Durkheim, Simmel, Weber, Elias
Edited by Anna Rita Calabro of Serafin Marilisa
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Sociology is the discipline which indicates the proper perspective to look at what we seem to see every day. To make simple what seems complex and complicated what might seem simple.
A good social scientist is one who gives us a good way to look at reality, why not just intuition or common sense, nor a single perspective to interpret it. It takes a more rigorous reasoning and a look sharper. Climbing on the shoulders of some authors, defined giants, maybe our eyes can go away.
Durkheim and Weber have defined two different paradigms - the paradigm of the structure and the action - which, over time, have kept intact the scientific value and the persuasive force. The sociology of science has become a society gradually becoming more complex and, to overcome this challenge, it must tighten its ranks, seeking synergies rather than the contrast between his followers, thereby strengthen its resources and its explanatory tools .
The answers to three questions:
- what is the object of sociology?
- which method?
- how to conceptualize the relationship between the individual and society?
are the bases of the two paradigms.
sociology Auguste Comte, the science of society, as defined by Comte, it is stated in an era when positivism, son of the Enlightenment, definitively puts man at the center of his world, able to understand the secrets and to govern the events. The scientific revolution, the advent of modernity, the French Revolution and the American claim that the principle of equality, and finally the birth of capitalism, which offers the potential to earn by signing contracts for work in a regime of personal freedom -> The complexity of then these events requires new tools for the interpretation of the facts and from this comes the need for sociology with the ambition of individuals in society those same universal laws that govern nature. Know in order to provide, in order to control, Comte said that it intends to apply the experimental method to the new discipline that he himself baptizes coniandone name. Sociology
like physics: if the universe has its own laws, then the company has similar laws.
sociology as biology: the company as a living body, its institutions as vital organs of the body, performing its functions, and ensure the survival and development, scientific observation as a tool for analyzing games, understand the secrets, treating the ills, guide its development.
Antony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method, 1976, p.14, "remains a fairly widespread species of Newton agonizing wait for a social science ... except that those who are still waiting ... not just waiting for a train arrives, but they are also in the wrong station. "
For the moment (in France in the first half of the 800) the illusion is perfect, so much so that the stated objective is to establish a science that Comte, in a secularized world, representing a new religion based on the order Legal. Sociology as the science par excellence, able to discover the laws of social order and the means to maintain it.
ago from The Herbert Spencer
controvoce England. He states that, like biological organisms, even societies evolve from the most simple and primitive to the more complex and differentiated. The increase in size inevitably involves the need to differentiate the functions; detrmina that a change in the overall structure of the system. (...)
Keywords: complexity, interdependence and social differentiation.
Émile Durkheim
It was not until 1895, when D. public in France Rules of Sociological Method, because the ideas and suggestions of the positivist theory of the evolution of Comte and Spencer are translated into a strong research prgramma a solid theoretical basis and un'eccepibile empirical tools. Here D. smbra not show hesitation and concerns in developing its conceptual framework and develop the tools of the trade (which should be the method).
1. sociological theory is a theory since it assumes a holistic point of view of society, which "is not a simple sum of individuals."
2. sociology must define its object of study must be different from that of all other sciences, "the domain of sociology covers only a specified group of phenomena." We recognize a social fact, according to the power of external coercion engaged, or is able to exercise over individuals, we recognize this power in turn the basis of the existence of any specific measure or the resistance that opposes any initiative that seeks to separate him violence. You can also define it according to its spread, adding that it exists independently of individual forms it assumes spreading.
3. sociology must define in the right size, the relationship between the individual and society: "Far from being a product of our will, the social facts and determine from the outside."
4. Finally, indicate the method for the study of social facts:
-searching for the cause that produces it and the function it performs.
-determine whether a match exists between the fact and the general needs of the social and What is.
NB: The main cause of a social fact should be sought among antecedent social facts and not among the states of individual consciousness. The aim is to clearly identify the point of observation. It 's a bit like boarding the plane, looking down from a city. The metaphor is useful to illustrate the relationship between the individual and society: the city exists regardless of the existence of its individual inhabitants and is a container whose structure determines the conditions and actions. In fact: the city as a social organism is something more and different than the sum of its inhabitants Obviously D. does not negate the fact that society is a human product. Simply and without hesitation he excludes such a perspective from the field analysis of sociology. Sociology has to deal with social facts, which are nothing more than things, and that exist outside us and independently of us.
things, that: institutions, behavior patterns, beliefs, class actions, mental constructs ... everything that constitutes the social reality that go beyond individual intentionality because it is derived solely from structure to build these things together. Things that influence and determine actions.
Ex: suicide, in sociology, is a social fact, which cleverly D. shall develop the theory dell'anomia, that would justify the causal relationships involved.
paradigm of structure: we need to find the link cause and effect.
E 'as if the social reality was formed by layering multiple textures. Each of the great sociologists have been able to reveal a complete and coherent design, confused and otherwise invisible to the eye. E 'then the whole of their works that we must look.
Georg Simmel, Problems in the Philosophy of History, writes: "To understand a sentence spoken by someone means that the mental processes of the speaker are aroused in the listener right in the words which have been fed." These words contain the conditions that set of concepts and theories that the paradigm for action.
Paradigm and Paradigm of the structure represented up to now, two opposing and souls together accomplices of sociology.
S., 'the more contemporary classic', is a fascinating figure in the history of sociology. He charmed the audience with his eclectic and refined intelligence, rigorously defines the task of sociology and with the same ruthlessness explores the territories, seems to look at secondary and even mundane aspects of social reality but in fact is talking with sociological language, the whole world.
1. Simmel and Weber with the spotlight moving from structure to illuminate the other hand the joint actions of individuals whose social structure is the result: social interaction, and the set of reciprocal relzioni. Sociology, says S., must not, nor wants to, subtract from the ground to the other sciences: sociology is a new method, an auxiliary tool.
2. The object becomes to S. a lens with a particular observation, a new level of abstraction capable of linking social phenomena and illuminate a light novel by distinguishing between form and content: the objects of study are not the contents but his manner of being, forms, through which individuals reach together a unit on the basis of mutual recognition. Objectively separate what is always one of the forms allows the study of the association as a field of scientific research independent.
