Sociological Perspectives

Sociological Perspectives Week 2 - Introduction: Sociology and Modernity Professor Nicholas Gane

Lectures and Seminars: Term 1 • Lecturers: Nicholas Gane (n.gane@warwick.ac.uk) Goldie Osuri (G.Osuri@warwick.ac.uk) Maria do Mar Pereira (M.D.M.Pereira@warwick.ac.uk) • Seminar Tutors: Nicholas Gane, Goldie Osuri Daniel Fairbrother (D.J.Fairbrother@warwick.ac.uk) Ruth Pearce (Ruth.Pearce@warwick.ac.uk) Sam Burgum (samburgum@live.co.uk)

Term One Outline • Week 3: Capitalism and Class: Karl Marx • Week 4: Capitalism and religion: Max Weber • Week 5: The Division of Labour: Emile Durkheim • Week 6: Nations and Nationalism (GO) • Week 7: Race, Biopower and Modernity (GO) • Week 8: Contemporary Politics: Biopower, Sexuality and Surveillance (GO) • Week 9: Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology (MdMP) • Week 10: Goffman on Stigma (MdMP)

Assessments • Deadline for Formative Assessment Week 5. To be handed in to your seminar tutor in class. Questions can be found online in the module handbook • Deadlines for Summative Assessment Essay 1 (25%): Tuesday 26th November, 2013, by 2pm Group Podcast (10%): Tuesday 28th January 2014, by 2pm Essay 2 (25%): Tuesday 29th April 2014, by 2pm 2 hour unseen exam (40%): May/June 2014

This week. Introduction: Sociology and Modernity • Modernization generally refers to changes in society and culture that took place in the West from 1750 onwards. • What are these changes? • How is sociology a product of ‘modernity’ and at the same time critical of many of the outcomes of modernization?

Modernization • Enlightenment and secularisation – a new belief in progress through knowledge/science (as opposed to traditional/religious beliefs) • Bhambra: ‘the movement of the Enlightenment challenged the Church's claim to knowledge and contributed to the undermining of the authority of theology as the primary source of explanation’ (p.35)

Modernization (cont’d) • Urbanization – the birth of the modern city + a shift away from agrarian society • Industrialization – the birth of the factory system and the expansion of the capitalist marketplace: Even though people were still subject to the economic system in general, the introduction of industry was believed to generate degrees of social freedom that had previously not been possible’ (Bhambra, p.43). • The birth of modern individual rights especially following the French Revolution in 1789: new individual freedoms

‘Modernity’ • Modernity is characterised by a belief in ‘progress’: confidence that things are generally going in the right direction • The idea, for example, that ‘more’ can only be better – supposed increased wealth for everyone • Modernization both of institutions (social/political) and ideas and beliefs (cultural) • An enlightenment ideal of the mastery of nature through technical means – science can give us the answers • Sociology is a discipline born out of modernity while to some extent against it

Sociology • A complex etymology: Latin and Greek • socius (sharing/associated)+ logos (theory) • The term was developed by Auguste Comte (1794-1859) in the 1830s • An aspiration for sociology to be a science – ‘the science of society’ (Bhambra, p.47) • the key term here is positivism • Comte, in particular, was interested in developing sociology as a form of social physics – a concern for social statics and social dynamics

Karl Marx • Marx lived from 1818-83. • Primarily a political thinker but his work has been of enormous sociological significance (as we shall see next week) • Main reason is his theory of social class – a primary social division that arises from the private ownership of property • An enlightenment belief in progress • An argument for necessary laws of societal development: a kind of science

Sociology in France • Sociology as a discipline emerged in the late-19th Century • Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) founded the first European department of sociology at Bordeaux in 1895 • Durkheim like Comte believe sociology should be a science but drew his inspiration from biology rather than physics • Sociology the study of ‘social facts’ • He analyses forms of social solidarity that are characteristic of modern, industrial societies

Sociology in Germany • Key figure: Max Weber (1864-1920). • Trained in law and appointed as a Professor of Political Economy at Freiburg in 1895 (interesting relationship of sociology to other disciplines such as politics and economics) • Central figure in formulating a different type of sociology in German at the turn of the 20th Century • Stood against positivism and for interpretive sociology: against sociological laws

Sociology as a critical project • Sociology was a product of modernity, but was also critical of many aspects of modernization • Marx: who benefits from capitalist modernity? Class struggle, commodification, exploitation, alienation... • Durkheim: abnormal forms of the division of labour’ - anomie... • Weber: increased scientific knowledge of world gives rise to new forms of power and control: rationalization, bureaucracy...

The ambivalence of modernity • Modernity might be said to be ambivalent. Contemporary sociology has reminded us that modernity has a dark side • Stuart Hall: ‘The pollution of the environment and wastage of the earth's resources turns out to be the reverse side of 'development'. As many recent writers have noted, the Holocaust, which ravaged European Jewry, was perpetrated by a society which regarded itself as the summit of civilization and culture...

Stuart Hall • Hall (cont’d): ‘The troubled thought surfaces that modernity's triumphs and successes are rooted, not simply in progress and enlightenment, but also in violence, oppression and exclusion, in the archaic, the violent, the untransformed, the repressed aspects of social life’ (p.16). • Through the 20th Century and beyond, the confidence previously placed in modernization is placed into question (see for example Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society)

Limits of classical sociology • There are clearly limits to the critical project of the classical tradition. Is this tradition also part of the problem? • For example: the declaration of the ‘rights of man’, which accompanied the French Revolution • Classical sociology was right to point out that individual rights offered freedoms but also contained dangers • But barely questioned who these rights were for: women, colonial populations? An ‘intrinsic Eurocentrism’ (Bhambra, p.44)?

This module • There are gaps in classical sociological theory that became apparent through the course of the 20th Century and which we will address through the course of this module • For example, there are questions concerning the ‘scientific’ basis of sociology – a question of epistemology and method. At what scale should the discipline seek to study the social (the micro-/the global)? One answer –interactionism and Goffman... • Plus questions of race, racism, nationalism, sexuality, biopower... • How relevant is classical theory today?

Sociological Perspectives