Реферат: Rise of sociology as an intellectual tradition. Classical tradition in sociology of the XIX century

To M. Weber, social actions fall into four basic types:

(1) action oriented by expectations of behaviour of other people in the surrounding milieu (in Russian terminology:целерациональное действие ). It means that an individual is rational as he clearly sees the aim, means for its achievement and foresees other people’s reaction to it; the criterion of rationality is success;

(2) action oriented to some absolute value as embodied in some ethical, aesthetic, or religious code (ценностно - рациональное действие ). In other words, action which is morally guided, and not undertaken simply for one’s own gain;

(3) action guided by emotive response to or feelings about the surrounding milieu (аффективное действие );

(4) action performed as part of long-standing societal tradition (традиционное действие ).

Of these four types, the last two are non-social behaviour whereas the first two types are inherently more social forms of human action, because they involve subjective assessment and result from the process of rationalization. Anyway, M. Weber never asserted that any of these types could operate independently of one another in the human individual. Typically, social action is guided by some combination of motivations, including both rational (the first and second types) and non-rational elements (the third and fourth types).

M. Weber examined the concept of social action within a number of sociological fields, from class behaviour to politics and religion. Its best-known example is contained in his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), in which the sociologist examines the motivation behind social action in the economic sphere. Specifically, he suggests that the spirit that drives modern capitalistic enterprise is motivated by the ethical doctrine of Protestantism.

M. Weber notes a relationship between the zeal for business profit and membership in specific Protestant denominations in Europe in the XVII century. This attitude toward moneymaking is embraced not only by the so-called captains of industry but by ordinary workers and peasants. For M. Weber, this suggests the existence of a new attitude toward work, the one in which the pursuit of gain (living to labour) has gained supremacy over the more traditional view that sees work simply as necessary for survival (labouring to live).

This new way of thinking which M. Weber dubs the “spirit of capitalism” appears concurrently with basic changes in religious thinking brought about by the Reformation. Such changes are connected with two prominent developments introduced by Martin Luther and John Calvin. What both M. Luther’s and J. Calvin’s teachings contributed was the emergence of a new type of Christian – Protestant who valued work as a moral duty, lived an ascetic lifestyle, and as a result achieved considerable success in material terms. This in turn came to be viewed as a sign of God’s favour – if one works hard, he will be saved. The notion of predestination became generally accepted that salvation was attainable, but only through a life of “good work”.

Ultimately the legacy of early Protestantism, in terms how it motivated capitalistic economic behaviour, became widespread in the Western world. At the same time, individuals largely came to reject the religious roots of the spirit of capitalism and instead became increasingly consumed by the secular passion for profit and acquisition of material goods. That’s why M. Weber defines “the spirit of capitalism” as the ideas and habits that favour the rational pursuit of economic gain. And among the tendencies identified by the researcher is a greed for profit with minimum effort, an idea that work is a burden to be avoided, especially when it exceeds what is enough for modest life.

In the studies of politics and government,M. Weber unveils the definition of the state that has become so pivotal to Western social thought – the state is that entity which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Politics is understood as any activity in which the state might engage itself in order to influence the relative distribution of force. Politics thus comes to be understood as deriving from power.

M. Weber is also well-known for his study of bureaucratization of the society so many aspects of modern public administration go back to him. In his work, Economy and Society (1922), he outlines a description of rationalization (of which bureaucratization is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organization and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (legal-rational authority). The result is that increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an “iron cage” of rule-based, rational control.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is a German-Jewish sociologist and economist, who analyzed the impact of money relations and division of labour on human culture and alienation of labour in his main work, The Philosophy of Money (1890). Through the prism of money G. Simmel considered hidden mechanisms of social life and manifestation of various forms of labour. For him, money is both a pure form of economic relations and economic value. According to G. Simmel, values are fundamental, underlying relations in the society.

Another German sociologist Ferdinand Toennies (1855-1936) is best known for his distinction between two types of social groups – Gemeinschaft or communityand Gesellschaft or society. This distinction is based on the assumption that there are only two basic forms of an actor’s will. Following his essential will, an actor sees himself as a means to serve the goals of the social group; very often it is an underlying, subconscious force. A group formed around an essential will is called Gemeinschaft . Of another type is an arbitrary will: an actor sees a social group as a means to further his individual goals; so it is purposive and future-oriented. A group formed around the arbitrary will is called Gesellschaft . Whereas the membership in Gemeinschaft is self-fulfilling, Gesellschaft is instrumental for its members. In pure sociology (theoretically) these two normal types of will are to be strictly separated; in applied sociology (empirically) they are always mixed.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), an American sociologist, is considered the founding father of the institutional approach due to his study of social institutions. In his central work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), he defined a social institution as social patterns of human behaviour and habits of thinking. According to him, mankind and human civilization develop as far as social institutions (those of private property, money competition, demonstrative consumption etc.) change. The engine of the society’s development is economy, in particular the development of production that results in change of social institutions and norms of social life; managers and technical intelligentsia play the major role in this development.

He also described capitalism as class struggle but not as happening between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (according to K. Marx and F. Engels), but between businessmen (bankers, lawyers, brokers, managers) and industry (engineers, designers, technicians, and labour); in short, between those who make money and those who produce goods. His Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) further widened his renown.

Sociological knowledge grew not only in Western Europe and the USA. On the threshold of the XIX-XX centuries Russian sociological thought was gaining the world level, developing from social philosophy through social theory to sociological theory. In this period fame came to such thinkers as N.K. Michailovski, E.V. de Roberti, M.A. Bakunin, P.A. Sorokin etc.

One of the most influential movements in Russia was anarchism. Its founding fathers were M.A. Bakunin (1814-1876) and P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921). Anarchism is the political belief that the society should have no government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all its members.

M.A. Bakunin’s ideas are as follows:

· Liberty is the only medium in which intelligence, dignity, and the happiness of man can develop; not official “liberty”, licensed, measured and regulated by the state; not individual liberty, selfish, mean and fictitious, which considers the rights of the individual as limited by the rights of the state, and therefore necessarily results in the reduction of the rights of the individual to zero;

· Liberty has a social character as it recognizes no other restrictions than those which are traced for us by the laws of our own nature; such laws are immanent in us, inherent, constituting the very basis of our being, material as well as intellectual and moral; instead, finding them a limit, we must consider them as the real conditions and effective reason for our liberty.

P.A. Kropotkin went further. He borrowed socialist ideas and developed them in the theory of socialism and federalism. Its major postulates are as follows:

· Socialism as the social system must be based on individual and collective liberty and activities of free associations;

· The state must be abolished;

· The relationships between the subjects of society are built on the principles of federalism, i.e. a free union where the subjects have equal rights.

Although the ideas of anarchism (complete individual liberty, rejection of regulation by the state etc.) were naïve, the ideas of equality, justice, individual liberty, federalism in social life are still followed by.

Another famous movement in Russia was narodnik movement , or populism . Its ideologists were P.L. Lavrov (1823-1900) and N.K. Michailovski (1842-1904). Still of importance are thoughts about power and dictatorship expressed by P.L. Lavrov:

· The possession of great power corrupts the best people, and even the ablest leaders, who meant to benefit the people by decree, failed;

· Every dictatorship must surround itself by compulsory means of defense which must serve as obedient tools in its hands. Every dictatorship is called upon to suppress not only its reactionary opponents but also those who disagree with its methods and actions. Whenever a dictatorship succeeded in establishing itself, it had to spend more time and effort in retaining its power and defending it against its rivals than upon realization of its programme, with the aid of that power;