3. Relationship between the individual and society: society exists where more individuals enter into reciprocal action. *
4. The proposed method is practiced by S. who proceeds from the particular to the general, then consider the subject of self-knowledge, thereby drawing a kind of social geometry. (Various forms of association can produce the same content as well as the same content can take various forms).
* Company: unit objective and set of individuals.
S # D -> Simmel look at social reality with a perspective that reveals the tension between individuality and sociality. The individual self-consciousness of the world and himself in the world only in relationship with other individuals. These reports form the interaction of social, supra-structures crystallize in giving life to groups, institutions ...
crucial question: "How can society?" (And what prmesse?)
3 shapes knowledge that man must have to live in society -> 3 specific categories that should be understood as the outcome and the premise of social interaction: First-
a priori the role. Defines the process of social and generalization is based on the typing of the other -> the knowledge that each of us has the other is always incomplete knowledge. The person acknowledging himself as member of society, knowing that such membership is not fully its essence. It 'exactly this strangeness to enable it to be part of society without zero in it. In fact, the companies "are formations from beings who are simultaneously inside and outside of them." According to a priori
-Individuality '. Being itself a social being and form a whole, the individual in its totality, which can not be ignored by its very existence, in these two memberships. This creates a situation of contmporaneità rather, a kind of voltage range which determines the actions of each. Third-
a priori FRAME. The first and the second would not be a priori sufficient to answer the question whether the individual was not able to move within a structure, the company indeed, ideally perfect, a set of positions that produce a perfect connection. Within the individual fits with all its peculiarities.
Max Weber, "The sociology must appoint a science which aims to understand under a procediento interpretive social action and causally explain its course and its effects. To "act" is meant a human attitude in so far as the individual who acts or individuals acting connecting to it a subjective meaning. To act "social" should be understood, however, an act that is reported - according to his keen sense of the agent or agents - the attitude of other individuals, and oriented in its course based on this. "
subjectivity takes the place of objectivity. Weber will analyze the company as a result of joint actions of individuals, who must always be attributed to concrete realities.
methodological individualism: is used to denote all those theories that, unlike the holistic, taking the viewpoint of the actor.
Interpretative Sociology: consider the individual and his action as the unit of analysis.
W. consider what D. had defined social facts as being the actions of the actors involved therein, that is the result of between individuals and therefore the same individuals changed -> the method of natural science is inadequate to grasp the significance of these actions. The observer is still a scientist who must come to the explanation of social phenomena through scientific propositions empirically verified, that is, through a rigorous method to proceed anyway abstractions and generalizations (see the metaphor of the city).
Starting from the micro to get to the macro, from the structure.
Keyword: avalutatività principle of social sciences. Weber does not reject the method of attributing causal but replaces the terms of the probability (or possibility) to that of causality, the term bias than the whole. In this way, the deterministic sociology abandon all certainty, it accepts the fact that every social phenomenon is the effect of such a multiplicity of causal chains to make any prudent forecast. Not because human behavior is unpredictable, just madness, he says, makes it very unpredictable human behavior. But people are not always aware of the true reasons that determine their behavior, also the actions of individuals often have unintended effects -> it is precisely these effects to be the object of study of sociology.
But how is it possible for the social scientist not be misled by their own value judgments? The social scientist has to reconstruct and understand the ways in which those values, its values, were constructed.
heritage Weber, theoretical and methodological directions: the perspective of analysis starts from the subjective sense that individuals attach to their actions, the idea that social structure should be considered the effect of social interaction, the fact that ' action of a single individual becomes the unit of measurement to analyze social phenomena. Directions to which we use both symbolic interactionism that ethnomethodology, and all those using qualitative methodologies.
But the crucial theoretical and methodological tool, the heart of his doctrine, is "the type ideal "
-is a model that represents, in its essential features, this social phenomenon to be studied.
-built on the basis of a comparative analysis of various expressions of this social phenomenon can be found in reality (this comparative method is possible because the sociologist is able to reconstruct the meaning attributed to the observed behavior).
-this analysis serves to highlight those features essential for defining and representing the given social phenomenon.
-the student must identify and isolate the essential elmenti , failing which the object of study would lose its nature and its peculiar character mingling with other phenomena social.
Nb: The ideal type never corresponds to something that really exists. And 'consistently inconsistent because the elements are discarded, so it can be used as a model for orientation in social reality, but always being careful not to confuse it with reality itself.
W # M -> Marx believed that the character of society and the manner of its future development were determined exclusively by relations of production. W. rejects this view not because they exclude a cause-effect relationship between production system and belief system but because it provides support and demonstrates that this causal relationship can be inverted on its own terms. True to his sociology, understanding of human action which is faithful to his idea of \u200b\u200bsociological causality, he suggests that the Reformation represented an item (certainly not the only) that promoted the rise of capitalism. Method by which proceeds in proving his thesis by comparing two typical ideal models, capitalism and the Protestant ethic.
Norbert Elias: Elias
does not arise in the wake of the classics, rather than share with them the ambition to formulate his own theory of society and their method of analysis. Thus lies in its own right as the last great representative of the European sociological tradition.
Keywords: Figuration and process. The task of sociology is to analyze society. To achieve this objective should be to take a procedural view of social reality. Perspective
case: everything that surrounds us is simply the result of a process involving the psychic structures and social needs. The order and direction of this process are the result of social interaction whose effects are manifested both in the social structure in which the psychic habitus.
