Theories. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. Includes many examples of, and original contributions to, theories from a diversity of cultural backgrounds.

14    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

STEVEN SEIDMAN Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today. 6th ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017. Most recent edition of an influential sociological theory textbook. Covers theories from the traditional sociology canon but also excels in its presentation of critical theoretical perspectives. A. JAVIER TREVIÑO, ed. The Development of Sociological Theory: Readings From the Enlightenment to the Present. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017. A cuttingedge collection of original writings, from diverse perspectives, by classical and contemporary theorists.

CHAPTER ONE  •  INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY    15

CHAPTER

TWO

CLASSICAL THEORIES I

Émile Durkheim: From Mechanical to Organic Solidarity Karl Marx: From Capitalism to Communism Max Weber: The Rationalization of Society Summary Suggested Readings

The early giants of social theory are noted for their creation of grand theories, theories that as defined in Chapter 1, are vast, highly ambitious efforts to tell the story of great stretches of social history and/or large expanses of the social world. These theories of history generally culminate, in their authors’ times, with descriptions of a society that although it has made progress, is beset with problems. The creators of such theories usually offer ideas about how to solve those problems and thereby create a better society.

ÉMILE DURKHEIM: FROM MECHANICAL TO ORGANIC SOLIDARITY Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) built on the work of the French social theorist Auguste Comte, but he became a far more important figure than Comte in the history of theory. In fact, at least some observers consider Durkheim the most important theorist in the history of sociology. To this day, many forms of sociological theorizing bear the stamp of his thinking.

Two Types of Solidarity Durkheim’s grand theory involves a concern for the historical transformation of societies from more primitive mechanical forms to more modern organic ones. What differentiates these two types of societies is the source of their solidarity, or what holds them together. The key here is the division of labor.

17

In mechanical solidarity, society is held together by the fact that virtually everyone does essentially the same things (gathering fruits and vegetables, hunting animals). In other words, there is little division of labor in primitive society, and this fact holds society together. In contrast, in more modern organic ­solidarity a substantial division of labor has occurred, and people perform increasingly specialized tasks. Thus, some may make shoes, others may bake bread, and still others may raise children. Solidarity here comes from differences; that is, individuals need the contributions of an increasing number of people to function and even to survive. Durkheim envisioned a historical transformation from mechanical to organic solidarity. This idea is clearly different from Comte’s model of social change. Comte thought in terms of changes in ideas, in the way people seek to explain what transpires in the world; Durkheim dealt with changes in the material world, specifically in the ways in which we divide and do our work.

Changes in Dynamic Density What causes the change from mechanical to organic solidarity? Durkheim’s answer is that the transformation results from an increase in the dynamic density of society. Dynamic density has two components. The first is simply the sheer number of people in society. However, an increase in the number of people is not enough on its own to induce a change in the division of labor because individuals and small groups of people can live in relative isolation from one another and continue to be jacks-of-all-trades. That is, even in societies with large populations, each individual can continue to do most of the required tasks. Thus, a second ­factor is necessary for dynamic density to increase and lead to changes in the division of labor: there must be an increase in the amount of interaction that takes place among the people in society. When increasingly large numbers of people interact with greater frequency, dynamic density is likely to increase to the point that a transformation from mechanical to organic solidarity occurs. What is it about an increase in dynamic density that leads to the need for a different division of labor? With more people, there is greater competition for scarce resources, such as land, game, and fruits and vegetables. If everyone competes for everything, there is great disorder and conflict. With an increased division of labor in which some people are responsible for one of these things and other people are responsible for other things, there is likely to be less conflict and more harmony. Perhaps more important is the fact that greater specialization

mechanical solidarity–In Durkheimian theory, the idea that primitive society is held together by the fact that there is little division of labor, and as a result, virtually everyone does essentially the same things. organic solidarity–To Durkheim, the idea that because of the substantial division of labor in modern society, solidarity comes from differences; that is, individuals need the contributions of an increasing number of people to function and even to survive. dynamic density–The number of people in a society and their frequency of interaction. An increase in dynamic density leads to the transformation from mechanical to organic solidarity (Durkheim). 18    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

in performing specific tasks makes for greater efficiency and ultimately greater productivity. Thus, with an increased division of labor, more of everything can be produced for an expanding population. Greater peace and prosperity are the results, or at least that is what Durkheim contends.

ÉMILE DURKHEIM (1858–1917) A Biographical Vignette Durkheim is most often thought of today as a political conservative, and his influence within sociology certainly has been a conservative one. But in his time, he was considered a liberal. This was exemplified by the active public role he played in the defense of French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish man whose court-martial for treason in the late 19th century was felt by many to be based on anti-Semitic sentiments in some sectors of French society. Durkheim was deeply offended by the Dreyfus affair, particularly its antiSemitism. But he did not attribute this anti-Semitism to racism among the French people. Characteristically, he saw it as a symptom of the moral sickness confronting French society as a whole. He said, When society undergoes suffering, it feels the need to find someone whom it can hold responsible for its sickness, on whom it can avenge its misfortunes; and those against whom public opinion already discriminates are naturally designated for this role. These are the pariahs who serve as expiatory victims. What confirms me in this interpretation is the way in which the result of Dreyfus’s trial was greeted in 1894. There was a surge of joy in the boulevards. People celebrated as a ­triumph what should have been a cause for public mourning. At least they knew whom to blame for the economic troubles and moral distress in which they lived. The trouble came from the Jews. The charge had been officially proved. By this very fact alone, things already seemed to be getting better and people felt consoled. Thus, Durkheim’s interest in the Dreyfus affair stemmed from his deep and lifelong interest in morality and the moral crisis confronting modern society. To Durkheim, the answer to the Dreyfus affair and crises like it lay in ending the moral disorder in society. Because that could not be done quickly or easily, Durkheim suggested more specific actions, such as severe repression of those who incite hatred of others and government efforts to show the public how it is being misled. He urged people to “have the courage to proclaim aloud what they think, and to unite together in order to achieve victory in the struggle against public madness.” Source: Steve Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) pp. 345, 347.

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   19

Collective Conscience Another important aspect of Durkheim’s argument about the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity is that it is accompanied by a dramatic change in what he called the collective conscience, the ideas shared by the members of a group, tribe, or society. These ideas are collective in the sense that no one individual knows or possesses all of them; only the entire collection of individuals has full knowledge and possession of them. The collective conscience in mechanical solidarity is different from that in organic solidarity. In mechanical solidarity and the small, undifferentiated societies associated with it, the collective conscience affects everyone and is of great significance to them. People care deeply about collective ideas. Furthermore, the ideas are powerful, and people are likely to act in accord with them. The ideas are also rigid, and they tend to be associated with religion. In contrast, in organic solidarity and the large, differentiated societies linked with it, fewer people are affected by the collective conscience. In other words, more people are able to evade the ideas partially or completely. The collective conscience is not as important, and most people do not seem to care about it deeply. It is far weaker and does not exercise nearly as much control over people. The collective conscience is far more flexible and adaptable and less associated with anything we think of as religion. For example, in a primitive society with mechanical solidarity, people might feel deeply about being involved in group activities, including the selection of a new leader. If one member does not participate, everyone will know, and difficulties will arise for that person in the group. However, in a modern society characterized by organic solidarity, the feeling about such political participation (e.g., voting) is not nearly as strong. People are urged to vote, but there is not much strength of conviction involved, and in any case the fact that some do not vote is likely to escape the view of their neighbors.

Law: Repressive and Restitutive How do we know whether there has been a transition from mechanical to organic solidarity? From a strong to a weak collective conscience? Durkheim argued that we can observe these changes in a transformation in the law. Mechanical solidarity tends to be characterized by repressive law. This is a form of law in which offenders are likely to be severely punished for any action that is seen by the tightly integrated community as an offense against the powerful collective conscience. The theft of a collective conscience–The ideas shared by the members of a collectivity such as a group, a tribe, or a society (Durkheim). repressive law–Characteristic of mechanical solidarity, a form of law in which offenders are likely to be severely punished for any action that is seen by the tightly integrated community as an offense against the powerful collective conscience (Durkheim).

20    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

pig might lead to the thief’s hands being cut off. Blaspheming against the community’s God or gods might result in the removal of the blasphemer’s tongue. Because people are so involved in the moral system, offenses against it are likely to be met with swift, severe punishments. These reactions are evidence that repressive law is in place, and such law is, in turn, a material reflection of the existence of a strong collective conscience and a society held together by mechanical solidarity. As we have seen, over time mechanical solidarity gives way to organic solidarity and a progressive weakening of the collective conscience. The indicator of a weak collective conscience, of the existence of organic solidarity, is restitutive law. Instead of being severely punished for even seemingly minor offenses against the collective morality, individuals in this more modern type of society are likely simply to be asked to comply with the law or to repay (make restitution to) those who have been harmed by their actions. Thus, one who steals a pig might be required to work for a certain number of hours on the farm from which the pig was stolen, pay a fine, or repay society by spending a brief period in jail. This is obviously a far milder reaction than having one’s hands cut off for such an offense. The reason is that the collectivity is not deeply and emotionally invested in the common morality (“Thou shalt not steal”) that stands behind such a law. Rather, officials (the police, court officers) are delegated the legal responsibility to be sure the law and, ultimately, the morality are enforced. The collectivity can distance itself from the whole thing with the knowledge that it is being handled by paid and/or elected officials. More extremely, something like blaspheming against God is likely to go unnoticed and unpunished in modern societies. Having a far weaker collective conscience, believing little in religion, people in general are likely to react weakly or not all to a blasphemer. And officials, busy with far greater problems, such as drug abuse, rape, and murder, are unlikely to pay any attention at all to blasphemy, even if there are laws against it.

Anomie At one level Durkheim seems to be describing and explaining a historical change from one type of solidarity to another. The two types of solidarity merely seem to be different, and one does not seem to be any better or worse than the other. Although mechanical solidarity is not problem free, the problems associated with organic solidarity and how they might be solved concerned Durkheim. Several problems come into existence with organic solidarity, but the one that worried Durkheim most is what he termed anomie. Durkheim viewed anomie (and other problems) as a pathology, which implies that it can be cured. In other words, a social theorist like Durkheim was akin to a medical doctor, diagnosing social pathologies and dispensing cures. restitutive law–Characteristic of organic solidarity and its weakened collective conscience, a form of law in which offenders are likely simply to be asked to comply with the law or to repay (make restitution to) those who have been harmed by their actions (Durkheim).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   21

KEY CONCEPT Social Facts

Crucial to understanding Durkheim’s thinking and the development of modern sociology is his concept of social facts. Durkheim developed this idea because he was struggling to separate the then-new discipline of sociology from the existing fields of psychology and philosophy. Whereas philosophers think about abstractions, Durkheim argued, sociologists should treat social facts as things. As such, social facts are to be studied empirically; this practice distinguishes sociologists from philosophers, who merely speculate about abstract issues without venturing into the real world and collecting data on concrete social phenomena. For example, in his book Suicide, Durkheim said that the “social suicide rate”—the relative number of people who commit suicide in a given region or occupation— is a social fact. It describes a measureable, overarching pattern in a society. Durkheim also argued that social facts are external to, and coercive over, individuals. This distinguishes them from the things that psychologists study. Psychologists are concerned with psychological facts that are internal (not external) to individuals and are not necessarily coercive over them. Durkheim distinguished between two types of social facts: material and nonmaterial. Material social facts are social facts that are materialized in the external social world. An example is the structure of the classroom in which you are taking the course for which you are reading this book. It is a material reality (you can touch and feel the walls, desks, blackboard), and it is external to you and coercive over you. In terms of the latter, the structure of the room may encourage listening to, and taking notes on, lectures. It also serves to prevent you from, say, playing baseball in the room while a lecture is in process. Nonmaterial social facts are social facts that are also external and coercive but that do not take a material form. The major examples of nonmaterial social facts in sociology are norms and values. Thus, we are also prevented from playing baseball while a lecture is in progress because of unwritten and widely shared rules about how one is supposed to behave in class. Furthermore, we have learned to put a high value on education with the result that we are reluctant to do anything that would adversely affect it.

social facts–To Durkheim, the subject matter of sociology. Social facts are to be treated as things that are external to, and coercive over, individuals, and they are to be studied empirically. material social facts–Social facts that take a material form in the external social world (e.g., architecture) (Durkheim). nonmaterial social facts–Social facts that are external and coercive but that do not take a material form (e.g., norms and values) (Durkheim).

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We can see how a nonmaterial social fact is coercive over us, but in what sense is it also external to us? The answer is that things like the norms and values of society are the shared possessions of the collectivity. Some, perhaps most, of them are internalized in the individual during the socialization process, but no single individual possesses anything approaching all of them. The entire set of norms and values is in the sole possession of the collectivity. In this sense we can say that these nonmaterial social facts are external to us. To this day, many sociologists concentrate their attention on social facts. However, they rarely use this now-antiquated term. Rather, sociologists focus on social structures and social institutions. However, it has become clear that in his effort to distinguish sociology from psychology and philosophy, Durkheim came up with a much too limited definition of the subject matter of sociology. As we will see, many sociologists study an array of phenomena that would not be considered Durkheimian social facts.

Anomie may be defined as a sense of not knowing what one is expected to do. This is traceable to the decline in the collective conscience in organic solidarity, which means that there are few, if any, clear, strong collective ideas about things. As a result, when confronted with many issues—Should I take that pig that is wandering in the field? Should I blaspheme against God?—people simply do not know what they are supposed to do. More generally, people are adrift in society because they lack clear and secure moorings. This contrasts strongly with mechanical solidarity, in which everyone is aware of what the collectivity believes and what they are supposed to do in any given situation. They have clear and secure moorings; they do not suffer from anomie.

KARL MARX: FROM CAPITALISM TO COMMUNISM The most important and most aesthetically pleasing (because its analyses, conclusions, and remedies for society’s ills stem seamlessly from basic premises) theory of the classical age is that of the German social thinker and political activist Karl Marx (1818–1883). This assertion might come as a surprise to readers who have previously come into contact only with critical statements about Marx and his thinking. In the popular view, Marx is some sort of crazed radical who developed a set of ideas that led many nations, especially the Soviet Union, in the direction of disastrous communist regimes. The failures of those societies and the abuses associated with them (e.g., the system of prison camps in the Soviet Union— the Gulag—where millions died) have been blamed on Marx and his ideas. But

anomie–A sense, associated with organic solidarity, of not knowing what one is expected to do, of being adrift in society without any clear and secure moorings (Durkheim).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   23

KEY CONCEPT Anomic (and Other Types of ) Suicide

The concept of anomie plays a central role in Durkheim’s famous work Suicide, in which he argues that people are more likely to kill themselves when they do not know what is expected of them. In this situation, regulation of people is low, and they are largely free to run wild. This mad pursuit of anything and everything is likely to prove unsatisfying, and as a result, a higher percentage of people in such a situation are apt to commit suicide, specifically anomic suicide. But what causes the rate of anomic suicide to increase? Social disruption is the main cause, but interestingly, we can see an increase in the rate of such suicide in times of both positive and negative disruption. That is, both an economic boom and an economic depression can cause a rise in the rate of anomic suicide. Either positive or negative disruptions can adversely affect the ability of the collectivity to exercise control over the individual. Without such control, people are more likely to feel rootless, not knowing what they are supposed to do in the changing and increasingly strange environment. The unease that this causes leads people to commit anomic suicide at a higher rate than in more stable times. Anomic suicide is one of four types of suicide Durkheim describes in a broad-ranging theory of this behavior. The others are egoistic suicide, which occurs when people are not well integrated into the collectivity. Largely on their own, they feel a sense of futility or meaninglessness, and more of them adopt the view that they are free (morally and otherwise) to choose to do anything, including kill themselves. In altruistic suicide, people are too well integrated into the collectivity and kill themselves in greater numbers than they otherwise would because the group leads them, or even forces them, to do so. Finally, fatalistic suicide occurs in situations of excessive regulation (e.g., slavery), where people

anomic suicide–A type of suicide that occurs when people do not know what is expected of them, where regulation is low, and they are largely free to run wild.This mad pursuit is likely to prove unsatisfying, and as a result, a higher percentage of people are apt to commit this type of suicide (Durkheim). egoistic suicide–A type of suicide that occurs when people are not well integrated into the collectivity and are largely on their own; they feel a sense of futility or meaninglessness, and more of them feel that they are morally free to kill themselves (Durkheim). altruistic suicide–A type of suicide that occurs when people are too well integrated into the collectivity; they are likely to kill themselves in greater numbers because the group leads them, or even forces them, to do so (Durkheim). fatalistic suicide–A type of suicide that occurs in situations of excessive regulation (e.g., slavery), where people are often so distressed and depressed by their lack of freedom that they take their own lives more frequently than otherwise (Durkheim).

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are so distressed and depressed by their lack of freedom that they take their own lives more frequently than otherwise. Thus, Durkheim offers a broad theory of suicide based on the degree to which people are regulated by, or integrated into, the collectivity.

although the leaders of those societies invoked Marx’s name and called themselves communists, Marx himself would have attacked the kinds of societies they created for their inhumanity. The fact is that what those societies became had little in common with what Marx would have liked a communist society to be.

Human Potential The starting point for Marx’s grand theory is a set of assumptions about the potential of people in the right historical and social circumstances. In capitalistic and precapitalistic societies, people had come nowhere close to their human potential. In precapitalistic societies (say, the Stone Age or the Middle Ages), people were too busy scrambling to find adequate food, shelter, and protection to develop their higher capacities. Although food, shelter, and protection were generally easier to come by in capitalistic societies, the oppressive and exploitative nature of the capitalist system made it impossible for most people to come anywhere close to their potential. According to Marx, people, unlike lower animals, are endowed with consciousness and the ability to link that consciousness to action. Among other things, people can set themselves apart from what they are doing, plan what they are going to do, choose to act or not to act, choose a specific kind of action, be flexible if impediments get in their way, concentrate on what they are doing for long periods, and often choose to do what they are doing in concert with other people. But people do not only think; they would perish if that were all they did. They must act, and often that involves acting on nature to appropriate from it what people need (raw materials, water, food, shelter) to survive. People appropriated things in earlier societies, but they did so in such primitive and inefficient ways that they were unable to develop their capacities, especially their capacities to think, to any great degree. Under capitalism, people came to care little about expressing their creative capacities in the act of appropriating what they needed from nature. Rather, they focused on owning things and earning enough money to acquire those things. But capitalism was important to Marx because it provided the technological and organizational innovations needed for the creation of a communist society, where for the first time, people would be able to express their full capacities. Under communism, people would be freed from the desire merely to own things and would be able, with the help of technologies and organizations created in capitalism, to live up to their full human potential (what Marx called “species being”).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   25

Alienation The idea that people must appropriate what they need from nature is related to Marx’s view that people need to work. Work is a positive process in which people use their creative capacities, and further extend them, in productive activities. However, the work that most people did under capitalism did not permit them to express their human potential. In other words, rather than expressing themselves in their work, people under capitalism were alienated from their work. One cannot understand what Marx meant by alienation without understanding further what he meant by human potential. In the circumstance (communism) where people achieve their human potential, there is a natural interconnection between people and their productive activities, the products they produce, the fellow workers with whom they produce those things, and what they are potentially capable of becoming. Alienation is the breakdown of these natural interconnections. Instead of being naturally related to all of these things, people are separated from them. First, under capitalism, instead of choosing their productive activities, people have their activities chosen for them by the owners, the capitalists. The capitalists decide what is to be done and how it is to be done. They offer the workers (in Marx’s terminology, the proletariat) a wage, and if the workers accept, they must perform the activities the way they have been designed to be performed by the capitalist. In return, they receive a wage that is supposed to provide them with all the satisfaction and gratification they need. The productive activities are controlled, even owned, by the capitalist. Thus, the workers are separated from those activities and unable to express themselves in them. Second, capitalists also own the products. The workers do not choose what to produce, and when the products are completed, they do not belong to the workers. The workers are unlikely to use the products to satisfy their basic needs. Instead, the products belong to the capitalists, who may use them, or seek to have them used, in any way they wish. Given the profit orientation that serves to define capitalism, this almost always means that they will endeavor to sell the products for a profit. Once the workers have made the products, they are completely separated from those products and have absolutely no say in what happens to them. Furthermore, the workers may have little sense of their contribution to the final products. They may work on assembly lines, perform specific tasks (e.g., tightening some bolts), and have little idea of what is being produced and how what they are doing fits into the overall process and contributes to the end products. Third, the workers are likely to be separated from their fellow workers. In Marx’s view, people are inherently social and, left to their own devices, would choose to work collaboratively and cooperatively to produce what they need alienation–The breakdown of and separation from the natural interconnection between people and their productive activities, the products they produce, the fellow workers with whom they produce those things, and what they are potentially capable of becoming (Marx).

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to live. However, under capitalism, the workers, even when surrounded by many other people, perform their tasks alone and repetitively. Those around them are likely to be strangers who are performing similarly isolated tasks. Often the situation is even worse than this: the capitalist frequently pits workers against each other to see who can produce the most for the least amount of pay. Those who succeed keep their jobs, at least for a time, whereas those who fail are likely to find themselves unemployed and on the street. Thus, instead of working together harmoniously, workers are forced to compete with one another in a struggle for survival. Even if they are not engaged in such life-and-death struggles, workers in capitalism are clearly separated from one another. Finally, instead of expressing their human potential in their work, people are driven further and further from what they have the potential to be. They perform less and less like humans and are reduced to animals, beasts of burden, or inhuman machines. Their consciousness is numbed and ultimately destroyed as their relations with other humans and with nature are progressively severed. The result is a mass of people who are unable to express their essential human qualities, a mass of alienated workers.

Capitalism Alienation occurs within the context of a capitalist society. As we have seen, capitalism is essentially a two-class system in which one class (capitalists) exploits the other (proletariat). The key to understanding both classes lies in what Marx called the means of production. As the name suggests, these are the things that are needed for production to take place. Included in the means of production are things such as tools, machinery, raw materials, and factories. Under capitalism, the capitalists own the means of production. If the proletariat want to work, they must come to the capitalists, who own the means that make most work possible. Workers need access to the means of production to work. They also need money to survive in capitalism, and the capitalists tend to have that too as well as the ability to make more of it. The capitalists have what the proletariat need (the means of production, money for wages), but what do the workers have to offer in return? The workers have something absolutely essential to the capitalists: labor and the time available to perform it. The capitalists cannot produce

capitalism–An economic system comprising mainly capitalists and the proletariat in which one class (capitalists) exploits the other (proletariat) (Marx). means of production–Those things that are needed for production to take place (including tools, machinery, raw materials, and factories) (Marx). capitalists–Those who own the means of production under capitalism and are therefore in a position to exploit workers (Marx). proletariat–Those who, because they do not own the means of production, must sell their labor time to the capitalists to get access to those means (Marx).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   27

and cannot make more money and profit without the labor of the proletariat. Thus, a deal is struck. The capitalists allow the proletariat access to the means of production, and the proletariat are paid a wage (albeit a small one, as small as the capitalists can possibly get away with). Actually the worker is paid what Marx called a ­subsistence wage, enough for the worker to survive and have a family and children so that when the worker falters, they can be replaced by one of their children. In exchange, the proletariat give the capitalist their labor time and all the productive abilities and capacities associated with that time. On the surface, this seems like a fair deal: both the capitalist and the proletariat get what they lack and what they need. However, in Marx’s view this is a grossly unfair situation. Why is that so? The reason is traceable to another of Marx’s famous ideas, the labor theory of value. As the name suggests, his idea is

KARL MARX (1818–1883) A Biographical Vignette After graduating from the University of Berlin, Marx became a writer for a liberalradical newspaper and within 10 months had become its editor in chief. However, because of its political positions, the paper was closed shortly thereafter by the government. The essays that Marx published in this period began to reflect a number of the positions that would guide him throughout his life. They were liberally sprinkled with democratic principles, humanism, and youthful idealism. He rejected the abstractness of philosophy, the naive dreaming of utopian communists, and the arguments of activists who were urging what he considered to be premature political action. In rejecting these activists, Marx laid the groundwork for his own life’s work: Practical attempts, even by the masses, can be answered with a cannon as soon as they become dangerous, but ideas that have overcome our intellect and conquered our conviction, ideas to which reason has riveted our conscience, are chains from which one cannot break loose without breaking one’s heart; they are demons that one can only ­overcome by submitting to them. Source: “Communism and the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,” in D. McLellan (ed), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (New York: OUP, 1844/1972), p. 20.

subsistence wage–The wage paid by the capitalist to the proletariat that is enough for the worker to survive and have a family and children so that when the worker falters, they can be replaced by one of their children (Marx). labor theory of value–Marx’s theory that all value comes from labor and is therefore traceable, in ­capitalism, to the proletariat.

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KEY CONCEPT Exploitation

To Marx, capitalism, by its nature, leads to exploitation, particularly of the proletariat, or working class. His thinking on exploitation is derived from his labor theory of value and more specifically the concept of surplus value, defined as the difference between the value of a product when it is sold and the value of the elements (including workerslabor) consumed in its production. Surplus value, like all value from the perspective of the labor theory of value, comes from the workers. It should go to the workers, but in the capitalist system the lion’s share of the value goes to the capitalists. The degree to which the capitalists retain surplus value and use it to their own ends (including, and especially, expansion of their capitalist businesses) is the degree to which capitalism is an exploitative system. In a colorful metaphor, Marx describes capitalists as “vampires” who suck the labor of the proletariat. Furthermore, the more proletariat “blood” the capitalists suck, the bigger, more successful, and wealthier they will become. In capitalism, the deserving (the proletariat) grow poorer, while the undeserving (the capitalists) grow immensely wealthy.

that all value comes from labor. The proletariat labor; the capitalist does not. The capitalist might invest, plan, manage, scheme, and so on, but to Marx this is not labor. Marx’s sense of labor is the production of things out of the raw materials provided by nature. The proletariat and only the proletariat do that, although under capitalism the raw materials are provided by the capitalist and not directly by nature. To put it baldly, because the proletariat labor and the capitalist does not, the proletariat deserve virtually everything and the capitalist almost nothing. Of course, the situation in a capitalistic society is exactly the reverse: the capitalist gets the lion’s share of the rewards and the workers get barely enough to subsist. Thus (and this is another of Marx’s famous concepts), the proletariat are the victims of exploitation. Ironically, neither capitalist nor worker is conscious of this exploitation. Both are the victims of false consciousness. Marx believed that it is possible for people to be unaware of the forces that determine their social surplus value–The difference between the value of a product when it is sold and the value of the elements (including workerslabor) consumed in its production (Marx). exploitation–The nature of the relationship between capitalists and workers in capitalism, where the capitalists get the lion’s share of the rewards and the proletariat get only enough to subsist, even though based on the labor theory of value, the situation should be reversed (Marx). false consciousness–The inaccurate sense of themselves that both proletariat and capitalists have under capitalism regarding their relationship to each other and the way in which capitalism operates (Marx).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   29

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Does Marx’s Theory Have Any Relevance to a ­Postcommunist World? When the Soviet Union and its allies began to fall in the late 1980s, some observers believed not only that communism had failed but also that Marx’s theory, on which that system was ostensibly based, would finally, once and for all, be relegated to the dustbin of disproven and dishonored theories. Indeed, in the early 1990s there was much talk of the end of Marxian theory. Yet Marx’s theory, as well as the many neo-Marxian theories derived from it, not only survives in the early 21st century but is also considered by many scholars to be more relevant and useful than ever. The fact is that Marx did little or no theorizing about communism. Rather, he was a theorist of capitalism, and it is clear that with the demise of Soviet communism (and the transformation of Chinese communism into a vibrant capitalist economy coexisting with a communist state), capitalism is freer than it has been in 100 years (since the birth of Soviet communism in 1917), if not in its entire history, to roam the world and intrude itself into every nook and cranny of that world. From 1917 to 1989 the expansion of capitalism was limited by communism in various ways. First, many countries in the world, including some of the biggest and most important, were communist or were allied with the communist bloc. As a result, capitalist businesses found it impossible, or at least difficult, to establish themselves in those parts of the world. Second, the global conflict between capitalism and communism, especially the U.S.–Soviet Cold War, which began shortly after the close of World War II, inhibited the development and global spread of capitalism. For one thing, the huge expenditures on the military and military flare-ups associated with those periods in which the Cold War heated considerably (e.g., the wars in Korea and Vietnam) sapped resources that could have been devoted to the expansion of capitalism. With communism fast becoming a dim memory (except in Cuba and, at least rhetorically, in China), capitalism has been freed of many of its global restraints and is rampaging through the world. This is most obvious in the former communist countries that have become prime territory for capitalist expansionism. Western capitalists have rushed into the old Soviet bloc and established a strong presence, whereas in China they have done the same, even as a strong indigenous capitalism has developed. Indeed, the question now is not whether China will replace the United States as the leading capitalist country but when that transformation will take place. Marx foresaw that capitalism not only would but must become a global phenomenon. Capitalist businesses now, much more than in Marx’s day, must

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expand or die. Thus, they must ceaselessly seek new markets as old markets grow less able to produce ever-expanding business and profits. Marx’s prediction was prevented from coming to full fruition in the 20th century because of the global conflict between communism and capitalism (as well as other factors, such as two devastating world wars). However, in the past two decades the global proliferation predicted by Marx has occurred with a vengeance. What this all means is that Marx’s ideas are more relevant today than ever before to the analysis of capitalism, especially global capitalism. Not only has capitalism spread around the world, but we are now increasingly facing the kinds of crises that Marx anticipated would accompany capitalism’s expansion. These include growing levels of global inequality, a disappearing middle-class, financial crises such as the recent worldwide recession, and environmental threats. At the same time, global social movements have emerged to challenge capitalism. In fact, some of the most important works in globalization theory these days emanate from a Marxian perspective (see Chapter 11). That is not to say that Marx’s ideas are sacrosanct. Many of them are dubious, even downright wrong, and contemporary Marxian theorists need to amend, adapt, or abandon those ideas. Indeed, that is what many of those thinkers are doing. Nonetheless, they take as their starting point Marx’s theoretical ideas on capitalism and build on them to gain insight into the global success of capitalism in the wake of the ­failure of communism. To answer the question posed in the title of this box, Marx’s ideas are, if anything, more relevant today than ever!

positions. Even though the proletariat suffer under capitalism, they are unaware of the reasons for that suffering, or at least they have a false understanding of the sources of that suffering. The workers think they are getting a fair day’s pay. The capitalists think that they are being rewarded not because of their exploitation of the workers but for their cleverness, their capital investment, their manipulation of the market, and so on. The capitalists are too busy making more money ever to form a true understanding of the exploitative nature of their relationship with workers. However, the proletariat do have the capacity to achieve such an understanding, partly because eventually they are so exploited and impoverished that the reality of what is transpiring in capitalism is no longer hidden from them. In Marx’s terms, the proletariat are capable of achieving class consciousness; the capitalists are not. Class consciousness is prerequisite to revolution. The proletariat must understand the source of their exploitation before they can rise up against capitalism. However, the coming revolution is aided by the dynamics of capitalism. In other class consciousness–The ability of a class, in particular the proletariat, to overcome false consciousness and attain an accurate understanding of the capitalist system.

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   31

words, for a revolution to occur, the proper material conditions must be in place and the proletariat must understand that they can create a better world through their own actions. For example, capitalism grows more competitive, prices are slashed, and an increasing number of capitalists are driven out of business and into the proletariat. Eventually, the proletariat swells while the capitalist class is reduced to a small number who maintain their position because of their skill at exploitation. When the massive proletariat finally achieve class consciousness and decide to act, there will be no contest because the capitalists will be so few that they are likely to be easily brushed aside, perhaps with little or no violence. Thus, capitalism will not be destroyed and communism will not be created without the proletariat taking action. In Marx’s terms, the proletariat must engage in praxis, or concrete action. It is not enough to think about the evils of capitalism or develop great theories of it and its demise; people must take to the streets and make it happen. This does not necessarily mean that they must behave in violent ways, but it does mean they cannot sit back and wait for capitalism to collapse on its own.

Communism Marx had no doubt that the dynamics of capitalism would lead to such a revolution, but he devoted little time to describing the character of the communist society that would replace capitalism. To Marx, the priority was gaining an understanding of the way capitalism works and communicating that understanding to the proletariat, thereby helping them gain class consciousness. He was critical of the many thinkers who spent their time daydreaming about some future utopian society. The immediate goal was the overthrow of the alienating and exploitative system. What was to come next would have to be dealt with once the revolution succeeded. Some say that this lack of a plan laid the groundwork for the debacles that took place in the Soviet Union and its satellites. Marx did have some specific things to say about the future state of communism, but we get a better sense of communism by returning to his basic assumptions about human potential. In a sense, communism is the social system that permits, for the first time, the expression of full human potential. In effect, communism is an antisystem, a world in which the system is nothing more than the social relations among the people who make up the system. Marx did discuss a transitional phase after the fall of capitalism, when there would be larger structures (e.g., the dictatorship of the proletariat), but that was to be short-lived and replaced by what he considered true communism. (The experience in the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution indicates the naïveté of this view and the fact that it may be impossible to eliminate the larger structures that exploit and alienate people.)

praxis–Concrete action, particularly that taken by the proletariat to overcome capitalism (Marx). communism–The social system that permits, for the first time, the expression of full human potential (Marx).

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Thus, communism is a system that permits people to express the thoughtfulness, creativity, and sociability that have always been part of their nature but have been inhibited or destroyed by previous social systems (e.g., feudalism, capitalism). Communist society would utilize and expand upon the technological and organizational innovations of capitalism, but otherwise it would get out of people’s way and allow them to be what they always could have been, at least potentially.

MAX WEBER: THE RATIONALIZATION OF SOCIETY If Karl Marx is the most important thinker from the point of view of social thought in general, as well as from the perspective of political developments of the last 100-plus years, then his fellow German theorist Max Weber (1864–1920) is arguably the most important theorist from the perspective of sociology (the other possibility is Émile Durkheim). Weber was a complex thinker who made many contributions to social thought, but his best-known contribution is his theory of the increasing rationalization of the West. That theory is based on Weber’s work on action, especially rational action.

Social Action For many years, Weber’s work on social action was the center of attention, rather than his theory of rationalization, which is now seen as the heart of his theoretical orientation. The focus on social action is traceable to the work of Talcott Parsons, who, in the 1930s, introduced classical European theory in general, and Weberian theory in particular, to a large American audience. However, he did so with a number of now widely recognized biases. One of those biases was his own action theory, which led him to accentuate the importance of Weber’s thinking on action (which played a central role in the creation of Parsons’s own perspective).

Behavior and Action Weber’s thinking on action is based on an important distinction in all sociologies of everyday life (see Chapter 6), that between behavior and action. Both behavior and action involve what people do on an everyday basis, but behavior occurs with little or no thought, whereas action is the result of conscious processes. Behavior is closely tied to an approach, largely associated with psychology, known as behaviorism, which has played an important role in the development of many sociologies of everyday life. It focuses on situations where a stimulus is

behavior–Things that people do that require little or no thought. action–Things that people do that are the result of conscious processes. behaviorism–The study, largely associated with psychology, of behavior.

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applied and a behavior results, more or less mechanically, with little or no thought process intervening between stimulus and response. For example, you engage in behavior when you pull your hand away from a hot stove or automatically put up your umbrella when it starts raining. Weber was not concerned with such behavior; his focus was on action in which thought intervenes between stimulus and response. In other words, Weber was interested in situations in which people attach meaning to what they do: what they do is meaningful to them. In contrast, behavior is meaningless, at least in the sense that people simply do it without giving it much or any thought. Weber defined sociology as the study of action in terms of its subjective meaning. What matters are people’s conscious processes. Furthermore, what people believe about a situation in which they find themselves is more important for an understanding of the actions they take than the objective situation. At a theoretical level, Weber was interested in the action of a single individual, but he was far more interested in the actions of two or more individuals. Sociology was to devote most of its attention to the regularities in the actions of two or more individuals. In fact, although Weber talked about collectivities (e.g., Calvinists, capitalists), he argued that they must be treated solely as the result of the actions of two or more people. Only people can act, and thus sociology must focus on actors, not collectivities. Sociologists may talk about collectivities, but that is only for the sake of convenience. A collectivity is nothing more than a set of individual actors and actions.

MAX WEBER (1864–1920) A Biographical Vignette Max Weber was born in Erfurt, Germany, on April 21, 1864, into a decidedly middle-class family. Important differences between his parents had a profound effect on both his intellectual orientation and his psychological development. His father was a bureaucrat who rose to a relatively important political position. He was clearly a part of the political establishment and as a result eschewed any activity or idealism that would require personal sacrifice or threaten his position within the system. In addition, the senior Weber was a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures, and in this and many other ways, he stood in sharp contrast to his wife. Max Weber’s mother was a devout Calvinist, a woman who sought to lead an ascetic life largely devoid of the pleasures craved by her husband. Her concerns were more otherworldly; she was disturbed by the imperfections that were signs that she was not destined for salvation. These deep differences between the parents led to marital tension, and both the differences and the tension had an immense impact on Weber.

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Because it was impossible for him to emulate both parents, Weber was presented with a clear choice as a child. He first seemed to opt for his father’s orientation to life, but later he drew closer to his mother’s approach. Whatever the choice, the tension produced by the need to choose between such polar opposites negatively affected Weber’s psyche. During his 8 years at the University of Berlin (where he obtained his doctorate and became a lawyer), Weber was financially dependent on his father, a circumstance he progressively grew to dislike. At the same time, he moved closer to his mother’s values, and his antipathy toward his father increased. He adopted an ascetic way of life and plunged deeply into his work. During one semester as a student, his work habits were described as follows: “He continues the rigid work discipline, regulates his life by the clock, divides the daily routine into exact sections for the various subjects, saves in his way, by feeding himself evenings in his room with a pound of raw chopped beef and four fried eggs.” Weber, emulating his mother, had become ascetic and diligent, a compulsive worker—in contemporary terms, a workaholic. This compulsion for work led him in 1896 to a position as professor of economics at Heidelberg University. But in 1897, when Weber’s academic career was blossoming, his father died following a violent argument between them. Soon after, Weber began to manifest symptoms that culminated in a nervous breakdown. Often unable to sleep or to work, Weber spent the next 6 or 7 years in near total collapse. After a long hiatus, some of his faculties began to return in 1903, but it was not until 1904, when he delivered (in the United States) his first lecture in 6.5 years, that Weber was able to begin to return to active academic life. In 1904 and 1905, he published one of his best-known works, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this work, Weber announced the ascendance, on an academic level, of his mother’s religiosity. Weber devoted much of his time to the study of religion, although he was not personally religious.

Types of Action Weber offered a now-famous delineation of four types of action. Affectual action (which was of little concern to Weber) is action that is the result of emotion; it is nonrational. Thus, slapping your child (or an aged parent) in a blind rage is an example of affectual action. Also nonrational is traditional action, in which what is done is based on the way things have been done habitually or customarily. Crossing oneself in church is an example of traditional action. Although traditional action was of some interest to Weber (especially given its relationship to traditional authority, discussed later in this chapter), he was far more interested, affectual action–Nonrational action that is the result of emotion (Weber). traditional action–Action taken on the basis of the way things have been done habitually or customarily (Weber).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   35

because of his overriding concern with rationalization, in the other two types of action, both of which are rational. Value-rational action occurs when an actor’s choice of the means to an end is based on the actor’s belief in some larger set of values. The action chosen may not be optimal, but it is rational from the point of view of the value system in which the actor finds herself. So, if you belong to a cult that believes in a ritual purging of one’s previous meal before the next meal is eaten, that is what you do, even though purging may be quite uncomfortable and will delay, if not ruin, your next meal. Such action would be rational from the point of view of the value system of the cult. Means-ends rational action involves the pursuit of ends that actors have chosen for themselves; thus, their action is not guided by some larger value system. It is, however, affected by the actors’ view of the environment in which they finds themselves, including the behavior of people and objects in it. This means that the actor must take into account the nature of the situation when choosing the best means to an end. Thus, when you are at a party and spot someone you want to dance with, you must decide on the best way to meet that person, given the nature of the situation (it may be an all-couples party) and the objects (there may be a table in your path) and other people (one of whom may already be dancing with that person) present. Taking those things into consideration, you choose the best means of achieving your end of getting that dance. These four types of actions are ideal types (see the discussion of the ideal type that follows). The fact is that one rarely if ever finds actions that can be categorized solely within one of these four types. Rather, any given action is likely to be some combination of two or more of these ideal-typical actions. Weber offers an approach to studying social action and the theoretical tools to examine such action. Many sociologists have found this work useful.

Types of Rationality Although Weber’s theory of action relies on the typology outlined previously, his larger theory of rationalization rests on the typology of rationality outlined as follows. (As you will see, the two typologies overlap to some degree.) Practical rationality is the type that we all practice on a daily basis in getting from one point to another. Given the realities of the circumstances we face, we try value-rational action–Action that occurs when an actor’s choice of the means to an end is based on the actor’s belief in some larger set of values.The action chosen may not be optimal, but it is rational from the point of view of the value system in which actors find themselves (Weber). means-ends rational action–Action that involves the pursuit of ends that actors have chosen for themselves; that choice is affected by the actors’ view of the environment in which they find themselves, including the behavior of people and objects in it (Weber). practical rationality–The type of rationality people use on a day-to-day basis in dealing with whatever difficulties exist and finding the most expedient way of attaining the goal of getting from one point to another (Weber).

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to deal with whatever difficulties exist and find the most expedient way of attaining our goal. For example, our usual route to the university is blocked by a traffic accident, so we take a side road and work our way to campus using a series of back roads. Westerners are not the only people who engage in practical rationality; all people in all societies throughout history have used this type of rationality. Theoretical rationality involves an effort to master reality cognitively through the development of increasingly abstract concepts. Here the goal is to attain a rational understanding of the world rather than to take rational action within it. Thus, to continue with the example, theoretical rationality as applied to traffic problems would involve the efforts of experts in the area to figure out long-term solutions to traffic bottlenecks. Like practical rationality, theoretical rationality has been used everywhere in the world throughout history. Substantive rationality, like practical rationality, involves action directly. Here the choice of the most expedient thing to do is guided by larger values rather than by daily experiences and practical thinking. Thus, for example, people are sometimes guided by the values of love and friendship, even when these may interfere with completing tasks efficiently and effectively. If I take time out of my day to help a friend in distress, I may not get the report to my boss on time, and this will cost my employer business. From the point of view of practical rationality, taking time to care for a friend in the middle of the workday is clearly not rational, but it is rational within social systems that value friendship. As with the preceding two types of rationality, substantive rationality occurs transcivilizationally and transhistorically. Finally, and most important to Weber, is formal rationality, in which the choice of the most expedient action is based on rules, regulations, and laws that apply to everyone. The classic case of this is modern bureaucracy, in which the rules of the organization dictate the most rational course of action. Thus, if the rules say that every action must be preceded by the filling out of a required form in triplicate, then that is what everyone must do. To some outside the organization this may seem inefficient and irrational, but it is rational within the context of the bureaucracy. Unlike the other types of rationality, formal rationality arose only in the Western world with the coming of industrialization. Thus, what interested Weber was formal rationality and why it arose only in the modern West and not anywhere else at any other time. This led him to

theoretical rationality–A type of rationality that involves an effort to master reality cognitively through the development of increasingly abstract concepts.The goal is to attain a rational understanding of the world rather than to take rational action within it (Weber). substantive rationality–A type of rationality in which the choice of the most expedient action is guided by larger values rather than by daily experiences and practical thinking (Weber). formal rationality–A type of rationality in which the choice of the most expedient action is based on rules, regulations, and laws that apply to everyone.This form of rationality is distinctive to the modern West (Weber).

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examine the factors that expedited the development of (formal) rationalization in the West and the barriers to such rationalization that existed elsewhere. He found that major expediting forces and barriers existed in religion.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism In the West, Protestantism played a key role in the rise of rationalization. In this case, Weber was primarily interested in the rationalization of the economic system, and the most rational economic system is capitalism. Weber considered capitalism to be rational in a number of ways but most importantly because of its emphasis on quantifying things, which is best represented by its development and reliance on modern bookkeeping. Thus, Weber was interested in the expediting role that Protestantism (especially the sect known as Calvinism) played in the rise of capitalism. In contrast, other religions throughout the world (Confucianism in China, Hinduism in India) served to impede the rise of rationalization in general, and capitalism in particular, in those nations. Weber was primarily interested in the Protestant ethic as it existed in Calvinism. The Protestant ethic is a belief system that emphasizes hard work and asceticism, the denial of personal pleasure. This ethic grew out of the more general Calvinist belief in predestination, the religious doctrine that a person’s fate in the afterlife, whether heaven or hell, is predetermined. According to the C ­ alvinists, there is no way that a person can directly know what their fate in the afterlife will be, and further, there is no way a person can directly affect that fate. However, it is possible for a person to discern signs that they are either saved or damned, and one of the major signs of salvation is success in business. Thus, the Calvinists were deeply interested in being successful in business, which meant building bigger and more profitable businesses. It also meant that instead of spending profits on frivolous personal pleasures, they had to save money and reinvest it in their businesses to make them even more successful. The Calvinist business owners were comforted in their sometimes ruthless pursuit of profits by the fact that it was their ethical duty to behave in such a way. They were also provided with hardworking, conscientious Calvinist workers, who were similarly motivated in looking for signs of success, and being a good worker was one such sign. Finally, Calvinist business owners did not have to agonize over the fact that they were so successful while those who worked for them had comparatively little. After all, this was all preordained. If they were not among the saved, they would not be so successful. And if at least some of their employees were saved, they would prosper economically. It was a wonderfully reassuring system for those who sought and acquired wealth. Protestant ethic–A belief system, associated with the Protestant sect of Calvinism, that emphasized hard work and asceticism, the denial of personal pleasure.The development of capitalism depended on the presence of this ethic (Weber).

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KEY CONCEPT Verstehen

Verstehen is a German word meaning understanding. From the point of view of action theory, Verstehen refers to the effort to understand the thought processes of the actor, the actor’s meanings and motives, and how these factors led to the action (or interaction) under study. Weber made clear that this was not a softer, or less scientific, method than, for example, the experimental methods employed by behaviorists. To Weber, Verstehen was not simply intuition but involved a systematic and rigorous method for studying thoughts and actions. In fact, a researcher using Verstehen has an advantage over those who fancy themselves hard-nosed scientists using positivistic methods. The advantage lies in the fact that because subjects are fellow human beings, the social scientist can gain an understanding of what goes on in the subjects’ minds and why they do what they do. A physicist studying subatomic particles has no chance of understanding those particles; in fact, the particles cannot be understood in the same way that human beings can be understood. The particles can be observed only from without, whereas the thoughts and actions of humans can be observed from within, introspectively. But how does this methodology, this sense of understanding actors and actions, relate to Weber’s grand theory of, for example, the relationship between Calvinism and the spirit of capitalism? It could be argued that Weber was trying to understand what went on in the minds of individual Calvinists that led them to the kinds of actions that set the stage for the rise of the spirit of capitalism. However, another view on this is that Weber used Verstehen as a method to put himself in the place of individual Calvinists to understand the cultural context in which they lived and what led them to behave in a capitalist manner (i.e., energetically seeking profits). Here the view of the researcher is outward, examining the cultural context, rather than inward, examining the mental processes of the Calvinist. A third view is that Verstehen is concerned with the relationship between individual mental processes and the larger cultural context. In fact, all three views have ample support. However, one valid interpretation is that ­Verstehen is a method to analyze action from the perspective of individual mental processes.

Verstehen–A methodological technique involving an effort to understand the thought processes of the actor, the actor’s meanings and motives, and how these factors led to the action (or interaction) under study (Weber).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   39

All of these beliefs about economic success among the Calvinists (and other sects) added up to the Protestant ethic, which Weber linked to the development of another system of ideas, the spirit of capitalism. It was this idea system that led, in the end, to the capitalist economic system. People had been motivated to be economically successful at other times and in other parts of the world, but the difference at this time in the West was that they were motivated not by greed but by an ethical system that emphasized economic success. The pursuit of profit was turned away from the morally suspect greed and toward a spirit that was deemed to be highly moral. The spirit of capitalism had a number of components, but most important for our purposes is the rational and systematic seeking of profits. Other ideas associated with this spirit included frugality, punctuality, fairness, and the earning of money as a legitimate end in itself. Above all, it was people’s duty to work ceaselessly to increase their wealth and economic prosperity. The spirit of capitalism was removed from the realm of individual ambition and made an ethical imperative. There is a clear affinity between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism: the former helped give rise to the latter. Weber found evidence for this in an examination of those European nations in which several religions coexisted. What he found was that the leaders of the economic systems in these nations—business leaders, owners of capital, high-grade skilled laborers, and advanced technically and commercially trained personnel—were overwhelmingly Protestant. He took this as an indication that Protestantism was a significant factor in the choices people made to enter these occupations and, conversely, that other religions (e.g., Roman Catholicism) failed to produce idea systems that impelled people into these positions. In other words, Roman Catholicism did not give, and could not have given, birth to the spirit of capitalism. In fact, Roman Catholicism impeded the development of such a spirit. In this, it functioned in the West as ­Confucianism and Buddhism functioned in the East.

Confucianism, Hinduism, and Capitalism China, like the West, had the necessary conditions for the development of capitalism, including a tradition of intense acquisitiveness and unscrupulous competition. There was great industry and enormous capacity for work among the Chinese people. With these and other factors in its favor, why did China not undergo rationalization in general, and more specifically, why did capitalism

spirit of capitalism–An idea system that led to the capitalist economic system. In the West, unlike in any other area of the world, people were motivated to be economically successful not by greed but by an ethical system that emphasized the ceaseless pursuit of economic success. The spirit of capitalism had a number of components, including the rational and systematic seeking of profits, frugality, punctuality, fairness, and the earning of money as a legitimate end in itself (Weber).

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not develop there? Although elements of capitalism were there (moneylenders, businesspeople who sought high profits), China lacked a market and other rational elements of capitalism. There were a number of reasons capitalism failed to develop in China but chief among them was Confucianism and its characteristics. Confucianism emphasized a literary education as a prerequisite of obtaining an office and acquiring status. A cultured person well steeped in literature was valued. Also valued was the ability to be clever and witty. The Confucians devalued any kind of work and delegated it to subordinates. Although the Confucians valued wealth, working for wealth was not regarded as proper. Confucians were unconcerned with the economy and economic activities. Active engagement in a for-profit enterprise was viewed as morally dubious and unbecoming a Confucian. Furthermore, Confucians were not oriented to any kind of change, including economic change. The goal of the Confucians was to maintain the status quo. Perhaps most important, there was no tension between the religion of the Confucians and the world in which they lived. Therefore, they did not need to take any tension-resolving action. This stands in contrast to Calvinism, in which the tension between predestination and the desire to know one’s fate in the afterlife led to the idea that success in business might be a sign of salvation and striving for such success could bring about a resolution of the tension. In India, Hinduism posed barriers to rationalization and capitalism. For example, Hindus believed that a person was born into a given caste (a fixed position within a system of social stratification) based on what that person deserved by virtue of behavior in a past life. Through faithful adherence to the ritual of caste, a person gained merit for the next life. Salvation was to be achieved through the faithful following of the rules. Innovation, particularly in the economic sphere, could not lead to a higher caste position in the next life. Activity in this world was not seen as important because this world was understood to be merely a transient abode and an impediment to the spiritual quest.

Authority Structures and Rationalization The theme of rationalization runs through many other aspects of Weber’s work. Let us examine it in one other domain—authority structures. Authority is legitimate domination. The issue is: What makes it legitimate for some people to issue commands that other people are likely to obey? The three bases of authority are tradition, charisma, and rational-legal factors. In keeping with his theory of rationalization, Weber foresaw a long-term trend in the direction of the triumph of rational-legal authority. Traditional authority is based on followers’ belief that certain people (people from particular families or tribes or with special lineage) have exercised traditional authority–Authority based on followers’ belief that certain people (people from particular families or tribes or with special lineage) have exercised sovereignty since time immemorial.The leaders claim, and the followers believe in, the sanctity of age-old rules and powers (Weber).

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   41

authority since time immemorial. The leaders claim, and the followers believe in, the sanctity of age-old rules and powers. Forms of traditional authority include rule by elders and rule by leaders who inherit their positions. Weber viewed feudalism as one type of traditional authority. Traditional authority structures are not rational, and they impede the rationalization process. Although one still finds vestiges of traditional authority in the world today, especially in less developed societies, it has largely disappeared or become marginalized. For example, the monarchy in England is a vestige of traditional authority, but it clearly has no power. Charismatic authority is legitimated by followers’ belief in the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of the charismatic leader. This idea obviously involves the now-famous concept of charisma. Although in everyday usage we may describe someone as charismatic to indicate that they have extraordinary qualities, Weber emphasized the fact that others define a person as having charisma. This leads to the important conclusion that a person need not have any discernible extraordinary qualities to be defined as a charismatic leader. To Weber, charisma is an extremely important revolutionary force. Throughout history charismatic leaders have come to the fore and overthrown traditional (and even rational-legal) authority structures. However, it is important to remember that charismatic authority is not rational and therefore is ill suited to the day-to-day demands of administering a society. In fact, this becomes obvious almost immediately to the followers of a victorious charismatic leader. Soon after the leader takes power, the followers take steps to ensure that the new regime is able to handle the routine tasks of administering a domain. They do this through a process Weber labeled the routinization of charisma, in which they seek to recast the extraordinary and revolutionary characteristics of their regime so that it is able to handle mundane matters. They also do this to prepare for the day when the charismatic leader passes from the scene so that they are not thrown out of power as soon as the leader dies. Through routinization they hope to transfer the charisma to a disciple or to the administrative organization formed by the group of disciples. There is a terrible contradiction here. In attempting to make charisma routine, the disciples do what is needed to allow this form of authority to function on a daily basis and to continue in existence after the leader dies, but if they are

charismatic authority–Authority legitimated by followers’ belief in the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of the charismatic leader (Weber). charisma–Extraordinary qualities attributed to an individual by other people. A person need not actually have such qualities to be defined as charismatic (Weber). routinization of charisma–Efforts by disciples of a charismatic leader to recast the extraordinary and revolutionary characteristics of the leader so that the regime is better able to handle mundane matters. The followers also do this to prepare for the day when the charismatic leader passes from the scene so that they can remain in power (Weber). 42    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

KEY CONCEPT The Ideal Type and the Ideal-Typical Bureaucracy

Weber created many important methodological ideas, but one of the most important is the ideal type. It is worth noting immediately that Weber did not mean that an ideal type is some sort of utopian, or best possible, phenomenon. It is ideal because it is a one-sided exaggeration, usually an exaggeration of the rationality of a given phenomenon. Such one-sided exaggerations become concepts that Weber used to analyze the social world in all its historical and contemporary variation. The ideal type is a measuring rod to be used in the comparison of specific examples of a social phenomenon either cross-culturally or over time. One of Weber’s most famous ideal types is the bureaucracy. The ideal-typical bureaucracy has the following characteristics: 1. A series of official functions become offices in which the behavior of those who occupy those offices is bound by rules. 2. Each office has a specified sphere of competence. 3. Each office has obligations to perform specific functions, the authority to carry them out, and the means of compulsion to get the job done. 4. The offices are organized into a hierarchical system. 5. People need technical training to meet the qualifications for the positions in each office. 6. Those who occupy these positions are given the things they need to do the job; they do not own these things. 7. The position is part of the organization and cannot be appropriated by an incumbent. 8. Much of what goes on in the bureaucracy (acts, decisions, rules) is in writing. (Continued)

ideal type–A one-sided, exaggerated concept, usually an exaggeration of the rationality of a given phenomenon, used to analyze the social world in all its historical and contemporary variation.The ideal type is a measuring rod to be used in the comparison of specific examples of a social phenomenon either cross-culturally or over time (Weber). bureaucracy–A modern type of organization in which the behavior of officers is bound by rules; each office has a specified sphere of competence and has obligations to perform specific functions, the authority to carry them out, and the means of compulsion to get the job done; the offices are organized into a hierarchical system; technical training is needed for each office; those things needed to do the job belong to the office and not to the officer; the position is part of the organization and cannot be appropriated by an officer; and much of what goes on (acts, decisions, rules) is in writing (Weber). CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   43

(Continued) This ideal type, like all ideal types, exists nowhere in its entirety. In creating it, Weber had in mind the bureaucracy as it developed in the modern West, but even there no specific organization has all of these characteristics and to a high degree. But Weber used this ideal type (and every ideal type) to do historical comparative analysis—in this case, analysis of organizational forms. He did this in terms of the organizations associated with the three types of authority and found that the organizational forms associated with traditional and charismatic authority are lacking most or all of these characteristics; they are not bureaucracies, and they do not function nearly as well as the bureaucratic ­organizations associated with rationallegal authority. One could also use the ideal type to compare specific organizations within the modern world in terms of the degree to which they measure up to the ideal type. The researcher would use the ideal type to pinpoint divergences from the ideal type and then seek to explain them. Among the reasons a specific organization does not measure up to the ideal type might be misinformation, strategic errors, logical fallacies, emotional factors, or more generally, any irrationality that enters into the operation of the organization.

successful, they undermine the basis of charismatic authority—it will no longer be extraordinary or perceived by the followers in that way. Thus, the successful routinization of charisma eventually destroys charisma, and the structure is en route to becoming one of Weber’s other authority structures: traditional or rational-legal. As we said, charismatic authority is a revolutionary force. It operates by changing people from within; they change their minds and opt to follow the charismatic leader. However, as a revolutionary force, charisma pales in comparison to what Weber considered the most important revolutionary force in history— rationalization and the coming of rational-legal authority. Under rational-legal authority, the legitimacy of leaders comes from codified rules and regulations; leaders hold their positions as a result of those rules. Thus, for example, the president of the United States has rational-legal authority: the president’s position as leader is legitimated by the results of a national election. Although charisma changes people’s minds (charisma changes people from within; rationalization changes them from without), it alters the structures in which they live. And the key structure associated with rational-legal authority is the modern bureaucracy (see the Key Concept box on the ideal type). The other forms of authority have organizations associated with them, but they do not measure up to bureaucracy and do not have nearly the effect on people that bureaucracy does. Bureaucracy was so important to Weber that for him it was the heart of rational-legal authority as well as the model for the rationalization rational-legal authority–A type of authority in which the legitimacy of leaders is derived from codified rules and regulations; leaders hold their positions as a result of those rules (Weber).

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process in the West. Weber saw bureaucracy not only as a rational structure but also as a powerful one that exercises great control over those who work within it and even those who are served by it. It is a kind of cage that alters the way people think and act. More generally, Weber thought of rationalization as having cage-like qualities. There is no question that rationalization in general and rational-legal authority (and its bureaucracy) in particular bring with them numerous advantages, but Weber was attuned to the problems associated with them. In fact, Weber formulated the notion of an iron cage of rationalization, using the imagery of a powerful, cage-like structure from which it is nearly impossible to escape, to describe the increasing rationalization of the West. He appreciated the advances brought by rationalization but despaired of its increasingly tight control over people. He feared that as more sectors of society (not only the government bureaucracy) were rationalized, people would find it increasingly difficult to escape into nonrationalized sectors of life. They would find themselves locked into an iron cage of rationalization. Weber viewed rationalization as triumphant in the West, and he saw rationallegal authority in the same way. Rational-legal authority is much more effective than traditional authority with the result that the latter must, over time, give way to the former. Charismatic revolutions will continue to occur, but once routinized, the organization of charismatic authority is weak in comparison to the rational bureaucracy. In any case, once routinized, charisma is destroyed, and the authority structure is on its way to taking some other form. Although the new form could be traditional authority, in the modern West it is increasingly common for charismatic authority to be transformed into rational-legal authority. Furthermore, as modern charismatic movements arise, they are increasingly likely to face the iron cage of rationalization and rational-legal authority. That cage not only locks people in, but it also is becoming ever more impervious to external assault, able to keep out both the charismatic leader and the rabble who follow such a leader. The result is that charismatic authority, like traditional authority, has become increasingly inappropriate to the demands of modern society and unlikely to accede to power. Rational-legal authority, rationalization, and the iron cage of rationality are triumphant!

SUMMARY 1. The great theories of sociology’s classical age were vast, highly ambitious efforts to tell the story of great stretches of social history. 2. Émile Durkheim’s theory deals with the changing division of labor and the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity.

CHAPTER TWO  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES I   45

3. The major factor in this transformation is an increase in dynamic density. 4. The change from mechanical to organic solidarity is accompanied by a dramatic decline in the power of the collective conscience. 5. An indicator of that change is the transformation from the predominance of repressive law to the predominance of restitutive law. 6. The major pathology associated with organic solidarity and its weak collective conscience is anomie. 7. Karl Marx’s theory deals with the historical roots of capitalism, capitalism itself, and the hoped-for transition to communism. 8. Marx’s critique of capitalism is based on a series of assumptions about human potential. That potential is thwarted in capitalism, leading to alienation, especially among the workers. 9. Capitalism is essentially a two-class economic system in which the members of one class (the capitalists) own the means of production and the members of the other class (the proletariat) must sell their labor time to have access to those means. 10. Marx adopts the labor theory of value—all value comes from labor—and this allows him to see that capitalists exploit the proletariat. 11. The proletariat (and the capitalists) are unable to see this reality because of false consciousness, but they are eventually capable of getting a clear picture of the way capitalism works and of achieving class consciousness. 12. To overthrow capitalism, the proletariat must engage in praxis. 13. Communism is a social system that permits for the first time the full expression of human potential. 14. Max Weber distinguished among four types of rationality—practical, theoretical, substantive, and formal—but his focus was on formal rationality and the way its preeminence led to the rationalization of the West. 15. The Protestant ethic played a central role in the rationalization of the West, especially the economy. It was a key factor in the development of the spirit of capitalism and ultimately the rise of the capitalist economic system. 16. Weber was interested in the factors within Confucianism in China and Hinduism in India that hindered the development of rationalization and capitalism in those nations.

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17. Weber was concerned with the three types of authority—traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal—and the emergence of rational-legal authority as the dominant form.

SUGGESTED READINGS ROBERT J. ANTONIO and IRA COHEN, eds. Marx and Modernity: Key Readings and Commentary. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. Includes a lengthy and excellent introduction by Antonio, key selections from Marx’s work, and a section devoted to contemporary work on his theories. ROBERT J. ANTONIO “Karl Marx.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 115–164. First-rate analysis of Marx’s life and work, including discussion of Marx’s relevance in the present moment. CHARLES CAMIC, PHILIP GORSKI, and DAVID TRUBEK, eds. Max Weber’s “Economy and Society”: A Critical Companion. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Contains a series of essays on Weber’s most important and all-encompassing work. MUSTAFA EMIRBAYER, ed. Émile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. A useful collection of some of Durkheim’s most important work as well as more contemporary works that pick up on key themes in his work. MARCEL FOURNIER Émile Durkheim: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. The most recent and comprehensive account of Durkheim’s life, relationships, and main ideas. KARL MARX and FRIEDRICH ENGELS. 1848/2016. The Communist Manifesto Illustrated. George S. Rigakos, ed., and Red Viktor, illus.. Ottawa, ON: Red Quill books. A graphic novel set to the words of the Communist manifesto. This book is entertaining, and it visually connects the ideas of the Manifesto to contemporary events. TARA MILBRANDT and FRANK PEARCE “Émile Durkheim.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 236–282. Extensive overview of Durkheim’s major ideas and works placed in biographical, intellectual, and historical context.

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STEPHEN KALBERG, ed. Max Weber: Readings and Commentary on Modernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Key selections of Weber’s work followed by contemporary work on his theories. STEPHEN KALBERG The Social Thought of Max Weber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017. Best treatment of Weber and his diverse contributions available in the context of a short book. DAVID HARVEY. A Companion to Marx’s Capital: The Complete Edition. 2018. New York: Verso. A detailed guide to one of Marx’s most important and influential works written by one of most prominent Marxist theorists writing today. The book is accompanied by an extensive website including video lectures about Capital by Harvey: http://davidharvey.org/ reading-capital/ DAVID MCLELLAN Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. New York: Harper Colophon, 1973. A monumental treatment of Marx’s life and work. JOACHIM RADKAU Max Weber: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009. Major Weber biography, based on recently available archival material, that offers a view of Weber’s life distinctly different from that originally provided by Marianne Weber. Excels in connecting Weber’s personal life with his thought and work. MARIANNE WEBER Max Weber: A Biography. Harry Zohn, ed. and trans. New York: Wiley, 1975. Biography by Weber’s wife, a scholar in her own right, that offers much detail about Weber’s life.

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CHAPTER

THREE

CLASSICAL THEORIES II

Georg Simmel: The Growing Tragedy of Culture Thorstein Veblen: Increasing Control of Business Over Industry George Herbert Mead: Social Behaviorism W. E. B. Du Bois: Race and Racism in Modern Society Summary Suggested Readings

This chapter is a continuation of the previous chapter’s discussion, focusing on four additional major classical theorists. The first, Georg Simmel, is a noncontroversial choice for inclusion because he is often discussed along with Marx, Weber, and Durkheim as one of the founders of sociological theory. The other three selections here are more atypical and controversial. Thorstein Veblen was an American and is usually thought of as an economist. However, he deserves recognition because (1) his ideas were sociological in nature, (2) he offered a grand theory of economic change that was similar in focus and scope to Marx, ­Durkheim, and Weber (all of whom had much to say about the economy), and (3) he alone anticipated the great shift in the late 20th century from an economy defined by production to one oriented mainly toward consumption. Another American, George Herbert Mead, is also a somewhat unusual choice for discussion in this context. Although Mead grappled less than the others with the big social changes and issues of his day, he did create a theory that provides incomparable insights into individual consciousness (including “mind” and “self”), action, and interaction. Finally, we consider the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, an African American sociologist. Even though he was trained as a sociologist, until recently, Du Bois has not been discussed as a major classical theorist. However, his writings on race, racism, and colonialism offer insight into theoretical issues that have now become central to social thought and analysis.

49

GEORG SIMMEL: THE GROWING TRAGEDY OF CULTURE Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was an important German social theorist. The big issue for Simmel was what he called the tragedy of culture. However, before we get to that issue, we need to deal with some of the building blocks of Simmel’s theorizing.

Association Although Simmel had an important grand theory of the tragedy of culture, his earlier and, to some degree, continuing fame is based on his theories of everyday life. In fact, more than any other classical thinker, Simmel was concerned with such seemingly trivial everyday behaviors as people having dinner together, asking others for directions, and dressing to please others. These forms of association, or interaction, serve to link people to one another. They are continually being created, worked out, dropped, and then replaced by other forms of association. To Simmel, these associations were the atoms of social life that were to be studied microscopically. This theory is clearly different from, although not unrelated to, Simmel’s grander thoughts on things such as the tragedy of culture. Simmel, like Weber, went so far as to define sociology as the study of everyday life: sociology is the study of society, and society is nothing more than the sum of the individual interactions that constitute it.

Forms and Types Simmel made an important distinction between forms of interaction and types of interactants. In the real world people are confronted with a confusing array of interactions and interactants. To deal with this confusion, individuals reduce their social worlds to small numbers of forms of interaction and types of interactants. Think of the bewildering array of interactions taking place at a party. Someone asks you, “What brings you to a party like this?” This form of interaction could be interpreted in at least two ways: as a request for information or as an indication of a desire to begin a relationship. Given the nature of the party and the way the words are uttered, you might well interpret this as the latter form of interaction. Depending, then, on whether you are receptive to exploring a new relationship, you might say either “Why, the chance to meet someone like you” or “I came by train.” The point is that because so much is always going on that we association–The relationships among people, or interaction (Simmel). forms–Patterns imposed on the bewildering array of events, actions, and interactions in the social world both by people in their everyday lives and by social theorists (Simmel). types–Patterns imposed on a wide range of actors by both laypeople and social scientists to combine the actors into limited numbers of categories.

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GEORG SIMMEL (1858–1918) A Biographical Vignette Simmel was a marginal man, a “stranger,” in the German academic world of his day. Even though he is now considered one of the great masters of theory, he occupied marginal academic positions throughout his life. Indeed, most of the time he did not earn a regular salary but was dependent on student fees. He produced an impressive body of work and knew the most important intellectual figures of the day (e.g., Max Weber), and they thought highly of his work. Why, then, was he so marginal? Two reasons stand out. First, he generally did not write what were considered to be legitimate academic tracts. Rather, he wrote essays with popular titles that were often published in newspapers and magazines. He was much more comfortable with this kind of work than with massive tomes (although he wrote those, too), but the administrators of German universities did not know what to make of such work. The other reason for Simmel’s marginal status was that he was a Jew in an academic world rife with anti-Semitism. In one report to the minister of education, he was described as Jewish in the way he looked, the way he comported himself, and the way he thought. Given this view of him and the anti-Semitism of the day, it is little wonder that Simmel found it impossible to get a regular academic appointment, at least until the end of his life, when he finally got such a post at a minor German university.

are always seeking to reduce interaction to a limited number of forms so that we are better able to understand and deal with them. The same thing occurs in regard to the large numbers of people with whom we can potentially interact. To make dealing with so many people more manageable, we reduce them to a limited number of types of interactants. At the party, a person asks you why you are there, but because you have never met the person, you do not know their particular characteristics. Without knowing the person, how do you respond? The answer is that you have developed a series of types to which you assign people, and you make an initial decision about the type to which the person belongs. Is the person who asked the question a serious person or merely a flirt? Your response will be shaped by your initial attempt to categorize the person. You may find later that your initial judgment was wrong and you put the person in the wrong category. Nevertheless, in a world in which we meet innumerable people, we must use such types as first approximations to begin (or decide to avoid) interactions with others.

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Simmel believed not only that laypeople develop forms and types on a dayto-day basis but also that sociologists must do the same. Thus, Simmel wrote many essays on forms of interaction (e.g., between superordinates and subordinates) and types of interactants (e.g., the stranger).

Consciousness Simmel’s thinking on association was related to, and shaped by, his thinking on consciousness. He operated with the assumption that people engage in action on the basis of conscious processes. In their interaction, people have motives, goals, and interests; they engage in creative consciousness. He also believed that people are able to confront themselves mentally and to set themselves apart from their own actions. Unlike animals, which merely respond to their environments and cannot reflect on their relationships to their environments, people can take in external stimuli, assess them, try different courses of action, and then decide what to do. Because of these mental capacities, people are not enslaved by external stimuli or external structures.

KEY CONCEPT Secrecy

Simmel defined secrecy as the condition in which one person has the intention of hiding something while the other is seeking to reveal what is being hidden. People must know some things about other people to interact with them. For instance, we must know with whom we are dealing (e.g., a friend, a relative, a shopkeeper). We may come to know a great deal about other people, but we can never know them absolutely; that is, we can never know all of any other person’s thoughts, moods, and so on. In all aspects of our lives, we acquire not only truth but also ignorance and error; however, it is in our interaction with other people that ignorance and error acquire a distinctive character. This relates to the inner lives of the people with whom we interact. People, in contrast to any other object of knowledge, have the capacity intentionally to reveal the truth about themselves or to lie and conceal such information. The fact is that even if people wanted to reveal all (and they almost always do not), they could not do so because giving out so much information would drive

secrecy–The condition in which one person has the intention of hiding something while the other is seeking to reveal that which is being hidden (Simmel).

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everybody crazy; hence, people must select the things they report to others. From the point of view of Simmel’s concern with quantitative issues, we report only fragments of our inner lives to others. Furthermore, we choose which fragments to reveal and which to conceal; thus, in all interactions, we reveal only a part of ourselves, and which part we opt to show depends on how we select and arrange the fragments we choose to reveal. The lie is a form of interaction in which a person intentionally hides the truth from others. With a lie, not only are others left with an erroneous conception, but also the error is traceable to the fact that the liar intended that the ­others be deceived. Simmel discussed the lie in terms of social geometry, specifically his ideas on distance. For example, we can better accept and come to terms with the lies of those who are distant from us; hence, we have little emotional difficulty when we learn that the politicians who habituate Washington, D.C., sometimes lie to us. In contrast, we find it unbearable if those closest to us lie. The lie of a spouse, lover, or child has a far more devastating impact on us than the lie of a government official known to us only through the television screen. More generally, in terms of distance, all everyday communication combines elements known to both parties in an interaction with facts known only to one party; this leads to “distanceness” in all social relationships. Indeed, Simmel argued that social relationships require elements that are known to both of the interactants as well as elements that are unknown to one party or the other. In other words, even the most intimate relationships require both nearness and distance, reciprocal knowledge and mutual concealment; hence, secrecy is an integral part of all social relationships, although a relationship may be destroyed if the secret becomes known to the person from whom it was being kept. In that most intimate, least secret form of association, marriage, there is a temptation to reveal all to the partner, to have no secrets; however, Simmel believed that doing so is a mistake. For one thing, all social relationships require some truth and some error. More specifically, complete self-revelation (assuming such a thing is even possible) would make a marriage matter-of-fact and remove all possibility of the unexpected. Finally, most of us have limited internal resources, and every revelation we share reduces the (secret) treasures that we have to offer others. Only those few with great storehouses of personal accomplishments can afford numerous revelations to their marriage partners. All ­others are left denuded (and uninteresting) by excessive self-revelation.

At first glance, then, Simmel seems to grant humans a tremendous amount of freedom and control over their lives and social worlds. However, in a fashion typical of his thought, Simmel immediately challenges the idea that the mind is free in any simple sense. This is because even though the mind can thoughtfully respond lie–A form of interaction in which a person intentionally hides the truth from others (Simmel).

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to its environment, it also has the capacity to endow stimuli and structures with a separate and real existence. In sociological terms, the mind has the capacity to reify its creations—that is, treat them as more real and concrete than they actually are. So as humans acquire freedom and control over their world by inventing ideas, these ideas almost inevitably come to appear as structures that dominate their lives. For example, many human relationships are organized around ideas such as obligation and duty. A child becomes a farmer like their father out of a sense of duty to their father. The weight of the obligation feels like a real entity, a duty, that exists independent of the child’s will. In this sense, humans have the capacity to create the conditions that constrain them. In this example, even though duty is a construction of the mind, it has become a real social entity that constrains action. Overall, then, through their mental processes people can free themselves, constrain themselves, or, more likely, do some combination of both. These kinds of tensions pervade Simmel’s work.

Group Size One of the most powerful aspects of Simmel’s sociology of everyday life is the way he builds from everyday interactions to the larger structures of society. This is best seen in his famous work on the dyad and the triad. Put simply, a dyad is a two-person group, and a triad is a three-person group. On first thought, there appears to be little difference between the two. After all, how much difference can the addition of one person make? Simmel’s surprising and important answer is that it makes an enormous difference. In fact, the crucial difference sociologically is that between a two-person group and a three-person group: no further addition to the size of the group makes nearly as much difference as the addition of one person to a dyad. Unlike all other size groups, the dyad has no meaning beyond its meaning to each of the two individuals involved. No independent group structure emerges in a dyad; it comprises two people interacting. Each of these two separable individuals retains a high level of individuality. Because there is no separable group, no possibility of any collective threat to the individual exists. Of crucial importance is the fact that the addition of the third person to a dyad, the creation of a triad, makes the emergence of an independent group structure possible. Now there is the possibility of a group threat to individuality. Furthermore, with the addition of a third party, a number of new social roles become possible that were not possible before. For example, one member of the triad can take the role of mediator or arbitrator in a dispute between the other two parties. The third party can also exploit disputes between the others to gain power. It is also possible that the other two members can compete for the favor of the third, or the third party may foster disputes between the other two so that it reify–To endow social structures, which are created by people, with a separate and real existence (Simmel). dyad–A two-person group (Simmel). triad–A three-person group (Simmel).

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is easier to exercise control over both. Thus, in various ways, a system of authority and a stratification system can emerge, systems that cannot exist in a dyad. The movement from dyad to triad is essential to the development of social structures that can become separate from, and dominant over, individuals. In other words, the tragedy of culture that occupies such a central place in Simmel’s grand theory becomes possible only when at least a triad has developed. Simmel offered many other insights based on group size. For example, and seemingly contradictorily, he argued that individual freedom grows with an increase in group size. A small group is likely to exert great control over an individual member, who simply cannot escape the gaze and control of other members. In a large group, however, the individual is better able to become less visible and less subject to the control of the group. In large societies, especially large cities, where there are likely to be many different groups, the individual is a member of a number of them. As a result, any single group is able to control only a minute portion of the individual’s behavior. However, individuals become subject to other kinds of control in large societies, as exemplified by the soon-to-be-discussed tragedy of culture. Furthermore, masses are more subject to being controlled by one idea, the simplest idea. The physical proximity of a large number of people, especially in the modern city, makes individuals more suggestible and more likely to follow simplistic ideas and to engage in mindless, emotional actions.

Distance and the Stranger Along these same lines (his social geometry), Simmel was also interested in the issue of distance. For example, the social type we mentioned previously, the stranger, is defined by distance. The stranger is a person who is neither too close to the group nor too far away from it. If they came too close, they would no longer be a stranger—they would be a member of the group. If they were too far away, they would cease to have any contact with the group. Thus, to be a stranger involves a combination of closeness and distance. The peculiar distance between the stranger and the group leads to some unusual patterns of interaction between the two. For example, the stranger can be more objective in their interaction with group members. Their lack of emotional involvement allows them to be more dispassionate in their judgments of, and relationships with, members. Furthermore, because they are a stranger, other people feel more comfortable expressing confidences to them than to those who are close to them and members of the same group. They feel free to say things to the stranger because they believe that what they say will not get back to the group; they may be reluctant to say the same things to group members for fear that other members will soon find out. (A good example of this is that some people feel quite comfortable divulging personal information to taxi drivers because they are not stranger–One of Simmel’s social types defined by distance: one who is neither too close to the group nor too far from it.

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likely to see them again and the drivers are unlikely to have contact with other members of their group.) The stranger is not only a social type; strangeness can also be discussed as a social form of interaction. For example, a degree of strangeness, a peculiar combination of closeness and distance, enters even the most intimate relationships; thus, even the closest of marriages can have elements of distance (poker group vs. reading group). In fact, Simmel believed that to be successful, marriages must have some degree of strangeness to keep them interesting.

Distance and Value One of Simmel’s most interesting insights on distance relates to value and the development of an alternative to Marx’s labor theory of value. In terms of the issue of distance, Simmel argued that the value of things is a function of their distance from us. Things that are too close to us, too easy to obtain, are of no great value to us; thus, even though our lives depend on it, air is not valuable to most of us most of the time because it is all around us and readily attainable. (Of course, air would be quite valuable if there were little of it—for instance, if pollution made it hard to

KEY CONCEPT Space

Although Simmel’s thinking on distance is widely known, less well-known is his broader theory of space. One of his concerns is the importance of boundaries in space. This importance is revealed particularly when the boundaries are indefinite or indistinct. Indefinite boundaries occur when groups are not limited to their political boundaries (e.g., a mass of people in a large space). Being in the open in this way makes a group subject to impulsiveness and enthusiasm and also susceptible to manipulation. This, of course, can be related to things such as riots. Indistinct boundaries occur when the space is unclear, such as when a group finds itself in pitch-black space. Among other things, this is likely to lead to an increase in group fantasizing. Some of Simmel’s most interesting insights on space relate to what he has to say about the bridge and the door. For example, whereas the bridge always leads to connectedness, the door can lead to either connectedness (if it is open) or separation (if it is closed). Thus, he concludes that the door is much richer and has much livelier significance than the bridge. Direction makes no difference in terms of the bridge, but there are huge differences between entering through and leaving by a door.

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breathe and dangerous to inhale. And it is valued more highly by those who find it hard to obtain, such as people with emphysema.) Also, things that are too far from us, too difficult to obtain, are not of great value. Thus, a trek to the top of Mount Everest is not valuable to most of us because it is too far to travel, the climb is too difficult, and the project is too expensive. In the end, the things that are most valuable to us are those that are attainable but only with considerable effort.

Objective and Subjective Culture The concept of the tragedy of culture is based on a distinction between subjective (or individual) and objective (or collective) culture. Objective culture involves those objects that people produce (art, science, philosophy, etc.). ­Individual culture is the capacity of the individual to produce, absorb, and control the elements of objective culture. The tragedy of culture stems from the fact that over time objective culture grows exponentially, whereas individual culture and the ability to produce objective culture grow only marginally. Over time people’s ability to be creative has increased little, if at all. Yet the sum total of what they have produced has exploded. First, the absolute size of objective culture grows. This can be seen most obviously in the case of science. Clearly, we know many more things about disease, astronomy, physics, and sociology than ever before, and with each passing day, we know still more. Second, the number of different components of objective culture increases. For example, not many years ago there was no internet. Now it is an increasingly important part of objective culture, and there is always more to know about it. Finally, and perhaps most important, the elements of objective culture become intertwined in ever more powerful, self-contained worlds that are increasingly beyond the comprehension, let alone the control, of the actors who created them. The tragedy of culture is that our meager individual capacities cannot keep pace with our cultural products. We are doomed to a decreasing understanding of the world we have created. More important, we are destined to be increasingly controlled by that world. For example, the internet now exerts enormous control over our lives, and that control will only grow as it becomes more important and more complex. We understand it less, but we need it more.

objective culture–The objects that people produce—art, science, philosophy, and so on—that become part of culture (Simmel). individual culture–The capacity of the individual to produce, absorb, and control the elements of objective culture (Simmel). tragedy of culture–A concept that stems from the fact that over time objective culture grows exponentially, whereas individual culture and the ability to produce it grow only marginally. Our meager individual capacities cannot keep pace with our cultural products. As a result, we are doomed to have a decreasing understanding of the world we have created and to be increasingly controlled by that world (Simmel).

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Division of Labor A key factor in the tragedy of culture is the growth in the division of labor. Increased specialization leads to an increased ability to produce ever more complex and sophisticated components of the objective world. But at the same time, the highly specialized individual loses a sense of the total culture and loses the ability to control it. Thus, a person may be a sophisticated computer programmer, but immersed in the details of producing a specific program, or even a minute portion of a program, the individual loses an overall sense of computer technology, the internet, and internet culture in general. As objective culture grows, individual culture atrophies. Of course, there are positive aspects to all of this. Specialization has led to innumerable developments that have greatly enhanced our daily lives. Given the enormous and expanding array of things available in the objective culture, we all have infinitely more choices than ever before. But all this comes at a cost as individuals feel, and are becoming, increasingly insignificant in comparison to the objective culture that they must confront and attempt to come to grips with on a daily basis. In that confrontation, the individuals are destined to be the losers. Worse, there is no end to this process; we are destined to experience progressively greater insignificance in comparison to objective culture—to be increasingly controlled by it. And the future inhabitants of our society are doomed to be far more tragic figures than we are.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN: INCREASING CONTROL OF BUSINESS OVER INDUSTRY We continue this discussion of classical theories with the contributions of an American, Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). Veblen’s general concern throughout his career was with the conflict between business and industry. Although to our way of thinking the two may seem closely related, to Veblen there was a stark contrast, in fact an inherent conflict, between them. Whereas the development of industry leads to greater and greater output, business interests seek to limit output to keep prices and profits high.

Business Veblen detailed a historic change in the nature of business and business leaders. The early leaders tended to be entrepreneurs who were designers, builders, shop managers, and financial managers. They were more likely than later leaders to have earned their income because, at least in part, it was derived from their direct contribution to production (industry). Today’s business leaders are almost exclusively concerned with financial matters, and therefore, at least in Veblen’s view, they are not earning their income because finance makes no direct contribution to industry. (In fact, if anything, finance inhibits industry.) A further development involved the routinization of financial matters, which in turn led to their 58    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

being handled by large financial organizations (e.g., investment bankers). Thus, the business leader was left as an intermediary between industry and finance, with little concrete knowledge of either.

KEY CONCEPTS Conspicuous Consumption and Conspicuous Leisure

What distinguishes Veblen from every other classical theorist is that he not only developed an important theory of production but also created a theory of consumption. Of enduring importance is his theory of the relationship between social class and consumption. At the turn of the 20th century, Veblen argued that the motivation to consume a variety of goods (services were of little interest in Veblen’s day, but the same idea would apply) is not for subsistence; rather, such consumption creates the basis for invidious distinctions (those designed to lead to envy) among people. The possession of particular goods leads to higher status for those who possess them. In other words, the leisure class engages in conspicuous consumption. And the conspicuous consumption of the leisure class ultimately affects everyone else in the stratification system. In deciding what goods to consume, people in every other social class ultimately emulate the behavior of the leisure class, those at the pinnacle of the stratification system. The tastes of that class eventually work their way down through the stratification hierarchy, although most people end up emulating the acquisitions of those in the class immediately above them in the hierarchy. Veblen distinguished between conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. He argued that leisure, or the nonproductive use of time, was an earlier way of making invidious distinctions among people; that is, people conspicuously wasted time to elevate their social status. In the modern era, people consume conspicuously (i.e., waste goods rather than time) to create such distinctions. Buying expensive goods when far less expensive commodities can accomplish the same objectives is an example of waste in the realm of goods. In the modern world, elites are more likely to engage in conspicuous consumption than in conspicuous leisure because the former is more visible, and visibility is crucial if the goal is to elevate one’s status and make others envious. Driving a new Rolls-Royce around the neighborhood is far more likely to be noticed than the fact that one is whiling away the hours in front of one’s television set.

conspicuous consumption–The consumption of a variety of goods not for subsistence but for the higher status particular goods confer on those who consume them; such consumption creates the basis for invidious distinctions among people (Veblen). conspicuous leisure–The consumption of leisure, or the nonproductive use of time, in such a way as to create invidious distinctions between people and elevate the social status of those able to waste their time in this way (Veblen).

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Business tended to define the world of Veblen’s day, especially the interests of the upper classes. Business is a pecuniary approach to economic processes; that is, the dominant interest of business is money. The focus is not on the interests of the larger community but rather on the profitability of the organization. The occupations of those with business interests tend to involve ownership and acquisition; members of the leisure class tend to occupy these positions. Thus, the captains of industry as well as the captains of solvency (the investment bankers, financiers who come eventually to control the captains of industry) have a business orientation. Because business is nonproductive, Veblen viewed a business orientation as parasitic and exploitative. Instead of production, business leaders focus on things such as sharp practice, cornering the market, and sitting tight. Veblen gave business leaders credit for increasing productive capacity, but his most distinctive contribution is his view of such leaders as being at least as much involved in disturbing production and restricting capacity as they are in increasing capacity. Veblen viewed the modern corporation as a type of business. As such, its interests are in financial matters like profit and in sales and not in production and workmanship.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN (1857–1929) A Biographical Vignette Veblen was, to put it mildly, an unusual man. For example, he could sit for hours and contribute little or nothing to a conversation going on around him. His friends and admirers made it possible for him to become president of the American Economic Association, but he declined the offer. The following vignette offered by a bookseller gives us a bit more of a sense of this complex man: A man used to appear every six or eight weeks quite regularly, an ascetic, mysterious person with a gentle air. He wore his hair long. . . . I used to try to interest him in economics. . . . I even once tried to get him to begin with The Theory of the Leisure Class. I explained to him what a brilliant port of entry it is to social consciousness. He listened attentively to all I said and melted like a snow drop through the door. One day he ordered a volume of Latin hymns. “I shall have to take your name because we will order this expressly for you,” I told him. “We shall not have an audience for such a book as this again in a long time, I am afraid.” “My name is Thorstein Veblen,” he breathed rather than said. Excerpt cited in Rick Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891–1963: Conservative,Liberal, and Radical Perspectives (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 9–10.

business–A pecuniary approach to economic processes in which the dominant interests are acquisition, money, and profitability rather than production and the interests of the larger community (Veblen). 60    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Industry Industry has to do with understanding and using mechanized processes of all sorts on a large scale. An industrial orientation is associated with the people involved in workmanship and production. The working classes are most likely to be involved in these activities and to have such an orientation. Unfortunately, industry is controlled by business leaders who have little or no understanding of it and understand only the “higgling of the market” and financial intrigue. The main interest of those leaders is to restrict production and restrict the free operation of the industrial system to keep prices (and therefore profits) high. The result is that the main task of the business leader, in Veblen’s view, is to obstruct, retard, and sabotage the operation of the industrial system. Without such obstructions, the extraordinary productivity of the industrial system would drive prices and profits progressively lower. The tightly interlocking nature of the industrial system lends itself to cooperative undertakings, but this characteristic also makes the system increasingly vulnerable to the efforts of business and national leaders to sabotage it. Such sabotage may be done consciously or as a result of business leaders’ ignorance of industrial operations. In either case, it results in hardship to the community in the form of unemployment, idle factories, and wasted resources. Veblen even went so far as to imply that business leaders are consciously responsible for economic depressions: they reduce production because under certain market conditions they feel they cannot derive what they emotionally consider a reasonable profit from their goods. To Veblen, there is no such thing, from the point of view of the larger community, as overproduction. However, even with the activities of the business leaders, including the creation of depressions, the industrial system is so effective and efficient that it still allows business leaders and their investors to earn huge profits. The modern industrial system is so productive that it yields returns far beyond those required to cover costs and supply owners and investors with reasonable profits. These excess returns constitute what Veblen calls free income, which goes to the business leaders and their investors, not to the workers (this is reminiscent of Marx’s theory of exploitation). Overall, the captains of industry and the leisure class of which they are an important part, and their pecuniary orientation, are associated with waste. In encouraging such waste, the leisure class tends to stand in opposition to the needs of modern, industrial society.

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD: SOCIAL BEHAVIORISM Perhaps the most important theorist of everyday life in the history of sociology was another American, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931). Although he taught in the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, Mead was a central figure in the development of an important contemporary sociological theory: symbolic industry–The understanding and productive use, primarily by the working classes, of a wide variety of mechanized processes on a large scale (Veblen). CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   61

interactionism. As all the grand theorists discussed previously had sociologies of everyday life, Mead also had a grand theory. However, his most important contribution to the development of sociological theory lies in his sociology of everyday life. Interestingly, although Mead focused on thought, action, and interaction, he emphasized the importance of starting with the group or, more generally, with what he called the social. Thus, analysis is to begin with the organized group and then work its way down rather than begin with separate individuals and work its way up to the group. Individual thought, action, and interaction are to be explained in terms of the group and not the group explained by individual thought and action. The whole is prior to its individual elements. In focusing on those individual elements, Mead found it difficult to distinguish his approach from psychological behaviorism, even though he called himself a type of behaviorist: a social behaviorist. Basically, he recognized the fact of stimulus–response behavior, but he thought there is much more to human action than that simple model. To put it simply, the mind intervenes between the application of a stimulus and the emitting of a response; people, unlike lower animals, think before they act.

The Act Mead comes closest to psychological behaviorism in discussing the most basic element in his theoretical system—the act—but he does not see people as engaging in automatic, unthinking responses. He recognizes four separable stages in the act, but each is related to all of the others, and the act does not necessarily occur in the following sequence: 1. Impulse. The actor reacts to some external stimulus (hunger, a dangerous animal) and feels the need to do something about it (find food, run away). 2. Perception. The actor searches for and reacts to stimuli (through hearing, smell, taste, etc.) that relate to the impulse and to the ways of dealing with it. People do not simply react to stimuli; they think about them and select among them, deciding what is important (the animal is growling) and what is unimportant (the animal has pretty eyes). 3. Manipulation. The actor manipulates the object once it has been perceived. This is an important phase before a response is emitted and involves two major distinctive characteristics of humans: our minds and our opposable act–The basic concept in Mead’s theory involving an impulse, perception of stimuli, taking action involving the object perceived, and using the object to satisfy the initial impulse. impulse–First stage of the act in which the actor reacts to some external stimulus and feels the need to do something about it (Mead). perception–Second stage of the act in which the actor consciously searches for and reacts to stimuli that relate to the impulse and ways of dealing with it (Mead). manipulation–Third stage of the act, in which the actor manipulates the object once it has been perceived (Mead).

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thumbs. Thus, a hungry person can pick up a mushroom from the forest floor, examine it by rolling it around in their fingers, and think about whether it has the characteristics of a poisonous mushroom. In contrast, a hungry animal is likely to grab for the mushroom and eat it unthinkingly without examining it. 4. Consummation. The actor takes action that satisfies the original impulse (eating the mushroom rather than simply manipulating and examining it, shooting the animal). Humans are more likely to be successful in consummation because of our ability to think through the act, whereas lower animals must rely on the far less efficient and effective trial and error.

Gestures An act involves only one person or lower animal, but both people and animals interact with others. The most primitive form of interaction involves gestures—movements by one party that serve as stimuli to another party. People and animals make gestures and also engage in a conversation of gestures, in which gestures by one elicit mindless responding gestures from the other. In a dogfight, for example, the baring of teeth by one dog might automatically cause the other dog to bare its teeth. The same kind of thing might happen in a boxing match: the cocked fist of one fighter could lead the other to raise an arm in defense. In both types of fights, the reaction is instinctive, and the gestures are nonsignificant because neither party thinks about its response. Although both people and animals employ nonsignificant gestures, only people employ significant gestures, or those that involve thought before responses are made. Among gestures, Mead placed great importance on vocal gestures. All vocal gestures of lower animals are nonsignificant (the bark of a dog to another dog), and some human vocal gestures may be nonsignificant (snoring). However, most human vocal gestures are significant, the most important of them involving language. This system of significant gestures is responsible for the great advances (control over nature, science) of human society. One huge difference exists between physical and vocal gestures. When we make a physical gesture, we cannot see what we are doing (unless we are looking in a mirror), but when we make a vocal gesture, we can hear it in the same way as the person to whom it is aimed. Thus, a vocal gesture affects the speaker in much the same way it affects the hearer. Furthermore, people have far better control over their vocal gestures; if they do not like what they find themselves saying (and consummation–Final stage of the act in which the actor takes action that satisfies the original impulse (Mead). gestures–Movements by one party (person or animal) that serve as stimuli to another party (Mead). conversation of gestures–An interaction in which gestures by one party elicit mindless responding gestures from the other party (Mead). significant gestures–Gestures that require thought before responses are made; only humans are capable of making significant gestures (Mead).

CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   63

hearing), they can stop it or alter it in midsentence. Thus, what distinguishes people from lower animals is not only their ability to think about a response before emitting it but also their ability to control what responses they emit.

Significant Symbols and Language One of the most famous ideas in Mead’s conceptual arsenal, and in all of sociology, is the significant symbol. Significant symbols are those that arouse in the person expressing them the same kind of response (it need not be identical) they are designed to elicit from those to whom they are addressed. In other words, people can think about what they are saying as they are saying it. Physical objects can be significant symbols, but vocal gestures, especially language, are the crucial significant symbols. In a conversation of physical gestures, only the gestures are communicated. In a conversation involving language, both the gestures (the words) and, most important, the meanings of those gestures are communicated. Language (or, more generally, significant symbols) brings out the same responses in both speaker and hearer. If someone were to say the word dog to you, both you and the speaker would have a similar mental image of a dog. In addition, words are likely to lead us to the same or similar actions. If someone yells “Fire!” in a crowded theater, both that person and others in the theater would be driven to want to escape as quickly as possible. Language allows people to stimulate their own actions as well as those of others. Language also makes possible the critically important ability of people to think, to engage in mental processes. Mead defined thinking, as well as the mind, simply as conversation that people have with themselves using language; this activity is like having a conversation with other people. Similarly, Mead believed that social processes precede mental processes; significant symbols and a language must exist for the mind to exist. The mind allows us to call out in ourselves not only the reactions of a single person (who, e.g., shouts “Fire!” in a theater) but also the reactions of the entire community. Thus, if yelling “Fire!” is likely to save lives, we might think about the public recognition we would receive for doing so. In contrast, if we contemplate yelling “Fire!” falsely, our anticipation of the reaction of the community (disapproval, imprisonment) might prevent us from taking such action. Furthermore, thinking of the reactions of the entire community leads us to come up with more organized responses than if we were to think about the reactions of a number of separate individuals.

The Self Another crucial concept to Mead is the self, or the ability to take oneself as an object. The self and the mind are dialectically related to each other; neither can exist without the other. Thus, one cannot take oneself as an object (think about significant symbols–Symbols that arouse in the person expressing them the same kind of response (it need not be identical) they are designed to elicit from those to whom they are addressed (Mead). mind–The conversations that people have with themselves using language (Mead). self–The ability to take oneself as an object (Mead). 64    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

oneself ) without a mind, and one cannot have a mind, have a conversation with oneself, without a self. Of course, it is impossible to separate mind and self because the self is a mental process. Basic to the self is reflexivity, or the ability to put ourselves in others’ places—think as they think, and act as they act. This ability allows us to examine ourselves and what we do in the same way that others would. We can adopt the same position toward ourselves as others adopt toward us. To do this, we must be able to get outside ourselves, at least mentally, so that we can evaluate ourselves as others do. We have to adopt a specific standpoint toward ourselves, which can be either the standpoint of a specific individual or that of the social group as a whole. (This idea will be discussed later.) Mead believed that the self emerges in two key stages in childhood. The first is the play stage, in which the child plays at being someone else. The child might play at being Dora, or Peppa Pig, or Mommy. In so doing, the child learns to become both subject (who the child is) and object (who Dora is) and begins to be able to build a self. However, that self is limited because the child can only take the role of a distinct and separate other (Dora, mother). In playing at being Dora or mother, the child is able to see and evaluate themselves as they imagine Dora or their mother might see and evaluate them. However, the child lacks a more general and organized sense of self.

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD (1863–1931) A Biographical Vignette Most of the important theorists discussed throughout this book achieved their greatest recognition in their lifetimes for their published work. George Herbert Mead, however, was as important, at least during his lifetime, for his teaching as for his writing. His words had a powerful impact on many people who were to become important sociologists in the 20th century. One of his students said, “Conversation was his best medium; writing was a poor second.” Another of his students described what Mead was like as a teacher: For me, the course with Professor Mead was a unique and unforgettable experience. . . . Professor Mead was a large, amiable-looking man who wore a magnificent mustache and a Vandyke beard. He c ­ haracteristically had a benign, rather shy smile matched with a twinkle in his eyes as if he were enjoying a secret joke he was playing on the audience.

reflexivity–The ability to put ourselves in others’ places—think as they think, and act as they act (Mead). play stage–The first stage in the genesis of the self in which the child plays at being someone else (Mead). CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   65

As he lectured—always without notes—Professor Mead would manipulate the piece of chalk and watch it intently. . . . When he made a particularly subtle point in his lecture, he would glance up and throw a shy, almost apologetic smile over our heads—never looking directly at anyone. His lecture flowed and we soon learned that questions or comments from the class were not welcome. Indeed, when someone was bold enough to raise a question, there was a murmur of disapproval from the students. They objected to any interruption of the golden flow. His expectations of students were modest. He never gave exams. The main task for each of us students was to write as learned a paper as one could. These Professor Mead read with great care, and what he thought of your paper was your grade in the course. One might suppose that students would read materials for the paper rather than attend his lectures but that was not the case. Students always came. They couldn’t get enough of Mead. Excerpts from Leonard S. Cottrell Jr., “George Herbert Mead: The Legacy of Social Behaviorism,” in R. K. Merton and M. W. Riley (eds.), Sociological Traditions from Generation to Generation: Glimpses of the American Experience (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1980), pp. 40–50. Copyright © 1980 by Ablex Publishing Company.

KEY CONCEPT Definition of the Situation

W. I. Thomas (1863–1947), along with his wife, Dorothy S. Thomas, created the idea of definition of the situation: if a person defines a situation as real, then that definition is real in its consequences. This means that what matters is the way a person mentally defines a situation rather than what that situation is in reality. The definition, not the reality, leads the individual to do certain things and not others. To illustrate with a baseball example, suppose that you are playing shortstop and you define the situation as the opposing team having two outs when there is only one. The batter hits a pop fly in your direction, and you catch it, and because you believe that there are now three outs, you jog off the field as if the inning were over. Your definition has had real consequences: you have left the field. Other real consequences may follow: opposition runners on the bases may run for home and score unmolested, your teammates may scream at you, and your manager may bench you. In many areas of our lives, how we define ­situations often matters more than the reality.

definition of the situation–The idea that if a person defines a situation as real, then that definition is real in its consequences (Mead). 66    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

In the next stage, the game stage, the child begins to develop a self in the full sense of the term. Whereas the child takes the role of a discrete other in the play stage, in the game stage they take the role of everyone involved in the game. Each of these others plays a specific role in the overall game. Mead used the example of baseball, in which the child may play one role (say, pitcher) but must know what the other eight players are supposed to do and what they are going to expect from them. To be the pitcher, they must know what everyone else is to do. They need not have all the players in mind all the time, but at any given moment they may have the roles of three or four of them in mind. As a result of this ability to take on multiple roles simultaneously, children begin to be able to function in organized groups. They become able to better understand what is expected of them, what they are supposed to do, in the group. Although play requires only pieces of a self, the game requires a coherent self. Another famous concept created by Mead is the generalized other: the attitude of the entire community. In the example of the baseball game, the generalized other is the attitude of the entire team. A complete self is possible only when the child moves beyond taking the role of individual significant others and takes the role of the generalized other. It is important for people to be able to evaluate themselves and what they are doing from the point of view of the group as a whole and not only from the perspectives of discrete individuals. The generalized other also makes possible abstract thinking and objectivity. In terms of the latter, a person develops a more objective perspective when they rely on the generalized other rather than individual others. In sum, to have a self, a person must be a member of a community and be directed by the attitudes common to the community. All of this, especially the generalized other, might lead one to believe that Mead’s actors are conformists who lack individuality. However, Mead makes it clear that each self is unique; each develops within the context of specific biographical experiences. Furthermore, there is not one generalized other but many because there are many groups within society. Because people belong to many different groups and have many generalized others, there are a multitude of selves. Furthermore, people need not accept the community and the generalized other as they are; they can work to change them. At times they succeed, altering the community, the generalized other, and ultimately, the selves within that community.

I and Me The fact that there is both conformity and individuality in the self is manifest in Mead’s distinction between two phases of the self—the I and the me. Although these phases sound like things or structures of the self, in reality they are viewed by Mead as processes that are part of the larger process that is the self. game stage–The second stage in the genesis of the self (the first is the play stage) in which, instead of taking the role of a discrete other, the child takes the role of everyone involved in the game. Each of these others plays a specific role in the overall game (Mead). generalized other–The attitude of the entire community or of any collectivity in which the actor is involved (Mead). CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   67

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Have We Become Obsessed with the Self? George Herbert Mead offered great insight into the nature of the self, but he might have been surprised to see the degree to which the self has been transformed and has become the center of attention, even an obsession, in the contemporary world. We live today in a world in which we are increasingly likely to reflect on a greater number of things. The internet and globalization, among other developments, have put us in touch with many more things, and we are increasingly able (because of such developments) to reflect on them. Indeed, we need to reflect on them because so many of them (e.g., global economic changes, health threats) are likely to have profound effects on us. And among the things that we reflect on more these days is ourselves. Although self-reflection has always been a human characteristic, people in the past were less able and less likely than people today to engage in such activity. For one thing, people in the past were often too busy trying to survive and provide for their daily needs to engage in much self-reflection. Furthermore, they lived in a culture that stressed material accomplishments and de-emphasized self-reflection and self-absorption, viewing them as excessive and not furthering the material needs of people and the larger society. However, as Anthony Giddens, a contemporary theorist we will discuss at several points later in this book, points out, today the self has become a project, perhaps even the project, for many people. For one thing, the self no longer simply emerges; it is something that we actively create. Who we are, or who we think we are, is not based in particular characteristics, or even set in childhood; we consciously and actively create who we are throughout the course of our lives. Thus, the self is not created once and for all; rather, it is continually molded, altered, and even changed dramatically over time and even from one time to another. Thus, the self becomes something that we all need to watch over, monitor, and alter as needed. This makes us in many ways more flexible and adaptable. However, it also represents a fearsome and difficult process. That is, in contrast to a century or two ago, when people did not worry much about the self, today it has become a constant source of concern. We have become preoccupied with the self and adapting it to the changing society, to our changing position in that society, and even from one situation to the next. This is not an easy task, and it is one that is fraught with difficulties and tensions. There are many advantages to being in tune with the self, but there are also many costs.

The I is the immediate response of the self to others. It is the incalculable, unpredictable, and creative aspect of the self. People do not know in advance what the I will do. Thus, in the case of a baseball game, a player does not know I–The immediate response of the self to others; the incalculable, unpredictable, and creative aspect of the self (Mead). 68    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

in advance what will happen—a brilliant play or an error. We are never totally aware of the I, with the result that we sometimes surprise ourselves with our actions. Mead stresses the importance of the I for four reasons. First, it is the key source of novelty in the social world. Second, it is in the I that our most important values lie. Third, the I constitutes the realization of the self, and we all seek to realize the self. Because of the I we each develop a unique personality. Finally, Mead describes a long-term evolutionary process (and here the great sociologist offers a grand theory) from primitive societies, where people are dominated by the me, to contemporary society, where the I plays a much more significant role. The I reacts against the me within the self. The me is basically the individual’s adoption and perception of the generalized other. In contrast to their lack of awareness of the I, people are cognizant of the me; they are conscious of what the community wants them to do. All of us have a substantial me, but those who are conformists are dominated by the me. Society controls us through the me. The me allows people to function comfortably in the social world, whereas the I makes it possible for society to change. Society gets enough conformity to allow it to function, and it gets a steady infusion of innovations that prevent it from growing stagnant. Both individuals and society function better because of the mix of I and me.

W. E. B. DU BOIS: RACE AND RACISM IN MODERN SOCIETY William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963) was an African American sociologist and political activist. The central focus of Du Bois’s theoretical work is race (in particular the situation of Black Americans) and what he called the color line. In the United States, the color line is the division of Black society and white society into two different and unequal worlds. At the beginning of his most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois says that the problem of the 20th century is the “color line,” in other words, racial divisions. That is, in contrast to Marxist and feminist theories, which place variables such as class and gender at the center of analysis, Du Bois argued that race is the most important variable for understanding the course of 20th-century America and, as detailed in his later writings, global civilization. In this Du Bois offered a unique approach to social theory that can also be viewed as a forerunner to contemporary critical theories of race and racism.

me–The individual’s adoption and perception of the generalized other; the conformist aspect of the self (Mead). color line–The division of Black society and white society into two different and unequal worlds (Du Bois). CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   69

Race At the beginning of his career, Du Bois conceptualized race in a manner that can be characterized as racialist. Racialism, an approach to race that was widespread in the 19th century, held that there are distinct races with unique defining features. Unlike racism, racialism does not necessarily assume that some races are superior to others. Like many racialist theorists, Du Bois argued that some racial differences are physical, but more important, racial differences are found in cultural, spiritual, psychic, and intellectual forms. These differences are not the products of biology but rather the products of particular groups’ sociohistorical development. Du Bois argued that each race has a distinct contribution to make to human civilization. For example, whereas white Europeans have developed a talent for commerce, African Americans offer talents in the cultural forms of music, fairy tales, and humor. In fact, Du Bois asserted that Black music is the only truly original American music. Because each race contributes uniquely to civilization, Du Bois argued against the absorption or integration of African Americans into American society. Instead he insisted on the education and cultural development of African Americans. All of this is not to say that people from different racial

KEY CONCEPT Romanticism

Like many sociologists, Du Bois revised his theories over his lifetime. Whereas toward the end of his career his thinking was most heavily influenced by Marxism and Marxist economic analysis, early in his career Du Bois was inspired by the romantic philosophy that he encountered when he studied in Germany. Romanticism was a broad intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that affected European societies in the 19th century. In addition to Du Bois, other sociologists, including Simmel (with his interest in subjective culture), Weber (with his method of Verstehen), and Marx (with his concepts of species being and alienation), were influenced by romanticism. Romanticism was a rejection of the

racialism–An approach to race widespread in the 19th century that held that there are distinct races with unique defining features. Unlike racism, racialism does not necessarily assume that some races are superior to others (Du Bois). romanticism–An intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that affected European societies in the 19th century. Rejecting the Enlightenment values of objectivity and rationality, romantics believed that humans are deep-feeling, emotional beings who express the self in culture and language (Du Bois).

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objective, rational, and scientific attitude that had dominated Enlightenment thought in the 18th century. Romantics believed that humans are deep-feeling, emotional beings who express the self in culture and language. Thus, scholarly (in our case, sociological) theories of social life must always take into account this subjective, cultural component of human beings. In his book Lines of Descent, Kwame Anthony Appiah describes the many ways that romanticism influenced Du Bois’s ideas about race and identity. His early career ideas about race and nationalism had much in common with the work of German scholar Johann Gottfried Herder. Appiah suggests that when Du Bois talked about the souls of Black folk, he had in mind Herder’s concept of Volksgeist (spirit of the people). Du Bois, like Herder, believed that each nation or “race” of people has a unique spirit that emerges in cultural expressions such as music and art. For example, Du Bois started each chapter of The Souls of Black Folk with a musical bar from the sorrow songs, the slave spirituals that Du Bois thought expressed something unique about Black historical experience. Romantics like Johann Fichte also emphasized the importance of struggle to personal and cultural development. In particular, romantics believed that individuals can overcome personal limits and express their true, authentic selves by reaching beyond the immediate world. This emphasis on struggle is captured in the title of the opening essay of The Souls of Black Folk, “Our Spiritual Strivings.” According to Appiah, striving for Du Bois is similar to the romantic concept of struggle, except that in the context of African American history striving refers to the struggle of a whole people to grow beyond the limits of the racist world around them. In part, these romantic ideas explain why Du Bois thought that education and learning (not only training in basic trades) were so important for Black Americans. For Du Bois, cultural expression played a crucial role in the development of Black identity beyond the legacy of slavery and the racist social structures of early 20th-century America.

backgrounds cannot develop the intellectual and cultural styles of different groups, as Du Bois himself had done when he successfully studied at American and European universities. Rather, Du Bois insisted that as the United States and the world develop, it is important to keep in view the unique values of different cultural traditions. Although Du Bois never fully abandoned his focus on culture and race, as his career developed he adopted a more heavily economic point of view. Later in life, he wrote that one of the most important factors shaping African ­American identity is the shared history of slavery. Slavery, imposed for economic reasons, was the grounds around which African Americans came to define their unique identity. In an essay titled “The Souls of White Folk” which appeared in the book Darkwater, Du Bois combined his earlier interest in culture with economics when he explored the relationship between “whiteness” and economic

CHAPTER THREE  •  CLASSICAL THEORIES II   71

inequality. For Du Bois like Blackness, the concept and experience of whiteness are cultural and historical constructions. To understand why whiteness is so valued in modern societies, he examined its symbolic meaning. To the question “But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?” Du Bois answers “the ownership of the earth.” In other words, in the 18th and 19th centuries wealth and power came to be associated with the persons of European descent who dominated the world through economic capital. In fact, Du Bois argued that the symbolic distinction between white and Black did not only develop in North America but came to define the distinction between white persons and persons of color around the world. Here Du Bois connected economics, race, capitalism, and colonialism, a theme that we will return to in Chapter 9. Whether in the form of slavery or capitalist exploitation, European and ­American colonialism created a situation in which white nations exercised economic control over persons of color worldwide. Eventually, Du Bois predicted, white nations will be faced with a global challenge to their power unless they treat people of color as humans of equal status with whites.

