Marx, Durkheim, and Weber 75

21 ST-CENTURY SOCIOLOGY SERIES EDITOR: Steven Seidman, State University of New York at Albany The 21 st-Century Sociology series provides instructors and students with key texts in sociology that speak with a distinct sociological voice and offer thoughtful and original perspectives. The texts reflect current discussions in and beyond sociology, avoiding standard textbook definitions to engage students in critical thinking and new ideas. Prominent scholars in various fields of social inquiry combine theoretical perspectives with the latest research to present accessible syntheses for students as we move further into the new millennium amidst rapid social change. 1 CULTURAL THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION Philip Smith 2 CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY IN PRACTICE Laura Desfor Edles 3 CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY: A CONTEMPORARY ApPROACH Kenneth H. Tucker, Jr. Forthcoming: SELF AND CYBERCOMMUNITY Ben Agger GENDER, RACE, AND CLASS Lynn Chancer MASS CULTURE AND SOCIETY M. Gottdiener and Joseph Galbo CONSUMER SOCIETY Andrew Herman THE FEMINIST TRADITION IN SOCIOLOGY Susan Hoecker-Drysdale NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND SOCIETY Douglas Kellner URBAN SPACES Anthony Drum GLOBAL SOCIETY Roland Robertson MULTICULTURAUSM IN GLOBAL SOCIETY Peter Kivisto CLASSICAL SOCIAL THEORY A Contemporary Approach KENNETH H. TUCKER, JR. Contents Acknowledgments viii Introduction Part I The Social and Intellectual Context of Classical Social Theory 15 The World of Classical Social Theory 17 2 From the Enlightenment to Nietzsche: Science, Republicanism, and Identity 39 Part II Social Science and the Canon: Marx, Durkheim, and Weber 75 3 Marx: Modernity and Capitalism 77 4 Durkheim: Modernity and Social Solidarity 117 5 Weber: Modernity and Rationalization 154 Part III Rethinking and Expanding the Canon 191 6 Freud, Simmel, and Mead: Aesthetics, the Unconscious, and the Fluid Self 193 7 Du Bois and Perkins Gilman: Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity 228 Conclusion 253 Further Reading 260 Index 267 Acknowledgments There are many people who helped me throughout the writing of this book. Steven Seidman suggested and supported the project, and made valuable comments on the manuscript at an important stage in its devel opment. Several anonymous readers recommended helpful revisions dur ing the initial stages of the writing when I was formulating my ideas. Ken Provencher, commissioning editor at Blackwell Publishers, and copy editor Jack Messenger were invaluable resources for me. Robert Antonio, Robert Dunn, Elizabeth Long, and Sherry Silveus Tucker read most or all of the manuscript. They often disagreed with me, and their critical com ments vastly improved the book. I was unable to incorporate all of their suggestions, and any inaccuracies and/or misinterpretations are entirely attributable to me. The Sociology/Anthropology department and Critical Thought Program of Mount Holyoke College provide an interdisciplinary intellectual environment conducive to innovation in the teaching of social theory. Professors Joan Cocks and Harold Garrett-Goodyear and the stu dents in various Critical Social Thought seminars made excellent com ments on the Marx chapter. Finally, I wish to thank Sherry for her intellect, compassion, strength, and support. She has taught me far more than she realizes. Introduction As an undergraduate in the 1970s. I took a course on social theory during my sophomore year at the University of California. Santa Barbara. This class turned out to be a pivotal moment in my intellectual life. The professor discussed the critical Marxist social theory of a German group of philosophers and sociologists known as the Frankfurt School. including Max Horkheimer. Theodor Adorno. Herbert Marcuse. Jiirgen Habermas. and its roots in the thought of Karl Marx. Max Weber. and Sigmund Freud. These authors began writing in the 1930s. and became popular in the 1960s. They criticized the conformity and standardization of modem societies. in which corporate capitalism. uncontrolled technology. and the mass culture industry reduced the scope of freedom and critical thinking. The professor's informal style of presentation and the course material intersected with the activist mood of the times (though it was waning in the 1970s) and my personal biography to generate what the SOciologist Lillian Rubin calls. rather prosaically. an "aha experience." where public and private concerns intersect. Like many others at the time. I had ques tions about the structure of American social and cultural power in the wake of Vietnam. Like many young adults. my thoughts on these ques tions tended to be rather self-absorbed. I sensed that social and cultural power was tied to philosophical and personal issues. I wondered if there were connections between the reasons why people so often acted out of self-interest. treated each other as disposable means, and placed such great faith in technical solutions to social problems. Social theory spoke to me regarding these questions, for it connected personal and social issues in a profound way. My fascination with Marx ism was soon complemented by an interest in Weber and Emile Durkheim. early twentieth-century social theorists who struck me as addressing the same questions from different angles. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, I moved from an interest in labor movements to a concern with the new 2 Introduction social movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which centered around issues of civil rights, gender, sexual orientation, the environment, and the decolonization of the European nineteenth- and twentieth-century em pires. These movements challenged not only entrenched social power, but the assumptions that informed understandings of society and history. They raised novel issues for social theory, including the role of colonization, gender, race, and sexual orientation in structuring social stratification and personal identity, how different social groups develop varied cultur ally based knowledges, and how to understand such differences in an egalitarian, non-hierarchical manner. Progress and science were not seen as objective processes guaranteeing truth, but critiqued as ideologies jus tifying elite power. The new movements also questioned the substance and preconditions of democratic practices, and the limitations of parlia mentary versions of democracy. These new issues challenge the viability of classical sociological tradi tions to understand contemporary issues and events. In the wake of the new social movements, much criticism has been directed at the sociologi cal canon, especially the triumvirate of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. They are accused of marginalizing race, gender, and colonialism in their theories, and their relevance to today's issues is questioned. It is time to write an undergraduate text that reviews the accomplishments of the classics while pointing to their theoretical limitations. This book summa rizes the major themes of the classical sociological theory of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. It also interprets their thought through the lens of new theoretical concerns, from the role of Empire in shaping sociological theory to the prospects and limitations for democracy in each theorist's perspec tive. The text examines other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theorists who open up new perspectives on these issues in ways not ad equately addressed by Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. These theorists in clude Freud, Georg Simmel, G. H. Mead, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who raise issues of colonialism, race, gender, and the complexity of cultural and personal identity. I will closely read the texts of these theorists, drawing out their major themes and internal contradictions. I think the best criticism intensively examines the arguments of the thinkers under study. I will also place their thought in the historical circumstances of their time, so that their ideas are presented in the context of the social problems and intellectual debates they addressed. But such internal or "immanent" criticism is not enough. We always interpret thinkers of the past with contemporary themes in mind. I will be led by my own interpretation of the major issues of social theory today, and whether the classical theorists can contribute to an understanding of them. I will defend and criticize the classical theo rists where appropriate, assessing their significance for our time. While Introduction 3 some of their viewpoints are indeed dated, others can help to puncture the conventional wisdom of current social theory. The Canon and Its Problems In most colleges and universities, sociology students who study social theory read texts by Marx, Weber. and Durkheim. These three nineteenth century European social theorists are considered to have formulated many of the fundamental themes of sociology. They achieved several of sociolo gy's most distinctive approaches and central concepts. Each of these thinkers was contributing to a common intellectual enterprise, what Collins and Makowsky refer to as the discovery of society.l They responded in diver gent ways to a shared historical context, which included the rise and transformation of Western society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The aftermath of the French Revolution, the industrial revolu tion, the emergence of the market, and European colonialism opened up social. economic, and cultural opportunities and problems previously un imaginable, from the possibilities of more complex types of social organi zation (capitalism and socialism) to a novel type of culture

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