SOCIOLOGY:

 There are many parts to a society. So, there are many ways to
study society.
 The scientific study of society and social behaviours is
called sociology, and it's a big area of study. In order to
understand the many complexities of human societies, sociologists
have developed several viewpoints, or theories, to help establish
the basic concepts of the field.
 Some theories deal with the sizes of groups in society. Others deal
with production of morals and values. And some deal with the
economy and the creation of social classes.
 That's where we find Karl Marx.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF KARL MARX:

 The Marxist Perspective is a central theory within a level Sociology.
There are many key concepts of Karl Marx such as his ideas about
the social class structure, his criticisms of capitalism and
communism as an alternative.

 Karl Marx (1818- 1883) was alive in the middle of the 19th century,
and it‟s important to realise that his theories stem from an analysis
of European societies 150 years ago

 Marx travelled through Europe during the mid

and later half of the 19th century where he
saw much poverty and inequality.

 The more he travelled the more he explained

what he saw through unequal access to
resources and ownership of property, wealth.
He argued that the working class (proletariat)
in Britain (and elsewhere) was being
exploited by the ruling class (bourgeoisie).

 The ruling class paid the working class less wages than they
deserved, made them work long hours in poor conditions, and kept
the profit from the sale of the goods produced.

 Thus, the ruling class got richer and the working class became
increasingly poor, and had no way of improving their prospects,
unless… Marx argued, they all came together to overthrow the
ruling class in a revolution. Equality for all in the shape of
Communism would replace an unequal capitalist system.

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  Because Marx’s theory is based on criticising Capitalism, one
really needs to understand what Capitalism is.

 Modern industry has established the world market that has given
immense scope of development to commerce, navigation and
communication by land. These developments again have paved the
way for the extension of industries and free trade.

 The bourgeoisie class constantly maximises its profit through the

expansion of new markets, introduction of new technology,
extraction of surplus value and exploitation of the proletariat.

 However, along with these developments there emerge new forces

of contradiction within the capitalist system. Notwithstanding the
emergence of new forces of contradiction, the bourgeoisie was very
revolutionary in their outlook and action. According to Marx,

“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part the

bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of society.”

 Through the exploitation of the

world market the bourgeoisie has
given a cosmopolitan character to
the production and consumption
process.

 The old industries got destroyed.

The old national industries got
dislodged. Industry in the capitalist system no longer worked only
on indigenous raw materials but raw materials drawn from the
remotest zones, whose products are consumed in every quarter of
the globe.

 In place of old wants satisfied by the productions of the country, we

find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of
distant lands and climes.

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 In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency,
we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of
nations.

 And as in material, so also in intellectual production, the intellectual

creations of individual nations become common property. National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures
there arises a world literature.

 The capitalists according to Marx also subjected the nature to the

force of man and machinery through the application of chemistry to
industry and agriculture, and modern technologies such as steam-
navigation, railways, electric telegraph, canalisation of rivers, etc.

 All these facilitated the scope of free commodification of the

economy at world scales. There also emerged free competition
accompanied by social and political institutions to adapt to it.

 The modern capitalist however, according to Marx, has inherited

and nurtured the seeds of its destruction in its own womb.

 In proportion to the growth of the bourgeoisie there has emerged

the modern working class the proletariat, “These labourers, who
must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other
article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the
vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”

 For Marx the essence of the captor is to maximise profit through

commoditisation of the production process. As long as capitalism is
based on private ownership of the means of production, it
maximises profits of the private producers.

 This profit is again maximised by exchange proceeding from money

to money by way of commodity.

 Gradually, the proceed from money to money by way of commodity

ends up with more money than one had at the outset. To explain
the sources of profit, Marx talked about the theory of value, wage
and surplus value.

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 To him, the value of any commodity is roughly proportional to the
quality of human labour contained in it. The wage capitalists pay to
the workers, as the compensation for the labour power the worker
rent to the capitalist, is equal to the amount necessary for the
existence of the workers and their family to produce the
merchandise for the capitalist.

