Social theory

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Social analysis" redirects here. For the journal, see Social Analysis (journal).

Social theories are analytical frameworks, or

structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formal cultural and literary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.[1]

Definitions

Social theory by definition is used to make distinctions and generalizations among different types of societies, and to analyze modernity as it has emerged in the past few centuries.[2]: 10  Social theory, as it is recognized today, emerged in the 20th century as a distinct discipline, and was largely equated with an attitude of critical thinking and the desire for knowledge through a posteriori methods of discovery, rather than a priori methods of tradition.[citation needed]

Social thought provides general theories to explain actions and behavior of society as a whole, encompassing

Eurocentric.[by whom?
]

Theory construction, according to The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, is instrumental: "Their goal is to promote accurate communication, rigorous testing, high accuracy, and broad applicability. They include the following: absence of contradictions, absence of ambivalence, abstractness, generality, precision, parsimony, and conditionality."[3] Therefore, a social theory consists of well-defined terms, statements, arguments and scope conditions.

History

Ancient

Warring States.[4] Later on, also in China, Mozi
(circa 470 – circa 390 BCE) recommended a more pragmatic sociology, but ethical at base.

In the West,

pre-Socratic philosophers and religious teachers were the precursors to social theory proper.[citation needed
]

Medieval

Main articles:
Sociology in medieval Islam, Muqaddimah, and Asabiyyah

There is evidence of

nomadic societies.[citation needed
]

European social thought

philosophers embraced the idea of progress and ideas of modernity.[8]

The Enlightenment period was marked by the idea that with new

progress.[citation needed] French thought during this period focused on moral critique and criticisms of the monarchy.[2]: 15  These ideas did not draw on ideas of the past from classical thinkers, nor involved following religious teachings and authority of the monarch
.

A common factor among the classical theories was the agreement that the

technological progress, decline or even fall. Social cycle theorists were skeptical of the Western achievements and technological progress, but argued that progress is an illusion of the ups and downs of the historical cycles. [citation needed] The classical approach has been criticized by many modern sociologists and theorists; among them Karl Popper, Robert Nisbet, Charles Tilly and Immanuel Wallerstein
.

The 19th century brought questions involving

social evolutionism theory (of which Social Darwinism forms a part), the social cycle theory, and the Marxist historical materialism theory.[citation needed
]

19th-century classical social theory has been expanded upon to create newer, contemporary social theories such as

theory of post-industrial society) and various strains of Neo-Marxism.[citation needed
]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social theory became closely related to academic sociology, and other related studies such as anthropology, philosophy, and social work branched out into their own disciplines. Subjects like "philosophy of history" and other multi-disciplinary subject matter became part of social theory as taught under sociology.[citation needed]

A revival of discussion free of disciplines began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The

Cultural Studies programs extended the concerns of social theory into the domain of culture and thus anthropology. A chair and undergraduate program in social theory was established at the University of Melbourne. Social theory at present seems to be gaining acceptance as a classical academic discipline.[citation needed
]

Classical social theory

Main article: History of sociology

Montesquieu, and John Millar, among others, were the first to study society as distinct from political institutions and processes. In the nineteenth century, the scientific method was introduced into study of society, which was a significant advance leading to development of sociology as a discipline.[9]

In the 18th century, the pre-classical period of social theories developed a new form that provides the basic ideas for social theory, such as

Montesquieu, in The Spirit of Laws, which established that social elements influence human nature, was possibly the first to suggest a universal explanation for history.[10] Montesquieu included changes in mores and manners as part of his explanation of political and historic events.[2]
: 23 

Philosophers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Denis Diderot, developed new social ideas during the Enlightenment period that were based on reason and methods of scientific inquiry. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this time played a significant role in social theory. He revealed the origin of inequality, analyzed the social contract (and social compact) that forms social integration and defined the social sphere or civil society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau also emphasized that man has the liberty to change his world, an assertion that made it possible to program and change society.[citation needed]

women was important for progress of society. Millar also advocated for abolition of slavery, suggesting that personal liberty makes people more industrious, ambitious, and productive.[11]

The first "modern" social theories (known as classical theories) that begin to resemble the analytic social theory of today developed simultaneously with the birth of the science of sociology.

conflict theory, and Weberian antipositivism and verstehen critique.[citation needed
]

Another early modern theorist,

social actors.[citation needed
]

The 19th century pioneers of social theory and sociology, like Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx,

Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.[citation needed
]

Post-modern social theory

Further information:
post-modern feminism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism

The term "postmodernism" was brought into social theory in 1971 by the Arab American Theorist Ihab Hassan in his book: The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. In 1979 Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short but influential work The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge. Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes were influential in the 1970s in developing postmodern theory.