The Veil and Double-Consciousness One of Du Bois’s most famous concepts is that of the veil, a metaphor for the clear separation, the barrier, between Blacks and whites in the United States. The imagery is not one of a wall but rather of a thin, porous material through which each race can see the other. However, no matter how thin and porous the veil, no matter how easy it is to see through, it still clearly separates the races. From this perspective, Du Bois’s goal in his autobiographical book The Souls of Black Folk is to lift the veil so that white Americans can see behind it and understand the world from the perspective of Black Americans. Although Du Bois usually describes the veil as something that can be seen through and lifted, there are times when he views it as more opaque and impossible to lift. He discusses the veil, then, in many ways: • as something that shuts Blacks out from the rest of the world and within which they live; • as something that Blacks are born with; • as something that falls between Blacks and whites; • as something that affects the ways Black and white people see each other; • as something that hangs between Blacks and opportunity;

veil–A metaphor for the separation between Blacks and whites.The imagery is not one of a wall but rather of thin, porous material through which each race can see the other.

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• as something that negatively affects both Black and whites; and, • at least early in his career, as something that he hopes might someday be lifted. Closely related to the concept of the veil is one of Du Bois’s best-known and most influential ideas: double-consciousness. Whereas the veil describes the sociostructural fact of the division between Blacks and whites in the United States, double-consciousness describes the social psychological consequences of the veil. African Americans were both outsiders and insiders or, more specifically, outsiders within. That is, they were (and to some degree still are) both inside and

W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868–1963) A Biographical Vignette Unlike other Black leaders (such as Booker T. Washington) and intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, W. E. B. Du Bois was born free in the North. He attended Harvard University and obtained a doctorate from that university (he also studied at the University of Berlin). He is best known in sociology for his important contributions to urban ethnography in The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and to racial economic history in Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935). However, Du Bois was also a polemicist and politician (traits that were manifest in his more scholarly books), and these traits are powerfully reflected in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). In addition to his publications, Du Bois’s accomplishments during the 20th century were many. He was the major force in opposition to Booker T. Washington and his concessions to white power, and he was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, 1909), serving as the organization’s principal spokesperson during the second decade of the century. He also was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, and he received worldwide recognition as a leader of the pan-African movement. In the 1950s he defied the U.S. government’s persecution of anyone thought to be a communist, and in the 1960s he settled in Ghana, where he set about to create an “Encyclopedia Africana.” Du Bois died in 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington and the ascendancy of Martin Luther King, Jr. as leader of the Black movement. His passionate concern about the dire implications of the “color line,” especially among Black Americans, continues to influence scholars, politicians, activists, and many others.

double-consciousness–The feeling that a Black person has of being split in two, of having two forms of self-consciousness (Du Bois).

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outside the dominant white society. They saw themselves both from the perspective of their own community and from the perspective of the white community. Double-consciousness, then, refers to the feeling that a Black person has of being split in two, of having two forms of self-consciousness. On the one hand, this position gives Blacks unique and enhanced insight into society as a whole. On the other, this split produces enormous confusion and tension. Struggling to reconcile these two, often opposed, aspects of their being, Black people suffer socially and psychologically.

Economics and Marxism Despite Du Bois’s attention to cultural, political, and social psychological aspects of race, he also relied on economic explanations of racial inequality. In his later work, in particular, he adapted a form of economic analysis inspired by the writings of Karl Marx. Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 is Du Bois’s most involved application of Marxian theory. The book presents a revisionist history of the 20-year period following the American Civil War, during which efforts were made to integrate former slaves into the U.S. economy. Du Bois argues that the Civil War was caused by slavery, and the failure of Reconstruction was due to economic and political factors. For one, in pre-Civil War America, the slave was an important source of surplus value. The war was fought over access to that source of wealth. Second, explaining the failure of Reconstruction, Du Bois points out that both Black and white workers were exploited by the owning classes. Although together the working classes could have offered a formidable challenge to structures of economic inequality, racial ideology divided them. In particular, white supremacist views made it impossible for whites to see former slaves as social equals. As such, the owning classes were able to play whites against Blacks and drive wages down to increase profit. Thus, the emerging capitalist class had an interest in seeing Reconstruction fail and supported policies that ensured continued race division. In addition, Du Bois relies on arguments similar to those found in the Marxian concept of ideology. In the United States, white control of culture had led to widespread misrepresentation of African Americans. This included racist imagery in newspapers and literature, the absence of slave history from American history textbooks, and in particular the misrepresentation of the role that African ­Americans played in the Civil War. The story of the Civil War and Reconstruction was written largely by what Du Bois calls white supremacists. These were historians who unquestioningly took the view that Black people are lazy, backward, and uncivilized. From this racist perspective, the failure of Reconstruction was attributed to innate features of Black people rather than to the cultural, political, and economic factors described by Du Bois. Here ideology perpetuated racist stereotypes and supported capitalist economic domination.

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SUMMARY 1. Georg Simmel was interested in association, or interaction. 2. To deal with the bewildering array of interactions with which we are all confronted, both sociologists and laypeople develop forms of interaction. 3. Simmel argued that humans engage the world through conscious processes. On the one hand, this gives people the freedom to interpret and react to the world in unique ways. On the other, it means that the products of consciousness easily become reified and end up constraining action. 4. In terms of the issue of size, there is a great difference between dyads (twoperson groups) and triads (three-person groups). The addition of a third person to a dyad makes possible the emergence of an independent group structure. No further additions in group size are as important as the addition of one person to a dyad. 5. The larger the group structure, the freer the individual. 6. Simmel’s interest in the issue of distance was manifested in his discussion of a social type, the stranger, who is neither too close to nor too far from the group. Distance is related to a social form, strangeness, which means that a peculiar form of strangeness and distance enters all social relationships. 7. Distance is also related to Simmel’s thinking on value. Those things that are valuable are neither too close nor too far. 8. Simmel’s grand theory is concerned with the tragedy of culture. 9. The tragedy of culture involves the growth of objective culture and its increasing predominance over subjective culture. 10. Thorstein Veblen’s grand theory deals with the increasing control of business over industry and the negative effects of the former on the latter. 11. George Herbert Mead was a social behaviorist interested not only in stimulus– response behavior but also in the human mind that intervenes between stimulus and response: people think before they act. 12. The four stages in the act are impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation. 13. Although people and lower animals use gestures and engage in conversations of gestures, only people use significant gestures, significant symbols, and language.

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14. The generalized other is the attitude of the entire community. 15. The self has two phases that are in constant tension: the I (the immediate, unpredictable, creative aspect) and the me (the adoption of the generalized other, leading to conformism). 16. Although W. E. B. Du Bois saw race, in part, as a biological phenomenon, he argued that the important features of racial difference are cultural and intellectual. 17. Du Bois also argued that economic and political oppression are important factors in shaping racial identity. 18. The veil is a metaphor Du Bois used to describe the division between Black society and white society in the United States. 19. Double-consciousness is a concept Du Bois used to describe the feeling of being split in two that pervaded the lives of many African Americans. 20. Later in his career, Du Bois drew on Marxist ideas to describe the history of American slavery as well as the negative representations of African Americans in mainstream U.S. culture.

SUGGESTED READINGS KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Accessible book by a leading scholar of culture and identity that places Du Bois’s theories in the context of broader ideas about humanity and civilization. GARY COOK George Herbert Mead: The Makings of a Social Pragmatist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Treatment of Mead’s life and work within the context of pragmatism, the philosophical school of thought with which he is most often associated. JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Excellent biography of Veblen with a heavy emphasis on his writings. HORST J. HELLE The Social Thought of Georg Simmel. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015. A short introduction to Simmel’s main ideas introduced through topics such as religion, gender, the family, poverty, and money. DONALD LEVINE, ed. Georg Simmel: Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Excellent collection of Simmel’s most important essays and excerpts from other works.

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J. DAVID LEWIS and RICHARD L. SMITH American Sociology and Pragmatism: Mead, Chicago School, and Symbolic Interactionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Controversial study of Mead’s work as it relates not only to pragmatism but also to the Chicago School of sociology and symbolic interactionism. ALDON D. MORRIS The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Eye-opening book details the ways in which racism led to the exclusion of Du Bois’s scientifically rigorous ideas from mainstream sociology. LOUIS PATSOURAS Thorstein Veblen and the American Way of Life. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2004. Recent examination of Veblen that not only looks at his sociology and economics but also emphasizes his politics. LARRY SCAFF “Georg Simmel.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 205–235. Insightful essay concentrating on Simmel’s work as well as the historical and intellectual context in which it was embedded. DMITRI SHALIN “George Herbert Mead.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 373–425. Rich analysis of Mead and his work. PAUL C. TAYLOR “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists. vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 448–468. Strong portrait of Du Bois that provides a unique framework for understanding the phases of his intellectual development.

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CHAPTER

FOUR

CONTEMPORARY GRAND THEORIES I

Structural Functionalism Conflict Theory General Systems Theory Summary Suggested Readings

In this chapter and the next we turn to several contemporary theories that like the classical theories covered in the preceding two chapters (with the possible exception of Mead’s theory), qualify as grand theories. In this chapter we deal with three closely related examples of such theories—structural functionalism, conflict ­theory, and general systems theory. Conflict theory emerged as a reaction to the oncedominant (at least in the United States) structural-functional theory, and systems theory is closely associated with structural functionalism. In fact, the term system is often used in structural-functional theory. However, structural functionalism and systems theory are now quite distinct theories as we will see in the discussion of the work of the most important contemporary systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann.

STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM As the name suggests, structural functionalism focuses on the structures of society and their functional significance (positive or negative consequences) for other structures. In structural functionalism, the terms structural and functional need not be used together, although they are typically linked. We could study the structures of society (patterned social interaction and persistent social structural functionalism–A sociological theory that focuses on the structures of society and their functional significance (positive or negative consequences) for other structures. structures–In society, patterned social interaction and persistent social relationships (structural functionalism). 79

relationships) without being concerned with their functions (consequences that can be observed and that help a particular system adapt or adjust) for other structures. Similarly, we could examine the functions of a variety of social processes (e.g., crowd behavior) that may not be structured. Still, the concern for both elements—structures and functions—characterizes structural functionalism. Although structural functionalism takes various forms, societal functionalism is the dominant approach among sociological structural functionalists and as such will be the focus of this section. The primary concerns of societal functionalism are the large-scale social structures and institutions of society, their interrelationships, and their constraining effects on actors. A structural functionalist (especially one associated with the societal version of the theory) is concerned with the relationships among the large-scale structures of society—say, the relationship between the educational system and the economic system. The focus is on the functions that each provides for the other. For example, the educational system provides the trained personnel needed to fill occupational positions within the economy. The economy, in turn, provides such positions for those people who complete the educational process. This allows the educational system and its students to have objectives in mind at the end of the educational process. Although this example offers an image of a positive and close-fitting relationship between social structures, not all relationships are necessarily that way. In the days of the anti-Vietnam War and student movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the American educational system was producing large numbers of radical students who did not fit well into the occupational world then being offered to them. Although such tensions among structures often exist, structural functionalists tend to focus on the more positive, more functional relationships among structures. The following section deals with one of the most famous works in the history of structural functionalism, one that offers an intriguing and highly controversial portrait of society.

The Functional Theory of Stratification and Its Critics The functional theory of social stratification, as articulated by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore in 1945, makes it clear that stratification is both universal and necessary. Davis and Moore argue that no society is ever unstratified, or totally classless. Stratification is, in their view, a functional necessity. Every society needs such a system, and this need brings stratification into existence. Davis and Moore also view a stratification system as a societal-level structure, pointing out that stratification is a system of positions (e.g., occupations, such as laborer and ­manager) rather than a system of stratified individuals. They focus on the fact that functions–Consequences that can be observed and that help a particular system adapt or adjust (Davis and Moore). societal functionalism–A variety of structural functionalism that focuses on the large-scale social structures and institutions of society, their interrelationships, and their constraining effects on actors.

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positions within the structure carry with them varying degrees of prestige and not on how individuals come to occupy these positions; that is, the focus is on the structure of social stratification as well as on the functions it performs. The Theory. The major issue in the Davis and Moore theory is how a society motivates and places people in their proper positions in the stratification system. This presents two problems: First, how does a society instill in the proper individuals the desire to fill certain positions? Second, once people are in the right positions, how does society instill in them the desire to fulfill the requirements of those positions? Proper social placement in society is a problem for three reasons. First, some positions are more pleasant to occupy than others. There is little problem getting people to occupy pleasant positions, but unpleasant ones are a different matter. In addition, some positions are more important to the survival of society than others. Although all positions need to be occupied, it is especially important, even necessary, that certain crucial ones be filled. Finally, different social positions require different abilities and talents. The problem is to find a way to be sure that the right people find their way into the right positions—that there is a satisfactory fit between individual skills and abilities and positional requirements. Davis and Moore are concerned with the functionally most important positions in society’s stratification system. The positions that rank high within the system are presumed to be those that are less pleasant to occupy but more important to the survival of society and those that require the greatest ability and talent. Society must attach sufficient rewards to these positions so that adequate numbers of people will seek to occupy them and the individuals who do come to occupy them will work diligently. Davis and Moore imply but do not discuss the converse: low-ranking positions in the stratification system are presumed to be more pleasant (an odd view—the position of the laborer more pleasant than that of the manager?) and less important and to require less ability and talent. Also, society has less need to be sure that individuals occupy these positions and perform their duties with diligence. Thus, social stratification is a structure involving a hierarchy of positions that has the function of leading those people with the needed skills and abilities to do what is necessary to move into the high-ranking positions that are most important to society’s functioning and survival. Davis and Moore do not argue that a society consciously develops such a stratification system to be sure that the high-level positions are filled and filled adequately. Rather, they make it clear that stratification is a mechanism that evolves in an unplanned way. However, it is a device that every society must develop if it is to survive. To be sure that people occupy the higher-ranking positions, society must, in Davis and Moore’s view, provide these individuals with rewards, including great social stratification–To the structural functionalist, a structure involving a hierarchy of positions that has the function of leading those people with the needed skills and abilities to do what is necessary to move into the high-ranking positions that are most important to society’s functioning and survival.

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prestige, high salary, and sufficient leisure. For example, to ensure that our society has enough doctors, we need to offer them these and many additional rewards. Davis and Moore imply that we could not expect people to undertake the burdensome and expensive process of medical education if we did not offer such rewards. The implication seems to be that people who occupy positions at the top must receive the rewards that they do. If they did not, those positions would remain understaffed or unfilled, and society would suffer, if not collapse. Criticisms.  The structural-functional theory of stratification has been subject to much criticism. One basic argument is that the theory simply perpetuates the privileged position of those people who already have power, prestige, and money. It does this by arguing that such people deserve their rewards; indeed, they need to be offered such rewards for the good of society. The functional theory also can be criticized for assuming that simply because a stratified social structure has existed in the past and continues to exist in the present, it must continue to exist in the future. It is possible that future societies will be organized in other, nonstratified ways. Structures other than stratification could be created that would perform the same kinds of functions without having the deleterious effects (e.g., great inequality) associated with stratified systems. In addition, it has been argued that the idea that functional positions vary in their importance to society is difficult to support. Are garbage collectors any less important to the survival of society than advertising executives? Despite the lower pay and lower prestige of the garbage collectors, they actually may be more important to society’s survival. Even in cases in which it could be said that one position serves a more important function for society than another, the greater rewards do not necessarily accrue to the more important positions. Nurses may be much more important to society than are movie stars, but nurses have far less power, prestige, and income than movie stars have. Is there a scarcity of people capable of filling high-level positions? In fact, many people are prevented from obtaining the training they need to achieve prestigious positions even though they have the ability. In the medical profession, for example, there is a persistent effort to limit the number of practicing doctors. In general, many able people never get a chance to show that they can handle highranking positions even though there is a clear need for them and their contributions. Those in high-ranking positions have a vested interest in keeping their own numbers small and their power and income high. Finally, it can be argued that we do not have to offer people power, prestige, and income to get them to want to occupy high-level positions. People can be equally motivated by the satisfaction of doing a job well or by the opportunity to be of service to others. Thus, the structural functionalists have offered a portrait of the structure and operation of society’s system of social stratification. However, it is a highly conservative and controversial portrait. There are other ways to organize society

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to motivate people to handle important social functions. In other words, it is possible to draw other kinds of portraits of social stratification in particular and social organization more generally.

Talcott Parsons’s Structural Functionalism Over the course of his life, the most famous structural functionalist, Talcott Parsons, did a great deal of theoretical work. This section deals with his later structural-functional theorizing. Parsons’s structural functionalism comprises the four functional imperatives for all action systems, his famous AGIL scheme. In this section we discuss the four functions and analyze Parsons’s ideas on structures and systems. AGIL.  In examining functions, Parsons focused on sets of activities aimed at meeting a need or the multiple needs of a system. He argued that four functions are imperatives—that is, they are necessary for (characteristic of) all systems. If they are to survive, all systems must engage in four sets of activities aimed at meeting their needs: adaptation (A), goal attainment (G), integration (I), and latency, or pattern maintenance (L). Together, these four functional imperatives are known as the AGIL scheme. In terms of adaptation, a system must adjust to its environment and adjust the environment to its needs. More specifically, a system must cope with external situational dangers and contingencies. A system cannot remain long at odds with its environment because such a lack of fit would place the system in grave danger of perishing. For example, if a tribe of agriculturalists found themselves in an environment in which the soil was not conducive to raising fruits and vegetables, the tribe would not be able to survive unless its members adapted to the new environment, perhaps by becoming hunters and fishers rather than agriculturalists. A contemporary example is the United States, which has finally come to realize that people cannot continue to drive large, gas-guzzling SUVs in a world in which there is a finite supply of oil needed for gasoline. Eventually, the United States is going to have to begin to develop alternative modes of transport for its population and thereby adapt to the external reality that fossil fuel is a limited resource. The system can also seek to adapt its environment to its needs. The tribe in the preceding example could engage in actions that serve to invigorate the soil and make it more conducive to the raising of crops. In the case of U.S. dependence on oil, in recent years the United States has increased its use of technologies that enable the extraction of oil from unconventional sources, such as shale, within the country’s borders. adaptation–One of Parsons’s four functional imperatives. A system must adjust to its environment and adjust the environment to its needs. More specifically, a system must cope with external situational dangers and contingencies.

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Third, and more specific, are the external dangers and contingencies to which systems must adapt. For example, during the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan moved toward ordering the development of an antiballistic missile system designed to destroy incoming Soviet missiles before they could explode on American soil. Although such a system was never built, the mere possibility that it could be served to heighten the stakes and the costs involved in the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The inability to keep up in that arms race was undoubtedly one of the factors that hastened the Soviet Union’s demise (other factors included a large number of internal problems and crises, such as the inability of the command economy to produce and distribute needed products). This effort by the United States to adapt to the Soviet threat helped lead to the end of that threat; it proved to be a particularly successful adaptation. Goal attainment involves the need for a system to define and achieve its primary goals. The ultimate goal of any system is that it not only survive into the future but also grow and expand. Specific social systems share this general objective but also have a series of more specific goals. For example, the university is a system with two other basic objectives: educate its students and allow its professors to do the basic research needed to continue to enhance knowledge. Interestingly, the university, like all other systems, cannot simply define its goals once and for all and then forget about the issue. Situations change, and arrangements that once allowed for goal attainment may become ineffective. Within a university, for example, the goals of educating students and doing basic research often come into conflict. If education is emphasized too much, professors are unable to devote enough time and energy to research. Similarly, if professors spend too much time doing research, the education of students suffers. Thus, the university must continually examine these two objectives and their relationships to one another to be able to achieve both of them to an adequate degree. Through integration a system seeks to regulate the interrelationships of its component parts. Thus, if the tribe in our example succeeds in creating a viable agricultural system, it must then seek to integrate agriculture with hunting. It needs to be sure that enough time, energy, personnel, and resources are allocated to each. Similarly, within the university, administrators must be sure that research and teaching do not become totally isolated from each other. Thus, it is important that professors integrate their research results into their classes and that students, where possible, participate in research projects. Such interrelationships help ­prevent conflict between teaching and research; they make the two more

goal attainment–The second of Parsons’s functional imperatives involving the need for a system to define and achieve its primary goals. integration–The third of Parsons’s functional imperatives, requiring that a system seek to regulate the interrelationships of its component parts. Integration also involves the management of the relationships among the other three functional imperatives (AGL).

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integrated. Integration also involves the management of the relationships among the other three functional imperatives (AGL). Parsons calls the fourth functional imperative latency, or pattern maintenance. Latency refers to the need for a system to furnish, maintain, and renew the motivation of individuals. Pattern maintenance refers more to the need to furnish, maintain, and renew the cultural patterns that create and sustain individual motivation. Latency is embedded in the functional theory of stratification discussed previously; the whole structure of the system, with greater rewards to those who occupy higher-level positions, is designed to motivate individuals to strive to move up the stratification system and occupy the higher-level positions. The system must not only create and maintain this motivation but also renew it from time to time to keep the system working and people striving. For example, we periodically read or hear success stories in the media about individuals who have, through great effort or a burst of genius, vaulted quickly to the top of the system. Such stories are particularly abundant these days, with the boom in the tech industry and the large numbers of people whose success in it has led to their meteoric rise to the top. The best example is Bill Gates, who as a young man—and in only a few years—became the richest person in the United States. Telling Gates’s story, as well as those of many other tech industry billionaires, serves to reinforce the motivation of large numbers of people to strive to reach the pinnacle of the stratification system. Pattern maintenance is concerned with much the same thing but at the macro rather than the micro level. To maintain the stratification system and keep people involved in striving to reach the top of that system, norms and values that support such a system and such striving must be put in place and sustained. Success, especially economic success, is strongly valued in the United States, and such a value system does help sustain the stratification system and those who seek to move up in it. However, norms and values are not static; they must change to reflect new social realities. The norm used to be that years of striving led to a high-level position within the stratification system. But with the coming of the so-called new economy (computers, the internet, biotechnology), the new norm, at least in that realm of the economy, is that success should come quickly and early in one’s career: the young have the mind-set and capabilities to succeed in the new economy. This new norm serves to sustain the new ways of reaching the top of the stratification system. Although we have discussed the AGIL scheme both in general terms and with some specific examples, Parsons designed the AGIL scheme to be used at all levels

latency–The first aspect of Parsons’s fourth functional imperative involving the need for a system to furnish, maintain, and renew the motivation of individuals. pattern maintenance–The second aspect of Parsons’s fourth functional imperative, involving the need for a system to furnish, maintain, and renew the cultural patterns that create and sustain individual motivation.

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in his theoretical system. This included his most general and all-inclusive sense of the four action systems: the behavioral organism, the personality system, the social system, and the cultural system. All of these relate to action, but each one is primarily involved in the performance of one of the four functional imperatives. The behavioral organism is the action system that handles the adaptation function by adjusting to and transforming the external world. The personality system performs the goal attainment function by defining system goals and mobilizing resources to attain them. The social system copes with the integration function by controlling its component parts. Finally, the cultural system performs the latency function by providing actors with the norms and values that motivate them for action. Figure 4.1 summarizes the structure of the action system in terms of the AGIL scheme. Thus, we have already encountered two of Parsons’s structural-functional portraits—the four functional imperatives and the four action systems (as well as

Figure 4.1  Structure of the General Action System

L

A

I Cultural System

Social System

Behavioral Organism

Personality System G

Source: THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, by Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, with contributions by Neil J. Smelser, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, © 1973 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

behavioral organism–The Parsonsian action system responsible for handling the adaptation function by adjusting to and transforming the external world. personality system–The Parsonsian action system responsible for performing the goal attainment function by defining system goals and mobilizing resources to attain them. social system–The Parsonsian action system responsible for coping with the integration function by controlling its component parts: a number of human actors who interact with one another in a situation with a physical or environmental context. cultural system–The Parsonsian action system that performs the latency function by providing actors with the norms and values that motivate them for action.

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the main function of each). Another portrait is to be found in the overall shape of Parsons’s action system. Figure 4.2 gives an outline of the major levels in Parsons’s schema. The Action System.  Parsons obviously had a clear notion of levels of social analysis as well as their interrelationship. The hierarchical arrangement of the action system is clear, and the levels are integrated in Parsons’s system in two ways: first, each of the lower levels provides the conditions, the energy, needed for the higher levels; second, the higher levels control those below them in the hierarchy. In terms of the environments of the action system, the lowest level, the physical and organic environment, involves the nonsymbolic aspects of the human body, its anatomy and physiology. The highest level, ultimate reality, has a metaphysical feel, but it is argued that Parsons was not interested in the supernatural but rather in the universal tendency for society to deal symbolically with the difficulties of human existence (e.g., uncertainty, tragedy) that represent challenges to a social organization that purports to be meaningful. As previously discussed, the heart of Parsons’s work is found in his four action systems. In the assumptions that Parsons made regarding his action systems, we encounter the problem of order that was his overwhelming concern and that has become a major source of criticism of his work. The Hobbesian problem of order—what prevents a social war of all against all—was not resolved to Parsons’s satisfaction by earlier thinkers. Parsons found his answer to the problem of order

Figure 4.2  Parsons’s Action Schema

High information (controls)

Hierarchy of conditioning factors

High energy (conditions)

High information (controls) 1. Environment of action: ultimate reality 2. Cultural system 3. Social system 4. Personality system 5. Behavioral organism 6. Environment of action: physical-organic environment

Hierarchy of controlling factors

High energy (conditions)

Source: Adapted from Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective, 1st ed., © 1966. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

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in structural functionalism, which operates, in his view, with the following set of assumptions: 1. Systems have the property of order and interdependence of parts. 2. Systems tend toward self-maintaining order, or equilibrium. 3. Systems may be static or involved in an ordered process of change. 4. The nature of one part of a system has an impact on the forms that the other parts can take. 5. Systems maintain boundaries with their environments. 6. Allocation and integration are two fundamental processes necessary for a given state of equilibrium of a system. 7. Systems tend toward self-maintenance, involving the maintenance of boundaries and of the relationships of parts to the whole, control of environmental variations, and control of tendencies to change the system from within. These assumptions led Parsons to make the analysis of the ordered structure of society his first priority. In so doing, he did little with the issue of social change or the creation of a grand theory, at least until later in his career. His priority was to focus on combinations of social variables. Only after they were described and studied would it be possible to deal with how combinations of such variables change over time. Parsons was so heavily criticized for his static orientation that he devoted more attention to change. However, in the view of most observers, even his work on social change tended to be highly static and structured. Actually, the key elements in Parsons’s portrait of the social world do not exist in the real world; rather, they are analytical tools for thinking about and studying the real world. Social System.  Parsons’s conception of the social system begins at the micro level, with interaction between ego and alter ego, defined as the most elementary form of the social system. Parsons spent little time analyzing this level, although he did argue that features of this interaction system are present in the more complex forms taken by the social system. He defined a social system as a number of human actors who interact with one another in a situation with a physical or environmental context. In such a situation actors are seen as seeking to optimize their gratification. Their relationships to one another, as well as to their social situations, are defined and mediated by shared cultural symbols. This definition seeks to define a social system in terms of many of the key concepts in ­Parsons’s work—actors, interaction, environment, optimization of gratification, and culture.

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Despite his commitment to viewing the social system as a system of interaction, Parsons did not take interaction as his fundamental unit in the study of the social system. Rather, he used the status–role complex as the basic unit of the social system. This is neither an aspect of actors, nor an aspect of interaction, but rather a structural component of the social system. Status is a structural position within the social system, and role is what the actor does in such a position seen in the context of its functional significance for the larger system. The actor is viewed not in terms of thoughts and actions but instead (at least in terms of position in the social system) as nothing more than a bundle of statuses and roles. In his analysis of the social system, Parsons was interested primarily in its structural components. In addition to a concern with the status–role complex, he examined large-scale components of social systems such as collectivities, norms, and values. In his analysis of the social system, however, Parsons was not simply a structuralist but also a functionalist. Thus, he delineated a number of the functional prerequisites of a social system (these are more specific than the four functional prerequisites [AGIL] that apply to all action systems): 1. The system must be structured so that it operates compatibly with other systems. 2. To survive, the system must have the requisite support from other systems. 3. The system must meet a significant proportion of the needs of its actors. 4. The system must elicit adequate participation from its members. 5. The system must have at least a minimum of control over potentially disruptive behavior. 6. If conflict becomes sufficiently disruptive, the system must control it. 7. The system requires a language to survive. It is clear in Parsons’s discussion of the functional prerequisites of the social system that his focus was large-scale systems and their relationships to one another (societal functionalism). Even when he talked about actors, it was from the point of view of the system. Also, the discussion reflects Parsons’s concern with the maintenance of order within the social system. However, Parsons did not completely ignore the issue of the relationship between actors and social structures in his discussion of the social system. Given

status–A structural position within the social system (Parsons). role–What an actor does in a status, seen in the context of its functional significance for the larger system (Parsons).

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his central concern with the social system, of key importance in this integration are the processes of internalization and socialization; Parsons was interested in the ways that the norms and values of a system are transferred to the actors within the system. In a successful socialization process these norms and values are internalized; they become part of actors’ consciences. As a result, in pursuing their own interests, the actors are, in fact, serving the interests of the system as a whole. During socialization actors acquire value orientations that to a large degree fit the dominant values and the basic structure of roles within the social system. In general, Parsons assumed that actors are usually passive recipients in the socialization process. Children not only learn how to act but also learn the norms and values, the morality, of society. Socialization is conceptualized as a conservative process in which need-dispositions (drives molded by society) bind children to the social system, and the process provides the means by which the need-dispositions can be satisfied. There is little or no room for creativity; the need for gratification ties children to the system as it exists. Parsons sees socialization as a lifelong process. Because the norms and values inculcated in childhood tend to be general, they do not prepare children for the many specific situations they will encounter in adulthood. Thus, socialization must be supplemented throughout the life cycle with a series of more specific socializing experiences. Despite this need later in life, the norms and values learned in childhood tend to be stable and, with a little gentle reinforcement, tend to remain in force throughout life. Despite the conformity induced by lifelong socialization, there is a wide range of individual variation in the system. The question is: Why is this normally not a major problem for the social system given its need for order? For one thing, a number of social control mechanisms can be employed to induce conformity. However, as far as Parsons was concerned, social control is strictly a second line of defense. A system runs best when social control is used only sparingly. In addition, the system must be able to tolerate some variation, some deviance. A flexible social system is stronger than a brittle one that accepts no deviation. Finally, the social system should provide a wide range of role opportunities that allow different personalities to express themselves without threatening the integrity of the system. Socialization and social control are the main mechanisms that allow the social system to maintain its equilibrium. Modest amounts of individuality and deviance are accommodated, but more extreme forms must be met by reequilibrating mechanisms. Thus, social order is built into the structure of Parsons’s social system. No one deliberately planned it, but in our type of social system vicious circles of deviance that might threaten the system are forestalled by such simple and mundane efforts as approving or disapproving of actions or rewarding some and punishing others.

need-dispositions–To Parsons, drives that are shaped by the social setting.

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Figure 4.3  Society, Its Subsystems, and the Functional Imperatives

L

I Fiduciary System

Societal Community

Economy

Polity

A

G

Source: THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, by Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, with contributions by Neil J. Smelser, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, © 1973 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Again, Parsons’s main interest was the system as a whole rather than the actor in the system—how the system controls the actor, not how the actor creates and maintains the system. This interest reflects Parsons’s commitment on this issue to societal functionalism. Society.  Although the idea of a social system encompasses all types of collectivities (e.g., church groups, schools, families), one specific and particularly important social system is society. A society is a relatively self-sufficient collectivity; the members can live entirely within the framework of the society and provide enough to satisfy their needs as individuals and collectivities. As a structural functionalist, Parsons distinguished among four structures, or subsystems, in society in terms of the functions (AGIL) they perform (see Figure 4.3): • The economy is the subsystem that performs the function for society of adapting to the environment. On the one hand, owners, managers, and workers must adapt to their environment. For example, if no oil is available, they might shift to nuclear energy. On the other hand, they must adapt the environment to society’s needs. For example, if certain types of crops are not indigenous to a society, the seeds necessary to grow them must be imported and cultivated. Through work, the economy adapts the environment to society’s needs, and it helps society adapt to these external realities. society–To Parsons, a relatively self-sufficient collectivity. economy–To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the function of adapting to the environment.

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• The polity (or political system) performs the function of goal attainment by pursuing societal objectives and mobilizing actors and resources to that end. Thus, in 1957 the United States was shocked by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite. A few years later President John F. Kennedy declared a dangerous gap in space technology between the United States and the Soviet Union and successfully mobilized people and resources to make the United States a leader in space exploration. The goal was achieved when the United States became the first, and still the only, nation to land people on the moon. • The fiduciary system (e.g., in the schools, the family) handles the pattern maintenance and latency function by transmitting culture (norms and values) to actors and seeing to it that they internalize that culture. Thus, parents and teachers socialize children into internalizing values such as economic success and norms such as getting a good education and working hard to achieve success. • Finally, the integration function is performed by the societal community (e.g., the law), which coordinates the components of society. Laws that relate to the economy, the polity, and the fiduciary system serve to make sure that each functions as it should and that all of them relate well to one another. For example, laws that set the minimal levels of education required of everyone not only ensure that the educational system has ample students but also help make sure that people will be at least adequate workers and that they will be reasonably knowledgeable participants in political issues and debates. As important as the structures of the social system were to Parsons, the cultural system was more important. In fact, the cultural system stood at the top of Parsons’s action system, and Parsons labeled himself a cultural determinist. Cultural System.  Parsons conceived of culture as the major force binding the elements of the social world or, in his terms, the action system. Culture mediates interaction among actors in the social system and integrates the personality and the social systems. Culture has the peculiar capacity to become, at least in part, a component of the other systems. Thus, in the social system, culture is embodied in norms and values, and in the personality system it is internalized by the actor. polity–To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the function of goal attainment by pursuing societal objectives and mobilizing actors and resources to that end. fiduciary system–To Parsons, the subsystem of society that handles the pattern maintenance and latency function by transmitting culture (norms and values) to actors and seeing to it that they internalize that culture. societal community–To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the integration function coordinating the components of society.

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But the cultural system is not simply a part of other systems; it also has a separate existence in the form of the social stock of knowledge, symbols, and ideas. These aspects of the cultural system are available to the social and personality systems, but they do not become part of them. Parsons defined the cultural system, as he did his other systems, in terms of its relationship to the other action systems. Thus, culture is seen as a patterned, ordered system of symbols that are objects of orientation to actors, internalized aspects of the personality system, and institutionalized patterns in the social system. Because it is largely symbolic and subjective, culture is readily transmitted from one system to another. Culture can move from one social system to another through diffusion and from one personality system to another through learning and socialization. However, the symbolic (subjective) character of culture also gives it another characteristic, the ability to control Parsons’s other action systems. This is one of the reasons that Parsons came to view himself as a cultural determinist. Personality System.  The personality system is controlled not only by the cultural system but also by the social system. That is not to say that Parsons did not accord some independence to the personality system. It has its own unique characteristics because of the uniqueness of people’s life experiences. Although it is weak, the personality system is not insignificant in Parsonsian theory; however, it is certainly reduced to secondary or dependent status in it. Personality is defined as the individual actor’s organized system of orientation to, and motivation for, action. The basic component of the personality, the most significant aspect of motivation, is the need-disposition. Need-dispositions are differentiated from drives, which are innate tendencies. Because of the physiological energy associated with them, drives make action possible. In other words, drives are better seen as part of the biological organism. Need-dispositions are defined as the same tendencies but those that are acquired socially rather than being innate. In other words, need-dispositions are drives that are shaped by the social setting. Need-dispositions impel actors to accept or reject objects presented in the environment or to seek out new objects if the available ones do not adequately satisfy their need-dispositions. Parsons differentiated among three basic types of need-dispositions. The first type impels actors to seek love, approval, and so forth from their social relationships. The second type includes internalized values that lead actors to observe cultural standards. Finally, role expectations lead actors to give and get appropriate responses. This view yields a passive image of actors. They seem to be either impelled by drives or dominated by the culture—or, more usually, shaped by a ­combination of drives and culture (i.e., by need-dispositions). A passive personality system personality–To Parsons, the individual actor’s organized system of orientation to, and motivation for, action.

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is  clearly a weak link in an integrated theory, and Parsons seemed to be aware of  this. On occasion, he tried to endow the personality with some power and creativity. For example, people are capable of modifying culture in creative ways as they internalize it. Despite views such as these, the dominant impression that emerges from Parsons’s work is one of a passive personality system. Parsons’s emphasis on need-dispositions creates other problems. Because it leaves out so many other important aspects of personality, this system is impoverished. It can be argued that even when Parsons analyzed the personality system, he was not focally interested in it. This is reflected in the ways in which he linked the personality to the social system. First, actors must learn to see themselves in a way that fits with the positions they occupy in society. Second, expectations are attached to each of the roles occupied by individual actors, and actors must fulfill those expectations, at least to a high degree. Actors must also learn self-discipline, internalize value orientations, and so forth. All these forces point toward the integration of the personality system with the social system, which Parsons emphasized. He also pointed out the possibility of the malintegration of the two, which represents a problem for the system that needs to be overcome. Another aspect of Parsons’s work, his interest in internalization as the personality system’s side of the socialization process, also reflects the passivity of the personality system. In emphasizing internalization and the superego, Parsons once again manifested his conception of the personality system as passive and externally controlled. Although Parsons was willing to talk about the subjective aspects of personality in his early work, he progressively abandoned that perspective. In so doing, he limited his possible insights into the personality system. Parsons made it clear that he was shifting his attention away from the internal meanings that the actions of people may have. Behavioral Organism.  Although he included the behavioral organism as one of the four action systems, Parsons had little to say about it. It is included because it is the source of energy for the other systems. Although it is based on genetic constitution, its organization is affected by the processes of conditioning and learning that occur during the individual’s life. The behavioral organism is clearly a residual system in Parsons’s work, but at a minimum Parsons is to be lauded for including it as a part of his sociology, if for no other reason than that he anticipated the interest of some sociologists in sociobiology and the sociology of the body. Thus, from his structural-functional perspective, Talcott Parsons offers several useful portraits of the social world, especially his AGIL scheme of functional prerequisites and the four action systems. We turn now to the work of Parsons’s leading student, Robert Merton (1910–2003), who is best known for his outline of structural-functional theory. His theory stands in contrast to that of Parsons, who

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TALCOTT PARSONS (1902–1979) A Biographical Vignette Robert Merton was one of Parsons’s students when Parsons was beginning his teaching career at Harvard. Merton, who became a noted theorist in his own right, made it clear that graduate students came to Harvard in those years to study not with Parsons but rather with Pitirim Sorokin, the senior member of the department, who was to become Parsons’s archenemy: Of the very first generation of graduate students coming to Harvard . . . precisely none came to study with Talcott. They could scarcely have done so for the simplest of reasons: In 1931, he had no public identity whatever as a sociologist. Although we students came to study with the renowned Sorokin, a subset of us stayed to work with the unknown Parsons. Merton’s reflections on Parsons’s first course in theory are interesting too, especially because the material provided the basis for one of the most influential theory books in the history of sociology: Long before Talcott Parsons became one of the grand old men of world sociology, he was for an early few of us its grand young man. This began with his first course in theory [It] would provide him with the core of his masterwork, The Structure of Social Action which did not appear in print until five years after its first oral publication. Although all would not share Merton’s positive evaluation of Parsons, they would acknowledge the following: The death of Talcott Parsons marks the end of an era in sociology. When [a new era] does begin it will surely be fortified by the great tradition of sociological thought which he has left to us. Excerpts from Robert Merton, “Remembering the Young Talcott Parsons” from American Sociologist 15 (1980), pp. 69, 70, 71. © 1980 by the American Sociological Association

offered structural-functional portraits of the social world. Merton felt that to do more adequate structural-functional analyses of that world, sociologists needed a clearer and better sense of the nature of structural functionalism. Merton criticized some of the more extreme and indefensible aspects of structural functionalism. But equally important, his new conceptual insights helped give structural functionalism a continuing usefulness.

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Robert Merton’s Structural Functionalism Although both Merton and Parsons are associated with structural functionalism, there are important differences between them. For one thing, whereas Parsons advocated the creation of grand, overarching theories, Merton favored more limited middle-range theories. For another, Merton was more favorable toward Marxian theories than was Parsons. In fact, Merton and some of his students (especially Alvin Gouldner) can be seen as having pushed structural functionalism more to the left politically. A Structural-Functional Model.  Merton criticized what he saw as the three basic postulates of functional analysis. The first is the postulate of the functional unity of society, which holds that all standardized social and cultural beliefs and practices are functional for society as a whole as well as for individuals in society. This view implies that the parts of a social system must show a high level of integration. However, Merton maintained that although it may be true of small, primitive societies, the generalization cannot be extended to larger, more complex societies; that is, in modern societies structures may exist that are not necessarily functional for society as a whole or for individuals within society. For example, the structures (e.g., factories, highways) that produce environmental pollution are not functional for society as a whole or for individuals who are exposed to the pollution. Similarly, not all parts of society are highly integrated. The poorly funded and inadequate primary and secondary school system in the United States, for example, is not well equipped to supply people with the skills they need to fit into today’s high-tech work world. Universal functionalism, the second postulate, states that all standardized social and cultural forms and structures have positive functions. Merton argued that this idea contradicts what we find in the real world. It is clear that not every structure, custom, idea, belief, and so forth has positive functions. For example, rabid nationalism can be highly dysfunctional in a world of proliferating nuclear arms. Third is the postulate of indispensability, which argues that all standardized aspects of society not only have positive functions but also represent indispensable parts of the working whole. This postulate leads to the idea that all structures and functions are functionally necessary for society, and no other structures and functions could work quite as well as those currently in place. Merton’s criticism, following Parsons, was that we must at least be willing to admit that there are structural and functional alternatives to be found within society. Thus, it is not necessarily true that a system of social stratification is indispensable to society. A different structure could be put in place in which people are motivated to occupy high-level positions not because of the money and power associated with them middle-range theories–Theories that seek a middle ground between trying to explain the entirety of the social world and trying to explain a minute portion of that world (Merton).

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but because of the gratification that comes from performing invaluable services for society. Merton’s position was that all these functional postulates rely on nonempirical assertions based on abstract, theoretical systems. At a minimum, the sociologist’s responsibility is to examine each empirically. Merton’s belief that empirical tests, not theoretical assertions, are crucial to functional analysis led him to develop his paradigm of functional analysis as a guide to the integration of such theory and research. Merton made it clear from the outset that structural-functional analysis focuses on groups, organizations, societies, and cultures. He stated that any object that can be subjected to structural-functional analysis must be a ­standardized— repetitive and patterned—unit. He had in mind things such as social roles, institutional patterns, cultural patterns, social norms, group organization, social structure, and social control mechanisms. In other words, Merton was a societal functionalist. Early structural functionalists tended to focus almost entirely on the functions of one social structure or institution for another. However, in Merton’s view, early analysts tended to confuse the subjective motives of individuals with the functions of structures or institutions. The focus of the structural functionalist should be on social functions rather than on individual motives. Functions, according to Merton, are observable consequences that help a particular system adapt or adjust. However, there is a clear ideological bias when one focuses only on adaptation or adjustment, for the consequences are always positive. It is important to note that one social structure can have negative consequences for another social structure (recall the example of pollution). To rectify this serious omission in early structural functionalism, Merton developed the idea of dysfunctions. As structures or institutions could contribute to the maintenance of other parts of the social system, they also could have negative consequences for them; they could have adverse effects on the ability of those parts to adapt or adjust. Slavery in the southern United States, for example, clearly had positive consequences for white southerners, such as supplying them with cheap labor, support for the cotton economy, and social status. It also had dysfunctions, such as causing long-term harm to Black American communities and making Southerners overly dependent on an agrarian economy and therefore unprepared for industrialization. The lingering disparity between the North and the South in industrialization can be traced, at least in part, to the dysfunctions of the institution of slavery in the South. Merton also posited the idea of nonfunctions, which he defined as consequences that are simply irrelevant to the system under consideration. Included here might be social forms that are survivals from earlier historical times. dysfunctions–Observable consequences that have adverse effects on the ability of a particular system to adapt or adjust (Merton). nonfunctions–Consequences that are irrelevant to the system under consideration (Merton).

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Although they may have had positive or negative consequences in the past, they have no significant effect on contemporary society. One example, although a few might disagree, is the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement. It may have been useful in its day in limiting alcoholism, but today it clearly has no impact on that social problem. To help answer the question of whether positive functions outweigh dysfunctions, or vice versa, Merton developed the concept of net balance. However, we can never simply add up positive functions and dysfunctions and objectively determine which outweighs the other—the issues are so complex and based on so much subjective judgment that they cannot easily be calculated and weighed. The usefulness of Merton’s concept comes from the way it orients the sociologist to the question of relative significance. In the example of slavery, the question becomes whether, on balance, slavery was more functional or dysfunctional for the South. Still, this question is too broad and obscures a number of issues (e.g., that slavery was functional for certain groups, such as white slaveholders). To cope with problems like these, Merton added the idea that there must be levels of functional analysis. Functionalists had generally restricted themselves to analysis of the society as a whole, but Merton made it clear that analysis also could be done on an organization, institution, group, or any standardized and repetitive social phenomenon. Returning to the issue of the functions of slavery for the South, it would be necessary to differentiate several levels of analysis and ask about the functions and dysfunctions of slavery for Black families, white families, Black political organizations, white political organizations, and so forth. In terms of net balance, slavery was probably more functional for certain social units and more dysfunctional for other social units. Addressing the issue at these more specific levels helps in analyzing the functionality of slavery for the South as a whole. Merton also introduced the concepts of manifest and latent functions, which have been important additions to functional analysis as well. In simple terms, manifest functions are functions that are intended, whereas latent functions are unintended. The manifest function of slavery was an increase in the economic productivity of the South, but slavery also had the latent function of providing a vast underclass that served to increase the social status of southern whites, both rich and poor. This idea is related to another of Merton’s concepts: unanticipated consequences. Structures

net balance–The relative weight of functions and dysfunctions (Merton). levels of functional analysis–The concept that functional analysis can be performed on any standardized repetitive social phenomenon, ranging from society as a whole to organizations, institutions, and groups (Merton). manifest functions–Positive consequences that are brought about consciously and purposely (Merton). latent functions–Unintended positive consequences (Merton). unanticipated consequences–Unexpected positive, negative, and irrelevant consequences.

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ROBERT K. MERTON (1910–2003) An Autobiographical Vignette I wanted . . . to advance sociological theories of social structure and cultural change that will help us understand how social institutions and the character of life in society come to be as they are. That concern with theoretical sociology . . . led me to avoid the kind of subject specialization that has become (and, in my opinion, has for the most part rightly become) the order of the day in sociology, as in other evolving disciplines. For my purposes, study of a variety of sociological subjects was essential. In that variety, only one special field—the sociology of science . . . persistently engaged my interest. During the 1930s, I devoted myself almost entirely to the social contexts of science and technology, especially in 17th-century England, and focused on the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. As my theoretical interests broadened, I turned, during the 1940s and afterward, to studies of the social sources of nonconforming and deviant behavior, of the workings of bureaucracy, mass persuasion, and communication in modern ­complex society, and to the role of the intellectual, both within bureaucracies and outside them. In the 1950s, I centered on developing a sociological theory of basic units of social structure: the role-set and status-set and the role models people select not only for emulation but also as a source of values adopted as a basis for self-appraisal (this latter being the theory of reference groups). I also undertook, with George Reader and Patricia Kendall, the first large-scale sociological study of medical education, aiming to find out how, all apart from explicit plan, different kinds of physicians are socialized in the same schools of medicine, this being linked with the distinctive character of professions as a type of occupational activity. In the 1960s and 1970s, I returned to an intensive study of the social structure of science and its interaction with cognitive structure, these two decades being the time in which the sociology of science finally came of age, with what’s past being only prologue. Throughout these studies, my primary orientation was toward the connections between sociological theory, methods of inquiry, and substantive empirical research. Source: Copyright 1981 by Robert K. Merton.

have both intended and unintended consequences. Slavery may have been instituted to help strengthen the South economically, but one of its unanticipated consequences was to slow industrialization and ultimately weaken that region from an economic point of view. Although everyone is aware of intended consequences, sociological analysis is required to uncover unintended consequences; indeed, to some this is the essence of sociology. Peter Berger has called this debunking, or looking beyond stated intentions to real effects.

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Merton made it clear that unanticipated consequences and latent functions are not the same. A latent function is one type of unanticipated consequence, one that is functional for the designated system. But there are two other types of unanticipated consequences: those that are dysfunctional and those that are irrelevant. As further clarification of functional theory, Merton pointed out that a structure may be dysfunctional for the system as a whole and yet continue to exist. For example, discrimination against Blacks, females, and members of other marginalized groups is dysfunctional for American society, yet it continues to exist because it is functional for a part of the social system; for example, discrimination against females is generally functional for males. However, such discrimination is not without some dysfunctions, even for the groups for which it is functional. Males do suffer from their discrimination against females; similarly, whites are hurt by their discriminatory behavior toward Blacks. One could argue that such discrimination adversely affects those who discriminate by keeping vast numbers of people underproductive and by increasing the likelihood of social conflict.

KEY CONCEPTS Social Structure and Anomie

One of the best-known contributions to structural functionalism, indeed to all of sociology, is Merton’s analysis of the relationship between culture and structure and the anomie that can result. Merton defined culture as the organized set of normative values shared by those belonging to a group or society that govern their behavior. Social structure is the organized set of social relationships in which societal or group members are involved. Anomie can be said to have occurred when there is a serious disconnection between social structure and culture, that is, between the structurally created abilities of people to act in accord with cultural norms and goals and the norms and goals themselves. In other words, because of their position in the social structure of society, some people are unable to act in accord with normative values. The culture calls for some type of behavior that the social structure prevents from occurring.

debunking–Looking beyond stated intentions to real effects (Merton). anomie–To Merton, a situation in which there is a serious disconnection between social structure and culture, that is, between the structurally created abilities of people to act in accord with cultural norms and goals and the norms and goals themselves.

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In American society, for example, the culture places great emphasis on material success. However, many people are prevented from achieving such success because of their positions within the social structure. If one is born into the lower socioeconomic classes and as a result is able to acquire, at best, only a high school education, then one’s chances of achieving economic success in the generally accepted way (i.e., through succeeding in the conventional work world) are slim or nonexistent. Under such circumstances (and they are widespread in contemporary American society) anomie can be said to exist, and as a result, there is a tendency toward deviant behavior. In this context, deviance often takes the form of alternative, unacceptable, and sometimes illegal means of achieving economic success. Becoming a drug dealer or a prostitute to achieve economic success are examples of deviance generated by the disjunction between cultural values and social structural means of attaining those values. This is one way in which the structural functionalist would seek to explain crime and deviance. In this example of structural functionalism, Merton was looking at social (and cultural) structures, but he was not focally concerned with the functions of those structures. Rather, consistent with his functional paradigm, he was mainly concerned with dysfunctions—in this case, anomie. More specifically, as we have seen, Merton linked anomie with deviance and thereby argued that disjunctions between culture and structure have the dysfunctional consequence of leading to deviance within society. It is worth noting that implied in Merton’s work on anomie is a critical attitude toward social stratification (e.g., for blocking the means of some to achieve socially desirable goals). Thus, although Davis and Moore wrote approvingly of a stratified society, Merton’s work indicates that structural functionalists can be critical of a structure like social stratification.

Merton contended that not all structures are indispensable to the workings of the social system. Some parts of our social system can be eliminated. This helps functional theory overcome another of its conservative biases. By recognizing that some structures are expendable, structural functionalism opens the way for meaningful social change. Our society, for example, could continue to exist (and even be improved) if discrimination against groups were eliminated. Merton’s clarifications are of great utility to sociologists who wish to perform structural-functional analyses.

CONFLICT THEORY Conflict theory can be seen as a development that took place, at least in part, in reaction to structural functionalism. However, it should be noted that conflict theory has other roots, such as Marxian theory and Georg Simmel’s work on social

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conflict. In the 1950s and 1960s, conflict theory provided an alternative to structural functionalism, but it was superseded by a variety of neo-Marxian theories (see Chapter 5). Indeed, one of the major contributions of conflict theory was the way it laid the groundwork in the United States for theories more faithful to Marx’s work, theories that came to attract a wide audience in sociology. The

C. WRIGHT MILLS (1916–1962) A Biographical Vignette C. Wright Mills was not a great neo-Marxian theorist (he made no original contributions of his own to the theory), but he was a great critic of American society (and of American sociological theory, especially the theorizing of ­Talcott ­ Parsons—see previous sections) from a Marxian, or more generally leftist, perspective. He critiqued union leaders for being insufficiently radical and did not see the labor movement and the working class as truly revolutionary forces. He critiqued white-collar workers for, among other things, their great concern with elevating their personal status and their resulting disinterest in larger social change. Most important, he saw a “power elite” (comprising an interlocking group of corporate leaders, government officials, and military leaders) emerging in American society, and he worried about the control the members of this group were exercising over society. But Mills made many other kinds of contributions to sociology, especially his idea of the “sociological imagination” and the need to think imaginatively about social issues, such as the intersections between individual biography and social history, between “character” and “social structure,” and between “private troubles” and “public issues.” Mills was a radical not only intellectually but also personally. He generally refused to play the academic game according to the “gentlemanly” rules of the day (sociology was dominated by men in the mid-20th century). Beginning in graduate school, he attacked the work of the professors in his department, and later in his career he took on senior theorists in that department (calling one a “real fool”), leaders of American sociological theory (such as Parsons), and the dominant survey research methods (and methodologists) in the field. Eventually he came to be estranged and isolated from his colleagues at Columbia University. Mills said of himself, “I am an outlander . . . down deep and good.” However, Mills did not restrict his critiques to conservative and establishment elements in the United States. Late in his life, he was invited to the Soviet Union, where he was honored as a major critic of American society. Instead of meekly accepting the award, Mills took the occasion to attack censorship in the Soviet Union with a toast to a Soviet leader who had been purged and murdered by the Stalinists: “To the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are ­published in the Soviet Union!”

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basic problem with conflict theory is that it never succeeded in divorcing itself sufficiently from its structural-functional roots. It was more a kind of structural functionalism turned on its head than a truly critical theory of society. As such, conflict theory, like structural functionalism, offers a portrait of society albeit one that is different in many ways.

The Work of Ralf Dahrendorf Like functionalists, conflict theorists are oriented toward the study of social structures and institutions. Conflict theory is little more than a series of contentions that are often the direct opposites of functionalist positions. This antithesis is best exemplified by the work of Ralf Dahrendorf, in which the tenets of conflict theory and functional theory are juxtaposed: • To the functionalists, society is static or, at best, in a state of moving equilibrium, but to Dahrendorf and the conflict theorists, every society at every point is subject to processes of change. • Where functionalists emphasize the orderliness of society, conflict theorists see dissension and conflict at every point in the social system. • Functionalists (or at least early functionalists) argue that every element in society contributes to stability; the exponents of conflict theory see many societal elements as contributing to disintegration and change. • Functionalists tend to view society as being held together informally by norms, values, and a common morality. Conflict theorists believe that whatever order there is in society stems from the coercion of some members by those at the top. Whereas functionalists focus on the cohesion created by shared societal values, conflict theorists emphasize the role of power in maintaining order in society. Dahrendorf was the major exponent of the position that society has two faces (conflict and consensus) and that sociological theory therefore should be divided into two components—conflict theory and consensus theory (one example of which is structural functionalism). Consensus theorists should examine value integration in society, and conflict theorists should examine conflicts of interest and the coercion that holds society together in the face of these stresses. Dahrendorf recognized that society could not exist without both conflict and consensus, which are prerequisites of each other; thus, we cannot have conflict unless there is some prior consensus. For example, French housewives are highly unlikely to come into conflict with Chilean chess players because there is no contact between them, no prior integration to serve as a basis for conflict. Conversely, conflict can lead to consensus and integration. An example is the alliance between the United States and Japan that developed after World War II. CHAPTER FOUR  •  CONTEMPORARY GRAND THEORIES I   103

Despite the interrelationship between consensus and conflict, Dahrendorf was not optimistic about developing a single sociological theory encompassing both processes. Eschewing a singular theory, he set out to construct a separate conflict theory of society. He began with, and was heavily influenced by, structural functionalism. He noted that to the functionalist, the social system is held together by voluntary cooperation, general consensus, or both. However, to the conflict (or coercion) theorist, society is held together by enforced constraint; thus, some positions in society are delegated power and authority over others. This fact of social life led Dahrendorf to his central thesis that systematic social conflicts are always caused by the differential distribution of authority.

Authority Dahrendorf (like societal functionalists) concentrated on larger social structures. Central to his thesis is the idea that positions within society have different amounts of authority. Authority resides not in individuals but in positions. Dahrendorf was interested not only in the structures of these positions but also in the conflicts among them. The structural origin of these conflicts could be traced to the relationship between positions that possess authority and those that are subject to that authority. For Dahrendorf, the first task of conflict analysis was to identify authority roles within society. In addition to making the case for the study of large-scale structures like systems of authority roles, Dahrendorf was opposed to a focus on the individual level. For example, he was critical of sociologists who focused on the psychological or behavioral characteristics of the individuals occupying such positions. He went so far as to say that those who adopted such an approach were not sociologists. The authority attached to positions is the key element in Dahrendorf’s analysis. Authority always implies both superordination and subordination. Those who occupy positions of authority are expected to control subordinates; that is, they dominate because of the expectations of those who surround them, not because of their own psychological characteristics. Like authority, these expectations are attached to positions, not to people. Authority is not a generalized social phenomenon; those who are subject to control, as well as permissible spheres of control, are specified in society. Finally, because authority is legitimate, sanctions can be brought to bear against those who do not comply. Authority is not a constant, as far as Dahrendorf was concerned, because authority resides in positions and not persons. Thus, a person with authority in one setting does not necessarily hold a position of authority in another setting. Similarly, a person in a subordinate position in one group may be in a superordinate position in another. This follows from Dahrendorf’s argument that society comprises a number of units that he called imperatively coordinated associations. These may be seen as associations of people controlled by a hierarchy of imperatively coordinated associations–Associations of people controlled by a hierarchy of authority positions (Dahrendorf).

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RALF DAHRENDORF (1929–2009) A Biographical Vignette Ralf Dahrendorf is best known in sociology for his conflict theory, which was heavily influenced by Marxian theory. He had quite an illustrious career as a public figure, culminating in his being named Baron Dahrendorf in 1993 by Queen Elizabeth II. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Dahrendorf had a fascinating life. As a teenager, he resisted the Nazis and was imprisoned (as his father had been) for his opposition to that regime. In early 1945, as the Russian army approached, he was released by an SS officer from the camp where he was imprisoned. He studied at the University of Hamburg and earned a doctorate there as well as another from the London School of Economics. He taught in German universities and later became both a public intellectual and a public figure. Among other positions, he served as a member of the German parliament, as secretary of state in the ­German Foreign Office, as a commissioner in the European Commission in Brussels, and as director of the London School of Economics. He became a British citizen in 1988. Although his conflict theory was influenced by Marxian ideas, Dahrendorf was never a Marxist. He described himself as a liberal. Nevertheless, he was strongly influenced by the Marxian notion of integrating theory and practice. In fact, he led a life in which he developed theory and applied it to practical matters in academia and, more important, in the larger society.

authority positions. Because society contains many such associations, an individual can occupy a position of authority in one and a subordinate position in another. Authority within each association is dichotomous; thus two, and only two, conflict groups can be formed within any association. Those in positions of authority and those in positions of subordination hold contrary interests. Here we encounter another key term in Dahrendorf’s theory of conflict: interests. Groups on top and at the bottom are defined by their common concerns. Dahrendorf continued to be firm in his thinking that even these interests, which sound so psychological, are basically large-scale phenomena; that is, interests are linked to social positions and not to the psychological characteristics of the individuals who occupy those positions. Within every association, those in dominant positions seek to maintain the status quo, whereas those in subordinate positions seek change. A conflict of interest is at least latent at all times within any association, which means that the interests–Concerns, usually shared by groups of people (Dahrendorf).

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legitimacy of authority is always precarious. This conflict of interest need not be conscious for superordinates or subordinates to act on it. The interests of superordinates and subordinates are objective in the sense that they are reflected in the expectations (roles) attached to positions. Individuals do not have to internalize these expectations or even be conscious of them to act in accord with them. If they

KEY CONCEPTS The Functions of Social Conflict

Although structural functionalism and conflict theory are discussed separately, and are at odds with one another in many ways, it is possible to discuss them together. In this box we do that by discussing the functions of social conflict. Conflict may serve to solidify a loosely structured group. In a society that seems to be disintegrating, conflict with another society may restore the integrative core. The cohesiveness of Israeli Jews might be attributed, at least in part, to Israel’s long-standing conflict with the Arab nations in the Middle East. If that conflict were to end, underlying strains in Israeli society might well be exacerbated. The potential for conflict to act as an agent for solidifying a society has long been recognized by propagandists who have sometimes constructed enemies where none existed or fanned antagonisms toward inactive opponents. Conflict with one group may serve to produce cohesion by leading to a series of alliances with other groups. For example, Israel’s conflict with the Arab nations has led to an alliance between the United States and Israel. A lessening of the Israeli–Arab conflict might weaken the bonds between Israel and the United States. Within a society, conflict can bring some ordinarily isolated individuals into active roles. The protests over the Vietnam War motivated many young people to take vigorous roles in American political life for the first time. With the end of that conflict, a more apathetic spirit emerged again among American youth. Conflict also serves a communication function. Prior to conflict, a group may be unsure of its adversary’s position, but as a result of conflict, positions and boundaries often become clarified. Individuals therefore are better able to decide on the proper course of action in relation to their adversary. Conflict also allows the parties to get a better idea of their relative strengths and may well increase the possibility of rapprochement or peaceful accommodation. From a theoretical prospective, it is possible to wed functionalism and conflict theory by looking at the functions of social conflict. Still, it must be recognized that conflict also has dysfunctions.

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occupy given positions, then they will behave in the expected manner. Individuals are adjusted or adapted to their roles when they contribute to conflict between superordinates and subordinates. Dahrendorf called these unconscious concerns latent interests. Manifest interests are latent interests that have become conscious. Dahrendorf viewed the analysis of the connection between latent and manifest interests as a major task of conflict theory. Nevertheless, actors need not be conscious of their interests to act in accord with them.

Groups, Conflict, and Change Next, Dahrendorf distinguished three broad types of groups. The first is the quasi group, or a number of individuals who occupy positions that have the same role interests. These are the recruiting grounds for the second type of group: the interest group. Interest groups are true groups in the sociological sense of the term, possessing not only common interests but also structure, goals, and personnel. Interest groups have the capacity to engage in group conflict. Out of all the many interest groups emerge conflict groups, those groups that actually engage in conflict. Dahrendorf felt that the concepts of latent and manifest interests, and of quasi groups, interest groups, and conflict groups, were basic to an explanation of social conflict. Under ideal conditions no other variables would be needed. However, because conditions are never ideal, many different factors do intervene in the process. Dahrendorf mentioned technical conditions such as adequate personnel, political conditions such as the overall political climate, and social conditions such as the existence of communication links. Another social condition important to Dahrendorf was the way people are recruited into a quasi group. He felt that if the recruitment is random and determined by chance, then an interest group, and ultimately a conflict group, is unlikely to emerge. In contrast to Marx, Dahrendorf did not feel that the lumpenproletariat (the mass of people who stand below even the proletariat in the capitalist system) would ultimately form a conflict group because people are recruited to it by chance. However, when recruitment to quasi groups is structurally determined, these groups provide fertile recruiting grounds for interest groups and, in some cases, conflict groups. The final aspect of Dahrendorf’s conflict theory is the relationship of conflict to change. Here Dahrendorf recognized the importance of Lewis Coser’s work, latent interests–Unconscious interests that translate into objective role expectations (Dahrendorf). manifest interests–Latent interests of which people have become conscious (Dahrendorf). quasi group–A number of individuals who occupy positions that have the same role interests (Dahrendorf). interest group–A true group in the sociological sense of the term, possessing not only common interests but also structure, a goal, and personnel. Interest groups have the capacity to engage in group conflict (Dahrendorf). conflict group–A group that actually engages in group conflict (Dahrendorf). lumpenproletariat–The mass of people who stand below even the proletariat in the capitalist system (Marx).

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which focused on the functions of conflict in maintaining the status quo. Dahrendorf felt, however, that the conservative function of conflict is only one part of social reality; conflict also leads to change and development. Briefly, Dahrendorf argued that once conflict groups emerge, they engage in actions that lead to changes in social structure. When the conflict is intense, the changes that occur are radical. When it is accompanied by violence, structural change is sudden. Whatever the nature of conflict, sociologists must be attuned to the relationship between conflict and change as well as that between conflict and the status quo. In other words, they must be sensitized to the dynamic relationships among the elements involved in this portrait of society. Thus, theoretical portraits need not necessarily be static. This idea is even clearer in the context of systems theory, discussed in the next section.

GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY 1 The Work of Niklas Luhmann Although his theories have not been widely acknowledged in North America, internationally Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) is recognized as one of the most important social theorists of the past 30 years. Luhmann worked within the tradition of general systems theory to develop the earlier insights of structural-functional theory, in particular the work of Talcott Parsons (although, as we will see, Luhmann disagreed with Parsons on some important points). General systems theory is an interdisciplinary research area. It draws on fields such as biology, cognitive psychology, organizational theory, computer science and information theory (cybernetics), and sociology (among others). General systems theory assumes that phenomena as diverse as biological organisms, ecosystems, human cognition, and information processing can all be treated as systems that operate according to shared sets of principles. As a sociologist, Luhmann made his most important contribution to systems theory with his analysis of social systems. In this review, we describe three concepts that are of central importance to Luhmann’s analysis of the social system: the distinction between the system and its environment, autopoiesis, and differentiation. In brief, the theory argues that social systems bring themselves into existence when they differentiate themselves from their surrounding environments and then generate further divisions within themselves.

System and Environment The key to understanding what Luhmann means by a system can be found in the distinction between a system and its environment. Every system is situated in an environment, and a system is separated from its environment by a boundary. An example of a boundary is the distinction between a human body and the world

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around it. The human body is a system situated in an environment that contains, among other things, other people and objects. Another example of a boundary is the distinction between a nation-state, such as the United States, and the surrounding nation-states to which it relates. The United States is the system, and the collection of other nations is the environment for that system. Central to Luhmann’s definition of system is the concept of complexity. The world is complex, meaning that it is filled with numerous incalculable possibilities for action and interaction. In fact, the world is so complex that unless human beings find ways to manage complexity, they would be overwhelmed by the world. With this in mind, Luhmann says that systems, in particular social systems, emerge when they are able to reduce the complexity of the world. This reduction of c­ omplexity—making the world simpler than it actually is—creates the distinction between a system and its environment. The system is always less complex than its environment. In other words, by putting up boundaries, by ignoring parts of the environment, the system carves out a unique place for itself in the environment. For example, whereas a country such as the United States might be concerned with the foreign policy of a nation like China, it is not necessarily concerned with the way that art is made and produced in China. The United States reduces the complexity of its environment by focusing on some aspects of the environment (foreign policy) and not others (art production). Another way that Luhmann deals with this is to say that the system selects the components of its environment with which it will relate. The United States chooses to interact with Chinese foreign policy rather than with the field of Chinese art production. In so doing the system defines its limits and boundaries. This kind of selection has implications for the system. By ignoring parts of the environment it may put itself at risk. Events may occur in parts of the environment that the system has ignored and that later will threaten its functionality. This said, what should also be clear is that the system is attuned to such environmental risks, and when risks become too much of a threat, the system can reorganize itself. To use evolutionary language, the system is able to adapt to changes in its environment. This gives systems the quality of contingency. That is, the organization of a system is context bound and open to continual change. The selections that a system makes in relationship to its environment can change over time. Indeed, in contrast to previous structural-functional theories that emphasized the stability and universality of systems (see, e.g., Talcott Parsons’s theory), Luhmann emphasizes the idea that a system continually redefines itself and its relationship to its environment. The system, then, has to be viewed as an entity that has a certain level of organizational stability but at the same time is in a state of flux and change. complexity–In systems theory, the incalculable possibilities for action and interaction in the world. Social systems develop by reducing the world’s complexity (Luhmann). contingency–A quality of the organization of a system that is context bound and open to continual change (Luhmann).

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Autopoiesis Luhmann is best known for his thinking on autopoiesis. He borrows the concept from the biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. The word is derived from classical Greek: poiesis refers to the act of making, and auto refers to the self. As such, autopoiesis refers to the self-making, self-generating, or self-organizing quality of systems. There is no super-entity outside a system that determines the development and evolution of the system. In other words, the system is ultimately responsible for its own organization and development. In the previous discussion, we have described the most basic sense in which a system is autopoietic: it comes into existence when it makes a distinction between itself and its environment. The system in effect creates itself when it draws a boundary between itself and the rest of the world. Luhmann’s focus on autopoiesis implies a number of related features of social systems. As self-making entities, social systems are self-referential. That is, they are self-monitoring; they operate on the basis of feedback mechanisms. The system creates structures, and then the system constantly “checks in” on itself and its structures to ensure that they are functioning properly. Other theorists, such as Harold Garfinkel (Chapter 6) and Anthony Giddens (Chapter 5), call this self-monitoring feature reflexivity. Luhmann also says that the system creates the elements that make up the system. Elements are the building blocks of a system. For example, many social systems distinguish between institutions such as religion and politics. These institutions are made up of elements. In religious institutions, elements include things such as sacred objects, rituals, and belief systems. Each of these elements is required for the continued existence of the religious institution. The important point in all of this is not only that the system generates its own structures and elements. In addition, autopoiesis means that the system must constantly create and re-create itself. This is what distinguishes Luhmann from previous structural-functional scholars, such as Talcott Parsons. These earlier functionalists took for granted the existence of social structures; certain kinds of structures were universal and ever present. Parsons assumed that structures associated with the AGIL scheme would be present in every system, social and otherwise. But Luhmann argued that the makeup of an autopoietic system is never given or guaranteed. It must constantly be created. This is similar to the ethnomethodological idea (see Chapter 6) that social life is an ongoing accomplishment of its members. In their actions and activities people, and on a larger scale social systems, are constantly making up the structures within which they live. On the one hand, this means that the creation of a social system is an extraordinary and, Luhmann even suggested, unlikely achievement. On the other hand, it means that

autopoiesis–The self-making or, more broadly, self-organizing quality of systems (Luhmann). elements–The building blocks of a system (Luhmann).

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NIKLAS LUHMANN (1927–1998) A Biographical Vignette As a systems theorist, Niklas Luhmann is almost always closely associated with Talcott Parsons. As we saw earlier in this chapter, Parsons wrote a great deal about systems, and his ideas influenced the later thinking of Luhmann. Furthermore, Luhmann got to know Parsons when he studied public administration at Harvard in 1960–1961. This inevitably led to an assumed linkage between Luhmann and structural functionalism (the theory for which Parsons was most famous). Because structural functionalism fell out of favor by the late 1960s, Luhmann’s connection to it led to his having less influence than he otherwise might have had, especially in the United States. However, in recent years it has become clear that although Luhmann was a systems theorist, he was not a structural functionalist. Among other things, Luhmann’s sense of structure was different from Parsons’s, and Luhmann rejected Parsons’s focus on things such as value consensus in society and social order. As Luhmann’s systems theory has gradually been freed of its linkages to structural functionalism, it has had an increasing influence on social theory around the world.

social systems are also quite adaptive. Because they are always making their structures and elements, they can also remake those elements in ways that respond to the changes and demands of the environment.

Differentiation From what we have already said, it should be clear that differentiation is a key concept in Luhmann’s systems theory. Most simply, differentiation is the process by which systems make distinctions. In Luhmann’s theory there are two basic kinds of distinctions, two general forms of differentiation. The first is the distinction between the system and its environment. The second comprises the distinctions that a system makes within itself, internal distinctions. In other words, once a system has distinguished itself from its environment, it proceeds to develop subsystems. Over time, a system can become increasingly complex, meaning that it is characterized by a growing number of internal distinctions. This growth in internal complexity makes a system incredibly rich and dynamic. Perhaps the most practical aspect of Luhmann’s social systems theory is his description of the different forms of internal differentiation. There are at least differentiation–The process by which systems make distinctions (Luhmann).

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four ways in which social systems are divided and organized: segmentary, stratificatory, center-periphery, and functional differentiation: Segmentary Differentiation.  Segmentary differentiation divides parts of the system on the basis of the need to fulfill identical functions over and over. For instance, an automobile manufacturer has functionally similar factories for the production of cars at many different locations. All locations are organized in much the same way; all have the same structure and fulfill the same function—­ producing cars. Stratificatory Differentiation.  Stratificatory differentiation is a vertical differentiation according to rank or status. This kind of differentiation is hierarchical. Every rank fulfills a particular and distinct function in the system. In the automobile firm, we find different ranks. The manager of the new department of international relations occupies the top rank within the hierarchy of that department. The manager has the function of using power to direct the operations of that department. A variety of lower-ranking workers within the department handle a variety of specific functions (e.g., word processing). Center-Periphery Differentiation.  The third type of differentiation, centerperiphery differentiation, is a link between segmentary and stratificatory differentiation. It is a component within the system that coordinates relations between elements in the periphery and those in the center. For instance, the automobile firm has built factories in other countries, but the headquarters of the company remains the center, ruling and, to some extent, controlling the peripheral factories. Differentiations of Functional Systems.  Functional differentiation is the most complex form of differentiation and the form that dominates modern society. Every function within a system is ascribed to a particular unit. For instance, the automobile manufacturer has functionally differentiated departments, such as production, administration, accounting, planning, and personnel. Functional differentiation is more flexible than stratificatory differentiation, but if one system fails to fulfill its task, the whole system will have great trouble surviving. However, as long as each unit fulfills its function, the different units segmentary differentiation–The division of parts of the system on the basis of the need to fulfill identical functions over and over (Luhmann). stratificatory differentiation–Vertical differentiation according to rank or status in a system conceived as a hierarchy (Luhmann). center-periphery differentiation–Differentiation between the core of a system and its peripheral elements (Luhmann). functional differentiation–The most complex form of differentiation and the form that dominates modern society. Every function within a system is ascribed to a particular unit (Luhmann).

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can attain a high degree of independence. In fact, functionally differentiated systems are a complex mixture of interdependence and independence. For instance, although the planning division is dependent on the accounting division for economic data, as long as the figures are accurate, the planning division can be blissfully ignorant of exactly how the accountants produced the data.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Is the “War on Terror” Functional? In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States embarked on a so-called war on terror that continues into the present, especially through the fight against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). As a social phenomenon, that “war” is analyzable from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including the structural-functional perspective discussed in this chapter. It qualifies for such analysis because it is a structure that is both repetitive and patterned. This is best exemplified by the Department of Homeland Security, but it applies as well to the many places and ways in which the “war” is being fought. The first issue to be addressed concerns the “functions” of this war, the ways in which it has helped the United States adjust and adapt to the reality that it has external enemies who are able and willing to inflict significant damage on the country. Among the things that can be mentioned here is that Osama bin Laden (the al-Qaeda leader behind the 9/11 attacks) was hounded, forced into hiding, and in 2011, killed by American forces; Saddam Hussein (falsely presumed to be an ally and supporter of al-Qaeda) was forced from power and executed; all sorts of security measures have been put in place in and around the United States; and perhaps most important, there have been no terror incidents of the same size and scope in the United States since 9/11, and there is some evidence that several have been averted (although smaller-scale attacks have occurred, such as the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013 and the San ­Bernardino shootings of 2015). However, there are also a number of “dysfunctions” associated with the war on terror. Among them is the high economic cost of fighting this war, especially in the occupation of Iraq and in fighting those who opposed the American presence there. Of course, the economic cost is small in comparison with the loss of human lives in Iraq. Then there are the enemies that the United States has made as a result of its military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria as well as other actions such as the capture and abduction of thousands of people and their incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. There are many seemingly tangential dysfunctions as well, such as the farming of opium poppies,

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which grew dramatically in Afghanistan during the years when the fundamentalist and repressive Taliban was forced from power. This increased the source of heroin for illegal sale in many countries, including the United States. In the United States, many programs—social welfare, spending on infrastructure—were starved for funds because the money was spent elsewhere. The big question in terms of net balance becomes: Do the functions of this war outweigh the dysfunctions, or vice versa? For some groups (e.g., defense contractors), the war is certainly functional, whereas for others (most Iraqis, American welfare recipients) it is dysfunctional, but what of the United States as a whole? A systematic analysis of the functions and dysfunctions of the war on terror does not yield a ready and simple answer for the nation as a whole, but it does offer a systematic way of trying to think through what such an answer would look like.

This indicates a further difference between the forms of differentiation. In the case of segmentary differentiation, if a segment fails to fulfill its function (e.g., one of the automobile manufacturer’s factories cannot produce cars because of a labor strike), that failure will not threaten the system. However, in the case of the more complex forms of differentiation, such as functional differentiation, failure will cause a problem for the social system, possibly leading to its breakdown. On the one hand, the growth of complexity increases the abilities of a system to deal with its environment. On the other hand, the greater the complexity, the greater the risk of a system breakdown if a function is not properly fulfilled. In most cases, this increased vulnerability is the price that must be paid for an increase in possible relations among different subsystems. Having more types of possible relations among the subsystems means having more variation in the available structural responses to changes in the environment.

SUMMARY 1. Structural functionalism is a theory that focuses on the structures of society and their functional significance (positive and negative consequences) for other structures. 2. One type of structural functionalism is societal functionalism, which focuses on the large-scale social structures and institutions of society, their interrelationships, and their constraining effects on actors. 3. To structural functionalists, social stratification is a functional necessity. Every society needs such a system, and this need brings stratification into existence. 114    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

The stratification system is viewed as a societal-level structure; it is a system of positions (e.g., occupations, like laborer and manager) rather than a system of stratified individuals. 4. According to the functional theory of stratification, people must be offered great rewards for doing what is necessary to occupy the high-ranking and crucially important positions in the stratification system. 5. The functional theory of stratification has been widely criticized. The key point made by critics is that there are ways to motivate people to do things other than offering them inordinate benefits. 6. To Talcott Parsons, any system is faced with four functional imperatives: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance (or latency). 7. The four Parsonsian action systems, in order of their control over the system below them, are cultural, social, personality, and behavioral organism. 8. Robert Merton developed a sophisticated model of a structural-functional approach involving a focus not only on functions but also on dysfunctions, nonfunctions, net balance, levels of functional analysis, manifest and latent functions, and unanticipated consequences. 9. Conflict theory developed in reaction to structural functionalism and is in many ways its mirror image, focusing on change (rather than equilibrium), dissension, and conflict (rather than order), forces that contribute to disintegration (rather than integration) and the coercion (rather than norms and values) that holds society together. 10. Ralf Dahrendorf’s focus was on authority, which always implies superordination and subordination. The organizations in which authority positions are found are called imperatively coordinated associations. 11. Groups within these associations are defined by their interests; superordinate and subordinate groups each have common interests. 12. Three types of groups are formed in imperatively coordinated associations, especially among those in subordinate positions. The quasi group is a number of individuals who occupy positions that have the same role interests. These are the recruiting grounds for interest groups, which have the capacity to engage in group conflict. Out of all the many interest groups emerge conflict groups, or those groups that actually engage in conflict. 13. Conflict has the capacity to lead to change. CHAPTER FOUR  •  CONTEMPORARY GRAND THEORIES I   115

14. The key to understanding Niklas Luhmann’s distinction between system and environment is the fact that the system is always less complex than the environment. 15. Autopoiesis is the self-making or self-organizing feature of systems. This means that systems constantly create and re-create their own structures and elements. 16. Differentiation is the system’s ability to make distinctions, first between itself and its environment and then within itself. 17. The four types of differentiation are segmentary, stratificatory, center-periphery, and functional. 18. Functional differentiation is the most complex form of differentiation and the one that dominates society.

SUGGESTED READINGS MARK ABRAHAMSON Functionalism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978. Interesting brief introduction to structural functionalism. KENNETH BAILEY “General Systems Theory.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 309–315. Broad overview of systems theory by a prominent theorist; puts Luhmann’s contribution in the context of the work of other theorists and theoretical ideas. RANDALL COLLINS Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science. New York: Academic Press, 1975. Important, more contemporary, and micro-oriented contribution to conflict theory. LEWIS COSER The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free Press, 1956. Classic effort to integrate conflict theory and structural functionalism. CHARLES CROTHERS “Robert Merton.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 65–88. Thorough review of Merton’s life and work that provides an overarching framework for organizing his many contributions. VICTOR LIDZ “Talcott Parsons.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 1, Classical Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 511–558. Overview of the life and work of Talcott Parsons authored by one of his former students.

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NIKLAS LUHMANN “Modern Systems Theory and the Theory of Society.” In Volker Meja, Dieter Misgeld, and Nico Stehr, eds., Modern German Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, pp. 173–186. Early but comparatively readable rendition of some of Luhmann’s basic ideas on systems theory. RICHARD MUNCH “Talcott Parsons.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 550–555. Overview of some of Parsons’s most important ideas by a leading German disciple. GERD NOLLMANN “Niklas Luhmann.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 454–457. Brief overview of Luhmann’s ideas, with particular attention to the relationship between his ideas and those of Parsons. RUDOLF STICHWEH “Niklas Luhmann.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 287–309. Very interesting and rich study of Luhmann’s life, social context, and major theoretical contributions. PIOTR SZTOMPKA Robert K. Merton: An Intellectual Profile. London: Macmillan, 1986. Book-length treatment of Merton’s life and work. PIOTR SZTOMPKA “Robert Merton.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 499–500. A brief sketch of Merton’s perspective that is barely able to scratch the surface on Merton’s many contributions to social theory; the author is an intellectual biographer and disciple of Merton. MELVIN TUMIN “Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” American Sociological Theory 18 (1953): 387–394. The classic critique of the structuralfunctional theory of stratification. JONATHAN TURNER “Conflict Theory.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 134–138. Nice overview of some of the major types of conflict theory by an important contributor to that theory and to social theory in general.

NOTE 1. This section is an adaptation of material that was originally coauthored by Douglas Goodman and Matthias Junge.

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CHAPTER

FIVE

CONTEMPORARY GRAND THEORIES II

Neo-Marxian Theory The Civilizing Process The Colonization of the Lifeworld The Juggernaut of Modernity Summary Suggested Readings

This chapter deals with four additional important modern grand theories. We begin with neo-Marxian theory, which encompasses such a broad range of theories that we are able to focus on only two of its main varieties: critical theory and theories of space in the contemporary world. We then turn to grand theories closely associated with contemporary theorists: Norbert Elias’s civilizing process, Jürgen Habermas’s (a later critical theorist) colonization of the lifeworld, and Anthony Giddens’s juggernaut of modernity. The theories covered here and in the previous chapter constitute only a small sample of the wide range of contemporary grand theories.

NEO-MARXIAN THEORY Many theorists followed Marx and over the years took his theories in many different directions; there are a number of neo-Marxian theories. It is worth noting that not all neo-Marxian theories offer grand narratives, but several, including the two discussed here, do closely follow Marx in the sense of offering theories of great sweep.

Critical Theory and the Emergence of the Culture Industry Critical theory was founded in 1923 at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. However, in the 1930s the institute was taken over by the Nazis, and

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the theorists associated with it were forced to flee, many of them to the United States. Many of critical theory’s most important ideas were formulated in the United States, but after World War II many of its practitioners gradually returned to Germany. As the name suggests, the critical theorists were social (and intellectual) critics. In this they were following Marx, who was a critic of capitalism. Marx focused his work on the economy because in the era in which he lived (the height of the Industrial Revolution) the economy was of overwhelming importance. However, critical theory is based on the idea that in the half century or so between Marx’s Capital and the heyday of the critical school, capitalism underwent a dramatic change. During this period, a shift occurred in which the culture replaced the economy as the most important aspect of society; people were more likely to be controlled by the culture rather than by the economy. Thus, the critical school had to focus its critical gaze not on the economy (where Marx and many of his followers, even to this day, concentrated) but on the culture. Marx, and those who followed immediately in his wake, tended to think of culture, along with the state, as a superstructure erected on an economic base. In other words, the economy is of prime importance, and everything else in society is based on it. The capitalist economy was seen as especially powerful, playing a central role in determining and controlling culture and the state. Both tended to be seen as mechanisms that the capitalists manipulated to further their own economic interests. What the critical theorists argued was that culture, as well as those who lead and control it, had achieved significant autonomy from the capitalists. In this and in their focus on the culture industry, the critical theorists took a position radically different from that of virtually all Marxists who had come before them. Culture.  At the most general level, the critical theorists were most concerned with what they called the culture industry and its increasing domination of society in general and of individuals in particular. The critical theorists were sensitized to the rise of what has come to be called mass culture. In their day, the major disseminators of culture to the masses were newspapers, magazines, and the relatively new media of movies and radio. Although all those media continue to be important today, we now also have far more powerful disseminators of mass culture, most notably television and the internet. It is clear that if the critical theorists were right in their day to be interested in the culture industry, there is far more reason to be concerned with it today. superstructure–To Marx, secondary social phenomena, like the state and culture, that are erected on an economic base that serves to define them. Most extremely, the economy determines the superstructure. base–To Marx, the economy, which conditions, if not determines, the nature of everything else in society. culture industry–To the critical theorists, industries such as movies and radio that were serving to make culture a more important factor in society than the economy. mass culture–The culture made available to, and popular among, the masses.

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Why were the critical theorists so concerned about culture? For one thing, the impacts of culture are more pervasive than those of work. Work largely affects people while they are on the job, but culture’s impacts are felt around the clock, 7 days a week. Another reason is that culture’s impacts are far more insidious— gradually working their way into people’s consciousness and altering the way they think, feel, and act. Third, at work people know that they are being dominated. This is quite clear when they are given orders, when they are forced to do certain things over and over again by technologies like the assembly line, and when they are laid off or fired. In the case of culture, control is largely invisible. In fact, people crave more mass culture (more radio and TV shows, and today, more time on the internet) without realizing the way it exercises domination over them. In a sense, the critical theorists came to the realization that people had come to seek out their own domination. Culture came to dominate people in various ways, the most important of which was through its function as what Marx called an opiate of the masses. Lulled into semiconsciousness by the culture industry, the proletariat would not be receptive to revolutionary messages. This was a pleasant kind of control. Rather than being controlled at gunpoint, or by the whip, the masses were controlled in the 1930s, for example, by a steady diet of Hollywood B movies that not only did not elevate their tastes but actually reduced them to the lowest common denominator. In addition, a string of nightly radio programs kept listeners tuned in for hours to lowbrow comedies, dramas, and contests of one kind or another. Radio also served to bring mass sports into people’s homes so that they spent additional hours listening to the exploits of their favorite professional and college teams. People entertained for many hours a week were likely to lose whatever hostility they might have had toward the capitalist system. Furthermore, the sheer amount of time spent listening to the radio or going to the movies, combined with the hours spent at work, left little time for revolutionary reading and thinking, let alone action. Today, of course, other media play the central role in narcotizing the masses. Television is a key player, with endless talk shows during the day followed by one so-called reality show after another at night. The latter are, at least for the moment, among the most-watched programs on network television. Millions of viewers devote several hours a week to watching people compete with one another to win the money they need without having to work for it or be players in the capitalist economic system. Instead of rebelling against the capitalist system, viewers daydream about what they would do with all that money. But the culture industry of the 1930s and 1940s (and continuing today) played a much more direct role in the maintenance of capitalism by turning more people into consumers. In becoming mass consumers, people came to play another central role (the other was as worker) in the capitalist system. Their consumption served as an important motor of capitalist production. In the early 1900s, that ultimate capitalist Henry Ford recognized this and began paying his workers

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enough so that they could afford to buy his products as well as those of other capitalist enterprises. Of course, the key development was the growing magnitude and sophistication of the advertising industry. Radio was a wonderful new medium for advertising, whereas the mass magazines and newspapers (especially the tabloids) were more traditional media for advertisers. Spurred on by advertisements, people spent more time shopping; once again, they were not using their time to think about and undertake social revolution. Furthermore, the burgeoning needs of consumers meant that they had to work as much as they could, seek as much overtime as possible, and even work second jobs to be able to afford all those goodies being advertised everywhere. Working so much further reduced the amount of time available for revolutionary activities, and the additional time at work and the energy expended working meant that the proletariat had even less energy for revolution. They had about enough strength left at the end of the workday or workweek to drag themselves home, switch on the radio, and doze off during lulls in the action. If this was true of America in the 1930s, it is far truer of America in the early years of the 21st century. However, in the interim the culture industry has grown far more powerful and infinitely more sophisticated. Few of us switch on the radio at night, but virtually all of us turn on the television set, often for many hours. We still go the movies on occasion, but with the advent of on-demand movies we no longer need to go out to see a movie. Magazines are more numerous and more spectacular than their predecessors. Newspapers are less prevalent, but those that remain are emulating USA Today and becoming more attractive and seductive. Then there are the home computer, the internet, and smartphones. Although they are wonderful tools for education, most people use them mainly for social networking (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), entertainment (especially video games), and, increasingly, shopping—24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Shopping is the favorite leisure activity of Americans, and many spend long hours after work and on weekends at shopping malls or online. Vacations are likely to be spent consuming services and goods in places like Las Vegas casino-hotels, on cruise ships, or at resorts like Disney World. Today’s culture industry opiates are far more numerous, ever-present, and sophisticated than those the critical theorists were so concerned about. The tools at the disposal of advertisers are much more sophisticated than those of the past, and their ability to manipulate us into consuming is much greater. And there is infinitely more time available for shopping and many more venues, both real and virtual, in which we can do our shopping. All of this means, of course, that there is much less interest in and time for revolutionary thinking and action. As the critical theorists might put it, people are too anesthetized by the mass media and too busy shopping and working to afford what they buy to think much about revolution, let alone to act on such thoughts. This said, since the Great Recession, which began in 2007, people have had less money to engage in widespread consumption. This suggests at least the possibility that the consumer culture will loosen its grip on people. And although, in general,

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there is no sign that people in the United States are interested in revolution, protests such as those initiated by the Occupy movement in 2011 indicate that at least some people are able to see through the manipulations of consumer culture and envision alternative social arrangements (see the Contemporary Applications box on the Occupy movement later in this chapter). Implied in this critique is the idea that even though the consumer culture promises happiness, it does not offer true happiness. So it is worth asking the question: What kind of society would bring the greatest happiness? To address this question, critical theorists combined Marxian theory and Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Following Sigmund Freud, critical theorists held that human beings are fundamentally sexual and sensual beings who find the greatest satisfaction in acting on those instincts. Repression of these instinctual desires leads to frustration

HERBERT MARCUSE (1898–1979) A Biographical Vignette Herbert Marcuse was a member of the critical school and an important contributor to critical theory. He became a major public intellectual in the United States and in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s because his ideas resonated well with the revolutionaries, especially students, who were protesting the Vietnam War and oppression in its various forms. Marcuse was a critic of repression wherever he found it but especially in advanced capitalist society and its negative effects on people. This theme is apparent in his best-known book One-Dimensional Man (1964), published before the advent of the revolutionary movements of the late 1960s and a powerful influence on them. Among other things, Marcuse singled out modern technology, especially television (were he alive today he might say many of the same things about the computer and the internet), for its advances in repression, especially its ability to make repression seem so pleasant. Television and other contemporary technologies invade individuals and serve to whittle them down. As a result, people become “one-dimensional.” They become more or less what these repressive but oh-so-pleasant technologies tell them to be. In the process, they lose a key dimension: the ability to think critically and negatively about many things, including the society and technologies that are repressing them. The answer, for Marcuse, is not the elimination of modern technologies (they are here to stay and will only increase) but the wresting of control of them away from oppressive forces and into the hands of free people. Clearly, Marcuse’s critique and political program were attractive to student (and other) radicals of the late 1960s, and to some they remain attractive today in light of continuing advances in television technology and the development of new technologies (e.g., smartphones) that make repression even more ubiquitous and deeply implicated in our everyday lives.

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and unhappiness. Freud argued that humans are destined for unhappiness because in entering society they must repress their most powerful desires. However, people can make up for this loss by finding creative outlets for the expression of their repressed desires. They may not be able to act out those desires fully, but they can find satisfying substitute expressions of those desires, for example, through artistic and scientific activity or, as we will see in a moment, through meaningful work. In general, the critical theorists agreed with this idea, but Herbert Marcuse added a particularly interesting variation. He argued that some kinds of societies impose greater degrees of repression on their members and allow fewer substitute forms of satisfaction than do others. This is especially the case with capitalism. On the surface, consumer capitalism seems to provide people satisfaction of all their desires. Indeed, from a psychoanalytic perspective consumer capitalism works precisely because it provides channels for expressing otherwise repressed desire. However, critical theorists pointed out that the kind of satisfaction provided by consumer culture is inadequate to human need. Remember that critical theorists were Marxists. For Marx, pleasure comes in the capacity for meaningful work. Critical theorists argued that if a society is to be free and happy, people must be able to find satisfaction in their work. This cannot happen in a society where work is increasingly monotonous, individualizing, and deadening. In this view, whereas consumer capitalism promises happiness, this kind of happiness is a poor substitute for the more authentic kind that stems from meaningful, cooperative work. According to critical theory, a communist society would allow people both the creative gratification and the sensual gratification that come from working in the world with other persons. Presumably this would also allow for the development of more meaningful and satisfying forms of consumption. Modern Technology.  Implicit in the critique of the culture industry is the critical school’s attack on modern technology. Obviously, many of the key elements of today’s culture industry—television, computers, the internet—are the results of technological advances that occurred after the heyday of the critical school. But the critical school itself confronted new technologies (e.g., the radio) that it saw as creating major problems for, and sources of control over, people. Rather than being controlled by people, these technologies controlled people. However, the main thrust of the work of the critical school was to argue that it was not technology per se that was the problem but the way technology was deployed and employed in capitalism. Thus, the capitalists used technology to control people, deaden their critical capacities, and greatly limit their ability to revolt against this inherently exploitative system. Critical theorists believed that in another economic system—say, socialism—technology could be used to make people more conscious, more critical, and resistant to exploitative systems like capitalism. Thus, instead of offering mediocre programming designed mainly to help sell things, radio could present truly stimulating and educational content.

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Focusing on the role of technology, Marcuse argued that it was being used to create what he called a one-dimensional society. In an ideal world, Marcuse, like Marx and many other Marxists, saw a dialectical relationship between people and the larger structures, like technology, that they created. In other words, people should be fulfilling their needs and expressing their abilities as they create, employ, and alter technologies. In this way, both people and technology would flourish. However, in capitalism this is transformed into a one-sided relationship. People create technology, but it is owned and controlled by the capitalists, who use it to their own advantage to control and exploit workers. Thus, instead of expressing themselves through the use of technology, people are impoverished by the control exerted over them by technology. Individuality is suppressed as everyone conforms to the demands of technology. Gradually, individual freedom and creativity dwindle into nothingness. As a result, people lose the capacity to think critically and negatively not only about technology but also about the society that controls and oppresses them. Without that ability, people are unable to revolt against and overthrow the capitalist system. The answer to this problem from Marcuse’s perspective is the creation of a society in which people (i.e., the proletariat) control technology rather than the other way around. The technologies employed by the capitalists, such as the assembly line, tend to be highly rationalized; this fact relates to another central concern of the critical theorists. Strongly influenced not only by Karl Marx but also by Max Weber, they tended to argue that society was growing increasingly rationalized. Like Weber, some of them even came to see increasing rationalization, rather than capitalism, as the central problem of their day. This rationalization undergirded not only the technologies being put into place but also the culture industry; both were growing increasingly rationalized. In the critical theorists’ view, increasing rationality tends to lead to technocratic thinking. That is, people grow concerned with being efficient, with simply finding the best means to an end without reflecting on either the means or the end. An example is the Nazis associated with the concentration camps (given the critical theorists’ origins in Germany, many observers feel that these thinkers anticipated the horrors of Nazism), who focused all of their attention and energies on the goal of killing the greatest number of Jews using the most efficient means possible (e.g., gas chambers). Such thinking serves the interests of those in power. one-dimensional society–To Marcuse, the result of the breakdown in the dialectical relationship between people and the larger structures they created so that people are largely controlled by such structures. They lose the ability to create and to be actively involved in those structures, and individual freedom and creativity dwindle, leaving people without the capacity to think critically and negatively about the structures that control and oppress them. technocratic thinking–Concern with being efficient, with simply finding the best means to an end without reflecting on either the means or the end (critical theory).

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KEY CONCEPT The Knowledge Industry

Another sector of society that came under attack by critical theorists was what they called the knowledge industry. Paralleling the idea of the culture industry, the knowledge industry comprises those entities in society concerned with knowledge production and dissemination, especially research institutes and universities. Like the culture industry, these settings have achieved a large measure of autonomy within society, which has allowed them to redefine themselves. Instead of serving the interests of society as a whole, they have come to focus on their own interests; this means that they are intent on expanding their influence over society. Research institutes help turn out the technologies needed by the culture industry, the state, and the capitalists and, in so doing, help strengthen their position in, and influence over, society. Universities have come to serve a similar series of interests, but perhaps more important, they serve to foster technocratic thinking and, in the process, help suppress reason. Universities are dominated by technocratic administrators who run these institutions much as other bureaucracies are run, imposing rules on professors and students alike. Furthermore, universities have become increasingly dominated not by the liberal arts that might encourage reason but by business, professional, and technical schools that encourage technocratic thinking. Instead of challenging students to think, universities have become more like factories for the manufacture of hordes of graduates. The focus is not on helping students become reasonable human beings but on processing as many of them as possible in the most efficient way. Universities have come to turn out graduates in much the same way that factories turn out automobiles or sausages.

In the case of capitalism, both the capitalists and the proletariat were dominated by this kind of thinking. However, the critical theorists were most interested in and concerned about the proletariat. For example, assembly line workers are led, even forced, to concentrate on working as efficiently as possible. The continual pressure of the assembly line leaves them little or no time to reflect on how they are doing the work and how tiring and debilitating it is to do one thing over and over. Furthermore, it leaves them even less time and energy to think about the knowledge industry–To the critical theorists, those entities in society concerned with knowledge production and dissemination, especially research institutes and universities. Like the culture industry, these settings have achieved a large measure of autonomy within society, which has allowed them to redefine themselves. Instead of serving the interests of society as a whole, they have come to focus on their own interests; this means that they are intent on expanding their influence over society.

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ends of the production process, say, the automobiles that roll off the assembly line and the fact that they kill and maim many thousands of people each year, pollute the air, use up valuable natural resources, and so on. What is lost in the process is the alternative to technocratic thinking, reason, which assesses means to ends in terms of ultimate human values such as justice, freedom, and happiness. Reason, to critical thinkers, is the hope for humanity. Auschwitz, for example, was a rational place, but it was certainly not reasonable. If the Nazis had employed reason rather than technocratic thinking, the Holocaust would never have occurred because the actions associated with it flew in the face of all human values. Much the same could be said of capitalism: it is rational but not reasonable. To the critical theorists, the hope for humankind lay in the creation of a society dominated by reason rather than by technocratic thinking, a society in which human values take precedence over efficiency. In other words, despite its seeming rationality, capitalism is a system rife with irrationality. This is the notion of the irrationality of rationality; rational systems inevitably spawn a series of irrationalities. In the rational world of capitalism, it is irrational that such a system is destructive of individuals and their needs and abilities; that technology makes them one-dimensional; that the culture industry controls them rather than helping them express their finest aspirations and abilities; and that despite the existence of more than sufficient wealth, many people remain impoverished, repressed, exploited, and unable to fulfill themselves. Pessimism About the Future.  All of this, but especially the focus on increasing rationalization, led the critical theorists, unlike Marx and most Marxists, to a pessimistic view of the future. Instead of the overthrow of the capitalists by the proletariat, the critical theorists envisioned continued and expanding rationalization. This has been the case within the culture, technology, and the knowledge industry (see Key Concept box). However, the critical theorists saw each of these as likely not only to grow increasingly rational but also to grow more important in its own right. Thus, they saw the future as a kind of iron cage comprising increasingly rational cultural, technological, and educational systems that would interpenetrate to control people and make them increasingly one-dimensional. This kind of thinking has far more in common with the pessimistic views of Weber than with the optimistic perspectives of Marx and most neo-Marxists. This kind of pessimistic thinking about the future did not endear the critical theorists to other Marxists. After all, Marxists were not supposed to be merely thinkers; they were also supposed to be people of action intent on relating their theories to revolutionary movements. The pessimism of the critical theorists reason–The assessment of means to ends in terms of ultimate human values such as justice, freedom, and happiness (critical theory). irrationality of rationality–The idea that rational systems inevitably spawn a series of irrationalities (Weber).

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seemed to foreclose the possibility of action, let alone revolution. The proletariat were left to await their inevitable fate—imprisonment in the iron cage of rationality being put in place by the elements of the culture industry. From the perspective of the critical theorists, the masses did not view this as an unpleasant fate. In fact, the iron cage has been made as pleasant and comfortable as possible. It is nicely padded and furnished. It is loaded with amenities like People magazine and USA Today; labor-saving devices like dishwashers, microwave ovens, and self-driving cars; televisions, smartphones, and tablets; computers with free and continuous access to video games, movies, Facebook, Twitter, and shopping sites; and so on. People have come to love their cages, and they are eager to fill them with more of the goodies being churned out by the capitalist system. However, this situation is precisely the problem. In love with their cages and the consumer toys that crowd them, people see no need to revolt; indeed, they are no longer even able to see that problems such as exploitation and control exist. In the end, these attractive and pleasant methods of control are far more effective than the oppressive actions of the capitalists and their lackeys that characterized the early years of capitalism.

Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis In the past, Marxist theories have focused primarily on the analysis of capitalism as it develops over time. Marx, for example, analyzed the processes that led to the shift from feudal society to capitalist society and would culminate, he believed, in communist society. In contrast to this focus on temporal process, in recent years Marxist social theorists have been interested in the relationship between capitalism and space. These theorists argue that the focus on time does not adequately address the way that capitalism spreads across and controls space. This includes everything from the way capitalism shapes people’s movement through their everyday lives (Do you walk or drive to work?) to the way that cities are organized (How many suburbs does your city have?) to the way that capitalism shapes the development of international trade routes (Which parts of the world do your groceries come from?). In this section, we describe the main ideas of two of the most prominent Marxist theorists of space. Henri Lefebvre on Space.  According to Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), in the past, social theorists have not sufficiently theorized the nature of space and its relationship to social life. They have primarily treated space as a neutral backdrop to the more important events that occur in space. To these older theories, space was a place in which things happened, but space in itself did not have meaning or significance. In contrast, Lefebvre argues that space is not neutral. Space is made by human beings to reflect human interests. In the simplest sense, this means that people actively shape their environments, cutting down trees, rerouting rivers, and digging holes in the ground so that they can build villages and cities in those spaces. But Lefebvre’s argument is even richer than this. It is not simply that humans modify space. In modifying space they inject human meanings into space.

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People inject meaning into the spaces in which they live all the time. For example, when people move into new homes, they paint the walls their favorite colors, they hang art on the walls, and they bring cherished items of furniture from previous spaces in which they lived. In short, they make the new spaces their own. Lefebvre sees a similar process taking place on a grand social scale. Human societies build, shape, and ultimately dominate the spaces in which they live. In this act of building, they turn space into something that embodies their own meanings, interests, and values. As a Marxist, Lefebvre is particularly interested in the way that capitalism shapes the spaces in which people live. To better understand the capitalist domination of space, Lefebvre provides a history of the ways in which space has been shaped by human societies. Early pastoral and agricultural societies did not dominate space. They lived quite close to nature and, Lefebvre suggests, were dominated by the spaces and forces of nature. They lived in response to the demands placed on them by their immediate geography. This started to change with the development of what Lefebvre calls absolute spaces, which are shaped by religious and political concerns. These spaces are built in places like mountaintops and caves. Examples include Greek temples and Christian tombs and cemeteries. On the surface, Lefebvre says, these spaces seem to draw their power from nature. For instance, the ancient Greek temple is built in a natural setting and is constructed to reflect natural geometrical principles of order and symmetry. Similarly, the Christian cemetery is built in a natural setting and puts people into contact with the natural force of death. Ultimately, however, these spaces dominate nature. They are, after all, built spaces, and built spaces necessarily impose their order on the natural world that they displace. In addition, the elites who control these spaces use their symbolic power to dominate human populations. Lefebvre calls the next kind of space historical space. This kind of space started to be produced in early modern Europe. Even though Lefebvre spends relatively little time discussing historical space, it is an important bridge between absolute space and the abstract space of the present moment. Historical space is secular. It breaks with the religious connection to nature found in absolute space. Historical space is produced as separate nations vie with one another for power and the accumulation of wealth. This space is produced with human interests, rather than nature or religion, in mind. Ultimately historical space gives way to abstract space. Abstract space is the kind of space produced within the modern industrial capitalist society. Abstract space involves the total domination of nature and absolute spaces–Spaces built in natural locations that embody religious and political principles. Ultimately these spaces serve the interests of political and religious elites (Lefebvre). historical space–The kind of space produced when separate nations vie with one another for power and the accumulation of wealth (Lefebvre). abstract space–The kind of space produced within modern capitalist society, where space is treated as a problem to be solved and calculated. Such space dominates nature and all unique human forms (Lefebvre).

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The Occupy Movement and Neo-Marxian Spatial Analysis Although there is a long tradition of spatial occupation in acts of protest, the last decade has seen a surge of revolutions and protests organized around the longterm occupation of urban space. For example, as part of the broader Arab Spring, in 2011 Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square in Cairo to oppose the leadership of President Hosni Mubarak. In 2013–2014, Ukrainians occupied the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) for 3 months in opposition to the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. In the United States the Occupy movement began when protesters took over Zuccotti Park in New York City on September 17, 2011. They stayed there for 2 months. In contrast to traditional protest marches, occupiers set up camp and lived on the square. The goal was to draw attention to social inequality in the United States and around the world. Famously, occupiers distinguished between the 1 percent who own most of the wealth and have most of the power in the United States and the remaining 99 percent of the population, whose wealth and power are significantly less and diminishing. The protest quickly spread beyond Zuccotti Park, and by mid-autumn numerous Occupy sites had been established across the United States and around the world. Most of the spaces occupied in 2011 were cleared of protesters by state authorities before the end of the year. From the perspective of Lefebvre’s neo-Marxian spatial theory, Occupy is interesting precisely because the movement works through the occupation of space. The way that occupiers use space demonstrates an alternative to the production of abstract space. For example, according to Lefebvre, abstract space fragments social practice and thereby destroys the unity of life. Social functions are dispersed and located in separate spaces: politics are practiced at the legislature, leisure and recreation are practiced at the mall or the park, education is practiced in schools and libraries, sleeping and eating are practiced in the family home. In contrast, the Occupy movement brought all of these functions together in the same place. The park became a place of political protest and decision making, but it was also a place where people learned together (the occupiers set up a makeshift library) and a place where people slept, prepared food, and ate together. Further, occupiers brought the space to life through music, art, and dance. In contrast to abstract space, the Occupy movement created an example of Lefebvre’s differential space. When different kinds of people come together and engage in different kinds of social practices, a new kind of dynamism is created. The occupiers demonstrated the production of a new kind of space—one that challenges the control exercised through abstract space. This is underlined by the fact that the occupiers spent large amounts of time deliberating over their own use of space. For example, occupiers wanted to avoid authoritarian decision-

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making, so they relied on a leaderless, mass democracy in which the space, in its more political moments, became a forum for shared discussion and decision making. The importance of spatial control to the reproduction of society is also highlighted by the aggressive and violent responses of authorities to the Occupy movement. At first, when Occupy appeared to be short-lived, authorities remained vigilant but did not interfere. However, once the movement began to draw widespread public attention and occupiers began to challenge the normal uses of space (i.e., they stayed in a public space for a long time), the state intervened: riot police arrested occupiers, removed tents, and used pepper spray to subdue protesters. Supporters of the state argued that the demonstrators were removed in the name of public safety and a respect for the law: parks are to be used only during posted hours, parks should not be used for sleeping or camping, unorthodox use of space might lead to health risks. From Lefebvre’s perspective, this is precisely the point. Challenges to dominant modes of social power require novel and unanticipated uses of space. Why should the state, or the private enterprise that owns a particular space, be permitted to decide how space is used? How do those in power determine the difference between a safe space and a risky space? Why should a particular space be used only for leisure and that leisure be exercised only at certain times of the day? The Occupy movement, then, showed that the everyday use of space is by no means a neutral issue. Normally we take for granted the ways in which our spaces are organized. However, when these spaces are persistently and stubbornly used in unfamiliar ways, we see not only that space is something that is produced but also that it is produced with ­powerful political and economic interests in mind.

society. To ensure as much profit as possible, the capitalist, working alongside the state, tries to exert as much control over space as possible. Indeed, for Lefebvre the control of space is essential to the growth of capitalism. This kind of control requires that the capitalist take an abstract view of space. Within a capitalist society professions like urban planning and architecture serve the purpose of producing abstract representations of space. These abstract representations treat space as a series of problems to be analyzed and solved, as though space were a mathematical grid rather than a place in which people live their lives. Indeed, instead of seeing space from the perspective of the person who uses space, planners seek to maximize the efficient and profitable use of space: How can space be most efficiently used? How can space be organized to benefit the growth of the economy? From this view, it is not only the factory that generates profit but also the bus routes, railway lines, and highways that provide routes into the factory for workers and raw materials and out of the factory for finished products. The city, the country, and ultimately the planet are treated as a monolithic problem in spatial management.