 Under the capitalist system, workers receive the wage which is less
than the actual duration of the work; that is less than the value of
the commodity he or she produces.

 Here comes the notion of “surplus value” which refers to “the

quality of value produced by the workers beyond the necessary
labour time”. Under the capitalist system the workers do not get the
wage for the quality of the value produced beyond the necessary
labour time.

 In return the wage received by a workman is restricted only to the

means of his subsistence and survival. Marx calculated that the
price of a commodity and therefore “also of labour is equal to its
cost of production”.

 In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of work increases the

wage decreases. With the increase in the proportion of the use of
machinery and division of labour the burden of toil of the labour
also increases in terms of increase in the working hours, and
increase in the quantum of work.

 The proletariat is without property. His relation to his children and

wife has no longer anything in common with the bourgeoisie family
relations; modem industrial labour, modern subjugation to capital,
the same in England, as in France, in America and Germany, has
stripped him of every trace of national character.

 Law, morality, religion are to him so many bourgeois prejudices,

behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interest.

 Gradually, the number the proletariat also increases to gain more

strength and awareness. The lower middle class, the small

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 manufacturer, artisans, and peasants also join the army of the
proletariat in their fight against the bourgeoisie.

 To Marx “All previous historical movements were movements of

minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian
movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the
immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.”

 And again Marx writes; in depicting the most general phases of the
development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled
civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that
war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent
overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the
proletariat.

KEY IDEAS OF KARL MARX

1. CAPITALIST SOCIETY IS DIVIDED INTO TWO CLASSES:

 The Bourgeoisie or the Capitalist

class are the ones who own and
control the wealth of a country.
 These control the productive forces
in society (what Marx called the
economic base), which basically
consisted of land, factories and
machines that could be used to
produce goods that could then be
sold for a profit.
 The majority, or the masses, or what
Marx called The Proletariat can only
gain a living by selling their labour
power to the bourgeoisie for a price.

2. THE BOURGEOISIE INCREASE THEIR WEALTH BY

EXPLOITING THE PROLETARIAT

 Marx argued that the bourgeoisie maintain and increase their wealth
through exploiting the working class.

 The relationship between these two classes is exploitative because

the amount of money the Capitalist pays his workers (their wages)

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 is always below the current selling, or market price of whatever
they have produced.

 The difference between the two is called surplus value. Marx thus
says that the capitalist extracts surplus value from the worker.
Because of this extraction of surplus value, the capitalist class is
only able to maintain and increase their wealth at the expense of
the proletariat.

 To Marx, Profit is basically the accumulated exploitation of workers

in capitalist society.

 Marx thus argues that at root, capitalism is an unjust system

because those that actually do the work are not fairly rewarded for
the work that they do and the interests of the Capitalist class are in
conflict with the interests of the working class.

3. THOSE WHO HAVE ECONOMIC POWER CONTROL ALL

OTHER INSTITUTIONS IN SOCIETY

 Marx argued that those who control the Economic Base also control
the Superstructure – that is, those who have wealth or economic
power also have political power and control over the rest of society.

Consists of the forces of production (tools,

machinery, raw materials which people use to
produce goods and services)and the relations of
Economic production (social relations between people
Base(The Mode involved in the production of goods and services).
of Production) Together these make up the mode of production

All other institutions: The legal system, the mass

Superstructure media, family, education etc.

4. IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL

 Marx argued that the ruling classes used their control of social
institutions to gain ideological dominance, or control over the way
people think in society.

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  Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling classes were presented as
common sense and natural and thus unequal, exploitative
relationships were accepted by the proletariat as the norm.

5. THE RESULT OF THE ABOVE IS FALSE CLASS

CONSCIOUSNESS

 The end result of ideological control is false consciousness – where

the masses or proletariat are deluded into thinking that everything
is fine and that the appalling in which they live and work are
inevitable.

 This delusion is known as False Consciousness. In Marxist terms,

the masses suffer from false class consciousness and fail to realize
their common interest against their exploiters.