Scholars most commonly hold postmodernism to be a movement of ideas arising from, but also critical of elements of modernism.[citation needed] The wide range of uses of this term resulted in different elements of modernity are chosen as being continuous. Each of the different uses is rooted in some argument about the nature of knowledge, known in philosophy as epistemology.[13] Individuals who use the term are arguing that either there is something fundamentally different about the transmission of meaning, or that modernism has fundamental flaws in its system of knowledge. [citation needed]

The argument for the necessity of the term states that economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society. [

transportation,[14] is cited as one force which has decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society, lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication, or intellectual production. The postmodern view is that inter-subjective knowledge, and not objective knowledge, is the dominant form of discourse. The ubiquity of copies and dissemination alters the relationship between reader and what is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce.[citation needed
]

Not all people who use the term postmodern or postmodernism see these developments as positive.

historical period
.

Today

In the past few decades, in response to postmodern critiques, [citation needed] social theory has begun to stress free will, individual choice, subjective reasoning, and the importance of unpredictable events in place of deterministic necessity. Rational choice theory, symbolic interactionism, false necessity are examples of more recent developments. A view among contemporary sociologists is that there are no great unifying 'laws of history', but rather smaller, more specific, and more complex laws that govern society.[citation needed]

Philosopher and politician

human sciences that developed claimed to identify a small number of possible types of social organization that coexisted or succeeded one another through inescapable developmental tendencies or deep-seated economic organization or psychological constraints. Marxism is the star example.[16]
: 1 

Unger, calling his efforts "super-theory", has thus sought to develop a comprehensive view of history and society. Unger does so without subsuming deep structure analysis under an indivisible and repeatable type of social organization or with recourse to law-like constraints and tendencies.[16]: 165  His articulation of such a theory is in False Necessity: anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy, where he uses deep-logic practice to theorize human social activity through anti-necessitarian analysis.

Unger begins by formulating the theory of false necessity, which claims that social worlds are the artifact of human endeavors. There is no pre-set institutional arrangement that societies must adhere to, and there is no necessary historical mold of development that they will follow. We are free to choose and to create the forms and the paths that our societies will take. However, this does not give license to absolute contingency. Unger finds that there are groups of institutional arrangements that work together to bring about certain institutional forms—liberal democracy, for example. These forms are the basis of a social structure, which Unger calls

anti-necessitarian social thought, Unger recognized that there are an infinite number of ways of resisting social and institutional constraints, which can lead to an infinite number of outcomes. This variety of forms of resistance and empowerment make change possible. Unger calls this empowerment negative capability. However, Unger adds that these outcomes are always reliant on the forms from which they spring. The new world is built upon the existing one.[17]

Schools of thought

Chicago school

Main article:
Chicago School (sociology)

The

place, and within context of other social variables.[18]

Critical theory

Main article: Critical theory

power structures
and their relations and influences on social groups.

Marxism

Main article: Marxism

Karl Marx wrote and theorized about the importance of political economy on society, and focused on the "material conditions" of life.[2]: 4  His theories centered around capitalism and its effect on class-struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie.[19]

Postmodernism

Main article: Postmodernism

Postmodernism was defined by

metanarratives" and contrasted that with modern which he described as "any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse... making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth."[20]

Other perspectives

Other theories include:

Key thinkers

French social thought

Some known

Claude Henri Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim, and Michel Foucault
.

British social thought

Gandhi
's philosophy).

German social thought

Important German philosophers and social thinkers included Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Niklas Luhmann.

