Sociological Theory
o Week One, Lectures 1 & 2, 5th of March Ø Admin & Assessments
- Tutorials will be run as face to face, small group learning – no computers, screens or phones; notes on paper
- Week five: note in the UOS outline, that assessments will be penalized if they are submitted after public holidays
- Big assessment due on the 18th of May, 4 weeks preparation - Prepare your reading to answer questions in the tute – mini
presentations make you think and write critically, make you participate
- All assessments must be attempted, must attend tutes, attend lectures
Ø Foundations
- Begins with the foundational sociologists; Durkheim, Simmel, Weber, Marx etc. the people who try to comprehend the
European, industrialized world 1800s - 1920
- As times change, so do the theorists we look at; functionalism emerges
- Micro-sociology; looking at social life that privileges the individuals, tiny details over more holistic approaches - Individualism raises many sociological problems Ø Karl Marx
- Materialist: emphasizes how your relationship to means of
production is critical, because it is how we earn a living - two important aspects of sociology: 1. theory of history and
social change, how societies change from one sort to another 2.
Theory of class conflict, an account of what he sees as the key feature of capitalist society, conflict around the means of production; exploitation is necessary
- he died in 1833, he writes at the beginning of the industrial revolution where labour is brutal and degrading – at some points he is considered irrelevant or erroneous, however around the time of the GFC there was an academic resurgence in Marx and capitalism
- theory of history and social change that gives us a benchmark to evaluate other theories of social change, two key claims: 1.
Capitalism is inferior to socialism / communism in terms of
causing alienation, its brutality and its degradation, wastefulness, and its ultimate demise 2. Class conflict is key to the
understanding of all history
- Marx sees capitalism as destined as giving way to socialism which will give rise to communism, his view of social progress is dependent on this essentialist view
- Value / surplus and exploitation, the value of the product is always more than the worker is paid in order to maximize profit - Necessary antagonism: tension between capital and labour,
being the force of social change, this is necessary in capitalistic society – some
SCLG2601 Semester One 2015
people argue in opposition to Marx where workers and capitalists interests can be conflated, making tension unnecessary
Ø Theory of Class Conflict
- Necessary tension, inevitable class conflict embedded in Marx’s theory
- Material basis of Marx’s theorising is why Marx thought that one’s relation to the dominant mode of production of an epoch was vital – class relations signify the dominant mode of means of production that shape any society that must be understood - the so-called base-superstructure metaphor; fundamental are
socio- economic relationships and how we make a living
determine the superstructure; if we understand the fundamental way in which we make a living, then we can understand
culture/values/attitudes/art/law etc.
- the dominant mode of production in an epoch determines life chances: life, death, culture, leisure, social relations
- ideology: a set of beliefs and attitudes and values, characteristic of a social group or class which are employed by the dominant class to advance its interests, to bamboozle and fool the
subordinate groups and their critical thinking skills – the dominant ideas in society are therefore the ideas of the ruling class
- social classes; underclass (beneath the proletariat) social scum, who would gravitate toward the bourgeoisie in times of
revolution and not the proletariat – he identified many classes, but ultimate polarized them into those who owned the means of the production, and those who sell their labour power to the owners
- classes are necessarily in antagonistic relations, and class
consciousness would inevitably develop, where people are aware that they are in a class and an awareness of those around them
and what class they belong to
- therefore, class interest develops, where the subordinated classes would become sensitive to class antagonism, and ultimately insight revolution
- antagonism à consciousness à interest à revolution Ø Religion
- the notion that religion is a social construction, that in society adherence to a religion will operate very importantly to keep subordinate groups in their place and to justify the ruling groups - the notion that god made the physical, social and animal world
in a particular arrangement upholds the ideology of the ruling class – the poor are therefore encouraged to hope for a better world, but not in this lifetime but rather in the next
- religion is therefore apart of the capitalist ideological apparatus that allows for exploitation, where social relations are ordained by god
o Week One, Tutorial, 15th of March Ø Admin SCLG2601 Semester One 2015
- Tutor: Alec, email: [email protected] o Week One, Readings, 5th of March
Marx, Karl ([1932] 2012) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in Calhoun et al. Classical Sociological Theory, Wiley/Blackwell, pp. 146- 155.
