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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
This revised edition of this extremely popular introduction to social theory has been carefully and thoroughly updated with the latest developments in this continually changing field. Written in a refreshingly lucid and engaging style, Introducing Social Theory provides readers with a wide-ranging, well organized and thematic introduction to all the major thinkers, issues and debates in classical and contemporary social theory. Introducing Social Theory traces the development of social theorizing from the classical ideas about modernity of Durkheim, Marx and Weber, right up to a uniquely accessible review of contemporary theoretical controversies in sociology surrounding postcolonialism, gender and feminist theories, and public sociology. Introducing Social Theory is the ideal textbook for students at all levels taking courses in sociology, from A-level students to undergraduates, who are looking to engage with social theory. Remarkably easy to follow and understand, the new edition lives up to its predecessors' goal that students need never be intimidated by social theory again.
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Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
1. An Introduction to Sociological Theories
Introduction
Society as a structure of rules
Structural-consensus theory
Society as a structure of inequality
Structural-conflict theory
Society as the creation of its members
Action theory
Modernity
Modernism and sociology
Mapping modernity
Further reading
2. Marx and Marxism
Introduction
Philosophical interpretations of social change
Marx and historical materialism
The superstructure
The contradictions of capitalist economies
Marxism after Marx
Gramsci
The Frankfurt School of critical theory
Marxism in contemporary society
Conclusion
Further reading
3. Max Weber
Introduction
Social action theory
Types of action
Types of inequality
Types of power
Ideal types and sociological theorizing
Religion, capitalism and rationalization
Bureaucracy and rationalization
Rationalization after Weber
Further reading
4. Emile Durkheim
Introduction
A science of society
Social structure
The laws of society
Functionalism
Religion and society
The politics of sociological knowledge
Parsons’ functionalist sociology
Further reading
5. Interpretive Sociology: Action Theories
Introduction
Symbolic interactionism
Labelling theory
Ethnomethodology
Pragmatism
Language and social life
Further reading
6. Language, Discourse and Power in Modernity: Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault
Introduction
Habermas and modernity
Habermas and communicative rationality
Foucault, structuralism and discourse theory
Foucault and post-structuralism
Discourse theory
Discourses and modernity
Bio-medicine
Body-centredness in modernity
Self-surveillance
Governmentality
Foucauldian theory and the project of modernity
Foucault and feminism
Governmentality and agency
Postmodernism
Intellectuals and political debate
Further reading
7. Social Structures and Social Action
Introduction
Bourdieu’s genetic structuralism
Science, language and interpretation
Critical realism
Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory
Pragmatist criticisms of foundational theories
Conclusion
Further reading
8. Feminist and Gender Theories
Introduction
Feminist theories and Women’s Liberation
Anti-essentialism
Feminist modernity
Gender relationships and power
Theory and politics
Post-structuralism and the politics of gender
Further reading
9. Sociology and Its Publics
Globalization
Cosmopolitanism and its critics
Parochial or provincialized sociology?
Further reading
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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In memory of Heather Townsend
INTRODUCING SOCIAL THEORY
Third Edition
PIP JONES AND LIZ BRADBURY
Contributions by Shaun Le Boutillier
polity
Copyright © Pip Jones and Liz Bradbury 2018
The right of Pip Jones and Liz Bradbury to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition first published in 2003 by Polity PressSecond edition first published in 2011 by Polity PressThis third edition first published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station Landing, Suite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0508-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Liz would particularly like to thank our editor, Jonathan Skerrett, for his patience and encouragement, and Helen Gray for her thorough and elegant copy-editing. We would both like to thank Shaun Le Boutillier for allowing his work from the second edition to appear here; the anonymous readers whose comments were particularly helpful in shaping this edition of the book; our colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University, particularly Daniel Smith and James Rosbrook-Thompson, and our students, past and present, for giving us the chance to discuss and develop our ideas with them. Thanks also to Jan Haynes and Helen Grantham for helping prepare early drafts, and also to Cammie Townsend for reading through later drafts. Liz would like to thank Jane McCann, Clare Bacchus, Jamie Le Boutillier and her parents, for their respective but not mutually exclusive supplies of wisdom, friendship, bad jokes, chocolate and a modicum of affection.
1AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES
Introduction
Humans are social beings. Whether we like it or not, nearly everything we do in our lives takes place in the company of others. Few of our activities are truly solitary and scarce are the times when we are really alone. Thus the study of how we are able to interact with one another, and what happens when we do, would seem to be one of the most fundamental concerns of anyone interested in human life. Yet strangely enough, it was not until relatively recently – from about the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards – that a specialist interest in this intrinsically social aspect of human existence was treated with any seriousness in Europe. Here, before that time, and even since, other kinds of interests have dominated the analysis of human life. Two of the most resilient, non-social approaches to human behaviour have been ‘naturalistic’* (see Glossary naturalism (1)) and ‘individualistic’ explanations.
Rather than seeing social behaviour as the product of interaction, these theories have concentrated on the presumed qualities inherent in individuals. On the one hand, naturalistic explanations suppose that all human behaviour – social interaction included – is a product of the inherited dispositions we possess as animals. We are, like animals, biologically programmed by nature. On the other hand, individualistic explanations baulk at such grand generalizations about the predictability of behaviour. From this point of view we are all ‘individual’ and ‘different’. Explanations of human behaviour must therefore always rest ultimately on the particular and unique psychological qualities of individuals. Sociological theories are in direct contrast to both of these ‘non-social’ approaches. Looking a little closer at them, and discovering how they might be incomplete, makes it easier to understand what sociological theories can offer.
