Essentials of Sociology. George Ritzer
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Название: Essentials of Sociology
Автор: George Ritzer
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Социология
isbn: 9781544388045
isbn:
However, as Durkheim demonstrated, an increasing division of labor took place over time. Instead of continuing to do the same sorts of things, people began to specialize as, for example, hunters, farmers, and cooks. What held them together was not their similarities but their differences. That is, they had become more dependent on one another; people needed what others did and produced in order to survive. Durkheim called this later form of social organization organic solidarity. This can be a powerful form of solidarity, but it is accompanied by a decline in the power of the collective conscience. Because people were doing such different things, they no longer necessarily believed as strongly in the same set of ideas. This weakened collective conscience was a problem, Durkheim argued, because it progressively lost the power to control people’s passions. Further, because of the weakened collective conscience, people were more likely to feel anomic and, among other things, were more likely to commit anomic suicide.
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel’s (1858–1918) major importance in contemporary sociology lies in his contributions to micro theory. Simmel believed that sociologists should focus on the way in which conscious individuals interact and associate with one another (Scaff 2011). Simmel was interested in the forms taken by social interaction. One such form involves the interaction between superiors and subordinates. He was also interested in the types of people who engage in interaction. For example, one type is the poor person and another is the rich person. For Simmel, it was the nature of the interaction between these two types of people and not the nature of the people themselves that was of greatest importance. Therefore, poverty is not about the nature of the poor person but about the kind of interaction (e.g., help for, or hostility toward, the poor) that takes place between the poor and the rich.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois is best known in sociology for his theoretical ideas, in particular the “color line” existing between whites and blacks in the United States. This barrier was physical in the sense that African Americans could be distinguished visually, through their darker skin color, from white Americans. The barrier was also political in that much of the white population did not see African Americans as “true” Americans. As a result, they denied African Americans many political rights, such as the right to vote. And the barrier was psychological because, among other things, African Americans found it difficult to see themselves in ways other than the ways in which white society saw them.
W. E. B. Du Bois was a pioneer in efforts to bring a focus on race to the field of sociology.
Bettmann/Getty Images
One of Du Bois’s goals, especially in The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1966), was to lift the veil of race and give whites a glimpse of “Negroes” in America. He also wanted to show blacks that they could see themselves in a different way, especially outside the view that white society had prescribed for them. Politically, he hoped for the day when the veil would be lifted forever, thereby freeing blacks. However, he did understand that destroying the veil of race would require a great deal of time and effort.
Trending The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (University of California Press, 2015)
Aldon D. Morris
© 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.
According to Morris, Du Bois has not been given the credit he deserves in establishing scientific sociology in the United States. In fact, Morris argues that the work of Du Bois was intentionally ignored by the white founders of American sociology, such as Albion Small, who defended social Darwinism, or the idea that society is guided by natural laws. Instead of trying to empirically prove that these natural laws existed, these early sociologists developed speculative grand theories. Their belief in the existence of natural laws also led them to minimize the role of human agency in society and prevented them from developing a comparative perspective. Du Bois attempted to challenge social Darwinism by using empirical methodology to demonstrate that racial inferiority was not a result of biology or natural law but a product of society. Two decades before the Chicago School of sociology started using scientific methodology to investigate urban ethnic and immigrant communities, Du Bois conducted an empirical study of the black community in Philadelphia. His findings were published in his book The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), which Morris hails as “the first major empirical sociological study” (2015, 45). However, the early Chicago School sociologists failed to acknowledge Du Bois’s contributions in their work.
Even though Du Bois received his doctorate from Harvard, he was denied an academic position at a prestigious American university because of his race. He pursued his scholarly career at Atlanta University, a historically black college, where he established a sociology department with a strong empirical research program. Even though most American sociologists ignored Du Bois’s work, he gained a famous advocate in Germany—Max Weber. Weber invited Du Bois to write an article on caste relations for his journal (Archiv für Sozialwissensachaft und Sozialpolitik) and tried to have a translation of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk published in Germany. Weber shared Du Bois’s position that race was a social construct shaped by socioeconomic conditions, not biology. Like Du Bois, Weber was interested in the intersections between class and race relations and agreed that the color line was a critical problem of their era. Morris suggests that Weber’s theory of caste and status groups, as well as his embrace of cultural pluralism later in his career, was influenced by the work of Du Bois. ●
Visit edge.sagepub.com/ritzeressentials4e to
Listen to Morris’s lecture on the relevance of Du Bois in science, the civil rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Read an article about Morris and his book The Scholar Denied that appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
Another of Du Bois’s important ideas is double consciousness. By this he meant that black Americans have a sense of “two-ness,” of being American and of being African American. Black Americans want to tear down the barriers that confront them but do not want to give up their identity, traditions, knowledge, and experience. That is, black Americans, including former President Barack Obama (Terrill 2015), are both inside and outside dominant, white American society.
Ask Yourself
How many “consciousnesses” do you have? What are they? In what ways are they sources of satisfaction for you? In what ways do they stress you?
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) was concerned with the ways in which the upper classes demonstrate their wealth. One way to show off wealth is through conspicuous leisure, or doing things that demonstrate quite publicly that one does not need to do what most people consider to be work. However, the problem with conspicuous leisure is that it is often difficult for very many others to witness these displays.
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