Lecture Notes ALL

Lecture – 01/16/2014 Max Weber - Discusses capitalism and beauracracy - Zimmel = study of individualism, individual - Born in 1864, oldest of seven children in Berlin - Father was political figure and thus there were many political influences, mother influenced literary and cultural development - Joined military and fell in love with cousin - Was first student then lawyer and finally professor - Highly resentful of his father - Studied German agriculture - Like the monk, utterly absorbed in his work, produced a book each year - Marian Weber, wife, was an influential intellectual - Weber was center of intellectual thought - Fight with father and subsequent death of father resulted in mental breakdown - Founded some of the first intellectual journals related to sociology - WWI: believed war was great and wonderful for Germany - Science/Politics as a vocation: studies of the great world religions Sociology as Science of Action - Refers to understanding logic of society - You need to understand human being doing things in reference to on another, and in particular what motivates you, what matters to people when they do things - Why are people praying in Church? o Examine structure of organization o What they hope to get out of this experience – Weber’s viewpoint - You take seriously people’s ideas and motivations o Power o Status o Recognition - Focus is not institutions but rather the individual, the subjective meaning that people attach to what they do - It is true that people do stuff without a reason o Gene - There are a lot of people in the world thus how is it possible to study this n a subjective manner - How is it possible to understand what drives people to do what they do Theory of Action - What action means and what the basis of it is - Describes what types of action there are - Tells you what to look for - What are different meanings that can motivate action - Theory of action = typology of action - Explaining and understanding action = why someone beats up their friend - 4 major types of action: o Purposive rationality (goal-oriented, teleological)  Why people are doing what they are doing  Goals for action  Based on trying to match means available to you in the most efficient way  Do it without emotion  You are concerned with outcome  Focused on the consequences o Value oriented rationality  Defending a value such as honor of the family  Certain things become rational in the light of the value  Focused on the intention rather than the consequences  Will defend mother regardless of the consequences o Affective (emotion)  Action based on the emotional condition of the person  Person shouting because they are angered: aren’t getting anything out of it, not defending a value o Traditional  Where you’re action is based on taken for granted customs and habits  Just the way things have always been done  Customs, path dependency are powerful things that explain our actions  Families fighting for 500 years  You’re not achieving a purpose, no value or even emotional - Reasons for this theory: o Allows you to make systematic and typological distinctions  Able to classify different groups and organizations in a systematic way  Can compare and classify whole ranges of social life based on the meaning of their actions o Allows you study historical development  Can evaluate change over time  Weber believed that traditional and emotional action was declining and instead modern society focused on purposive action  Only care about values, traditions but ultimate goal  A rationalization of all aspects of life Natural vs. Social Science - Natural science is considered to be science (chemistry, physics) - Two Camps of Debate of science: o Positivists – we explain things in a scientific way when we can bring it under a general law  Science of society needs to find general law of human behavior  Scientific theory of revolution = law of revolution, if so and so occurs a revolution will happen o Historicists  Impossible to make generalizations when it comes to human beings, they are not like rocks  Humans do not follow the same sort of regularities, we are free to act and make decisions  These actions can never be fully explained by any law  A historical situation is always unique and not always a result of the same situations  Can only address each of the specific historical occurrences - Weber saw merit in both of the concepts presented by the two camps - Weber says that scientific understanding has to proceed by generalization and abstraction, when we bring things under general categories that is the basis of science (address what they all have in common) - Weber says that human beings cannot be understood as a result of their external behavior, their meaning, motivations and values - You can’t understand people without understanding the motivations of a person - Social science can penetrate deeper into the world than natural science can - Only studies surface object - Social science goes deeper than natural science because people are deeper than rocks Verstenen - A third approach to social science = Verstenen (Interpretative) o Try to understand people’s motivations o Get into their shoes o What drives them, what motivates them o Empathetically entering the minds of those under study STEP ONE = DIRECT INTERTRETATION - From study of warlord you understand they do what they do because of their life experiences - Get direct interpretation to formulate an explanation STEP TWO = EXPLANATION - Why do they think that - Where do they get those ideas from - Certain outlook of life means they do things differently from other people - Why do people pursue profit? - People do things in a senseless methodical way when they think doing that action is good - What are consequences of adopting that idea - Sociology according to Weber has to be about action - Sociology has to create more general knowledge that can be applied to many cases - Needs to lead to knowledge of social causes The Ideal Type - It is an abstract construct which you can use to help to investigate, examine and understand action in any given situation - Provides baseline measuring stick to note similarities and differences in a large number of cases - Not ideal in idea that it is a moral ideal - Can make ideal type of immoral things such as criminal - Trying to understand what perfect type of actor would be o i.e. ideal criminal : if nothing got in your way what would you do - Rational stock market investor o will never get emotionally attached to a given stock o does not concern self with values of company o do not care for tradition nor custom o emotions disregarded (no excitement) - What you can do with ideal type: o Can explain deviation from ideal  What are real people actually doing of different backgrounds, religions, etc.  