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In this article an attempt has been made to present briefly the seminal ideas of few pioneers who have contributed sociology.
Pioneer # 1. Auguste Comte (1798-1857):
August Comte’s important contribution to sociology was the positivist legacy which he left behind him. In his Course de philosophies positive, he propounded his positivist philosophy.
It embraced five methodological precepts:
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(i) Le reel,
(ii) La certitude,
(iii) Le drecis
(iv) Futile and
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(v) Le relative
Le reel meant that the scientific status of knowledge had to be guaranteed by the direct experience of an immediate reality. This required a particular conception of causality in which causal relations amounted to regular associations between phenomena. Comte claimed that a causal relation ‘discovered between any two phenomena enables us both to explain them and foresee them, each by means of the other’.
The limitation of the terms of scientific explanation to the phenomenal level, therefore, meant that the positivist could not have recourse to any supernatural or abstract forces which were by definition outside his direct experience.
Comte traced three fundamental stages of knowledge: from a ‘theological’ state in which the world was explained in terms of supernatural forces, to a ‘metaphysical’ state in which the world was explained in terms of abstract forces, and finally to a ‘positive’ state in which the world was explained in terms of regular connections between empirically observable phenomena.
This rule of phenomenalism has to be complemented by la certitude which meant that the scientific status of knowledge had to be guaranteed by the common experience of reality, a mode of apprehension which was accessible to all scientists and which ensured the replicability of their observations—in other words, the unity of the scientific method.
If followed from this that disciplines were to be distinguished by their object of study, and not by their method.
This, in turn, required le précis, which defined the scientific method as the formal construction of theories whose consequences could be tested in some way. Value- judgements were immediately excluded from scientific inquiry because they were ethical assertions rather than empirical predictions, incapable of verification.
L’utile confirmed this by regarding all scientific knowledge as technically utilizable, concerned with ‘means’ not ‘ends and although in one sense this could be interpreted as nothing more than instrumentalism, its main function in the Comtean scheme was to rule value-judgements out of the scientific court.
Comte conjoined le précis and futile in a distinctive way. His scientific method was intended to reveal the laws of co-existence and succession which governed society, and he maintained that these allowed no variation. Once man realised this, then the battalions and barricades would be removed from the map of Europe.
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As Comte put it himself, “there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others, to invariable laws, which shall as a whole prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of political action”.
If the scientist was obliged, however, to accept society as these laws dictated it to be, he did not have to accept society as it was, particularly when he looked out on a continent disrupted and corrupted by politicians who evidently did not recognise the inexorable force of these social laws.
While excluding value-judgments, which were not in accordance with these laws, Comte’s positivism was also distinguished by an affirmative impulse of critical enlightenment, in the sense of seeking to remove the misery which resulted from misguided attempts to force society down paths which were necessarily closed it.
This impulse was regarded as non-ideological in so far as the positivist was not required to assume any ethical position in order to demonstrate the truth of his statements or the invincibility of the social laws which they embodied.
Finally, le relative depicted scientific knowledge as unfinished and relative, progressing by the gradual unification of theories which would consolidate man’s awareness of the-social laws.
It followed from this that scientific progress was paralleled by social progress, and Comte tied his three stages of knowledge to three modes of action’ the theological to the military, the metaphysical to the defensive, and the positive to the Industrial.
From this fundamental correlation there also results the general explanation of the three natural ages of humanity. Its long infancy, which fills the whole of antiquity, had to be essentially theological and military; its adolescence, in the middle Ages, was metaphysical and feudal; finally, its maturity, which has only begun to be appreciated in the last few centuries, is necessarily positive and industrial. Comte was neither the first nor the last to devise a tripartite history of civilization, but his proposals show that he saw positivism very much as a child of the nineteenth century.
Pioneer # 2. Karl Marx (1818-1883):
In its present state of development, sociology is an attempt to describe impartially, to measure exactly, and to connect by means of scientific generalisations the diver s phenomena of social life. Seen in this perspective, Marxism is more than a system of sociology.
It is, on the contrary, a philosophy of man and society as well as political doctrine. “The originality of Marx’s thought”, says Maxmilien Rubel, “lies in his immense efforts to synthesize, in a critical way, the entire legacy of social knowledge since Aristotle. His purpose was to achieve a better understanding of the conditions of human development and with this understanding to accelerate the actual process by which mankind was moving toward an ‘association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. The desired system would be a communist society based on rational planning, co-operative production, and equality of distribution and, most important, liberated from all forms of political and bureaucratic hierarchy”.
Rubel points out, however, that this dual commitment—to scholarly understanding and to political action—created constant difficulty for Marx. Many other topics, such as religion, family, bureaucracy, etc. have also been examined from a Marxian perspective.
We propose not to go over those themes again, but to concentrate exclusively on Dialectic Materialism or Materialistic Interpretation of History. Dialectic Materialism is the philosophy sketched out in the philosophical writings of Marx and Engels.
The leading principles of the doctrine may be expounded as follows:
(i) The Principle of Realism:
The existence of any object does not depend upon its being perceived or experienced in any way. Although some characters of existence may depend upon the mode in which it is experienced, existence itself cannot be deduced from psychological or logical considerations alone.
(ii) The Principle of Dialectic:
Dialectic Materialism took over the dialectical interpretation of reality developed by Hegel. The term dialectic, as originally used in Greece, meant the process of getting at the truth through a debate carried on by opposing sides.
For Hegel, the movement of experience itself represents a sort of logical debate carried on by reality, with a logical thesis being opposed by logical antithesis and yielding thereby an endless movement toward higher synthesis. The extent of the debt of dialectical materialism to the Hegelian philosophy and its divergence from it may best be indicated in Marx’s own words.
In the preface of the second edition of Das Kapital he writes:
“My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of the ‘Idea’ he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgus of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of ‘the Idea’. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.”
(iii) The Principle of Causality (Determinism):
Although there are chance elements in the world, the methodological assumption of science presupposes that all objects of enquiry in different fields are subject to law. There can be no dispute about this, and where there is dispute the real problem is whether some subject matter can be treated scientifically.
Dialectic Materialism holds that no limits can be drawn to the progress of science and although many things will probably remain unknown, none of them is inherently unknowable. Engels repeats Hegel’s argument that the nature of a thing is not some mysterious X but the sum total of all its qualities or the synoptic formula which unifies its appearances from all possible points of view.
(iv) The Principle of Historical Materialism:
Dialectic materialism, applied to the realm of culture, i.e., to the field delimited by the common activity of men as members of society, gives us the principle of historical materialism.
The hypothesis of historical materialism is that “the causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch”.
Historical materialism is the doctrine that “the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally”.
As its name suggests, historical materialism differs from all other materialistic interpretation of history on the ground that it does not explain the rise and fall of social systems in terms of factors which are non-social. While admitting that climate, topography, soil, race, etc. are genuine conditioning factors of social and historical activity, it denies that they determine the general character of a culture or its development.
The reason is two-fold: first, in any given area these factors are relatively constant while social life is more variable; second, there can be no intelligible reduction of the specific qualities of human behaviour—exhibited in a social context—to categories of physics and biology.