The civilizing process: it consists in a progressive increase in the division of functions and interdependence among individuals, which resulted in the occurrence of an appropriate organization to an increasingly complex society.
evolutionary process characterized by a dual dynamics of centralization and decentralization: on the one hand, the progressive centralization of monopoly power, the decentralization of the other, in the minds assist both independent of the mechanisms of behavioral control. The state then holds the monopoly of violence and the instinctual and emotional life of the individual becomes uniform and stable through constant self-control. Between the individual and society are inseparable: they are both involved in a structural change -> "Civilization is not yet complete: it is in the making."
figure (or configuration) is used to indicate the interdependence of networks formed by individuals and expresses the interdependent nature of the case and of social forms. The man is a process. Individual mean man in the singular and the plural society man. In civilized societies
apparatus of behavior control have largely lost visibility because they have been introjected by the individual himself and unknowingly used as a filter to impusi.
configuration concepts, the metaphor of dance: dancers moving together create the figures, these figures are changing, never stopping, generating more and more figures -> "dances conceptual configurations are considered in the abstract, based on observations of individual individuals considered to himself. " Similarly we need to translate any concept to a sociological concept of relationship (also applies to the power). The sociology of Elias, whom he defines sociology and evolutionary figurazionale, which has obvious similarities with connecting wires or that of S, W, D, and M.
Part One
Émile Durkheim
The sociology of social fact
(from "The rules of sociological method. Sociology and philosophy. - Original title: Les Règles de la méthode sociologique. Sociologie et Philosophie, 1924)
1. What is a social fact: the object of sociology
recognize a social base in the power of external coercion which it exercises or is able to exert on individuals
(...) But it can be defined also by making shows that within the group - diffusivity, even though it exists independently of individual forms that assume spreading - General -> it is easier to recognize when the constraint is manifested through some direct reaction to the society (moral rights, beliefs, customs, fashions ) -> how? imposing -> objectivity. There are also ways of being a collective social order that is made anatomical and morphological (number and nature of elementary parts, communication routes, population distribution, ..) but will require the individual in the same way -> are ways to consolidation. There is thus a range of shades, with no solution of continuity, linking the most characteristic structural facts the liberal currents of social life that are still imprisoned in any die set -> sotanto they differ in the degree of consolidation (degree of crystallization)
Definition: A social fact is a way of do, more or less fixed, wielding an external constraint on the individual - or a way to do that is the general extension of a given society, although its existence, independent of its individual manifestations. (...)
2. The observation of social facts
must consider social facts as things -> this is something that is given, all that is offered or who require observation. E 'therefore necessary to consider social phenomena in themselves, regardless of whether those who represent them, it is necessary to study them from the outside. This externality, however, is only apparent because the outside tends to internalize -> rule: even if the social phenomena they had all the intrinsic characteristics of the thing, you have to start considering them as if they had. Proceeding in this way will often have the satisfaction of seeing the facts appear to make the most arbitrary character of consistency and regularity are the symptoms of their objectivity. Distinctive character of a thing is that it can not be amended by a simple decree of the will. To produce a change in it should be a much greater effort.
social facts determine our actions, are in a sense, we are forced to stampiin versarelenostre actions. Subject
sociology: (...) So, when the sociologist is going to explore any order of social facts, he must strive to consider the side where you are isolated from their individual events.
3. The explanation of social facts
You can not explain a social fact only in relation to the functions it performs (as did Comte and Spencer). Show what a fact is not to say néspiegare useful as it is born or how it is what it is. The need that we have things can not draw him out of nowhere and put them in place: they owe their existence to other causes.
To explain a social fact must find the cause of the fact that this is the effect. To produce an effect or change is necessary to act causes, the only likely to generate.
not be explained through a social function that it performs this function because it also changes over time. It 'true, moreover, in sociology as in biology, the proposition that the body is independent of the function and therefore, while remaining the same, can serve different purposes. The cause of a social fact is thus independent of the functions it performs.
The trend, needs, desires Men are things, and intervene in social hasten or slow down development, but also in accordance with efficient causes. Change is needed to determine the causes of action that will involve physically. For example: the steady progress of the social division of labor are needed to help men to persist in the new conditions of existence in which is located as it goes in the story -> here we have therefore attributed to the tendency of self-preservation an important role. If it is oriented is because the survival of individuals who continued to devote himself to general tasks became increasingly difficult. The man was then forced to change direction and this is occurred because this was the direction of least resistance: other possible solutions were out-migration, suicide, the crime ..
human needs can affect the social evolution, as long as they themselves evolve. Given a certain environment, every individual, depending on your mood, it fits the way you prefer. The one will try to change it to put it into harmony with his needs, the other prefer to change himself and to moderate his desires. No doubt the external events vary from people to people, but it is surprising how they recur with extraordinary regularity in the same circumstances -> uses more bizarre as the couvade, the levirate, the exogamy .., are observed at wide variety of peoples and are symptoms of a certain social status -> general collective forms.
To explain a social fact must be sought separately the efficient cause that produces it and the function it performs -> We must determine whether there is a correspondence between social reality and the general needs of the social organism and what it is, without bothering to find out if it was intentional or not. If a social fact is known by its power of coercion on individual consciousness it follows that it derives from them. The autocostrizione, inhibition is the only means by which it acts social constraint, but this is not compulsion. Dismissed the individual, is not that the company -> we must seek the explanation of social life in the nature of society itself. It is believed that it is able to dictate the ways of acting and thinking. This pressure, which is the hallmark of social facts, is that all have on each. Therefore, it is in society that we must seek the cause of social facts.
The company is not a simple sum of individuals on the contrary, the system formed by the association represents a specific reality with their own characteristics. It should, however, that these consciousnesses are associated and combined in a certain way, from this combination is the social life and consequently it is this combination that explains it. Regrouping, penetrating, funds, the individual souls give life to a being (psychic, if we want) but it is a new kind of psychic individuality.
sociology and psychology as a science distinct group thinks, feels and acts entirely different from that in which its members would behave if they were isolated. If you start with the latter, then you can not understand anything that happens in the group! All that is binding has its source outside the individual. On the other hand, individuals have not decided whether or not to enter into the collective life. E 'Ciaro that the general characteristics of human nature come in the development work which highlights the social life: that they are not, however, raise or that give it its specific form. The representations, emotions, collective tendencies have not been to cause certain kinds of individual consciousness, but the conditions in which there is the social body as a whole.
Rule: the cause of a social fact should be sought among antecedent social facts and not among the states of individual consciousness. The function of a social fact can only be social: it must always be sought in the report that there is some social purpose.