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As should be clear, the production of abstract space has implications for the everyday experience of space. Abstract space controls the way that people use and move through space, and in so doing it also determines the way that people experience and live their lives. For example, North American cities designed in the latter half of the 20th century were organized around the interests of the automobile industry. City planners chose to build highways and intricate road systems that stretched into suburbs, rather than planning walkable cities like those found in Europe. People who live in the former kinds of cities are likely to experience their environs through the lens of high-speed traffic and congestion. They will spend many hours commuting to and from work in single-passenger cars, and their homes in the suburbs will become the self-enclosed centers of their existence. This said, as a good Marxian theorist, Lefebvre emphasizes that abstract space is also full of contradictions that will ultimately bring about its demise. Indeed, the point of most Marxist analysis is to show that built into the structures of capitalism are the forces that will undermine capitalism. For example, one of the consequences of capitalism is a clear and growing distinction between the rich and the poor. Spatially, this inequality has been realized through the development of wealthy suburbs and gated communities. Gated communities are designed to defend the property of the wealthy against intrusions by the poor, who live in lowincome neighborhoods and slums. If inequality continues to grow (as Marxists predict), then we can expect to see further spatial divisions between rich and poor. Although, until the present, scholars have only commented on the inequalities made apparent through these spaces, Lefebvre suggests that recognition of these kinds of contradictions will eventually produce challenges to these spatial divisions and the emergence of a new kind of space. This brings us to Lefebvre’s fourth kind of space: differential space. Whereas abstract space seeks to control and homogenize everyone and everything, differential space accentuates difference and freedom from control. Whereas abstract space breaks up the natural unity that exists in the world, differential space restores that unity. Differential space allows for the use of space that is not imagined through the principles of abstraction and calculation. A differential space would be one in which space is produced from the perspective of those who live within it rather than from the perspective of the system of capitalism. It would also, Lefebvre suggests, bring people closer to the power of natural spaces that have for so long been dominated by human interests. Indeed, differential space is revolutionary and transformative because it allows room for tension, difference, and unique forms of human spatial expression to thrive. In contrast to abstract space, then, differential space is a dynamic space that is accountable and responsive to the variety of people who live in that space.

differential space–A hoped-for space that would accentuate difference and freedom from control and would restore the natural unity that is broken by abstract space (Lefebvre).

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Within the context of Marxian theory, then, Lefebvre’s analysis of space is important for two reasons. First, it offers a new focus for analysis and critique. Our attention should shift from the capitalist production of wealth through the means of production to the way that capitalism shapes the spaces of contemporary society. The forces of capital, in other words, are found not only in factories and financial exchange centers but also in the organization of the spaces of everyday life. Second, Lefebvre conducts this analysis to motivate social change. We live in a world in which the state, the capitalist, and the bourgeoisie dominate space. It is a closed, sterile world, one that is being emptied of its contents (e.g., highways are replacing and destroying local communities). Lefebvre argues that we need instead a world in which people would work with others to produce the kinds of spaces that they need to survive and prosper. They would not try to dominate space but rather would modify natural space to serve their collective needs. Thus, Lefebvre’s goal is the production of space that is a product and reflection of human beings rather than of abstract systems. It would be planetwide space that would serve as the basis for transforming everyday life. Needless to say, state and private ownership of the means of production would wither away under such a system. David Harvey on Space.  One aspect of David Harvey’s (1935–) complex body of work that is particularly relevant to this discussion of neo-Marxian theory is his analysis and critique of the geographical arguments made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto (1868). Harvey sees what he calls the “spatial fix” as central to the argument made in the Manifesto. That is, the need to create ever-higher profits means that capitalist firms must, among other things, continually seek new geographic areas (and markets) to exploit and find more ways of exploiting more intensively the areas in which they already operate. Although such geographical arguments occupy an important place in the Manifesto, they characteristically are subordinated to a perspective that prioritizes time and history (e.g., the history of class struggles, especially proletariat vs. capitalists) over space and geography. Harvey wants to see more attention paid to the way the world, including capitalism, is organized geographically. Thus, it is not enough to say that the state is controlled by the capitalists; the way a territorially defined state is organized and administered is also of great importance. For example, loosely connected provinces have to be brought together to form a nation. However, territories do not remain set in stone once they have been transformed into states. All sorts of things alter territorial configurations, including revolutions in transportation and communication, differences in resources, and the uneven outcomes of class struggle. Furthermore, boundaries between territories are always porous, and products, money, and workers flow through them easily. Thus, territories are being redefined and reorganized continually, with the result that any model that envisions a final formation of the state on a

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territorial basis is overly simplistic. The implication is that we need to be attuned continuously to territorial changes in a world dominated by capitalism (as well as any other economic system). Another of the spatial arguments made in the Communist Manifesto is that capitalism (e.g., its factories, offices) tends to become concentrated in cities. This, in turn, leads to the concentration of the proletariat (formerly scattered throughout the countryside) in those cities. Instead of conflict between isolated workers and capitalists, it becomes more likely that a collectivity of workers will confront capitalists, who are themselves now more likely to be organized into a collectivity. Thus, the nature and likelihood of class struggle are strongly affected by spatial changes. There is much more to be said about the relationship between space and class struggle, and this is amply demonstrated in the more recent history of capitalism. For example, capitalists in the late 19th century dispersed factories from the cities to the suburbs and small towns in an effort, at least in part, to limit the concentration of workers and their power. And in the late 20th century we witnessed the dispersal of factories to remote areas of the world as capitalists sought not only to reduce labor costs but also to weaken the proletariat further and strengthen their own position. Most generally, capitalism itself has grown more widespread throughout the world; it has become increasingly global (see Chapter 11). Harvey also points out that the Manifesto tended to focus on the urban proletariat and thereby largely ignored rural areas as well as agricultural workers and peasants. Of course, the latter groups have over the years proved to be active in revolutionary movements. Furthermore, Marx and Engels tended to homogenize the world’s workers, to argue that they have no country and that national differences are disappearing in the development of a homogeneous proletariat. Harvey notes that not only do national (spatial) differences persist but also capitalism itself produces national (and other) differences among workers. In addition, labor plays a role in sustaining spatial distinctions by, for example, using organizations based in given territories to mobilize workers and creating loyalties rooted in those places. Finally, Harvey notes the famous call in the Manifesto for workers of the world to unite and argues that given the increasingly global character of capitalism, such an exhortation is more relevant and more important than ever. An ever more global capitalism means that a reaction, even a revolution, against it is increasingly likely to be global in scope. In addition to critiquing the ideas of the Communist Manifesto, Harvey develops many of his own ideas under the heading of “spaces of hope.” With this perspective, he wishes to counter what he perceives to be a pervasive pessimism among scholars today. He wants to acknowledge that there are spaces in which political struggle exists and, as a result, there is hope for society as a whole. Finally, he describes a utopian space of the future that offers hope to those concerned about the oppressiveness of today’s spaces. 134    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

KEY CONCEPT The Modern World-System

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) chose a unit of analysis unlike those used by most Marxian thinkers. He did not look at workers, classes, or even states because he found most of these too narrow for his purposes. Instead, he looked at a broad economic entity with a division of labor not circumscribed by political or cultural boundaries. He found that unit in his concept of the world-system, a largely self-contained social system with a set of boundaries and a definable life span (i.e., it does not last forever). It comprises internally a variety of social structures and member groups. Wallerstein viewed the system as being held together by a variety of forces in inherent tension. These forces always have the potential for tearing the system apart. Wallerstein argued that thus far we have had only two types of world systems: one was the world empire, of which ancient Rome was an example; the other is the modern capitalist world-economy. A world empire was based on political (and military) domination, whereas a capitalist world-economy relies on economic domination. A capitalist world-economy is seen as more stable than a world empire for several reasons. It has a broader base because it encompasses many states, and it has a built in process of economic stabilization. The separate political entities within the capitalist world-economy absorb whatever losses occur, whereas economic gain is distributed to private hands. Wallerstein foresaw the possibility of a third world-system, a socialist world government. Whereas the capitalist world-economy separates the political from the economic sector, a socialist world-economy reintegrates them. Within the capitalist world-economy, the core geographic area is dominant and exploits the rest of the system. The periphery comprises those areas that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited by it. The semiperiphery is a residual category that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between the exploiting and the exploited. To Wallerstein the international division of exploitation is defined not by state borders but by the economic division of labor in the world.

world-system–A broad economic entity with a division of labor that is not circumscribed by political or cultural boundaries. It is a social system, comprising internally a variety of social structures and member groups that is largely self-contained, has a set of boundaries, and has a definable life span (Wallerstein). core–The geographic area that dominates the capitalist world-economy and exploits the rest of the system (Wallerstein). periphery–Those areas of the capitalist world-economy that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited by it (Wallerstein). semiperiphery–A residual category in the capitalist world-economy that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between the exploiting and the exploited (Wallerstein). CHAPTER FIVE  •  CONTEMPORARY GRAND THEORIES II   135

Thus, in these and many other ways, Harvey builds on Marx’s (and in this case Engels’s) limited insights into space and capitalism to develop a richer and more contemporary perspective on their relationship to each other. In that sense, what Harvey is doing here is a model of neo-Marxian spatial analysis.

THE CIVILIZING PROCESS Norbert Elias’s lifework was the study of a long-term historical development he called the civilizing process. He was interested in changes in everyday behaviors, and he arbitrarily chose as his starting point Europe in the Middle Ages. Much of the information that Elias analyzed came from books on manners written between the 13th and 19th centuries. What he found was a long-term change in manners as they relate to daily behavior. Everyday behaviors that were once acceptable have, over time, become increasingly unacceptable. Compared with our forebears, we are more likely to observe the everyday behaviors of others, to be sensitive to them, to understand them better, and perhaps most important, to find an increasing number of them embarrassing. What we once found acceptable now embarrasses us enormously. As a result, many things that were once public are now hidden from view. Because others are likely to find certain mundane behaviors offensive, we are more likely to engage in those behaviors out of public view.

Examples of the Civilizing Process Eating at the table offers some examples of this process. In the 13th century most people found it acceptable to gnaw on the bones of animals and then put them back in the serving dish. They became self-conscious about this only when others commented on it and brought their attention to the offensive nature of the behavior. Most people also had to be told that it was unacceptable to pick their noses while eating. The need to warn people about such behaviors makes it clear that many were accustomed to engaging in them. They were not embarrassed by them; they did know that they were behaving in an uncivilized manner. However, as the decades and centuries passed, the lessons were learned, and books on manners paid increasing attention to things such as picking one’s nose at the table. When nose picking finally became a behind-the-scenes behavior (except for young children), attention turned to other, less egregious violations. For example, a 16th-century document warned against things such as licking one’s fingers at the table and stirring sauce with one’s fingers. Such behaviors have now been eliminated from the table. civilizing process–The long-term change in the West in manners as they relate to daily behavior. Everyday behaviors once acceptable have, over time, become increasingly unacceptable. Compared with our forebears, we are more likely to observe the everyday behaviors of others, to be sensitive to them, to understand them better, and perhaps most important, to find an increasing number of them embarrassing.What we once found acceptable now embarrasses us enormously.As a result, many things that were once public are now hidden from view (Elias).

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A similar trend is found regarding natural functions, such as expelling wind. A 14th-century book for schoolchildren had pieces of advice about this behavior: • It is best to expel wind without a sound. • However, it is better to expel it with a noise than to hold it back. • To avoid offending others with the sound, press your buttocks firmly together. • A cough is an excellent way of concealing the sound of wind being expelled. Again, the point is that the need to offer advice about such things makes it clear that the public expelling of wind, often noisily, was common. Clearly, in the more civilized 21st century, there would be no need for such a document or such admonitions. Few people today expel wind noisily in public unless they cannot avoid it or they think no one is nearby. In Elias’s terms, the frontier of embarrassment has moved to encompass the expelling of wind. Nose blowing followed the same trajectory. In the 15th century, readers of books on manners were warned about blowing one’s nose with the same hand that held one’s meat. In the 16th century, there was an admonishment about opening one’s handkerchief and admiring the results after blowing one’s nose. By the 18th century, advice was still being offered about nose blowing, but the kinds of behaviors discussed had largely disappeared behind the shame frontier. Sexual relations experienced a similar fate. In the Middle Ages it was not uncommon for a man and woman who may have been little more than acquaintances to spend the night in the same room and to sleep naked. On a couple’s wedding night in the Middle Ages, a procession accompanied the bride and groom to their bed. Bridesmaids undressed the bride, and for the marriage to be considered valid, the couple had to mount the bed and lie together in the presence of others. All of this, of course, has now passed behind the shame frontier, and brides and grooms spend their wedding night in the presence of only each other.

Explaining the Changes: Lengthening Dependency Chains Elias described historical changes in mundane behaviors, but how did he explain those changes? Although Elias explained changes in everyday life, that which explains those changes occurs, at least at first, at the macro level of the state. A crucial development was the emergence of a strong head of state, a king. With the king emerged a stable central government in control of taxes and warfare. Around the king a court developed in which power was relatively equally divided. The court was central to Elias’s argument.

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NORBERT ELIAS (1897–1990) A Biographical Vignette Norbert Elias, who was born in Germany and later became a British citizen, had an interesting and instructive career. He produced his most important work in the 1930s, but it was largely ignored at the time and for many years thereafter. During World War II, 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 positions, and he accepted the one at University College Leicester. Thus, Elias began his formal academic career at the age of 57! His 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 approaches (of Talcott Parsons and others) that were then preeminent in sociology. He was also disappointed that few students adopted his approach; he continued to be a voice in the wilderness at Leicester, where students tended to regard him as an eccentric whose day was past. Reflective of this feeling of being on the outside was a recurrent dream Elias reported having during those years, in which a voice on the telephone repeated, “Can you speak louder? I can’t hear you.” Throughout Elias’s years at Leicester, none of his books was translated into English, and few English sociologists of the day were fluent in German. However, on the Continent, especially in the Netherlands and Germany, Elias’s work began to be rediscovered in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, Elias began to receive not only academic but also public recognition in Europe. Throughout the rest of his life, he received a number of significant awards. Excerpt from Stephen Mennell, Norbert Elias: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 23

Prior to the emergence of the royal court, warriors were preeminent, and they were able to engage in violence because they had what Elias called short dependency chains. That is, relatively few people were dependent on them, and they were dependent on only a small number of other people. Thus, when warriors engaged in violent behavior, their behavior affected those against whom the violence was aimed as well as a relatively small number of other people. In a sense, warriors were free to engage in violence because their behavior did not affect or disrupt too large a portion of society. In contrast, the court nobles developed long dependency chains, which served to prevent violence. They became dependent on those who provided them with the goods and services they dependency chains–The chains of relationships involving the people on whom a person is dependent as well as those people’s dependency on the person (Elias).

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desired (warriors had far fewer such needs and desires), and others depended on the nobles for that business. If the nobles engaged in violence, large numbers of people, perhaps the society as a whole, would be affected. Long dependency chains forced nobles to become increasingly sensitive to the needs and expectations

KEY CONCEPT Figurations

Elias was involved in an effort to overcome the tendency of sociologists to distinguish between individuals and society. To help achieve his integrative goal (see Chapter 7), Elias proposed the concept of figuration, an idea that makes it possible to overcome our inability to think of people as both individuals and societies. Figurations can be seen, above all, as processes. In fact, later in his life Elias came to prefer the term process sociology to describe his work. Figurations are social processes involving the interweaving of people. They are not structures external to and coercive of relationships among people; they are those interrelationships. Individuals are seen as open and interdependent; figurations are made up of such individuals. Power is central to social figurations, and they are, as a result, constantly in flux. Figurations emerge and develop but in largely unseen and unplanned ways. Central to this discussion is the fact that the idea of a figuration applies to every social phenomenon between small groups and societies, even China, with well over a billion people. Elias refused to deal with the relationship between the individual and society. In other words, both individuals and societies (and every social phenomenon in between) involve people—human relationships. The idea of chains of interdependence is as good an image as any of what Elias meant by figurations and what constituted the focus of his sociology. He was interested in how people are linked together and why that linkage occurs. Elias’s notion of figuration is linked to the idea that individuals are open to, and interrelated with, other individuals. Elias argued that most sociologists operate with a sense of single individuals totally independent of all other human beings. Such an image does not lend itself to a theory of figurations; an image of open, interdependent actors is needed for figurational sociology..

figurations–Social processes involving the interweaving of people, who are seen as open and interdependent. Power is central to social figurations; they are constantly in flux. Figurations emerge and develop but in largely unseen and unplanned ways (Elias).

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of others. Sensitized to others, the nobles were disinclined to commit violence against them. They were even less likely to engage in violence against others that might offend those involved in their dependency chains. Another factor serving to inhibit the nobles from engaging in violence was the fact that the king controlled not only the money needed to buy weapons but also the weapons themselves. Now the issue is: What does the change at the top of society (among the nobles and their dependency chains) have to do with picking one’s nose and expelling wind? The answer is that the situation confronting, and the behavior engaged in by, the nobles came to be the reality for more people throughout society. Dependency chains grew progressively longer for more people. As a result, the majority of people, like the nobles, grew more sensitive to those around them and had to be sensitive to the needs of more people. The longer dependency chains meant that an individual’s untoward behaviors would be known to, and affect, more than a few people in the immediate environment— large numbers of people far removed along the dependency chain would also learn of the behaviors and be affected by them. Thus, if one picked one’s nose at the table or expelled wind at a party, many people would eventually come to know of this behavior. Knowledge of this new reality and growing sensitivity to it led people to be increasingly c­ ircumspect about expelling gas or picking their noses in public. Over time, people have grown more concerned about displaying, and better able to control, their baser instincts. We might think that this is all to the good. After all, aren’t we all better off when people are likely to be less violent or less likely to expel wind in our presence? Life has grown less dangerous, less base, less unpredictable, but it has also grown less exciting, less interesting. Unable to act out behaviors, people are likely to become increasingly repressed, bored, and restless.

A Case Study: Foxhunting In addition to looking at great expanses of history, Elias applied his ideas to more specific arenas, such as sports in general and foxhunting in particular. Following the general line of his argument, we have witnessed a general decline in the violence associated with sports. In the early years, foxhunting was vicious, dominated by humans killing and eating the fox. However, over the years foxhunting has become increasingly civilized (in 2005, Great Britain legally banned foxhunting). For example, instead of people doing the killing, the hounds do it. Furthermore, it is no longer the norm for participants to eat the fox. However, with such “sportization” comes boredom; foxhunting and many other sports are not as interesting or exciting as they once were. The need for more excitement is reflected in the violence that frequently erupts at European, especially British, soccer matches. Furthermore, violence has certainly not disappeared. It is found regularly in taverns, on the streets, and in skirmishes and open warfare among nations. Perhaps if we allowed more violence in sports,

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if sports were less civilized, then we might have somewhat less violence elsewhere in the world. More generally, Elias did not think that civilization is necessarily a good thing. Less civilized societies had many advantages over more civilized ones, and increasing civilization has meant the loss of things that are important to people.

THE COLONIZATION OF THE LIFEWORLD Jürgen Habermas is a neo-Marxian theorist; in fact, in his early years as a scholar he was associated directly with the critical school. Although he made important contributions to critical theory, over the years he has fused Marxian theory with many other theoretical inputs to produce a distinctive set of theoretical ideas. One is his grand theory of the increasing colonization of the lifeworld. An understanding of what Habermas means by “the colonization of the lifeworld” requires a prior understanding of what he means by “lifeworld” as well as of what is doing the colonizing: the system.

JÜRGEN HABERMAS (1929–) A Biographical Vignette In 1956 Habermas arrived at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and became associated with the Frankfurt school. He became a research assistant to one of the most illustrious members of that school, Theodor Adorno, as well as an associate of the institute. Although the Frankfurt school is often thought of as highly coherent, that was not Habermas’s view: For me there was never a consistent theory. Adorno wrote essays on the critique of culture and also gave seminars on Hegel. He presented a certain Marxist background—and that was it. Although he was associated with the Institute for Social Research, Habermas demonstrated from the beginning an independent intellectual orientation. An article he wrote in 1957 got him into trouble with the leader of the institute, Max Horkheimer. Habermas urged critical thought and practical action, but Horkheimer was afraid that such a position would jeopardize the publicly funded institute. Horkheimer strongly recommended that Habermas be dismissed, saying, “He probably has a good, or even brilliant, career as a writer in front of him, but he would only cause the institute immense damage.” The article was eventually published but not under the auspices of the institute and with virtually no reference to it. Horkheimer began placing impossible conditions on Habermas’s work, and Habermas finally resigned. Excerpts cited in Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).

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Lifeworld, System, and Colonization The lifeworld is a concept used by Alfred Schutz (and others associated with phenomenology and phenomenological sociology) to refer to the world of everyday life. Schutz was primarily concerned with intersubjective relations within the lifeworld, but Habermas has a different interest: the interpersonal communication that takes place within the lifeworld. Ideally, that communication would be free and open with no constraints. To Habermas, free and open communication means the rationalization of communication within the lifeworld. Although the concept of rationalization has been used in a negative sense, and in another context Habermas has used it that way, within the confines of the lifeworld and communication, rationalization takes on a positive connotation. Those who interact with one another will be rationally motivated to achieve free and open communication, leading to mutual understanding. Rational methods will be employed to achieve consensus. Consensus will be arrived at, and understanding achieved, when the better argument wins the day. In other words, external forces like the greater power of one party should play no role in the achievement of consensus. People debate issues and the consensus reached is based solely on the best argument. The system has its source within the lifeworld, but it comes to develop its own distinctive structures, such as the family, the legal system, the state, and the economy. As these structures develop, they grow increasingly distant and separated from the lifeworld. Like the lifeworld, the system and its structures undergo progressive rationalization. However, the rationalization of the system takes a form that is different from the rationalization of the lifeworld. Rationalization here means that the system and its structures grow increasingly differentiated, complex, and self-sufficient. Most important, the power of the system and its structures grows and with it their ability to direct and control what transpires in the lifeworld. This has a number of ominous implications for the lifeworld, most significant of which is that the system colonizes (intrudes upon) the lifeworld. This colonization of the lifeworld takes many forms, but none is more important than the fact that the system imposes itself on communication in the lifeworld and serves to limit the ability of actors to argue things through and achieve consensus within it. In other words, instead of enhancing the capacity to communicate and reach understanding and consensus, the rational structures of the system threaten those processes through the exertion of external control over them. lifeworld–To Schutz, the commonsense world, the world of everyday life, the mundane world, that world in which intersubjectivity takes place. Habermas is more concerned with interpersonal communication in the lifeworld. system–To Habermas, the structures (such as the family, the legal system, the state, and the economy) that have their source within the lifeworld but that come to develop their own distinctive existence and grow increasingly distant and separated from the lifeworld. colonization of the lifeworld–The concept that as the system and its structures grow increasingly differentiated, complex, and self-sufficient, their power grows and with it their ability to direct and control what transpires in the lifeworld (Habermas).

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KEY CONCEPT Ideal Speech Situation

Underlying much of Habermas’s thinking is his notion of free and open communication (in the lifeworld), or what he calls the ideal speech situation. In most cases, power determines which argument wins out over all others. However, for Habermas, the ideal speech situation is one that is free of all distorting influences, especially power. It is one in which the better argument wins out rather than the argument that is backed by the most powerful individual or group. The better argument is the one that, for example, has the most evidence behind it and is made most convincingly. A consensus arises out of this contest of ideas as to what is the truth. Thus, the truth arises from consensus and not because it is a copy of reality. The problem in the contemporary world is that little communication is undistorted. It is especially the case that power affects virtually all communication with the result that not only is almost all communication distorted, but there is also a general failure to arrive at a true consensus and, therefore, at the truth. Given Habermas’s Marxian orientation, this diagnosis of contemporary ills has a set of practical and political implications. That is, the barriers to free and open communication, especially the power that so distorts it, need to be removed so that people can freely arrive at consensus and the truth.

For example, a group of close friends may meet to decide through free and open discussion how they might go about pooling their resources to earn more money in the future. They may want to use knowledge derived from the fact that they are all well-placed officers of important companies to form a stock club to invest in the stocks of some of those companies. However, they are prevented from doing so, and even prevented from getting far in discussing it, by laws that forbid insider trading. An officer of one company is prohibited from sharing with other members of the group information about upcoming developments that might affect the company’s share prices. Thus, the law prohibits free and open discussion of this way of acquiring wealth within the lifeworld of this group. We might think that insider trading should be banned, but the fact remains that the law in this case prohibits the achievement of consensus through free and open communication. ideal speech situation– A speech situation that is free of all distorting influences, especially power; one in which the better argument wins out rather than the one that is backed by the most powerful individual or group. A consensus arises out of this contest of ideas as to what is the truth; truth arises from consensus and not because it is a copy of reality (Habermas).

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Given these views on the lifeworld and the system, Habermas is arguing that although they stem from the same roots, they have been decoupled from one another. Once they are separated, it is possible for the system to colonize the lifeworld. This colonization has a destructive effect on the lifeworld in general and especially on communication within it. Communication becomes increasingly rigid, impoverished, and fragmented; the lifeworld itself is pushed to the brink of dissolution. However, even when colonization is extensive, the lifeworld continues.

Rationalization of System and Lifeworld The problem for Habermas is that the system and its rationalization characteristic have gained ascendancy over the lifeworld and its distinctive form of rationalization. The solution to this problem lies in the rationalization of both lifeworld and system, each in its own way. The system and its structures need to be allowed to grow more differentiated and complex, whereas the lifeworld needs to be refined so that free communication is possible and the better argument is permitted to emerge victorious. The full rationalization of both would permit the lifeworld and the system to be recoupled in such a way that each enhances, rather than negatively affects, the other. A more rational system should be used to enhance rational argumentation in the lifeworld: that argumentation should, in turn, be used to figure out ways of further rationalizing the system. In this way the two systems would be mutually enriching rather than, as in the present situation, the system deforming the lifeworld. For example, a more rationalized system might permit groups of people to discuss exchanges of certain types of information that heretofore would have been considered insider trading. For their part, such groups, through free and open communication, might come up with better guidelines on what should and should not be considered insider trading. In a world in which both system and lifeworld are rationalized, these views on new guidelines would be fed back into the system and lead to changes there and to a more refined sense of what is and is not insider trading.

THE JUGGERNAUT OF MODERNITY Anthony Giddens sees modernity as a juggernaut, a massive force that moves forward inexorably, riding roughshod over everything in its path. Imagine a trailer truck the size of the Titanic careening down a busy city street. People steer this juggernaut, but given its size and bulk, they cannot totally control the path it takes and the speed at which it travels. There is an ever-present possibility that juggernaut–Giddens’s metaphor for the modern world as a massive force that moves forward inexorably, riding roughshod over everything in its path. People steer the juggernaut, but it always has the possibility of careening out of control.

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they could lose control, and the juggernaut, and everyone in it and nearby, could be destroyed. For those who control it, as well as those in its path, the juggernaut can bring great rewards (the huge truck may be loaded with a supply of new drugs needed by the population), but it can also bring great dangers, including a constant anxiety that those who drive it might at any moment lose control, threatening the lives of many people. The notion of modernity as a juggernaut is abstract. What, more specifically, does Giddens have in mind with this metaphor of possible rewards and dangers? Take the example of the trailer truck delivering medical supplies. The truck could be delivering drugs that seem to be worthwhile but that in the future could result in more harm than good. This was the case with fen-phen, a weight control drug that was popular for a time in the 1990s but was taken off the market when it was learned that many who took it developed heart valve problems. Other concrete examples of human creations that appear worthwhile but could have disastrous consequences include nuclear technology (e.g., power plants) and genetic research. These creations are produced by humans, and humans are also in day-to-day control of them. However, that control is tenuous, and there is an ever-present possibility of disaster, such as the meltdown of a nuclear reactor (as occurred at Chernobyl in 1986) or the unleashing of genetic mutations that could threaten the future of humankind.

Space and Time Our ability to control the components of the modern juggernaut is complicated by the fact that they have tended to grow distant from us in space and time (Giddens calls this distanciation). Whereas in a premodern society, or even in early modern societies, such components tended to be physically close to those controlling them, they are now spread out across the globe. A nuclear submarine with enormous capacity for destruction may be half a world away from those who direct its activities. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl affected people thousands of miles away. The same point can be made about time. Things that were created long ago (the nuclear waste that has been accumulating for more than a half century) can have disastrous effects on us. Similarly, things that we are in the process of creating (e.g., genetic technology) can have adverse effects well into the future. Because of these changes in time and space, those who live in the modern world are forced to develop a sense of trust in both systems and the people who control and operate them. For example, we need to trust that the captain of a nuclear submarine will not take it upon himself to launch a multiwarhead nuclear attack and that those doing genetic research will take the precautions needed to protect future generations. In other words, the nature of the modern world requires that we place our trust in a variety of experts. distanciation–The tendency for components of the modern juggernaut to grow distant in space and time from those attempting to control the juggernaut (Giddens).

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ANTHONY GIDDENS (1938–) A Biographical Vignette Although his work was most impactful in the late 20th century, Giddens has been a force in sociological theory for well over four decades. In addition, he has played in important role in shaping contemporary British sociology and social life. For one thing he served as a consulting editor for several major publishing companies. More important, he was a cofounder of Polity Press, a publisher that has been extremely influential, especially in sociological theory. Giddens’s career took a series of interesting turns in the 1990s. Several years of undergoing therapy led him to a greater interest in personal life and the authorship of books such as Modernity and Self-Identity (1991) and The Transformation of Intimacy (1992). Therapy also gave him the confidence to take on a more public role and to become an adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair. From 1997 to 2003 Giddens was director of the highly prestigious London School of Economics, where he moved to strengthen that institution’s scholarly reputation as well as to increase its voice in public discourse in Great Britain and around the world. More recently Giddens has entered a new phase of his career. In contrast to the highly theoretical focus of his early work, he has now turned his attention to the study of practical problems of contemporary life, such as globalization and climate change. Excerpt from Ian Craib, Anthony Giddens (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 12.

Reflexivity People in the modern world, however, are not content simply to leave things to the experts. People are reflexive, constantly examining big issues like nuclear technology and genetic research as well as the more mundane aspects of their everyday activities. Although our reexamination of the big issues may have little effect on those issues, it does leave us with a constant sense of uneasiness about them and their implications for their lives. More important, our constant examination of and reforming of our own actions results in an even greater degree of uneasiness. Few things are ever done once and for all. Rather, everything is constantly open to reexamination, and actions taken may be revised or modified. We not only reflect on our actions, but we also reflect on our thinking about those actions. This leaves us with an even more pervasive sense of uneasiness than our reflection on things like the dangers of nuclear technology.

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KEY CONCEPT Risk Society

Although the idea of risk is important to Giddens, it lies at the center of the work of German theorist Ulrich Beck (1944–2015), as reflected in the title of his best-known book, Risk Society (1992). Beck sees society today as being defined by risk and the ways in which it can be prevented, minimized, or channeled. Thus, instead of finding solidarity, as previous generations did, in the pursuit of positive goals such as greater equality, people today are unified largely by the negative goal of being spared the dangers associated with risks. Many of today’s risks stem from modern industry, and what makes them different from earlier risks is not that they are more dangerous (an accident at a nuclear power plant is far more dangerous than one at a conventional power plant) but also that they are not restricted by place or time. For example, the harm done by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 was not restricted to the geographic area around the plant; it affected many parts of the world, some remote from the original site. Furthermore, the impacts were not restricted to the time at which the accident occurred. Effects have lingered as the site and its environs remain dangerous to this day, and more important, people continue to suffer the ill effects of radiation exposure, with some even now experiencing new symptoms or developing symptoms for the first time. Risk, like many other things in the social world, is stratified. Rich nations and the upper classes in every nation are less likely to experience risk than are poor nations and the lower classes. Risks are much more likely to exist in poor nations than in rich ones (and the latter export risks to the former) and in areas where the lower rather than the upper classes live. Nevertheless, even the upper classes are not free from risk in the contemporary world. One reason is the ­boomerang effect, whereby risks strike back on the upper classes and rich nations most responsible for their production. Thus, rich nations and the upper classes seek to place factories that adversely affect the environment as far away from them as possible, but many of those risks still find their way back to them in the form of polluted air and water, a widening hole in the ozone layer, global warming, and the like. Thus, in many ways, there is no way for anyone to hide from, or escape, the risk society.

boomerang effect–The phenomenon in which risks strike back on the upper classes and rich nations most responsible for their production (Beck).

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Insecurity and Risks In what Giddens calls high modernity, we are all faced with great insecurity about life. The insecurity is made manageable by childhood socialization that leaves us with the ability to trust not only our parents but also authority figures in general. In addition, we all follow sets of daily routines that make it seem as if our lives are safe. However, we remain painfully aware of the risks that surround us. These risks are global in nature and involve not only the things previously discussed but also things like increasing global economic interdependence and the likelihood that an economic crisis in one part of the world could bring the entire global economy crashing down around us. We also know that although we generally trust the experts, they cannot fully control the juggernaut. The actions they take can cause crises, and the actions they take to deal with those crises can easily serve to worsen them. Why the risks? Or, to put it another way, why is the juggernaut always threatening to careen out of control? Giddens offers four answers: 1. Those who designed the juggernaut and its components made mistakes; the juggernaut has design faults. For example, those involved in the design and creation of the Chernobyl nuclear plant (and undoubtedly other nuclear reactors around the world) made a number of mistakes that led to the meltdown. 2. Those who run the juggernaut (its operators) make mistakes; the juggernaut is subject to operator failure. Thus, the meltdown at Chernobyl may have been caused by fatal errors made by those who ran the plant on a daily basis. In fact, the meltdown was undoubtedly the result of some combination of operator failure and design faults. 3. We cannot always foresee accurately the consequences of modifying the juggernaut or creating new components for it; such actions often have unintended consequences. For example, we are at present at the beginning of a revolution in the science of genetics, but we cannot foresee all of the consequences of the genetic changes we are now undertaking. Similarly, the manufacturers of fen-phen had no idea that the drug would lead to heart valve defects in patients who took it. 4. People in general, and experts in particular, are constantly reflecting on the juggernaut and, in the process, creating new knowledge about it. Such new knowledge applied to the juggernaut makes it likely that it will move at a different pace and/or in a different direction. However, this new pace and/or direction may bring with it a series of negative consequences. For example, at times the Federal Reserve System increases interest rates to keep inflation under control. However, rising interest rates bring with them the possibility of an economic recession; the economy could slow down too much.

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SUMMARY 1. Critical theory is focally interested in the culture industry and the increasing control of culture over people. Key to this control is mass culture, especially that disseminated by the mass media. 2. Critical theorists are critical of technology, especially the way it is used in capitalism. 3. The predominance of technology is producing a one-dimensional society in which people lose their ability to think creatively and critically. 4. Critical theorists are concerned with the effects of technology on thinking. People seek only the best means to an end without reflecting on the means or end. People lose the capacity for reason; this is part of the irrationality of rational systems. 5. Unlike most Marxists, critical theorists have a pessimistic view of the future, seeing only increasing technological control and rationalization. 6. Some neo-Marxists have shifted their attention to spatial analysis, especially the way space reproduces capitalist class relationships and the need to restructure space in a more egalitarian manner. 7. Henri Lefebvre makes distinctions among absolute space, historical space, abstract space, and differential space. 8. Lefebvre wants to see a transition from production in space to production of space. 9. David Harvey has reanalyzed The Communist Manifesto to uncover its spatial implications and the weaknesses in its spatial arguments. He has also used this analysis to develop a more positive image of the future in terms of “spaces of hope.” 10. Norbert Elias’s grand theory deals with the civilizing process, whereby a number of once-visible behaviors has come to be seen as uncivilized and have disappeared from public view. 11. A key factor in this change was the emergence of the king’s court, with its long dependency chains, and more generally, the lengthening dependency chains of more people. 12. Jürgen Habermas’s grand theory deals with the colonization of the lifeworld by the system and the prevention of free and open communication.

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13. The lifeworld, to Habermas, is the realm of everyday communication. 14. The system, to Habermas, has its origin in the lifeworld but comes to develop its own structures (e.g., the family, the state) that grow more distant and separate from the lifeworld. 15. Anthony Giddens’s grand theory deals with the juggernaut of modernity, a massive force that although it is steered by people, always has the possibility of lurching out of control. 16. Among the factors that can cause the juggernaut of modernity to careen out of control are design faults, operator error, unintended consequences, and the use of new knowledge that sends the juggernaut in unanticipated directions.

SUGGESTED READINGS CHRISTOPHER G. A. BRYANT and DAVID JARY “Anthony Giddens.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 432–463. Helpful overview of Giddens’s life and work, including his more recent writing on the environment and climate change. KANISHKA GOONEWARDENA “Henri Lefebvre.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 44–54. Comprehensive essay that describes Lefebvre’s theory of space as well as other, lesser-known aspects of his theory. MARTIN JAY The Dialectical Imagination. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. Important overview of neo-Marxian theory, especially as it relates to the critical school. DOUGLAS KELLNER “Frankfurt School.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 290–293. Concise summary of the importance of this school, also known as critical theory, by an important contemporary exponent of this approach. RICHARD KILMINSTER and STEPHEN MENNELL “Norbert Elias.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2011, pp. 13–43. Recent overview of Elias’s life and work. STEPHEN MENNELL Norbert Elias: An Introduction. Dublin, Ireland: University College Dublin Press, 1998. Good resource for those who crave more detail about Elias’s perspective.

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ANDY MERRIFIELD Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2006. An overview of Lefebvre’s life and work; outlines keys concepts and places them in biographical context. STJEPAN G. MESTROVIC Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist. London: Routledge, 1998. Interesting for its critiques (often outrageous) of Giddens’s work. GERD NOLLMAN “Jürgen Habermas.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 351–352. Brief look at a few of the highlights of Habermas’s theoretical contributions. WILLIAM OUTHWAITE Habermas: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Useful resource for those who want greater detail on Habermas’s work. JOHN RUNDELL “Norbert Elias.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 239–245. Overview of Elias’s work focusing on his most important theoretical ideas. ROB STONES “Anthony Giddens.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 321–327. Broad overview of Giddens’s theoretical work with special attention to his later theorizing.

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CHAPTER

SIX

CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Symbolic Interactionism Dramaturgy Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Exchange Theory Rational Choice Theory Summary Suggested Readings

In the preceding two chapters we have dealt with contemporary grand theories of large-scale changes in the social world. In this chapter we remain focused on contemporary theories but this time those that are oriented to a variety of smallscale phenomena associated with everyday life. We begin with symbolic interactionism, a theory strongly influenced by the thinking of George H ­ erbert Mead (see Chapter 3). This is followed by an examination of dramaturgy, which sees much of social life as analogous to a theatrical performance. We then address ethnomethodology, which is concerned with the methods we all use regularly to accomplish our lives on a daily basis. Next is exchange theory, which looks at social relationships in terms of rewards and costs and argues, among other things, that we are likely to continue in relationships that are rewarding and discontinue those that are costly. Finally, we discuss rational choice theory, which focuses on actors making choices that maximize the satisfaction of their needs and wants.

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SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM The focus of symbolic interactionism, like that of the other theories discussed in this chapter, is on everyday life. This theory’s distinctive focus, as its name suggests, is on interaction (as well as action and people as agents) and the symbols (and their meanings) that are deeply implicated in it. We can best address this theory by first enumerating some of its most fundamental assumptions and principles. First, people act toward things, but they do so on the basis of the meanings those things have for them. Thus, we act toward the American flag—say, by saluting it—based on the meaning that the flag has for us (our homeland) and not simply its physical characteristics. This also means that others can act toward it in other ways (say, by burning or defacing it) because it has other meanings (a symbol of U.S. imperialism) for them. Second, these meanings stem from our interactions with other people. Thus, we may have learned about the flag as a positive symbol through interactions at school, whereas enemies of the United States may have learned their meanings through interactions with groups of revolutionaries. Third, people do not simply internalize the meanings that they learn through social interaction; they are also able to modify those meanings through an interpretive process. Thus, whereas one may have learned to see the flag as a positive symbol, dissatisfaction with, say, America’s foreign policies might lead one to reinterpret the flag and to feel a bit less positive toward, or even develop negative sentiments about, it and what it stands for. Conversely, those who develop negative views in a revolutionary cell may become more positive about the flag and what it symbolizes as a result of U.S. actions that satisfy some of the revolutionaries’ demands. Fourth, people, in contrast to other animals, are unique in their ability to use and rely on symbols. Whereas other animals react directly or blindly to stimuli, people are able to give them meaning (turn them into symbols) and then act on the basis of that meaning. To put this another way, other animals react instinctively to objects, whereas we think through their meaning. Thus, a hungry animal might eat a poisonous mushroom, but we would be able to think through the fact that we had better not eat it because it might be poisonous. Fifth, people become human through social interaction, especially in the early years with family members and then in school. We are born with the capacity to become human, but that potential can be realized only through human interaction. Thus, feral children—those raised in the wild by animals (e.g., wolves)—­ cannot become human, but they can begin to become human if they are rescued and have the opportunity to interact with other humans. symbolic interactionism–The school of sociology that following Mead, focuses on symbolic interaction, the distinctive human ability to relate to one another not only through gestures but also through significant symbols.

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Sixth, as Mead made clear (see Chapter 3), people are conscious, capable of reflecting on themselves and what they do, and therefore capable of shaping their actions and interactions. In Mead’s terms, then, people have both a “mind” and a “self.” Particularly important is our ability to interact with ourselves to decide how to interact with objects in our world. This gives us a large measure of autonomy in our actions, but we certainly are not totally free to do as we wish—there are many external constraints on our actions. Seventh, people have purposes when they act in, as well as toward, situations. We define situations, give them meaning, and then act toward them. We choose ends and then act toward them (although not always successfully or in a linear manner because we may encounter all sorts of barriers and roadblocks).

KEY CONCEPTS The Conceptual Contributions of Charles Horton Cooley

Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929) is best known for his concept of the lookingglass self. We form our sense of ourselves by looking in some sort of mirror. That mirror is the other people with whom we interact. We use others as a mirror to assess who we are and how we are doing. We look at their eyes and their body language, and we listen to their words. Looking in that mirror, we determine whether we are who we want to be and whether our actions are having the desired effect. If we see what we expect to see, if people evaluate us the way we hope, if they do what we want them to do, then the mirror confirms ourselves and we continue on as we have been thinking and acting. However, if the reverse occurs, then we may need to reassess our actions and even our sense of who we are. If the looking-glass continues to show us a reflection that is different from what we think we are, then we may need to reevaluate our sense of who we are— in other words, reevaluate our self-image. The looking-glass self reflects Cooley’s interest, like that of others associated with symbolic interactionism, in the mind, self, and interaction. Another key concept associated with Cooley is the primary group, an intimate face-to-face group that plays a crucial role in linking the individual to the (Continued)

looking-glass self–The idea that we form our sense of ourselves by using others, and their reactions to us, as a mirror to assess who we are and how we are doing (Cooley). primary group–An intimate face-to-face group that plays a crucial role in linking the individual to the larger society. Of special importance are the primary groups of the young, mainly the family and friendship groups (Cooley).

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(Continued) larger society. Of special importance are the primary groups of the young, mainly the family and friendship groups, within which the individual grows into a social being. It is mainly within the primary group that the looking-glass self develops and the child makes the transition from thinking mainly about themselves to taking others into consideration. As a result of this transformation, the child begins to develop the capabilities that will enable them to become a contributing member of society. Cooley also made an important methodological contribution by arguing that sociologists need to put themselves in the places of the actors they are studying (usually in the real world) to better understand the operation of their mental processes. Cooley called this sympathetic introspection—putting oneself in the places and the minds of those being studied, doing so in a way that is sympathetic to who they are and what they are thinking and trying to understand the meanings and the motives that lie at the base of their behavior. This method continues to be one of the cornerstones of the study of everyday life, at least for some sociologists.

Eighth, we can see society as comprising people engaging in social interaction. Thus, society is not some macro-level entity separable from people. People produce society; society is the joint action of people.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Antidepressants: A Symbolic Interactionist View Recent years have seen significant growth in the numbers of people using antidepressant medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, and Cymbalta. Most people think of antidepressant medications as a wholly biological technology: they help people overcome depression and anxiety by modifying brain chemistry. However, the symbolic interactionist David Karp argues that there is also a sociological dimension to antidepressant use. For many people the use of antidepressants is an occasion for the redefinition of the self. This is because, in contemporary society, antidepressants and mental illness have powerful symbolic meanings that have implications for the way people think about themselves and their psychological suffering. For example, people who are depressed sometimes blame themselves for their depression. They may think that they are failures

sympathetic introspection–The methodology of putting oneself in the places and the minds of those one is studying, doing so in a way that is sympathetic to who they are and what they are thinking and trying to understand the meanings and the motives that lie at the base of their behavior. 156    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

because they cannot will their depression away. However, when people take antidepressants they learn that they are not to blame for their illness—rather, their depression is caused by an imbalance in brain chemistry. This not only gives them a feeling of relief but also allows them to think about themselves in new and sometimes empowering ways: I’m not to blame; it’s an illness. The symbolic meaning associated with antidepressants can also be negative. Even though cultural understandings of mental illness have changed significantly over the past 50 years, there is still a stigma associated with mental illness. People may be afraid to take antidepressants because they know that doing so will place them in the stigmatized category of “mentally ill person.” They will no longer be able to think of themselves as merely sad. Rather the fact that they are taking psychiatric medications becomes proof to them that they have a real illness called depression. The power of the negative connotations of mental illness can be so strong that people will avoid or stop taking antidepressant medications. Whether the meanings that individuals ascribe to antidepressants are positive, negative, or a combination the two, what should be clear is that these medications have socially determined symbolic meanings that affect the construction of the self.

There is, of course, much more to symbolic interactionism than this, but this brief overview, as well as the earlier, more detailed discussion of Mead’s ideas, should give a sense of this theoretical perspective. However, we need to make one more basic point before we move on. Symbolic interactionists are inclined to do social research rather than to develop abstract theories. This means they often go out and study people and get at their meanings from their point of view. To do this they must often venture into the real world and observe and interact with people. A key figure in this tradition of social research in the real world is Robert E. Park (1864–1944). Park had been a reporter before becoming a sociologist, and as a reporter he was accustomed to collecting data on and observing whatever social reality he was writing about. When he became a sociologist, Park urged his students as well as colleagues to do much the same thing. In one sense, he was encouraging them to do what has come to be known as fieldwork—that is, venturing into the field to observe and collect relevant data. More specifically, as a result of the urging of Park (and others), the key method of symbolic interactionists became observation. The attraction of being observers is that researchers can both engage in sympathetic introspection and put themselves in the place of fieldwork–A methodology used by symbolic interactionists and other sociologists that involves venturing into the field (the day-to-day social world) to observe and collect relevant data. observation–A methodology closely related to fieldwork, in which symbolic interactionists (and other sociologists) study the social world by observing what is transpiring in it. In the case of symbolic interactionism, this enables researchers to engage in sympathetic introspection and put themselves in the place of actors to understand meanings and motives and to observe the actions that people take. CHAPTER SIX  •  CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE   157

actors to try to understand their meanings and motives and observe the actions that people take. Thus, observation is a perfect way for those associated with symbolic interactionism to study the thought processes, actions, and interactions of everyday life.

DRAMATURGY The concept of self lies at the heart of symbolic interactionism. Herbert Blumer defined the self in extremely simple terms as the fact that people can be the objects of their own actions; that is, people have the ability to act not only toward others but also toward themselves (e.g., by admonishing themselves for saying foolish things). Both types of actions are based on the kinds of objects people are to themselves (e.g., whether they look upon themselves in a positive or negative light). Being able to do this, to act toward themselves, allows people to act in a conscious manner rather merely react to external stimuli. People actually interact with themselves to point out the things toward which they are acting and the meanings of those things. They interpret the meanings of things and alter those interpretations on the basis of the situation they are in and what they hope to accomplish. The most important work on the self in symbolic interactionism is The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman. Goffman’s conception of the self is deeply indebted to Mead’s (see Chapter 3) ideas, in particular his discussion of the tension between I, the spontaneous self, and me, social constraints within the self. This tension is mirrored in Goffman’s work on what to him was a critical discrepancy between our all-too-human selves on the one hand and our socialized selves on the other. The tension results from the difference between what we may want to do spontaneously and what people expect us to do. We are confronted with demands to do what is expected of us; moreover, we are not supposed to waver. To cope with this tension and maintain a stable self-image, people perform for their social audiences. As a result of this interest in performance, Goffman focused on dramaturgy, or a view of social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those that take place in the theater.

Dramaturgy Goffman’s ideas about the self were shaped by his dramaturgical approach. To Goffman (and to most other symbolic interactionists), the self is not a possession of the actor but rather the product of the dramatic interaction between actor and audience. In other words, the self is a sense of who one is that is a dramatic dramaturgy–A view of social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those that take place in the theater (Goffman). self–To Goffman, a sense of who one is that is a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate dramaturgical scene being presented.

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effect emerging from the immediate scene being presented. Because the self is a product of dramatic interaction, it is vulnerable to disruption during the performance. Much of Goffman’s dramaturgy is concerned with the processes by which such disturbances are prevented or dealt with. Although the bulk of his discussion focuses on these dramaturgical contingencies, Goffman pointed out that most performances are successful. The result is that in ordinary circumstances a firm self is accorded to performers, and it appears to emanate from the performers. Goffman assumed that when individuals interact, they want to present a certain sense of self that will be accepted by others. However, even as they present that self, actors are aware that members of the audience can disturb their performance. For that reason actors are attuned to the need to control the audience, especially those members of it who might be disruptive. The actors hope that the sense of self that they present to the audience will be strong enough for the audience to define the actors as the actors want to be defined. The actors also hope that this will cause the audience to act voluntarily as the actors want them to. Goffman characterized this central interest as impression management. It involves techniques actors use to maintain certain impressions in the face of problems they are likely to encounter and methods they use to cope with these problems. Front Stage.  Following the theatrical analogy, Goffman spoke of a front stage, that part of the performance that generally functions in fixed and general ways to define the situation for those who observe the performance. A professor lecturing to a class may be said to be in their front stage, as would a student at a fraternity party. Within the front stage, Goffman further differentiated between the setting and the personal front. The setting is the physical scene that ordinarily must be there if the actors are to perform. Without it, the actors usually cannot perform. For example, a surgeon generally requires an operating room, a taxi driver a cab, and an ice-skater an ice rink. The personal front comprises those items of expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting. A surgeon, for instance, is expected to dress in a medical gown, have certain instruments, and so on. Goffman subdivided the personal front into appearance and manner. Appearance includes those items that tell the audience the performer’s social status (e.g., impression management–The techniques actors use to maintain certain impressions in the face of problems they are likely to encounter and the methods they use to cope with these problems Goffman). front stage–That part of a dramaturgical performance that generally functions in rather fixed and general ways to define the situation for those who observe the performance (Goffman). setting–The physical scene that ordinarily must be there if the actors are to engage in a dramaturgical performance (Goffman). personal front–Those items of expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting (Goffman). appearance–The way the actor looks to the audience, especially those items that indicate the performer’s social status (Goffman).

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the taxi driver’s license). Manner (e.g., the expression of confidence on the surgeon’s face) tells the audience what sort of role the performer expects to play in the situation. A brusque manner and a meek manner indicate different kinds of performances. In general, we expect appearance and manner to be consistent. Although Goffman approached the front and other aspects of his system as a symbolic interactionist, he did discuss their structural character. He argued that fronts tend to become institutionalized, so collective representations arise about what is to go on in a certain front. Often when actors take on established roles, they find particular fronts already established for such performances. The professor who appears before a class has a front that has been established by many professors and students who have come before them. The result, Goffman argued, is that fronts tend to be selected, not created. This idea conveys a much more structural image than we would receive from most symbolic interactionists.

KEY CONCEPT Role Distance

Another of Goffman’s interests was the degree to which an individual embraces a given role. In his view, because of the large number of roles, few people get completely involved in any given role. Role distance is the degree to which individuals separate themselves from the roles they are in. For example, if older children ride on a merry-go-round, they are likely to be aware that they are too old to enjoy such an experience. One way they might cope with this feeling is by demonstrating distance from the role by performing seemingly dangerous acts in a careless, lackadaisical way while on the merry-go-round. In performing such acts, the older children are explaining to the audience that they are not as immersed in the activity as small children might be or that if they are, it is because of the special things they are doing. One of Goffman’s key insights is that role distance is a function of social status. High-status and low-status people often manifest role distance for different reasons. For example, a high-status surgeon may manifest role distance in the operating room to relieve the tension of the operating team. People in low-status positions usually manifest more defensiveness in exhibiting role distance. For instance, people who clean toilets may do so in a careless and uninterested manner. They may be trying to tell their audience that they are too good for such work.

manner–The way actors conduct themselves, which tells the audience what sort of role the actors expect to play in the situation (Goffman). role distance–The degree to which individuals separate themselves from the roles they are in (Goffman).

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Despite such a structural view, Goffman’s most interesting insights lie in the domain of interaction. He argued that because people generally try to present an idealized picture of themselves in their front stage performances, inevitably they feel that they must hide things in their performances: 1. Actors may want to conceal secret pleasures they engaged in prior to the performance (e.g., the professor who consumed alcohol before entering class) or in past roles (e.g., the physician who has overcome a drug addiction) that are incompatible with their performance. 2. Actors may want to conceal errors made in the preparation of the performance as well as steps taken to correct these errors. For example, a surgeon may seek to hide the fact that they prepared to do an appendectomy when, in fact, they were scheduled to do open heart surgery. A professor who brings the wrong notes to class may be forced to improvise during the class period to conceal that fact. 3. Actors may find it necessary to show only end products and to conceal the process involved in producing them. For example, professors may spend several hours preparing their lectures, but they may want to act as if they have always known the material. 4. It may be necessary for actors to conceal from the audience that dirty work was involved in the making of the end products. Dirty work may include doing things that are immoral, illegal, or degrading. For example, a manufacturer of peanut butter may seek to conceal from government inspectors the fact that an inordinate number of rodent droppings and rodent hairs found their way into the finished product. 5. In giving a certain performance, actors may have to let other standards slide. For example, to keep up with a busy surgical schedule, the surgeon may not be able to find the time to do enough reading to keep up with recent developments in the field. 6. Finally, actors probably find it necessary to hide any insults, humiliations, or deals made so that the performance could go on. A surgeon may well want to hide the fact that they have been admonished by their superiors for not keeping up with recent developments and that they will be suspended if they do not demonstrate that they are reducing their surgical schedule so that they have time to do so. Generally, actors have a vested interest in hiding all of the facts discussed previously from their audience. Another aspect of dramaturgy in the front stage is that actors often try to convey the impression that they are closer to the audience than they actually are. Actors may try to foster the impression that the performance in which they are

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engaged at the moment is their only performance or at least their most important one. Thus, a physician must try to convey the impression to every patient that they are the most important patient and the object of their undivided attention. To do this, actors have to be sure that their audiences are segregated so that the falsity of the performance is not discovered. The physician’s patients would be upset to learn that the doctor has purposely tried to make each one of them feel as if they are the most important patient. Even if the falsity is discovered, Goffman argued, the audiences themselves may try to cope with it to avoid shattering their idealized image of the actor. Thus, the patients may console themselves that this is the way doctors are, and in any case, the doctor does excellent work. This reveals the interactional character of performances. A successful performance depends on the involvement of all parties. Another example of this kind of impression management is an actor’s attempt to convey the idea that there is something unique about this performance as well as about their relationship to the audience. Thus, a car salesperson may seek to convey the idea that they like a particular customer and is giving them a far better deal than they would give anyone else. The audience, too, wants to feel that it is the recipient of a unique performance. The car buyer wants to feel that the salesperson is not giving them the same old spiel and that they have a special relationship with the salesperson. Actors try to make sure that all the parts of any performance blend together. A priest might seek to ensure consistency and continuity among his Sunday sermons. In some cases, a single discordant aspect can disrupt a performance. However, performances vary in the amount of consistency required. A slip by a priest on a sacred occasion might be terribly disruptive, but if a taxi driver makes one wrong turn, the overall performance is not likely to be greatly damaged. Another technique employed by performers is mystification. Actors often tend to confound their audience by restricting the contact between themselves and the audience. They do not want the audience to see the mundane things that go into a performance. Thus, a professor may prepare a lecture by simply reading a textbook not being used in that particular class, but they will certainly conceal this fact and attempt to act as if they have known this material and much else for a long time. By generating social distance between themselves and the audience, actors try to create a sense of awe in the audience. Students are supposed to be awed by how much a professor knows and how effortlessly a mass of information can be brought to bear on a particular lecture. This awe, in turn, keeps the audience from questioning the performance. Goffman pointed out that the audience is involved in this process and often seeks to maintain the credibility of the performance by keeping its distance from the performer. In the case being

mystification–An effort by actors to confound their audience by restricting the contact between themselves and the audience, concealing the mundane things that go into their performance (Goffman).

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discussed here, students would not want to know how the professor prepares for class because that would demystify the whole process. Goffman also had an interest in teams. As a symbolic interactionist, he believed that a focus on individual actors obscures important facts about interaction. Thus, Goffman’s basic unit of analysis was not the individual but the team. A team is any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single routine. The preceding discussion of the relationship between the performer and the audience is about teams. Each member is reliant on the others because all can disrupt the performance and all are aware that an act is being put on. Goffman concluded that a team is a kind of secret society. A class is such a secret society, and class members cooperate with the professor in making each class meeting a credible performance. Of course, at times a professor makes so many slips, or reveals so many weaknesses, that the students can no longer ignore them and the performance is disrupted, if not destroyed. However, this a rarity and something students and professors, audiences and performers, seek to avoid at all costs. Back Stage and Outside.  Goffman also discussed a back stage, where facts suppressed in the front stage or kinds of informal actions may appear. A back stage is usually adjacent to the front stage, but it is also cut off from it. Performers can reliably expect no members of their front audience to appear in the back. ­Furthermore, they engage in types of impression management to make sure of this. A performance is likely to become difficult when actors are unable to prevent the audience from entering the back stage. The doctors’ lounge is the back stage relative to the office where physicians interact with patients. Safely in the back stage lounge, doctors can say things about their patients, their expertise, or their performance that they would never say to patients in the front stage. A doctor would rarely, if ever, tell a patient that they dislikes them or that they have no idea what ails the patient or what to do about it. A third, residual domain is the outside, which is neither front nor back. For example, a brothel is (usually) outside relative to the doctor’s office and lounge. However, it is possible that a brothel could become a back stage if it is visited by doctors or patients who then bend the ear of the sex worker by complaining about each other. The latter illustrates the idea that no area is always one of these three domains. Also, a given area can occupy all three domains at different times. A professor’s office is front stage when a student visits, back stage when the student leaves, and outside when the professor is at a university basketball game. team–Any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single performance (Goffman). back stage–Where facts suppressed in the front stage or kinds of informal actions may appear. A back stage is usually adjacent to the front stage, but it is also cut off from it. Performers can reliably expect no members of their front audience to appear in the back (Goffman). outside–Neither front nor back; literally outside the realm of the performance (Goffman).

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KEY CONCEPT Stigma

Goffman was interested in stigma, or the gap between what a person ought to be, virtual social identity, and what a person actually is, actual social identity. Goffman focused on the dramaturgical interaction between stigmatized people and “normals.” The nature of that interaction depends on which of two types of stigma an individual has. In the case of discredited stigma, the actor assumes that the differences are known by the audience members or are evident to them (e.g., a paraplegic or someone who has lost a limb). A discreditable stigma is one in which the differences are neither known by audience members nor perceivable by them (e.g., a person who has had a colostomy or a homosexual passing as straight). For someone with a discredited stigma, the basic dramaturgical problem is managing the tension produced by the fact that people know of the problem. For someone with a discreditable stigma, the dramaturgical problem is managing information so that the stigma remains unknown to the audience. Most of the text of Goffman’s Stigma is devoted to people with obvious, often grotesque, stigmas (e.g., the loss of a nose). However, as the book unfolds, the reader realizes that Goffman is saying that we are all stigmatized at some time or other or in some setting or other. His examples include the Jew passing in a predominantly Christian community, the fat person in a group of people of average weight, and the individual who has lied about their past and constantly must be sure that the audience does not learn of this deception.

Impression Management In general, impression management is oriented to guarding against a series of unexpected actions, such as unintended gestures, inopportune intrusions, and faux pas, as well as intended actions, such as making a scene. Goffman was interested in the methods of dealing with such problems. stigma–A gap between virtual and actual social identity (Goffman). virtual social identity–What a person ought to be (Goffman). actual social identity–What a person actually is (Goffman). discredited stigma–A stigma that the actor assumes is known by the audience members or is evident to them (Goffman). discreditable stigma–A stigma that is neither known by audience members nor discernible by them (Goffman). 164    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

ERVING GOFFMAN (1922–1982) A Biographical Vignette Erving Goffman died in 1982 at the peak of his fame. He had long been regarded as a cult figure in sociological theory. He achieved this status in spite of the fact that he had been a professor in the prestigious sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley and later held an endowed chair at the Ivy League’s University of Pennsylvania. By the 1980s he had emerged as a centrally important theorist. He had been elected president of the American Sociological Association in the year he died but was unable to give his presidential address because of advanced illness. Given Goffman’s maverick status, Randall Collins says of his address: “Everyone wondered what he would do for his presidential address: a straight, traditional presentation seemed unthinkable for Goffman with his reputation as an iconoclast. We got a far more dramatic message: presidential address canceled, Goffman dying. It was an appropriately ­Goffmanian way to go out.” Excerpt from Randall Collins, “The Passing of Intellectual Generations: Reflections on the Death of Erving Goffman,” in Sociological Theory 4 (1986):106–113, p. 112. © 1986 by the American Sociological Association.

1. One set of methods involves actions aimed at producing dramaturgical loyalty by, for example, fostering high in-group loyalty, preventing team members from identifying with those outside the performance, and changing audiences periodically so that they do not become too knowledgeable about the performers. 2. Goffman suggested forms of dramaturgical discipline, such as having the presence of mind to avoid slips, maintain self-control, and manage the facial expressions and verbal tone of one’s performance. 3. He identified types of dramaturgical circumspection, such as determining in advance how a performance should go, planning for emergencies, selecting loyal teammates, selecting good audiences, being involved in small teams where dissension is less likely, making only brief appearances, preventing audience access to private information, and settling on a complete agenda to prevent unforeseen occurrences. The audience also has a stake in successful impression management by the actor or actors. The audience often acts to save the performance through devices such as giving great interest and attention to it, avoiding emotional outbursts, not noticing slips, and giving special consideration to neophyte performers. CHAPTER SIX  •  CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE   165

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The Stigmatization of Muslims after September 11, 2001 Prior to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, relatively little hostility was aimed at Muslims in the United States. They were simply yet another group of immigrants who had integrated or were integrating into the United States. It was other groups—mainly African Americans and Mexican immigrants (especially those here illegally)—who were most often stigmatized; Muslims largely escaped this process. However, the heinous acts of September 11—planned and committed largely, if not exclusively, by Muslims associated with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—changed that. Since then there has been an increasing and palpable tendency for many Americans to stigmatize Muslims both within and outside the United States. The growth of the Islamic State in the Middle East and the heated, sometimes anti-immigrant, rhetoric during and after the 2016 American presidential campaign added to this stigmatization. Some Muslims have a discredited stigma because their physical appearance, accents, modes of dress, and so on make it clear to others (or seem to) that they are ­Muslims. Other Muslims whose appearance, accents, and ways of dressing are not dissimilar from those of most other Americans are more likely to confront the stresses and strains of a discreditable stigma. Because of this, non-Muslims who are mistakenly thought to be Muslim are also stigmatized. One indicator of the increasing stigmatization of Muslims is the tendency for movies and television shows to depict Muslims as villains. This is the case, for example, in shows like 24 and Homeland, both of which have depicted groups of ruthless Muslims intent on spreading death and destruction in the United States by, for example, infiltrating security agencies, blowing up bombs on ­American soil, or causing the meltdown of nuclear reactors throughout the country. ­During the 2004–2005 season of 24, the show’s stigmatization of Muslims was so blatant that the network issued disclaimers. At one point, the show’s star, Kiefer Sutherland, appeared in a spot in which he claimed that the stigmatization of Muslims was not the intent of the show and stated that many Muslims are good ­Americans. In one episode, two clearly Muslim shop owners were depicted allying themselves with Jack Bauer (Sutherland’s character) and taking up arms against a private army employed by a ruthless defense contractor. Such disclaimers and actions did little to counter the stigmatization of Muslims on the show—and increasingly in the larger society.

One thing that many critics of Goffman’s thinking on dramaturgy have pointed out is his cynical view of actors. He believed that actors are putting on performances and they are well aware of that fact. They cynically manipulate their performances and the impressions they seek to make to accomplish their objectives. They are generally aware that some aspects of what they say and do are false, but they persevere nonetheless. 166    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Emotion Management Goffman briefly discussed the role that emotions, such as shame, play in the management of social performances. For example, he suggested that people attempt to “save face” in their performances to avoid the embarrassment of a “failed” performance. This said, for the most part, Goffman’s theory prioritized the symbolic or cognitive (thinking) aspects of social performance over emotional aspects of performance. Starting in the 1980s, as part of a more general sociological enthusiasm for the study of emotions, Arlie Hochschild began supplementing Goffman’s dramaturgical theory by analyzing emotion management, the techniques that people use to express, and control, emotion in a social performance. According to Hochschild, whereas emotions are connected to biological processes, such as changes in heart rate, blood flow, and hormone levels, they can also be manipulated through social processes. As with Goffman’s concept of impression management, Hochschild says that the success of social performances requires the presentation of context-appropriate emotions. For example, when a friend tells you that they have had a bad day, the appropriate response is a display of sympathy rather than laughter. These emotional performances do not occur naturally but rather depend on a person’s ability to conjure and display the right kind of feeling at the right time. To develop this idea, drawing on the writings of Russian theater actor Constantin Stanislavski, Hochschild distinguishes between surface acting and deep acting. In surface acting, a person manipulates surface appearances such as facial expression and tone of voice to convey an emotional expression to others. The politician, for example, smiles and warmly shakes a supporter’s hand to communicate appreciation. Goffman is regarded as the master theorist of surface acting, and in fact a criticism of his work is that he reduced all of human behavior to strategic and cynical forms of surface acting. To describe the concept of deep acting, Hochschild relies on Stanislavski’s technique of method acting. Stanislavski advised actors to communicate emotion not only through the surface of the body but through the “soul” as well. In deep acting the performance of emotions comes from the actor’s living through them. A deep actor does not simply perform the emotions but actually experiences them as part of the performance. To do this, the actor recalls memories of situations from their own past in which they experienced emotions similar to those required by the present social context. By bringing the personal emotional past into the present situation, the actor is able to perform emotion with realism emotion management–The techniques that people use to express, and control, emotion in a social performance (Hochschild). surface acting–A performance in which a person manipulates surface appearances such as facial expression and tone of voice to convey an emotional expression to others (Hochschild). deep acting–A performance in which a person recalls personal emotional experiences to create an authentic emotional performance in the present (Hochschild). CHAPTER SIX  •  CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE   167

and authenticity. Unlike the handshaking politician, the actor is not merely going through the motions. Rather, they are digging deep to actually feel the emotion in the present. Hochschild breaks the process down into several steps: • A person recognizes that they are expected to feel a particular way in a situation. • The person then recalls an appropriate emotion memory, an autobiographical episode that carries within it strong feelings. • The person then acts as if the feeling contained in the memory is relevant to the present moment. • This allows the person to deeply feel the emotion appropriate to the situation. Hochschild gives numerous examples of how this works in everyday life. A person is not as strongly affected by a friend’s mental breakdown as would be expected, so they recall a similar episode from their own past and uses that emotion memory to better sympathize with their friend. A young Catholic woman works hard to feel love for a man to justify having slept with him. In emotion management there is an intense use of memory and imagination to bring the body into alignment with the expectations of the moment. This said, emotion work involves more than a person’s relationship with their own emotion memory. Hochschild identifies many ways in which people use their immediate settings to conjure deep feeling. For example, people may rely on stage props to help them bring up emotion memories. Or they may rely on friends and family—members of their performance team, to use Goffman’s term—to help them feel the right emotions. Alternatively, people might leave particularly evocative settings to suppress unwanted emotions. Here we see that emotion work is used not only to evoke particular emotions but also to suppress particular emotions. If, for example, an individual starts to feel inappropriate joy at the failure of a friend or classmate, they might imagine a similar failure from their own past. If this emotion work is successful, they will suppress the emotion of joy and evoke the more appropriate emotion of sympathy. Feeling Rules.  Hochschild also describes the many feeling rules that influence the way people manage their emotions in particular situations. Feeling rules are culturally determined standards for emotion management. For example, different cultures have different rules for the expression of grief at the death of a loved one. Some cultures expect a loud and joyous celebration of the deceased person’s life accompanied by alcohol and food consumption. Other cultures expect a solemn emotion memory–A memory of an autobiographical episode that carries within it strong feelings (Hochschild). feeling rules–Culturally determined standards for emotion management (Hochschild).

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ceremony of commemoration. Feeling rules lay out the extent, direction, and duration of feeling in a particular situation. Extent refers to how strongly a particular emotion should be felt. Should I be very happy at the birth of my friend’s child or a little bit happy? Direction refers to the kind of emotion appropriate to a situation. Can I feel sad at the birth of my friend’s child? Duration refers to the length of time that a particular feeling should be felt. Can I feel happy for my friend for days, weeks, months, a year? More specifically, feeling rules influence everyday interactions by setting out guidelines for the interpersonal exchange of emotions. Here Hochschild ­likens emotional exchange to gift giving. Like the well-given gift, the appropriate exchange of feeling ensures the viability of the social bond. In everyday life we expect to receive certain feelings from others and to give back certain feelings to others. These rules also bear upon the previous discussion of surface acting and deep acting. Hochschild notes that people are quite good at recognizing the difference between surface and deep acting. In some situations, where the feeling rules allow, we can exchange feelings through surface acting. We fully expect that the politician’s expression of warmth for a supporter is, at least in part, a surface performance. We are usually content if the politician merely puts in the effort to keep up this performance. In other cases, such as a love affair, emotional exchange requires deep acting. If a person feels that their lover is only going through the motions rather than conjuring real feeling, this will generally be considered an inadequate exchange of feeling, and the relationship will be put at risk.

KEY CONCEPT The Commercialization of Feeling

In addition to drawing on the ideas of Goffman and Stanislavski, Hochschild uses the ideas of Karl Marx to discuss emotion management. Hochschild first examined the commercialization of feeling in her famous 1983 book-length study of airline stewardesses, The Managed Heart. Studying economic production in the 18th and 19th centuries, Karl Marx argued that economic value was produced through manual labor. In contrast, Hochschild argued that in contemporary (Continued)

commercialization of feeling–The management of emotion to produce economic value in service industries. Examples include the work conducted by flight attendants and restaurant servers (Hochschild).

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(Continued) America economic value is increasingly produced through service work. A large component of service work involves emotional labor. For example, in the airline industry flight attendants are expected to maintain a happy face despite long hours and often challenging passengers (another example, familiar to many university students, is the emotion work conducted by servers in restaurants and bars). The emotional atmosphere that the flight attendant creates within the airplane cabin is one component of the product sold by the airline. Indeed, as Hochschild’s work reveals, industry managers provide flight attendants with specific instructions on the kinds of feelings they are to project to customers and the techniques they can use to generate these feelings. Where manual labor exerts a toll on the body, service work exerts a toll on the emotional system. At one level, of course, this kind of emotional labor can be viewed as surface acting, and the individual can maintain some role distance from the performance. However, Hochschild worries that the increasing preponderance of corporately managed emotion work may affect people’s capacity to feel and detect deeper forms of emotional expression in other areas of their lives.

ETHNOMETHODOLOGY AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS Given its Greek roots, the term ethnomethodology literally means the methods that people use on a daily basis to accomplish their everyday lives. To put it slightly differently, the world is seen as an ongoing practical accomplishment. People are viewed as rational, but they use practical reasoning, not formal logic, in accomplishing their everyday lives.

Defining Ethnomethodology Ethnomethodology is the study of ordinary members of society in the everyday situations in which they find themselves and the ways in which they use commonsense knowledge, procedures, and considerations to gain an understanding of, navigate in, and act on those situations. We can gain insight into the nature of ethnomethodology by examining efforts by its founder, Harold Garfinkel, to define it. Like Émile Durkheim (see Chapter 2), Garfinkel considers social facts to be the fundamental sociological phenomenon. However, Garfinkel’s social facts are different from Durkheim’s social facts. For Durkheim, social facts are external to and coercive of individuals. Those who adopt such a focus tend to see actors as ethnomethodology–The study of ordinary members of society in the everyday situations in which they find themselves and the ways in which they use commonsense knowledge, procedures, and considerations to gain an understanding of, navigate in, and act on those situations.

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constrained or determined by social structures and institutions and able to exercise little or no independent judgment. In the acerbic terms of the ethnomethodologists, such sociologists tend to treat actors like judgmental dopes. In contrast, ethnomethodology treats the objectivity of social facts as the accomplishment of members (see as follows)—as a product of members’ methodological activities. In other words, ethnomethodology is concerned with the organization of everyday, ordinary life. To the ethnomethodologist, the ways in which we go about organizing our ordinary, day-to-day lives are extraordinary. Ethnomethodology is certainly not a macrosociology in the sense intended by Durkheim and his concept of a social fact, but its adherents do not see it as a microsociology either. Thus, whereas ethnomethodologists refuse to treat actors as judgmental dopes, they do not believe that people are continually thinking about themselves and what they ought to do in every situation that presents itself. Rather, they recognize that most often, action is routine and relatively unreflective. The problem is to understand how these routines are created and then recreated every time people get together. Ethnomethodologists focus not on actors or individuals but rather on members. And they view members not as individuals but rather as membership activities or the artful practices through which people produce what are for them both large-scale structures (e.g., bureaucracy, society) and the structures of everyday life (e.g., patterns of day-to-day interaction). In sum, ethnomethodologists are interested in neither microstructures nor macrostructures; they are concerned with the artful practices that produce people’s sense of both types of structures. What Garfinkel and other ethnomethodologists have sought is a new way of getting at the traditional concern of sociology with objective structures both small and large-scale.

Accounts One of Garfinkel’s key points about ethnomethods is that they are reflexively accountable. Accounts are the ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations. Accounting is the process by which people offer accounts to make sense of the world. Ethnomethodologists devote a lot of attention to analyzing people’s accounts as well as to the ways in which accounts are offered and accepted (or rejected) by others. This is one of the reasons that ethnomethodologists are preoccupied with analyzing conversations. For example, when a student explains to their professor why they failed to take an examination, they are offering an account. The student is trying to make sense out of an event for their professor. Ethnomethodologists are interested in the nature of that account but also more generally in the accounting practices by which the student offers the account accounts–The ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations (ethnomethodology). accounting–The process by which people offer accounts to make sense of the world (ethnomethodology). accounting practices–The ways in which one person offers an account and another person accepts or rejects that account (ethnomethodology).

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and the professor accepts or rejects it. In analyzing accounts, ethnomethodologists adopt a stance of ethnomethodological indifference. They do not judge the nature of the accounts but rather analyze them in terms of how they are used in practical action. They are concerned with the accounts as well as the methods needed by both speaker and listener to proffer, understand, and accept or reject accounts. Extending the idea of accounts, ethnomethodologists take great pains to point out that sociologists, like everyone else, offer accounts. Reports of sociological studies can be seen as accounts, and ethnomethodologists can analyze them in the same way they can study all other accounts. This perspective on sociology serves to demystify the work of sociologists—indeed of all scientists. A good deal of sociology (indeed, all sciences) involves commonsense interpretations. Ethnomethodologists can study the accounts of the sociologist in the same way that they can study the accounts of the layperson. Thus, the everyday practices of sociologists and all scientists come under the scrutiny of the ethnomethodologist. We can say that accounts are reflexive in the sense that they enter into the constitution of the state of affairs they make observable and are intended to deal with. When we offer an account of a situation that we are in, we are in the process of altering the nature of that situation. If you are interacting with someone, realize that you have made a faux pas, and seek to explain (account for) that mistake, in doing so you are changing the nature of that interaction. This is as true for sociologists as it is for laypeople. In studying and reporting on social life, sociologists are, in the process, changing what they are studying; subjects alter their behavior as a result of being observed and in response to descriptions of that behavior.

HAROLD GARFINKEL (1917–2011) A Biographical Vignette Harold Garfinkel was drafted in 1942 and entered the U.S. Air Force. Eventually he was given the task of training troops in tank warfare on a golf course in Miami Beach in the complete absence of tanks. Garfinkel had only pictures of tanks from Life magazine. The real tanks were all being used in combat. The man who would insist on concrete empirical detail in lieu of theorized accounts was using imagined tanks to teach real troops who were about to enter live combat to fight against tanks in situations where things like the proximity of the troops to the tanks could make the difference between life and death. The impact of this on the development of Garfinkel’s views can only be imagined. He had to train troops to throw explosives into the tracks of imaginary tanks and to keep imaginary tanks from seeing them by directing fire at imaginary tank ports. This task posed, in a new and concrete way, the problems of the adequate description of action and accountability that Garfinkel would take up as theoretical issues.

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Some Examples Ethnomethodology has gained much notoriety through its research. Breaching Experiments.  In breaching experiments, researchers violate social reality to shed light on the methods by which people construct social reality. The assumption behind this research is not only that the methodical production of social life occurs all the time but also that the participants are unaware that they are engaging in such actions. The objective of the breaching experiment is to disrupt normal procedures so that the researcher can observe and study the processes by which the everyday world is constructed or reconstructed. Michael Lynch offers an example of breaching, derived from earlier work by Garfinkel, that uses a game of tic-tac-toe (see Figure 6.1). The rules of the game allow participants to place marks within each of the cells, but the rules have been breached in this case, as player 1 has placed a mark between two cells. If this breach were to occur in a real game of tic-tac-toe, player 2 would likely insist that the mark be erased and placed correctly. If such a new placement did not occur, player 2 would try to explain (offer an account of) why player 1 had taken such an extraordinary action. The ethnomethodologist would study the actions of player 2 to see how the everyday world of tic-tac-toe is reconstructed. In another experiment, Garfinkel asked his students to spend between 15 minutes and an hour in their own homes imagining that they were boarders Figure 6.1  Breaching in Tic-Tac-Toe

Source: Michael Lynch, 1991. “Pictures of Nothing? Visual Constructs in Social Theory.” Sociological Theory 9:15. Originally adapted from Garfinkel, Harold (1963) ‘A conception of, and experiments with, “trust” as a condition of stable concerted actions’. In: O.J. Harvey, ed. Motivation and social interaction: cognitive approaches. New York: Ronald Press: 187-238.

breaching experiments–Experiments in which researchers violate social reality to shed light on the methods by which people construct social reality (ethnomethodology). CHAPTER SIX  •  CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE   173

and then acting on the basis of that assumption. They were told to behave in ways that are usually not found in a family situation. For example, they were instructed to be polite, cautious, impersonal, and formal; they were to speak only when family members spoke to them. In the vast majority of cases, family members were dumbfounded and outraged by such behavior. The students reported (offered accounts of) family members who expressed astonishment, bewilderment, shock, anxiety, embarrassment, and anger. Family members charged that the students who engaged in these behaviors were mean, inconsiderate, selfish, nasty, or impolite. These reactions indicate how important it is that people act in accord with commonsense assumptions about how they are supposed to behave. What most interested Garfinkel was how the family members sought commonsense ways to cope with such a breach. They demanded explanations from the students for their behavior. In the questions they asked of students, they often implied explanations of the aberrant behavior. They asked whether the students were ill, had been fired, were out of their minds, or were stupid. Family members also sought to explain the behaviors to themselves in terms of previously understood motives. For example, a student was thought to be behaving oddly because they were working too hard or because they had had a fight with their fiancé. Such explanations are important to participants—the other family members, in this case—because the explanations help them feel that under normal circumstances interaction would occur as it always had. If the student did not acknowledge the validity of such explanations, family members were likely to withdraw and to seek to isolate, denounce, or retaliate against the culprit. Deep emotions were aroused because the student rejected family members’ efforts to restore order through explanation. The family members felt that more intense statements and actions were necessary to restore the equilibrium. In one case, the student was told that if they did not stop behaving in this way, they had better move out. In the end, the students explained the experiment to their families, and in most situations harmony was restored. However, in some instances hard feelings lingered. Breaching experiments are undertaken to illustrate the way people order their everyday lives. These experiments reveal the resilience of social reality because the subjects (or victims) move quickly to normalize the breach—that is, to render the situation accountable in familiar terms. It is assumed that the way people handle these breaches tells us much about how they handle their everyday lives. Although these experiments seem innocent enough, they often lead to highly emotional reactions. These extreme reactions reflect how important it is to people to engage in routine, commonsense activities. Reactions to breaches are sometimes so extreme that in recent years ethnomethodologists have been warned not to perform the kinds of breaching experiments performed by Garfinkel.

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EXCHANGE THEORY Another theory of everyday behavior is exchange theory. Although there are a number of varieties of exchange theory in sociology, the focus here is on the work of George Homans.

The Exchange Theory of George Homans Although there are a variety of inputs into Homans’s development of exchange theory, perhaps the most important is the psychological theory known as behaviorism. The behavioral sociologist is concerned with the relationship between the effects of an actor’s behavior on the environment and the impact on the actor’s later behavior. This relationship is basic to operant conditioning, or the learning process by which the consequences of behavior serve to modify that behavior. One might almost think of this behavior, at least initially in the infant, as a random behavior. The environment in which the behavior exists, whether social or physical, is affected by the behavior and in turn acts back in various ways. That reaction—positive, negative, or neutral—affects the actor’s later behavior. If the reaction has been rewarding to the actor, the same behavior is likely to be emitted in the future in similar situations. If the reaction has been painful or punishing, the behavior is less likely to occur in the future. The behavioral sociologist is interested in the relationship between the history of environmental reactions or consequences and the nature of present behavior. Past consequences of a given behavior govern its present state. By knowing what elicited a certain behavior in the past, we can predict whether an actor will produce the same behavior in the present situation. The heart of Homans’s exchange theory lies in a set of fundamental propositions powerfully influenced by behaviorism. Although some of his propositions deal with at least two interacting individuals, Homans was careful to point out that these propositions are based on psychological principles. According to Homans, they are psychological for two reasons: (1) they are usually the province of psychologists, and (2) they deal with individual behavior rather than large-scale structures like groups or societies. As a result of this position, Homans admitted to being a psychological reductionist. To Homans, reductionism involves showing that the propositions of one science (in this case, sociology) are derived from the more general propositions of another science (in this case, psychology). Although Homans made the case for psychological principles, he did not think of individuals as isolated. He recognized that people are social and spend

operant conditioning–The learning process by which the consequences of behavior serve to modify that behavior (exchange theory).

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a considerable portion of their time interacting with other people. He attempted to explain social behavior with psychological principles. In other words, the principles that apply to the relationship between human beings and the physical environment are the same as those that relate to instances in which the environment is made up of other human beings. Homans did not deny the Durkheimian position of emergence—that something new emerges from interaction. Instead, he argued that those emergent properties can be explained by psychological principles; there is no need for new sociological propositions to explain social facts. He used the basic sociological concept of a norm as illustration. Homans did not doubt that norms exist and that they lead to conformity. However, people do not conform automatically. They do so because they see it as an advantage to conform to those norms. Homans detailed a program to bring people back into sociology, but he also tried to develop a theory that focuses on psychology, people, and the elementary forms of social life. In terms of the latter, he focused on social behavior involving at least two people in the exchange of tangible and intangible activities. Such behavior would vary in terms of the degree to which it was rewarding or costly to the people involved. For example, Homans sought to explain the development of power-driven machinery in the textile industry, and thereby the Industrial Revolution, through the psychological principle that people are likely to act in such a way as to increase their rewards. More generally, in his version of exchange theory, he sought to explain elementary social behavior in terms of rewards and costs. Homans set for himself the task of developing propositions that focus on the psychological level; these form the groundwork of exchange theory. Roots in Behaviorism.  In Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, Homans acknowledged that his exchange theory was derived, in large part, from behavioral psychology. In fact, he regretted that his theory was labeled exchange theory because he viewed it as behavioral psychology applied to specific situations. Homans began with a discussion of the work of the leading figure in psychological behaviorism, B. F. Skinner—in particular, Skinner’s study of pigeons born with the ability to explore their environments by pecking at the things that confronted them. Placed in an experimental cage, pigeons begin to peck and eventually peck at a target placed there by the researcher. When the pigeon does so, it is rewarded with a bit of grain. Because the pigeon has been rewarded for pecking the target, the chances are good that it will do so again. In formal, behaviorist terms, the pecking at the target is the operant, that operant has been reinforced, and the reinforcer was the bit of grain. Thus, the pigeon has undergone a process of operant conditioning: it has learned to peck the target because it has been rewarded for doing so. Skinner was interested in this instance in pigeons; Homans’s concern was humans. According to Homans, Skinner’s pigeons are not engaged in a true exchange relationship with the psychologist. The pigeon is engaged in a one-sided

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GEORGE CASPAR HOMANS (1910–1989) An Autobiographical Vignette I had long known Professor Talcott Parsons and was now closely associated with him in the Department of Social Relations. The sociological profession looked upon him as its leading theorist. I decided that what he called theories were only conceptual schemes and that a theory was not a theory unless it contained at least a few propositions. I became confident that this view was correct by reading several books on the philosophy of science. Nor was it enough that a theory should contain propositions. A theory of a phenomenon was an explanation of it. Explanation consisted in showing that one or more propositions of a low order of generality followed in logic from more general propositions applied to what were variously called given or boundary conditions or parameters. I stated my position on this issue in my little book The Nature of Social Science (1967). I then asked myself what general propositions I could use in this way to explain the empirical propositions I had stated in The Human Group and other propositions brought to my attention by later reading of field and experimental studies in social psychology. The general propositions would have to meet only one condition: In accordance with my original insight, they should apply to individual human beings as members of a species. Such propositions were already at hand—luckily, for I could not have invented them for myself. They were the propositions of behavioral psychology as stated by my old friend B. F. Skinner and others. They held good of persons both when acting alone in the physical environment and when in interaction with other persons. In the two editions of my book Social Behavior (1961 and revised in 1974), I used these propositions to try to explain how, under appropriate given conditions, relatively enduring social structures could arise from, and be maintained by, the actions of individuals who need not have intended to create the structures. This I conceive to be the central intellectual problem of sociology.

exchange relationship, whereas human exchanges are at least two sided. The pigeon is being reinforced by the grain, but the psychologist is not truly being reinforced by the pecks of the pigeon. The pigeon is carrying on the same sort of relationship with the psychologist as it would with the physical environment. Because there is no reciprocity, Homans defined this as individual behavior. He seemed to relegate the study of this sort of behavior to the psychologist, whereas he urged the sociologist to study social behavior in which the activities of two

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(or more) human beings reinforce (or punish) the activities of the other. In other words, Homans was interested in behavior in which each person influences the other. However, it is significant that, according to Homans, no new propositions are needed to explain social behavior as opposed to individual behavior. The laws of individual behavior as developed by Skinner in his study of pigeons explain social behavior as long as we take into account the complications of mutual reinforcement. Homans admitted that he might ultimately have to go beyond the principles derived by Skinner but only reluctantly. In his theoretical work, Homans restricted himself to everyday social interaction. It is clear, however, that he believed that a sociology built on his principles would ultimately be able to explain all social behavior. Homans used the case of two office workers to exemplify the kind of exchange relationships in which he was interested. According to office rules, each person is to do their job on their own. If either worker needs help, they are to consult a supervisor. However, suppose one of the workers, worker A, has trouble completing their work from time to time, but they could do it better and more quickly with help. According to the rules, they should consult their supervisor, but to do so will make their incompetence clear to the supervisor and adversely affect their future with the organization. It is far safer for worker A to ask their colleague, worker B, for help, especially if worker B has more experience and greater capacity to do the work. It is also assumed that such a consultation will not come to the supervisor’s attention. One worker gives the needed assistance, and the other offers thanks and approval. In other words, an exchange has occurred between them—help in exchange for approval.

Basic Propositions Focusing on this sort of situation, and basing his ideas on Skinner’s findings, Homans developed several propositions: 1. The success proposition states that the more often a person is rewarded for a particular action, the more likely the person is to perform the rewarded action. In terms of the office situation example, this proposition means that worker A is more likely to ask others for advice if they have been rewarded in the past with useful advice. Furthermore, the more often a person has received useful advice in the past, the more often they will request advice in the future. Similarly, worker B will be more willing to give advice and give it more frequently if they have often been rewarded with approval in the past. Generally, behavior in accord with the success proposition involves three stages: first, a person’s action; next, a rewarded result; and finally, a repetition of the original action or, at minimum, one similar in at least some respects. Homans specified a number of things about the success proposition. First, although it is generally true that increasingly frequent rewards lead to increasingly frequent actions, this reciprocation cannot go on

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indefinitely. At some point individuals simply cannot act that way as frequently. Second, the shorter the interval between behavior and reward, the more likely a person is to repeat the behavior. Conversely, long intervals between behavior and reward lower the likelihood of repeat behavior. Finally, it was Homans’s view that intermittent rewards are more likely than regular rewards to elicit repeat behavior. Regular rewards lead to boredom and satiation, whereas rewards received at irregular intervals (as in gambling) are likely to elicit repeat behaviors. 2. The stimulus proposition asserts that if in the past a person’s action has been rewarded as a result of their responding to a particular stimulus, or set of stimuli, then the person is more likely to perform the same action (or something similar) when stimuli are applied that are similar to those in the past. In the office worker example, if, in the past, the two workers in question found the giving and getting of advice rewarding, then they are likely to engage in similar actions in similar situations in the future. Homans offered an even more down-to-earth example when he argued that those who catch fish in dark pools are more likely to fish in such pools in the future. Homans was interested in the process of generalization, the tendency to extend behavior to similar circumstances. In the fishing example, one aspect of generalization is to move from fishing in dark pools to fishing in any pool with any degree of shadiness. Similarly, success in catching fish is likely to lead from one kind of fishing to another (e.g., freshwater to saltwater) or even from fishing to hunting. However, the process of discrimination is also important. The actor may fish only under the specific circumstances that proved successful in the past. For one thing, if the conditions under which success occurred were too complicated, then similar conditions may not stimulate behavior. If the crucial stimulus occurs too long before behavior is required, then it may not actually stimulate that behavior. An actor can become oversensitized to stimuli, especially if they are valuable to the actor. In fact, the actor could respond to irrelevant stimuli, at least until the situation is corrected by repeated failures. All this is affected by the individual’s alertness or attentiveness to stimuli. 3. The value proposition states that the more valuable people find the results of their action, the more likely they are to perform that action. In the office worker example, if the rewards each worker offers to the other are considered valuable, the workers are more likely to perform the desired generalization–The tendency to extend behavior to similar circumstances (exchange theory). discrimination–The tendency to manifest behavior only under the specific circumstances that proved successful in the past (exchange theory).

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behaviors than if the rewards are not seen as valuable. At this point, Homans introduced the concepts of rewards and punishments. Rewards are actions with positive values; an increase in rewards is more likely to elicit the desired behavior. Punishments are actions with negative values; an increase in punishments means that the actor is less likely to manifest undesired behaviors. Homans found punishments to be an inefficient means of getting people to change their behavior because people may react to punishments in undesirable ways. It is preferable simply not to reward undesirable behavior (e.g., anger); then such behavior eventually becomes extinguished. Rewards are clearly to be preferred, but they may be in short supply. Homans did make it clear that his is not simply a hedonistic theory; rewards can be either materialistic (e.g., money) or altruistic (helping others). 4. The deprivation-satiation proposition contends that the more often in the recent past people have received a particular reward, the less valuable future rewards of that type will be. In the office example, the two workers may reward each other so often for giving and getting advice that they cease to find the rewards valuable. Time is crucial here; people are less likely to become satiated if particular rewards are stretched over a long period of time. At this point, Homans defined two other critical concepts: cost and profit. The cost of any behavior is defined as the rewards lost in forgoing alternative lines of action. Profit in social exchange is seen as the greater number of rewards gained over costs incurred. The latter led Homans to recast the deprivation-satiation proposition as follows: the greater the profits people receive as a result of particular actions, the more likely they are to perform those actions. 5. There are two aggression-approval propositions. In Proposition 5A, Homans argued that when people do not receive expected rewards for their actions, or they receive unanticipated punishment, they become angry, more likely to act aggressively, and more likely to find the results of such aggressive behavior valuable. In the office worker example, if worker A does not get the advice they expect and worker B does not receive the praise they anticipate, both are likely to be angry. We might be surprised to find the concepts of rewards–Actions with positive values; an increase in such actions is more likely to elicit the desired behavior (exchange theory). punishments–Actions with negative values; an increase in such actions means that the actor is less likely to manifest undesired behaviors (exchange theory). cost–Rewards lost in adopting a specific action and, as a result, in forgoing alternative lines of action (exchange theory). profit–The greater number of rewards gained over costs incurred in social exchange (exchange theory).

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frustration and anger in Homans’s work because they would seem to refer to mental states. Purists in behaviorism would not deal with such states of mind. Homans went on to argue that frustration of such expectations need not refer only to an internal state. It can also refer to wholly external events, observable not only by worker A but also by outsiders. Proposition 5A on aggression-approval refers only to negative emotions, whereas Proposition 5B deals with more positive emotions and argues that people will be pleased when they receive an expected reward, especially one that is greater than expected; they will, as a result, be more likely to perform the behavior that has received approval, and the results of that behavior will become of increasing value. In the office worker example, when worker A gets the advice that they expect and worker B gets the praise that they expect, both are pleased and more likely to get or give advice. Advice and praise become more valuable to each. 6. In the rationality proposition people are seen as choosing from the available alternatives those actions for which, given the individuals’ perceptions at the time, there are greater rewards and greater probability of getting those rewards. Although the earlier propositions rely heavily on behaviorism, the rationality proposition demonstrates most clearly the influence of rational choice theory (see the next section) on Homans’s approach. In economic terms, actors who act in accord with the rationality proposition are maximizing their utilities. Basically, people examine and make calculations about the alternative actions open to them. They compare the amounts of rewards associated with the different courses of action. They also calculate the likelihood that they will actually receive the rewards. Highly valued rewards are devalued if the actors think it unlikely that they will obtain them, and lesser-valued rewards are enhanced if they are seen as highly attainable. Thus, there is an interaction between the value of the reward and the likelihood of attainment. The most desirable rewards are those that are both valuable and highly attainable. The least desirable rewards are those that are not valuable and difficult to attain. Homans related the rationality proposition to the success, stimulus, and value propositions. The rationality proposition tells us that whether or not people perform an action depends on their perception of the probability of success. But what determines this perception? Homans argued that perceptions of whether chances of success are high or low are shaped by past successes and the similarity of the present situation to past successful situations. The rationality proposition also does not tell us why an actor values one reward more than another; for this we need the value proposition. In these ways, Homans linked his rationality principle to his more behavioristic propositions. utilities–An actor’s preferences, or values.

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In the end, Homans’s theory can be condensed to a view of the actor as a rational profit seeker. However, Homans’s theory is weak on mental states and large-scale structures. For example, on the subject of consciousness Homans admitted the need for a more fully developed psychology. Despite such weaknesses in his theory, Homans remained a behaviorist who worked resolutely at the level of individual behavior. He argued that we can understand large-scale structures if we adequately understand elementary social behavior. He contended that exchange processes are identical at the individual and societal levels, although he granted that at the societal level there is greater complexity to the ways in which fundamental processes are put together to form large-scale phenomena.

RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY Although it influenced the development of exchange theory, rational choice theory was generally marginal to mainstream sociological theory. Largely through the efforts of one man, James S. Coleman, rational choice theory has become an influential theory.

A Skeletal Model The basic principles of rational choice theory are derived from neoclassical economics (as well as utilitarianism and game theory). Using a variety of different models, it is possible to piece together what can be described as a skeletal model of rational choice theory. The focus in rational choice theory is on actors. Actors are seen as being purposive, or as having intentionality; that is, actors have ends or goals toward which their actions are aimed. Actors are also seen as having preferences (or values, utilities). Rational choice theory is unconcerned with what these preferences, or their sources, are. Of importance is the fact that actors undertake actions to achieve objectives consistent with their preference hierarchies. Although rational choice theory starts with actors’ purposes or intentions, it must take into consideration at least two major constraints on action. The first is the scarcity of resources. Actors have different resources as well as differential access to other resources. For those with lots of resources, the achievement of ends may be relatively easy. However, for those with few, if any, resources, the attainment of ends may be difficult or impossible. Related to scarcity of resources is the idea of opportunity costs. In pursuing a given end, an actor must keep an eye on the costs of forgoing the next most attractive action. An actor may choose not to pursue the most highly valued end if opportunity costs–The costs of forgoing the next most attractive action when an actor chooses an action aimed at achieving a given end (rational choice theory).

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their resources are negligible, if, as a result, the chances of achieving that end are slim, and if in striving to achieve that end they jeopardizes their chances of achieving their next most valued end. Actors are seen as trying to maximize their benefits; that goal may involve an assessment of the relationship between the chances of achieving a primary end and what that achievement does for the chances of attaining the second-most valuable objective. A second source of constraints on individual action is social institutions. Such constraints occur throughout the life course and are manifest through schools and their rules, the policies of employing organizations, and the laws of society. These all serve to restrict the choices available to actors and, thereby, the outcomes of actions. These institutional constraints provide both positive and negative sanctions that serve to encourage certain actions and to discourage others. It is possible to enumerate two other ideas that can be seen as basic to rational choice theory. The first is an aggregation mechanism whereby a variety of individual actions are combined to form a social outcome. The second is the importance of information in making rational choices. At one time, it was assumed that actors had perfect, or at least sufficient, information to make purposive choices among the alternative courses of action open to them. However, there is a growing recognition that the quantity and quality of available information are highly variable and that variability has a profound effect on actors’ choices. In his introductory comments in the first issue of the journal that he founded, Rationality and Society, Coleman makes it clear that he gives allegiance to rational choice theory not only because of the strengths of the theory itself but also because it is the only theory capable of producing a more integrative sociological approach. He views rational choice theory as providing the micro-level base for the explanation of macro-level phenomena. Beyond such academic concerns, Coleman wants work done from a rational choice perspective to have practical relevance to our changing social world. For example, the issue of public policies aimed at the prevention of HIV/AIDS has been studied from a rational choice perspective.

Foundations of Social Theory Coleman argues that sociology should focus on social systems but that such macro phenomena must be explained by factors internal to them, ideally, individuals. He favors working at the individual level for several reasons, including the fact that data are usually gathered at that level and then aggregated or composed to yield the system level. Among his other reasons for favoring a focus on the individual level is that this is where interventions are ordinarily made to create social changes. Central to Coleman’s perspective is the idea that social theory is not merely an academic exercise; the social world should be affected through such interventions. Given his focus on the individual, Coleman recognizes that he is a methodological individualist, although he views his particular perspective as a special

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variant of that orientation. His view is special in the sense that it accepts the idea of emergence and that although it focuses on factors internal to the system, those factors are not necessarily individual actions and orientations. Micro-level phenomena other than individuals can be the focus of his analysis. Coleman’s rational choice orientation is clear in his basic ideas that people act toward goals in a purposive manner and that both goals and actions are shaped by values (or preferences). But Coleman then goes on to argue that for most theoretical purposes, a more precise conceptualization of the rational actor is needed, one derived from economics, that sees the actor as choosing those actions that will maximize utility, or the satisfaction of the actor’s needs and wants.

JAMES S. COLEMAN (1926–1995) A Biographical Vignette Looking back from the vantage point of the mid-1990s, Coleman found that his macro-level approach had changed. For example, with respect to his work on social simulation games at Johns Hopkins University in the 1960s, he said that it “led me to change my theoretical orientation from one in which properties of the system are not only determinants of action (à la Émile Durkheim’s Suicide study), to one in which they are also consequences of actions sometimes intended, sometimes unintended.” Coleman needed a theory of action, and he chose, in common with most economists, the simplest such foundation, that of rational, or if you prefer, purposive action. The most formidable task of sociology is the development of a theory that will move from the micro-level of action to the macrolevel of norms, social values, status distribution, and social conflict. This interest explains why Coleman is drawn to economics: What distinguishes economics from the other social sciences is not its use of rational choice but its use of a mode of analysis that allows moving between the level of individual action and the level of system functioning. By making two assumptions, that persons act rationally and that markets are perfect with full communication, economic analysis is able to link the macro-level of system functioning with the micro-level of individual actions. Another aspect of Coleman’s vision for sociology, consistent with his early work on schools, is that it be applicable to social policy. Of theory he says, “One of the criteria for judging work in social theory is its potential usefulness for informing social policy.” Source: James S. Coleman: A Vision for Sociology edited by Dr. Jon Clark taken from pgs 347 and 348 (9780750705127)

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The two key elements in his theory are actors and resources. Resources are those things over which actors have control and in which they have some interest. Given these two elements, Coleman details how their interaction leads to the system level. This is based on the fact that actors have resources and those resources are of interest to others. As a result, actors engage in actions that involve others, and a system of action, a structure, emerges among them. In other words, interdependent actors, all seeking to maximize their own interests, form a social system. Given his orientation to individual rational action, it follows that Coleman’s focus in terms of the micro-macro issue (see, especially, Chapter 7) is the microto-macro linkage, or how the combination of individual actions creates the larger system. Although he accords priority to this issue, Coleman is also interested in the macro-to-micro linkage, or how the macro system constrains the orientations of actors. Finally, he is interested in the micro-micro aspect of the relationship, or the impact of individual behavior on the behavior of other individuals. In spite of this seeming balance, there are at least three major weaknesses in Coleman’s approach. First, he accords overwhelming priority to the microto-macro issue, thereby giving short shrift to the other relationships (macromicro, micro-micro). Second, he ignores the macro-macro issue. Finally, his causal arrows go mainly in one direction (micro-to-macro); in other words, he ignores the ongoing reciprocal relationship among and between micro and macro phenomena. Utilizing his rational choice approach and starting at the micro-level of rational individual behavior, Coleman seeks to explain a series of macro-level phenomena, including collective behavior, norms, and the corporate actor. Collective Behavior.  Coleman (and other rational choice theorists) chooses to deal with collective behavior (of, e.g., a crowd) because its often disorderly and unstable character is thought to be difficult to analyze from a rational choice perspective. But Coleman’s view is that rational choice theory can explain all types of macro phenomena, not only those that are orderly and stable. In collective behavior, rational actors unilaterally transfer control over their actions to others (e.g., crowd organizers or leaders) in an attempt to maximize the actions’ utility. Normally, such maximization involves a balancing of control among several actors; this balance produces equilibrium within society. However, in the case of collective behavior, because there is a unilateral transfer of control, individual maximization creates an imbalance and does not necessarily lead to system equilibrium. Instead, there is the disequilibrium characteristic of collective behavior, such as in the case of an unruly crowd. Norms.  Another macro-level phenomenon that comes under Coleman’s scrutiny is the creation of norms. Unlike collective behavior, norms are not only stable, but they also serve to produce order in society. Although most sociologists take norms as given and invoke them to explain individual behavior, they do not explain why and how norms come into existence. Coleman wonders how, in a group of rational CHAPTER SIX  •  CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE   185

actors, norms emerge and are maintained. He argues that norms are created and maintained by some people who see benefits resulting from norms that control group behavior and see harm stemming from the violation of those norms. Thus, norms against smoking in public places have emerged because they protect nonsmokers (likely those who helped create the norms) from secondhand smoke, and violation of such norms would lead to higher rates of lung cancer among them. People are willing to give up some control over their own behavior (others decide whether smoking in public places is permissible) if in the process they gain some individual and collective control (through norms) over the behavior of others (preventing them from smoking in such settings). Once again, people are seen as maximizing their utility by partially surrendering rights of control over themselves and gaining some control over others. Because the transfer of control is mutual—not unilateral, as it is in the case of collective behavior—there is equilibrium in the case of norms. Norms often act to the advantage of some people (e.g., nonsmokers) and the disadvantage of others (smokers). In some cases (including smoking in public places), actors surrender the right to control their own actions to those who initiate and maintain the norms. Such norms become effective when a consensus emerges that some people have the right to control (through norms) the actions of other people. Furthermore, the effectiveness of norms depends on the ability to enforce that consensus (e.g., forcing violators to extinguish their cigarettes in public places). This consensus and enforcement are other factors that prevent the kind of disequilibrium characteristic of collective behavior. Coleman recognizes that norms become interrelated (bans on smoking on airplanes and in airports), but he sees such a macro-macro (norm-norm) issue as beyond the scope of his work on the foundations of social systems. However, he is willing to take on the macro-to-micro issue of the internalization of norms. He sees the internalization of norms as the establishment of an internal sanctioning system; people sanction themselves when they violate a norm. Coleman looks at this in terms of the idea of one actor or set of actors endeavoring to control others by having norms internalized in them. Thus, it is in the interests of one set of actors to have another set of people internalize norms and be controlled by them. The Corporate Actor.  Within such a collectivity as a corporation or a state, individual actors may not make choices among actions in terms of their self-interest but often must choose on the basis of the interest of the collectivity. Thus, a U.S. president might choose not to run for a second term even though it would be in their self-interest to do so. Rather they choose that option because it is in the interest of their political party, the nation, and its citizens. There are rules and mechanisms for moving from individual choice to collective (social) choice. The simplest is the case of voting and the procedures for tabulating the individual votes and coming up with a collective decision. This is the micro-to-macro dimension, whereas things such as the slate of candidates proposed by the collectivity involve the macro-to-micro linkage.

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Coleman argues that both corporate actors and human actors have purposes. Furthermore, within a corporate structure such as an organization, human actors may pursue purposes of their own that are at variance with corporate purposes. This conflict of interest helps us understand the sources of revolts against corporate authority. The micro-to-macro linkage here involves the ways in which people divest authority from the corporate structure and vest legitimacy in those engaged in the revolt. But there is also a macro-to-micro linkage in that certain macro-level conditions lead people to such acts of divestment and investment. As a rational choice theorist, Coleman starts with the individual and with the idea that the individual is where all rights and resources exist. It is the interests of individuals that should determine the course of events. However, this is often not the case, especially in modern society, where many rights, significant resources, and even sovereignty reside in corporate actors. In the modern world corporate actors have taken on increasing importance. The corporate actor may act to the benefit or the harm of the individual. How are we to judge the corporate actor in this regard? Coleman contends that we need to do this on the basis of the assumption that it is individual persons who are sovereign, and the social system must be evaluated on the basis of how well it serves individual sovereignty. Coleman differentiates between traditional structures based on the family, such as neighborhoods and religious groups, and purposive structures, such as economic organizations and the government. There have always been corporate actors, but the traditional ones, such as the family, are steadily being replaced by new, purposively constructed, freestanding corporate actors. He sees a progressive “unbundling” of the activities that once were tied together within, for example, the family. Such traditional structures are “unraveling” as their functions are dispersed and taken over by a range of corporate actors (e.g., child-care centers in the case of the family). Coleman is concerned about this unraveling as well as about the fact that we are now forced to deal with positions in purposive structures (e.g., managers) rather than with the people who populated traditional structures. The existence of these new corporate actors raises the issue of how to ensure that they are socially responsible. Coleman suggests that we can do this by instituting internal reforms or by changing the external structure, such as the laws affecting such corporate actors or the agencies that regulate them. The ultimate goal of Coleman’s work is the creation of a new social structure as the traditional one on which people have depended disappears. With the passing of traditional structures and their replacement by purposive structures, a series of voids have been left that have not been filled adequately by the new social organizations. Social theory and the social sciences more generally are made necessary by the need to reconstruct a new society. The goal is not to destroy purposive structures but rather to realize the possibilities, and to avoid the problems, of such structures. An overview of the field confirms Coleman’s views on rational choice theory. Work continues on many of the macro issues Coleman has identified (e.g., collective behavior), but it has also expanded not only into other macro areas (e.g.,

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social stratification) but also into micro areas (e.g., emotions) that one would not immediately think of as being amenable to rational choice analysis. Although he has faith in rational choice theory, Coleman does not believe that this perspective has all the answers—at least not yet. But it is clear that he believes that it can move in that direction. His hope is that work in rational choice theory will, over time, reduce the number of issues that cannot be dealt with by that theory. Coleman recognizes that in the real world people do not always behave rationally, but he believes that this makes little difference in his theory; the same theoretical predictions would be made whether or not people behave rationally.

SUMMARY 1. Symbolic interactionism, like the other theories discussed in this chapter, focuses on everyday life, especially interaction (as well as action and people as agents) and the symbols (and their meanings) that are deeply implicated in it. 2. Symbolic interactionism is defined by a set of fundamental assumptions: a. People act toward things on the basis of the meanings those things have for them, and these meanings stem from their interactions with other people. b. People do not simply internalize the meanings that they learn through social interaction; they are also able to modify those meanings through an interpretive process. c. People, in contrast to other animals, are unique in their ability to use and rely on symbols. d. People become human through social interaction, especially in the early years with family members and then in school. e. People are conscious, capable of reflecting on themselves and what they do, and therefore capable of shaping their actions and interactions. f. People have purposes when they act in, as well as toward, situations. g. Society comprises people engaging in social interaction. 3. Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy is a view of social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those performed in the theater. 4. From a dramaturgical perspective, the self is a sense of who one is that is a dramatic effect that emerges from the immediate scene being presented.

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5. Impression management involves techniques that actors use to maintain certain impressions in the face of problems they are likely to encounter and methods they use to cope with these problems. 6. The front stage is that part of dramaturgical performance that generally functions in rather fixed and general ways to define the situation for those who observe the performance. 7. The back stage is where facts suppressed in the front stage or kinds of informal actions may appear. 8. Role distance is the degree to which individuals separate themselves from the roles they are in. 9. Stigma involves a gap between virtual social identity (what a person ought to be) and actual social identity (what a person actually is). 10. A discredited stigma occurs when the actor assumes that the differences are known by the audience members, or are evident to them, whereas a discreditable stigma is one in which the differences are neither known by audience members nor perceivable by them. 11. Arlie Hochschild has extended Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy by studying the role that emotions play in social performances. 12. Emotion management comprises the techniques people use to display emotions appropriate to particular performances. 13. Emotion management relies on both surface acting and deep acting. 14. Emotion management is shaped by the feeling rules of a particular culture. 15. Ethnomethodology is the study of ordinary members of society in the everyday situations in which they find themselves and the ways in which they use commonsense knowledge, procedures, and considerations to gain an understanding of, navigate in, and act on those situations. 16. Ethnomethodologists are concerned with accounts, accounting, and accounting practices. 17. In breaching experiments, ethnomethodologists violate social reality to shed light on the methods by which people construct social reality. 18. George Homans’s exchange theory is based primarily on behaviorist principles. 19. The heart of Homans’s exchange theory lies in a series of propositions that describe how people reinforce each other’s behavior.

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20. The focus in rational choice theory is on actors. 21. In rational choice theory, actors are seen as being purposive, or as having intentionality; that is, actors have ends or goals toward which their actions are aimed. 22. Actors are also seen as having preferences (or values, utilities). Rational choice theory is unconcerned with what these preferences, or their sources, are. Of importance is the fact that actors undertake actions to achieve objectives consistent with their preference hierarchies. 23. In addition, rational choice theory must take into account scarcity of resources and opportunity costs, or the costs of forgoing the next most attractive action, as well as the constraints imposed by social institutions. 24. Utilizing a rational choice approach and starting at the micro-level of rational individual behavior, Coleman seeks to explain a series of macro-level phenomena, including collective behavior, norms, and the corporate actor.