Not the slightest evidence has been produced, for example, to show that the climate of Greece from the 6th century B.C., to the first —a period of tremendous social change—varied in any appreciable way.
The positive principles underlying the theory of historical materialism may be summed up as follows:
(a) Every existing culture is a structurally inter-related whole. Consequently, any aspect of that whole—its legal code, educational practices, religion, art or the like—cannot be understood by itself,
(b) Culture is not only an inter-related whole but a developing whole. The independent variable in the developing social whole will be the explanatory key not only to the causes of change from one society to another but to the dominant culture pattern existing at any time.
According to historical materialism, the independent variable is the mode of economic production. Hegel had maintained that “political history, forms of government, art, religion and philosophy—one and all have the same common root, the spirit of the time”. On the other hand, Marx contended that all of these cultural phenomena are “rooted in the material conditions of life “.
The view that the independent variable is the mode of economic production does not deny that the cultural products of economic development react upon that development. Engels writes: “The political, legal, philosophical, literary and artistic development rest on the economic. But they all react upon one another and upon the economic base.
It is not the case that the economic situation is the sole active cause and everything else is merely a passive effect, rather there is reciprocity within a field of economic necessity which in the last instance always asserts itself.
Similarly, historical materialism does not deny the role played by social tradition in modifying the rate of change in the non-material aspects of culture. “The tradition of all dead generations”, Marx writes in the 18th Brumaire, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”.
Family relationships, religion, art and philosophy, although they reflect the new social equilibrium produced by changes in the economic order, lag behind both in time and structural form. From the vantage point of a long time perspective, the phenomenon of cultural lag may not appear significant; but from the point of view of short-term political operation they are of great importance.
(c) By the economic structure of society historical materialists mean “the sum total of the relations of production”. By the ‘relations of production” Marx means not the mechanical agencies used in manufacture or the technical organisation of the factory but the social relations into which human beings enter or, better still, find themselves whenever they participate in the economic life of society.
Property relations are the formal expressions or signs of these social relations of production. These, in turn, constitute a whole of which technique is only one of the parts. Marx argues: “Machinery is no more an economic category than is the ox which draws the plough. Machinery is only a productive force”.
Indeed, it is possible to find societies with different social relations but certain identical productive fore’s: techniques of tilling the soil were sometimes the same in feudal economies as in slave economies: the use of machinery in the Soviet Union parallels that in the United States.
More important still is the assertion of the historical materialist that the very development of techniques is not independent but is guided by the needs of a larger social productive whole, of which it is a part.
(d) The mode of economic production is expressed in certain social relationships which are independent of any individual. Man is born into a society in which property relations have already taken form. These property relations define the different social classes, such as feudal lord and serf, employer and employee.
The conflicting interests of these classes flow not merely from the consciousness or lack of it of individual antagonisms but from the different objective roles played by them n the processes of production.
The absence of class conflicts, which may often be the consequence of the activity of professional social pacifiers, no more eliminates the real opposition of class interests than the willingness of Negro slaves to serve their masters proves that they were not enslaved:
(e) The division of society into classes gives rise to different ideologies—political, ethical, religious and philosophical—which express existing class relationships and tend either to consolidate or to undermine the power and authority of the dominant class.
A struggle for survival goes on in the realm of ideas. Since those who control the means of production also control, directly or indirectly, the means of publication, the prevailing ideology is a support to the existing order. Marx, therefore, observes: “In every epoch the ruling ideas have been the ideas of the ruling class”.
(f) In every social order there is a continuous change in the material forces of production. Sometimes, as in early societies, this change is produced by some natural phenomenon, such as the drying up of rivers or exhaustion of the soil. Usually, however, this change is produced by a development’ in the instruments of production.
At a certain point in their development, the changed relations in the forces of production come into conflict with existing property relations. It no longer becomes possible on the basis of the existing methods of distribution of income to permit the productive processes to function to full capacity. Property relations are now recognized as a fetter upon further social development.
The class that stands to gain by the modification of property relations becomes revolutionary. It asserts itself as a political force and develops revolutionary ideology to aid it in its struggle for state power.
Marx, however, observes:
“No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”.
(g) Viewed in this perspective, all history since the disappearance of primitive communism may be regarded as a history of class struggles. Every class struggle is a political struggle, because the state is an organ of class repression and is never really neutral in class conflict.
(h) The struggle between capitalist and proletariat represents the last historic form of social opposition, because in that struggle it is no longer a question of which class should enjoy ownership of the instruments of production, but of the very existence of private ownership.
The abolition of private property in the means of production actually means the abolition of all classes. This can be accomplished only by a victory of the proletariat.
Political power is to be consolidated in a transitional period of revolutionary dictatorship after which the state dies out. That is, its repressive functions disappear and its administrative functions become part and parcel of the productive process.
“For the creation on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, as well as for the success of the cause itself, it is necessary for men themselves to be changed on a large scale, and this change can only occur in a practical movement, in a revolution. Revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because only in a revolution can the class which overthrows it rid itself of the accumulated rubbish of the past and become capable of reconstructing society”.
The theory of historical materialism raises certain questions of a basic nature. To begin with, what are the specific mechanisms by which economic conditions influence the habits and motives of classes, granted that individual are actuated by motives that are not always a function of the individual self-interest?
Since classes are composed of individuals, how are class interests furthered by the non-economic motives of individuals? For example, the workers, who fulfill the objective conditions of a class in the Marxian sense, may be actuated by narrow ethnic or religious interests and get involved among themselves in ethnic or religious disputes.
Such disputes do not obviously further their economic interests nor can such disputes be explained in economic terms.
Secondly, the statement that economic conditions “in the last instance” determine social life or that they are “the real foundations” of society implies a theory of measurement. So far, however, no theory of measurement for the social discipline has been evolved.
Thirdly, if it is true, as Marx states in Das Kapital, that in changing his external environment man changes his own nature, then human nature under ancient slavery must have been different in some respects from human nature under modern capitalism.
If this is so, how is it possible to understand past historical experience in the same way as we understand present experience, since understanding presupposes an unvarying explanatory pattern? This is a problem which is not peculiar to historical materialism. Such a problem confronts all philosophies of history. This is, however, no valid reason for avoiding it.
Fourthly, to what extent are chance events to’ be admitted as operating forces in history? Most historical materialists have contended that “to appeal to chance in history is to exhibit a certificate of poverty”, Marx and Engels were more cautious. In a letter to Kugelmann on the Paris Commune (April 17, 1871) Marx goes so far as to claim that for some specific and local issues chance may be a decisive factor.
Engels with his eye on long-range tendencies admits the presence of chance phenomena, but holds that their influence is compensatory with the result that in the final account they cancel one another.
It is instructive, in this connection, to compare the views of H.A.L. Fisher who writes in History of Europe:
“One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned history, a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen. This is not a doctrine of cynicism and despair. The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next. The thoughts of men may flow into channels which lead to disaster and barbarism”.
