Social Theory: A Textbook

282 Pages·2017·1.43 MB·English

by  Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Lars Thorup Larsen, Mathias Wullum Nielsen, Tine Ravn, Mads P. Sørensen

Social Theory
This textbook offers a new approach to understanding social theory.
Framed around paired theoretical perspectives on a series of sociological
problems, the book shows how distinctive viewpoints shed light on dif-
ferent facets of social phenomena. The book includes sociology’s “found-
ing fathers”, major 20th-century thinkers and recent voices such as Butler
and Žižek. Philosophically grounded and focused on interpretation and
analysis, the book provides a clear understanding of theory’s scope while
developing students’ skills in evaluating, applying and comparing
theories.
Carsten Bagge Laustsen is Associate Professor at the Department of
Political Science, Aarhus University.
Lars Thorup Larsen is Associate Professor at the Department of Politi-
cal Science, Aarhus University.
Mathias Wullum Nielsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of
History, Stanford University.
Tine Ravn is a doctoral fellow at the Danish Centre for Studies in
Research and Research Policy, Department of Political Science, Aarhus
University.
Mads P. Sørensen is Senior Researcher at the Danish Centre for Studies
in Research and Research Policy, Department of Political Science, Aarhus
University.
“Students often experience social theory as intimidating. The braver ones
sometimes question its point: why do we have to learn about Durkheim?
This welcome new text should go some way towards answering that
question, while also encouraging students to see theory as a ‘necessary
good’ rather than an ‘unnecessary evil’. Some of their teachers may also
breathe a sigh of relief. An impressive achievement.”
– Professor Emeritus Richard Jenkins,
University of Sheffield
Social Theory
A Textbook
Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Lars Thorup
Larsen, Mathias Wullum Nielsen,
Tine Ravn and Mads P. Sørensen
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Lars Thorup Larsen, Mathias Wullum
Nielsen, Tine Ravn and Mads P. Sørensen
The right of Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Lars Thorup Larsen, Mathias Wullum
Nielsen, Tine Ravn and Mads P. Sørensen to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised 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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-99994-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-99995-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65799-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Preface vii
1 What is sociology? 1
2 Capitalism and alienation: Marx and Weber 14
3 Recognition and anomie: Durkheim and Honneth 35
4 Social interaction and marginalisation: Simmel
and the Chicago School 54
 5  Power and stratification: Foucault and Bourdieu  72
6 System and differentiation: Luhmann and Habermas 91
 7  State and market: Althusser and Boltanski & Chiapello  108
 8  Uncertainty and risk: Bauman and Beck  127
 9  The reflective self: Goffman and Giddens  144
10  Family and work: Sennett and Hochschild  161
11  Gender, body and identity: Butler and Haraway  179
v
12  Factish and fetish: Latour and Žižek  197
13  Sociology as an analytic praxis  220
References 246
Index 259
vi contents
Preface
“Sociology” comes from Latin and Greek; “socius”, meaning confederate,
and “logos”, meaning thought or reason. Etymologically, sociology means
something in the direction of reasonable thoughts about what is shared.
French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was the first to use the
term in his establishment of a new discipline that would conduct scientific
investigation of “the common”. What was “reasonable” about sociology
was how it distanced itself from the speculative or religious conceptions
of the day; as such, the discipline did not take people’s conceptions of
the common at face value.
Sociology is a relatively young discipline, and its development in the
19th century should be understood in the context of a number of signifi-
cant changes in society, all of which undermined the traditional and
religious perceptions of the world. The first worth mentioning is the
dramatic industrialisation, which accelerated in England in the 18th cen-
tury and later spread to the European continent. Industrialisation led to
urbanisation: People moved from country to town, abandoning the tradi-
tional forms of rural peasant life to become workers. A new class of
workers emerged, which would later prove to have great political signifi-
cance. The prelude to the class struggles was the French Revolution,
which broke with the conceptions of the “natural” privileges of the upper
class. All these changes challenged established forms of life and hierar-
chies and created an understanding that social conditions could be
changed; that social conditions were created by mankind, not by God.
This sensibility is also fundamental to sociology.
We have already hinted at the analytic strategy of sociology. Pointing
out a number of structural conditions behind a given phenomenon – here,
the emergence of sociology – is inherently “sociological”. It was no
vii
coincidence that sociology emerged in the beginning of the 19th century,
as a number of structural changes in society in this period made it pos-
sible to think in this manner. Generally speaking, sociology assumes that
there is always something behind a given occurrence or phenomenon. An
