SOC755
GENERAL SOCIOLOGY
2017 Autumn
MARXISM
AND
CRITICAL
THEORY
“First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it
does not belong to his essential being; that in his work,
therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself,
does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely
his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and
ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself
outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
He is at home when he is not working, and when he is
working he is not at home. His labor therefore is not
voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not
the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy
needs external to it. (Marx, 1850/1964:72)
ALIENATION
➤ Alienation is a perverted
relation between labor and
human nature. Labor has to be
a being in itself and not a
means to earn money.
➤ People feel free only in their
animal functions (eating,
drinking, procreating) which
turned into ultimate ends (also
in their cultivated forms)!
➤ The division of labour is the
ground of alienation: i.e.
capitalism recently.
FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES
➤ Producing figures and
worshiping them.
➤ Our labour is separated
from us and turned into
an abstract thing.
➤ Commodities are the
sources of alienation.
➤ Social relation between
men assumes, in their
eyes, the fantastic form of
relation between things.
REIFICATION
➤ The fetishism of commodities
reveals the embeddedness of
individual in the large-scale
social structures, having an
independent, external and
coercive reality.
➤ Reification occurs when the
belief in thing-character of
relations becomes a selffulfilling
prophecy: beyond
controll.
➤ Reification is present also in
religious, political and
organizational institutions.
“Man in capitalist society confronts a reality
“made” by himself (as a class) which appears to
him to be a natural phenomenon alien to
himself; he is wholly at the mercy of its “laws”;
his activity is confined to the exploitation of the
inexorable fulfillment of certain individual laws
for his own (egoistic) interests. But even while
“acting” he remains, in the nature of the case,
the object and not the subject of events.
(Lukács, 1922/1968:135)
HEGELIAN MARXISM
➤ People come to believe that
things have a life of their own.
➤ Class consciousness is a belief
system shared by a group in a
same socio-economic position.
But this is a NORMATIVE
concept! To overcome false
consciousness and achieve
class consciousness.
➤ False consciousness: the
illusion implicit in a socioeconomic
situation is not
arbitrary. Class conditioned
unconsciousness.
FURTHER READING
➤ David Gartman. 1991. "Culture as class symbolization or mass
reification? Critique of Bourdieu's Distinction." American
Journal of Sociology.
SYMBOLIC
INTERACTIONISM
AND SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIVISM
“Symbolic interactionism rests in the last analysis on
three simple premises. The first premise is that
human beings act toward things on the basis of the
meanings that the things have for them... The
second premise is that the meaning of such things is
derived from, or arises out of the social interaction
that one has with one's fellows. The third premise is
that these meanings are handled in, and modified
through by an interpretive process used by the
person in dealing with the things he encounters.
(Herbert Blumer)
MEANING
➤ Things include trees and
chairs; mothers and clerks;
friends and enemies; schools
and governments; individual
independence and honesty;
commands and requests of
others; daily encounters.
➤ Meaning in explanative
sociology disappears by being
merged into the initiating
factors of action or becomes a
mere transmission link that
can be ignored in favor of the
causative factors.
THE SOURCE OF MEANING
➤ Observational realism: there is
no process involved in the
formation of meaning, it is
inherent in the thing that has
it. A cow is a cow!
➤ Expressive psychologism: there
is an internal formation
process that includes
perception, cognition, feelings.
➤ Interactive creation: meaning
grows out of the ways in which
other persons act toward the
person with regard to the
thing.
INTERPRETATION
➤ The use of meaning by a
person in his action is not an
application of already
established meanings.
➤ Interpretation is an instance of
the person engaging in a
process of communication
with himself: indication.
➤ Interpretation is a process in
which meanings are used and
revised as instruments for the
guidance of action: handling
meanings.
“The notion of socialization leads to
theoretical formulations mirroring the adult
view that children are incomplete beings.
Investigators have been consequently
distracted from the important area of study
which is adult-child interaction and the
underlying theoretically important problem
of intersubjectivity implied in such
interaction.
(Robert W. Mackay, 1973)
INTERPRETIVE COMPETENCE
➤ All interaction is based on
interpretive competencies
which are not innate: children
have their own separate
culture.
➤ Cultural assimilation requires
a process of adequate
translation: convergence.
➤ To remember, to find
coherence, to participate in a
reciprocity of perspectives: to
understand and recognize
descriptive features of the
world taken for granted.
NATIONALISM
MEMORY
AND IDENTITY
“In an anthropological spirit, then, I
propose the following definition of
the nation: it is an imagined political
community - and imagined as both
inherently limited and sovereign.
(Benedict Anderson 1983: 5-6)
CULTURAL ROOTS
➤ Nationalism is a taken
for granted frame of
reference.
➤ Other cultures of self-
evidence:
➤ The sacral culture of
religious
communities
➤ The political culture
of dynastic realms
CLASS AND NATION
➤ Critical theory:
➤ Capitalist culture
legitimates class structure
by obscuring classes.
➤ Mass culture makes classes
unrecognizable
➤ Critical sociology:
➤ Culture legitimates class
structure by misrecognition.
➤ Masking its origin in group
power by instances of
individual worthiness
THE VERNACULARIZATION
➤ Discovery and conquest
also caused a revolution
in European ideas about
language
➤ Grammars, dictionaries
and histories
➤ A rapid increase in state
expenditures and the size
of state bureaucracies.
➤ Linguistic unification
CLASSSIFICATION STRUGGLE
➤ Representation and
reality
➤ The reality of
representations
➤ The reality of struggle
over representation
➤ Mental images
➤ Social
demonstrations