Fifthly, is the truth of historical materialism itself historically determined? Or, is it valid for all history, past and present? Both Marx and Engels declared that its truth was relevant only for class societies and that consciousness of the conditions of its truth would lead to action which would abolish class society.
Does this mean that “the leap from the kingdom of necessity to that of freedom”, the phrase with which Engles describes communism in anti-During, implies a condition in which man escapes the limitations of his earthly fate? There is no warrant for the belief that historical materialism justifies any such historical apocalypse.
Sixthly, although the theoretical scheme of historical materialism was intended to have a universal character, Marx actually employed it in a partial manner. His own researches were limited almost entirely to the nineteenth century capitalist societies and he gave only fragmentary accounts of the other types of society.
Furthermore, some of his most important theoretical ideas were derived immediately from the observation of modern societies, and they fit closely those particular societies. His theory of social classes applies, in the main, to the formation and development of the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat; it is not so helpful when applied to the phenomenon of a caste system.
Clearly, the theory of social conflict originated in an interpretation of the French Revolution, the materials for which had been prepared by earlier historians and it was developed further by observation of the class struggle which accompanied the growth of the labour movement in Western Europe.
Seventhly, Raymond Aron, C. Wright Mills and Ralf Dahrendorf reject, as inconsistent with the evidence, the constant association between economic ownership and political power which is a basic postulate of Marx’s theory. They draw attention, in particular, to the alternative bases of political power in societies where private ownership of industrial wealth is non-existent.
In this context, the views of Polish sociologist, Stanislaw Ossowski, may be considered. He makes a profound re-appraisal of Marxian theory of class and he comes to the conclusions which do not differ widely from those reached by sociologists elsewhere. Ossowski recognizes that substantial changes have occurred in the class structure of capitalist countries.
He observes that in all the modern industrial societies the political authorities increasingly determine the system of social stratification, rather than being determined by it, as a rigorous Marxist view would maintain. He also criticizes the arguments, which have been put forward, on opposite sides, for regarding both the United States and the Soviet Union as ‘classless societies’.
Bottomore emphasizes two points while dealing with Marx’s contribution to sociological thinking. In the first place, Marx adopted and maintained very consistently in his work a view of human societies as wholes or systems in which social groups, institutions, beliefs, and doctrines are interrelated, so that these have to be studied in their inter-relations rather than treated in isolation.
Secondly, he viewed societies as inherently mutable systems in which changes are produced largely by internal contradictions and conflicts.
The questions which have been raised with regard to historical materialism are no doubt very important and deserve serious consideration. These questions will agitate the minds of men for years to come. Herein lies the importance of the contribution made by Marx.
Except physical sciences, there is no discipline which has not been affected by this debate between the Marxists on the one hand and the non-Marxists on the other.
In his preface to Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, Zeitlin has made an assessment of Marx’s contribution in these words:
“Marx’s contribution to sociological thinking….. is one of the most important of the late nineteenth century—perhaps the most important. This is true, I believe, not only because of the immensely rich ideas he himself advanced but also because his work provoked a response that accounts, in a large measure, for the character of Western sociology”.
It will be quite in order to point to the various Marxist schools which have come into being since Marx. There are different versions of Marxist doctrine—the Soviet version, the Chinese version, die Western version, “whose most perfect form is probably Swedish society where there is a mixture of private and public institutions, and a very extensive equalization of income”.
There is no way of knowing how Marx would have reacted to this development, had he been with us today. Raymond Aron observes: “In all probability, Marx, who had a rebel’s temperament, would not be enthusiastic about any of the versions, any of the modalities of society which call themselves Marxist. But which would he prefer? An answer seems to me impossible and, in the last analysis, pointless”.
Those who claim to be Marxists hold the view “that the true lineage of Marx is Soviet society”. If that be so, how has Marxist sociology developed in Soviet Russia? Stanislaw Ossowski notes that in the sphere of theoretical sociology, the contributions from communist counties have been few and this brings out the difficulty of maintaining the Marxist system intact.
Maxmilien Rubel has this to say on this aspect: “The process of incorporating Marx’s ideas into the social sciences in western countries contrasts vividly with the unsure attempts by Marxist regimes to invent and decree a ‘Marxist ‘sociology. The efforts of these regimes unwittingly confirm one of Marx’s major hypotheses that the dominant ideas of a society are those of its ruling class”.
Pioneer # 3. Emile Durkheim (1858—1917):
Durkheim was a professor of the French University. In his age, sciences seemed to professors ‘to provide the model for precise thinking, successful thinking, and one might even say the only model for valid thinking.” At the end of the nineteenth century, Durkheim noted with other intellectuals of his age the erosion of religious beliefs under the impact of science.
He could clearly see that traditional religion was being exhausted. This was a matter of deep concern for him. As a sociologist, he was inclined to believe that society could retain its cohesion and unity only by a common faith which would bind together the members of the collectivity.
The crisis of modern society seemed to him to have been created by the non-replacement of traditional moralities based on religions by a morality based on science. His intellectual problems may be stated thus: He was for a precise and methodical study of society.
At the same time, he was convinced that science could not unite men. In his view the coherence and stability of society depended largely on beliefs and values cherished by the people.
As a sociologist, he, therefore, set before himself the task of finding out how sociology could help establish such a morality— “a morality inspired by the scientific spirit.” As a spiritual disciple of Auguste Comte, he emphasized the necessity for social consensus. Durkheim wrote four great books which mark his intellectual itinerary and which represent variations on the fundamental theme of consensus.
The first, The Division of Labour, is concerned with the following theme. Modern society exhibits an extreme differentiation of jobs and professions. How are we to ensure that a society divided among innumerable specialists will retain the necessary intellectual and moral coherence?
How can individuals achieve a consensus which, incidentally, is the condition of social existence? Durkheim’s answer to this central question is to set up a distinction between two forms of solidarity, viz., mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. The purpose of his long and interesting contrast of the two types of society is to discern what Durkheim calls the ‘social factor’.
What led him to undertake this quest was his criticism of the prevailing individualist and utilitarian philosophy which argued that society is composed of individuals who act in such a manner as to satisfy their individual wants, and that in doing so they enter into contractual relationships which thus form the basis of social order.
Durkheim set out to destroy this false view of human society. To do so, the true science of sociology had to be established, because, he thought, sociology must be able to account for the social factor. Durkheim was convinced that other sciences could not answer the question posed.
Gabriel Trade, for instance, had attempted to explain social phenomena in terms of the characteristics of individuals when he emphasized the psychological process of imitation. Durkheim rejected this kind of explanation because it failed to account precisely for the social factor.
His alternative approach was to look for social phenomena:
(a) Which were exterior to the individual and could not be attributed to internal psychic states, and
(b) Which stood over the individual in some compelling way.
For Durkheim, these are law and custom and the whole range of obligations which morally compel the individual and which exercise constraint on him. These he called ‘social facts’.
According to him, it is the task of sociology to study these social facts and herein lies the peculiar subject matter of this social science. In his words, “………… society is not an aggregate of individuals but a reality sui generis”. The concept of the ‘social fact’ received lengthy treatment in the Rules of Sociological Method which was written after The Division of Labour.