SUGGESTED READINGS JON CLARK, ed. James S. Coleman. London: Falmer Press, 1996. Excellent collection of essays on Coleman’s contributions to sociology and sociological theory. ERVING GOFFMAN The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959. Goffman’s works tend to be quite readable. This is the best source on dramaturgy. ERVING GOFFMAN Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963. One of Goffman’s most interesting and insightful works. TIM HALLETT “Emotion Work.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 248–249. An overview of Hochschild’s main concepts as well as their connections to Goffman’s work and subsequent research. DOUGLAS HECKATHORN “Rational Choice.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 620–624. Overview of the varieties of rational choice theory authored by one of the important contributors to that theory. RICHARD HILBERT “Ethnomethodology.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp.

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253–257. Informative look at some of the background of ethnomethodology, its relationship to the social sciences, its terminology, and some of its basic studies. Also includes a brief discussion of conversation analysis. ARLIE HOCHSCHILD The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Updated ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. The latest edition of Hochschild’s groundbreaking study of emotion management. GEORGE HOMANS Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984. The title is self-explanatory. PHILIP MANNING “Dramaturgy.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 210–213. A look at dramaturgy focusing on Goffman’s contributions, although it also includes a look at the perspective after Goffman as well as some of the basic criticisms of it. ANNE RAWLS “Conversation Analysis.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 145–149. Detailed examination of conversation analysis, including its ties to ethnomethodology. ANNE RAWLS “Harold Garfinkel.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 89–124. Rare personal glimpse into Garfinkel’s life and work. KENT SANDSTROM and SHERRYL KLEINMAN “Symbolic Interaction.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 821–826. Nice overview of the basic principles of symbolic interactionism as well as of current trends and future directions. GREG SMITH “Erving Goffman.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 125–154. Comprehensive overview of Goffman’s life and major theoretical contributions.

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CHAPTER

SEVEN

CONTEMPORARY INTEGRATIVE THEORIES

A More Integrated Exchange Theory Structuration Theory Culture and Agency Habitus and Field Summary Suggested Readings

In previous chapters we have dealt with a variety of contemporary theories that focus either on the large-scale structures and institutions of society (Chapters 4 and 5) or on the micro level phenomena we associate with everyday life (Chapter 6). In this chapter we deal with efforts that have sought to combine micro and macro levels of analysis to create more integrative sociological theories.

A MORE INTEGRATED EXCHANGE THEORY Whereas George Homans was involved in an effort to create a microreductionistic exchange theory, Richard Emerson sought to create a more integrated version of that theory. He published two related essays in 1972 that had a profound effect on the development of exchange theory. Three basic factors served as the impetus for this new body of work. First, Emerson was interested in exchange theory as a broader framework for his earlier interest in power and dependence. It seemed clear to Emerson that power was central to the exchange theory perspective. Second, Emerson felt that he could use behaviorism (operant psychology) as the base of his exchange theory but avoid some of the problems that had befallen Homans. Homans and other exchange theorists had been accused of assuming an overly rational image of human beings, but Emerson felt he could use behaviorism without assuming a rational actor. In addition, Emerson felt he could avoid the charge of reductionism (one that Homans reveled in) by developing

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an exchange perspective capable of explaining macro level phenomena. Third, ­Emerson wanted to deal with social structure and social change by analyzing social relations and social networks and using them as foundations that could be employed from the most microscopic levels of analysis to the most macroscopic. In addition, the actors in Emerson’s system could be either individuals or larger corporate structures (albeit structures working through agents). Thus, Emerson used the principles of operant psychology to develop a theory of social structure. In his two 1972 essays, Emerson developed the basis of his integrative exchange theory. In the first essay, he dealt with the psychological basis for social exchange, whereas in the second he turned to the macro level and exchange relations and network structures. Later, Emerson made the micro-macro linkage more explicit, and exchange network structures served as the linkage between micro and macro levels of analysis. Karen Cook, Emerson’s most important disciple, pointed out that the idea of exchange network structures is central to the micro-macro linkage; such structures can link single individuals and two-person groups to larger collectivities such as organizations and political parties. Both Emerson and Cook accepted and began with the basic, micro level premises of exchange theory, especially the rewards that people get from, and contribute to, social interaction. More specifically, Emerson accepted behavioristic principles as his starting point. He outlined three core assumptions of exchange theory: (1) when people are engaged in situations that they find rewarding, they will act rationally, and as a result, the situations will occur; (2) as people become satiated with the rewards they obtain from situations, those situations will be of declining importance to them; and (3) benefits obtained depend on benefits provided in exchange. Therefore, exchange theory focuses on the flow of rewards (and costs) in social interaction. All this is quite familiar, but Emerson began to point behavioristically oriented exchange theory in a different direction at the close of his first micro-oriented 1972 essay by arguing that he wanted to move on to dealing with more complex situations than those usually dealt with by behaviorism. This theme opened the second 1972 essay, in which Emerson made it clear that he wanted to include social structure as a dependent variable in exchange theory. Whereas in the first essay he was concerned with a single actor involved in an exchange relation with their environment (e.g., a person fishing in a lake), in the second essay he turned to social exchange relationships as well as to exchange networks.

Exchange Relationships and Networks The actors in Emerson’s macro level exchange theory can be either individuals or collectivities. Emerson was concerned with the exchange relationship among actors. An exchange network has several components. First, such a web exchange network–A web of social relationships involving a number of either individual or collective actors in which the actors have a variety of valued resources as well as exchange opportunities and exchange relations with one another. A number of these exchange relations exist and interrelate with one another to form a single network structure (Emerson).

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of social relationships involves a number of either individual or collective actors. Second, the actors have a variety of valued resources. All actors, individual and collective, in the network have exchange opportunities and exchange relations with one another. Finally, a number of these exchange relations exist and interrelate with one another to form a single network structure; thus, at least two exchange relations between actors can be seen as forming a social structure. The connection between exchange relations is of great importance and is critical to linking exchange between two actors (dyadic exchange) to more macro level phenomena. What is crucial is the contingent relationship between dyadic exchanges. We may say that two dyadic exchange relations, A-B and A-C, form a minimal network (A-B-C) when exchange in one is contingent on exchange (or nonexchange) in the other. It is not enough for A, B, and C to have a common membership for an exchange network to develop; there must be a contingent relationship between exchanges in A-B and B-C. Each exchange relation is embedded within a larger exchange network comprising two or more such relationships. If the exchange in one relationship affects exchange in another, they can be said to be connected. That connection can be positive, when the exchange in one positively affects the exchange in another (e.g., the money obtained from one is used to gain social status in another); negative,

RICHARD EMERSON (1925–1982) A Biographical Vignette Richard Emerson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1925. Raised near mountains, he never seemed to stray too far away from rivers, mountain peaks, and glaciers. One of his most prized personal accomplishments was his participation in the successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1963. Aspects of this experience are captured in his publication “Everest Traverse,” which appeared in the December 1963 edition of the Sierra Club Annual Bulletin and in an article published in Sociometry in 1966. Emerson received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study group performance under prolonged stress on this climb. This project earned him the Hubbard Medal, presented to him by President Kennedy on behalf of the National Geographic Society in July 1963. Emerson’s love of mountains and the rural social life of the mountain villages of Pakistan became a constant source of sociological inspiration for him during his career. His studies of interpersonal behavior, group performance, power, and social influence were often driven by his close personal encounters with expedition teams, for which the intensity of cooperation and competition were exacerbated by environmental stress. Source: This biographical vignette was written by Karen Cook.

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when the exchange in one serves to inhibit the exchange in the other (e.g., time spent earning money in one relationship reduces the ability to spend time with friends in another); or mixed.

Power-Dependence Theory Emerson defined power as the potential cost that one actor can induce another to accept. Dependence is the potential cost that an actor is willing to tolerate within a relationship. These definitions lead to Emerson’s power-dependence theory, which can be summarized as follows: in an exchange relationship, the power of one actor over another is a function of that actor’s dependence on the other actor. Unequal power and dependence lead to imbalances in relationships, but over time relationships move toward greater power-dependence balance. Actors’ dependence on one another is critical in Emerson’s work. Among other things, this mutual dependence determines the nature of their interaction and the amount of power they exercise over one another. A sense of dependence is linked to Emerson’s definition of power. Thus, the power of actor A over actor B is equal to and based on actor B’s dependence on actor A. There is balance in the relationship between actor A and actor B when the dependence of A on B equals the dependence of B on A. Where there is an imbalance in dependence, the actor with less dependence has an advantage in terms of power; thus, power is a potential built into the structure of the relationship between A and B. Actors can also use power to acquire rewards from the relationship. Even in balanced relationships, power exists albeit in a kind of equilibrium. Power-dependence studies have focused primarily on positive outcomes—the ability to reward others. However, in a series of studies, Linda Molm has emphasized the role of negative outcomes—punishment power—in power-dependence relationships; power can be derived from both the ability to reward and the ability to punish others. In general, Molm has found that punishment power is weaker than reward power in part because acts of punishment are likely to elicit negative reactions. However, Molm has suggested that the relative weakness of punishment power may be attributable to the fact that it is not widely used rather than that it is inherently less effective than reward power. Molm and her coauthors found that the use of punishment power is more likely to be perceived as fair when those using it also have the power to reward.

A More Integrative Exchange Theory In explaining power-dependence, exchange theory focuses on the dyadic relation between actors. To move away from the dyadic approach of exchange theory and toward a focus on the power of a position within a structure, Cook power–To Emerson, the potential cost that one actor can induce another to accept. dependence–To Emerson, the potential cost that an actor will be willing to tolerate within a relationship.

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and Emerson argued that the determination of the power of a position is based on the amount of dependence of the entire structure on that position. Such systemwide dependence, in their view, is a function of both the structural centrality of the position and the nature of power-dependence relationships. They adopted a vulnerability approach in an effort to raise power-dependence theory from a microscopic to a more macroscopic level of analysis. Vulnerability involves the network-wide dependence on a particular structural position. Cook, Jodi O’Brien, and Peter Kollock define exchange theory in inherently integrative terms as being concerned with exchanges at various levels of analysis, including those among interconnected individuals, corporations, and nation-states. They identify two strands of work in the history of exchange—one at the micro level, focusing on social behavior as exchange, and the other at the more macro level, viewing social structure as exchange. They see the strength of exchange theory in micro-macro integration because the basic propositions of this theory apply to individuals and collectivities. In addition, the theory is explicitly concerned with the impact that changes at one level have on other levels of analysis. Cook et al. identify three contemporary trends, all of which point toward a more integrative exchange theory. First is the use of field research focusing on more macroscopic issues, which can complement the traditional use of the laboratory experiment to study microscopic issues. Second, they note the shift, discussed earlier, in substantive work away from a focus on dyads and toward larger networks of exchange. Third, and most important, is the effort to synthesize exchange theory and structural sociologies. There are a number of recent examples of efforts by exchange theorists to synthesize their approach with other theoretical orientations.

STRUCTURATION THEORY In creating one of the most satisfying efforts to develop an integrated theory that we will encounter in this chapter, Anthony Giddens began by surveying a wide range of theories that begin with either the individual/agent (e.g., symbolic interactionism) or the society/structure (e.g., structural functionalism) and rejected both of these polar alternatives. Rather, Giddens argues that we must begin with recurrent social practices. Indeed, Giddens says that society acquires its structural properties (its “patternedness”) precisely because practices are recursive—that is, they can be repeated indefinitely. Social practices can range from mundane everyday actions such as buying groceries to less common but nevertheless repeatable social practices such as voting in elections. Thus, to structuration theory, the focus is neither on large-scale structures nor on everyday actions and interactions but recursive–Capable of being repeated indefinitely. Giddens says that society acquires structure through recursive social practices.

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on social practices that recur in a patterned way. As in much of Giddens’s theory, time and space are significant to his conception of these practices: they recur and are ordered over time; they not only occurred yesterday and are occurring today but are also apt to recur tomorrow, next week, next year, and in the next century. Similarly, they recur and are ordered across space so that patterned social practices found in New York are also found in Chicago, Tokyo, and London, among other places. At its core Giddens’s structuration theory, with its focus on social practices, is a theory of the relationship between agency and structure. What is thought of in the United States as the micro-macro issue is the agency-structure issue in Europe. Although there are some important differences between them, for the purposes of this discussion we will treat micro-macro and agency-structure as all but identical continua. To Giddens, agency and structure cannot be conceived of apart from one another; they are two sides of the same coin. In Giddens’s terms, they are a duality (we discuss Margaret Archer’s critique of this orientation in the next section). All social action involves structure, and all structure involves social action. Agency and structure are inextricably interwoven in ongoing human activity or practice. This means several things: (1) social practices are not created mentally (or any other way) by actors; (2) social practices are not created by the structural social conditions in which actors find themselves; and (3) most important, because people are expressing themselves as human actors, they are creating their consciousness and the structural conditions that make these practices possible. Practices, consciousness, and structure are being created simultaneously by the actor. Activities are not produced by consciousness or by the social construction of reality, nor are they produced by social structure. Rather, in expressing themselves as actors, people are engaging in practice, and it is through that practice that both consciousness and structure are produced. Giddens is concerned with consciousness, or reflexivity. However, in being reflexive, the human actor is not merely self-conscious but also engaged in the monitoring of the ongoing flow of activities and structural conditions. Most generally, it can be argued that Giddens is concerned with the dialectical process in which practice, structure, and consciousness are produced. Thus, Giddens deals with the agency-structure issue in a historical, processual, and dynamic way. Not only are social actors reflexive, but so are the social researchers who are studying them. This led Giddens to his well-known ideas on the double ­hermeneutic. Both social actors and sociologists use language. Actors use language to account (here Giddens draws on ethnomethodology) for what they do, and sociologists, in turn, use language to account for the actions of social actors. duality–The concept that all social action involves structure and all structure involves social action. Agency and structure are inextricably interwoven in ongoing human activity or practice (Giddens). double hermeneutic–The concept that social scientists’ understanding of the social world may have an impact on the understandings of the actors being studied, with the result that social researchers can alter the world they are studying, which can lead to distorted findings and conclusions (Giddens).

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Thus, we need to be concerned with the relationship between lay and scientific language. We particularly need to be aware of the fact that the social scientist’s understanding of the social world may have an impact on the understandings of the actors being studied. In that way, social researchers can alter the world they are studying, which can lead to distorted findings and conclusions.

Elements of Structuration Theory Giddens’s structuration theory includes his thoughts on agents, who, as discussed previously, continuously monitor their own thoughts and activities as well as their physical and social contexts. In their search for a sense of security, actors rationalize their world. By rationalization Giddens means the development of routines that not only give actors a sense of security but also enable them to deal efficiently with their social lives. Actors also have motivations to act, and these motivations involve the wants and desires that prompt action. Thus, although rationalization and reflexivity are continuously involved in action, motivations are more appropriately thought of as potentials for action. Motivations provide overall plans for action, but most of our action, in Giddens’s view, is not directly motivated. Although such action is not motivated and our motivations are generally unconscious, motivations play a significant role in human conduct. Also within the realm of consciousness, Giddens makes a (permeable) distinction between discursive and practical consciousness. Discursive consciousness entails actors’ ability to describe their actions in words. Practical consciousness involves actions that the actors take for granted without being able to express in words what they are doing. The latter type of consciousness is particularly important to structuration theory, reflecting a primary interest in what is done rather than what is said. This focus on practical consciousness provides a smooth transition from agents to agency, the things that agents actually do. Thus, agency involves actions that are perpetrated by actors; that is, what occurs would not have occurred in that way were it not for the fact that the actor intervened and took the action in question. Thus, Giddens gives great (his critics say too much) weight to the importance of agency. He is careful to separate agency from intentions because he wants to make the point that actions often end up being different from what was intended; in other words,

rationalization–To Giddens, the development of routines that not only give actors a sense of security but also enable them to deal efficiently with their social lives. discursive consciousness–Consciousness that entails actors’ ability to describe their actions in words (Giddens). practical consciousness–Consciousness that involves actions that the actors take for granted without being able to express in words what they are doing (Giddens). agency–Actions that are perpetrated by actors; what occurs would not have occurred in that way were it not for the fact that the actor intervened and took the action in question.

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intentional acts often have unanticipated consequences. The idea of unintended consequences plays a significant role in Giddens’s theory and is especially important in getting us from agency to the level of the social system. Consistent with his emphasis on agency, Giddens accords the agent great power. Giddens’s agents have the ability to make a difference in the social world. Even more strongly, the notion of an agent makes no sense if the agent is not accorded power; that is, an actor ceases to be an agent if they lose the capacity to make a difference. Giddens certainly recognizes that there are constraints on actors, but this does not mean that actors have no choices and make no difference. To Giddens, power is logically prior to consciousness because action involves power, or the ability to transform the situation. Thus, Giddens’s structuration theory accords power to the actor and action and is in opposition to theories that are disinclined to such an orientation and instead grant great importance either to the intent of the actor (phenomenology) or to the external structure (structural functionalism). The conceptual core of structuration theory lies in the ideas of structure, system, and duality of structure. Structure is defined unconventionally as the structuring properties (specifically, rules and resources) that give similar social practices a systemic form. More specifically, it is what allows those social practices to exist across widely varying expanses of both time and space; thus, structure is made possible by the existence of rules and resources. Structures themselves do not exist in time and space. Rather, social phenomena have the capacity to become structured. Only through the activities of human actors can structure exist. Giddens offers a definition of structure that does not follow the Durkheimian pattern of viewing structures as external to and coercive of actors. He takes pains to avoid the impression that structure is outside or external to human action. Structure gives shape and form to social life, but it is not itself either that form or that shape. Giddens does not deny the fact that structure can be constraining on action, but he feels that sociologists have exaggerated the importance of this constraint. Furthermore, they have failed to emphasize the fact that structure is capable of both constraining and enabling action. Structures often allow agents to do things they would not otherwise be able to do. Although Giddens de-emphasizes structural constraint, he recognizes that actors can lose control over the structured properties of social systems as they stretch away in time and space. However, he is careful to avoid Weberian iron-cage imagery and notes that such a loss of control is not inevitable. The conventional sociological sense of structure is closer to Giddens’s concept of social system. To Giddens, social systems are reproduced social practices, agents–Actors who have the ability to make a difference in the social world; agents have power. structure–To Giddens, the structuring properties (specifically, rules and resources) that give similar social practices a systemic form. social systems–To Giddens, reproduced social practices, or relations between actors or collectivities that are reproduced, becoming regular social practices.

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or relations between actors or collectivities that are reproduced, becoming regular social practices. Giddens’s idea of social system is derived from his focal concern with practice. Social systems do not have structures, but they do exhibit structural properties. Structures do not themselves exist in time and space, but they do become manifested in social systems in the form of reproduced practices. Although some social systems may be the product of intentional action, Giddens places greater emphasis on the fact that such systems are often the unanticipated consequences of human action. These unanticipated consequences may become unrecognized conditions of action and feed back into it. These conditions may elude efforts to bring them under control, but actors continue in their efforts to exert such control nevertheless. Thus, structures are instantiated in social systems. In addition, they are manifest in the memories of individual agents. As a result, rules and resources manifest themselves at both the macro level of social systems and the micro level of human consciousness. The concept of structuration is premised on the idea, discussed previously, that agents and structures are a duality (not a dualism); they are not independent of one another. Instead, they are interrelated to such an extent that at the moment they produce action, people produce and reproduce the structures in which they exist. It is clear that structuration involves the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Structure and agency are a duality; neither can exist without the other. As previously indicated, time and space are crucial variables in Giddens’s theory. Both depend on whether other people are present temporally or spatially. The primordial condition is face-to-face interaction in which others are present at the same time and in the same space. However, social systems extend in time and space, so others may no longer be present. Such distancing in terms of time and space is made increasingly possible in the modern world by new forms of communication and transportation. The central sociological issue of social order depends on how well social systems are integrated over time and across space. One of ­Giddens’s most widely recognized achievements in social theory is his effort to bring the issues of time and space to the fore.

CULTURE AND AGENCY Margaret Archer has moved the agency-structure issue in another direction by focusing on the linkage between agency and culture. One key difference between Giddens and Archer is Giddens’s case for dualities as opposed to Archer’s critique structuration–The concept that agents and structures are interrelated to such an extent that at the moment they produce action, people produce and reproduce the structures in which they exist; the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Structure and agency are a duality; neither can exist without the other (Giddens).

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of Giddens’s devotion to dualities and her case for the utility of using (analytic) dualisms for analyzing the social world. In her view, as a dualism, structure (and culture) and agency are analytically distinct, although they are intertwined in social life. Archer argues that Giddens (and others) are too eager to examine both sides of the coin simultaneously. In doing so, they are prevented from examining the interrelationship between one side and the other, between agency and structure. Of particular concern to Archer is that the focus on duality overshadows the real ways in which structures can dominate people and impose social inequalities. She asserts that it is necessary for theorists to resist any theory that prevents study of this interrelationship because that makes it impossible to unravel the relationship between the two sides. In our view, both dualities and dualisms have a role to play in analyzing the social world. In some cases it may be useful to separate structure and action, or micro and macro, to look at the way in which they relate to each other. In other cases, it may help to look at structure and action (micro and macro) as ­inseparable—as a duality. In fact, it may well be that the degree to which the social world is characterized by dualities or dualisms is an empirical question. In one case the social setting might be better analyzed using dualities, whereas in another case it might be better to use dualisms. Similar points could also be made about different moments in time. We should be able to study and measure the degree of dualities and dualisms in any social setting at any given time. A second major criticism of Giddens is that in his structuration theory the problem of structure and agency has overshadowed the issue of culture and agency. Archer sees a distinction between structure and culture, as do most sociologists. However, the distinction is a conceptual one because structure and culture are obviously intertwined in the real world. Although structure is the realm of material phenomena and interests, culture involves nonmaterial phenomena and ideas. Not only are structure and culture substantively different, but they are also relatively autonomous. In Archer’s view, structure and culture must be dealt with as relatively autonomous, not lumped together under the heading of structure. However, in spite of the revival of cultural sociology, cultural analysis lags far behind structural analysis.

HABITUS AND FIELD Pierre Bourdieu’s theory is animated by the theorist’s desire to overcome what he considers to be the false opposition between subjectivism and objectivism, or between the individual and society. Bourdieu places Durkheim and his study of social facts (see Chapter 2) within the objectivist camp. Durkheimians are criticized for focusing on objective structures and ignoring the process of social dualism–The view of structure (and culture) and agency as distinct for analytic purposes, although they are intertwined in social life (Archer).

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construction by which actors perceive, think about, and construct these structures and then proceed to act on that basis. Objectivists ignore agency and the agent, whereas Bourdieu favors a position that is structuralist without losing sight of the agent, or real-life actor.

Bridging Subjectivism and Objectivism The goal of bridging subjectivism and objectivism moves Bourdieu in the direction of a subjectivist position, one that is associated with symbolic interactionism (see Chapter 6). Bourdieu views the latter as an example of subjectivism because it focuses on the way agents think about, account for, or represent the social world while largely ignoring the large-scale structures in which those processes exist. He sees theories such as symbolic interactionism as largely concentrating on agency and ignoring structure. Bourdieu, in contrast, focuses on the dialectical relationship between objective structures and subjective phenomena. For their part, objective structures constrain thought, action, and interaction as well as the way people represent the world. However, those representations cannot be ignored because they ultimately affect objective structures. To sidestep the objectivist-subjectivist dilemma, Bourdieu focuses on p ­ ractice, which he views as the outcome of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Practices are not objectively determined, nor are they the product of free will. Reflecting his interest in the dialectic between structure and the way people construct social reality, Bourdieu labels his own orientation constructivist structuralism, structuralist constructivism, or genetic structuralism. Bourdieu defines genetic ­structuralism as the study of objective structures that cannot be separated from mental structures that, themselves, involve the internalization of objective structures. He clearly subscribes, at least in part, to a structuralist perspective, but it is one that is different from that of most traditional structuralists. Whereas they focus on structures in language and culture, Bourdieu argues that structures also exist in the social world itself. He sees a social world comprising objective structures that are independent of actors but that can guide and constrain actors’ thoughts and practices. However, what truly differentiates Bourdieu from structuralists is the fact that he simultaneously adopts a constructivist perspective that allows him to deal with the genesis of schemes of perception, thought, and action as well as of social structures. practice–To Bourdieu, actions that are the outcome of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Practices are not objectively determined, nor are they the product of free will. genetic structuralism–Bourdieu’s approach, which involves the study of objective structures that cannot be separated from mental structures that, themselves, involve the internalization of objective structures. structuralist perspective–The view that there are hidden or underlying structures that determine what transpires in the social world. constructivist perspective–The view that schemes of perception, thought, and action create structures (Bourdieu).

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PIERRE BOURDIEU (1930–2002) A Biographical Vignette Shortly before his death, Bourdieu wrote what conventionally would be called an autobiography—a story about his life. However, true to his reflexive sociology, he warned readers that the book was not an autobiography but rather a sociological self-analysis. Like many poststructuralist thinkers, Bourdieu was wary of the idea that a person can be the sole author of their own life. So whereas Sketch for a Self-Analysis is filled with episodes from Bourdieu’s life, these are always placed in the context of the social fields that shaped his life. Typical of his sociological style, he presents his life as something that was structured by the fields through which he moved but also a product of the moves that he made as an agent within those fields. When Bourdieu first began his studies in French academia, it was dominated by the likes of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. These scholars represented a closed and elitist approach to scholarship. Their personalities and academic styles structured French academia. Although Bourdieu took classes with some of these elites, he was drawn to scholars on the periphery, including people like Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. Even though Bourdieu would eventually become head of the prestigious Collège de France (replacing the sociologist Raymond Aron), his early intellectual development was defined through this opposition to mainstream academic life. Bourdieu was also influenced by the time that he spent in war-torn Algeria, first in the French army and then as an assistant professor in Algiers. Throughout this time, Bourdieu positioned himself against the war. He wrote a book based on his time in Algeria that was intended to educate the French public on what he viewed as the true nature of French colonialism. Ultimately Bourdieu traced his stubborn and rebellious “disposition” to his upbringing in the peasant region of Béarn, France. Although his father had become a postal worker, both of his parents were from peasant families. They lived on a modest income, and their lifestyle was different from those of the classmates with whom Bourdieu would eventually study at the university. Not only did Bourdieu think about the world differently than his peers, but he talked with a different accent, held his body in a different way, and possessed a different kind of cultural capital. Bourdieu suggested that it was this habitus, and his resulting sympathy for outsiders, that led him to challenge authority both in French academia and in Algeria.

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Although Bourdieu seeks to bridge structuralism and constructivism, and he succeeds to some degree, there is a bias in his work in the direction of structuralism. For this reason he is thought of as a poststructuralist. His work has more continuity with structuralism than with constructivism. Unlike the approaches of most others (e.g., phenomenologists, symbolic interactionists), Bourdieu’s constructivism ignores subjectivity and intentionality. He does think it important to include within his sociology the way people, on the basis of their positions in social space, perceive and construct the social world. However, the perception and construction that take place in the social world are both animated and constrained by structures. What Bourdieu is interested in is the relationship between mental structures and social structures. Some microsociologists would be uncomfortable with Bourdieu’s perspective and would see it as little more than a more fully adequate structuralism. They would be particularly upset by his unwillingness and inability to deal with subjectivity. Yet there is a dynamic actor in Bourdieu’s theory, an actor capable of invention and improvisation. However, these are limited in his work: the invention is intentionless; the improvisation is regulated by structures. The heart of Bourdieu’s work, and of his effort to bridge subjectivism and objectivism, lies in his concepts of habitus and field as well as their dialectical relationship to one another. Whereas habitus exists in the minds of actors, fields exist outside their minds.

Habitus Bourdieu is most famous for his concept of habitus, the mental or cognitive structures through which people deal with the social world. People are endowed with a series of internalized schemes through which they perceive, understand, appreciate, and evaluate the social world. Through such schemes people both produce their practices and perceive and evaluate them. Dialectically, habitus is the product of the internalization of the structures of the social world. We can think of habitus as social structures that have been internalized; it is embodied social structures. It reflects objective divisions in the class structure, such as age groups, genders, and social classes. A habitus is acquired as a result of long-term occupation of a position within the social world. Thus, habitus varies depending on the nature of one’s position in that world; not everyone has the same habitus. However, those who occupy the same position within the social world tend to have a similar habitus. In this sense, habitus can also be a collective phenomenon. The habitus allows an actor to make sense out of the social world, but the existence of a multitude of habitus means that the social world and its structures do not impose themselves uniformly on all actors. poststructuralist–A theorist, like Bourdieu, who has been influenced by a structuralist perspective but has moved beyond it to synthesize it with other theoretical ideas and perspectives. habitus–The mental or cognitive structures through which people deal with the social world (Bourdieu).

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A habitus available at any given time has been created over the course of collective history. The habitus manifested in any given individual is acquired over the individual’s life course and is a function of the particular point in social history in which it occurs. Habitus is both durable and transposable—that is, transferable from one field to another. However, it is possible for a person to have an inappropriate habitus, to suffer from what Bourdieu calls hysteresis. A good example is someone who is uprooted from an agrarian existence in a contemporary precapitalist society and put to work on Wall Street. The habitus acquired in the precapitalist society would not allow the individual to cope well with life on Wall Street. The habitus both produces and is produced by the social world. On the one hand, habitus is a structuring structure, a structure that structures the social world. On the other hand, it is a structured structure; that is, it is a structure that is structured by the social world. In other words, the habitus involves a doublesided dialectic: it involves the internalization of external structures but also the externalization of things internal to the individual. The concept of habitus allows Bourdieu to avoid having to choose between subjectivism and objectivism. Practice mediates between habitus and the social world. On the one hand, through practice the habitus is created; on the other, as a result of practice, the social world is created. Although practice tends to shape habitus, habitus, in turn, serves to both unify and generate practice. Although habitus is an internalized structure that constrains thought and choice of action, it does not determine them. This lack of determinism is one of the main things that distinguishes Bourdieu’s position from that of traditional structuralists. The habitus merely suggests what people should think and what they should choose to do. People engage in a conscious deliberation of options, although this decision-making process reflects the operation of the habitus. The habitus provides the principles by which people choose the strategies they employ in the social world. As a result, in Bourdieu’s view, as in that of Garfinkel and the ethnomethodologists, people are not judgmental dopes. However, people are not fully rational either (Bourdieu has disdain for rational choice theory); they act in a reasonable manner—they have practical sense. There is a logic to what people do—the logic of practice. Practical logic is polythetic; that is, it can sustain a number of confused and seemingly illogical (from the point of view of formal logic) means. This is important not only because it underscores the difference between practical logic and rationality (formal logic) but also because it reminds us of Bourdieu’s relationism. The latter is important in this context because it leads us to recognize that habitus is not an unchanging, fixed structure; rather, it is adapted by individuals who are constantly changing in the face of the contradictory situations in which they find themselves.

hysteresis–The condition that results from having a habitus that is not appropriate for the situation in which one lives (Bourdieu).

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The habitus is not conscious, nor are we able to articulate linguistically the ways in which it functions. We cannot scrutinize it introspectively, nor are we able to control it through acts of will. Although we are not conscious of habitus and its operation, it manifests itself in our most practical activities, such as the way we eat, walk, talk, and even blow our noses. The habitus operates as a structure, but people do not simply respond mechanically to it or to external structures that are operating on them. Thus, in Bourdieu’s approach we avoid the extremes of unpredictable novelty and total determinism.

KEY CONCEPT Reflexive Sociology

Pierre Bourdieu calls for a reflexive sociology in which sociologists use their own tools to better understand their discipline. Sociologists, who spend their careers turning aspects of the social world into objects of study, ought to spend some time objectivizing their own practices. Using his own terminology, Bourdieu would favor examining the habitus and practices of sociologists within the fields of sociology as a discipline and the academic world as well as the relationship between those fields and the fields of stratification and politics. He would also be concerned with the strategies of individual sociologists, as well as of the discipline itself, to achieve distinction. For example, individual sociologists might use jargon to achieve high status in the field, and sociology might wrap itself in a cloak of science so that it can achieve distinction vis-à-vis the world of practice. In fact, Bourdieu argues that the scientific claims of sociology and other social sciences are really assertions of power. Of course, this position has uncomfortable implications for Bourdieu’s own work. He seeks to maintain his own symbolic power while at the same time criticizing the scientific approach that lies at the base of his own work. Bourdieu makes an interesting case for metatheorizing when he argues that practicing sociologists need to avoid being the toys of social forces that play on them and their work. The only way to avoid such a fate is to understand the nature of the forces acting on sociologists at a given point in history. Such forces can be understood only through metatheoretical analysis, or what Bourdieu calls socioanalysis. Once sociologists understand the nature of the forces (especially external social and intellectual forces) operating on them, they will be in a better position to control the impact of those forces on their work. Bourdieu himself seeks always to use sociology to cleanse his work of social determinants.

reflexive sociology–The use by sociologists of their own theoretical and empirical tools to better understand their discipline (Bourdieu).

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Field Bourdieu thinks of the concept of field relationally rather than structurally. The field is a network of relations among the objective positions within it. These relations exist apart from individual consciousness and will. They are not interactions or intersubjective ties among individuals. The occupants of positions may be either agents or institutions, and they are constrained by the structure of the field. The social world has a number of semiautonomous fields (e.g., art, religion, higher education), each with its own specific logic and each generating among actors a belief about the things that are at stake in a field. Bourdieu views the field, by definition, as an arena of struggle and battle, with people occupying positions within fields and oriented, either as individuals or as collectivities, to defending their present positions or to improving them. The structure of the field both lies at the base of and guides the strategies used to safeguard or improve positions. The field is a type of competitive marketplace in which kinds of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) are employed and deployed. However, the field of power (of politics) is of the utmost importance; the hierarchy of power relationships within the political field serves to structure all the other fields. Bourdieu lays out a three-step process for the analysis of a field. The first step, reflecting the primacy of the field of power, is to trace the relationship of any specific field to the political field. The second step is to map the objective structure of the relations among positions within the field. Finally, the analyst should seek to determine the nature of the habitus of the agents who occupy the types of positions within the field. The positions of agents in the field are determined by the amount and relative weight of the capital they possess. Bourdieu even uses military imagery (emplacements, fortresses) to describe the field and the struggles that take place within it. Capital allows one to control one’s own fate as well as the fate of others. Bourdieu usually discusses four types of capital. The idea is, of course, drawn from the economic sphere, and the meaning of economic capital is obvious. Cultural capital involves kinds of legitimate knowledge, social capital comprises valued social relations between people, and symbolic capital stems from one’s honor and prestige. Occupants of positions within the field employ a variety of strategies. This idea shows, once again, that Bourdieu’s actors have at least some freedom. H ­ owever, strategies are not conscious or preplanned. Rather, they are structured and are field–A network of relations among the objective positions within it (Bourdieu). economic capital–The economic resources possessed by an actor (Bourdieu). cultural capital–The kinds of legitimate knowledge possessed by an actor (Bourdieu). social capital–The extent of the valued social relations possessed by an actor (Bourdieu). symbolic capital–The amount of honor and prestige possessed by an actor (Bourdieu).

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structurally patterned and regular. The strategies that actors deploy depend on their habitus and the nature of their positions within the field. Bourdieu views the state as the site of the struggle over the monopoly of what he calls symbolic violence. This is a soft form of violence because the agent against whom it is practiced is complicit in its practice. Symbolic violence is practiced indirectly, largely through cultural mechanisms, and stands in contrast to the more direct forms of social control that sociologists often focus on. The educational system is the major institution through which symbolic violence is practiced on people. The language, the meanings, and the symbolic system of those in power are imposed on the rest of the population. This serves to buttress the position of those in power by, among other things, obscuring what they are doing from the rest of society and getting subordinates to accept the legitimacy of that which dominates them. More generally, Bourdieu views the educational system as deeply implicated in reproducing existing power and class relations. The political aspect of Bourdieu’s work is clearest in his ideas on symbolic violence. Bourdieu is interested in the emancipation of people from this violence and, more generally, from class and political domination. Yet Bourdieu is no naive utopian; a better description of his position might be reasoned utopianism. In underscoring the importance of both habitus and field, Bourdieu is rejecting the split between methodological individualists and methodological holists and adopting a position that has been termed methodological relationism—that is, he is focally concerned with the relationship between habitus and field. He sees this as operating in two main ways: on the one hand, the field conditions the habitus; on the other, the habitus constitutes the field as something that is meaningful, that has sense and value, and that is worth the investment of energy. Applying Habitus and Field: Distinction.  Bourdieu does not simply seek to develop an abstract theoretical system; he also relates it to a series of empirical concerns and thereby avoids the trap of pure intellectualism. The application of his theoretical approach is illustrated in his empirical study Distinction, which examines the aesthetic preferences of different groups throughout society. In this work, Bourdieu attempts, among other things, to demonstrate that culture can be a legitimate object of scientific study. He seeks to reintegrate culture in the sense of high culture (e.g., preferences for classical music) with the symbolic violence–A soft form of violence (the agent against whom it is practiced is complicit in its practice) that is practiced indirectly, largely through cultural mechanisms (Bourdieu). methodological individualists–Those social scientists who focus on the micro level and view it as determining the macro level. methodological holists–Those social scientists who focus on the macro level and view it as determining the micro level. methodological relationism–The position of social scientists who focus on the relationship between macro- and micro level phenomena (Bourdieu).

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anthropological sense of culture, which looks at all its forms, both high and low (e.g., country or rap music). More specifically, in this work Bourdieu links taste for refined objects, like fine foods, with taste for the most basic objects, such as burgers and fries. Because of structural invariants, especially field and habitus, the cultural preferences of the groups within society (especially classes and fractions of classes) constitute coherent systems. Bourdieu is focally concerned with variations in aesthetic taste, the acquired disposition to differentiate among the cultural objects of aesthetic enjoyment and to appreciate them differentially. Taste is also practice that serves, among other things, to give an individual, as well as others, a sense of their place in the social order. Taste serves to unify those with similar preferences and to differentiate them from those with different tastes. Through the practical applications and implications of taste, people classify objects and, in the process, themselves. We are able to categorize people by the tastes they manifest, for example, by their preferences for different types of music or movies. These practices, like all others, need to be seen in the context of all mutual relationships, that is, within the totality. Thus, seemingly isolated tastes for art and movies are related to preferences in food, sports, and hairstyles. Two interrelated fields are involved in Bourdieu’s study of taste: class relationships (especially within fractions of the dominant class) and cultural r­ elationships. He sees these fields as a series of positions in which a variety of games are undertaken. The actions taken by the agents (individual or collective) who occupy specific positions are governed by the structure of the field, the nature of the positions, and the interests associated with them. However, excelling at this game also involves self-positioning and the use of a wide range of strategies. Taste is an opportunity both to experience and to assert one’s position within the field. But the field of social class has a profound effect on one’s ability to play this game; those in the higher classes are far better able to have their tastes accepted and to oppose the tastes of those in the lower classes. Thus, the world of cultural works is related to the hierarchical world of social class and is itself both hierarchical and hierarchizing. Needless to say, Bourdieu also links taste to his other major concept, habitus. Tastes are shaped far more by these deep-rooted and long-standing dispositions than they are by surface opinions and verbalizations. People’s preferences for even mundane aspects of culture such as clothing, furniture, and cooking are shaped by the habitus. And these dispositions serve to unify classes, albeit unconsciously. To put it another way, taste is a matchmaker. Through taste one habitus indicates its compatibility with another habitus. Dialectically, of course, it is the structure of the class that shapes the habitus. Although both field and habitus are important to Bourdieu, their dialectical relationship is of utmost importance and significance; field and habitus mutually define one another. Out of the dialectical relationship between habitus and field, practices, cultural practices in particular, are established.

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Bourdieu views culture as a kind of economy, or marketplace. In this marketplace people utilize cultural rather than economic capital. This capital is largely a result of people’s social class origins and their educational experience. In the marketplace, people accrue more or less capital and either expend it to improve their positions or lose it, thereby causing their positions within the economy to deteriorate. People pursue distinction in a range of cultural fields—the beverages they drink (Perrier or cola), the automobiles they drive (Mercedes-Benz or Kia), the newspapers they read (New York Times or USA Today), and the resorts they visit (the French Riviera or Disney World). Relationships of distinction are objectively inscribed in these and other products and reactivated each time they are appropriated. In fact, there is an almost inexhaustible set of possible fields in which to pursue distinction. The appropriation of certain cultural goods (e.g., a Mercedes-Benz) yields profit, whereas appropriation of others (a Kia) yields no gain or even a loss. Bourdieu takes pains to make it clear that he is not simply arguing, following Thorstein Veblen’s famous theory of conspicuous consumption (see Chapter 3), that the motor force of human behavior is the search for distinction. Rather, his main point is that to occupy a position within a field is to differ from those who occupy neighboring positions—to be different. Through tastes people demonstrate differences from others. Thus, for example, one who chooses to own a grand piano is different from one who opts for an accordion. That one choice (the grand piano) is seen as worthy of high status while the other (the accordion) is considered vulgar is a result of the dominance of one point of view and the symbolic violence practiced against those who adopt another viewpoint. A dialectic exists between the nature of cultural products and tastes. Changes in cultural goods lead to alterations in taste, but changes in taste are also likely to result in transformations in cultural products. The structure of the field not only conditions the desires of the consumers of cultural goods but also structures what the producers create to satisfy those demands. Changes in taste (and Bourdieu sees all fields temporally) result from the struggle between opposing forces in the arenas of culture (e.g., the supporters of old vs. new fashions) and class (the dominant vs. the dominated fractions within the dominant class). However, the heart of the struggle lies within the class system, and the cultural struggle between artists and intellectuals, for example, is a reflection of the interminable struggle among the different factions of the dominant class to define culture—indeed, the entire social world. Oppositions within the class structure condition oppositions in taste and in habitus. Although ­Bourdieu gives great importance to social class, he refuses to reduce it merely to economic matters or to the relations of production; rather, he sees class as defined by habitus as well. Bourdieu offers a distinctive theory of the relationship between agency and structure within the context of a concern for the dialectical relationship between

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habitus and field. His theory is also distinguished by its focus on practice (in the preceding case, aesthetic practice) and its refusal to engage in arid intellectualism. In that sense it represents a return to the Marxian concern for the relationship between theory and practice.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The “Field” of American Higher Education Today Higher education in the United States in the early 21st century is certainly a field in Bourdieu’s sense of the term. It is a network of relations among objective positions within it. Among those positions are universities and colleges, a wide range of academic departments, chancellors and deans, professors of various ranks, graduate students, undergraduate students, staff, and so on. Like other fields, it can be looked at as a kind of vast military battlefield in which a variety of struggles to improve or protect positions are taking place. Among the ongoing struggles are the following: 1. Elite universities versus those that aspire to that status. The relatively small number of elite universities in the United States (e.g., Harvard, Stanford) have a disproportionate share of the best-known and most productive scholars and produce the vast majority of PhDs. Many other universities (including most state universities) would like to achieve elite status but almost always find it impossible to do so. The elite universities often undercut the efforts of nonelite universities, by, for example, hiring away their best professors. 2. Department versus department. Within any university there is a status hierarchy among departments, with, for example, the hard sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry) almost always ranking above the social sciences (economics, sociology) and arts and humanities (history, English) ranking even lower. This hierarchy is reflected in, among other things, the relative funding of departments and the average salaries of faculty in them. Lower-ranking departments frequently struggle to move up the hierarchy to obtain more funding, higher salaries, and greater prestige, and they are usually opposed in their efforts by the departments that rank above them. 3. Senior faculty versus junior faculty. Senior faculty (professors) hold most of the power in academic departments, and junior faculty (associate and assistant professors) aspire to be professors. However, it is the professors who decide which junior faculty will get promoted. More generally, junior faculty aspire to get a share of the power held by professors, who needless to say, are generally reluctant to share much, if any, of it.

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4. Faculty versus graduate students. Graduate students are far lower in the status hierarchy than the most junior faculty members, who along with other faculty members, exercise power over them. Graduate students aspire to get the PhDs that they hope will lead them to secure faculty positions, but existing faculty decide how difficult the process will be and who will or will not get those degrees. 5. Faculty versus undergraduate students. Undergraduate students want the time and attention of faculty members, but the latter, especially if they are ambitious, want to devote most of their time to the writing and research that will get them promotions and perhaps even lead to positions at elite universities. This is a far from exhaustive list, but it does at least give a sense of the positions, relationships, and struggles in the field of U.S. higher education today.

SUMMARY 1. Richard Emerson constructed a more integrative exchange theory. 2. He dealt with the psychological basis of exchange as well as exchange relations, networks, and structures at the macro level. 3. An exchange network is a web of social relationships involving a number of either individual or collective actors; the actors have a variety of valued resources as well as exchange opportunities and exchange relations with one another. 4. There are a number of these exchange relations, and they interrelate with one another to form a single network structure. 5. Power (the potential cost that one actor can induce another to accept) and dependence (the potential cost that an actor will be willing to tolerate within a relationship) are central to Emerson’s integrative exchange theory. 6. Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory deals with agents and structures as a duality; they cannot be separated from one another. 7. Giddens’s approach is distinguished by the power it accords to agents. 8. In structuration theory, structure is defined unconventionally as the structuring properties (specifically rules and resources) that give similar social practices a systemic form.

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9. Social systems are reproduced social practices, or relations between actors or collectivities that are reproduced, becoming regular social practices. 10. Structuration is premised on the idea that agents and structures are not independent of one another. Rather, they are interrelated to such an extent that at the moment they produce action, people produce and reproduce the structures in which they exist. 11. In contrast to Giddens, Margaret Archer makes the case for a dualism in which structure and agency can be distinguished analytically even though they are intertwined in the social world. 12. Archer also argues that culture has been ignored and that we should focus on the relationship between culture and agency. 13. Bourdieu’s integrated theory is concerned with the relationship between habitus and field. 14. Habitus is the mental or cognitive structure through which people deal with the social world. 15. The field is a network of relations among the objective positions within it. 16. The positions of agents in the field are determined by the amount of capital— economic, cultural, social, and symbolic—they possess. 17. The field is a site of struggles to gain advantageous positions.

SUGGESTED READINGS MARGARET ARCHER Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. The source for Archer’s views on Giddens and her own ideas on the integration of culture and agency. CRAIG CALHOUN “Pierre Bourdieu.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 361–394. Compelling overview of Bourdieu’s life and work. IRA COHEN Structuration Theory. London: Macmillan, 1989. Makes structuration theory as accessible as possible. IRA COHEN “Structuration.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 811–814. Readable overview of Giddens’s dense and difficult structuration theory by one of its foremost analysts.

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KAREN S. COOK, JODI O’BRIEN, and PETER KOLLOCK “Exchange Theory: A Blueprint for Structure and Process.” In George Ritzer ed., Frontiers of Social Theory: The New Syntheses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, pp. 158–181. KAREN S. COOK and ERIC RICE “Social Exchange Theory.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 735–740. Examination of the history and current status of exchange theory; the senior author is one of the most important living contributors to that theory. KAREN S. COOK and JOSEPH WHITMEYER “Richard Emerson.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 193–218. Brief introduction to Emerson’s life and work; the senior author is Emerson’s most important disciple. IAN CRAIB Anthony Giddens. London: Routledge, 1992. A critical examination of Giddens’s work, including structuration theory. NOAH FRIEDKIN “Exchange Networks.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 264–265. Entry focused on the concept that gets to the heart of a more integrated exchange theory. RICHARD JENKINS “Habitus.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 352–353. Detailed examination of the best-known and most influential of Bourdieu’s concepts. RICHARD JENKINS “Pierre Bourdieu.” In George Ritzer, ed., The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 66–71. Broad overview of the person and his work that includes a discussion of the relationship between habitus and field. DAVID SWARTZ Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Excellent overview of the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu to social theory.

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CHAPTER

EIGHT

CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEORIES

Patricia Madoo Lengermann The George Washington University

Gillian Niebrugge The George Washington University

The Basic Theoretical Questions The Classical Roots Contemporary Feminist Theories Summary Suggested Readings

Feminist theory is a generalized, wide-ranging, and critical system of ideas about social life and human experience developed from a woman-centered perspective. This perspective both investigates the situations and experiences of women in the social world and depicts that world from the vantage points of women. Feminist theory is “critical” because it challenges and seeks to redress the disadvantages and injustices that almost all women experience in a world where men have had superior power. It is also critical because it has always been part of social movements by and for women—periods of activism in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries known as first wave, second wave, third wave, and now fourth wave feminist mobilization. feminist theory–A generalized, wide-ranging system of ideas about social life and human experience ­developed from a woman-centered perspective.

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Feminist sociological theory is both the expression of feminist theory in sociological terms and the contribution of sociological understandings to the transdisciplinary and international body of thought that constitutes feminist theory. Feminist sociological theory reworks feminism’s focus on women into the central sociological concept of gender—the socially constructed identities, relationships, and stratification practices associated with the terms femininity and masculinity (and, recently, with other gender identities such as transgender, queer, or nonbinary). The classic roots of contemporary feminist theory are in first-wave feminist activism (circa 1848–1920), which centered on women’s struggle for the vote and for admission to the political process. Contemporary feminist theory began with second wave activism (1960–1990), which worked to translate women’s basic political rights into tangible economic and social equality with men. Third wave feminism, running from the early 1970s and to the present moment, uses an analysis now widely known as “intersectionality” to express critiques by women of color, lesbians, working-class women, and women in the global South to what they identify as race- and class-privileged biases in second wave feminism. Fourth wave feminism, emerging around 2010, seeks actively to challenge “gender” as a defining concept in people’s life experiences and life chances; it seeks to disrupt gender binaries, validate all body types, mobilize for the rights of trans people (both transsexual and transgender), and oppose and resist the temptation to misandry by actively including men in its actions. It expands the repertoire of feminist protest through its use of online resources, social media, and major protest actions (slut walks, #MeToo and Time’s Up, the Women’s March on Washington, and the Black Lives Matter movement). The current revision of this chapter is framed by a historic moment of high activism and energized feminist scholarship on a global scale. This chapter has four main sections: an overview of the basic questions that guide feminist theory, a sketch of the classical roots of contemporary feminist theory, a description of the types of contemporary feminist theory emphasizing the contributions of sociologists to those theories, and some current challenges to feminist theorizing.

THE BASIC THEORETICAL QUESTIONS The impetus for feminist theory begins 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? gender–A concept developed in feminist sociological theory to distinguish between sex, the biologically determined attributes associated with male and female, and socially constructed behaviors associated with masculinity and femininity.

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In response to this question, feminist scholarship has produced some generalizable answers. 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 have been present, women have played roles different from the popular conception of them (as, e.g., passive wives and mothers). Indeed, as wives and as mothers, and in a series of other roles, women, along with men, have actively created the situations being studied. Yet, although 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 roles in most social situations, although essential, have been different from, less privileged than, and subordinate to the roles of men. Their invisibility is only one indicator of this inequality. Feminism’s second basic question is: Why is all this as it is? In answering this question, feminist theory has produced a variety of sub-theories or what we may think of now as “themes,” the discussion of which forms the central part of this chapter. We trace the development of feminist sociological theory through its response to and use of the answers to this second basic question. As the circle of feminists exploring these questions has become more inclusive of people of diverse backgrounds both in the United States and internationally, feminist theorists have raised a third question, What about the differences among women? At this moment, this may be the most significant question for both feminist theory and feminist sociological theory and research. The answers to this question lead to a general conclusion that the invisibility, inequality, and role differences in relation to men that generally characterize all women’s lives are profoundly affected by their locations in other stratificational arrangements—class, race, age, physical disabilities, affectional preference, marital status, religion, ethnicity, and global location. This perspective is known as intersectionality theory. The fourth question for all feminists is: How can we change and improve the social world to make it a more just place for all people? This commitment to social transformation in the interest of justice is the distinctive characteristic of critical social theory, defined by Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought as “theory . . . that actively grapple[s] with the central questions facing groups of people differently placed in specific political, social, and historic contexts characterized by injustice.” This commitment is practiced in sociology by feminism, Marxism, neo-Marxism, critical race theory and postcolonial theory. But today, after more than five decades of activism and genuine material gains, feminist social theorists are confronting a fifth question emerging from a record of victories and defeats: How—and why—does gender inequality persist in the modern world? Feminist theory has also been called to answer the challenge of a sixth question, frequently coming from sources outside feminist theory: What is to be understood by the category “gender”? Particular sources of this challenge are postmodernism and neoliberalism. Feminism’s answers to these theoretical questions have produced a revolutionary switch in our understanding of the world, similar in Western history to

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that produced by Marx’s critique of the world as a product of ruling class ideas and his presentation of it as the product of working-class endeavors. Feminism shows 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 points of a hitherto invisible, unacknowledged “underside”: women (and some men) who, in subordinated but indispensable “serving” roles, work to sustain and re-create the society we live in. This discovery raises questions about everything we thought we knew about society, and its implications constitute the essence of contemporary feminist theory’s significance for sociological theory.

HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802–1876) A Biographical Vignette Born on June 12, 1802, in Norwich, England, to a Unitarian manufacturing family, Harriet Martineau received a good education for a woman in her times because of her family’s religious principles, which emphasized human reason as the way to transcendental experience. But she was left penniless with the failure of her father’s textile business in 1829 and had to choose, as she later said, between making her living by the needle or by the pen. She had written for Unitarian publications in her youth with success in the form of monetary prizes, and so she turned to writing. She became a household name in England, outselling even Charles Dickens, with the publication of Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–1834), a series of novels designed to teach the general public the principles of what was then economics. The effort left her disillusioned about the possibilities of economics but with enough financial independence to be able to choose her new project. She turned to the new science of sociology and to a test of this new science in the New World, specifically the United States, where she felt she would be able to observe a society in the making—a view shared by her contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville (see Chapter 1), whose time in America overlapped with hers. On her way to the United States in 1835, she drafted the first methods text in sociology, How to Observe Morals and Manners. She used many of the principles therein as a guide to the field research that produced Society in America in 1836–1837. In 1853, she published her translation, reorganization, and abridgment of Auguste Comte’s six-volume Positive Philosophy, a version Comte liked so much that he had it retranslated into French, and the result became a standard version. Long recalled only for this last work, Martineau is now being studied for her original work of the 1830s and recognized as being, along with Comte, one of the inventors of sociology. Martineau was a prolific writer in many genres, publishing some 70 books and more than 1,500 newspaper articles. Deaf from her early teens, she was the first sociologist to write about illness and disability. She died on June 27, 1876.

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THE CLASSICAL ROOTS Posing the question “And what about the women?” has resulted in studies like our own work in the history of women in sociology, The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830–1930. This work shows within the discipline of sociology itself the ways that women can be major players in the creation and development of a field and yet have their contributions remain invisible—a process we call “erasure.” Women were active creators of both sociology and social theory in the first century of the discipline. Indeed, the claim can be made that in the founding generation, it was the work of a woman, Harriet Martineau, along with the work of Auguste Comte (see Chapter 2), that produced the first formal mapping of sociology as a way of thinking and as a method (see the biographical vignette on Martineau). Later, in the classic generation (1890–1930), at the same time that Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and George Herbert Mead were creating what would become the academic field of sociology, a group of women who formed a broad and connected network of social reformers were also developing pioneering sociological theories. These women included Jane Addams (1860–1935), Anna Julia Cooper (1858– 1964), Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), Florence Kelley (1859–1932), Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943), Marianne Weber (1870–1954), and Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931). With the possible exception of Cooper, they can all be connected through their relationship to Jane Addams—and Cooper was influenced by Addams. That they have not been known or recognized in conventional histories of the discipline as sociologists or sociological theorists is dramatic evidence of the power of gender politics within sociology. Although the sociological theory of each of these women is a product of individual theoretical effort, when the theories are read collectively, they represent a coherent statement of early feminist sociological theory. The chief hallmarks of their theories are characteristics they share with contemporary feminist sociological theory and are also the qualities that may account for their being passed over in the development of professional academic sociology. First, they practice a critical rather than descriptive or explanatory analysis. They understand sociology as part of the general progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and claim that the purpose of sociology is social amelioration and that the main problem to be ameliorated is social inequality. Second, they emphasize women’s experience, lives, and works as being equal in importance to men’s. A third hallmark of these theories is the theorists’ conscious awareness that they—like all people—speak from their own situated and embodied standpoints and that this understanding must be central to sociological method. And, fourth, they have a concern with domination as the chief practice by which inequality is maintained in the world; domination is the power relation in which the domination–A relationship in which one party (individual or collective), the dominant, succeeds in making the other party (individual or collective) the subordinate, an instrument of the dominant’s will, and refuses to recognize the subordinate’s independent subjectivity.

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superordinate makes the subordinate an instrument of their will, denying the subordinate’s individual capacity for thought and opinion. What distinguishes the classical women theorists from one another is the nature of and the remedy for the inequality on which they focused—gender, race, class, or the intersection of these factors. But all these women translated their views into social and political activism and helped shape and change the North Atlantic societies in which they lived. This activism was as much a part of their sense of practicing sociology as was the creation of theory. They believed in social science research as part of both the theoretical and activist practices of sociology. They were, consequently, highly creative innovators of the social science method. As the developing discipline of sociology marginalized these women as sociologists and sociological theorists, it often incorporated their research methods into its own practices while using the women’s activism as an excuse to define them as “not sociologists.” Thus, the women are remembered as social activists, community organizers, and social workers rather than as sociologists. Their heritage is a sociological theory that is a call to action as well as to thought.

CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST THEORIES In this section we look at how feminist sociologists have incorporated the insights of feminist theory into the theory and practice of sociology. The first basic point is that feminist theory is not unitary but expressed in a variety of forms. Sociologist Judith Lorber provides one map of this variety in terms of how the theories approach gender inequality: theories that aim to “reform” the gender system by equalizing opportunities, theories that aim to “resist” the gender system by actively promoting the value of women’s ways of being, and theories that “rebel” against the gender system by challenging the existence of gender itself (including postmodern and queer theories). We offer a somewhat different mapping, but the important first point is that although there is variety within feminist theory, there is an underlying unity based in a dedication to understanding and improving women’s position in society. Our typology classifies feminist theories in terms of their answer to feminism’s most basic question: “And what about the women?” In our mapping, there are five basic answers to this question. As shown in Table 8.1, these general answers can be further broken down in terms of the second basic question of feminist theory: “Why is all this as it is?” Table 8.1 needs to be read with the following cautions in mind. First, the typology outlines theoretical positions, not the locations of specific theorists; a given theorist may write over the course of a career from several of these positions. A second caution is that feminist theory and feminist sociological theory are dynamic enterprises that change over time. Over the past few years, there has been a steady movement toward synthesis, toward seeing how elements of these theories complement one another. There has also been a shift in the focus of much feminist theorizing

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from women’s oppression to oppressive practices and structures that affect the lives of the majority of the world’s population, men and women. A major line of tension has developed between interpretations that emphasize culture and meaning and those that emphasize the material consequences of power. Part of this debate over what explains most—meaning or materiality—has focused on problematizing gender. Theorists are exploring and deconstructing the taken-for-granted meanings of gender. And finally, the theories identified in the table do not exist on a level playing field: at this moment, some are relatively dormant (i.e., have made significant contributions in the past but are not now being elaborated), most notably psychoanalytic feminism; others are currently dynamic and expanding, most notably, intersectionality and to some degree radical feminist theory.

Gender Difference Although historically the concept of “difference” has been at the center of several theoretical debates in feminism, we use it here to refer to theories that describe and explain the ways in which men and women are or are not the same in behavior and experience. All theories of gender difference have to confront the problem usually termed “the essentialist argument”: the thesis that the fundamental differences between men and women are immutable. That immutability usually is seen as traceable to one of five factors: (1) biology; (2) the existential or phenomenological need of human beings to produce an “Other” as part of the act of self-definition; (3) the different cultures women and men create; (4) social institutional needs for men and women to fill different roles, most especially but not exclusively in the family, and (5) the production of gender differences out of the processes of interaction itself. Despite their persistence in popular thought, biological explanations of the differences between women and men did not gain traction among feminist sociologists in the second wave, although a few thinkers explored the idea, most notably Alice Rossi). But overall the response to this line of argument was oppositional. And there seems to be no significant theorizing moving in this direction.

General Feminist Theories of Difference There are two major theories of gender difference in feminist theory: cultural feminism and existential (or phenomenological) feminism. Cultural feminism is unique among theories analyzed here because it does not focus on explaining the origins of difference; rather, it explores (and celebrates) the social value of women’s distinctive ways of being—that is, the ways in which women are different from men. This approach allows cultural feminism to sidestep rather than resolve problems posed by the essentialist thesis. The essentialist thesis was first used against women in male patriarchal discourse to claim cultural feminism–A feminist theory that explores and celebrates the social value of women’s distinctive ways of being.

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Table 8.1  Overview of Varieties of Feminist Theory Basic varieties of feminist theory—

Distinctions within theories—

answers to the descriptive question:

answers to the explanatory

“What about the women?”

question: “Why is all this as it is?”

Gender difference Women’s location in, and experience of, most situations is different from that of men in the situation.

Cultural feminism Existential (or phenomenological) feminism Sociological theories Institutional placement Interactional accomplishments— “doing gender”

Gender inequality Women’s location in most situations is not only different from but also less privileged than or unequal to that of men.

Liberal feminism

Gender oppression Women are oppressed, not only different from or unequal to but actively restrained, subordinated, molded, and used/abused by men.

Psychoanalytic feminism Radical feminism

Structural oppression Women’s experience of difference, inequality, and oppression varies by their social location within capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.

Socialist feminism Hegemonic masculinity Intersectionality theory Postcolonial theory

Interrogating gender Women’s position may not be answered in the construct “gender.”

Postmodernism Neoliberalism

Source: Author created

that women are inferior to men. But that argument was reversed by the first-wave feminists who created cultural feminism. Cultural feminism extols the positive qualities of what it defines as “the female character” or “the female personality.” Theorists such as Margaret Fuller, Frances Willard, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman argued that the governing of society needed women’s virtues like

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cooperation, pacifism, and nonviolence in the settling of disputes. This tradition has continued in the present day in arguments about women’s distinctive standards for ethical judgment, mothers’ particular quality of consciousness, female communication style, women’s capacity for openness to emotion, and women’s lower level of aggression. The best-known modern work of this type is psychologist Carol Gilligan’s thesis that “an ethic of care” is more frequently invoked by women, whereas an ethic of rights derived from abstract principles is the standard used by men. Cultural feminism suggests that women’s ways of being may provide a healthier template for producing a just society than the ways of an androcentric (or male-centered) culture. Existential or phenomenological feminism has developed one of the most enduring themes of feminist theory: that women are marginalized as “Other” in a male-created culture. This theme is given its classic formulation in Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis in The Second Sex. Existential or phenomenological feminism sees people being born into a world that is shaped by a culture that reflects male experience and ignores or marginalizes women’s experience. De Beauvoir argues that human thought and culture tend to organize around a binary opposition—an either/or logic. A major binary opposition is male/female. One is either male or female. But, de Beauvoir says, in a world built on male experience, woman is not part of either/or; she is “Other.” Woman is assigned all the qualities that are the opposite of those of the agentic male subject. She is seen as passive where he is active, as timid where he is brave, as simple where he is complex, and so on. Women’s differences from men result in part from this fact of cultural construction, which excludes them. It also results in part from their internalizing this “Otherness” so that they experience themselves not as actors in the world but as objects that wait for men to desire them. Existential or phenomenological feminism raises crucial questions about difference: Can women liberate themselves from the status of object/Other? Must they become like men to do so? One answer being asserted in French feminism by thinkers like Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray is that liberation will come for women only when they develop a consciousness and culture that is uniquely theirs.

Sociological Theories of Difference Feminist institutional theory posits that gender differences result from the different roles that women and men play within institutional settings. A major source of difference is the sexual division of labor in the family to which all people are socialized both as children and as adults. This division of labor links women to the functions of wife, mother, and household worker; to the private sphere of existential or phenomenological feminism–A feminist theory of difference that sees people born into a world shaped by a culture that reflects male experience and ignores or marginalizes women’s experience. feminist institutional theory–A feminist theory that sees gender differences as resulting from the different roles that women and men play within institutional settings.

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home and family; and thus to a lifelong series of events and experiences different from those of men. A number of theorists have analyzed women’s roles as mothers and wives in producing and reproducing a female personality and culture, including Jessie Bernard, in The Future of Marriage (see the discussion of liberal feminism that follows); Nancy Chodorow, in The Reproduction of Mothering; and Miriam Johnson, in Strong Mothers, Weak Wives. Women’s repeated experience in these settings is pictured as carrying over into other institutions and producing differences between women and men in political behavior (e.g., the gender gap in voting), in choices of careers (e.g., the caring professions for women), in styles of corporate management, and in possibilities for advancement (e.g., the “mommy track”). Institutional placement theories have been subject to two criticisms. First, they do not account for the persistence of gender difference when men and women occupy the same institutional position. Second, many sociologists see these theories as presenting too static and deterministic a model. Feminist interactionist theory is currently the most elaborated sociological understanding of the origins of gender difference. It is anchored in ethnomethodology’s analysis of gender as an accomplishment. Ethnomethodologists (see Chapter 6) claim that institutional order, culture, and stratification are maintained by the ongoing activities of individuals in interaction. When they apply this idea to gender, the result is the understanding that “people do gender”—or what is called in shorthand “doing gender.” Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s 1987 article “Doing Gender” distinguishes among sex, sex category, and gender. A baby is born with some configuration of biological sex (although this may be more or less clear); on the basis of what the adults attending the birth interpret as its sex, the baby is assigned to a sex category; after that assignment, everyone around the child and the child itself over time begin to do gender, to act in ways considered appropriate to the sex category designation. The question of how they know what is appropriate is resolved in ethnomethodology by the principle of accountability: people do not act any way they choose; people in interactions hold other people “accountable” for behaving in ways that are expected, or useful, or understandable. Thus, people are constantly producing gender in their interactions with others as a way of making sense of the world and letting the world work. For instance, until recently, using the “right” public restroom was a taken-for-granted way of avoiding all sorts of potential embarrassments and a method of getting through the day okay. But with the advent of the trans-rights movement, what was taken-for-granted is now more visibly seen as “a way of doing gender.” Similarly, hugging, laughing, complaining—conveying the whole range of human emotions—are deeply gendered, and people situationally enact these ways as they attempt to communicate with other people. Indeed, one question that emerges from the doing gender perspective is whether it is possible not to do gender.

feminist interactionist theory–A feminist theory that views gender as an accomplishment by skilled actors in interaction with others who hold them accountable for conforming to appropriate gender behavior.

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Whereas the elemental understanding of “doing” holds constant for women and men, interactionist theorists recognize that a part of the substance of the doing in gender is “doing difference”—that is, acting to make distinctions, to distinguish oneself as masculine, not feminine, or, conversely, as feminine, not masculine. People repeat these acts of distinction from situation to situation to maintain gender identity. The major criticism of this approach is the sense—felt about much ethnomethodology—that it is not clear where the standards for accountability come from, that it is perhaps too voluntaristic in its orientation, because people in individual interactions do for the most part produce remarkably similar behaviors in doing gender. Other sociologists have argued that the approach is too concerned with how gender gets reproduced and does not account enough for moments of resistance. A major development in theories of difference is the stocktaking being done about the results of several decades of feminist activism. This stocktaking has produced a picture of a society in which gender differences have been negotiated in favor of equality up to a certain point and then have stalled out. Some of these studies are reviewed under “Liberal Feminism” in the next section.

Gender Inequality Three themes characterize feminist theorizing of gender inequality: (1) men and women are situated in society not only differently but unequally; (2) this inequality results from an organization of society that leaves women situationally less empowered than men to realize the human need for self-actualization; (3) humans have a potential malleability that lets them adapt to the constraints or opportunities of their situations in pursuit of self-actualization. Inequality theorists assume that both women and men will respond fairly easily to more egalitarian social structures and situations—unlike theorists of gender difference and of gender oppression, who present a picture of social life in which differences between women and men in accomplishing self-actualization are more durable, more penetrative of personality, and less easily changed.

Liberal Feminism The major expression of gender inequality theory, liberal feminism, argues that women may claim equality with men on the basis of an essential human capacity for reasoned moral agency, that gender inequality is the result of a sexist patterning of the division of labor, and that gender equality can be produced by liberal feminism:–A feminist theory of inequality that argues that women may claim equality with men on the basis of an essential human capacity for reasoned moral agency, that gender inequality is the result of a patriarchal and sexist patterning of the division of labor, and that gender equality can be produced by the transformation of the division of labor through the repatterning of key institutions—law, work, family, education, and media.

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transforming the division of labor through the repatterning of key institutions— law, work, family, education, and media. Historically, these claims were first articulated in the Declaration of Sentiments drafted at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 with the express purpose of reimagining the Declaration of Independence to include women, opening with the revisionist line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal” (italics added) and concludes with a call for women to do whatever is required to gain equal rights with men. The radical nature of this foundational document is that it conceptualizes the woman not in the context of home and family but as an autonomous individual with rights in her own person. In so doing, it states the case on which all liberal feminism rests, the beliefs that (1) all human beings have certain essential features—capacities for reason, moral agency, and self-actualization; (2) the exercise of these capacities can be secured through legal recognition of universal rights; (3) the inequalities between men and women assigned by sex are social constructions having no basis in “nature”; and (4) social change for equality can be produced by an organized appeal to a reasonable public and the use of the state. Second wave liberal feminism has focused on translating political rights won by the first wave into economic equality for women. Feminist sociology has explicated the barriers to achieving that equality by analyzing the gender division of labor, an ideology and practice that separates the world into public and private spheres. Men have privileged access to the public sphere, which allocates the major rewards of social life—money, power, status, freedom, opportunities for growth and self-worth. Women are assigned primary responsibility for the private sphere, the world of domesticity, where largely unpaid labor reproduces the world’s workers day after day. The two spheres constantly interact in the lives of women (much more than they do for men), and both spheres are shaped by patriarchal ideology and sexism. In a series of now classic works, liberal feminist sociologists of the second wave developed three primary insights about the public-private patterning of social life: (1) the dynamics of the private world limit women’s agency and, thus, their participation in the public sphere; (2) the public sphere itself is organized around assumptions about gender that keep women at a disadvantage; and (3) negotiating the interface of private and public is perhaps the most formidable and enduring of the barriers to women’s economic equality. Jessie Bernard’s The Future of Marriage ([1972] 1982) offers a model of marriage as, simultaneously, a cultural system of beliefs and ideals, an institutional arrangement of roles and norms, and a complex of interactional experiences for individuals. Experientially, any marriage contains two marriages: “his marriage,” in which the husband holds to the cultural belief of sexism–A system of discriminatory attitudes and practices connected by a theme of privileging male experience and devaluing female experience.

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being constrained and burdened while experiencing what the norms dictate— authority, independence, and a right to domestic, emotional, and sexual service by the wife; “her marriage,” in which the wife 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. In support, Bernard cites measurements of human stress showing that married women, whatever their claims to fulfillment, and unmarried men, whatever their claims to freedom, rank high on all stress indicators. Studies like Bernard’s undergirded efforts to increase egalitarian arrangements between marriage partners. Although by the beginning of the 21st century, such studies were rarely done, early data reports on the effects of the pandemic of 2020– 2021 revive concerns about inequality in marriage as data repeatedly show that when both husband and wife worked outside the home and then had to shift to working at home, it was the wife who took on the demands of domesticity and childcare, and it was wife who tended to quit the paid economy to handle childcare and virtual schooling. Joan Acker’s groundbreaking 1990 study “Hierarchies, Jobs, and Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations” challenged the accepted assumption that organizations are gender neutral, positing instead the existence of a gendered substructure that produces segregation in the workplace, inequalities of both status and income, and masculinist assumptions about what Joan Williams would later call “the ideal worker.” Christine Williams and Megan Tobias Neely continue this argument in a 2018 study showing that corporate rhetoric about flexibility and diversity is not realized in the gendered practices of the modern corporation (see “Neoliberalism” in this chapter). In the 1989 The Second Shift, Arlie Hochschild demonstrates the unequal terms on which women who are wives and mothers participate in paid employment by conceptualizing the work of the private sphere as “a second shift,” an hours-long round of daily duties, largely nonnegotiable, that these women must do. Drawing on interviews with couples who both work in the paid economy, Hochschild paints a picture of women’s double day—the work of the office followed by the work of the home—and the emotional and physical toll this schedule exacts, especially in sleep deprivation. Hochschild’s work has permeated popular understandings of women’s experience and led to investigations of how women and men “juggle work and family.” In a later book, the 1997 The Time Bind, Hochschild explores the problem of balancing work and family in dual-income households and the ineffectiveness of companies offering family-friendly policies because workers fear censure and job loss if perceived as less than 100% committed to their work (a finding reinforced by Williams the second shift–The work done by women at home before and after their work at a job in the paid economy (Hochschild).

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and Neely, 2018, see additional information that follows). Hochschild suggests that many workers, both women and men, also develop a preference for being at work because of the linearity of demands and clearer rewards system than they can experience in the unstructured, unending, intangibly rewarded work of the home. Building on such studies, liberal feminist sociologists—Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, Beth Hess, Patricia Martin, and Barbara Risman—have moved to define gender as a structure. Risman describes gender as a stratificational system patterning human behavior at three levels—individual, cultural/interactional, and institutional—that produces a gendered division of labor, the organizational lens of public and private spheres, and a culture permeated by sexist ideology (see “Hegemonic Masculinity” under “Structural Oppression”). Most recently, feminist sociologists have begun to seek answers for the persistence of gender inequality despite the gains of the last 50 years. One important step has been Cecilia Ridgeway’s 2011 conception of gender frames. Frames generally, and gender frames in particular, offer a simplified categorizing schema by which people can adjust their behaviors to others. Ridgeway places gender frames in the larger social context of people’s needs to coordinate activity—and to do so often fairly quickly—and sees them as slower to change than the organizational arrangements, like work and education, of society. Thus, frames permeate new interactional settings with old understandings. Assessing the data on women’s gains in education and employment, Paula England concludes in 2020 that feminists may be facing “a stalled revolution.” Women’s gains have not affected all women equally and have not produced a major reconfiguration of the culture that devalues traditional female activity and jobs nor a new script for negotiating heterosexual intimacy. England argues that this arrest reflects the interaction of three widely held beliefs: that every individual has a right to upward mobility through personal effort; that there are, nevertheless, essential differences between men and women; and that what men do has more intrinsic value than what women do. Practically, this affects action because (1) men see no upward mobility in moving to traditionally female careers; (2) acceptance of essentialist beliefs by both women and men fundamentally shapes how they do dating, courtship, and marriage; and (3) women who accept essentialist beliefs prefer to pursue traditionally female careers (the choice of blue-collar women) unless their experience of mobility is blocked, as is the case for middle-class daughters aspiring to move up from the position of mother in traditional women’s careers. England’s analysis has received confirmation in William Scarborough, Ray Sin, and Barbara Reskin, 2019 “Attitudes and the Stalled Gender Revolution.” gender frame–Frames generally, and gender frames in particular, offer a simplified categorizing schema by which people can adjust their behaviors to others.

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Two additional factors shape 21st-century liberal feminism. One is the arguments of intersectionality theory (see as follows)—so that now most liberal analyses explore the effects of race, class, disability, age, affectional preference, and so on, on their project: women’s quest for full economic equality. A second is the need to counter challenges presented to feminism by neoliberalism (see as follows). Contemporary liberal feminism has expanded to include a global feminism that confronts racism in North Atlantic societies and works for “the human rights of women” everywhere based on a theory of human equality as a right that the state—local, national, and international—must respect.

Gender Oppression Theories of gender oppression describe 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, an instrument of the dominant’s will, refusing to recognize the subordinate’s independent subjectivity. 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 gender oppression is incorporated in the deepest and most pervasive ways into society’s organization, a basic structure of domination most commonly called patriarchy. Patriarchy is not the unintended and secondary consequence of some other set of factors, like biology or socialization or sex roles or the class system. It is a primary power structure sustained by strong and deliberate intention. Indeed, to theorists of gender oppression, gender differences and gender inequality are by-products of patriarchy. Two major variants of oppression theory are psychoanalytic feminism and radical feminism.

Psychoanalytic Feminism Psychoanalytic feminism attempts to explain patriarchy by reformulating the theories of Freud and his intellectual heirs, led by Nancy Chodorow and patriarchy–A system in which men subjugate women. Patriarchy is universal, pervasive in its social organization, durable over time and space, and triumphantly maintained in the face of occasional challenge (feminist theory). psychoanalytic feminism–An effort to explain patriarchy through the use of reformulations of the theories of Sigmund Freud and his successors in psychoanalytic theory.

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Jessica Benjamin. These theories map and emphasize the emotional dynamics of personality, 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. Once a central approach for feminist sociologists, psychoanalytic feminism is currently much less visible in the theoretical, research, and policy work of the feminist sociological community—although Chodorow and Benjamin both continue to publish expansions of their theoretical models. Nevertheless in the continuing belief that their explanation of gender oppression is illuminating and useful, we give a brief six-point outline of the key arguments made by these theorists. 1. Psychoanalytic feminists set out to solve the puzzle of why men bring such unremitting energy to the task of sustaining patriarchy and, concomitantly, why there is an absence of countervailing energy on the part of women to resist. 2. Psychoanalytical feminists focus on the socioemotional environment in which the personality of the child takes form and on two facets of early childhood development: (1) the assumption that human beings grow into maturity by learning to balance the tension between individuation, the desire for freedom of action, and recognition, the desire for confirmation by another, and (2) the observable fact that in all societies, infants and children experience their earliest and most crucial development in a close, uninterrupted relationship with a woman—their mother or mother substitute. 3. Without language as a tool for understanding experience, infants and young children experience their early phases of personality development as an ongoing storm of primitive emotions—fear, love, hate, pleasure, rage, loss, desire—the lifelong emotions that are potent but often unconscious “feeling memories.” Central to that emotional residue are deeply ambivalent feelings toward the woman/mother/ caregiver: need, dependence, love, and possessiveness but also fear and rage over her ability to thwart one’s will. Children’s relationship to the father or man is much more occasional, secondary, and emotionally uncluttered. 4. 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 mother. 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 yet is dependent on and

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controlled by him—that is, he seeks to dominate but finds recognition of others difficult. 5. The female child, bearing the same feelings toward the woman/ mother, discovers her own female identity in a culture that devalues women and grows up with deeply mixed positive and negative feelings about herself and the woman/mother, an ambivalence that erodes 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— submissively with males in acts of sexual attraction and mutually with females in acts of kinship and friendship. And rather than seeking a mother substitute, she re-creates the early infant-woman relationship by becoming a mother. 6. Psychoanalytical feminist theorists have extended their analyses beyond individual personality to the separation between “man” and “nature” in Western science; motifs in popular culture, the organizational practices of professional groups of service providers), and to two pathologies—the over-individuated dominator, who “recognizes” the Other only through acts of control, and the under-individuated subordinate, who finds identity only as a mirror of the dominator. Clinical psychiatric evidence supports may aspects of this theory. But, in drawing a straight line from human emotions to female oppression, psychoanalytic feminists fail to explore the intermediate social arrangements that link emotion and oppression or suggest possible lines of variation in emotions, social arrangements, or in oppression itself produced by class, race, nationality, and ethnicity. Moreover, psychoanalytic feminist theory suggests few strategies for change, except perhaps that we restructure our child rearing practices.

Radical Feminism Radical feminism has had two phases of high popularity between 1975 and 2020: the radical feminism of the second wave (1975–1995) and that of the third and fourth waves that emerged about 2010 and continues today. Between these two phases, radical feminism, like psychoanalytic feminism today, appears in the margins of feminist sociology. The two phases of high visibility differ considerably in tone and content and will be presented separately.

radical feminism–A theory of social organization, gender oppression, and strategies for change that affirms the positive value of women and argues that they are everywhere oppressed by violence or the threat of violence.

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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—often violently—by the system of patriarchy. Radical feminists see in every institution and in all society’s stratificational arrangements systems of domination and subordination, the most fundamental of which is patriarchy, historically the first such structure and still the most pervasive structure of domination and subordination. Through participation in patriarchy, men learn how to hold other human beings in contempt 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 second wave radical feminists, is the least noticed yet the most significant structure of social inequality. A major theoretical statement of second wave radical feminism is an explication of how patriarchy operates in Adrienne Rich’s parsimoniously titled Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980). Two key ideas are in that tight title phrase: one, the problem is not heterosexuality (or by extension, any particular form of sexuality), the problem is the compulsory nature of heterosexuality as now practiced, which forces women into sexual service to men; two, the ideology and practice of patriarchy threaten the right to existence of people who depart from it and the ultimate deviant within patriarchy is the lesbian or “woman-­identifiedwoman” as Rich describes her. Rich offers a detailed description of both the enforcement of patriarchy through violence and the benefits that accrue to men under patriarchy through the compelled service of women. Central to this analysis is the image of patriarchy as violence practiced by men and by male-dominated organizations against women. This violence can be hidden in more complex practices of exploitation and control: in denial of basic economic resources; 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; and 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 to women. But the theme of violence as overt physical cruelty lies at the heart of this phase of radical feminism: sexual abuse and rape, enforced prostitution, spouse abuse; “femicide,” the murder of women because they are women; sadism in pornography and in historical or cross-cultural practices of witch burning, the stoning to death of adulteresses, the persecution of lesbians, female infanticide, Chinese foot binding, the abuse of widows, and the practice of female genital mutilation. Once patriarchy is in place, economic, ideological, legal, and emotional power resources can be marshaled to sustain it. But physical violence always remains its fundamental resource, used to protect patriarchy from women’s individual and

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collective resistance. Men’s motives are those of cognitive self-interest in the many rewards of controlling women: sexual satisfaction, progeny, the availability of sustained and heavy labor, ornamental enhancement of male status and power, companionship, emotional support, and confirmation of male social significance. These uses 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. How is patriarchy to be defeated? Radicals hold that women can defeat this oppression by recognizing their own value and strength and working in unity with other women, regardless of differences among them, to establish a broad-based sisterhood of 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, artistic creativity, and love relationships on a lesbian continuum. During the 1970s and 1980s radical feminism was a passionate, mobilized, and activist part of the second wave feminist movement, a major factor in its public visibility. The protests, meetings, publications, policy initiatives, and institution building—like domestic violence shelters and women-only communities—had two broad goals: to bring to public awareness the widespread, pervasive, and multiple practices of violence against women by men and male-controlled institutions and to remove the practices of discrimination and marginalization against gay people—particularly visible and tragic in the pandemic of AIDS. With the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and the growing acceptance of gay and lesbian people produced by the strategy of “coming out,” the energy of radical feminism dissipated, as did that of feminist mobilization generally. Time magazine’s cover in 1998 asked “Is Feminism Dead?” In 2005, Phyllis Chesler published The Death of Feminism, and media reporting on the fading of feminism was a recurrent theme well into the second decade of the 21st century. Three trends in these years, however, would build the foundations of a sudden and explosive reappearance of radical feminist action. The first was the impact of the concept of intersectionality introduced by two African American scholaractivists, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins, which became central in feminist social science research and publication and crossed into mainstream publications like The Washington Post and New York Magazine. “Intersectionality” made visible the complex of inequalities that affect women’s lives in varying ways—race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age (see the discussion under “Structural Oppression”). A second factor was the expansion of third wave feminism, with the growing presence of women of color as major spokespersons for feminist goals of empowerment, who created the phrases of current multiracial international mobilizations for social justice: “MeToo,” “Black Lives M ­ atter,” “SayHerName.” A third trend was the increased use of social media and the appearance of young, multiracial, radical and media-savvy fourth wave feminists whose projects

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were protests and activism for women’s freedom from racist, patriarchal constraints and who came with new ideas to older battles. The energy on which radical analysis always rides received an enormous boost with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, a self-admitted sexual predator. This sparked, in 2017, the largest single protest action by women in history, the Women’s March, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The energy of this new phase of radical feminism—a multiracial mobilization of women’s protest—would continue in 2018 when a wave of women, of all races and backgrounds, new to politics and angry, won seats in the House of Representatives and returned Democrats to power there. Then, in May 2020, a 17-year-old African American woman, ­Darnella Frazier, recorded on her phone camera the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer; the video went “viral” around the world, and people of all races and ethnicities marched and protested under the banner “Black Lives Matter.” And as part of this same protest, Crenshaw’s phrase “SayHerName” rallied people to the cause of Breona Taylor, a young Black woman murdered by white police officers as she slept in her bed after finishing a shift as an emergency medical technician during the COVID-19 pandemic. Radical feminism, incorporating the lessons of intersectionality theory, has entered a new phase of anger and activism.

Structural Oppression Structural oppression theories, like gender oppression theories, recognize that oppression results from the fact that some groups of people derive direct benefits from controlling, using, and subjugating other groups of people. Structural oppression theorists analyze how interests in domination are enacted through social structure, here understood as those recurring and routinized large-scale arrangements of social relations that arise out of history and are always arrangements of power. These theorists focus on the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and heterosexism, locating enactments of domination and experiences of oppression in the interplay of these structures, that is, in the way they mutually reinforce each other. Structural oppression theorists do not absolve or deny the agency of individual dominants nor that of subordinates to push back against and perhaps alleviate some aspects of this oppression. But they examine how that agency is shaped by social structure. In this section, we look at three structural oppression theories: socialist feminism, hegemonic masculinity, and intersectionality theory.

Socialist Feminism Three expressions of socialist feminism are described here: Marxian feminism, materialist feminism, and Dorothy E. Smith’s feminist model of the socialist feminism–An effort to develop a unified theory that focuses on the role of capitalism and patriarchy in creating a large-scale structure that oppresses women.

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contemporary dynamics of social production. All three of these forms of socialist feminism pursue the project of (1) describing the distinctive yet interrelated oppressions of patriarchy and capitalism from a women’s standpoint, (2) developing clear methods for social analysis from an expanded understanding of historical materialism, and (3) incorporating the phenomenon of socially produced ideas into the formulation of historical materialism. Marxian feminism has traditionally brought together Marxian class analysis and feminist social protest. But this amalgam—often portrayed as an uneasy marriage—produces not an intensified theory of gender oppression but a more muted statement of gender inequality as women’s concerns are grafted onto, rather than made equal partners in, the critique of class oppression. Whereas pure Marxian feminism is a relatively dormant theory in contemporary American feminism, it remains important as an influence on materialist feminism and on Smith’s feminist model of production (both discussed as follows). Its foundation was laid by Marx and Engels (see Chapter 2), most famously in The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (written by Engels in 1884 from extensive notes made by Marx the year before his death in 1883). Its major argument is that woman’s subordination results not from her biology, which is presumably immutable, but from social relations that have a clear and traceable history and that presumably can be changed. The key moment in this history is the shift from hunter-gatherer economies, in which women had an independent economic role, to herding and farming economies. In these latter economies, men’s resources of strength, mobility, and a technology derived from their earlier hunting roles gave them a systematic advantage over women. This period saw the invention of the concepts of property and of family. “Property” allowed a male class to claim as its own what had heretofore been communal resources of economic production. “Family” allowed men as property owners to create both a compliant labor force—be it of slaves, captives, women-wives, or children—and heirs who would serve as a means of preserving and passing on property. (Familia in Latin means “servant.”) Since then, the exploitation of labor has developed into increasingly complex structures of domination, most particularly of class relations, up to today’s capitalist economy, and the family has steadily devolved into an embedded and dependent institution, reflecting all the injustices of the economy and consistently enforcing the subordination of women. Materialist feminists accept the Marxian analysis of economic capitalism as an explication of one major structure of oppression. But they reject the Marxian

historical materialism–(1) a basic principle in Marxian social theory that holds that any effort at social analysis must trace in historically concrete detail the specifics of a group’s material conditions and the links between those conditions and its experiences, personalities, events, ideas, and social arrangements; (2) the Marxian idea that the material conditions of human life, inclusive of the activities and relationships that produce those conditions, are the key factors that pattern human experience, personality, ideas, and social arrangements; that those conditions change over time because of dynamics immanent 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.

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analysis of patriarchy as a by-product of the economy and capitalism. Instead, they argue that patriarchy is an independent structure of oppression, and they set out to bring together capitalism and patriarchy—into a unified explanation of all forms of social oppression. One term used for these two interacting forms of oppression is capitalist patriarchy. But the more widely used term is domination, defined under “Gender Oppression” as a relationship in which one party, the dominant, succeeds in making the other party, the subordinate, an instrument of the dominant’s will, refusing to recognize the subordinate’s independent subjectivity. Materialist feminists present domination as a large-scale structural arrangement of power between categories of social actors, an arrangement reproduced by the willful and intentional actions of dominant actors. Women are central to materialist feminism as the primary topic for analysis and as the essential vantage point on domination in all its forms. But these theorists are concerned with all experiences of oppression, both of women and of men. They also explore how privileged class women, themselves oppressed, actively participate in the oppression of other women, for example, in the exploitation of immigrant women in domestic service. The use of historical materialism by materialist feminism shows the school’s indebtedness to Marxian thought. But in their use of this method, materialist feminists move beyond the Marxians in three crucial ways. First, they broaden the concept of the material conditions to include not only the Marxian concept of economic production for the market but other conditions that create and sustain human life: sexuality, procreation, and child rearing; housework; emotional care; and the production of knowledge. In all these life-sustaining activities, exploitative arrangements profit some and impoverish others. An analysis of the historical transformation of all production and exploitation is essential to a theory of domination. Second, materialist feminism emphasizes the products of the mind—consciousness, motivation, ideas, definitions of the situation, knowledge, texts, ideology, interests, and will. To materialist feminists, all these factors deeply affect human personality, human action, and the structures of capitalism and patriarchy. Moreover, these aspects of human subjectivity are as elaborate and powerful as those that produce economic goods, helping promote exploitative arrangements that enrich and empower some while impoverishing and immobilizing others. Materialist feminists claim that a historical analysis of the processes that pattern human subjectivity is vital to a theory of domination. Third, materialist feminists develop 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 as impersonal social patterns and as the more varied subtleties of interpersonal relationships. To analyze this system, socialist feminists shuttle capitalist patriarchy–A term used by socialist feminists to express the concept that the oppression of women is traceable to a combination of capitalism and patriarchy.

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between mapping large-scale systems of domination and 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. Within this general theoretical framing, materialist feminism situates gender relations in the structure of contemporary capitalism as a global system, exploring the implications of global capitalism for women’s lives and the ways women’s labor contributes to the expanding wealth of capitalism. Women are paid more poorly than men because patriarchal ideology assigns them a lower status as a worker while at the same time assigning them responsibility for the home, which makes their relation to the job more precarious, and precarity makes it harder for them to organize as workers. These two factors make them an easy source of profit for the capitalist class. Furthermore, their unpaid production as housewives, wives, and mothers subsidizes and disguises the real costs of reproducing and maintaining the capitalist workforce. And women’s work as consumers of goods and services for the household becomes a major source of capitalist profit making. A third expression of socialist feminism is Dorothy Smith’s feminist model of production with its conception of the relations of ruling, the processes by which contemporary capitalist patriarchy is enacted through an interdependent system of domination that includes not only the economy but the state and the privileged professions (including social science). She explores the dynamics of this arrangement of control through a focus on women’s daily activities and experiences in the routine maintenance of daily life—what she calls “the local actualities of lived experience.” The relations of ruling are revealed as pervading and controlling women’s daily production via “texts,” extra-local, generalized requirements that seek to pattern and appropriate their labor—texts like employment contracts, employee handbooks, health insurance forms, the school calendar, and advertisements about the ideal home and the ideal female. This arrangement produces for the worker, especially the woman, in the local actuality of lived experience an ongoing experience Smith labels “­bifurcated ­consciousness.” She sees the experience of bifurcation arising out of the relations of ruling–The complex, non-monolithic but intricately connected social activities that attempt to control human social production (feminist theory). local actualities of lived experience–The places where actual people act and live their lives (feminist theory). texts–Written documents, characterized by their essential anonymity, generality, and authority, that are designed to pattern and translate real-life, specific, individualized experience into a language form acceptable to the relations of ruling (feminist theory). bifurcated consciousness–A type of consciousness characteristic of women that reflects the fact that for them, everyday life is divided into two realities: the reality of their actual, lived, reflected-on experience and the reality of social typifications (feminist theory).

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difference between women’s lived experience and the patriarchal typifications of that experience. What Smith is producing for feminism is a sociology that integrates neoMarxian concerns with the structures of domination and phenomenological insights into the variety of subjective and micro-interactional worlds. Smith sees these everyday lifeworlds as shaped by macro structures that are themselves shaped by the historical specifics of economic demand. What Smith wishes to avoid, in developing this line of reasoning, is a vision of the world in which the oppressors are consistently interpreted as individual actors making rational decisions on the basis of self-interest. Instead, she sees that self-interest itself is structurally situated, but she believes that these structures can become known only by beginning with the outcome at hand, that is, by exploring the everyday

DOROTHY E. SMITH (1926–) A Biographical Vignette Dorothy E. Smith has explained that her sociological theory derives from her experiences as a woman moving between the male-dominated academic sphere and her life as a single parent. She remembers her work toward her doctorate in sociology as “not so much… a career as a series of contingencies, of accidents.” This theme of contingency is an important hallmark of her sociology of women. Whether they occurred by accident or design, the following events appear to the outsider as significant stages in Smith’s development. She was born in 1926 in Great Britain. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of London in 1955 and her PhD in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. During this same period, she had “the experience of marriage, of immigration [to Canada] closely following marriage, of the arrival of children, of the departure of a husband rather early one morning, of the jobs that became available.” These events, Smith stresses, “were moments in which I had in fact little choice and certainly little foreknowledge.” The jobs that became available included research sociologist at Berkeley; lecturer in sociology at Berkeley; lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex, Colchester; associate professor and then professor in the department of sociology at the University of British Columbia; and professor of sociology in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. Smith’s ideas are foundational to feminist macro theory, integrated feminist theory, and socialist feminism. Excerpts from Dorothy E. Smith, “A Sociology for Women,” in J. A. Sherman and T. Beck (eds.), The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 151. © 1979.

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worlds of situated individuals. Smith is concerned that much social science serves to obfuscate rather than clarify the structures that produce these worlds because much social science begins with an assumption that the structures are already known and can be known separately from the everyday lifeworlds. Her recent work has extended her project of a sociology for women to a sociology for people that explores macro structures as organizers of everyday and everynight worlds, text-based organization, and text-mediated social relations in people’s everyday local practices. Socialist feminists’ program for change calls for global solidarity among women to combat the abuses capitalism works in their lives, in the lives of their communities, and in the environment. Indeed, eco-feminism is a major force in socialist feminism, They call on the feminist community to be ever vigilant about the dangers of their own co-optation into a privileged intelligentsia that serves capitalist interests. Their project is to mobilize people to use the state as a means for the effective redistribution of societal resources through the provision of an extensive safety net of public services such as publicly supported education, health care, transportation, child care, and housing; a progressive tax structure that reduces the wide disparities of income between rich and poor; and the guarantee of a living wage to all members of the community. They believe that this mobilization will be effective only if people become aware of and caring about the life conditions of others as well as their own. The feminist social scientist’s duty is to make visible the material inequalities that shape people’s lives. At this moment, there is a curious hiatus in socialist feminist theory in the United States. Its main North American theorist, Dorothy E. Smith continues to inspire many dissertations and some articles, but they most frequently draw on her work in institutional ethnography or epistemological questions in sociology. But socialist feminist theorizing in other parts of the world remains vital. In some cases, its basic tenets offer a framework for feminist theorizing, and to suggest that many restrictions placed on their use of those assets by the capitalist patriarchy need to be understood not in terms of morality but of economic control of scarce resources.

Hegemonic Masculinity The concept of “hegemonic masculinity” is formulated by Raewyn Connell in her classic contribution to the sociology of gender, Gender and Power (1987). Feminists have long understood gender as one of society’s major stratificational categories; the concept of hegemonic masculinity shows that gender contains

hegemonic masculinity–The practice by social groups of creating an ideal type of masculinity and equating it with leadership.

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its own internal stratificational system that affects the varying ways people experience oppression. Although hegemonic masculinity has emerged as the most discussed concept of Connell’s theory, she locates it in her analysis of gender as a “structure.” Connell emphasizes that “structure” names a feature of social life that seems to the individual to be unchangeable and that either limits or expands a person’s ability to act in the world. A structure both shapes and constrains action, or “practice,” making it possible for us to do things in particular ways but harder or seemingly impossible to do other things or to do a thing in a different way. A structure can also become “the object of practice”; that is, people can set out to change structure. So structure and practice are always linked. Gender is a particular structure—one that connects the biological experiences of reproduction to nearly all other fields of social practice. So, whether one is seen as playing the male or female role in reproduction determines not only their role in the family but possibly what occupations they can enter, what sports they can play, what majors they may see as appropriate, how they vote, and how much they will be paid for the work they do. It is this particular linkage to reproduction, an activity essential to the very endurance of society, that gives gender its power in social life. When Connell describes gender as a linking structure that ties human reproduction to other critical social structures, she is not arguing that gender is an expression of biological realities but rather that in human culture it is “linked” to the performance of reproduction—in ways that are both powerful and misleading. This linking of gender to other social activities may be very tight or fairly loose and varies among societies and over time. Connell arrives inductively through a vast and well-informed review of studies of gender at three structures of human life that gender operates on at the social and individual levels: production, which she calls “labor,” power, and “cathexis.” Labor refers to how individuals and societies organize to do all the work that must be done for humans to survive and thrive. When gender becomes an organizing principle of production, we create in some form the gender division of labor. When gender becomes on organizing principle of power relations, it has resulted in a near universal installation of men as dominants and women as subordinates; Connell describes power relations as the social ordering of hierarchies of command and control, an important part of which is hegemonic masculinity. When gender is the organizing principle of cathexis, gender shapes and limits the experience of desire; channeling emotion or libidinal energy to a person or a thing or an idea and here gender constrains practices of desire. In all these areas, stratification by gender is based in the structure of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is Connell’s name for the practice that exists in all societies of establishing some set of qualities that constitute the ideal form of masculinity. What she means is not that there is some specific content of masculinity that will be found in all societies but rather that all societies produce

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their own version of an ideal form of masculinity, and it is an important way that the structure and practice of gender links many other areas of activity to the fundamental creative act of engendering. When we speak of an area of life as being gendered, such as education or sport or government, we are saying that its organizing principles, and many of its basic practices, are linked to or affected by gender. So an idea like “women are too emotional to be president” turns ultimately on some deep essentialist sense of woman as designed for childbirth and childrearing; and this linkage becomes part of an accepted rationale for not voting for a woman. The fundamental necessity of reproduction overrides any other activity that a person may be asked to do regardless of other qualifications the person has. Hegemonic masculinity describes the way social groups create an ideal type of masculinity and equate it with leadership. The hegemonic male is a symbol of the culture at its most potent. Regardless of societal variations in the specific contents assigned to the male ideal, the structure of gender operates to secure that hegemony is male or masculine; the male hegemon by virtue of embodying culturally significant qualities becomes a potential candidate for many positions from which subordinate men and all women are barred. Men who seem closely to fit this ideal have the best chance of playing a leading position in the group or society. The hegemonic masculine ideal serves as a cultural standard from which individuals take their bearings. It is useful to all men in establishing male predominance, largely by the subordination of women but also perhaps by bringing a kind of order to relations among men. Other men, of subordinated masculinity, find their places in relationship to both this ideal and the men who seem closest to it in the group. In a patriarchal order, femininity has no corresponding position to hegemonic masculinity. Women get positions in the gender hierarchy in terms of what Connell calls “emphasized femininity,” the measure of how close they are to meeting the ideal of a consort for the hegemonic male. (One weakness in the theory is the absence of a discussion of women who are powerful.) Ultimately women, like subordinate males, find their identity by locating themselves in the orbit of the hegemonic male. The concept of hegemonic masculinity has enjoyed enormous popularity not only in masculinity studies but among feminist sociologists. Its embrace suggests that men and women have been looking for a way to on the one hand acknowledge the fact that male dominance and female subordination is almost universally the pattern among humans and on the other hand to allow for some possibilities for change. Connell argues that any structure can change over time and that ordinary people may turn their attention to changing hegemonic masculinity—perhaps by changing the qualities that are most admired, perhaps by raising different men to positions of power or perhaps by exploring how women are creating, through practice, an alternative model of accessing power.

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RAEWYN CONNELL (1944–) A Biographical Vignette Raewyn Connell was born in 1944 in Australia to parents who were both teachers; she attended local schools, earned a BA with honors at the University of Melbourne and a PhD at the University of Sydney. She began what has been by almost any standard an extraordinary publishing career at the age of 23 and has authored or joint-authored more than 21 books and more than 150 refereed journal articles. That career has centered on hierarchies in various forms—large-scale class dynamics and unions (Ruling Class, Ruling Culture [1977] and Class Structure in Australian History [1980)], schools (Making the Difference: Schools, Families, and Social Division [1982] and Teachers’ Work [1985]), and gender (Gender and Power [1987]). Gender and Power informed a developing movement in sociology toward understanding “gender” as a structure and is the source of her most-cited concept “hegemonic masculinity,” which has been the focus of much of her subsequent writing. Following the death of Pam Benson, her long-time partner and the mother of their daughter, Connell made a decision to change the life path she had been on since childhood, one she self-described as that of “a transsexual woman living as a man” and began the transition process toward living as a woman. This took time and some medical intervention, but in 2006 she formally changed her name to Raewyn from “R. W. Connell” (her birth name had been “Robert William”) and has been generous in speaking to the public about the trans experience. An accomplished and creative social theorist, Connell produced in 2007 Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in the Social Sciences (treated in Chapter 15 of this book).

We offer three concerns about Connell’s theory. First, does that theory explain or merely describe male dominance? Second, is there an aspect of self-fulfilling prophecy in it, where men who succeed are taken to approximate the hegemonic male? Third, and more importantly, as Judith Lorber has asked, does it address the core project of feminism, the liberation of women (and men) from oppression?

Intersectionality Theory Intersectionality theory begins with the understanding that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. The intersectionality theory–The understanding that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity because of the intersections of other arrangements of social inequality (feminist theory).

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explanation for that variation (and this explanation is the central subject of intersectionality theory) is that whereas all women potentially experience oppression on the basis of gender, women are nevertheless differentially oppressed by the varied intersections of other arrangements of social inequality. We may describe these arrangements of inequality as vectors of oppression and privilege (or, in Patricia Hill Collins’s phrase, “the matrix of domination”); they include not only gender but also class, race, global location, sexual preference, and age. The variation of these intersections qualitatively alters the experience of being a woman, and this alteration, this diversity, must be taken into account in theorizing the experiences of women. Kimberlé Crenshaw, for example, has shown that Black women frequently experience discrimination in employment because they are Black women, but courts routinely refuse to recognize this discrimination—unless it can be shown to be a case of what is considered general discrimination, sex discrimination (read “white women”) or race discrimination (read “Black men”). A fundamental insight of intersectionality theories is that the privilege exercised by some women and men relies on the oppression of other women and men. Theories of intersectionality at their core understand these arrangements of inequality as hierarchical structures based in unjust power relations. Intersectionality theory emphasizes the link between ideology and power, showing how dominants use differences among people to justify oppressive practices by translating difference into models of inferiority/superiority; people are socialized to relate to difference not as a source of diversity, interest, and cultural wealth but evaluatively in terms of better or worse. These ideologies operate in part by creating what Audre Lorde calls a “mythical norm” (in the United States, examples include white, thin, male, and heterosexual) against which people evaluate others and themselves. This norm not only allows dominants to control social production (both paid and unpaid), but it also becomes part of individual ­subjectivity—an internalized rejection of difference that can operate to make people devalue themselves, reject people from different groups, and create criteria within their own groups for excluding, punishing, or marginalizing group members. Gloria Anzaldúa describes this last practice as Othering, an act of definition done within a subordinated group to establish that a group member is unacceptable, an Other, by some criterion. This definitional activity, she points out, erodes the potential for coalition and resistance.

vectors of oppression and privilege–The varied intersections of a number of arrangements of social inequality (gender, class, race, global location, sexual preference, and age) that serve to oppress women differentially. Variation in these intersections qualitatively alters the experience of being a woman (feminist theory). matrix of domination–The intersections of a number of arrangements of social inequality (gender, class, race, global location, sexual preference, and age) that serve to oppress women differentially. Variation in these intersections qualitatively alters the experience of being a woman (P Collins). Othering–An act of definition done within a subordinated group to establish that a group member is unacceptable, an ”Other,” by some criterion; this erodes the potential for coalition and resistance (feminist theory).

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PATRICIA HILL COLLINS (1948–) A Biographical Vignette Collins writes that her experiences of educational success were permeated by the counter experience of being the first, or only, African American (or woman or working-class person, etc.) in a social setting. She learned that educational success seemed to demand that she distance herself from her Black working-class background. This created for her a loss of voice. Her response to these tensions has been to formulate an alternative understanding of social theory and an alternative way of doing theory. This project led her to discover the theoretical voice of her community and to reclaim her own voice by situating it in that community. It culminated in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and Empowerment (1990), a landmark text in feminist and social theory. Black Feminist Thought presents social theory as the understandings of a specific group: Black women. To this end, Collins draws on a wide range of voices—some famous, others obscure. What she presents is a communitybased social theory that articulates that group’s understanding of its oppression by intersections of race, gender, and class—and its historic struggle against that oppression. In 2009 Collins served as president of the American Sociological Association, the first African American woman to do so. She is professor emerita at the University of Maryland.

The intersection of vectors of oppression and privilege creates variations both in the forms and the intensity of people’s experience of oppression. Much of the writing and research done out of an intersectionality perspective presents the concrete reality of people’s lives as those lives are shaped by the intersections of these vectors. One part of the project of intersectionality theory is to give voice to the group knowledges worked out in specific life experiences created by historic intersections of inequality and to develop feminist expressions of these knowledges, for example, Black feminist thought or Chicana feminism. Intersectionality theory has developed a critique of earlier feminist writings in which it sees that work reflecting the experience and concerns of white privileged class feminists in North Atlantic societies. This critique has produced questions about what we mean by categories such as woman, gender, race, and sisterhood. It has focused on the diversity of experience in seeming universals such as mothering and family and has reinterpreted theoretical works like the sociological psychoanalytic studies of Chodorow. This critique has prompted a repositioning of the understandings of whiteness by white feminists who seek to understand whiteness as a construction, the ways that whiteness results in privilege, what they can actively do to reduce racism, and how they can contribute to producing a more inclusive feminist analysis.

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Beyond this function of critique, intersectionality theory has had three other significant impacts on sociology. First and foremost, it is almost impossible to write about gender today without some reference to other dimensions of privilege and oppression—most especially in the U.S. context of race and class. Second, this insight has extended to the study of masculinity, where the idea of multiple masculinities, pioneered by Raewyn Connell, has replaced the conception of masculinity as a monolithic structure of privilege. Third, intersectionality theory is now the central model of the study of gender at the global or transnational level, including the whole field of immigration studies and the issue of trafficking in women and children. This process of theory building, research, and critique has brought intersectionality theory to one of its central themes and one of the central issues confronting feminism today: how to allow for the analytic principle and empirical fact of diversity among women while at the same time holding to the valuational and political position that specific groups of women share distinctive standpoints. Patricia Hill Collins describes standpoint as the view of the world shared by a group characterized by a heterogeneous commonality (see the Key Concept box). Thus, Collins concludes that a group’s standpoint is constituted not out of some essentialism but out of a recognition that everyone is in the same boat. Although vectors of oppression and privilege—race, class, gender, age, global location, and sexual preference—intersect in all people’s lives, intersectionality theorists argue that the way they intersect markedly affects the degree to which a common standpoint is affirmed. Among factors facilitating this affirmation are the group’s existence over time, its sense of its own history as a group, its location in relatively segregated identifiable spaces, and its development of an intragroup system of social organization and knowledges for coping with oppression. But a group standpoint is never monolithic or impermeable; the fact that the group is constituted out of intersections of vectors means that group members can pivot among varying senses of self. Group members frequently move from the home group into the larger society, where their experience is that of the outsider within. Moreover, the home group is subject to permeation by outside ideas and is not undifferentiated; it has its own internal dynamics of difference and may even be constituted by its existence at what Anzaldúa names a “cultural borderland.” Intersectionality theorists warn that although it is easy to locate the experience of intersection and of standpoint in individuals, this reductionism is theoretically and politically dangerous, erasing the historic structures of unequal power that have produced the individual experience and obscuring the need for political change.

standpoint–The perspective of embodied actors within groups that are differentially located in the social structure (feminist theory). outsider within–The role frequently experienced by group members when they move from the home group into the larger society (feminist theory).

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KEY CONCEPT Standpoint

Much of feminist theory is premised on the idea that people operate from particular standpoints in the social world from the perspectives of the positions of embodied actors within groups that are differentially located in social structure. As a result, what each person sees and knows is always partial and interested, never total and objective. Knowledge is produced in and varies among groups and, to some degree, among actors within groups. That knowledge is always affected by power relations—whether it is formulated from the standpoint of dominant or subordinate groups. A feminist sociological theory begins here because feminists attempt to describe, analyze, and change the world from the standpoint of women, and because, working from women’s subordinated position in social relations, feminist sociological theorists see that knowledge is part of the system of power governing the production of knowledge as it governs all production in society. Feminist sociological theory attempts to alter the balance of power within sociological discourse—and within social theory—by establishing the standpoint of women as one of the standpoints from which social knowledge is constructed. In attempting to do sociology from the standpoint of women, feminist sociological theorists have to consider what constitutes the standpoint of women. A standpoint is the product of a social collectivity with a sufficient history and commonality of circumstance to develop a shared knowledge of social relations. All women under patriarchy have been assigned the tasks of social reproduction (childbearing, child rearing, housekeeping, food preparation, care of the ill and dependent, emotional and sexual service); hence, this work, which is done without material compensation, is exploitative. This shared and historic relation to social reproduction in circumstances of subordination is the basis for the feminist claim of the standpoint of women, but the intersection of gender inequality with race inequality, class inequality, geosocial inequality, and inequalities based on sexuality and age produces a complex system of unequally empowered standpoint groups relating through shifting arrangements of coalition and opposition. These intersectionalities are now an integral part of the feminist description and analysis of women’s standpoint.