Naturalistic theories
Naturalistic explanations of human activity are common enough. For example, in societies of the global North it is often argued that it is only natural for a man and a woman to fall in love, get married and have children. It is equally natural for this nuclear family to live as a unit on their own, with the husband going out to work to earn resources for his dependants, while his wife, at least for the early years of her children’s lives, devotes herself to looking after them – to being a mother. As they grow up and acquire more independence, it is still only ‘natural’ for the children to live at home with their parents, who are responsible for them, at least until their late teens. By then it is only natural for them to want to ‘leave the nest’, to start to ‘make their own way in the world’ and, in particular, to look for marriage partners. Thus they, too, can start families of their own.
The corollary of these ‘natural’ practices is that it is somehow unnatural not to want to get married, or to marry for reasons other than love. It is equally unnatural for a couple not to comprise a man and a woman, or not to want to have children, or for wives not to want to be mothers, or for mothers not to want to devote their lives exclusively to child-rearing. Though it is not right or natural for children to leave home much younger than eighteen, it is certainly not natural for them not to want to leave home at all in order to start a family of their own. However, these ‘unnatural’ desires and practices are common enough in these societies. There are plenty of homosexual couples and people who prefer to stay single, or ‘marry with an eye on the main chance’. There are plenty of women who do not like the idea of motherhood, and there is certainly any number of women who do not want to spend their lives solely as wives and mothers. Likewise, there are plenty of children who want to leave home long before they are eighteen, while there are also many who are quite happy to stay as members of their parents’ households until long after that age.
Why is this? If human behaviour is, in fact, the product of a disposition inherent in the nature of the human being then why are such deviations from what is ‘natural’ so common? We can hardly put the widespread existence of such ‘unnatural’ patterns of behaviour down to some kind of large-scale, faulty genetic programming. In any case, why are there so many variations from these notions of ‘normal’ family practices in other kinds of human societies? History provides us with stark contrasts in family life. In his book on family life in medieval Europe, Centuries of Childhood (1973), Philippe Ariès paints a picture of marriage, the family and child-rearing which sharply contradicts our notions of normality. Families were not then, as they are for us today, private and isolated units, cut off socially, and physically separated from the world at large. Families were deeply embedded in the community, with people living essentially public, rather than private, lives. They lived in households whose composition was constantly shifting: relatives, friends, children, visitors, passers-by and animals all slept under the same roof. Marriage was primarily a means of forging alliances rather than simply the outcome of ‘love’, while women certainly did not look upon mothering as their sole destiny. Indeed, child-rearing was a far less demanding and onerous task than it is in our world. Children were not cosseted to anywhere near the extent we now consider ‘right’. Many more people – both other relatives and the community at large – were involved in child-rearing, and childhood lasted a far shorter time than it does today. As Ariès puts it, ‘as soon as he [sic] had been weaned, or soon after, the child became the natural companion of the adult’ (Ariès 1973). Later in Europe, marriage was regarded as primarily an alliance between families rather than an expression of a bond between two individuals. A ‘good’ marriage was judged primarily in terms of its bringing prosperity to those involved, by increasing their land or other sources of wealth. Practices which associate marrying with being in love and remaining married only for as long as both remain in love are very recent.
Clearly, then, to hope to explain human life simply by reference to natural impulses common to all is to ignore the one crucial fact that sociology directs our attention to: human behaviour varies according to the social settings in which people find themselves.
Individualistic theories
What of individualistic explanations? How useful is the argument that behaviour is the product of the psychological make-up of individuals? The employment of this kind of theory is extremely common. For example, success or failure in education is often assumed to be merely a reflection of intelligence: bright children succeed and dim children fail. Criminals are often taken to be people with certain kinds of personality: they are usually seen as morally deficient individuals, lacking any real sense of right or wrong. Unemployed people are equally often condemned as ‘work-shy’, ‘lazy’ or ‘scroungers’ – inadequate individuals who would rather ‘get something for nothing’ than work for it. Suicide is seen as the act of an unstable person – an act undertaken when, as coroners put it, ‘the balance of the mind was disturbed’. This kind of explanation is attractive for many people and has proved particularly resilient in the face of sociological critique. But a closer look shows it to be seriously flawed.
If educational achievement is simply a reflection of intelligence then why does research in British society show that children from manual workers’ homes do better when schools are well-funded and equipped than when they are not? Achievement in education must in some way be influenced by the characteristics of a child’s environment.
Equally, the fact that the majority of people convicted of a crime come from certain social categories must cast serious doubt on the ‘deficient personality’ theory. British and North American crime figures show that the conviction rate is highest for young males, especially blacks, who come from manual, working-class or unemployed backgrounds. Can we seriously believe that criminal personalities are likely to be concentrated in such social categories? As in the case of educational achievement, it is clear that the conviction of criminals must somehow be influenced by social factors.
Again, is it likely that millions of unemployed people are typically uninterested in working when the vast majority of them have been forced out of their jobs, either by ‘downsizing’ or by the failure of the companies they worked for – as a result of social forces quite outside their control?