How close are they to ideal type  What is it that causes them to deviate from the ideal  Cause of behaviour  Why do people not buy most profitable costs – could be value based o Can examine causes and consequences of actually approximating the ideal type  What leads some people in some places to come closer to embodying this ideal type  What other behaviours results from this approximation  Emergence of priesthood results in creation of people who want to live up to ideal type  Christian ideals: love neighbor of family  Disobey father in name of Father - Used ideal to understand specific historical aspects Power: Authority - Power means the ability to get other people to do things regardless of what they want to do and even if they don’t want to do it - Type of domination - When someone commands others to do things - Most domination does not occur through the exercise of force or violence - People do not do most things because of violence or force - People follow commands because they believe that the dominator has a right to command, their say so is legitimate - There couldn’t be authority in society if only based on violence and force - Authority is only exercised by a few over a large number of people - Student accepts what professor says because we are bound by legitimacy of educational system - Not based solely on resources of leader but based on meaning that the leader/commander has over followers - Types of legitimate authority (historical ways people have accepted authority): o Rational – legal: type of authority that is rooted in impersonal roles that people have often established in a contract  Students have committed to implicit contract when they enroll in UFT in respect to their professor  Loyalty is not to a specific professor but to the role of professor  Contract lays a set of impersonal obligations that must be fulfilled in role  More and more dominate in modern society o Traditional: dominate type of authority in pre modern society, tradition and customs that are reasons for why we do things and listen to authority  Person has to be part of heritage in order to be listened to  Based on obligation to person who has certain standing within a tradition o Charismatic: when you listen to what people tell you to do because of that individual  i.e. prophets, heroes  based on individual qualities of individual  just want to listen to person because of charismatic manner of person  charisma tends to destroy existing social order because it doesn’t care about rational-legal nor traditional authority  charismatic individuals create new rules  rules is how you determine next leader after charismatic leader: rise of charisma followed by either traditional or rational-legal Power: Stratification - Essentially refers to inequality - Marx says power depends on class – production is controlled by people who have money o Things get done by people with money and property o Class background effects chances of success - Weber agrees but says: o There is huge variation within property owning class  Agriculture, Factories, Home owners  Don’t necessarily have the same interests or are equal o Variation among propertyless  Managers of companies can rent house but have different ideas and outlook from a janitor o Class interests does not equal class action  Even if you identify that there are many people in class with shared class they may not have shared interests  Not necessarily a community  Class does not explain much in terms of what people do  Person’s income level does not say what they will do as group o Difference between status and class  There are factors in life that are not class based but are still important for raking in society which he deems status  Status groups is not about production but about consumption, style of life instead of place in market  Position in status group is based on food, dress, books  Does not have to line up with class positions such as within Ethnic groups, equal in terms of class but differentiate between selves based on food for instance  Moving up in society isn’t only about property but includes status Lecture 01/23/2014 Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism - Narrative that connects seemingly unconnected things - Speaks of deeply spiritual religion - Cold hard side of capitalism - Protestant leads to capitalism Spirit of Capitalism - Capitalist goal = earn a profit - Spirit of capitalism o Spirit = meaning/life orientation behind it o People are trying to make money but why - Uses selections from Benjamin Franklin to display spirit of capitalism o Time is money - Out of Franklin words he is getting spirit of capitalism as a business - Idea that industriousness is a moral due: not only pay debts but must also be credit worthy, have a duty to increase wealth and not be credit worthy, don’t be idle wasting time. - This is not how most societies have thought of work according to Weber o Modern vs. adventure capitalism - Adventure capitalism has always been around o Wolf of wall street o Greed, take the big gamble o Not ethically sanctioned - Modern capitalism o Not just about rich people and big business o Everyday normal people work day in and day out doing what they can to earn just a little profit each day o Gain profit through incrementally implementing plan systematically - Weber was interested in where modern capitalism originated - Real force of history is whether you have property of not - (79-80) ideal vs. material causes in history o Even though money is about material wealth ideas are what drive o If everything is about material then no need to care about ideas - Weber decides to delve into where MC first emerged - MC first emerged among poor people, first to work in methodological way, first started with groups of early settlers in America - Spirit of capitalism, the ethic itself is not solely based on material conditions but also had to be based on their ideas - MC was historically considered to be bad - It was not the elites of world that started to work as capitalist but rather the down-trodden - MC has always been considered to be morally suspect - Point of working was to stop working so that you could enjoy life - Idea that retiring early was bad came with capitalism - Where so these ideas come from? - (80-1) comes from rationalism - Capitalist ideal is tied to the rationalization of modern economy, economic activity o Apply scientific principles to production o Don’t just follow customs or traditions o Build mechanical tractor, hire consultant, apply scientific thinking to rationalize the economy o The economy becomes much more quantitative: use numbers  Bookkeeping is modern invention o People did not necessarily track profit o Numbers bring rational ideas and scientific principles to what you are doing, rational attitude being applied to work - Where does rationalism come from, why do we accept idea that we should do this? - Where does systematic application of reason to life - This systematic application comes from religion, specifically Protestantism - Rise of new religious movement led to people accepting rationalism and spirit of capitalism - How did revolution in religion transform economic order Protestant Ethic - Protestantism = was a movement within Christianity that emerged in 16 -17 century led by people like John Calvin and Martin Luther and American Puritans o Had idea that every individual could have access to God o Did not need to go through priest o You on your own could reach out directly to God o Came with a revolutionized ideology and theology - Ethic = way of life/practice - Weber interest is in how when Protestantism is implemented into life, what happens to them - Religion idea to ethic to spirit to capitalism - Key questions: o What is Protestant ethic? o What does PE say about work and wealth o How does PE lead to SC? - Predestination = God selected a fixd number of souls to be saved, and you do not know if you are one of the saved, you can never know for sure if you are one of them, psychologically changed o Challenge created certain way of life - Led to asceticism = self-denial, denying self any pleasure, control body, endure suffering, fast don’t eat, pleasure is seen as temptation and sin, only pleasure allowed is that of life of saint o Even in marriage, sex is not for pleasure o Sports are bad, allowed only if it makes you stronger o Classic feature of monks in all religions - Protestant believer adopts this attitude because of beliefs in regards to state of grace = some people are saved, saints, they are not tempted by pleasures of the flesh or in this world, they are destined to be in heaven and to live in a better world o These people are angels walking among us o How do you know if you are in this elect? - Testifying to belief: if you were part of saved your whole life would display it, would be holy through and through o No single act would get you into heaven o It would be via everything that you do o Have to be good/pure in every aspect of your life o Everything you do/feel has to be controlled so that it has no temptations - Methodological self-supervision o Invent diary: origin of book keeping attitude o Comes from methodical tracking of thoughts - Ordinary people o Applies to not only priests and monks but also ordinary people o Do not know who is saved o Doesn’t not matter who family is, matters how you live o Do not have to be rich, faith must pervade every aspect of life o Religious virtuoso = monks commit themselves totally to it unlike normal people o Weber says there is no such thing as a religious virtuoso, everyone has to live with exact same expectations - Inner worldly o This form of commitment in life is not content with running away from world away from people o This type of ethic says that you need to go into world and make it purer o Find sin and purify o Temperance movement o Towns with higher percentages of Protestants had no drinking rules o Leads to trying to raise ethical levels of everyday life, everyone must do it Protestant ideas/ethic of wealth - Danger of wealth is enjoying it o Money itself is not bad o Tempts you to waste time on pointless things o Need to be constantly working o Wealth is not bad in it of itself - Consumption is bad o Good thing to do with life is to work, not really care about pleasure of consuming o Consuming is sinful, origin of anti-consumerism o Work is a practise of self-control and denial o Demonstrate and testify to own good character o Life is made to work, process of working, not for consumption o Richest should be hardest work - Work becomes a calling (vocation) o Your work is not just a 9-5 job but rather defines who you are as an individual o Supposed to love your work, shouldn’t be something that bores you o As if God called on you to engage in this work o Traditional view of work: born into station of life, social order was sacred, expected to accept position into which you were born o Find a job that you love o Key Questions:  Does my work please God?  Does it serve the community?  Is your work profitable? - Contradictory in a logical sense but not psychologically - Encourages people to save and avoid wastefulness Direct Economic Consequences of Rise of Protestant Ethic - Many people working long hours, producing more things o Boom in productivity that is related to capitalism o America = foundation of capitalism o Learn to endure lack of simulation and boredom as long as you are doing something productive in tedious jobs - Makes standardization acceptable to people o Buy functional things, dress in purposeful way o Origin of business suit comes from Puritan outfit o If you had money you wanted to show it off - It encourages people to rationally plan for the future o Deny self any pleasure for now o Rationally planning leads you to apply scientific principles to your work - Leads you to think that profit is good - Leads to saving o Saving leads to capital accumulation o This leads to increased productivity and thus capitalism o Smith never had answer for why people began to save -------- - The creation of vast wealth occurs after the peak of the Protestant ethic movement - Were originally very pure but as they accumulated wealth they became corrupt - Because they stayed away from money they became rich - Many of the descendants of Protestants settled into a business ethic - Historical injunctions against wealth and money could be set aside as a result of this ethic - Could make money day in and out yet not have to worry about religious conscious Features of modern capitalist society: Iron Cage of Capitalism - Money making is good so long as you are constantly reinvesting - Hard working labour force o Have to keep up with protestant’s hard work in order to survive - Accepts inequality o If you are rich it is because you worked harder than everyone else, better and more hardworking o If you are poor it is because you are lazy, own fault o Valorize the winners and do not care for loser - Anti-state o Individuals have to achieve on their own o Welfare saps individual initiative to find their calling _____________ - Must work all day, care about job - Can’t get away from expectation that job will define you Lecture – 1/30/2014 Religious Rejections of the World - Making money systematically, methodically = spirit of capitalism stemming from the Protestant Ethic - Systems that religions provide people have deep influences on life - Primarily interested in religions that he dubs salvation religions o Salvation = being saved from the world which is thought of as corrupt, sinful, fallen o Salvation Religions offer vision of a higher world outside of this world - Idea of salvation is one of the most powerful forces of history - When people believe they are not governed by world as it exists but that there is a higher truth, they do not feel that they are bound by conventions of society but they feel they need to change society - Salvation religions try to transform