Postcolonial theory is the name given to critiques of the knowledge systems and actions of the colonizing North Atlantic societies (Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the United States) by spokespersons from the Global South, whose territories for centuries endured those imperial regimes. This theory is discussed in Chapter 9. This section looks at postcolonial feminist

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The #MeToo Movement In October 2017, women’s activism found an important new outlet. Disturbed by the growing accusations against Harvey Weinstein, actor and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted that everyone who had a similar experience of sexual harassment should just reply to her tweet “#MeToo” and generated more than a half million replies in the first 24 hours, and the replies continued building for days. It emerged that the slogan “MeToo” had an earlier beginning than Milano knew; African American activist Tarana Burke had used the phrase since 2006 to rally young women against similar sexual abuse in the same way—by establishing solidarity. For a moment the confusion over the origin of the phrase threatened to be another illustration of a key principle of intersectionality theory—that the same is not the same in a deeply stratified world; the fate of an idea is different if that idea is attributed to a person of color or a white person; white people are privileged as inventors in situations where people arrive at the same idea independent of each other. But Milano, informed by the lessons of intersectionality theory, worked with Burke to avoid such an unjust and unequal outcome. Burke and Milano joined forces; they were part of the women Time magazine named “Persons of the Year” for 2017 and called “The Silence Breakers.” Burke emerges as “an organic intellectual,” a person who speaks for a community out of the community’s experience. In in a series of speeches around the country she explained “MeToo” as the basis of “empathetic empowerment.” The MeToo movement turned a powerful light on the widespread practice of workplace sexual abuse and gave a name to the fourth wave of young feminists—“The #MeToo generation.” But much work remains. At the 75th Golden Globes, when celebrities brought activist dates (e.g., Meryl Streep brought i-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance), celebrities were still the main draw in media coverage; as one media outlet noted. “Millions say #MeToo. But not everyone is heard equally.”

theory, a growing body of literature that incorporates concepts from and expands the reach of intersectional theory. Four traits characterize postcolonial feminist sociology: first, its acknowledgment of two second wave American theorists as early proponents of their ­viewpoint—Audre Lorde for her essay in Sister Outsider (1984), “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” and Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1991). Second, postcolonial feminist sociologists pursue two projects: a critique of the masculinist bias in postcolonial theory and a critique of the ways that North

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Atlantic feminists have unreflectively incorporated the colonialist understandings of their regions. Third, these understandings include: the gender binary concept that classifies people as either men or women; the view that women of the Global South were deeply and systematically oppressed by their precolonial cultures; that this oppression was challenged by colonial regimes but was reignited as those regimes collapsed or withdrew; and the epistemology that led to these sweeping, undifferentiated claims. Fourth, postcolonial feminist sociology embraces the methodology of intersectional theory, which calls for grounded theory anchored in focused, case-specific research on and in clearly delineated communities. For postcolonial feminist sociologists these case studies require an inquiry into the cultural understandings of gender in the group studied and a use of vantage point analysis to establish if that group’s practices are acts of oppression.

CHALLENGES TO FEMINISM Feminism and Postmodernism Postmodernist theory has affected feminist theory in two important ways. First, it has challenged the central question of all feminist theory And what about the women? by developing a philosophic argument about what the category “women” means, an argument that extends to the concept of gender. Second, postmodernism has provided feminist theory with “an oppositional epistemology,” a strategy for questioning the claims to truth advanced by any given theory. As its name suggests, postmodernism starts with the idea that modernity as a phase of culture and understanding is now past and a postmodern culture and understanding is now in place. This claim was made against a background of material changes led by a technological revolution in communication that fueled the rise of an increasingly expanding global capitalism and made capitalist corporations frequently more powerful than traditional nation-states and humans more important as consumers than producers. These changes in turn gave rise to liberationist social movements based not in class but in other forms of identity—nationalism, race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and environmentalism. Postmodernism responded to these changes with a critique focused on the basic principle of modernist epistemology—that humans can, by the exercise of pure reason, arrive at a complete and objective knowledge of the world, a knowledge that is a representation of reality, “a mirror of nature.” What postmodernism critiques in modernity is its claim of “certainty”—the certainty that measurements can be trusted, that scientific practices will consistently produce the same result, that people will under the same conditions see the same things, that each individual possesses a definite self. Postmodernism questions the existence both of “reason” as a universal, essential quality of the human mind and of the “reasoning subject” as a consistent, unified configuration of consciousness. Postmodernists portray the knowledge-making process as one of

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multiple representations of experience created by differently located discourse groups in which the establishment of any hegemonic knowledge-claim results from an effective exercise of power. Following this logic, postmodernism questioned whether there was a category such as “women” or “woman” that would always hold as universally true. The classic statement of this questioning has been Judith Butler’s 1990 Gender Trouble. Butler questioned woman, gender, and whether there is, as popularly presumed, a coherent relation among sex, gender, and sexuality. She situated her argument directly in the political context of the women’s movement, warning that feminism’s claim to speak for a universal “women” created friction with people who do not fit some part of the category—women who claim to have no motherly instincts, women who desire not men but other women, and women who have to do men’s work to earn their living. This warning helped focus a range of third wave and fourth wave concerns about the second wave position that conceptualized woman as a possible and even seamless category. For Butler, the categories of woman and gender are produced by a process she names “performativity.” The classic example of performativity is drawn from speech-act theory: when the minister says, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” and, thus, calls the marriage roles into existence. Gender arises as people perform it in interaction with each other—by performing gender, they create it. Butler explains how repeated performances lead to a sense of gender and woman and man. Repetition of phrases like “a good wife,” “a brave man,” “a man doesn’t like a woman who takes charge,” “a woman wants a man to take care of her” confers consistency to performance. But people are not free to choose their performances. Drawing on Foucault, Butler sets performativity in the context of “regulative discourse,” that is, a composite of ideas, actions, beliefs, and attitudes that systematically construct the worlds and the subjects about which they speak. Gender performance, then, is subject to regulative discourses that vary across history and culture but that control within a given situation what one is able to do to act as a man or a woman. The pervasive repetition of this regulative discourse leads people to experience gender as a core identity that everyone shares. Feminist theory has incorporated the postmodernist set of practices and vocabulary for interrogating the modernist claim of definitive statements and that allow for alternative epistemological practices. These include decentering (moving the understandings of less privileged groups to the center of discourse and knowledge), deconstruction (showing how concepts, posed as accurate representations of the world, are historically constructed and contain contradictions), a focus on difference (exploring any knowledge construct not only for what it says but for what it erases or marginalizes), and the singling out of instances of binary logic (a system of thought that reduces complex questions to “either/or”). But the feminist relation to postmodernism is also marked by unease. Some feminist theorists see postmodernism as exclusive (and, therefore, antithetical to

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the feminist project of inclusion) in its arcane vocabulary, its location in the academy rather than in political struggle, and its nonreflective grasp for hegemonic status in that academy. Feminists also question the “innocence” of the postmodernist challenge, wondering whether it is truly liberationist or is part of a politics of knowledge in which a privileged academic class responds to the challenges of marginalized persons with a technically complex argument to the effect that no location for speech can claim authority.

Neoliberalism A second significant challenge to feminist theory, particularly to feminist sociological theory, comes from neoliberalism, a theory and set of practices framing the transformation of capitalism into a global economic and social system. Contemporary opponents of that transformation use the term “neoliberalism” with pejorative intent to describe a set of ideas that center on faith in market capitalism as the model for the organization of the economy and social relations. Proponents of neoliberalism are critical of the role of the state in patterning social life, arguing instead for social solutions through privatization and capital investment. For example, state-provided services like education and health care can be turned into profit-making investments like charter or private schools and for-profit hospitals. Neoliberalism asserts the ideals of “freedom” and “choice,” urging people to take responsibility for developing their individual human capital assets to improve their competitiveness in the new economy. In its drive to pervade all parts of social life, neoliberalism has produced a kind of feminism that reflects these ideals of individual responsibility and economic self-sufficiency. This self-help approach has made neoliberal feminism popular with a general public and with women like Ivanka Trump and Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg, who now claim the feminist label. Feminist sociological theorists identify two major threats from neoliberalism. One threat, the more widely perceived, is that neoliberalism shifts women’s focus from the quest for gender equality in the workplace to the quest for individual advancement and work-life balance. When neoliberalism engages with feminism, it takes major feminist projects for improving the lives of all women, projects that are macrosocial in their understandings and undertakings, and turns them into issues of individual actions and needs. Neoliberalism entrusts the achievement of gender equality in the workplace to the operation of free market forces. It argues that diversity and gender equality are good for business and therefore businesses that pursue these will flourish and business that deny these will fail. But the mechanism by which this is to be accomplished seems to be “the invisible hand of the market” rather than public policies advanced by feminist researchers. Similarly, the feminist project of achieving recognition and accommodation of neoliberalism–A theory and set of practices framing the transformation of capitalism into a global economic and social system.

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women workers’ ongoing responsibilities for home and childcare is translated by neoliberalism into “workplace flexibility.” In a critical overview of the results for women of neoliberal policies, sociologists Christine Williams and Megan Tobias Neely in “Gender Inequality and Feminism in the New Economy”(2018) find that the emerging winners in the socalled new economy (the one pictured by neoliberal doctrine) remain white men. They find that women move ahead in wages primarily by changing their job categories to upper management jobs that pay more (not by getting an increase in pay for the work they were doing). But upper management jobs require more hours at work, which is hard for women, given the current gender division of labor in U.S. society. Neoliberalism’s answer to this problem is twofold: women managers should outsource the work of the home to paid domestic staff, and two, employers can institute “workplace flexibility,” policies often described as adjusting to change by changing how and when work gets done. But as Williams and Neely note, there are problems with these solutions from a feminist perspective. Outsourcing the work of the home frequently leads to one group of women progressing by exploiting another group of women. Gains from workplace flexibility do not benefit all workers equally and often lead to increased exploitation of lower-wage workers, where “flexibility” can quickly translate into “unpredictability” and having work hours suddenly shortened for paid-by-the-hour workers. A second challenge to feminist social theory is neoliberalism’s production of a turn in popular culture and in academic research from a focus on gender as a structure to a focus on the accomplishment of one’s gender role as an individual achievement realized through making good choices. This understanding has been canonized in the public mind through the time-honored vehicle of the self-help book like Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013). This understanding also may undergird the concern with gender itself as a choice so that feminism becomes focused on making the right choices about your own individual gender rather than on issues of gender inequality.

SUMMARY 1. Feminist theory is a generalized, wide-ranging system of ideas about social life and human experience developed from a woman-centered perspective. 2. Feminist theory raises several basic questions: What about the women? Why is all this as it is? How can we change and improve the social world to make it a more just place for women and all people? What about the differences among women?

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3. Answering these basic questions of feminism has produced several varieties of feminist theory—united by the questions they pose but differentiated by the answers they give. 4. The first posing of these questions in sociology occurred at the beginnings of the discipline in the 19th century by major thinkers such as Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Anna Julia Cooper. These women were present at the creation of sociology but gender politics that biased the academy against recognizing women as thinkers led to their erasure from the history of sociology. They are only now being recovered under the impetus of second wave feminism. 5. Answering of these basic feminist questions can be seen as producing four major types of feminist theory: theories of gender difference, theories of gender inequality, theories of gender oppression, and theories of structural oppression. 6. Theories of gender difference include cultural feminism and existential feminism and the specifically sociological theories of institutional placement and interactional accomplishments. The interactionist ethnomethodological theory “doing gender” is one of the most influential sociological feminist theories in current scholarship. 7. Theories of gender inequality center on what is widely known as liberal feminism, which emphasizes women’s basic rights to equal treatment in society because of their capacity for moral reasoning. The explanations they offer for the fact of inequality are socially constructed sexist beliefs that pattern the practices of major institutions, especially family, economy, and education. 8. Theories of gender oppression see women not as treated unequally but as actively oppressed by men. The major forms of gender oppression theory are psychoanalytic feminism, currently in a dormant period, and radical feminism, currently in a moment of high mobilization. Psychoanalytic feminist theory adapts Freudian understandings to an explanation of why men are emotionally motivated to dominate women. Radical feminism is based on two central beliefs: that women are of absolute positive value as women, a belief asserted against what radical feminists claim to be the universal devaluing of women, and that women are everywhere oppressed—violently oppressed—by the system of patriarchy. 9. Structural oppression theories recognize that oppression results from the fact that some groups of people derive direct benefits from controlling, using, subjugating, and oppressing other groups of people. These theories analyze how those interests in domination are enacted through mechanisms of social structure—that is, through recurring and routinized large-scale arrangements of social interaction.

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10. Theories of structural oppression name and explore basic social structures that oppress women. Socialist feminism adapts Marxian insights to show how women are exploited by capitalism in both the economy and the home. Hegemonic masculinity theory looks at the way gender has an internal structure that enforces male dominance and female subordination. Intersectionality theory, the predominant theory in sociology at this moment, traces the ways that the different locations of women in stratificational arrangements such as race, class, age, immigration status, and so on affect their experiences of oppression as women. Postcolonial theory views the way a history of colonial control has patterned and distorted the life experiences of women and men in the Global South. 11. Feminist theory has been subject to two forms of challenge in recent times— one by postmodernist deconstruction of gender and the other by the neoliberal doctrine of individual achievement.

SUGGESTED READINGS JOAN ACKER. “Hierarchies, Jobs, and Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender & Society 4 (1990):139–158. Exposes the many ways that formal organizations are not “gender neutral” but gendered in ways that enact male dominance. NANCY CHODOROW The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. A book that gave great impetus to psychoanalytic feminism. PATRICIA HILL COLLINS Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and Empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990. Fast becoming a contemporary classic on the Black feminist perspective and standpoint theory. RAEWYN CONNELL. Gender and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. A probingly thorough exploration of “gender” as a social structure. ARLIE HOCHSCHILD, with Anne Machung The Second Shift. Updated ed. London: Penguin Books, 2003. An updated edition of the 1989 classic, honored as a New York Times notable book, with a new introduction by Hochschild. CHRYS INGRAHAM White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. A classic of socialistic materialist feminism. PATRICIA MADOO LENGERMANN and JILL NIEBRUGGE-BRANTLEY The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory 1830–1930. New York: McGraw-

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Hill, 1998. Excellent treatment of the theories of the long-neglected early female contributors to sociology. Includes useful selections from these thinkers. JAMES MESSERSCHMIDT, PATRICIA YANCEY MARTIN, MICHAEL A. MESSNER, and RAEWYIN CONNELL, eds. Gender Reckonings: New Social Theories and Research. NY: NYU Press, 2018. The collection considers gender theory since Connell’s 1987 Gender and Power. ADRIENNE RICH. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” In Women, Sex, and Sexuality, edited by Catherine R. Stimson and Ethel Spector Person. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1980, pp. 62-91. Foremost statement of radical feminist position in second wave feminist theory. DOROTHY E. SMITH The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1987. Smith’s major theoretical statement. CANDACE WEST and DON ZIMMERMAN “Doing Gender” Gender & Society 1, no. 2 (1987): 125–151. The most widely cited article on gender in the world. JOAN WILLIAMS Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Explores problems of balancing work and family.

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CHAPTER

NINE

THEORIES OF RACE AND COLONIALISM

Fanon and the Colonial Subject Postcolonial Theory Critical Theories of Race and Racism Racial Formation A Systematic Theory of Race Southern Theory and Indigenous Resurgence Summary Suggested Readings

Writing in the early 1900s, sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois (see Chapter 3) asserted that the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. By this he meant that race was one of the most important organizing features of modern society. This remains as true at the beginning of the 21st century as it was then. All contemporary social theories of race challenge the once common idea that race is a biological difference, a way of cleanly distinguishing between so-called natural types of persons. As we will see in this chapter, race is a social construction. It is a classification system that organizes people according to phenotypic differences such as skin color, hair type, and eye shape. And even though there is no inherent relationship between, for example, skin color and ability, modern societies have been shaped in important (and mostly negative) ways by the idea of racial difference. This has resulted not only in the violence of racism but also in persistent social inequalities, such as in wealth and health, among people of different “races.”

race–A social construction that classifies people according to phenotypic differences such as skin color, hair type, and eye shape.

257

As we indicate with the title of this chapter, race is connected to colonialism. This might seem perplexing at first. What does something that happened hundreds of years ago have to do with race and racism in the 21st century? As most race theorists agree, the answer is that the modern racial order emerged out of colonialism, particularly the expansion of European nations that took place between the 16th and 19th centuries. Colonialism is the process by which nations occupy and politically dominate other nations. Sometimes European colonialism operated through administrative rule, and at other times it took the form of settler colonialism, in which the colonizers established permanent settlements in the colonies (e.g., those in what are now the United States, Canada, and Australia). In either case, colonial powers legitimated the violence of colonialism (which also included the slave trade) through socially constructed racial hierarchies. For example, European powers justified the subjugation and mistreatment of African slaves and Indigenous peoples through the idea that Europeans were members of a superior civilization and racial type. Although there are many theories of race, in this chapter we focus on two kinds of theories. First, we examine perspectives that build on the theories covered in other parts of this book. For example, Frantz Fanon’s theories use some of Karl Marx’s ideas (see Chapter 2), and Edward Said draws on the theories of Michel Foucault (see Chapter 10). Second, we include some cutting-edge theories that challenge the assumptions, and Western biases, of many of the theories covered in this book. As the feminist theorists discussed in Chapter 8 have asserted in regard to women’s experiences, many theorists of race argue that the dominant theoretical concepts do not adequately describe the experiences and social realities of people of color. This is because the experiences and perspectives of persons of color have not been included in the development of these concepts. For much of sociology’s history, sociological theorists have ignored the concept of race. In the cases where it has been discussed, it has often been through the vantage point of white academics using the tools of Western science. In response to this problem, in recent years some scholars have developed theories that incorporate ideas from non-Western and Indigenous traditions. In the last section of this chapter we introduce some of these theories, first through Raewyn Connell’s discussion of Southern theory and then through a review of some contemporary North American Indigenous theories.

colonialism–The process by which nations occupy and politically dominate other nations. Most often this refers to the expansion of European nations between the 16th and 19th centuries. settler colonialism–A form of colonialism in which the colonizers establish permanent settlements in the colonies. Examples include the French colonies in what are now the United States and Canada and the British colonies in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

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KEY CONCEPT Colonialism

Colonialism was a key force in the development of modern capitalist societies. In broadest terms, as sociologist Julian Go points out, colonialism is the political domination of one nation by another. Although many nations have held colonial possessions, the term is most often used in reference to the expansion of European nations into Africa, Asia, and North America from the 15th to the 19th centuries. In the 15th century, Portugal established trading colonies in Asia, and Spain violently plundered South America. This was followed by a period of colonial expansion by the Netherlands in the 17th century, especially into South Africa and Southeast Asia. In the 18th and 19th centuries, England and France were the world’s largest empires, with colonies in the Middle East, Asia, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, India, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. In addition to political domination, colonialism is defined by other features. Economically, colonies serve as sources of wealth for colonizing nations. For example, in Capital, Karl Marx said that the development of capitalism was supported by the “primitive accumulation” of gold and silver from European colonies. And once the Industrial Revolution was further advanced, colonies served European nations as stable sources of raw materials, such as the cotton used in textile manufacture. Culturally, colonialism shaped the identities of both colonized and colonizer. For example, European nations imposed their worldviews and Christian religion on Indigenous peoples. In Canada, many Indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed in foster care and residential schools. There they not only suffered violence and abuse but also were forced to abandon their languages and cultural traditions in favor of European languages, religion, and culture. At the same time, modern racism developed as European nations sought to legitimate their domination of Indigenous populations. Scientific theories such as social Darwinism proposed hierarchies of racial superiority, and Europeans (including sociologists) contrasted their so-called civilized societies to the so-called savage societies of colonized peoples. Although many view colonialism as a phenomenon of the past (most European nations abandoned their colonial possessions by the mid-20th century), contemporary theorists of race recognize the continuing influence of colonialism. For one, the relations of inequality developed under colonial rule continue to shape the relations between the wealthy North and the impoverished South under neoliberal globalization. Second, practices of cultural domination of the kind found in residential schooling left Indigenous populations with ­continuing cultural and psychological damage. Finally, some Indigenous scholars argue that (Continued)

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(Continued) colonialism never actually went away. On the one hand, many states have made attempts to overcome the violence of colonialism by seeking cultural and political reconciliation with the subjects of colonial rule. On the other hand, these same states continue to sanction the appropriation of land from Indigenous peoples, especially when the land is valuable for the mining and transport of natural resources such as oil. The 2016 protests against the building of an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock reservation in the Dakotas drew attention to a recent example of this.

FANON AND THE COLONIAL SUBJECT We begin with Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and philosopher born in the French colony of Martinique. Later in his life he worked as a psychiatrist in the North African country of Algeria, where he also became heavily involved in the Algerian anticolonial War of Independence. Although Fanon was not a sociologist, he had a significant impact on social theories of race, colonialism, and postcolonialism. He described the dehumanizing effects of colonialism and offered an account of the rise of anticolonial movements. He is best known for two books: Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.

Black Skin, White Masks In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon looks at the psychological effects of colonialism on colonized people. Colonial power, as we will see throughout this chapter, depends on broad racial distinctions between white, European “races” and other “uncivilized,” “primitive” races. For example, Fanon says that in French colonial society, the Black man was a phobogenic object—that is, the Black man embodied unconscious European fears and came to stand for the most shameful and “dark” aspects of human nature. The distinction between the so-called civilized white man and the uncivilized Black man was communicated in popular culture and in the colonial education system. In fact, Black children in ­Martinique—­colonial subjects—were never taught their own history but rather French history. They were expected to value white civilization and to be ashamed of their Black Skin. This dynamic is reflected in the title of Black Skin, White Masks. Much as W. E. B. Du Bois expressed with his concept of “double-­consciousness” (see Chapter 3), Fanon asserts that the Black colonial subject is split in two. On  the one hand,

phobogenic object–Fanon’s description of the Black man as viewed by French colonial society. For white Europeans, Black persons, and in particular Black men, embodied unconscious fears.

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the identity of the colonial subject is shaped by local, traditional culture and values. On the other hand, colonial education imposes European identity on top of the traditional identity. This imposition distorts the self-understanding and selfknowledge of the colonial subject. Fanon explores the effect of this colonial culture through a now-famous account of an encounter he had with a white boy in the streets of Paris. As Fanon relates, the young French boy sees Fanon and anxiously says to his mother, “Look! A Negro!” The boy’s fear escalates, and he says, “Maman, look, a Negro; I’m scared!” Finally, in a panic, the boy runs to his mother and says, “Maman, the Negro’s going to eat me.” As he describes it in Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon, an educated, normally self-possessed man, tries to smile and laugh off this racist encounter. However, he finds himself frozen, voiceless, and unable to talk back to, or address, the insult. Instead, he feels trapped by the situation, and he dissociates from his body. Rather than acting as a fully rational person, a subject, Fanon says that he becomes a mere thing, an object for others. To explain the cause of this dissociation and objectification, Fanon uses the ideas of the phenomenological philosopher Georg Hegel. Phenomenology is the philosophical study of subjective experience. When phenomenologists analyze social life, they begin by describing people’s subjective experiences of the world. Like symbolic interactionists (see Chapter 5), Hegel and Fanon claim that people’s subjectivity, their consciousness of self, develops through their interactions with others. Hegel describes this process as the dialectic of recognition. In the dialectic of recognition, I develop my sense of self when you recognize me as a whole, complete, and free person, and vice versa, you develop your sense of self when I recognize you as a whole, complete, and free person. However, the dialectic of recognition works differently in different societies. Ideally, societies are organized so that all members are able to develop through mutually supportive interactions. However, some societies are organized in such a way that the more powerful members exercise control over the dialectic of recognition. For example, in what Hegel refers to as the master–slave dialectic, the master affirms its consciousness by denying the independent consciousness of the slaves. However, it is precisely this refusal of recognition that encourages slaves to seek their own consciousness. Even though the master refuses to recognize slaves, eventually slaves develop their own consciousness and force the master to recognize it, sometimes through violence. In Fanon’s theory, the Black person in colonial society represents an extreme example of this denial of recognition. Fanon also says that dehumanization works through the objectification of the body. For these ideas, he draws on the writings of existentialist philosopher phenomenology–The philosophical study of subjective experience. dialectic of recognition–The intersubjective process through which people mutually recognize one another’s identities, thereby creating self-consciousness.

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Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism is a school of philosophy that emphasizes the importance of freedom and personal responsibility to human beings. Ideally, humans possess the freedom of consciousness to define their own thoughts and actions. Freedom is also experienced through a body that moves around the world with ease and confidence. When it comes to colonial racism, it is not only that people lose control of their thoughts and ideas. They are also made to feel ­uncomfortable—unfree—in their bodies. Fanon refers to this as the racial-­ epidermal schema, a way of looking at and acting on people that prioritizes skin color and other so-called racial features. In Fanon’s case Black Skin is made into something to be ashamed of. The white people on the street do not see Fanon as a unique individual like themselves but only as a Black person with all the stereotypes that this represents. This representation of the Black body determines not just the attitudes and actions of white people but also the feelings that colonized subjects have toward themselves. This is what Fanon encounters in the street. He would like to act in freedom, to respond with reason, but instead he is reduced to the color of his skin. This makes him feel like a mere thing. Finally, it should be emphasized that even though Fanon is describing a single event, his encounter with the white boy in the street represents the whole structure of colonial power and racism. To put it in more sociological terms, for Fanon the microsocial encounter is structured by macrosociological cultural frameworks. The race-based distinction between colonizer and colonized is pervasive and consistent, encountered in all spheres of life, and absorbed deep into the body and psyche. It is not only exhibited in the actions and words of racist individuals and ill-mannered children; it is built into the structure of European colonial civilization.

The Wretched of the Earth Fanon’s second major book, The Wretched of the Earth, is seen by many as one of the main texts of the anticolonial movements of the 20th century. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall called it the Bible of decolonization. Where Black Skin, White Masks is micro in focus, The Wretched of the Earth takes a more macro approach. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon provides a phenomenological and existential analysis of the effects of colonial racism based largely on his experiences in Martinique. In contrast, The Wretched of the Earth is based on Fanon’s experiences of the brutally violent Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). In terms of theory, The Wretched of the Earth provides a large-scale dialectical account of the rise of anticolonial movements and anticolonial consciousness. existentialism–A school of philosophy that emphasizes the importance of freedom and personal responsibility to human beings (Fanon). racial-epidermal schema–A way of looking at and acting on people that prioritizes skin color and other so-called racial features (Fanon).

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FRANTZ FANON (1925–1961) A Biographical Vignette Although he was raised in the French colony of Martinique and trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon, France, Frantz Fanon earned his reputation in the French colony of Algeria in North Africa. At first he worked as a psychiatrist in a hospital in Blida, Algeria, where he treated people who suffered the effects of colonialism and war. Later he used the hospital to shelter revolutionaries. This led to his intense political involvement with the revolutionary National Liberation Front (in French, Front de Libération Nationale [FLN]). In 1957, Fanon fled Algeria for Tunisia, where he became the editor of the FLN’s newsletter and then the international spokesperson for the FLN. Fanon was an intense person, wholly dedicated to the Algerian cause. Journalist Jean Daniel described his meeting with Fanon in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, like this: As his face became more hollow and his eyes seemed to devour it, he seemed to internalize everything. His handshake became more urgent and always seemed to have a message. The way he met your gaze was both sharp and indulgent. You always hesitated for a moment before knowing whether you had been admitted to the demanding universe into which he had withdrawn, and where he remained to think about the condition of his people—a condition that was, for him, still not the human condition. Fanon died in the United States on December 6, 1961, the same day that copies of his revolutionary book The Wretched of the Earth, only recently published, were confiscated from bookstores across France. Source: Macey, David 2012. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. New York: Verso; p. 429

Because of its focus on war, revolution, and colonial violence, The Wretched of the Earth is much more visceral than Black Skin, White Masks. Where Black Skin, White Masks describes schoolbooks and racist advertisements as forces of colonial oppression, The Wretched of the Earth describes machine guns, machetes, tanks, fighter planes, bombs, armored cars, bullets, and police as forces of colonial oppression. In fact, as many have remarked, violence, and the role of violence in revolution, is a central concern in The Wretched of the Earth. Using Algeria as his case study, Fanon views violence as the means to overcome colonization. The colonized, he argues, do not simply want to be like the colonizers; they want to take the place of the colonizers. In addition, Fanon says that revolutionary violence can serve a “positive” psychological purpose. It allows the oppressed to overcome their “inferiority complex” and gain “self-confidence.” Despite his strong support

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for anticolonial violence in Algeria, there are also reasons to suspect that Fanon had a more nuanced view on violence. For example, at points in The Wretched to Earth, he suggests that the symbolic demonstration of strength may be enough to generate the kind of collective solidarity and consciousness-raising necessary for successful social revolution. Also, as a psychiatrist Fanon was well aware of the traumatic psychological effects of violence. So although he may have believed that violence was a necessary response to the situation in colonial Algeria, he did not see violence as a good in itself. Fanon’s thoughts in The Wretched of the Earth also show the influence of Marx’s ideas. On the surface, similarities include the focus on social revolution, the relationship between oppressed and oppressor, and the justification of violence in service of radical social change. However, where Marx said that the most important force in social revolution is the class conflict between the bourgeoisie (the owning classes) and the proletariat (the working classes), Fanon prioritizes racial divisions. Nevertheless, the basic theoretical model is similar. For one thing, Fanon shares Marx’s description of capitalism as an exploitative economic system. In Capital Marx introduced the concept of primitive accumulation: the precious metals and raw materials violently taken from colonial lands were important to the development of early capitalism. Fanon also emphasizes the relationship between capitalism and colonialism. He agrees with Marx that in its early, start-up phase, capitalism used colonies for their raw materials. Later, as capitalism developed, colonies became markets for the goods produced within the capitalist system. In either case, colonies (and their dependent populations) are necessary features of capitalist civilization. In one case they provide cheap labor and materials, and in the other they provide a large consumer market for European industries. Also showing the influence of Marx, throughout The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon uses a dialectical theory of social change. Earlier, we discussed Fanon’s use of the dialectic of recognition. There the concept of dialectic referred to a microsocial process of consciousness development; here it refers to a large-scale process of social change. Conflicts between mutually opposed social forces lead to the transformation of societies into something new. For Marx, the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is supposed to lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the emergence of a communist society. For Fanon, the conflict between colonizers and colonized is supposed to lead to a society that is no longer organized around racial differences. In particular, over time, with the support of intellectuals and politicians, members of colonized populations develop a revolutionary consciousness. They recognize that their problems are caused by colonialism and seek to overcome European domination. Although Fanon’s emphasis is on the conflict between colonizers and colonized, he also

primitive accumulation–A process described by Marx in which the precious metals and raw materials taken from colonial possessions were used to fuel the early stages of capitalism.

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argues that for decolonized peoples, socialism is a better socioeconomic system than capitalism. However, in his work the immediate problem is not the liberation of working people but the liberation of colonized people through national liberation movements. Finally, Fanon talks about culture in a way that is similar to Marx’s discussion of culture, especially his concept of ideology. Famously, Marx referred to religion as the opiate of the people. In other words, religion is a set of ideas, an ideology, that distracts people from understanding the true causes of social inequality and human suffering. Fanon also says that culture, in particular religion, distracts colonized people from revolution. Fanon’s accounts of the mystifying and distorting characteristics of colonial culture are especially powerful because they are informed by his experiences as a psychiatrist. In the colonial situation, Fanon says, colonized people are in a state of agitation. The perpetual violence of colonialism makes people angry. Nevertheless, in the early phases of colonization, the colonized do not fight back against the colonizers. The colonizers are too powerful a force. Instead, the colonized find other outlets for their anger: they fight with other colonial subjects (e.g., interethnic conflict), they adopt religious and

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION Anticolonialism, Antiracism, and the Destruction of Statues For centuries societies have built statues and monuments intended to honor and remember events and leaders. These monuments have often reflected the values and identities of mainstream society and its elite. But for just as long monuments have been the target of attack and destruction, especially by those who oppose the values and identities symbolized by the monuments. In 1776, marking the American Declaration of Independence, a statue in New York of King George III was toppled. In 1956, in Budapest, Hungary, the statue of authoritarian Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was destroyed 3 years after this death. More recently, the 2020 murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off a series of antiracism protests across the globe that included a large wave of statue toppling and destruction. By attacking monuments, these protestors connected contemporary racialized violence with colonial history. In the United States statues of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Christopher Columbus in St. Paul and Boston, and (Continued)

ideology–To Marxists and neo-Marxists, ideas that distract people from understanding the true causes of social inequality and human suffering.

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(Continued) ­ onuments to confederate soldiers in Indianapolis, among many others, were m toppled. In Antwerp, Belgium, the city removed a statue of King Leopold II (who had overseen the colonization of the African Congo) after it had been set on fire and painted red. Outraged over the violence of the Canadian Indian residential school system, protestors tore down a statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. MacDonald in Montreal. In Bristol, England, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was graffitied, torn down, and thrown into the harbor.1 It has since been retrieved and displayed, lying down, still graffitied, in a museum. The form that the destruction of these statues takes is varied. In some cases, protestors tear the statues down, leaving an empty plinth. In others they graffiti them, often in a symbolic red. In some cases, messages describing the reason for the toppling are painted on monuments or displayed alongside. Critics of statue destruction see this as a property crime or fear that without these monuments the past will be forgotten. Sociologists of collective memory, however, point out that monuments have always been contested. They are part of the process through which social memories develop and change. In fact, rather than erasing history, their destruction can lead to debate and discussion that keep history alive and connected to the living present. In this case, destruction of monuments that followed the George Floyd murder can be understood as the public surfacing of a long simmering, worldwide conflict over the violence done by colonialism, and its relevance for contemporary social life.

mythological beliefs, and they engage in dances and rituals that drain off angry energies. Unlike Émile Durkheim, who saw “primitive” rituals as positive expressions of collective consciousness, Fanon, like Marx, treats religion as something that obscures people’s understanding of their situation. Only in the 1940s and 1950s, in the period of decolonization, would colonial subjects turn their focus to the real source of their suffering and fight back against colonial powers.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY The Wretched of the Earth is based on Fanon’s descriptions of national struggles for liberation. And indeed, by the mid-20th century, just as Fanon died, most of the world had been decolonized or was well on the way to decolonization. However, contrary to Fanon’s hopes, decolonization did not destroy the power structures of colonialism. In fact, many now argue that we live in an era of

See https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/all-the-monuments-to-racism-that-havebeen-torched-occupied-or-removed/ for a longer list including video. 1

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neocolonialism. Although the formal period of colonialism is over, neoliberal globalization (see Chapter 11) continues to perpetuate racialized inequalities between the East and the West (or, as some say, between the North and the South) under a new name. Postcolonial theory is a perspective that developed in response to decolonization. It describes the continuing effects of colonialism in the present moment. Postcolonial theory arose as a field of study in the humanities, particularly in the study of literature. As such it tends to focus on the cultural forces that enable postcolonial power and on the sources of potential resistance to that power. Central theorists include Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Edward Said. Despite its origins in literary theory, some sociologists have started to examine the relevance of postcolonial theory for sociology. For example, Julian Go has noted the following five elements of postcolonial theory: • Postcolonial theory emphasizes how the colonial past influences contemporary social life, including ideas about race and ethnicity. • Postcolonial theory analyzes how culture and knowledge constructed by colonizers affected the people living in the colonial world. • Postcolonial theory says that Westerners’ ideas about Western society, and the kinds of people who live in Western society, are shaped through colonialism. In other words, the modern West has created an image of itself through its encounters with colonized people. Western ideas about people from other parts of the world play a significant role in sustaining Western privilege and power. • Postcolonial theory offers tools that help reveal the assumptions and biased cultural values of Western society. In this respect, it shares with poststructuralism and postmodernism (see Chapter 10) a focus on the deconstruction of taken-for-granted knowledge. • Postcolonial theory introduces new kinds of ideas and new kinds of knowledge that try to overcome the perspectives imposed by Western knowledge. In other words, it tries to decolonize consciousness. In short, postcolonial theorists argue that Western knowledge is organized around a simplistic distinction between the Western world, shaped by European and North American values, and the rest of the world. The goals of postcolonial theory are to describe the way that this distinction has shaped modern society neocolonialism–The idea that even though most colonizing nations abandoned their colonies by the mid-20th century, the basic power structures of colonialism continue to operate under the form of neoliberal globalization. postcolonial theory–A theoretical perspective that describes the cultural forces that enable postcolonial power and describes sources of potential resistance to that power.

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and to deconstruct this distinction. We turn now to the ideas of literary theorist Edward Said, a leading figure in postcolonial theory.

Orientalism Edward Said (1935–2003) was born into a Palestinian Christian family in Jerusalem. He was educated in the United States and worked as a professor of English literature at Columbia University. Even though his ideas were influenced by some abstract theoretical concepts, such as those found in the writings of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, Said always tried to develop ideas that were connected to the world that he sought to explain and understand. As we will see, Said’s concept of Orientalism achieves this. It both describes the development of a particular kind of racialized knowledge and remains relevant to an understanding of contemporary “East–West” relations. Said is best known for his book Orientalism, in which he introduced the now influential concept. As Said explains, Orientalism developed in the 18th century in the context of colonialism as Western explorers, politicians, and academics interacted with people from Eastern societies such as those in the Middle East, China, and India. Said offers three definitions of Orientalism: • Orientalism is an academic field of study that grew out of colonialism. Orientalists study the so-called Orient. By focusing on the academic world, Said makes the point that many of our ideas about societies are shaped by textual knowledge (things written about in books) rather than by practical, hands-on experience. • Orientalism is based on a distinction between the Orient and the Occident, or the East and the West. This distinction is based on broad, stereotypical ideas about the difference between so-called Occidental and Oriental societies. This distinction also implies that the so-called Occidental society is superior to the so-called Oriental society. • Orientalism is a way of thinking about the world that allows Western academics, politicians, and explorers to exercise authority over the so-called Orient. In other words, Orientalism encourages members of Western societies to believe that Eastern societies can and should be dominated and controlled by Western societies. Overall, the purpose of Orientalism is to make sense of the Eastern world for Western people. It does this by “translating” the practices and values of Orientalism–A way of thinking, writing, and talking that distinguishes, in broad, stereotypical ways, between the Occident (Western societies) and the Orient (Eastern societies).This distinction implies that Occidental societies are superior to Oriental societies and that Occidental societies have a duty to dominate and control Oriental societies (Said).

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non-European societies into forms that are more easily understood by Europeans. In so doing, it teaches Europeans how to think about and therefore act upon non-European peoples and societies. Even though Orientalism originated as an academic field, it has become intertwined with modern educational and political institutions. Most simply, Orientalism interprets non-Western social practices as inferior and uncivilized. For many Europeans, this means that Westerners have a duty to dominate and educate non-Western persons. In developing his theory of Orientalism, Said draws on a number of theoretical traditions, but most notable are structuralism and poststructuralism (see Chapter 10). In particular he relies on Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse. A discourse is a symbolic system that organizes and classifies the world. As we will see in Chapter 10, Foucault analyzes discourses of mental illness/madness and discourses of crime and criminality, among others. Discourses have histories. They change over time and are intertwined with social and political structures. In short, discourse analysis deals with the way in which representational systems, such as academic texts, organize reality and our capacity to act on reality. Said says that these kinds of texts can actually create the realities that they presume to describe. Texts, in other words, produce their own universes of understanding. They organize and classify the world without having to refer directly to the world and the people who live in that world. So, how does Orientalist discourse define the Orient? How has the Orient been constructed for the West? Perhaps one of the most important points is that Orientalism gathers together a wide variety of distinct and unique regions and cultures under a single category—the Orient. At first, Orientalism originated out of the European/Christian/white confrontation with Islam in the Middle Ages. After that it expanded to include people in the Near East (Arabs and Jews—the Semitic peoples) and the Far East (China, Japan). To be clear, there is no such thing as the Orient (or “Orientals”) except insofar as it exists in Orientalist, and now popular, discourse. Different Orientalist authors writing in different styles emphasize different aspects of the Orient, but Said says there are a number of themes common to Orientalist discourse. First and foremost, the Oriental person is defined as essentially different from the Western person. The job of the Orientalist is to explain, or interpret, this difference for the Western audience. Second, the Oriental is defined as dangerous. This depiction of the Orient has been most common in encounters with Islam, where Muslim people are seen as a violent threat to the West and Westerners. This representation of the Middle East and Islam continues to shape the ideas and beliefs that some people living in Europe and North America have about Islam. Third, in some depictions produced in the 19th century, the Oriental is defined as exotic and sensual. In this kind of Orientalism, the person from the

discourse–A symbolic system that organizes and classifies the world (Foucault/Said).

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East is associated with mysterious sexuality that both excites and frightens people from the West. An example is the popularity, among Westerners, of books like the Hindu Kama Sutra. Even though the Kama Sutra is a complex religious and philosophical text, in the West it has been sold almost exclusively as a sex guide. Despite the many kinds of Orientalist stereotypes, ultimately the Orient is constructed as an object against which the West can define itself. In contrast to the West, which Orientalists view as adult, rational, active, and morally upright, the East is seen as childlike, irrational, passive, and morally backward. Finally, for Said, as for Foucault, discourse is a form of power. Put another way, knowledge and power are intertwined. At its broadest, Orientalist discourse exercises power by creating the distinction between East and West and defining the East on Western terms. Further, this knowledge acts as a form of power because it organizes colonial bureaucracy, shapes government policy, and informs popular opinion. The Western consumer of Orientalist knowledge comfortably claims understanding of so-called Orientals without ever having met someone from the so-called Orient. Although the Orientalist discourse has the power to frame Western understandings of the East, it should also be clear that the ability to create and sustain such knowledge is backed by military might. Said, for example, treats the Napoleonic military expedition to Egypt (1798–1801) as a founding moment in modern Orientalism. Said’s strongest point for social theorists is that even though the world has changed radically since the 18th and 19th centuries, when Orientalist knowledge was first developed, the basic categories of Orientalism continue to organize social life. Most obvious, and a recurrent theme in Orientalism, is the way that Orientalist ideas still shape relationships between the United States and Islamic countries. For example, in his preface to the 2003 edition of Orientalism, Said discusses how Orientalist ideas influenced the American government’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

CRITICAL THEORIES OF RACE AND RACISM So far, we have focused on the relationship between colonialism and the construction of race. We now turn more explicitly to theories of race and racism, in particular theories that have been developed in the United States. Although they have never been central to the field of sociological theory, theories of race and racism go back to the origins of American sociology. For example, W. E. B. Du Bois introduced influential concepts such as double-consciousness, the color line, and the veil (see Chapter 3). Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Anna Julia Cooper considered intersections between race and gender. All three theorists anticipated what we now call standpoint theory (see Chapter 8). In this section, we provide an overview of two broad approaches to the contemporary study of race: critical race theory and critical theories of race and racism. We present details on specific critical theories of race in subsequent sections.

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Although it is not strictly a sociological perspective, critical race theory is one of the central impetuses for the recent study of race and ethnicity. Critical race theory is centered in the study of law and its relationship to the perpetuation of racism and racial domination. Central figures include Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derek Bell, Alan Freeman, Neil Gotanda, and Richard Delgado. Critical race theory came about as a result of the growing realization that the civil rights movement of the 1960s had lost its momentum, if not been reversed, and that there was a need not only for a revivified social activism but also for new theorizing about race. The ideas associated with critical race theory developed from a wide range of sources, some of which are quite familiar to social theorists, such as those derived from Marxian theory (e.g., the work of Antonio Gramsci), poststructuralism (e.g., the work of Derrida), feminist theory, and of course, Du Bois’s contributions. In Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Delgado and Jean Stefancic offer a provisional list of the basic tenets of critical race theory: • Racism is not an aberration; it is “normal” and endemic to American life. This makes it difficult to eliminate. • Much of the population has little incentive to eradicate racism. White elites gain from it materially through exploitation of Blacks and other minorities; working-class whites also gain materially as well as psychologically by having a group of people to whom they can favorably compare themselves in spite of their own difficulties. • Race is not an objective or fixed reality. It is a social construction that changes over time. Such social constructions are created, manipulated, and sometimes even retired although usually to be replaced by new social constructions. This social constructionist orientation is related to skepticism about the supposed ahistoricism of American law and skepticism about legal claims of neutrality, objectivity, color blindness, and meritocracy. That is, all of these may be seen as social constructions that can be manipulated, revised, or even jettisoned when such actions are deemed necessary. • Critical race theorists also describe differential racialization. This is the idea that different minority groups are racialized in different ways at different times. Thus, although Black Americans have been racialized since the inception of the United States, other minorities have come to be racialized over time. Examples include the Japanese during World War

critical race theory–A perspective centered in the study of the law and its relationship to the perpetuation of racism and racial domination. differential racialization–The idea that different minority groups are racialized in different ways at different times (critical race theory).

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II, Muslims after September 11, 2001, and Mexican Americans in recent years as a result of growing concern over legal and illegal immigration. • As in feminist theory (see Chapter 8), intersectionality and antiessentialism are key ideas in critical race theory. Thus, Black Americans (and other minorities) have no common or unifying identity. Rather, each Black person exists, as does every individual, at least potentially, at the intersection of many social positions and identities. These may include religion, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and political preference. • In critical race theory, as in other standpoint theories, great emphasis is placed on the importance of the experiential knowledge of people of color. • As part of a broader goal of eliminating all forms of oppression, critical race theory is oriented to the elimination of racial oppression.

KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW (1959–) A Biographical Vignette Kimberlé Crenshaw is a leading legal scholar and one of the founding figures of critical race theory. She also coined the term intersectionality and played a central role in the development of intersectionality theory, which argues that social oppression must be understood through multiple structures, such as race, class, and gender (see Chapter 8). In particular, Crenshaw says that when race and gender are analyzed in isolation from each other, the experiences of, and injustices suffered by, women of color are overlooked. Crenshaw was born in 1959 in Canton, Ohio. In 1981, she earned a bachelor of arts degree from Cornell University, where she majored in government and Africana studies. She earned a doctor of jurisprudence degree from Harvard in 1984 and a master of law degree from the University of Michigan in 1985. Since 1986, Crenshaw has been a faculty member at UCLA School of Law, and since 1995 she has been a professor at Columbia University Law School. There she is also head of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. In 1996, Crenshaw, along with Luke Charles Harris, founded the African American Policy Forum (AAPF). One of Crenshaw’s major projects at AAPF has been the publication of the report Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected and the related Twitter campaign #sayhername. In part, these projects aim to complement the My Brother’s Keeper initiative begun by the Obama administration, which addresses the discrimination, inequality, and violence suffered by young

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men and boys of color in America. Where My Brother’s Keeper focuses on young men and boys of color, the Black Girls Matter project and #sayhername address the discrimination, inequality, and violence faced by young women and girls of color. Crenshaw’s larger point is that despite its success within academic circles, the concept of intersectionality has yet to be embraced by the political and social mainstream. The Black Girls Matter report and #sayhername address this gap.

Critical theories of race and racism (CTRR) have much in common with critical race theory, including a strong focus on intersectionality and the goal of reducing or eliminating social inequalities and other social injustices. H ­ owever, there are also important differences stemming from the fact that CTRR are rooted much more in the social sciences, including sociology, than is critical race theory, with its base in legal scholarship and activism. These differences serve to sensitize CTRR to and involve them in cutting-edge issues in theory such as the relationships between race and racism and the agency-structure issue, the political economy, and globalization. Included in or related to globalization is a concern regarding race and racism as they relate to nation-states, nationalism, ethnonationalism, transnationalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, decolonization, imperialism, empire, and so on. Thus, whereas critical race theory focuses on the United States and U.S. law, CTRR have a much broader, even global, focus. In addition, CTRR are open to a much wider array of classical and contemporary theories as they apply to race. Patricia Hill Collins (see Chapter 8) delineates the following distinguishing features of critical theories of race and racism:1 • CTRR do not simply study race and racism; they seek to deal with social inequalities and to advance social justice. • CTRR eschew all binary oppositions and look at everything from the perspective of intersecting entities. Such a view requires the use of multifaceted research methods. • CTRR are inherently multidisciplinary. • CTRR draw upon and advance intersectionality, looking at the relationships among race and racism and gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nation. • CTRR are increasingly drawn to materialist (political economic) analyses of race and racism as well as to how race and racism relate to globalization. critical theories of race and racism–A set of theories that have much in common with critical race theory but are centered in the social sciences rather than in the study of the law.These theories focus on the way that racism and racial domination are perpetuated through multiple social institutions.

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• Structures of power are increasingly central to CTRR. Earlier concerns with the power of the American social welfare and criminal justice systems have been extended to topics such as nation-states and nationalism, democracy, empire, transnationalism, and imperialism.

RACIAL FORMATION One example of a particularly influential critical theory of race and racism is Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s theory of racial formation. In this theory, Omi and Winant provide a critique of racism in contemporary American society. They challenge the claim made by some that the United States is a postracial society, referring to the idea that since the civil rights era, race has not played a significant role in American life. For example, the election of an African American president, Barack Obama, is often held up as proof that race no longer determines life chances in the United States. In contrast, Omi and Winant argue that race and racism remain central organizing features of American life. This point has been made even more evident by the recent upsurge of white nationalist and white supremacist groups in the United States and accompanying racist rhetoric and symbols in popular discourse. In addition, more than any of the other theorists covered in this chapter, they explain the idea that race is socially constructed. To begin, they introduce the concept of racial formation. By using the word formation, Omi and Winant emphasize that race is a dynamic, ever-changing construction that develops over long periods of historical time. For example, modern American racism originated in the 16th century with the slave trade and the domination and destruction of Indigenous Americans. The theory of racial formation shows how these older ideas and structures find their way into the mainstream of American political, economic, and cultural life, thus making race a taken-forgranted feature of social organization. In addition, for Omi and Winant race is a master category. This means that even though race intersects with other social formations (like class and gender), it must also be studied on its own terms. They say that race cannot be explained through economic theories of class domination or cultural theories of ethnic difference. An example of a class-based theory of race is Edna Bonacich’s Marxist split labor market theory. According to this theory, the bourgeoisie (owning classes) create tensions among the working classes by paying Black workers lower

postracial society–The idea that race no longer plays a significant role in the social life of a society; specifically, some claim that race has played little role in American social life since the civil rights era (1950s–1960s). racial formation–The idea that the concept of race is not natural but rather a social construction that has been formed over long periods of time (Omi and Winant). split labor market theory–The theory that racial and ethnic tensions develop when owning classes (the bourgeoisie) pit workers (the proletariat) from different racial categories against each other (Bonacich).

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wages than white workers. This makes Black laborers a cheaper and therefore more attractive workforce, which in turn, fuels tension and racial hatred between Black and white workers. Despite the value of these kinds of explanations, Omi and Winant argue that the idea of race, independent of any economic motivations, is a central factor in social organization. Overall, the theory of racial formation is concerned with the way that race has been constructed as a social form that significantly contributes to American social organization. To explain the emergence and development of racial formations, Omi and Winant introduce several additional concepts, including that of racialization. The concept of racialization starts with the assumption that people do not inherently have a race. Phenotypic differences such as skin color do not have any naturally given meaning or significance; rather, they are given social and symbolic meaning through the social process of racialization. In other words, racialization is the process through which phenotypic differences are made to matter in a socially significant way. Because racialization is a social and dynamic process, the meanings and significance of race change over time and from place to place. Black Skin, for example, does not have the same meaning in Brazil as it does in the United States. And in the 19th century, the English saw the Irish as nonwhite and inferior. However, when Irish settlers moved to the United States, they assumed a new, dominant social position in relationship to Black slaves and Indigenous North Americans. Omi and Winant also describe race as a template for dealing with difference, meaning that it serves as a broad, ready-at-hand way for people to perceive and act on differences between themselves and others. The template encourages people to “see” different skin colors or eye shapes, and it shows them how to act on those differences. Societies create ways of perceiving and acting on racial differences through institutions such as religion, science, and politics. In the United States, the template of race emerged in the colonial encounter between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of North America and in the relations between Europeans and African slaves. Europeans justified colonial violence through Christian narratives that saw the European as a distinct and superior type of human being whose task it was to introduce “others” to the Christian religion and European culture. Later, the concept of race was developed through scientific theories that argued that phenotypic differences were indications of underlying, genetic, species differences. White people were thought of as different in kind from Black people and Asian people. These scientific arguments justified racial domination. Social Darwinist theories, supported by techniques such as craniometry (the measurement of skull size), identified and ranked groups according to so-called racial differences. These systems created the idea of race by grouping together physical

racialization–The process by which phenotypic differences are made to matter in a socially significant way (Omi and Winant).

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traits and treating them as essential and definitive features of people. Although we often like to think that the process of scientific racialization is a relic of the past, Omi and Winant show that the idea continues to influence biological theories. For example, as recently as 1994, in their controversial, and much criticized, book The Bell Curve, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray asserted a connection between “race” and intelligence. A more recent example comes from the field of pharmacogenomics, which tries to create drugs that are personalized to the genetic makeup of specific individuals. In some case these drugs are designed to target so-called racial differences. The idea is that people of particular races have genetic types that respond differently to specific drug types. The problem is that from a sociological perspective, this science reproduces misconceptions about race. Race is not an essence carried within a genetic code. Rather, it is possible to think about people in terms of races, and then to go in search of racial differences, only because of the social process of racial formation. In addition to religion and science, political institutions have contributed to the construction of race. Perhaps the most important such institutions are those responsible for gathering census data. Governments use census statistics to make decisions about social policy and the distribution of social resources. In the United States, as in most modern nations, census forms ask people to identify their race or ethnicity. Since the 1990s the U.S. Census Bureau has established a widely influential set of five racial categories: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, Black or African American, and White. Although these categories are generally accepted as markers of identity, their accuracy and logical consistency are regularly questioned. Moreover, the categories change across time and place. The point is that these kinds of categories, and the distinctions they represent, are not natural or persistent. Nevertheless, they influence the way that government and nongovernment policy makers, as well as Americans in general, conceive of and act on differences among people. Most significantly, they keep in play the idea that race is an essential measure of social difference. Finally, Omi and Winant introduce the concept of racial projects: the specific, concrete social processes through which racialization occurs. Racial projects are both cultural and structural. They are cultural in that they influence the way people think about differences among people. For example, the racial hierarchies created by 19th-century scientists led people to believe that there are racebased categories of persons of different worth and value. Racial projects are also structural in that these ways of thinking about people affect the distribution of resources and subsequent life chances for people in different racial categories. For example, compared with white Americans, Black Americans still make less money, suffer poorer health, are offered poorer-quality education, are subject to more police violence, and are more likely to be imprisoned.

racial projects–The concrete social processes through which racialization occurs (Omi and Winant).

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In previous sections, we have given examples of racial projects. Omi and Winant say that colonialism was the first modern racial project. It exploited African labor and appropriated Indigenous lands (in this way colonialism’s racial project involved the structural distribution of resources). It also legitimated these actions through appeal to hierarchies of racial difference (in this way colonialism’s racial project depended on the construction of a system of knowledge, or a representational system). Also, the development of racializing scientific theories is a racial project, as is the development of the field of Orientalism discussed by Said. Racial projects can be big or small. They can operate at the macrosocial level through the development of social policies based on the category of race. They can operate at the microsocial level through, for example, the frequent police harassment faced by racialized youth. Sometimes these projects support one another, as has been the case with white supremacist projects for much of American history. Sometimes projects come into conflict with one another. For example, antiracist projects, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, challenge racist projects. Overall, Omi and Winant present an image of modern society as a world populated by a wide array of racial projects of varying size, scope, and intent.

KEY CONCEPT Color-Blind Racism

Many people hold the view that racism is a thing of the past in the United States and that even overt racist displays and rhetoric are the act of “bad seeds” and therefore not a part of mainstream society. The belief is that since the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, America has been a postracial, color-blind society in which people (for the most part) no longer discriminate on the basis of race. Although it is true that the overt, Jim Crow racism of the early and mid-20th century has significantly diminished, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that racism persists in the United States in a new form that he calls color-blind racism, or a racism without racists. Color blindness is the idea that in government policy and everyday life people ignore racialized differences such as skin color, hair type, eye shape, and cultural practices; despite physical and cultural differences, people behave as though they believe that underneath people are all the same. Yet Bonilla-Silva argues that despite its liberal appearance, the ideology of color blindness actually perpetuates racism. Typically, racism is defined too narrowly. Most people think of it in psychological terms as a set of discriminatory and hateful attitudes (Continued)

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(Continued) held by individual persons. A sociological perspective, however, emphasizes that racism is not attitudinal alone; it also comprises persistent structural inequalities. Since the 1960s attitudinal racism has diminished, but structural racism has persisted. The ideology of color blindness draws attention away from the fact that despite talk of equality and freedom, structural racism persists. Bonilla-Silva lists four frames of color-blind racism. By “frames,” he means common ways of interpreting information about race. The frames of color-blind racism help people explain away racism and race-based inequalities. The first frame is abstract liberalism. This frame views the world through liberal ideals such as the freedom of choice and the rights of the individual. Historically, these ideals were intended to support equal opportunity and improved life chances for all people. However, because of its strong emphasis on the actions of individuals, the frame of abstract liberalism disregards structural inequalities (e.g., economic, educational) that make the playing field uneven from the start. Rather than recognizing the structural sources of racial inequality, this frame blames individuals for their problems. The second frame is naturalization, in which racial inequalities are attributed to natural or biological human tendencies. According to Bonilla-Silva, people use this frame to explain inequality by saying things like “White people are naturally attracted to white people, and Black people are naturally attracted to Black people.” This kind of naturalization is different from the biological racism of the 19th and early 20th centuries because it says that these natural tendencies are common to all people and independent of race. In other words, because both white and Black people (the argument goes) are inclined toward, for example, racial segregation, it cannot be racist. The third frame is cultural racism. Where in the past racial inequalities were explained biologically and genetically, now inequalities are explained culturally. For example, rather than saying that poverty among Latinx Americans is caused by a biological inferiority, some people now say that there is something about Latin American culture, such as a cultural preference for leisure, that leads toward poverty. The fourth frame is the minimization of racism. This frame holds that in comparison to the past, there is now little racial discrimination in America. Reports of incidents of racism and discrimination are dismissed as exaggerations, hypersensitivity, or “playing the race card.” Like all the other frames of color-blind racism, this frame ignores the sociological idea that racial inequality is not a product of poor life choices or cultural preferences but rather a structural problem that requires large-scale social change.

frames of color-blind racism–Common ways of interpreting information about race. Bonilla-Silva describes four such frames: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism.

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A SYSTEMATIC THEORY OF RACE In their 2015 book The Racial Order, Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond develop a systematic theory of race. They note that sociologists have provided many empirically rich accounts of race and racism and have also provided a number of significant theories of particular aspects of race and racism, some of which we have reviewed in this chapter. However, Emirbayer and Desmond observe, sociologists have been lacking a single theory that brings all of these empirical findings and theoretical insights together in one complete system. Their goal in The Racial Order is to provide this kind of systematic theory of race. A systematic theory is one that brings together multiple theoretical perspectives, operates at multiple levels of analysis, and provides a more or less exhaustive set of analytic categories. A good example of a systematic theory is Talcott Parsons’s structural functionalism (see Chapter 4), which uses the AGIL scheme to describe all facets of social life. Although Emirbayer and Desmond do not use Parsons’s scheme (or anything quite like it), they nevertheless take inspiration from the idea that social theorists can and should attempt to map out the whole of social life and the particular realms therein, such as the racial order. In the postmodern era (see Chapter 10), the concept of a systematic, universalizing, or grand theory has been criticized, and rightly, because of the tendency of such theories toward theoretical abstraction and the development of hegemonic ideologies. In other words, systematic theories often lose contact with the experiential details of people’s everyday lives. Related to this, systematic theories tend to represent the interests of the people writing the theories rather than the lives of the people being written about. As we have seen in this chapter, this is an especially important criticism in the context of race, where grand narratives of European civilization and scientific progress have been used to silence racialized people and to justify racist projects. Sensitive to this problem, Emirbayer and Desmond argue that nevertheless, there is value in a systematic theory of race. For one thing, when multiple theoretical perspectives on race are drawn together, common themes and conceptual problems can be identified. Also, a systematic approach to race allows for the development of a set of comprehensive analytic distinctions, that is, a set of concepts and categories that will enable sociologists to arrange and connect broad sets of ideas and empirical observations. Finally, we would emphasize, as Emirbayer and Desmond do, that systematic theory building allows theorists to ask new, unconsidered questions. By attempting to describe the whole, the systematic theory is able to draw attention to areas of study that have been underexamined or not examined at all.

systematic theory of race–A theory of race that brings together multiple theoretical perspectives, operates at multiple levels of analysis, and provides a more or less exhaustive set of analytic categories (Emirbayer and Desmond).

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The Structure of the Racial Field In their theory, Emirbayer and Desmond bring together many theoretical traditions. Two important influences are Durkheim’s cultural sociology (see Chapter 2) and John Dewey’s American pragmatism (George Herbert Mead is another example of a pragmatist; see Chapter 3). However, the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and in particular his concept of the field, plays the central role in Emirbayer and Desmond’s theory. Like all other theories covered in this chapter, their theory emphasizes that race is not a biological essence. Instead, drawing on Bourdieu, Emirbayer and Desmond say that race is an effect of fields. In other words, race is created by and exists only within fields. What is a field? According to Bourdieu, a field consists of all the positions that people can adopt in relationship to one another in a particular domain of social life (see Chapter 7 for more detail on the concept of the field). The fields of the social world can be compared to the fields of play in sports activities (Bourdieu himself was a rugby player and frequently drew on sports imagery). Bourdieu analyzed many different kinds of fields: the field of art, the field of law, the field of academics, and the field of politics, to name a few. The important point is that fields are social constructions. Particular kinds of fields, as well as the positions within those fields, are made by people. These fields determine the kinds of people in a society as well as the kinds of relationships that they can have with one another. To Bourdieu’s concept of the field, Emirbayer and Desmond add the concept of the racial field, which describes the totality of racial identities that exist in a given society as well as their relationships to one another. When a person takes up, or is made to take up, a position within the racial field, they are racialized. That is, the individual acquires a racial identity. For example, as discussed earlier, in the colonial culture of Fanon’s Martinique, the racial field comprised two basic positions: Black and white. Similarly, Orientalism creates a global racial field divided between Occidental people and Oriental people. To the concept of the racial field, Emirbayer and Desmond add the concept of racial capital. According to Bourdieu, some field positions come with more power than others. This power is related to the possession of various kinds of capital. For example, positions within a field can be defined by different levels of economic capital, social capital, and symbolic capital. Capital gives people power. Racial capital is the kind of power that comes from being a member of a particular racialized group. In the American racial field, white people of European descent possess the most racial capital and have thereby been able to define the relative value and merit of racialized persons in the United States. The map of the racial field of American society, then, would describe not only all of the racial positions/identities within racial field–The totality of racial identities that exist within a given society as well as their relationships to one another (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial capital–The kind of capital, and therefore power, that comes from being a member of a particular racialized group (Emirbayer and Desmond).

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the United States but also how each of these racial positions comes with different kinds of capital (cultural, economic, and racial) and therefore the power that each field position possesses. For Bourdieu, society is organized around many different kinds of fields that interact with one another. So too, for Emirbayer and Desmond, race is organized through many different kinds of racial fields. For example, in their review of the racial order, they describe the global racial field, national racial fields, the field of whiteness, the field of Blackness, the field of Indianness, and others. Again, each one of these fields can be mapped to describe positions available to members as well as the power that comes with these positions. Emirbayer and Desmond discuss, for example, the field of Blackness in the United States. This field comes with a set of rules by which members are identified as Black in the first place. Further, members are positioned in that field through the possession of political, economic, and what Emirbayer and Desmond call “Black capital.” Black capital is the degree to which a particular position in the field can be identified as authentically Black. For example, Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. secretary of state, has a lot of political and economic capital but little Black capital. In contrast, within the current structure of the racial field, members of the Black Panthers and gangsta rappers have relatively low economic and political capital but a great deal of Black capital. Emirbayer and Desmond also discuss how cultural and collective-emotional structures influence racial fields. Racial cultural structures constitute the symbolic organization of racial life. To develop this idea, Emirbayer and Desmond draw on the Durkheimian distinction between the sacred and the profane. In American culture, they say, people of white European descent are represented as sacred and therefore of greater value than members of other racialized groups, whereas people of African descent are presented as profane and therefore dangerous and less worthy. Also, Native Americans (i.e., “Indians”) have been mythologized and romanticized as possessing an ancient culture filled with ceremonies and rituals. The cultural representation of Native Americans shapes the formation of the field of Indianness. Whereas the concept of racial cultural structures concerns cognitive and symbolic representations of race, the concept of racial collective-emotional structures involves how feelings about race are socially structured. Emirbayer and Desmond say that members of a group share fantasies that are charged with emotions including admiration, respect, hate, and anger. These collective emotions have a logic and power independent of the symbolic/cognitive systems previously discussed. These emotions provide a basis for group solidarity (e.g., the feeling of belonging to a particular racialized group), but they can also drive race racial cultural structures–The symbolic organization of racial life (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial collective-emotional structures–The group organization of feelings about race (Emirbayer and Desmond).

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discrimination. For example, the American racial field is organized so that those at the dominant end of the field (whites) have feelings of security, pride, and entitlement, but when their position of power is challenged, they feel shame and anger. People who are positioned at the dominated end of the field often suffer contradictory feelings of despair, apathy, hope, and optimism.

Structure and Agency in the Field In addition to his concept of the field, Bourdieu is known for his efforts to bridge the structure-agency gap (see Chapter 7). The structure, or organization, of the field not only shapes action but is also shaped by action. The fact that fields are made up of human actors means that the field depends on people’s engagements with its basic principles and rules. Actors can reproduce the structures of the field, or they can challenge the organization of the field. This can happen at the interactive level, when for example, a person challenges another’s racist comment at a dinner party, or at the institutional level, when antiracist social movements rally against racist government policy. By focusing on agency, Emirbayer and Desmond underline the idea that race is not something imposed on persons from above. Rather, once positioned in racial fields, people, or groups of people, can act in many ways. They can reproduce these fields so that the fields stay roughly the same. They can also try to change these fields through acts of resistance. To capture these many forms of action, Emirbayer and Desmond describe three types of agency: practical-evaluative agency, iterative agency, and projective agency. The concept of practical-evaluative agency draws attention to the fact that social action depends on an embodied, taken-for-granted understanding of the basic structures of a given racial field. Action in the racial field is never guided by a machinelike application of racial rules. Instead, action is a spontaneous and dynamic engagement with the unspoken rules of the field. People’s positions within a field depend on their ability to act in a way that shows they know the rules without having to say so. Because the performance of race is spontaneous and dynamic, this leaves the racial field open to transformation and change. Iterative agency is the kind of action that focuses on the past. In their everyday practices and activities, social actors habitually, unthinkingly reproduce the traditions and customs that structure the racial order. By acting habitually, members of a racial field accept the basic racial illusio that structures the field—that is, the shared set of ideas that people have about the racial field and how it works.

practical-evaluative agency–A concept that emphasizes that action is not a machinelike application of rules but is based on embodied, dynamic engagement with the field (Emirbayer and Desmond). iterative agency–A kind of action that is focused on the past and aims to reproduce habit, custom, and tradition (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial illusio–The shared set of ideas that people have about the racial field and how it works (Emirbayer and Desmond).

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These ideas continue to structure the field only insofar as people continue to believe in them and act in relation to them. Projective agency is a kind of action that is future oriented. Such projects can either sustain or challenge the racial order. According to Emirbayer and Desmond, the conservation strategy is pursued by actors who dominate the racial field. This group of people try to maintain and expand the existing racial order because it favors their interests. As examples of this kind of strategy, Emirbayer and Desmond refer to the slavery plantation system and the American criminal justice system. Both systems imagined and created structures that maintained white supremacy through the power of economics and law. In contrast to this, the subversion strategy is usually pursued by those who are dominated in the racial field. They try to overturn existing authority in the racial field and in some cases go so far as to change the entire structure of the field. Examples of this include Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of an equitable future and the strategies pursued by the Black Lives Matter movement, on behalf of African Americans in the United States, and the Idle No More movement, on behalf of Indigenous groups in Canada.

SOUTHERN THEORY AND INDIGENOUS RESURGENCE To this point in the chapter, we have described some of the ways that theories of race and colonialism have drawn on and expanded Western theoretical perspectives. Fanon applied the ideas of Hegel, Sartre, and Marx. Said makes use of Foucault. Emirbayer and Desmond place Bourdieu’s concept of the field front and center. At the same time, some of these theories sit in uncomfortable tension with the Western theoretical tradition and have sought to develop knowledge grounded in alternative traditions. For example, even though Fanon was inspired by Western ideas, at one time in his life he was also inspired by the ideas of the Negritude movement, an intellectual movement led by Fanon’s teacher Aimé Césaire and future president of Senegal Léopold Senghor. The movement opposed the values of white, capitalist, colonial culture and tried to create a panAfrican identity through what it saw as the values of African culture: communalism, anti-individualism, and poeticism. Although Fanon was ambivalent about

projective agency–A kind of agency that is focused on the future and, through projects, tries to maintain or change the existing order (Emirbayer and Desmond). conservation strategy–In Emirbayer and Desmond’s theory about race, the kind of projective agency in which actors try to maintain the existing racial order. subversion strategy–In Emirbayer and Desmond’s theory about race, the kind of projective agency in which actors try to change the existing racial order. Negritude movement–An intellectual movement during the early 20th century that opposed the values of white, capitalist, colonial culture and sought a pan-African identity in the values of African culture.

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Negritude, he nevertheless took inspiration from the idea that social life could be described, and theories developed, through the use of cultural resources other than those provided by European science and philosophy. In this section we consider some recent theories that are grounded in non-Western knowledges. In some cases, these theories criticize but also try to build on Western/European ideas. In others cases they develop entirely novel concepts by drawing on Indigenous ideas and social practices.

Ibn Khaldun Before we begin our discussion of contemporary versions of non-Western non-European theory, it is important to say a few words about the 14th-century North African Arab scholar Abdel Rahman Ibn Khaldun. Usually sociologists and social scientists trace their intellectual origins to 18th- and 19th-century figures like Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim (see Chapter 1). However, some, such as sociologist Syed Farid Alatas, have argued that the foundations of the social sciences were established several hundred years earlier by Ibn Khaldun. This suggests that there are long-standing traditions of sociological thought that offer alternatives to those usually imagined by Western scholars. Ibn Khaldun was born to an educated family in Tunis, North Africa, on May 27, 1332. He was schooled in the Koran (the Muslim holy book), mathematics, and history. In his lifetime, he served a variety of sultans in Tunis, Morocco, Spain, and Algeria as ambassador, chamberlain, and member of the scholars’ council. He also spent 2 years in prison in Morocco for his belief that state rulers were not divine leaders. After approximately two decades of political activity, Ibn Khaldun returned to North Africa, where he undertook an intensive 5-year period of study and writing. Works that he produced during this period increased his fame and led to a lectureship at the center of Islamic study, AlAzhar Mosque University in Cairo. In his well-attended lectures on society and sociology, Ibn Khaldun stressed the importance of linking sociological thought and historical observation. By the time he died in 1406, Ibn Khaldun had produced a corpus of work that had many ideas in common with contemporary sociology. As described in his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun was committed to the scientific study of society, empirical research, and the search for causes of social phenomena. He devoted considerable attention to social institutions (including politics and the economy) and their interrelationships. He was interested in comparing primitive and modern societies. As sociologist Syed Farid Alatas emphasizes in his book on Ibn Khaldun’s life and work, one particular topic of interest to Ibn Khaldun was state formation— that is, the process by which political entities and governments are developed. Many modern theories of state formation emphasize the linear, or progressive, development of states over time. Contemporary states improve and build on the

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accomplishments of earlier states. In contrast, Ibn Khaldun developed a cyclical theory of state formation. The key to this theory was the differences between the two kinds of social forms found in North Africa: sedentary societies and pastoral nomadic societies. Sedentary societies are those, usually organized around agriculture, that stay in one place for long periods of time. In contrast, pastoral nomadic societies move around, following the grazing patterns of livestock. Ibn Khaldun said that nomadic groups had high levels of ‘asabiyyah, a feeling of group solidarity or social cohesion. ‘Asabiyyah comes from a shared knowledge of common descent. Because of this strong social cohesion, nomadic groups were able to defeat the sedentary societies, which had less ‘asabiyyah. The nomadic societies would then establish their own sedentary dynasties. However, once nomadic groups settled and became sedentary, they would lose ‘asabiyyah and become vulnerable to nomadic groups that now had stronger ‘asabiyyah. There are interesting similarities and differences between Ibn Khaldun’s ideas and later sociological theories. On the one hand, Ibn Khaldun’s concept of ‘asabiyyah anticipates the concept of social cohesion in the work of theorists like Durkheim some 400 years later. On the other hand, Ibn Khaldun’s description of historical cycles contrasts strongly with the focus on linear and progressive social development seen in the work of many of the classical Western theorists.

Southern Theory Even though some now recognize the significance of Ibn Khaldun’s work, through much of the modern period and into the present, the ideas of non-Western scholars and intellectual traditions have been overlooked in sociology. Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell has tried to address this absence, and her 2007 book Southern Theory represents an effort to develop an approach to sociological theory based in Southern knowledges. Northern theory (also referred to as Western theory or metropolitan theory) consists of theories developed in Europe and North America, and Southern theory (also known as peripheral theory or Indigenous theory) encompasses theories developed in the Global South. For example, Connell discusses theories from sub-Saharan Africa, Iran, Latin America, and ­Australia. Her argument is that historically, sociological theory has been produced in the North. In this relationship, as we saw illustrated with Said’s concept of Orientalism,

cyclical theory of state formation–Ibn Khaldun’s theory, based on his experiences with North African societies, that state formation is driven by a cyclical relationship between pastoral and nomadic social forms. This is in contrast to modern Western linear theories of state formation. ‘asabiyyah–A feeling of group solidarity or social cohesion (Ibn Khaldun). Northern theory–Theories developed in Europe and North America; also known as Western theory or metropolitan theory (Connell). Southern theory–Theories developed in the Global South; also known as peripheral theory or Indigenous theory (Connell).

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Southern societies are explained and studied by scholars using Northern concepts. This is not because people in the periphery have not developed theories of society. Rather, as part of the imperial/colonial project, Indigenous knowledges have been discounted as primitive, irrational, and backward. Connell’s goal in Southern Theory is to describe these Southern theories to help create a more democratic and globally representative version of sociological theory. The first Southern theories that Connell describes were developed by Iranian theorists: al-Afghani (1839–1997), Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–1969), and Ali Shariati (1933–1977). According to Connell, these three thinkers were strongly opposed to the European imperialism and colonialism that has historically threatened the Middle East. Al-e Ahmad expresses his opposition to Western imperialism through the concept of Westoxification, meaning the collective negative effects of Western imperialism on Iran. This includes the idea that imperialism alienates people from local culture and dominates everyday life through imported machinery. Al-e Ahmad sees the Islamic religion as a source of cultural resistance to imperialism. Connell argues that Shariati goes a step further than Al-e Ahmad in that he not only opposes Western ideology but also finds the roots of an alternative social theory in the Islamic religion. This includes theories of class, a commitment to social equality, and resistance to all kinds of power structures. In contrast to most Northern theories, in these theories, modernity is not opposed to a distant, primitive, religious past. Rather, religion is viewed as a meaningful cultural resource that grounds many of the ideals and aspirations, including scientific rationality, valued by Northern sociology. Connell also describes the work of the Indian Subaltern Studies Group. This group is currently best known in North America for its affiliation with abstract postmodern and postcolonial theories, but as Connell points out, it emerged originally as an intellectual challenge to the elitism of Indian and South Asian social science. In contrast to social science imposed from above through colonial ideology, the Subaltern Studies Group developed its ideas from the experiences of local political movements. These, the group believed, contained their own theories of society, power, and consciousness. Like the work of the Iranian theorists previously described, these alternative theories were often expressed in local religious languages. A third example of Southern theory is the work of Nigerian sociologist ­Akinsola Akiwowo. Akiwowo argues that traditional Yoruba poetry and ritual contain a uniquely African social theory. Using these traditional cultural sources, he

Westoxification–The collective negative effects of Western imperialism on Iran and colonized Middle Eastern nations, including the alienation of people from local culture and the domination of everyday life through imported machinery (Al-e Ahmad). Subaltern Studies Group–A group of Indian and South Asian scholars who base their social theory on local political movements in India and South Asia.

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developed sociological concepts and sought to introduce them to the rest of the world. According to Connell, the main assumptions of Yoruba theory are that • the unit of social life is the individual, and • the individual cannot exist without community, • but also, self-alienation is a sin; • as a result, genuine people work and make sacrifices both for their own improvement and for the improvement of the entire society. Although scholars in Africa and elsewhere have debated the merits of a social theory grounded in traditional poetry, Akiwowo’s efforts demonstrate the need to consider theories grounded in materials other than conventional written texts. Overall, Connell concludes that Southern theory challenges Northern theory in a number of important ways. Most centrally, it challenges the idea that the kind of theory discussed throughout this textbook is the only kind of theory. Southern theory also asks theorists to consider the different media in which social theories are embedded. In the North, social theory is typically associated with abstract and disengaged texts, but Connell presents examples of theories that emerge out of everyday life: religious ritual and story, art, and local political movements. The idea that social theory is found in a range of cultural forms pushes Northern definitions of theory to the limit. In all of this what seems crucial is a reconceptualization of the meaning of theory. Should theories, as in the Western scientific tradition, be generalizable and universal, descriptive of all human beings? Or should theories stay connected to local traditions and social life? If the latter is the case, then the measure of theory should be its ability to make sense of people’s lives on the terms set by their own cultures and societies. For more on this, we turn to North American Indigenous theory.

Indigenous Theories In this section we discuss some of the recent work by North American Indigenous scholars. Like the Southern theories described by Connell, scholars working the field of Native studies have an ambivalent relationship with theory. On the one hand, as Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith discuss in their introduction to Theorizing Native Studies, “theory” is often associated with European scholars and European perspectives on the world. As a European approach to knowledge, theory has overlooked Indigenous perspectives, and as we have seen throughout this chapter, particular theories (such as social Darwinism) have been used to justify colonial domination and racist state policies. On the other hand, as the essays in Theorizing Native Studies show, North American Indigenous scholars have been able to develop powerful tools through the critique and modification of Western ideas. In this process, Western concepts have been both strengthened and elaborated. CHAPTER NINE  •  THEORIES OF RACE AND COLONIALISM   287

For example, Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard combines the ideas of Fanon, Marx, and Taiaiake Alfred to develop a critique of the politics of recognition. Settler colonialism subjected (and continues to subject) Indigenous North Americans to physical and cultural violence: pandemics, the dispossession of land, forced relocation, the destruction of culture and language, and the removal of children from communities and their placement in residential schools. In recent years, the governments of nations responsible for colonial violence have sought reconciliation with Indigenous peoples—that is, they have made attempts to overcome the damage of the colonial past and to establish equitable and fair relations between colonizers and colonized. The most common reconciliation strategy used by Western governments is driven by the politics of recognition. The politics of recognition is based on the concept of recognition introduced by Georg Hegel (discussed earlier in this chapter). Recognition theory argues that to flourish and develop, humans need to have their unique cultural identity recognized. As we saw with the discussion of Fanon’s work, colonialism denied Indigenous peoples such recognition by forcing them to adopt European cultural practices (e.g., European languages and Christianity). The politics of recognition holds the view that the integrity and well-being of Indigenous peoples will be restored if their unique cultural practices and identities are recognized. This is expressed, for example, in apologies that Western governments have made to Indigenous populations as well as in the work of “truth and reconciliation” commissions. As we will see in a moment, cultural flourishing is an important component of contemporary Indigenous social theory. However, the politics of recognition is an inadequate response for several reasons. For one, Coulthard argues, the politics of recognition has a limited theory of culture and identity. In much contemporary Western theory, which includes recognition theories, culture is understood to consist of the symbolic dimensions of social life, such as language and religious belief. In a challenge to this, Coulthard says that the Dene people, and many other Indigenous peoples, have a broader conception of culture. He agrees that on the one hand culture and identity include symbolic systems. However, he notes, culture also encompasses material practices connected to the land. To capture this dimension of Indigenous culture and thought, sociologist Vanessa Watts introduces the term Indigenous Place-Thought. This idea emphasizes that land is not only a backdrop to human action but is alive and interconnected

reconciliation–Attempts to overcome the damage of the colonial past and to establish equitable and fair relations between colonizers and colonized. politics of recognition–Political practices shaped by the idea that the integrity and well-being of people depends on the recognition of their unique cultural practices and identities. Indigenous Place-Thought–The idea that land is not only a backdrop to human action but is alive and interconnected with human and nonhuman agents (Watts).

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with human and nonhuman agents (for more on nonhuman agency see Chapter 12). From both Coulthard’s and Watts’s perspective the connections among land, culture, and human agency need to be at the center of the debate. The politics of recognition does not go far enough because it does not sufficiently address these connections. In fact, Coulthard argues, the land issue makes the problem of recognition and reconciliation particularly challenging. This is because settler colonialism depends on the dispossession of land, which consists of both the removal of Indigenous persons from their traditional lands and the division and definition of land on European terms (e.g., through the creation of reservations). The removal of Indigenous persons from land allowed (and continues to allow) European settlement and capitalist development. Here Coulthard relies on, but updates, Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation. As we saw earlier, primitive accumulation is the idea that the growth and development of early capitalism depended on colonies for raw resources. Marx’s error, Coulthard says, is that he places primitive accumulation in the distant past. Rather, dispossession of land is an ongoing process central to the functioning of contemporary capitalism. Even though many governments recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples to speak their languages and practice their traditional religions, they do not go so far as to respect their ideas about land and land use. One of the best recent examples of this is the move to build a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline across land near the Standing Rock Indian reservation in the Dakotas, which set off protests among Native Americans beginning in 2016. The pipeline furthers the interests of the oil and gas industry, but protestors argue that it threatens to pollute the river waters that serve the reservation. In this context, Coulthard would argue that it is not enough to recognize the languages and religions of the Native cultures at Standing Rock. Full reconciliation with Indigenous peoples requires a respect for their understanding of the land and its preservation. Coulthard’s ideas offer an example of how Indigenous theory can both critique and build on Western theories. Coulthard criticizes the theory of recognition, but drawing on Indigenous ideas about the land, he also shows how that theory can be further developed. Further, Coulthard demonstrates how Marx’s ideas can be updated to take account of the experience of colonized persons.

Resurgence One important idea introduced by Indigenous theory is that of resurgence, a concept that comes from the work of Indigenous scholars such as Coulthard, Leanne Simpson, and Taiaiake Alfred. Resurgence is the reinvigoration and dispossession of land–The removal of Indigenous persons from their traditional lands as well as the division and definition of land on European terms (Coulthard). Resurgence–The reinvigoration and regeneration of Indigenous life through Indigenous culture and ideas (Alfred/Coulthard/Simpson).

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regeneration of Indigenous life through Indigenous culture and ideas. In his book Wasáse, Alfred points out that although resurgence challenges the legacies of colonialism, it is not defined by colonialism. Rather, it requires that people turn away from colonialism to create new kinds of lives built on traditional Indigenous knowledges. Resurgence is both political and cultural. It is political because it aims to decolonize Indigenous knowledges and overcome what L. Simpson calls the “cognitive imperialism” of settler colonial societies. It is cultural because it is grounded in Indigenous knowledges. These carry within them, as we saw with some of the Southern theories described by Connell, ways of living in the world that are different from those imposed by European settler societies. In Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, L. Simpson shows how Indigenous knowledges, in particular the stories, politics, and practices of her Nishnaabeg people, embody a unique social theory. This is a theory that prioritizes “good relations” with the “implicate order” of the natural world and other people. Unlike most Western/Northern theories that try to develop abstract concepts that transcend time and place, Simpson’s Nishnaabeg theory emphasizes fluidity and change. The local is valued over the general, and the how of theory is more important than the content of theory. Simpson exemplifies this approach to theory through her discussion and use of language. In addition to being a scholar, Simpson identifies herself as a language learner. Learning Indigenous languages is an important part of resurgence because Indigenous languages carry within them theories of life and relationships that cannot be found in colonial languages (e.g., English). But it is not so much the content of the Nishnaabeg language as the way in which Simpson learns about new words that illustrates her approach to theory. When she comes across a new word, she brings it to her language teacher and then to the community’s elders. They discuss the many meanings of the word. She says that she does this because, to be meaningful, the word must make sense within her community of relations. That is, words do not have set or preestablished meanings. The meanings of words are shaped by their uses in particular contexts, and these meanings are likely to change over time. Similarly, we might say that there are no set-in-stone theories to be memorized. Instead, the meanings of words and theories emerge within specific communities of learners. Thus, Simpson emphasizes an approach in which knowledge is always contingent. This means that ideas and related practices must be handled carefully, discussed, and reflected upon continually. This stands in contrast to the many Western/Northern theories that try to establish once-and-for-all definitions of key concepts and explanations. A number of additional concepts are also important to Simpson’s approach. First, theories are embedded in stories. Theories should not be treated as separate from the communities they are supposed to describe, Simpson suggests, because they are already present within the communities’ stories. These stories are told to young children, and community members hear them repeated over and over again throughout their lives. The theories that Simpson talks about are woven into the

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fabric of daily life. Theory, in this sense, is always connected to the problems and experiences of everyday life. In fact, Simpson says, traditional creation stories carry within them ontologies of social life. Ontology, a term used in philosophy, refers to basic assumptions about the nature of being. For the Indigenous ideas that Simpson discusses, ontologies are revealed through daily storytelling. As ontologies, or descriptions of ways of being, stories connect Indigenous persons to forms of knowledge and life that guided their forebears before colonialism. Here stories are a key component of resurgence. They connect people to past forms of life and in so doing give meaning to, and reinvigorate, the present. Simpson notes that many ideas are communicated within the stories of her own community, such as ideas about ethics, relationships, and responsibility. She adds that even though this ontology is grounded in community, the ideals of sovereignty and self-determination of individuals are important components of these stories. Stories not only communicate shared values but also encourage personal reflection and thought. In fact, in this worldview, personal truth and individual difference are treated as necessary features of the fabric of life. This said, even though the knowledge they contain comes from the past, the stories are not a nostalgic return to the past. Resurgence, in others words, depends on the thoughtful and inspiring use of traditional stories to address and serve the challenges of the present. Simpson also emphasizes the importance of land to social theory. Earlier we saw that land is important in Coulthard’s theory. Also, Connell notes that land is a common theme in Southern theories. Simpson develops these ideas when she says that Nishnaabeg theory comes from, or emerges from, the land. Most of the theories that we have discussed in this book focus on the relationship between people and the social structures created by people. For example, in Durkheim’s view, people organize themselves in relationship to shared values, and for Marx, the proletariat think about their problems in relationship to the bourgeoisie. For Simpson, in addition to this attention to other persons, theory springs from an awareness of, and attunement to, the changing features of the natural world. This awareness translates into theory that is equally concerned with flux. This requires the cultivation of a form of knowledge grounded in a strong capacity for presence, or the ability to connect to the deep structures of what she calls the “implicate order.” This attunement to the surrounding environment stands in stark contrast to the attitude of much contemporary sociological theory, which, because it values abstraction and neutrality, tries to distance itself from its subject matter. Feminist theorists have called this distancing approach the “view from nowhere.” In contrast, for Simpson theory is always somewhere, and that somewhere is, in large part, defined by the qualities and characteristics of the natural world. Simpson’s focus on presence is a critique not only of mainstream sociology but also of contemporary consumer culture. Simpson asserts that the consumer culture embraces the attitude of absence. By this she means that consumer culture creates in people the desire for things they do not have. It is a culture organized

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around wanting. In particular, Simpson emphasizes, the consumer culture is organized around wanting things that other people have produced. This includes the desire not only for consumer objects like iPads, handbags, and shoes but also for knowledge, ideas, and feelings produced and sold by academics, filmmakers, artists, and musicians. In contrast to this, Simpson encourages the development of knowledge that at least ideally, is based in acts of creative expression. These theories start from the belief that the world is not bought. Rather, it is created by people through their active engagement with and attention to other people and the natural world. Although these alternative ideas are clearly meant to inspire Indigenous resurgence, we also see in them potential models of life and theorizing for nonIndigenous people. For example, Simpson offers critiques of consumerism and alternatives to abstract and alienating knowledge systems. Further, these ideas provide an approach that places awareness of and attention to the natural environment at the center. This attunement to the natural world is particularly important in an era when people across the planet face the unprecedented dangers and risks of climate change.

SUMMARY 1. Race is a social construction that organizes people according to phenotypic differences. 2. Modern conceptions of race emerged with colonialism, the process by which nations occupy and politically dominate other nations. 3. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon describes the psychological impact of colonialism on colonial subjects, arguing that colonialism dehumanizes and objectifies them, or turns them into things rather than free subjects. 4. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon describes the rise of anticolonial national liberation movements, especially those in Africa and North Africa, and discusses the role that violence plays in anticolonial movements. 5. Fanon’s ideas can be compared to Marx’s ideas. Fanon focuses on the role that capitalism plays in colonialism. He describes the dialectical rise of anticolonial movements and the role that ideology played in stifling anticolonial movements. 6. Even though most European nations abandoned their colonies by the 1960s, the basic power structures of colonialism continue to shape the global order.

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7. Postcolonialism is a theoretical perspective that was developed in the humanities and literary studies. It focuses on the role that cultural representation plays in the perpetuation of contemporary systems of power. 8. Edward Said is an important postcolonial theorist who introduced the concept of Orientalism. 9. Orientalism distinguishes between the Orient (the East) and the Occident (the West) and views the Occident as superior to the Orient. 10. Critical race theory is concerned with how the law perpetuates racism and racial domination. 11. Although related to critical race theory, critical theories of race and racism are grounded in the social sciences and are concerned with the continuing roles that race and racism play in American society. 12. Many people believe that the United States is a postracial society, but Michael Omi and Howard Winant argue that race remains a central organizing feature of American social life. 13. Race is a social formation that emerges over long periods of historical time. 14. Racialization is the process by which phenotypic differences are made to matter in a socially significant way. 15. Racialization is accomplished through racial projects. Racial projects are pursued at different levels (micro and macro) through social institutions such as religion, science, and politics. 16. In The Racial Order, Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond develop a systematic sociological theory of race in which they describe the many fields and forms of capital through which race is constructed. 17. Racial cultural structures constitute the symbolic organization of social life, and racial collective-emotional structures are the ways that groups of people feel about race. 18. Emirbayer and Desmond describe three different kinds of agency: practicalevaluative agency is spontaneous and dynamic, iterative agency reproduces traditional racial fields, and projective agency attempts to change racial fields. 19. Ibn Khaldun was a 14th-century North African scholar who, well before the development of Western social science, created his own version of sociological theory. He studied phenomena such as state formation and introduced concepts like ‘asabiyyah.

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20. In her book Southern Theory, Raewyn Connell reviews alternatives to the Northern/Western theories that have dominated the social sciences. She describes social theories developed in Iran, India, Africa, and Australia, among other traditions. 21. Glen Sean Coulthard critiques the politics of recognition by arguing that a complete theory of culture and identity must also include the concept of land and land use. 22. Indigenous resurgence is the reinvigoration and regeneration of Indigenous life through Indigenous cultures and ideas. Although resurgence is a response to and criticism of colonialism, it is not defined by colonialism. Instead, it shows how ideas from the precolonial past can be used to engage contemporary problems and issues. 23. Indigenous resurgence emphasizes that theory must always be understood in its social, communal, and natural contexts; underlines the role that storytelling plays in theory; and criticizes theories that privilege absence over presence.

SUGGESTED READINGS EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. 5th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. One of the most influential theories of the dynamics of racism in contemporary America. RAEWYN CONNELL Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007. Provides a critique of Northern theory and introduces a selection of Southern theories. GLEN SEAN COULTHARD Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Modifies and develops key theories of race and colonialism to address issues pertinent to Indigenous societies. KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW, NEIL GOTANDA, GARY PELLER, and KENDALL THOMAS, eds. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New York: New Press, 1995. Collection assembled by central figures in the area of critical race theory that includes the most important early writings in the field. RICHARD DELGADO and JEAN STEFANCIC Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press, 2012. An accessible outline of the basic tenets of critical race theory.

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MUSTAFA EMIRBAYER and MATTHEW DESMOND “What Is Racial Domination?” Du Bois Review 6, no. 2 (2009): 335–355. A thorough and clear journal article that discusses several key concepts in race scholarship as well as ethnicity, nationality, and five common misconceptions or “fallacies” about racism. MUSTAFA EMIRBAYER and MATTHEW DESMOND The Racial Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Provides a rich sociological theory of race and also serves as an overview of important sociological theories and research on race and racism. FRANTZ FANON Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Reprint of Fanon’s influential 1952 book, in which he discusses the psychological impact of colonialism on colonial subjects. SYED FARID ALATAS Ibn Khaldun. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Short biography by one of Ibn Khaldun’s foremost sociological interpreters includes discussion of his major ideas. JULIAN GO “Colonialism (Neocolonialism).” In George Ritzer, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 11 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, pp. 602–604. A short description of two key concepts: colonialism and neocolonialism. JULIAN GO “For a Postcolonial Sociology.” Theory and Society 42, no. 1 (2013): 25–55. Essay reviews the central ideas of postcolonialism and discusses ways in which sociologists can incorporate these ideas into their work. DAVID MACEY Frantz Fanon: A Biography. New York: Verso, 2012. A riveting account of Fanon’s intense, and tragically short, life. MICHAEL OMI and HOWARD WINANT Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2015. Omi and Winant’s now-classic statement on the social construction of race in the United States. EDWARD SAID Orientalism, 25th anniversary ed. New York: Vintage, 2003. Said’s famous account of Orientalism, with a new preface that includes discussion of the impact of Orientalist thought on post-9/11 American politics. AUDRA SIMPSON and ANDREA SMITH, eds. Theorizing Native Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. A collection of diverse, interdisciplinary essays that demonstrate Indigenous approaches to theory. LEANNE SIMPSON Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg, Manitoba: ARP Books, 2011. A readable example of contemporary Indigenous theory; offers a critique of

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colonial approaches to theory and counters these with a perspective grounded in Nishnaabeg tradition. VANESSA WATTS “Indigenous Place-Thought and agency amongst human and non humans (First Woman and Sky Woman go on a European World Tour!). Decolonization: Indigeniety, Education & Society, 2, 1 (2013): 20–34. Essay explaining the differences between Western and Indigenous theory by introducing the concept of Place-Thought.

NOTE 1. The following list is derived from the syllabus for Collins’s fall 2005 graduate course Critical Theories of Race and Racism, which she taught at the University of Maryland.

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CHAPTER

TEN

POSTMODERN GRAND THEORIES

The Transition From Industrial to Postindustrial Society Increasing Governmentality (and Other Grand Theories) Postmodernity as Modernity’s Coming of Age The Rise of Consumer Society, Loss of Symbolic Exchange, and Increase in Simulations The Consumer Society and the New Means of Consumption Queer Theory: Sex and Sexuality Summary Suggested Readings

In Chapters 4 and 5 we dealt with a variety of modern grand theories. Most grand theories that address the contemporary world have been created by theorists who consider themselves to be modernists. In this chapter we discuss a series of grand theories (postmodern theorists have done comparatively little work on everyday life) that deal with the postmodern world and/ or were created by thinkers associated with postmodern social theory. Most postmodernists argue that in contrast to the relative certainty and stability of the modern world, the postmodern world is characterized by flux, constant change, and a pervasive uncertainty. A further group of postmodern theorists go so far as to say that in the postmodern world there is no truth, only everchanging social constructions. This is a direct challenge to modern grand theories that seek to discover truths and tell all-encompassing stories about society. We will see this view expressed at several points in this chapter. The irony, however, is that even though these postmodern theorists are sometimes critical of modern grand theories, they themselves have created such perspectives.

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THE TRANSITION FROM INDUSTRIAL TO POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETY The work of Daniel Bell (1919–2011) on the coming of the postindustrial society represents something of a transition from Chapters 4 and 5 on modern grand theories to this one on postmodern grand theories. Even though he is decidedly a modernist, there are many commonalities between what he has to say on industrial-postindustrial societies and what the postmodernists argue about modern and postmodern societies. However, although grand theories seem to emerge unintentionally in the work of postmodernists, as a modernist, Bell has no hesitation about consciously offering a theory of the great sweep of recent history. Bell is also eager to criticize at least some aspects of postindustrial society; most postmodernists are inclined to depict that society in more positive terms, at least in comparison to modern society. What Bell has to say on the industrial-postindustrial relationship is embedded in a broader scheme of social change that also includes preindustrial society. He sees a transition from preindustrial (most of Asia and Africa) to industrial (some of Western Europe, Russia) to postindustrial (the United States). At the time Bell was writing, in the early 1970s, the United States was considered the world’s sole postindustrial society, but of course much has happened in the five decades since then. The United States has become a far more pronounced postindustrial society, and other nations have moved further in that direction (e.g., several Western European nations and Japan). Postindustrial Society.  Bell’s primary concern is postindustrial society, and to analyze it he divides society into three realms: social structure, polity, and culture. The coming of the postindustrial society primarily affects social structure and several of its major components: the economy, the work world, science, and technology. However, changes in social structure also have implications for the political system (polity) and culture. The following is an enumeration of the major changes in social structure associated with the transition to postindustrial society: 1. Within the economy, there is a transition from goods production to the provision of services. Production of goods such as clothing and steel declines, and services such as selling hamburgers and offering advice on investments increase. Although services predominate in a wide range of postindustrial society–A society characterized by the provision of services rather than goods; professional and technical work rather than blue-collar, manual work; theoretical knowledge rather than practical know-how; the creation and monitoring of new technologies; and new intellectual technologies to handle such assessment and control (Bell).

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sectors, health, education, research, and government services are the most decisive for a postindustrial society. 2. The importance of blue-collar, manual workers (e.g., assembly-line workers) declines, and professionals (e.g., lawyers) and technical workers (e.g., computer programmers) come to predominate. Of special importance is the rise of scientists (e.g., medical and genetic) and engineers. 3. Instead of practical know-how, theoretical knowledge is increasingly essential in a postindustrial society. Such knowledge is seen as the basic source of innovations (e.g., the knowledge created by scientists involved in the Human Genome Project is leading to new ways of treating many diseases). Advances in knowledge also lead to the need for other innovations, such as ways of dealing with ethical questions raised by advances in cloning technology. All of this involves an emphasis on theoretical rather than empirical knowledge and on the codification of knowledge. The exponential growth of theoretical and codified knowledge, in all its varieties, is central to the emergence of the postindustrial society. 4. Postindustrial society seeks to assess the impacts of new technologies and, where necessary, to exercise control over them. The hope is, for example, to better monitor things like nuclear power plants and to improve them so that accidents like those that have taken place at Three Mile Island, Chornobyl, and Fukushima can be prevented in the future. The goal is a surer and more secure technological world. 5. To handle such assessment and control, and more generally the sheer complexity of postindustrial society, new intellectual technologies are developed and implemented. These include cybernetics, game theory, and information theory. 6. A new relationship is forged in postindustrial society between scientists and the technologies they create. Scientific research has come to be institutionalized, and new science-based industries have come into existence. The fusion of science and innovation, as well as systematic technological growth, lies at the base of postindustrial society. This leads to the need for more universities and university-based students. In fact, the university is crucial to postindustrial society. The university produces the experts who can create, guide, and control the new and dramatically changing technologies. Differences Among Types of Societies.  Given this depiction of postindustrial society, Bell outlines a number of differences between such a society and preindustrial and industrial societies:

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1. Occupationally, preindustrial society is dominated by farmers, miners, fishermen, and unskilled workers; industrial society is dominated by semiskilled workers and engineers; and postindustrial society is dominated by professionals and technical scientists. 2. The three types of society involve different types of challenges. The challenge to preindustrial society is to be able to extract things from nature in the realms of mining, fishing, forestry, and agriculture. The challenge in industrial society is to deal with machines through more sophisticated coordination, scheduling, programming, and organization. The main challenge in postindustrial society is to deal with other people. Some people provide services to other people, and those who provide the services generally have more information and knowledge (they are the experts) than those to whom the services are provided. This gives them a great advantage in dealing with their clients. 3. In preindustrial society, the landowners and the military hold the power, and they exercise it through the direct use of force. In industrial society, businesspeople have the lion’s share of power, although they exercise it indirectly, by influencing politicians. Scientists and researchers come to the fore as the dominant figures in postindustrial society, and they seek to balance technical and political forces. Culture.  All of these factors focus on changes in social structure in postindustrial society, but Bell, as we have seen, is also interested in the polity and, especially, the culture. Of great interest to Bell is the fact that fundamentally different principles lie at the bases of social structure and culture in postindustrial society. Whereas social structure, with its focal concern with economic issues, is dominated by a concern for rationality and efficiency, culture is dominated by notions of irrationality, selfrealization, and self-gratification. Thus, in postindustrial society the old-fashioned ideas of self-discipline, restraint, and delayed gratification predominate in social structure and conflict with the hedonism that characterizes the cultural domain. In this context Bell explicitly attacks postmodernism, which he associates with irrational and hedonistic ideas such as impulse, pleasure, liberation, and eroticism. Clearly, a culture characterized in this way is at odds with a social structure dominated by efficiency and rationality. In Bell’s terms, this leads to a disjuncture between social structure and culture, and this situation can create the conditions needed for a social revolution. Although he is at odds with the postmodernists on this and other grounds, Bell, like the postmodernists, does accord central importance to the rise of consumer society. Hedonism has replaced frugality and asceticism, at least in part, because of the mass production and sale of all sorts of goods. Traditional values are being eroded and replaced by a focal interest in things like pleasure, play, fun, and public display. As a modernist, and a conservative at that, Bell is alarmed by these postmodern developments and the threats they pose to society.

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INCREASING GOVERNMENTALITY (AND OTHER GRAND THEORIES) To some, Michel Foucault is a forerunner of postmodern social theory, whereas to others he is one of its foremost practitioners. In either case, he created an important grand theory that every serious student of social theory needs to consider. One thing that especially distinguishes Foucault’s grand theory from modern grand theories is that it does not see, or at least does not emphasize, the continuities over time that are integral to most modern grand narratives. Foucault does not view history as unfolding in a unilinear and unidirectional fashion, as Weber, among others, does in his theory of rationalization. The following are several differences between Foucault’s grand theory and those of modernists: 1. Modernists often search for the sources or the origins of social developments, whereas Foucault seeks to describe and analyze social realities at various points in time. Finding the origin is akin to finding the answer, but postmodernists reject the idea of finding an answer. They are more interested in raising questions than in finding answers; they are more interested in keeping the intellectual dialogue alive than they are in the modernist search for answers (or origins). 2. Whereas modernists emphasize coherence, Foucault focuses on incoherence. To put it another way, whereas modernists focus on what holds things together over time, Foucault is interested in the internal contradictions that exist at any given point in time. 3. In contrast to the modernists, who emphasize continuity in developments over time, Foucault emphasizes the discontinuities, the ruptures, and the sudden reversals that characterize social history. Historical developments do not occur uniformly, consistently, unidirectionally, and without ebbs and flows; there are movements backward, sideward, and sometimes even forward.

Increasing Governmentality Within the context of such general views on change, Foucault is interested in the changing nature of what he calls governmentalities, or the practices and techniques by which control is exercised over people. The most obvious form of governmentality is that exercised by the state over its citizens. Although Foucault is interested in this, what distinguishes his approach is his concern with the way governmentality is practiced by agencies and agents unrelated to the state governmentalities–The practices and techniques by which control is exercised over people (Foucault).

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(including the social sciences and social scientists). Also distinctive in his work is a focus on the way people govern themselves. No directionality is implied in this conceptualization, but it is found in some of Foucault’s works. Discipline and Punish.  The best example of Foucault’s interest in nonstaterelated governmentality is found in his book Discipline and Punish. His main concern in this work is the period between 1757 and the 1830s, specifically within the prison system, where he sees a historical process through which the torture of prisoners was replaced by control by prison rules. Characteristically, he views this change as developing in fits and starts, not unidirectionally. Nonetheless, there was a general trend from one form of punishment to the other. Not only was there such a change, but it was viewed (by modernists) as a progressive development. The transition from torture to rule-based control was seen by most observers as involving a progressive humanization of the treatment of criminals. In general, punishment was viewed as growing more kind, less painful, and less cruel. However, the reality from Foucault’s perspective was that the system had greatly enhanced its ability to punish criminals. For one thing, the new ability to punish had fewer negative side effects. Earlier, prisoners had been subjected to public torture, but the problem was that this treatment tended to incite the masses viewing the spectacle, leading them to engage in criminal acts, riots, and perhaps even rebellion. Excited by the scenes of public torture, people were prone to all sorts of behavior that those in power viewed as antisocial and threatening to them and their position. In contrast, the imposition of rules on prisoners generally occurred behind prison walls, and even if it was at times visible to the public, it was unlikely to incite a crowd. Imposing rules carried with it many other advantages over torture as well. First, the imposition of rules can occur much earlier in the deviance process than torture; people can be taught the rules before they even think of engaging in deviant acts, or they can have those rules reinforced at the first sign of a tendency toward deviance. In contrast, torture is likely to be undertaken only when an act, and more likely a series of acts, of deviance has occurred. In addition, the imposition of rules can take place far more often than torture; rules can be taught and retaught, but torture cannot be practiced repeatedly on the same deviant because that person is likely to be badly injured, maimed, or even killed. Furthermore, the more often acts of torture are practiced, the more likely it is that those who witness them will engage in deviant acts of their own. Third, rule imposition is closely associated with rationalization and bureaucratization. Among other things, this means that it is more efficient, more impersonal, more sober, and more invariable than torture. In other words, torture is likely to be inefficient (it may anger the prisoner rather than bringing them under greater control); it could get personal (the person using a whip could take out personal animosity on the victim); it could become emotional

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for the torturer, the tortured, and those who witness the whole thing; and it could be highly variable, with one user of the whip being far more aggressive than another. Finally, and perhaps most important, imposition of rules has much broader ramifications. It is almost impossible to torture an entire population, but rule-based control can be exercised over a population. This ability to control an entire population is based on the ability to exercise surveillance over it on a regular basis. However, power and surveillance are not, in Foucault’s view, part of a single overarching power system; rather, they are exercised in a number of seemingly independent local settings. Thus, there are innumerable points at which power and surveillance are exercised over people, and there is always the possibility, within Foucault’s theoretical perspective, for opposition to such exercise to occur at every one of those points. Three basic instruments are available to those who seek to exercise control over and observe a population. Instruments of Observation and Control.  The first instrument is hierarchical observation, or the ability of officials at or near the top of an organization to oversee all that they control with a single gaze. In this context is found Foucault’s famous discussion of the panopticon, a structure that allows someone in power (e.g., a prison officer) the possibility of complete observation of a group of people (e.g., prisoners). In fact, the official need not necessarily be present in the structure; the mere possibility that the official might be there, observing, constrains people and forces them to behave as they are expected to behave. For example, a panopticon might take the form of a tower surrounded by a circular prison. Guards in the tower, who are not visible to the prisoners, can see into all of the cells, which are open to view from the tower. The tower gives the guards the possibility of total surveillance when they are on duty and observing what is transpiring around them. More important, it gives the guards enormous power even if they are not present in the tower or observing what is happening in the cells. Because the inmates cannot see into the tower, they cannot tell whether they are being watched at any given time. With the ever-present possibility that they are being watched, they are likely to behave as expected, even though the guards may be absent or inattentive for long periods. The guards need not do anything; the prisoners will control themselves because they fear they might be under observation. The panopticon, and variations on it, is the basis of what Foucault calls the disciplinary society.

hierarchical observation–The ability of officials at or near the top of an organization to oversee all that they control with a single gaze (Foucault). panopticon–A structure that allows someone in power (e.g., a prison officer) the possibility of complete observation of a group of people (e.g., prisoners) (Foucault). disciplinary society–A society in which control over people is pervasive (Foucault).

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His point is that there are many places from which, and many ways in which, we can be observed, with the result that we exert control over ourselves and prevent ourselves from engaging in acts that might cause us trouble if they are seen. Take the case of the computer. There are ways in which our behavior on the internet can be monitored, with the result that we monitor ourselves and prevent ourselves from, for example, visiting certain websites (e.g., those that allow access to pornography). In the workplace, we might be tempted to log on to an e-tail site and do some shopping, but we do not do so because we think there is a possibility that the boss may be monitoring our use of the computer and the websites we visit. The panopticon is a specific example of hierarchical power involving highranking officials who are in a position to have such a structure built and to occupy, or to have subordinates occupy, the lookout positions in it. They are also the ones who initiate and control newer technologies, like those associated with the internet, that monitor what subordinates are doing. Most generally, hierarchical observation involves the ability of superiors to oversee all they control with a single gaze. A second instrument of disciplinary power is the ability to make normalizing judgments and to punish those who violate the norms. Those in power can decide what is normal and what is abnormal on a variety of dimensions. Those who violate the norms, who are judged abnormal, can then be punished by officials or their agents. For example, officials may focus on time and make normalizing judgments about those who are late. Or they may concentrate on behavior and penalize those who do not behave as expected. For example, students are supposed to be attentive in class; those who are inattentive may be punished. Finally, officials can use examination as a way of observing subordinates and judging what they are doing. This involves the other two methods (hierarchical observation and normalizing judgments). An examination is a way of checking up on subordinates and assessing what they have done. It is employed by those in authority in a given setting and involves normalizing judgments about what is and is not an adequate score. We usually associate examinations with schools, but we also find examinations of the kind Foucault discusses in psychiatrists’ offices and psychiatric hospitals, in physicians’ offices and in hospitals, and in work settings. Increasing Disciplinary Power.  Foucault’s most general point is that because of the creation of new and better methods of disciplinary power, our ability to punish

normalizing judgments–Judgments made by those in power based on their decisions about what is normal and what is abnormal on a variety of dimensions.Those who violate the norms, who are judged abnormal, can then be punished by officials or their agents (Foucault). examination–A way of observing subordinates and judging what they are doing. Examination involves checking up on subordinates and assessing what they have done; it is employed in a given setting by those in authority, who make normalizing judgments about what is and is not an adequate score (Foucault).

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people has increased, not decreased. Torture may have been cruel, but it was limited to the moment of torture. The disciplinary power discussed above affects us all the time and in all settings. We are constantly watched and judged. If we misbehave in the eyes of those in power, we will be punished. Thus, punishment has not been liberalized and humanized. Rather, it has become more pervasive and more insidious. However, in rejecting one grand theory, Foucault seems to be replacing it with another. This is true to some degree. Here and elsewhere in his work, Foucault does offer grand theories, but he is also wary of them and tempers them in ways that would not be found in the grand theories of modernists. For example, where a modernist would tend to see changes affecting parts of society in a rather uniform way, Foucault writes about discipline “swarming” through society. This is meant to imply that the process affects some parts of society and not others, or it may affect some parts at one time and other parts at another time. Thus, instead of creating something like Weber’s iron cage, it creates more of a patchwork of centers of discipline amid a world in which other settings are less affected or unaffected by the spread of the disciplinary society. One image that Foucault uses to express this notion is that of a carceral archipelago: islands of discipline within a sea where discipline is more or less absent. The roots of the disciplinary society lie in prison, but Foucault sees the theories, practices, and technologies developed there as swarming into many other sectors of society—schools, hospitals, and military barracks, for example. The result is that more settings are coming to resemble prisons. This is the creation of the carceral archipelago and the carceral society, concepts that are central to Foucault’s grand theory of the changing nature of, and increase in, governmentality. Microphysics of Power.  Another aspect of Foucault’s grand theory differentiates it from the theories of the modernists: Foucault is ever attuned to oppositional forces within each of these settings as well as those that operate against the process in general. There are innumerable points of opposition, confrontation, and resistance. These settings and the overall process are always being contested and reshaped by that constant testing. This is another reason we cannot view these settings as iron cages. Constant contestation is altering these structures on a continuing basis. Foucault’s interest in these processes is part of his concern with what he calls the microphysics of power.

carceral archipelago–An image of society that results from the idea that discipline is swarming through society.This means that the process affects some parts of society and not others, or it may affect some parts at one time and other parts at another time.Thus, it creates a patchwork of centers of discipline within a world in which other settings are less affected or unaffected by the spread of the disciplinary society (Foucault). microphysics of power–The idea that power exists at the micro level and involves efforts to exercise it as well as efforts to contest its exercise (Foucault).

