Introduction
|
Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber created many of the seminal concepts and methods
at the heart of sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and social
psychology. Marx1 (1818-1883) wrote his greatest works in the decades around the middle
of the 19th century, while Durkheim2 (1859-1917) and Weber3 (1864-1920) wrote their major works during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and yet their ideas and methods still largely define what social scientists think about, and how they analyze societal phenomena. Contemporary scholars feel compelled to study and apply the theories and findings of the three great masters — either to test, support, or deconstruct that earlier work. But what, in fact, have social scientists in the late 20th century been saying about the great masters’s concepts, methods, and findings? How have revolutionary cultural and social events such as the“Sixties,” the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, the rise of feminism, and the computer revolution affected the way social investigators apply and analyze Marx, Durkheim and Weber? And have these modern applications and analyses tended to support or weaken the classical sociological theories? Answers to these and related questions are found in this anthology, which brings together for the first time a rich collection of articles by sociologists, as well as by economists, political scientists, anthropologists, and social psychologists. Collectively, the selections show how some of the world’s leading scholars research and dissect concepts such as class, anomie, bureaucracy, community, rationality, representations, capitalism, charisma, inequality, and religious ritual, which are at the heart of the writings of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Some of the articles apply the seminal concepts, such as anomie and rationalization, to examine contemporary behaviors and historical processes, while other articles analyze the concepts, methodologies, and philosophical and epistemological assumptions of the masters, such as positivism, verstehen, the dialectic, and ideal types. As you will see from reading these articles, there is no agreement among the authors about the three giants of sociological theory, except for an important implied consensus: that the works of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber are still vital for understanding and studying human societies. The classical works serve as“fuel,” one might say, which provides energy that stimulates modern social scientists’s imaginations, sense of curiosity, critical intelligence, quest for the truth, and belief that a better society is possible through the application of reason and systematic observation of human behavior. Some of the authors in this collection show reverence towards the masters, leaving their concepts and methods intact while applying them to contemporary societal phenomena; other contributors, however, are highly critical of the classical theorists, pointing out, for example, that they were either sexist, racist, or elitist. Still other contributors launch their attack on Marx, Durkheim, or Weber by showing that they were actually confused in their writings, defining key terms differently in different contexts, and even giving contradictory meanings to core concepts in different texts. From reading these articles, one must come away with a heightened appreciation of the overwhelming mental power of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and the influence they have had on the world, to this day — not only on scholars, but also on those who actively work to maintain social order or bring about change, such as politicians, urban planners, and civil rights leaders. But more than this, from reading these articles, you will learn how to think about the works of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber in creative ways, rather than treat the old masters’s writings as petrified or sacred texts; and, as a result, your sociological imagination will be stimulated to conceive of new ways to envision the world, explain societal phenomena, and study human behavior in all its variegated manifestations. Such creative thought is especially important now, as we enter the New Millennium, in a post-Cold War world characterized by a global breakdown of the traditional norms and structures that have largely defined political and social life throughout the 20th century in modern industrial societies, and for a much longer period of time in most of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. In such an“anomic,” inegalitarian world that is being rapidly transformed by microprocessor-based technologies, along with the more historic forces of bureaucratization, urbanization, and industrialization — analyzed in depth by Marx, Durkheim and Weber — the role of the social scientist becomes more important than ever. For who else is going to define this“strange new land” into which millions of individuals and families are moving all around the globe, and help leaders in government, communities, and business create policies and programs in the 21st century that will contribute to the building of a safe, sane social order for generations to come? It is my hope that this anthology contributes to the emergence of social scientists able to create the concepts and methods of study that advance the standard of living and quality of life