A society is defined as people who interact within a defined..

A society is defined as people who interact within a defined..

A society is defined as people who interact within a defined territory

while sharing a common culture or way of life. The family is the oldest and most basic social institution and in hunting gathering societies is also considered the society or tribe itself. In hunting gathering societies such as the Tuareg nomads, the family provides its members with all of their social knowledge (culture) and all of their physical and emotional support. The family incorporates what later becomes separate educational, economic, political and
Karl Marx viewed religion as supporting the capitalistic status quo. Max Weber viewed religion as generating the social change which led to the development of capitalism. This video discusses these contrasting perspectives. religious institutions. Individuals within the family hold a roughly equivalent status. However, this all-pervasiveness of the family is found only in societies which are at the basic level of subsistence. In these societies almost all of social activity is focused on survival. Men hunt wild game. Women gather edible wild plants. Societies are very small in order to sustain a nomadic existence. Life is physically challenging and brutally short.
Gerhard Lenski described hunting gathering societies as the starting point of societal development. In his view technology is the stimulus which brings about fundamental changes in the organization and operation of human societies. The first technological innovation is the domestication of plants and animals. This innovation produced the horticultural (hand tool cultivation) and pastoral society. The material surplus generated by this technology not only allowed a substantial increase in the size of the population but freed people to specialize in activities other than food production. Horticultural societies produced the first permanent settlements and the beginnings of trade. Pastoral societies tended to remain nomadic. Social stratification which was virtually absent in hunting gathering societies develops as some social positions are considered more important than others.

A population explosion into the millions occurs with the invention of the plough and the development of agrarian society. This occurs first in the Middle East leading to the “dawn of civilization.” Work becomes highly specialized. Political, religious, and economic social institutions develop outside of the family to support the highest level of social stratification and inequality found in any type of society. Egypt under the Pharaohs and the Roman Empire are early examples of this type of society.
With each change in technology, the rate of societal development speeds up. The increasing speed of development is most apparent with the advent of industrial society. The use of water power and later steam power with the invention of the first reliable steam engine by James Watt in 1765 changed the primary type of work changed from agricultural to manufacturing. This speeded increasing specialization and complexity. Because the equipment required to manufacture goods was large and unmovable, workers moved to what would later become the largest cities in the world. Trade and transportation increased exponentially with the development of railroads, steamships, and later the automobile and airplane. People no longer worked near their fields and families. The power of the family’s traditional values weakened even more and families themselves became more diverse. At first industrialization benefited only a few but over time substantially increased the general standard of living.
More recently, the invention of the computer has led to the beginnings of post-industrial society. The primary type of work changed from manufacturing to information processing with a greater emphasis on the possession of information-based, symbolic skills. The exchange of information is global leading to the development of multi-national corporations and the increased interconnectivity of the global economy. Information processing work benefits those whose work is professional in nature. However, the replacement of manufacturing jobs which usually have substantial benefits including health and life insurance, personal leave and retirements with service jobs which have few, if any benefits has led to its own set of issues.
Industrial and Post-Industrial societies provide greater personal freedom but at the expense of the higher degree of social integration (solidarity) associated with earlier forms of society. Industrial and Post-Industrial societies have provided many luxuries but at the expense of natural resources and with the additional hazards generated by pollution of the atmosphere.
Karl Marx experienced the worst aspects of the industrial revolution and capitalism. In London he observed the contrast between the few wealthy capitalists and the many workers whose life in the words of Thomas Hobbes was “solitary, poore (sic), nasty, brutish, and short.”

As a result of this exposure to the worst of early capitalism, Marx developed a utopian theory of society which is materialistic and economic in focus. In his view society is organized to support and protect the owners of productive property, capitalists, at the expense of those who must sell their labor for pay, the workers or proletariat. This inequality leads to a continuing social conflict between these two segments of society. In Marx’s view all of society’s family, educational, and political social institutions are organized to generate laws, beliefs, and values which protect the interests of the capitalists. For example, religion supports social inequality by promoting the belief that an individual’s life chances are divinely ordained. False consciousness diverts workers’ attention from flaws in structure of society itself which is the source of their problems and instead explains social problems in terms of the personal shortcomings. Workers are oppressed not only by the structure of society but by the nature of industrial work itself which leaves them isolated and powerless. Workers no longer have a say in what is produced, the method of production or ownership of the product. They are isolated from other workers and from their human potential by work which is dull, repetitive, and
personally meaningless.

