Classical Sociological Theroy: Prof. R. Santhosh

CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL
THEROY
Prof. R. Santhosh
Humanities and Social Sciences
IIT Madras
INDEX
S.NO TOPICS PAGE.NO

Week 1
1 Sociology an Overview 5
2 Sociological perspective 15
3 C Wrigh Mill's Socioloigcal Imagination 27
4 Thinking Sociologically: Zygmunt Bauman 38
Emergence of Sociology: The, socio-political, economic and

5 intellectual context 50
Week 2
6 Enlightenment 62
7 Emegernce of nation-state and French Revolution 73
8 Industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism 84
9 Discussion with Dr. Roland Part - 1 97
10 Discussion with Dr. Roland Part - 2 108
Week 3
11 Clasical Thinkers of Sociology 119
12 Auguste Comte 132
13 Herbert Spencer 148
14 Marx Durkheim and Weber 160
15 Factory scene from Modern Times 170
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Week 4
16 Karl Marx Life 179
17 Intellectual Influence 191
18 Historical Materialism 209
19 Marxian theory of social Change 230
20 Theory of Capitalism-1 243
Week 5
21 Theory of Capitalism-2 260
22 Karl Marx and Alienation 275
23 Karl Marx and Religion 295
24 Marx on Democracy, and Colonialism 310
25 Marx- An Appraisal 323
Week 6
26 Emile Durkheim; Life and Intellectual Influences 334
27 The Rules of the Sociological Method 350
28 Division of Labour (1893) 374
29 Division of Labour (conti…) 393
30 Suicide (1897) 409
Week 7
31 Elementary forms of Religious Life (1912) 428
32 Durkheim on Education, Colonialism and Democracy 447
33 Durkheim An Assessment 466
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34 Max Weber: Life and Intellectual Influences 479
35 Weber’s Methodology of the Social Sciences 493
Week 8
36 Rationalization and social action 508
37 Rationalization and Authority 524
38 The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism 543
39 MODERN RATIONAL CAPITALISM 565
40 Bureaucracy 581
Week 9
41 Social Stratification: Calss, Status Group, and Party 595
42 Comparative Religion and Disenchantment 614
43 Weber on democracy and colonialism 633
44 Critical Assessment 650
45 Ferdinand Tonnies ( 1885-1936 ) 666
Week 10
46 George Simmel ( 1858 - 1918 ) 684
47 Social Differentiation and Conflict 700
48 Simmel on Philosophy of Money 719
49 Mind, Self and Society 737
50 George Herbert Mead 756
Week 11
51 Mead on Self 775
52 Mead on Society 796
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53 Perkins Gilman and the gender question 813
54 Dubois and question of race 828
55 Classical Sociological Theory and Modernity : A Recap 842
Week 12
Subsequent Development of Sociological Theory : Structural

56 Functionalism 858
57 Conflict Theory 871
58 Interactionist Perspective 885
59 Theoretical orientations and methodologies 896
60 Conclusion 911
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Classical Sociological Theory
Professor. R. Santhosh
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Lecture 01
Sociology: An Overview
Welcome to this session, and I have titled this session as Sociology: An Overview. In this
session, I will provide a very broad overview of the discipline. You must be knowing that
providing an overview or a summary of the discipline in a single session is almost
impossible. So, I would be trying to provide a rather broad argument about the character and
nature of the discipline, its important development and major players of the discipline.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:50)
Sociology is widely defined as a systematic study of the patterned social relations, or in other
words, social interaction through empirical investigations and critical analysis. So, what does
this particular definition mean? It actually talks about a particular and the systematic way of
understanding, the way in which society functions with a specific focus on the subject matter,
which is defined as the patterned social relations or in other words, defined as social
interaction.
And how is this study done? This study is done through empirical investigation and critical
analysis. We will come back to these terms later in more detail because the idea of empirical
investigation and critical analysis deserve much more elaborate description.
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Now, this particular tendency of looking at society in a systematic critical view, is it
something new? Or is it not been something that began since human civilization. This is a
very important question. So, in the case of sociology, mostly it is said that sociology has a
long past, but has a very short history. It is considered to be a modern social science that
emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. But as we just discussed, the kind of a
critical and systematic understanding about society and this particular way of looking at
society goes back much earlier in history.
So, we need to look into this debate very briefly. There are arguments that even before the
emergence of sociology in a very systematic manner in Europe or the way we understand in
the contemporary society as the emergence of modern sociology, we had very important
scholars and thinkers in different countries, in different ages, who provided some very
fascinating understandings about sociology, about society. Do we call them sociologists?
May not be.
However, they were some of the important forerunners who provide very fascinating insights
about the way in which they understood society during their time. One of the important
scholars of the pre modern times is Ibn Khaldun, a Tunisian scholar who lived between 1332
and 1406. He was a philosopher of history, he was a statesman, he was a judge, and he was a
historian. And his book, the Muqaddimah is widely considered by quite a lot of important
scholars as an example of a pre modern sociological understanding of society.
So in this work, Ibn Khaldun elaborates a concept titled “asabiyyah”, and if you roughly
translate asabiyyah, it means the idea of ‘social cohesion’. So what is ‘social cohesion’?
Social cohesion is something that actually binds the society together, some kind of a force or
some kind of a spirit that binds society together, something that provides a sense of ‘we’
feeling to the society. So he uses this concept to understand, to explain, to examine his own
society, the tribal society, the more agrarian society and that is a very interesting and
fascinating discussion in his work.
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So, you might be interested to see the pictures of Ibn Khaldun and the book, so I have got the
pictures. On your left, it is the bust of Ibn Khaldun and the book is also there, The
Muqaddimah.
Now, coming to the word, sociology. Where did the term sociology emerge from? The word
sociology is derived from the Latin word ‘socius’, which means companion or society and the
Greek word ‘logos’, which means knowledge or science. We now come back to recent times,
where sociology emerged as an institutionalized discipline with its own theoretical as well as
methodological platforms.
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So, the systematic development and institutionalization of sociology happened in Europe,
especially in the countries of France and Germany, even though we have thinkers from other
countries such as Britain and Italy who contributed for the growth of this particular
discipline.
The first formal Department of Sociology in the world was established at the University of
Chicago in 1892, and the first journal, the American Journal of sociology was founded in
1895. You must be knowing that the journal is something important in the career of a
particular discipline because journals carry some of the most recent researches and
advancements in the knowledge system of every discipline.
Who are the important scholars who laid the foundations for this particular discipline? We
come to understand the discipline basically through the writings of these people. So, it is
extremely important to understand the theoretical contributions of these people. There is a
long list of names starting with Montesque, August Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile
Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Wilfredo Pareto, George Simmel, Ferdinand Tonnies and
others.
We may not go through all these scholars in detail, but some of the scholars especially, Emile
Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber are of profound importance, and we will go through
their work in great detail. If you look into the countries of their origin, you will see that most
of them are from France and Germany, and one of them, Herbert Spencer is from England
and Wilfredo Pareto from Italy.
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Methodologically speaking in terms of the scientific orientation, sociology actually
developed as a positivist science and later developed an anti-positivist twist which later led to
the emergence of phenomenology. These terms might look rather strange; we will come back
to them in detail. But basically, this is an extremely important point to remember that,
sociology emerged as a positive science, and later it developed an anti-positivist strand, and
later phenomenological influence became very apparent.
There are three major theoretical traditions; structural functionalism, conflict theory and
symbolic interactions. So, what do I mean by this term major theoretical traditions? We will
discuss this in the coming classes that sociology as a discipline provides a particular
perspective to understand the knowledge. So, in other words, sociology as a discipline has a
particular take; it has a particular perspective and has a particular point of view to understand
society. But within that, sociology does not have a singular theoretical orientation, and rather
there are multiple competing theoretical orientations for this discipline.
Each of these theoretical orientations or theoretical strands, provide different and distinct
understanding about the society. So, within the discipline of sociology, you have competing
divergent theoretical traditions. So, it is important to understand the ideological basis, the
epistemological basis of each of these traditions and the kind of methodology that emerged
from there. So in that sense, we have these three theoretical traditions; structural
functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.
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Structural functionalism as a major theoretical perspective began to decline after the 1960s.
After that, there are a number of other theoretical strands which became important in the
trajectory of sociology like the influence of a wide variety of intellectual currents, including
feminism, postcolonialism, and orientalism, poststructuralism and so on. So, these
developments which are very recent in times, maybe for the last four or five decades, are
something very important as they thoroughly reshaped the orientation and the nature of
sociological inquiry and its theoretical basis as well as methodological orientations.
One of the most recent developments is the emergence of globalization. There are very
critical arguments that sociology as a discipline needs to be reoriented or needs to reinvent
itself in order to understand the kind of changes happening as a part of globalization. So,
there are arguments that sociology needs to develop a new set of theories, a new set of
methodological practices, in order to understand and comprehend the kind of changes
happening in a globalizing world. I am not going into the details, but this debate is something
very important.
Now, if you ask me, what is the subject matter of sociology? Or what does sociology study?
This is a rather difficult question because sociology studies almost every aspect of human
society, and there could be nothing that is left which is not being studied by sociology. So, it
studies some of the very important themes that define our social life. I have given a lengthy
list of terms and the moment you try to understand the importance of these terms and
discourses in our everyday life; you will realize that how important and central these terms
are in deciding the social nature of our society.
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It includes social stratification, the way in which how society is stratified into separate
groups, about social class, the whole question of economic inequality and social mobility, the
whole idea of people able to move upward or downward in a vertical or horizontal manner
and then the question of religion, one of the very important topics of our current time.
It also includes the question of secularization, again a very central theme in the discussion of
sociology, then the question of power, another fascinating theory, very closely connected
with political science. Then, the question of law, question of sexuality, gender and caste,
especially in the Indian context. I think sociology is the most important discipline in India
which has studied caste so systematically. No other discipline can claim to be having
produced so much of knowledge about caste, as compared to the discipline of sociology.
The question of race in the western society and question of economy, consumption and
globalization are also important subjects of sociological inquiry. So, almost every aspect of
social life is being studied by sociology in a very systematic manner. Then, another very
important point that we need to keep in mind is that the kind of a methodology that this
discipline employs is very closely connected with its theoretical premises. So, there is a very
strong connection between the kind of methodology that somebody uses and the kind of
larger theoretical frame he or she uses to understand the society.
The Methodology does not stand in isolation, or the research method or methodology cannot
be adopted as something independent of the theory. Therefore, there is a very important
methodological formulation in consonant with the specific theoretical framework. Then, there
is also a very important connection between the questions of ontology, the questions
regarding the whole question of what is that? And the questions of epistemology, the
questions related to the questions of knowing, how somebody knows that, and the question of
knowledge, about epistemology and research methodology and research methods.
So, this is an extremely important topic, for which we will have a very brief discussion in the
coming classes, but we may not go deeper into that. But I want to highlight the point that the
type of research that you do, the type of research tools that you employ, the kind of research
methods that you adopt, has to be informed by the larger theoretical framework that you
adopt because there is a very specific connection between the ontology, the epistemology,
methodology and the research methods.
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Then, it also uses a series of both qualitative as well as quantitative research methods, and
they include a long list. They include survey, the input analysis of data sets, interview
schedules, focus group interviews, participant and non-participant observations, textual and
content analysis, discourse analysis, network analysis, internet ethnography, and so on. So,
each of these research methods or the very specific method that you use to collect data is
again decided on the basis of your understanding of what constitute social data and how do
we get hold of that.
Each of these questions is influenced or shaped by our larger understanding of the theoretical
framework that we adopt. So, for example, take survey and analysis of data sets and interview
schedule, these are widely used as a part of quantitative research methods, where statistical
tools are used to analyse and then, they are used to reach a certain kind of conclusion.
Whereas, almost all the latter part after including the focus group interviews and the rest of
these methods are widely considered as qualitative, because they try to understand the data
mostly in the form of information which cannot be converted into numbers.
Now, who are the people who use sociology widely or who are the beneficiaries of
sociology? Again, the list is very long. We have academics, people like you and me who
study society for an academic degree or to generate more knowledge about the society, the
people who study society in a scientific and in a systematic manner. The academics constitute
a very important section of people who use sociology and sociology is one of the most
important social sciences widely, widely offered across universities and colleges all over the
world.
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Then there are politicians, and you might be interested to see how politicians make use of
sociology. Yes, politicians also make use of sociological analysis and understanding in order
to understand how the society functions, how specific groups such as caste groups or race
groups or other kinds of groups function in a particular society in terms of their voting
behaviour, in terms of their socio-economic locations, like they were middle class or upper
class, their class orientation, or their caste orientation or their specific ideological
orientations. All these information are very important for the politicians as well.
Especially in modern day politics, politicians make use of each of this information very
carefully. Another important set of beneficiaries or people who make use of sociology are
bureaucrats, who are basically entrusted with the task of framing policies. Because the data
generated by sociologists by doing research work or by collecting data from the field has very
specific policy implications, this data is very important for bureaucrats to devise various
plans for certain welfare measures, or to reformulate specific government policies and even to
implement a host of developmental as well as bureaucratic aspects.
Policymakers in larger realms, people who are concerned with larger policy decisions and
even corporates make use of sociological research. Corporates constitute a very important
group of people who make use of sociology, especially corporates and companies who look
into the consumption pattern, consumption pattern of huge population, how do they consume,
what do they consume, what are their preferences.
And also a number of new emerging corporates, invest huge amount of money in
understanding how people behave with respect to, for example, how people make use of
technology in specific forms, how people use mobile phones, or how people use social media
platform. In this age of artificial intelligence, this amount of data and the kind of sociological
insights that are derived from this information is something very important for corporates.
So, in that sense, sociology is an important discipline, which offers a very fascinating
understanding of society. It has a very interesting history. It emerged in a specific historical
context in Europe and it is now spread across the globe. It is being widely taught across the
educational institutions, and it offers a very fascinating and interesting understanding of the
society around one's own life.
More importantly, it offers very interesting insights about one's own life, the way we live in
this world, the kind of choices that we are making, the kind of freedom that we are
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experiencing, and the kind of unfreedom that we will be able to negotiate, if we carefully go
through the kind of social processes that are around us. So, we will conclude this session
here, and we will meet you for the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 02
Sociological Perspective
Welcome to this session, in which we will begin a couple of lectures with the aim to understand
the term Sociological Perspective. So, what does this term sociological perspective mean and
why is it important? We are beginning the discussion of a new discipline sociology by focusing
on the classical social theorists who laid the theoretical foundation of the discipline. So, before
entering into these theorists and their theories, it is important that we have a clear idea regarding
what this particular discipline mean.
You can approach a discipline or you can get introduced to a discipline in two ways. One of the
ways is to understand the basic concepts and frameworks of the discipline or the other way is to
understand the unique perspective of the discipline. What is the unique nature or what is a unique
offering of this particular discipline? I would be following the second way in which we will have
a very detailed discussion about what is sociological perspective.
The word ‘perspective’ is widely understood or we can explain it as the distinctive viewpoint of
a discipline or the exclusive explanatory framework of the discipline. What does it mean? Every
discipline such as sociology or political science or economics will have a very unique and
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distinctive viewpoint, a particular point of view or a particular explanatory paradigm, which
offers us a unique understanding about the subject matter that we are going to study. It is referred
as the ‘perspective’ of that discipline
We are discussing about such kind of an exclusive explanatory framework that is unique to this
particular discipline of sociology. This uniqueness is the one which separates sociology from
other major social sciences like political science, history or psychology. Therefore, it is
extremely important that we get some familiarity with this particular idea of ‘sociological
perspective’.
These are the three major reference materials that we will be using for these lectures. Each of this
lectures will revolve around these three reference materials. The first one is the chapter ‘The
Promise’ from the book ‘Sociological Imagination’ by C. Wright Mills. And the second material
will be chapter two, titled ‘Sociology as a form of consciousness’ from the book ‘Invitation to
Sociology’ by Peter Berger. The third will be the introduction chapter titled ‘Sociology: What
For?’ by Zygmunt Bauman from the book titled ‘Thinking Sociologically’. These are some of
the widely used materials across the globe.
As you must be seeing here that these books, especially the books by C. Wright Mills and Peter
Berger were written much earlier that were published in 1959 and 1963 respectively while
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Zygmunt Bauman’s is relatively recent. However, they are widely considered as the classic
books to introduce the discipline of sociology discipline to the students.
These are the images of the three books that we will be using throughout this lecture. Peter
Berger’s Invitation to Sociology, Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills, and Thinking
Sociologically by Zygmunt Bauman. These books are available in most of the book shops and in
online platforms and I would urge you to buy and read these books.
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We begin with the essay by Peter Berger, ‘Sociology as a form of consciousness’. The title itself
is very instructive because he is talking about sociology as a particular kind of a consciousness
that you need to acquire, a kind of a consciousness that provides you with certain kind of
understanding about the world. It is a very important concept. It means a kind of sociological
consciousness that somebody develops by studying this discipline and this consciousness offers a
particular understanding of the society around one's own life.
Now, if somebody ask you, what does sociology study? The most common answer is that,
sociology studies society. Then what is society? Again, you get a set of answers because the term
society is widely used and it is a very common word in our everyday life. We have housing
societies, we have societies for women, societies for particular purposes and so on. Therefore,
society is a very common term. But in the discipline of sociology, such common terms acquire
very specific meanings.
In sociology, the term society acquires a very specific meaning and it is not used in a very loose
manner. What is the sociological meaning of society? Or what is the sociological definition of
society. A sociologist thinks of society as denoting a large complex of human relationships,
referring to a system of interaction and this is a one of the widely used definitions of society in
sociology. There are different understandings of society within the sociology as the discipline
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has been defined by different scholars differently. For example, Emile Durkheim defines,
sociology as a study of social facts.
Max Weber would define sociology as the study of social action. However, the generally
accepted definitions of sociology is that that sociology is the study of the large complex web of
human relationships. Therefore, we are specifically focusing on the complex set of human
relationships that exist among human beings when they interact together. The term ‘interaction’
is very important.
There is a mutuality, there is a correspondence and it is not a one sided action. People interact
with each other and that produce a complex web of relationships. This term ‘web of relationship’
is another widely used term to refer to the subject matter of sociology. Sociology studies this
web of relationship which acquire a certain patterns or in other words we call it as forms of
social interaction.
The immediate question then be, how large must be a society? There is no specific answer, but
we can confidently say that, an interaction is possible only if there are two or more people. Then,
what kind of interaction? What we have in mind is not very cursory exchange between two
strangers. That does not really constitute an interaction. Rather, the social we define, refers to the
quality of interaction in the relationships with an element of mutuality. This term mutuality is
very important.
Our understanding of social relationship comprises of very close relationships as well as, not so
close relationships that exist among people, either in small or large numbers and that have this
quality of mutuality. These relationships and their specific features, their specific characters, and
their specific orientations and their changing forms constitute the subject matter of sociology.
Obviously it is very clear that the sociologists does not look at the phenomenon that nobody else
is aware of and this is an important aspect. Unlike a psychologist who can claim that a
psychological analysis is his or her unique area of investigation, such claims of exclusivity is not
shared usually by other social scientists.
He or she looks into the psychological processes that are happening inside somebody's mind, but
sociology will not or cannot make any such kind of claims about exclusivity, rather sociologists
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does not have any field of their own interest which nobody else is aware of. What is more
fascinating and more interesting is that a sociologist looks at this same phenomena that
everybody else looks at, but from a different way and from a very unique perspective.
One of the interesting ways in which Peter Berger defines this sociological consciousness is the
ability to look behind or to see through the facade of social structure. This is a very important
term. The ability to look behind or the ability to see through the facade of social structure. Berger
argues that this particular practice of looking at it became possible in Europe after the collapse of
Christendom and the collapse of the absolute state after reformation that happened in
Christianity.
What does the ‘ability to look beyond or the ability to look behind or to see through the façade of
social structure’ mean? This particular argument will become more clear when we proceed
further and when we discuss the emergence of sociology and the kind of important theoretical
arguments, philosophical viewpoints behind the emergence of this particular discipline.
Berger would argue that sociology offers you a particular ability to understand social structure,
which shapes our immediate social realities, and the ability to look behind or to look through the
façade of social structure. This ability to look beyond the facade of social structure, the way in
which our society is structured, how the society is structured on the basis of economic relations,
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on the basis cast relations, on the base of gender relations and other social structures are
extremely important and that provide us with very specific meanings.
Sociology offers you an opportunity to look behind or to see through these particular things.
Berger says that, this ability became a reality in the Europe, especially in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century. Does it mean that the people who lived elsewhere, for example, in countries
like India or in Arabia or in other parts of the world did not develop this particular ability? Or
does this again raise the question whether people who live in Europe before this eighteenth and
nineteenth century did not develop these abilities? Of course they must have, but none of these
things become institutionalized.
Before the emergence of modernity, none of these things became institutionalized and they
remained mostly at the individual level. But here we are talking about the emergence of
sociology as a discipline, which is institutionalized in Europe during this particular time. It is an
important point in which we understand how social context can generate new theories, new
frameworks, and even new social sciences. For example, Berger gives us a quite a lot of
examples in his essay on the ability to look beyond official accounts of certain incidents, the
public discourses, the propaganda, the popular assumptions, and so on.
In this era of saturated media, we are bombarded with quite lot of information and propaganda,
about which we say that we are living in a post fact or post truth era. Therefore, at this era, the
ability to look beyond the official versions and the ability to look at look beyond the public
discourses, the ability to look beyond popular assumptions and popular opinion is really
important.
This is important at the level of the discipline, as well as at the level of as the practitioners. It is
also important at the individual level and in the way in which we understand our own life and the
society around us. How do we process all this information? How do we get a picture with better
clarity about the way in which society functions and the way in which we live in the society, we
can live in the society, and we are expected to live in this particular society.
Berger gives a very interesting example of love marriage, where he says that the common
assumption behind love marriage is that, people fall in love at the first sight and there is
something that connect them immediately and therefore people fall in love. He says that, there
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are certain conditions which are necessary for most people to fall in love. He says, if you dissect
that, you will understand that, only when certain conditions have met or have been constructed,
one allows oneself to fall in love. This is a very interesting argument as it looks into how
personal preferences actually work between two people who fall in love.
For example, how are their perceptions about beauty ,perceptions about family status ,about race,
about their specific congruence in terms of their ideology and so on are extremely important in
deciding whether one has to fall in love or not. Therefore, the romanticized idea of two people
falling in love because of some forces appears more problematic because once you analyze you
understand that there are very important material conditions and very important calculated
moves, calculated decisions behind this act of falling in love.
Berger provides this example, which really is instructive for us to understand how even some of
the very common examples like falling in love needs to be analyzed. Once you extend this
argument, for example, on the functioning of democracy, or on a particular organization of an
industry and examine how it works, you will get very interesting insights. We have a very rosy
picture about how democracy is supposed to work. Most of our politicians will have a very rosy
picture about how their governments upholds the principles and spirit of democracy.
But if you dig bit deeper and examine the way in which these systems function, we will realize
that many of these promises and processes are problematic and democracy is not functioning the
way it is ought to function. In a particular context, the practices as well as discourses of
democracy assumes specific character by responding to or by navigating with the nature of socio
economic and political processes.
The ability to look beyond the existing arguments and narratives and public opinion is the most
important contribution of sociology. Similarly, Sociology explores the whole idea about how an
industry or an organization functions and (whole industrial sociology emerged as an area which
actually specializes in this), how organization has its own a social character, how organization
has its own social ethos which many times contradict the official version of the the way in which
an organization is run.
We have talked about this whole idea, but whether is this ability uniquely modern? As we
mentioned, this particular way of looking at society was not or it is not uniquely modern, it
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existed, but its emergence as a systematic institutionalized discipline happened only in
eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. That is the distinctive character of what we
understand as a European modernity, which played a very important role in the emergence of
sociology as a discipline.
Peter Berger has a very interesting analysis or a distinction between ‘social problem’ and
‘sociological problem’. Let us spend some time trying to understand that distinction. Most of you
must be familiar with this term social problem. What is a social problem? A social problem is
usually considered as something that is not desirable in a society, something that is injurious to
society or something that is detrimental to the society.
There is a long list of such so called ‘social problems’ starting with poverty, unemployment,
corruption, terrorism, beggary and a host of other issues which are widely considered as
unwanted or injurious to the society. What is the distinction between a social problem and
sociological problem? Social problem are those issues that are undesirable or injurious or
considered as negative and mostly defined by the law and or by the state. There is a very close
connection between social problems with law and the state.
Most of the social problems are defined by the popular opinion backed by legal provisions as
well as by the state. But sociological problem is different. Of course, there is a sociological
problem behind every social problem, but sociological problem is a broader term. It has to do
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with the question of a disciplinary engagement with a particular situation. You can develop
sociological questions about everything. Sociological problems need not be the situation which
are defined as negative or detrimental.
Berger argues that the sociological problem is not so much about why something go wrong from
the viewpoint of the authorities, but how the whole system works in the first scene, place, where
and what are its presuppositions and by what means it is held together. For example, imagine a
classroom where a teacher is teaching forty or fifty students and there is pin drop silence in the
class. This particular classroom raises quite a lot of interesting sociological questions.
What are the assumptions on the basis this whole exchange or the whole interaction between the
students and teachers is taking place? What is their understanding of this whole knowledge of
learning? How do they understand the role of the teacher? What are the kind of authority that the
teacher perceives for himself? What is the kind of power relation between the teacher and the
student? What is understood as the transmission of the knowledge? How does the teacher
understand the role of the student in this whole process? Are they seen as the mere recipients of t
knowledge?
Or are they seen as the people who are contributing in the generation of the knowledge that must
take place in the space of classrooms? These kinds of questions are very important and these are
not social problems, rather they are sociological problems. Here, you are asking very important
questions about a particular social interaction. Similarly, take the example of your own house.
What is the kind of arrangement between gender roles in your house? Who does what kind of
jobs? Whether your father helps your mother in cooking? Who does the cleaning? Who does the
cooking?
What are the kind of assumptions about what constitutes man’s job and woman’s job? What kind
of gender stereotypes are prevalent? What kind of changes happened over a period of time? How
do people negotiate these kind of spaces within their own houses? Each of these questions open
up very fascinating areas of inquiry, which can be broadly understood as sociological problems
or sociological questions.
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Here is a very interesting paragraph from Berger. “The fundamental sociological problem is not
crime but the law, not divorce but marriage, not racial discrimination but racially defined
stratification, not revolution but government”. It is a beautiful statement that combines a set of
social problems as well as sociological problems. You see that the social problems appear less
significant or social problems appear only as a manifestation or as a side effect of a larger
sociological problems. For example, look at the case between the crime and the law. What is the
relation between crime and the law?
You must be knowing that, an act becomes a crime only when the law defines as such. Take the
case of murder. A murder is widely seen as a crime and it is punishable under the law. But
murder of an enemy soldier is not something punishable and most often it will be rewarded. So,
more than focusing on the crime. It is important for a sociologist to focus on the question of law.
How does law gets constituted, and how does it gets changed, what is the relationship between
this official law and the popular perception?
These questions really open up very fascinating questions. Some of the acts can become
criminalized by the law and later get decriminalized. Take the example of recent judgment about
homosexuality being decriminalized. It was widely considered as a historic judgment which
decriminalize a particular act of sexual relationship. Thereby liberating, thousands or millions of
people who till then were branded as criminals. Similarly, take the whole question of divorce and
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marriage. Sociologists are more interested in the changing forms of marriage, rather than
understanding the changing forms of divorce.
Suppose if somebody asks a question that why there were very few divorces some three or four
decades back and why the divorce rates are very high now. Then the answer comes back to the
question of marriage and its changing character and composition. The people who enter into the
institutional marriage and their aspirations, their independence, their economic stability, their
ideologies, their orientations and so on are very different from the people who entered into a
wedlock three or four decades back. Therefore, instead of focusing on divorce, it is important
that we focus on the institution to which this divorce is only a side effect.
Similar is the case with racial discrimination and racially defined stratification, revolution and
government. Berger argues that we would contend that there is a debunking motif inherent in
sociological consciousness. The sociologist will be driven time and again by the very logic of his
discipline in order to debunk social system she is studying. Therefore this term ‘debunking
motif’ is very important. This term gets repeated in the writings of Zygmunt Bauman as well.
What does debunking motif which Berger argues as inherent in sociological consciousness, one
of the inherent motifs of sociological consciousness. It is to look behind and look through things
and to not accept things at its face value and to not go by the popular narrative, to not go by the
immediately visible things, but the ability to look behind or the ability to see through the kind of
narratives that are presented to you.
This is why the whole argument about debunking becomes important and the sociologists will be
driven time and again, by the very logic of his or her discipline to debunk the social system that
she is studying. Therefore a systematic study of social systems and its structure is something
very important for a person to develop her sociological imagination along with a debunking
motive, so that you understand the society in a far better and clearer manner.
That is the promise of sociological perspective. That is the promise of sociological

