POLS138 New Bulgarian Main Preoccupations of Classical Sociology Paper Using font “Times new Roman”, line spacing 1 single, and font size 12 please prepare

POLS138 New Bulgarian Main Preoccupations of Classical Sociology Paper Using font “Times new Roman”, line spacing 1 single, and font size 12 please prepare a 2000-word essay (around 5-6 pages) trying to fulfill the following requirements: Give a brief insight of the main preoccupations of classical sociology and the historical context that led to the development of this social thought What are the main similarities and differences in the works of those authors?What is/are the main problem(s) of society according to Marx;according to Durkheim;according to Weber;Give the perspective which one of the three of them, according to you, was the most relevant in pinpointing societal problems, considering the subsequent development of modern societies.Conclusion: In your own worlds try to characterize the perspective of classical sociology.Kindly make judicious use of all the materials I uploaded. Please do refer to the material I uploaded “How to write a sociological essay” and reference and cite correctly. POLS 138
Classical sociological authors –
Marx, Weber and Durkheim.
Part 1. Introduction + Marx
The “Birth” of Sociology
?
4 conditions determine the birth of a discipline from our
current perspective:
?
1)The bibliographical information on the matter
?
2) Its precursors
?
3) the founding fathers
?
4) The specificity of the historic context.
Social Sciences are concerned mainly with theorizing and
conceptualizing, especially in the first stages of their
development.
Work of synthesis on the birth of
Sociology – the two approaches
?
Aron Raymond, 1965. Main Currents in Sociological
Thought, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Aron starts from the big authors from the past
searching the coherence of their work
?
Nisbet Robert, 1966. The Sociological tradition, New
York, Basic Books.
Nisbet uses a different approach: he doesn‘t start by
examining the different authors, but he is searching for the
common ideas .
The 5 antitheses of Nisbet: main
ideas at the base of sociology
?
1) Community and Society
?
2) Authority and Power
?
3) Status and classes
?
4) Sacred and profane
?
5) Alienation and progress
The revolutions of the XIX
century
?
Necessity to understand a new and rapidly changing
society
?
The French Revolution and the subsequent revolutions
all around Europe destabilize the European continent
?
Profound transformations due to the fast pace of
industrialization and increased mobility from rural to
urban setting
?
Mutation of the relations in families and social classes
?
Spectacular development of the natural sciences
Political destabilization during
the XIX century
?
The birth of Sociology coincides with a period of abrupt political
and military change
?
The example of the French Revolution: a society of three classes
and a hereditary monarch (The Ancien Régime)
?
?
– First Estate (Premièr État, le clergé ) – The clergy, both high
(generally siding with the nobility, and it often was recruited
amongst its younger sons) and low
?
Second Estate (Second État, la noblesse ) – The nobility
?
The Third Estate (Third Estate (Tiers État) – Everyone not included
in the First or Second Estate. At times this term refers specifically
to the bourgeoisie, the middle class, but the Third Estate also
included the sans-culottes, the labouring class. Also included in the
Third Estate were lawyers, merchants, and government officials)
A. de Tocqueville (1805-1859) shows the two systems in a conflict:
The “Ancien Regime” found on the hierarchy of Estates, which is by
definition inegalitarian and the new one proclaiming the ideal of
equality in the conditions – polarized society
Political destabilization
during the XIX century – 2
?
France during the XIX century: one Empire, two Royal
regimes overthrown by revolutions, a Republic with an
universal suffrage, a Second Empire and once again a
Republic. The Same processes took place in Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Europe was a turmoil.
?
Ideology, replacing to some extent religion, becomes a
central part of social life during that period. Conservative,
liberal, solidaristic, revolutionary ideologies are having
deeply antagonistic positions and become source of
division.
?
The Fear of the fragility of Societies (pathology of the
social organism). How to put to end the acute social crisis
that Europe is experiencing ? Those questions are at the
base of the search of a science of society.
?
Interventionists and neutralists
The Industrial Revolution
during the XIX century
?
If France played an extremely important role in the dissemination of
radical and revolutionary ideas all across the world, it is England that
exported the industrial mode of production and political economy
?
England cities were profoundly transformed with the arrival of an urban
proletariat.
?
Negative effects during the beginning of the industrial revolution: dequalification of the work force in the traditional mode, forced division
of labor, exploitation of the work force and miserable wages, child
labor.
?
The Social Question becomes central for Western Societies: a series of
studies on the life of workers, their revenues and their way of life
reflects those tendencies.
?
Social statistics
?
Family budgets
?
Field work and observation
?
The idea of Social Politics (Altruist or egoist?)
The Silent scientific revolution: the
xix century progress of natural
sciences
?
Radical transformations in the fields of physics,
chemistry and biology and their application as industrial
or medical technologies.
?
Physics becomes more and more mathematicised and
becomes the standard of the good methodology.
?
It is the progress of chemistry and biology that is the
more impressive for contemporaries and gives birth to
using their models for social theorizing:
?
Atomic structure of matter
?
Comparative physiology (organs, functions, normal and
pathological, homeostasis, cellular theory, Darwin and the
social Darwinism theories)
?
The organic and the mechanistic conceptions
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
?
Marx is not a pure sociologist. He is a philosopher,
economist and sociologist. (Hegel)
?
From dialectical materialism – a theory of knowledge – to
historical materialism (the application of dialectical
materialism to history)
?
Principles of dialectical materialism:
?
Materialism and idealism: primacy of the material world. Two
irreconcilable conceptions of the world.
?
Reality and representation: material world exists outside of the
representations that one could have. Do not confound material and
physical. Ideas, sentiments are part of the material world
?
Matter and movement: matter is never still. You cannot isolate a
phenomenon from its context. Social phenomena should be studied
in their organic
?
The principle of contradiction: all things and all phenomena are
constructed by the unity of opposites.
Karl Marx economist
C + L = W (capital + labour =
value or wealth)
?
Exchange value and use value: Basic Marxian idea is that value depends
on the quantity of work crystallized on the commodity. Money as a
means of exchange via tacit agreement. Social conception of
production: Socially necessary labour time … Holism and Individualism
?
Working Force and salaries: the working force is a commodity as any
other and it does posses an exchange value (food, home, clothing etc.)!
The Relations of Production: the relations people must enter into in
order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life.
People must enter into these social relationships, i.e. because
participation in them is not voluntary, the totality of these relationships
constitute a relatively stable and permanent structure: the “economic
structure”.
?
The exchange of labour is only possible when people are free and when they
do not posses the instruments of labour;
?
The proprietor of the means of production becomes also proprietor of the
results of workers work;
?
Exchanging is obligatory for the work force because they need the goods
necessary for their reproduction.
Karl Marx on capitalism
?
The surplus value Theory and Exploitation: if the
capitalist pays a salary equivalent to x hours of work for
the reproduction of the work force, he/she actually
employs the worker for y hours of work, where x always