While analysing the nature of ‘social fact’, Durkheim introduces the concept of conscience collective, In French, the terms conscience collective mean both common consciousness and common conscience. According to him, there are certain values in every society which are engraven on the minds of its members.
This explains common approach and attitude among members of a society to social events. For example, if an act is considered by the society to be wrong, then that act is adjudged to be wrong. Such evaluations vary from society to society according to conscience collective of each society. This explains as to why what is considered to be wrong in one society may not be considered as such in another society.
According to Durkheim, conscience collective falls under two categories, namely, collective representations and individual representations. Collective representation is simply ‘the body of beliefs and sentiments common to the average of the members of a society’. Durkheim adds that the system of these beliefs and sentiments has a life of its own.
Individual representation, on the other hand, refers to preferences or values cherished by an individual. When an individual expresses his preference for fish as compared to, say, meat or when he has abhorrence for some food, such preference or abhorrence may be taken to be examples of individual representation.
When, however, the Hindus consider beef to be forbidden food, this is an example of collective representation. In this case, individual preferences have no place whatsoever. Judged from this view, collective representation is objective, and not subjective. This is in the nature of a commandment of the community.
According to Durkheim, collective representation, whose existence depends on the sentiments and beliefs present in individual consciousness, is nevertheless separable, at least analytically, from individual consciousness. It evolves according to its own laws is not merely the expression or effect of individual consciousness, but something more than that.
How does conscience collective grow? According to Durkheim, intense debate and sharing of ideas give rise to new values and new sentiments which acquire an enduring quality.
“The essence of social life is the interaction of people’s minds. Sometimes, indeed, there is a peculiar intensity in the interaction which brings forth new sentiments, sentiments which possess a stronger power than purely individual sentiments possess, for these are group ones and represent a collective ferment of intense social communion out of which something new may emerge, something creative, indeed a new ideal. Thus are values created”.
Durkheim cites a number of historical instances. The growth of scholasticism in the 12th and 13th centuries in Europe sprang from the meeting and intense interaction of scholars gathered together in Paris. The Renaissance and the Reformation were other instances. So also the French Revolution in the 18th century and the rise of socialist movements in the 19th century.
He argues that all these were cases of creative syntheses. In such times new ideals are born, sectional interests are subdued and forgotten for a while and the ideal becomes real. Of course, the occasion passes and life becomes humdrum again.
So men wish to revive the memory, because faith in the new ideal has to be repeatedly restored, and the experience has to be re-lived. Hence, ceremonies, religious events and feasts, public occasions and speeches, plays and pageantry are utilised.
They are “minor versions of the great creative movement”. Durkheim further observes: “Through the very awareness of itself society forces the individual to transcend himself and to participate in a higher form of life. A society cannot be constituted without creating ideals”.
In his book, The Rules of the Sociological Method, his first rule is:
“Consider social facts as things”. He emphasizes that “far from being a product of the will, social facts determine it from without; they are like moulds in which our actions are inevitably Shaped”. The conceptions of time, space, numerals and even religion are derived, according to him, from social experience. Thus, “time is the collective representation of the rhythm of social life”. In other words, “the categories of thought are not a priori but derived from the structure of social existence’; once implanted in men’s minds the categories do indeed appear as if they were immanent”.
Social facts, as defined by Durkheim, have two objective criteria:
(i) The criterion of exteriority and
(ii) The criterion of constraint.
Durkheim says that if individuals are constrained by external social facts like laws, they are also constrained by some social facts which are not so clearly perceived and identified, and here Durkheim argues that the sociologist must discover statistical rates which reflect these social facts.
It is the rate of crime, the suicide rate, the birth rate, the divorce rate and incidence of drunkenness which provide the empirical referents for an analysis of social currents and trends.
Le Suicide:
His third great book, Le Suicide, is an analysis of a phenomenon regarded as pathological, intended to shed light on the evil which threatens modern or industrial societies: anomie. Durkheim’s study of suicide begins with a definition of the phenomenon. He then proceeds to refute the earlier interpretations of suicide. Finally, he develops general theory of the phenomenon.
Durkheim defines suicide as “every case of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative death performed by the victim himself and which strives to produce this result”. A ‘positive act’ would be to shoot oneself in the temple or to hang oneself.
A “negative act” would be to remain in a burning building or to refuse all nourishment to the point of starvation. Thus, a hunger strike carried out until death is a case of suicide according to Durkheim’s definition. The distinction between ‘directly’ and ‘indirectly’ is the one between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ acts of committing suicide.
Having defined the phenomenon, Durkheim refutes the psychological explanations of suicide. He criticizes those who say “that the majority of people who take their own lives are in a pathological state when they commit the act, and that they are predisposed to it by the pathological state of their sensibility or of their psyche”.
According to Durkheim, “the force which determines the suicide is not psychological but social” In support of his thesis, he remarks that the proportion of neurotic or insane persons among Jews is particularly high, while the frequency of suicide in these populations is specially low.
Similarly, he tries to show that there is no correlation between hereditary tendencies and the suicide rate. The percentage of suicides increases with age. This, according to Durkheim, is hardly compatible with the hypothesis that the efficient cause of suicide is transmitted by heredity.
Having dismissed explanations of a psychological nature, he proceeds to analyse the types of suicide cases. He takes into account the three types of suicide: egoist suicide, altruist suicide and anomic suicide. Men and women commit suicide more often than others when they are egoists, when they are not properly integrated into a social group and when they think primarily of themselves.
Such individuals experience infinite desires which are not tempered or limited by their obligations to the group to which they happen to belong. The gap between expectations and fulfillment produces a sense of frustration which forces them to commit suicide.
While egoistic suicide takes place as a result of excess of individualism, altruistic suicide takes place when an individual completely effaces himself through merger in the group. Durkheim gives two types of examples of altruistic suicide.
Sometimes an individual chooses death in conformity with social imperatives. This is illustrated by the case of a Hindu widow (the practice of sati) who agrees to take her place on the pyre on which the body of her dead husband is to be burned.
Another example is that of the captain of a ship who chooses to go down with the sinking ship. In both cases, the instinct of self-preservation is stifled by the values or social imperatives internalized by the concerned individuals.
The third type of suicide, vis., anomic suicide is characterised “by a state of irritation or disgust, irritation resulting from the many occasions of disappointment afforded by modern existence”, and disgust resulting from a disproportionate gap between aspirations and satisfactions.
Having analyzed the three types of suicide, Durkheim concludes that “suicide is an individual phenomenon whose causes are essentially social”, His fourth great book, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, is concerned with the essential characteristics of religious order at the dawn of human history.
He undertook this study “not out of curiosity about what might have happened thousands of years ago, but in order to rediscover in the simplest societies the essential secret of all human societies — in order to understand what the reform of modern societies requires in the light of primitive experience”.
In this book Durkheim tried to derive a general sociological theory of religion from what he believed to be its simplest form totemism. He justified this approach on the ground that religion does not require communion with a God.