consciousness. Through the discipline of sociology, you acquire the kind of a consciousness that
allows you to understand, to look at society and make sense of the society in a far better way.
We will conclude this session here and we will continue with the same topic in the next day as
well. Thank you.
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C Wright Mill's 'Socioloigcal Imagination'.
Professor R. Santhosh
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Lecture 3
Welcome to the next session. Today I will be talking about the sociological perspective of C
Wright Mills. In the previous class, we had a brief discussion on Peter Berger's argument
about sociological consciousness as a particular ability that people need to cultivate in order
to understand the society around them through the perspective of sociology. So, in this
lecture, I will be closely following the writings of C Wright Mill's, especially his introductory
chapter to the book, the Sociological Imagination.
C Wright Mills talks about the importance of sociological perspective, the kind of a unique
standpoint that sociology offers to its reader. As I mentioned earlier, C Wright Mills’s essay,
‘sociological imagination’ have been widely used across the globe to introduce the discipline.
One of the very important aspects that Mills highlight in this essay is the connection between
individual life or individual biography and the wider social history, which many times we do
not make a direct link between. But C Wright Mills argues that it is one of the fundamental
points of developing a sociological perspective, that we cultivate the ability to connect our
own life with the larger historical processes taking place around us.
Mills in this essay says that in order to understand one's own life experience, it is essential to
understand the relation of the individual with the society through a historical perspective. As
I mentioned in the previous lectures, one of the promises of sociological perspective is that it
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offers enormous insights into one's own life, along with providing information and insights
about the society around you. If you are interested to understand more nuanced aspects of
your own life, the way in which you are living, your own choices, your own freedom, your
own unfreedom, the compulsions, that many times you find yourselves under, the kind of
freedom that you declare for yourselves, all these aspects become very fascinating. You will
be able to gain much better interest and insights about each of these aspects if you develop
this ability to look at society through sociological perspective.
He argues that in order to understand one's own life experience, it is essential to study the
relation of the individual with society through a historical perspective. Here one can see the
connection between the discipline of history and discipline of sociology as extremely
important. Thus, one cannot develop a sociological perspective without historical
consciousness. In other words, one cannot understand the uniqueness of her own life, the
uniqueness of her own context without placing it in the larger picture or larger canvas of
history. Mills opines that ‘the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the
larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external carrier of a
variety of individuals. So, this term the inner life and the external carrier of a variety of
individuals, it enables him to take into account how individuals in the welter of their daily
experience often become falsely conscious of their social positions. Within that welter, the
framework of modern society is sought and within that framework, the psychologies of a
variety of men and women are formulated’.
This is a very powerful passage which asks you to understand how individuals need to
recognize their own experience, their own personal life, through the larger historical
understanding of their own society and especially, how you can understand the psychologies
of a variety of men and women. This understanding of psychologies are possible only when
you keep these people in a particular historical context. In other words, C Wright Mills
argues that you cannot reduce people's actions into their own psychological orientations,
rather, these psychological orientations emerge from the very specific historical and cultural
context.
Mills through this essay argues that a person who develops a sociological consciousness or a
sociological imagination will be able to look at his own life, his own inner life, the kind of
ideas and the kind of feelings that he has, and his external carrier of an individual through by
placing him or her in this larger historical context.
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‘The first fruit of this imagination, and the first lesson of social science that embodies it, is
the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and gauge her own fate, only
by locating herself within her period that she can know her own chance in life only by
becoming aware of all individuals in her circumstances. In many ways, it is a terrible lesson.
In many ways, it is a magnificent one’. So, what is this particular passage trying to
communicate?
He is arguing that understanding of our own life becomes plausible or it becomes intelligible,
only when we try to understand the stories of people around us. Our own life is in no way
unique. Our own life is one among the lives of the people around us. So, only by trying to
understand our own life, Vis-a-vis the lives of people who are around us, or the people who
constitute the community or society around us, we will be able to get insights about the way
we are actually living. In other words, we are living, we are part of a society, a society that
thinks and acts and behaves in a particular way, a society that is structurally compelled to
behave or structurally compelled to exist in very specific forms. And he says that this in
many ways is a terrible lesson. Why does he say that it is a terrible lesson? It becomes a
terrible lesson for maybe people who think that they are the masters of their own destiny. It
also might become a terrible lesson for people who think that they can decide their own fate
or they can decide their life the way they want. Here he cautions us that such kind of a
confident argument about one being the master of one's own destiny is very short sighted.
You are able to make those very tall claims because you do not really understand the way in
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which your ideas and your arguments and your taste and your orientations are already
structured by the society. But this in many ways, he says is also a magnificent one.
Why is it magnificent? Because it does not say that you are a prisoner of your own society, or
you are a prisoner of your own conditioning. In other words, the sociological imagination
also has the ability to open up opportunities for you to break away from quite a lot of self
imposed or socially imposed restrictions that we undergo or we experience in our day to day
life. So, we will come back to that point later.
The second important point in the essay is that why it is by means of the sociological
imagination, that men and women now hope to grasp what is going on in the world and to
understand what is happening to themselves as minute points of the intersection of biography
and history within the society. This concept of individual biography and history within the
society is an extremely important point. It is because our story as an individual, or our story
as a community, our story as a person who was born in a particular year as a part of a
particular group, as a part of a community who reside in a particular geographical area, or
who are engaged in specific kind of economic activity, who have a particular kind of political
participation, who participates in particular kind of political processes, who believes in
certain kind of cultural ideals and the ideologies, all these things constitute what we
understand it as our biography. We can make sense of this biography only when we try to
connect that with the kind of our contemporary history. Hence, without locating our own
individual biography in the specific context of the larger history, our biography or our story
about ourselves will become or will appear to be very hollow and superficial.
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Now, Mills lists three sets of interesting questions, which usually we do not ask, in order to
understand about our life or the story of the people around us. But these questions or trying to
answer these questions will definitely provide you the way in which sociological imagination
will be able to present you with the ideas and insights about the society.
For example, the first one, what is the structure of this particular society as a whole? We
hardly ask that kind of a question, an ordinary person hardly ask that kind of a question
because the very idea of the structure of a particular society is not something that an ordinary
person is really familiar with. But sociologists do ask that question and an understanding of
the social structure of every society and how social structure changes over a period of time is
something very important for every individual. What are its essential components? And how
are they related to one another? How does it differ from other varieties of social order?
Within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its change?
This again, a series of very important aspects that are concerning around this whole question
of social structure.
What are its elements? How is it constituted? And why is that certain elements of the social
structure is something very important, and how are they different from the previous societies?
These are some of the foundational questions about the basic nature of every society. The
more you understand about these elements the better we are insightful about the society
around us and also about our own life. One of the questions Mills raise in this essay is ‘What
varieties of men and women now prevail in the society and this period’? What does that
mean? Are there different varieties of men and women exist in different periods in time? No
instead he asks that why we exist as men and women as human beings? The question points
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to the fact that they are very different in different epochs in time, in different cultures, in
terms of our orientations, in terms of our understanding, in terms of our ideologies, in terms
of our inclinations. So, in order to understand how people are unique in different periods in
time, it is significant that we try to locate them in different aspects of the society in the larger
canvas of History. And what varieties of and what varieties are coming to prevail? In what
ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted?
These are all important themes in the larger literature of sociology, the whole question of how
people are liberated, what is the understanding of liberation, what is the meaning of
liberation, how there are systems of repression and oppression, and what are the ways in
which human beings have been held captive under various forms of power relations, how we
try to come out of that, what have been the stories of different types of revolutions, different
types of resistance, and how did people understand these arguments or these points that
people can fight and then come out of this regimes of repression. What kind of human nature
are revealed in the conduct and character of the period?
The question of human nature is an interesting one. We must understand that there is no
given or essential understanding of what constitutes a human nature. Though we can say in a
very broad way that only human beings have culture unlike animals, they know how to make
tools, know how to create knowledge and to pass it on to the next generation. But beyond
that, to talk about a very specific set of human nature, as something applicable to people
across the globe is very difficult. So, what we are confronting in different era is a kind of set
of human nature that were discovered by that particular society during that particular time. It
is very fascinating to understand how this argument of human nature was discovered, created
and presented to the larger society. It is important, thus, to ask the question of the meanings
of human nature of each and every feature of society to develop a sociological perspective.
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The third set of questions that Mills ask is, where does the society stands in human history?
To answer this, it requires a much larger understanding about history, as a larger canvas and
whether we are able to place our community or our society in this larger canvas of history.
What are the mechanics by which it is changing the whole argument about social change,
what is its place within its meaning for the development of humanity as a whole? How does
any particular feature we are examining effect and by how it is affected by the historical
period in which it moves? And this period - what are its essential features? How does it differ
from other periods? What are its characteristic ways of history making? And I must say that
this set of concerns, they emerge from a very specific understanding of Mills time or
especially from a very specific Eurocentric understanding of history as having a type of
origin and a particular kind of a trajectory, leading to a particular kind of an end.
In other words, I would say that these kind of concerns are really emerging from a theoretical
argument informed by the modernization theory, where this idea of becoming modern, the
idea of progress, is something very essential in understanding human life in this particular
fashion. This makes us to identify our own epoch, our own society in the larger canvas and
we understand that every human society has to have an origin and it has to have a trajectory
towards mostly a singular direction, which is decided and determined by the idea of progress
and the idea of development. But Mills argues that it is very important that we develop these
capabilities. We try to introspect into our own situation into our own society, try to
understand, where we look at our own society. So, his basic argument, as I mentioned earlier,
is to understand these questions, these larger questions in order to place yourselves into that
and to keep or to identify ourselves in this larger story, so that you we develop a historical
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consciousness. In that sense, we will be able to appreciate our own life and the life around us
in this larger story of humankind.
Another very interesting set of questions that Mills brings about is this distinction between
personal troubles of the milieu and the public issues of social structure. This is a very
fascinating way of getting into the whole idea of sociological perspective. He argues that
many times we confuse between our personal troubles and the kind of public issues of social
structure to the extent that we are unable to distinguish between these two.
We quite often think that the kind of personal trouble that we encounter is our own making,
or somebody else has done to us or you are unfortunate or you must have done some sins in
your previous birth or your astrological signs are not correct or your time is not good. So, you
tend to attribute a lot of reasons for your own misfortune. But he argues that you need to
develop an ability to understand your own personal troubles of the milieu of the important
context by connecting it with the larger public issues of social structure. So, he says that
personal troubles should be seen as happening within the immediate context of an individual
related to their private sphere and then they can probably resolve it. And you know that all of
us face challenges, all of us find ourselves in deep trouble. Most, quite a lot of in our personal
life, in our professional life, in the social life, we quite often find ourselves in difficult
situations. So, personal troubles, Mills argues are something within the immediate context of
an individual. It is related to their private sphere, it very deeply affects their private sphere.
they can resolve it through hard work, through very persistently working about it, or what or
trying or trying to overcome that, they might be able to resolve it. But public issues transcend
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this local environment and individual lives and they are the issues is that of a public matter,
no immediate solution within the personal capacities are possible. So, our own personal lives
or our own personal troubles or difficulties that we find could be a reflection of a larger
public issues.
If you fail to understand the connection between that, we will most often end up in blaming
ourselves, we will most often end up blaming somebody else, because we will not be able to,
we are not able to locate ourselves in the larger social context and then see that our own
personal troubles are the reflections of larger public issues of social structure. For example,
he gives the example of unemployment. Finding oneself in a situation of unemployment is a
very difficult situation. You are educated, you are formally qualified, but you find it very
difficult to find a job. And how do we reconcile with the fact? Most often you will blame
ourselves or we will blame our own misfortune which becomes a kind of personal trouble
that affects your family, that affects your private sphere, that affects your carrier, your family,
your ability to spend, your self esteem, all these things are very badly affected by your
unemployment if you find it as a kind of a personal trouble.
But on the other hand, if the unemployment rate of your country is very high, there are a large
number of educated youth who are unemployed, then you realize that your story has a much
larger Canvas, your story of being unemployed is a result of the larger structural aspects or
structural processes that produce large scale unemployment in a given time period in that
particular context. So, that provides you with better insights to understand and make sense of
your own difficult situation and deal with it to live accordingly. Similarly, he gives the
example of divorce. A couple getting married and after some time, they find that they cannot
continue with the marriage and they have to go for a divorce. This may not be a very pleasant
experience for many people, and they can blame each other, they can blame each one of them
for not understanding, not loving and for dowry harassment or for n number of reasons. The
society around them as well will blame either one of them or both of them for not being
accommodating enough or not being understanding enough, being egoistic or ‘n’ number of
other reasons. But at the same time, when you look at the larger Canvas in the society, and if
you find that the divorce rates among or within your society is very high, and that is true of
the contemporary times in some of the developed societies and in societies like India where,
divorce rate is very high among the upper class or upper middle class.
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Then you realize that this divorce, why that divorce has happened to your marital life is not
only a reflection of the incompatibility between two of you, between you and your partner,
but it also has a larger story. A large number of couples are finding themselves to be
incompatible and end up in using divorce as an easy way of coming out of the wedlock. And
what does that indicate?
It indicates that the very character of marriage has changed, the kind of commitment that
people make with each other when they enter into this marital or wedding alliance, its
meaning has changed and people have very different ideas about how to lead their own life.
So, you understand that your personal trouble, while it can have it negative impact on your
life, has a much larger story. The society itself has a structural element of increasing number
of divorce. And blaming either you or your partner or somebody else is unhelpful because
there is a larger social process and you are just a part of that. You cannot be very different.
You are just a part of the social product. And maybe another example is that of internet
addiction. A large number of parents would complain that their children are spending so
much time with the TV or with the mobile phone. They have lost the reading habit and they
are all the time with the mobile phone. Scolding the children or finding fault with the
children, or saying that our generation were different, we used to read a lot more, we were
more serious, we were not distracted these type of explanations won’t help in understanding
the reason. This might help you to find fault with somebody, but it really prevents you from
understanding the kind of a larger changes, in terms of the availability of internet, the kind of
enormous possibility and enormous exposure that it provides you to the younger generation,
and their much broader worldview, much, much larger understanding, information, awareness
about a wide variety of issues, that has been made possible only by making use of internet.
So, he makes this very useful distinction between the personal problem of the milieu and the
public issues of the social structure, in order to have a larger understanding of our own life
instead of finding fault with it. This applies to the other set of examples. If we succeed in life,
if you are able to find a very good job or if you are able to score very good marks in the
examination. Again, sociologists would come and tell you that of course, your achievement is
something very great. It means that you are a person of very high intelligence, but you must
also look at the larger picture, the larger social and cultural background of your family that
really enabled you to study well and make use of your intelligence in scoring marks. Maybe
we will discuss that aspects and that themes later.
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To understand any issue, this kind of connection between your personal trouble and the kind
of public issues of social structure, as pointed out by Mills is something very important and it
constitutes to be a cornerstone for developing a sociological perspective. We are concluding
this session, and we will meet you in the next one. Thank you.
Keywords: Sociological imagination, Social structure, Historical context, sociological

