Society

✵Gerhard Lenski: Society and

Technology
✵Karl Marx: Society and Conflict
✵Max Weber: The rationalization of
Society
✵Emil Durkheim: Society and
Function
✵Critical Evaluation
 Gerhard Lenski: Society and
Technology
• What are some of the differences between
societies? How do societies change?, and
What forces divide a society or hold it
together.
• Sociolcultural evolution- refers to the
changes that occur as a society acquires
new technology.
Hunting and Gathering Societies

• From the emergence of our species 3

million years ago until just 12,000 years
ago, all humans were hunters and gatherers.
• Hunting and Gathering- the use of simple
tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation.
 Horticulture and Pastoral
Societies
• 1200 years ago people discovered horticulture.
• Horticultural- the use of hand tools to raise crops.
People used a hoe to work the soil and a digging
stick to punch holes in the ground to plant seeds.
This was a huge break through, it allowed people
to grow their own food instead of hunting and
gathering it.
• Humans first planted gardens in the Middle
East and then in Latin America and Asia.
Within 5000 years horticulture spread
throughout most of the world.
• Pastorialism- refers to the domestication of
animals.
• Tribes who became pastoral remained
nomadic compared to horticulture
communities who were more likely to
remain in one place for a while.
 Agarian Societies
• About 5000 years ago agriculture was
discovered by the Middle East and then
spread to most of the world.
• Agriculture- large scale cultivation using
plows harnessed to animals or more
powerful energy source.
• Plowing allowed people to cultivate large
amounts of land and aerating the soil
increased fertility.
• Among hunting and gathering and also
horticulture societies women were the
primary role of providers of food.
Agriculture however propels men into a
social dominant role.
• Agrarian societies have the greatest
specialization and the most social inequality.
This technology gives people a greater range
of life choices, which is why agrarian
societies differ more from one another than
horticulture and pastoral societies.
 Industrial Societies
• Industrialism- is the production of goods
using advanced sources of energy to drive
large machinery.
• People went to the cities to work, leaving
behind close kinship ties. Rapid change
and movement from place to place
generated anonymity, cultural diversity, and
numerous subcultures and countercultures.
 Postindustrial Societies
• Postindustrialism- refers to technology that
supports an information-based economy.
• The Limits of Technology
• Technology remedies many human
problems, it raises production, reduces
infectious diseases. It however does not
eliminate hunger and is not a quick fix for
social problems.
Karl Marx: Society and
Conflict
• Marx struggled with the basic contradiction
of so many people being so rich and so
many people being so poor.
• Social Conflict- struggle between segments
of society over valued resources.
 Society and Production
• Marx observed the early stage of industrial
capitalism in Europe.
• Capitalists- people who own and operate factories
and other businesses in pursuit of profit.
• Proletarians- people who sell their productivity
labor for wages.
• Conflict between capitalists and workers is
inevitable in a system of capitalist production.
• Social Institutions- the major sphere of
social life, or societal subsystems,
organized to meet human needs.
• Marxs argued that one institution- the economy-dominates all
the others and defines the character of a society.
• False Consciousness- explanations of social problems as the
shortcomings of individuals rather than the flaws of society.
• Capitalism and Class Conflict- Marx wrote the Manifesto of
the Communist Party, where he described the two major social
classes of Industrial Capitalism: the ruling class and the
oppressed class.
• Class Conflict- conflict between entire
classes over the distribution of a society’s
wealth and power.
• Class Consciousness- workers’ recognition
of themselves as a class unified in opposition
to capitalist and, ultimately, to capitalism
itself.
 Capitalism and Alienation
Marx
• Alienation- the experience of isolation and misery
resulting from powerlessness.
• 1. Alienation from the act of working.
• 2. Alienation from the products of work.
• 3. Alienation from other workers.
• 4. Alienation from human potential.
 Revolution
• The only way out of the trap of capitalism,
argued Marx, is to remake society.
 Max Weber: The
Rationalization of Society
• Tradition- sediments and beliefs passed
from generation to generation.
• Rationality- deliberate, matter-of-fact
calculation of the most efficient means to
accomplish a particular task.
 Is Capitalism Rational?
• Weber and Marx are on opposite side of the
argument.
• **Weber considered industrial capitalism the
essence of rationality because capitalists
pursue profit in whatever ways they can.
• **Marx believed capitalism was irrational
because it failed to meet the basic needs of
most people on earth.
 Weber’s Great Thesis:
Protestantism and Capitalism
Calvinism
• Rational Social Organization
• 1. Distinctive social institutions.
• 2. Large-scale organizations.
• 3. Specialized tasks.
• 4. Personal discipline.
• 5. Awareness of time.
• 6. Technical competence.
• 7. Impersonality.
 Rationality and Beaucreacy-
• The Medieval church grew large, but it
remained basically traditional and resisted
change, according to Weber.
 Rationality and Alienation
• Max Weber like Karl Marx recognized the
efficiency of capitalism. Weber also agreed
that modern society generates widespread
alienation.
Emile Durkheim: Society and
Function
 Structure: Society Beyond
Ourselves
• Durkheim recognized that society exists
beyond ourselves. Society is more than the
individuals who compose it: society has a
life of its own that stretches beyond our
personal experiences.
 Social facts-
• Patterns of behavior—cultural norms,
values and beliefs—exist as established
structures and are social facts that have an
objective reality beyond the lives of
individuals.
 Function: Society as System-
• The significance of any social fact, he
explained, is more than what individuals see
in our immediate lives; social facts help
society as a whole to operate.
Personality: Society in Ourselves
• Society is beyond ourselves and also in
ourselves. Each of us builds a personality
by internalizing social facts. How we act,
think, and feel—our essential humanity—is
drawn from the society that nurtures us.
 Modernity and Anomie
• Anomie- a condition in which society
provides little moral guidance to
individuals.
• Mechanical Solidarity- social bonds based
on common sentiments and shared moral
value that are strong among members of
preindustrial societies.
• With industrialization Durkheim believed
that mechanical solidarity becomes weaker,
and people cease to be bound by tradition.
• Organic Solidarity- social bonds based on
specialized and interdependence that are
strong among members of industrial
societies. Solidarity is based on differences
among people.
• Division of Labor- a specialization of
economic activity.
 Durkheim’s Delimma
• The technological power and greater
personal freedom of modern society come
at the cost of declining morality and the
rising risk of anomie.
 Critical Evaluation
• What holds Societies together?
• How have Societies changed?
• Why do Societies change?