Commodity Fetishism A fetish is an object of desire, worship or

obsessive concern. Capitalism is very good at producing „things‟. In
capitalist society people start to obsess about material objects and
money, which is necessary to purchase these objects. Material objects
and money are worshipped in capitalist societies. Some people even
need material objects to construct identities – this is partly responsible
for keeping most of us in „false consciousness‟

6. REVOLUTION AND COMMUNISM

 As far as Marx was concerned, he had realised the truth –

Capitalism was unjust but people just hadn‟t realised it! He believed
that political action was necessary to „wake up‟ the proletariat and
bring them to revolutionary class consciousness.

 Eventually, following a revolution, private property would be

abolished and with it the profit motive and the desire to exploit. In
the communist society, people would be more equal, have greater
freedom and be happier.

CRITICISMS OF TRADITIONAL MARXISM

 Marx‟s concept of social class has been criticised as being too simplistic
– today, there are clearly not just two social classes, but several;
moreover, most people don‟t identify with other members of their

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 social class, so it is questionable how relevant the concept of social
class is today.
 Clearly Marx‟s predictions about capitalism ending and the „inevitable
success of communism‟ have been proved wrong with the collapse of
communism.
 Capitalism has changed a lot since Marx‟s day, and it appears to work
for more people – it is less exploitative, so maybe this explains why it
still continues to this day?

REFERENCES:

http://www.sociologydiscussion.com/capitalism/karl-marx-main-features-
of-capitalism-according-to-karl-marx/634

https://revisesociology.com/2015/11/22/marx-key-ideas-summary/

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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF DAVID HARVEY

 David W. Harvey FBA (born 31 October 1935) is the Distinguished

Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Centre of
the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his PhD in
geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961.

 Harvey has authored many books and essays that have been
prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline.
He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city.

 By the mid-1960s, Harvey followed trends in

the social sciences to employ quantitative
methods, contributing to spatial science
and positivist theory. Roots of this work were
visible while he was at Cambridge:
the Department of Geography also
housed Richard Chorley, and Peter Haggett.

 His Explanation in Geography(1969) was a landmark text in the

methodology and philosophy of geography, applying principles
drawn from the philosophy of science in general to the field of
geographical knowledge.

 Social Justice and the City (1973) expressed Harvey's position that
geography could not remain 'objective' in the face of urban poverty
and associated ills.

 It has been cited widely (over 6600 times, by 2017, in a discipline

where 50 citations are rare), and it makes a significant contribution
to Marxian theory by arguing that capitalism annihilates space to
ensure its own reproduction.

 Dialectical materialism has guided his subsequent work, notably the

theoretically sophisticated Limits to Capital (1982), which furthers
the radical geographical analysis of capitalism, and several books on
urban processes and urban life have followed it.
“THE NEW URBANISM AND THE COMMUNITARIAN TRAP”

 Harvey criticizes New Urbanism for only seeking to solve the

problems of suburban sprawl within the same framework of
capitalism. He implies that the solution lies not simply in a better
designed city, but in a change in the political and social process
from capitalism to something else.

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SPACES OF HOPE

 Harvey begins by presenting some of the issues with the city,

including a concept he calls “uneven geographical development.”9
This is more often known as polarization.

 Instead of merely building on previous critiques, Harvey presents

some of his ideas to fix things, a vision for what might be instead of
capitalism.

 He briefly mentions a few thoughts on his vision for what might be

in an interview on BBC HARD talk in 2010. He advocates for
socialism, decentralization and diversity, without delving too deeply
into some of his ideas that would break drastically from the
capitalist mold.

“GLOBALIZATON AND THE 'SPATAL FIX'”

 He clarifies his meaning by the term “fix” as being similar to the

usage for a drug addict. Just as a drug addict needs his next “fix,”
capitalism needs a “fix” using space. Each fix is only a temporary
improvement and does nothing to provide a permanent solution.

 Harvey discusses the cycle of development and redevelopment that

could be in the same space or shifting from one place to another,
pointing out how it is a waste of resources.

