Karl Marx (1818-1883)

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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Karl Marx A Short Biography

• born 1818 in Trier
• Educated at U of Bonn, U of Berlin
• The Young Hegelians
• Blacklisted by German universities
• Journal editor
• Jenny Westphalen
• 1843 move to Paris

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Karl Marx Bio (contd)

• Exposure to French socialism
• Friedrich Engels
• troubles expulsion from France
• Brussels
• Communist Manifesto (1848)
• Uprisings of 1848
• London early troubles

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Karl Marx Bio (contd)

• Das Kapital (Capital), vol. 1 (1867)
• Financial stability
• The International
• Death in 1883

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Estranged Labor

• What is this essay about?
• What is Marxs main message or argument?

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Marxs General Approach

• Materialism vs. Idealism
• Dialectical understanding of history
• Dialectical Materialism

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Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

• Response to political economists Adam Smith,
  David Ricardo
• Question and analyze what their approach takes
  for granted private property, labor and profit,
  division of labor
• Class is a central category for Marx
• Nature of inequality

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Estranged Labor

• Main point dehumanizing effect of capitalism on
  workers
• Workers as commodities
• Objectification of labor
• 4 dimensions of estranged labor

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Types of Alienation

• Alienation from work product
• Alienation from work process
• Alienation from species being
• Alienation from other people

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Private Property and Wage Labor

• Interdependence of wage labor and private
  property wage labor makes private property
  possible, and the system of private property
  makes wage labor possible.

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Communist Manifesto

• Social theory
• Call to action
• Powerful political writing

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Marx and Engels

• Not on the sidelines
• Marxs rejection of the traditional philosophical
  stance
• Role of theory in social change
• Political party formation is not the point

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CM Main Points

• Historyclass struggle
• Crisis tendencies of capitalism
• Alienation of workers
• Emergence of the proletarians as a united class
• Bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers

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CM Main Points

• Communist aims
• Formation of proletariat class
• Overthrow of bourgeoisie
• Political power
• Theoryabolition of private property
• Contrast between capitalism and communism
• Steps toward communism
• End point classless society

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Marxs Weaknesses

• Predictions for capitalism were wrong
• Vague on the details of the socialist future
• Next class assessment of strengths and
  weaknesses of his theory

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Why Capitalism Hasnt Fallen

• Labor theory of value is wrong
• Rise of professional-managerial class
• Rise of welfare state
• Postindustrial society?

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Industrial vs. Postindustrial Society
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Why Capitalism Hasnt Fallen

• Labor theory of value is wrong
• Rise of professional-managerial class
• Rise of welfare state
• Postindustrial society?
• No proletariat revolt why?

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Capitalism The End of History?

• Current strength, global spread, lack of
  worldwide economic crises, lack of widespread
  worker revolt
• But . . . emerging movement against global
  capitalism, and continuing environmental concerns

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Max Weber (1864-1920)
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Webers Life and Times

• Family background
• Early adulthood
• Germanys power
• 1897 personal turning point

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Webers Life and Times

• Protestant Ethic
• Founder of sociology
• World War I
• Economy Society
• Post-war years

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Webers Approach to Sociology

• Scientific study of social action
• Definition of social action
• Types of social action
• Affectual
• Traditional
• Instrumentally-rational
• Value-rational

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Webers Approach to Sociology

• Role of values
• Verstehen interpretive understanding
• Complex causality
• Comparative-historical approach
• Ideal types

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Rationalization

• Most important theme in Webers work
• Definition of rationalization
• Types of rationality
• Practical
• Theoretical
• Substantive
• Formal

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Rationalization

• Key distinction instrumental vs. substantive
• Increase and spread of formal rationality through
  bureaucracy
• Unintended consequences of instrumental
  rationality
• Webers pessimism

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

• Emergence of bourgeois capitalism
• Role of Protestants in European economy
• Protestant religious doctrine
• Luther calling
• Calvin predestination
• Comparison to Marx

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

• Religion as one factor (complex causality)
• Role of ideas switchman metaphor
• Spirit of capitalism outlives religious doctrine

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Bureaucracy

• Ultimate tool of formal rationality
• Spread of bureaucracy spread of formal
  rationality (rationalization)

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Characteristics of Bureaucracies

• Rule-bound conduct
• Jurisdictions
• Hierarchy
• Specialized training/staff
• Staff not owners
• Separation of organization and personal property
• Separation of office and living space
• Rights of offices, not incumbents
• Written records of acts, decisions, etc.

