SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE 2024
What is sociological theory?
- A simple answer: It is an attempt to provide explanation for diverse types of social phenomena and social
change at a range of scales, large and small
o Theory is explanation
o Changes in the social world
- Another way to answer the question is to distinguish…
1) The positive approach (looking at what “is”, describing) Thomas Kuhn
o Does not define by abstract rules
o Science is what scientists do
2) The normative approach (looking at what “ought” to be the case) – Karl Popper
o What counts as a good theory?
o Criteria to count as good science
o Must be falsifiable, potentially wrong
All swans are white, found a black swan – this evidence proves its false
- All this put differently; we can look at…
- We can understand by the theorist and what they meant, or assert generalizable claims and understand the
theory
1) The theorists, or
2) The theory
o Here you can understand theory in a
Broad sense, ie, “framework,” (Marxism; rational choice theory; evolutionary biological) or in a
- How the state works, use these to explain Marxism/ Rational Choice
Narrow sense, ie, “mechanisms” (X factor might have caused Y outcome. A factor might have
caused B outcome)
- Why domestic violence decreased, maybe since divorce increased
Why do we need theory?
1) The “Theory-leadenness” of facts
- All observations are bound to implicit theory
o Poor people try to explain
o Cannot observe, and understand it
o Can lead to false conclusions, without theory
2) Even statistics are meaningless without theory…
- Exhibit A: High statistical correlations, that may be meaningless
- Exhibit B: You still need theory to understand and interpret
- Look for additional facts sun going down or we roll over the sun
- Capitalism and Protestantism (opposite)
, o Particular world view (saving and Investment)
Why social Theory?
- The merit of actions that we choose to engage with
- We are following social rules
- How these rules change
Pivotal idea on social theory: Social rules govern actions
Six Sociological ideas about social rules:
1) Rules are enforced
- Not a rule if it is not enforced somehow
2) Rules come in many diverse forms
- Different forms – can be laws or norms, incorporated to our habitus
3) Rules are not neutral – winners and losers
- Rules benefit some people, but not others
o Vagrancy laws, Jim Crow
o Difficult to leave your slave owners
4) Rules are backed by power
- People will defend these rules if they benefit them
- Jim Crow’s Vagrancy laws benefited some
5) Rules are often inconsistent
- Rules can contradict
- Pressure for women to enter workforce, yet also have kids (contradictory)
6) Rules change over time
- Deliberately or in a fundamental way, they change
- Societies as distinct objects of analysis, that differ across time & place and have their own logic.. and may not be
reducible to individuals within them:
o Louis de Bonald: “The schools of modern philosophy… have produced the philosophy of modern man,
the philosophy of I … I want to produce the philosophy of social man, the philosophy of we”
- Social theory distinguishes societies along various lines: eg: Secular/ religious; capitalist/ feudal/ socialist;
modern/traditional; organic solidarity/ mechanical solidarity, and so on
The origins of social theory
- Social theory (classical & then contemporary) emerges as a response to massive, society changing events
o Origins are a response to social change
- Especially, the industrial & French revolutions
o They are the largest revolutions
o As soon as it changes, you realize there are different societies
Explosions in Population and Wealth
- Graph*
Explosions in cities
- A recipe for capitalism in 5 easy steps:
1. People were kicked off the land (the ‘enclosures’)
2. They flooded the cities
3. That land was used for capitalist farming
4. The new methods used exponentially raised productivity and,
5. Much more food was produced which,
, 6. Allowed population itself to explode
- Productivity growth
o the way we are working
o the output, make more stuff
o You can produce twice as much, or you can produce the same in half the time
- Low productivity Society
o You are making food all day – why people were in agriculture/ farming
The origins of social theory
- These social changing events generated a sense of society itself as a unit of analysis that takes on different forms
and changes across time – as against the view of stability and permanence characterizing traditional worldviews
o Marx you will have to be a specific productivity for churches to appear
o Soldiers – fight all day rather than produce food all day
Social theory developed alongside a sense of history itself
Giddens on the upending of tradition:
- “This shattering of the traditional order … was the source of the development of historical science. Traditional
society … continually looks back into the past, and the past is its present. But it is exactly because this is the case
that there is no concern with ‘history’ as such; the continuity of yesterday and today minimizes the clarity with
which distinctions are drawn between what ‘was’ and what ‘is’. The existence of a science of history, therefore,
presupposes a world in which change is ubiquitous, and, more especially, one in which the past has become … a
burden from which men seek to be freed. In the modern era, men no longer accept the conditions of life into
which they are born as necessarily given for all time but attempt to impose their will upon reality in order to
bend the future into a shape which conforms to their desires.” -- Giddens (1971), p. xi
o We are doing what our parents do
o Giddens – shattering of traditional order
o Hard to make a distinction between past/present
Social Theory developed alongside a sense of history itself
Howe, an example of traditional thinking in the Jewish shtetl:
- “The events of Jewish life were divided into two endless days, the Biblical yesterday and the exile of today.
