PETER L. BERGER INVITATION TO SOCIOLOGY A HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE ® PENGUIN BOOKS Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Limited, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published in the U.S.A. by Doubleday & Co. 1963 Published in Pelican Books 1966 Reprinted 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971 (twice),. 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 (twice), 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 Copyright © Peter L. Berger, 1963 AU rights reserved Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading Set in Intertype Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CONTENTS Preface 7 1 Sociology as an Individual Pastime 11 2 Sociology as a Form of Consciousness 37 3 Digression: Alternation and Biography 68 4 Man in Society 81 5 Society in Man 110 6 Society as Drama 142 7 Sociological Machiavellianism and Ethics 172 8 Sociology as a Humanistic Discipline 186 Bibliographical Comments 201 Index 213 2 SOCIOLOGY AS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS If the previous chapter has been successful in its presentation, it will be possible to accept sociology as an intellectual preoccupation of interest to certain individuals. To stop at this point, however, would in itself be very unsociological indeed. The very fact that sociology appeared as a discipline at a certain stage of Western history should compel us to ask further how it is possible for certain individuals to occupy themselves with it and what the preconditions are for this occupation. In other words, sociology is neither a timeless nor a necessary undertaking of the human mind. If this is conceded, the question logically arises as to the timely factors that made it a necessity to specific men. Perhaps, indeed, no intellectual enterprise is timeless or necessary. But religion, for instance, has been well-nigh universal in provoking intensive mental preoccupation throughout human history, while thoughts designed to solve the economic problems of existence have been a necessity in most human cultures. Certainly this does not mean that theology or economics, in our contemporary sense, are universally present phenomena of the mind, but we are at least on safe ground if we say that there always seems to have been human thought directed towards the problems that now constitute the subject matter of these disciplines. Not even this much, however, can be said of sociology. It presents itself rather as a peculiarly modern and Western cogitation. And, as we shall try to argue in this chapter, it is constituted by a peculiarly modern form of consciousness. The peculiarity of sociological perspective becomes clear with some reflection concerning the meaning of the term 37 invitation to sociology 'society*, a term that refers to the object par excellence of the discipline. Like most terms used by sociologists, this one is derived from common usage, where its meaning is imprecise. Sometimes it means a particular band of people (as in 'Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals'), sometimes only those people endowed with great prestige or privilege (as in *Boston society ladies'), and on other occasions it is simply used to denote company of any sort (for example, 'he greatly suffered in those years for lack of society'). There are other, less frequent meanings as well. The sociologist uses the term in a more precise sense, though, of course, there are differences in usage within the discipline itself.(The sociologist thinks of 'society' as denoting a large complex of human relationships, or to put it in more technical language, as referring to a system of interaction. YThe word Marge' is difficult to specify quantitatively in this context. The sociologist may speak of a 'society' including millions of human beings (say, 'American society'), but he may also use the term to refer to a numerically much smaller collectivity (say, 'the society of second-year students here'). Two people chatting on a street corner will hardly constitute a 'society', but three people stranded on an island certainly will. The applicability of the concept, then, cannot be decided on quantitative grounds alone. It rather applies when a complex of relationships is sufficiently succinct to be analysed by itself, understood as in autonomous entity, set against others of the same kind. The adjective 'social' must be similarly sharpened for sociological use. In common speech it may denote, once more, a number of different things - the informal quality :>f a certain gathering ('this is a social meeting - let's not iiscuss business'), an altruistic attitude on somebody's part ['he had a strong social concern in his job'), or, more generally, anything derived from contact with other people ['a social disease'), (jjie sociologist will use the term more 38 sociology as a form of consciousness narrowly and more precisely to refer to the quality of interaction, inter-relationship, mutuality) Thus two men chatting on u street corner do not constitute a * society', but what Irunspires between them is certainly 'social*. * Society* contests of a complex of such 'social' events. As to the exact definition of the 'social', it is difficult to improve on Max Weber's definition of a 'social' situation as one in which jrople orient their actions towards one another. The web nf meanings, expectations and conduct resulting from such mutual orientation is the stuff of sociological