Religion involves, on the contrary, a classification of all things known to men as either sacred or profane. While making an assessment of Durkheim’s contribution to sociological thinking, we are to note, in the first place, his conscious attempt to keep sociology separate and distinct from other social sciences.
He was aware of the need for devising a distinct method for pursuing sociological studies, and emphasized the value of comparative approach to the study of society. His analysis of division of labour, suicide, education and religion paved the way for subsequent investigation and study of various social problems.
The second point to be noted in this connection is that Durkheim belonged to what Pitirim Sorokin described as Bio-sociological or Sociologist School. Those who belong to this school “interpret social and psychical phenomena as a derivative of various forms of interaction”.
They are right in their contention that “the factor of social interaction is to be taken into consideration in an explanation of the growth of the mind and the psychology of human beings”.
They are also right in their attempt “to establish the correlation between social processes of interaction and psychological processes and in insisting on the social origin of language, science, concepts, logical categories, morals and religion and other social values”.
As Sorokin rightly points out, if such an approach were suggested as one among many possible approaches, there would have been no valid reason for opposing it. But the sociolinguistic school pretends to be exclusive and declares all other approaches to be wrong. This line of thinking is, therefore, one-sided, and hence unacceptable. Their main criticism against Durkheim stems from this one-sided approach.
Thirdly, in terms of the interpretation of the sociologist theory, we should reasonably expect that the ‘mentality’ of species living in societies and continually interacting would be higher than that of animals who are not living in societies.
“Facts do not corroborate this expectation. L. Morgan is right in declaring that we do not have any reason for saying that the non-social wasps are inferior psychologically to the social wasps, or that a non-social tiger is inferior to the social jackals, or that many non-social birds are more stupid than social birds”. These examples indicate that “the factor of interaction is not sufficient to explain the miracle of the origin and growth of mind”.
Despite these weaknesses of his approach, the real contributions of Durkheim consist not so much in his general statements “as in his factual studies and in the series of correlations which he tried to establish to support his fundamental principles”.
Sorokin discusses the eminence of Durkheim as a sociologist in these words: “He fortunately combined the ability of broad, logical, and philosophical thought with the scrupulous and careful method of a scientist. Every hypothesis formed by him is formulated on the basis of patient study of the corresponding facts.
After the formulation he carefully tries to verify it again through an inductive study of the factual data. This has made his works quite superior to the purely speculative philosophizing in social sciences, as well as to the narrow, matter-of-fact descriptions of a definite phenomenon. Hence the eminence of Durkheim”.
Pioneer # 4. Max Weber (1864—1920):
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, intellectual discussion in Germany was dominated by historical studies. Historical researches of an eminently high quality were carried out. Almost all subjects were examined from historical angle. For example, economic studies were made from historical perspective. Karl Marx was the foremost among those who studied economic issues from this perspective.
As a matter of fact, the social and economic thinking of the period was deeply influenced by Marxian philosophy. No one could escape this influence, not even Max Weber. But Weber could not accept in to Marxian analysis of contemporary European society.
He, therefore, attempted a new approach and adopted a new angle to interpret contemporary European society. One of the critics of Max Weber, Albert Salomon, very aptly observed: “Max Weber became a sociologist in a long and intense dialogue with the ghost of Karl Marx”.
His differences with Marx provoked him to explore and analyse the origin and growth of capitalism in Western Europe. In the course of this exploration, Weber initiated studies on various aspects of society.
Sociology has been considerably enriched by these studies. We noted Weber’s critical views on the Marxian analysis of social stratification, his delineation of status groups, his analysis of bureaucratic organisation, his typology of social action and his thesis on protestant ethics and the growth of capitalism.
His views on these subjects are of abiding value and interest to sociologists even today. Of these two are important: One is his concept of the Ideal-Type and the other is his views on rationality which, according to him, is the distinguishing mark of present-day industrial society.
Ideal Type:
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century philosophical discussion in Germany was dominated by the question of the place of science in human studies. According to the then prevailing idealist philosophy, there was no possibility of the application of scientific method to cultural subjects, on the ground that the facts of human life were unique.
The general categories which science utilizes were, therefore, inappropriate in so far as cultural subjects or human studies were concerned. The core of this argument was that social phenomena are unique and do not, therefore, allow generalisation.
Weber did not agree with this view. He claimed that scientific categories could be used in the field of human studies or cultural subjects. But he hastened to add that they must be used with care. Weber’s belief that scientific method was relevant to social studies encouraged him to offer a set of operational definitions and to construct concepts which could be used. He classified and described types of social phenomena.
He argued that if the types were rigorously defined and the elements of each type were consistent with each other, then it should be possible to compare existing cases to the type. He called the latter an ideal-type.
“An ideal-type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a Utopia”.
Max Weber cautions that the ideal-type is to be constructed and used with care. To begin with, the ideal-type is not a hypothesis, nor an ‘average’, nor a faithful description of reality. Nor is it a model of what ‘ought to be’. It is rather an accentuation of what the researcher considered to be the essential characteristics and tendencies of the phenomenon in question.
The possible pitfalls that accompany the use of this device are:
(i) That one might confuse the ‘construct’ with ‘actual reality’;
(ii) That one might regard the ‘construct’ as a Procrustean bed into which to force the data;
(iii) That one might hypostasize the ideas so that they may assume the character of real forces. If these dangers are averted, the ideal-type can become an extremely useful instrument with which to confront reality.
His classification of four types of social action is an example of ideal-type construct. Weber did not regard human beings as mechanically responding in set ways to stimuh. On the contrary, they endeavored in their behaviour to conform to some ideal conception of action.
In other words, Weber conceived of action as being normatively oriented. Thus, a man performing quite simple social tasks like buying a commodity in a shop or playing a game with a child has some standard by which he measures his behaviour.
There is, therefore, an ideal-type of shopping or playing with children. Actual instances approximate to it may not be ideal in the sense of being the best conceivable way, but at least the elements are selected in terms of the ends and values of the actors. As he put it, the ideal- type describes “objectively possible action”.
Weber believed that the most fruitful use of the ideal-type ‘constructs’ was exemplified in the work of Marx. He regarded Marx’s method of abstraction, particularly his two-class model (the bourgeoisie and the proletariat), as one that had yielded important insights into the nature of the modern economic system.
Just as Marx had attached great importance to the locus of control over the material means of production, so also Weber, in his analysis of political, military and scientific institutions, centred his attention on the locus of control over the means of administration, violence and research.
Marx observed the increasing concentration of the means of production and the consequent separation of the worker from those means, so that a clear dichotomy emerged between those who owned and controlled the means of production and those who did not.
Weber used it as an ideal- type and called attention to the increasing concentration of the means of administration, means of violence, means of research, etc. In this way, Weber argued that the tendency which Marx dramatized as a special case in the sphere of production could be seen as part of a much more general process.
Max Weber used the ideal-type concept in order to explain the impact of religion on economic activities. While analysing the growth and development of capitalism in Western Europe under the influence of Protestantism, he considered, for purposes of his analysis, one dominant aspect (according to his perception) of both Capitalism and Protestantism and ignored all other aspect.