perspective.
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Thinking Sociologically - Zygmunt Bauman.
Professor R. Santhosh.
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Lecture 4
Welcome back to this session. In this class, I will be talking about the arguments of Zygmunt
Bauman, a very important sociologist, based on his chapter titled, ‘Sociology, What for?’. It
is the introduction chapter of his book titled ‘Thinking Sociologically’. This book has been
widely used across the globe to introduce the discipline of sociology. It provides a very
fascinating introduction to the subject and I personally found it very interesting.
The title of the chapter is ‘Sociology What For?’ It very precisely tells us about the
uniqueness of sociological perspective. It is an extremely lucid chapter compared to the
writings of C Wright Mills or Peter Berger. Bauman basically starts off with the question;
what is the difference that makes sociology different from other social sciences? We know
that social sciences in general deal with the social aspect or society and then how sociology
does in particular is looking at the society as a separate entity?
The question is, what is that makes sociology different from other social sciences like
economics or political science or other similar kind of social science disciplines?. Bauman
argues that the sociology is the habit of viewing human actions as elements of wider
figurations that is of non- random assembly of actors locked together in a web of mutual
dependency. This is an extremely important point this is the crux of our sociological
perspective.
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The ability to or the habit of viewing human action as elements of wider figurations, that is,
of a non-random assembly of actors locked together in a web of mutual dependency. There
are two key terms in this section. One is elements of wider figuration. Second one is mutual
dependency. What does it mean when we say that we have to view human actions as
elements of wider figurations?
It simply means that a person's action cannot be understood by looking at that those actions
alone. They make sense only when you understand those actions in the larger context. Most
often, even while people attribute their own motifs into their own actions, even while when
we all would like to say that somebody has done that and alone is responsible, (of course, he
would be responsible to a large extent), but a sociological perspective would really would
compel you to look at his action, not as an isolated and individual act, but as an element of
wider figuration.
That is of a non-random assembly of actors locked together in a web of mutual dependency.

This web of mutual dependency is something that is a defining character of a society. We are
all entangled in this web of mutual dependency. We are able to act in a particular manner
only because there is a thick layers of social interactions, which provide us a kind of mutual
dependence. Our actions make sense only when others reciprocate with that.
We are able to act in a society only when it is understood and reciprocated by others.
Otherwise, we will be acting in isolation without it being indeed intelligible to others.
Therefore, this particular capacity of looking at human interaction, its patterns, it’s very
specific forms of mutual dependency is what Bauman argues as the essential feature of
sociological thinking. He suggests that sociology is basically is this particular way of thinking
about society.
We have come across this point earlier as well. C Wright Mills also suggests that the kind of
sociological perspective that we are trying to develop is not something that is not been
studied by others. It is not an exclusive property of social scientists. But it is a unique way of
looking at it and developing a particular type of consciousness about society. It is a particular
ability to look at things from a very specific disciplinary vantage point.
It is a very unique way of thinking about society. Sociology as a discipline helps you to
develop this particular way of thinking so that you understand what a sociological perspective
is. The theoretical foundations and the methodological orientations of the discipline helps you
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to develop this particular way of thinking about society, about our own life, about the life of
the people around us. Let us see how Bauman explains this.
Very interestingly, Bauman begins with the essay by making a distinction between sociology
and commonsense. It is a very interesting take, because sociology has a peculiar relationship
with this term common sense. Now, what is common sense? Common sense has different
meanings in different contexts, we would usually say that somebody does not have common
sense in a very generic sense.
With that usage, we mean to say that that person does not act, behave or understand things
properly. But in sociology or in anthropology, common sense is usually defined as the sum
total of knowledge that people acquire and the kind of knowledge that people acquire which
enable them to live in a society in a normal manner in their everyday life. This living is
possible because that person has acquired quite a lot of knowledge about how live normally
in a society.
Living normally includes, how to act, how to dress, how to behave, how to speak, how to eat,
what to eat, what not to eat, or how to behave in specific situations. A person's normal life
becomes possible only when they acquire this set of knowledge, which in other ways, we
understand as common sense. Sociologist will tell you that the process of socialization plays
a very important role in instilling this common sense into the minds of the people. Generally,
every person of sound mind must be having a huge amount of common sense which allows
him to live normally in the society.
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A normal individual knows about his life, his society, the major institutions, the important
customs, the rituals, about religion, about family, about everything around him. Then why is
that it has a peculiar relationship with sociology? Sociologists would argue that the subject
matter of sociology is also something very similar to the subject matter of common sense. In
other words, sociology studies a host of themes and subjects that are already in the realm of
common sense of the people and this is a very peculiar situation.
Now, compare this situation with that of an astronomer or a physicist or a microbiologists.