individual’s actions, identity, understanding of the world, lifestyle, culture
and so forth can be explained or understood with reference to something
that is precisely not individual in nature but instead societal. In its most
fundamental form, sociology is interested in the interpersonal – in that
which emerges in the meeting between two or more individuals and in
that which set the conditions for this meeting.
Sociology is a science informed by history. Many disciplines are inter-
ested in what lies behind or conditions action. However, sociology dis-
tinguishes itself from the natural sciences and parts of psychology in
finding societal explanations rather than pointing out natural or individual
explanations. One of the most important characteristics regarding the
social dimension is that it consists of actions, relations and institutions
that are all based on human activity and therefore could have been dif-
ferent. The social dimension sets conditions and defines underlying social
strata, which can be reproduced or changed by our practices. The social
dimension is changeable and must be studied as such.
This book introduces key theories in classic and contemporary sociology.
Each chapter will be structured around a discussion between two (or more)
sociological thinkers about a central theme in the sociological literature.
It is our hope that these discussions will deepen the reader’s understanding
of what sociology is, and how its concepts and theories can help us under-
stand the social world around us.
Chapter 1 introduces sociology as a particular way of viewing and
analysing society; it discusses the status of sociology as a discipline; it
briefly presents the difference between sociological theory, social theory
and social diagnosis; and finally, it discusses whether the social is wither-
ing away.
Chapter 2 focuses on two of the greatest classics of the discipline, Karl
Marx and Max Weber. The two theorists’ oeuvres and core theories are
introduced, and their different views on capitalism are examined: Marx’s
critique of political economy and Weber’s descriptions of the relationship
between capitalism and Calvinism.
With the key concepts of anomie and recognition as the starting point,
Chapter 3 introduces Emile Durkheim’s and Axel Honneth’s different
views on individualisation, morality and social cohesion. Their strands
of thought are connected in a comparative discussion of the possible
explanations and solutions to the prevalent experiences of inadequacy,
malaise and loss of meaning that characterise many people’s lives in
contemporary society.
viii preface
Chapter 4 brings together key sociological contributions from Georg
Simmel and the Chicago School tradition. The chapter includes a discus-
sion of the theorists’ analyses of both negative and positive aspects of
life in early modern societies characterized by increased urbanisation,
industrialisation and immigration. With a specific view to the analytical
duality of distance and closeness, Simmel’s theories are compared to
those of the Chicago school, in particular the writings of Robert Ezra
Park.
After discussing some of the key consequences of modernity, Chapter 5
looks at the concept of power, particularly the execution of power between
people and groups. After a general introduction to the sociological con-
ceptualisation of power with focus on Michel Foucault’s power analytics
and how it differs from a conventional understanding, two aspects of
Foucault’s authorship are illuminated: his famous analysis of the Panop-
ticon and the emergence of the disciplinary power and his theorising of
biopolitics and sexuality. The chapter moves on to Pierre Bourdieu’s
theories of reproduction, symbolic violence and class. Finally, the two
sociologists are compared in a discussion of the difference between a
sociological focus on centre or margin.
Chapter 6 draws on two of German sociology’s key contributions to
social systems thinking, to clarify and discuss society’s division into sec-
tors, systems and spheres, or what is called functional differentiation:
Niklas Luhmann’s perception of societal systems as each other’s sur-
roundings as well as the condensation of communication within these
through symbolically generalisable media, and Jürgen Habermas’ criticism
of systemic characteristics in the societal spheres, where communication
should, in his opinion, be coordinated on the basis of a common life
world.
Chapter 7 continues the discussion of the social system but adopts a
more holistic perspective. The starting point is the claim that our society
today is capitalistic in a basic sense, which gives rise to a number of
questions, including: What is the relationship between state and market,
and how are people motivated to work in an absurd system where others
reap the profits of their work? These questions led Louis Althusser, Luc
Boltanski and Ève Chiapello to reflect on the meaning of ideology in
modern societies. Althusser develops a critical sociology and views ideol-
ogy as repression, whereas Boltanski focuses on criticism as empirically
occurring critical competences that can both challenge and consolidate
capitalism.
Chapter 8 introduces two of the most prominent sociologists today,
Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck, with focus on their diagnoses of our
times. Bauman calls our age liquid modernity whereas Beck describes a
paradigmatic shift from modernity to second modernity and introduces
preface ix