Suicide would seem to have the strongest case for being explained as a purely psychological act. But if it is simply a question of ‘an unsound mind’, then why does the rate of suicide vary between societies? Why does it vary between different groups within the same society? Also, why do the rates within groups and societies remain remarkably constant over time? As in other examples, social factors must be exerting some kind of influence; explanations at the level of the personality are clearly not enough.
Variations such as these demonstrate the inadequacy of theories of human behaviour which exclusively emphasize innate natural drives, or the unique psychological make-up of individuals. If nature is at the root of behaviour, why does it vary according to social settings? If we are all different individuals acting according to the dictates of unique psychological influences, why do different people in the same social circumstances behave similarly and in ways others can understand? Clearly there is a social dimension to human existence, which requires sociological theorizing to explain it.
All sociological theories thus have in common an emphasis on the way human belief and action is the product of social influences. They differ as to what these influences are, and how they should be investigated and explained. This book is about these differences and also about what these differences tell us about the doing of social theory.
A useful way to begin is to examine three distinct kinds of theory – consensus, conflict and action theories – each of which highlights specific social sources of human behaviour. Though none of the sociologists whose work we will spend the rest of the book examining falls neatly into any one of these three categories, discussing them now will produce two benefits:
it will serve as an accessible introduction to theoretical debates in sociology
and
it will act as a useful reference point against which to judge and compare the work of the subject’s major theorists and to understand debates about the future pathways of sociological inquiry.
Society as a structure of rules
The influence of culture on behaviour
Imagine you live in a big city. How many people do you know well? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? Now consider how many other people you encounter each day, about whom you know nothing. For example, how many complete strangers do people living in London or Calcutta or New York come into contact with each day? On the street, in shops, on buses and trains, in cinemas or theatres – everyday life in a big city is a constant encounter with complete strangers. Yet even if city-dwellers bothered to reflect on this fact, they would not normally leave their homes quaking with dread about how all these hundreds of strangers might behave towards them. Indeed, they hardly, if ever, think about it. Why? Why do we take our ability to cope with strangers so much for granted? It is because nearly all the people we encounter in our everyday lives do behave in ways we expect. We expect bus passengers, shoppers, taxi-drivers, passers-by and so on to behave in quite definite ways, even though we know nothing about them personally. City-dwellers in particular – though it is true of all of us to some extent – routinely enter settings where others are going about their business, both expecting not to know them and yet also expecting to know how they will behave. And, more than this, we are nearly always absolutely right in both respects. We are only surprised if we encounter someone who is not a stranger – ‘Fancy meeting you here! Isn’t it a small world!’ – or if one of these strangers actually does behave strangely – ‘Mummy, why is that man shouting and waving his arms about?’ Why is this? Why do others do what we expect of them? Why is disorder or the unexpected among strangers so rare?
Structural-consensus theory
One of the traditional ways in which sociologists explain the order and predictability of social life is by regarding human behaviour as learned behaviour. This approach is known – for reasons that will become apparent – as structural-consensus theory. The key process this theory emphasizes is called socialization. This term refers to the way in which human beings learn the kinds of behaviour expected of them in the social settings in which they find themselves. From this point of view, societies differ because the kinds of behaviour considered appropriate within them differ. People in other societies think and behave differently because they have learned different rules about how to behave and think. The same goes for different groups within the same society. The actions and ideas of one group differ from those of another because its members have been socialized into different rules.
Consensus sociologists use the term culture to describe the rules that govern thought and behaviour in a society. Culture exists prior to the people who learn it. At birth, humans are confronted by a social world already in existence. Joining this world involves learning ‘how things are done’ in it. Only by learning the cultural rules of a society can a human interact with other humans. Because they have been similarly socialized, different individuals will behave similarly.
Consensus theory thus argues that a society’s cultural rules determine, or structure, the behaviour of its members, channelling their actions in certain ways rather than others. They do so in much the same way that the physical construction of a building structures the actions of the people inside it. Take the behaviour of students in a school. Once inside the school they will display quite regular patterns of behaviour. They will all walk along corridors, up and down stairs, in and out of classrooms, through doors and so on. They will, by and large, not attempt to dig through floors, smash through walls or climb out of windows. Their physical movements are constrained by the school building. Since this affects all the students similarly, their behaviour inside the school will be similar – and will exhibit quite definite patterns. In consensus theory, the same is true of social life. Individuals will behave similarly in the same social settings because they are equally constrained by cultural rules. Though these social structures are not visible in the way physical structures are, those who are socialized into their rules find them comparably determining.
The levels at which these cultural rules operate can vary. Some rules, like laws for instance, operate at the level of the whole society and structure the behaviour of everyone who lives in it. Others are much less general, structuring the behaviour of people in quite specific social settings. For example, children in a classroom are expected to behave in an orderly and attentive fashion. In the playground much more licence is given them, while away from school their behaviour often bears little resemblance to that expected of them during school hours. Similarly, when police officers or nurses or members of the armed forces are ‘on duty’, certain cultural rules structure their behaviour very rigidly. Out of uniform and off duty these constraints do not apply, though other ones do instead – those governing their behaviour as siblings, friends or parents, for instance.