 This cycle is something we see quite frequently in South Florida,

where the economy has been driven by development. The fact that
we are currently in a recession with South Florida's real estate
market seems to prove how the “fix” of development was only
temporary.

THE NEW IMPERIALISM

 It was when the United States was beginning to go back to war with
Iraq, postulates that we are again in an age of imperialism. Harvey
suggests that many aspects of globalization are actually imperialism
by the United States.

 The chief example he uses to prove his point is the war in Iraq and
how the Bush administration manipulated us into going there for
control of the oil.

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SPACES OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM

 Harvey once again builds on the ideas presented in his other works
relating capitalism and geography, especially the concept of the
“spatial fix” that he brought up in his earlier article.

 He points out that capitalism creates the problems of polarization.

The uneven development is created due to accumulation by
dispossession. Gain in one place results in loss in another.

 Another concept that Harvey discusses in Global Capitalism is

absolute, relative, and relational space. Absolute space is basically
real, physical space.

 Any movement in absolute space is simply movement from one

location to another. Relative space consists of things like
communication and transactions. Relational space is a bit more
abstract, dealing with relations between people or potential energy.

 These three spaces are reminiscent of some of the concepts

discussed in this globalization class, such as Castell's three layers to
his Spaces of Flows.

IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION

 Harvey does not examine the built environment or metropolitan

form so much as the social, political, and economic aspects of
globalization. He doesn't focus as much on globalization as he does
the larger concept of “global capitalism.”

 For him, globalization is merely a natural part of the capitalist

ambition, so it gets analyzed and critiqued right alongside the whole
system.
 Since capitalism is by its nature an economic system, Harvey
naturally touches on the economic aspects of globalization. The
economic system is also tied to government control, necessitating a
political discussion as well.

 One of the key topics that Harvey emphasizes is polarization. The

income gap between the majority of the population and the few who
control the majority of the capital troubles him.

 The uneven geographical developments do as well, as so many of

his writings touch on the subject. Through his “spatial fix” concept,
he points out how we have deindustrialization in some geographical
areas at the same time as we have industrialization in others. A

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 current example of this would be the trend to offshoring and
outsourcing prevalent in the United States.

 We used to have a large manufacturing industry at home, but the

manufacturing has shifted overseas to places like China. One of the
reasons for this shift is that the wages are much lower in these
other countries, saving manufacturing costs and increasing profits.

 Wages are higher in the West, of course, because of our labour laws
and our desire for a higher standard of living. Developing nations
have lower wages as well as lower standards of living and fewer
labour laws.

 Lately, Chinese technology factories such as Foxconn have been

pressured into raising wages for their assembly line workers.
Labourers have gone on strike and expressed their discontentment
in many ways, as they seek to improve their standards of living in
the same way that Western nations did years ago.

 As these wage increases take effect, several companies have made

decisions to move to other areas of China where labour costs are
lower, or decided to move to other countries with even lower wages
such as Vietnam or Mexico. Some US companies even relocated
their factories back to the United States.

PERSPECTVE ON GLOBALIZATON

 David Harvey takes a skeptic or a traditionalist view on

globalization.

 While he doesn't deny that globalization exists, he considers

globalization as a natural extension of a capitalist system which he
dislikes. That falls basically in line with the thought that
globalization exists “for ideological reasons of capitalist
accumulation,” as well as being part of market liberalism.

 He would tend to agree that the world was globalized before. He

suggests that globalization has been happening since 1492 or
earlier. Because he ties it to capitalism, the assumption would be
that globalization started about the same time as capitalism. Harvey
seems pretty consistent with his traditionalist stance through all his
writings.

 Since capitalism tends to discourage welfare systems and

encourage privatization of anything from health care to education,
Harvey implicitly agrees (by supporting socialism/communism and

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 opposing capitalism) that globalization, or at least global capitalism,
is a way of dismantling those systems. His solution to global
capitalism is to support revolutionary change, so he would support
resistance movements like most other skeptics.

