Social Process and social systems

How do individuals create society?

Classical and Contemporary theorists all stress that I SMarxDurkheimWeberParsonsMillsCh. 13 discusses: Parsons (Sculli),

Coleman, Habermas, Wallerstein and Tilly

Habermas: The most widely read social theorist in Europe Combines sociology and philosophy Calls himself a Marxist Combines Marx with Parsons Main center of “Critical theory,” aka “Frankfurt

school theory,” aka critical Marxism. Supporters currently trying to chance the name of

the Marxist section of the ASA.

The ideal speech situation Critical theorists are, in general, democratic

socialists, but they are not simply democrats because Nazi’s and fascists may have a majority.

The ideal speech situation says that the truth is what people would agree too in an unconstrained situation of open discussion and access.

They argue that issues of right and beauty are similar.

“Communicative ethics” involves a complex development of these ideas.

Who said,

“Human beings have the ability to dream better futures than we have yet succeeded in dreaming. We have the ability to create much better societies than we have yet succeeded in creating.”

Joe Feagin’s Presidential ASA address 2001

How is society different from the solar system?

In general, the solar system is a closed system that merely repeats a set of dynamic motions, indefinitely.

From the knowledge of planets position and trajectory at any instant, positions can be predicted indefinitely into the past or future.

Although even the solar system is subject to chaos and to external effects.

Chaos

Lorentz showed that weather systems are not like this.

A mathematical replication consisting of three simple equations never repeats,

And, when entered into the computer again, produces a different trajectory,

Due to “deterministic chaos”The “butterfly effect.”

The butterfly effect If a system contains many amplifiers,

then a force as weak as the wave of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil may generate a force as strong as a hurricane in the North Atlantic a month later.

Systems containing amplifiers (positive feedbacks) and dampers (negative feedbacks) will usually be chaotic.

Positive feedbacks It is positive feedbacks that tend especially to

amplify the effects of individual action, and therefore to make outcomes open.

Positive feedbacks often generate systems governed by the Matthew Principle that operate like a game of Monopoly, generating inequality and discontinuities.

This is one of the insights of conflict theory.

Negative FeedbacksNegative feedbacks tend to act as

controls and thermostats, fastening the system or parts of it into temporarily stable configurations.

The pervasiveness of negative feedbacks is one of the insights of functional theory.

Positive feedbacks in Myrdal’s An American Dilemma “cumulative causation:”

Minority deprivation

Minority deprivation

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Majority racism

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Negative feedback in Myrdal

Myrdal believed that the conflict of the dynamics of cumulative causation with normative, moral development towards an open, universalistic society creates a dilemma

Institutionalized, systemic racism

Violation of the American Creed of equal opportunity, etc

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Interpretations of Myrdal In a complex system of feedbacks, one can

get very different dynamics by emphasizing different causal influences.

Feagin believes Myrdal overestimated the openness of the American Creed and underestimated the importance of struggles.

I.e. it was the ghetto rebellions, not white liberals that generated Civil Rights.

Positive Feedbacks in Feagin

Unjust enrichment

Unjust impoverishment

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Institutionalized racism and sexism

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Negative feedbacks in Feagin

The dialectical process by which such structures of oppression generate their own opposition and nemesis

Institutionalized inequality

Struggle and opposition

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Braithwaite and Wilson Both theories are represented as a causal

model without significant feedbacks. Try to figure out in what ways they reflect the

concerns of classical sociological theory and in what ways their actual dynamic is a

feedback dynamic, leading to partially chaotic social process.

The Durkheimian core of Braithwaite

The effects of being male, adolescent, unmarried, unemployed, or not hooked into a career are what Durkheim called “egoism” a lack of social bonds.

The effects of urbanism and mobility are what Durkheim called “anomie,” or weakening of social norms.

Social bonds and social norms reinforce each other.

The central positive feedbacks

Association with other criminals

Stigmatization and labeling

Crime (and punishment)

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The central negative feedbacks

crime Strict punishment

Stronger norms

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Net effects

The funny box in the lower left is Braithwaite’s attempt to get the best of both worlds.

He believes that strict punishment is needed to re-establish norms (reducing crime) but at the same time it reinforces labeling and stigmatized identity.

He thinks the Japanese criminal justice system is particularly good at punishing and then re-integrating, and that we need to learn from them.

The Marxian core of Wilson “Its jobs, stupid!”The “underclass” is generated by class.He believes that the structure of

institutionalized, cumulative inequality has lead to job flight, which then generated a deviant subculture of broken families and social isolation from job skills.

Some positive feedbacks

Concentrated poverty and powerlessness

Unemployment and job flight

Creation of weak labor force attachment and underclass culture.

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Some negative feedbacks in A Bridge over the Racial Divide

Structures of class and race inequality

Opportunity to build an alliance around full employment policies

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