10/19/2012

The French Revolution of 1789 and the Origins of Sociology

Henri de Saint-Simon
o Industrialism = new era in history
Auguste Comte
o Law of three stages of knowledge
o System of positivism
o Sociologysocial static and social dynamics
Reading:
o Discovery ch. 1
Tocqueville: revolution and bureaucracy
The Old Regime and the French Revolution
Inevitable advance of equality
Democracy in the US
Reading:
o The Old Regime and the French Revolution
o Discover, ch. 3
Marx and Engels: economic class conflict theory; Engels theory of sexual stratification
Marx

o Economic classes and economic conflict

o Factory workers = grave-diggers of capitalism
o Theory of politics
o Labor theory of value
o Profit as exploitation
o Law of the falling rate of profit
o Periodic crises
o Final collapse of capitalism
o Communism
Engels
o Theory of gender stratification
Reading:
o Working Class Manchester
o These on Feuerback
o Manifesto of the Communist Party
o Class Struggles in France
o Eighteenth Brumaire
o Civil War in France
o Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State
o Discovery, ch. 2

Nietzsche: the historical critique of religion and morality

Apollonian vs. Dionysian worldview
Wagner
Slave morality of Christianity
Dynamics of will
Reevaluation of all values (the superman)
Weber: three-dimensional stratification, organizational power, and legitimacy; Twentieth
Century Follow-Ups on Marx and Weber
Sociologys original question
What was the cause of the 1789 French Revolution
What is the transformation of modernity?
Religious secularism
Industrial technocracy replacing aristocracy
Bureaucracy
Democracy/mass politics
Timeline of the French Revolution of 1789
Important events:
o 1789 financial crisis of monarchy from war debts
o 1792 war with Austria and Prussia
o 1793 English military intervention in France
o 1796-97 Napoleons victories in Italy

Class, status, and power

Class
o Class = same as Marxproperty and lack of property = position in market
o Weber agrees that history is driven by conflict
o State = organization, monopoly, legitimate force, territory

Status group
o Prestige, honor or lack of honor
o Lifestyle
o Associational community
Commensality [eating together]
Connubiality [intermarrying]
Hence sociability and sex are always boundary-creating
Marriage market [assortative mating]individual choices constrained
by other individual choices
Match-ups in couples with approx. equal
resources/attractiveness
[match-ups w. unequal resources personal power difference
e.g. who loves who more]
Friendship markets resemble marriage markets, but more matches at
a time tendency to homophily
Micro-mechanisms by which this happens:
Close friendships: serious discussions of personal
matters = similar backstage position in social structure
Fun, pleasure, enjoyment = similar standards and
tastes
o Goffman: spontaneous unselfconscious
involvement

Ability to carry on conversation

o Similar cultural capital [Bourdieu]
o Gossip/stories about acquaintances
Depends on network ties

Status group always has a name and identity; whereas classes are just
statistical categories, not necessarily conscious of themselves and others

Strong and weak status groups

Vary by how strong boundaries and identities are
Among class-based status groups, upper class has strongest status
group identity
Many institutions for association, intermarriage [clubs,
debutantes, written records, charities]
Middle class and working class may have weak status group identities
(especially in contemporary US)
Unless based on strong residential location/segregation, local
group customs/activities (vs. mass culture)
Or distinct ethnic/racial/religious status groups
Network structure:
High density ------------------------ low density
Number of actual ties
---------------------------- number of potential ties

Various ways status groups can be formed:

Economic groups:
E.g. old money vs. new money (nouveau riche)
Race/ethnic/religious groups
Lifestyle groups inside closed community
E.g. high school groups
Pure status
Arbitrarily created
Murray Milner, Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids:
American Teenagers and the Culture of Consumption
(2004)
o Pure status structure = widely publicized
rankings
goldfish bowl
o autonomous from external structures [parents,
teachers]
o non-autonomy low status
o High status persons guard internal rankings and
external boundaries

Power
o Live in the house of power
Oriented towards grasping/maintaining power
o Power is the end itself;
o Getting into office can be based on classes or status groups,
But once in office, develops own interest
Great men in high office often follow the policy which they
attacked when in opposition. (262)
It is the nature of an heir apparent to oppose the policy of the
reigning monarch. (107)

(re. Brit. Foreign secretary Grey in new liberal govt. 1905)

as often happens, when a party of the Left takes office, he is
often anxious to show that he could be as firm and realistic as
any conservative. (436)
The Struggle for Mastery
Government departments guard the power and prestige of
their own specialty
(Taylor, 571)

Power:
The ability to impose ones will on others, despite their resistance
Can be based on many things:
Controlling resources others need but lack
Physical force
Ideas: legitimate authority
Extra summaries
o It is no surprise that Weber decided to aptly title his essay, Class, Status,
Party because the order in which they are connected to each other is
precisely that: Class, Status, Party. A person's class situation will undoubtedly
determine their social status and since social status is tied to lifestyle, which
shapes most people's ideals and convicitions the transition from status to an
affiliation to a certain political party is the nature progression. And it is that
natural progression, which comes to shape and structure the society as a
whole, often cementing the class, status, party formula.
o

Bureaucracy
Formal rules and regulations
Keeping records in files
Impersonality
o Separating person from position
Important difference from patrimony, venality of office, feudal
administrators
More efficient than any other system, according to Weber, modernly thought of to be
inefficient
They are rife with conflict

Order-givers vs. order-takers

Dahrendorfs critique of Marx
Why white-collar workers arent radical;
Explains anomalies:
Why conflict exists inside socialism
Top authority vs. administrators
(line vs. staff)
o Conflict not so much based on relationship to means of production/position in
market, but instead on relationship to power in organizations
Organizational weapons of bureaucratic administrators
o control of files, information, communications
o knowledge of procedures
o maneuvering through complexity
o blocking opponents policies
How can we reconcile the two bureaucracies?
o Bureaucracy as rational-legal organization
o Bureaucracy as house of power
o Both are true, just different ways of looking at the same thing
o
o

The sociology of charismatic authority

Legitimacy
o Traditional: based on the way things have always been, or some religious
beliefs
o Charismatic: based on personal traits of the ruler
o Rational-legal: based on laws
o Each form of legitimacy has a corresponding form of organization
o Types:
Traditional patrimony (favors, patronage)
Charismatic loose, unorganized following of disciples
Rational-legal bureaucracy
o Shift from traditional towards rational-legal
Politics as a vocation
Structures of power