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MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926–1984) A Biographical Vignette Among Foucault’s last works was a trilogy devoted to sex: The History of Sexuality (1976), The Care of the Self (1984), and The Uses of Pleasure (1984). These works reflect Foucault’s groundbreaking intellectual engagement with issues of sex and sexuality that would become important to the discipline of sociology. Like many gay men of his generation, Foucault struggled psychologically with his sexuality, coming to terms with this facet of his identity later in life. During a trip to San Francisco in 1975, Foucault was attracted to the city’s flourishing gay community and experimented with sadomasochism and the impersonal sex that was part of the bathhouse culture of that time and place. His participation in these settings and activities were part of an interest in “the overwhelming, the unspeakable, the creepy, the stupefying, the ecstatic.” In other words, in his life (and his work) Foucault was deeply interested in “limit experiences” (experiences in which people, including himself, purposely push their minds and bodies to the breaking point). It was Foucault’s belief that it is during limit experiences that great personal and intellectual breakthroughs and revelations become possible. For Foucault, sex was related to limit experiences, and both, in turn, were related in his view of death: “I think the kind of pleasure I would consider as the real pleasure would be so deep, so intense, so overwhelming that I couldn’t survive it. . . . Complete total pleasure . . . for me, it’s related to death.” Even in the fall of 1983, when he was well aware of AIDS and the fact that gay men were disproportionately likely to contract the disease, he plunged back into the impersonal sex of the bathhouses of San Francisco: “He took AIDS very seriously When he went to San Francisco for the last time, he took it as a ‘limit-experience.’” Foucault also had a limit experience at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley in the spring of 1975. There he tried LSD for the first time, and the drug pushed his mind to the limit: “The sky has exploded and the stars are raining down upon me. I know this is not true, but it is the Truth.” With tears streaming down his face, Foucault said, “I am very happy Tonight I have achieved a fresh perspective on myself. . . . I now understand my sexuality. We must go home again.” Source: Excerpts from Michel Foucault in James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), pp. 27, 250–251, 230.

Other Grand Theories Madness and Civilization. In spite of these and other refinements, one senses a grand theory not only in Discipline and Punish but also in other works by Foucault. For example, in Madness and Civilization, he examines the history of the relationship between madness and psychiatry. Similar to his critique of the increasingly humane treatment of criminals, Foucault takes on the modern grand theory that because of the rise of psychiatry and psychiatric facilities, we have 306    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

witnessed, over the past several centuries, the growth of scientific, medical, and humanitarian treatment of those who are mad. Instead, he sees an increase in the ability of the sane and their agents to separate out the insane from the rest of the population and to oppress and repress them (and this implies a serious questioning of the whole idea of mental illness). Writing in the 1960s, Foucault was certainly thinking of the then widespread mental hospitals and other institutions to which the mentally ill were sent and in which they were often treated abysmally. He was also thinking of the control psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health workers exercised over those with psychological problems. Since the 1960s we have witnessed the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Many psychiatric institutions have closed, and much of the type of oppression of the mentally ill that existed in the 1960s has disappeared. However, it has been replaced by other forms. For example, many mentally ill people have been left free to roam the streets, becoming what we think of today as homeless people or street people. Others who were freed from mental hospitals, or who were never sent to such hospitals in recent years as a result of deinstitutionalization, have been put on psychotropic drugs that control their mental and, often, physical functioning. Finally, as Foucault anticipated, many of the mentally ill (and many others) have been forced to judge themselves and their own mental conditions. In many senses, such internalized control is the most repressive form of control. For example, people have far more access to their own innermost thoughts than do outside agents like psychiatrists. And, whereas psychiatrists may make occasional negative judgments, individuals are able to judge themselves ceaselessly. Overall, we find in Madness and Civilization the same pattern as in Discipline and Punish—a critique of a modern grand theory and its replacement, perhaps unintentionally, with another more critical and postmodern form of that type of theory. A Grand Theory of Sexuality.  A somewhat different pattern appears in Foucault’s later work on sexuality. The History of Sexuality critiques the modern grand theory that Victorianism led to the repression of sexuality, especially discourse about sexuality. Although Foucault continues to view sex as repressed, he takes the opposite position on discourse, arguing that Victorianism led to an explosion of discourse on sexuality. As a result of Victorianism, there was more analysis, stocktaking, classification, specification, and causal and quantitative study of sexuality. Once again, Foucault criticizes one grand narrative and seemingly puts another in its place. However, whereas in previous cases the modern position emphasizes greater freedom and Foucault’s position emphasizes greater constraint, in this case the modern position focuses on increased repression, and Foucault sees greater freedom (of discourse on sexuality).

deinstitutionalization–The process, begun in the 1960s and made possible by new drug treatments, in which many psychiatric institutions were closed and the vast majority of patients who were released were left to their own devices to survive in the larger society. CHAPTER TEN  •  POSTMODERN GRAND THEORIES   307

In addition to arguing that we are experiencing more discourses on sexuality, Foucault asserts that we are also witnessing increased efforts to exercise power over sexuality as well as resistance to that power in a number of specific settings. Beginning in the 18th century, society made an effort to shift from control over death to control over life, especially sex. Foucault calls this social control over life biopolitics. Biopolitics takes two forms. The first, focusing on the individual, involves an effort to exert great discipline over the human body, especially the sexual practices associated with it. The second, focusing on the population as a whole, involves efforts to control and regulate population growth, health, life expectancy, and so forth. By controlling sex, society is able to control both the individual and the species. Although Foucault is concerned about this oppression, he also sees hope in bodies, sexuality, and pleasure. He believes that through them people can overcome efforts to control not only their sexuality but also their lives.

POSTMODERNITY AS MODERNITY’S COMING OF AGE Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) is a perceptive analyst of the modern world, and he offers many insights into the advent of the postmodern world. Relatedly, he deals with the issue of modern sociology as well as that of what a postmodern sociology and a sociology of postmodernity might look like (see the Key Concepts box “Postmodern Sociology, Sociology of Postmodernity”). Depending on which aspects of his work one wishes to emphasize, Bauman can be thought of as either a modern or a postmodern social theorist. His works on postmodernism occupy our attention here.

Learning to Live With Ambivalence? Ambivalence is a distinctive product of modernity, but postmodernism offers at least the possibility of overcoming that problem by simply accepting and learning to live with ambivalence. In fact, Bauman defines postmodernity in opposition to modernity and its need to eliminate ambivalence. However, even if it is successful in learning to live with ambivalence, and thereby eliminating it as a source of problems (and that is by no means assured), postmodernism is fully capable of producing a range of other problems. Thus, Bauman concludes that postmodernity is both worrying and exhilarating; it opens both new possibilities and new dangers. It should be noted that most postmodernists have a far more pessimistic view of postmodern society. For example, barbarism (e.g., ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia) is associated with postmodernism.

biopolitics–The social control of life. Biopolitics takes two forms: control over the individual human body and control over the population as a whole (Foucault).

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KEY CONCEPT Postmodern Sociology, Sociology of Postmodernity

Despite some sympathy for it, Zygmunt Bauman is generally opposed to the development of what he calls postmodern sociology. One reason for his opposition is the fear that a radically different postmodern sociology would give up on the formative questions that lie at the foundation of the discipline. Bauman also opposes a postmodern sociology because it would, by its nature, be in tune with the culture of postmodernity. Because postmodern culture is different from modern culture, postmodern sociology would have to be different from modern sociology. For example, the difference between rational modern culture and nonrational postmodern culture would be reflected in the respective sociologies. Bauman is not ready for a nonrational sociology; he wants a sociology that is, to a large extent, continuous with its origins. Bauman feels that what we need to develop is a sociology of postmodernity. Although postmodern sociology breaks sharply with modern sociology, a sociology of postmodernity is continuous with modern sociology in that, for example, it is characterized by rational and systematic discourse and by an effort to develop a model of postmodern society. Even though it is continuous with modern sociology, the sociology of postmodernity accepts postmodern society as a distinctive and unique type and not as an aberrant form of modern society. Bauman offers a number of major tenets of a sociological theory of postmodernity, including the following: 1. The postmodern world is complex and unpredictable. 2. The postmodern world is complex because it lacks a central goal-­setting organization and it contains a great many large and small, mainly ­single-purpose, agencies. No one of these agencies is large enough to subsume or control the others, and each is resistant to centralized control. Although the agencies may be partially dependent on one another, the nature of that dependence cannot be fixed, with the result that each of (Continued)

postmodern sociology–A type of sociology that is heavily influenced by postmodern ideas and that adopts a nonrational approach to the study of society (Bauman). sociology of postmodernity–A type of sociology that is continuous with modern sociology in that it is characterized by rational and systematic discourse and by an effort to develop a model of postmodern society. However, the sociology of postmodernity accepts postmodern society as a distinctive and unique type and does not see it as an aberrant form of modern society (Bauman).

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(Continued) these agencies is largely autonomous. Thus, agencies are largely free to pursue their own institutionalized purposes. 3. Even though they are likely to be well ordered internally, when they operate in the larger world, agencies face an arena that appears as a space of chaos and chronic indeterminacy and ambivalence, a territory subjected to rival and contradictory meanings. The states of the postmodern world appear equally contingent. That is, any given state has no overwhelming reason to be what it is, and it could be different if other agencies operated differently. Agencies need to be cognizant of the fact that what they do affects the world in which they are operating. 4. The existential situation of agents is fluid. The identity of agents needs to be self-constituted continually, largely on the basis of trial and error. Identity is permanently changing but not developing in any clear direction. At any given time, the constitution of identity involves the disassembly of some existing elements and the assembly of new elements. 5. The only constant in all of this is the body, but even here agents devote continual attention to the cultivation of the body. People engage in a series of self-controlling and self-enhancing activities (jogging, dieting) that they would have resented were they imposed on them by some external organization. Thus, these activities are seen as the product of free human agents and not resented as externally imposed regimens. More generally, we can say that agents are no longer coerced; rather, they are seduced. 6. Lacking predesigned life projects, agents need a series of orientation points to guide their moves throughout their life spans. These are provided by other agencies (real or imagined). Agents are free to approach or abandon these other agencies. 7. Accessibility to resources varies among agents depending on their personal assets, especially knowledge. Those with more knowledge can choose among a wider range of assembly patterns. Variations in freedom to choose among resources are the main basis of social standing and social inequality in postmodern society. Knowledge is also the main stake in any kind of conflict aimed at the redistribution of resources. This emphasis on knowledge and the fact that information is a key resource tends to further enhance the status of experts.

Rather than seeking to eliminate ambivalence, postmodernity accepts the messiness of the world; it is not determined to impose order on it. For example, the postmodern world is more accepting of the stranger. Generally, it is a more tolerant world, one that tolerates differences. However, tolerance brings with it even more ambiguity. Thus, the postmodern world is destined to be a far more uncertain world than modernity, and those who live in it need to have strong nerves. 310    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Ambivalence About Postmodernity.  Although Bauman generally sees postmodernity as preferable to modernity, he is, quite characteristically, ambivalent about it. He argues that postmodernity shares with modernity a fear of the void. Postmodernity has not succeeded in eliminating those fears, but it has served to privatize them. Faced with private fears, postmodern individuals are also doomed to try to escape those fears on their own. Not surprisingly, they have been drawn to communities as shelters from these fears. However, this raises the possibility of conflict among communities. Bauman worries about these hostilities and argues that we need to put a brake on them through the development of solidarity. Although the modern world sought to eliminate distinct communities and assimilate them into the whole, postmodernity can be seen as the coming of age of community. In fact, Michel Maffesoli has dubbed this the age of neotribalism. These new tribes, or communities, are refuges for strangers and, more specifically, for a wide range of ethnic, religious, and political groups. These communities, and their groups, are tolerated by the larger society. Those living in the postmodern world have overcome the hubris of modernity and are therefore less likely to be cruel to others and to have the need to humiliate them. However, this is not enough as far as Bauman is concerned. Each of these communities needs to be respected by all other communities as well as by the society as a whole. Although postmodernity offers hope against ambivalence, the latter does not totally disappear. Popular disaffection and discontent still exist, but the postmodern state no longer feels the need to control them. Rather, it may be that scattered ambivalence can help society reproduce itself. However, the tolerance of postmodernity does not necessarily lead to solidarity. Because it is characterized by a lack of concern, playfulness, and self-centeredness, postmodernity could make it easier for people to engage in massive acts of cruelty. Life in postmodern society is not easy. It is a life without clear options and with strategies that are always open to question. However, one thing that is clear in the postmodern world is that consumerism and the freedom associated with it are not enough to satisfy people. The paradox here is that postmodern society is, above all else, a consumer society. Therefore, we seem to be doomed to the knowledge that the world we live in is inadequate to our needs.

Postmodern Ethics Bauman is interested in the status of an ethical code in a postmodern era that is inherently antagonistic to the idea of a coherent set of rules that any moral person ought to obey. In postmodernity the old ethical systems are no longer seen as adequate. This has opened the possibility of a radical new understanding of moral behavior. Thus, as usual, Bauman sees postmodernity as offering an opportunity— in this case, in the realm of ethics. It may be a time of the renaissance of morality or, on the other hand, of the twilight of morality. neotribalism–A postmodern development characterized by the coming of age of a wide array of communities that are refuges for strangers and, more specifically, for ethnic, religious, and political groups. CHAPTER TEN  •  POSTMODERN GRAND THEORIES   311

It is clear that postmodern ethics must reject much of what passed for modern ethics. Postmodern ethics must reject things like coercive normative regulation and the search for things like foundations, universals, and absolutes. Also to be rejected is modernity’s search for an ethical code that is nonambivalent and lacking in contradictions. Despite such rejections, clearly, the great issues in ethics have not lost their importance. Even in a postmodern world, we are confronted with issues such as human rights, social justice, the conflict between peaceful cooperation and individual self-assertion, and the confrontation between individual conduct and the collective welfare. These issues persist, but they must be dealt with in a novel manner. The moral code, looked at from a postmodern perspective, is rife with ambivalence and contradictions. Among the aspects of the moral condition viewed from a postmodern perspective are the following: 1. People are neither good nor bad but morally ambivalent, and it is impossible to find a logically coherent ethical code that could accommodate such moral ambivalence. 2. Moral phenomena are not regular and repetitive. Therefore, no ethical code can possibly deal with moral phenomena in an exhaustive fashion. 3. Morality is inherently laden with contradictions that cannot be overcome with conflicts that cannot be resolved. 4. There is no such thing as a universal morality. 5. From a rational point of view, morality is, and will remain, irrational. 6. Because Bauman rejects coercive ethical systems emanating from society as a whole, he argues for an ethical system that emanates from the self. It is based on the idea that one has to be for the Other before it is possible to be with the Other. 7. Although the postmodern perspective on morality rejects the modern coercive form of morality, it does not accept the idea that anything goes— the idea of complete relativism. Among the ideas central to a postmodern orientation to ethics are the views that the world would fall apart without the nation-state (and the tribe), that the autonomous self will ultimately be emancipated, and that the moral self will ultimately stand up to the inherent and inevitable ambivalence. Irresolvable Moral Dilemmas.  Despite the ideas discussed here, neither B ­ auman nor postmodernism can offer an ethical code to replace the modern ethical code that is being dismantled. As a result, we are destined to a life of irresolvable moral dilemmas. Without an overarching ethical code, people are left with their own individual moralities. Given the innumerable moral voices in today’s world, the only ultimate ethical authority lies in the subjectivities of individuals. 312    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

The challenge of the postmodern world is how to live morally in the absence of an ethical code and in the presence of a bewildering array of seemingly equal moralities. Without such an overarching code, life in the postmodern world is not likely to grow any easier, although it is at least possible that life will become more moral with the dismantling of the oppressive and coercive ethical code associated with modernity. After all, Bauman associates the most heinous of crimes (e.g., the Holocaust) with the modern ethical code. At a minimum, we will be able to face moral issues directly without the disguises and deformities that have come with the modern ethical code. Instead of the coercive and deforming ethical codes of modernity, there is hope in the conscience of the moral self, especially its need to be for the Other. The Other is the responsibility of the moral self. Being for the Other does not determine goodness and evil. That will be worked out in the course of the relationship. It will be worked out in a world devoid of certainty, where there will never be a clear dividing line between good and evil. Thus, it does matter what we do and do not do, but that must be worked out in individual conscience and not in some collective moral code. In this way, Bauman adopts a postmodern position without surrendering to relativism and nihilism. Nonetheless, there is a fundamental tension between the unconditional need to be for the Other and the discontinuity and fragmentariness that Bauman associates with postmodernity. The postmodern world is simultaneously one of great moral hope and great personal discomfort: People have full moral choice, but they have it without the guidance of an overarching moral code once promised by modernity. To put it another way, morality, like much else in the postmodern world, has been privatized. Without a larger ethical system to guide people, ethics for individuals becomes matters of individual decision, involves risks, and involves chronic uncertainty. Postmodernity may be either our bane or our chance. Which it will be is far from determined at this juncture in history.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION Fake News In the last few years, the term “fake news” has become commonplace in the popular culture. In contrast to news that represents facts, fake news refers to news that promotes lies and distorts truth. Partisans on the political left and right use the phrase fake news to cast doubt on the claims and positions of one another. From the position of those on the political right, the stories carried by mainstream media (i.e., the “lamestream” media) are false narratives meant to depict reality in ways that reenforce mainstream (i.e., liberal) values. From the position (Continued)

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(Continued) of those on the political left, the stories promoted by right-wing media outlets are also false and designed to shape people’s impression of reality. In either case, fake news is undoubtedly a postmodern phenomenon. First, the phenomenon of fake news highlights the idea that in a postmodern media environment, truth is a social construction. Even if, as modernists claim, there are truths about the world to be discovered, the proliferation of fake news makes these truths difficult to discern. Instead, confusion about what is true and what is not true reigns, and people are often left to themselves to sort through contrasting online truth claims. Second, the postmodern perspective sees truth not as a once and for all established fact but rather a battle between ideological perspectives. Here truth does not depend upon discovering the facts of a situation but rather telling a convincing story, whether or not it corresponds to fact. The internet with all its algorithms and eye-catching aesthetics is an ideal tool for shaping and telling convincing truth stories. The fraught online political battles between left and right then are attempts to win the truth war and thereby the capacity to shape social action and organization. Indeed, postmodern truth wars also take on a global geopolitical dimension. Russia, for example, is one of the many state actors that support “troll farms.” Trolls are internet users who spread intentionally divisive, inflammatory, and deceptive information online. Troll farms are formally organized groups of trolls. Notoriously, Russian trolls tried to shape the results of recent American elections. 1 The purpose of troll farms is to disrupt popular and mainstream news narratives—especially those distributed by the mainstream media. This disinformation contributes to the postmodern state of confusion, casting doubt not only on mainstream news but news and information in ­general. What is the antidote to such postmodern confusion? In response to the growth in fake news and troll farms, organizations have emerged to combat disinformation and misinformation and promote media literacy. These sites teach people not only to read news carefully but also to discern the typical tricks and tools used by trolls and other purveyors of disinformation. The News Literacy Project (newslit.org), for example, is an American nonpartisan nonprofit that believes that “education is the most effective approach to combat the spread of misinformation.” And FactCheck.org is a “nonprofit ‘consumer advocate’ for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.” Of course, in the spirit postmodern cynicism, critics might argue that even these presumably neutral organizations are themselves biased in their views about what counts as truth and how to discover truth. In other words, for the true postmodernist there is no way out of this cycle of uncertainty, ambivalence, and confusion.

For more information, see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/technology/russia-troll-farm -­election.html. 1

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THE RISE OF CONSUMER SOCIETY, LOSS OF SYMBOLIC EXCHANGE, AND INCREASE IN SIMULATIONS The social thinker Jean Baudrillard is most associated with postmodern social theory, even though he disliked being labeled in such a way. Baudrillard was radical not only in his ideas but also in his style of writing, especially in his later work. Like other postmodernists, he rejected the idea of a grand theory, and the style of his later work—books that include a series of seemingly unrelated aphorisms— seems to militate against the creation of grand theory. Yet it is possible to identify several such theories in the body of his work.

From Producer to Consumer Society In his early work, Baudrillard was heavily influenced by the thinking of Karl Marx and branches of neo-Marxian theory. However, although Marx and most neo-Marxists focused on issues relating to production, Baudrillard concerned himself with the emergence of consumer society. In doing so, he was ahead of his time, because the consumer society to which we have now grown so accustomed was, at the time Baudrillard wrote his book on that society (the late 1960s), still in its infancy. Although Baudrillard was later to break with Marxian theory, he was still heavily influenced by that theory when he analyzed consumer society. For example, despite his focus on consumption, he took the traditional Marxian position of according ultimate importance to production; that is, the forces of production control and orchestrate the world of consumption. Thus, Toyota can be seen as controlling the consumption of automobiles, just as Microsoft can be viewed as orchestrating the purchase of computer software. Baudrillard did not go far enough here in terms of his emphasis on consumption. The forces of consumption (e.g., advertisers, shopping malls, McDonald’s, Disney World, Amazon) play their own important roles in consumption. Although they are not totally separable from the forces of production, these entities are crucial in their own right in the realm of consumption. Baudrillard was unable to see this at that point in his career because he had not yet made his break with a Marxian view of the world. Consumption as Language.  Baudrillard was also influenced by linguistics, which led him (and others) to think of the consumption of objects as a kind of language. Within that language, each consumer object has a sign associated with it. For example, in today’s automobile market the purchase of a Lexus is a sign of wealth, whereas buying a Kia indicates humble economic circumstances. Similarly, going to an Ariana Grande concert is a sign of youth, whereas attending a performance of Madame Butterfly is a sign of being middle-aged, if not elderly. In a real sense, when we purchase cars or tickets, we are purchasing signs as much as or more than we are purchasing the ability to drive a car or attend a performance. To Baudrillard, consumption is most importantly about signs, not goods. CHAPTER TEN  •  POSTMODERN GRAND THEORIES   315

But how do we know what all these signs mean? Baudrillard argues that we are able to interpret these signs because we all understand the code and are controlled by it. The code is basically a system of rules that allows us to understand signs and, more important, how they relate to one another. Thus, the code allows us to understand the meanings of Lexus and Kia and, most important, the fact that the Lexus yields far higher status than the Kia. Because we all understand and are controlled by the code, we all are able to have similar understandings of the meanings of signs and how those meanings relate to one another. In fact, consumption is based on the fact that others will understand the meanings of what we consume in the same way that we do. Thus, the main reason for buying a Lexus is the assumption that others will understand the meaning of that sign and will approve of it as well as of us. This leads to the point that in consuming objects we are, in the process, serving to define ourselves. Categories of objects define categories of people. One of the ways in which we find our place in the social order is in terms of what we consume. Thus, a Lexus gives us a higher position in the social order than a Kia does. Furthermore, we can alter our position in that order by consuming differently. For example, if we want to move up the stratification ladder, we can go into debt and buy a Honda rather than a Kia. Such purchases allow us, at least to some extent, to manipulate the trajectory of our movement through the stratification system. Of course, there are limits on this. We may know that if we want to alter our position, we need to buy a Lexus, but no matter how far we stretch, many of us may never be able to afford such a car. In this way, the stratification system often acts to keep people in their places within the system. Overall, in a real sense, people are what they consume; they define themselves, and are defined by others, on that basis. Consequently, the motivation for consumption is not what we often assume it to be. We generally believe that the cause of consumption is human needs. We buy things because we need them: food to survive, clothes to keep us warm, and cars to transport us. However, Baudrillard sees grave problems with such an explanation. How can needs explain why some of us buy the much more expensive Lexus rather than the modestly priced Kia? Both vehicles get us from one point to another nicely. How can needs explain the extraordinarily high level of consumption—the hyperconsumption—that characterizes the developed world today? Many of us are clearly consuming far more than we need and in many cases far more than we could ever use (or at least we did until the beginning of the 2007 recession; see the Contemporary Applications box “The Death of Consumer Culture? If So, What Next?”). code–A system of rules that allows us to understand signs and, more important, how they relate to one another (Baudrillard). needs–Those things that people require to survive and to function at a minimal level in the contemporary world. Needs are often used to explain why we consume what we do. hyperconsumption–An extraordinary level of consumption associated with the contemporary world (Ritzer).

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Thus, Baudrillard rejects the theory of needs, at least in our affluent society, and argues that such a consumption pattern is better explained by difference than by needs. We consume to be different from other people, and such differences are defined by what and how we consume. Buying CDs of operas like Madame Butterfly differentiates us from those who buy Ariana Grande CDs. In fact, buying CDs (rather than streaming music) also indicates status differences among persons. Because differences are infinite in number, there is no end to consumption; there are an endless number of things (in addition to those mentioned before, music by Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, Pete Seeger, Twenty One Pilots, etc., speak to additional differences) that we can buy to differentiate ourselves from others. Thus, the need for difference can never be satisfied; we end up with a continuous, lifelong need to differentiate ourselves from those who occupy other positions in society. This means that consumption is a form of communication. When we consume things, we are communicating a number of things to others, including what groups we do or do not belong to. Others understand what we are “saying” because they, too, know the code and therefore understand the meanings of signs. But that brings us back to the question: How do we know what to buy to signify difference? The answer is that guidelines are inscribed in the code, and because we know the code, we know what to consume. However, this means that the code does more than simply inform our choices; it controls our selections. Thus, what we think of as needs on a day-to-day basis are determined by the code. We end up needing what the code tells us we need. Individual needs exist because the code needs them to exist. Another key point made by Baudrillard is that consumption has little or nothing to do with what we conventionally think of as reality. When we buy a Big Mac at McDonald’s, we are not only, or mainly, buying something to eat; rather, we are obtaining what dining at McDonald’s and eating a Big Mac say about us. We are consuming signs—Big Mac, McDonald’s—more than we are consuming food to keep us alive. In consuming a Big Mac, we are differentiating ourselves not only from those who eat Whoppers at Burger King but also those who eat filet mignon at Morton’s. Thus, we are consuming not the reality of the food but the unreality of the signs associated with the food and the code that defines and controls them. Another key point is that in a society controlled by signs and the code, we are coming to relate far more to consumer objects and the settings in which they are sold, especially the consumption of those objects and settings, than we are to other human beings. Relationships with objects and settings are tending to replace human relationships. We are increasingly oriented more to spending on time-consuming things in these settings than to spending time in relationships with other people. Ironically, we do so for what it says about us and our relationships to such people, but we spend less and less time actually relating to them. difference–An alternate explanation of consumption favored by postmodernists. We consume not because of needs but to be different from other people; such differences are defined by what and how we consume.

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This is clearest in the settings in which we consume. In those settings, we increasingly are asked to do things ourselves (pump our own gasoline, obtain money on our own from ATMs) rather than to obtain those things from other human beings. Even when we do relate to other human beings in those settings, the relationship is likely to be an inhuman one in which employees act like automatons and interact with us on the basis of scripts (“Would you like apple pie with your Big Mac?” “Have a nice day.”) taught to them by the employing organization. In a McDonald’s restaurant, for example, we relate far more to the restaurant and the objects (including the toys that are forever being promoted in such settings) than we do to the people who work there or to the others dining there. From Production to Consumption.  Embedded in all of this is a grand theory. Most generally it involves the argument that we are moving from a society dominated by production to one that focuses on consumption. More specifically, B ­ audrillard outlines a change from a society in which capitalists focused on controlling their workers to one in which the focus has shifted to control over consumers. In the early days of capitalism consumers could be left largely on their own. However, more recently capitalists have come to the realization that consumers can no longer be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to consume or how much or what to consume. Capitalism has increasingly come to need to be sure that people participate, and participate actively, in the consumer society. Specific capitalistic organizations (McDonald’s, Lexus) must try to convince people to be active and regular consumers of their products. In a way, from the perspective of capitalists, consumers, like workers, perform a kind of labor that must be controlled. Going to the mall and buying a range of goods and services is as much a form of labor as putting hubcaps on cars on an automobile assembly line. When we look at consumers in this way, it is not a stretch for capitalists to think of them as a group that must be exploited to enhance the capitalists’ profits. This was (and is) the way capitalists think about workers; such thinking has now been extended to consumers. Consumers need to be lured into buying what they do not need, what they cannot afford, and what they may well have to go into debt for to acquire. In addition, capitalists are interested in preventing a social revolution, and, as the proletariat were kept from revolting by being kept hard at work, consumers are less likely to become rebellious if they are busy not only consuming but also working to afford all those consumables.

The Loss of Symbolic Exchange and the Increase in Simulations A more general and historically far-reaching grand theory in Baudrillard’s work involves his views on the differences between primitive and contemporary society. Basically, he argues that primitive societies characterized by symbolic exchange have tended to be superseded by contemporary societies defined by their simulations.

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION The Death of Consumer Culture? If So, What Next? For about a half century, the growth of consumer culture and the expansion of consumption came to seem inexorable. Consumer culture emerged and exploded in the second half of the 20th century and into the early 21st. In that culture, consumption was no longer something people had to do; it was something many enjoyed doing. For those who could afford it, consumption of more than the basics needed for survival came to be valued in its own right. The act of shopping was a major recreation activity and source of personal identity. More than that, given the importance of consumer spending to the American and global economy, many came to feel compelled to consume and to feel guilty if they did not or did not consume “enough.” Something of a peak in this epoch was reached when after 9/11 both the mayor of New York and the president of the United States urged Americans to go out and shop. However, all of that came to an abrupt halt during the severe economic downturn that began in late 2007. Driven by a decline in their economic resources, many individuals found, perhaps regretfully, that they could not consume as much as they once did, and they felt less pressure to do so. Although consumer spending and consumer confidence returned to prerecession levels by 2014, consumption took another major hit in 2020 due the global pandemic. There were many factors that led to the decline in consumer spending. For example, rules around social distancing forced many retail businesses to close, at least for periods of time. This in turn led to job losses and less money in the pockets of consumers. The pandemic also led to disruptions in global supply chains, which made it difficult, even when consumers had money, to purchase high-demand items such as bicycles. That said, during the pandemic many members of the middle and upper classes who were fortunate enough the keep their jobs grew their savings, and economists anticipated a post-spending boom, especially in the services sector (restaurants, recreation, tourism) as more people were vaccinated and retail opened again. Although it is too early to tell, the pandemic seems to have led to a shift in style of consumption. For example, many retail businesses adapted to the pandemic by moving, at least part of their business, online. This shift of course was already underway due to the success of online businesses like Amazon. However, it is possible that going forward even greater swaths of the consumer economy will depend upon online shopping and related delivery services (food delivery services boomed during the pandemic). At the same time, people’s experience with the pandemic has opened the possibility of work from home unlike ever before. This means consumers will be more likely to invest in home (Continued)

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(Continued) offices, gyms, and other goods that before the pandemic they may have consumed outside the home.2 That said, there is also reason to think that the pandemic may have led people to rethink the extent of their consumer behavior. After the Great Recession several popular movements appeared that favored simple, relatively inexpensive lifestyles: local food movements, tiny house movements, and home decluttering are examples. Under pressure from the pandemic, greater numbers of the middle classes were forced to learn how to live from home and consequently to simplify their consumer behaviors. Many learned to appreciate the value of time spent with family (although it’s important to note that domestic violence and abuse also increased during the pandemic) and turned to domestic activities such as cooking, bread making, and gardening. At the same time, one of the outcomes of the Great Recession and the pandemic is growing social inequality.3 If this trend continues, as is likely, this means a future with fewer people who can spare the money for luxurious consumer goods. Thus, although greater pandemic savings may boost consumer spending in the short term, over the long-term people may be forced to adopt the leaner consumer habits and lifestyles imposed during the pandemic. This is to say nothing of the changes we may be forced to make in response to the increasingly evident dangers caused by climate change, which is also, in part, a product of the excessive economic and consumer activity of contemporary societies.

Symbolic Exchange.  By symbolic exchange, Baudrillard means a reversible process of giving and receiving—a cyclical exchange of gifts and counter-gifts. He praises this type of exchange and the primitive societies in which it occurs. Take, for example, the case of death. In primitive societies, exchanges with people do not end at death. People continue to engage in exchanges with the dead by bringing offerings to grave sites, integrating cemeteries into the life of the community, and engaging in periodic rituals involving the dead, often at their grave sites. In other words, the dead are integrated into the life of a primitive community. Baudrillard contrasts this to the contemporary situation in which the dead, their grave sites, and cemeteries are segregated from the rest of society. Although people may make a few perfunctory offerings here and there (e.g., bringing flowers to grave sites), in the main, the living have little to do with the dead. Overall, Baudrillard argues that primitive societies are characterized by symbolic exchanges with the dead, but such exchanges have all but disappeared in the contemporary world. symbolic exchange–A reversible process of giving and receiving; a cyclical exchange of gifts and countergifts associated with primitive societies (Baudrillard). 2

See https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/us-consumer-spending-after-covid.html.

For further analysis, see https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardmcgahey/2021/04/30/covid-19 -accelerating-economic-trends-including-inequality/?sh=6af83e382b7c. 3

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This, for Baudrillard, is emblematic of what has happened throughout contemporary society. Thus, in the economic realm symbolic exchange has tended to be replaced by economic exchange. In primitive societies, the exchange of goods tended to be strictly limited. Gifts and counter-gifts were given, but eventually the parties were satisfied, and the cycle associated with that particular exchange ended. However, in the contemporary world of economic exchange, there is no end to the exchange of goods—no end to purchasing goods for oneself and others. The idea is to keep the process of economic exchange through consumption going on continually and forever. This, of course, serves to increase production and, ultimately, the wealth of those who control production (today, the capitalists). Work can also be examined from this perspective. In primitive societies, work involved a symbolic exchange between workers and other workers, raw materials, tools, and so forth. For example, workers took from nature (e.g., raw materials), but they also returned to nature (e.g., by replanting that which they had taken). In contemporary societies, work is dominated by economic exchange. Raw materials derived from nature may be purchased, but there is little sense (unless it is coerced by outside forces) that the buyer needs to renew what has been taken from nature. In addition, in contemporary societies a worker gives the owner labor time, and in exchange the worker is paid. There is no symbolic exchange between worker and owner. Moreover, in primitive societies there were no owners in the contemporary sense of the term; there was simply continual symbolic exchange among people involved in the work process. Simulations.  Relatedly, Baudrillard views a transformation from primitive societies characterized by genuine cultural worlds, such as symbolic exchange, to contemporary worlds characterized by their lack of genuineness—by simulations. Simulations are fakes, and Baudrillard envisions a world increasingly dominated by them. He also views genuine cultural worlds such as those characterized by symbolic exchange as being enchanted and magical and asserts that over time the social world has lost its enchantment (its magic). The simulations that characterize the contemporary world do not have the capacity for magic and enchantment at least in the sense that Baudrillard uses the term. Thus, this simulated world is totally disenchanted and is almost shameful in comparison to the primitive, genuine world. One of Baudrillard’s favorite examples of a simulation is Disney World. This contemporary theme park encompasses many simulations of what were at one time genuine social realities. For example, one enters and leaves Disney World through Main Street, a thinly disguised shopping mall that is a simulation of the kinds of main streets that characterized many American towns at the beginning of the 20th century. But it is not only the past that is simulated at Disney World; the park includes a simulated submarine ride to which people flock to view simulated simulations–Fakes; to Baudrillard, the contemporary world is coming to be increasingly dominated by the inauthentic.

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undersea life. Strikingly, many tourists prefer to go there rather than to the more genuine aquarium (itself, however, a simulation of the sea) down the road, to say nothing of the actual ocean and its sea life not much farther away from the gates of Disney World. The widespread existence of simulations is a major reason for the erosion of the distinction between the real and the imaginary, the true and the false. Virtually every aspect of the contemporary world is a mixture of the real and the imaginary. Nothing is real at Disney World except for the people who work there, and even they behave in unreal ways by donning costumes (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, etc.) and speaking and acting in accord with preset scripts. In fact, the real and the true are harder to find and may even be said to have disappeared in an avalanche of simulations. This can make it dangerous to try to get to the bottom of things, to try to probe beneath and behind the simulations. It is increasingly likely that we will find that there is nothing beneath the simulations but other simulations. In other words, in the contemporary world, there is no truth; there is no reality. Without truth and reality, it could be argued that we live in one huge simulation. Baudrillard views the United States as being in the forefront of this development. As the most unreal, false, and simulated society on earth, it is setting the standard, but the rest of the world is sure to follow. The United States is the home of some of the world’s best-known and most popular simulations. A major example is Las Vegas, especially its hotels that simulate other worlds: New York, New York; Paris; Venetian; Mandalay Bay; Bellagio; and Luxor, to mention a few. But Baudrillard goes beyond the obvious examples to discuss whole cities (e.g., Los Angeles) and even the entire nation in terms of simulations. Thus, in New York City today, one can discuss the Disneyization of the Times Square area. The Disney corporation’s renovation of an old theater in Times Square led to a dramatic change in the entire area as old pornographic theaters and cheap shops were closed and replaced by a number of franchises found throughout the United States. One could say that the real Times Square has been eliminated, and a simulated, sterilized reality, not much different from that found elsewhere, has taken its place. New York is in the process of losing its distinctiveness and coming to look like many other places. The United States is also the home of other key centers of simulation. For instance, U.S. companies dominate the world’s movie industry, and all of what one sees in the movies is simulation. Similarly, the world’s television programming is dominated by the United States, and that, too, is entirely within simulation. In addition, the internet and cybersites are all simulations. For example, people increasingly visit cybershops and cybermalls that are simulations of the real things that exist throughout the United States. Of course, they, too, are increasingly simulated so that people find it relatively easy to move smoothly from a cybermall to some real setting like the Park Meadows Retail Resort in suburban Denver, a shopping mall (although it refuses to call itself one) that is a simulation of the rustic Timberline Lodge (itself the model for the simulation of the hotel in the movie The Shining) on Mount Hood in Colorado.

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KEY CONCEPTS The Prosumer and Prosumption

The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of an era in which the focus in the economy was on production (e.g., in the factory) and producers (e.g., workers and owners). In the decades after World War II, especially in the United States, production at first rose and then began to decline (in steel, tires, and more recently automobiles). In its place arose a society increasingly dominated by consumption (e.g., shopping) and consumers. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we have entered an era in which “prosumption,” rather than either production or consumption, has become preeminent. The term prosumption, a fusion of production and consumption, refers to the fact that we increasingly produce and consume more or less simultaneously. Furthermore, there is a growing realization not only that we are increasingly likely to be prosumers but also that people have always been prosumers. In fact, the clear distinction between production and consumption is relatively recent. On the farm, for example, those who were (and still are) the producers of food (the farmers) were also the consumers of much of what they produced. In the Industrial Revolution and with the emergence of the factory, all industrial production simultaneously involved consumption. For example, an enormous range of things are consumed in the production of automobiles, including raw materials, the workers’ labor time, and energy of various types. Recent trends have tended to reduce further whatever separation continues to exist between the two, at least in the developed West. For example, the rise of the modern fast-food restaurant was instrumental in the trend toward putting the consumer to work (creating a prosumer). The “diner” at a fast-food restaurant, the consumer of fast-food, is also, at least to some degree, a producer of that meal. Diners are, for example, expected to serve as their own waiters, carrying their meals to their tables, and to bus their own tables, disposing of their debris after the meal is finished. This trend toward putting the consumer to work has accelerated since the birth of the fast-food restaurant. Examples include pumping one’s own gasoline at the filling station; serving as one’s own bank teller at the ATM; working at the checkout counter at the supermarket by scanning one’s own purchases, bagging them, and paying by credit card; using electronic kiosks to check in at a hotel and at the airport, to purchase movie tickets, and so on; and cocreating a variety of experiences, such as moving oneself through Disney World and its many attractions and serving as an “actor” in the theater “staged” by Starbucks, designed to create the image of an old-fashioned coffeehouse. (Continued)

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(Continued) Medicine is increasingly characterized by do-it-yourself technologies (e.g., blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors, pregnancy tests) that allow patients to perform, without recompense, tasks formerly performed by paid medical professionals. In the entertainment industry, there has been a proliferation of “reality TV shows,” in which members of the audience become performers, perhaps for an entire season. In pornography, the once-booming “professional” porn industry finds itself in difficulty because of competition from amateurs. Cell phones now allow “amateurs” to photograph dramatic events and then send the photos to TV networks and local stations that show them on air almost immediately. Much of what transpires on the internet in terms of content generated by users (consumers) needs to be seen in this context and as among the latest developments in this long-term trend. For example, it is the users who generate and constantly edit the articles on Wikipedia; create the profiles (composed of videos, photos, text) and the interaction that creates communities on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook; create the characters and virtual environments in the massively popular game Second Life; make up the “blogosphere,” where weblogs, personal blogs, and the comments on them are produced by those who consume them; create the market on eBay, Craigslist, and so on; are the mostly “amateur” photographers who upload and download the photographs on Flickr; and not only do all the work involved in ordering products on sites like Amazon.com but also do things like write the “reviews” that appear there. It is on the internet, especially Web 2.0 (all of the sites mentioned in the previous paragraph are examples of Web 2.0), that the prosumer has come of age. Web 1.0 (e.g., the websites for the New York Times and the New York Yankees) was, and still is, dominated by distinct producers and consumers of content. What distinguishes Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 is user generation; it is the users (consumers) who also generate (produce) most, if not all, of the content.

Baudrillard describes such developments as hyperreal, that is, entirely simulated and, as a result, more real than real, more beautiful than beautiful, truer than true. This is certainly the case with Disney World, Las Vegas, and even the “new” Times Square in New York. For example, Disney World is cleaner than the world outside its gates, and its employees are far friendlier than most people we are likely to meet in our daily lives. To take another example, think of the luxury gated communities throughout the United States, especially in states with hospitable climates, like Arizona, Florida, and California. In such a community one finds foliage that is not necessarily indigenous to the area. In addition, even that which is indigenous has been nurtured so that it appears far lusher than that which exists in nature. The result is the production of a tropical paradise that is far more real hyperreal–Entirely simulated and, as a result, more real than real, more beautiful than beautiful, truer than true, and so on (Baudrillard).

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JEAN BAUDRILLARD (1929–2007) A Biographical Vignette Jean Baudrillard was an unusual social theorist, even in France, which specializes in producing unique theorists (e.g., Michel Foucault). He was trained in sociology but soon moved away from it. He taught at the university level but gave it up quickly. One of his early publications was a critique of Foucault, who was then a leading figure in French scholarly life. Foucault dismissed Baudrillard as easily forgotten, and Baudrillard subsequently had a difficult time advancing in French scholarly and academic circles. He was a radical, strongly influenced by Marxian ideas. Over the years he grew less politically engaged, and even more quickly, he abandoned Marxian theory. One of the reasons for this was the fact that Marx and the Marxists focused on production, whereas Baudrillard quickly came to recognize the increasing centrality of consumption in the contemporary world. In the late 1960s, Baudrillard published pioneering work on consumption, work that continues to influence this growing area of sociological interest. In the 1970s and beyond, Baudrillard published a series of innovative and startling works that led to his being considered the preeminent postmodern social theorist. Characteristically, Baudrillard had disdain for the postmodernist label and refused to accept it for himself. Yet many students of Baudrillard’s work and postmodern theory more generally view him as being at the heart of that new theoretical orientation. His general perspectives, as well as many of his more specific ideas (e.g., symbolic exchange, simulations, implosion), have powerfully influenced not only postmodern social theory but also more mainstream work in theory. Baudrillard’s influence is not restricted to social theory; many artistic fields have also been affected by his ideas. For example, in the movie The Matrix there is a close-up of a book titled Simulations. Thus, even pop culture has been ­influenced by Baudrillard, who has himself become something of a pop icon. It is the rare thinker who can be considered both a pop icon and a serious social theorist.

than the surrounding environment, which may well be dry, dusty, and populated by an occasional undernourished palm tree. The tropical paradise of the luxury community is clearly hyperreal. Another example, in an entirely different realm, is pornography. The female pornographic film star, with her implants, additional cosmetic surgery, tattoos, body makeup, and other alterations, can be viewed as a simulated temptress. She is a hyperreal sex object, more real than the women most men are ever likely to encounter in real life. The same can be said of the sex acts depicted in these movies; few people attempt, or are even able, to go through the gyrations and manipulations that are seen on the screen. And if they try, they are turning their own sex lives into simulations. Because the sex acts seen on the screen are hyperreal, people

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do try to emulate them with the result that their day-to-day sex lives themselves become simulations. People may also seek to live up to these hyperreal images by transforming themselves so that they look more like porn stars. Thus, women get breast implants and even have surgery to beautify their vaginas, whereas men may undergo surgery to increase the length and breadth of their penises. In this way, they come to be simulated lovers, if not simulated people. It could be argued that these simulated realities are important not only in themselves but also because they serve as the models for transformations beyond their immediate confines. Under the influence of these hyperreal models, the rest of the world is itself becoming increasingly simulated, increasingly hyperreal. Thus, Disney World’s influence is not restricted to within the park’s borders or even restricted to Times Square in New York. Many communities are attempting to emulate the Disney model of simulating America at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, Disney itself built such a model community, Celebration, on the corporation’s property in Florida. Furthermore, new communities around the country are using Celebration and Disney World as models for their own development. Thus, according to Baudrillard, reality is increasingly contaminated by these simulations. Overall, Baudrillard offers a grand theory of the change from primitive societies, characterized by real, human symbolic exchange, through the less real and fully human economic exchange, to the contemporary world, increasingly characterized by unreal, inhuman technologies. The sense is that although the United States lies at the heart of all this, the rest of the world is destined to move in the same simulated direction. Furthermore, even the United States is clearly only at the beginning of the process of simulation. The future will bring not only increasingly extraordinary but also increasingly pervasive simulations.

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY AND THE NEW MEANS OF CONSUMPTION Strongly influenced by several of Baudrillard’s postmodern ideas, as well as other ideas drawn from modernists like Marx and Weber, George Ritzer has created a grand theory that involves the settings in which we consume. More generally, it depicts a world of increasing consumption leading to contemporary society, which can be seen as being characterized by hyperconsumption. Means of Consumption: Old and New.  Following Marx, Ritzer has labeled consumption sites means of consumption. Marx uses this term, but he does so in a way that is inconsistent with the way he uses his far better-known concept, means of production. To Marx, the means of production are those things means of production–Those things that are needed for production to take place (including tools, machinery, raw materials, and factories) (Marx).

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(tools, machines, raw materials, etc.) that make production possible in a capitalist society. However, as he defines them, the means of consumption are simply consumer goods. To be consistent with the definition of means of production, the means of ­consumption should be defined as those things that make consumption ­possible. As the factory makes production possible, the shopping mall enables the ­consumer and ­consumption. Others who have used the concept in this way include Baudrillard, who views the Parisian drugstore, among other settings, as a means of consumption. Part of Ritzer’s grand theory involves movement from what can be termed old means of consumption, such as taverns, cafés, and diners, to the new means of consumption to be discussed next. The older, more traditional means of consumption were (and are) all material, involving physical structures, face-to-face interaction among customers and employees, consumption of things like food and drink, and payment almost exclusively in cash. Although they were material structures, these sites had, or produced, a number of immaterial effects, such as feelings of gemeinschaft, or community, among those who frequented them. Of course, there are even older means of consumption, such as bazaars, arcades, department stores (see the Key Concepts box “Phantasmagoria and Dream Worlds”), general stores, and county fairs. What Ritzer calls the new means of consumption are a set of sites that came into existence largely after 1950 in the United States and have served to revolutionize consumption. The following are the major new means of consumption with notable examples and the years in which they began operations: • Franchises (McDonald’s, 1955) • Shopping malls (the first indoor mall, Edina, Minnesota, 1956) • Megamalls (West Edmonton Mall, 1981; Mall of America, 1992) • Superstores (Toys“R”Us, 1957) • Discounters (Target, 1962) • Theme parks (Disneyland, 1955) • Cruise ships (Sunward, 1966) • Casino-hotels (Flamingo, 1946) • Eatertainment (Hard Rock Café, 1971) means of consumption–To Marx, these are simply consumer goods, but to Ritzer, paralleling Marx’s sense of the means of production, these are the things that make consumption possible. As the factory makes production possible, the shopping mall enables the consumer and consumption. new means of consumption–The set of consumption sites that came into existence largely after 1950 in the United States and that served to revolutionize consumption (Ritzer).

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These, too, are material structures, but they also can be seen as phantasmagoria or dream worlds. In fact, over the past half century, these new means of consumption have become increasingly fantastic and spectacular to enchant consumers and lure them in greater numbers and with increasing frequency into their lairs to heighten progressively the level of consumption—to produce hyperconsumption. They have all been enormously successful in their efforts and, through what Joseph Schumpeter called the process of creative destruction (in which older structures are destroyed to make way for newer ones that function more effectively), have largely replaced the older means of consumption such as diners, arcades, and expositions. Yet the pace of change is so rapid that many of these new means of consumption are already being threatened by other, even newer, dematerialized means of consumption, such as home shopping television (born in 1985) and especially cybercommerce/e-commerce of all types. This shift to e-commerce was made possible by the coming of the internet in 1988 and the emergence of major online retailers such as Amazon.com. The central role that online shopping plays in modern life was exacerbated by the global coronavirus pandemic that started in 2020. The greater immateriality of dematerialized consumption (both perceptual and real) gives them enormous advantages over the material means of consumption in terms of both what they are able to do and the effect they are able to create. As a result, they pose a profound threat to several of the more material new means of consumption, especially shopping malls, megamalls, and superstores. Why venture out of the house, into one’s car, onto the freeway, and into that cavernous parking lot and that enormous and tiring consumption site when one can obtain as much, and in many cases even more, from the comfort of one’s sofa or seat in front of the computer? For example, Amazon.com’s million-plus list of books is far larger than the stock in the largest Barnes & Noble book superstore. Instead of undertaking all those physical acts required to get to and from the superstore, one can accomplish consumption with a few keystrokes. Many other new (and old) material means of consumption are now facing a similar struggle in luring customers out of their homes. Why fly to a Las Vegas casino-hotel when one can play the slots and other games of chance online? Why go to the racetrack when one can bet on the races over the internet? Why go to a movie theater when one can order the latest Hollywood films on demand on their release dates (a phenomenon necessitated by the shutdown of material theaters during the coronavirus pandemic)? More important, these new dematerialized sites of consumption, especially those associated with the internet, have a far greater potential to produce phantasmagoria or dream worlds than their more material predecessors. Ritzer focuses on processes that serve to make the new means of consumption more spectacular, enchanting, dreamlike, and phantasmagoric. The fact is that at least potentially, creative destruction–The process in which older structures are destroyed to make way for newer ones that function more effectively (Schumpeter).

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the dematerialized means of consumption have a far greater capacity to use these processes to create alluring fantasy worlds for consumers. In other words, not only is greater immateriality an advantage in itself, but it can also be used to create still further advantages for dematerialized means of consumption. Spectacle and Implosion.  One of the ways that the new means of consumption create spectacles is through the implosion (this concept, like others in Ritzer’s theory, is borrowed from Baudrillard and involves the decline of boundaries and the collapse of things into each other) of once-separate means of consumption into one setting: Mall of America, which is both a mall and an amusement park, and the cruise ship, encompassing a mall, a casino, and so on. Yet because these are material structures, there are limits to what can be imploded into them. People need to be able to physically navigate a mall or the deck of a cruise ship. If, to encompass more means of consumption, malls, amusement parks, and so on grow too big, people will not be able to work their way through them. For example, it has been found that if grocery superstores grow too large, customers, especially older ones, are turned off by the need to walk so far to get a quart of milk.

KEY CONCEPTS Phantasmagoria and Dream Worlds

An examination of older means of consumption is found in the work of Walter Benjamin, who was concerned with both the physical structure of these means of consumption and the immaterial feelings they were designed to evoke. Bestknown is Benjamin’s arcades project (Passagen-Werk), a fragmentary, unfinished undertaking focusing on the 19th-century Parisian arcades. The arcades were old means of consumption even when Benjamin wrote about them (roughly 1920– 1940), and he used them as a lens through which to gain greater insight not only into his day but also into the era in which they flourished. Benjamin saw himself as examining the debris or residue of the mass culture of the 1800s. The arcades were essentially privately owned covered city streets lined on both sides with shops of various sorts. The streets were closed to vehicular traffic, allowing consumers to wander from shop to shop to buy or merely window-shop. Benjamin viewed the arcade as the original temple for the consumption of capitalist commodities. It was the immediate precursor of other temples (Continued)

implosion–The decline of boundaries and the collapse of things into each other; dedifferentiation as opposed to differentiation (Baudrillard).

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(Continued) for the consumption of commodities—expositions and the department stores. (The arcades themselves, of course, had predecessors, such as the church— arcades were often shaped like crosses—and Oriental bazaars.) What was originally confined to the arcades later burst out of those confines and flooded Paris with grander and more pretentious commodity displays. Benjamin accorded an important role here to the architect Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who created in Paris a series of physical structures, including railroad stations, museums, winter gardens, sports palaces, department stores, and exhibition halls (as well as the boulevards to get to them) that not only dwarfed the original arcades but also served to eclipse them. All of these structures related wholly or in part to consumption. However, Benjamin recognized that not only the arcades but all of these physical structures as well were more than material realities; they produced immaterial effects, most notably those that Benjamin famously referred to as phantasmagoria. In fact, his general argument was that the new urban phantasmagoria traced to Haussmann were replacing arcades and that the once-magical arcades that had created such phantasmagoria were in decline. Rosalind Williams makes a similar argument about other early means of consumption: expositions and department stores. Williams asserts that the Paris Expositions, especially those of 1889 and 1900, were the first systematically planned mass-consumption settings and that they were innovative in the way they combined imagination and goods to be sold. Imagination in concert with a planned environment creates a dream world for consumers. Again, we see here the integration of ideal (imagination) and material (planned environmental) factors. In this context, Williams discusses the founding of the French department store, especially Le Bon Marché in 1852. She concentrates on things such as the use of decor to lure customers to the stores and to make the merchandise seem glamorous, romantic, and therefore, appealing to consumers. Williams argues that the goal of such department stores was to inflame the desires and feelings of consumers for the merchandise in them. The goal was not necessarily to arouse a desire that would be immediately satisfied but rather to create a free-floating desire that would lead to purchases sooner rather than later. The key point is that the older means of consumption were decidedly physical structures, and whereas analysts such as Benjamin and Williams have recognized that fact and acknowledged its importance, they have emphasized the way those structures served to arouse feelings associated with being in a phantasmagoric setting or a dream world.

phantasmagoria–The fantastic immaterial effects produced by physical structures like shopping arcades as well as the newer means of consumption (Benjamin). dream world–Similar to phantasmagoria but with emphasis on the use of things like decor to lure customers to means of consumption and to make the goods and services being purveyed seem glamorous, romantic, and therefore, appealing to consumers.The goal in creating a dream world is to inflame the desires and feelings of consumers (Williams). 330    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

There are no such limits in cyberspace. Cyberspace can be as big as the imaginations of those who create and view its components. Of course, as cybersites and cyberspace grow larger, they become increasingly difficult to navigate, but this is where search engines and other technologies come in and do the work for the consumer. An example of such a technology is the shop bot; it roams through e-tailers’ sites looking for specific items. There is no need for a consumer to switch from Amazon.com to barnesandnoble.com to varsitybooks.com in search of a particular book; the shop bot will do the work. Consumers may get irritated by delays or by problems finding what they want as the components of the internet grow more numerous and diverse, but few will be winded by the process. Many of the means of consumption, new and old, are collapsing into the internet in one way or another. The incredible spectacle is that with a click of a mouse a person can switch from shopping at the cybermall to gambling at the cybercasino to a virtual tour of Disney World. Spectacles and Simulations.  Another way in which the new means of consumption make themselves spectacular is through the creation of simulations more incredible than reality. For example, the Las Vegas Strip encompasses a series of incredible casino-hotel simulations such as New York, New York. As physical structures, casino-hotels must operate within the limitations imposed by their materiality. For example, New York, New York’s attractions are not toscale, and they are jumbled together indiscriminately. From the outside, viewers never lose sight of the fact that they are looking at a simulation, and inside, they never lose the sense of being in a casino-hotel; they never really feel that they are in New York. Cybersites are by definition simulations. Because they do not have the limitations of physical sites, they are freer to create simulations that are more spectacular and even in some senses truer to reality. Thus, a to-scale model of New York could, at least theoretically, be built in cyberspace. Once we have greater bandwidth and the wedding of virtual reality and cyberspace, we will see even greater ability to place people in simulated worlds that closely approximate reality. They may even be more real than real—that is, hyperreal (e.g., cybersites lack the crowds and the trash one sees in malls). The point is that because they are not restricted physically, cybersites have a much greater potential to use simulations to create far more fantastic worlds than are possible in Las Vegas or Mall of America. Spectacles, Time, and Space.  Time and space are also manipulated in the ­creation of spectacles in the new means of consumption. Las Vegas hotels freely juxtapose time periods. The Luxor of ancient Egypt stands next to Excalibur (evoking the England of King Arthur), which stands adjacent to a mid-20th-century New York, New York. Furthermore, the interiors of casino-hotels are designed so that gamblers have no idea what time it is—no clocks or windows are allowed. Space is CHAPTER TEN  •  POSTMODERN GRAND THEORIES   331

manipulated through, for example, the creation of huge spaces designed to awe consumers. Mall of America is large enough to encompass both a shopping mall and an amusement park. The Luxor hotel-casino in Las Vegas has the world’s largest atrium, one that can hold nine Boeing 747 airliners. As impressive as these are, they pale in comparison to what can potentially be created in cyberspace, where literally there are no limits to what can be done with time and space. The entire universe and the entire expanse of time are at the disposal of the means of consumption that exist in cyberspace.

QUEER THEORY: SEX AND SEXUALITY Connected to what we have already said about Michel Foucault, another important area of social theory is concerned with sex and sexuality. Queer theory, an important contributor to this area, is distinct from theories of gender (see Chapter 8) and thus requires separate treatment. Queer theories are postmodern because they emphasize the socially constructed and historically contingent nature of sexuality. They also focus on the fundamental instability of meaning systems, social systems, and the material, desiring body. Indeed, more than any other contemporary theoretical approach, queer theory does not simply document the instability of meaning systems but also develops strategies to resist the stabilization of meanings, bodies, and desires. Even though queer theory has implications for social theory more generally, it is concerned first with the stigmatization and marginalization of gays and lesbians. The queer, then, in queer theory refers to the experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. But we must be careful here. Although queer theory is allied with antihomophobic politics, it is wary of the identity politics that has served as the foundation for mainstream conceptualizations of sexuality. Identity politics is a particular kind of political activism in which marginalized groups seek recognition for their distinct identities. Queer theorists argue that the concept of identity mistakenly assumes that all persons have essential, in-built, character traits and, in the case of sexuality, essential sexual desires. As a postmodern perspective, queer theory rejects essentialist thinking and tries to open conceptual and practical spaces in which individuals can articulate forms of desire that are not captured within existing categories. The purpose is not merely to speak up for marginalized sexualities but also to establish the basis for descriptions of uncategorized and unmarked desires and forms of social relationship. For this reason, queer theory does not promote the truth or reality of homosexual desire alongside heterosexual desire. Instead it

identity politics–Political activism that arises out of the efforts of marginalized groups to seek legitimacy and recognition for their distinct identities.

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develops theoretical tools that demonstrate the contingency of all identities and then describes the processes through which sexual identifications are achieved. Queer theory “queers” social life by drawing attention to the in-betweens, the hidden spaces, and the invisible zones that both exist alongside and help constitute the meanings of identities and desires.

The Heterosexual/Homosexual Binary Queer theory draws heavily on poststructuralist philosophy. Poststructuralism is a school of thought that grew out of mid- to late 20th-century French literary theory (see also Bourdieu, Chapter 7). According to poststructuralists, language is a system of power that constructs and orders social reality. In the modern West, reality has been constructed through linguistic binaries: male versus female, white versus Black, inside versus outside, and, in the case of modern sexuality, heterosexual versus homosexual. These categories define what people can be and do at given times and places. Through the technique of deconstruction poststructuralists show that even though these binaries appear to be natural realities, they are in fact linguistic creations. Foucault, for example, describes the construction of sexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality in the 19th century. Prior to this historical period, there was no such thing as a sexual identity, at least in the sense understood today. People engaged in sexual acts such as same-sex sodomy, but it was not believed that these acts expressed something fundamental about the persons who engaged in them. The development of the sciences of sex, such as psychoanalysis and sexology, alongside transformations in industrial and domestic life led to the identification of particular sex acts with character types. The 20th-century conceptualization of homosexuality emerged, then, when the act of sodomy became associated with the identity of homosexuality. Furthermore, the identity of homosexuality was defined in contrast to the identity of heterosexuality, itself a newly invented concept. Following poststructuralist logic, a central claim of queer theory is that as binaries, heterosexuality and homosexuality define one another and hence depend on one another for their meanings. Beyond the idea that identities are constructed through binaries, another central idea of poststructuralist thought is that one element in the binary structure is always viewed as inferior to the other. For example, as constructed in patriarchal societies, masculinity is superior to femininity. So too, queer theorists demonstrate that homosexual identity has been constructed as inferior to heterosexuality. In fact, modern Western social life has been organized around the p ­ resumed naturalness and primacy of heterosexuality. In other words, modern social life is governed deconstruction–An analytic technique used by poststructuralists to demonstrate the constructed nature of taken-for-granted social realities. In particular, deconstruction shows that social reality is created in the relationship between binary linguistic categories in which one of the elements in the category is treated as inferior.

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by what Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix, a cultural framework that makes it appear as if heterosexuality is the natural form of sexuality. Further, the heterosexual matrix imposes compulsory heterosexuality—that is, a social system in which the only viable, intelligible, and respectable form of sexuality is heterosexuality, accompanied by the related accoutrements of middle-class suburban life. Any alternative expressions of desire are treated as unnatural and unintelligible. Such expressions are frequently disparaged and sometimes met with violence. Queer theorist Eve Sedgwick further describes the logic of contemporary sexual culture through her concept of the epistemology of the closet. Epistemology is the field of philosophy that studies the ways in which humans know and can know the world. The closet refers to the now popular idea that an identity can be closeted—that is, kept secret, hidden from view, maintained in a private and safe place. Sedgwick analyzes the concept of the closet as a means of understanding how the relationship between heterosexuality and homosexuality has shaped modern ways of knowing and relating to sexuality. It is not only that homosexuality is treated as inferior to heterosexuality but also that this relationship of dependency is hidden from view, unspoken, or closeted. This has given rise to central components of identity formation in our times. For one, in contrast to the open public image of heterosexuality, homosexuality and other queer sexualities have largely been developed in hidden spaces. This has resulted in feelings of shame being associated with queer identities. Further, as a result of its identification with the closet, the act of “coming out” of the closet has, for good or bad, been a defining feature of queer experience over the past 30 years. Finally, because homosexuality has been closeted, people who identify as heterosexual are unable to understand the relationship between their sexuality and queer sexuality. As already described, queer theorists argue that there is a mutually constitutive relationship between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Moreover, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, some queer theorists argue that sexuality in general is never classifiable or set in stone. Instead, sexual desire is fluid and open to transformation. Desire is locked into strict categories only through historical and social processes. Following this, queer theorists make a subversive point: heterosexual persons contain within themselves the potentials of queer sexuality. When social institutions repress or deny queer sexuality, they do not eliminate it but only hide it from view. This can be dangerous. For example, Sedgwick argues that homosexual panic—the fearful and violent reactions that homosexuality arouses in heterosexual

heterosexual matrix–A cultural framework that makes it appear as if heterosexuality is the natural form of sexuality (queer theory). compulsory heterosexuality–A product of the heterosexual matrix, a social system in which the only viable, intelligible, and respectable form of sexuality is heterosexuality (queer theory). epistemology of the closet–The idea that modern knowledge about sexuality and in particular homosexuality is connected to the public denial of homosexuality (Sedgwick).

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society (often described as homophobia)—is a product of the closeting of queer desire. Because it has so insistently denied the homosexuality within itself, the ­heterosexual culture strikes back against public manifestations of queer sexuality. Making a related point, Butler argues that modern Western persons suffer homosexual melancholy, the persistent sadness that emerges when heterosexual culture denies its own homosexuality. In both of these examples, even though it is denied, homosexual desire, the queer side of the modern subject, continues to haunt heterosexuality and vice versa. The task of queer theory is to show the ways that queer desire is and always has been a central component of sociocultural life.

Performing Sex Judith Butler, one of the most important queer theorists, is famous for her claim that gender and sex are created through social performances. In feminist theories, gender refers to the social roles played by men and women. These roles are generally regarded as social constructions. Sex refers to the biological makeup of males and females. Butler agrees with other feminists that gender roles are social constructions, but she takes the argument a step further and says that sex is also a social construction. Even though Western society believes that there are only two sexes—male and female—Butler insists that our perception of this difference is a cultural and historical achievement. For example, the distinction overlooks the many intersex bodies that do not clearly fit into one category, male or female. With these ideas in hand we can turn to the concept of performance. From Butler’s perspective, sex, gender, and desire are not automatic possessions of a body; rather, they are brought into existence in performance. The successful achievement of sex identity (e.g., to see oneself as a “real man”) and accompanying ideas about sex attraction depends on the successful performance of a gender role. This is similar to Goffman’s idea that the self is not an inborn entity but rather an effect of social performances (see Chapter 6). In the same way, then, that a person builds a self over time in social performances, so too are sex, gender, and sexual desire produced through performance. For example, male heteronormative gender performances link together male bodies with male gender performances and male expressions of desire for females. These connections among bodies, desires, and social roles are not automatically given; rather, they are cultural and personal achievements. In connection with this, Butler also argues that certain culturally sanctioned performances produce “bodies that matter.” Butler plays on the double meaning of the word matter. On the one hand, matter describes the way that identities become embodied. Distinctions made in language are built into the body through its performances so that they are felt and lived as real and uncontestable. At the same time, matter describes a political judgment. Sexuality is constructed and then homosexual melancholy–The persistent sadness that is part of a heterosexual culture in denial of its own homosexuality (queer theory).

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materialized within social structures that privilege some forms of sexuality and desire over others. There are bodies that matter, and there are bodies that do not matter. The bodies that do not matter are marginalized and submitted to social and political violence. The concept of performance, then, is crucial for queer theory. If sex and gender are performed, then the viability of dominant sexualities depends on their continued performance. Through the concept of performance, Butler denaturalizes heterosexuality in a concrete way. She does not merely reveal it to be a social construction but also shows that it is a performance that has to be chosen to be sustained. To be a woman you need to walk and talk and act like a woman. This does not automatically happen; the performance must be practiced. In addition, the concept of performance grounds Butler’s challenge to the heterosexual matrix. Unlike gay rights activists, Butler does not call for the creation of a space for gays and lesbians within heterosexual culture. Nor does she call for the replacement of heterosexual social organization with a presumably more open and liberating homosexual social organization. Each of those moves would merely reinstantiate a normative social order and in particular reaffirm heterosexuality as the binary opposite of homosexuality. Queer theory tries to move beyond utopias, essentialisms, and binaries and instead sees sexuality as a constant and ongoing set of activities through which sexuality and desire are created. To demonstrate the performed and constructed nature of sexuality and gender, Butler famously uses the example of the drag performer. The drag queen is a male who performs as a woman. A successful performance reveals that gender is a performance and so too is the desire generated by the drag performer in the audience. Butler also provides an analysis of “butch” identity. In queer culture the butch is a lesbian who adopts the posture of masculinity. The Hollywood star James Dean is an iconic figure whom some butch lesbians try to imitate in their everyday identifications. Butler says that the butch is not simply a woman who adopts a male role. Rather, in juxtaposing sex and gender in new ways, the butch generates new forms of sexuality and desire. These examples do not make sex and sexual desire any less concrete or real. Instead, they show that real feelings and identities originate in sociocultural play. This points to the overall relevance of queer theory. Queer theory is a perspective that illuminates the sphere of sexuality, especially queer sexuality, but it speaks to social theory more generally. For one thing, it demonstrates that sexuality and desire are central features of social life and have been for some time. This means that any serious social theory must incorporate the study of sex, gender, and sexuality into its analysis. In addition, queer theory provides tools that can help sociologists understand how sexualities have been and continue to be constructed and performed. Finally, queer theory shows that as a society we are not locked into preset social and bodily roles. Rather, in the spirit of all social theories that have sought social change, queer theory argues that by playing with new combinations of bodies and roles, we can create more equitable and satisfying social relationships and social institutions.

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The Bathroom Problem In the book Female Masculinity, queer theorist Jack Halberstam introduces the “bathroom problem.” The bathroom problem illustrates the way that gender binarism is reproduced in everyday, innocuous ways. The bathroom, Halberstam says, is a place for enhanced gender policing. Using a public bathroom is one of the most important everyday occasions on which people are implicitly and sometimes explicitly asked, Are you male or female? The complexities of the bathroom problem are revealed through the experiences of people of ambiguous gender, people who do not look clearly male or female. It is a regular experience for people of ambiguous gender to be subjected to scrutiny, questioning, and hostility when they enter a bathroom. Sometimes security personnel or police are called. Other bathroom users want to know whether ambiguous people are male or female and therefore whether or not they belong. According to Halberstam, the bathroom problem shows that one of the most important rules of gendered existence is that one’s gender immediately be recognizable to others. Any ambiguity, confusion, or uncertainty results in fear, anger, and in some cases, violence. The bathroom problem also highlights the anxieties that accompany everyday life for some queer people. To avoid confrontation, people of ambiguous identity may avoid using public bathrooms. Consequently, they organize at least parts of their lives around finding safe bathrooms: those at home or in queer-friendly spaces. This not only demonstrates the social psychological distress that comes with some forms of queer life, but it also shows the taken-for-granted privilege that accompanies straight life. Straight people, especially straight white males, generally feel comfortable in public space. In contrast, queer people often experience public space as something that resists, challenges, and questions their right to existence.

SUMMARY  1. Daniel Bell’s grand theory focuses on the emergence of postindustrial society, which is characterized by a transition from goods production to service provision, the decline of blue-collar work and the rise of professional and technical work, the replacement of practical know-how with theoretical knowledge, improved assessment of and control over technology, and the development of new intellectual technologies.

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 2. In postindustrial society a conflict occurs between social structure (especially the economy), which is dominated by rationality and efficiency, and culture, which is dominated by irrationality, self-realization, and self-gratification.  3. Michel Foucault’s grand theory differs from those of modernists because of Foucault’s rejection of finding origins and his focus on incoherence and on discontinuity.  4. The substance of Foucault’s grand theory deals with the increase in governmentality, that is, the practices and techniques by which control is exercised over people.  5. Instead of seeing progress and increasing humanization in the treatment of prisoners over time, Foucault sees an increase in the ability to punish people and to punish them more deeply.  6. Three basic instruments are available to those who seek to exercise control over and observe a population. The first is hierarchical observation, or the ability of officials at or near the top of an organization to oversee all that they control with a single gaze.  7. A panopticon is a structure that allows someone in power (e.g., a prison officer) the possibility of complete observation of a group of people (e.g., prisoners).  8. The second instrument of disciplinary power is the ability to make normalizing judgments and to punish those who violate the norms.  9. The third instrument of disciplinary power is the use of examination as a way of observing subordinates and judging what they are doing. 10. Although he focuses on control, Foucault recognizes that control is constantly contested. This is part of his interest in the microphysics of power. 11. In contrast to the accepted grand theory, Foucault sees an increase in the ability of the sane and their agents to separate the insane from the rest of the population and to oppress and repress them. 12. In contrast to the accepted grand theory on the relationship between Victorianism and sexuality, Foucault sees more analysis, stocktaking, classification, specification, and causal and quantitative study of sexuality. 13. Zygmunt Bauman associates modernity with an inability to accept ambivalence, but postmodernity promises to be more accepting of ambivalence. 14. Bauman also associates neotribalism with postmodernity. These new tribes, or communities, are refuges for strangers and more specifically for a wide range of

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ethnic, religious, and political groups. These communities, and their groups, are tolerated by the larger society. 15. The morality of the postmodern world is dominated by the need to be for the Other. 16. Jean Baudrillard sees a transformation from producer society to consumer society. 17. Consumption is better explained by the consumer’s search for difference than by the needs of consumers. 18. When we consume, we are consuming signs rather than goods or services. 19. Because the code determines the meanings of signs, it also controls consumption. 20. Capitalism has shifted from a focus on control over workers to control over consumers. 21. Baudrillard also views a transformation from primitive symbolic exchange (a reversible process of giving and receiving) characterized by its genuineness to today’s simulations, or fakes, that are characterized by their lack of genuineness. 22. George Ritzer sees a world dominated by hyperconsumption, fostered, at least in part, by the new means of consumption. 23. The process of creative destruction continues, and even some of the new material means of consumption are threatened by the even newer nonmaterial means of consumption, such as cybermalls and home shopping television. 24. To attract consumers, the new means of consumption use a variety of mechanisms, such as implosion, simulation, and the manipulation of time and space. Nonmaterial means of consumption are better able to use these mechanisms than are the new material means of consumption. 25. Queer theory focuses on the social construction of sexuality and in particular the construction of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender sexuality. 26. The categories of homosexual and heterosexual are not universal forms of sexuality but rather modern constructions that have shaped the experience of sexuality for the past 150 years. 27. Sex and gender are not natural attributes that emanate from the body; rather, they are created through social performances. 28. Modern sexuality has been defined through an epistemology of the closet in which the importance of homosexuality to the organization of modern life has been hidden and denied.

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SUGGESTED READINGS ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. A provocative modernist work by a theorist who has become one of the best-known postmodernists. Demonstrates why, despite his own ambivalence about it, he prefers postmodernity to modernity. PETER BEILHARZ Zygmunt Bauman: Dialectic of Modernity. London: Sage, 2000. A study of Bauman’s work from a strong theorist and a great admirer of Bauman’s work. PETER BEILHARZ “Zygmunt Bauman.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 155–174. Overview of Bauman’s major contributions, placed in the context of his life and intellectual environment. JUDITH BUTLER Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. A foundational text in queer theory and one of Butler’s most cited books; offers criticisms of essentialist theories of sexuality and introduces her performative theory of sexuality. MIKE GANE, ed. Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews. London: Routledge, 1993. Revealing and fascinating set of interviews with this leading postmodern thinker. DOUGLAS KELLNER “Jean Baudrillard.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 310–338. Overview of the major contributions of this provocative postmodern thinker placed in the context of his life and times. EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. A central text in queer theory; analyzes how the concept of the closet has shaped modern understandings of sexuality and social life more generally. MOYA LLOYD “Judith Butler.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 541–560. Overview of the work and life of this most important queer theorist. GARY T. MARX “Surveillance.” In George Ritzer, ed. The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, pp. 816–821. Brief overview of surveillance and surveillance methods in the contemporary world.

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JAMES MILLER The Passion of Michel Foucault. New York: Anchor Books, 1993. Fascinating biography of this most provocative of social theorists. GEORGE RITZER Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption: Fast Food, Credit Cards, and Casinos. London: Sage, 2001. A collection of excerpts from Ritzer’s books and essays, several previously unpublished, on the sociology of consumption. GEORGE RITZER, PAUL DEAN, and NATHAN JURGENSON, eds. “The Coming Age of Prosumption and the Prosumer,” special double issue, American Behavioral Scientist 56, no. 4 (2012): 379–398. A collection of cutting-edge research papers in the field of prosumption studies. STEVEN SEIDMAN Difference Troubles: Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Book-length treatment of the topic from the leading sociological spokesperson for queer theory. DENNIS SMITH Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. A short introduction to Bauman’s ideas. WILLIAM STAPLES Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Book-length discussion of everyday surveillance in the postmodern world. KEITH TESTER The Social Thought of Zygmunt Bauman. London: Palgrave, 2004. A more recent overview of Bauman’s contributions to social theory. COUZE VENN “Michel Foucault.” In George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, vol. 2, Contemporary Social Theorists. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, pp. 240–267. Overview of the major contributions of Michel Foucault placed in the context of his life and intellectual environment. MALCOLM WATERS Daniel Bell. London: Routledge, 1996. Full treatment of Bell and his work.

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CHAPTER

ELEVEN

GLOBALIZATION THEORY

Major Contemporary Theorists on Globalization Cultural Theory Economic Theory Political Theory Summary Suggested Readings

Globalization theory refers to the set of theories that emerged in the late 20th century to describe the increasing interconnectedness of people and nations across the planet. Virtually every nation and the lives of billions of people throughout the world have been transformed, often quite dramatically, by globalization. The degree and significance of globalization’s impacts can be seen virtually everywhere one looks. To take a few examples: national economies are regulated, at least to some degree, by international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF); global climate change is addressed through international accords such as the Paris Agreement; international travel and immigration connect people from different cultures in unprecedented ways; and perhaps most important, the internet offers increasingly powerful ways to forge myriad global connections. The significance of globalization is also indicated by the intensity of the resistance it has faced. For example, in the 1990s and early 2000s, meetings of the WTO and IMF were regularly met with demonstrations by people who were concerned that globalization favors the interests of large corporations over everyday people. More recently, after many years of supporting economic globalization, nations such as the United Kingdom and the United States have indicated their hostility to globalization. In 2016, in a national referendum, the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union. Referred to as Brexit (British exit), this move is viewed by many as a protest against international political organizations and the limits they place on national sovereignty. Expressing similar sentiments,

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in 2016 Americans elected Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. Trump’s campaign was largely based on an antiglobalization message, including promises to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico and to withdraw from, or renegotiate, international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, from which the United States has now withdrawn) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as well as other international agreements, such as the Paris climate accord. These political developments do not mean that globalization is over or that the world is deglobalizing. For example, the antiglobalization of the Trump presidency is now counter-balanced by the Joseph Biden presidency, which is more sympathetic to the ideals of globalization. Moreover, globalization is a complex phenomenon that includes not only economic but also cultural, political, and environmental elements. Although some aspects of the global order may change (e.g., national involvement in international trade pacts), others may stay the same or intensify. For example, despite rising talk of nationalism, the global flow of information and culture continues unabated. This can be seen in the ever-­increasing amount of global communication via the internet as well as in the growth of international content on streaming services like Netflix. Even changes to trade agreements may not be so much about deglobalization as they are about a change in the organization of the global order. Globalization theory also emerged as a result of a series of developments internal to social theory, notably the reaction against such earlier perspectives as modernization theory. Among the defining characteristics of modernization theory were its Western bias, the preeminence accorded to developments in the West, and the idea that the rest of the world had little choice but to become increasingly like the West (for more on these critiques, see Chapter 9). Although there are many different versions of globalization theory, virtually all of them shift dramatically away from a focus on the West (including and especially the United States) to examine transnational processes, both those that flow in many different directions and those that are, at least to some degree, autonomous and independent of any single nation or area of the world (see the discussion of Arjun Appadurai’s work, which follows). Globalization can be analyzed culturally, economically, politically, and/or institutionally. For each analytic viewpoint, a key difference is whether one sees increasing homogeneity or heterogeneity. At the extremes, the globalization of culture can be seen as the transnational expansion of common codes and practices (homogeneity) or as a process in which many global and local cultural inputs interact to create a kind of pastiche, or a blend, leading to a variety of cultural hybrids (heterogeneity). The trend toward homogeneity is often associated with cultural imperialism, or the influence of a particular culture on a wide range of other cultures. There are many varieties of cultural imperialism, including those that emphasize the role played by American culture, the West, or core countries. cultural imperialism–The influence of a particular culture on a wide array of other cultures.

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Among many others, Roland Robertson, although he does not use the term cultural imperialism, opposes the idea through his famous concept of “glocalization” (discussed as follows), in which the global is seen as interacting with the local to produce something distinctive—the glocal. Theorists who focus on economic factors in examining globalization tend to emphasize the growing importance of these factors and their homogenizing effects on the world. They generally see globalization as the spread of the market economy throughout many regions of the world. For example, some have focused on globalization and the expansion of trade. Joseph ­Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, has issued stinging attacks on the World Bank, the WTO, and especially the IMF for their roles in exacerbating, rather than resolving, global economic crises. Among other things, Stiglitz has criticized the IMF for its homogenizing, “one-size-fits-all” approach that fails to take into account national differences. The IMF in particular and globalization in general have worked to the advantage of the wealthy nations, especially the United States (which effectively has veto power over IMF decisions), and to the detriment of poor nations; the gap between rich and poor has actually increased as a result of globalization. Whereas those who focus on economic issues tend to emphasize homogeneity, some differentiation (heterogeneity) is acknowledged to exist at the margins of the global economy. Indeed, Stiglitz argues that the IMF and other global economic organizations need to implement more differentiated policies. Other forms of heterogeneity in the economic realm include the commodification of local cultures and the existence of flexible specialization that permits the tailoring of many products to local needs. More generally, those who emphasize heterogeneity would argue that the interaction of the global market with local markets leads to the creation of unique “glocal” markets that integrate the demands of the global market with the realities of the local market.

KEY CONCEPT Globalization

Globalization is increasingly omnipresent. We are living in a—or even the— “global age.” Globalization is clearly an important change; it could even be argued that it is the most important change in human history. This is reflected in many domains, but particularly in social relationships and social structures, (Continued)

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(Continued) especially those that are widely dispersed geographically. Globalization can be defined as a transplanetary process or set of processes involving growing multidirectional flows of increasingly liquid people, objects, places, and information and the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to or expedite those flows. On the one hand, the emphasis in this definition is on movement—­ multidirectional processes and flows of phenomena that have become increasingly liquid in the contemporary world. People move around the world more easily (as tourists, migrants), objects travel easily and quickly because of companies like Federal Express, places move everywhere (McDonald’s in well over 100 countries in the world), and information moves most easily and quickly of all via the internet. On the other hand, structures are also important globally. Some of those structures help in the flow of phenomena. For example, established routes for airlines help them move throughout the world (and serve to prevent midair collisions), and illegal migrants follow well-established paths, for example, from Central and South America through Mexico and then to the United States. However, other structures serve to slow down or even stop global flows. The borders of nation-states and passport and customs controls are examples of such structures. Overall, in thinking about globalization we need to focus on that which is in motion—processes, flows, liquids—as well as the more stationary structures that either expedite or impede those flows. In contrast to many other definitions of globalization, the one offered here does not assume that greater global integration is an inevitable component of ­globalization. That is, globalization can bring with it greater integration (­especially when things flow easily), but it can also serve to reduce the level of integration (when structures are erected that successfully block flows). A term that is closely related to globalization is transnationalism, which involves the interconnection of individuals and social groups across the borders of specific nation-states. This in turn is related to the idea of transnationality, or the development of communities, identities, and relationships that are not ­limited to a single nation-state. The words globalization and transnationalism are often used interchangeably. However, transnationalism is limited to interconnections that cross geopolitical borders, especially those associated with nation-states, whereas globalization includes such connections but is not restricted to them

globalization–A transplanetary process or set of processes involving growing multidirectional flows of increasingly liquid people, objects, places, and information and the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to or expedite those flows.

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and encompasses a far wider range of transplanetary processes. Further, ­g eopolitical borders are only one of the kinds of barriers encountered, and often overcome, by globalization. Some phenomena, labor unions, for example, are better thought of as transnational rather than as global. That is, the cross-border relationships among labor unions that exist in two or more nation-states are more important than the global labor movement. Sociologists most often use the concept of transnationalism when thinking about, and doing research on, immigrants who move from one country to another but continue to be involved with their countries of origin.

Globalization theorists with political or institutional orientations, too, tend to emphasize either homogeneity or heterogeneity. For example, some who operate from a homogenization perspective in this domain focus on the worldwide spread of models of the nation-state and the emergence of similar forms of governance throughout the globe. More broadly, these theorists are concerned with the global influence of a multiplicity of institutions. As we will see, some view the growth of transnational institutions and organizations as greatly diminishing the power of both the nation-state and other, more local, social structures to make a difference in people’s lives. One of the most extreme views of homogenization in the political realm is Benjamin Barber’s thinking on “McWorld,” or the growth of a single political orientation that is increasingly pervasive throughout the world. (Barber’s view of McWorld is not restricted to politics; he sees many other domains following the model of McWorld.) Interestingly, Barber also articulates, as an alternative perspective, the idea of “Jihad,” which he defines as localized, ethnic, and reactionary political forces (including “rogue states”) that involve an intensification of nationalism and that lead to greater political heterogeneity throughout the world. The interaction of McWorld and Jihad at the local level may produce unique, glocal political formations that integrate elements of both the former (e.g., use of the internet to attract supporters) and the latter (e.g., use of traditional ideas and rhetoric). Although the issue of homogenization/heterogenization cuts across a broad swath of globalization theory, it is not exhaustive. That will become clear in the following discussion of major theories of globalization, which certainly touches on homogenization/heterogenization but also highlights a number of other facets of globalization theory. This discussion is divided into four sections. First, we look at the perspectives on globalization of some of the major contemporary theorists (Giddens, Beck, and Bauman) encountered earlier in this book. We then turn to three broad categories of theorizing about globalization: cultural, economic, and political/institutional.

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KEY CONCEPT Civil Society

The major figure in social theory associated with the idea of civil society is Alexis de Tocqueville (see Chapter 1). Tocqueville lauded the propensity of Americans to form a wide range of associations (e.g., religious, moral) that were not political in nature and orientation. Such civil associations allowed people to interact with one another and to develop, renew, and enlarge feelings, ideas, emotions, and understandings. They also allowed people to band together and to act in concert with one another. Without such associations, individuals would be isolated and weak in large-scale contemporary societies. The United States (and the West more generally) often conquered the world through uncivilized, even violent, means (colonialism, imperialism; see Chapter 9). However, it also played a major role in creating many of the elements of civil society, such as a free press, a written constitution, religious tolerance, and human rights. A robust civil society was already in existence in the United States by the beginning of the 20th century (with associations such as peace societies, cooperatives, and workers’ movements), but it was soon set back dramatically by two world wars. It was largely in the aftermath of World War II that modern civil society took shape and expanded dramatically. In the development of modern civil society, central importance is accorded to the 1970s and 1980s, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe. In both regions, people united in opposition to military dictatorship and in efforts to find autonomous and self-organizing bases outside the state to oppose the military. It was also during this period that civil society became increasingly global as improved travel and communication made linkages possible among civil society groups throughout the world. These groups mounted appeals to international authorities and were able to create a global political space for themselves where they argued for, and helped bring about, international agreements on issues such as human rights. Of great importance in the 1990s was the emergence of global activism as people from different nations came together in efforts to deal with land mines, human rights, climate change, and HIV/AIDS. Civil society is the process through which individuals engage with political and economic authorities in a wide variety of ways. It is a realm in which people can communicate with one another more or less directly and in which they can, among other things, analyze and criticize political and economic institutions. People can do this, and thereby act publicly, through their participation in a variety of voluntary associations, social movements, political parties, and labor unions. Thus, civil society involves both settings and the actions that take place within those settings. It also represents an ideal toward which many people and

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groups aspire—an active, vital, and powerful civil society that can influence, and act as a counterbalance to, the polity and the economy. It is particularly the case that civil society stands as a counterbalance and an alternative to both the nationstate and the economic market, especially the neoliberal capitalist market. Whereas civil society has historically been linked to groups and actions within states, in recent years it has been associated with more global actions and organizations (e.g., international nongovernmental organizations [INGOs]). In other words, we have moved increasingly toward a global civil society, although civil society remains a force within states and societies as well. Global civil society is nongovernmental, a form of society composed of interlinked social processes oriented to civility (nonviolence), to being pluralistic (including the strong potential to reduce conflict), and to being global. A number of factors are involved in the recent rise of civil society in general and INGOs in particular. Perhaps the most important are global flows (see the Key Concept box “Globalization”), including flows of both resources (money, information, popular culture, etc.) and threats (e.g., pollution, drugs, sex trafficking). As the power of the nation-state to deal with these flows—and, in the case of negative flows, to mitigate or prevent them—has declined, the role of civil society in general and of myriad INGOs in particular has grown. Among the most notable of these INGOs are CARE, the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and Oxfam. Perhaps of greatest importance today in civil society are groups that represent the poor, especially those in less developed countries, and seek to improve the position of the poor within the global economy.

MAJOR CONTEMPORARY THEORISTS ON GLOBALIZATION Anthony Giddens on the “Runaway World” of Globalization Giddens’s views on globalization are obviously closely related to, and overlap with, his thinking on the juggernaut of modernity (see Chapter 5). Giddens also sees a close link between globalization and risk, especially the rise of what he calls manufactured risk. Much of the runaway world of globalization is beyond our control, but Giddens is not totally pessimistic. We can limit the problems created by the runaway world, but we can never control it completely. He holds out some hope for democracy, especially international and transnational forms of democracy such as the European Union. Giddens emphasizes the role of the West in general, and the United States in particular, in globalization. However, he also recognizes that globalization is a two-way process, with the West being strongly influenced by it. Furthermore, he argues that globalization is in the process of becoming decentered, with nations

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outside the West playing an increasingly large role. He also recognizes that globalization has both undermined local cultures and served to revive them. And he makes the innovative point that globalization “squeezes sideways,” producing new areas that may cut across nations. He offers as an example an area around ­Barcelona in northern Spain that extends into France. A key clash taking place at the global level today is that between fundamentalism (or traditionalism) and cosmopolitanism. Fundamentalism, the main force in opposition to cosmopolitanism, is itself a product of globalization. Furthermore, fundamentalism uses global forces (e.g., the mass media) to further its ends. Fundamentalism can take various forms—religious, ethnic, nationalist, political— but, according to Giddens, whatever form it takes is problematic both because it is at odds with cosmopolitanism and because it is linked to violence. In the end, however, Giddens sees the emergence of a “global cosmopolitan society.”

Ulrich Beck and the Politics of Globalization We can get at the essence of Beck’s thinking on this issue by discussing his distinction between globalism and globality. Globalism is the view that the world is dominated by economics and that we are witnessing the emergence of the hegemony of the capitalist world market and the neoliberal ideology that underpins it. To Beck, this view involves both monocausal and linear thinking. The multidimensionality of global developments—ecology, politics, culture, and civil society—is wrongly reduced to a single economic dimension. And that economic dimension is seen, again erroneously, as evolving in a linear direction of everincreasing dependence on the world market. Clearly, Beck sees the world in much more multidimensional and multidirectional terms. In addition, he is sensitive to the problems associated with the capitalist world market, including the fact that there are all sorts of barriers to free trade and that there are not only winners in this world market but also (many) losers. Although Beck is a critic of globalism, he sees much merit in the idea of globality, in which closed spaces, especially those associated with nations, are growing increasingly illusory because of globalization, which involves transnational actors with varying degrees of power, identities, and the like, crisscrossing and undermining nation-states. These transnational processes are not simply economic but also involve ecology, culture, politics, and civil society. Such processes traverse national borders, rendering them porous, if not increasingly irrelevant. Nothing is limited to the local any longer; that which takes place locally, including both advances and catastrophes, affects the entire world. globalism–The monocausal and unilinear view that the world is dominated by economics and that we are witnessing the emergence of the hegemony of the capitalist world market and the neoliberal ideology that underpins it. globality–The view that closed spaces, especially those associated with nations, are growing increasingly illusory in the era of globalization.

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Although transnational processes have long existed, globality is new for at least three reasons. First, its influence over geographic space is far more extensive than that of earlier transnational processes. Second, its influence over time is far more stable; it is of continual influence from one time to another. Third, there is far greater density to its elements, including transnational relationships and networks. Beck also lists a number of other things that are distinctive about globality in comparison to earlier manifestations of transnationality: 1. Everyday life and interaction across national borders are being profoundly affected. 2. There is a self-perception of this transnationality in realms such as the mass media, consumption, and tourism. 3. Community, labor, and capital are increasingly placeless. 4. There is a growing awareness of global ecological dangers and actions to be taken to deal with them. 5. There is an increasing perception of transcultural others in our lives. 6. Global culture industries circulate at unprecedented levels. 7. There is an increase in the number and strength of transnational agreements, actors, and institutions. This leads Beck to refine his previously discussed thinking on modernity and to argue that globality, and the inability to reverse it, is associated with what he now calls “second modernity.” Above all, however, what defines the latter is the decline of the power of the nations and the national borders that went to the heart of “first modernity.” The central premise of first modernity is (was) that we live in self-enclosed nation-states. (Beck dismisses this as a “container theory” of society.) Thus, globality and second modernity mean, most importantly, denationalization and, Beck hopes, the rise of transnational organizations and perhaps a transnational state.

Zygmunt Bauman on the Human Consequences of Globalization Bauman sees globalization in terms of a “space war.” In his view, it is mobility that has become the most important and differentiating factor in social stratification in the world today. Thus, the winners of the space war are those who are mobile, that is, able to move freely throughout the globe and in the process to create meaning for themselves. They can float relatively free of space, and when they must “land” somewhere, they isolate themselves in walled and policed spaces where they are safe from the losers in the space war. The latter not only lack mobility but also are relegated and confined to territories denuded of meaning and even of the ability to offer meaning. Thus, whereas the elite may be intoxicated by their

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ZYGMUNT BAUMAN (1925–2017) A Biographical Vignette Zygmunt Bauman had an interesting life and scholarly career. Born in Poland, he escaped the Nazis (he was Jewish) by fleeing with his family to Russia. He fought in the Polish army during World War II, and by 1953 he had risen to the rank of major before being relieved of his duties during a wave of anti-Semitism. He then turned to the social sciences, and by 1968 he had risen to become a professor at Warsaw University when he was again forced out of his position by antiSemitism. He eventually ended up at the University of Leeds in England, where he proceeded to publish widely in English and became one of the leading social theorists of the day. His first book in English appeared in 1972, and although he achieved significant recognition in the ensuing decades, his career took off when in 1989 he published the landmark Modernity and the Holocaust, a book that argues that the Holocaust was not an aberration but an expression of the essential nature of modernity. This critique of modernity led Bauman in the direction of postmodernity and postmodern social theory, which he engaged and adapted to his own orientation through the 1990s. Toward the end of his career he increasingly became a public intellectual, writing on a wide range of subjects, including globalization, but this did not prevent him from making new and original contributions to the scholarly literature, such as his 2000 notion of “liquid modernity.”

mobility opportunities, the rest are more likely to feel imprisoned in their home territories, from which they have little prospect of moving. Furthermore, the latter are likely to feel humiliated by the lack of their own mobility and the sight of elites free to move about at will. As a result, territories become battlefields where the losers and winners of the space war face off in an uneven conflict. The winners can be said to live in time rather than in space; they are able to span virtually every space quickly, if not instantaneously. In contrast, the losers can be seen as living in space. That space is beyond their control, heavy, resilient, resistant, untouchable, and able to tie time down. However, it is important to distinguish among those who have at least some mobility. The tourists are on the move because they want to be. They are attracted by something, find it irresistible, and move toward it. Then there are the vagabonds, who are on the move because they find their environs unbearable or inhospitable for any number of reasons. The positive aspects of what we applaud as globalization are those associated with tourists–Those on the move throughout the globe because they want to be (Bauman). vagabonds–Those on the move throughout the globe because they find their environs unbearable or inhospitable for any number of reasons (Bauman).

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tourists, although an unavoidable side effect is that many others are transformed into vagabonds. However, most people exist between these two extremes. They are unsure exactly where they now stand, and wherever it is, they are not sure they will be in the same place tomorrow. Thus, globalization translates into uneasiness for most of us. However, even the seeming winners in globalization—the tourists—have their problems. First, there is the burden associated with the impossibility of slowing down; it is hard to be always on the move and at high speed. Second, mobility means an unending string of choices, and each choice has a measure of uncertainty associated with it. Third, each of these choices also carries with it a series of risks and dangers. Endless mobility and continual choice eventually become troublesome if not burdensome. Given the globalization theories of some of today’s major social theorists, we turn to the major types of globalization theory and some examples from other major social thinkers.

CULTURAL THEORY Jan Nederveen Pieterse has identified three major paradigms in theorizing the cultural aspects of globalization, specifically on the centrally important issue of whether cultures around the globe are eternally different, converging, or creating new “hybrid” forms out of the unique combination of global and local cultures. Next we look at each of these paradigms in turn and present a representative example (or examples) of each.

Cultural Differentialism Those who adopt the cultural differentialism paradigm argue that there are lasting differences among and between cultures that are largely unaffected by globalization or any other bi-, inter-, multi-, and transcultural processes. This is not to say that cultures are completely unaffected by any of these processes, especially globalization, but it is to say that at their core, cultures remain much as they always have been. In this perspective globalization occurs only on the surface, and the deep structures of cultures are largely, if not totally, unaffected by it. Cultures are seen as largely closed not only to globalization but also to the influences of other cultures. The world may be envisioned as a mosaic of largely separate cultures or, in a more menacing metaphor, as a number of billiard balls (representing cultures) bouncing off of one another. The latter image is more menacing because it indicates the possibility of dangerous and potentially catastrophic collisions among and between world cultures. This paradigm has a long history, but in the early 21st century, it attracted increased attention and adherents (as well as critics) because of two sets of events. The first set of events encompasses the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and the continuing CHAPTER ELEVEN  •  GLOBALIZATION THEORY   353

terrorist acts claimed by the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS). Many observers see these events as the products of a clash between Western and Islamic cultures stemming from eternal cultural differences. The other set of events involves the increasing multiculturalism of both the United States (largely because of the growing Hispanic p ­ opulation) and Western European countries (largely because of growing Muslim populations) and the vast differences, and enmity, between majority and minority populations. The most famous, and controversial, example of this paradigm is Samuel Huntington’s 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington traces the beginnings of the current world situation to the end of the Cold War and the reconfiguration of the world from one in which nations were differentiated on a political economic basis (democratic/capitalist versus totalitarian/communist) to one in which cultural differences became most important. Divisions based in cultural differences are nothing new, but they were largely submerged (as in the old Yugoslavia, where divisions existed between Serbs and Croats, among others) by the overwhelming political economic differences of the Cold War era. What we have seen resurfacing in the past two decades are ancient identities, adversaries, and enemies. Huntington uses the term civilization to describe the broadest level of these cultures and cultural identities (indeed, to him civilization is culture “writ large”). He sees the emergence of fault lines among and between these civilizations, and this is a highly dangerous situation, given the historic enmities among at least some of these civilizations. Huntington differentiates among seven or eight world civilizations: Sinic (Chinese), Japanese (sometimes combined with the Sinic as Far Eastern), Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox (centered in Russia), Western (which includes Europe, North America, and the closely aligned Australia and New Zealand), Latin American, and (possibly) African. He sees these civilizations as differing greatly on basic philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life. To Huntington, human history is in effect the history of civilizations, especially these civilizations. Civilizations share a number of characteristics, including the fact that there is great agreement on what they are (although they lack clear beginnings and there are no clear-cut boundaries between civilizations, which nonetheless, are quite real): 1. Civilizations are among the most enduring of human associations (although they do change over time). 2. Civilizations represent the broadest level of cultural identity (short of humanity in its entirety). 3. Civilizations represent the broadest type of subjective self-identification.

civilization–The broadest domain of cultures and cultural identities; culture “writ large” (Huntington).

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4. Civilizations usually span more than one state (although they do not perform state functions). 5. Each civilization is a totality. 6. Civilizations are closely aligned with both religion and race. Huntington offers a modern grand narrative of the relationships among civilizations. For more than 3,000 years (approximately 1500 BC to AD 1500) civilizations tended to be widely separated in terms of both time and space. As a result, contacts among them were rare. When such contacts occurred, they took place on a limited or intermittent basis, and they were likely intense. The next phase, roughly from 1500 to the close of World War II, was characterized by the sustained, overpowering, and unidirectional impact of Western civilization on all other civilizations. Huntington attributes this to structural characteristics of the West, including the rise of cities, commerce, and state bureaucracy as well as an emerging sense of national consciousness. However, the most immediate cause was technological advancement, especially in ocean navigation and the military, including improvements in military organization, discipline and training, and of course, weaponry. In the end, the West excelled in organized violence, and although those in the West sometimes forget this, those in other parts of the world have not. Thus, by 1910, before World War I, the world came closer, in Huntington’s view, than at any other time in history to being one world, one civilization—Western civilization. The third phase—the multicivilizational system—is traceable to the end of the expansion of the West and the beginning of the revolt against it. The period after World War I to about 1990 was characterized by the clash of ideas, especially capitalist and communist ideologies. With the fall of communism the major clashes in the world now revolve around religions, cultures, and ultimately, civilizations. Although the West continues to be dominant, Huntington foresees its decline. This decline will be slow, will not occur in a straight line, and will involve decreases in the West’s resources—population, economic products, and military capability (traceable to things such as the decline of U.S. forces and the globalization of the defense industries, making generally available weapons once available only, or largely, to the West). Other civilizations will increasingly reject the West, but they will embrace and utilize the advances of modernization, which can and should be distinguished from Westernization. While the West declines, the resurgences of two other civilizations will be of greatest importance. The first will be the economic growth of Asian societies, especially Sinic civilization. Huntington foresees continuing growth of Asian economies that will soon surpass those of the West. Important in itself, this will translate into increasing power for the East and a corresponding decline in the ability of the West to impose its standards on the East. Huntington sees the economic ascendancy of the East as largely traceable to the superior aspects of Eastern cultures, especially collectivism, which contrasts with the individuality that dominates the

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West. Also helpful to the economic rise of the East will be other commonalities among the nations of the region (e.g., religion, especially Confucianism). The economic successes of Asian societies will be important not only in themselves but also for the role they will play as models for other non-Western societies. This first of Huntington’s arguments is not that surprising or original. After all, we witnessed the dramatic growth of the post–World War II Japanese economy, and we are now witnessing the amazing economic transformation of China. Few would disagree with the view that given current economic trends, the Chinese economy will become the largest in the world in the not-too-distant future. More controversial is Huntington’s second major contention, which involves the resurgence of Islam. Whereas the Sinic emergence is rooted in the economy, the Islamic resurgence is rooted in the dramatic growth and mobilization of the Muslim population. These changes have touched virtually every Muslim society, usually first culturally and then sociopolitically. They can be seen as part of the global revival of religion and also as both products of and efforts to come to grips with modernization. Huntington goes beyond pointing to this development to paint a dire portrait of the future of the relations between the West and these other two civilizations, especially Islam. The Cold War conflict between capitalism and communism has been replaced by conflict that is to be found at the “fault lines” among and between civilizations, especially the Western, Sinic, and Islamic civilizations. Thus, Huntington foresees dangerous clashes in the future involving Western civilization (and what he calls its “arrogance”), Islamic civilization (and its “intolerance”), and Sinic civilization (and its “assertiveness”). Much of the conflict will revolve around the West’s view of itself as possessing “universal culture,” its desire to export that culture to the rest of the world, and its declining ability to do so. Furthermore, what the West sees as universalism, the rest of the world, especially Islamic civilization, sees as imperialism. More specifically, the West wants to limit weapons proliferation, whereas other civilizations want weapons, especially “weapons of mass destruction.” The West also seeks to export democracy to, even impose it on, other societies and civilizations that often resist it as part of the West’s idea of universal culture. Although the West seeks to control and limit immigration (especially from Islamic civilization), many people from Islamic and Sinic civilizations have found their way into the West or want to be there. As this migration increases, ­Huntington sees cleft societies developing within both Europe and the United States. Huntington makes a number of controversial statements about Islamic civilization and Muslims that have earned him numerous criticisms and great enmity. For example, he argues that wherever Muslims and non-Muslims live in close proximity to one another, violent conflict and intense antagonism are pervasive. And he puts much of the blame for this on Muslims and what he asserts is their propensity toward violent conflict. He argues that from the beginning, Islam has been a religion of the sword; it glorifies military values, and there is a history of Islamic conquest (however, this clearly pales in comparison to the history of Western conquest). The relationship between Islam and other civilizations has

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historically been one of mutual indigestibility. Of course, Western imperialism— often with Islam as a target—has played a key role in this. Islam also lacks a strong core state to exert control over the civilization. But of greatest importance to Huntington are the pressures created by the demographic explosion within Islam. Huntington is also concerned about the decline of the West, especially of the United States. He sees the United States, indeed all societies, as threatened by an increasingly multicivilizational or multicultural character. For him, the demise of the United States effectively means the demise of Western civilization. Without a powerful, unicivilizational United States, the West is minuscule. For the West to survive and prosper, the United States must do two things. First, it must reaffirm its identity as a Western (rather than multicivilizational) nation. Second, it must reaffirm and reassert its role as the leader of Western civilization around the globe. The reassertion and acceptance of Western civilization (which would also involve a renunciation of universalism), indeed all civilizations, is the surest way to prevent warfare among civilizations. The real danger, for Huntington, is multiculturalism within the West and all other civilizations. Thus, Huntington ultimately comes down on the side of cultural continuity and something approaching cultural purity within civilizations. Thus, for him, at least in some ideal sense, globalization becomes a process by which civilizations continue to exist and move in roughly parallel fashion in the coming years. This constitutes a reaffirmation of the importance of civilization—that is, culture—in the epoch of globalization.

Cultural Convergence Whereas the cultural differentiation paradigm is rooted in the idea of lasting differences among and between cultures and civilizations as a result of, or in spite of, globalization, the cultural convergence paradigm is based on the idea that globalization is leading to increasing sameness throughout the world. Whereas thinkers like Huntington emphasize the persistence of cultures and civilizations in the face of globalization, those who support this perspective see cultures as changing, sometimes radically, as a result of globalization. The cultures of the world are seen as growing increasingly similar, at least to some degree and in some ways. There is a tendency to see global assimilation in the direction of dominant groups and societies in the world. Those who operate from this perspective focus on things such as cultural imperialism, global capitalism, Westernization, Americanization, and “McDonaldization.” At its extreme, globalization becomes Westernization, Americanization, and McDonaldization writ large. Next, we will discuss two versions of this basic argument that are closely associated with George Ritzer’s work on this topic: McDonaldization and the “globalization of nothing.” However, a note of warning and clarification. Whereas Ritzer’s work does focus on cultural convergence, it certainly does not argue that such convergence is all that is happening in globalization or that local cultures are disappearing completely or even necessarily being altered in some fundamental way. Rather, the argument is that there are global processes that are bringing the

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same or similar phenomena (e.g., McDonald’s restaurants in 120-plus countries) to many parts of the world, and in that sense, there is cultural convergence. However, side by side with such global phenomena exist local phenomena (e.g., local open-air food markets and craft fairs) that continue to be vibrant and important. Furthermore, it may well be that the arrival of these global forms spurs the revival or development of new local forms. Although the last two points are certainly meritorious, in accepting them we must not lose sight of the fact that some, perhaps a great deal, of cultural convergence is also occurring (the spread of Walmart into Mexico and other nations would be another example). McDonaldization.  Although it is based on Max Weber’s ideas on the rationalization of the West (see Chapter 2), the McDonaldization thesis adopts a different model (Weber focused on the bureaucracy, whereas Ritzer concentrates on the fast-food restaurant), brings the theory into the 21st century, and views rationalization as extending its reach into more sectors of society and areas of the world than Weber ever imagined. Of greatest concern in terms of this section is the fact that McDonaldization is, as we will see, a force in globalization, especially increasing cultural homogenization. McDonaldization is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world. The nature of this process may be delineated through an overview of McDonaldization’s five basic dimensions: efficiency, calculability, predictability, control through the substitution of technology for people, and paradoxically, the irrationality of rationality. First, a McDonaldizing society emphasizes efficiency, or the effort to discover the best possible means to whatever end is desired. Workers in fast-food restaurants clearly must work efficiently; for example, burgers are assembled, and sometimes even cooked, in an assembly-line fashion. Customers want, and are expected, to acquire and consume their meals efficiently. The drive-through window is a highly efficient means for customers to obtain, and employees to dole out, meals. Overall, a variety of norms, rules, regulations, procedures, and structures have been put in place in the fast-food restaurant to ensure that both employees and customers act in an efficient manner. Furthermore, the efficiency of one party helps ensure that the other will behave in a similar manner. Second, great importance is given to calculability, or an emphasis on quantity, often to the detriment of quality. Aspects of the work at fast-food McDonaldization–The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to d­ ominate more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world; in the latter sense, a form of cultural ­imperialism (Ritzer). efficiency–The effort to discover the best possible means to whatever end is desired; a dimension of ­McDonaldization (Ritzer). calculability–An emphasis on quantity, often to the detriment of quality; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer).

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restaurants are timed; this emphasis on speed often has adverse effects on the quality of the work, from the point of view of the employee, resulting in dissatisfaction, alienation, and high turnover rates. Similarly, customers are expected to spend as little time as possible in the fast-food restaurant. In fact, the drive-through window reduces this time to zero, but if customers desire to eat in the restaurant, the chairs may be designed to impel them to leave after about 20 minutes. This emphasis on speed clearly has a negative effect on the quality of the dining experience at a fast-food restaurant. Furthermore, the emphasis on how fast the work is to be done means that customers cannot be served high-quality food, which almost by definition, requires a good deal of time to prepare. McDonaldization also involves an emphasis on predictability, meaning that things (products, settings, employees, customer behavior, etc.) are pretty much the same from one geographic setting to another and from one time to another. Employees are expected to perform their work in a predictable manner and, for their part, customers are expected to respond with similarly predictable behavior. Thus, when customers enter, employees ask, following scripts, what they wish to order. For their part, customers are expected to know what they want, or where to look to find what they want, and are expected to order, pay, and leave quickly. Employees (following another script) are expected to thank customers when they leave. A highly predictable ritual is played out in the fastfood restaurant—one that involves highly predictable foods that vary little from one time or place to another. In addition, great control exists in a McDonaldized society, and a good deal of that control comes from technologies. Although these technologies currently dominate employees, increasingly they will be replacing them. Employees are clearly controlled by technologies such as french fry machines that ring when the fries are done and even automatically lift the fries out of the hot oil. For their part, customers are controlled both by the employees who are constrained by such technologies and more directly by the technologies themselves. Thus, the automatic french fry machine makes it impossible for a customer to request welldone, well-browned fries. Finally, both employees and customers suffer from the irrationality of rationality that seems inevitably to accompany McDonaldization. That is, paradoxically, rationality seems often to lead to its exact opposite—irrationality. For example, the efficiency of the fast-food restaurant is often replaced by the predictability–An emphasis on things (products, settings, employees, customer behavior, etc.) being pretty much the same from one geographic setting to another and from one time to another; a dimension of ­McDonaldization (Ritzer). control–The domination of technologies over employees and customers; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer). irrationality of rationality–The paradoxical reality that rationality seems often to lead to its exact ­opposite— irrationality; inevitably accompanies McDonaldization (Ritzer).