for human beings everywhere, who are increasingly forced to confront and cope with novel conditions of living unimagined by Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. These new phenomena, which affect all important aspects of life, include the Internet and "computerization" of home, work and leisure environments; life-threatening environmental pollution and depletion of natural resources; mass means of birth control and the female liberation movement; air travel that links the world and space exploration that erases traditional paradigms and creates new, unfathomable realities; and mass media that instantly spread verbal and visual messages around the globe, upsetting age-old traditions and stimulating new dreams, desires, and possibilities among men and women of every color, nationality, religion, ethnic background, language group, and culture. If modern social scientists can adapt classical sociological theory to help define solutions to the novel problems that will increasingly alter the lives of the majority of people on Earth, then their contribution will ensure that the legacy of Marx, Durkheim and Weber continues to live, well into the 21st century. The remainder of this Introduction contains a brief overview of the articles, in the sequence they are presented in the anthology, to orient the reader to the selections and show how they relate to each other. The concise statement of the focus of each article and a conclusion or two drawn by its author, presented here, only hints at the rich, profound, stimulating discussions that await the reader. The next series of articles contain empirical analyses based on Durkheim’s theoretical work. Robert W. Duff and Lawrence K. Hong (p. 73) investigate death anxiety, religious rituals, and social solidarity among 674 members of retirement communities, and find support for Durkheim’s thesis about the importance of participation in shared religious rituals. T. P. Schwartz (p. 91) studies the wills of residents in Providence, Rhode Island from 1775 to 1985, and reports that the findings do not support predictions about a shift from family to organizational inheritance practices expected from Durkheim’s theory. Frans van Poppel and Lincoln H. Day (p. 116) analyze suicide statistics for contemporary citizens of the Netherlands, and conclude that the suicide statistics Durkheim used probably erroneously reflected cause-of-death, calling the empirical aspect of his work into question, though not necessarily the theoretical aspect. Jules J. Wanderer (p. 129) uses Durkheim’s (as well as Georg Simmel’s) model of self and society to shed light on characters in famous fictional works (who are used, in turn, to help elucidate the theorists’ concepts and epistemology), and concludes that the source of epistemologic and symbolic materials that shape knowledge and reality worlds exist for Durkheim in the associations of social life. The next three articles focus on Weber. Anthony J. Blasi (p. 149) applies Weber’s theory of authority and leadership to study office charisma in early Christian Ephesus, or Asia Minor, and concludes that mediating structures were critical for transforming personal charisma into office charisma, and that external relations appeared to result in the merging of different leadership structures. Thomas W. Segady (p. 164) applies Weber’s theory of rationalization to professional, classically trained symphonic musicians and conductors, and concludes from case studies that Weber failed to both differentiate between types of irrationality and to address“interactional” irrationality. Stanford M. Lyman (p. 177) reviews Weber’s and Marx’s statements about the“Jewish Question” in their time, as a basis for discussing the contemporary American assimilation-pluralism debate and“ethnoracial dilemma” in the context of postmodernist thought, which some claim negates the utility of“Big M” Marxian analysis today. The Applications section ends with two articles for educators concerned with research and curriculum building. Carl B. Backman (p. 213) describes how teachers and students can effectively conduct computer-assisted research on Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and describes a classroom project that brings to life the students’ reactions to the research process. Donald Johnson (p. 232) discusses why a strong graduate program in global education should include the liberal model as well as other perspectives, and begin with a review of the works of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. The next series of articles focus on Durkheim’s theoretical work. Jennifer M. Lehmann (p. 336) considers whether Durkheim had contradictory theories of race, class, and sex, and concludes that, although he had both a dominant and subordinate theory for each category, his dominant theory of sex is one of castes, not individuals, reflecting contradictions at the heart of modern society and liberal ideology. Robert K. Merton (p. 372), in a classic article, analyzes Durkheim’s theory about consciousness and the division of labor, and points out several serious contradictions in the work, including that Durkheim refutes his own positivistic emphasis. Robert G. Perrin (p. 382) compares Durkheim’s moral communalist position in The Division of Labor, which stresses values and norms, to Spencer’s theory of the division of labor, and concludes that the former’s theory was an alternative to the Spencerian“exchangist,” utilitarian