normal human interactions o Spiritual brothers trump blood brothers - Salvation religions tell you that you cannot only be occupied with yourself but must have compassion for human beings wherever they are o Allegiance just does not stop at local family and people you know - Ethic of brotherliness = universal idea that all human beings need to love all other human beings - Tries to understand this by trying to determine how these religions relate to the world - Active religion, inner-worldly = looks at world as being depraved but believe that they can change it via the active efforts of people they can try to bring the Kingdom of God onto Earth - Inner worldly = must be active in the world to make business more profitable - Other-worldy, passive = world is corrupt and fallen but there is nothing you can do about it, must accept it, retreat, withdraw, try to accept things as they are Inner Worldly Otherworldly Active Active Asceticism - Puritan Passive Mysticism - As more and more people begin to live in this manner, Weber questions how this changes norms and mores - As people pursue the ethic of brotherliness that means they also pursue the activities of the world more actively and more according to their principles o Think only of business and forget ethics, morality and politics - Spheres in life begin to operate under their own principles Economy Sphere - How does pursuit of ethic of brotherliness effect economy - In business you are supposed to treat people in an impersonal manner in order to be a successful business person - If you’re a good business person you treat everyone the same way according to the principles of business - Idea that its business principles and not personal is rooted in economy but totally in conflict with ethic of brotherliness - Ethic of economy = you should love nobody - Businessman thinks that it is childish to contemplate the idea of loving everyone - Salvation religions must make compromises in order to heal the tensions - Modern economy = care about elected people, saved people, good people will rise to top (mysticism) o Have to compromise on ethic of brotherliness o Puritan - Mysticism o Believes they cannot change society o Not interested in active intervention in the world - Working in a calling and mysticism are simply two ways that you can compromise religion with modern economics Political Sphere - Salvation religions often conflict with political life because they claim the right to reorder the world from scratch - If you happen to be king/prince this raises tension o Bunch of highly committed religious people that do not respect your authority - As you pursue politics purely for politics this results in: o Impersonality: bureaucratic administration that is treating people as numbers, apply universal standards to them o Friendship thrown under bus if it benefits campaign o Politics is inevitably about power, power is about hierarchy people who command and obey which is in conflict with the idea that everyone is equal before the eyes of God o States use violence, they control the means of killing people, state can legally use violence, state can call you up to go to war and kill and be killed o When states go to war, it comes into conflict with the ethic of brotherliness o Real politik: thinks of interests of state and not consider morals, be realistic about political interest o Patriotism: states, specially modern states claim the right to wage war which demands sacrifice and willingness to die for the state which results in making connections and bonds  This bond can rival that it rivals the connections and bonds that religion encourages  Sense of community felt can be more profound than the bonds felt with one’s religious group  Works as an alternative sense of salvation ad meaning o Politics can consecrate death: make sacred and give meaning to death, question of what gives your death meaning  Salvation religions tell followers that they can tell them the meaning of their death  Now politics can do the same thing, can de for something, for your country *State can become modern kind of religion - Active Asceticism: reconcile religions and politics via Crusades o Use state to make the world better o Religious crusades are actively intervening in the world, make it better o Forged connection between politics and religion but give up on ethic of brotherliness - Mysticism o Pacifism – turn the other cheek Art - Tensions between world of art (paintings, song, dance) and world of religion - Salvation religions are anti-pleasure because the world is corrupt and offers temptations - World of art says pleasure is good and encourages you to feel passions expressed in art - Religion says that is giving into temptations of the world - Salvations religions are about belief and commitment - Art says style and form are more important than the substance, can make anything and make it beautiful o Turn horrific things into something beautiful - Art for art’s sake: art itself seems to provide us with an escape from the meaninglessness of life while religions says that it can give us meaning - Art says that we can make art that has nothing to do with religion but can still give your life meaning resulting in a competition between art and religion - We have tension built into our society: onside that is suspicious of art and the other celebrate art Sex - Deep relationship between brotherliness and sexuality - Many pre-salvation rituals had sexual acts as part of their religious customs - Not only an issue of act of sex but rather when it becomes eroticism o Eroticism is the application of methodical look at sexual life - Salvation religion sees a threat of irrationalism o See body as part of world that needs to be controlled and thus sex seems to be allowing irrational part of self being allowed to win o Eroticism views sex as releasing vital parts of the self that needs to be let go giving insight into aspects of life - Sexual relationship between two people is highly personal and can become so profound that the partner can become like a sacrament, as important to you as God, embodiment of meaning, replace God in life and thus a threat of God - Salvation religion looks as sex as being brutal: someone is always coercing someone else o Ethic of brotherliness is about no coercion - Aspect of exclusiveness o Only between two people can share it that can’t be put into words - Ethic of brotherliness says that you must be able to share everything - Feeling of loss of self-control – lose self in the other person but religion emphasizes controlling themselves Rise of rationalism - Began and Europe and exported throughout the world 1. Science o People have been making empirical observations of world for centuries o But there was never a systematic observations/method or mathematical foundation of astronomy, no rational pursuit of history 2. Art o Harmony, theorize about music o Study music