Chinese social thought

Important

Lao Zi, Confucius, Mencius, Wang Chong, Wang Yangming, Li Zhi, Zhu Xi, Gu Yanwu, Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, Kang Youwei, Lu Xun, Mao Zedong
, Zhu Ming.

Italian sociology

Important Italian social scientists include Antonio Gramsci, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Franco Ferrarotti.

Thai social thought

Important Thai social theorists include

Jit Phumisak, Kukrit Pramoj, and Prawase Wasi

In academic practices

Social theory seeks to question why humans inhabit the world the way they do, and how that came to be by looking at power relations, social structures, and social norms,[21] while also examining how humans relate to each other and the society they find themselves in, how this has changed over time and in different cultures,[22] and the tools used to measure those things. Social theory looks to interdisciplinarity, combining knowledge from multiple academic disciplines in order to enlighten these complex issues,[21] and can draw on ideas from fields as diverse as anthropology and media studies.

Social theory guides scientific inquiry by promoting scientists to think about which topics are suitable for investigation and how they should measure them. Selecting or creating appropriate theory for use in examining an issue is an important skill for any researcher. Important distinctions: a theoretical orientation (or paradigm) is a worldview, the lens through which one organizes experience (i.e. thinking of human interaction in terms of power or exchange). A theory is an attempt to explain and predict behavior in particular contexts. A theoretical orientation cannot be proven or disproven; a theory can.

Having a theoretical orientation that sees the world in terms of power and control, one could create a theory about violent human behavior which includes specific causal statements (e.g. being the victim of physical abuse leads to psychological problems). This could lead to a hypothesis (prediction) about what one expects to see in a particular sample, e.g. "a battered child will grow up to be shy or violent". One can then test the hypothesis by looking to see if it is consistent with data. One might, for instance, review hospital records to find children who were abused, then track them down and administer a personality test to see if they show signs of being violent or shy. The selection of an appropriate (i.e. useful) theoretical orientation within which to develop a potentially helpful theory is the bedrock of social science.

Example of questions posed by social theorists

Philosophical questions addressed by social thinkers often centered around modernity, including:

  • Can human reason make sense of the social world and shape it for the better?
  • Did the development of modern societies, with vast inequalities in wealth among citizens, constitute progress?
  • How do particular government interventions and regulations impact natural social processes?
  • Should the economy/market be regulated or not?

Other issues relating to modernity that were addressed by social thinkers include

social disorganization, and secularization
.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Seidman, S., 2016. Contested knowledge: Social theory today. John Wiley & Sons.
  2. ^ a b c d Callinicos, A. (1999). Social Theory: A Historical Introduction. New York University Press.
  3. ^ Ritzer, George, ed. 2007. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
  4. ISBN 0-13-128746-X
    .
  5. ^ Heilbron, Johan (1995). The Rise of Social Theory. Cambridge University Press.
  6. ^ H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in the Arab World", Cooperation South Journal 1.
  7. ^ S. W. Akhtar (1997). "The Islamic Concept of Knowledge", Al-Tawhid: A Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought & Culture 12 (3).
  8. ^ "Enlightenment Period: Thinkers & Ideas". HISTORY. 21 February 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2023.
  9. ^ "The History Behind Sociology". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
  10. ^ Althusser, L. (1972). Politics and History.
  11. ^ Meek, Rodney L. (1967). Economics and Ideology and Other Essays.
  12. ^ Bourdeau, Michel (19 October 2017). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 19 October 2017 – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  13. S2CID 55576226.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  14. ISSN 1532-5555
    .
  15. ISSN 0130-9641
    .
  16. ^
    ISBN 9780521329750
    .
  17. ISBN 978-1-85984-331-4
    .
  18. JSTOR 2580667
    .
  19. ^ Marx, Karl. "The German Ideology. Karl Marx 1845". marxists.org. Retrieved 2016-09-29.
  20. ^ Lyotard, Jean-François (1979). The Postmodern Condition.
  21. ^
    OCLC 56608295.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link
    )
  22. OCLC 232358185
    .

Further reading

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Introduction to Sociology
Wikiquote has quotations related to Social theory.
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