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GEORGE RITZER (1940–) An Autobiographical Vignette As with a surprising number of other twists and turns in my academic career, I did not set out to write about globalization. When I first wrote about the McDonaldization of society in 1983, and even a decade later, when I published the first edition of a book with that title, I was not fully conscious of its relationship to globalization. I was certainly aware of, and described, the spread of McDonald’s, and the larger process that it spawned, through both the United States and the world, but the broader issue of globalization was not on my radar and, in fact, was not much on sociology’s radar when I first began this work. My sensitivity to the relationship between McDonaldization and globalization increased in a 1995 book, Expressing America: A Critique of the Global Credit Card Society. As the title makes clear, that book took a global orientation, and it included a discussion of McDonaldization focusing on the degree to which the credit card industry had been McDonaldized. Perhaps more important for my developing orientation, it focused on credit cards as a form of Americanization, and the latter was clearly one aspect of a broad process of globalization. I soon found myself with three interrelated concepts—McDonaldization, Americanization, and globalization—that needed to be sorted out and analyzed on their own and in relationship to one another. It became clear that both McDonaldization and Americanization were subprocesses under the broader heading of globalization. It also became clear that these subprocesses needed to be differentiated, with McDonaldization not being reducible to one form of Americanization. For one thing, McDonaldization had roots outside the United States, and more important, today it has taken root outside the United States and is being exported back into it. Gradually, my focus has shifted more in the direction of globalization. In my most recent work on the topic, I have come to focus on the globalization of “nothing” and to argue that McDonaldization and Americanization are two key contributors to the globalization of nothing. I have also related that form of globalization to several others in an effort to cast light on globalization in general, especially as it relates to culture. Thus, I embarked on an intellectual voyage that has led me to a focal interest in globalization, although that topic could not have been further from my mind when I began. Although I retain a strong interest in globalization, my focus has shifted again to the study of prosumption, or the interrelated processes of production and consumption. This was anticipated by a section in The McDonaldization of Society on how fast-food restaurants put customers to work as well as by my early work on production (work) and consumption.

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inefficiencies associated with long lines of people at the counter or long lines of cars at the drive-through window. Although there are many other irrationalities, the ultimate irrationality is dehumanization. Employees are forced to work in dehumanizing jobs, and customers are forced to eat in dehumanizing settings and circumstances. The fast-food restaurant is a source of degradation for employees and customers alike. McDonaldization, Expansionism, and Globalization.  McDonald’s has been a resounding success in the international arena. About half of McDonald’s restaurants are outside the United States (in the mid-1980s only 25% of McDonald’s were outside the United States). The vast majority of new McDonald’s restaurants opened each year are overseas. Well over half of McDonald’s profits come from its overseas operations. Other fast-food chains that have adopted a similar model have met with global success. For example, Starbucks has become an increasingly global force and is now a presence in Latin America, Europe (it is particularly visible in London), the Middle East, and the Pacific Rim. Many highly McDonaldized firms outside the fast-food industry have also had success globally. Walmart opened its first international store (in Mexico) in 1991, and it now operates more than 5,100 stores overseas (compared to more than 5,300 in the United States, including supercenters and Sam’s Clubs). Another indicator of the globalization of the McDonald’s model is the fact that other nations have developed their own variants of this American institution. Tim Hortons, a Canadian chain of doughnut and coffee shops (which merged with Wendy’s a few years ago), has more than 4,200 outlets in Canada, and more than 500 in the United States. Paris, a city whose love for fine cuisine might lead you to think it would prove immune to fast-food, has a large number of fastfood croissanteries; the revered French pastry has also been McDonaldized. India has a chain of fast-food restaurants, Nirula’s, that sells mutton burgers (about 80% of Indians are Hindus, who eat no beef) as well as local Indian cuisine. Mos Burger is a Japanese chain with more than 1,400 restaurants in Japan that in addition to the usual fare, sell teriyaki chicken burgers, rice burgers, and oshiruko (a traditional dessert) with brown rice cake. Russkoye Bistro, a Russian chain, sells traditional Russian fare like pirogi (meat and vegetable dumplings), blini (thin pancakes), “Cossack apricot curd tart,” and of course, vodka. Perhaps the most unlikely spot for an indigenous fast-food restaurant, war-ravaged Beirut of 1984, witnessed the opening of Juicy Burger, with a rainbow instead of golden arches and J.B. the Clown standing in for Ronald McDonald. Its owners hoped that it would become the McDonald’s of the Arab world. After the 2003 war with Iraq, a number of clones of McDonald’s (with names like Madonal and Matbax) quickly opened. Now McDonaldization has come full circle. Other countries with their own McDonaldized institutions have begun to export them to the United States. The Body Shop, an ecologically sensitive British cosmetics chain, had 3,000 stores in 66 nations in 2017; many of those stores are in the United States. Furthermore,

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American firms have opened copies of this British chain, such as Bath & Body Works. Pollo Campero, a Guatemalan chain specializing in fried chicken, has more than 300 restaurants around the world, at least 70 of which are in the United States. The Globalization of Nothing.  The globalization of nothing, like McDonaldi­ zation, implies increasing homogenization as more nations around the world have an increasing number of forms of nothing. Ritzer is not arguing that globalization is nothing; indeed, it is clear that the process is of enormous significance. Rather, the argument is that there is an elective affinity (using a term borrowed from Weber) between globalization and nothing. That is, one does not cause the other, but they do tend to vary together. What is central here is the idea of grobalization (a companion to the notion of glocalization, defined as follows), or the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on geographic areas. Their main interest is in seeing their power, influence, and in some cases, profits grow (hence grobalization) throughout the world. Grobalization involves a variety of subprocesses, three of which—­ capitalism, Americanization, and McDonaldization—are not only central driving forces in grobalization but also of great significance in the worldwide spread of nothingness. By nothing, Ritzer means (largely) empty forms, that is, forms largely devoid of distinctive content. Conversely, something would be defined as (largely) full forms, that is, forms rich in distinctive content. Thus, it is easier to export empty forms throughout the globe than it is to export forms that are loaded with content (something). The latter are more likely to be rejected by at least some cultures and societies because the content conflicts, is at variance, with local content. In contrast, because they are largely devoid of distinctive content, empty forms are less likely to come into conflict with the local. In addition, empty forms have other advantages from the point of view of globalization, including the fact that because they are so minimalist, they are easy to replicate over and over. They also have a cost advantage because they are relatively inexpensive to reproduce. A good example of nothing in these terms is the shopping mall (e.g., any of the malls created by the Mills Corporation—Potomac Mills, Sawgrass Mills, etc.), which is an empty (largely) structure that is easily replicated around the world. Such malls could be filled with an endless array of specific content (e.g., local shops, local foods—something!) that could vary grobalization–The imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on geographic areas (Ritzer). nothing–Largely empty forms; forms devoid of most distinctive content (Ritzer). something–Largely full forms; forms rich in distinctive content (Ritzer).

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enormously from one locale to another. However, increasingly they are filled with chain stores—nothing! Because more countries in the world have these malls, this is an example of the grobalization of nothing and of increasing global homogenization. There are four subtypes of nothing, and all of them are largely empty of distinctive content and are being globalized. These subtypes are “non-places,” or settings that are largely empty of content (e.g., the malls discussed previously); “non-things,” such as credit cards, in which there is little to distinguish one from the billions of others and which work in exactly the same way for all who use them anywhere in the world; “non-people,” or the kind of employees associated with non-places, for example, telemarketers (who may be virtually anywhere in the world), who interact with all customers in much the same way, relying heavily on scripts; and “non-services” such as those provided by ATMs (the services provided are identical; the customer does all the work involved in obtaining the services) as opposed to human bank tellers. The grobal proliferation of non-places, non-things, non-people, and non-services is another indication of increasing homogenization.

Cultural Hybridization The cultural hybridization paradigm emphasizes the mixing of cultures as a result of globalization and the production, out of the integration of the global and the local, of new and unique hybrid cultures that are not reducible to either the local or the global culture. From this perspective, McDonaldization and the grobalization of nothing may be taking place, but they are largely superficial changes. Much more important is the integration of these and other global processes with local realities to produce new and distinctive hybrid forms that indicate continued heterogenization rather than homogenization. Hybridization is a positive, even romantic, view of globalization as a profoundly creative process out of which emerges new cultural realities and continuing if not increasing heterogeneity in many different locales. The concept that gets to the heart of cultural hybridization, as well as what many contemporary theorists interested in globalization think about the nature of transnational processes, is glocalization. Glocalization can be defined as the interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas. Whereas grobalization, as discussed, tends to be associated with the proliferation of nothing, glocalization tends to be tied more to something and therefore stands opposed, at least partially (and along with the local itself), to the spread of nothing. glocalization–The interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas (Robertson).

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According to Roland Robertson, the following are the essential elements of glocalization: 1. The world is growing more pluralistic. Glocalization theory is exceptionally sensitive to differences within and among areas of the world. 2. Individuals and local groups have great power to adapt, innovate, and maneuver within a glocalized world. Glocalization theory sees local individuals and groups as important and creative agents. 3. Social processes are relational and contingent. Globalization provokes a variety of reactions—ranging from nationalist entrenchment to cosmopolitan embrace—that feed back on and transform grobalization and that produce glocalization. 4. Commodities and the media are not (totally) coercive; rather, they provide material to be used in individual and group creation throughout the glocalized areas of the world. Those who emphasize glocalization tend to see it as militating against the grobalization of nothing and, in fact, view it as leading to the creation of a wide array of new, “glocal” forms of something. In contrast, those who emphasize grobalization see that phenomenon as a powerful contributor to the spread of nothingness throughout the world. A discussion of some closely related terms (and related examples) will be of considerable help in clarifying the nature of glocalization as well as the broader issue of cultural hybridization. Of course, hybridization itself is one such term, emphasizing the increasing diversity associated with unique mixtures of the global and the local as opposed to the uniformity associated with grobalization. A cultural hybrid would involve the combination of two or more elements from different cultures and/or parts of the world. Examples of hybridization (and heterogenization, glocalization) include Ugandan tourists visiting Amsterdam to watch two Moroccan women engage in Thai boxing, Argentinians watching Asian rap performed by a South American band at a London club owned by a Saudi Arabian, and the more mundane experiences of Americans eating concoctions such as Irish bagels, Chinese tacos, and kosher pizza. Obviously, the list of examples is long and growing rapidly with increasing hybridization. The contrast, of course, would be uniform experiences such as eating hamburgers in the United States, quiche in France, and sushi in Japan. Yet another concept that is closely related to glocalization is creolization. The term comes from creole, which generally refers to people of mixed race; creolization extends this idea of mixture to the combining of languages and cultures that were previously unintelligible to one another. hybridization–A perspective on globalization that emphasizes the increasing diversity associated with unique mixtures of the global and the local as opposed to the uniformity associated with grobalization (Pieterse). creolization–The combining of cultures that were previously separate from one another; often used interchangeably with hybridization. 364    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

An understanding of all three of these concepts—glocalization, hybridization, and creolization—is useful for an understanding of cultural hybridization. Appadurai’s “Landscapes.”  In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Arjun Appadurai emphasizes global flows and the disjunctures among them. These serve to produce unique cultural realities around the world; they tend to produce cultural hybrids. Appadurai discusses five global flows: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. The use of the suffix scape allows ­Appadurai to communicate the idea that these processes have fluid, irregular, and variable shapes and are therefore consistent with the idea of heterogenization and not homogenization. That there are a number of these scapes and that they operate independent of one another to some degree, and are perhaps even in conflict with one another, make this perspective also in tune with those that emphasize cultural diversity and heterogeneity. Furthermore, these scapes are interpreted differently by different agents, ranging all the way from individuals to face-to-face groups, subnational groups, multinational corporations, and even nation-states. And these scapes are ultimately navigated by individuals and groups on the basis of their own subjective interpretations of the scapes. In other words, these are imagined worlds, and those doing the imagining can range from those who control the worlds to those who live in and traverse them. Whereas power obviously lies with those in control and their imaginings, this perspective gives to those who merely live in or pass through these worlds the power to redefine and ultimately subvert them. At the center of Appadurai’s thinking are the five landscapes mentioned previously: 1. Ethnoscapes are the mobile, moving groups and individuals (tourists, refugees, guest workers) who play such an important role in the shifting world in which we increasingly live. This involves actual movement as well as fantasies about moving. Furthermore, in an ever-changing world, people cannot afford to allow their imaginations to rest too long and thus must keep such fantasies alive. 2. Technoscapes are the ever-fluid, global configurations of high and low, mechanical and informational technology and the wide range of material (internet, e-mail) that now moves freely and quickly around the globe and across borders that were at one time impervious to such movement (or were at least thought to be). ethnoscapes–Mobile groups and individuals (tourists, refugees, guest workers), whether they are taking part in actual movement or fantasies about moving; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. technoscapes–The ever-fluid, global configurations of high and low, mechanical and informational technology and the wide range of material (internet, e-mail) that now moves freely and quickly around the globe and across borders; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. CHAPTER ELEVEN  •  GLOBALIZATION THEORY   365

3. Financescapes involve the processes by which huge sums of money move through nations and around the world at great speed through commodity speculation, currency markets, national stock exchanges, and the like. 4. Mediascapes encompass both the electronic capability to produce and transmit information around the world and the images of the world that these media create and disseminate. Involved here are global filmmakers and film distributors, television stations (CNN, RT, and Al Jazeera are notable examples), and newspapers and magazines. 5. Ideoscapes, like mediascapes, are sets of images. However, ideoscapes are largely restricted to political images either produced by states and in line with their ideologies or produced by movements with counterideologies that seek to supplant those in power or at least to gain a piece of that power. Three things are especially worth noting about Appadurai’s landscapes. First, they can be seen as global processes that are partly or wholly independent of any given nation-state. Second, global flows occur not only through the landscapes but also increasingly in and through the disjunctures among them. Thus, to give one example of such a disjuncture, the Japanese are open to ideas (ideoscapes, mediascapes) but notoriously closed to immigration (at least one of the ethnoscapes). More generally, the free movement of some landscapes may be at variance with blockages of others. Studies in this area must be attuned to such disjunctures and to their implications for globalization. Third, territories are affected differently by the five landscapes and their disjunctures, leading to important differences among and between cultures. The focus on landscapes and their disjunctures points globalization studies in a set of unique directions. However, it is in line with the idea that globalization is much more associated with heterogenization than with homogenization.

ECONOMIC THEORY Although there are many theories of the economic aspects of globalization, the most important perspectives, at least in sociology, tend to be those associated with Marxian theory. We discuss two major examples in this section. financescapes–The processes by which huge sums of money move through nations and around the world at great speed; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. mediascapes–The electronic capability to produce and transmit information around the world as well as the images of the world that these media create and disseminate; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. ideoscapes–Largely political images either produced by states and in line with their ideologies or produced by movements with counterideologies that seek to supplant those in power or at least to gain a piece of that power; one of Appadurai’s landscapes.

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Neoliberalism Neoliberalism is a theory that is particularly applicable to economics (especially the market and trade) as well as to politics (especially the need to limit the government’s involvement in, and control over, the market and trade). It is not only an important theory in itself, but it has also strongly influenced other thinking and ­theorizing about both of those domains. This is especially the case with neo-­ Marxian economic theories that are highly critical of neoliberalism. In the following section we will deal with two of the major neo-Marxian alternatives to neoliberalism. A number of well-known scholars, especially economists, are associated with neoliberalism. We will briefly examine some of the ideas of one neoliberal ­economist—William Easterly—here to give a sense of this perspective from the point of view of one of its supporters. Easterly is opposed to any form of collectivism and state planning, either as they were espoused and practiced in, for example, the Soviet Union or are today promoted by the United Nations, other economists, and so on. Collectivism failed in the Soviet Union, and in Easterly’s view, it will fail today. It will fail because it inhibits, if not destroys, freedom, and freedom, especially economic freedom, is highly correlated with economic success. This is the case because economic freedom allows for searches for success that are decentralized; such searches go the heart of the idea of a free market. Economic freedom and the free market are great favorites of neoliberal economists. Easterly offers several reasons economic freedom is related to economic success. First, it is extremely difficult to know in advance which economic actions will succeed and which will fail. Economic freedom permits a multitude of actions, and those that fail are weeded out. Over time, what remains, for the most part, are the successful actions, and they serve to facilitate a higher standard of living. Central planners can never have nearly as much knowledge as myriad individuals seeking success and learning from their own failures and those of others. Second, markets offer continuous feedback on which actions are succeeding and failing; central planners lack such feedback. Third, economic freedom leads to the ruthless reallocation of resources to those actions that are succeeding; central planners often have vested interests that prevent such reallocation. Fourth, economic freedom permits large and rapid increases in scale in financial markets and corporate organizations; central planners lack the flexibility to make large-scale changes rapidly. Finally, because of sophisticated contractual protections, individuals and corporations are willing to take great risks; central planners are risk averse because of their personal vulnerability if things go wrong. Created by John Locke (1632–1704), Adam Smith (1723–1790), and others, classical liberal theory came to be termed neoliberalism, at least by some, as a result of developments in the 1930s. Neoliberalism involves the combination of a neoliberalism–A theory that combines a political commitment to individual liberty with neoclassical economics devoted to the free market and opposed to state intervention in that market.

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political commitment to individual liberty with neoclassical economics devoted to the free market and opposed to state intervention in that market. Entrepreneurs are to be liberated, markets and trade are to be free, states are to be supportive of this and keep interventions to a minimum, and there are to be strong property rights. Neoliberalism emerged during the Great Depression at least in part in reaction to Keynesian economics and its impact on the larger society. The market, entrepreneurs, and corporations, inspired in part by the then-predominant theories of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), came to be limited by a number of constraints (social and political) and a strong regulative environment. In addition, calls for a revitalization of liberal ideas were spurred by the need to counter the collectivism (Marxian theory) that dominated much thinking and many political systems in the early 20th century. The intellectual leaders of this revitalization were economists, especially members of the Austrian School, including Friedrich van Hayek (1899–1992) and Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). An organization devoted to liberal ideas, the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), was created in 1947. Its members were alarmed by the expansion of collectivist socialism (especially in, and sponsored by, the Soviet Union) and the aggressive intervention by liberal governments in the market (e.g., Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal”). Those associated with MPS, especially the famous and highly influential Chicago economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006), played a key role in efforts to protect traditional liberal ideas, develop neoliberal theory, and sponsor the utilization of neoliberal principles by countries throughout the world. Neoliberalism as a theory comes in various forms, but all are undergirded by some or all of the following ideas: • Great faith is placed in the free market and its rationality. The market needs to be allowed to operate free of impediments, especially any imposed by the nation-state and other political entities. The free operation of the market will in the “long run” advantage about everyone and bring about both improved economic welfare and greater individual freedom (and a democratic political system). It is thus important to champion, support, and expand a wide range of technological, legal, and institutional arrangements that support the market and its freedom. The free market is so important that neoliberals equate it with capitalism. Further, the principles of the free market are not restricted to the economy (and the polity); transactions in every sphere of life (family, education, culture) should also be free, like those in the economy. • The key, if not only, actor in the market is the individual; neoliberalism is radically individualistic. • Related to the belief in the free market is a parallel belief in free trade.

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• Where there are restraints on the free market and free trade, the theory leads to a commitment to deregulation, to limit or eliminate such restraints. Free markets and free trade are linked to a democratic political system. Thus, the political system, especially the freedom of democracy, is associated with economic well-being and with the freedom of individuals to amass great individual wealth. • There is a commitment to low taxes and to tax cuts (especially for the wealthy) where taxes are deemed too high and too burdensome. Low taxes and tax cuts are believed to stimulate the economy by encouraging people to earn more and ultimately to invest and spend more. • Tax cuts for business and industry are also encouraged, with the idea that the tax savings would be invested in more operations and infrastructure, thereby generating more business, income, and profits. This is seen as benefiting not only business and industry but also society as whole. Higher profits are expected to “trickle down” and benefit most people in society. • Spending on welfare should be minimized, and the safety net for the poor should be greatly reduced. Such spending and such a welfare system are seen as hurting economic growth and even as harming the poor. Cuts in welfare are designed to reduce government expenditures and thereby allow the government to cut taxes and/or to invest in more “productive” undertakings. It also is presumed that without the safety net, more poor people would be forced to find work, often at minimum wage or with low pay. More such workers presumably allow companies to increase productivity and profits. Reduction of the safety net also creates a larger “reserve army” that business can draw on in good economic times to expand its workforce. • There is a strong and generalized belief in limited government. The theory is that no government or government agency can do things as well as the market can (the failure of the Soviet Union is seen as proof of that). Among other things, this leaves a government that is, at least theoretically, less able, or unable, to intervene in the market. It also presumably means a less expensive government, one that would need to collect less in taxes. This, in turn, would put more money in the hands of the public, especially the wealthier members of society, who in recent years, have benefited most from tax cuts. Not only must the state be limited, but also its job is to cooperate with open global markets. • There is great belief in the need for the global capitalist system to continue to expand. It is presumed that such expansion would bring with it increased prosperity (but for which members of society?) and decreased poverty.

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Although most of these ideas deal with the neoliberal economy, a few apply to the closely linked neoliberal state. More concretely and directly, the neoliberal state should do the following: • Provide a climate that is supportive of business and its ability to accumulate capital. This should be done even if certain actions (e.g., the raising of interest rates by the Federal Reserve) lead to higher unemployment for the larger population. • Focus on furthering, facilitating, and stimulating (where necessary) the interests of business. This is done in the belief that business success will benefit everyone. However, many believe that neoliberalism has benefited comparatively few people and areas of the world. • Privatize sectors formerly run by the state (e.g., education, telecommunications, transportation) to open up these areas for business and profit making, and seek to be sure that those sectors that cannot be privatized are “cost-effective” and “accountable.” • Work to allow the free movement of capital among and between economic sectors and geographic regions. • Extol the virtues of free competition, although it is widely believed that the state actually works in support of the monopolization of markets by business interests. • Work against groups (e.g., unions, social movements) that operate to restrain business interests and their efforts to accumulate capital. • Work to reduce barriers to the free movement of capital across national borders and to the creation of new markets. • Bail out financial institutions if they are in danger of collapse (as in the 2007–2008 cases of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG, and Citibank). Overall, critics argue that the neoliberal state favors elites but seeks to conceal that fact by seeming to be democratic; in fact, in the eyes of many the neoliberal state is deeply antidemocratic. Its concerns for things like freedom and liberty are largely restricted to the market. Contrary to the established view, neoliberalism has not made the state irrelevant. Rather, the institutions and practices of the state have been transformed so that they are better attuned to the needs and interests of the neoliberal market and economy. However, the neoliberal state is riddled with internal contradictions. For one thing, its authoritarianism coexists uncomfortably with its supposed interest in individual freedom and democracy. For another, although it is committed to ­stability, its operations, especially in support of financial (and other) speculation,

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lead to increased instability. Then there is its commitment to competition while it operates on behalf of monopolization. Most generally, its public support for the well-being of everyone is given the lie by its actions in support of economic elites.

Critiquing Neoliberalism The Early Thinking of Karl Polanyi.  Much of the contemporary critique of neoliberalism, especially as it relates to economics, is traceable to the work of Karl Polanyi (1886–1964), especially his 1944 book The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Polanyi was a great critic of a limited focus on the economy, especially the focus of economic liberalism on the self-regulating, or unregulated, market as well as on basing all on self-interest. In his view, these are not universal principles but rather unprecedented developments associated with the advent of capitalism. Polanyi showed that the laissez-faire system came into existence with the help of the state, and it was able to continue to function as a result of state actions. Furthermore, he argued that if the laissez-faire system were left to itself, it would threaten to destroy society. Indeed, it was such threats, as well as real dangers, that led society and the state to react (e.g., with socialism, communism, the New Deal) to protect themselves from the problems of a free market, especially to protect the products of the market and those who labored in it. The expansion of the laissez-faire market and self-protective reaction against it by the state and society is called the double movement. Although economic liberalism saw such reactions (including any form of protectionism) as “mistakes” that disrupted the operation of the economic markets, Polanyi saw them as necessary and desirable responses to the evils of the free market. Polanyi saw the selfregulating market as an absurd idea. He also described as mythical the liberal idea that socialists, communists, New Dealers, and so on were involved in a conspiracy against liberalism and the free market. Rather than being a conspiracy, what took place was a natural, “spontaneous” collective reaction by society and its elements that were threatened by the free market. In his time, Polanyi saw a reversal of the tendency for the economic system to dominate society. This promised to end the evils produced by the dominance of the free market system and also to produce more, rather than less, freedom. That is, Polanyi believed that collective planning and control would produce more freedom, for all people, than was then available in the liberal economic system. It is interesting to look back on Polanyi’s ideas with the passage of more than 70 years since their publication and especially with the rise of a global economy dominated by the kind of free market system he so feared and despised. Polanyi’s hope lay with society and the nation-state, but these have been rendered far less powerful with the rise of globalization, especially the global economy. Telling here is Margaret Thatcher’s (in)famous statement: “There is no such thing as society.” double movement–The expansion of the laissez-faire market and the self-protective reaction against it by the state and society (Polanyi).

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Without powerful social and political influences, one wonders where collective planning and social control over the market are to come from. Clearly, such planning and control are more inadequate than ever in the global age. Beyond that, one wonders whether the creation of truly global planning and control is either possible or desirable. Nevertheless, it is likely that were Polanyi alive today, the logic of his position would lead him to favor global planning and control, given his great fears of a free market economy, now far more powerful and dangerous because it exists on a global scale. The great global economic crisis of 2007–2009 underscores the importance of Polanyi’s ideas. The market had come to be allowed unprecedented freedom; restraints on it turned out to be limited or nonexistent. The result was a series of excesses—mortgage loans to people who should not have qualified for them, excessively risky undertakings by financial institutions, financial instruments that were opaque (e.g., “derivatives”) and that diffused responsibility for bad loans (­mortgage-backed securities)—that led to the collapse of the American housing market, a credit crunch, and eventually a global economic meltdown. Polanyi would have said that the cause of all of this was a lack of state control over the market. (More) Contemporary Criticisms of Neoliberalism.  Among the problems with neoliberalism as a theory is that it assumes that everyone in the world wants narrow and specific types of economic well-being (to be well-off economically, if not rich) and political freedom (democracy). The fact is, there are great cultural differences in the ways societies define well-being (e.g., to not have to work hard) and freedom (e.g., to be unfettered by the state even if it is not democratically chosen). Neoliberalism often comes down to the North, the United States, and/ or global organizations (e.g., the IMF) seeking to impose their definitions of wellbeing and freedom on other parts of the world. Furthermore, there is wide variation in how individuals within societies view well-being and freedom so that if definitions are imposed from outside, at least some people are likely to disagree with those definitions. Another problem lies in the fact that the theory conceals or obscures the social and material interests of those who push such an economic system with its associated technological, legal, and institutional systems. These systems are not being pursued because everyone in the world wants them or will benefit from them but because some, usually in the North, are greatly advantaged by them and therefore push them. Among other criticisms of neoliberalism are that it has produced financial crises in countries throughout the world (e.g., Mexico, Argentina); its economic record has been dismal because it has redistributed wealth (from poor to rich) rather than generating new wealth; it has sought to commodify everything; and it has contributed to environmental degradation. Furthermore, there are signs that neoliberalism is failing (e.g., deficit financing in the United States and China), signs of more immediate crises (e.g., burgeoning budget deficits, the bailout of financial institutions), and evidence that U.S. global hegemony is crumbling.

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS Is Global Neoliberal Capitalism Dead? The economic recession that began in the United States in late 2007 deepened in the ensuing months and years and spread rapidly throughout much of the world, threatening globalization, in particular neoliberal economic globalization. There have been prior epochs of globalization (e.g., the late 1800s until 1914), which were ended by abrupt changes such as war (e.g., World War I) and recession or depression. A frequent reaction of nations in such times is to begin to close their borders and turn inward, especially economically—that is, to engage in “protectionism.” The goal is to husband remaining resources and protect the nation as much as possible from the disastrous effects of negative global flows of all types (e.g., military invasion, a run on stock markets and banks). However, such protectionism is anathema to capitalism in general, and especially to neoliberal global capitalism, which is premised on free markets and free trade. The partially or completely closed borders that result from protectionism serve to block, at least in part, the flow of goods, money, and the like that is the lifeblood of neoliberal global capitalism. During the global economic crisis of 2007–2009, the dangers posed to global capitalism by protectionism led to warnings being raised, most notably by then U.S. president Barack Obama, that nations should not react by resorting to protectionism. This position has been challenged by Obama’s successor, Donald Trump. Trump campaigned for the presidency under the populist idea that the neoliberal global economic system is the source of America’s problems. He said that he could “make America great again” by ending U.S. participation in international agreements and focusing on American (primarily economic) interests. A broader issue may have been raised by this most recent global economic crisis, and that is the future of global capitalism, especially in its neoliberal form. The crisis commenced in the United States because of a lack of restraints on, and regulations over, capitalist enterprises, especially financial institutions and their highly risky investments. Many institutions throughout the world had bought some of these high-risk investments (not fully understanding how risky they were), and losses cascaded around the world. These losses led to other kinds of losses and a growing lack of confidence in the global economic system, which in turn led to deep declines in many stock markets, and economies in general, throughout the world. Job losses accelerated, poverty increased, and fear and worry over the economy mounted. Many, including then president of France Nicolas Sarkozy, blamed American-style risk-taking neoliberal capitalism and began a search for global alternatives to it. (Continued)

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(Continued) The issue is: Is there a viable alternative to a neoliberal global economy? There are, of course, many ways to run an economy (e.g., socialism), including a global economy, but the most likely alternative to neoliberalism seems to lie in efforts to reform it in terms of the way it operates both in the United States (and elsewhere) and globally. Since the downturn, there have been several efforts to limit or eliminate the worst inadequacies of unrestrained global neoliberal capitalism. For example, in 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which imposed financial regulations that were intended to correct the problems that led to the economic downturn of 2007–2009. Similar laws were passed in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere around the world. More recently, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France. As a banker who has worked within neoliberal institutions, Macron supports neoliberal globalization, but he seems to have adopted the European consensus that neoliberalism requires at least some regulation. And most recently, in response to the global pandemic, governments across the world have provided extensive economic stimulus to struggling businesses and corporations—a decidedly socialist move for neoliberals who generally preach government noninterference. This said, if history is any guide, capitalistic businesses will find restraints objectionable, and in their pursuit of ever-higher profits, they will seek, and eventually find, ways to circumvent any regulations placed on them. Indeed, since 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives supported by President Trump passed several laws that repealed sections of the Dodd–Frank Act. In all of these examples, whether regulated or unregulated versions are favored, neoliberalism seems far from dead. Instead, national and international governments, as well as business interests, now debate the kinds of neoliberalism they imagine for the future. From the point of view of Marxian and neo-Marxian theory, this is another example of the “boom and bust” character of capitalism. Capitalism inevitably cycles through periods of rapid growth followed by crashes. The debate over regulation is not about fixing capitalism for good (this, from the Marxist perspective, is impossible) but only about smoothing over these cycles so that capitalism can live to see another day. The big question is whether the great gains made in boom periods (which tend to go to a relatively small portion of the population) are worth the disastrous consequences of the busts (especially for those least able to afford economic setbacks). If not, then an alternative to neoliberal global capitalism is needed.

The Death of Neoliberalism?  It is arguable that the economic crisis of 2007– 2009 spelled the beginning of the end of neoliberalism (see the Contemporary Applications box). In a speech in late 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, said: “The idea of the absolute power of the markets that should not be constrained by any rule, by any political intervention, was a mad idea. The idea that markets are always right was a mad idea.” Referring implicitly to the global

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economic system dominated to that point by neoliberalism, Sarkozy argued that “we need to rebuild the whole world financial and monetary system from scratch.” In other words, we need to scuttle the remnants of the global neoliberal economic system, as the Keynesian system was scuttled when neoliberalism gained ascendancy, and replace it with some as yet undefined alternative. Where and how far this goes remains to be seen, but believers in neoliberalism have not disappeared, and their ideas, perhaps in some new form, are likely to resurface when the dust of the recent economic crisis settles. If nothing else, this economic crisis has reminded us of the importance of not only the neo-Marxian critique of neoliberalism but also the neo-Marxian alternatives to it. We turn now to two major examples of neo-Marxian thinking.

Neo-Marxian Theoretical Alternatives to Neoliberalism We have already presented, at least implicitly, critiques of neoliberalism from a neo-Marxian perspective, but neo-Marxists have done more than critique neoliberalism, they have developed their own perspectives on, and theories of, capitalism. Whereas neoliberalism is supportive of capitalism, the neo-Marxists are, needless to say, critical of it. In this section we offer two examples of neo-Marxian approaches that are explicitly and implicitly critical of the neoliberal theory outlined in this chapter. However, they are of interest not solely as critiques; they are important in their own right. Transnational Capitalism.  Leslie Sklair distinguishes between two systems of globalization. The first, the capitalist system of globalization, is the one that is now predominant. The other is the socialist system, which is not yet in existence but is foreshadowed by current antiglobalization movements, especially those oriented toward greater human rights throughout the world. The antiglobalization movements, and the possibility of a socialist form, are made possible by the problems in the current system of globalization, especially class polarization and the increasing ecological unsustainability of capitalist globalization. Although the nation-state remains important, Sklair focuses on transnational practices that are able to cut across boundaries—including those created by states—with the implication that territorial boundaries are of declining importance in capitalist globalization. As a Marxist, Sklair accords priority to economic transnational practices, and it is in this context that one of the central aspects of his analysis, transnational corporations, predominate. Underlying this is the idea that capitalism has moved away from being an international system (since the nation[-state] is of declining significance) to being a globalizing system that is decoupled from any specific geographic territory or state. transnational corporations–Corporations that dominate the contemporary capitalist global economy and the actions of which are largely unconstrained by the borders of nation-states (Sklair).

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The second transnational practice of great importance is political, and here the transnational capitalist class predominates. However, it is not made up of capitalists in the traditional Marxian sense of the term. That is, the members of this class do not necessarily own the means of production. Sklair differentiates among four “fractions” of the transnational capitalist class. The first is the corporate fraction, made up of executives of transnational corporations and their local affiliates. The second is the state fraction, comprising globalizing state and interstate bureaucrats and politicians. The third, the technical fraction, is made up of globalizing professionals. Finally, there is the consumerist fraction, which encompasses merchants and media executives. This group is obviously different from the one that Marx thought of in conceptualizing the capitalist class. The transnational capitalist class may not be capitalist in the traditional sense, but it is transnational in various ways. First, its members tend to share global (as well as local) interests. Second, they seek to exert types of control across nations. That is, they exert economic control in the workplace, political control in both domestic and international politics, and culture-ideological control in everyday life across international borders. Third, they tend to share a global rather than a local perspective on a wide range of issues. Fourth, they come from many different countries, but increasingly they see themselves as citizens of the world and not only of their countries of origin. Finally, wherever they may be at any given time, they share similar lifestyles, especially in terms of the goods and services they consume. The third transnational practice is culture-ideology, and here Sklair accords great importance to the culture-ideology of consumerism in capitalist globalization. Although the focus is on culture and ideology, this ultimately involves the economy by adding an interest in consumption to the traditional concern with production (and the transnational corporations) in economic approaches in general and Marxian theories in particular. It is in this realm that the ability to exert ideological control over people scattered widely throughout the globe has increased dramatically, primarily through the greater reach and sophistication of advertising, mass media, and the bewildering array of consumer goods marketed by and through them. Ultimately, they all serve to create a global mood to consume that benefits transnational corporations as well as the advertising and media corporations that both are examples of such corporations and profit from them. transnational capitalist class–Not made up of capitalists in the traditional Marxian sense of the term; its members do not necessarily own the means of production. Includes four “fractions”—corporate, made up of executives of transnational corporations and their local affiliates; state, comprising globalizing state and interstate bureaucrats and politicians; technical, made up of globalizing professionals; and consumerist, encompassing merchants and media executives (Sklair). culture-ideology of consumerism–An ideology that affects people scattered widely throughout the globe with the increasing reach and sophistication of advertising, mass media, and consumer goods. Ultimately, a global mood to consume is created that benefits transnational corporations as well as the advertising and media corporations (Sklair).

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Ultimately, Sklair is interested in the relationship among the transnational social practices and institutions that dominate each, arguing that transnational corporations use the transnational capitalist class to develop and solidify the consumerist culture and ideology that is increasingly necessary to feed the demands of the capitalist system of production. Indeed, it is this relationship that defines global capitalism today, and it is the most important force in ongoing changes in the world. As a Marxist, Sklair is interested not only in critically analyzing capitalist globalization but also in articulating an alternative to it and its abuses. He sees some promising signs in the protectionism of some countries that see themselves as exploited by transnational corporations. Also hopeful are new social movements such as the green movement, which seeks a more sustainable environment, and the antiglobalization groups that have sprung up in recent years. He is particularly interested in human rights movements in which, he believes, can be found the seeds of the alternative to capitalist globalization—that is, socialist globalization. He predicts that these and other movements will gain momentum in the 21st century as they increasingly resist the ways in which globalization has been appropriated by transnational corporations. In fact, in good Marxian dialectical terms, Sklair sees the success of capitalist globalization sowing the seeds of its own destruction. That is, the expansion of capitalist globalization tends to provide the opponents with resources (derived from the economic success of transnational capitalism), organizational forms (copied from the successful organizations in global capitalism), and most obviously a clarity of purpose. As the transnational corporations grow more successful, their abuses also grow, increasing the need for their opponents to supplant them as the central players in the global system. Empire. In their book Empire,  Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri present an important Marxian approach to globalization that has been widely discussed and debated. Although they have reservations about postmodern social theory, Hardt and Negri analyze the postmodernization of the global economy. They associate modernity with imperialism, the defining characteristic of which is a nation (or nations) at the center that controls and exploits a number of areas throughout the world, especially economically. In a postmodern move, they “decenter” this process, thereby defining empire as a postmodern reality in which such dominance exists but without any single nation (or any other entity) at its center. To put this another way, modern sovereignty can be traced to a place, but in its postmodern form as empire, sovereignty exists in a non-place. That is, there is no center, it is deterritorialized, it is virtual in the form of communication (especially through the media), and as a result, the spectacle of the empire is everywhere; it is omnipresent. imperialism–The control and exploitation, especially economically, of a number of areas throughout the world by a nation (or nations) at the center.

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Empire does not yet exist fully; it is in formation at the moment, but we can already get a sense of its parameters. Empire governs the world with a single logic of rule, but there is no single power at the heart of empire. Instead of a single source of command, in empire power is dispersed throughout society and the globe. Even the United States, in spite of its seeming hegemony in the world today, is not an empire in these terms and does not lie at the heart of Hardt and Negri’s sense of empire. However, the sovereignty of the United States does constitute an important precursor to empire, and the United States continues to occupy a privileged position in the world today. However, it is in the process of being supplanted by empire. Empire lacks (or will lack) geographic or territorial boundaries. It can also be seen as lacking temporal boundaries in the sense that it seeks (albeit unsuccessfully) to suspend history and to exist for all eternity. It also can be seen as lacking a lower boundary in that it seeks to expand down into the depths of the social world. This means that it seeks not only to control the basics of the social world (thought, action, interaction, groups) but also to go further in an effort to use biopower to control human nature and population—both people’s brains and their bodies. In a way, empire is far more ambitious than imperialism in that it seeks to control the entirety of life down to its most basic levels. The key to the global power of empire lies in the fact that it is (or seeks to be) a new juridical power. That is, it is based on things such as the constitution of order, norms, ethical truths, and a common notion of what is right. This juridical formation is the source of power of empire. Thus, it can, in the name of what is “right,” intervene anywhere in the world to deal with what it considers humanitarian problems, to guarantee accords, and to impose peace on those who may not want it or even see it as peace. More specifically, it can engage in “just wars” in the name of this juridical formation; the latter legitimates the former. Such wars become a kind of sacred undertaking. The enemy is anyone or anything that the juridical formation sees as a threat to ethical order in the world. Thus, the right to engage in just war is seen as boundless, encompassing the entire space of civilization. The right to engage in it is also seen as boundless in time; it is permanent, eternal. In a just war, ethically grounded military action is legitimate, and its goal is to achieve the desired order and peace. Thus, empire is based not on force but on the ability to project force in the service of that which is right (precursors of this can be seen in the two U.S. wars against Iraq as well as the incursion into Afghanistan). Empire is based on a triple imperative. First, it seeks to incorporate all that it can. It appears to be magnanimous, and it operates with a liberal facade. However, in the process of inclusion, it creates a smooth world in which differences, empire–A decentered, postmodern Marxian perspective on globalization and the exertion of power around the world based on new juridical power such as the constitution of order, norms, ethical truths, and a common notion of what is right. Empire can, in the name of what is “right,” intervene anywhere in the world to deal with what it considers humanitarian problems, to guarantee accords, and to impose peace on those who may not want it or even see it as peace (Hardt and Negri).

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resistance, and conflict are eliminated. Second, empire differentiates and affirms differences. Although those who are different are celebrated culturally, they are set aside juridically. Third, once the differences are in place, empire seeks to hierarchize and to manage the hierarchy and the differences embedded in it. It is hierarchization and management that are the real powers of empire. Empire is, then, a postmodern Marxian perspective on globalization and the exertion of power around the world. However, instead of capitalists, or capitalist nations, exerting that power, it is the much more nebulous empire that is in control. If there are no more capitalists in empire, what about the proletariat? To Hardt and Negri, the time of the proletariat is over. But if the proletariat no longer exist to oppose empire, where is the opposition to come from? After all, operating from a Marxian perspective, Hardt and Negri must come up with an oppositional force. In fact, they do not disappoint on this score, and they label that oppositional group “the multitude.” This is an interesting choice of terms for many reasons. For one thing, it is much more general and abstract than the concept of the proletariat and moves away from a limited focus on the economy. Second, it is clear that there are many at least potential opponents of the empire; indeed, those in control in the empire constitute only a small minority vis-à-vis the multitude. The multitude is that collection of people throughout the world that sustains empire in various ways, including through its labor (it is the real productive force in empire). Among other ways, the multitude also sustains empire by buying into the culture-ideology of consumption and, more important, by actually consuming a variety of its offerings. Like capitalism and its relationship to the proletariat, empire is a parasite on the multitude and its creativity and productivity. Like Marx’s proletariat (which all but disappears in this theory), the multitude is a force for creativity in empire. Also like the proletariat, the multitude is capable of overthrowing empire through the autonomous creation of a counter-empire. The counter-empire, like empire, is, or would be, a global phenomenon created out of, and becoming, global flows and exchanges. Globalization leads to deterritorialization (and the multitude itself is a force in deterritorialization and is deterritorialized), and the latter is prerequisite to the global liberation of the multitude. That is, with deterritorialization social revolution can, as Marx predicted, occur, perhaps for the first time, on a global level. Thus, although Hardt and Negri are certainly critics of globalization, whether it be modern capitalist imperialism or postmodern empire, they also see a utopian potential in globalization. Thus, globalization is not the problem; rather, the problem is the form that globalization has taken, or takes, in imperialism and empire. That utopian potential has always been there, but in the past it has been smothered by modern sovereign powers through ideological control or military multitude–The collection of people throughout the world that sustains empire in various ways, including through its labor (it is the real productive force in empire).The multitude also has the power, at least potentially, to overthrow empire (Hardt and Negri).

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force. Empire now occupies, or soon will occupy, that controlling position, but its need to suppress that potential is counterbalanced by the need of the multitude to manifest and express it. Ultimately, it is in globalization that the potential exists for universal freedom and equality. Further, globalization prevents us from falling back into the particularism and isolationism that have characterized much of human history. Those processes, of course, would serve to impede the global change sought by the multitude. More positively, as globalization progresses, it serves to push us more in the direction of the creation of counter-empire. This focus on the global serves to distinguish Hardt and Negri from other postmodernists and post-Marxists who tend to focus on the local and the problems and potential that exist there. In contrast, in their view, a focus on the local obscures the fact that the sources of both our major problems and our liberation exist at the global level in empire. Although Hardt and Negri foresee counter-empire, they, like Marx in the case of communism, offer no blueprint for how to get there or what it might look like. Like communism to Marx, counter-empire will arise out of actual ­practice (praxis), especially that of the multitude. Counter-empire must be global, it must be everywhere, and it must be opposed to empire. Counter-empire is made increasingly likely because empire is losing its ability to control the multitude. Thus, it must redouble its efforts (e.g., through police power), and this serves to mobilize the multitude and make counter-empire more likely. As postmodernists, Hardt and Negri reject a focus on the agent of the type found in Marxian theory, specifically the centrality accorded to the proletarian revolutionary agent who is increasingly conscious of exploitation by capitalism. Instead, they focus on such nonagential, collective actions by the multitude as desertion, migration, and nomadism. In accord with their postmodern orientation and the latter’s focus on the body, Hardt and Negri urge a new “barbarism” involving new bodily forms of the kind that are now appearing in the realms of gender, sexuality, and ­aesthetic mutations (such as tattooing and body piercing). Such bodies are less likely to submit to external control and more likely to create a new life—the basis of counter-empire. Thus, the revolutionary force is not a conscious agent but new bodily, corporeal forms. Although Hardt and Negri retain a Marxian interest in production, they do recognize a new world of production and work in which immaterial, intellectual, and communicative labor is increasingly central. Thus, control over those engaged in such work—a key element and growing proportion of the multitude—is of increasing importance. However, whereas the multitude is controlled through global communication and ideology (especially via the media), it is also through communication and ideology that the revolutionary potential of the multitude will be expressed. The key thing about communication is that it flows easily and effectively across the globe. This makes it easier for empire to exert control, to organize production globally, and to make its justification of itself and its actions immanent within that communication. Conversely, of course, it is also the mechanism by which the multitude can ultimately create counter-empire.

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS The Great Global Economic Meltdown If there was any lingering doubt about the reality of globalization, it was put to rest by the global economic crisis that began in 2007 and ended in 2009. It began as a largely U.S. problem relating specifically to the housing market, bad mortgage loans, and accelerating foreclosures on those unable to keep up with their mortgage payments. What was at first seen as a small and manageable American problem soon grew out of control and ultimately spread throughout much of the world. It turned out that many of these bad mortgages had been carved up into little pieces and packaged as financial instruments (they had been “securitized,” turned into mortgage-backed securities) that had been sold to many financial institutions not only in the United States but throughout the world. The institutions had bought them because of their faith in the U.S. economy and in the safety of mortgage loans (backed by real estate) and ultimately because small pieces of so many mortgages in any given financial instrument seemed to mean that the failure of a few mortgages would have little impact on the instrument as a whole. However, as the number of bad mortgages grew dramatically, these financial instruments were increasingly threatened, and they declined significantly in value. Soon major American financial institutions came under tremendous pressure, and a number of them failed (e.g., Lehman Brothers, IndyMac, and ­Washington Mutual) or were bailed out by the U.S. government (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG). These developments put financial institutions throughout the world at risk because they found themselves holding financial instruments whose value was in free fall. Prior to this, there had been much talk that the global economy had “decoupled” from, was no longer closely tied to, the American economy. Many areas (e.g., the European Union) and individual nations (e.g., China, India, Brazil) had become so successful economically that it was believed that they could withstand a decline in the U.S. economy by trading more with each other and/or by increasing consumption of their own products as well as those of other successful economies. To many, it seemed that the economic crises that had previously befallen the world (e.g., the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s) were a thing of the past. However, it turned out this was not the case, and what was an American economic problem rapidly became a global economic problem. Banks and other financial institutions throughout much of the world came under increasing pressure; some failed and others were bailed out by their governments. Many (Continued)

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(Continued) governments also injected large sums of money into their economies to keep them afloat. Some nations failed almost completely (e.g., Iceland) or experienced severe economic problems, and some (e.g., Hungary, Pakistan) had to seek financial aid from the IMF. Consumption declined globally, and as a result, production declined in response to lower demand. Global oil prices, which had risen to almost $150 a barrel, declined to almost $40 a barrel because of reduced demand as global economies slowed. The demand for other commodities (e.g., copper) also fell, and their prices declined precipitously. These and other aspects of the economic crisis of 2007–2009 showed how tightly intertwined the world had become and how easily economic problems can flow throughout the world. There was little that any given region or nation-state could do to protect itself from these negative economic flows and from globalization more generally. Of course, this cuts both ways: when the global economy improves, those improvements will also flow throughout much of the world.

POLITICAL THEORY Several theories that deal with globalization are deeply rooted in political science rather than sociology. International relations (IR) focuses on the relations among and between the nation-states of the world. The nation-states are viewed as distinct actors in the world, occupying well-defined territories, and as sovereign within their own borders. There is also an emphasis on a distinct and well-defined interstate system. Within IR, political realism begins with the premise that international politics is based on power, organized violence, and ultimately war. It assumes that nation-states are the predominant actors on the global stage, that they act as coherent units in the global arena, that force is not only a usable but also an effective method by which nation-states wield power on the global stage, and that military issues are of utmost importance in world politics. Complex interdependence sees nation-states relating to one another through multiple channels, formally and informally, through normal channels and so-called back channels. Where complex interdependence differs from realism is in the importance accorded to these informal channels, where, for example, international relations–A political theory that focuses on the relations among and between the nationstates of the world. political realism–A political theory that operates on the premise that international politics is based on power, organized violence, and ultimately war. complex interdependence–A political theory that sees nation-states relating to one another through ­multiple channels and that emphasizes informal channels, where, for example, entities other than states (such as multinational corporations) connect societies to one another.

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entities other than states (such as multinational corporations) connect societies to one another. There is no clear hierarchy of interstate relationships, and it is certainly not the case that military issues always, or even often, predominate. Coalitions arise within and between nation-states on these issues. Conflict may or may not arise, and if it does, it varies greatly in terms of degree of intensity. Complex interdependence tends to lead to a decline in, or even the disappearance of, the use of military force by one nation-state against other(s) within a given region or alliance, although military action may continue to occur outside that region or bloc. Although international organizations have only a minor role to play in the realist view of the world, they play an expanded role from the perspective of complex interdependence. Such organizations bring together representatives from countries, set agendas, serve as catalysts for the formation of coalitions, serve as arenas from which political initiatives arise, and are helpful to weak states in playing a larger role in the international arena. Thus, the complex interdependence perspective continues to focus on relationships among nation-states but takes a much wider and broader view of the nature of those relationships. There are also a variety of positions that are at variance with IR and its derivatives and that offer fundamental challenges to it. Among these are the positions of a wide range of scholars associated with international political economy theory, which challenges IR. Among other things, these scholars focus more on power and critique the state-centrism of IR, which ignores nonstate entities with political and economic power, especially corporations. An overriding interest in the literature on globalization and politics is the fate of the nation-state in the age of globalization. Many see the nation-state as threatened by global processes, especially global economic flows. Some go so far as to argue that the state is now a minor player globally in comparison to a huge and growing borderless global economy that nation-states are unable to control. Whereas nation-states once controlled markets, it is now the markets that often control the nation-states. A variety of other factors are also threatening the autonomy of the nationstate, including flows of information, illegal immigrants, new social movements, terrorists, criminals, drugs, money (including laundered money and other financial instruments), and sex trafficking. Many of these flows have been made possible by the development and continual refinement of technologies of all sorts. The nation-state has also been weakened by the growing power of global and transnational organizations (e.g., the European Union) that operate largely free of the control of nation-states. Another factor is the growth of global problems (e.g., HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis) that cannot be handled, or handled well, by a nationstate operating on its own. A more specific historical factor is the end of the Cold War, which had been a powerful force in unifying, or at least holding together, some nation-states. One example is Yugoslavia and its dissolution at the end of the Cold War, but the main one, of course, is the dissolution of the Soviet Union into a number of independent nation-states (Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, etc.). Then there are “failed states” (e.g., Somalia), which have, in effect, no functioning national

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governments, as well as states that are in the process of breaking down. Clearly, failed states and states that are disintegrating are in no position to maintain their borders adequately. One way of summarizing much of this is to say that the nation-state has become increasingly porous. Although this seems to be supported by a great deal of evidence, the fact is that no nation-state has ever been able to control its borders completely. Thus, it is not the porosity of the nation-state that is new but rather the dramatic increase in that porosity along with the kinds of flows that are capable of passing through national borders. There are at least some scholars who contest the position taken here. They have made a variety of arguments, including that the nation-state continues to be the major player on the global stage, that it retains at least some power in the face of globalization, that nation-states vary greatly in their efficacy in the face of globalization, and that the rumors of the demise of the nation-state are greatly exaggerated. There are even scholars who see the role of the state as not only enduring but even increasing in the world today. There are greater demands being placed on the state because of four major sources of collective insecurity: terrorism, economic globalization leading to problems such as outsourcing and pressures toward downsizing, threats to national identity due to immigration, and the spread of global diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Further, the state does not merely respond to these threats; it may actually find it in its interest to exaggerate or even create dangers and thereby make its citizens more insecure. A good example is the argument made by the U.S. and British governments prior to the 2003 war with Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that posed a direct threat to them. The United States even claimed that Iraq could kill millions by using offshore ships to lob canisters containing lethal chemical or biological material into American cities. The collective insecurity created by such outrageous claims helped foster public opinion in favor of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The other side of this argument in support of the nation-state is that global processes are not as powerful as many believe. For example, global business pales in comparison to business within many countries, including the United States. For another, some question the porosity of the nation-state by pointing, for example, to the fact that migration to the United States and other countries has declined substantially since its heights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A related point is that it would be a mistake simply to see globalization as a threat to, or a constraint on, the nation-state; it can also be an opportunity for the nation-state. For example, the demands of globalization were used as a basis for making needed changes (at least from a neoliberal point of view) in Australian society, allowing it to move away from protectionism and in the direction of (neo)liberalization, to transform state enterprises into private enterprises, and to streamline social welfare. In this, the rhetoric of globalization, especially an exaggeration of it and its effects, was useful to those politicians who were desirous of such changes. In other words, Australian politicians used globalization as an ideology to reform Australian society.

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SUMMARY  1. Globalization theory emerged as a result of developments and changes in the world as a whole as well as within academia.  2. Globalization can be analyzed culturally, economically, politically, and institutionally. A concern for homogenization/heterogenization cuts across work in all of these areas.  3. Central to the work of Anthony Giddens on globalization is the idea of losing control over the juggernaut of modernity and creating a runaway world.  4. Ulrich Beck sees hope in globality with the decline of the nation-state and in transnational organizations and possibly a transnational state.  5. To Zygmunt Bauman, what defines the global world is a “space war” between those who have mobility and those who do not. However, even those with mobility face grave problems.  6. Cultural theories of globalization may be divided into three paradigms: cultural differentialism, cultural convergence, and cultural hybridization.  7. Cultural differentialism adopts the view that there are lasting differences among and between cultures that are largely unaffected by globalization.  8. Samuel Huntington offers the best-known example of cultural differentialism with his focus on civilizations, the major civilizations of the world, and the likelihood of economic conflict between Sinic civilization and Western civilization and warfare between Islamic civilization and Western civilization.  9. Cultural convergence takes the view that globalization is leading to increasing sameness around the world. 10. Two examples of cultural convergence are the McDonaldization thesis and the idea that the world is increasingly dominated by the “grobalization” of “nothing.” 11. Cultural hybridization adopts the perspective that globalization is bringing with it the mixing of cultures, that is, the production of new and unique cultures that are not reducible to either global or local. 12. A number of theoretical ideas are associated with cultural hybridization, including glocalization, hybridization, and creolization. 13. A major theory included under the heading of cultural hybridization is Arjun Appadurai’s thinking on landscapes and the disjunctures among and between them.

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14. Neoliberalism is the dominant economic theory of globalization. It combines a commitment to individual liberty with the economic ideas of the free market and an opposition to state intervention in that market. 15. The excesses of neoliberalism in the economy and the polity led to reactions against it, including the work of Karl Polanyi on the “double movement,” which involves the expansion of the laissez-faire market and the self-protective reaction against it by the state and society. 16. Leslie Sklair develops a neo-Marxian economic theory of globalization that focuses on transnational capitalism, especially transnational corporations, the transnational capitalist class, and the culture-ideology of consumerism. 17. Sklair argues that transnational capitalism provides the basis for the emergence of socialist globalization. 18. To Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, we are in the midst of a transition from capitalist imperialism to the dominance of empire. Empire lacks a center and is based on juridical power. 19. The multitude sustains empire, but it also has, at least potentially, the power to overthrow empire and create counter-empire. 20. There are several political theories that relate to globalization, including international relations, political realism, and complex interdependence. 21. A central issue in the study of political globalization is the degree to which the nation-state is being weakened by globalization.

SUGGESTED READINGS ARJUN APPADURAI Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. An important anthropological take on globalization that is best known for its discussion of “scapes” and the disjunctures among and between them. BENJAMIN R. BARBER Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Times Books, 1995. Popular and influential work by a political scientist who sees a global split between the forces of McWorld and Jihad; notes that to succeed in the long term, Jihad will likely need to use more of the tools of McWorld (e.g., internet, television). ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Globalization: The Human Consequences. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. One of the most famous theorists of the day expounds on his thoughts on globalization, especially on the “space war” and the advantages that accrue to those who can move easily across space. 386    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

ULRICH BECK World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Further develops Beck’s theory of risk society and its relationship to globalization, offering additional insights into the latter. MANUEL CASTELLS The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996. Highly processual view of globalization that focuses on global flows and networks. ANTHONY GIDDENS Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives. New York: Routledge, 2000. A major social theorist relates his ideas on the juggernaut of modernity to the possibility that globalization is bringing with it a runaway world. MICHAEL HARDT and ANTONIO NEGRI Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Highly influential and controversial neo-Marxian approach to globalization that sees a more nebulous empire replacing capitalist imperialism and the multitude taking the role of the proletariat in traditional Marxian theory. MICHAEL HARDT and ANTONIO NEGRI Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin, 2004. Important, more popularly oriented, follow-up to Empire that among other things further develops the elusive idea of the multitude. SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Perhaps the most controversial book on globalization; focuses on culture “writ large,” that is, civilizations, but its arguments on Islam have led to the most heated critiques. JAN NEDERVEEN PIETERSE Globalization and Culture: Global Melange. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Develops a useful way of looking at three paradigms in the analysis of the relationship between culture and globalization as well as further developing the idea of hybridization. GEORGE RITZER The Globalization of Nothing 2. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2007. A theory of globalization that emphasizes both heterogenization (glocalization) and homogenization (grobalization), although its most important argument is that increasing homogenization is occurring through the grobalization of nothing. GEORGE RITZER and PAUL DEAN Globalization: A Basic Text, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2015. A broad and interdisciplinary overview of globalization theory, elaborating many of the issues introduced in this chapter. GEORGE RITZER The McDonaldization of Society. 8th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2015. Develops both a theory of contemporary society building CHAPTER ELEVEN  •  GLOBALIZATION THEORY   387

on Max Weber’s theory of rationalization and a theory of increasing global homogenization as a result of the worldwide proliferation of McDonaldized forms. JAMES N. ROSENAU Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. A political scientist’s analysis of global political trends through a variety of developments that produce both “distant proximities” and increasing “fragmegration.” LESLIE SKLAIR Globalization: Capitalism and Its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. A neo-Marxian economic treatise that emphasizes the importance of transnational corporations, the transnational corporate class, and the culture ideology of consumerism. JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Important critique of globalization and the role played by the United States and key international organizations (e.g., the IMF) in structuring globalization to the advantage of the United States and the West. JOHN TOMLINSON Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Excellent overview of work on the relationship between culture and globalization, especially that which emphasizes heterogenization. JOHN URRY Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Unique look at globalization through the lens of complexity or chaos theory.

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CHAPTER

TWELVE

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND NATURE

Affect Theory and the New Materialism Science Studies and Actor-Network Theory Theories of the Anthropocene Summary Suggested Readings

In this chapter we introduce several theories that address the themes of science, technology, and nature. Sociological theory has a long history of interaction with the natural and physical sciences. Classical theorists, such as Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim, introduced evolutionary theories of social change that complemented and borrowed from biological theories of evolution. At the beginning of the 20th century, George Herbert Mead drew on Darwinian evolutionary theory and relativistic physics to develop his ideas about the self and society. In the mid to late 20th century, the perspectives of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology were popular in psychology and some sociological quarters. These link the study of social behavior to evolutionary theory. In evolutionary sociology, specific kinds of human social behavior are treated as evolved strategies that maximize chances for the individual, either at the level of organism or gene, to reproduce itself. Though evolutionary and sociobiological approaches have been criticized for their presumed reductionism (explaining social behavior through biology) and their proximity to Social Darwinism, theorists such as John Turner have argued for a “new evolutionary sociology” that better integrates the findings of sociology with evolutionary and neuroscientific theory. Recently, alongside these more familiar approaches, theories that stem from other intellectual traditions (including poststructuralism, systems theory,

evolutionary sociology–A theory that describes human behaviors as evolved strategies that maximize chances for the individual, either at the level of organism or gene, to reproduce themselves.

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feminism, Marxism, historical sociology) have sought ways to engage the natural sciences. This is due to several factors. For one, some recognize that the heavy focus on language and symbol use found in postmodern and poststructuralist theory wrongly diminishes the importance of biological and material processes in the formation of social orders. Second, the rapid growth in scientific knowledge and ever-expanding incorporation of technology into social life calls for theories that better appreciate how the ideas and products of science and technology shape social life. Finally, since at least the beginning of the 21st century, human societies have been confronted with the effects of climate change. These require a better understanding of how human society is implicated in and influenced by changes in the planetary system (e.g. climate, species extinctions, flooding, pollution).

KEY CONCEPT Realism and Critical Realism

As discussed in this chapter, there are many contemporary approaches in the social sciences that address the limits of the postmodern theories that dominated much social theory in the late 20th century. One of the most important alternatives comes from realist approaches to science and social science, the influence of which has been growing during the 21st century. In general realism is contrasted with social constructionism. Specifically, it takes issue with the tendency to explain social phenomenon through human language, action, and intention alone. In contrast, realists point out that much of reality exists and works independent from the human mind and its conceptualizations of reality. Even in social science the way that society works often exceeds our ability to conceptualize and control it. One of the most important realist theories in contemporary sociology is critical realism. Despite its recent rise to prominence, critical realism has been in development since the 1970s when philosopher Roy Bhaskar, published A Realist Theory of Science (1975). Current sociological representatives of this position include Margaret Archer, Philip Gorski, Andrew Sayer, and Christian Smith. Critical realism was introduced as an alternative to positivism (examples of which are exchange theory and rational choice theory, see Chapter 6) and postmodernism (see Chapter 11). Critical realists challenged positivists because

critical realism–One kind of realism popular in contemporary sociology that criticizes both positivism and social constructionism. It emphasizes the analysis of layers of reality and their relationship to human society.

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positivists limited their explanations of social life to observable, quantifiable phenomenon. Obsessed only with what they could see and measure, positivists refused to imagine deeper levels of reality. In contrast, critical realists challenged postmodernists because of their overemphasis on flux, flow, and what they saw as the impermanent nature of social life. As they do with the positivists, critical realists fault postmodernists because they refuse to look past the surface to the deeper, more permanent (or as critical realists say, intransitive) aspects of the social. Critical realists have a stratified theory of reality. Reality comprises layers, and each layer is made of unique entities and processes. These cannot be reduced or understood in the same way as the processes at other levels. For example, one layer of reality includes subatomic processes, another layer biological processes, yet another what we call the “social,” and still higher-order processes, like those discussed in cosmology. That said, despite their differences these layers of reality are related to each other through the process of emergence. By emergence, critical realists mean that interactions among entities in one layer can lead to the emergence of new kinds of entities and processes in the layer above. In his book What Is a Person?, Christian Smith provides a helpful example. He describes the layers of reality that enable the emergence of human personhood. Human biology is one level of reality out of which, under the right conditions, human consciousness can emerge. The phenomena encountered in each layer are distinct from each other. For example, human consciousness is characterized by a selfawareness that biology, in itself, does not possess. Nevertheless, consciousness emerges from biology and is therefore dependent on biology. Consciousness also operates at various layers, a few of which include a layer of primary capacities (such as mental representation), which give rise to a layer of secondary capacities (e.g., intersubjective understanding) all the way up to a layer of higher-order capacities (e.g., moral awareness). Beyond the layers of human consciousness, of course, is another layer of reality—social institutions—and then further layers above and even below.

AFFECT THEORY AND THE NEW MATERIALISM Affect theory is an extension of poststructural and postmodern theory. As we will see, it shares with those perspectives an interest in deconstruction and decentering human subjectivity. However, it departs from those theoretical perspectives because it emphasizes the independent role that biology or “matter” (physical phenomena and processes) plays in the construction of society. In this respect, emergence–An idea from systems theory and critical realism that interactions among entities in one layer of reality can lead to the emergence of new kinds of entities and processes in the layer of reality above. affect theory–An extension of poststructuralist and postmodern theory that emphasizes how bodies affect and are affected by one another.

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affect theory is a variety of what has been called the new materialism. New materialism refers to perspectives that emphasize the materiality of social phenomena. This contrasts with perspectives that emphasize the ideal or immaterial aspects of social life, such as language and symbols. The new materialism is often contrasted with Marx’s historical materialism. It will be recalled, from Chapter 2, that Marx emphasized that society could be explained through analysis of the material economic productive forces that were the base upon which societies were built. Although the new materialism includes discussion of economic productive forces, it especially emphasizes the materiality human bodies, including their relationship to objects and other beings, like animals. Affect theorists capture this emphasis when they say that they are interested in how bodies affect and are affected by one another. Turning more specifically to affect theory, whereas the concept of affect has clear affinities with the concept of emotion (see Chapter 6), affect theorists distinguish between the two. To put it simply, affect is an indeterminate biological force that energizes and brings vitality to life. By describing affect as indeterminate, affect theorists mean that affect is not easily named, described, or acted upon. As a phenomenon that is felt and experienced in and through bodies, it is similar to the concept of emotion, although affect captures a broader range of phenomena. It is best to say that affect is a variety of unprocessed emotion. Emotion is what happens to affect once it has been submitted to social processes that make it conscious. Affect theory analyzes how this unique phenomenon shapes the social world and describes the processes by which affect is used and managed in societies. Before getting into more specific concepts, it is important to draw attention to three major claims of affect theory. First, affect theorists take seriously the findings of the natural sciences and, in particular, work in the life sciences (e.g., biology, genetics, neuroscience). This is a major difference from earlier postmodern perspectives that for the most part, rejected research conducted in the natural sciences on the grounds that most science was a social construction that reproduces normative social categories. For example, as we saw in the chapter on race and colonialism, some scientific theory has constructed categories of racial difference that have been used to justify colonialism and racial domination. That said, affect theorists (and new materialists more generally) think that some versions of social constructionism have gone too far. Some social constructionists have argued that nature and biology are a social construction; that they primarily acquire their meaning and significance for social life through the ways they are discussed and interpreted in language and symbols systems (e.g., scientific texts). Affect theory criticizes the idea that “nature” is merely a cultural construction. Rather, nature

new materialism–Perspectives that emphasize the materiality of all social phenomenon.Where Marx’s original historical materialism focused on the materiality of economic production, new materialists also emphasize the materiality of human bodies and the objects to which they relate. affect–Indeterminate biological forces that energize and bring vitality to life.

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is an “autonomous” force that enters relations with culture, language, and so on. The problem is to understand how nature and culture interact without reducing one to the other. In other words, the goal is to avoid reductionist approaches that explain culture through nature and biology (as some sociobiologists and evolutionary sociologists are accused of doing) or nature through culture (as some postmodernists are accused of doing). The second important claim forwarded by affect theorists is that we live in a society that is governed through affective processes. This contrasts with poststructuralist and postmodern claims that social life is governed through linguistic and symbolic processes. Sociologist Patricia Clough says that poststructuralist Michel Foucault (see Chapter 10) overemphasized the role that language and discourse play in the disciplining and construction of human subjectivity. Poststructuralism treats the body as a product of discursive forces rather than a biological entity that could act and be acted upon independent of language. Clough introduces psychotropic medications, such as antidepressants, as an example of technologies that allow people to directly modify bodily affect (i.e., through the manipulation of neurotransmitters). Antidepressants change the way that bodies feel by acting on biological systems outside of conscious awareness. According to Clough the poststructuralist or constructionist focus on linguistic explanations of human subjectivity does not account for the way these affective technologies shape people and, by extension, society. Affect theory provides a way of talking about these biological interventions in ways that avoid either biological or cultural reductionism. In a similar vein, linking biological process and technology, affect theorists have analyzed how advertisers shape consumer behavior through the manipulation of neurological processes and how new media and digital technologies act upon affective systems. Third, affect theorists emphasize the idea that human action is grounded in unconscious or nonconscious processes. Nonconscious refers to processes that operate outside of awareness. Along these lines Gregg and Siegworth describe affect as “subpersonal” or “subsocial,” which means that affect is a phenomenon that exists and operates in a realm beneath recognizable social and personal processes. Social theorists have a long history of discussing unconscious and nonconscious processes. Critical theorists (see Chapter 5) draw on Freudian ideas to discuss the ways that unconscious sexual and violent desires affect human action. Through the concept of practice, Giddens and others introduce the possibility of nonconscious embodied action. This is also captured with the concept of habit and Bourdieu’s habitus. But affect theory offers a unique approach to the nonconscious. It is steeped in scientific ideas about molecular biological processes. These biological reductionism–Theoretical and scientific approaches that try to explain one kind of phenomenon by reducing it to the mechanisms and processes of another. nonconscious processes–Processes that occur outside of human awareness.

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processes, interacting with their immediate environment, generate their own kind of ­feeling—affect. Affect is always present, a kind of backdrop energy—buzzing and humming—out of which action emerges, but it is inaccessible to direct experience or even conscious control and management. Importantly, whereas affect is felt and lived through the body, it always exists within specific situations. In this sense, affect, as we explain in the next section, is best conceived as an energetic field rather than something located within individuals. This concept of affect allows social theorists to explain a variety of generally perplexing social and psychological phenomena. These are phenomena that exceed the conceptual grasp of contemporary social science. For example, leading affect theorist Brian Massumi points out that psychological experiments show that bodies make decisions 0.5 seconds before these decisions become conscious. In social theory and the social sciences, we usually think of the body as something that is governed by the mind: First we think, and then our bodies carry out our actions. But Massumi says that the body “thinks” through a problem in advance, and the mind registers this decision after the fact. This points to another key characteristic of affect: Affect is faster than thought. We feel before we see or hear. Where language fixes or holds still, affect flows (although, as we will see, it can also be held still and controlled). Indeed, affect theory is especially relevant to a world that operates through the global flows and rapid movement identified by Zygmunt Bauman and Arjun Appadurai (see Chapters 10 and 11). A great deal of human action and interaction occurs in this spontaneous, fast, nonconscious realm, and cognitive rationality is better viewed as an afterthought than as the driver of action. The problem in understanding the management of contemporary societies is understanding the ways that affect is both captured and liberated.

The Affective Field The discussion of biological process may have given the impression that affect is a phenomenon that is centered human bodies. It is true that affect is associated with these internal biological processes. However, its potential for sociological theory lies in the idea that affect (this raw, felt energy of the body) is actually a product of relations among bodies, biological systems, and other bodies and systems. Affect, in this sense, is like a vast field in which people are always immersed but of which they are conscious of only small, actualized portions. We can compare this concept of the field to Bourdieu’s concept of the field (see Chapter 7). For Bourdieu the field is a set of social roles structured through symbolic and economic distinctions. For affect theorists the field is an energy or force field comprising the feelings and energies contributed by all participants (both human and natural) that in turn feed back to shape human action and interaction. Also, like Bourdieu’s theory, affect theory is a relational theory. This is one of the things that makes affect theory different from theories that assume methodological individualism, such as rational choice, exchange theories (see Chapter 11), and much modern biological science. Under methodological individualism the body

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is treated as a self-enclosed unit that begins and ends with its skin. For affect theorists bodies and the feelings in bodies are caught up in fields that are made out of all the energies contributed by all the bodies in that field. Two areas of research that have come out of this focus on affective fields are a renewed interest in the sociology of crowds and the development of social studies of atmosphere. The relationship between affect theory and the sociology of crowds can be traced backed to the ideas of classical sociologist Emile Durkheim (see Chapter 2) and one of Durkheim’s contemporaries Gustav Le Bon. Durkheim said that when groups gather for ritual celebrations they experience collective effervescence—a shared energy that emerges out of the collective dances, songs, and rituals in which group members participate. Whereas in the past sociologists have emphasized the role that collective representations (symbol systems) play in creating the group, Durkheim argued that the shared energy of collective effervescence was also necessary to group formation. Le Bon, in contrast, contributed the idea that crowds operate through social contagion—a process in which affect directly travels from body to body. Le Bon says that when people gather in large groups—for examples in urban protests—their normal inhibitions are lowered, and they are more likely to be caught upon in group energies and affects. Here the action of groups is guided not by individuals, but rather individuals are carried along by irrational, subindividual forces active in the affective field. Atmosphere theory also analyzes shared, collective feelings. Atmosphere refers to the shared feelings of place that surround and condition human action and interaction. Different groups of people in different settings possess unique atmospheres. Each has its own feel, tone, and smell. A family home has a different atmosphere than a busy shopping mall. A university lecture room has a different feeling than a mosque. To describe this phenomenon, Theresa Brennan starts her book The Transmission of Affect with the question: “Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and ‘felt the atmosphere’?” On this view, the contemporary social world is both experienced and constructed through atmospheres. As we move from one setting to another, we move from atmosphere to atmosphere, each of which allows or disallows different kinds of actions, often without our notice. In addition to describing the different kinds of atmospheres people encounter in social life, social scientists have studied how atmospheres are created. Like new materialists and affect theorists, these explanations often emphasize how material objects and environments are arranged to create atmospheres. Mood can be created collective effervescence–Emile Durkheim’s term for the shared energy that emerges out of collective dances, songs, and rituals in which group members participate. social contagion–A process described by Gustav Le Bon in which affect directly travels from body to body, driving irrational group behavior. atmosphere–Shared feelings of place that shape human feeling and action and that people create through their interactions.

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in family homes by manipulating paint, furniture, and lighting. Air quality, including levels of warmth, are managed through air-conditioning. Museums and malls are populated with ambient noises that shape people’s experiences of space. Brennan even suggests that biological phenomena, such as the pheromones that fill up a shared space, contribute to the background feeling. Importantly, concepts like atmosphere introduce a new way of thinking of age-old sociological phenomena like solidarity and community. Historically, solidarity and community have been explained through concepts like economic class position, or the mental bond provided by shared language and symbols. In contrast, affect and specifically atmosphere theories argue that solidarity and community can be created through the collective feelings that are attached to and linger in a community’s spaces.

KEY CONCEPT Assemblage

Assemblage is a concept that is used widely in contemporary social theory. In general, it emphasizes the idea that societies are created out of the assembly of, or interconnection among, multiple parts. In his books A New Philosophy of Society and Assemblage Theory, philosopher Manuel DeLanda provides the most developed description of the concept. An important point is that societies are not seamless totalities. Societies are not made up from one overarching material like culture or economic structure. Rather societies are built up from smaller components to produce assemblages of different varieties and scale. DeLanda refers to societies as “assemblages of assemblages.” For example, in A New Philosophy of Society, DeLanda argues that persons are a kind of assemblage that give rise to another assemblage called interpersonal networks, which can in turn be assembled as communities. Higher-level assemblages built out of connections among those below include social institutions (like government bureaucracies), cities, and nations. In Assemblage Theory DeLanda summarizes the main assumptions of the theory as follows: •

Assemblages are “individuals.” By this, DeLanda means that any type of assemblage, no matter its size (person or institution), is a unique agent that can interact with other agents at different scales to produce new kinds of assemblages. Thus, for example a family assemblage can interact with a government assemblage to produce a department of social services (its own kind of assemblage).

assemblage–Emphasizes the idea that societies are created out of the assembly of, or interconnection among, multiple parts.

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•

Assemblages are made from “heterogenous components.” This means that assemblages are built out of connections among many kinds of beings such as humans, animals, technological objects, and the natural environment. For example, a government bureaucracy includes not only people but also files and physical office spaces, among other objects.

•

Assemblages can be connected to one another to form larger assemblages. Here DeLanda treats micro and macro (see Chapter 7) as relative terms. The individual person is a micro assemblage in comparison to a social institution, but that same social institution is a micro assemblage in comparison to an entire social structure. DeLanda says that assemblages are “nested” into one another.

•

Finally, he says that assemblages “emerge out of the interactions between their parts.” The kind of assemblage and the things that it can do depends upon all the smaller assemblages within the assemblage. He also points out that once formed the larger assemblage can exert “top-down control” on the parts that are nested within it.

Affect and Social Control Most affect theorists have produced politically charged analyses in the spirit of Marxist theory, critical theory, and queer theory. In addition to describing how affect connects people to one another, affect theorists also describe how affect can be used as a force of social control. In effect theory, social control and social domination are usually described with terms borrowed from the postmodern thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. For example, affects are created and controlled through the construction of “machinic assemblages.” Machinic assemblage is a term that describes the ways that bodies, ideas, and technologies are hooked up with one another. Consider for example how a social media platform like Instagram captures your attention, manipulates your feelings, introduces you to ideas about who you can be, and uses that attention and those feelings to generate profit for Instagram. When effective, these machinic assemblages create populations and citizens that support the contemporary political and economic status quo (which for most affect theorists is a problem). In the current moment, affects are managed through assemblages that hook together capitalist markets, mass media imagery, and biotechnologies. When machinic assemblages take over geographical, cultural, and psychical regions, this is referred to as territorialization.

machinic assemblage–How bodies, ideas, and technologies are hooked up with one another (Deleuze and Guattari). territorialization–Occurs when machinic assemblages take over geographical, cultural, and psychical regions (Delueze and Guattari).

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Territorialization is never full or complete and is often met with deterritorialization efforts—attempts to create assemblages that offer new affective possibilities, that is, new way of feeling and acting. Patricia Clough analyzes the relationship between affect and capitalism through the concept of biomedia. Bodies are organized differently in different historical periods. She distinguishes between the body-as-organism of the 19th century and the biomediated body of the present moment. The body-as-organism was a self-enclosed body that was created and reproduced through labor and consumption practices. For example, consider the ways in which the body of the factory worker was shaped through labor and connected to the world in the 19th century. The biomediated body, in contrast, is opened to the flows and movements of consumer capitalism. For example, in contrast to the 19th-century factory worker, consider how the body of an online gamer, seated at home in front of a screen, is shaped by their play and connected to their world. Biomedia are the technologies that allow historically unique engagements with the biological body. Here affect is “captured” in at least two ways. First, new media technologies generate and circulate affect. Media, mass entertainment, and social media work by stimulating and circulating affective energies. Social media channels capture viewer attention. They generate profit for corporations and power for politicians. In the era of television and the internet, a successful political rally depends not only on the energy developed at the rally itself but also on the ability to circulate this energy through televisual networks that captivate a much larger segment of the population than can be present at a rally. Second affect is managed and captured through biomedicine. Biomedicine is the growing sector concerned with the treatment and management of biological health and wellness. Biomedicine generates biocapital. Biocapital is the value— economic wealth—produced through knowledge about bodies and their affective capacities. How for example do bodies, or particular bodies, respond to new drugs and medical treatments? How can this knowledge be leveraged into profits? For example, the coronavirus pandemic has led to unprecedented research on how bodies react to viruses and vaccines. This has led to the development and mass distribution of mRNA vaccines on an unprecedented scale. Pharmaceutical companies that developed the vaccines have earned large profits, but perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of affect theory, developed new techniques for the engagement with biological matter, bodies, and human populations that can in turn be used to develop further knowledges, technologies, and profits. deterritorialization–Attempts to create assemblages that offer affective possibilities other than those determined by territorialization (Deleuze and Guattari). biomedia–Technologies that allow historically unique engagements with the biological body. biomedicine–The growing sector concerned with the treatment and management of biological health and wellness. biocapital–The economic wealth produced through knowledge about bodies and their affective capacities.

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SCIENCE STUDIES AND ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY Actor-network theory (ANT) grows out of the more general area of science and technology studies. In this section, we review the basic ideas of ANT, focusing mostly on the work of one of its most influential representatives, Bruno Latour. We also introduce the work of Donna Haraway, a science studies scholar. Although Haraway is not an actor-network theorist, her ideas complement our presentation of ANT by adding a feminist perspective. The study of science and technology has a long history in sociology and social theory. For example, in the 1970s, Robert Merton (see Chapter 4) used a functionalist approach to study science. Other theorists have drawn on ethnographic and ethnomethodological techniques to study laboratory practices. That is, they treat the laboratory like any other society—as a group that is organized through norms, rules, and social hierarchies. Others have researched science from the perspectives of cultural studies, feminism, and race theory. In contrast to Merton, these later positions do not see science as simply one of many independent social institutions available for sociological analysis. Rather, science is a form of knowledge and practice that increasingly, more than any other institution, organizes society. For example, feminist theorists have shown that biological theories are not neutral descriptions of a so-called natural reality but rather produce and reproduce conventional social distinctions between masculinity and femininity.

ANT and Society Although it is not the only theory to come out of science and technology studies, ANT is the perspective that has most widely affected sociological and social theory. How does ANT change the way we can think about society? The most significant idea is that society is not made up of human actors alone. In ANT society is treated as a “network” or “assemblage” that is made up of both human and nonhuman agents. Nonhumans include biological organisms (e.g., animals, viruses, plants), entities studied in the physical science (e.g., electrons, gravity, climate), and technology (e.g., tablets, refrigerators, canals). Historically, most sociologists have concentrated their attention on relationships among humans and the social forms that are created through their interaction: culture, values, and institutions. However, as Latour argues, social life, especially in the modern period, involves collaborations between humans and nonhumans. The task for the actor-network scholar is to describe how kinds of agents come together to create what we call society. For example, in one famous ANT study, Michel Callon examined research on the domestication of scallops and fishermen in St. Brieuc Bay, France. As part of

actor-network theory (ANT)–A theory that emerged out of science and technology studies that studies how societies are built out of the interconnections among human and nonhuman agents.

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BRUNO LATOUR (1947–) A Biographical Vignette In addition to his impressive academic output, Bruno Latour (1947–) regularly engages in activities that reach far beyond the university, especially into the fields of politics and the arts. In terms of politics, Latour argues that science is political. For example, right now he thinks we are in a new “science war” between those who deny the reality of climate science and those who recognize the reality of climate change. He is critical of the corporations that deny climate change yet nevertheless have a strong influence over the rest of the population. He is also critical of scientists who believe that they can be neutral in these science wars and encourages them to take a stand and speak on behalf of nature and nonhumans. In terms of art, increasingly, Latour has paired his social theory with exhibitions and theatrical performances. He has co-curated several art exhibitions at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Iconoclash tackled the relations among science, religion, and art (https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2002/05/­iconoclash), and Making Things Public examined representation in politics (https://zkm.de/ en/exhibition/2005/03/making-things-public). With colleagues he has also put on theatrical performances. Some of these stage historical debates between famous intellectuals, such as Emile Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde (http://www .bruno-latour.fr/node/354.html). Others such as Moving Earths (https://zkm.de/ en/event/2020/05/screening-moving-earths; written with Frederique Ait Touati) and Gaia Global Circus (https://zkm.de/en/event/2014/01/gaia-global-circus) have engaged the issue of climate change. Updates on Latour’s latest works and collaborations can be found on his website: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/news_ and_logs.html.

this research, Callon introduced the concept of “symmetry.” Symmetry is the idea that social scientists need to treat all entities in a social encounter in the same way. We should not assume in advance, for example, that humans are the only actors that possess agency—the ability to control and shape other agents. This opens the possibility that in any social situation, as human actors influence the behavior of nonhuman actors, so too nonhuman actors influence the behavior of human actors. To emphasize this symmetry, in place of the word agent, actor-network theorists use the term actant. They use the word actant because agent is too closely associated with human agency and human intentionality (the ability to act based

symmetry–The idea that social science explanations must treat both human and nonhumans in the same way (actor-network theory). actant–A term used by actor-network theorists to indicate that both humans and nonhumans possess agency.

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on cognition). One point of ANT is that there are kinds of agency (ways of influencing others) that do not depend upon intentionality. Actants exert force—they shape the world, and they shape other actants. In Callon’s analysis of the scallops, he found at least three actants: scallops, fishermen, and scientists. Each of these actants have interests. For example, scallop famers are interested in farming scallops. The scallops, in turn, are interested in avoiding predators and surviving. Scientists are interested in learning about the behavior of scallops. To successfully domesticate the scallop, the fishermen and scientists must develop nets/collectors that will attract the scallops. In other words, their actions—net building—is influenced by the agency of the scallops. They had to design nets so that scallop larvae would anchor to them and develop on them. Taken together these actants form a “network.” The network is created out of the efforts of actants to convince each other to play along or cooperate. As actor-network theorists say, the actors try to “recruit” or “enroll” one another into networks. Enrollment refers to the process by which one actant tries to get another actant to join its network. Latour points out that there is a political dimension to enrollment. He frequently describes networks as alliances and contests of power. Actants seeks alliances with other actants to help them achieve new ends. Weak actants (those that do not have a lot of power) strengthen themselves by allying with other actants. In this respect, network building, which is also society building, is an effort to extend power through alliance formation. This brings us to the second point. Latour replaces the word society with the word collective or assemblage or network or association. Latour introduces assemblage/collective/network/association (he uses these terms interchangeably) as an alternative to the image of society introduced by Emile Durkheim in the late 1800s (see Chapter 2). Durkheim’s conception of society underpins much contemporary sociological research. Durkheim used the term social fact to say that society is a real thing that transcends, or hangs above, human activity and directs it from outside. He gives us the idea that there is some “stuff” or “substance” called the social. Latour contends that there is no such social stuff. Rather, society is a shorthand term for the collection of entities or agents that hold together for shorter or longer periods of time. Drawing on ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel (see Chapter 6), Latour argues that assemblages are a constant and ongoing accomplishment. Assemblages don’t simply exist; they must constantly be “performed”—brought into existence through constant work and effort. In other words, networks are always in the process of being formed and created. Often sociologists mistakenly treated these networks as finished products that exist as a matter of fact outside of all the processes and activities that built them in the first place. Latour insists that the more important and interesting sociological endeavor is to study the practices through which these assemblages are constantly being put together. enrollment–When one actant joins another actant’s network. It is a technique that weak actants use to increase their power (actor-network theory).

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The practice of science and technology, or technoscience, is crucial to the formation of these networked collectives because it has become one of the most important tools in modern society for assembling new actors into previously unconceivable assemblages. For example, using a high-powered microscope (a technological actant that extends sight), the biologist (a human actant with intention) can “discover” and thereby “enroll” a microbe (a new biological actant) into the collective. Modern societies are the kinds of societies that have leveraged scientific practice into making larger and ever more complicated networks.

Translation, Mediation, and the Modern Constitution The key idea in ANT, then, is that society is formed out of networks that are made up of humans and nonhumans. The theory however becomes more complicated once we consider the nature of the relations between humans and nonhumans. In its theory of relationship, ANT borrows most heavily from poststructural theory (see Chapter 10). In the same way that poststructuralists say that words and signs gain their meaning from their positions in relationship to other words in a language, actor-network theorists say that actants, both human and nonhuman, gain their shapes, forms, and identities from their relationships within networks of other actants. In Callon’s research, for example, in forming a network the scallops and the fishermen transform one another. In other words, the actants don’t have a final or stable form until they come together to form a network. Yes, the human and the microbe exist and possess qualities outside of the network relationship, but for all practical purposes the “nature” of the microbe and the human is settled only once the network is formed. Put another way, actants only exist as parts of networks. To explain this, Latour introduces the concepts of translation and mediation. Translation refers to the process by which actants modify, or transform, one another. The capacity to modify is mediation. Consider again the microscope example. Often, we think of a microscope as a technology that simply magnifies an entity that is already there waiting to be seen. The microbe is the exact same thing it was before the microscope was invented, except now it can be seen more clearly. However, if we think about the microscope as a mediator, we see how the technology, the microscope, changes or translates the microbe. For the microscope to do its work, the microbe must be taken out of its environment, prepared, and placed on a slide so it can be seen by the microscope. The microbe exists like this only in the microbe-microscope-human network. This new version of the “microbe,” along with the new version of the human actant it creates (because the human is also modified by the act of producing the microbe), is a part of a larger network of human, microscope, microbe relations.

translation–The process by which actants modify, or transform, one another (actor-network theory). mediation–The capacity of actants to modify one another (actor-network theory).

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This concept of actant also requires a new definition of what sociologists have historically called human nature. Like poststructuralists, for actor-network theorists there is no such thing as a human nature (or any kind of “nature”). Instead, our natures are part of the networks into which we have been recruited. The mistaken idea that there is a human nature that can be opposed to a nonhuman nature is a product of what Latour calls the Modern Constitution. The Modern Constitution is the ideological and institutional arrangement that shapes the modern world. In the Modern Constitution actants are divided between those that possess agency and those that do not possess agency. Another way of saying this is that the Modern Constitution divides the world between subjects that act and objects that are acted upon. For Latour, the Modern Constitution gives too much agency to humans and not enough agency to nonhumans. Instead, he says, most societies, but especially modern societies, are made up of hybrids/quasi-objects. Actants, including humans, are neither fully subject nor fully object but rather combinations of objectivity and subjectivity—sometimes humans act on the world; other times they are acted upon by the world (usually both at the same time). This reconceptualization of human nature as something made up of both human and nonhuman elements is often called a “posthuman” perspective. ANT is a posthuman theory in the sense that it does not accept the basic assumptions of humanist philosophy, especially the idea that humans are self-enclosed beings that can be defined through uniquely human components and traits. In fact, Latour says that most of the things that humans do are only possible because they have combined their abilities with the abilities of other actants. For example, increasingly humans rely on mobile phones and computers to remember vast amounts of information. Most of us do not remember the phone numbers of friends or family members because our phone remembers these for us. In fact, human memory and our relation to the past is massively transformed by our regular interaction with these nonhuman actants. Finally, Latour’s redefinition of human subjectivity and society implies a different conception of action. Classical theorists see action as something that is tied to individual human thought and intention. But on this new conception there is no such thing as individual human thought or intention—rather our agency is distributed across networks. For example, in one essay Latour (writing under the pseudonym Jim Johnson) analyzed how humans delegate the act of opening a door to the hinges on the door. The hinges solve the problem of easily opening the door. In turn, the kind of hinges (Do they have a spring? Do the springs shut Modern Constitution–The ideological and institutional arrangement in which actants are divided between those that are presumed to possess agency (the humans) and those that do not possess agency (the nonhumans) (Latour). hybrids/quasi-objects–Actants that combine both objectivity and subjectivity; in Latour’s theory all actants are hybrids, even humans (actor-network theory). posthuman theory–Theories that challenges humanist assumptions about human nature, especially the idea that humans are self-enclosed beings that are defined through uniquely human components and traits.

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the door slowly or quickly? Do they have a hydraulic component?) shape—or ­prescribe—the behavior of the humans. In this network humans invent technologies to delegate their behavior, but in turn their behavior is shaped by the technology. In this example we can no longer say that the agency of opening the door is wholly in the hands of the human actant. Rather the ability to open the door is distributed across all actants in the networks—humans, door hinges, doors, walls, and so on.

CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION The Coronavirus Pandemic In one of his most famous books, The Pasteurization of France, Latour analyzed Louis Pasteur’s efforts to develop a vaccine for anthrax. Anthrax was a microbe that posed a problem for 19th-century French agriculture because it caused disease in livestock and disrupted the French economy. He showed that to develop the vaccine Pasteur had to develop an actor-network that included: the microbe anthrax, sheep farmers, politicians, and lab scientists. The important point is that starting with Pasteur, modern societies began to organize their activities around the enrollment of microbes into their networks. We are not only human societies or human-animal societies. We are human-animal-microbe societies. Latour’s analysis of Pasteur has implications for understanding the coronavirus/ COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning around January 2020, another microbe, the virus SARS-CoV-2 (or as it is popularly called—the coronavirus) began to exert its influence on societies across the world. Like the anthrax bacillus, coronavirus forced the creation of new kinds of actor-networks. It has led to global awareness of a previously unknown actant—coronavirus. In response to this actant, individuals and governments reorganized their activities to account for its presence; in other words, coronavirus has been enrolled into many actor-networks. Governments and medical professionals talked about how we must learn to “live with” the coronavirus. To manage the spread of coronavirus, governments instituted rules that required (or in some cases strongly recommended) that people stand 6 feet apart from each other and wear protective face masks. People also started to wash their hands more often with soap or hand sanitizer. These everyday practices were accompanied by people’s increased knowledge about viruses, vaccines, and illness management strategies. Coronavirus also reshaped economic networks. To avoid spreading the virus, some businesses were forced to shut down, and global distribution networks were restructured. In addition, for some, especially those in middle-class professions, work changed. Supported by video chat mediators, such as Zoom, persons have become increasingly comfortable working from home. Further, the coronavirus crisis moved public health professionals

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such as Dr. Anthony Fauci in the United States to prominent network positions. Actants like Fauci have been responsible for defining the coronavirus and helping establish the networks through which we engage the coronavirus and each other. In a term frequently used by actor-network theorists, we say that because of coronavirus, scientists and their laboratories have become “obligatory points of passage”—institutions through which our actions must pass. Trips to the clinic to be tested for coronavirus or “jabbed” with a vaccine have become routine. Attempts to organize society through the language and technologies of science and medicine has also led to challenges. The coronavirus actor-network includes social movement groups that oppose government restrictions (e.g., lockdowns) and the widespread use of vaccines (i.e., anti-vaxxers). From the perspective of actor-network theory, even though they oppose, for example, the use of vaccines, the identity and actions of anti-vaxxers have been made possible and defined by their relation to all these other actants in the coronavirus actor-network. Ironically, anti-vaxxers are part of the set of actor-network relations that they oppose. The important point is to see how an entire actor-network emerged around the coronavirus. The coronavirus was not automatically inserted into social networks in a predetermined manner. Rather, these networks emerged over time as new actants emerged (scientists, politicians, coronavirus variants, Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca vaccines) to define one another and the coronavirus. This led to the development of new social and institutional structures that, even now, continue to change.

Haraway’s Hybrids Alongside Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway is one of the most influential contemporary science studies scholars. Although some of her ideas overlap with those found in ANT, especially the emphasis on human-nonhuman interaction, her ideas are more politically charged and also grow out of her engagement with feminist theory.

Cyborgs In 1985 Haraway published an essay called “A Cyborg Manifesto.” The center of the analysis is the cyborg, which she defines as a combination of a machine and an organism. Examples of cyborgs from popular culture include Star Trek’s Locutus of Borg, Robocop, and Star War’s Darth Vader. However, as experienced in everyday life, the cyborg simply refers to the increasing interdependence of

obligatory points of passage–Institutions through which actions must pass (actor-network theory). cyborg–A hybrid of machine and organism.

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humans and technology. For example, most human relationships depend upon and are shaped by mobile phones and social media apps, and many people have incorporated medical technologies (e.g., pacemakers, insulin pumps, allergy medications) into their bodies. Originally, Haraway explains, the cyborg emerged out of Cold War politics and economics. Cyborgs were invented and proliferated as Americans and Soviets attempted to develop technology that helped them control and dominate the planet. One recent example of these kinds of political power technologies are military drones that allow operators to survey spaces and even attack enemies from a large distance. The Cold War origin of the cyborg automatically links it to techniques of social power and domination, and one of Haraway’s goals is to show how modern hybrid technologies create unique forms of power and control. However, ironically, even though the cyborg can be a form of power, Haraway says that it can also undermine modern forms of power and domination. It opens the door to new ways of being human and organizing society. This is because the cyborg is a “blasphemous” image. It challenges the sacred modern idea that there are clear boundaries between humans, technology, and natural world. She says that once we accept the idea that humans are made from our relationships with technology and other nonhuman beings, we can experiment with and take pleasure in changing the boundaries between humans and technology. Like Latour, Haraway says that the modern world (with all its borders and categories) was created using hybrids—entities that cross borders. Haraway draws attention to three kinds of “boundary breakdowns” that set the stage for cyborgs: • First, the boundary between animals and humans is breaking down. This includes the development of evolutionary theories that treat humans as a kind of animal, as well as the growth of animal rights movements. It also recognizes the pleasure that many people find in human-animal relationships. These pleasurable relationships with nonhumans should be encouraged rather than feared. • Second, the distinction between organisms (human-animal) and machines is disappearing. Machines (think of self-driving cars or the computer algorithms that recommend online purchases to consumers) increasingly act with an “autonomy” previously associated only with humans. The idea is enhanced in science fiction literature which regularly explores the role of artificial intelligence and living machines in future societies. • Third, modern technology erases the distinction between the physical and non-physical. Machines are no longer physically visible material objects. They work through signals and waves that are ever present in the background of our lives. Sometimes the presence of machines is obvious, but in most cases the human enmeshment with machines happens outside of awareness.

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Finally, the image of the cyborg is connected to feminism. In the spirit of intersectional feminism (see Chapter 8), Haraway criticizes theories that present a total or unified analysis of the world. In a now famous phrase that she first used in a 1988 essay called “Situated Knowledge,” Haraway says that we should avoid “the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere.” She is critical of grand theories such as functionalism, and even some versions of Marxism and feminism, that tried to develop all-encompassing theories of everything. These grand theories assumed that it was possible for scientists and philosophers (and political decision makers informed by science) to step out of everyday life and act as if they knew everything or, like a god, could see and explain everything at once. Haraway says that it is impossible to know, see, or theorize everything at once. Action is always situated within a local, historically specific set of relationships and in particular relationships with technology and animals. Alongside this critique of grand narratives Haraway challenges dualist thinking—the intellectual habit organizing ideas in terms of binaries (see the poststructuralist critique of dualism, Chapter 10). Dualism is connected, she says, to modern practices of domination. As an entity that cross boundaries, the cyborg undermines this god trick and its accompanying dualism. For example, it challenges the idea that there are gender and sex binaries. Once we get rid of the idea of “true” nature, then we get rid of the idea of a female (or male) nature. Even more, the cyborg offers an alternative to the long-standing idea that there is a unique biologically determined category called “woman.” Haraway challenges the popular idea that women are “natural” caregivers and mothers are defined by their organic body. Here Haraway’s ideas resonates with queer theory (see Chapter 10) and upholds the idea that there is no such thing as a stable gender or sexual identity. Rather identity is fluid and always open to transformation. Haraway adds to queer theory the idea that technology and nonhuman agents are central to sex and gender fluidity. Once we recognize that we are cyborgs, we can imagine and play around with new kinds of sex, gender, and sexual embodiment.

Companions In 2003 Haraway published the Companion Species Manifesto, and in 2008 she wrote When Species Meet. Like in the cyborg manifesto, these books are inspired by the posthumanist idea that people and societies are made up through their relationships with nonhumans. Here the focus is on companion species such as animals and especially dogs. A common character in both books is Haraway’s companion Cayenne Pepper, an Australian Shepherd dog, with whom Haraway practices the sport of agility training.

companion species–The inter-relationships between humans and animals in the creation of societies (Haraway).

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In both books Haraway explores the entanglement of humans and animals. One element of the human-animal relationship is how humans and animals have been bound together through political economies, what she also calls naturecultures. For example, to better understand her relationship with Cayenne Pepper Haraway provides a history of the Australian Shephard breed and in particular their connection to major moments in the development of North American society: the colonization of Australia and North America, the California gold rush, the American Civil war, and their more recent use in sport and leisure. Other elements of the story of dogs include the development of the pet industry, the use of dogs (and animals) in drug and product testing, their breeding for agricultural work, and their use in prisons. Haraway says that it is our responsibility to know the story of dogs (or any animal that is part of our lives). Haraway’s work on companion species also offers a theory of human-animal relationship. This theory is neither naïve nor utopian. These relationships are messy (as is social theory), and all creatures are caught up in a web of life in which they “use” one another’s bodies for good and bad. For example, although critical of the abuse and misuse of animals for human purposes, Haraway does not outright condemn the use of animals for food or scientific research. The problem for Haraway are the social processes that make animals “killable,” that is, to act on them without empathy, without feeling their pain. If humans use animals for food or as subjects in an experimental laboratory, then they must do so in a way that minimizes, and empathizes, with their suffering. Central to Haraway’s understanding of human-animal relationships are the concepts of responsibility and response. To be responsible and responsive means to be accountable to one another. This requires a different approach to relationship than has been considered in Western philosophy and social science. Often the social sciences have associated the human capacity for relationship (and hence social life) with the human ability to use symbols and language. We explain our motives and our interests to each other in language, and this makes reciprocity and respect possible. Because animals and other nonhumans do not use language as humans do, the basis for the human and nonhuman relationship must come from elsewhere. For example, Haraway talks about the recognition that comes from animals and human’s ability to look at one another. As humans look at animals with meaning and intent, so too animals look back at humans—the relationship is reciprocal. Haraway also talks about the relationship with the dog Cayenne Pepper. She is not training Cayenne Pepper. Rather, they are training each other. Part of this training involves, slowly, over time developing communication—ways of responding to each other—that are unique to the relationship. This includes the development of new forms of touch and ways of calling out to, or hailing, one another.

naturecultures–Political economic social systems formed out of the inter-relation of natural and cultural phenomena (Haraway).

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THEORIES OF THE ANTHROPOCENE In this section we discuss an area of theory that has gained much attention in recent years—theories of the Anthropocene. There is overlap between the theories of science and technology discussed previously and theories of the Anthropocene. For example, theories of the Anthropocene, especially sociologically oriented theories, decenter human beings to consider the role that nonhumans play in the construction of social life; although typically Anthropocene scholars consider objects on the much larger scale than we have discussed. They consider global processes like climate change and the formation of fossil fuels over millions of years. One of the points of Anthropocene scholarship is that humans must abandon the conceit that they can separate society from nature, especially the impact that human activity has on the planetary ecosystem. In short, theories of the Anthropocene place front and center the problem of changes to the planetary ecosystem, especially as experienced through climate change. Theories about the Anthropocene are interdisciplinary. Major contributors come from environmental studies, human ecology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, history, and science studies. In sociology, the recent work on the Anthropocene clearly overlaps (but is not reducible to) scholarship in the sociology of the environment. They both criticize mainstream sociology’s relative inattention to the relationship between society and the natural environment. The purpose of this section is to explain how discussions about the Anthropocene are shaping social theory. Before getting to this, however, some background on the science of the Anthropocene is necessary.

Time, Space, and the Anthropocene Although the term Anthropocene has circulated for many years, generally atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen is credited with popularizing the term in 2000. For Crutzen Anthropocene refers to a geological era in which collective human activity has reached the level where it can significantly affect the Earth system. This includes the human impact on phenomena like climate, levels of acid in the oceans, the well-being of forests, and the extinction of species, among others. The Anthropocene is distinguished from the previous geological era called the Holocene. The Holocene goes back 11,700 years and is characterized by relative stability and moderate temperature. In contrast to the relative stability of the Holocene, the changes associated with the Anthropocene threaten to push the planetary system (e.g., its weather and temperature) into an era of instability that human societies, going back thousands of years, have never faced. A central debate in the Anthropocene literature is over the date at which the Anthropocene begins. Will Steffan, former director of the International Anthropocene–A geological era in which collective human activity has reached the level where it can significantly affect the Earth system.

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Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) locates the beginning of the Anthropocene at the Great Acceleration. The Great Acceleration refers to a collection of sudden striking changes to the Earth system that started around 1950: large growth in concentration of carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the atmosphere, ozone depletion, increase in great floods, the loss of tropical rain forest, and growing numbers of species extinctions, among others. The Great Acceleration also refers to the acceleration of human activities, starting around 1950, that are connected to these planetary changes: population growth, expanded water use, fertilizer consumption for agriculture, reliance on motor vehicles, and growth in the number of McDonald’s restaurants. Yet others locate the origins of the Anthropocene in the 18th century and the start of the industrial revolution. This is when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration began to rise above levels typical of the Holocene. Finally, geologist Bill Rudiman argues that the Anthropocene began thousands of years ago with land clearing for agriculture. This too led to atmospheric increases in carbon dioxide and methane. Putting these different positions together, a common narrative of the Anthropocene comprises the following: - thousands of years ago humans acquired the capacity to alter their environment in impactful ways - this was brought to a new level with the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism - the full effects of human activity on the planet have become most visible starting in the 1950s - these effects have brought the planet near to a tipping point at which the stability of the Holocene will give way to chaos and instability One of the significant outcomes of the Anthropocene debate for sociological theory is that it challenges sociologists to develop theories on a new time scale. Typically, sociologists study the development of society in human time. Anthropocene scholars tie human society to planetary history or geohistory. Historian Dipesh Chakrabarty says that social scientists need to think in terms of deep history. Deep history connects the development of human societies to longer-term natural process. For example, the rapid growth of modern capitalist and communist societies depended on the widespread use of fossil fuels (oil and coal). These fossil fuels formed in geological processes that unfolded over millions of years. The Anthropocene also introduces new objects into the sociological imagination. In his 2013 book Hyperobjects, philosopher Timothy Morton coined the term Great Acceleration–A collection of sudden striking changes to the Earth system that started around 1950. deep history–The study of human history and society that links the development of human society to longerterm natural processes (Chakrabarty).

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“hyperobjects.” Hyperobjects are “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.” In some ways, hyperobjects are like Durkheim’s social facts (see Chapter 2). These are entities that affect humans even though they operate independent of individual humans. The important difference is that hyperobjects are both human and nonhuman, and they exist on a scale much larger than the social fact, which is limited to human time. Hyperobjects can be natural objects (like the solar system). They can also be the products of human industry such as Styrofoam or plastic bags. Ulrich Beck’s descriptions of the modern phenomena that gave rise to risk society (see Key Concept “Risk Society,” Chapter 5) are good examples of hyperobjects. For example, the 1986 explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear facility released radioactive materials that could not be seen by the human eye, traveled across the planet, and will have long-term outcomes that still cannot be predicted. Another example of an hyperobject is global warming, one of the central objects of concern to Anthropocene scholars. Taken together, the temporality of deep history and the discovery of hyperobjects create a new conception of human agency that is significant for social theory. If the insights of Anthropocene theory are taken seriously, it is no longer possible to think of nature as a passive, inert entity that simply stands back and absorbs the actions and products of human societies. Rather, nature both shapes the development of human society and responds to the actions of human societies. The modern era, and consequently much modern sociological theory, assumed that humans could know and control the natural world. When taken seriously, the Anthropocene brings a realization that humans are subject to and must act alongside forces that they do not fully understand nor can they expect to control.

Naming the Anthropocene Alongside debates over the timing of the Anthropocene, scholars have argued about the name of the Anthropocene. Some critical social scientists have been quick to point out that the term Anthropocene reproduces the attitude of human achievement and exceptionalism that got the planet into this situation in the first place. Modern societies are premised on the idea that humans can use science and technology to remake the Earth to serve their own purposes. In this spirit, the emphasis on “anthro” (i.e., human) in Anthropocene (literally, the era of humans) continues to place human beings at the center of the theory. Further, in many of these narratives the problems of the Anthropocene are treated as unintended consequences of industry and science. Science and technology have created problems of the Anthropocene but not on purpose. Therefore, many mainstream Anthropocene scholars hold onto the idea that science and technology will save the planet from the problems of global warming and biosphere destruction. For example, many believe hyperobjects–Coined by Timothy Morton to describe “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.”

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that carbon capture technologies will effectively mitigate the dangers of carbon pollution caused by using fossil fuels. Alternately, many have placed hope in the development of electric cars as a solution to environmental problems. However, although they reduce carbon output, neither of these technologies solves the fundamental social problem of excessive consumption. In contrast to the idea that humans and human technology will solve the problem of climate change, a growing number of Anthropocene scholars argue that we need to develop new ways of thinking about, creating new stories about, the relationships among humans, animals, and nature. For example, sociologist Eileen Crist proposes that we replace the word Anthropocene with the term Ecozoic. She says we are living in the Ecozoic era. To Crist, rather than emphasizing the powers of human beings, the term Ecozoic emphasizes the human relationship with the biosphere, a collection of entities and beings that also have a stake and influence in the state of the planet. Jason Moore gets at a similar idea when he says that humans are part of a web of life. His use of this term highlights the idea that humans are part of a larger natural whole that is part of us. There is no such thing as human beings that are separate from nature. We are made up through nature. All of the things that humans do with nature also feed back to affect humans. Here the important role for sociological theory is not only describing the complex relations between humans and nature but also coming up with words and languages that better describe the interwoven and overlapping character of humans and nonhumans than is provided by the current terminology.

Cthulucene and Symbiogenesis Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble is a frequent touchstone for rethinking the human nature relationship in the Anthropocene. Like Crist she says that we need to find concepts and stories that give more space and voice to nonhumans. The phrase “staying with the trouble” means that we should not look to the future for heroic human solutions to our present dilemma (e.g., the promise of a technology that will save the planet). Instead, social theorists need to stay in the moment to better appreciate the messy entanglements that make us and others up. To describe this era Haraway introduces the word Chthulcene. This is her alternative to the word Anthropocene. Chthlucene comes from a combination of figures from science fiction, biology, and myth: Gaia, the Greek gorgons, Medusa,

Ecozoic–An alternative to the term Anthropocene that emphasizes the human relationship with the biosphere (Crist). web of life–Used to indicate that humans are a part of nature entangled in complex relationships with many other kinds of beings. Chthulucene–Donna Haraway’s term for the Anthropocene. It borrows from myth and science fiction and emphasizes that humans are entangled with the timeless depths and spaces of nature.

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DONNA HARAWAY (1944–) A Biographical Vignette Despite her heavy engagement with science and material things, Haraway thinks of herself as a storyteller. In a 2009 interview with the Minnesota Review, she said, “I tell theory stories a lot, and I take them very seriously. I’m extremely interested in the way stories loop through each other and the way attachment sites get built. The continuities are much stronger than the discontinuities, as I think of my own intellectual life.” Elsewhere she traces her commitment to storytelling to two parts of her upbringing. For one, Haraway’s father was a sportswriter for the Denver Post. In the 2017 documentary by Fabrizio Terranova, Storytelling for Earthly Survival (https://earthlysurvival.org/), Haraway says that her father loved the drama of the game and shared that enthusiasm with her. Also, Haraway grew up Catholic. She is critical of the colonial violence perpetuated by the Catholic church. Yet, she also sees that Catholicism influenced her approach to stories. In a 2019 interview in Logic, she said that Catholicism gave her an interest in bodies, especially entangled bodies. In contrast to the more cerebral Protestantism, Catholicism encouraged her “love of biology as a materialist, sensual, fleshly being in the world as well as a knowledge-seeking apparatus. It shaped me in my sense that I saw biology simultaneously as a discourse and profoundly of the world. The Word and the flesh” (https://logicmag.io/nature/a-giant-bumptious-litter/).

