Transcript Sociology in the 1st c

Sociology in the
st
21
century
Modernization and Stratification
theory 50 years later
Dates to remember

4/4 Discussion #6
 4/16 Draft #3; Discussion #7
 4/18 No class
 4/23 Final Draft (30% of final grade)
 5/8 (8:00 Aagh) Final exam (10% of final
grade)
 Thus, there are only 4 lectures after today.
Be aware of the material in the last chapters
relevant to your paper.
Parsons and his critics
(review)
 Parsonian
functionalism dominated
sociology in the 3rd quarter of the 20th c.
 Modernization
theory and the functional model
of stratification both appeared in the early ’50s
 They were two of the main bodies of theory
leading to the dominance of structuralfunctionalism 1950-1975
 But also to its collapse in the ’80’s and ’90’s
 Both are somewhat resurgent today.
Systems and Sociological
Theory

Many research models have no feedbacks,
but most theoretical models are systemic.
 Functional theory stresses norms and values
which function as negative feedback
thermostats.
 Conflict theory stresses vicious cycles of
power and privilege, which operate as
positive feedbacks.
 Organization, theory, symbolic interaction,
and other theoretical approaches can also be
most simply represented as feedback
models.
Functions and Thermostats:
Negative Feedbacks
 A function
is something that is needed
 e.g.
social order, socialization into family,
economic production, health,
 Such that a failure to have that need met
will generate changes to restore it.
 This self-maintaining structure can be
represented as a kind of thermostat:
+
Failure to
meet need
reforms to try to meet
functional needs
Anomie;
search
Conflict theory and Vicious
Cycles: Positive Feedbacks

Conflict theory treats society as a kind of
game of monopoly characterized by vicious
cycles of advantage/disadvantage.
 Money, power and prestige leads to access to
further money, power and prestige
 More generally
+
Access to further
resources
Resources
+
Feedbacks are inconvenient
but dynamically important

Feedbacks enormously complicate empirical
estimation of causal relations.
 Therefore 20th c. sociology has tended to
ignore them
 But they are dynamically important.
 Positive and negative feedbacks are
explanatory primitives.
 Mid-20th c. systems theory tended to privilege
the analysis of negative feedback systems,
and Parsons did even more so.
 Contemporary chaotic and complex systems
dynamics tends to look at positive feedbacks.
Theory and “model
specification”
 Whenever
one looks at any causal
relation empirically, there are always an
indefinitely large number of ‘other
forces’ going on.
 The overall assumptions about the
forces that are operating are
established and justified by theory.
The Functional model of
stratification and its critics

Structures of inequality are centrally
connected to almost every process of interest
to sociologists
 E.g. sociology of education and race are
often direct application of stratification
processes
 And central justifications and criticisms of the
social structure hinge on inequality.
 Thus views that inequality is a just reward for
talent and sacrifice continue to generate
important political positions about issues such
as race, gender or education.
Parsonian theory (review)

Parsons argued that stratification is a central
aspect of evaluation and differentiation
 Necessary and functional in all societies.
 We have seen that his students, Davis & Moore
formulated the dominant model 1950-1970:



Not all jobs are equally important; people are
unequally talented; training takes sacrifice
Therefore stratification is a reward for talent and
training
Its reduction would lower efficiency and productivity,
setting in motion forces to restore it.
Problems of Functional theory

The Davis/Moore model is largely rejected
today because:
 Property income and inheritance cannot
motivate effort.
 Rewards (pay scales) are not proportional to
functional importance.
 Large inequalities produce privilege and
forced division of labor.
 Inequality has many dysfunctions.
 The size of inequalities in the U.S (I.e.
1:10,000 for income) is hard to justify
functionally.
e.g. Feagin’s ASA Address
2000

Give task of designing a closed, sustainable
social system to operate for several
generations (“spaceship earth”).
 To have the top 1% have more resources
than the bottom 90% combined (as is the
wealth distribution in the US today) would be
inefficient, divisive, and a source of many
further functional problems.
 Functional theory merely legitimates
structures that are unfair and dysfunctional
Modernity and Modern Values

Another main appeal of Parsonian
functionalism was an account of US
development and modernization elsewhere.
 Achievement/universalism promotes social,
political and economic development.
 Myrdal’s conception of the role of the
American Creed in the US,
 And of development in the Third World.
Problems and Criticisms of
the modernization model

Many Third World countries do not seem to
be modernizing; indeed on many criteria
(including protein consumption per cap) they
seem to be losing ground.
 This led models of how and why the rich
societies were getting richer and the poor
were getting poorer.
 Dependency theory and World-systems
theory were two of the most important.
Dependency Theories

Often the rich countries make the rules, using
gun-boats when it suits them.
 Dependency theories argue that those rules
advantage the developed countries and distort
the economies of third world countries.
 The International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank and the direct policies of dominant
powers (especially the U.S.) often do not
permit balanced development,
 But rather raw materials extraction and cheap
labor production that makes the Third World
country an unequal, coercive wasteland.
World systems Theories

radicalized the dependency perspective,
 arguing that when the core societies (Holland,
France, England, Spain) first came in
contact with the peripheral societies
(Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia) their
standard of living and level of development
was roughly equal to those they conquered.
 A single exploitative process produced
development of the core and
underdevelopment of the periphery.
Domination
and exploitation
Movement within the world
system

World systems theorists note that some societies
(US, Japan
) have moved up into the core.


They suggest that the societies were those that could
prevent domination by core powers and that could exert
domination over peripheral ones.
And other societies (e.g. Spain
) have slipped
down into the semiperiphery or periphery



Specifically societies that could not hold onto their
colonies and booty militarily were de-developed.
It is an exploitative system
Every society can’t develop any more than everyone can
go to medical school and become a doctor
The World-systems Critique

Wallerstein says that to understand change in
the world today you have to see that the main
process is not modernization,
 but a capitalist core exploiting a periphery,
 That this process is one of struggle, inequality
and domination between core and periphery,
 which, periodically, bursts into world wars
between the core powers.
4 War peaks every 100 yrs.
 1610-40;
1705-09; 1800-15; 1914-45
 Were mostly driven by power vacuums.