Ø Political Economy
- “the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness
of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly m a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between the capitalist and the land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory work,
disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes”
- political economy (according to the author) teaches us nothing, because it does not explain how things is set into order, only that greed and competition necessarily existà“competition, freedom of the crafts and the division of landed property were explained and comprehended as accidental, premeditated and violent consequences of monopoly”
- political economy fails to see the estrangement in labour by not considering the direct relationship between the worker and the production
Ø Process
- the worker becomes a cheaper commodity, the more he produces, workers become more devalued the more value is affixed to the things they create – the objectification of labour - labour itself becomes an object which can only be obtained with
the greatest effort and with the most irregular interruptions - the worker becomes a slave to his object – he receives an object
of labour (i.e. work) and through that he receives means of
subsistence – allowing him to exist, first as a worker, and second a physically subject
- he product of the worker’s labour is not t become his own – “it belongs to another.. it is the loss of his self”
- his physical and emotional self becomes his life, and his
personal life (because life is defined as activity) becomes his work – in this sense he becomes an animal, because all other functions he is free to engage (sex, eating, drinking) are ultimately animal - the worker is further estranged from nature and himself, his
personal life and own active functions, “it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in abstract an estranged form”
- man relation to himself only becomes for him objective and actual through his realtion to the other man – if the product of his labour is alien, hostile and a powerful object estranged from him, then he feels that someone else is master of this object, and
therefore enjoys his alienation SCLG2601 Semester One 2015
and suffering, as alien, hostile, powerful and independent of him – performed under the dominion and coercion of another man - “where the product, as the object of labour, pays for labour itself, there
there wage is but a necessary consequence of labour’s estrangement”
Chinoy, Elly (1964) Manning the Machines - The Assembly-Line Worker in Berger, Peter L. The Human Shape of Work, Gateway Editions, Indiana.
Ø Ford
- the assembly line emerged in the Ford Motor Company plant in Michigan, 1913 – it has become a dominating symbol of modern industrialism “its productive capabilities have epitomized the fruitfulness of mass production” (p. 2)
- have created extreme disentrancement and many human problems created by mechanization / alienation – “the presence
of the assembly line has significantly affected the prevailing temper of work and of woker- management relations in those industries which is has been widely adopted” (p. 3)
- extremely efficient used to maximize speed and profits, necessarily involves the division of labor, standardized and
interchangeable parts, the utilization of the conveyer belt to limit movement
- final assembly used to be a highly-skilled job, alienation and the division of labour have changed this – it requires little to no
training
- the efficiency of the conveyer even out-did itself, leading to the expansion of the Ford factory and more conveyors needing to be built
- “it eliminates almost entirely the time spent by labor in moving, unproductively, from palce to plac. Continual rationalization of the assembly process makes is possible to carry the division of labour almost as far as it can go” (p. 54)
Ø Workers
- requires little to no training, can be learnt in a day or less, is not mentally involved, taxing or engaging and offers little stimulus or reward
- “many other routine tasks allow the worker to perform his duties almost automatically while day-dreaming, pursuing his own serious thoughts, or carrying on an easy conversation with his fellows. Work on the line, in contrast, frequently requires consistent attention without seriously engaging the work’s
interests or demanding the close concentration inherent in skilled labour” (p. 57)
- the worker gets little break or reprise, they must be replaced if
they need to use the bathroom “if space permits he can move up the line a few extra feet and eventually have a few seconds free for a momentary break in the otherwise constant tempo” (p. 58) - the psychological patterns of working on an assembly line
manifested in the workers need to drink after, always a beer which is imbued with lower class, status and prestige symbols, also with reports of workers snapping at their family members and shaking for hours
SCLG2601 Semester One 2015
- social relationships and a sense of meaning and purpose on the job often softens the blow and monotony of such a job – but statistically, the job has been sited as awful and disruptive to one’s health / well-being Ø Power
- “I am just a cog in the machine” (p. 73) is a common sentiment, the feelings of alienation, lack of a shared cultural goal, the sense that the work is never completed
- “the absence of a larger set of valies from which men can derive some moral substance” (p. 74)
- they derive no immediate benefit from the volume or quality of their work and their product, the efforts and efficiency to not benefit them – they go directly to their employer rather than in greater rewards for themselves
- to compensate for feelings of alienation, exploitations, and monotony, outside of work recreational things, such as a baseball team are created – these do not, however, make up for the lack or meaning and purpose on the actual job
Ø Symbolic Power
- “an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work” – the protestant
ethic; theological motivation has since been dissolved, but has none the less been sustained in the economic necessity for
individuals and society, and the prospect of gain or development - in America, holding a job is a moral requirement as well as an
economic one, but there still remains an ambiguity around how well the job actually needs to be performed
- technological decisions have psychological and social impacts, but it has been geared towards efficiency, productivity, cost and proft whereby the worker’s human selves are ignored
- the desire to keep speed, production, and efficiency high – at an ever increasing rate – has not been seriously challenged, changes to pay rates, hours and rostering, incentives etc. have all been challenged by unionist movements, if only to mask the real problem
- engineers and managers rarely concern themselves with the human or social consequences of technology – they assume workers will perform if they are paid adequately
- pushes to change and humanize work are always measured against economic tests rather than social or psychological