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Characteristics of Administrative Staff

• Personally free
• Contractual relationships/free selection
• Selection on technical qualifications
• Fixed salaries, graded by rank
• Sole or primary occupation
• Career
• Strict, systematic discipline and control

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Consequences of Bureaucratic Domination

• Social levelling
• Tendency to plutocracy
• Spirit of formalistic impersonality equality of
  treatment
• without hatred or passion, and hence without
  affection or enthusiasm

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Advantages of Bureaucracy

• Efficiency
• Predictability
• Calculability
• Control (through substitution of nonhuman
  technology for human judgment)

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Negative Effects of Bureaucracy

• On customers/clients
• On workers
• On society

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Comparing Weber and Marx

• Similarities
• Comparative-historical approach
• Concerns about impact of modernization
  (alienation the iron cage)
• Concerns about materialistic values under
  capitalism (commodity fetishism Protestant
  ethic)

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Comparing Weber and Marx

• Differences
• Optimism vs. pessimism
• Class struggle vs. rationalization
• Materialist account vs. complex causality
• Class vs. Class, Status and Party

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Emile Durkheim, 1858-1917
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Durkheims Life Times

• Born 1858, Epinal close-knit family
• 1879 Ecole Normale Superieure
• Social and political context
• 1885 Trip to Germany
• Writings on methodology The Rules of the
  Sociological Method (1895)

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Durkheims Life Times

• 1887 Position at University of Bordeaux The
  Division of Labor in Society (1893)
• Suicide (1897)
• 1902 Position at the Sorbonne
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)

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Durkheims Life Times

• World War I loss of son
• Stroke in 1916, death in 1917

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Durkheims Approach to Sociology

• Rejection of methodological individualism
  need to study groups, societies
• Social Realism
• Society as constraint
• Social Facts
• Need for separate discipline for study of society

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The Division of Labor in Society

• What holds societies together?
• Durkheims argument shared moral framework
• Spencer, Principles of Sociology social
  cooperation based on rational self-interest
• Durkheim rational action presupposes moral
  framework
• Rational action rests on nonrational foundation

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The Division of Labor in Society

• Increasing division of labor
• Cause increasing volume and density of
  population
• Functionalist argument
• Social solidarity?
• Shift from mechanical to organic solidarity

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Mechanical Solidarity

• Same activities, same beliefs
• Individual consciousness has two components
• Collective Conscience
• Mechanical solidarity CC takes up almost all of
  individual consciousness
• Why mechanical?

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Organic Solidarity

• High division of labor, solidarity through mutual
  dependence
• People not as similar
• Why organic?
• Receding place of collective conscience in
  individual consciousness

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Laws as Indicators

• Low division of labor/mechanical solidarity ?
  repressive laws
• High division of labor/organic solidarity ?
  restitutive laws

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Suicide (1897)

• Thinking about suicide
• Durkheim social causes
• Study approach social structure and suicide rates

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Suicide (1897)

• Rejection of popular explanations (mental
  illness, climate)
• Durkheims alternative social structure
• Integration
• Regulation

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Types of Suicide

• Low integration ? Egoistic suicide
• High integration ? Altruistic suicide
• Low regulation ? Anomic suicide
• High regulation ? Fatalistic suicide

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Method and Findings

• Method country-level data
• Findings
• Religion
• Marriage
• Children
• Family size
• Wars and crises
• Economic booms and busts

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Problems of Study

• Logical flaws
• Design flaw ecological fallacy
• Sexist assumptions and conclusions
• Significance Large-scale empirical effort to
  show effects of social structure

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Feminist Theory

• Feminism, feminist theory, feminist research
• Tensions
• Theorizing Gender

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What Is Feminism?

• Gender as a social construction
• Gender as a site of power relations
• Concern with social justice

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Variants of Feminism

• Liberal or Equality Feminism
• Socialist/Radical Feminism
• Cultural Feminism
• Feminism is both an intellectual and a
  social/political movement

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What Is Feminist Theory?

• Interdisciplinary
• Woman-centered
• Critical
• Interested in social change

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Trends Toward Fragmentation

• Internal critiques
• Influence of poststructural and postmodernist
  thought
• Questioning the privileging of gender as category
  of analysis
• Moving past the sex/gender distinction
• Attention to intersectionality

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What Is Feminist Research Practice?

• Rejection of positivism
• Feminist alternative
• Researcher as situated and embodied
• Priority to female and other marginalized
  experiences and viewpoints
• Interest in interpretive approaches (induction)
• Commitment to empowering research subjects

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Standpoint Theory (Smith reading)

• Womens lives as starting point for theorizing
• Epistemic advantage of socially disadvantaged
• Move outside relations of ruling

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Central Concepts of D. Smith

• Bifurcated consciousness
• Relations of Ruling

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Sites of Tension

• Relationship between feminist theory and
  political practice
• Core assumptions of feminist vs. postmodernist
  theory
• Death of the subject
• Death of history
• Death of philosophy

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Theorizing Gender

• Part of more general interest in theorizing
  identities
• Parallels social movements dominant in last
  several decades

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Doing Gender (West Zimmerman, 1987)

• Gender as something people do
• Gender is done in context of interaction
• Sex, sex category, and gender
• Sex biological criteria for male/female
• Sex category presumes sex, but can vary
  independently
• Gender managing conduct in light of what is
  normative for ones sex category

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Doing Gender (West Zimmerman, 1987)

• Accountability for gender performances
• Criteria for judgment vary across contexts and
  interactions
• Gender tends to reproduce itself

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Time on Household and Family Care