analysis. Yet this refinement of terminology is not enough to show up the distinctiveness of the sociological angle of vision. We may get closer by comparing the latter with the peril irclive of other disciplines concerned with human actions. I lie economist, for example, is concerned with the analyses nf processes that occur in society and that can be described «i nodal. These processes have to do with the basic problem of economic activity - the allocation of scarce goods nimI services within a society. The economist will be confined with these processes in terms of the way in which lliey carry out, or fail to carry out, this function. The iologist, in looking at the same processes, will naturally liiivc to take into consideration their economic purpose. But lih distinctive interest is not necessarily related to this purler as such. He will be interested in a variety of human iitliitlonships and interactions that may occur here and that limy (>c quite irrelevant to the economic goals in question. IIimn economic activity involves relationships of power, |Mmtitfc. prejudice or even play that can be analysed with • •nly marginal reference to the properly economic function iif the activity. I lie sociologist finds his subject matter present in all (Milium activities, but not all aspects of these activities continue this subject matter. Social interaction is not some «|nh iullzed sector of what men do with each other. It is 39 invitation to sociology rather a certain aspect of all these doings. Another way of putting this is by saying that the sociologist carries on a special sort of abstraction. The social, as an object of inquiry, is not a segregated field of human activity. Rather (to borrow a phrase from Lutheran sacramental theology) it is present 'in, with and under* many different fields of such activity. The sociologist does not look at phenomena that nobody else is aware of.^But he looks at the same phenomena in a different way) As a further example we could take the perspective of the lawyer. Here we actually find a point of view much broader in scope than that of the economist. Almost any human activity can, at one time or another, fall within the province of the lawyer. This, indeed, is the fascination of the law. Again, we find here a very special procedure of abstraction. From the immense wealth and variety of human deportment the lawyer selects those aspects that are pertinent (or, as he would say, 'material!) to his very particular frame of reference. As anyone who has ever been involved in a lawsuit well knows, the criteria of what is relevant or irrelevant legally will often greatly surprise the principals in the case in question. This need not concern us here. We would rather observe that the legal frame of reference consists of a number of carefully defined models of human activity. Thus we have clear models of obligation, responsibility or wrong-doing. Definite conditions have to prevail before any empirical act can be subsumed under one of these headings, and these conditions are laid down by statutes or precedent. When these conditions are not met, the act in question is legally irrelevant. The expertise of the lawyer consists of knowing the rules by which these models are constructed. He knows, within his frame of reference, when a business contract is binding, when the driver of an automobile may be held to be negligent, or when rape has taken place. 40 sociology as a form of consciousness The sociologist may look at these same phenomena, but his frame of reference will be quite different. Most importantly, his perspective on these phenomena cannot be derived from statutes or precedent. His interest in the human relationships occurring in a business transaction has no bearing on the legal validity of contracts signed, just as sociologically interesting deviance in sexual behaviour may not be capable of being subsumed under some particular legal heading. From the lawyer's point of view, the sociologist's inquiry is extraneous to the legal frame of reference. One might say that, with reference to the conceptual edifice of the law, the sociologist's activity is subterranean in character. The lawyer is concerned with what may be called the official conception of the situation. The sociologist often deals with very unofficial conceptions indeed. For the lawyer the essential thing to understand is how the law looks upon a certain type of criminal. For the sociologist it is equally important to see how the criminal looks at the law. To ask sociological questions, then, presupposes that one is interested in looking some distance beyond the commonly accepted or officially defined goals of human actions. It presupposes a certain awareness that human events have different levels of meaning, some of which are hidden from the consciousness of everyday life. It may even presuppose a measure of suspicion about the way in which human events are officially interpreted by the authorities, be they political, juridical or religious in character. If one is willing to go as far as that, it would seem evident that not all historical circumstances are equally favourable for the development of sociological perspective. It would appear plausible, in consequence, that sociological thought would have the best chance to develop in historical circumstances marked by severe jolts to the self-conception, especially the official and authoritative and generally accepted self-conception, of a culture. It is only 41 invitation