Outline, Sociology 2111, Week 14
Robert Merton(1910-?)
I. Background and studies with Parsons at Harvard
Immigrant parents; NY school system; libraries, museums,
etc.
II. Grand theory and middle range theory
Social Theory and Social Structure: 1957
"Those who read the following pages will soon recognize the great debt I owe to my teacher and friend, Talcott Parsons, who so early in his teaching career conveyed his enthusiasm for analytical theory to so many. The measure of his calibre as a teacher is found in his having stirred up intellectual enthusiasm, rather than creating obedient disciples."
"Throughout this book... the term sociological theory refers to logically interconnected conceptions which are quite limited and modest in scope, rather than all-embracing grandiose. Throughout I attempt to focus on what might be called theories of the middle range.... I assume that the search for a total system of sociological theory , in which all manner of observations promptly find their preordained place, has the same large challenge and the same small promise as those all-encompassing philosophical systems which have fallen into deserved disuse."
"As Whitehead has observed in the passage I have taken as an epigraph for this book, 'It is characteristic of science in its early stages to be both ambitiously profound in its aims and trivial in its details. Complete sociological systems today, as in their day complete systems of medical theory or of chemical theory, must give way to less imposing but better grounded theories of the middle range."
"We social scientists happen to live at a time in which some of the physical sciences have achieved comparatively great precision of theory and experiment... Looking about them, many social scientists take this as a standard for self-appraisal. Understandably, they want to compare biceps with their big brothers. They, too, want to count... But this is to ignore the distinctive fore-history of each discipline; between twentieth century physics and twentieth century sociology stand billions of man-hours of sustained, disciplined, and cumulative research. Perhaps sociology is not ready for its Einstein because it has not yet found its Kepler. Even the nonpareil Newton had, in his day, acknowledged the indispensable contributon of cumultative research, saying: 'If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'"
"In recent years, while we have worked in double harness in the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Research, I have learned most from Paul Lazarsfeld.... Above all, he has through his own example, reinforced in myself the conviction that the great difference between social science and social dilettantism resides in the systematic and serious... pursuit of what is first entertained as an interesting idea."
A. Examples of middle range theory from the classic tradition:
1) Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Explaining the emergence of a particular type of human motivation needed for the establishment of capitalism.2) Durkheim: Suicide. Offering three or four theories to explain the rate of suicide in a particular society or social group.
B. Examples of grand theory
1) Comte's law of three stages. All societies go through three stages, the religious, the metaphysical, and the positive...
2) Marx. All societies are characterized by class struggle, which can be understood....
3) Parsons. All societies can be analyzed in terms of four systems... in which the cultural system dominates.
III. Manifest and latent functions
e.g. Merton's analysis of machine politics and immigrant communities. Example: account of Pendergrast machine from Truman
Merton sees the analysis of latent functions as one of the most essential contributions of functionalist sociology.
IV. Social structure and anomie
A. Culture as a source of deviance
B. Anomie = lack of fit between culturally prescribed goals and culturally prescribed means
|
goals
|
means
|
|
| Conformity |
+
|
+
|
| Innovation |
+
|
-
|
| Ritualism |
-
|
+
|
| Retreatism |
-
|
-
|
| Rebellion |
+/-
|
+/-
|
A. A social arrangement may lessen adaptation of the system as a whole.
B. A social arrangement may be functional for some groups and dysfunctional for others
C. Raising the question, "functional for whom," creates a bridge to conflict theory.
E.g. Herbert Gans on the functions of poverty... source of soldiers and low-wage workers, outlet for charity, jobs for people in social services... but obviously not functional for the poor themselves
VI. Functional alternatives: opens the door for social reform
e.g., in a kibbutz, a children's house may take over many of the functions of the family in other societies
VII. Social system and personality system
A. Roles as empowering: Chaplain JoAnn
B. Role conflict: 2 types
1. Between the different statuses you hold: for example, my status as a UMD instructor and my status as a husband/father
2. Between different expectations that relate to a single role. Example: what the department head expects of me as an instructor, what students expect of me, what the janitor expects of me
3. Ways of resolving role conflict
a. Differential involvement... I may downplay my investment in work and concentrate my energies on my family role, or the reverse.
b. Offsetting pressures... I can play off one set of expectations against another.
c. Insulation from observation... I can be a different kind of person at work than at home
d. Visibility of conflicting demands... my wife can see that I've also got obligations to my mother, my kids, my job
e. People (positions) with expectations of me have different amounts of power over me.