Their subject matter and scientific terms used in microbiology or physics or nanotechnology
or nuclear physics are not a part of the common sense of ordinary people. They are in a
completely separate and limited scientific realm. On the other hand, the subject matter of
sociology is something that is very much present in the common sense of ordinary people.
What is the subject matter of sociology? Sociology studies the society, it studies the social
institutions and social organization. It studies institutions like family, marriage, kinship,
religion. It studies development, it studies culture. It studies society in which an ordinary
person lives. In other words, every ordinary human beings already possess quite a lot of
knowledge about the subject matter of sociology.
To large extent, people have a certain amount of knowledge about the society in which they
live, otherwise, their life becomes impossible and they will not be able to live properly.
Sociology is entering into this field which has already been understood and there is already a
body of knowledge amongst the ordinary people. Ordinary people know a lot of things about
their society and in that context, sociologists have to give better and informed explanations
about the existing knowledge that is already present in common sense.
That is slightly a challenging task. It is a very interesting challenge. It is very fascinating to

tell people that of course, you understand about your own society, but we have better
explanations for that. That is the promise of sociology and that is what sociological
consciousness mean. It is about offering something more insightful than what is usually
understood by the ordinary people though their common sense.
Bauman talks about four very important points that distinguish sociology from that of
common sense. These four points are very important. Firstly, he says that sociology compels
that you speak irresponsibly and it insists on the rule of responsible speech and this is very
interesting. In our ordinary conversations, we make a lot of sweeping statements about
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incidents, about particular communities, about particular group of people, about lots of
events.
In other words, we tend to speak in a very loose language. Bauman says that while you are
living as a member of a society, that is fine, but you cannot do that within sociology where
you have to speak responsibly. You must be able to stand by your statement, you must be
able to substantiate your statement, and it has to be very careful. He says that it is very easy
to make very sweeping, generalized and stereotypical statements.
We quite often hear generalized statements about communities, about other religions, about
other caste, about other gender, about other countries. Bauman says that that is not possible to
make such statements if you are a professional sociologist. If you are acting and behaving as
a professional, you must speak responsibly. And where does this responsibility come from?
It comes from your peer review. If you are arguing something as a product of sociological
research, then you must submit it to be scrutinized by your fellow sociologists, which is
called as peer review. This is a very essential aspects of every science. You must not say that
nobody should question your arguments or theories. Or you cannot say that I have an
argument or I have a point about this particular incident and none of you are allowed to
question that. That is not the spirit of sociology.
A sociologist will be always ready to present herself or her argument for wider scrutiny, from
her professional community. Only through such kind of a critical appraisal, an argument
about society becomes accepted. This is one of the first points that Bauman talks about.
Second one is the size of the field from which materials for judgments are drawn.
This is again a very fascinating area and very closely connected with how common sense is
made and how people speak from their common sense. If you ask people, why are you saying
so about a particular incident or about a particular community or about a particular group of
people? One of their very often response would be that ‘it happened to me’ or ‘I experienced
that’ or my father told me or my brother experienced that or somebody sent me this.
Of course, all these ideas are true and all these arguments are valid, their experience could be
true, they must have experienced that, their father must have told their uncle must have told
or somebody else in their community must have told, but for a sociological argument, this is
not sufficient.
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While your own personal experience is valid, it is not sufficient. You need to have a much
larger size of the field. If you are doing research on certain things, you have to have a larger
field from where you draw your conclusions. You find your materials and analyze them
properly. Only after that you come to a certain kind of a conclusion.
Your hearsay, your family's experience, your individual experience, the kind of incident that
you witnessed, or read about, all these things could be valid, but only up to a point. And
unless these experience are subjected to scientific scrutiny, those aren’t sociologically valid.
You need to have a rigorous methodology in order to present your argument.
Your argument cannot be based merely on your own experience. However, off late, this
particular point has been criticized very strongly on in the light of a lot of new theoretical
developments about how autobiographies are important, how the narration of a particular
person is important, but I am not going into that now.
In general sociology which emerged as a modern social science, insist that its scientific
methodology is very important and sociology cannot be reduced to the story of individual
experience or hearsay and any stories you hear about.
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The third point by Bauman is the most fascinating one. It is about how you make sense of this
particular world. Bauman very brilliantly put it as ‘to see the social in the individual and the
general in the particular’. What does it mean, how do you see the ‘social in the individual and
general in the particular’.
A sociologist would argue that an individual quite often represents the social. How much ever
an individual try to be unique, separate, quite independent, quite different, he mirrors or he
reflects quite a lot of very important aspects of the society. It is true for all Individuals for
that matter.
You can take your own example. For example, myself, while I am an individual, I represent
the society. In my look, I represent the society, I dress up like a man, and my haircut is that of
a man, I behave quite often accordingly in terms of how a man should behave. Therefore, an
individual quite often represents various aspects of the social. Understanding that aspect
something very important. That is why again it brings back to the point that why people
behave in certain manner.
Instead of accusing them or instead of finding fault in an Individual alone for his actions or ,
instead of putting all responsibility and agency to that particular person, it would be more
insightful if you say that he represents a larger trend. He represents a larger, broader pattern
of the society. That perspective offers very interesting insights. I can give you quite a lot of
examples.
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You all must be knowing that the teachers, especially the school teachers of the previous
years have very strongly believed that physical punishment or beating up the children, or
corporal punishment is a very essential aspects of teaching method. I have quite a lot of
memories about some of the teachers who used to beat up students very harshly. On the one
hand, you can say that they were very cruel people and you can say that these people have to
be blamed.
On the other hand, the teachers of that generation really believed that a teacher has to be
feared by the children and children have to be physically punished, or only through this
feeling physical punishment that the children will learn certain things. That was the kind of a
common understanding that made them to beat up small children with the sticks, and then
resort to all other kinds of punishment. Here, we are understanding why certain people
behave in certain manner rather than isolating an individual action.
Keep in mind that I am not attaching any moral meanings with that or I am not saying it is
good or bad, but I am only saying that why certain people behave in certain way or certain
manner, has to be understood in a larger context. Because quite often, they are the person
representing certain streaks or certain aspects of the society.
It is the case with the general and the particular. An incident, a communal right, or a caste
conflict or an honor killing or a dowry death and n number of examples reflect the kind of a
larger trends and larger processes taking place.
This is an extremely important insight that Bauman wants us to develop as a part of

developing sociological perspective. He also says, it is about how our individual biographies
intertwine with the history that we share with our fellow human beings. I hope by now, this
point is very clear, that if you have to understand your own biography, your own life so far,
the story of your own community, you have to look at it with the history that we share with
our fellow human beings.
These fellow human beings could be the people immediately around you, it could be your
community, it could be the people who speak your language, your state, your country, and
maybe the civilization in a given point in time. It will be a very fascinating experience for
you to write a biography of your own, and trying to see how social aspects like your caste or
your class or your gender and other social factors really shaped your life so far.
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Definitely, this particular attempt will discount your individual effort and that is what the
crux of the sociological argument. Of course, your individual effort, your individual
intelligence, your individual motivation are important. Sociologists are not discounting that.
But they have to be placed in the larger context. Then you will realize that, why we are
thinking in a particular way and the way in which we are thinking is often the product of our
own society.
How much ever we try to be distinct, or even our notion of what constitutes difference or how
we can be different, how we can look and act differently and even this thinking is shaped and
constraint by the society. It actually provides a very fascinating idea about how people live,
in their own society. Then the fourth point and a very important point is that sociology
defamiliarizes the familiar. It very consciously make you to defamiliarize the familiar and it
makes you more sensitive.
What is defamiliarization? Bauman again gives a very interesting statement. ‘Familiarity is