to sociology n such circumstances that perceptive men are likely to be nptivated to think beyond the assertions of this self-:onception and, as a result, question the authorities. Albert Salomon has argued cogently that the concept of * society', n its modern sociological sense, could emerge only as the lormative structures of Christendom and later of the ancien 'egime were collapsing. We can, then, again conceive of society' as the hidden fabric of an edifice, the outside acade of which hides that fabric from the common view. ji medieval Christendom, * society' was rendered invisible >y the imposing religio-political facade that constituted the :ommon world of European man. As Salomon pointed out, he more secular political facade of the absolute state per-brmed the same function after the Reformation had broken ip the unity of Christendom. It was with the disintegration )f the absolute state that the underlying frame of society' ame into view - that is, a world of motives and forces that :ould not be understood in terms of the official interpreta-ions of social reality. Sociological perspective can then be mderstood in terms of such phrases as * seeing through', looking behind', very much as such phrases would be anployed in common speech - 'seeing through his game', looking behind the scenes' - in other words, 'being up on ill the tricks'. We will not be far off if we see sociological thought as >art of what Nietzsche called 'the art of mistrust'. Now, it vould be a gross oversimplification to think that tliis art has existed only in modern times. 'Seeing through' things is >robably a pretty general function of intelligence, even in 'ery primitive societies. The American anthropologist Paul ladin has provided us with a vivid description of the ceptic as a human type in primitive culture. We also have svidence from civilizations other than that of the modern Vest, bearing witness to forms of consciousness that could veil be called proto-sociological. We could point, for 42 sociology as a form of consciousness instance, to Herodotus or to Ibn-Khaldun. There are even texts from ancient Egypt evincing a profound disenchantment with a political and social order that has acquired the reputation of having been one of the most cohesive in human history. However, with the beginning of the modern era in the West this form of consciousness intensifies, becomes concentrated and systematized, marks the thought of an increasing number of perceptive men. This is not the place to discuss in detail the prehistory of sociological thought, a discussion in which we owe very much to Salomon. Nor would we even give here an intellectual table of ancestors for sociology, showing its connexions with Machia-velli, Erasmus, Bacon, seventeenth century philosophy and eighteenth century belles-lettres - this has been done elsewhere and by others much more qualified than this writer. Suffice it to stress once more that sociological thought marks the fruition of a number of intellectual developments that have a very specific location in modern Western history. Let us return instead to the proposition that sociological perspective involves a process of * seeing through' the facades of social structures. We could think of this in terms of a common experience of people living in large cities. One of the fascinations of a large city is the immense variety of human activities taking place behind the seemingly anonymous and endlessly undifferentiated rows of houses. A person who lives in such a city will time and again experience surprise or even shock as he discovers the strange pursuits that some men engage in quite unobtrusively in houses that, from the outside, look like all the others on a certain street. Having had this experience once or twice, one will repeatedly find oneself walking down a street, perhaps late in the evening, and wondering what may be going on under the bright lights showing through a line of drawn curtains. An ordinary family engaged in pleasant talk with guests? A 43 invitation to sociology scene of desperation amid illness or death? Or a scene of debauched pleasures? Perhaps a strange cult or a dangerous conspiracy? The facades of the houses cannot tell us, proclaiming nothing but an architectural conformity to the tastes of some group or class that may not even inhabit the street any longer. The social mysteries lie behind the facades. The wish to penetrate to these mysteries is an analogon to sociological curiosity. In some cities that are suddenly struck by calamity this wish may be abruptly realized. Those who have experienced wartime bombings know of the sudden encounters with unsuspected (and sometimes unimaginable) fellow tenants in the air-raid shelter of one's apartment building. Or they can recollect the startling morning sight of a house hit by a bomb during the night, neatly sliced in half, the facade torn away and the previously hidden interior mercilessly revealed in the daylight. But in most cities that one may normally live in, the facades must be penetrated by one's own inquisitive intrusions. Similarly, there are historical situations in which the facades of society are violently torn apart and all but the most incurious are forced to see that there was a reality behind the facades all along. Usually this does not happen and the facades continue to confront us with seemingly rock-like permanence. The perception of the reality behind the facades then demands a considerable intellectual effort. A few