Modernist Project

1. Social World, not Divine
2. Can rationally reconstruct (Kant)
3. Science as the means (discover how the world works; remake it) (Hegel disagrees)
4. Progress; humans fashion own destiny
5. Freedom and control

German Ideology

Marx's theory of history:

• Men distinguish selves from animals by producing means of subsistence--that production and product defines the human
• Direct relationship between division of labor and forms of ownership
• Ruling class has material force and intellectual force
• Base and superstructure: When the base changes, a revolutionary class becomes the new ruling class that forms the superstructure
• Morality, religion, metaphysics, and all the rest of ideology depend on the development of the material production.
  

Focus of Ideologists

1. Hobbes-Locke-Human beings are self-interested
2. Kant-Human beings are rational
3. Hegel-Human beings are... (social beings? Individual in terms of their culture? Rational?)
4. Marx- Human beings are laborers, creators
5. Durkheim- Human Beings are social beings

Ex nihilo

Out of nothing (*Marx)

Base and superstructure

Base: The forces and relations of production.

Superstructures: Culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and state.

Alienated Labor

1. Objectification of the Product of Labor (object becomes a commodity; stands independent of us (even nature itself))
2. Externalization of Labor (from laborers themselves; stand apart from; forced labor)
3. Alienation from species-being (labor makes us the species we are--essence of humans taken away)
4. Alienation from other men (disconnect; atomism; cogs; competitors)

Class

Relation to means of production

Exchange value

is not identical to its price, but represents rather what (quantity of) other commodities it will exchange for, if traded

Use-value

the want-satisfying power of a good or service

Labor theory of value

Material + Labor

Surplus Value

the new value created by production which is claimed by enterprises as "generic gross profit."

Where do the bourgeoisie cut to compete?

1. Pay workers less--Pauperization of prolitariat
2. Increase new material/technology (more productivity)

Structuralist or Conflict Theory

1. Stratification: Human life is (1) heterogenous (class, race gender) and (2) hieracrchical (inequality)
2. Social relations are competitive (conflict at heart of relations and scarce resources)
3. Social action is driven be interests
4. Interests=Social position (One's interest is determined by social position in structure)
5. Power is determined be social position (means of production)
   
6. Social change driven by conflict
7. Macro focus (want an understanding of the basic sturcture of society)

Systemic/ Functionalist

1) Society exists independently (sui generis) (holism not atomism)

2) Socialization-collective conscience (sesame stree and homeless people) (individual made to worship society

3) Society has a logic-systematic-like human body

4) Specialization and interdependance(mechanical vs. organic solidarity)

5) Functionalism-things specialize and become interdependent-society functions

6) Everything considered in terms of the whole

7) Macro focus

Key words for Marx

• German Ideology
• Dialectical MATERIALISM
• mode of life
• divisoin of labor
• Ex nihilo
• create
• means of production
• class, class struggle
  
• cultural superstructure and economic base
• use-value, exchange-value, labor-value
• commodity (money is the pure form)
  
• species-being
• alienation
• fully human
• productivity
• pauperization
• ideology
• proletariat, bourgeoisie
• liberal reformer
• class consciousness
• private property
• 
  

Sui generis reality

Something is a reality in and of itself that cannot be reduced to subparts (atomism vs. holism)

Social Facts

Not individual--an objective reality external to individual. Not something everyone shares. Relative to society. Not social because they are general, they are general because they are social. Operates by CONSTRAINTS.

-rates

-norms

Collective effervescence

The emergence of a collective reality (crowds, riots). They are either (both?)

1)INSTITUIONALIZED

2)SPONTANEOUS

Religion to Durkheim

An institution created by society that serves to express and constitute the group. (What it means to be a member of the tribe means to hold an object sacred.) Society is like a God to its members. It is superior to the individual, a higher power, a less material force, but a MORAL force which automatically CAUSES or INHIBITS actions. Religion is idolatry. There is a separation of the sacred and profane

Crime

A violation of the collective conscience; and individualistic action and a sign of a healthy society.