If collective life is not derived from individual life, but both are closely related. A psychological culture, not just a biological culture, the sociologist is therefore a necessary preliminary, but it will be useful only if he knows how to get rid of after having received them, and that can completely overcome by a culture specifically sociological. He should be established in the very heart of social facts in front of and to observe them without intermediaries, asking only to the science of the individual life skills.
Part
Max Weber The Sociology of Social
1. Social action and the ideal type: the object and method of sociology
(from basic sociological concepts, in Economy and Society - Tit. Orig: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1922)
Sociology is a science that seeks to interpret, understand and explain social action.
To act "social" is meant an act that is reported - according to his keen sense of the agent or agents - the attitude of other individuals, and oriented in its course based on this. "
methodological foundation
1. a "sense":
a) in fact, in a case as historically
b) subjective intentions of a conceptually pure type built
certainly do not include any sense objectively correct, nor established a true sense metaphysically -> resides in this Unlike the sciences empriche of action than all the dogmatic, that is propose to investigate the correct way or invalid.
2. the "border" between an act with meaning and a purely reactive behavior is completely fluid. A very important part of the behavior that is of interest to sociology, and in particular to act purely traditional, is the boundary between one and another.
3. every interpretation aims to achieve the 'evidence'.
a) rational evidence is, in action, especially that which is understood clearly and without residue. The rational action is one that has the widest degree of evidence.
b) Full penetration is sympathetic, which is relived fully in its immediate connection of feeling.
Eg.: We understand what that means 2x2 = 4 or who successfully draws a logical conclusion. Similarly, we also understand what it means those who, as' facts of experience "that we know, comes in his action the consequences that result.
much the same we are not able to understand with crystal clear, and yet we can in certain circumstances to take intellettalmente, several "objectives" and "values" in view of the last of which can be oriented in accordance with experience, the act of a man, but on the other hand, the more radical and their distance from our ultimate values, the more difficult it is to understand them by means of reviving the work of penetration sympathetic fantasy. Depending on the case then we must be content to interpret only intellectually, or in certain circumstances - even when it fails - we addirrittura take them as facts, in order to understand the course of action motivated by them according to their points of orientation, can be interpreted as intellectually or experienced as much as possible about the basis of a sympathetic penetration.
The creation of models is established as the first act would take place if there had been aware of all the circumstances and all the intentions of the participants, and whether the choice of means had been strictly purposive-rational. Only in this way then becomes possible causal attribution of deviations from that course to the irrational elements for making them. The construction of a strictly purposive-rational action is therefore to sociology as a type ('ideal type') to mean the actual act, influenced by irrational factors of all kinds, such as diverting the course that would take place in the case of reasoning purely rational. As such, only in this ground of methodology, the method of sociology "comprising" is "rational" procedure intended as a methodological tool -> The only rational action is a theoretical model.
4. "Attribution of meaning ' any process or object can be interpreted and understood in accordance with the direction that human action attributes to its existence.
5. the 'understanding' may describe:
a) the current understanding of the meaning of willing an action -> what I am doing (present understanding of rational thoughts or actions, with current understanding of irrational ..)
b) the mean explanatory -> mean on the basis of reasoning which has the sense that it acted just now, and thus fall into a sense of connection that is intelligible, the understanding of which is treated by us as an explanation of the course of action in fact. Explain means to capture the sense in which connections are to operate, according to his keen sense subjectively, an act now intelligible.
6. the 'mean' means in all these cases an understanding of the meaning or interpretation of the connection according to a sense of perspective:
a) historical
b) sociological
c) ideal-typical
Any interpretation aims to achieve the obvious. Provided an interpretation of meaning, as evident, it is never causally valid, but is itself only a hypothesis causal particularly evident.
- sometimes the actor is not aware of the meaning of his action
- similar behaviors can hide
different reasons - when the only motivations are antithetical to the actual course of events can shed light on the motivation of each real link -> control is therefore inevitable intelligible interpretation of meaning based on the decision which is to determine the actual course of events
7. The 'reason' means a sense of connection that looks like a foundation with a sense of attitude.
- appropriate attitude in accordance with the direction, which is developed successfully as a typical sense of connection, correct.
- appropriate attitude in terms of probability, to the extent that there is a possibility that it is always done in a similar way (as a causal explanation why a certain process to be followed by another process secodo a rule of probability determined in some way - and in the ideal case, which is rarely formulated in quantitative terms).
8. The processes are not capable of comprehension are not necessarily less important. They are covered only in a context other than that of action intelligible.
9. Sociology # biology to sociology the unit is the individual. Biology can be decomposed into the individual cells and find causal rules. Not sociology. For sociology, like that for history, the object of understanding is constituted by its connection to the sense of social, cognitive
For different purposes it would be possible to consider the particular social groups as individuals, as subjects of rights and duties ..
For interpretation intelligible action, in which sociology aspires, these formations are simply specific processes and connections of action of individual men -> sociology goes beyond the simple determination of functional connections and laws because, unlike any other natural science, is able to understand its object of study. This advantage of the interpretive explanation than the explanation based on observation is offset by the essentially hypothetical achievable through interpretation. Yet it is precisely the specific component of sociological knowledge.
10. The "laws" are possible Typical -> attribution of causality indicates probability and not certainty. The formula includes sociology laws only in terms of ability and / or probability based on hypothetical strictly rational behavior (as well as political economy). Sociology psychological
#: In the case of a sociological explanation of the irrational elements of action, including psychology can certainly make the crucial importance of services, while remaining unchanged fundamental methodological issue.
11. # History Sociology: The Sociology prepares concepts of types and look for general rules of becoming, in contrast to the history which seeks causal analysis and imputation of training, personality rivstonoun'importanza individual culture. Sociology formula types 'pure' (ie ideal types), constructed in accordance with the direction (and occasionally also other types of media, that kind of empirical-statistical), making possible a series of society, but do not exist in reality - > I'm looking for ideal-typical constructions without exception would take place to determine how the action in the case of a rational relation to the aim of ideal character, and that in view of the following purposes:
- in order to understand the real action, conditional the various kinds of obstacles, to the extent that it was actually condeterminato.