the staunchest enemy of inquisitiveness and criticism’. It is a very important statement.
‘Familiarity is the staunchest enemy of inquisitiveness and criticism’. When you get
habituated to or get familiar to things, then you will lose the ability to critically analyze how
it works. We become so accustomed to that, we will not find anything interesting in that.
Take the case of our own family. We are born into a family, we grew up in that particular
family, and we live our everyday life in that particular family. Each and every aspect of that
family life is so familiar to us. That to a large extent, will prevent you from developing a
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critical viewpoint about how this particular family functions. The best example could be
about gender roles practiced in the family. Who does what kind of work and how gender
plays out in this family sphere?
We all think that the very act that your mother gets up early morning and prepares breakfast
and serves it to your father and other members of the family is a natural thing to happen..
Father goes to work, mother stays back at home and we consider it as quiet natural and quite
normal. We consider it as natural and this term is very problematic. We fail to understand that
there is nothing natural about it, there is nothing normal about it.
You can live differently. There is nothing wrong if father gets up in the early morning and
does all the household work and if mother goes out for work and then come back in the
evening. There is nothing wrong if father takes care of the children. People can live in the
way they like. However, we are not able to think about these possibilities, because we are so
familiar. We are so habituated with the way we live.
Sociology, very consciously asks you to defamiliarize from the familiar. So that
inquisitiveness and criticism can develop about even some of the most intimate places. That
is why Bauman says sociology has an anti-fixating power. Once you understand sociology
properly, you will try hard or it will naturally come to you not to get fixated with a particular
idea or fixated with or get convinced very easily with a particular argument or a particular
ideology.
You will imbibe a strong element of skepticism. We will develop, as many scholars whom
we discussed earlier have mentioned, a tendency to look beyond the facade of social
structure. It will keep coming back, so that you will not be convinced about that what
constitute ‘normal’ or ‘preferable’ or ‘legitimate’. It becomes your personal choice to agree
with that or not to agree with social norms. That is why Bauman says it has a very
destabilizing effect on the existing power relations.
It has a very strong destabilizing effect. The moment you think about family in this manner
that I just explained, by critically looking at the gender division of labour within family and
how feminine and masculine duties are divided, then it will start destabilizing the existing
understanding. If you begin to question all of them, then what is essentially would be
happening is that, we are destabilizing the kind of a conventional family structure. Whether
one needs to do that or not becomes an individual choice.
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However realize the existence of different possibilities of social organizations. Take the
example of a classroom. If the teacher comes, speak in a dictatorial manner, gives a
monologue and goes back and if you think that is the normal way of functioning in a
classroom, you are very badly mistaken. That is one particular way of doing that, there is
nothing natural about it, there is nothing normal about it.
Other possibility is that you can really work closely with the teacher if he or she is willing to
make that classroom situation much livelier, much more interactive and much more engaging.
This opens up quite a lot of possibilities. Bauman says that this destabilizing effect makes
people almost a kind of a perpetual skeptic. A person with this sociological perspective will
be very difficult to get convinced off by certain thing, whether it is the arguments of religion
or about nationalism, ideologies and so on. If people say this should be the only way in which
you have to understand nationalism, you might agree with that.
If people say that his is how you are supposed to express your religiosity or this is what
spirituality means, you might not agree. Therefore, this has a very strong destabilizing effect
on the existing power relations and quite often you can find yourself in difficult situation
because if you earnestly follow this sociological perspective, you can get into difficult
situations.
Finally, Bauman has a very beautiful chapter about this freedom and dependence. He
examines how people experience freedom and how people are dependent. Sociological
perspective, in general, provides you with very interesting and fascinating insights about our
notion of freedom, how we are living and what the boundaries of our life are. Sociology help
us to understand the possibility of alternatives ways in which we can live our life and make
us aware of how independent we are, how dependent we are, how unfree we are and explore
the question that can we think of living life in a more meaningful manner without worrying
about the society.
Once we understand society as a construct, which evolved over a period of time in a given
context, then it also enables you to think whether you can live differently in a more
meaningful manner, in whichever way you define it. That provides very interesting and
fascinating ideas about your notion of freedom and dependence.
While sociology ask emphasizes that you are dependent on others, it does not mean that you
are all the time have to live according to the diktats of the society, whether it is by the
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tradition, by the religion, or by various other institutional aspects. It provides you quite a bit
of opportunities to explore your own life, with the kind of meanings and ideology that you
values that you attach yourself.
Therefore, Sociology opens up huge possibilities for exploring ideas of freedom and to think
about dependence and independence in a different way. We are summing up the discussions
about sociological perspective here. We touched upon three important scholars such as
Zygmunt Bauman, whom we discussed today and Peter Berger and C Wright Mills. As I told
you, these three are widely considered as important scholars of sociology across the globe.
These thinkers essentially tell you that sociology is a form of a consciousness and a particular
ability to think about society and the ability to understand our own life in the larger canvas of
human history. I hope that this discussion helped you to develop a deeper understanding
about sociological perspective, which will definitely help you to appreciate the discipline, its
theory and the subsequent sections of this course. Let us wind up. Thank you.
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Emergency of Sociology: The, Socio-Political, Economic and Intellectual Context
Lecture 5
Welcome to the second week of lectures. In this week, we will look into the socio-political,
economic and intellectual history behind the emergence of the discipline of sociology. As we had
discussed in the previous classes, there are certain requirements and factors that necessitate the
emergence of a new discipline especially in the social sciences. The emergence of a social
science is not the product of a single individual or a single intellectual. It must emerge from a
particular context and the context must convince the existing intellectuals that the prevailing
theories or the frameworks are unable to explain or unable to interpret the kind of changes that
are happening around them by compelling them to look for better frameworks, theories and
methodologies, which might consolidate over a period of time; thus, giving rise to the emergence
of a new particular discipline.
In the case of sociology, this is exactly what happened. As we discussed in the previous class,
there is a saying that sociology has a long past; but a very short history. A systematic and critical
thinking about the society must have been there in many civilizations in the pre-modern
societies.
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But, the emergence of this kind of thinking in a more institutionalized, in a more systematic
manner emerged only in Europe in the 18th and 19th century through the institutions of higher
learning and through the writings of important scholars and thinkers. The fact that sociology
emerged in Europe and specifically Western Europe in this particular time period itself requires
quite a lot of examination. Sociology afterwards spread across the globe mainly through the
process of colonialism. We will briefly look at the specific factors and contexts that generated
this particular discipline in Europe.
These are the following resource materials that we will be using for this lecture; 1. ‘Edward
Royce titled Classical Social Theory and Modern Society’, 2. Ken Morrisons work ‘Marx,
Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought’ and 3. Kenneth Tuckers book titled
‘Classical Social Theory: A Contemporary Approach’. We also hope to have a couple of
conversations with with experts in in the field of history of science and technology and also in
philosophy.
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Now, sociology emerged as a new discipline in response to the great transformation which swept
across the Europe in the 18th and 19th century resulting in the demise of the premodern world
and the rise of the modern world. We thus specifically situate the emergence of sociology with
the emergence of the modern world. This modern world quite often indicates the emergence of a
modern vis-à-vis that of a premodern or a traditional society.
We will see that in the coming lectures almost all social scientists, who we are going to engage
with the subject, were all preoccupied with the questions of what constitutes this model i.e. how
do society function itself in this modern field; in what way are they different from the traditional
societies. A new modern emerged in Europe during this particular time and the old medieval or
pre-modern social system; or social order began crumbling down. This was as a result of what is
known as the great transformation, a complete, a comprehensive a thorough transformation that
left nothing unchanged in the socio-political and historical context of Europe. Without
understanding these transformations, we will not be able to comprehend why and how a new
discipline like sociology emerged. What are the historical factors that necessitate the emergence
of sociology? What were the socio-historical and cultural requirements or imperatives that
necessitated the emergence of sociology?
So, this term great transformation is an important concept because it is a very overarching, a very
comprehensive term. It indicates the kind of a transformation that happened almost in an
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absolute sense. There were basically three revolutions or triple revolutions that took place in
Europe during this particular time. One is widely known as the Enlightenment, the European
Enlightenment, which indicates the kind of intellectual and Cultural Revolution. The
transformations that happened are in the realm of ideas, in the realm of knowledge, in the realm
of reasoning, in the realm of cultural ideas and then the intellectual engagements.
The second factor of transformation is a series of incidents most importantly the French
revolution of 1789, which indicates the kind of radical changes happened in the fields of politics
and society. We will take up each one of these developments in detail in coming lectures but,
these are important factors to keep in mind.
Third factor is a complete transformation related with the rise of capitalism and the subsequent
process of industrialization which again replaced an agrarian feudal system that was raining in
the medieval period in Europe. All these changes happened in the background of Renaissance
and the Reformation. Reformation was a very important movement that happened in a Roman
Catholic Church. It emerged as a protest against the perceived corruption and then decadence of
Roman Catholic Church which led to the emergence of Protestantism with a very powerful
theological and organizational challenge to Roman Catholic Church. Renaissance was also a
very powerful movement that happened across the cultural, political, social and philosophical
realm which brought in a new sense of arguments based on the ideas of humanism.
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A combination of all these three major factors; the cultural, the intellectual and the economic
brought in large scale transformation which was unprecedented.
‘They gave rise to new worldviews and aspirations, new attitudes and orientations, new political
and economic institutions, and new forms of social organization and patterns of living. They set
into motion new social forces, new developmental dynamics, and new social movements; and
they brought new problems and new possibilities onto the historical stage’.
The above paragraph help us in understanding the magnitude and the depth of changes that swept
across Europe during this particular time. It brings in new world views, it brings in new
aspirations; especially aspiration regarding the political aspirations of ordinary people. These
new attitudes and orientations were completely different from the traditional argument centered
on religion. These were also the result of new political and economic institutions, emergence of,
nation state, and new forms of social organizations and patterns of living.
We will discuss what kind of social transformations and changes happened, when people
migrated in large scale from rural areas to urban areas; and then began to live in urban places.
So, what does an urban living mean and how is it different from the way people live in rural
societies and what are the differences in the kind of social relationships that people develop.
They set into motion new social forces of the most important could be the working class
movement.
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The laborers who work in factories began to organize themselves which completely transformed
the kind of social realities in several places. This was also accompanied by new development
dynamics, the new social movements which brought in new problems and possibilities onto the
historical stage.
Thus, this great transformation of these three centuries of historical period is seen as a specific
turn in the history of Europe, and also that of mankind. What you understand in general terms as
modernity emerged during this particular time. Here is the list of words, which emerged and
became very prominent during this particular period of time.
‘And these words include industry, factory, working class, middle class, capitalism, socialism,
communism, liberal, conservative, scientist, engineer, utilitarian, journalism, economic crisis,
pauperism, strike, ideology, intellectual, humanitarian, statistics, bureaucracy, commercialism,
masses, unemployment, and sociology’
One can easily understand that each of these terms have become so common in our everyday
language. We cannot imagine to have a conversation or have a discussion about the
contemporary society without invoking any of these particular terms because they are important
and so ingrained in the contemporary discussions about the modern and contemporary society.
They exist not only as terms but as extremely important institutions, ideas, processes as well as
social forms of organizations. And then there is this final word sociology, is also one of the terms
that emerged during this particular time and remain as very important one when we talk about
the contemporary situation.
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Now, what do we mean by this transformation and what are its consequences? And why these
consequences are so relevant when you talk about the emergence of sociology. The argument is
that these changes resulted in the emergence of the social as a distinct realm of inquiry which
requires specific epistemological and methodological orientation.
So, one of the important takeaways from all these discussions that we need to keep it in mind or
one of the most important consequences of these transformations is the emergence of the social.
The social emerges as a distinct realm of inquiry. It is no longer seen as a side effect of certain
political or economic or psychological or historical aspect. Rather, the social emerges as a
distinct field, which requires specific epistemological and methodological orientation. It can no
longer be seen as a side effect or as an epiphenomenon of any other human activity.
The social deserves to be studied exclusively with specific theoretical and methodological
orientation. This led to the emergence of a new discipline called sociology and its subsequent
development. One of the most important concerns of all these initial theories or the early
theorists who began and developing sociology was the whole question of social order. We will
comeback to this term again and again because it is one of the most central themes of sociology,
especially in the classical sociological theories.
What do you mean by social order? Social order is also explained by other terms like social
equilibrium or social stability. It basically tries to understand how a society is able to maintain
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itself. How a society is able to maintain its order? How a society is able to able to stay together,
and then function efficiently. So, this whole question of social order or stability was seen as in
disarray, and the discipline emerged as an attempt to make sense of these changes and if possible
restore the order and stability. So, we have discussed the kind of transformation at least in brief.
We will discuss them more in detail in the subsequent classes. We saw a kind of a complete
transformation that the European societies had witnessed so far through this notion of social
order or social stability which led to disarray and was seen by many as a kind of a chaotic one
without any order, without any control and nobody knew how and where it is leading to. Nobody
was aware of its consequences. Many of these early thinkers were really worried about this lack
of stability or lack of social order. And they wanted this discipline of sociology to emerge as a
distinct discipline, which is capable of understanding these changes scientifically; and if possible
to restore order and stability.
Thus, it is very important to keep in mind that at least among some of the thinkers, sociology was
a very conservative discipline. It was a discipline which did not really approve off or encourage
the kind of rapid social changes. It was very skeptical about many of these changes and many of
them were conservative. They wanted to bring back social order; they wanted to at least to slow
down the kind of changes, and they wanted to bring back the equilibrium or social order. This is
a major debate; we will come back to that later.
This is followed by the debate on the sociology as a discipline, as a science of the society; and
these terms science of sociology is very significant. Why should sociology be seen as the science
of society? What is something so special about science? It is important to remember here that the
term sociology is made up of two words; socius and logos and logos means science.
So, why was sociology imagined as a science? This has a long history and a very important
context in the development of human knowledge. Sociology too claims that it studies society
objectively so as to understand its transformations better. The word objectivity is very important.
To study something objectively means not allowing your own biases and ideological inclinations
to influence it.
There is a distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. Subjectivity is when you have an
opinion different to those of others for example when you read a poem or when you watch a
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movie. Since it is individual centric, it is subjective. But, science does not speak in the language
of subjectivity it speaks in the language of objectivity. The length of this pen or the weight of
this pen remains constant irrespective of the person who measures it. So, science is
predominantly or science is completely centering on the idea of objective facts.
Sociology emerged with this claim that the sociologists will be able to understand the social
phenomenon without being influenced by the person who studies it and also would be able to
explain society without allowing his or her personal subjective dispositions to influence the kind
of his subject that he studied. This again is a very controversial claim that somebody can study
society objectively, as if to tell the truth what exactly that is.
Sociology emerged with this claim but later this claim was thoroughly questioned, and I do not
think that any sensible sociologist at present claim that, they are studying things in a very
complete absolutely objective manner. Because what is objective, what is subjective and how
important this objectivity are all subjected to a series of very fascinating theoretical discussions
and deliberations so, it’s a more complicated field. But when sociology emerged it wanted to
qualify itself as a science. It wanted to claim itself to be a discipline as science, which studies
society in a completely objective manner.
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So, how was this argument about science and objectivity realized? What were the kind of
arguments that came along with this idea that sociology is a science which studies things
objectively? There are two terms or two epistemological positions about studying a particular
subject. They are empiricism and positivism. These two terms in the development of human
knowledge especially regarding epistemology, plays a very important role in the emergence of
sociology and its later subsequent transformations.
Empiricism is the philosophical strand that argues knowledge of the material world must be
based on straightforward observation and sense perception. When you talk about this in the
contemporary society or in the contemporary times; it looked very straight forward, it looked
very simple; because we try to understand society through our senses. So, anything that we are
able to observe, anything that we are able to measure, anything that we are able to see through
our senses; must inform the basis of our understanding of that particular object.
But when did this particular argument emerged? It came up against very powerful theoretical
traditions based on theology and metaphysics and a host of other kind of similar arguments
where you create ideas about the world and yourself. You create ideas about almost everything
without any way of ascertaining them through empirical observations. For example, how do you
go by the theological arguments? How do you prove whether a particular theological argument is
right or wrong? How do you experience or how do you observe a theological argument?
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You know that a theology has answers for every questions and any theology is a comprehensive
set of explanations for everything. It answers every human question, and but the moment you try
to ask the question, how do you come to this kind of conclusions it has different set of
explanations, it has a different set of arguments; and these arguments are not based on
observation; or based on empiricism.
In the coming lectures we will talk about the emergence of science; we will talk about the
emergence of science and technology, industrial revolution, and about enlightenment. So,
science emerges as an important paradigm during this particular time. Science emerges as a very
powerful paradigm, which can offer you more convincing explanations about the world around
you; by displacing the religious explanation, by almost nullifying the religious explanation. This
is the context in which sociology emerged and one of the most important foundations of
sociology was the argument that sociology is a positive science especially by the so-called father
of sociology Auguste Comte. He argued that sociology is a science. But positivism is the view
that social phenomena, such as human social behavior and how societies are structured ought to
be studied using only the methods of the natural sciences. Thus, it is a view about the appropriate
methodology of social science, emphasizing empirical observation.
So, the argument is that if natural sciences are able to understand the nature better in a
convincing manner, if physics and chemistry and biology and other disciplines are able to
unravel the mystery of the universe and nature. What prevents us from using the similar
scientific methods to understand our society? Sociology was fashioned or sociology was
imagined as a science of society, which uses a scientific method to understand the society.
Sociology as a result does not depend upon philosophical or religious texts, rather you depend
upon scientific methods to understand how the society is structured, how the society is brought
together? How the society function? These provide you with a more clearer, more convincing
and unbiased objective picture, about the society in which we live. So, these two terms
positivism and empiricism becomes important as they laid foundation for the methodological
orientation of the discipline, which was later criticized. There were divergent stand points of
methodology which emerged later; there was a development of an anti positive simulator with
the Max weber. We will discuss all these points later; so let us conclude this session.
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And in the coming sessions we will take up many of these specific points or specific factors that
laid to the emergence of sociology. So, I have listed out several factors and we will take up each
one of them specifically in the coming classes. Thank you.
Keywords: Triple revolution, Social order, Social change, Epistemology, Positivism.
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Lecture 06
Enlightenment
Welcome to this session. In this session, we will discuss very briefly the concept of
Enlightenment. We are discussing this concept of Enlightenment not to go deeper into its
philosophical or ideological background, but to understand how Enlightenment functioned as
a very important background or as a very important factor for the emergence of sociology as
a distinct social science discipline in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Europe.
A set of new ideas, a set of new political, economic and cultural processes and a demanding
new social reality, all these are important factors behind the emergence of any social science
discipline, the case of sociology was not an exception. One of the most important intellectual
changes or ideological changes that happened in Europe is widely described by this term,
European Enlightenment.
There are very fascinating discussions and debates about the European Enlightenment to what
extent they can herald a true idea of human emancipation, and whether different civilizations
had anything similar to this idea of Enlightenment and what were the kind of internal
contradictions of Enlightenment and how did Enlightenment view certain practices like
racism or slavery, or how many of these champions of Enlightenment were heavily racists.
Therefore, it is a very fascinating area to look into the kind of discussions and debates about
Enlightenment.
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Enlightenment emerged in the wake of scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
century, which challenged the dominant philosophical and religious visions of the universe.
The rise of science and the scientific contributions of Copernicus, Galileo, and a number of
important scientists had altered the widely held views and belief systems about the nature of
the universe, its creation, its functioning, and the role of earth, the role of sun, and the
importance of human beings.
Before that, all these explanations were very convincingly provided by the most powerful
religious institution, the Roman Catholic Church. As I mentioned in one of the previous
classes, an institution like Catholic Church and its religious theology had a very convincing
answer in its own rationality. It does not say that religion cannot provide answer to every
question.
Christianity explained the origin of man, the creation of man, it explained the creation of the
universe, the creation of the world. It had very convincing answers, and through its
institutions, it very systematically imposed these ideas and this set of knowledge across the
centuries over generations of population.
One of the most scientists who challenged this argument was Copernicus. His argument about
heliocentrism went against the biblical or the Catholic argument or the Christian argument
that the earth is the center of the universe.
The Christian hurch argued that earth is the center of the universe, and all other planets,
including the sun, are revolving around earth because earth is a place where human beings
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inhabit, and human beings are the most precious creations of God. Therefore everything
revolves around the earth and that was their geocentric argument. Copernicus argued that this
is a fallacy, rather the earth is revolving around the sun.
And then comes Galileo Galilei, who through his systematic study and through his
observation through telescope reaffirmed Copernicus’s argument. He argued earth is one
among the several satellites that revolve around the sun and there is nothing distinct or there
is nothing special about earth as earth is one among different planets that revolve the sun.
As the students of science know, that created quite a lot of controversy. Because these
arguments were seen as heretical, and were seen as against the teaching of Bible, they were
seen as against the teaching of Christianity, and that was punishable.
At that particular time in history, if you were to talk about a new idea that went against the
teachings of Bible or went against the teaching of Christianity, you could be punished. Hence
Galileo was subjected to so much of pressure, so much of intimidation, so much of threat, and
the church constituted an inquisition committee. He was examined was asked to go back from
his argument about heliocentrism.
There is a very interesting statement of this inquisitorial commission of the Catholic Church
declared heliocentrism, to be a “foolish and absurd philosophy, and formally heretical since it
explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”
What we are discussing now are some of the very, very important very important moments
in the human history, where one of the most fundamental lessons of natural science is being
ridiculed as foolish and absurd philosophy because it goes against the Holy Scripture.
The Holy Scripture, the Bible was seen as the ultimate source of knowledge about the whole
universe. Nobody was allowed to question and say anything contradictory to the arguments or
the suggestions of the Holy Scripture. Therefore, Galileo was subjected to the inquisition by
the church and was found guilty. He was punished, and punishment was to retract from all his
arguments. Initially he was punished for imprisonment, and later it was reduced to house
arrest till his death. And he died in his house.
There is a very interesting story that even when this sentence was given, he mentioned in a
very mute voice that “and yet it moves”. This is supposed to be a very important episode.
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‘And yet it moves’, mean yet the earth moves around the sun, arguing that your judgment or
your punishment on me will not stop this truth and you cannot cover it or erase it for long.
Enlightenment, while it derives its outlook from this scientific revolutions, especially that of
scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo, also benefit from the whole interventions of
Charles Darwin, who revolutionized the whole idea about the evolution of human beings that
completely went against the teachings of Christianity. The teachings of Christianity that
established that human beings were the most special creations of God and woman was
created from the rib of the man.
These belief systems which were perpetuated, which were believed, disseminated,
institutionalized for the past so many centuries, were now refuted and challenged by this man,
Charles Darwin, through his work evolution. His work on evolution convincingly argued on
the basis of evidences that human beings were not created all on a sudden, rather every
animal and plant species in this world are the product of a process called evolution, and there
is nothing divine about it.
These scientific discoveries completely shook the foundation of religious explanation of

knowledge. This particular development played a very important and pivotal role in the
emergence of sociology as a discipline. Enlightenment is often seen as a march of progress,
as the rise of reason and the science overcoming the superstitions of middle Ages. Therefore,
this is a very important point, because we talked about this concept of reason and science and
how it was trying to overcome the superstitions existed in middle Ages.
So, a group of intellectuals began to emerge in Europe, arguing that many of the hitherto held
belief systems about the universe, about human beings about the world, especially those
sanctioned and propagated by religion, are nothing but superstitions and unfounded beliefs.
These unfounded beliefs need to be replaced with the knowledge that is produced by the
reason and science. So, you see the decline of a particular religious paradigm as an
explanatory platform. And you see the emergence of science and reason as an alternative
platform and as an alternative system of knowledge.
The kind of conflict between religion and science becomes very important during this
particular period. That conflict later lead to the decline of religion, which very famously
known in sociological literature as the process of secularization, meaning how religion lost its
significance in the public sphere, in the society, in politics, in social aspects in everything.
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Therefore, this is seen as a fundamental conflict between science and religion, and the
explanatory potential of religion as a paradigm to explain about the worldly things, about the
universe was very significantly dented by the rise of science and reason.
These enlightenment thinkers argued for the use of reason to analyze and understand the
universe and the world around them, rather than blindly accepting the reasoning of religion
and tradition. As you know, there is a very close connection between religion and tradition.
Every religion has a religious tradition comprises if a set of rules and practices, which are
supposedly considered to be constant and supposedly contains some of the most essential
elements of this religion.
Many of these traditions were protected and considered very important and essential because
they were religiously sanctioned and one could not change them. Therefore, challenging this
religious traditions was considered to be a major offense and a sin. Against all these widely
believed systems and convictions, there are a set of people who now argue that you need to
use reason and to analyze and understand the universe and the world around them, rather than
blindly accepting the reasoning of religion and tradition.
This introduced a new perception of an orderly universe, which was governed by natural laws
of motion and gravity rather than spirit. Science could grasp these laws in mathematical form.
There was no need for a divine purpose to explain the working of nature. The natural world
became subject to humankind’s prediction and will. This realization was a moment of
tremendous sense of empowerment.
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This particular realization that there are natural laws and these laws are governing the
planetary motions and the universe, and we can make sense of them, and understand them has
brought important changes. The idea that we do not need to depend upon the clergy or the
priests or so called holy books to know the truths about the universe and they have very little
to offer in order to make sense of the functioning of universe was completely new in terms of
outlook.
The natural world becomes a subject of humankind's prediction and will. You can predict
how the world will evolve and you can understand a lot of things, you can move and control a
lot of things.
This was a moment of tremendous sense of empowerment, a new sense of power, new sense
of knowledge where you can use your intellect and wisdom in order to make sense of the
world, because there are natural laws, which are intelligible to human beings and by
understanding these natural laws, you can deal with them better.
And thereby, it was an open call to argue that this the religion is of very limited use. Maybe
religion has some relevance to the questions of spirituality, individual issues or organizing the
social aspects, but beyond that religious contribution are irrelevant in understanding the
world and the universe. The relevance of religion in the realm of science was seen as either
minimal or almost nil.
This lead do the commitment to the idea of an empirical science. As we mentioned in the
previous session, the idea of empiricism talks about the ability of human beings to understand
his world around him through the senses. A reliable understanding of the world, they insisted,
could only be attained through experience, observation and experimentation. It is the most
fundamental component and the most important feature of science that you observe, you
experience, you collect data, you classify them, you experiment with them, and you prove the
hypothesis and then you reach to a conclusion.
The scientific method that combines positivism and empiricism were widely heralded as the
most suitable, or perhaps the only way of understanding the world. That again, resulted in a
major conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, because it came as a very serious challenge
to the existing positions and powers of the Church.
Roman Catholic Church was not only a religious institution, it was also a political institution.
A combination of these two deadly forces religious power as well as political power, made
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Roman Catholic Church an extremely powerful institution. Therefore, it was not very easy to
fight the influence of Roman Catholic Church. However, soon, it became very clear that the
church has very little to offer to resist or to criticize the emergence of the increasing
influences and expansion of the field of science and expansion of scientific and technological
advancement
What are the consequences of these scientific revolutions into the field of society, or how did
this emergence of reasoning and empiricism and a kind of a scientific methodology and the
newfound sense of empowerment that you can understand the world by your own sense and
intellect influence social sciences?
These enlightenment philosophers were “practical social reformers,” seeking knowledge