social theory, which focuses on individual interests, exchange, and interdependence. Warren TenHouten (p. 409) analyzes Durkheim’s“sociogenic” theory of the emotions, considers its shortcomings, and proposes a synthesis of it with the“psychoevolutionary” theory of Plutchik, which contains eight primary emotions. Theo Verheggen (p. 435), in considering the German origins of some of Durkheim’s thought, analyzes whether his concept of“representations” was influenced by the German concept of“Vorstellung,” especially as conceived by Schopenhauer in On the Will in Nature, and concludes that it was, and that Durkheim was more than a positivist. Kenneth L. Morrison (p. 473) next compares Durkheim and Weber in terms of investigative methods, and concludes that they had both largely antithetical investigative procedures and programmatic recommendations concerning sociological investigation. In the next article, Thomas Abel and William C. Cockerham (p. 489) analyze the English translation of Weber’s crucial term“lifestyle,” as well as“life conduct” and“life chances,” and claim that errors in translation have caused social scientists to overlook the depth of Weber’s thinking on the subject. Lawrence A. Scaff (p. 497) considers Weber’s analysis of the Russian revolutions, focusing on the problem of liberalism in the modern age, and determines that Weber believed that a liberal order was unlikely to emerge in Russia because of the relative absence of an inner-worldly ascetic foundation of culture that was present in Western culture. The next article, by Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri (p. 507), analyzes Weber’s theory of intercultural understanding in conjunction with Leo Strauss’s anti-social-scientific stance, and concludes that — while Weber’s theory cannot be heuristically classified with either the essentialist or relativistic positions — it could be expanded to include a universal theory for studying historically and geoculturally distant peoples. The next two articles analyze problems involving the terminology and conceptual levels of both classical and more recent sociological theory. Walter L. Wallace (p. 529) points out that Durkheim was among the theorists who insisted on the need for a collective standardization of terms in social science, and argues that standardized terminology is necessary for sociology to develop into a mature science. Harry H. Bash (p. 537) points out that Durkheimian theorists emphasize a“social whole” while others argue that the social whole does not obtain a superpersonal life beyond that of its individuals, and claims that this disagreement among sociologists about distinct“levels” of analysis is merely one among many that has resulted in a“scatter” of sociologies, which poses severe impediments to theoretical unification in the discipline. The anthology concludes with four articles that review recent books concerned with the theories of either Marx, Durkheim, or Weber. Lewis A. Coser (p. 566) reviews Democratic Individuality (by Alan Gilbert), which compares Marx’s“moral realism” to Weber’s“moral relativism,” and determines that Marx’s position was superior — a conclusion that Coser finds injudicious and polemical. Philip Smith and Jeffrey C. Alexander (p. 570) review a new translation of Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life (by Karen Fields), which they find superior to Swain’s 1915 translation, as they explain why The Elementary Forms has risen to canonical stature among social scientists over the past few decades. Kevin Anderson reviews Reinventing Marxism (by Howard Sherman), which argues for distinguishing Marx-the-intellectual from the uses made of Marx by the USSR, and decides that, overall, the analysis opens debate on a wide variety of key issues. Finally, Nicos Mouzelis (p. 582) reviews Solidarity and Schism:“The Problem of Disorder” in Durkheimian and Marxist Sociology (by David Lockwood), which compares Marxist and Durkheimian traditions regarding social order and disorder, and concludes that — despite some conceptual problems involving action, norms, power, and resources — the analysis displays uncommon analytical rigor and intellectual craftsmanship. Richard Altschuler Manhattan, January 1998 1 See, e.g., The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (NY: International Publishers); Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (eds. T. B. Bottomore and Maximillian Rubel. Baltimore: Penguin, 1964; orig. 1848); The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels. Baltimore: Penguin, 1969; orig. 1848); Capital (NY: International Publishers, 1967; orig. 1867). 2 See, e.g., The Division of Labor in Society (NY: Free Press, 1964; orig. 1893); The Rules of Sociological Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; orig. 1894); Suicide: A Study In Sociology (NY: Free Press, 1951; orig. 1897); The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (NY: Free Press, 1965; orig. 1915). 3 See, e.g., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930; orig. 1904); The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (ed. Talcott Parsons. NY: Free Press, 1964); The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949); From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (eds. H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills. NY: Oxford University Press, 1946). | Testimonials | How to Contact Us | | Gordian Knot Books | | Richard Altschuler & Associates | |