CONCLUSION

 Harvey is a well-written scholar who has spent years polishing and

perfecting his ideas. It is not surprising that he is so widely
respected in academia, given the thoroughness of his critiques and
the depth of his arguments.
 Through his general critiques of global capitalism, he discusses the
social, economic, and political aspects of globalization. Some of his
key themes include polarization and the economic crises caused by
capitalism.
 His stance on globalization is generally that of a traditionalist.
 Harvey's arguments are quite convincing, but his desire for some
kind of utopian economic system fails to account for the imperfect
reality of this world.

References:

https://www.slideshare.net/JohnMarkPalacios/david-harvey-
33832285?from_action=save

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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF TALCOT PARSONS

 Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was an American sociologist who

served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973.
Parsons was one of the most influential structural functionalists of
the 1950s.

 As a functionalist, he was concerned with how

elements of society were functional for a
society. He was also concerned with social
order, but argued that order and stability in a
society are the result of the influence of certain
values in society, rather than in structure such
as the economic system.

 For example, he believed that stable,

supportive families are the key to successful
socialization. Parsons also contributed to our
understanding of medicine, arguing that medicine is our strategy to
keep members of a society healthy, and illness is dysfunctional
because it undermines people's ability to perform their roles in a
society. Finally, he argued that U.S. society needs to find roles for
the elderly.

 Talcott Parsons was for many years the best-known sociologist in

the United States, and indeed one of the best-known in the world.

 He produced a general theoretical system for the analysis of society

that came to be called structural functionalism. Parsons' analysis
was largely developed within his major published works:
1. The Structure of Social Action (1937),
2. The Social System (1951),
3. Structure and Process in Modern Societies (1960),
4. Sociological Theory and Modern Society (1968),
5. Politics and Social Structure (1969).
 Parsons was an advocate of "grand theory," an attempt to integrate
all the social sciences into an overarching theoretical framework.
 His early work "The Structure of Social Action" reviewed the
output of his great predecessors, especially Max Weber, Vilfredo
Pareto, and Émile Durkheim, and attempted to derive from them a
single "action theory" based on the assumptions that human action
is voluntary, intentional, and symbolic.
 Later, he became intrigued with, and involved in, an astonishing
range of fields: from medical sociology (where he developed the
concept of the sick role to psychoanalysis-personally undergoing full

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 training as a lay analyst) to anthropology, to small group dynamics
to race relations and then economics and education.
Parsons is also well known for his idea that every group or society tends
to fulfill four "functional imperatives".

 adaptation to the physical and social environment;

 goal attainment, which is the need to define primary goals and
enlist individuals to strive to attain these goals;
 integration, the coordination of the society or group as a cohesive
whole;
 latency, maintaining the motivation of individuals to perform their
roles according to social expectations.

Parsons contributed to the field of social evolutionism and

neoevolutionism. He divided evolution into four sub processes:

1. division, which creates functional subsystems from the main

system;
2. adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient
versions;
3. inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems;
and
4. Generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the ever-
more complex system.

 Furthermore, Parsons explored these sub processes within three

stages of evolution:
1) primitive,
2) archaic and
3) modern (where archaic societies have the knowledge of writing,
while modern have the knowledge of law).
 Parsons viewed the Western civilisation as the pinnacle of modern
societies, and out of all western cultures he declared the United
States as the most dynamically developed. For this, he was
attacked as an ethnocentrist.
 Parsons' late work focused on a new theoretical synthesis around
four functions common (he claimed) to all systems of action-from
the behavioural to the cultural, and a set of symbolic media that
enable communication across them.
 His attempt to structure the world of action according to a mere
four concepts was too much for many American sociologists, who
were at that time retreating from the grand pretensions of the
1960s to a more empirical, grounded approach.

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PATTERN VARIABLES
 Parsons asserted that there were two dimensions to societies:
instrumental and expressive. By this he meant that there are
qualitative differences between kinds of social interaction.

 Essentially, he observed that people can have personalized and

formally detached relationships based on the roles that they play.
The characteristics that were associated with each kind of
interaction he called the pattern variables.