examples of the way in which sociology 'looks behind' the facades of social structures might serve to make our argument clearer. Take, for instance, the political organization of a community. If one wants to find out how a modern American city is governed, it is very easy to get the official information about this subject. The city will have a charter, operating under the laws of the state. With some advice from informed individuals, one may look up various statutes that define the constitution of the city. Thus one may find out that this particular community has a city- 44 sociology as a form of consciousness manager form of administration, or that party affiliations do not appear on the ballot in municipal elections, or that the city government participates in a regional water district. In similar fashion, with the help of some newspaper reading, one may find out the officially recognized political problems of the community. One may read that the city plans to annex a certain suburban area, or that there has been a change in the zoning ordinances to facilitate industrial development in another area, or even that one of the members of the city council has been accused of using his office for personal gain. All such matters still occur on the, as is were, visible, official or public level of political life. However, it would be an exceedingly naive person who would believe that this kind of information gives him a rounded picture of the political reality of that community. The sociologist will want to know above all the constituency of the 'informal power structure' (as it has been called by Floyd Hunter, an American sociologist interested in such studies), which is a configuration of men and their power that cannot be found in any statutes, and probably cannot be read about in the newspapers. The political scientist or the legal expert might find it very interesting to compare the city charter with the constitutions of other similar communities. The sociologist will be far more concerned with discovering the way in which powerful vested interests influence or even control the actions of officials elected under the charter. These vested interests will not be found in city hall, but rather in the executive suites of corporations that may not even be located in that community, in the private mansions of a handful of powerful men, perhaps in the offices of certain labour unions or even, in some instances, in the headquarters of criminal organizations. When the sociologist concerns himself with power, he will 'look behind' the official mechanisms that are supposed to regulate power in the community. This does not necessarily 45 invitation to sociology mean that he will regard the official mechanisms as totally ineffective or their legal definition as totally illusionary. But at the very least he will insist that there is another level of reality to be investigated in the particular system of power. In some cases he might conclude that to look for real power in the publicly recognized places is quite delusional. Take another example. Protestant denominations in America differ widely in their so-called 'polity', that is, the officially defined way in which the denomination is run. One may speak of an episcopal, a presbyterián or a congregational 'polity' (meaning by this not the denominations called by these names, but the forms of ecclesiastical government that various denominations share - for instance, the episcopal form shared by Episcopalians and Methodists, the congregational by Congregationalists and Baptists). In nearly all cases, the 'polity' of a denomination is the result of a long historical development and is based on a theological rationale over which the doctrinal experts continue to quarrel. Yet a sociologist interested in studying the government of American denominations would do well not to arrest himself too long at these official definitions. He wiU soon find that the real questions of power and organization have little to do with 'polity' in the theological sense. He will discover that the basic form of organization in all denominations of any size is bureaucratic. The logic of administrative behaviour is determined by bureaucratic processes, only very rarely by the workings of an episcopal or a congregational point of view. The sociological investigator will then quickly 'see through' the mass of confusing terminology denoting office-holders in the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and correctly identify those who hold executive power, no matter whether they be called 'bishops', or 'stated clerks' or 'synod presidents'. Understanding denominational organization as belonging to the much larger species of bureaucracy, the sociologist will then be able to 46 sociology as a form of consciousness grasp the processes that occur in the organization, to observe ihe internal and external pressures brought to bear on those who are theoretically in charge. In other words, behind the facade of an 'episcopal polity' the sociologist will perceive the workings of a bureaucratic apparatus that is not terribly different in the Methodist Church, an agency of the Federal government, General Motors or the United Automobile Workers. Or take an example from economic life. The personnel manager of an industrial plant will take delight in preparing brightly coloured charts that show the table of organization that is supposed to administer the production process. Every man has his place, every person