methodically 3. Architecture o Apply mathematical principles and laws of physics to buildings 4. Universities o It was in the West where universities were organized into functions and disciplines in a systematic manner o Define different disciplines Bureaucracy o There has been civil service but developing a world of bureaucracy for itself, rational organization is a new development o Operate rationally and productively Constitutional State - People selected to govern according to systematic rules and their commitment to ideas Capitalism - One of the major carriers of methodical control of life - Not only defined by pursuit of life Bureaucracy and Charisma - Bureaucracy = clearly defined jurisdictional areas, organized according to functions and clearly defined roles - Authority rests on the rules that define responsibilities in assigned areas - Don’t listen to someone because they are son of duke but because of rules - Authority based on rules and not status - Usually leaders had followers organize as people loyal to that person or nobles got to exercise authority according to lineage - Office hierarchy = lower offices monitored by higher offices, offices of appeals, map out hierarchy of office and everyone knows where they fit it - Defines career = goal is to move up in a bureaucracy - They have files: they keep written or recorded documents which they store in a special place, has a living memory that it has recorded and thus can track decisions over time - Office management o We have people whose job is to develop strategies to manage relationships in office so that it can work better - Your duties are a full time job that requires special training o Administration requires time, knowledge and skills - There are people who spend all their time trying to make business run more successfully - Previously, duke would occasionally check in on work but now work is main job - Bureaucracies require general rules o Cannot make ad hoc decisions, cannot make exceptions, must be applied to everybody - Manner of moving up is via appointment instead of being elected o If getting job via appointment you now depend on superiors for appointment - Responsibility is to those who elected to them - If you start your own business means that you are responsible for being creative and changing rules - Loyalty is more and more to the structure of the organization - Most B jobs come with salaries - Rewards isn’t necessarily measured by performance, reward is now based on rank within the organization - Ethos of office = the demands of your function and job become your vocations/life’s work o Just do what the job asks me to do o Must put personal feelings aside even if I don’t like it - Elected official doesn’t necessarily have this type of ethos, their responsibility it to resist that/resign - Bureaucrats are supposed to stay outside of political fray - People doing what they are required to do without getting personal feelings get into the way - Impersonality allows for decisions to be carried out much more effectively - Have good memories and thus can look at past to plan for future - The fact that they are hierarchical means that they are very successful, productive - They are cheaper than alternatives, nobles who have not devoted themselves to the organization versus people who make it their vocation - A collegial mode of organization = instead of having a hierarchy, people are colleagues, bunch of people have equal say o Professors - Bureaucracies create a form of inequality o Involves to a high degree non-democratic rules: ruled by the experts, know how things work, not a vote: politicians complain about bureaucracies making final decisions o Elected leaders are quite weak in comparison to bureaucracies o Secrecy rule  Hidden files - There is a leveling aspect: often results in mass democracy o Mass democracy brings expectation that we govern selves by rule of law - Always is expanding: most effective peak of rational organization is keeps spreading o Bureaucratic are very powerful - Indestructibility of bureaucracy o Livelihood depends on conforming to organization o Nobles had income outside their business o Cannot stop bureaucracy as we are dependent on it for our lives and livelihood Routinization of Charisma - One of most profound consequences of bureaucracy - Based on person with extraordinary qualities and rule in virtue of those qualities - Creates and emotional community - Support staff for leader are not impersonal, people around leader feel called by his message - Make judgement case by case based on what the leader wans - Charismatically run organization are creative o They do not exercise existing rule but create new rules for people - Therefore anti-bureaucratic o Very stable, rule defined = bureaucracy o Charisma = no rules - Charismatic authority is transitional and in the purest form cannot last - Even moments of charisma become traditional or bureaucratic - When charismatic leader dies try to pass on charisma but via rules, ceremony - As rule based understanding of life, we take charisma and personal decisions based on personal convictions and implement them Lecture – 2/6/2014 - Bureaucracy is one of the greatest way that rationalization has been expressed o Social organization in plans, methods Science as a vocation - Science not as a hobby but as a calling - Begin to think of scientist as a most noble pursuit - Scientist has authority to tell us the truth - This lecture was given to a group of students, trying to explain to them what a scientist really entails and commitment required - At time that Weber was writing (1910) = romantics, wanted intellectual work to have a personal aspect to, didn’t like that scientist requires them to commit themselves to one science - Weber rejects idea of personal aspect of life, interconnectivity - Weber believes that there are qualities that are a part of science that make it incompatible with interconnectivity o Specialization: want to achieve perfection but this cannot be done unless you are specialized, knowing everything you can in regards to what you are studying  Know everything in regards to your specialization  As soon as you try to make a statement in regards to other aspects of science, they don’t know what they are talking about  Scientist must put on blinders, must take passion and pour in into something narrow and specific and nothing else o Must fuse enthusiasm and discipline: Need inspiration but can’t only have inspiration but must discipline creativity and control it  Must control methods, can’t control when ideas come to you  Must think in a methodical way but at same time you must be open to ideas o Progress: science is different from arts because it is a progressive activity, products of science (theories, research) are made to surpassed, someone else will add on to it and improve it  Failure to science if your law is still applicable in a 100 years  Arts recognizes art from centuries before  Success = destruction of things of past  Why committing life to building theories that will be overturned?  