Potnia Theraon, and the spider Pimoa chtuhlio. Common to all these monstrous figures is an imagery of tentacular entanglement that arises from timeless depths. Chthulcene also implies a new relationship to space. Instead of looking upward into the sky, away from the Earth, Chthlucene invites people to imagine how humans and nonhumans are immersed in and entangled with the land and the oceans. Because we are inextricably entangled with the Earth and other “critters” (Haraway often uses the word critters to describe all kinds of nonhumans), the problem of environmental change is not something we can put off or for which we can create an immediate technoscientific solution. Addressing the issue requires a reconceptualization of our relationship with the Earth and nature. Pushing the imagery even further, Haraway plays on the word human to say that we are “humus” or compost. Humans are part of the Chthulucene (whether they like it or not) because they are mixed in with the Earth and all the other beings that inhabit the Earth. An important concept in understanding the Chthulucene is symbiogenesis/ sympoiesis. Haraway borrows this word from M. Beth Dempster. The sym– in symbiogenesis/sympoiesis–The idea that organisms develop and grow through symbiotic entanglements with other organisms (Haraway).

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sympoiesis comes from symbiosis. Symbiosis refers to a biological interdependency of two different organisms. Sympoiesis is an alternative to autopoieisis (selfmaking)—a concept from systems theory (see Chapter 4 on Luhmann). Much Anthropocene scholarship, especially theories developed in the natural sciences, is inspired by systems theory. Systems theory treats the planet as an enclosed, self-regulating system. Haraway’s use of sympoiesis is meant as a criticism of system theories. She wants to emphasize that there is no such thing as an enclosed, finally complete individual or planetary system. The planet she imagines is a mix of critters working with and against one another to form worlds that are always changing—a process she calls “worlding.” In the book Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Anna Tsing and her coauthors build on this idea. They say that organisms do not merely influence each other from the outside. Rather they get mixed up with one another from the inside out. For example, in this book Scott Gilbert explains that the cow, contrary to our normal understanding of cow, is a symbiogenetic organism. The cow, he says, does not actually digest grass. Rather it is the microorganisms within the cow’s gut that digest grass. Without the microorganisms the cow cannot digest grass. The cow does not exist as a single, self-enclosed unit but rather depends upon microorganisms inside of it to exist. And vice-versa—the microorganisms depend upon the cow’s gut for their growth and survival. In fact, most organisms on planet Earth depend, in this way, on one another for their existence. The concept of symbiogenesis is important to social theory because it challenges taken-for-granted ideas about the individual, especially the individual human. What is normally called the individual (the individual microbe, the individual cell, the individual ant, the individual person) is a combination of organisms. In this view, humans cannot go it alone because many of their capacities depend upon relationships with other beings. There is a practical element to this view of life. If we are unaware of the complex independencies that have made life on this planet and, therefore, human societies possible, then we run the risk of destroying organisms and entities that make these forms of life possible. Sociologists need to listen to natural scientists so that they can learn to pay attention to all the critters, some of which are invisible to the naked eye, that make persons and society up.

The Earthbound Bruno Latour, who we discussed earlier in this chapter, also says that we need to change the way we think about the relationship between nature and humanity. He argues that mainstream debates over climate change are still grounded in modern narratives about the relationship between humans and nature. This poses an obstacle to providing meaningful change. He says that most contemporary engagements with climate change (whether on the political left or right) continue to treat nature and humans as two separate entities. Similar to Haraway he says that humans and nature co-produce one another. In other words, there is no such

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thing as humans without nature of nature without humans and all their technologies. Rather, we are all “terrestrials” faced with the problem of learning how to live with each other in a “new climatic regime.” In Down to Earth Latour identifies modern ideas about globalization (see Chapter 11) as one of the main obstacles to addressing the problems faced by terrestrials. He distinguishes between two narratives of globalization: globalization minus and globalization plus. Globalization minus is like what Ritzer (see Chapter 11) calls homogenizing globalization—a planet connected through an increasingly uniform economy, culture, and politics. Latour calls this kind of globalization minus because it operates by shrinking the ways of thinking about the planet and the ways of living on the planet. Globalization minus is an “escape” narrative that favors the interests of only a few. It tells a story in which technology and wealth can allow humans to escape the bounds of nature. It imagines that humans, some humans at least, can flee the planet and its problems. At the outer reaches of this fantasy, billionaires build spaceships, and government leaders imagine landing on the moon and Mars. Closer to home, the well-off build their savings and move to high ground as flood waters rise. This view accepts social inequality as a matter of fact: some will escape; others will not. In contrast to globalization minus, Latour insists that we must come up with concepts that better ground us on the Earth, along with all the nonhumans who share and contribute to the formation of the Earth. In other words, we are all, he says, Earthbound, and we must live and act with the knowledge that we are not going to escape the Earth or nature. This is where globalization plus comes in. Where globalization minus subtracts points of view, globalization plus multiplies perspectives about how to live on the Earth. Latour is clear that one of the impacts of globalization minus is that it closes discussion even before we have mapped the issues at stake. For Latour then the goal is to put in place a politics—a way of making decisions— about how to “dwell” on the planet together that involves as many parties as possible. Globalization plus seeks the input of communities from many realms of life. This includes scientists, politicians, and engineers from across the planet. It also includes locals, nonprofessionals, and even religious devotees that have been excluded from administrative and political decision making in the modern world. Latour’s approach also comes with the knowledge that human activity affects nonhumans and that nonhumans are part of the web of life that sustains human life and society. To fully account for these dependencies, we need to develop a parliament of things. This means that politics must expand to account for the globalization minus–A homogenizing view of globalization that shrinks the number of ideas about how to live on Earth (Latour). globalization plus–A view of globalization that multiplies the perspectives about how to live on Earth (Latour). parliament of things–An approach to political decision making that includes the perspectives of humans and nonhumans (Latour).

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points of view of nonhumans. Obviously, animals, microbes, atmospheres, and oceans cannot sit in parliamentary chambers and speak for themselves. Provocatively, Latour says that scientists can act as mediators or translators (using the ANT term introduced earlier in the chapter) for these nonhumans. Here Latour challenges the modern definition of science as neutral, uninvolved, and apolitical. In the new climatic regime, science is political not in the sense that it promotes ideology but in the sense that it represents the points of view of nonhumans. Properly conceived, science is part of the process of discovering what terrestrials need to exist and advocating on their behalf.

Capitalism and the Anthropocene Another word that has been used to describe the Anthropocene is Capitalocene. This name connects changes on the planet to one kind of socioeconomic form—capitalism. The name is significant for two reasons. First, one problem with the term Anthropocene is that it implies that the human species, in general, is the cause of global warming. Capitalocene theorists argue instead that it is not the human species that is the problem but the capitalist economic system. Capitalism depends upon technologies (steam engines and internal combustion engines) that are mostly powered by fossil fuels. When burned, fossil fuels generate carbon dioxide, which in turn warms the atmosphere, leading to some of the effects associated with the Great Acceleration. Moreover, capitalism is the kind of economic system that depends upon endless growth. It does not just generate carbon dioxide but as part of its mode of operation must generate increasing amounts of carbon dioxide. Second, by calling the Anthropocene Capitalocene, theorists try to better apportion responsibility for climate change, especially as it breaks down along lines of race, class, and gender. So far, wealthy members of core European and North Americans societies have been the prime beneficiaries of the economic processes that have led to increased carbon dioxide output. Going forward, because they have wealth, members of these classes will be able to better protect themselves from the challenges brought by global warming and environmental change, such as flooding and food shortages. Meanwhile, persons in the Global South and those lacking significant economic means will be left to suffer the consequences of climate change.

Fossil Capital In his influential book Fossil Capital, Andreas Malm provides a historical sociological explanation of the relationship between capitalism and global warming. Capitalocene–Used to connect massive changes in climate, global warming, and other Earth systems to the development and growth of capitalist civilization.

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His goal is to demonstrate how Western and now global societies became locked into an economic system intertwined with fossil fuels. To describe the development of capitalism, Malm introduces the terms flow and stock. Flow refers to sources of energy that come directly and immediately from the biosphere. Examples of flow are water, wind, and sunlight. These can power machinery such as water wheels, windmills, and more recently, solar panels. These are also often referred to as renewable energies. Stock refers to sources of energy produced through photosynthesis that have been stored in the Earth for a long time and exist in a limited quantity. Examples include coal and oil. Much of the machinery that powers contemporary capitalism depends upon stock. In Britain, the focus of Malm’s research, before the 1820s both flow and stock were viable sources of power. Flow, for example, powered water wheels that were connected to power looms in riverside factories. In contrast, James Watts’s steam engine, introduced in 1776 and that went on to power the industrial revolution, was fueled by coal. In the long run, the steam engine and consequently coal was chosen over water not because it was cheaper or easier to acquire. As a source of energy, water was abundant, and there were no economic costs required to mine or process water, as was the case with coal. The decisive factor, Malm says, is that coal, and later oil, has natural properties that made it more amenable to the goals and interests of capitalism. First, flow is closely tied to land and the temporal rhythms of nature. In periods of drought or diminished rainfall, rivers dry up or their flow is reduced. Using a contemporary example, sunlight does not reach solar cells on cloudy days or at night. Conversely, once coal is mined industrialists can use it to power machinery whenever they like. Stock provides industry with a predictable and reliable source of power over which they can exercise control. Another way that Malm describes this is that with coal time becomes abstract. The actions of capitalists are no longer controlled by external factors such as weather or intransigent workers. They can plan the working day and therefore predictably calculate costs, expenses, and profits. Second, with flow, industry is forced to develop around fixed locations. Water wheels must be built alongside rivers or canal systems. In contrast, once purchased, stock can be used and steam engines set up in factories wherever the owner of stock wishes. Primarily, this means that capitalists could concentrate factories in urban locations that had a large supply of well-trained industrial labor— what Marx called a “reserve army of labor.” Capitalists no longer feared losing employees to harsh, poorly paid work conditions because there were plenty more flow–Sources of energy that come directly and immediately from the biosphere. Examples are wind, water, and sunlight. stock–Sources of energy produced through photosynthesis that have been stored in the Earth for a long time and exist in a limited quantity. Examples are oil and coal.

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available in the urban landscape. In the same way that coal leads to the creation of an abstract temporality, it also leads to the creation of an abstract spatiality— space is no longer organized in response to the properties of the natural environment (what Lefebvre, see Chapter 8, called absolute space) but rather according to the designs of capitalists operating within a capitalist system (what Lefebvre calls abstract space). Overall, then, coal was adopted because it was the best fuel source for an economic system premised on the ideas of individual freedom and property ownership and the demands for a rational, abstract organization of economy and society. In part, this explanation is encouraging. If fossil capital is not inevitable but an historical choice, then surely contemporary societies, faced with the global warming caused by fossil fuels, could construct an alternate economy based in flow. However, this optimism is tempered by the fact that the contemporary economy and social order is organized around stock. The early adoption of coal created a path dependency that locked modern societies into stock economies. The prospects of building a new infrastructure to support the use of flow (water and sun and wind) would require immense investment (with little immediate economic return) and long-term planning. This is anathema to the current capitalist organization that requires fast profit and relies on the actions of individual capitalists rather than the cooperative forms of decision making required by flow.

Cheap Nature Sociologist Jason Moore also links global warming to capitalism. However, unlike Malm, Moore traces the origins of the Capitalocene to the long 16th century, or early modernity. Borrowing terminology from World-systems theory (see Key Concept “The Modern World-System,” Chapter 5) Moore calls this approach to studying the Anthropocene a World-ecological perspective. A World-ecological perspective describes how societies shape (and are shaped by) the natural environment. A World-capitalist ecology is the kind of human nature organization developed within capitalism. Moore says that starting in the 16th century, early capitalists were driven by the idea that control of labor (the kind and amount of work that people do) could generate wealth, especially when that labor was cheap. This by itself is not a strikingly new argument. Marx (see Chapter 2) explained that capitalists make money by paying workers less than the value of their labor. World-ecological perspective–Describes how societies shape (and are shaped by) the natural environment (Moore). World-capitalist ecology–The kind of human nature organization developed within capitalism (Moore).

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However, Moore adds to this that cheap labor also depends upon cheap nature. For capitalism, as it developed from the 16th century, to work, there are four things that must be cheap. Moore calls them the “4 cheaps”: labor power, energy, food, and raw materials. By cheap, Moore does not mean that work done to make nature cheap is easy. Nature does not freely give energies and materials. Rather Moore understands capitalism as a long socioeconomic process that creates cheap labor and cheap nature by connecting capitalism, scientific knowledge, and political empire. It requires time and effort to build these systems. There are two important points. First, nature is made cheap through a transformation of landscape. This started in the 16th century. European nations organized, cleared, and built up the landscape (fields, forests, waterways) so that it became more rational and therefore more productive. This served emerging economic markets that demanded efficiency and predictability in resources and commodity supply. For example, the Dutch landscape was transformed through the widespread use of windmills, Polish and Dutch forests were replaced by agricultural operations to provide cheap food, and mining in the Baltics also led to deforestation. Moore adds that these processes were evident in overseas European colonization as exemplified by silver mining in the Andes. Second, in changing the landscape, capitalism changed the nature of work. Typically, in sociological analysis, work (especially the work conducted in industrial society) is thought of as a distinctly human activity. But Moore says that work is something that depends upon the “whole of nature.” For labor to be productive in the capitalist sense, people and nature must be organized in relationship to each other. The World-capitalist ecology does not only put people to work; it also sets up systems that put nature to work. Some of this work is paid, and some of this work goes unpaid. Where paid work depends upon the process of exploitation (see Chapter 2), unpaid work involves the process of appropriation—taking something and treating it as a free gift. We can conclude by adding that the history of capitalism, as conceived by Moore, is a series of expansions in this dual system of exploitation (paid workers) and appropriation (unpaid nature—which includes slaves). Modern capitalism has been able accumulate wealth only because it has been able to treat a significant component of the work required to fuel the system as a gift. However, the planetary system is nearing the limit of its capacity to handle this easy appropriation. Moore asks whether capitalism can take for granted, any longer, the “free gifts” of nature. If there is no more cheap nature then, according to Moore, Worldcapitalist ecology is nearing its end. cheap nature–The processes that reduce the costs of integrating natural power and products into socioeconomic systems (Moore). appropriation–Taking something and treating it as a free gift.

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SUMMARY 1. Sociological theorists have drawn on ideas from the natural sciences for a long time, but more recent approaches have combined findings in the natural sciences with poststructuralism, feminism, Marxism, and historical sociology. 2. Affect theory is a kind of new materialism that studies how bodies (both human and nonhuman) affect and are affected by each other. It draws on poststructuralist ideas and takes seriously the findings of the natural sciences. 3. Affect is defined as the vital forces and feelings that are associated with biological life. It is nonconscious, indeterminate, and distinct from emotion. 4. Affect is like a field that is made from all the energies that participants put into it. Examples include social contagion in crowds and atmosphere. 5. Affect theory studies how people are controlled and societies managed through the manipulation of affect. Important concepts are machinic assemblage, territorialization, and deterritorialization. 6. Biomedia refers to media that influence the organization of the biological body and its relationship to the world. In many contemporary societies, bodies are organized through the relationship between media technologies and capitalism. 7. ANT is one of the most influential theories to have come out of the larger field of science and technology studies. Bruno Latour is one of the best-known actornetwork theorists. 8. Actor-network theorists use concepts like symmetry and actant to indicate that both humans and nonhumans exercise agency and influence one another. 9. ANT says that society is made up of networks that connect human and nonhuman agents. Actants in a network are defined by other actants in a network. The terms translation and mediation describe how actants transform each other. 10. The Modern Constitution refers to the arrangement in which humans and nonhumans are clearly separated from each other. The Modern Constitution is contrasted with posthuman theories that show how humans and other actants are actually hybrids. 11. Donna Haraway introduced the concept of the cyborg—a hybrid of human and machine. 12. Cyborgs draw attention to three boundary breakdowns: the boundary between animals and humans, the boundary between organisms and machines, and the boundary between the physical and non-physical.

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13. The concept of cyborg is also used to show that gender and sexuality is more fluid than conventionally assumed. 14. Companion species are the animals, such as dogs, that have been important to the creation of human societies or, as Haraway calls them, naturecultures. 15. The term Anthropocene refers to a geological era in which collective human activity can significantly affect the Earth system. 16. The concept of Anthropocene is important to social theory because it requires that sociologists take seriously how nature and society are interconnected. In doing so it changes the time and scale that sociologists use to think about the origins of society. 17. Social theorists have debated whether the name of the Anthropocene is appropriate. Some prefer words like Ecozoic or Chthulucene because these emphasize the interconnectedness of humans and other beings on the planet. 18. Symbiogenesis is a term used to describe how organisms develop and grow through the interconnection with other organisms. 19. Latour’s says that all terrestrials are earthbound and that we should seek globalization theories that multiply (globalization plus) rather than reduce (globalization minus) the number of ideas about how human and nonhumans can live on planet Earth. 20. Capitalocene is another alternative to the word Anthropocene. It emphasizes that global warming and climate change are produced by the capitalist socioeconomic system. 21. Andreas Malm describes how stock won out over flow as the main source of energy to fuel modern capitalist society. 22. Jason Moore introduces the World-ecological perspective to describe how humans and nature have been transformed since the 16th century to make nature cheap, as if it were freely giving its gifts to human civilization.

SUGGESTED READINGS CHRISTOPHE BONNEUIL and JEAN-BAPTIST FRESSOZ The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. New York: Verso, 2016. An excellent book written by two historians about the historical and social significance of the Anthropocene.

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CHRISTIAN BORCH The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative history of Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015. An award-winning book that tells the history of sociology from the perspective of theories about crowds. MICHEL CALLON “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay.” The Sociological Review 32 (1984): 196–233. Influential ANT study that introduces key terminology in the field. ERLE C. ELLIS Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Written by an environmental scientist, providing an accessible overview of the science behind theories of the Anthropocene. MELISSA GREEG and GREGORY J. SEIGWORTH, eds. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Interdisciplinary set of essays on affect and affect theory. Includes pieces by authors referred to in this chapter such as Clough and Massumi. DONNA HARAWAY The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago, Ill: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. A short book in which Haraway introduces her ideas about the relationship between animals and society. DONNA HARAWAY Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Haraway introducing her take on the problem of the Anthropocene. BRUNO LATOUR Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Overview of the key ideas of ANT written by a preeminent actor-network theorist. BRUNO LATOUR Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. A series of lectures in which Bruno Latour introduces his approach to the study of the Anthropocene. The final chapter describes real-world dialogues about climate change that reflect the “parliament of things.” JASON W. MOORE, ed. Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016. Essays that focus on the debate over the name of the Anthropocene. Should it be called Anthropocene or Capitalocene or some other term? Includes essays by authors discussed in this chapter, including Crist, Haraway, and Moore.

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SERGIO SISIMONDO An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. A thorough overview of the major perspectives in the area of science and technology studies. JONATHAN H. TURNER and RICHARD S. MACHALEK The New Evolutionary Sociology: Recent and Revitalized Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. New York: Routledge, 2018. A book that develops a new approach to evolutionary sociology through a combination of sociology with the most recent findings in neuroscience and evolutionary theory, written by one of the leading figures in late 20th-century sociological theory. RICHARD YORK and RILEY E. DUNLOP “Environmental Sociology.” In George Ritzer and Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy, eds., The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Sociology. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, pp. 283–300. An overview of the major research trends in environmental sociology. It can be read as a complement to the theories of the Anthropocene presented in this chapter.

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GLOSSARY

absolute spaces: Spaces built in natural locations that embody religious and political principles. Ultimately these spaces serve the interests of political and religious elites (Lefebvre). abstract space: The kind of space produced within modern capitalist society, where space is treated as a problem to be solved and calculated. Such space dominates nature and all unique human forms (Lefebvre). accounting: The process by which people offer accounts to make sense of the world (ethnomethodology). accounting practices: The ways in which one person offers an account and another person accepts or rejects that account (ethnomethodology). accounts: The ways in which actors explain (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific situations (ethnomethodology). act: The basic concept in Mead’s theory involving an impulse, perception of stimuli, taking action involving the object perceived, and using the object to satisfy the initial impulse. actant: A term used by actor-network theorists to indicate that both humans and nonhumans possess agency. action: Things that people do that are the result of conscious processes. actor-network theory (ANT): A theory that emerged out of science and technology studies that studies how societies are built out of the interconnections among human and nonhuman agents. actual social identity: What a person actually is (Goffman). adaptation: One of Parsons’s four functional imperatives. A system must adjust to its environment and adjust the environment to its needs. More specifically, a system must cope with external situational dangers and contingencies. affect: Indeterminate biological forces that energize and bring vitality to life. affect theory: An extension of poststructuralist and postmodern theory that emphasizes how bodies affect and are affected by one another. affectual action: Nonrational action that is the result of emotion (Weber). agency: Actions that are perpetrated by actors; what occurs would not have occurred in that way were it not for the fact that the actor intervened and took the action in question. agents: Actors who have the ability to make a difference in the social world; agents have power. alienation: The breakdown of and separation from the natural interconnection between people and their productive activities, the products they produce, the fellow workers with whom they produce those things, and what they are potentially capable of becoming (Marx).

 425

altruistic suicide: A type of suicide that occurs when people are too well integrated into the collectivity; they are likely to kill themselves in greater numbers because the group leads them, or even forces them, to do so (Durkheim). anomic suicide: A type of suicide that occurs when people do not know what is expected of them, where regulation is low, and they are largely free to run wild. This mad pursuit is likely to prove unsatisfying, and as a result, a higher percentage of people are apt to commit this type of suicide (Durkheim). anomie: A sense, associated with organic solidarity, of not knowing what one is expected to do, of being adrift in society without any clear and secure moorings (Durkheim). To Merton, a situation in which there is a serious disconnection between social structure and culture, that is, between the structurally created abilities of people to act in accord with cultural norms and goals and the norms and goals themselves. Anthropocene: A geological era in which collective human activity has reached the level where it can significantly affect the Earth system. appearance: The way the actor looks to the audience, especially those items that indicate the performer’s social status (Goffman). appropriation: Taking something and treating it as a free gift. ‘asabiyyah’: A feeling of group solidarity or social cohesion (Ibn Khaldun). assemblage: Emphasizes the idea that societies are created out of the assembly of, or interconnection among, multiple parts. association: The relationships among people, or interaction (Simmel). atmosphere: Shared feelings of place that shape human feeling and action and that people create through their interactions. autopoiesis: The self-making or, more broadly, self-organizing quality of systems (Luhmann). back stage: Where facts suppressed in the front stage or kinds of informal actions may appear. A back stage is usually adjacent to the front stage, but it is also cut off from it. Performers can reliably expect no members of their front audience to appear in the back (Goffman). base: To Marx, the economy, which conditions, if not determines, the nature of everything else in society. behavior: Things that people do that require little or no thought. behavioral organism: The Parsonsian action system responsible for handling the adaptation function by adjusting to and transforming the external world. behaviorism: The study, largely associated with psychology, of behavior. bifurcated consciousness: A type of consciousness characteristic of women that reflects the fact that for them, everyday life is divided into two realities: the reality of their actual, lived, reflected-on experience and the reality of social typifications (feminist theory). biocapital: The economic wealth produced through knowledge about bodies and their affective capacities.

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biomedia: Technologies that allow historically unique engagements with the biological body. biomedicine: The growing sector concerned with the treatment and management of biological health and wellness. biopolitics: The social control of life. Biopolitics takes two forms: control over the individual human body and control over the population as a whole (Foucault). boomerang effect: The phenomenon in which risks strike back on the upper classes and rich nations most responsible for their production (Beck). breaching experiments: Experiments in which researchers violate social reality to shed light on the methods by which people construct social reality (ethnomethodology). bureaucracy: A modern type of organization in which the behavior of officers is bound by rules; each office has a specified sphere of competence and has obligations to perform specific functions, the authority to carry them out, and the means of compulsion to get the job done; the offices are organized into a hierarchical system; technical training is needed for each office; those things needed to do the job belong to the office and not to the officer; the position is part of the organization and cannot be appropriated by an officer; and much of what goes on (acts, decisions, rules) is in writing (Weber). business: A pecuniary approach to economic processes in which the dominant interests are acquisition, money, and profitability rather than production and the interests of the larger community (Veblen). calculability: The emphasis on quantity, often to the detriment of quality; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer). capitalism: An economic system comprising mainly capitalists and the proletariat in which one class (capitalists) exploits the other (proletariat) (Marx). capitalist patriarchy: A term used by socialist feminists to express the concept that the oppression of women is traceable to a combination of capitalism and patriarchy. capitalists: Those who own the means of production under capitalism and are therefore in a position to exploit workers (Marx). Capitalocene: Used to connect massive changes in climate, global warming, and other Earth systems to the development and growth of capitalist civilization. carceral archipelago: An image of society that results from the idea that discipline is swarming through society. This means that the process affects some parts of society and not others, or it may affect some parts at one time and other parts at another time. Thus, it creates a patchwork of centers of discipline within a world in which other settings are less affected or unaffected by the spread of the disciplinary society (Foucault). center-periphery differentiation: Differentiation between the core of a system and its peripheral elements (Luhmann). charisma: Extraordinary qualities attributed to an individual by other people. A person need not actually have such qualities to be defined as charismatic (Weber). charismatic authority: Authority legitimated by followers’ belief in the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of the charismatic leader (Weber).

GLOSSARY   427

cheap nature: The processes that reduce the costs of integrating natural power and products into socioeconomic systems (Moore). Chthulucene: Donna Haraway’s term for the Anthropocene. It borrows from myth and science fiction and emphasizes that humans are entangled with the timeless depths and spaces of nature. civilization: The broadest domain of cultures and cultural identities; culture “writ large” (Huntington). civilizing process: The long-term change in the West in manners as they relate to daily behavior. Everyday behaviors once acceptable have, over time, become increasingly unacceptable. Compared with our forebears, we are more likely to observe the everyday behaviors of others, to be sensitive to them, to understand them better, and perhaps most important, to find an increasing number of them embarrassing. What we once found acceptable now embarrasses us enormously. As a result, many things that were once public are now hidden from view (Elias). class consciousness: The ability of a class, in particular the proletariat, to overcome false consciousness and attain an accurate understanding of the capitalist system (Marx). code: A system of rules that allows us to understand signs and, more important, how they relate to one another (Baudrillard). collective conscience: The ideas shared by the members of a collectivity such as a group, a tribe, or a society (Durkheim). collective effervescence: Emile Durkheim’s term for the shared energy that emerges out of collective dances, songs, and rituals in which group members participate. colonialism: The process by which nations occupy and politically dominate other nations. Most often this refers to the expansion of European nations between the 16th and 19th centuries. colonization of the lifeworld: The concept that as the system and its structures grow increasingly differentiated, complex, and self-sufficient, their power grows and with it their ability to direct and control what transpires in the lifeworld (Habermas). color line: The division of Black society and white society into two different and unequal worlds (Du Bois). commercialization of feeling: The management of emotion to produce economic value in service industries. Examples include the work conducted by flight attendants and restaurant servers (Hochschild). communism: The social system that permits, for the first time, the expression of full human potential (Marx). companion species: The inter-relationships between humans and animals in the creation of societies (Haraway). complex interdependence: A political theory that sees nation-states relating to one another through multiple channels and that emphasizes informal channels, where, for example, entities other than states (such as multinational corporations) connect societies to one another. complexity: In systems theory, the incalculable possibilities for action and interaction in the world. Social systems develop by reducing the world’s complexity (Luhmann).

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compulsory heterosexuality: A product of the heterosexual matrix, a social system in which the only viable, intelligible, and respectable form of sexuality is heterosexuality (queer theory). conflict group: A group that actually engages in group conflict (Dahrendorf). conservation strategy: In Emirbayer and Desmond’s theory about race, the kind of projective agency in which actors try to maintain the existing racial order. conspicuous consumption: The consumption of a variety of goods not for subsistence but for the higher status particular goods confer on those who consume them; such consumption creates the basis for invidious distinctions among people (Veblen). conspicuous leisure: The consumption of leisure, or the nonproductive use of time, in such a way as to create invidious distinctions between people and elevate the social status of those able to waste their time in this way (Veblen). constructivist perspective: The view that schemes of perception, thought, and action create structures (Bourdieu). consummation: Final stage of the act, in which the actor takes action that satisfies the original impulse (Mead). contingency: A quality of the organization of a system that is context bound and open to continual change (Luhmann). control: The domination of technologies over employees and customers; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer). conversation of gestures: An interaction in which gestures by one party elicit mindless responding gestures from the other party (Mead). core: The geographic area that dominates the capitalist world-economy and exploits the rest of the system (Wallerstein). cost: Rewards lost in adopting a specific action and, as a result, in forgoing alternative lines of action (exchange theory). creative destruction: The process in which older structures are destroyed to make way for newer ones that function more effectively (Schumpeter). creolization: The combining of cultures that were previously separate from one another; often used interchangeably with hybridization. critical race theory: A perspective centered on the study of the law and its relationship to the perpetuation of racism and racial domination. critical realism: One kind of realism popular in contemporary sociology that criticizes both positivism and social constructionism. It emphasizes the analysis of layers of reality and their relationship to human society. critical theories of race and racism: A set of theories that have much in common with critical race theory but are centered in the social sciences rather than in the study of the law. These theories focus on the way that racism and racial domination are perpetuated through multiple social institutions. cultural capital: The kinds of legitimate knowledge possessed by an actor (Bourdieu).

GLOSSARY   429

cultural feminism: A feminist theory that explores and celebrates the social value of women’s distinctive ways of being. cultural imperialism: The influence of a particular culture on a wide array of other cultures. cultural system: The Parsonsian action system that performs the latency function by providing actors with the norms and values that motivate them for action. culture-ideology of consumerism: An ideology that affects people scattered widely throughout the globe with the increasing reach and sophistication of advertising, mass media, and consumer goods. Ultimately, a global mood to consume is created that benefits transnational corporations as well as the advertising and media corporations (Sklair). culture industry: To the critical theorists, industries such as movies and radio that were serving to make culture a more important factor in society than the economy. cyborg: A hybrid of machine and organism. cyclical theory of state formation: Ibn Khaldun’s theory, based on his experiences with North African societies, that state formation is driven by a cyclical relationship between pastoral and nomadic social forms. This is in contrast to modern Western linear theories of state formation. debunking: Looking beyond stated intentions to real effects (Merton). deconstruction: An analytic technique used by poststructuralists to demonstrate the constructed nature of taken-for-granted social realities. In particular, deconstruction shows that social reality is created in the relationship between binary linguistic categories in which one of the elements in the category is treated as inferior. deep acting: A performance in which a person recalls personal emotional experiences to create an authentic emotional performance in the present (Hochschild). deep history The study of human history and society that links the development of human society to longer-term natural processes (Chakrabarty). definition of the situation: The idea that if a person defines a situation as real, then that definition is real in its consequences (Mead). deinstitutionalization: The process, begun in the 1960s and made possible by new drug treatments, in which many psychiatric institutions were closed and the vast majority of patients who were released were left to their own devices to survive in the larger society. dependence: To Emerson, the potential cost that an actor will be willing to tolerate within a relationship. dependency chains: The chains of relationships involving the people on whom a person is dependent as well as those people’s dependency on the person (Elias). deterritorialization Attempts to create assemblages that offer affective possibilities other than those determined by territorialization (Deleuze and Guattari). dialectic of recognition: The intersubjective process through which people mutually recognize one another’s identities, thereby creating self-consciousness. difference: An alternate explanation of consumption favored by postmodernists. We consume not because of needs but to be different from other people; such differences are defined by what and how we consume. 430    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

differential racialization: The idea that different minority groups are racialized in different ways at different times (critical race theory). differential space: A hoped-for space that would accentuate difference and freedom from ­control and would restore the natural unity that is broken by abstract space (Lefebvre). differentiation: The process by which systems make distinctions (Luhmann). disciplinary society: A society in which control over people is pervasive (Foucault). discourse: A symbolic system that organizes and classifies the world (Foucault/Said). discreditable stigma: A stigma that is neither known by audience members nor discernible by them (Goffman). discredited stigma: A stigma that the actor assumes is known by the audience members or is evident to them (Goffman). discrimination: The tendency to manifest behavior only under the specific circumstances that proved successful in the past (exchange theory). discursive consciousness: Consciousness that entails actors’ ability to describe their actions in words (Giddens). dispossession of land: The removal of Indigenous persons from their traditional lands as well as the division and definition of land on European terms (Coulthard). distanciation: The tendency for components of the modern juggernaut to grow distant in space and time from those attempting to control the juggernaut (Giddens). domination: To (feminist) oppression theorists, any relationship in which one party (individual or collective), the dominant, succeeds in making the other party (individual or collective), the subordinate, an instrument of the dominant’s will, and refuses to recognize the subordinate’s independent subjectivity. double-consciousness: The feeling that a Black person has of being split in two, of having two forms of self-consciousness (Du Bois). double hermeneutic: The concept that social scientists’ understanding of the social world may have an impact on the understandings of the actors being studied, with the result that social researchers can alter the world they are studying, which can lead to distorted findings and conclusions (Giddens). double movement: The expansion of the laissez-faire market and the self-protective reaction against it by the state and society (Polanyi). dramaturgy: A view of social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those that take place in the theater (Goffman). dream world: Similar to phantasmagoria but with emphasis on the use of things like decor to lure customers to means of consumption and to make the goods and services being purveyed seem glamorous, romantic, and therefore, appealing to consumers. The goal in creating a dream world is to inflame the desires and feelings of consumers (Williams). dualism: The view of structure (and culture) and agency as distinct for analytic purposes, although they are intertwined in social life (Giddens/Archer). duality: The concept that all social action involves structure and all structure involves social action. Agency and structure are inextricably interwoven in ongoing human activity or practice (Giddens/Archer). GLOSSARY   431

dyad: A two-person group (Simmel). dynamic density: The number of people in a society and their frequency of interaction. An increase in dynamic density leads to the transformation from mechanical to organic solidarity (Durkheim). dysfunctions: Observable consequences that have adverse effects on the ability of a particular system to adapt or adjust (Merton). economic capital: The economic resources possessed by an actor (Bourdieu). economy: To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the function of adapting to the environment. Ecozoic: An alternative to the term Anthropocene that emphasizes the human relationship with the biosphere (Crist). efficiency: The effort to discover the best possible means to whatever end is desired; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer). egoistic suicide: A type of suicide that occurs when people are not well integrated into the collectivity and are largely on their own; they feel a sense of futility, meaninglessness, and more of them feel that they are morally free to kill themselves (Durkheim). elements: The building blocks of a system (Luhmann). emergence: An idea from systems theory and critical realism that interactions among entities in one layer of reality can lead to the emergence of new kinds of entities and processes in the layer of reality above. emotion management: The techniques that people use to express, and control, emotion in a social performance (Hochschild). emotion memory: A memory of an autobiographical episode that carries within it strong feelings (Hochschild). empire: A decentered, postmodern Marxian perspective on globalization and the exertion of power around the world based on new juridical power such as the constitution of order, norms, ethical truths, and a common notion of what is right. Empire can, in the name of what is “right,” intervene anywhere in the world to deal with what it considers humanitarian problems, to guarantee accords, and to impose peace on those who may not want it or even see it as peace (Hardt and Negri). enrollment: When one actant joins another actant’s network. It is a technique that weak actants use to increase their power (actor-network theory). epistemology of the closet: The idea that modern knowledge about sexuality and in particular homosexuality is connected to the public denial of homosexuality (Sedgwick). ethnomethodology: The study of ordinary members of society in the everyday situations in which they find themselves and the ways in which they use commonsense knowledge, procedures, and considerations to gain an understanding of, navigate in, and act on those situations. ethnoscapes: Mobile groups and individuals (tourists, refugees, guest workers), whether they are taking part in actual movement or fantasies about moving; one of Appadurai’s landscapes.

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evolutionary sociology: A theory that describes human behaviors as evolved strategies that maximize chances for the individual, either at the level of organism or gene, to reproduce themselves. examination: A way of observing subordinates and judging what they are doing. Examination involves checking up on subordinates and assessing what they have done; it is employed in a given setting by those in authority, who make normalizing judgments about what is and is not an adequate score (Foucault). exchange network: A web of social relationships involving a number of either individual or collective actors in which the actors have a variety of valued resources as well as exchange opportunities and exchange relations with one another. A number of these exchange relations exist and interrelate with one another to form a single network structure (Emerson). existentialism: A school of philosophy that emphasizes the importance of freedom and personal responsibility to human beings (Fanon). existential or phenomenological feminism: A feminist theory of difference that sees people born into a world shaped by a culture that reflects male experience and ignores or marginalizes women’s experience. exploitation: The nature of the relationship between capitalists and workers in capitalism, where the capitalists get the lion’s share of the rewards and the proletariat get only enough to subsist, even though based on the labor theory of value, the situation should be reversed (Marx). false consciousness: The inaccurate sense of themselves that both proletariat and capitalists have under capitalism regarding their relationship to each other and the way in which capitalism operates (Marx). fatalistic suicide: A type of suicide that occurs in situations of excessive regulation (e.g., slavery), where people are often so distressed and depressed by their lack of freedom that they take their own lives more frequently than otherwise (Durkheim). feeling rules: Culturally determined standards for emotion management (Hochschild). feminist institutional theory: A feminist theory that sees gender differences as resulting from the different roles that women and men play within institutional settings. feminist interactionist theory: A feminist theory that views gender as an accomplishment by actors in interaction with others who hold them accountable for conforming to appropriate gender behavior. feminist theory: A generalized, wide-ranging system of ideas about social life and human experience developed from a woman-centered perspective. fiduciary system: To Parsons, the subsystem of society that handles the pattern maintenance and latency function by transmitting culture (norms and values) to actors and seeing to it that they internalize that culture. field: A network of relations among the objective positions within it (Bourdieu). fieldwork: A methodology used by symbolic interactionists and other sociologists that involves venturing into the field (the day-to-day social world) to observe and collect relevant data. figurations: Social processes involving the interweaving of people, who are seen as open and interdependent. Power is central to social figurations; they are constantly in flux. Figurations emerge and develop but in largely unseen and unplanned ways (Elias).

GLOSSARY   433

financescapes: The processes by which huge sums of money move through nations and around the world at great speed; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. flow: Sources of energy that come directly and immediately from the biosphere. Examples are wind, water, and sunlight. formal rationality: A type of rationality in which the choice of the most expedient action is based on rules, regulations, and laws that apply to everyone. This form of rationality is distinctive to the modern West (Weber). forms: Patterns imposed on the bewildering array of events, actions, and interactions in the social world both by people in their everyday lives and by social theorists (Simmel). frames of color-blind racism: Common ways of interpreting information about race. BonillaSilva describes four such frames: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism. front stage: That part of a dramaturgical performance that generally functions in rather fixed and general ways to define the situation for those who observe the performance (Goffman). functional differentiation: The most complex form of differentiation and the form that dominates modern society. Every function within a system is ascribed to a particular unit (Luhmann). functions: Consequences that can be observed and that help a particular system adapt or adjust (Davis and Moore). game stage: The second stage in the genesis of the self (the first is the play stage) in which, instead of taking the role of a discrete other, the child takes the role of everyone involved in the game. Each of these others plays a specific role in the overall game (Mead). gender: A concept developed in feminist sociological theory to distinguish between sex, the biologically determined attributes associated with male and female, and socially constructed behaviors associated with masculinity and femininity. gender frame: Frames generally, and gender frames in particular, offer a simplified categorizing schema by which people can adjust their behaviors to others. generalization: The tendency to extend behavior to similar circumstances (exchange theory). generalized other: The attitude of the entire community or of any collectivity in which the actor is involved (Mead). genetic structuralism: Bourdieu’s approach, which involves the study of objective structures that cannot be separated from mental structures that, themselves, involve the internalization of objective structures. gestures: Movements by one party (person or animal) that serve as stimuli to another party (Mead). globalism: The monocausal and unilinear view that the world is dominated by economics and that we are witnessing the emergence of the hegemony of the capitalist world market and the neoliberal ideology that underpins it. globality: The view that closed spaces, especially those associated with nations, are growing increasingly illusory in the era of globalization.

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globalization: A transplanetary process or set of processes involving growing multidirectional flows of increasingly liquid people, objects, places, and information and the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to or expedite those flows. globalization minus: A homogenizing view of globalization that shrinks the number of ideas about how to live on Earth (Latour). globalization plus: A view of globalization that multiplies the perspectives about how to live on Earth (Latour). glocalization: The interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas (Robertson). goal attainment: The second of Parsons’s functional imperatives involving the need for a system to define and achieve its primary goals. governmentalities: The practices and techniques by which control is exercised over people (Foucault). grand theory: A vast, highly ambitious effort to tell the story of a great stretch of human history and/or a large portion of the social world. Great Acceleration: A collection of sudden striking changes to the Earth system that started around 1950. grobalization: The imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on geographic areas (Ritzer). habitus: The mental or cognitive structures through which people deal with the social world (Bourdieu). hegemonic masculinity: The practice by social groups of creating an ideal type of masculinity and equating it with leadership. heterosexual matrix: A cultural framework that makes it appear as if heterosexuality is the natural form of sexuality (queer theory). hierarchical observation: The ability of officials at or near the top of an organization to oversee all that they control with a single gaze (Foucault). historical materialism: (1) a basic principle in Marxian social theory that holds that any effort at social analysis must trace in historically concrete detail the specifics of a group’s material conditions and the links between those conditions and its experiences, personalities, events, ideas, and social arrangements; (2) the Marxian idea that the material conditions of human life, inclusive of the activities and relationships that produce those conditions, are the key factors that pattern human experience, personality, ideas, and social arrangements; that those conditions change over time because of dynamics immanent 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 space: The kind of space produced when separate nations vie with one another for power and the accumulation of wealth (Lefebvre). homosexual melancholy: The persistent sadness that is part of a heterosexual culture in denial of its own homosexuality (queer theory).

GLOSSARY   435

hybridization: A perspective on globalization that emphasizes the increasing diversity associated with unique mixtures of the global and the local as opposed to the uniformity associated with grobalization (Pieterse). hybrids/quasi-objects: Actants that combine both objectivity and subjectivity; in Latour’s theory all actants are hybrids, even humans (actor-network theory). hyperconsumption: An extraordinary level of consumption associated with the contemporary world (Ritzer). hyperobjects: Coined by Timothy Morton to describe “things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans.” hyperreal: Entirely simulated and, as a result, more real than real, more beautiful than beautiful, truer than true, and so on (Baudrillard). hysteresis: The condition that results from having a habitus that is not appropriate for the situation in which one lives (Bourdieu). I: The immediate response of the self to others; the incalculable, unpredictable, and creative aspect of the self (Mead). ideal speech situation: A speech situation that is free of all distorting influences, especially power; one in which the better argument wins out rather than the one that is backed by the most powerful individual or group. A consensus arises out of this contest of ideas as to what is the truth; truth arises from consensus and not because it is a copy of reality (Habermas). ideal type: A one-sided, exaggerated concept, usually an exaggeration of the rationality of a given phenomenon, used to analyze the social world in all its historical and contemporary variation. The ideal type is a measuring rod to be used in the comparison of specific examples of a social phenomenon either cross-culturally or over time (Weber). identity politics: Political activism that arises out of the efforts of marginalized groups to seek legitimacy and recognition for their distinct identities. ideology: To Marxists and neo-Marxists, ideas that distract people from understanding the true causes of social inequality and human suffering. ideoscapes: Largely political images either produced by states and in line with their ideologies or produced by movements with counterideologies that seek to supplant those in power or at least to gain a piece of that power; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. imperatively coordinated associations: Associations of people controlled by a hierarchy of authority positions (Dahrendorf). imperialism: The control and exploitation, especially economically, of a number of areas throughout the world by a nation (or nations) at the center. implosion: The decline of boundaries and the collapse of things into each other; dedifferentiation as opposed to differentiation (Baudrillard). impression management: The techniques actors use to maintain certain impressions in the face of problems they are likely to encounter and the methods they use to cope with these problems (Goffman).

436    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

impulse: First stage of the act in which the actor reacts to some external stimulus and feels the need to do something about it (Mead). Indigenous Place-Thought: The idea that land is not only a backdrop to human action but is alive and interconnected with human and nonhuman agents (Watts). individual culture: The capacity of the individual to produce, absorb, and control the elements of objective culture (Simmel). industry: The understanding and productive use, primarily by the working classes, of a wide variety of mechanized processes on a large scale (Veblen). integration: The third of Parsons’s functional imperatives, requiring that a system seek to regulate the interrelationships of its component parts. Integration also involves the management of the relationships among the other three functional imperatives (AGL). interest group: A true group in the sociological sense of the term, possessing not only common interests but also structure, a goal, and personnel. Interest groups have the capacity to engage in group conflict (Dahrendorf). interests: Concerns, usually shared by groups of people (Dahrendorf). international relations: A political theory that focuses on the relations among and between the nation-states of the world. intersectionality theory: The view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity because of the intersections of other arrangements of social inequality (feminist theory). irrationality of rationality: The idea that rational systems inevitably spawn a series of irrationalities (Weber). The paradoxical reality that rationality seems often to lead to its exact opposite—irrationality; inevitably accompanies McDonaldization (Ritzer). iterative agency: A kind of action that is focused on the past and aims to reproduce habit, custom, and tradition (Emirbayer and Desmond). juggernaut: Giddens’s metaphor for the modern world as a massive force that moves forward inexorably, riding roughshod over everything in its path. People steer the juggernaut, but it always has the possibility of careening out of control. knowledge industry: To the critical theorists, those entities in society concerned with knowledge production and dissemination, especially research institutes and universities. Like the culture industry, these settings have achieved a large measure of autonomy within society, which has allowed them to redefine themselves. Instead of serving the interests of society as a whole, they have come to focus on their own interests; this means that they are intent on expanding their influence over society. labor theory of value: Marx’s theory that all value comes from labor and is therefore traceable, in capitalism, to the proletariat. latency: The first aspect of Parsons’s fourth functional imperative involving the need for a system to furnish, maintain, and renew the motivation of individuals. latent functions: Unintended positive consequences (Merton).

GLOSSARY   437

latent interests: Unconscious interests that translate into objective role expectations (­Dahrendorf). levels of functional analysis: The concept that functional analysis can be performed on any standardized repetitive social phenomenon, ranging from society as a whole to organizations, institutions, and groups (Merton). liberal feminism: A feminist theory of inequality that argues that women may claim equality with men on the basis of an essential human capacity for reasoned moral agency, that gender inequality is the result of a patriarchal and sexist patterning of the division of labor, and that gender equality can be produced by the transformation of the division of labor through the repatterning of key institutions—law, work, family, education, and media. lie: A form of interaction in which a person intentionally hides the truth from others (Simmel). lifeworld: To Schutz, the commonsense world, the world of everyday life, the mundane world, that world in which intersubjectivity takes place. Habermas is more concerned with interpersonal communication in the lifeworld. local actualities of lived experience: The places where actual people act and live their lives (feminist theory). looking-glass self: The idea that we form our sense of ourselves by using others, and their reactions to us, as a mirror to assess who we are and how we are doing (Cooley). lumpenproletariat: The mass of people who stand below even the proletariat in the capitalist system (Marx). machinic assemblage: How bodies, ideas, and technologies are hooked up with one another (Deleuze and Guattari). manifest functions: Positive consequences that are brought about consciously and purposely (Merton). manifest interests: Latent interests of which people have become conscious (Dahrendorf). manipulation: Third stage of the act in which the actor manipulates the object once it has been perceived (Mead). manner: The way actors conduct themselves, which tells the audience what sort of role the actors expect to play in the situation (Goffman). mass culture: The culture made available to, and popular among, the masses (critical theory). material social facts: Social facts that take a material form in the external social world (e.g., architecture) (Durkheim). matrix of domination: The intersections of a number of arrangements of social inequality (gender, class, race, global location, sexual preference, and age) that serve to oppress women differentially. Variation in these intersections qualitatively alters the experience of being a woman (P Collins). McDonaldization: The process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world; in the latter sense, a form of cultural imperialism (Ritzer). me: The individual’s adoption and perception of the generalized other; the conformist aspect of the self (Mead).

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means-ends rational action: Action that involves the pursuit of ends that actors have chosen for themselves; that choice is affected by the actors’ view of the environment in which they find themselves, including the behavior of people and objects in it (Weber). means of consumption: To Marx, these are simply consumer goods, but to Ritzer, paralleling Marx’s sense of the means of production, these are the things that make consumption possible. As the factory makes production possible, the shopping mall enables the consumer and consumption. means of production: Those things that are needed for production to take place (including tools, machinery, raw materials, and factories) (Marx). mechanical solidarity: In Durkheimian theory, the idea that primitive society is held together by the fact that there is little division of labor and, as a result, virtually everyone does essentially the same things. mediascapes: The electronic capability to produce and transmit information around the world as well as the images of the world that these media create and disseminate; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. mediation: The capacity of actants to modify one another (actor-network theory). methodological holists: Those social scientists who focus on the macro level and view it as determining the micro level. methodological individualists: Those social scientists who focus on the micro level and view it as determining the macro level. methodological relationism: The position of social scientists who focus on the relationship between macro- and micro-level phenomena (Bourdieu). microphysics of power: The idea that power exists at the micro level and involves efforts to exercise it as well as efforts to contest its exercise (Foucault). middle-range theories: Theories that seek a middle ground between trying to explain the entirety of the social world and trying to explain a minute portion of that world (Merton). mind: The conversations that people have with themselves using language (Mead). Modern Constitution: The ideological and institutional arrangement in which actants are divided between those that are presumed to possess agency (the humans) and those that do not possess agency (the nonhumans) (Latour). multitude: The collection of people throughout the world that sustains empire in various ways, including through its labor (it is the real productive force in empire). The multitude also has the power, at least potentially, to overthrow empire (Hardt and Negri). mystification: An effort by actors to confound their audience by restricting the contact between themselves and the audience, concealing the mundane things that go into their performance (Goffman). naturecultures: Political economic social systems formed out of the inter-relation of natural and cultural phenomena (Haraway). need-dispositions: To Parsons, drives that are shaped by the social setting. needs: Those things that people require to survive and to function at a minimal level in the contemporary world. Needs are often used to explain why we consume what we do.

GLOSSARY   439

Negritude movement: An intellectual movement during the early 20th century that opposed the values of white, capitalist, colonial culture and sought a pan-African identity in the values of African culture. neocolonialism: The idea that even though most colonizing nations abandoned their colonies by the mid-20th century, the basic power structures of colonialism continue to operate under the form of neoliberal globalization. neoliberalism: A theory that combines a political commitment to individual liberty with neoclassical economics devoted to the free market and opposed to state intervention in that market. neotribalism: A postmodern development characterized by the coming of age of a wide array of communities that are refuges for strangers and, more specifically, for ethnic, religious, and political groups. net balance: The relative weight of functions and dysfunctions (Merton). new materialism: Perspectives that emphasize the materiality of all social phenomenon. Where Marx’s original historical materialism focused on the materiality of economic production, new materialists also emphasize the materiality of human bodies and the objects to which they relate. new means of consumption: The set of consumption sites that came into existence largely after 1950 in the United States and that served to revolutionize consumption (Ritzer). nonconscious processes: Processes that occur outside of human awareness. nonfunctions: Consequences that are irrelevant to the system under consideration (Merton). nonmaterial social facts: Social facts that are external and coercive but that do not take a material form (e.g., norms and values) (Durkheim). normalizing judgments: Judgments made by those in power based on their decisions about what is normal and what is abnormal on a variety of dimensions. Those who violate the norms, who are judged abnormal, can then be punished by officials or their agents (Foucault). Northern theory: Theories developed in Europe and North America; also known as Western theory or metropolitan theory (Connell). nothing: Largely empty forms; forms devoid of most distinctive content (Ritzer). objective culture: The objects that people produce—art, science, philosophy, and so on— that become part of culture (Simmel). obligatory points of passage: Institutions through which actions must pass (actor-network theory). observation: A methodology closely related to fieldwork, in which symbolic interactionists (and other sociologists) study the social world by observing what is transpiring in it. In the case of symbolic interactionism, this enables researchers to engage in sympathetic introspection and put themselves in the place of actors to understand meanings and motives and to observe the actions that people take. one-dimensional society: To Marcuse, the result of the breakdown in the dialectical relationship between people and the larger structures they created so that people are largely controlled by such structures. They lose the ability to create and to be actively involved in those structures, and individual freedom and creativity dwindle, leaving people without the capacity to think critically and negatively about the structures that control and oppress them.

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operant conditioning: The learning process by which the consequences of behavior serve to modify that behavior (exchange theory). opportunity costs: The costs of forgoing the next most attractive action when an actor chooses an action aimed at achieving a given end (rational choice theory). organic solidarity: To Durkheim, the idea that because of the substantial division of labor in modern society, solidarity comes from differences; that is, individuals need the contributions of an increasing number of people to function and even to survive. Orientalism: A way of thinking, writing, and talking that distinguishes, in broad, stereotypical ways, between the Occident (Western societies) and the Orient (Eastern societies). This distinction implies that Occidental societies are superior to Oriental societies and that Occidental societies have a duty to dominate and control Oriental societies (Said). Othering: An act of definition done within a subordinated group to establish that a group member is unacceptable, an “Other,” by some criterion; this erodes the potential for coalition and resistance (feminist theory). outside: Neither front nor back; literally outside the realm of the performance (Goffman). outsider within: The role frequently experienced by group members when they move from the home group into the larger society (feminist theory). panopticon: A structure that allows someone in power (e.g., a prison officer) the possibility of complete observation of a group of people (e.g., prisoners) (Foucault). parliament of things: An approach to political decision making that includes the perspectives of humans and nonhumans (Latour). patriarchy: A system in which men subjugate women. Patriarchy is universal, pervasive in its social organization, durable over time and space, and triumphantly maintained in the face of occasional challenge (feminist theory). pattern maintenance: The second aspect of Parsons’s fourth functional imperative, involving the need for a system to furnish, maintain, and renew the cultural patterns that create and sustain individual motivation. perception: Second stage of the act in which the actor consciously searches for and reacts to stimuli that relate to the impulse and ways of dealing with it (Mead). periphery: Those areas of the capitalist world-economy that provide raw materials to the core and are heavily exploited by it (Wallerstein). personal front: Those items of expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting (Goffman). personality: To Parsons, the individual actor’s organized system of orientation to, and motivation for, action. personality system: The Parsonsian action system responsible for performing the goal attainment function by defining system goals and mobilizing resources to attain them. phantasmagoria: The fantastic immaterial effects produced by physical structures like shopping arcades as well as the newer means of consumption (Benjamin). phenomenology: The philosophical study of subjective experience.

GLOSSARY   441

phobogenic object: Fanon’s description of the Black man as viewed by French colonial society. For white Europeans, Black persons, and in particular Black men, embodied unconscious fears. play stage: The first stage in the genesis of the self in which the child plays at being someone else (Mead). political realism: A political theory that operates on the premise that international politics is based on power, organized violence, and ultimately war. politics of recognition: Political practices shaped by the idea that the integrity and well-being of people depends on the recognition of their unique cultural practices and identities. polity: To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the function of goal attainment by pursuing societal objectives and mobilizing actors and resources to that end. postcolonial theory: A theoretical perspective that describes the cultural forces that enable postcolonial power and describes sources of potential resistance to that power. posthuman theory: Theories that challenges humanist assumptions about human nature, especially the idea that humans are self-enclosed beings that are defined through uniquely human components and traits. postindustrial society: A society characterized by the provision of services rather than goods; professional and technical work rather than blue-collar, manual work; theoretical knowledge rather than practical know-how; the creation and monitoring of new technologies; and new intellectual technologies to handle such assessment and control (Bell). postmodern sociology: A type of sociology that is heavily influenced by postmodern ideas and that adopts a nonrational approach to the study of society (Bauman). postracial society: The idea that race no longer plays a significant role in the social life of a society; specifically, some claim that race has played little role in American social life since the civil rights era (1950s–1960s). poststructuralist: A theorist, like Bourdieu, who has been influenced by a structuralist perspective but has moved beyond it to synthesize it with other theoretical ideas and perspectives. power: To Emerson, the potential cost that one actor can induce another to accept. practical consciousness: Consciousness that involves actions that the actors take for granted without being able to express in words what they are doing (Giddens). practical-evaluative agency: A concept that emphasizes that action is not a machinelike application of rules but is based on embodied, dynamic engagement with the field (Emirbayer and Desmond). practical rationality: The type of rationality people use on a day-to-day basis in dealing with whatever difficulties exist and finding the most expedient way of attaining the goal of getting from one point to another (Weber). practice: To Bourdieu, actions that are the outcome of the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Practices are not objectively determined, nor are they the product of free will. praxis: Concrete action, particularly that taken by the proletariat to overcome capitalism (Marx).

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predictability: An emphasis on things (products, settings, employees, customer behavior, etc.) being pretty much the same from one geographic setting to another and from one time to another; a dimension of McDonaldization (Ritzer). primary group: An intimate face-to-face group that plays a crucial role in linking the individual to the larger society. Of special importance are the primary groups of the young, mainly the family and friendship groups (Cooley). primitive accumulation: A process described by Marx in which the precious metals and raw materials taken from colonial possessions were used to fuel the early stages of capitalism. profit: The greater number of rewards gained over costs incurred in social exchange (exchange theory). projective agency: A kind of agency that is focused on the future and, through projects, tries to maintain or change the existing order (Emirbayer and Desmond). proletariat: Those who, because they do not own the means of production, must sell their labor time to the capitalists to get access to those means (Marx). Protestant ethic: A belief system, associated with the Protestant sect of Calvinism, that emphasized hard work and asceticism, the denial of personal pleasure. The development of capitalism depended on the presence of this ethic (Weber). psychoanalytic feminism: An effort to explain patriarchy through the use of reformulations of the theories of Sigmund Freud and his successors in psychoanalytic theory. punishments: Actions with negative values; an increase in such actions means that the actor is less likely to manifest undesired behaviors (exchange theory). quasi group: A number of individuals who occupy positions that have the same role interests (Dahrendorf). race: A social construction that classifies people according to phenotypic differences such as skin color, hair type, and eye shape. racial capital: The kind of capital, and therefore power, that comes from being a member of a particular racialized group (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial collective-emotional structures: The group organization of feelings about race (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial cultural structures: The symbolic organization of racial life (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial-epidermal schema: A way of looking at and acting on people that prioritizes skin color and other so-called racial features (Fanon). racial field: The totality of racial identities that exist within a given society as well as their relationships to one another (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial formation: The idea that the concept of race is not natural but rather a social construction that has been formed over long periods of time (Omi and Winant). racial illusio: The shared set of ideas that people have about the racial field and how it works (Emirbayer and Desmond). racial projects: The concrete social processes through which racialization occurs (Omi and Winant).

GLOSSARY   443

racialism: An approach to race widespread in the 19th century that held that there are distinct races with unique defining features. Unlike racism, racialism does not necessarily assume that some races are superior to others (Du Bois). racialization: The process by which phenotypic differences are made to matter in a socially significant way (Omi and Winant). radical feminism: A theory of social organization, gender oppression, and strategies for change that affirms the positive value of women and argues that they are everywhere oppressed by violence or the threat of violence. rationalization: To Giddens, the development of routines that not only give actors a sense of security but also enable them to deal efficiently with their social lives. rational-legal authority: A type of authority in which the legitimacy of leaders is derived from codified rules and regulations; leaders hold their positions as a result of those rules (Weber). reason: The assessment of means to ends in terms of ultimate human values such as justice, freedom, and happiness (critical theory). reconciliation: Attempts to overcome the damage of the colonial past and to establish equitable and fair relations between colonizers and colonized. recursive: Capable of being repeated indefinitely. Giddens says that society acquires structure through recursive social practices. reductionism: Theoretical and scientific approaches that try to explain one kind of phenomenon by reducing it to the mechanisms and processes of another. reflexive sociology: The use by sociologists of their own theoretical and empirical tools to better understand their discipline (Bourdieu). reflexivity: The ability to put ourselves in others’ places—think as they think, and act as they act (Mead). reify: To endow social structures, which are created by people, with a separate and real existence (Simmel). relations of ruling: The complex, nonmonolithic but intricately connected social activities that attempt to control human social production (feminist theory). repressive law: Characteristic of mechanical solidarity, a form of law in which offenders are likely to be severely punished for any action that is seen by the tightly integrated community as an offense against the powerful collective conscience (Durkheim). restitutive law: Characteristic of organic solidarity and its weakened collective conscience, a form of law in which offenders are likely simply to be asked to comply with the law or to repay (make restitution to) those who have been harmed by their actions (Durkheim). resurgence: The reinvigoration and regeneration of Indigenous life through Indigenous culture and ideas (Alfred/Coulthard/Simpson). rewards: Actions with positive values; an increase in such actions is more likely to elicit the desired behavior (exchange theory). role: What an actor does in a status, seen in the context of its functional significance for the larger system (Parsons).

444    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

role distance: The degree to which individuals separate themselves from the roles they are in (Goffman). romanticism: An intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that affected European societies in the 19th century. Rejecting the Enlightenment values of objectivity and rationality, romantics believed that humans are deep-feeling, emotional beings who express the self in culture and language (Du Bois). routinization of charisma: Efforts by disciples of a charismatic leader to recast the extraordinary and revolutionary characteristics of the leader so that the regime is better able to handle mundane matters. The followers also do this to prepare for the day when the charismatic leader passes from the scene so that they can remain in power (Weber). secrecy: The condition in which one person has the intention of hiding something while the other is seeking to reveal that which is being hidden (Simmel). segmentary differentiation: The division of parts of the system on the basis of the need to fulfill identical functions over and over (Luhmann). self: The ability to take oneself as an object (Mead). To Goffman, a sense of who one is that is a dramatic effect emerging from the immediate dramaturgical scene being presented. semiperiphery: A residual category in the capitalist world-economy that encompasses a set of regions somewhere between the exploiting and the exploited (Wallerstein). setting: The physical scene that ordinarily must be there if the actors are to engage in a dramaturgical performance (Goffman). settler colonialism: A form of colonialism in which the colonizers establish permanent settlements in the colonies. Examples include the French colonies in what are now the United States and Canada and the British colonies in the United States, Canada, and Australia. sexism: A system of discriminatory attitudes and practices connected by a theme of privileging male experience and devaluing female experience. significant gestures: Gestures that require thought before responses are made; only humans are capable of making significant gestures (Mead). significant symbols: Symbols that arouse in the person expressing them the same kind of response (it need not be identical) they are designed to elicit from those to whom they are addressed (Mead). simulations: Fakes; to Baudrillard, the contemporary world is coming to be increasingly dominated by the inauthentic. social capital: The extent of the valued social relations possessed by an actor (Bourdieu). social contagion: A process described by Gustav Le Bon in which affect directly travels from body to body, driving irrational group behavior. social facts: To Durkheim, the subject matter of sociology. Social facts are to be treated as things that are external to, and coercive over, individuals, and they are to be studied empirically. social stratification: To the structural functionalist, a structure involving a hierarchy of positions that has the function of leading those people with the needed skills and abilities to do

GLOSSARY   445

what is necessary to move into the high-ranking positions that are most important to society’s functioning and survival. social system: The Parsonsian action system responsible for coping with the integration function by controlling its component parts: a number of human actors who interact with one another in a situation with a physical or environmental context. To Giddens, reproduced social practices, or relations between actors or collectivities that are reproduced, becoming regular social practices. socialist feminism: An effort to develop a unified theory that focuses on the role of capitalism and patriarchy in creating a large-scale structure that oppresses women. societal community: To Parsons, the subsystem of society that performs the integration function coordinating the components of society. societal functionalism: A variety of structural functionalism that focuses on the large-scale social structures and institutions of society, their interrelationships, and their constraining effects on actors. society: To Parsons, a relatively self-sufficient collectivity. sociological canon: The theories, ideas, and texts that at least in the past, have been considered the most important in the field of sociology. Critics have argued that the canon is not a neutral construction; rather, it is affected by political factors. sociological theory: A set of interrelated ideas that allow for the systematization of knowledge of the social world, the explanation of that world, and predictions about the future of that world. sociology of postmodernity: A type of sociology that is continuous with modern sociology in that it is characterized by rational and systematic discourse and by an effort to develop a model of postmodern society. However, the sociology of postmodernity accepts postmodern society as a distinctive and unique type and does not see it as an aberrant form of modern society (­Bauman). something: Largely full forms; forms rich in distinctive content (Ritzer). Southern theory: Theories developed in the Global South; also known as peripheral theory or Indigenous theory (Connell). spirit of capitalism: An idea system that led to the capitalist economic system. In the West, unlike in any other area of the world, people were motivated to be economically successful not by greed but by an ethical system that emphasized the ceaseless pursuit of economic success. The spirit of capitalism had a number of components, including the rational and systematic seeking of profits, frugality, punctuality, fairness, and the earning of money as a legitimate end in itself (Weber). split labor market theory: The theory that racial and ethnic tensions develop when owning classes (the bourgeoisie) pit workers (the proletariat) from different racial categories against each other (Bonacich). standpoint: The perspective of embodied actors within groups that are differentially located in the social structure (feminist theory). status: A structural position within the social system (Parsons).

446    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

stigma: A gap between virtual and actual social identity (Goffman). stock: Sources of energy produced through photosynthesis that have been stored in the Earth for a long time and exist in a limited quantity. Examples are oil and coal. stranger: One of Simmel’s social types defined by distance: one who is neither too close to the group nor too far from it. stratificatory differentiation: Vertical differentiation according to rank or status in a system conceived as a hierarchy (Luhmann). structural functionalism: A sociological theory that focuses on the structures of society and their functional significance (positive or negative consequences) for other structures. structuralist perspective: The view that there are hidden or underlying structures that determine what transpires in the social world. structuration: The concept that agents and structures are interrelated to such an extent that at the moment they produce action, people produce and reproduce the structures in which they exist; the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Structure and agency are a duality; neither can exist without the other (Giddens). structure: To Giddens, the structuring properties (specifically, rules and resources) that give similar social practices a systemic form. structures: In society, patterned social interaction and persistent social relationships (structural functionalism). Subaltern Studies Group: A group of Indian and South Asian scholars who base their social theory on local political movements in India and South Asia. subsistence wage: The wage paid by the capitalist to the proletariat that is enough for the worker to survive and have a family and children so that when the worker falters, they can be replaced by one of their children (Marx). substantive rationality: A type of rationality in which the choice of the most expedient action is guided by larger values rather than by daily experiences and practical thinking (Weber). subversion strategy: In Emirbayer and Desmond’s theory about race, the kind of projective agency in which actors try to change the existing racial order. superstructure: To Marx, secondary social phenomena, like the state and culture, that are erected on an economic base that serves to define them. Most extremely, the economy determines the superstructure. surface acting: A performance in which a person manipulates surface appearances such as facial expression and tone of voice to convey an emotional expression to others (Hochschild). surplus value: The difference between the value of a product when it is sold and the value of the elements (including workerslabor) consumed in its production (Marx). symbiogenesis/sympoiesis: The idea that organisms develop and grow through symbiotic entanglements with other organisms (Haraway). symbolic capital: The amount of honor and prestige possessed by an actor (Bourdieu).

GLOSSARY   447

symbolic exchange: A reversible process of giving and receiving; a cyclical exchange of gifts and counter-gifts associated with primitive societies (Baudrillard). symbolic interactionism: The school of sociology that following Mead, focuses on symbolic interaction, the distinctive human ability to relate to one another not only through gestures but also through significant symbols. symbolic violence: A soft form of violence (the agent against whom it is practiced is complicit in its practice) that is practiced indirectly, largely through cultural mechanisms (Bourdieu). symmetry: The idea that social science explanations must treat both human and nonhumans in the same way (actor-network theory). sympathetic introspection: The methodology of putting oneself in the places and the minds of those one is studying, doing so in a way that is sympathetic to who they are and what they are thinking and trying to understand the meanings and the motives that lie at the base of their behavior. system: To Habermas, the structures (such as the family, the legal system, the state, and the economy) that have their source within the lifeworld but that come to develop their own distinctive existence and grow increasingly distant and separated from the lifeworld. systematic theory of race: A theory of race that brings together multiple theoretical perspectives, operates at multiple levels of analysis, and provides a more or less exhaustive set of analytic categories (Emirbayer and Desmond). team: Any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single performance (Goffman). technocratic thinking: Concern with being efficient, with simply finding the best means to an end without reflecting on either the means or the end (critical theory). technoscapes: The ever-fluid, global configurations of high and low, mechanical and informational technology and the wide range of material (internet, e-mail) that now moves freely and quickly around the globe and across borders; one of Appadurai’s landscapes. territorialization: Occurs when machinic assemblages take over geographical, cultural, and psychical regions (Delueze and Guattari). texts: Written documents, characterized by their essential anonymity, generality, and authority, that are designed to pattern and translate real-life, specific, individualized experience into a language form acceptable to the relations of ruling (feminist theory). the second shift: The work done by women at home before and after their work at a job in the paid economy (Hochschild). theoretical rationality: A type of rationality that involves an effort to master reality cognitively through the development of increasingly abstract concepts. The goal is to attain a rational understanding of the world rather than to take rational action within it (Weber). theories of everyday life: Theories that focus on such everyday and seemingly mundane activities as individual thought and action, the interaction of two or more people, and the small groups that emerge from such interaction. tourists: Those on the move throughout the globe because they want to be (Bauman).

448    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

traditional action: Action taken on the basis of the way things have been done habitually or customarily (Weber). traditional authority: Authority based on followers’ belief that certain people (people from particular families or tribes or with special lineage) have exercised sovereignty since time immemorial. The leaders claim, and the followers believe in, the sanctity of age-old rules and powers (Weber). tragedy of culture: A concept that stems from the fact that over time objective culture grows exponentially, whereas individual culture and the ability to produce it grow only marginally. Our meager individual capacities cannot keep pace with our cultural products. As a result, we are doomed to have a decreasing understanding of the world we have created and to be increasingly controlled by that world (Simmel). translation: The process by which actants modify, or transform, one another (actor-network theory). transnational capitalist class: Not made up of capitalists in the traditional Marxian sense of the term; its members do not necessarily own the means of production. Includes four “fractions”— corporate, made up of executives of transnational corporations and their local affiliates; state, comprising globalizing state and interstate bureaucrats and politicians; technical, made up of globalizing professionals; and consumerist, encompassing merchants and media executives (Sklair). transnational corporations: Corporations that dominate the contemporary capitalist global economy and the actions of which are largely unconstrained by the borders of nation-states (Sklair). triad: A three-person group (Simmel). types: Patterns imposed on a wide range of actors by both laypeople and social scientists to combine the actors into limited numbers of categories. unanticipated consequences: Unexpected positive, negative, and irrelevant consequences. utilities: An actor’s preferences, or values. vagabonds: Those on the move throughout the globe because they find their environs unbearable or inhospitable for any number of reasons (Bauman). value-rational action: Action that occurs when an actor’s choice of the means to an end is based on the actor’s belief in some larger set of values. The action chosen may not be optimal, but it is rational from the point of view of the value system in which actors finds themselves (Weber). vectors of oppression and privilege: The varied intersections of a number of arrangements of social inequality (gender, class, race, global location, sexual preference, and age) that serve to oppress women differentially. Variation in these intersections qualitatively alters the experience of being a woman (feminist theory). veil: A metaphor for the separation between Blacks and whites. The imagery is not one of a wall but rather of thin, porous material through which each race can see the other (Du Bois). Verstehen: A methodological technique involving an effort to understand the thought processes of the actor, the actor’s meanings and motives, and how these factors led to the action (or interaction) under study (Weber).

GLOSSARY   449

virtual social identity: What a person ought to be (Goffman). web of life: Used to indicate that humans are a part of nature entangled in complex relationships with many other kinds of beings. Westoxification: The collective negative effects of Western imperialism on Iran and colonized Middle Eastern nations, including the alienation of people from local culture and the domination of everyday life through imported machinery (Al-e Ahmad). World-capitalist ecology: The kind of human-nature organization developed within capitalism (Moore). World-ecological perspective: Describes how societies shape (and are shaped by) the natural environment (Moore). world-system: A broad economic entity with a division of labor that is not circumscribed by political or cultural boundaries. It is a social system, comprising internally a variety of social structures and member groups that is largely self-contained, has a set of boundaries, and has a definable life span (Wallerstein).

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SOURCE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 2 p. 19. Excerpt from Steven Lukes, Émile Durkheim: His Life and Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 345, 347. p. 28. Excerpt from “Communism and the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,” in D. McLlellan (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1844/1972), p. 20. p. 34. Excerpt from Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography (New York: Wiley, 1975), p. 105.

CHAPTER 3 p. 60. Excerpt cited in Rick Tilman, Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891–1963: Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Perspectives (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 9–10. p. 65. Excerpts from Leonard S. Cottrell Jr., “George Herbert Mead: The Legacy of Social Behaviorism,” in R. K. Merton and M. W. Riley (eds.), Sociological Traditions from Generation to Generation: Glimpses of the American Experience (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1980), pp. 40–50.

CHAPTER 4 p. 86. Figure 4.1: “Structure of the General Action System.” Reprinted by permission of the publisher from THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, by Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, with contributions by Neil J. Smelser, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, © 1973 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. p. 87. Figure 4.2: Adapted from “Parsons’s Action Schema” from Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective, 1st ed., 1966. p. 91. Figure 4.3: “Society, Its Subsystems, and the Functional Imperatives.” Reprinted by ­permission of the publisher from THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY by Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt, with contributions by Neil J. Smelser, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1973 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. p. 95. Excerpts from Robert Merton, “Remembering the Young Talcott Parsons” from American Sociologist 15 (1980), pp. 69, 70, 71. p. 99. Robert Merton.

CHAPTER 5 p. 138. Excerpt from Stephen Mennell, Norbert Elias: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 23.

451

p. 141. Excerpts cited in Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 2. p. 146. Excerpt from Ian Craib, Anthony Giddens (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 12.

CHAPTER 6 p. 172. Excerpt from Randall Collins, “The Passing of Intellectual Generations: Reflections on the Death of Erving Goffman,” in Sociological Theory 4 (1986):106–113, p. 112. p. 173. Figure 6.1: “Breaching in Tic-Tac-Toe” from Michael Lynch, “Pictures of Nothing? Visual Constructs in Social Theory,” from Sociological Theory 9 (1991). © 1991 by the American Sociological Association. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the American Sociological Association. p. 177. Reprinted with the permission of George Homans. p. 184. Excerpts from James S. Coleman, “A Vision for Sociology,” in Society 32 (1994): 32–33. © 1994 by Transaction Publishers.

CHAPTER 8 p. 240. Excerpts from Dorothy E. Smith, “A Sociology for Women,” in J. A. Sherman and T. Beck (eds.), The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 151. © 1979.

CHAPTER 9 p. 263. Excerpt from David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (New York: Verso, 2012), 429.

CHAPTER 10 p. 306. Excerpts from Michel Foucault in James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), pp. 27, 250–251, 230.

CHAPTER 11 p. 373. Nicolas Sarkozy quotes from Jarry, E. (2008). UPDATE 1-Sarkozy demands overhaul of world economic system. Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/france-economy -sarkozy-speech/update-1-sarkozy-demands-overhaul-of-world-economic-system-idUSLP 23408120080925

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INDEX

(CTRR), 273 24 (television program), 166 Absolute space, 129 Abstract liberalism, color-blind racism and, 278 Abstract space, 129–30, 132 Accountability, 226 Accounting practices, 171–72 Accounts, 171–72 Act defined, 62 in Mead, 62 Acting deep, 167 surface, 167 Action affectual, 35 behavior and, 33–34 defined, 33 means-ends rational, 36 social, 33 traditional, 35 types of, 35–36 value-rational, 36 Action system, 86 Actors corporate, 186–89 in rational choice theory, 182–89 Actualities of lived experience, local Adaptation, 83–84 Addams, Jane, 221, 224 Adorno, Theodor, 141 Affectual action, 35 al-Afghani, 286 African American Policy Forum (AAPF), 272 Agency, 199–200 culture and, 201–2 defined, 199

iterative, 282 practical-evaluative, 282 projective, 282 structure and, 198, 211 Agents, 200 Aggression-approval propositions AGIL, 83, 89, 91, 94 Akiwowo, Akinsola, 286 Alatas, Syed Farid, 284 Alfred, Taiaiake, 288–89 Alienation, 26–27 Alter ego, 88 alternatives to neoliberalism and Altruistic suicide, 24 Ambivalence, 308–11 American Economic Association, 60 Americanization, 360 American pragmatism, 280 American Sociological Association Anomic suicide, 24 Anomie, 21–23 anomie and, 100–101 Antidepressants, 156 Antiessentialism, 272 Anti-Semitism, Durkheim and, 19 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 245, 247 Appadurai, Arjun, 12, 344, 365–66 Appearance, 159 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 71 Arcades, consumption and, 327, 329 Archer, Margaret, 10, 201–2 Aron, Raymond, 204 Asabiyyah, 285 Association, 50 Authority charismatic, 42, 44–45 in Dahrendorf, 104–7 rational-legal, 44 traditional, 35

  453

Authority structures, rationalization and, 41–45 Autopoiesis, 110 Bacheland, Gaston, 204 Back stage, 163 Barber, Benjamin, 347 Base, 120 “Bathroom problem,”, 337 Baudrillard, Jean, 12, 315–26 Baudrillard and, 316 on colonialization, 259 conflict theory and, 101 critical theory, 119–27 critical theory and, 120, 124–25 spatial analysis, 128–36 Bauman, Zygmunt, 12, 308, 313, 351–52 Beauvoir, Simone de, 225 Beck, Ulrich, 12, 147, 350–51 Behavior action and, 33 collective, 185 defined, 33 Behavioral organism, 86, 94 Behaviorism, 33–34 defined, 33 exchange theory and, 175–78 integrative exchange theory and, 193–94 social, 61–69 Bell, Daniel, 12, 298–300 Bell, Derek, 271 The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray), 276 Benjamin, Walter, 329 Berger, Peter, 100 Bernard, Jessie, 226 Bhabha, Homi K., 267 Bias, social theory and, 3 bin Laden, Osama, 166 Biopolitics, 308 Black capital, 281 Black Feminist Thought (Collins), 246 Black Girls Matter report (AAPF), 272 Black Live Matter movement, 277, 283 Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (Du Bois), 73–74 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 260–63 Blair, Tony, 146

Blumer, Herbert, 158 Bonacich, Edna, 274 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 277 Boomerang effect, 147 Boundaries porousness of, 133 systems theory and, 108–9 Bourdieu, Pierre, 10, 202, 204 Breaching experiments, 173–74 Brexit, 343 Bureaucracy defined, 43 as ideal type, 43–44 rationalization and, 45 Bureaucratization, rule imposition and, 302 Business defined, 60 in Veblen, 58–60 Butler, Judith, 12, 334–35 Calculability, 358 Calvinism, 38–40 Canguilhem, Georges, 204 Canon, sociological, 6–8 Capital Capital (Marx), 120, 259, 264 Capital cultural, 208 economic, 208 social, 208 symbolic, 208 Capitalism, 120 Capitalists, 27 Capitalist world-economy, 135 Carceral archipelago, 305 The Care of the Self (Foucault), 306 Center-periphery differentiation, 112 Césaire, Aimé, 283 Change, groups, conflict and, 108 Charisma defined, 42 routinization of, 42, 44 Charismatic authority, 42, 44–45 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 145, 147–48 Child development Chodorow, 246 Chodorow, Nancy, 226

454    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Civilization, 354–57 defined, 354 Civilizing process, 9, 136–40 Civil society, 4, 348–49 Civil War, Du Bois on, 74 Cixou, Hélène, 225 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Huntington), 354–57 Class consciousness, 31–32 Code, 316–17 Cohesion, conflict and, 106 Coleman, James S., 10, 182–88 Collective behavior, 185 Collective conscience, 20 Collectivities, 34 Collins, Patricia Hill, 5, 245–47, 273 Collins, Randall, 165 Colonialism, 10, 259–60 defined, 258 in Du Bois, 72 in Fanon, 260–65 resurgence and, 290 settler, 258, 288–89 colonialization and, 259–60 Colonization of the lifeworld, 10, 142–44 Color-blind racism, 277–78 Color line, 69, 73, 257 Commercialization of feeling, 169 Communication conflict and, 106 ideal speech situation, 143 in lifeworld, 143 Communism, 23, 25, 30–33 defined, 32 Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels), 133–34 Complex interdependence, 382 Complexity, 109 Compulsory heterosexuality, 334 Comte, Auguste, 8, 17–18, 220–21 Conflict, groups, change and, 108 Conflict group, 107 Conflict theory, 9, 101–8 Confucianism, 38, 40–41 Confucianism and, 38, 40–41 global, 31 global neoliberal, 373–74

Connell Raewyn, 258, 285–87 R. W., 247 Conscience, collective, 20 Consciousness class, 32 discursive, 199 double, 72–73, 260 practical, 199 in Simmel, 52–54 Consensus theory, 103 Consequences, unanticipated, 98 Conservation strategy, 283 conspicuous, 59 dematerialized sites of, 328 hyperconsumption, 316 as language, 315 means of, 326–28 new means of, 327–28 from production to, 318 Conspicuous consumption, 59, 211 Conspicuous leisure, 59 Constructivist perspective, 203, 205 Consumer culture critique of, 291 death of, 319 Consumerism, culture-ideology of, 376–77 Consumers, 121–22 Consumer society, 12, 300, 315–26 Consummation, 63 Consumption, 12 Contingency, 109 Control, 359 Control instruments, 303–4 Convergence, cultural, 12, 357–63 Conversation analysis, 170 Conversation of gestures, 63–64 Cook, Karen, 194, 196–97 Cooley, Charles Horton, 155 Cooper, Anna Julia, 221, 270 Cooperative undertakings, industry and, 60 Coordinated associations, 104 Core, 135 Corporate actor, 186 Corporation, transnational, 375 Coser, Lewis, 107 Cosmopolitanism, 350

Index   455

Cost defined, 180 opportunity, 182 Coulthard, Glen Sean, 288–89 Counter-empire, 379–80 Creative destruction, 328 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 245, 271–72 Creolization, 364 Critical race theory, 10, 12, 270–73 Critical Race Theory (Delgado & critical race theory and, 271–72 Critical theories of race and racism Critical theory, 119–27 Cultural capital, 208 Cultural convergence, 12, 357 Cultural differentialism, 12, 353–57 Cultural feminism, 223–24 Cultural hybridization, 12, 363 Cultural imperialism, 344 Cultural racism, 278 Cultural sociology, 280 Cultural system, 86, 92–93 Cultural theory, 12, 353–66 Culture agency and, 201–2 consumer, 291, 318 critical theory and, 120–24 in Fanon, 265 indigenous theory and, 288 individual, 57 as marketplace, 211 mass, 120 objective and subjective, 57–58 as object of scientific study, 209 tragedy of, 57 transition from industrial to postindustrial society and, 300 Culture-ideology of consumerism, 376 Culture industry, 119–28 Cybersites, as simulations, 322, 331 Cyberspace, 331 Cyclical theory of state formation, 285 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 103, 105 Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back (Simpson), 289 Davis, Kingsley, 80–81, 101 Dean, James, 336 Debunking, 100

Decolonization, 262–66 Deconstruction, 333 Deep acting, 167 defined, 23 Definition of the situation, 66 Dehumanization, 261 Deinstitutionalization, 307 Delgado, Richard, 271 Democracy in American (Tocqueville), 4 Department stores, consumption and Dependence, 196 Dependency chains, 137–39 Deprivation-satiation proposition, 180 Derrida, Jacques, 268, 271 Desmond), 279 Desmond, Matthew, 10, 279 Destruction, creative, 328 Determinism, Bourdieu’s lack of, 206 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 4, 220, 348 Dewey, John, 280 Dialectical theory of social change Dialectic of recognition, 261 Difference consumption and, 316–17 feminist theories of, 222, 225 gender, 222–27 race and, 275 sociological theories of, 225 Differentialism, cultural, 12, 353–57 Differential racialization, 271 Differential space, 132 Differentiation, 111–14 center-periphery, 112 defined, 111 functional, 112–14 internal, 111–12 segmentary, 112, 114 stratificatory, 112 Disciplinary power, 304–5 Disciplinary society, 303–4 Discipline, 302–3 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 302–3, 306 Discourse defined, 269 Discreditable stigma, 164 Discredited stigma, 164 Discrimination, 100, 179 Discursive consciousness, 199

456    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Disney World, as simulation, 321, 324, 326 Dispossession of land, 288–89 Distance the lie and, 53 stranger and, 55–56 value and, 56 Distanciation, 145 Distinction, 209–11 Distinction (Bourdieu), 209 Division of labor in the family, 225 in Simmel, 58 solidarity and, 17–18 in Wallerstein, 135 “Doing Gender” (West & Zimmerman), 226 Domination, 221, 231 Double-consciousness, 72–73, 260 Double hermeneutic, 198 Double movement, 371 Dramaturgy, 10, 158 Dream worlds, 327, 329–30 Dreyfus, Alfred, 19 Dualism, 202 Duality, 198 Du Bois, W. E. B., 7, 9, 49, 69–74, 257, 260, 270 Du Bois and, 70 Durkheim, Émile, 9, 17–21, 24 Dyad, 54–55 Dynamic density changes in, 18 defined, 18 Dysfunctions, 97 Al-e Ahmad, Jalal, 286 Easterly, William, 367 Eating at the table, civilizing process and, 136–37 Economic capital, 208 Economics, in Du Bois, 74 Economic theory of globalization, 367–82 Economy defined, 91 in Parsons, 91 Education field of, 212–13 Efficiency, 358 Ego, 88

Egoistic suicide, 24 Elements of system, 110 Elias, Norbert, 3, 10, 136–41 Emerson, Richard, 10, 193–97 Emirbayer, Mustafa, 10, 279 Emotion management, 167–70 Emotion memory, 168 Empire, 12, 377–80 Empire (Hardt & Negri), 377 Engels, Friedrich, 133 Environment, system and, 108–9 Epistemology of the closet, 334 Ethics, postmodern, 311–13 Ethnomethodology, 10 accounts, 171–72 defining, 170–71 examples, 173–74 performativity vs., 227 Ethnoscapes, 365 Everyday life. See Theories of everyday life Examination, 304 Exchange network, 194 Exchange relationships, networks and, 194–96 Exchange theory, 10, 175–82 Existentialism, 262 Existential or phenomenological feminism, 225 Expansionism, 361 Exploitation, 29, 61 Expositions, 330 Expressing America (Ritzer), 360 Facts, social, 21–22 False consciousness, 29, 31 Fanon, Frantz, 10, 258, 260–65, 283, 288 Fanon and, 258, 264–65 feminist theory compared to Marx’s, 219 Fatalistic suicide, 24 Feeling, commercialization of, 169–70 Feeling rules, 168–69 Female Masculinity (Halberstam), 337 Feminism cultural, 223–24 existential or phenomenological, 225 psychoanalytic, 231 socialist, 238

Index   457

Feminist institutional theory, 225 Feminist interactionist theory, 226 Feminist theory, 5, 7, 10 basic theoretical questions in, 220 classical roots of, 221–22 contemporary, 222–47 defined, 217 of difference, 222, 225 marriage in, 253 Fichte, Johann, 71 Fiduciary system, 92 Field, 10, 202–13 applying, 209–11 of higher education, 212–13 See also Racial field Field research, 197 Fieldwork, 157 Figurations, 139 Financescapes, 366 Financial crisis. See Great Recession Ford, Henry, 121 Formal rationality, 37 Forms defined, 50 types and, 50–52 Foucault, Michel, 12, 258, 268–70, 301–7, 333 Foundations of Social Theory (Coleman), 182 Foxhunting, 140 Frames of color-blind racism, 278 Freedom, group size and, 55 Free income, 61 Freeman, Alan, 271 Free market, 368 Freud, Sigmund, 123–24 Friedman, Milton, 368 Front stage, 159 Fuller, Margaret, 224 Functional differentiation, 112–14 Functionalism societal, 80, 89 stratification and, 88 structural (see Structural functionalism) Functions defined, 80 latent, 98 manifest, 98 in Merton, 98 in structural functionalism, 80–81

Fundamentalism, 350 The Future of Marriage (Bernard), 226 Future pessimism, 127 Game stage, 67 Garfinkel, Harold, 10, 110, 170, 172 Gates, Bill, 85 Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. See Queer theory Gender difference, 222 inequaliity, 222, 227–31 oppression, 222, 231–36 problematizing, 223 producing, 226 See also Feminist theory General action system, 86 Generalization, 179 Generalized other, 67 General systems theory, 108 Genetic structuralism, 203 Gestures conversation of, 63–64 defined, 63 in Mead, 63 significant, 63 Giddens, Anthony, 10, 12, 144, 146 criticism of, 201–2 reflexivity and, 110, 146 on “runaway world” of globalization, 349–50 on self as project, 68 structuration theory and, 197–201 Gilligan, Carol, 225 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 221, 224 Global capitalism, 31 Global flows, 365–66 Globalism, 350 Globality, 350–51 Globalization, 343–47 cultural theory, 353–66 defined, 346 economic theory, 366–82 expansionism and, 361–62 human consequences of, 351 “McDonaldization” and, 357–63 political theory, 382–84

458    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

politics of, 350–51 “runaway world” of, 349–50 utopian potential in, 379 Globalization theory, 12, 344–45, 347 Glocalization, 345, 363 Go, Julian, 259, 267 Goal attainment, 84 Goffman, Erving, 10, 158–67, 335 Gotanda, Neil, 271 Gouldner, Alvin, 96 Government, limited, 369–71 Governmentality, 12, 301–5 Gramsci, Antonio, 271 Grand theory, 279 defined, 9 See also Postmodern grand theories Great Recession effect on consumption, 122 neoliberalism and, 372 The Great Transformation (Polanyi), 371 Grobalization, 362 Group conflict, change and, 108 interest, 107 primary, 155 quasi, 107 Group size, 54–55 Habermas, Jürgen, 10, 141, 141–44 Habitus, 10, 202 applying, 209–11 defined, 205 Hall, Stuart, 262 Happiness, consumer culture and, 123 Hardt, Michael, 12, 377–80 Harris, Luke Charles, 272 Harvey, David, 133–36 Harvey and, 133 Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 330 Hayek, Friedrich, 368 Hegel, Georg, 261, 288 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 71 Hermeneutic, double, 198 Herrnstein, Richard J., 276 Heterogeneity, globalization and, 345, 347 Heterosexual/homosexual binary, 333–34 Heterosexual matrix, 334, 336

Hierarchical observation, 303–4 Higher education, field of, 212–13 Hinduism, 38, 40–41 Hinduism and, 38, 40–41 in Marx, 32 from production to consumption, 318 spirit of, 35 technocratic thinking and, 126–27 transnational, 375–76 Historical space, 129 The History of Sexuality (Foucault), 306–7 Hochschild, Arlie, 167–70 Hochschild and, 169 indigenous theories and, 287 Homans, George, 10, 175–77, 193 Homogeneity, globalization and, 344–45, 347 Homogenization globalization of nothing and, 362–63 Homosexual identity, 333. See also Homosexual melancholy, 335 Horkheimer, Max, 141 How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau), 220 The Human Group (Homans), 176 Human potential, 25–26 Huntington, Samuel, 12, 354–57 Huntington on demise of, 357 role in globalization, 349–50 simulations and, 321–22 Hussein, Saddam, 113, 384 Hybridization, 364–65 cultural, 12, 363 defined, 364 Hyperconsumption, 316 Hyperreal, 324 Hysteresis, 206 Ibn Khaldun, Abdel Rahman, 9, 284–85 Ideal speech situation, 143 Ideal type, 43–44 Ideal-typical bureaucracy, 43–44 Identity politics, 332 Ideology, 245, 265 Ideoscapes, 366 Idle No More movement, 283

Index   459

Illustrations of Political Economy Imperatively coordinated associations, 104 Imperialism, 377–78 cultural, 344 defined, 377 Implosion, 329 Impression management, 159–66 Impulse, 62 Indigenous peoples, 10 Indigenous resurgence, 289–92 Indigenous theories, 287–92 resurgence, 289–92 Individual culture, 57 Industrial society, transition to postindustrial society, 298–300 Industry defined, 60 in Veblen, 60–61 Inequality, gender, 222, 227–31 Insecurity, risks and, 148 Institute for Social Research, 119, 141 Integration, 84–85 Integrative exchange theory, 197 Intelligence, race and, 276 Interdependence, complex, 382 Interest group, 107 Interests, 105, 107 Internal differentiation, 111–12 International Monetary Fund (IMF) International relations (IR), 382 Internet globalization and, 344 prosumer and, 324 simulations and, 322 Intersectionality theory, 247 Irigaray, Luce, 225 Irrationality of rationality, 127, 359, 361 Irresolvable moral dilemmas, 312 Islam Islamic resurgence, 356–57 Orientalism and, 269–70 Southern theory and, 286 stigmatization of, following September 11th attacks, 166 Western clash with, 354, 356–57 Islamic State (ISIS), 113, 166, 354 Iterative agency, 282

“Jihad,”, 347 Johnson, Miriam, 226 Juggernaut of modernity, 10, 144–48 Kama Sutra, 270 Karp, David, 156 Kelley, Florence, 221 Kendall, Patricia, 99 Kennedy, John F., 92, 195 Keynes, John Maynard, 368 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 73, 283 Kollock, Peter, 197 Labor division of (see Division of labor) theory of value, 28–29 Land dispossession of, 260, 264, 277, 288–89 social theory and, 291–92 Landscapes, 12, 365–66 Language consumption as, 315–17 heterosexual/homosexual binary and, 333 resurgence and, 289–90 significant symbols and, 64 structuration theory and, 197, 199 Las Vegas, as simulation, 322, 324, 331 Latency, 85–86 latent, 107 Latent functions, 98 Latent interests, 107 Law repressive, 20–21 restitutive, 21 Lefebvre, Henri, 128–32 Leisure, conspicuous, 59 Lengermann, Patricia Madoo, 10 Levels of functional analysis, 98 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 204 Liberal theory, 367 Lie, 53 Lifeworld colonization of, 142–44 defined, 142 Limited government, 369

460    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Limit experiences, 306 Lines of Descent (Appiah), 71 Liquid modernity, 352 Local actualities of lived experience Locke, John, 367 Looking-glass self, 155 Lorber, Judith, 222 Lorde, Audre, 245 Luhmann, Niklas, 9, 79, 108, 111 Lumpenproletariat, 107 Lynch, Michael, 173 Macron, Emmanuel, 374 Madness, 306–7 Madness and Civilization (Foucault) Maffesoli, Michel, 311 Maidan Nezalezhnosti occupation, 130 Mall of America, 329, 331 The Managed Heart (Hochschild), 169 manifest, 107 Manifest functions, 98 Manifest interests, 107 Manipulation, 62 Manner, 159 Manners, changes in, 136 Marcuse, Herbert, 123–25 Marriage in feminist theory, 253 secrecy and, 53 Martineau, Harriet, 220–21 Marx, Karl, 3, 7, 9, 23, 28, 32 Marx and Fanon and, 265 Marxism action and, 127–28 conflict theory and, 101 critical race theory and, 271 Du Bois and, 70, 74 socialist feminism and, 238 Masculinity, study of, 247 Mass consumers, 121–22 Mass culture, 120 Mass media, 121–22 Material social facts, 22 Maturana, Humberto, 110 “McDonaldization,”, 357 McDonaldization and, 358–63 The McDonaldization of Society (Ritzer), 360

“McWorld,”, 347 Me, 67, 69, 157 Mead, George Herbert, 9–10, 49, 61, 65, 153, 155 Mead on, 64–67 psychoanalytic feminism on, 231 Means-ends rational action, 36 Means of consumption, 326–28 new, 327–28 older, 327–30 Means of production, 27, 326 Mechanical solidarity, 17–18, 20–21 Mediascapes, 366 Mental illness, Foucault on, 306 Merton, Robert K., 94, 96–101 Merton’s, 96–101 Metatheorizing, 207 Methodological holists, 209 Methodological individualists, 209 Methodological relationism, 209 Microphysics of power, 305 Middle-range theories, 96 Mills, C. Wright, 102 Mind defined, 64 in Mead, 64 Minimization of racism, 278 Mobility, globalization and, 351–52 Modernists, 297, 301 Modernitiy at Large (Appadurai), 365 Modernity, juggernaut of, 144–48 Modernity and Self-Identity (Giddens), 146 Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman), 352 Modern technology, critical theory on, 124–27 Molm, Linda, 196 Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), 368 Moore, Wilbert, 80–81, 101 Moral dilemmas, irresolvable, 312 Movement, globalization and, 346 Mubarak, Hosni, 130 Multicivilizational system, 355, 357 Multitude, 379 Muqaddimah (Ibn Khaldun), 284 Murray, Charles, 276 Muslims, stigmatization of, 163–164. Mystification, 162

Index   461

Nation-state, fate in globalization, 382–84 Naturalization, color-blind racism and, 277–78 The Nature of Social Science (Homans), 176 Nazis, 125, 127 Need-dispositions, 90, 93–94 Needs, 316 Negri, Antonio, 12, 377–80 Negritude movement, 283 Neoliberalism, 12, 367–70 critiquing, 371–72 defined, 367 demise of, 372 neo-Marxian theoretical alternatives to, 375 Neo-Marxian spatial analysis, 128–36 Neo-Marxian theory, 7, 9, 12, 30 Neotribalism, 311 Net balance, 98, 114 Networks, 194 New means of consumption, 327–28 Niebrugge, Gillian, 10 Nonfunctions, 97 Nonmaterial social facts, 22 Normalizing judgments, 304 Norms, 185–86 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 344 Northern theory, 285–87 Note Page numbers in italic type indicate biographical vignettes. Nothing defined, 362 globalization of, 362–63 subtypes of, 363 Obama, Barack, 274, 373 Objective culture, 57–58 Objectivism, 203–5 Objects, consumer society and relationships with, 317 O’Brien, Jodi, 197 Observation defined, 158 hierarchical, 303–4 instruments, 303–4 Occupy movement, 123, 130–31

Omi, Michael, 10, 12, 274 One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse), 123 One-dimensional society, 125 Ontologies of social life, 291 Operant conditioning, 175 Opportunity costs, 182 Oppression gender, 222, 224, 231–36 structural, 236–47 vectors of, 245–47 Organic solidarity, 18, 20–21, 23 Orientalism, 10, 268–70, 277, 285 Orientalism (Said), 268 Orientalist, 269 as power, 270 Other generalized, 67 in postmodern ethics, 311, 313 women as, 223–24 Othering, 245–46 Outside, 163 Outsider within, 247 Panopticon, 303–4 Paris Agreement on climate change, 343–44 Park, Robert E., 157 Parsons, Talcott, 83–95, 279 Elias and, 138 Homans and, 177 Luhmann and, 108, 110–11 Mills and, 102 social action and, 33, 86, 88 Parsons’s, 83–96 stratification and, 88–92 Pattern maintenance, 85 Perception, 62 Performance queer theory and, 334–36 Performance team, 168 Performing sex, 335–36 Periphery, 135 Personal front, 159 Personality defined, 93 in Parsons, 93–94 Personality system, 86, 93–94 Pessimism, critical theory and, 127 Phantasmagoria, 327, 329–30

462    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Phenomenological feminism, 225 Phenomenology, 261 The Philadelphia Negro (Du Bois), 72 Phobogenic object, 260 Physical gestures, 63 Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, 353 Play stage, 65 Polanyi, Karl, 371 Political institutions, racial formation and, 276 Political realism, 382 Political theory of globalization, 382–84 Politics of globalization, 350–51 of recognition, 287–88 sociological canon and, 7 Polity, 92 Pornography prosumers and, 324 simulations and, 325 Positive Philosophy (Comte), 220 Postcolonial theory, 266 Postcommunist world, Marx’s theory and, 30–31 Postindustrial society defined, 298 transition from industrial to, 298–300 Postmodern ethics, 311–13 Postmodern grand theories, 12 consumer society and new means of consumption, 326–31 increasing governmentality, 301–5 madness and civilization, 306–7 postmodern sociology, 308–13 queer theory, 332–36 rise of consumer society, 315–26 sexuality, 307 transition from industrial to postindustrial society, 298–300 Postmodernists, 297 Postmodernity, 12, 308–13 Postmodern sociology, 309 Postracial society, 274 Poststructuralist, 205 Postulate of functional unit of society, 96 of indispensability, 96 Potential, human, 25–26

Power critical theories of race and racism and, 273 disciplinary, 304–5 in Emerson, 193, 196 ideology and, 245 microphysics of, 305 Power-dependence theory, 197 Practical consciousness, 199 Practical-evaluative agency, 282 Practical rationality, 36 Practice, 203 Praxis, 32 Predictability, 359 Preindustrial society, 300 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman), 158 Primary group, 155 Primitive accumulation, 264, 289 Privilege vectors of, 245–47 Process sociology, 139 Production means of, 27, 326 from production to consumption, 318 Profit, 180 Projective agency, 282 Proletariat, 27 Propositions of exchange theory, 178 Prosumer, 323 Prosumption, 323, 360 Protestant ethic, 35, 38–40 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), 35, 37–40 Psychoanalytic feminism, 231 Punishments, 180, 196, 304–5 al-Qaeda, 113, 166 Quasi group, 107 Queer theory, 7, 12, 332–36 Race, 7, 10 critical theories of, 270–73 defined, 257 in Du Bois, 69–71 systematic theory of, 279 Racial capital, 280 Racial collective-emotional structures, 281

Index   463

Racial cultural structures, 281 Racial-epidermal schema, 262 Racial field structure and agency in, 282 structure of, 280–81 Racial formation, 274 defined, 274 Racial illusio, 282 Racialism, 70 Racialization, 275 The Racial Order (Emirbayer & Racial projects, 276 Racism color-blind, 277–78 critical theories of race and, 273 cultural, 278 Radio, 122 Rational choice theory, 10, 182–88 Rationality authority structures and, 41–45 formal, 37 of free market, 368 irrationality of, 127, 359, 361 practical, 36 proposition, 181 substantive, 37 theoretical, 37 types of, 36–37 Rationality and Society (journal), 183 Rationality proposition, 181 Rationalization in Giddens, 199 “McDonaldization” and, 358 rule imposition and, 302 of system and lifeworld, 144 in Weber, 41–44 Rational-legal authority, 44 Reader, George, 99 Reagan, Ronald, 84 Realism, political, 382 Reason, 127 Recognition theory, 288 Reconciliation, 288 Reconstruction, Du Bois on, 74 Recursive practices, 197–98 Reductionism, 175, 193 Reference groups, 99 Reflexive sociology, 207

Reflexivity, 65, 110, 146 Reify, 54 Relationism, methodological, 209 Relativism, postmodern ethics and, 312–13 Religion capitalism and, 38–41. See also Islam Repressive law, 20–21 The Reproduction of Mothering (Chodorow), 226 Resistance to globalization, 343 Resources, in rational choice theory, 185 Restitutive law, 21 Resurgence, 289–92 Revolution class consciousness and, 31–32 Fanon on, 263–64 Rewards, 179–80, 196 Rice, Condoleezza, 281 Risk, 148 insecurity and, 148 Risk Society (Beck), 147 Ritzer, George, 3, 12, 326, 357, 360 Robertson, Roland, 345, 364 Role distance, 160 Roman Catholicism, spirit of capitalism and, 40 Romanticism, 70–71 Roosevelt, Franklin, 368 Routinization of charisma, 42, 44 Royal court, lengthening dependency chains and, 138 Rule imposition, 302–3 “Runaway world” of globalization, 349–50 Said, Edward, 10, 258, 267–70, 277 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 373 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 204, 262 Schumpeter, Joseph, 328 Schutz, Alfred, 142 Scientific method, 7 The Second Sex (Beauvoir), 225 Secrecy, 52–53 Sedgwick, Eve, 12, 334 See also Islam Segmentary differentiation, 112, 114 Self contemporary obsession with, 67 defined, 159

464    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

dramaturgy and, 158–67 in Goffman, 158–67 I and me, 67 looking-glass, 155 in Mead, 64–67 Self-referential, 110 Semiperiphery, 135 Senghor, Léopold, 283 September 11, 2001, 166, 353 Setting, in Goffman, 159 Settler colonialism, 258, 288–89 Sex, performing, 335–36 Sexuality grand theory of, 307 queer theory, 332–36 Shame, 167 Shariati, Ali, 286 Shopping, as leisure activity, 122 Significant gestures, 63 Significant symbols, 64 Simmel, Georg, 5, 9, 49–51, 70, 101 Simpson, Audra, 287 Simpson, Leanne, 289–91 Simulations defined, 321 increase of, 321–31 spectacles and, 331 Sinic civilization, 355–56 Situation, definition of the, 66 Sketch for a Self-Analysis (Bourdieu), 204 Skinner, B. F., 176, 178 Sklair, Leslie, 12, 375–77 Slavery, 71, 98 Smith), 287 Smith, Adam, 367 Smith Andrea, 287 Dorothy E., 5, 240 Social action, 33 Social Behavior Its Elementary Forms (Homans), 176–77 Social behaviorism, 61 Social capital, 208 Social change, spatial analysis and, 133 Social conflict, functions of, 106 Social control, 90 Social Darwinism, 275

Social facts, 22–23 defined, 22 nonmaterial, 22 Social identity Social institutions, as constraint on individual actions, 183 Socialist feminism, 238 Socialization process, 90 Social movements, new, 377 Social relationships, 5 Social status, 160 Social stratification, 80–82, 101 Social structure, 23 social structure and, 100–101 Social system, 86, 88–92, 200–201 Social theory, land and, 291–92 Societal community, 92 Societal functionalism, 80, 89 Society defined, 91 in Parsons, 91–92 Sociological canon, 6–8 Sociological theories of difference, 225–28 Sociological theory creating, 5–8 defined, 6 Sociology, Comte and term, 9 Sociology of everyday life, 62 Sociology of postmodernity, 309 Sociometry (journal), 195 Solidarity dynamic density and, 18 mechanical, 17–18, 20–21 organic, 18, 20–21 types of, 17–18 Something, 362 Sorokin, Pitirim, 95 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 69, 71–72 Southern theory, 285–87 Southern Theory (Connell), 285 Space absolute, 129 abstract, 129–31 differential, 132 in Giddens, 145 globalization and, 351–52 in Harvey, 132–34

Index   465

historical, 129 juggernaut and, 145 in Lefebvre, 128–32 spectacles and, 331 structuration theory and, 197, 201 Spaces of hope, 134 Spatial analysis, 128–36 Specialization, 58 Spectacle, 329–31 Speech situation, ideal, 143 Spirit of capitalism, 38–40 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 267 Split labor market theory, 274 Sports, civilizing process and, 140 Stage props, 168 Standing Rock protests, 260, 289 Standpoint, 247–48 Stanislavski, Constantin, 167 Stefancic), 271 Stefancic, Jean, 271 Stiglitz, Joseph, 345 Stigma, 164 Stigma (Goffman), 164 Stigmatization, of Muslims, 166 Stimulus proposition, 179 Stories, theory embedded in, 290 Stranger defined, 55 distance and, 55–56 Stratification criticisms of, 82 social, 80–82 in structural functionalism, 88 Stratificatory differentiation, 112 Strong Mothers, Weak Wives (Johnson), 226 Structural functionalism, 9, 101 Structural-functional model, 96–101 Structuralism, genetic, 203 Structuralist perspective, 203 Structural oppression, 236–47 Structuration, defined, 201 Structuration theory, 10, 197–201 Structure agency and, 198, 211 defined, 80, 200 Structure-agency gap, 282 Structures of society, 79–80 Subaltern Studies Group, 286

Subjective culture, 57 Subjectivism, 203–5 Subsistence wage, 28 Substantive rationality, 37 Subversion strategy, 283 Success proposition, 178 Suicide Suicide (Durkheim), 24 Suicide altruistic, 24 anomic, 24 egoistic, 24 fatalistic, 24 Superstructure, 120 Surface acting, 167 Surplus value, 29 Symbolic capital, 208 Symbolic exchange defined, 320 loss of, 320, 326 Symbolic interactionism, 10, 61–157 antidepressants in, 156 defined, 153 symbolic interactionism and, 154–58 Symbolic violence, 209 Sympathetic introspection, 156 System, 142 environment and, 108–9 rationalization of, 144 Systematic theory of race, 279 Systems theory, 9 Tahrir Square occupation, 130 Taliban, 114 Taste, cultural products and, 211 Teams, 163 Technocratic thinking, 125–27 Technology, 124–27 Technoscapes, 365 Television, critical theory on, 121–23 Terrorism, 113–14, 353 Texts, 269 Thatcher, Margaret, 371 Theoretical rationality, 37 Theories of everyday life, defined, 10 Theorizing, everyday vs. social, 2 Theorizing Native Studies (Simpson & The Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen), 58

466    CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND ITS CLASSICAL ROOTS

Thinking defined, 64 technocratic, 125–27 Third party, 54 Thomas Dorothy S., 66 W. I., 66 Tic-tac-toe, breaching in, 173 Time in Giddens, 145 spectacles and, 331 structuration theory and, 197, 201 Times Square, simulations and, 322, 324 Tourists, 352 Traditional action, 35 Traditional authority, 41–42 Tragedy of culture, 57 The Transformation of Intimacy (Giddens), 146 Transnational capitalism, 12, 375–77 Transnational capitalist class, 376 Transnational corporation, 375 Transnationalism, 346–47 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 344 Triad, 54–55 Trump, Donald, 344, 373 Types defined, 50 forms and, 50–52 ideal, 43–44 Unanticipated consequences, 98 United States Universal functionalism, 96 The Use of Pleasure (Foucault), 306 Utilities, 181 Vagabonds, 352–53 Value distance and, 56–57 surplus, 29 Value proposition, 179–80 Value-rational action, 36

Varela, Francisco, 110 Veblen, Thorstein, 9, 49, 58–61, 211 Vectors of oppression and privilege, 245–47 Veil, the, 72–73 Verstehen, 39 Violence symbolic, 209 Vocal gestures, 63 Volksgeist, 71 von Mises, Ludwig, 368 Wage, subsistence, 28 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 135 War on terror, functionalism of, 113–14 Wasáse (Alfred), 289 Washington, Booker T., 73 Web 2.0, 324 Webb, Beatrice Potter, 221 Weber, Marianne, 221 Weber, Max, 9, 33–44, 125, 358 Welfare, neoliberalism and, 369 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 221, 270 West, Candace, 226 Western civilization, 355–57 Westoxification, 286 Willard, Frances, 224 Williams, Rosalind, 330 Winant, Howard, 10, 274 Work in Marx, 26–27 symbolic exchange and, 320 World Bank, 345 World empire, 135 World-system, 135 World Trade Organization (WTO) The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon) Yanukovych, Viktor, 130 Yoruba theory, 287 Zimmerman, Don, 226 Zuccotti Park occupation, 130

Index   467