Because of capitalistic greed, workers eventually become aware of themselves as a class of people separate from and oppressed by the capitalists. They replace false consciousness with class consciousness resulting in a revolution in which capitalistic greed is replaced by a utopian classless society which provides for everyone equally.
For Max Weber it is not the economy but the power of ideas (idealism) which bring about change in society. Societies operate based on their worldview, the way in which people think about the world. Earlier forms of society like the Tuareg nomads rely on a social knowledge which is passed from one generation to another. People in these societies resist change maintaining an orientation to traditional beliefs and values. In modern society people have replaced this traditional orientation with rationality, a deliberate problem solving process weighing the relative advantages and disadvantages of different alternatives to achieve the greatest efficiency. Society has abandoned a traditional worldview in favor of rational one. Weber takes an opposing view to Marx. Capitalism is not associated with economic greed but with the rational calculation of the most efficient way to make a profit.

Weber also turns Marx’s view that religion supports the status quo upside down. Instead of religion supporting the capitalistic status quo, Weber argued that religion in the form of Calvinist Protestantism was responsible for social change which allowed capitalism to develop. Calvinist Protestantism maintained that people were destined to go to heaven (the elect) or hell even before the moment of their birth (predestination). Followers of this religious belief wanted to know if they were members of the elect. They viewed economic wealth as a sign of divine favor. As a result people were encouraged not only to generate wealth but to reinvest wealth in order to demonstrate that they were among the elect. This belief favored the advent of the capitalistic industrial revolution. Eventually, the notion of gaining wealth as a sign of divine favor was replaced by the notion of gaining wealth for its own sake turning industrial capitalism into a disenchanted religion.
Weber also developed the concept of bureaucracy as the primary example of modern rational organization. He cites seven characteristics of rational organization including specialization of tasks, personal discipline, time awareness, technical competence and impersonality (See p. 91 of the text for a description of each). Whereas Marx argued that workers’ experienced alienation as a result of economic inequality, Weber states that it is the result of the myriad of bureaucratic rules and regulations which turn unique people into routine “cases.”

Emile Durkheim looks at the enduring patterns of human expectations of behavior (norms), beliefs, and values, as social structure or facts, which outlive their creators and take on a life of their own, promoting the stability of society. Societal norms provide expectations not only of what an individual should do in a specific social situation but what he or she should expect of others. In times of rapid social change or where people experience sudden wealth or fame, the rules which they had previously used to guide their actions are weakened or eliminated but are not replaced. They are no longer well integrated into the fabric of society. The normlessness which they experience can result in a type of suicide which Durkheim refers to as anomic.
Durkheim states that society has changed from a preindustrial stage in which people are socially integrated based on a consensus of beliefs and values (mechanical solidarity) to one in which people are socially integrated based on specialization and interdependence (organic solidarity). This interdependence is ever increasing as labor itself becomes more specialized. Also, like Weber, Durkheim maintains that modern society provides more individual freedom but at the price of lack of moral guidance or anomie. Durkheim takes a more positive position on the future of society with the hope that society develops norms and laws which provide a framework within which people exercise their greater freedom positively and productively.

-Recommended Internet SitesKarl Marx: Philosopher, Journalist, Historian, Economist (1818-1883), Biography

-Karl Marx witnessed the major inequalities that existed between the owners of productive property and workers under early capitalism. This may have influenced his view that that economy was the primary social institution within society and that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.” This statement is the opening proposition of the Communist Manifesto that leads to his assertion that the class struggle can only end in revolution and the emergence of a classless society. However, his view is utopian. Wherever so-called “communist” revolutions have occurred the economic elite has been replaced by another elite, usually political. Ideology and False Consciousness Through a Super Bowl Ad, The Sociological Cinema

-How do you keep a workers’ revolution from happening? According to Marx this is accomplished through false consciousness, distracting workers from the real cause of their problems by focusing them on personal issues. This is accomplished through social institutions. For example, religion is “the opium of the people” because it distracts workers from their current misery promising happiness in the next life. This 2012 Super Bowl ad attempts to persuade workers to vote for the Employee Rights Act which would make it more difficult for workers to join unions.

False Consciousness

-How might Marx view the advertising of products that promise to make our lives more meaningful as an example of false consciousness?