History was regarded less as a vertical movement through time than as a horizontal simultaneity; Jewish history
was not seen in terms of the scientific assumptions of most modern historians… In a sense, history did not exist;
there was only endless expectation until the Messiah came.” (Howe, p.10)
o Howe Traditional mindset of the European Jews
o Fish don’t notice the water, when you have long periods of social stability
From Classical to Contemporary theory
- Early thinkers in the social theory canon offered classic analyses of, 1) society wide changes as they were
happening, and 2) the major effects of these changes.
- Unique perspectives on change having one foot in the old world
- Examples from Durkheim (From traditional certainty to “anomie” and normlessness of new societies),
- Weber (From traditional societies where the “world remains a great enchanted garden” to rational-bureaucratic
societies, the world is “robbed of gods”, magic is eliminated)
- and Marx, (From feudalism to the capitalism, where "everything is pregnant with its contrary” and “All fixed,
fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-
formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”)
MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE 2024
What is sociological theory?
- A simple answer: It is an attempt to provide explanation for diverse types of social phenomena and social
change at a range of scales, large and small
o Theory is explanation
o Changes in the social world
- Another way to answer the question is to distinguish…
1) The positive approach (looking at what “is”, describing) Thomas Kuhn
o Does not define by abstract rules
o Science is what scientists do
2) The normative approach (looking at what “ought” to be the case) – Karl Popper
o What counts as a good theory?
o Criteria to count as good science
o Must be falsifiable, potentially wrong
All swans are white, found a black swan – this evidence proves its false
- All this put differently; we can look at…
- We can understand by the theorist and what they meant, or assert generalizable claims and understand the
theory
1) The theorists, or
2) The theory
o Here you can understand theory in a
Broad sense, ie, “framework,” (Marxism; rational choice theory; evolutionary biological) or in a
- How the state works, use these to explain Marxism/ Rational Choice
Narrow sense, ie, “mechanisms” (X factor might have caused Y outcome. A factor might have
caused B outcome)
- Why domestic violence decreased, maybe since divorce increased
Why do we need theory?
1) The “Theory-leadenness” of facts
- All observations are bound to implicit theory
o Poor people try to explain
o Cannot observe, and understand it
o Can lead to false conclusions, without theory
2) Even statistics are meaningless without theory…
- Exhibit A: High statistical correlations, that may be meaningless
- Exhibit B: You still need theory to understand and interpret
- Look for additional facts sun going down or we roll over the sun
- Capitalism and Protestantism (opposite)
, o Particular world view (saving and Investment)
Why social Theory?