This shows how the theory of a social structure of cultural rules operates. The rules apply not to the individuals themselves, but to the positions in the social structure they occupy. Shoppers, police officers, schoolteachers or pupils are constrained by the cultural expectations attached to these positions, but only when they occupy them. In other circumstances, in other locations in the social structure – as fathers or mothers, squash players, sporting spectators, members of religious groups and so on – other rules come into play.
Sociologists call positions in a social structure roles. The rules that structure the behaviour of their occupants are called norms. There are some cultural rules that are not attached to any particular role or set of roles. Called values, these are in a sense summaries of approved ways of living, and act as a base from which particular norms spring. So, for example: ‘education should be the key to success’; ‘family relationships should be the most important thing to protect’; ‘self-help should be the means to individual fulfilment’. All these are values, and they provide general principles from which norms directing behaviour in schools and colleges, in the home and at work, are derived.
According to this sociological theory, socialization into norms and values produces agreement, or consensus, between people about appropriate behaviour and beliefs without which no human society can survive. This is why it is called structural-consensus theory. Through socialization, cultural rules structure behaviour, guarantee a consensus about expected behaviour and thereby ensure social order.
Clearly, in a complex society there are sometimes going to be competing norms and values. For example, while some people think it is wrong for mothers to go out to work, many women see motherhood at best as a real imposition and at worst as an infringement of their liberty. Children often encourage each other to misbehave at school and disapprove of their peers who refuse to do so. Teachers usually see this very much the other way round! The American Republican Party will invariably be strident in its condemnation of any speaker who criticizes the police. Most members of criminal gangs will be equally furious with any of their number displaying anything other than a strongly belligerent attitude towards the police.
Consensus theorists explain such differences in behaviour and attitude in terms of the existence of alternative cultural influences, characteristic of different social settings. A good example of this emphasis is their approach to educational inequality.
Educational inequality: a consensus theory analysis
Educational research within European societies demonstrates, in the most conclusive fashion, that achievement in education is strongly linked to class membership, gender and ethnic origin. There is overwhelming evidence, for example, that British working-class children of similar intelligence to children from middle-class backgrounds achieve far less academically than their middle-class counterparts.
To explain this, consensus theorists turn to stock concepts in their approach to social life – norms, values, socialization and culture. Starting from the basic assumption that behaviour and belief are caused by socialization into particular rules, their explanation of working-class underachievement in education seeks to identify:
the cultural influences which propel middle-class children to academic success
the cultural influences which drag working-class children down to mediocrity.
The argument usually goes something like this. The upbringing of middle-class children involves socialization into norms and values that are ideal for educational achievement. Because of their own educational experiences, middle-class parents are likely to be very knowledgeable about how education works and how to make the most of it. Further, they are likely to be very keen for their children to make a success of their own education. These children will thus grow up in a social setting where educational achievement is valued and where they will be constantly encouraged and assisted to fulfil their academic potential.
In contrast, the home background of working-class children often lacks such advantageous socialization. Working-class parents are more likely to have had limited, and possibly unhappy, experiences of education. Even if they are keen for their children to achieve educational success, they will almost certainly lack the know-how of the middle-class parent to make this happen. Indeed, sometimes they may actively disapprove of academic attainment; for instance, they may simply distrust what they do not know. As a result, their children may well be taught instead to value the more immediate and practical advantages of leaving school as soon as possible and finding a ‘proper’ job.
Consensus theory: conclusion
Here is a clear example of the application of consensus theory to the facts of social life. From this theoretical point of view, different patterns of behaviour are the product of different patterns of socialization. It might seem that this contradicts the commitment of these theorists to the idea that social order in a society is the outcome of an agreement or a consensus among its members about how to behave and what to think. But consensus theorists say that despite differences of culture between different groups, even despite opposing sub-cultures within the overall culture, in all societies an overall consensus prevails. This is because all societies have certain values about the importance of which there is no dispute. They are called either central values or core values, and socialization ensures everyone conforms to them.
In Victorian Britain two central values were a commitment to Christian morality and loyalty to the Queen and the British Empire. Today, examples of central values in a capitalist society might include the importance of economic growth, the importance of democratic institutions, the importance of the rule of law, and the importance of the freedom of the individual within the law. (Indeed, anything trotted out as ‘basic to our country’s way of life’ at any particular time is usually a central value in a society.)
For consensus theory then, central values are the backbone of social structures, built and sustained by the process of socialization. Social behaviour and social order are determined by external cultural forces. Social life is possible because of the existence of social structures of cultural rules.
Society as a structure of inequality
The influence of advantages and disadvantages on behaviour
Other sociologists argue a rather different theoretical case. They agree that society determines our behaviour by structuring or constraining it. But they each emphasize different structural constraints. For them, the most important influence on social life is the distribution of advantage and its impact on behaviour. Where advantages or ‘life chances’ are unequally distributed, the opportunities of the advantaged to choose how to behave are much greater than those of the disadvantaged.
Educational inequality: an alternative analysis
While it is perfectly feasible for two boys of the same intelligence to be equally keen to fulfil their potential in education and to be equally encouraged by their parents, their culturally instilled enthusiasm cannot, by itself, tell us everything about their potential educational successes or failures. If one boy comes from a wealthy home, while the other is from a much poorer one, this will be far more significant for their education than their similar (learned) desire. Clearly, the unequal distribution of advantage – in this case material resources – will assist the privileged boy and hamper the disadvantaged one.