in the organization knows from whom he receives his orders and to whom he must transmit them, every work team has its assigned role in the great drama of production. In reality things rarely work this way - and every good personnel manager knows this. Superimposed on the official blueprint of the organization is a much subtler, much less visible network of human groups, with their loyalties, prejudices, antipathies and (most important) codes of behaviour. Industrial sociology is full of data on the operations of this informal network, which ulways exists in varying degrees of accommodation and conflict with the official system. Very much the same coexistence of formal and informal organization are to be found wherever large numbers of men work together or live together under a system of discipline - military organizations, prisons, hospitals, schools, going back to the mysterious leagues that children form among themselves and that their parents only rarely discern. Once more, the sociologist will seek to penetrate the smoke screen of the official versions of reality (those of the foreman, the officer, the teacher) and try to grasp the signals that come from the 4underworld' (those of the worker, the enlisted man, the schoolboy). 47 invitation to sociology Let us take one further example. In Western countries, and especially in America, it is assumed that men and women marry because they are in love. There is a broadly based popular mythology about the character of love as a violent, irresistible emotion that strikes where it will, a mystery that is the goal of most young people and often of the not-so-young as well. As soon as one investigates, however, which people actually marry each other, one finds that the lightning-shaft of Cupid seems to be guided rather strongly within very definite channels of class, income, education, racial and religious background. V one then investigates a little further into the behaviour that is engaged in prior to marriage under the rather misleading euphemism of 'courtship', one finds channels of interaction that are often rigid to the point of ritual. The suspicion begins to dawn on one that, most of the time, it is not so much the emotion of love that creates a certain kind of relationship, but that carefully predefined and often planned relationships eventually generate the desired emotion. In other words, when certain conditions are met or have been constructed, one allows oneself 'to fall in love'. The sociologist investigating our patterns of 'courtship' and marriage soon discovers a complex web of motives related in many ways to the entire institutional structure within which an individual lives his life - class, career, economic ambition, aspirations of power and prestige. The miracle of love now begins to look somewhat synthetic. Again, this need not mean in any given instance that the sociologist will declare the romantic interpretation to be an illusion. But, once more, he will look beyond the immediately given and publicly approved interpretations. Contemplating a couple who in their turn are contemplating the moon, the sociologist need not feel constrained to deny the emotional impact of the scene thus illuminated. But he will observe the machinery that went into the construction of the scene in its 48 NfK'IOLOGY AS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS lion lunar aspects - the status index of the automobile from whu-li the contemplation occurs, the canons of taste and i»u Iks that determine the costume of the contemplators, the ninny ways in which language and demeanour place them MHiiilly, thus the social location and intentionality of the mine enterprise. It may have become clear at this point that the problems I lid I will interest the sociologist are not necessarily what other people may call * problems*. The way in which public olliuals and newspapers (and, alas, some college textbooks in sociology) speak about 'social problems' serves to obscure this fact. People commonly speak of a 'social problem * when something in society does not work the way it is mipposed to according to the official interpretations. They then expect the sociologist to study the 'problem' as they have defined it and perhaps even to come up with a • solution* that will take care of the matter to their own satisfaction. It is important, against this sort of expectation, to understand that a sociological problem is something quite dilFcrent from a 'social problem' in this sense. For example, it is naive to concentrate on crime as a 'problem' because law-enforcement agencies so define it, or on divorce because that is a 'problem* to the moralists of marriage. Even more clearly, the 'problem* of the foreman to get his men to work more efficiently or of the line officer to get his troops to charge the enemy more enthusiastically need not be problematic at all to the sociologist (leaving out of consideration for the moment the probable fact that the sociologist asked to study such 'problems' is employed by the corporation or the army). The sociological problem is always the understanding of what goes on here in terms of social interaction. Thus the sociological problem is not so much why some things 'go wrong' from the viewpoint of the authorities and the management of the social scene, but how the whole system works in the first place, what are its presuppositions 49 invitation to sociology and by what means it is held together. The fundamental sociological problem is not