- to make easier the knowledge of his real motives, depending on the distance from the actual course of his ideal-typical course. The real action takes place in the bulk of his cases, in a dark semi-consciousness or unconsciousness of his "keen sense." The individual who acts, he does more often than not, instinctively, or according to custom. But the fact remains that sociology develop its concepts using a classification of possible "sense of intention" as if the act did so consciously directed to proceed on the basis of sense. It must in any case to reckon with, and to determine, in its size and its species, its distance from the reality when it come to consider this in its concreteness. The concept of acting
Social
What is a social act?
an attitude to the attitude of other individuals (single and known, or a multiplicity of unspecified persons unknown)
Foundations of social determinants
Four ideal types of action:
1. traditional act
2. affective act
3. rational action value
4. rational action in order
-> types are conceptually pure, created for sociological purposes. The report
social
What is a social relationship? Behavior of most individuals introduced to each other according to its content of meaning, and directed accordingly.
Features:
a) reciprocity: we require a minimum of mutual relationship of the action of both parties;
b) intentionality of attoricontenuto sense of willing participants;
c) the content of meaning can be different between the various actors involved in the report -> report unilateral -> There will always be, however small, a common reference. If the content of meaning is -> bilateral relationship -> borderline case. We are only in the absence of social relations in consegunza actual lack of a common reference.
d) temporary or permanent;
e) changing: the content of meaning can change.
2. What is the task of sociology
(by the method of historical and social sciences - Tit. Orig: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1924)
sociology should not produce value judgments, or to demonstrate the actor strategies of action, but that does not mean that judgments value should not be subject to scientific analysis. Each
conceptual reflection on the elements of past human activity provided a sense is bound primarily to the categories of "purpose" and "two" (to want something in relation to its own value or as a means to an end).
question the appropriateness of the means towards a given purpose. Also, determine the consequences of the action, ie the consequences that would use of all the possible resources required to achieve the desired purpose.
How much is the attainment of the desired end, compared to other values? The self-reflection of men acting in a responsible manner can not be separated from each other Determination of the purpose and consequences of action. They measure and choose according to their conscience and according to their personal worldview.
task of science to lead man to the consciousness that every act that we take a stand in favor of certain values, and then against others. Making this choice, however, is his own.
What we can offer is the knowledge of the meaning of what he wants. The discussion of scientific reviews value not only wants us to understand and live out the goals that we set ourselves and the ideals that lie at their base, but also teach us to "evaluate" critical.
values \u200b\u200b-> an empirical science can never teach anyone what he should, but it can teach him what he can and what he wants -> judge the validity of the values \u200b\u200bis not the task of sociology. Values \u200b\u200bare historically determined cultural products, changing and contested, they are products of culture in the same way you are feeling and consciousness.
must distinguish between knowledge and assessment, ie between the Demp the scientific obligation to see the reality and fulfillment the practical need to support their ideals -> as a scientist I must be able to see the reality (the conceptual ability to empirical reality), as a man I have ideals. Scientific investigation is that it is valid regardless of the values \u200b\u200bthat have promoted or values \u200b\u200bthat have led to the phenomenon (and must be valid for everyone!)
Social science is a science of reality. We want to understand the straight line in its specificity, we understand that on the one hand the connection and significance of its cultural phenomena in their present configuration, the other the reasons for its being historically now, and not otherwise. Each
conceptual knowledge reality of the infinite by the finite human spirit rests in fact on the tacit assumption that only a finite part of it should be the subject of scientific consideration, and therefore be "essential" in the sense of being "worthy of being known." But according to what principles? (...) And
'a meaningless discussion "objective" of cultural processes, which requires him to count as ideal purpose of scientific work to reduce the empirical "laws" -> The individual moves on the basis of cultural orientations and not the basis of universally valid laws.
The "culture" is a finished section meaningless infinity of happening the world, which is given meaning and significance from the standpoint of man (-> awareness and attribution of meaning)
We are cultural beings, endowed with the capacity and willingness to consciously take place towards the world and give it a meaning => the cultural significance of a phenomenon is the sense that we attach to it.
Prostitution is a cultural phenomenon like religion or money, and all three are regulated as and only insofar as their existence and the form that historically take affect, indirectly or directly covered our cultural interests ... .
Every social phenomenon has a cultural significance. To know is to take a particular point of view based on those connections that the observer considers important, a choice that is still on the ideas of the researcher's value -> value without the ideas of the researcher there is no principle of selection of material, and there would be no knowledge provided sense of reality in its individuality. -> The direction of her personal faith also indicate the direction of his work. Knowledge is always bound assumptions, "subjective."
3. The social sciences avalutatività
(by the method of historical and social sciences - Tit. Orig: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 1924)
E 'can indicate that a rule of thumb Guidelines for action provided valuable?
The only things that a rule of thumb can show that its assets are:
1) the indispensable means
2) the concomitant consequences
3) competition between several possible
assessments only look at reality, or help support their values? It is important to avoid confusion.
In summary -> The sense of the discussion around assessments can consist only in transactions:
a) development of the axioms of ultimate value -> purely logical operation.
b) deduction of the consequences related to the position evaluation.
c) determination of the consequences of that should be the realization practice of a given evaluative stance towards a certain problem. This purely empirical finding may have resulted, inter alia:
1) the absolute impossibility of any realization of the postulate of value, because you can not establish any way to achieve it;
2) the more or less unlikely its realization ofa accomplished, or even soltantoapprossimativa, for the same reasons or because the possibility exists that have unintended consequences attendant.
3) the need to put those resources into account these consequences or concomitants and not considered before.
d) may present value of new axioms, and consequently new postulates.
values \u200b\u200bof the social scientist directs his work, but this must be 'value free'
-evaluation, but no relation to the values;
-no value judgments but interpretation of the value.