Homo-duplex thesis

social (a drive tobe socialized)

asocial (a drive to be individual)

Mechanical solidarity

• Mostly direct bonding (normative) than indirect bonding (systematic defferentiation)
• simple division of labor (men vs. women)
• solidarity arises out of activities and moral force that sustains them
• mechanical: automatic, without thought, blindly following

Organic Solidarity

• Increased systemic differentiation, specialization (indirect bonding)
• increased interdependency
• increased collective conscience
• increased cultural pluralism by individualism

Suicide Chart

                  ___ Integration    |        Regulation  

                  |                      |                    |

Too Low          |     Egositic            |       Anomic        | 

                  |                       |                    |

Too high          |     Altruistic           |      Fatalistic

Durkheims goals with sociology

1. Wants to establish sociology as a science (separate and distinct from psychology--social facts)
2. Wants to show that sociology is useful (individual freedom is a good thing but only within a social framework)

Key words for Durkheim

• Religion
• Holism
• Sui generis reality
• social facts
• constraint
• rates
• nomrs
• secondary analysis
• impose
• coerce
• social phenomena (is not universal-general)
• anti: atomism, autonomy, self-determinism
• collective effervescence
• Sacred and profane
• collective conscience (never universal, general)
• crime
• moral social force
• perpetual disatisfaction
• homo-duplex thesis
• Social and asocial
• solidarity
• specialization
• interdependence
• organic and mechanical
  
• suicide
• idosyncratic
• regulation and integration
• deviation
• 
  

Mode of life

As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are coincied with production (WHAT and HOW)

MATERIAL CONDITIONS

Ontologies**

Marx: Historical Materialism

Durkheim: Holism

Natural Religion Law Science

• God-given ability to understand the nature of God and the world. REASON
• Natural law relies on religion
• Reason can help us see what is good (an order to things)
• evil-right or wrong determined by reason, the law doesn't determine right or wrong
• natural law theories on: homosexuality,sex outside of marriage

Positive Religion Law Science

• appeal to law-bible or constitution
• dominant way of thinking about science in social sciences
• science precedes from a given
• Science is the means to settling a debate
• relies on data, what's given, what's posited
• can build on past claims
• facts
• means of acquiring-method of discovering-standardized procedure
• Properties of the act of thinking itself (scientism) objectivism

Nomological Explanation

X ----> Y

synthetic statements: facts to be built upon, they make a cliam upon the world. Imcapable of verification, only verified by experience.

analytic statements: fully logical (not necessarily fully empirical) and thus contain within themselves validity. Link causation. Causal Mechanisms "water rises" "seeks its own"

positivism permits a logical connection between synthetic and analytic

Popper's method of Falsification

hypothetico-inductive

1) Scientific theories proposed hypothetically

2) Propositions deduced from theories

3) Propositions tested--every effort made to prove false

After surviving every attempt at refutation, can be seen as provisionally true, but is tentative forever.

1)Place for guesswork, intuition, hunches

2)Not detached, disinterested observer of nature (always takes place within the context of a theory) (done within a horizon of expectations and is therefore selective)

BUT LACK OF A CRUCIAL TEST- variables isolated and observed w/o outside influence

Critiques of Positivism

1. Problem of induction--need to have all samples and all diversifed conditions (an empirical critique-Hume)
2. Logical Fallacy of affirming the consequent

Positivism

Rational Empiricism

• Is and should be anti-metaphysical
  
• grounded in data and empirical facts: given, known, science, data=posit, method of observation (sceintism)
• step outside the world
• demands SKEPTICISM
• must be unbiased
• made universal by method
• goal=universal nomological knowledge

Nomological knowledge

Law-like; can be tested and proved; causality

Scientism

• belief as the only one proper method
• objectivism
• value free
• empiricism
• a split between theory and data
• priveleges epistemology over ontology

Verification positivism

1. Empirical Facts
2. Induction
3. Generlaization
4. Test and verify

Problem with induction

Not nomological--the vision of science is absolute certainty, ahistorical and universal