The advantaged boy’s parents can buy a private education, while those of the poorer boy cannot. The advantaged boy can be assured of living in a substantial enough house, with sufficient space to study, whereas the disadvantaged boy may have to make do with shared space in a noisy bedroom shared with his brothers and sisters. The advantaged boy can rely on a proper diet and resulting good health, whereas the disadvantaged boy cannot. The advantaged boy can be guaranteed access to the equipment he needs to study, whereas the disadvantaged boy cannot. Probably most importantly, the advantaged boy will be able to continue his education up to the limit of his potential unhindered. Those who are less advantaged are more likely to leave school early and find themselves confined to looking for employment that is low-skilled, poorly paid and insecure.
Structural-conflict theory
One primary objection some sociologists have to structural-consensus theory is that where societies are unequal, people are not only constrained by the norms and values they have learned via socialization. Such theorists argue that it has to be recognized that people are also constrained by the life-chances they possess – by their position in the structures of inequality within their society. This emphasis on the effects on behaviour of an unequal distribution of advantage in a society is usually associated with structural-conflict theory. Why are such theories called conflict theories?
The kinds of inequality structures in a society vary. Ethnic groups can be unequal, young and old can be unequal, men and women can be unequal, people doing different jobs can be unequal, people of different religious beliefs can be unequal, and so on. The kinds of advantages unequally possessed by such groups can vary too. Different groups can possess unequal amounts of power, authority, prestige or wealth, or a combination of these and other advantages.
Apart from the different kinds of inequality that conflict theories focus on, and the different kinds of advantages they see as unequally distributed, such theories still have in common the axiom that the origin and persistence of a structure of inequality lies in the domination of its disadvantaged groups by its advantaged ones. Conflict theories are so-called because, for them, inherent in an unequal society is an inevitable conflict of interests between its ‘haves’ and its ‘havenots’. As Tony Giddens and Philip Sutton put it:
The quest for power and wealth, attempts to gain status, and social inequalities lead to the formation of distinct social groups with shared interests and identities that pursue those interests against others. Conflict theory therefore sees the potential for strife as always present. (Giddens and Sutton 2017: 201)
So conflict theory differs from consensus theory not only because it is interested in the way an unequal distribution of advantage in a society structures behaviour, but also because it is interested in the conflict, not the consensus, inherent in such a society. According to conflict theory, there is a conflict of interest between a society’s advantaged and disadvantaged, which is inherent in their relationship.
However, there is another objection to consensus theory. Conflict theorists not only accuse consensus theorists of putting too much emphasis on norms and values as determinants of behaviour at the expense of other influences; they also argue that consensus theory misunderstands and therefore misinterprets the role of its key concern – socialization into culture.
Ideas as instruments of power
Consensus theory argues that people behave as they do because they have been socialized into cultural rules. The outcome is a consensus about how to think and behave, which manifests itself in patterns and regularities of behaviour. In contrast, conflict theorists argue that we should see the role of cultural rules and the process of socialization in a very different light. For them, the real structural determinants of behaviour are the rewards and advantages possessed unequally by different groups in a society. Other things being equal, those most disadvantaged would not put up with such a state of affairs. Normally, however, other things are not equal. Where a society is unequal, the only way it can survive is if those who are disadvantaged in it come to accept their deprivation. Sometimes this involves naked coercion. Plenty of unequal societies survive because their rulers maintain repressive regimes based on terror. However, the exercise of the force necessary to maintain unequal advantage need not take such an obvious or naked form. There are two other related ways in which such a structure of inequality can survive – and with a surer future than by the naked use of force. First, it can do so if those most disadvantaged by that structure can somehow be prevented from seeing themselves as underprivileged, or, second, even if this is recognized, it can do so if they can be persuaded that this is fair enough – that the inequality is rightful, legitimate and just. According to the conflict view, the way this happens is through the control and manipulation of the norms and values – the cultural rules – into which people are socialized. In effect then, for conflict theorists, far from being the means to social order via consensus, socialization is much more likely to be an instrument of power – producing social order by means of force and domination.
Imagine the following scenario. It is early morning and a group of agricultural labourers, both men and women, are waiting by a roadside for a bus to arrive to drive them to work. Suddenly two vans draw up and four hooded men jump out. At gunpoint they order the labourers into the backs of the vans, which then race away deep into the surrounding countryside. At nightfall they are abandoned and the labourers transferred into a large covered lorry. This is driven through the night, deep into the mountains. Before daybreak it reaches its destination – a huge underground mine, built deep into the heart of a mountain. Here the labourers are horrified to find a vast army of slaves toiling away, under constant surveillance by brutal guards. After being given a meagre meal, the labourers are forced to join this workforce.
As they live out their desperate lives within this mountain world, some of the slaves try to escape. When caught they are publicly punished as a deterrent to others. Two attempts to escape result in public execution. As the labourers get older, they rely on each other for companionship, and on their memories for comfort. They keep sane by recounting stories of their former lives. In the fullness of time, children are born to them. The parents are careful to tell these children all about their past. As the children grow up and have children of their own, they too are told tales of their grandparents’ land of lost content. But for them these are handed-down, historical stories, not tales based on experience. As the years go by, though the facts of life within the mountain remain the same, the perception of life in it by the participants alters. By the time five or six generations of slaves have been born, their knowledge of the world of their ancestors’ past lives has become considerably diminished. It is still talked about sometimes but is now a misted world of folklore and myth. All they know from experience is slavery. So far as any of them can remember, they have always been slaves. In their world, slavery is ‘normal’. In effect, to be a slave means something very different to them from what it meant to their ancestors.