- The merit of actions that we choose to engage with
- We are following social rules
- How these rules change
Pivotal idea on social theory: Social rules govern actions
Six Sociological ideas about social rules:
1) Rules are enforced
- Not a rule if it is not enforced somehow
2) Rules come in many diverse forms
- Different forms – can be laws or norms, incorporated to our habitus
3) Rules are not neutral – winners and losers
- Rules benefit some people, but not others
o Vagrancy laws, Jim Crow
o Difficult to leave your slave owners
4) Rules are backed by power
- People will defend these rules if they benefit them
- Jim Crow’s Vagrancy laws benefited some
5) Rules are often inconsistent
- Rules can contradict
- Pressure for women to enter workforce, yet also have kids (contradictory)
6) Rules change over time
- Deliberately or in a fundamental way, they change
- Societies as distinct objects of analysis, that differ across time & place and have their own logic.. and may not be
reducible to individuals within them:
o Louis de Bonald: “The schools of modern philosophy… have produced the philosophy of modern man,
the philosophy of I … I want to produce the philosophy of social man, the philosophy of we”
- Social theory distinguishes societies along various lines: eg: Secular/ religious; capitalist/ feudal/ socialist;
modern/traditional; organic solidarity/ mechanical solidarity, and so on
The origins of social theory
- Social theory (classical & then contemporary) emerges as a response to massive, society changing events
o Origins are a response to social change
- Especially, the industrial & French revolutions
o They are the largest revolutions
o As soon as it changes, you realize there are different societies
Explosions in Population and Wealth
- Graph*
Explosions in cities
- A recipe for capitalism in 5 easy steps:
1. People were kicked off the land (the ‘enclosures’)
2. They flooded the cities
3. That land was used for capitalist farming
4. The new methods used exponentially raised productivity and,
5. Much more food was produced which,
, 6. Allowed population itself to explode
- Productivity growth
o the way we are working
o the output, make more stuff
o You can produce twice as much, or you can produce the same in half the time
- Low productivity Society
o You are making food all day – why people were in agriculture/ farming
The origins of social theory
- These social changing events generated a sense of society itself as a unit of analysis that takes on different forms
and changes across time – as against the view of stability and permanence characterizing traditional worldviews
o Marx you will have to be a specific productivity for churches to appear
o Soldiers – fight all day rather than produce food all day
Social theory developed alongside a sense of history itself
Giddens on the upending of tradition:
- “This shattering of the traditional order … was the source of the development of historical science. Traditional
society … continually looks back into the past, and the past is its present. But it is exactly because this is the case
that there is no concern with ‘history’ as such; the continuity of yesterday and today minimizes the clarity with
which distinctions are drawn between what ‘was’ and what ‘is’. The existence of a science of history, therefore,
presupposes a world in which change is ubiquitous, and, more especially, one in which the past has become … a
burden from which men seek to be freed. In the modern era, men no longer accept the conditions of life into
which they are born as necessarily given for all time but attempt to impose their will upon reality in order to
bend the future into a shape which conforms to their desires.” -- Giddens (1971), p. xi
o We are doing what our parents do
o Giddens – shattering of traditional order
o Hard to make a distinction between past/present
Social Theory developed alongside a sense of history itself
Howe, an example of traditional thinking in the Jewish shtetl:
- “The events of Jewish life were divided into two endless days, the Biblical yesterday and the exile of today.
History was regarded less as a vertical movement through time than as a horizontal simultaneity; Jewish history
was not seen in terms of the scientific assumptions of most modern historians… In a sense, history did not exist;
there was only endless expectation until the Messiah came.” (Howe, p.10)
o Howe Traditional mindset of the European Jews
o Fish don’t notice the water, when you have long periods of social stability
From Classical to Contemporary theory
- Early thinkers in the social theory canon offered classic analyses of, 1) society wide changes as they were
happening, and 2) the major effects of these changes.
- Unique perspectives on change having one foot in the old world
- Examples from Durkheim (From traditional certainty to “anomie” and normlessness of new societies),
- Weber (From traditional societies where the “world remains a great enchanted garden” to rational-bureaucratic
societies, the world is “robbed of gods”, magic is eliminated)
- and Marx, (From feudalism to the capitalism, where "everything is pregnant with its contrary” and “All fixed,
fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-
formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”)