In Parson's treatment of culture and the social system, roles and institutions largely determine the kind of personality we develop, the kinds of choices we make at the individual level; Merton, on the other hand, argues are we can view role conflict as a source of a considerable amount of freedom and individuation
Micro-Sociology: Rational Choice Theory (sometimes called Exchange Theory)
George Homans and Rational choice theory
I. Precedents
A. Economics: Individuals and firms, maximizing their profits and minimizing their costs, are of course the root assumption of classical economics, as it originated in the Scottish universities... "economic man"
D. Behaviorist psychology: B.F. Skinner--colleague of George Homans (and Parsons) at Harvard: operant conditioning and reinforcement (behaviorism)... people repeat the behaviors that have received positive reinforcement; on the other hand, behaviors that receive no reinforcement or negative reinforcement (punishment), tend to be extinguished
II. Background: Homans--upper class background, English major as an undergrad at Harvard: Is there a general currency of by which we can explain social behavior? "For us microsociologists, the laws of sociology are the laws of social snobbery." In other words, social approval is the underlying motivation of much (all?) social behavior... Homans spent his career in the Harvard Department of Social Relations, where psychologist B. F. Skinner was a colleague.
Micro-sociology: The Human Group
III. His sociology
A. 1964 Presidential Address to the ASA: "Bringing Men Back In"
B. Six propositions that are basic to all sociological theory (I will paraphrase these propositions and in several cases, relate them to psychology or economics.)
1. For all actions taken by persons, the more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more likely the person is to perform that action. (the success proposition)
2. If in the past the occurence of a particular stimulus has been the occasion on which a person's action has been rewarded, then the more similar the present stimuli are to past ones, the more likely the person is to perform the action or some similar action now. (the stimulus proposition)
3. The more valuable to a person is the result of his action, the more likely he is to perform the action. (the value proposition)
4. The more often in the recent past a person has received a particular reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes to him. (deprivation-satiation proposition)
5. When a person's action does not receive the reward he expected or receives a punishment he does not expect, he will be angry; he becomes more likely to perform aggressive behavior. (the aggression proposition)
6. When a person's action receives the reward he expected, especially a greater reward than he expected, or does not receive the punishment he expected, he will be pleased. He becomes likely to perform approving behavior. (the approval proposition)
In summary, rational choice theory sees people as maximizing their rewards (both in terms of material goods and in terms of social approval) and minimizing their costs. That's the very definition of rational choice (it's what Weber called instrumental rationality)
A. Peter Blau:
1. The norm of reciprocity: people begin to reciprocate rewards because it is rewarding to do so, but what is habitual becomes obligatory. Therefore, people become angry when the norm of reciprocity is violated.
2. The norm of fair exchange. People expect that the ratio of rewards and costs should be the same for both sides, and they get angry when they perceive this is not the case
B. James Coleman. Simulation of coalition building in legislatures. Legislators have different degrees of interests (depending on their values and their constituencies) in different issues. For negotiations to be effective, a norm of trustworthyness emerges, even between people who are ideological opponents.
A. Criminology: classical deterrence theories.
B. Education
1. Token economies
2. Discipline systems
C. Hochschild, The Second Shift: gender strategies... women who had traditional values but got great jobs, and women who had equalitarian values but got crummy jobs
A. Social movements: Free rider problem: let someone else take the risks, I will still get the benefits... e.g. with the civil rights movement... what's in it for the activists who take the major risks?