crime but the law, not divorce but marriage, not racial discrimination but racially defined stratification, not revolution but government. This point can be explicated further by an example. Take a settlement house in a lower-class slum district trying to wean away teenagers from the publicly disapproved activities of a juvenile gang. The frame of reference within which social workers and police officers define the 'problems' of this situation is constituted by the world of middle-class, respectable, publicly approved values. It is a 'problem' if teenagers drive around in stolen automobiles, and it is a 'solution' if instead they will play group games in the settlement house. But if one changes the frame of reference and looks at the situation from the viewpoint of the leaders of the juvenile gang, the 'problems' are defined in reverse order. It is a' problem' for the solidarity of the gang if its members are seduced away from those activities that lend prestige to the gang within its own social world, and it would be a 'solution' if the social workers went way the hell back uptown where they came from. What is a 'problem' to one social system is the normal routine of things to the other system, and vice versa. Loyalty and disloyalty, solidarity and deviance, are defined in contradictory terms by the representatives of the two systems. Now, the sociologist may, in terms of his own values, regard the world of middle-class respectability as more desirable and therefore want to come to the assistance of the settlement house, which is its missionary outpost in partibus infidelium. This, however, does not justify the identification of the director's headaches with what are 'problems' sociologically. The 'problems' that the sociologist will want to solve concern an understanding of the entire social situation, the values and modes of action in both systems, and the way in which the two systems coexist in space and time. Indeed, this very ability to look at a 50 SOCIOLOGY AS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS •Itnation from the vantage points of competing systems of Interpretation is, as we shall see more clearly later on, one of the hallmarks of sociological consciousness. We would contend, then, that there is a debunking motif Inherent in sociological consciousness. The sociologist will be driven time and again, by the very logic of his discipline, to debunk the social systems he is studying. This unmasking tendency need not necessarily be due to the w biologist's temperament or inclinations. Indeed, it may Imppen that the sociologist, who as an individual may be oŕ n conciliatory disposition and quite disinclined to disturb I ho comfortable assumptions on which he rests his own •ocial existence, is nevertheless compelled by what he is doing to fly in the face of what those around him take for Kí tinted. In other words, we would contend that the roots of the debunking motif in sociology are not psychological hut methodological. The sociological frame of reference, with its built-in procedure of looking for levels of reality other than those given in the official interpretations of ftociety, carries with it a logical imperative to unmask the Intensions and the propaganda by which men cloak their m lions with each other. This unmasking imperative is one of the characteristics of sociology particularly at home in the temper of the modern era. The debunking tendency in sociological thought can be Illustrated by a variety of developments within the field, ľor example, one of the major themes In Weber's sociology 1« that of the unintended, unforeseen consequences of human notions in society. Weber's most famous work, The Pro-itxiant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he demonstrated the relationship between certain consequences of Protestant values and the development of the capitalist riliofi, has often been misunderstood by critics precisely becuuse they missed this theme. Such critics have pointed out that the Protestant thinkers quoted by Weber never 51 invitation to sociology intended their teachings to be applied so as to produce the specific economic results in question. Specifically, Weber argued that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination led people to behave in what he called an 4 inner-worldly ascetic' way, that is, in a manner that concerns itself intensively, systematically and selflessly with the affairs of this world, especially with economic affairs. Weber's critics have then pointed out that nothing was farther from the mind of Calvin and the other leaders of the Calvinist Reformation. But Weber never maintained that Calvinist thought intended to produce these economic action patterns. On the contrary, he knew very well that the intentions were drastically different. The consequences took place regardless of intentions. In other words, Weber's work (and not only the famous part of it just mentioned) gives us a vivid picture of the irony of human actions. Weber's sociology thus provides us with a radical antithesis to any views that understand history as the realization of ideas or as the fruit of the deliberate efforts of individuals or collectivities. This does not mean at all that ideas are not important. It does mean that the outcome of ideas is commonly very different from what those who had the ideas in the first place planned or hoped. Such a consciousness of the ironic aspect of history is sobering, a strong antidote to all kinds of