Third Party
Georg Simmel
The sociology of the form (from Sociology - Tit. Orig: Soziologie, Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, 1908)
1. The problem of sociology: the object
What should be the object? The
known human society has developed from practice for a long time but it is no longer bound to this source, and simple means for purposes for the act itself has become a final order. Since the classes attracted the theoretical consciousness, thought he saw at once that every individual phenomenon is usually determined by an endless circle of influences from his human environment. Once you reach the consciousness that every human action takes place within society and that no act can escape its influence, anything that was not the science of external nature was to be the science of society. In this conception of sociology as a science of all that is human in general contributed to the fact that it was a new science and therefore flocked to it all possible problems who could not find a home elsewhere accurate -> but that would be found just a new name for a pot but it already existed under the previous research Setor -> sociology can not be a comprehensive science! The basis of this error is the intuition that if a man is determined by the fact of living in reciprocal action with other men, then there must be a new form of consifderazione in all so-called science of the spirit. What
then the specificity of sociology from other sciences? The ability to understand the historical events according to acting and doing each other in the common people, and based on the sum of the sublimation many individual contributions. Sociology, in his elation with the existing science, so it is a new method, an auxiliary tool of research and approach to the phenomena of all those fields in new ways.
sociology in this way does not contain anything that was not already covered in one of the existing science, but it represents only a new approach to social phenomena, a scientific method.
must therefore define the object. But what may be the proper object and new, whose investigation is an independent science and sociology from the boundaries determined? Oggtto mean by a set of determinations and relations each of which, projected onto a plurality of objects may become subject of a particular science. Every science is based on an abstraction. In front of the whole thing and things every science develops through a breakdown in their quality and special features, after you have found a concept that allows the latter to identify and understand its use in real things second connection methods.
Finding a new level of abstraction to link social phenomena. It is therefore necessary that the concept of companies to submit data to a new socio-historical process of abstraction and coordination so that certain determinations of them are recognized as mutually connected and then as objects of un'unicascienza. -> Distinguiere form from content.
Definition of society: society exists where more individuals enter into reciprocal action. Impusi of various kinds make that man come in with more consistency, in a correlation of situations, exercising with others and it suffers from the others. Reciprocal actions from which (by the individual holders of those impulses and occasional purposes) there is a unit that is a "society". An organic body is a unit because his organs are to one another in a mutual exchange of energies closer than with any external being.
Content: an impulse, interest, purpose, inclination, psychic situation and motion-> or what arises from that action.
Association: is when the action produces the forms of social coexistence, which fall under the general concept of the interaction. The association is therefore the form realizzantesi in countless different ways in which individuals reach a unit together on the basis of those interests, and within which these interests are realized.
In any social phenomenon existing on the content and form of social reality are a unit -> insepartabili elements in the reality of all being and social happenings by which or in which form that content takes social reality. Only when the vitality of this content takes the form of mutual influence, pure and simple contemporary space or temporal succession of men is reflected in a company -> sociology must investigate the ways and forms produced by the reciprocal.
How? We must separate the forms of content and form specific object of sociological analysis. Form and content are separated in abstraction scientific forms of reciprocal action or association are linked together conceptually isolated from the contents that they become only through social and methodically subjected to a unitary scientific point of view. The right to subject the historical and social phenomena un'nalisi second form and content and bring the first in a summary will be based on two conditions, which can be verified only in Based on the facts. You must first find that the same association occurs with a completely different content, for entirely different purposes and that, in contrast, assumes the same interest as its carriers or modes of izing completely different forms of association. In the most diverse social groups for any purpose and meaning, however, we find the same attitude of mutual formal ways. As many may be the interest from which it comes to these associations, the forms in which they are implemented, however, may be the same. On the other hand the same interest groups can arise in very different form.
-> different forms may have the same contents as different content may have the same shapes.
The facts that have legitimate sociological problem that requires a finding, the systematic order, the psychological motivation and the historical development of the pure forms of association -> this is the task of sociology! We need a line that the mere fact dissolve the association and established as a particular field. It thus becomes a specific science specialist whose character is that of combining a full range of objects from a particular point of view: not the object, but its form of consideration, particularly the abstraction from it of the different other historical and social sciences.
The term covers two companies meanings:
- Group of individuals: An object is everything that happens in and with society;
- sum of forms of association, relates to the forces, relations and ways in which men are associated and which are in their stand-alone configuration, the company in the strict sense. If you shoot
forms of association, the company would disappear.
Company is the reciprocal action. Sociology is the human sciences as geometry is the science of matter.
There is absolute equality of forms, but only approximate equality can be established in principle and only as a tool to legitimize and make the separation in individual feomeni scientific form and content. How
work then? Through an intuitive process supported by examples. So then the historical phenomena can be considered from three different points of view in principle: the individual, the form and content -> this distinction is only a methodological necessity to separate them, which is faced with difficulties at every step to order any item in an independent series and with the aspiration of the reality aun'immagine -> despite the clear and precise setting of methodological principle, we can hardly avoid the ambiguity -> will be reassured that through analysis .
2. Social forms: the method
Starting from the concept of reciprocal relationship reveals novel forms of relationship: As soon as the question of reciprocal influences between individuals, the sum of which produces the cohesion in society, is immediately revealed a number of forms of relationship which hitherto were not covered at all in the science of society. Overall, the sociology was properly limited to the study of macroscopic social phenomena, that is already crystallized forms of supra-and, leaving aside the countless number of forms of relationships and modes of interplay between the men who are smaller and less visible and are those that give rise only to society as we know it. The limitation to first phenomena recalls the primitive science of the human body inside (the company as a biological organism), which was limited to major organs and tissues without neglecting the innumerable organs separate those who would not give me a place in the living body. What rnde more difficult to establish scientifically these social forms inconspicuous, makes them both infinitely important for deeper understanding of society, namely that in general they are not yet consolidated into stable forms.
The association between men belting, melts and is linked continuously, like an eternal flow and pulse that binds individuals, even when it comes to real organizations. Here lie the actions each other - only accessible to microscopy psychological - between the atoms of the company -> we must look to the actions infinitely many and infinitely small.