“about all for the sake of its utility.” They were confident that the findings of science could
be employed to improve human condition. There was consensus that you can improve the
conditions of humanity and can make the lives of people far better. You can uplift the living
standards of people and can make them freer. You can ‘emancipate’, which is the most
important idea.
These philosophers dreamt about emancipation of large populations and they argued that
these people can be free of the shackles and the chains. That was the period of transition from
medieval feudalism to that of capitalism and large vast sections of people were bondages of
feudalism.
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Many of these philosophers believed that, vast majority of people were under the chains of
religion and the chains of church, who are blindly following certain unfounded principles. So,
they argued that this scientific revolution can be used for the betterment of people. There was
a major concern about the betterment of human beings, and about elevating the states of
human beings to make them lead a far better life through the emancipation of humankind.
This vision implied a conception of the world as malleable, capable of being rearranged to
align more closely with the dictates of reason and the requirements of human welfare.
Commitment to a better society and ideas of progress.
As I told you this feeling of empowerment gives you the possibility of changing the world as
per your ideas. This comes against many of the teachings of the church or many of the
teachings of almost every religion that argues that the world is like this, because God created
it so and you are suffering because God want you to suffer. You are suffering from poverty,
you are suffering from illness, and you are suffering from oppression because that is how it
is.
A quite a lot of theoretical explanations about human suffering and exploitation, about the
existence of different classes, consider it to be the most noble and natural vast majority of
them are suffering under this kind of social order which was seen as divinely sanctioned. It
was seen as ordered by the God. In this context, the new argument suggest that you can
change the society as per your conviction as per your reason marking a decisive critique of
the status quo.
It completely challenged these arguments of religion, especially that of Christianity. This

sense of empowerment informed not only the intellectuals, but also the ordinary people. It
convinced lot of people that that the world is malleable, you can shape it the way you want,
you can fashion it the way you want, you can orient it the way you want. You can create a
more better and humane society. You can create a society where inequalities are at its
minimum and where large number of people do not suffer in their everyday life.
This sense of idea emerges from the argument that the world can be understood by your
human consciousness and human intellect. That provided a major impetus to the study of
society and it gave so much of momentum and enthusiasm, not only to the philosophers who
led this moment, but also it slowly percolated down to the ordinary population.
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A group of philosophers including Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, John
Locke and Immanuel Kant, a number of them, the, the list of, you know Enlightenment
thinkers are very, very long, I have just selectively put a very important numbers. So, these
scholars include, say political scientists and philosophers Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume,
Adam Smith and David Hume, they were economists, and Immanuel Kant is a philosopher.
A group of scholars cutting across disciplines agreed upon some of the most important
arguments that the existing world order and existing situation can be changed for something
better. They were not very clear about what constitute ‘better’, but there was an idea that we
can definitely take the society to a far better position.
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Most enlightenment philosophers, especially in the fields of political science tend to be

utilitarian, where they thought that everyone has natural desire to maximize pleasure and
minimize pain. This idea significantly informed the emergence of economic theories during
this particular time. According to this idea, there is nothing wrong in trying to maximize the
pleasure and to minimize the pain. For that, human beings need to enter into some kind of a
contractual agreement which imply the rise of social contract theory that is predominant in
enlightenment political and economic thinking.
Many economists advocated the elimination of the government and its customary regulation
of the economy, allowing the free market through the idea of “invisible hand,”, argued by
Adam Smith in order maximize everyone's self-interest and to have a good of society as a
whole.
The economic philosophy David Hume and then Adam Smith come from this kind of an
argument that the government in their time, such as the monarchical or dictatorial kind of
government must recede, must lose its significance. The market must be allowed to freely
work as per its own logic and dynamics. In that way, people are able to pursue their passion
and desires and get their self-interest is fulfilled, and as a whole, it is good for the society.
You will find its implication in political science with the rise of social contract theory, where
the basic argument is that if everybody needs to live together, they need to have certain kind
of contract with each other and also with the state. This new kind of consciousness and
understanding about the world in which we live and about the universe had enormous
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implications on every distinct fields of life, whether it is political or social or economic or
philosophical. There was no sphere of society that was untouched by the arguments of
Enlightenment.
This is a very brief introduction to this huge fascinating topic, but I hope that it must have
given you some basic idea about how Enlightenment functioned as a catalyst in the
emergence of sociology as a new science. We will wind up here and then meet you for the
next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 07
Emergence of Nation-state and French Revolution
Welcome back to the class, and we are continuing our discussion about the Emergence of
Sociology in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. In the last classes, we were
discussing a series of factors that provided a very compelling context and a set of reasons for
the emergence of sociology during that particular historical context.
Let me also reiterate the point that, for a discipline to emerge as something new, especially a
discipline like social science requires a very compelling context. A host of socio-economic,
political and cultural factors are necessary for the emergence of a set of theoretical
formulations and methodological orientations which later gets consolidated as a discipline.
When you look at these major changes, the great transformation that swept across Europe
during this definitive period in its history, in terms of the political realm, and political sphere
of society, two important factors emerged to the fore, they are the emergence of nation-state
and the French Revolution.
Now, we are all familiar that nation-states are one of the most prevalent and important form
of political organizations. But we must know that this form of political organization in the
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form of a nation-state is of a very recent origin. It has not been the kind of way in which we
decide, the human beings decided to organize themselves throughout the history.
The nation-state arose with the expansion of capitalism and state replaced the city as a major
center for power and commerce. There is a very close connection between the expansion of
capitalism and the emergence of nation state and the state replaced the city as the major
center of power and commerce.
In earlier kingdoms and empires, it was the cities that were the nerve center of commerce
and merchandise activities, but with the expansion of nation-states, it became the unit of these
economic activities and played a very important role in the emergence of capitalism.
Why is it that there is a very close connection between capitalism and nation-states? Why
capitalism also became the most prominent form of economic activity, along with the
emergence of nation-states? Is there any relationship between these two? The
transformations were occurring both in the economic as well as political realm. Scholars were
of the very firm opinion that for capitalism to emerge as an institutionalized and important
economic form, then you must have the character of a nation-state in its political realm. They
would argue that capitalism could only gain world power in the context of a new state system
which provided a structured law and the fiscal guarantees of a peaceful social environment.
This is something very important, what is it that a nation-state has to offer why and how it
provides a stable environment of investment for entrepreneurs, factory owners, merchants
and for all the stakeholders who are involved in the economic activity.
Now, there is a structure of law and the legal system is well entrenched. It is not based on the
whims and fancies of the ruler and there is a disconnection between the ruler and the set of
laws, so that the ruler cannot change the set of rules as per his desires. There is also an
established legal system and a fiscal guarantee of a peaceful social environment. As a result
of these, there is an all-powerful political system which ensures that a more or less peaceful
social environment prevail. This kind of a guarantee is something very important for
capitalism as a mode of economic organization to emerge.
There are also arguments that economic compulsion and workplace surveillance replaced
direct coercion as the primary practices of controlling labor. The workplace surveillance and
the direct logic of capitalism emerged as a sufficiently powerful mechanism to control and
extract the maximum labor from the labor force so that you need not punish them physically,
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you need not threaten them, you need not use your brute force, but the very economic
rationale of modern capitalist system compelled the workers to work maximum.
We will discuss these in the coming classes when we discuss sections on Karl Marx and
others. So, the state became larger and more powerful, they created stable monetary systems,
which promoted the buying and selling of land and the establishment of wage labor. These
are the kind of structural relationships between the political system as well as the economic
system. The establishment of stable monetary systems and a peaceful and overarching power
of the state played an important role in economic activities including say, buying and selling
of land and other aspects.
As the nation-state became the accepted political form after sixteenth century, it enforced a
statutory monopoly over a delimited territory and rule sanctioned by law. We understand
modern nation state as a political entity has absolute sovereign power over a specific
delimited territorial area. This form of centralization of power was something very important
for the emergence and fruitful functioning of the capitalist system.
It also led to the rise of the market which demanded these stable institutions of rule and law,
so that the entrepreneurship and long term investment vital for capitalism could take place.
This is done to instill confidence in the minds of entrepreneurs and capitalists, so that they
establish factories, employ people. The political climate of peace and trust are something
very important for capitalism as a system of economic activity to take shape.
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The expansion of capitalism was dependent on the centralization of violence in the modern
state, as the police controlled populations internally, while government provided the military
support for capitalist expansion abroad. This is one of the important insights about how
aspects of violence associated with the modern state is in many ways helpful for the capitalist
expansion. We know that, one of the very important features of modern nation state is that it
alone has the legitimate power of using violence; state alone has the ability to use legitimate
violence over its citizens. So, every state ensures that it uses the police force to control its
internal population, while it also provides military support for capitalist expansion abroad.
This was extremely important in the colonial context, as you must be knowing that the major
European countries fought relentlessly over several centuries for the control of different
colonies in different parts of the world i.e. in Asia, in Africa and Latin America. The nation-
states could really do this dual function of controlling its internal population, as well as
providing a military support for the capitalist expansion abroad so that new markets and new
places can be identified from where raw materials can be sourced.
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Along with the emergence of nation-state as a very predominant form of political

organization, one of the most important incidents or episodes in the European history was the
French Revolution that began in 1789, and went on for next ten years. It is considered as one
of the most significant political events not only in Europe, but in the whole world because of
the ramifications of French Revolution and its consequences, its reverberations which became
very evident in the later political processes, not only in Europe, but across the world.
Thus, it is extremely important for us to understand, what were the connections between
French Revolution and the emergence of sociology? How did a particular incident, a
particular political development provided an important impetus for the emergence of a
discipline like sociology. You must be knowing what exactly happened in French Revolution,
I am not going into the detail. It actually is the overthrow of the feudal estate system where
the king exploited the vast majority of commoners of the third estate, with the help of the
clergy and nobility, who occupied the first and second estate respectively.
Here, we are talking about the specific type of social organization that existed in France
during that particular time, known as estate system comprising of three estates, the clergy, the
nobility, commoners and the king used the first two estates, basically to exploit the ordinary
people who represented the vast majority of the population. After a series of political
developments, there was a mass uprising where people they took up an armed revolution and
they guillotined and beheaded King Louie XVI and his wife, and it had a bloody end.
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Though Napoleon Bonaparte took over after the French Revolution, it did not really succeed
in all its stated claims because it did not lead to a kind of an immediate democracy, in that
sense French Revolution was only a partial success. But the kind of consequences and the
kind of premises on which the French Revolution took place had a very significant long
lasting impact and impression all over the world.
The year 1789 witnessed an extraordinary phenomenon, a population rising up and

transforming what was previously assumed to be natural order of things. One of the most
important aspects of French revolution is that the things which were earlier considered to be
natural order of things i.e. which were immutable and unchangeable, like political
arrangement or social arrangements were now seen as brittle and things that can be
overthrown. This particular kind of an understanding that the monarchy or a set of rulers or
the hereditary system of kings where a king becomes the Emperor, and then his son becomes
the king and that lineage continues, and nobody else can occupy that particular place,
majority of the people are exploited by this handful of few, the kind of a religious explanation
providing legitimacy to these particular systems. , all these factors or all these processes were
seen as natural. Then suddenly, you realize that these things can be overthrown and a
completely different system, a completely different political order, much more humane and
much better ideals can be established. This is something very important in terms of what
happened during the French Revolution.
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So, it was a revolt against royal despotism, hereditary privilege, and economic oppression and
a revolt in the name of democratic government, political equality, and human rights.
If royal despotism, hereditary privilege and economic oppression were the order of the day, if
they were the very established ways in which people were living for centuries, then you
realize that they can be replaced with far better forms of arrangement, in the name of
democratic government, where everybody irrespective of your economic position,
irrespective of whether you are a landed person or you are a landless person, whether you are
educated or whether you are not educated, whether you are a man or a woman, or a white or a
black, irrespective of all these social markers, you are able to take part in this democratic
process.
You have a say in your own governance and the most important aspect is the ideal about
political equality where everybody is equal and there is no distinction on the basis of birth.
You must be knowing that these are very revolutionary arguments in a traditional society like
medieval France where the social distinctions on the basis of birth was very important.
Above all these ideas of human rights which may not have developed then the way we
understand it today, but the idea that everybody has equal rights or everybody must be treated
equally or human beings have certain innate rights were very important in all these
discourses.
Now a particular set of revolutionary ideas that have quite a lot of emancipatory potential are
emerging. With these kinds of ideas, you are confronting an age old oppressive and
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exploitative system. So, the idea became prominent that the old social order could be swept
away in a revolutionary act and society could be remade according to the dictates of the
reason. Again, we are coming back to the idea of reason, because European enlightenment is
seen as the era where the reason is brought to the forefront.
We discussed in the previous class, how human reason and human intelligence was seen as a
very important resource to understand the way in which the universe function by completely
setting aside or by completely dismissing the theoretical explanation of the world. People and
scientists argued that you can use reason, human intelligence to understand the way the
universe functions. Similarly, the argument now taken are from the field of Natural Sciences
and Physical Sciences but also applicable in the realm of society.
Hence, the argument is that you can use the dictates of reason and your own logical thinking
in order to remold the society the way you want, and that too, through a revolutionary act, a
very swift act. One do not need to wait for centuries for the very gradual changes to take
place. If there is a popular rising, these drastic, overwhelming and complete transformation
can be brought in a very short period of time.
With the French Revolution, the term revolution became a powerful one which began to
influence the imaginations of quite a lot of political activities, because it was something quite
promising as you are able to bring in complete and absolute transformation in a society
within a very short period of time.
Whether it is violent or not, was not the kind of concern that most of these people had. So, all
the social order could be swept away in a very short and very effective revolutionary act. As a
result, the revolution affected the entire social structure of France, abolishing customary
relationship between the classes.
The whole estate system i.e. old, traditional system, which has both socio political and
economic underpinnings were collapsed. The French Revolution invented the idea of political
rather than religious revolution as a vehicle for fundamental social change the kind of
arguments by the church, clergy that the change is possible but only through the platform of
religion only by listening to the arguments and advices of the clergy is just completely
dismissed. There is also a very powerful argument, indeed, a way to achieve salvation in this
world. This is an extremely important point because they argued that at least quite a lot of
scholars and then philosophers who belong to this period argued that, you do not need to
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really wait for a salvation after your death, the promise of heaven, we are not sure whether it
exists or not, whether it is real or not. But more importantly, you must work to establish a
heaven in this world, a heaven in your lifetime, not after your death. So, they promise the
kind of salvation in this world, not in the other world, not in the world after your death. It was
in a sense a major process of secularization, where the idea of salvation was secularized.
The idea of your salvation, your elevation, the ideas of your attaining eternal peace, all these
things were subjected to very significant reformulation, redefinition by these scholars by
saying that if you need to be redeemed, to attain salvation, then it has to take place in this
world, during your lifetime. You do not need to be convinced, brainwashed by the clergy, by
the priest who would promise you salvation and then eternal bliss after your death, because
they are only the promises without foundations. This particular class has been brainwashing
you over the centuries by these kind of arguments which do not have any basis.
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French revolution accelerated the centralization of government, while promoting the notion
that the people have the right to participate in their own society and government. We just
discussed this briefly a couple of minutes earlier, the argument that every ordinary person has
the right to participate in their own government and the system.
They are not the mere recipients, passive recipients of a political system that is appointed
traditionally, chosen traditionally by somebody, which is claimed to be having a kind of a
divine approval. All these ideas were summarily rejected, and it was argued that every person
has the right to participate in their own society and government.
The French Revolution inspired other democratic uprising in much of the Europe throughout
the nineteenth century. As I told you, even if the French Revolution was only a partial
success, it did not lead to a kind of a full blown democracy in France, because Napoleon took
over the reins of France immediately after that, and made issues of democracy central
component of political discussions.
But we also know that with these kind of examples that at revolution, a movement even if it
is a failure in a particular sense of the world, its impact has to be evaluated in a different
manner. How do you evaluate the impact of a particular social movement? How do you
evaluate the impact of particular incident, the revolutionary act? We cannot really limit our
analysis immediately towards the particular incident, but its resonance should be analyzed for
a much longer period in time. So, a French example, French Revolution is a classic example
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in that sense. It promulgated the idea of a popular sovereignty, a powerful “new principle of
political legitimacy.”
It left an inspiring and world-changing legacy in the form of enduring and deeply felt
democratic and egalitarian aspirations. This could be one of the most important contributions
of French Revolution i.e. it kind of institutionalized democratic and egalitarian aspirations. It
is a phenomenal point that you are able to convince a large section of ordinary population that
their aspirations for equality and political right is legitimate.
They are not a set of people who have to be governed by somebody else all through and there
is nothing divine and religious about it, but rather they have the right to aspire for a very
genuine share, they have the right to aspire for their own participation in deciding their
destiny, both in terms of social and political life. These are these reasons why French
Revolution is still considered as one of the most important watershed moments in the history
of world where these set of revolutionary ideas with the kind of liberating potential with
emancipator potential were wide spread wide across the society and they were
institutionalized and became legitimate. This is the reason why they are talking about it in the
new language of political legitimacy.
This particular incident, though it happened early in Europe, it played a very important role in
bringing forth a series of ideas, a set of arguments, an enhanced notion of rights, a kind of
assertive notions of rights across the European countries, and of course later throughout the
world.
Hence, the rise of nation-state, and this particular incident of French Revolution played a very
significant role in completely altering the political culture of Europe, which again, was an
extremely important political context in which a discipline like sociology began to emerge.
We will continue the discussion. Thank you.
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Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Lecture 08
Industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism
Welcome back to the class. We are continuing with the discussion about the social context in
which discipline like sociology emerged. We are talking about the great transformations that
happened in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. In the previous class, we discussed about
the intellectual transformations and political transformations that happened with the rise of
nation-state and the French Revolution.
And in today's class, we are going to discuss, the major transformations that happened in the
economic front and how did the economy underwent substantial and comprehensive changes
in Europe during this particular time. We are familiar with the different ways of organization
and distinct characters of economic activity which are usually classified, at least in the
Marxian sense, as a primitive communism or feudalism or slavery or capitalism or socialism.
These modes are extremely important, because their relevance is not only confined to the
realm of economic activity, but they spill over to other fields such as social, economic and
cultural spheres of life. It is extremely important to understand what the larger
transformations were and what were the kind of revolutions that happened in the sphere of
economy in Europe during this particular time.
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This European transformation, the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution began to
spread across the globe immediately after its origin, basically through the process of
colonialism. So, in this class, we are going to examine this two important aspects ‘The Rise
of Capitalism’ and ‘Industrial Revolution’.
The Industrial Revolution, with machine labour gradually replacing hand labour, originated
in Great Britain in the late 1700s and then spread to Western Europe and the United States. In
the previous class, we discussed about scientific discoveries, we discussed about Copernicus,
we discussed about Charles Darwin, we discussed about Galileo Galilei and we discussed
about how a series of scientific discoveries completely undermined the religious explanation
about the universe.
The scientific revolutions were not only restricted in the realm of ideas, but they also had
very Immediate and specific practical consequences because it was transferred and
transformed as a set of technological innovations.
Series of technological innovations took place during this particular time and centuries just
preceding to that such as the discovery of electricity, the discovery of steam engine and a host
of other scientific discoveries and technological innovations completely began to transform
the technological and economic scenario of Europe and most importantly in Britain and that
immediately spread across Europe and to America and then on to the rest of the society.
We are familiar with India's own experience in terms of technological advancements.