Thus, he considered ‘rationality’ to be the essence of capitalism and ‘work ethics’ to be the most important teaching of Protestantism. Taking help of this ideal-type ‘construct’, he established with reference to case studies that Protestantism with, its accent on ‘work ethics’ encouraged rational economic activity culminating in the growth of capitalism in Western Europe.
He analysed the religions of India’ and China and with the help of his ideal-type tried to explain as to why rational capitalism, as he defined it, did not emerge in India and China because religions of these countries did not emphasise ‘work ethics’ to the same extent and in the same manner as did Protestantism.
It will be interesting to relate briefly his analysis of the religions of China and India vis-a-vis development of rational capitalistic system on the lines of Western Europe.
Weber noted that rationality was prominent in many aspects of Indian cultural life ; the rational number system, arithmetic, algebra, rational science, and, in general, a rational consistency in many spheres, together with a high degree of tolerance toward philosophical in many spheres, together with a high degree of tolerance toward philosophic and religious doctrines.
The prevailing judicial forms appeared compatible with capitalist development. There existed an autonomous stratum of merchants. Handicrafts as well as occupational specialization were developed. Finally, the high degree of acquisitiveness and high evaluation of wealth were a notable aspect of Indian social life.
Yet, Weber points out; modern capitalism did not develop indigenously before or during the English rule. By way of explanation, Weber refers to the absence of Protestant ethic in Indian religion. Despite the rational, scientific elements in the East, and the existence of economic strata and forms seemingly conducive to the emergence of a modern rational economy, the “East remained an enchanted garden.”
This meant that all aspects and institutions of Oriental Civilization were permeated and even dominated by the magical mentality which became a break on economic developments in particular and on rationalization of the culture as a whole. For Weber, one criterion of rationalization of religion is the degree to which it has rid itself of magic.
It is also to be noted that Weber’s studies of the world religions embrace much more than religious phenomena and institutions. He takes the entire social structure of the society in question into his purview. In the case of India, the caste system was of fundamental importance.
Speaking of China, Weber observes that the Chinese city dweller never became a citizen in the Western sense. He retained his relations to the native place of his sib, its ancestral land and temple. Hence, all ritually and personally important relations with the native village were maintained.
Thus, “the fetters of the sib were never shattered.” This was the opposite of the West where Christianity, according to Weber, played an important role, at least initially, in developing an ethic which transcended kinship obligations.
Rationality in Law and Administration:
According to Max Weber, the quality, which marks off Western civilization from other civilizations, is its rational quality. It is expressed in its economic system—the capitalist system governed by rational economic considerations.
The peculiarly rational character of modern Western civilisation is also seen in its type of law and administration, particularly when we contrast the type of administrative organisation associated with it to other types, such as that of feudal England and France.
In modern Western Civilisation, he argued, there is always a conception of authority, because in a corporate group some individual member or members give orders and others obey. Moreover, those who give the order expect to be obeyed.
The reason for this is that both those who give orders and those who obey commands share certain beliefs about the rightness of the process. In other words, authority is held to be legitimate. The bases of this legitimacy may, however, differ from one instance to another.
He said that there are three ideal-types of authority which derive legitimacy from three distinct sources:
(i) Rational legitimacy reflects belief in the legality of patterns of normative rules and the right of those people designated by the rules to exercise authority to command.
(ii) Traditional legitimacy depends on belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the right of those established on the strength of tradition in positions of authority to exercise it
(iii) Charismatic legitimacy depends on the devotion of followers to an individual who, according to their perception, is endowed by exceptional sanctity, heroism or other personal qualities.
Weber points out that in the first case obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal order whereas in the second and third cases it is owed to a person. In this typology, Weber’s emphasis is on rational legitimacy. The corresponding type of authority which emerges from this typology is as follows: rational-legal authority, traditional authority and charismatic authority.’
Weber, however, points out that none of these ideal-types are to be found in a pure form in any historical instance. But any case can be seen to approximate to any of these types. Wirtschaft and Gesellschaft (Economy and Society), Weber engages in a long disquisition on law.
His main purpose is to trace, in various civilizations over the centuries of history, the broad changes in the character of legal systems, picking out specially the relationships between legal and economic system, and showing how there has been a progressive development in the rationality of law.
Max Weber’s use of the term law is a precise one:
“An order will be called law when conformity with it is upheld by the probability that deviant action will be met by physical or psychic sanctions aimed at compelling conformity or at punishing disobedience, and applied by a group of men especially empowered to carry out this function.” The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, 1947.
When he speaks of rationality, Weber refers to two things: formal rationality and substantive rationality. When men are engaged in legislating, or in discovering what the law is, their activities are substantively rational, provided they consciously follow a set of principles. Such principles may be vastly different in different systems.
Thus, there may be religious principles (laws based on shariat or religious scriptures in Islamic countries), or ethical ones (laws based on principles of equity, justice and fair play), or, political principles (in, USSR “law is an instrument of politics”, according to Andrei Vyshinski, which means that law is a means for supporting the Communist ideology.
In contrast to this, there is irrationality in law which we find in Moslem kadi justice. Here the Kadi, traditionally sitting in the market place, adjudicates on an ad hoc basis, freely considering the merits of each case as he sees them.
Formal rationality, as distinct from substantive rationality, refers to the processes of legislating and law discerning. In this case what is held to be important is the set of formal rules governing procedures.
Formal rationality itself may be of two kinds. In one case, law is extrinsically formal. This is so when a contract is held to have been validly entered into on the ground that it was written down and signed or sealed or concluded in some prescribed manner. The other case is where law is logically formal.
This is so when the rules employed in drawing up the law are themselves made up of abstract concepts of a legal nature and are employed systematically. This stands in contrast to procedures based on oracles or some other similarly irrational means.
In this analysis of law, Weber stresses the fact that formally rational law is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the world, and that its advent coincided largely with the rise of modern capitalism. Like modern capitalism, formally rational law is a product of modern Western civilization.
What is the link between the two—that is, between capitalism and formally rational law—if there be a link at all? Weber had no doubt that there was a connection and he found it in the development of what he called bureaucratic administration.
What were the main contributions of Max Weber to the development of sociological thinking? The general consensus among sociologists is that Weber made a lasting contribution to sociology. He attempted an exploration of the origin and growth of capitalism in the Western societies.
While doing so, he initiated studies on various aspects of society from his distinctive angle. His original thinking on bureaucracy, religion, law, authority, social stratification and economic sociology enriched the discipline considerably.
He discerned correctly the subtle change taking place in the nature of stratification in terms of growth of status groups in industrial societies. His views on work ethics are very helpful in understanding the nature of problems connected with economic development of under-developed countries.
His ideal-type concept laid the basis for the present use of sociological models. “He introduced rigour into sociological analysis as well as providing it with such breadth of vision that it must remain an inspiration to social scientists…. Above all, he was intellectually bold, politically committed and thoroughly professional in his outlook and habits. These are qualities indispensable to the growth of sociological studies”.
Pioneer # 5. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881—1955):
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was one of the most eminent anthropologists of the first half of the twentieth century. He helped to develop and establish modern ‘social’ anthropology as a generalizing, theoretical discipline.