Just have to love profession but unable to understand what they are getting out of it - This dedication to science is as a result of the demagification of world/disenchantment of the world: doesn’t mean that people know a lot more than they did in the past, key idea is taking magic away from the world, magic = something is happening for no reason or being unable to explain something, idea of taking away magic is that there are no mysteries in the world, there ae a lot of unknowns but in principle everything can be known, no limit to what we can know, no limit to what the power of the mind can reveal, nothing is with no reason, will eventually find the reason, though the sunrise was divine but science explains why it occurs - Consequences: o Removes meaning from life: Weber draws form Tolstoy, two types of life  World has cycles: people are born and then die, cycle of political regimes, people get married and grow, cyclical understanding of the world means that when you aero older you can rest content that you have seen everything the world has offered because the cycle will continue after your death  Rise of science takes that contentment away, satisfied with life: things will happen after you die that you cannot even imagine, will die knowing that things will occur that you will never experience o Removes meaning from science itself: in past science had deep meaning for the people that did it that was connected with the deep meaning of the universe  Invention of modern laboratory = unlocking the secrets and mind of God  Past = aim to get in touch with nature’s perfection  Tolstoy: the reason we feel that something is amiss with the centrality of science is because it gives no answers, it gives no answers for how to live such as domains of religion, art and politics are able to do  Science can’t determine if its results are good or bad, can’t determine the value of the things it creates o Nihilism: domination of rationalization and science means that there is nothing to care about, nothing matters, we lack something that we can trust and believe in that can determine in the final analysis how to live  What can we trust to tell us what is good and bad  Question of how to decide what is the best – answer should be science  But the problem is it cannot answer that question, only able to explain cause/effect but not moral  Stuck with no answer to right/wrong moral of life  Stuck with idea of life as clash of gods - Rise of rationality is taking away rationality of decision making - Good things science can do: o Can provide methods of thinking and useful knowledge o Provides tools that sharpen the mind o Allows you to gain clarity about yourself: understand who you are, allows you to understand what you are getting into when you make a decision o Forces you to see the options open to you and then make a decision with clear eyes Emile Durkheim - French, son of rabbi, born in 1858 - Religion was very important to him when he was younger - Later abandoned religion - Objected to focus on books of past, interest in beauty, aesthetics and composition present in high education in French school system - Believes that science can and must provide moral direction to society Social Facts - Durkheim obsession was to create sociology as its own discipline by proving that sociology is concerned with real hard facts as a distinctly social type, there are objective social facts that are not physical, not subject to human desires - Social facts is: o Not everything that happens in society: too broad, unable to determine what makes it unique from other domains of science o Must be external or objective: must be outside of the human such as duties defined in our laws/customs that are written down, not up to any individual o Compelling/coercive: must push back against it, test reality of laws and you will find out that breaking laws hurts you, we know it’s a fact because if you break them it hurts you, resist our individual attempts to break them; therefore sociology isn’t biological (can’t find them in DNA) or psychological (can’t be found in individual mind, is a collective) o Supposed to study norms, institutions that direct us, coerce us regardless of our individual wishes - Areas that sociology wishes to understand: o Rules governing financial transactions o Religious ides o Institutions o Social currents: mood of concert, fashion trend  Put pressure on people to conform to them  Flow through society, no person in charge of them but influence behaviour o Education: process through which social facts are injected into an individual, whole process of education is making individual people into things that will accept rules  Teach manner and etiquette which would not be done unless taught to the individual  Taking people from being barbarians driven by impulses to a social being that respects rules  Organization through which society reproduces itself = schools - What gives something its factuality (i.e. Church) o Sanctions: punishments, look at what rules say about breaking rules, when there exists punishments  Churches: punishments for heretics  Schools: punishments for actions demonstrates what is being held as important o Legal codes: tell us most general rules for the whole society, something that everyone must accept (study law books)  Societies that punish for smashing idols versus punishment for rape demonstrates what a society values o General ideas: ideas, sentiments and feelings that are spread throughout an entire society  Suicide seems like the most intimate decision but Durkheim says suicide rates fluctuate greatly  Urbanization : trend of people moving from country to city despite lack of punishment, general trend of forces o Morphological characteristics will shape character of a society: how are things arranged, distributed, structural aspects of society  Age/religious/education distribution, distribution of different qualities - Wrote these ideas in a methodological book DOL in Society - Provides scientific understanding of society that gives moral compass of life - Questions what keeps everyone connected, sense of connectivity that manifests in obligation to others - Question of morality: why do we have rules that we respect - Can we study connectivity and solidarity as a social fact - Durkheim feared that traditional basis of morality and interconnectivity were collapsing - Traditional type of morality = mechanical solidarity o Based on people being similar to one another o In modern society, because of DOL we have become more and unique, much more specialized in day to day lives, less able to do what we need to do o Similarities of past: same religion, same ethnicity, same work, grew up in same town and thus a lot in common knowing that we think the same and thus