Whether it is telegraph or postal or telecommunications or railways or a host of other
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technological innovations or any other technological expansions happened in India, happened
mainly because of colonial rule. Whether that was for their own convenience and for their
own efficiency is a different question. Colonies began to experience the fruits of
technological innovation, basically through the process of colonialism.
The Industrial Revolution initiated an outpouring of continuous scientific and technological

innovations and continuous improvements in the methods of production. Once the process of
industrialization got underway, as Eric Hobsbawm writes, “change became the norm.”
Therefore, we are witnessing a particular phase in history with the rate of these innovations
become so high that this particular phase cannot be compared with any of this preceding
centuries, where the rate of changes or the rate of innovations were much slower and lower.
We witnessed that the period since 16th or17th centuries experienced a series of scientific
innovations that began to appear with very long lasting influences. So, that is why it is
leading to an outpouring of continuous scientific and technological innovation.
Innovation does not come and then stop, rather it becomes a continuous set of innovations. A
host of scholars and scientists working across the countries are bringing in new technologies
which are becoming more and more efficient and thereby replacing the traditional
technology, where human labour and animal labour were the most important source of labour
power. Whether it is in terms of industrial activities or in terms of agriculture activities, this
human labour and animal labour were swiftly replaced by the machine labour and continuous
improvement in the methods of production.
This technological innovations had very specific bearing on the economic activities. As this
methods of production and once the process of industrialization got underway, Eric
Hobsbawm writes “change became the norm.” You are no longer in a society which is more
or less static, you are no longer in a society where change is very gradual and very-very slow.
You are in a society which is changing rapidly, you are in a society which is witnessing
unprecedented kind of transformation, a transformation of a much higher level in every
aspect of life. In this particular context, the changes are brought in by technological
innovations.
In the previous class, we discussed about the changes that happened in the intellectual realms,
in terms of the ideologies and the resultant changes that were brought in the political realm.
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Here, we are talking about the kind of changes in technological and economic spheres of the
society.
We need to understand the relation between technological innovations and the emergence of
new domestic and overseas markets and the role of colonialism. I have been reiterating
several times that the new domestic market emerges with the rise of factory system, new
Industrial capitalist class leading to the ability to spend more. As a result, new overseas
markets emerge during this particular time, through the process of colonialism.
We know that how big this issue was in our freedom struggle which lead Mahatma Gandhi to
launch the whole movement of Swadeshi movement because India was one of the most
important markets for Britain. India was also a place for them to procure raw materials and
these raw materials were taken to Britain from where they were converted into finished
products and brought back to India and sold at a much higher price.
Thereby completely breaking the traditional industrial system in India and also reaping so
much economic profit through this process. Therefore, the connection between the rise of
capitalism and the process of colonialism is very strong and we need to understand these
larger transformations not only as the triumph of science and technology, but also the triumph
of systematic exploitation through the process of colonialism. The scenario this development
are much-much complicated rather than a black and white situation.
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As students of sociology we are more interested to understand the implications or the

consequences of these technological changes, the changes that happened in terms of science
and technology leading to a more efficient forms of production, not only in the economic
sphere but also promote predominantly in the social sphere.
How did these changes influence the social sphere of Europe? These changes basically, led to
the decline of agrarian rural life and the rise of industrial urban societies. We are talking
about two things, the changes from an agrarian rural life to that of an industrial urban
societies.
It is not only the transition from rural societies to urban societies, but also a transformation
from an agrarian society to an industrial society and these are very different types of social
organizations in every sense of the world. Not only in terms of the nature predominant
economic activity but also in terms of a host of socio cultural and political aspects that come
along with that.
This feudal tradition based economic transactions were replaced by market oriented
contractual relations. A feudal society is characterized more by conventions, traditions and by
kind of economic transactions influenced by very close networks, close kinship, close ties,
ethnic ties and so on. They were gradually but significantly replaced by more market oriented
and contractual relations, where this ethnic affiliations, your conventional ties, your social
ties became less significant, if not completely irrelevant.
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Even now, even in the modern capitalist system, these ties are important. But they became
less significant and business transactions happens mostly through modern contractual
relations and a new culture based on individualism. It comprises of competitive struggle for
wealth and a secular worldview that gave people a strong sense that they were living in a new
era of constant change.
A host of consequences of these changes occurred such as a new culture based on

individualism, which is the staple food for sociological thought. We will discuss how the
rights of the individual is one of the most important aspects of sociological studies. We
discussed in the previous class about the emergence of the social, along with the rise
individual as an independent person, as a more free agent, not as a part of a wider collectivity
or not as a part of a wider community.
This transformation of the individual as an independent free agent, who can think on her own
terms, who is not completely bound by the traditional rules, who has agential power, who is
empowered and so on and who involve in a competitive struggle for wealth is a very distinct
idea compared to that of previous ideas about the Individual.
We discussed how capitalism emerged, which completely destroyed the existing hierarchical
social stratification system, based on landed few and landless majority.
The land became less an important site for economic competition as industries and factories
became the new sites for this competitions. It came with a rapid phase of secularization where
the influence of religion began to decline and was pushed to the private sphere. Religion was
disentangled from other domains of social life, influence of religion on law, on political life
and on education was curtailed.
Therefore, you have more and more spheres emerge as autonomous from the influence of
religion and this is an extremely important element of the process of secularization. We will
come back to secularization more in detail when we discuss Max Weber, but I just want to
highlight this point. Secularization is not only that the number of people who go to church or
mosque or temple are coming down. It is also a very important delimitation of the relevance
of the religion in what is understood as the public sphere and in the public matters.
Religion is seen as one of the important institutions but its relevance and its ambits are very
specifically restricted. It is very seriously restricted and its dominance, it influence in a large
extent to other realms like family, law, politics, entertainment and a host of other things are
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very significantly curtailed. A new secular worldview emerged and that gave people a strong
sense that they were living in an era of constant change.
The fundamental changes in the social bonding between people such as the decline of
kinship, religious bonding and joint family system and the rise of individualism are all
connected. We know that in an agrarian rural settings, the relationship amongst people in
villages or in rural areas are mostly defined by agrarian activities and that kind of social
relationship is very different and usually defined as face to face interaction.
Everybody knows each other and their families for the past so many generations. Everybody
knows each other's caste and family history and everything and you are seen as a member of
a particular family, you are seen as a member of a particular community or a religion and that
kind of intimate social bonding was completely replaced and was disrupted because in an
urban situation you are seen as an individual.
The kind of relationship that exists in an urban setting is qualitatively different. It is not face
to face and not very intimate. Of course, you will have very strong set of relationships but
people generally do not know or do not identify you as belonging to a particular family or
particular community. They do not know the history of your life.
People are more or less anonymous. You may not even know who are living next to you.
There is a very interesting connection between the rise of industrialism, industrialization in
Europe and rise of nuclear families, because capitalism wanted able-bodied people, especially
able-bodied men who are available for their work.
Therefore, there was a large scale migration which we are going to discuss. There was a large
scale migration of predominantly male workers from rural areas to urban and Industrial
regions, leaving mostly the parents and other family members back in the villages. They
migrate alone to urban settings alone or maybe with their wife and children. So, the rise of
nuclear families and the decline of joint families and the decline of influence of religion have
all played a very important role in the rise of individualism or the rise of individual as
autonomous entities.
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There was large scale migration of population to urban areas and there are very fascinating
statistics about how large scale migration happened across Europe in very short span of time.
How the population cities increased manifold and the rapid growth of cities, which brought in
a series of problems and challenges, because it was unplanned and unregulated completely, as
it happened as a consequences of a sudden economic transformation.
That led to the proliferation of slums, poor housing and sanitary conditions and people's life
became quite chaotic, and there was quite a lot of issues in terms of living together in
unhygienic conditions in with the very bad infrastructural facilities. A series of social issues
emerged as a result of this large and unregulated migration of people who left behind the
traditional feudal society and then moved towards the urban cities which were seen as the
modern industrial new world.
Karl Polanyi is one of the very important intellectuals and he described this process as “at
the heart of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, there was an almost miraculous
improvement in the tools of production, which was accompanied by a catastrophic
dislocation of the lives of common people”.
Two things happened simultaneously. On the one side, there is a miraculous improvement of
tools of production. As we discussed earlier, the human power and the animal power was
dismissed and it was replaced by machine power, which was far more effective and more
efficient in terms of productivity and at the same time, it was accompanied by catastrophic
dislocation of the lives of common people.
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This dislocation is not only spatial dislocation. It is not only that people were displaced from
the rural area into urban areas. These are also dislocations in the lives of the people in every
sense of the word, in their cultural understanding, in the traditional ways of living, in the
quality of social bonds and the kind of an orientation that they used to develop. So, it was a
complete transformation and Polayani is using the word catastrophic, because the
consequences were very significant.
So, that is why we will come back to this kind of characterizations as catastrophic, because
most of the social scientists including the people whom we are going to discuss in the coming
classes found these changes as very disturbing. Because the social order which they were
familiar with, characterized by a very lethargic slow life of the traditional societies were
completely replaced by very unpredictable fast changing tumultuous social life, which had a
series of negative consequences and had catastrophic effects of the common people.
The rise of the factory as the most important site of economic activity and economic
production does not mean that the agriculture activities are declined, but the factory emerges
as the most important site of economic activity and the division between private sphere of
domestic work and the public sphere of factory and employment emerges.
Another very important point which can be easily connected with this change is the later
theorizations about the emergence of public sphere and the distinction between public and
private. Your household being always synonymous with your private life and the public life
being synonymous with your factory, your place of employment, the place of your
entertainment, the place of your reading, intellectual discussions and other things. So, the rise
of factory is yet another very important which we will discuss.
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In the factory, you have a central surveillance of the workforce and greater control on the
labourer; it is a regimented life and the tyranny of the clock. What does it mean to experience
a transition from a feudal, agrarian life into that of a modern factory life? How the labour
class did experienced this change?
The change was tremendous. The labour class or working class experienced this changes as
very significant, because they were always under surveillance. There was no physical threat,
no physical punishment unlike the feudal period and the power equations were completely
changed under Industrial capitalism.
However, because of the rationale of the economic system in which workers were entangled,
they were completely under central surveillance and they were forced to work more. They
were constantly under surveillance and supervision. They were forced to work more and it
was a regimented life.
So, what does it mean to be a ‘regimented life’? I am also connecting with this point of a
‘tyranny of the clock’. Because now, the life is regimented, the life is divided into very
specific rigid, schedules. For example, the sound of the siren in the factories emerged as a
very important factor in every labourer’s life.
The idea of the work begins and ends with the siren in the morning and evening respectively.
In between the working day, there will be a short period of time around 30 minutes or 40
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minutes for them to have food. It doesn’t matter whether they are hungry or not that allotted
time is for you to have food and you have to get back to work after that specific time period.
At the end of the day, maybe after 10 hours or 12 hours of continuous work, the siren rings
again, you must stop your work and then get back to your home. Hence, this was completely
a different lifestyle for quite a lot of people, because in feudal societies, this kind of very
stark difference between the work and the life was not acute and this kind of a demarcation
was not very strong. Here, the life became more regimented and there was this all pervasive
influence of the siren and the clock, which brought in so much of changes in the everyday life
of ordinary people turned workers.
As the industrial economy displaced agrarian economy, wealth in the form of landed property
declined in importance relative to the wealth in the forms of industrial capital including
factories and machinery. It is a significant transformation before the Industrial Revolution, it
was the land that is the most valued and was the site of economic activity. Agriculture was
the most important form of economic activity.
Labour had to take place in this agricultural field and there was a decline of this agricultural
land as the site of economic activity. On the other hand, the buildings and the factories and
the machinery became the important forms of capital. The use of Land continued but it was
no longer the most important form of capital. The new form of capital was a set of new ideas,
buildings, huge buildings and huge factories and the kind of machineries which can enhance
the production process.
A series of new issues emerged as a result of the transformation to Industrial capitalism due
to the exploitation of workers and resistance. We will touch upon this point maybe later when
we discuss Karl Marx. Because Karl Marx was a historian and an intellectual who devoted
his entire life for analyzing this whole question of labour and working class in the capitalist
era.
This transformation resulted in the systematic and brutal exploitation of workers and the
resultant resistance lead many times to successful revolutions and many often to not so
successful workers resistance which was kind of negotiated or defeated. While Industrial
Revolution resulted in the time of modern capitalism, on the other side, it also gave birth to
capitalism's chief adversary: the modern socialist movement.
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Till the fall of Berlin Wall, socialism represented as a very important model of competition
for the capitalist system. Throughout 19th and 20th century, socialism was a very important
alternate. It was seen as an important alternative for capitalist economic system.
Industrial Revolution, not only gave birth to the triumph of modern capitalism but also the
resulted in the modern socialist movement or the working class movement. The ideas of Karl
Marx and the ideas of socialism became very powerful during this particular time, leading to
a series of workers unrest across the industrial societies, because it was only through this
workers unrest and agitations that they were able to get better benefits from the capitalist
class.
Whether it is to attain better remuneration or better living conditions or other facilities,