The most notable of his many important contributions was his application to primitive societies of some of the ideas of systems theory, which led to a revolution in the analysis and interpretation of social relations. Radcliffe-Brown formed his theoretical approach as early as 1908 when, as a postgraduate student, he stated the requirements of a science of human society.
He considered them to be three-fold:
(i) To treat social phenomena as natural facts and thus subject to discoverable necessary conditions and laws;
(ii) To adhere to the methodology of the natural sciences;
(iii) To entertain only generalizations that can be tested and verified. He never departed from these rules, although his conceptual thought developed steadily.
Instead of explaining social phenomena in historical or psychological terms, which he believed to be impossible, Radcliffe-Brown explained them as persistent systems of adaptation, cooptation, and integration. His main working hypothesis was that the life of a society can be conceived of as a dynamic fiduciary system of inter-dependent elements, functionally consistent with one another.
He had used the notion of “social structure” as early as 1914, though not in a well-defined sense, as almost a doublet of ‘organisation’.
But gradually his ideas of ‘social structure’ underwent changes. In his final formulation, structure refers to an arrangement of persons and organisation, to an arrangement of activities. At the same time, he substituted the concept of ‘social system’ for that of ‘culture’. All these changes were connected.
Radcliffe-Brown’s social anthropology is best described by separating two main elements: a general theory and a central theory. The general theory produced three connected sets of questions.
The first set deals with static or morphological problems:
What kinds of societies are there?
What are their similarities and differences?
How are they to be classified and compared?
The second set deals with dynamic problems:
How do societies function?
How do they persist?
The third deals with developmental problems:
How do societies change their types?
How do new types come into existence?
What general laws relate to the changes?
The general theory dealing with these problems was borrowed from biology and bore the stain of Spencer in its emphasis on three aspects of adaptation: ecological adaptation to the physical environment; social adaptation, i.e., the institutional arrangements by which social order is maintained; and the socialisation or ‘cultural adaptation’ of persons.
The central theory dealt with the determinants of social relations of all kinds. Radcliffe-Brown phrased it in terms of the cooptation or fitting together or harmonisation of individual interests or values that makes possible “relations of association”, i.e., socially established norms or patterns of behaviour, and ‘social values’.
The two theories—the general theory and the central theory—are based on the idea that the life of a society can be conceived and studied as a system of relations of association and that a particular social structure is an arrangement of relations in which the interests or values of different individuals and groups are coated within fiduciary ‘social values’ expressed as institutional norms.
The idea of cooptation is fundamental to Radcliffe-Brown’s whole outlook. But the logical and conceptual implications of the idea are not fully worked out, nor are the static and dynamic aspects of the competitive process. What he did write is probably best viewed as only a sketch for a ‘pure’ theory dealing with all classes of relations of association and all classes of functioning systems or social structures.
While Radcliffe-Brown did not regard the study of social structure as the whole of anthropology, he did consider it to be its most important branch. But he asserted that “the study of social structure leads immediately to the study of interests or values as the determinant of social relations”, and that a “social system can be conceived and studied as a system of values”.
Important works by Radcliffe-Brown
i. The Andaman Islanders (First publication, 1922)
ii. The Social Organisation of Australian Tribes (First publication, 1931)
Pioneer # 6. Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski (1884—1942):
B.K. Malinowski was a Polish-born social anthropologist whose professional training and career, beginning in 1910, were based in England. Through his scientific activities, specially his methodological innovations, he was a major contributor to the transformation of nineteenth century speculative anthropology into a modern science of man.
As a field worker, a scholar, a theorist, and, above all, a brilliant and controversial teacher and lecturer, he played a decisive part in the formation of the contemporary British school of social anthropology.
He viewed anthropology as a field-oriented science in which theory and the search for general laws must be based on intensive empirical research involving systematic observation and detailed analyses of actual behaviour in living, on-going societies. His principal field-work was carried out among the Papuo-Melanesian people of the Trobriand Islands, located off the coast of New Guinea.
Malinowski regarded residence among the people under study, competent use of the native language, observation of the small events of daily life as well as the large events affecting the community, sensitivity to conflict and shades of opinion, and a consideration of each aspect within the context of the whole culture as indispensable conditions to ethnographic work and, indirectly, to the sound development of theory.
Malinowski’s primary scientific interest was in the study of culture as a universal phenomenon. At the same time, he was interested in the development of a methodological framework that would permit the systematic study of specific cultures and open the way to systematic cross-cultural comparison.
For purposes of research and exposition, he treated each culture as a closed system and all countries as essentially comparable. In other words, he treated the empirical study of a specific culture as a contribution to the understanding of the universal phenomenon of culture.
Malinowski presented two axioms which must underlie every scientific theory of culture. First, every culture must satisfy man’s biological needs, such as nutrition, procreation, protection against damaging forces of climate, dangerous animals and men.
But culture must also provide for occasional relaxation and the regulation of growth. Second, every cultural achievement is an instrumental enhancement of human physiology contributing directly or indirectly to the satisfaction of a bodily need.
Malinowski was also the originator of the functionalist approach to the study of culture. Although the idea of ‘function’ is a key concept throughout his work, the use of this term was open-ended, exploratory, and subject to continued modification.
Until very recently, theoretical codification of the functional approach had not been developed except by Malinowski. As propounded by Malinowski, the functional theory is applicable to the study of social structure and cultural diversity.
The outline of this theory may be stated as follows: The maintenance and the possible extension of a group and its social system as well as the persistence and the possible improvement of the group’s culture are defined, at least implicitly, as the groups objectives or goals.
Empirical study should reveal the functional requisites of a given system, that is, the conditions under which these objectives can be achieved. It can then be shown that specific parts of the social structure and culture of the group operate as mechanisms that satisfy (or do not satisfy) the functional requisites. The following aspects may be considered in this connection.
First, universal functional needs can be met in different ways, as is evidenced by social and cultural variation. In individual societies, particular procedures from a wide range of cultural possibilities are ‘selected’.
Second, the number of such ‘choices’ is always limited, limited by the biological characteristics of man and by his social and psychic needs. Hence the prevalence of independent and parallel inventions in different societies.
Third, the range of ‘choice’ for a specific society is further limited by the interrelationship and, in some measure, the interdependence of the choices themselves. For example, modern industrial growth in traditionally agrarian societies no doubt limits, but does not determine, the number and type of possible political and other institutional developments.
A major task of functional analysis is to discover the number and type of cultural possibilities under diverse social conditions which exist in different societies, so as to determine the functionalism of the societal organisation. This is the essence of Malinowski’s functional theory.
In addition to his study of culture and functionalist approach, reference must also be made to his observations on magic, science and religion. In his handling of science, magic and religion, he accepted essentially the traditional Western conception of a dual reality, viz., the reality of the natural world, grounded in observation and rational procedures that lead to mastery over nature, and supernatural reality, grounded in emotional needs that give rise to faith.
For example, Malinowski derived science not from magic but from man’s capacity to organise knowledge, as demonstrated by Trobriand technical skills in gardening, ship-building, etc. In contrast, he treated magic, which co-existed with these skills, as an organised response to a sense of limitation and impotence in the face of danger, difficulty and frustration.