A similar process occurs with the oppressors. As the slaves’ view of themselves has altered over time, so the necessity for naked force has become less and less. As, through socialization, their subordinates have begun to acquiesce in their own subordination, the guards no longer brandish guns and clubs. Because of this, they no longer see themselves as the original guards did. Both the dominant and the subordinate, knowing nothing else, have, through socialization, come to see the inequality in their world in a very different light from the original inhabitants.
Though this story is rather larger-than-life, it does allow us to see the role of socialization into cultural rules as conflict theorists see it. Their argument is that we must be careful not to dismiss the presence of conflict in societies just because a consensus seems to prevail. Naked force is only necessary so long as people see themselves as oppressed. If they can be persuaded that they are not oppressed, or if they fail to see that they are, then they can be unwitting architects in the design of their own subordination (a process Pierre Bourdieu (1998) calls ‘symbolic violence’). The easiest way for the dominant to exercise power, and maintain their advantage as a result, is if the dominated are complicit in their own subordination.
Conflict theorists tell us, therefore, that rather than simply describe cultural rules in a society, we must carefully examine their content. We must ask: ‘Who benefits from the particular set of rules prevailing in this society, rather than some other set?’ Cultural rules cannot be neutral or all-benevolent. Of course, consensus theorists are right to say that people are socialized into pre-existing norms and values. But for conflict theorists this tells us only half the story. We must also find out whether some groups benefit more than others from the existence of a particular set of rules and have a greater say in their construction and interpretation. If they do, then the process of socialization into these is an instrument of their advantage – it is an instrument of their power.
Ideas exercising power: the example of gender inequality legitimation
Even a cursory glance at the kinds of occupations held by women in British society and the kinds of rewards they receive for doing them clearly indicates the advantages men have over women in this society. Of course, Britain currently has a female prime minister, senior female civil servants, MPs, judges and university vice-chancellors, as well an increasing number of women in leading positions in business. But this cannot hide the fact that there is still markedly unequal occupational opportunity, and unequal economic reward, based on gender. The facts are that males dominate the best-rewarded and most prestigious occupations and still receive greater rewards when they perform the same jobs as women.
Clearly, there is a considerable potential conflict of interests between men and women here. It is in men’s interests for women not to compete in large numbers for the limited number of highly rewarded jobs. It is in men’s interests for women to stay at home and provide domestic services for them. If women were to want something different, this would conflict with the desires, interests and ambitions of men.
So why is it that more women do not object to this state of affairs? If women are as systematically deprived of occupational opportunities and rewards by men as this, why do so many of them appear to acquiesce in their deprivation? For example, why are some of the fiercest critics of the feminist movement women? Why do so many women choose to take part-time, relatively poorly paid work so as to be able to take responsibility for the (unpaid) household work for the benefit of their husbands and children? Why do they not wish to explore their potential in other activities more thoroughly?
Many feminists will argue that a substantial part of the answers to these questions is that women have been socialized into accepting this definition of themselves. For conflict theorists, this is a clear example of particular norms and values working in the interests of one section of society and against another. Through the ideas they have learned, women have been forced to accept a role that is subordinate to men.
There is one final question to be asked about this theoretical approach. How does the exercise of force by means of socialization into particular ideas happen? Conflict theorists say it can be intentional or unintentional. The rulers of many societies in the world today deliberately employ propaganda to persuade the ruled of the legitimacy of this arrangement. They also often control and censor social and mass media in their countries, to ensure lack of opposition to this controlled socialization. The exercise of this kind of force can be less deliberate too. Take our example of the inequality between men and women in British society. To what extent does the image of women presented in advertising promote an acceptance of this inequality? Marketing strategies to make specific products appear desirable often deploy images of women but, as more recent research shows, a major source of revenue is now seen to lie in packaging idealized images of women’s bodies directly to women. Whether in ‘infommercials’ or overt promotion of cosmetic enhancements, conflict theorists argue that the ideal body image is that which emphasizes sexual attractiveness by appealing to a male gaze as a sexually desirable object.
Such advertising socializes both men and women, of course. The outcome is a stereotypical view of womanhood and of the place of women in society, a view Raewyn Connell summarizes as that of ‘emphasized femininity’ (Connell 1987), which is embraced not only by a significant number of those whom it disadvantages, but also by those who benefit from it. There is a consensus about such things. However, it is not the kind of consensus portrayed by the consensus theorist. It is a consensus that is managed by those who believe they benefit from the subordinate position of women in society, and one that is intended to make it harder for those who do not benefit from successfully opposing the status quo.
Conflict theory: conclusion
There are a number of sociological theories that can be called structuralconflict theories, in that they are based on two main premises:
social structures consist of unequally advantaged groups; the interests of these groups are in conflict, since inequality results from the domination and exploitation of the disadvantaged groups by the advantaged ones
social order in such societies is maintained by force – either by actual force, or by force exercised through socialization.