can trust each other - Question of how do you trust people with whom you have very little in common with - Contemplated that maybe there was new type of solidarity that change in society produced - Tries to judge the moral value of specialization from a sociological perspective; has DOL made society healthier or sicker; do we need to destroy or improve DOL in order to aid society - DOL is just not about economics, also about basic moral aspects of society - DOL goes beyond work and consumption: o Politics: ministries, ministers o Science: various specializations o Music: metal, grunge, etc. - Dilemma = either can endorse or resist specialization o Should we be well-rounded person that can do everything and is self-sufficient or is the aspiration to be one piece/organ of a larger body, know one thing perfectly that contributes something essential? - There is a trend towards being part of a larger organ - Sense of wanting to be individualistic comes into conflict with trend to be part of a larger organ Function of DOL - Social science will give us an objective answer to question - Structure of book, main questions: o What is the function of DOL? o What are the causes and consequences of DOL? o What is its abnormal versus normal versions of DOL? - Answering these questions means that we will be able to determine whether there can be morality to society - Social function = what kind of need does it fulfill in society as a whole - Social function is not civilization: not intellectual or material development of society o Society function is not to make us more affluent or rich o Increased abundance leads to social decadence, crime, suicide o Civilization isn’t broadly shared, functional for whole of society - True purpose of DOL is to maintain social cohesion, feeling of togetherness - Two types of solidarity: o Mechanical solidarity: based on likeness with others, see qualities that others have that are similar to ours o Organic solidarity: based on differences, see qualities in others that you lack but need and thus connects people  People doing different things for each other and depend on each other  Holds us together as parts of an organic whole in virtue of doing different things - We have to determine what society has chosen for us and determine what they have chosen for us - DOL can create a degree of solidarity, question of how to measure it and Durkheim says to do this one must turn to the law books - (24) Law = social symbol of solidarity o Tells us code of society - We can classify different societies based on the laws that they have o Determine which types of laws are more important - Classifying laws based on types of sanctions imposed on those who break the law o Penal Law = type of law that is about punishing people, point of this law is to make people hurt, aka repressive law, not about giving property back to people who stole from someone but hurt the culprit  Main way of seeing mechanical solidarity reinforced in society  Why do we want to make criminals hurt?  Not because the crime harms society i.e. eating wrong kinds of meat, crimes that are most disruptive are not punished the most i.e. white collar crime  Harshly punished crimes offend the collective conscience (38.The totality of beliefs of society) o Restitutive = about compensating victims, make world go back to how it was before the crime was committed 02/13/2014 - Mechanical solidarity = degree to which you are similar to those around you - Organic solidarity = being different from those aroiund you in a complimentary manner - Understanding law is basis for understanding solidarity – sociological significance of legal systems - Two types of laws o Penal = pain, punishment o Restitutive = restoring world to how it was before violation, compensating, question of harming criminal is not relevant Mechanical Solidarity - Penal law is intimately linked with mechanical solidarity and is how penal is created - People want those who commit crime to suffer because causing punishment should be reflective of how much harm and suffering it causes but this does not ring true - Reason for punishment = offends collective conscience - Collective conscience = collection of beliefs, ideas that are shared by everyone within a society o i.e. individuality is valued so coercing a person is considered the worst possible crime - Some sorts of acts are called crimes because they are considered to be offensive to everyone, defies our sense of what is good and right - The collective conscience allows us to feel that the ideas and feelings that we have as individuals are also shared by a number of other people and thus these ideas become more powerful and energetic to each person - The most commonly shared feelings are the strongest thus people who threaten the feelings are considered to be the worst of people o Threatens that collective common sense - What you are acting in the name of is a higher power, the feeling that there is something that is bigger than any of us we want to hurt it - Goal of punishing those who offend the collective conscience is to restore collective conscience, bring it back to the strength it had before this person offended it - We feel solidarity in punishing the person and seeing them suffer for that act o Communal public punishment allows for community to heal i.e. why there was public executions in the past - Repressive law through public act of causing pain is a sign of mechanical solidarity and manner of creating mechanical solidarity - When we gather in collective punishment we are gathering and enforcing the idea that we all share something (61) - Any society in which this penal law dominates is one in which mechanical solidarity is strong Organic Solidarity - Restitutive law = compensate victims and not really to punish the criminals - Purpose of law is to put things back to how they were before the crime was committed - Lacks deep emotional roots - Process of figuring how much someone needs to be compensated depends on rationality versus emotion - Often referred to as civil law - It is not part of the collective conscience (CC) - Not really involved with collective feelings, often refers to highly private disputes o Issue of spousal support o How much contractor should pay - Restorative - Not private mediation: o Private mediator = making deal between two people, find satisfactory agreement that everyone can accept o Civil law = tells you what you have to do even if no one accepts it or agrees with it i.e. divorce - There is always a limit to a contract, social conditions to a contract - If society does not grant legitimacy to contract it doesn’t need to be followed - (77-86) establishing link to DOL - RL specifies relationships of roles/functions to each other o Contract law tells you what kinds of contracts are valid: defines relationship between buyers and sellers  Explains buyer’s role in the contract o Marriage law lays