B. Sherman and Berk: arrests and domestic violence... it turns out that people who feel they have been arrested unfairly are less likely to be deterred
C. Durkheim: Let's contrast the intensely unhappy and depressed, married with children, rural Catholic with the intensely unhappy and depressed, single, urban, Protestant. What makes suicide more in the self-interest of the second individual?
Rational choice theory deals with this by taking people's values as a given, whereas from Durkheim's point of view, the question that most interests him is why the first person is so much more collectively oriented, while the second is more individualistic.
I. Jane Addams (1860-1935)
The New Unity, May 3, 1895: Report from an Experimental Station
in Sociology: "If Chicago but knew her value, it would
hasten to cancel her position as street inspector and give to
Jane Addams a chair of sociology, where she might become a teacher
of teachers, a trainer of ministers, and an organizer of schools
along these lines."
The following notice is posted on one of the walls in the Hull
House Museum, March 1998
Working People's Social Science Club Hull House,
1892
A speech of 45 minutes is followed by discussion.
Program
Feb. 2 Child Labor, Mrs. Florence Kelley
Feb. 9 Our Jury System, Samuel Zelber
Feb. 16 The Chicago Police, Major R.W. McGlaughery
Feb. 23 The Cook County House of Corrections, Mr. Mark Crawford
Mar. 1 Competition, Col. Aldacee P. Walker
Mar. 8 The Cook County Courts, Judge M. F. Turle
Mar 15 The Municipal Control of Heat, Light, and Transportation, Col. Augustus Jacobs
Jane Addams: "A settlement is a protest against a restricted view of education. The social and educational activities of a settlement are but differing manifestations of the attempt to socialize democracy."
Mary Jo Deegan, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School
A. Hull House as the center of women's sociology
AJS articles, Hull House Maps and Papers
B. Self-identification as a sociologist, attendance at ASS meetings, publication in the American Journal of Sociology
C. Collegial relationships with key figures in sociology, especially Thomas and Mead
D. Basis for her conflicts with Park and exclusion from the sociological canon
1. Conflict as the basic social process (Park) vs. cooperation (Addams)
2. Political radicalism... e.g., pro-union activities, feminism, pacificism during World War I
President Harper, U of Chicago: "The labor movement may be all right but we get our money from the corporations, and I am with the capitalists every time."
3. Priorities: e.g. Addams response to the request that Hull House become the official research station of the U of Chicago sociology department
II. Lengerman and Brantley: The Women Founders
"We portray history as a social construction arising out of the discipline's power arrangements." (Notice the combination of symbolic interactionism and conflict theory)
A. Women social theorists tended to have quite a bit in common--in particular, an activist orientation to the social world (reformist or revolutionary) and a focus on inequality and its remedies.
1. "Scientific" objectivity vs. Activism... Louis Wirth's address on the 50th anniversary of the American Journal of Sociology: Dismissed many early sociologists as "social workers, social reformers, social prophets, and social critics who, for want of any other academic refuge, had identified themselves with the adolescent science of sociology."
2. Women as invisible vs. Women as written out... women like Jane Addams were never invisible. There was an active exclusion of women's concerns and perspectives by the men who created the official canon of American sociology.
B. Effects of being included or left out of the canon
1. Whether you even read or hear of someone: I was in my forties before I read anything by Jane Addams and in my fifties before she became one of my heroes.
2. How you interpret their work, if you do encounter it
3. 1890-1940: No woman held the rank of professor in any sociology department, no woman served as president of ASS or ASA, and women constituted less than 10% of papers published in AJS and ASR
C. Modern Feminism and Sociology (relate this to Jo Freeman's treatment of modern feminism as a social movement, in the reading assignment for Week 7)
1. Key events (within the general background of the development of a feminist social movement)
a.1971: Sociologists for Women in Society
b. 1972: creation of ASA section on sex and gender
c. 1986: Gender and Society
"In choosing to claim these women as part of our tradition as sociologists, we reaffirm that sociology is a discipline that has a history of speaking directly to and pressing for action on the most immediate problems confronting any society in which it is practiced."