 Some examples of expressive societies would include families,

churches, clubs, crowds, and smaller social settings. Examples of
instrumental societies would include bureaucracies, aggregates, and
markets.

1. Affectivity Vs affective neutrality: When actor is oriented towards

maximum satisfaction from a given choice.
2. Particularism Vs. Universalism: Situations are judged according to
uniform criteria (universalism) and not according to actor or
individuals relation with the given subject (particularism).
3. Quality Vs Performance: Defining people on the basis of biological
difference and performance is judging people according to their
performance and capacity.
4. Self-orientation Vs Collective Orientation when the actor acts out of
personal interest it is self-orientation.

Parson's theory of social action is based on his concept of the society.

Parsons is known in the field of sociology mostly for his theory of social
action.
 Action is a process in the actor-situation system which has
motivational significance to the individual actor or in the case of
collectively, its component individuals.

 On the basis of this definition it may be said that the processes of

action are related to and influenced by the attainment of the
gratification or the avoidance of deprivations of the correlative
actor, whatever they concretely be in the light of the relative
personal structures that there may be.

 All social actions proceed from mechanism which is their ultimate

source. It does not mean that these actions are solely connected
with organism. They are also connected with actor's relations with
other persons' social situations and culture.

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SYSTEMS OF SOCIAL ACTION

Social actions are guided by the following three systems which may also
be called as three aspects of the systems of social action
 Personality system: This aspect of the system of social action is
responsible for the needs for fulfilment of which the man makes
effort and performs certain actions. But once man makes efforts he
has to meet certain conditions. These situations have definite
meaning and they are distinguished by various symbols and
symptoms. Various elements of the situation come to have several
meanings for ego as signs or symbols which become relevant to the
organization of his expectation system.

 Cultural system: Once the process of the social action develops the
symbols and the signs acquire general meaning. They also develop
as a result of systematised system and ultimately when different
actors under a particular cultural system perform various social
interactions, special situation develops.

 Social System: A social system consists in a purity of individual

actor's interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a
physical or environmental aspect actors are motivated in terms of
tendency to the optimization of gratification and whose relations to
the situation including each other is defined and motivated in terms
of system of culturally structured and shaped symbols.
In Parson's view each of the three main type of social action systems-
culture, personality and social systems has a distinctive coordinative
role in the action process and therefore has some degree of causal
autonomy. Thus personalities organize the total set of learned needs,
demands and action choices of individual actors, no two of whom are
alike.
 Every social system is confronted with 4 functional problems. These
problems are those of pattern maintenance, integration, goal
attainment and adaptation. Pattern maintenance refers to the need
to maintain and reinforce the basic values of the social system and
to resolve tensions that emerge from continuous commitment to
these values.

 Integration refers to the allocation of rights and obligations, rewards

and facilities to ensure the harmony of relations between members
of the social system.

 Goal attainment involves the necessity of mobilizing actors and

resources in organized ways for the attainment of specific goals.

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 Adaptation refers to the need for the production or acquisition of
generalized facilities or resources that can be employed in the
attainment of various specific goals.

 Social systems tend to differentiate these problems so as to

increase the functional capabilities of the system. Such
differentiation whether through the temporal specialization of a
structurally undifferentiated unit or through the emergence of two
or more structurally distinct units from one undifferentiated unit is
held to constitute a major verification of the fourfold functionalist
schema.

 It also provides the framework within which are examined the plural
interchanges that occur between structurally differentiated units to
provide them with the inputs they require in the performance of
their functions and to enable them to dispose of the outputs they
produce.

REFERENCES:

http://www.sociologyguide.com/thinkers/Talcott-Parsons.php

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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF MAX WEBER

 Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the

founding fathers of Sociology. Weber saw
both structural and action approaches as
necessary to developing a full understanding
of society and social change. In one of his
most important works „Economy and
Society‟, first published in the 1920s, he said
„Sociology is a science concerning itself with
interpretive understanding of social action
and thereby with a causal explanation of its
course and consequences.‟

 Firstly he argued that „Verstehen‟ or empathetic understanding is

crucial to understanding human action and social change, a point
which he emphasised in his classic study „The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism‟; secondly, he believed we could make
generalisations about the basic types of motivation for human
action (there are four basic types) and thirdly, he still argued that
structure shaped human action, because certain societies or groups
encourage certain general types of motivation (but within these
general types, there is a lot of variation possible).

