Social Structure

156 Pages·2013·2.312 MB·English

by  Charles Crothers

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SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Charles Crothers
~l
~~
LONDONAND NEWYORK
First published 1996 by Routledge
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1996 Charles Crothers
Typeset in Garamond by Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Crothers, C.
Social structure / Charles Crothers.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social structure. 2. Sociology−Methodology. I. Title.
HM13l.C845 1996
301’.01−dc20
96−14318 CIP
ISBN: 978-0-415-14946-4 (hbk)
CONTENTS
Preface
Vll
Acknowledgements
Vlll
1 INTRODUCTION: THE SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL
STRUCTURE 1
2 USES OF THE TERM 'SOCIAL STRUCTURE' 14
3 HISTORY OF SOCIAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS 31
4 THEORETICAL ISSUES RELATING TO SOCIAL
STRUCTURE 60
5 DIMENSIONS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE:
AN ANALYTICAL TOOLKIT 82
6 CONCLUSIONS 126
Bibliography 138
Index 146
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PREFACE
The concept of Social Structure is important for understanding the brute facts
as well as the complexities, subtleties and the bewildering interlinkages and
interpenetrations of geographical and time scales which seem to be the mark of
current social conditions. The concept refers to descriptions and explanations of
people's attributes, attitudes and behaviour in terms of their positions within
wider social groupings and, in turn, endeavours to explain the characteristics
and dynamics of these collectivities themselves. The metaphor of social
structure is powerful yet mystical, and carries with it many overbearing
connotations of determinism. This unfortunate aura of the term seems to fit
less well in the contemporary intellectual climate, and this lack of congruence
has led to some falling away in its use. But it is essential for the developing
analytical capacity of Sociology to refurbish the concept and layout directions
in which thinking about social structure should progress.
In the past, thinking about social structures has been channelled within each
of several different perspectives which throw light into one or other of its
several aspects. These separate treatments need to be brought together,
reconciled and interrelated within a wider framework which allows the
examination of a wide range of different aspects. This book:
• provides an anchoring statement of the essential questions social structural
approaches must tackle;
• lays out the range of difficult issues which arise in analysing social
structures;
examines the meanings of the term and the history of its usage within
Sociology;
• sketches a synoptic model for analysing social strucrures; and
• shows how its disparate elements might each be studied using a toolkit of
approaches to analysing particular aspects of social structures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book arises from a long-held interest in the central theoretical concepts of
sociology and in their application to make sense of real-world social strucrures,
which was instilled in me by my early training at the hands of Allan Levett. It
also arises out of the work I have carried out on the theoretical work of Robert K
Merton (Crothers 1987) and subsequent work on the Columbia Tradition:
reading and talking with various Columbians has been helpful for this project
too.
I am thankful, too, for the many others who have encouraged me, or been
bemused at my project. But most of the ideas and arguments in this book have
arrived from such a multitude of different sources that the task of tracing them
would be extremely difficult. The main strucrures providing me access to
library resources as well as the sustenance for writing have been traditional
university departments: at the University of Auckland, on leave, and at the
University of Kent, Canterbury. Beyond that, more direct help came from only
a few sources: David Pearson, Raewyn Peart and Doug Porpora. Justin Leff and
Gaynor van Buerden provided long-distance electronic rescue at a difficult
point.
It is, of course, somewhat ironic that a book dealing with social strucrure
baulks at analysing the social organisation behind its own delivery. On the
other hand, it is a self-exemplification of the approach in the book, which
stresses the complexities and sometimes weak effects of social structures.
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INTRODUCTION
The sociology of social structure
The significance of concepts of social structure, and the extent to which social
structural explanations of human behaviour have been invoked, has varied
between and within societies, over time and according to circumstances. At
some periods, in some societies, human life has been seen as ploughing along
pre-set and predictable furrows completely dominated by unchanging and
unchallengeable social structures. At other times and places, ideologies of
individualism have abounded and the scope and variability of human freedom,
creativity and agency have been celebrated. More often, some mix of collective
and individual doctrines has been prevalent.
The emphasis given to social structure by sociologists has worked well
within the outer bounds set by broader cultural images of social structure.
Clearly, there is a continued bias in sociology towards the more socially
deterministic approach. After all, for very self-interested academic needs it has
usually been held that sociology's goal is to expose the workings of social
structures, as opposed to mere patternings of individual psychology. It offers its
views of social life in competition with alternative explanations put forward by
other social sciences, as well as popular ideologies held by elites and people
more generally. Any inability to find at least strong traces of structural
determinism therefore constitutes scientific failure. Moreover, many sociolo
gists have been trained to believe that social structures are real, whatever the
beliefs held in the culture.
In recent years, after the high-point of 'structuralist' approaches in the late
1960s and 1970s, there has been a faltering in the development of social
structural theory and a growing emphasis on human actions, cultural meanings
and the significance of bodies in natural environments (cf. Lash and Urry
1984). A result of this trend has been a tendency to ignore or slight the body of
social structural explanations which older eras of sociology confidently, even
brashly, provided.
More recently again, there seems to be a further revival of interest in social
structure in reaction to some of the desolate extremes of postmodernism's
denial of social structure. In this book, I attempt to draw together some of
the most useful components of the concept which are emerging from recent
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