revolutionary utopianism. The debunking tendency of sociology is implicit in all sociological theories that emphasize the autonomous character of social processes. For instance, Emile Dürkheim, the founder of the most important school in French sociology, emphasized that society was a reality sui generis* that is, a reality that could not be reduced to psychological or other factors on different levels of analysis. The effect of this insistence has been a sovereign disregard for individually intended motives and meanings in Durkheim's study of various phenomena. This is perhaps most sharply revealed 52 sociology as a form of consciousness in his well-known study of suicide, in the work of that title, where individual intentions of those who commit or try to commit suicide are completely left out of the analysis in favour of statistics concerning various social characteristics of these individuals. In the Durkheimian perspective, to live in society means to exist under the domination of society's logic. Very often men act by this logic without knowing it. To discover this inner dynamic of society, therefore, the sociologist must frequently disregard the answers that the social actors themselves would give to his questions and look for explanations that are hidden from their own awareness. This essentially Durkheimian approach has been carried over into the theoretical approach now called func-tionalism. In functional analysis society is analyzed in terms of its own workings as a system, workings that are often obscure or opaque to those acting within the system. The contemporary American sociologist Robert Merton has expressed this approach well in his concepts of 'manifest' and 'latent' functions. The former are the conscious and deliberate functions of social processes, the latter the unconscious and unintended ones. Thus the 'manifest' function of anti-gambling legislation may be to suppress gambling, its 'latent' function to create an illegal empire for the gambling syndicates. Or Christian missions in parts of Africa 'manifestly' tried to convert Africans to Christianity, 'latently' helped to destroy the indigenous tribal cultures nnd thus provided an important impetus towards rapid Nocial transformation. Or the control of the Communist Party over all sectors of social life in Russia 'manifestly' was to assure the continued dominance of the revolutionary ethos, 'latently' created a new class of comfortable bureaucrats uncannily bourgeois in its aspirations and increasingly disinclined toward the self-denial of Bolshevik dedication. Or the 'manifest' function of many voluntary associations In America is sociability and public service, the 'latent' 53 invitation to sociology "unction to attach status indices to those permitted to belong :o such associations. The concept of 'ideology', a central one in some sociological theories, could serve as another illustration of the iebunking tendency discussed. Sociologists speak of 'ideology' in discussing views that serve to rationalize the vested interests of some group. Very frequently such views systematically distort social reality in much the same way that in individual may neurotically deny, deform or reinterpret aspects of his life that are inconvenient to him. The important approach of the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto has a central place for this perspective and, as we shall see in a later chapter, the concept of 'ideology' is essential for the approach called the 'sociology of knowledge'. In such analyses the ideas by which men explain their actions are unmasked as self-deception, sales talk, the kind of 'sincerity* that David Riesman has aptly described as the state of mind of a man who habitually believes his own propaganda. In this way, we can speak of 'ideology' when we analyze the belief of many American physicians that standards of health will decline if the fee-for-service method of payment is abolished, or the conviction of many undertakers that inexpensive funerals show lack of affection for the departed, or the definition of their activity by quizmasters on television as 'education'. The self-image of the insurance salesman as a fatherly adviser to young families, of the burlesque stripper as an artist, of the propagandist as a communications expert, of the hangman as a public servant - all these notions are not only individual assuagements of guilt or status anxiety, but constitute the official self-interpretations of entire social groups, obligatory for their members on pain of excommunication. In uncovering the social functionality of ideological pretensions the sociologist will try not to resemble those historians of whom Marx said that every corner grocer is superior to them in knowing the difference 54 NHf'ini.OGY AS A FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Uiawii whut a man is and what he claims to be. The il*.lMiiik inji motif of sociology lies in this penetration of v*t M nmokc screens to the unadmitted and often unpleasant MHiiupilngs of action. 11 hitN Iwcn suggested above that sociological consciously**** In likely to arise when the commonly accepted or miiltoiituiivery stated interpretations of society become •hnky Am wc have already said, there is a good case for •Milking of the origins of sociology in France (the mother mMinify of the discipline) in terms of an effort to cope intel-U itiwlly with the consequences of the French Revolution, ««•1 only of the one great cataclysm of 1789 but of what Ifc r