Consensus theory versus conflict theory
Structural-consensus theory and structural-conflict theory emphasize different kinds of influences on thought and behaviour. Though both theories see the origin of human social life in structural influences or determinants of society external to the individual, they disagree about what this outside society consists of. Consensus theory emphasizes the primacy of the influence of culture – what we learn to want as a result of socialization. Conflict theory, in contrast, pays most attention to the conflict inherent in the relationship between unequally advantaged groups in society and argues that the content of culture should be seen as a means of perpetuating relationships of inequality.
Society as the creation of its members
The influence of interpretation on behaviour
A third kind of sociological theory leads in a rather different direction. It still attempts to explain why human beings in society behave in the orderly ways they do, but instead of looking for the answer in the influence of a social structure which people confront and are constrained by, this theory argues something else. From this point of view, the most important influence on an individual’s behaviour is the behaviour of other individuals towards him or her. The focus is not on general cultural rules, or on the unequal distribution of advantage in whole societies. It is on the way individual social encounters work – on how the parties to them are able to understand and thereby interact with one another. This is not to say that structural theories do not try to explain this, too. In consensus theory, for example, people are role players, and act out parts learned through socialization. But how do they decide which roles to play, in which social setting? Consensus theory does not try to explain why people choose one role rather than another. It is assumed that we somehow learn to make the right choices. This third theory, however, argues that the choice of role-playing is much more complex than in this rather mechanical view. It argues that the essence of social life lies in the quite extraordinary ability of humans to work out what is going on around them – their ability to attach meaning to reality – and then to choose to act in a particular way in the light of this interpretation. This is called interpretive, or action theory.
Action theory
Action theorists stress the need to concentrate on the micro-level of social life, the way particular individuals are able to interact with one another in individual social encounters, rather than on the macro-level, the way the whole structure of society influences the behaviour of individuals. They argue that we must not think of societies as structures existing independently of, and prior to, the interaction of individuals. For action theorists, societies are the end result of human interaction, not its cause. Only by looking at how individual humans are able to interact can we come to understand how social order is created. To see how this happens, let us reflect on the kinds of action of which humans are capable.
Some human action is like the action of phenomena in the non-human world – purposeless, or lacking intention. We all do things involuntarily – like sneezing, blinking or yawning. We do not choose to feel fear, excitement or pain, or choose to react in certain ways to those feelings. So far as we know, the actions of non-human animate phenomena are purely instinctive (automatic or reflex responses to external stimuli). It is true that animals, for example, often appear to act in a purposive way by using their brains. They seem to choose to eat or sleep or be friendly or aggressive, or to choose to evacuate their bladders over the new living-room carpet. Nevertheless, the usual zoological explanation is that even these often quite sophisticated patterns of animal action are involuntary. They are reactive and conditioned, rather than the product of voluntary creative decision-making.
In contrast, a significant amount of human action is voluntary. It is the product of a conscious decision to act, a result of thought. Very often, what we do is the result of choosing to act in one way rather than another. Furthermore, this is purposive, or goal-oriented choice. We choose between courses of action because, as humans, we are able to aim at an end or a goal and take action to achieve this. Such human action, therefore, is intentional action: we mean to do what we do in order to achieve our chosen purposes.
Where do these chosen purposes, or goals, come from? What action theory emphasizes is that we decide what to do in the light of our interpretation of the world around us. Being human means making sense of the settings or situations in which we find ourselves and choosing to act accordingly. To use the usual action-theory phrase for this, we choose what to do in the light of our ‘definition of the situation’. For example, suppose you wake up one summer morning to find the sun shining in a cloudless sky. You decide to sunbathe all day and to mow your garden lawn in the evening, when it will be cooler. At lunchtime, you see large clouds beginning to form in the distance. Because you decide there is a chance of a thunderstorm, you cut the grass immediately. You get very hot. It does not rain. In the evening, you go for a walk in the country. You come to a country pub and stop for a drink. As you sit outside you notice smoke rising on a hillside some distance away. As you watch the smoke gets thicker and darker. You decide the fire is unattended and out of control. You hurriedly find your mobile phone and ring the fire brigade. Shortly afterwards you hear a fire engine racing to the fire. You climb a nearby hill to have a better look. When you get there you see that the fire is, in fact, deliberate: it is a bonfire in the garden of a house on the hillside which you had been unable to see from the pub. Shortly afterwards you hear the fire engine returning to its base. You go back to the pub to finish your drink. It has been cleared away in your absence. You have no more money. You decide it is not your day. You decide to go home.
Of course, nearly all of the settings we have to make sense of involve more than this because nearly everything we do in our lives takes place in the company of others. Most of the situations we have to define in order to choose how to act are social; they involve other humans doing things. You see a very large man shaking his fist and shouting at you, and conclude that he is not overjoyed that you have driven into the back of his car. As a result, you decide not to suggest that he was responsible for the accident because of the way he parked. You see your waiter standing chatting to her friends rather than bringing you your wine and decide not to tip her at the end of your meal. She has interpreted your beckoning her as ‘little missy’ to mean you are unlikely to tip appropriately and is therefore giving you only minimal service. This is social action. It is action we choose to take in the light of what we interpret the behaviour of others to mean.
Meaningful social interaction
There is more to social action than interpretation leading to action, however. Most of the time when we interact with other humans, they want us to arrive at certain interpretations of their actions – they want us to think one thing of them rather than another. The man whose car has just been damaged is not behaving in the rather distinctive manner described above because he wishes the culprit to come round to his house for tea. The woman scratching her nose in the auction room is not (usually) alleviating an itch. She is communicating her bid to the auctioneer, and she expects that the latter will interpret her actions as she wishes. Pedestrians in London streets do not wave to taxi-drivers because they are, or want to become, their friends. They do so because they want a lift.