HOW WEBER THEORIZED SOCIAL CLASS

 Social class is a deeply important concept and phenomenon in

sociology. Today, sociologists have Max Weber to thank for pointing
out that one's position in society relative to others is about more
than how much money one has.

 He reasoned that the level of prestige associated with one's

education and occupation, as well as one's political group
affiliations, in addition to wealth, combine to create a hierarchy of
people in society.

SOCIAL ACTION AND VERSTEHEN

 Weber argued that before the cause of an action could be

ascertained you had to understand the meaning attached to it by
the individual. He distinguished between two types of
understanding.

 First he referred to Aktuelles Verstehen – or direct observational

understanding, where you just observe what people are doing. For

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 example, it is possible to observe what people are doing – for
example, you can observe someone chopping wood, or you can
even ascertain (with reasonable certainty) someone‟s emotional
state from their body language or facial expression. However,
observational understanding alone is not sufficient to explain social
action.

 The second type of understanding is Eklarendes Verstehen – or

Empathetic Understanding – in which sociologists must try to
understand the meaning of an act in terms of the motives that have
given rise to it. This type of understanding would require you to find
out why someone is chopping wood – Are they doing it because
they need the firewood, are they just clearing a forest as part of
their job, are they working off anger, just doing it because they
enjoy it? To achieve this Weber argued that you had to get into the
shoes of people doing the activity.

THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

 In this famous work, Weber argued that a set of religious ideas

were responsible for the emergence of Capitalism in Northern
Europe in the 16-17th century.

 Weber argued that we need to understand these ideas and how

they made people think about themselves in order to understand
the emergence of Capitalism.

WEBER‟S FOUR TYPES OF ACTION (AND TYPES OF SOCIETY)

 Max Weber didn‟t just believe that individuals shape society –

societies encourage certain types of motive for action – for
example, the religion of Calvinism encouraged people to save
money, which eventually led to capitalism.

 Weber believes that there are four ideal types of social actions.
Ideal types are used as a tool to look at real cases and compare
them to the ideal types to see where they fall. No social action is
purely just one of the four types.

1. Traditional Social Action: actions controlled by traditions, “the way it

has always been done”

2. Affective Social Action: actions determined by one‟s specific affections

and emotional state, you do not think about the consequences

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3. Value Rational Social Action: actions that are determined by a
conscious belief in the inherent value of a type of behavior (ex:
religion)

4. Instrumental-Rational Social Action: actions that are carried out to

achieve a certain goal, you do something because it leads to a result

 To illustrate these different types of action consider someone “going

to school” in terms of these four ideal types: Traditionally, one may
attend college because her grandparents, parents, aunts, and
uncles have as well.

 They wish to continue the family tradition and continue with college
as well. When relating to affective, one may go to school just
because they enjoy learning.
 They love going to college whether or not it will make them broke.
With value rational, one may attend college because it‟s a part of
his/her religion that everyone must receive the proper education.

 Therefore, this person attends college for that reason only. Finally,
one may go to college because he/she may want an amazing job in
the future and in order to get that job, he/she needs a college
degree.

 Max Weber was particularly interested in the later of these – he

believed that modern societies encouraged ‘Instrumental-
Action’ – that is we are encouraged to do things in the most
efficient way (e.g. driving to work) rather than thinking about
whether driving to work is the right thing to do (which would be
value-rational action.

 Weber believed that modern societies were obsessed with efficiency

– modernizing and getting things done, such that questions of
ethics, affection and tradition were brushed to one side – this has
the consequence of making people miserable and leading to
enormous social problems. Weber was actually very depressed
about this and had a mental breakdown towards the end of his life.

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