out what you must do in order to be married legally, explains stipulations for divorce - Law is laying out laws and obligations of husband/wife - RL is very specialized, does not consist of general code o Commercial code = code of commerce - RL is usually temporary, specific to specific time and period o i.e. will/estate distribution: when it is sorted out law has no use - system of RL is like the nervous system, keeps all aspects of society connected, harmonious - RL tells all parts of society how they are supposed to function in relation to one another - The bigger the RL code, the more the society is held together as an organism than feeling the same things in common - RL is form of solidarity that is produced by people performing inter-dependant functions - Two types of connections: o Direct (mechanical solidarity): no intermediation, nothing between individual and collectivity, society = common type/shared image of best life, stronger the weaker the individual personality is, the less I feel like an individual and the more I see myself as being the same as those around me, feeling one with a crowd, the more individuality you feel the more you are perceived as a threat o Indirect (Organic): interlocking parts, none of us are connected to a common ideology, some linkage to all the elements and functions that are connected to one another, society doesn’t actually mean collective unity, means interlocking parts, linkage is stronger the more that m personality and skills differ from everyone else, society only has power over us only if we want to - There will always be some time of interconnection where one has specialized in a particular area - Look to law, if there is more RL the organic solidarity is stronger and if it is penal law than it is PL that is stronger - Over time the scope of the penal law is decreasing – particularly interested in France – while scope of RL is increasing - Fewer and fewer crimes are being punished - Mechanical solidarity has weakened and organic solidarity has strengthened - In European societies in particular, there was almost no difference between religious law and RL - Religion encourages the idea of the collective conscience, not about one aspect of life but every aspect - When there is a strong punishment for going against religious law - Durkheim saying that people aren’t losing faith but religion is losing social importance o People do not need religious sanction for a leader, for marriage etc. - With weakening of religious control, mechanical solidarity is weakening and this CC is weakening - Without CC we act less and less on a single modern model - O Canada is celebration of nation state and is one thing we all share in Canada - Look at things that everybody shares and it will represent the things that we value - Society is less about conforming to common set of values and more about individuality - There is a practical force that is necessary to conform to, if CC proceeds to zero then there would be nothing left to hold us together and it would dissolve - We need a new form of solidarity to save society and thus Durkheim points to DOL and organic solidarity Causes of DOL - Function of DOL = solidarity, specifically organic solidarity which is a kind of solidarity based on cooperation and mutual dependence - Cause of DOL is disruption of social solidarity - DOL mainly caused by rise is dynamic density o Caused when people begin to live in more intimate proximity o Close interpersonal contacts with more and more people o Being close physically to a lot of people brings you to an increased interaction, more people to react to o Caused by more people living in big cities, better communication and better transportation o Know what you are doing is connected with multitudes of other people - Dynamic density results in higher/more intense competition o When you have people coming into more intimate day to day interactions, competitions between people who perform similar functions, increases o Businesses are no longer the unique shops but must compete with similar shops around them o Interconnectivity creates new sources of contention - If you can create the DOL you can reduce competition o If you have all these bakers and suddenly they need to specialize they there is no longer no competition - Dynamic density created two options o Can fight it out, compete o Specialize and this results in DOL as a solution to strife and people hating each other - Cause of DOL is thus intimately connected with solidarity which increases if people begin to specialize o Based on differences Pathologies of DOL - Durkheim is highly optimistic about the DOL which he thinks rises from crisis in social cohesion and DOL is solution to this crisis - The normal and good function of DOL is solidarity - Most of the time DOL does not function properly raising question of why is goes wrong - The pathologies hep you show what the normal version is like - Anomic (anomie) = lack of law, regulation, order - Anomic DOL = DOL exists but is not regulated - How owners treat workers and vice versa - Now we have more separate and distinct functions, people are in competition with each other and law must define how people must treat each other - System seems random and unorganized and is thus creating disharmony o In academia as there is specialization it makes it more competitive and often results in disharmony - The forced DOL o Kind of DOL in which certain tasks are only permitted to be done by people from a particular class group o We have DOL but there a rule of who can go into those specific functions resulting in conflict and resentment o This worsens as DOL develops, as DOL open more jobs the link between background and job weakens  Options are limited by background despite array of jobs o Increases feeling that DOL is forcing you into a specific direction in life - Uncoordinated DOL o Dysfunctional linkage between role and personality o People with the right personality are not matched to their roles o Being forced to become teacher despite not being a good teacher o People are stuck in roles that don’t suit them o Worsened as DOL expands, challenge of matching person to role increases as array of jobs expands - These pathologies are a force of social instability - Durkheim says that the problem is not with DOL but the fact that it has not been allowed to develop far enough - Anomic DOL o Need to create regulations that will define new functions o Now we have rules and regulations that define roles and thus tensions diminish - Forced DOL o Only by resisting DOL that you can resist laws that push certain people into roles - Uncoordinated DOL o Disagrees with Smith and Comte that education and festivals can combat DOL problems o Need to create institutions that match people to jobs via better organization  Talent scout  HR Managers - Disorientation of any new distinction is not yet regulated or organized