Again, he differentiated between magic and religion by defining magical systems as essentially pragmatic in their aims and by defining religious systems as self- fulfilling rituals organised, for example, around life’s crisis. It is also significant that he differentiated between the individual character of religious experience and the social character of religious ritual.
Particularly illuminating is his discussion of the use of public magic among the Trobriand Islanders as an initiating act in the organisation of stages of work. His book The Foundations of Faith and Morals represents an attempt to apply hypotheses based on primitive cultures to the problems of European societies.
Assessment’ of Malinowski:
It is exceedingly difficult to assess Malinowski’s place in Anthropology. In the subsequent year since his death, much of his theoretical work has been bypassed. Some of his ideas that made him a storm centre in the 1920s have been so fully incorporated into, anthropological thinking that his exposition now appears unnecessarily didactic.
The stress on precision and solid empirical evidence in present-day anthropological researches is mainly due to Malinowski’s breadth of vision which made this advance possible.
His method of institutional analysis made it possible for him to express, through a model, certain core ideas of his theory, viz., the integrity of each culture; the complex interrelationship of the society, the culture and the individual; the grounding of culture in the human organism (in man’s needs and the individual; the grounding of culture in the human organism(in man’s needs and capacities and in the individual as the carrier of culture); and the systematic nature of culture as a phenomenon.
Malinowski’s theoretical framework is a major contribution. Today no anthropologist is, however, prepared to make the dizzying leap from the particular to the universal that characterized his attempt to create an effective methodology. There are essential intermediate steps.
For example, these involve intensive studies of process within and across cultures and over time. We also require fine-grained systematic comparison of intensively studied cultures and cultural process.
Today the required tools have been devised and these tools make feasible more delicate and systematic research. Malinowski’s search for an adequate methodology was a step toward broadening the base of empirical research. For this, collaboration among all the relevant sciences will be necessary. The study of culture is crucial to, but not in itself sufficient for, the development of a science of man.
Important works by Malinowski:
1. The Dynamics of Culture Change
2. A Scientific Theory of Culture
3. Argonauts of the Western Pacific
4. The Family among the Australian Aborigines
5. The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia
6. Magic, Science and Religion
7. Crime and Custom in Savage Society
8. Myth in Primitive Psychology
9. The Foundation of Faith and Morals.
Pioneer # 7. Tallcott Paksons (1920—1979):
In contrast to a fascination with the techniques of sociological inquiry, applied to small-scale, and sometimes trivial, problems, there developed during the 1940s and 1950s a pre-occupation with the construction of elaborate conceptual schemes. This is exemplified most fully in the work of Talcott Parsons and his followers.
In his first book, The Structure of Social Action, Parsons expresses the view that action is the basic unit which sociologists have to observe and consider. He attempts to postulate a general theory of action. In his view, such a theory would provide a solution to “the Hobbesian problem of social order by locating the springs and orientations of action in reference to the normative aspects of social life”.
The Theory of action, as developed by Parsons. It was noted in the course of discussion that pattern-variable scheme is one of the main innovations of Talcott Parsons.
Max Weber, who discerned for the first time the growing importance of rationalisation in the modern era, feared that rationalisation could pervade the entire modern social fabric and threaten all spontaneous human relations with destruction.
Parsons, however, argued that rationality as a principle had limits just as kinship values have. He contended that kinship and personal relations will be maintained, cherished and protected in the private sphere.
We may mention two main points about this approach which remains central to Parsons’ subsequent development of his theory. In the first place, despite their many differences, it is argued that all stable societies have certain basic values in common, indicated by the pattern-variables.
In extreme contrast to cultural relativism, Parsons believed in the cultural unity of man, and the pattern-variables give a starting point for identifying important universals. Second, the major differences between cultures are matters of degree, to be seen in the priorities and nuances given to the same basic concerns.
While differences of degree are by no means unimportant, he argued that doctrines of unique cultural spirits mislead by only identifying the dominant values and beliefs of a culture, ignoring its lower priority values and over-particularizing their meanings.
Apart from the theory of social action, Parsons contributed substantially to the structural—functional school of sociology. Mention may be made, in particular, to his four-function paradigm. Some criticisms have been leveled against the sociological theories of Talcott Parsons.
To begin with, it is argued that in his sociological theories, the element of physical coercion in social relationships is almost entirely neglected. He emphasises an ‘equilibrium model’ of society whereas a ‘conflict model’ would be more realistic.
Secondly, it is pointed out that “Parsons has been largely concerned with elucidating the conceptual structure in the thought of the classical sociologists, and with elaborating new concepts within the framework of his notion of ‘social action’. He has not, however, developed, any comprehensive explanatory theory and his work has not given rise to a school of sociology characterised by new kinds of explanation of social events”.
Pioneer # 8. Robert K. Merton (1910):
Robert K. Merton, the American Sociologist, with his customary perspicacity, has developed the theories of the middle range. By way of illustrating his concept, he referred to certain social phenomena the significance of which was not brought out or emphasized in earlier theories.
Merton defines ‘theories of the middle range’ as “theories that lie between the minor but necessary working hypotheses that evolve in abundance during day-to-day research and, the all-inclusive systematic efforts to develop a unified theory that will explain all the observed uniformities of social behaviour, social organisation and social change”.
By way of elaboration of his thesis, he further observes:
“Middle-range theory is principally used in sociology to’ guide empirical inquiry. It is intermediate to general theories of social systems which are too remote from particular classes of social behaviour, organisation and change to account for what is observed and to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not generalized at all. Middle-range theory involves abstractions, of course, but they are close enough to observed data to be incorporated in propositions that permit empirical testing. Middle-range theories deal with delimited aspects of social phenomena as is indicated by their labels”.
He speaks of, by way of illustration, a theory of reference groups and relative deprivation, a theory of role-conflict, etc.
The seminal ideas in such theories are characteristically simple. The theory of reference groups and relative deprivation starts with the simple idea that people take the standards of significant others as a basis for self-appraisal and evaluation. Some of the inferences drawn from this simple idea are not consistent with common sense expectations based upon an unexamined set of ‘self-evident’ assumptions.
For example, common sense suggests that a family or a group would suffer from a sense of deprivation to the extent of the loss sustained by it in a mass disaster. This is based on an unexamined assumption that the magnitude of objective loss is related directly and lineally to the subjective appraisal of the loss.
But the theory of relative deprivation leads to an altogether different conclusion. According to this theory, self-appraisal is not confined to one’s own experience only. On the contrary, it depends upon people’s comparison of their own situation with that of other people perceived as being comparable to themselves.
The theory, therefore, suggests that a group or a family may actually suffer heavy losses. But it will fill less deprived if those, who are considered to be comparable, suffer more severe losses. It is clear therefore, that this theory has not been logically derived from a single all-embracing theory of social systems.
Similar is the case with the theory of reference group or the theory of role-set. These theories start with very simple observable social phenomena and draw inferences which shed light on the nature of the phenomena.