Dress can often organize interpretation just as effectively as gestures, of course. Though the skater, the hipster, the police officer and the traffic warden whom we encounter in the street make no apparent attempt to communicate with us, they are certainly doing so, nevertheless. They want us to think certain things about them when we see them, so they choose to communicate by the use of uniforms. They are making a symbolic use of dress, if you like; after all, like gestures, garments symbolize what their users want us to interpret about them.
The most effective symbols humans have at their disposal are words – linguistic symbols. Though dress, gesture, touch and even smell can often communicate our meanings and organize the interpretations of others adequately enough, clearly the most efficient – and most remarkable – way in which we can get others to understand us is through language. This is why action theorists are often interested in the way we use language to exchange meanings with each other. Language, verbal or written, is the uniquely human device which we are able to use to interact meaningfully with one another, and thereby to create society.
From this point of view, societies are made up of individuals engaging in a countless number of meaningful encounters. The result is social order. But this is no determined order. It is not the result of the imposition of cultural rules, as the consensus theorist sees it. Nor is it the result of the constraints of a world where advantages are unequally distributed, and where cultural rules legitimate these constraints, as the conflict theorist sees it. Instead, society is an order created, or accomplished, by the capacities of the members themselves. It is the outcome of innumerable occasions of interaction, each one accomplished by interpreting, meaning-attributing actors who can make sense of the social settings in which they find themselves and who choose courses of action accordingly.
The social construction of reality
There is another important difference between structural and interpretive conceptions of society. For structural theorists, the character of a society – its social structure – is not in doubt. It is a ‘real’ thing that exists outside of its members. For the interpretivist, however, it is much more difficult to describe a society that is the outcome of interpretation as somehow ‘true’ or ‘real’ in this structural sense.
For the interpretivist, being human involves interpreting what is going on around one – saying ‘this is what is happening here’, and choosing an appropriate course of action in the light of this interpretation. However, such interpretations of ‘what is going on here’ can only ever be considered ‘correct’ or ‘true’ for the particular person doing the interpreting. What is ‘really’ going on depends on how the individual sees it. Reality is in the eye of the beholder. We act in ways we consider appropriate. What we consider appropriate depends upon what we think the behaviour of others means. It is therefore by no means inconceivable that other people, in exactly the same social situations as ourselves, would have taken the behaviour around them to mean something very different, and would therefore have taken very different courses of action from us.
For example, a car crashes into a wall on a wet evening. The police officer called to the scene discovers a dead driver and a strong smell of alcohol in the car. A search reveals an empty whisky bottle underneath a seat. Like all humans encountering a social situation, the officer engages in a process of interpretation, defining the situation. Weighing up the evidence, he or she decides that the crash was an accident caused by the driver being drunk and losing control of the vehicle in difficult driving conditions. Another officer called to the scene might use this evidence to interpret things rather differently, however. He or she might consider the possibility that the driver deliberately drove the car into the wall as an act of suicide, having first given himself courage to do so by drinking the whisky. The second officer would then make inquiries that the first would not. The dead man’s domestic and work affairs would be looked into and it might be discovered that he had become severely depressed about his future. The officer would decide that their suspicions of suicide had been sufficiently confirmed by this additional evidence, and that it should be given at the Coroner’s court when the inquest was held.
How the death is finally interpreted depends, of course, upon the decision of the court, when the evidence is reassessed by a new set of interpreters – particularly the Coroner. The Coroner’s decision will define the death as either accidental or a suicide. But is this judgment the ‘truth’? Who is to say what the ‘reality’ of the situation was? What ‘really’ happened here? In the case of this kind of example, of course, no one will ever know for certain.
Even in less dramatic circumstances, actions still always depend upon the interpretation of the beholder. Suppose you come across a group of adults sitting together in a children’s playground. Should this situation worry you? If the group is made up of women you are perhaps going to assume they are parents watching their children play; if the group consists of younger men you may be less likely to assume they are related to the playing children and perhaps you look for evidence of alcohol being consumed, or, in some inner-city parks, of drug deals being made. What matters is not so much that you are right, that you see what is really happening, but that:
you cannot help but come to some sort of interpretation or other (even if it is that you do
not
know what is happening); and
what you decide to do will be the result of this interpretation.
Though subsequent events may ‘prove’ things one way or another, initial action undertaken by human beings in such social circumstances, though always involving a process of interpretation, can never be assumed to be definitely ‘true’ or ‘real’. It can only ever be how we choose to see things, often on the basis of fairly limited information and assumptions. The world ‘is’ what we think it is. As W. I. Thomas puts it: if a human ‘defines situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (Thomas 1966).
Action theory: conclusion
In contrast to the structuralist view, then, for action theory social ‘reality’ is not a factual, objective, unambiguous state of affairs. Reality can only ever be what the actors involved in interaction think is real, and what they think is real determines what they decide to do. Reality is therefore quite definitely the negotiated creation of individuals in interaction with one another. Furthermore, because the social worlds so created are dependent on the interpretations of particular individuals in particular social settings, they are much more precarious constructions than is suggested by the notion of social structures determining behaviour.