Beyond any analogy between the metaphysical and sociological reality of society and the body is here only delmetodo the analogy of a case and its development. The particular actions that are offered each other in these measures are not entirely familiar theoretical analysis should be considered as fornme constitutive of society, as part of the association in general.
What then is the boundary between sociology and social psychology? Change the method, the point of view, the object of observation -> sociology is forms of the association neglecting mental contents -> data while using as mental processes, these are not the subject of study of sociology => the science of society can only be the doctrine of the association.
the boundaries between philosophy and sociology are certain, however, suggests that the first and second applications based epistemological assumptions. When a subject exists, what are the conditions of his conscience to be a social being? What is the a priori and that makes it possible to form the empirical structure of the individual as a social being? But the essential question is:
3. How can society
What conditions? What assumptions must special action to ensure that the concrete processes of individual consciousness are relmente socialization processes, which allow elements theit function is to build a social unit? The sociological a priori determine the real processes of association, on the other hand, they constitute the logical and ideal conditions of perfect society. Consciousness can associate and be associated with a knowledge that is more a way of knowing. But what must be examined from the standpoint of its terms as the general concept of association is something of knowledge: consciousness of being members or associates. These are the processes of the interaction, which means for the individual being associated.
What forms should be made to them, such as forms that conscience should support? -> Theory of knowledge in society. Three of these forms or a priori knowledge of the association, the categories under which people look at themselves and look each other in order to produce the company of thumb (which resemble the Kantian categories):
1. the role of a priori: the generalized other -> we vediamol'altro general, because we can not fully represent us in our individuality divergent. Any reproduction of a soul is conditioned by the similarity / difference, closeness / distance with it. The result is a generalization of a the other psychic. We think the other under a general category that certainly covers it all. The report is because we do not see the other in his pure individalità, but as belonging to a particular social circle.
2. the a priori individuality: Each element of a group is not just a company, but also something more. There is a part of the individual can not be traced to his social being who intervenes and makes possible the dynamics of interaction. There are sociological types whose essence consists in being at the same time, inside and outside the company, included and excluded, near and far (the stranger, the enemy, the criminal, even the poor, but this also applies to any individual phenomenon). The social individuals always move between these extremes. The a priori of empirical social life is the fact that life is not entirely social. The fact that companies are formations from beings who are both inside and outside of them is also the basis of one of the most important sociological formations, namely, that the individual soul can never be in a connection without being at the same time of outside it.
relationship between the individual and society: the fact of the association, therefore, places the individual in this dual position, he understood and at the same time in opposition, is an organism and at the same time is an organic whole concluded, is a being for it and be themselves. An essential aspect: the individual and society inside and outside the two determinations are not subsisting side by side but define the position of all single man who lives socially -> contemporaneity of the two determinations logically opposed. There are two views that together form the unity that we call a social being.
3. the a priori structure: The company is a formation composed of unequal elements. Structure and inequality are the two terms that define the company. The company siconfigura as a cosmos, in which every point can be made and develop only in that particular way, if the structure of the whole should not be changed. No grain of sand could be trained and positioned differently from how it is, without the latter as a precondition and as a consequence a change in the whole existence.
This means that each new person who joins the company finds a place determined unequivocally -> this allows you to see the structure of the a priori and that means a foundation for the individual and the 'possibility' of belonging to a company .
value of universality inherent individuality: Condition under which the individual lives his social life is that every individual is oriented a certain position, which ideally belongs to him and that is also truly present in the social complex. Our life is based on the premise of finding harmony between our spiritual energies to maturity, even though individual and the external existence. Likewise, the social life rests on the assumption of a harmony between the individual and the social complex. As long as the individual is not realized this in advance of his social existence, he will not be associated with that business and society is not devoid of mutual gaps that his concept states. Example: the profession as a social expression of his own subjectivity. So that there is generally a "profession" there must be harmony between construction and the life process of society, on the one hand, and the quality and the individual impulses, on the other. The imperative becomes to search until you find it. (...)
Fourth Party
Norbert Elias Sociology
process
1. The process: the object of sociology
(from What is sociology - Original title: Was ist Soziologie?, 1970)
Social Sciences-Natural Sciences: The classical phase of their evolution is believed that the purpose of research in physics was is to bring all that is changing and moving to something immovable and immutable, which means the eternal laws of nature -> Formulation of laws as the criterion of science. Consequently, many representatives of academic disciplines, not least some sociologists, they feel a certain anxiety and maybe even feel guilty because on the one hand claim to be scientists, but on the other are not able to fulfill the ideal of philosophical science that has been established.
But how can we talk about change if there is something that does not change and therefore precedes any change?
We must portray the river as something static to be able to say that flows. The unchangeable element with which we have to do is specify the mutability of men, which comes from the evolutionary transformation. This mutability is not chaos, but rather a special type of order. Comte, Marx, Spencer and many other classical sociologists of the nineteenth century tried to analyze this order, ie the order inherent in change itself. In the twentieth century swung in the opposite direction, so that many of the leading theorists of sociology, Talcott Parsons in the first place, consider the stability and immutability as the normal characteristics of a social system, while the changes appear to be only the result of some disturbance of the normal condition of equilibrium of society.
Sociology must grasp the nature of the case of social phenomena. The current form of sociological analysis makes it possible to dismember conceptually compounds in the individual components, such as "variable" or "factors", without any need to analyze how these separate and isolated aspects of a broader context are interrelated.
Reports from objects placed in relation to -> The power as a way to report. The power expresses a relationship between two or more persons, or between people and objects of nature. Power is an attribute of the reports and the word is used in an appropriate way when it indicates changes of power.
The individual and society:
-Weber never failed to resolve the conceptual point of view the problem of the relationship between the two totally isolated and static objects which seem to postpone the concepts of each 'individual' and 'society', understood in this way (this has no effect on the greatness of his work). Weber unruffled the "company" in a number of actions carried out by more or less disordered adults left to themselves, each other and separated tuttoindipendenti. This approach led him to conceive of as reality without all property types and observable social regularities. Could justify the social structures typical of these artificial products just as sociologists, precise and orderly as scientific representations of something that really has no structure and order. Weber was then one of the great representatives of nominalism sociological (consider the human society as merely a "flatus vocis).
-Émile Durkheim was more inclined towards the opposite way of thinking. He wrote: 'It definitely an obvious truth that there is nothing in social life that is not even in the individual consciousness, however, almost everything is in the latter coming from the company. (..)».
As recently tried to Talcott Parsons, we consider now the real one or other or both at once - on the one hand the 'Ego', ie the individual agent, and the other the "social system '. But there is no way out of this trap concept (actor and system, and the ideal type person, individual and society are not isolated concepts and properties!).
The individual as a process: the man is a process -> is born, grows, grows up (while the traditional concept of individual expresses an ideal image). That between the individual and society is a dichotomy that has no reason to exist. The strength and persuasiveness of the idea of \u200b\u200b"society" as something external to individuals, and "individuals" as something that exists outside of society, derived from an image of man as homo clausus, the whole questionable. As Durkheim wrote: "If this externality is only apparent, the illusion will dissipate with the progress of science and see the outside world - so to speak - internalize ".
Throughout his life, Durkheim struggled in vain with this problem (the similarities between the two sets of problems: those focusing on the existence" outside "of social phenomena in relation to the individual and his conscience "inside" and those, the oldest, the theory of knowledge concerning the relationship between the existence of external objects and the individual cognitive subject with his "conscience").
Max Weber approached the problem differently: he distinguishes between individual actions "social" from those who are not, and are therefore only "individual", however dubious distinction.
He considers any non-social action aimed only at inanimate objects, although it is absolutely svidente that different individuals assign a different meaning to those objects. Weber's thinking is strongly influenced by the feeling that somewhere there must be a line between what deserves to be called and what the individual deserves to be called social -> individual considered statically.
The difficulties that we encounter repeatedly when we try to solve the problem of convincing relationship between what we call what we call the individual and society are largely due to the nature of these two concepts:
1. individual as a man in the singular
2. companies such as man in the plural
As a starting point in the study of sociology we explicitly need an image of man in the plural. Everyone is always in relationship with others -> need to perceive ourselves as persons among other things, involved in a game together with the other. It 'not easy to combine the two ideas, one in which there is a dividing barrier and one where this barrier does not exist. This vision requires a further effort to distance himself from -> the barrier between the individual and society resides only in individual consciousness.
2. The individual and society: the method
(from Introduction, in The Civilization of good manners - Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation, 1969)
The acquisition of a higher level of individual consciousness of self, was accomplished during the Renaissance -> move to the perception of nature as a landscape with respect to the observer as the object of knowledge that is separated by an invisible wall as the subject of knowledge, passing to a further stage of self-consciousness.
Questions: What exactly causes this idea of \u200b\u200ban "inside" the individual who is separated from everything that exists outside of themselves, what they are properly man the container and the contents?
The invisible wall that separates the individual from society is nothing but self-control behavior.
Concepts of classifiers sociology, as a "structure of society ',' social processes" or "development of society" may seem at best artificial products of sociologists, development 'ideal-typical' in the researcher needs to put some order . Quite the contrary are the beliefs of individual independence artifivciali to be produced, the result of a process of persuasion similar to that in the Middle Ages had the idea that the sun revolved around the earth .. Even then the geocentric picture of the physical universe, so no doubt the image of the social self-centered can be overcome.
Question: To what extent the feeling of isolation and alienation stems from ignorance and ineptitude in the development of self-monitoring individual and to what extent structural peculiarities of the most developed societies?
The idea of \u200b\u200b"individual and society" should be replaced with the configuration of men mutually related and mutually dependent -> The plot of the reciprocal relationship between people and their interdependencies are what binds them together -> are the core configuration.
E 'unsuccessful conceiving the image of man as image of a single man. E 'invecepiù appropriate to understand it as a picture of many interdependent people, which together create configurations, which are groups or companies. The company is the network of interdependencies formed by individuals.
The metaphor of dance: How to design the mobile configurations created by men in the dance interdependent, so we can conceive of states, cities, families, but also those feudal, capitalist and communist. How small are changing configurations of dance (think of a mazurka, a minuet, a Polish, a tango, a rock 'n roll), so changing the configuration that we call large companies. (...)
3. The concept of representation: the method
(from What is sociology - Original title: Was ist Soziologie? 1970)
Men men as individuals or as a society? The concept of configuration is a useful tool that allows us to overcome the dichotomy between individual and society.
The game as an example of the concept of "figure": With figuration we mean changing the model consists of the players understood as a totality, a model that players make in their mutual relationship not only with intellect but with their whole person, with the all of their modes of action. This figure can be seen as interdependent between allies or adversaries, the two groups, allies and opponents, who still form a single representation.
The concept of 'power': In the center of the process we find an oscillating figurazionale balance of tension, a balance of power that are constantly shifting -> feature each flow figurazionale.
The concept of representation is applicable both to relatively small groups (small groups) as a society made up of thousands or millions of interdependent people (large groups).
It then tries to understand the characteristics of qesto complex figure in a direct way, namely by analysis of chains of interdependence. Sociological analysis there can never be satisfied with the use of nouns as analytical tools dehumanizing (atomistic conception). Whether it's function or structure, role or organization, economics or Cutura, the meaning of these concepts often hides their amenability to particular figures. The same is true of meaning of the concept of "game", when you lose sight of the game is a matter of a specific figure, made up of players. E 'therefore doubtful that sociology can be defined as a "behavioral science." This does not mean that sociology can make use of statistical surveys. But we must realize the theoretical background from which it undertakes a statistical survey, and then especially the way in which the question arises as to which the investigation should provide answers.
If the task of sociology is to investigate the processes figurazionali that look like complex games, then we must seek to develop statistical tools that are suited to this task. Col
concept of representation drew attention to the interdependencies among men. The problem is to determine what really binds men in the picture.
interconnection behavior of many individuals arise specific interconnection facilities can not be understood or explained by reducing them to the behavior of their individual members.