working class had to involve in constant struggles and constant strikes and there are moments
where they were able to improve their life as a result of these struggles. Industrial capitalism,
therefore meant the end of the feudalism as well as the rise of working class compressing of
free independent agents who are free to sell his or her labour power.
Now, the labourer emerges as an independent agent who can sell his labour power. For
example, in the previous system of slavery where you become a property of your master,
where the master can sell you, and you are not the owner of your labour power. Under
feudalism, your dependency over the feudal lord was much more stronger. While under
capitalism, you become as an autonomous, independent agent who can sell your labour.
We conclude this session with a very famous passage from Karl Marx and Engel’s very
famous book, ‘The Communist Manifesto’ ,where they say, “All fixed fast-frozen relations,
with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-
formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that
is holy is profaned”. It is a very beautiful passage, which actually captures the kind of
magnitude as well as the depth of the transformation that was happening.
Marx and Engels are saying that all new formed ones became antiquated before they can
ossify or before something becomes like crystallized, they became antiquated. Even the new
one becomes old, very fast and all the venerable prejudices and opinion are swept away .The
whole aspects of tradition with all fixed and fast frozen relations with the train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinion are swept away and all that is solid melts into air and all
that is holy is profaned. These are very beautiful sentences. All that is considered to be holy,
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all that is considered to be unquestionable, all that considered to be divinely ordained are now
profaned.
They are brought back to the ground, they are questioned, they are profaned, and all the holy
aspects of them are taken out, and made very ordinary things. This passage is very powerful,
which really captures the mood of this kind of larger transformations happening in Europe
during this particular time.
As we discussed in the previous class, the kind of a large scale transformations happened in
the realm of economy and the kind of social change that took place was yet another factor
that played a very important role in the rise of sociology as a distinct social science
discipline. We will conclude this session now and we will meet you for the next class. Thank
you.
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Lecture 9
Discussion with Dr. Roland Part- 1
Professor R Santhosh: Welcome to this session and in this session we have a guest, Dr.
Roland Wittje, Associate Professor at the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT
Madras. Dr. Roland specializes in the History of Science and Technology.
I have invited him to join us in this session for a discussion on the Emergence of Science as
an important paradigm in Europe, which subsequently led to the advent of the industrial
revolution. Hope you remember that we had a very brief discussion about industrial
revolution which is considered as one among the series of important revolutions that shook
Europe during those important times.
Dr. Roland, we can start this discussion in general with your observations about the rise of
Science as an important explanatory paradigm as opposed to that of religion because, this
particular shift is a very important one in Sociological theory. You know that August Comte
talks about positivism and he borrows this Scientific Methodology as the most important
methodology that can be used within Social Sciences to understand society. The emergence
of Science which was initiated by important scientists also had a very profound impact on
social sciences as well.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Yes obviously, the scientific method which was kind of developed to
study the natural world and describe the law like behaviour of the natural world was then
extended to the social world and to humans. We usually talk about the renaissance, the early
modern period also as the period of the so called scientific revolution even though the term of
scientific revolution has really been criticized very much by Steven Shapin who has written
one of the best books on this, starts it with the argument that there has never been a scientific
revolution.
But obviously, we have a very important period from usually starting with the times of
Copernicus and the transformation of a world view with the earth as the centre to a
heliocentric world view. So, from Toleman to Copernican world view as a start of the
scientific revolution and we can say with Isaac Newton and Newtonian Mechanics that it
comes later at the end.
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But then, we can even look into the times of the Enlightenment, of obviously Newton that
would be the late 17th and early 18th century. The times of the enlightenment of the 18th
century could really be seen as a kind of the closure of this kind of period of the scientific
revolution. The emergence of what we can call scientific understanding of the natural world
and also we used to be talking about the scientific method, but I would also say that a whole
series of scientific methods were developed during this period.
Professor R Santhosh: While, we understand or while we usually talk about this renaissance
or the emergence of scientific revolution, we usually tend to understand it as a phenomenon
that happened within Europe but, how far this perception is right? Because, we know that the
historical exchanges have been happening. What are the kind of or where do we trace this
origins from?
Dr. Roland Wittje: I mean, we obviously have a lot of other transformations like the
religious ones that happened within Europe which is known as the Reformation or you can
say a series of reformations. Obviously, we have Protestantism at the rise of Lutheran
Protestantism, but we also have a lot of other historical changes within world history.
Like we can say specifically, the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman
Empire for example and also the Islamic rulers being driven out of Spain and Portugal. Then
Spain and Portugal subsequently becoming the places of origin of the Voyages of Discovery.
I mean, we know very well about Columbus and Vasco Da Gama and their voyages had very
profound Geopolitical changes and sitting here in India it is very interesting that obviously
both of them were very much inspired by finding new sea route, new trading road to India.
Obviously this is not a new thing. I mean knowledge about India and trading with India and
other parts of Europe or Asia has a very long history back to Antiquity, to Roman Times. But
with these kind of geopolitical changes there emerged the need for a kind of lucrative trade to
find new trade routes which really motivated these new voyages. These also then
metaphorically became new voyages to new territory.
Geographically then, if you think about new geographical knowledge which started to
question the existing geographical knowledge, that this is kind of an artefact of history that
we think, people in ancient times thought that the earth was a disk and not a sphere and that is
not really true, people knew or many people knew very well that earth was a sphere. But, still
there was a lot of unknowns. Specifically, America as a continent and with new lands and
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new geographies being discovered and new Specimens, new people were discovered which
did not really fit very well in the old systems of knowledge and of knowledge classification.
Professor R Santhosh: Coming back to this question of reformation, because Protestantism

is seen as a very important rational approach for the whole idea of religion and how far will
you be able to make a connection between a rational based religious movement and the rise
of the reason in the scientific field?
Dr. Roland Wittje: Look again, it would be from a historical point of view, positivist to draw
a very linear history here like, specifically if you look at let us say Luther’s or Protestantism’s
comment on copernicanism for example, it was not necessarily that they embraced all these
kind of new ideas, what was very new and important is the whole idea to question the
authority of the Church.
It was about questioning old authority as it was also about asking people. It was about the
rise of book print. For example, people would read their own books like before you would
have a situation where Latin was the language of the Church, and people who would not be
speaking Latin they would not understand what would be said in the Church and this was the
time when the Bible was then translated into Vernacular languages, into local languages and
ordinary people were supposed to be reading the Bible, be attentive, to understand and
supposed to reason with the Bible. As a result, when you compare the reality of the Bible and
the reality of the natural world, there are certain discrepancies and the question is to make
sense of these discrepancies. So, how do you bring your reading of the Bible together with
your experience of the world and how do you reason for that.
Professor R. Santhosh: One of the interesting scientist whom we come across in history is
Galileo Galilei who had a very problematic encounter with the Church, who was subjected to
inquisition. Can you tell us more about his arguments and his lingering influence on this
whole scientific level?
Dr. Roland Wittje: We see that there have been some arguments by an important sociologist
Robert Merton about the link between Protestantism and the rise of modern science. If you
turn to Italy we have not really the Protestantism or the rise of Protestantism, but what is very
important about Galileo important for several reasons in our story, not only for his kind of
encounter with the Church.
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We can say if we look at Copernicus and the Copernican world view, for the longest time it
was very uncontroversial. But it was rather a question of how to interpret this, a new
interpretation of how the world really looks or a kind of a mathematical trick like as you can
say, we use this just as a trick. But, we are not saying this is really true. In the true world, the
sun is not really in the centre.
Professor R Santhosh: So, in that sense they did not really take on the Church.
Dr. Roland Wittje: They did not really take on the Church. What Galileo actually was doing it
was taking on Church in terms of the authority of interpretation. Like, how do we have to
understand this? Also there was an idea that the mechanics of the Heavens and the mechanics
of the earth were fundamentally different from each other. Like the heavens were perfect like,
a perfect celestial world and the very imperfect terrestrial world which had a lot of grounding
in kind of religious understandings like, about the perfectionism of the heavens and the
Professor R Santhosh: Perfection
Dr. Roland Wittje: yeah, the imperfection of the earth and for example with Galileo’s
approach to the Moon for example, with the Telescope and showing the imperfection of the
moon like he was bringing in a connection between, say the mechanics of the earth and the
mechanics on heaven and questioning this idea about the perfectionism of the science or the
movement of the stars and the imperfection earth. Along with this, he was also questioning
the authority of the Bible to explain natural phenomena.
I would not say that this is an explanation or an episode of secularism, it was not really about
questioning the existence of a God, this was not the case with Galileo too, that comes much
later during the times of the French revolution and Laplace, an understanding of
Newtonianism where he was asked in his understanding of Newtonianism, where is god in
your model and he says, I do not need god in my model.
This is kind of very famous like where you really push back, no this is much more about the
catholic church as an institution and the authority of the catholic church over interpreting all
these kind of phenomena and he questioned that and that is the reason why he was taken to
the court.
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Professor R Santhosh: Yeah and also I think there were several Philosophers who shared
this argument, isn’t it, that we do not no longer need to require the religious explanation to
understand our world rather there are other universal laws and we can use the faculty of
reason to understand them. So, it was not only in the realm of science but, also in the realm of
philosophy, economics and political science.
Dr. Roland Wittje: But, we have to understand there was no science as such I mean, the
concept of science it would all be under philosophy like we would have the terms of natural
philosophy, experimental philosophy obviously the experiment. So, very much what this kind
of turned towards science is to take the nature as measure like we have both a Neo
Aristotelian and a Neoplatonic influence that are coming in the near Aristotelian.
This is really a rediscovery and also a very interesting rediscovery which has happened in the
early Renaissance period of Greek texts where this is very much related. We have been
talking about this kind of European phenomenon or something which has not really to do
with the contact with other cultures. Because, a lot of these Greek texts had been lost in
Europe and through re-translation movements.
So, there has been translation movements during early Islam and up to one thousand where
Islamic scholars have collected a lot of knowledge both from the Greek world, but we also
have these examples in India where we have translated a lot of Hindu texts and this whole
movement of the zero for example to Europe like which happened through the Islamic world.
There was also this discovery of these Greek texts and they were kind of both near as
Aristotelian which was very Empiricist. We really have to learn from nature, we have to
discover things in nature and Platonic, Neoplatonic which goes more in towards
Geometrization mathematical models and reason.
One of the philosophers obviously, who was very central was Rene Descartes and
Cartesianism like which really also this kind of idea where we can go back to Galilei and the
rise of mechanics as a way of explanation and like the kind of mechanization of the world.
They are the kind of underlying ideology to understand how the world works, to describe the
mechanism how the world works.
Mechanization was very much at the centre of this program even though, we have to
understand that this is again I would not describe these all as kind of Linear phenomena I
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mean, obviously you can say mechanization there is still a lot of open space of debates like
and specifically if, we talk about what has been ruling then as a kind of mechanical world
view until the end of 19th century, there was never been like kind of one homogeneous way
of how this was understood, there were a lot of different kind of programs under this kind of
program mechanization.
Professor R Santhosh: Another very important figure, whom we must discuss I believe is
Charles Darwin. Isn’t it his theory of evolution really fundamentally transformed and really
took on the some of the very fundamental and Cardinal arguments of the Church. So, what
were the kind of reactions and what were the kind of engagements that happened between the
Church and his anti-religious arguments?
Dr. Roland Wittje: I mean, the first point is to say there that we had different branches of
churches, we had the Catholic Church and different protestant versions of the Church. There
has not been any kind of uniform reaction of the Church to Darwinism. First, I would say
obviously I would even like to go a little bit back in time and the rise of natural philosophy
and really kind of the abandonment of a kind religious based understanding I mean, there
were new classification systems coming in Botany and Anthology specifically with the
Linnaean system coming up and as I already said, there are a lot of special specimens coming
from all place in the world and before we have Darwinian evolution, we have earlier models
of evolution.
For example, I mean the best known is Lamarck a French Zoologist who has brought up his
own system of evolution which was very difficult fundamentally in many ways from
Darwinian evolution because, in the Lamarckian evolution, every species has its very own,
very separate trajectory of evolution. There is not the kind of tree of evolution which we have
with a Darwinian evolution.
Ideas of evolutions were there before like Darwinian evolution. But you still find Darwinian
evolution is overwhelmingly accepted in the scientific community. But, there are still some
people who adhere to the idea of Lamarckian evolution as we know there are also a lot of
critiques not in the scientific community but, outside of Darwinian evolution.
Then, the other thing was really debates about the geology and the age of the earth. So,
people like for example, Alexander Von Humboldt. You had a lot of these kind of scientific
voyages, like in the British world more known like the cook exhibition as well but, Alexander
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Von Humboldt who was a German a scientist, more like a universal scientist, who had also
done these kind of voyages went to the Indies for example, and these were also very typical
for the times of the enlightenment i.e. doing these kind of voyages and collecting specimens
from natural history, zoology and botany, but also from geology like geological specimens
and then do all kinds of measurements. Magnetic meteorological measurements, collecting a
lot of data and trying to make sense to organize, systematize and quantify not in the same
way obviously, if you think about Zoology and Botany not to that extent but, specifically if
we think about meteorology and rather than having really models of the weather.
First like collecting data this is really the beginning. If you want to know when we did really
started specifically now in the times of global climate change, when did we really start
collecting systematically weather data it really goes back to this time to the 18th century.
Like collecting, all this kind of data and trying to make sense of this data and within that it
became increasingly difficult to argue that the world would only be five thousand years old.
That just did not work anymore like, there was a lot of controversy also, even in the 19th
century about the age of the earth because, there was still the question and another science
came up, the science of thermodynamics and people would argue but the, the earth cannot be
older than five thousand years because, then it would be much colder. Obviously, they did not
know about radioactivity and radioactive phenomenon that contribute to the energy equation
but, there was this whole conflict about the age of the earth and there was very clear that the
Bible could not be right.
So, all this kind of data and if you look at Charles Darwin he really started out as this kind of
classical you can say natural philosopher who travelled around in the world went to the
Galapagos Islands and other islands and was basically collecting botanical, zoological
geological specimens, like this was really kind of museum collection type rather than, the
experimental type of science.
Like you have these two different traditions really like working with collections and
specifying them going out to the field or experimental philosophy doing experiments in the
laboratory which was very much in the 19th century a lot of it comes together also for
biology.
But, Darwin really coming from this tradition and in the beginning again the resistance of the
Church I mean, there is still the selection of species like which was not so controversial for
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the Church, as the descent of men and making the suggestion that we are part of the natural
selection of species that we are part of this tree of.
Professor R Santhosh: Evolution.
Evolution, that was obviously rather controversial but, even though I would say I mean, the
reaction of different branches of the Church were rather
Professor R Santhosh: Yeah, could you say something more about these different types of
reactions, because they fundamentally challenge some of the most important promises of the
Church about the importance of man the whole question of creation. So, why the Church or
different branches of Church forced to accept it, how did they really deal with it?
Dr. Roland Wittje: You can say regionally there were lot of differences, like you could say
it was early on acceptance was actually rather early you can say, both in Britain with Huxley
and also within in Germany, it was rather early accepted whereas, you had resistance both in
France, but also in United States and obviously this kind of resistance of the more
Evangelicals Churches in the United States which is still lingering now onwards.
Professor R Santhosh: Even now.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Whereas it was quite early on except that in the United Kingdom, what is
very important about Darwinism was obvious and if we come to sociology it was kind of the
extension of this, it is also which we today would rather criticize that a lot of racist theories
came up and the kind of extension of Darwinism into other fields.
Professor R Santhosh: Social Darwinism.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Social Darwinism, which was actually not very much covered by
Darwin, he himself never made any pronouncements on this and was kind of an extension
and specifically also if you look at the colonized world and colonial science and how science
was used as a tool to govern colonies and specifically if, you look at Anthropology the rise of
Anthropology as a different as a discipline, where kind of physical at the beginning was kind
of very much based on physical Anthropology, where people try to make claims and extend
claims from Darwinian evolution into the social world.
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I mean, one thing which I have been researching myself is very interesting, is music for
example in the study of music, because Darwin actually mentions something already on the
selection of species, he mentioned something on the importance of bird songs and sexual
reproduction of birds and then you can also talk about music in there obviously, we can
discuss a lot about whether birds have music or not, like a lot of people would very much
argue that, but people extended that into the human world and they would be starting to talk
about a kind of evolution of music.
When people went to places like India or Africa to study music of so called Primitive people,
the idea of primitive people was that primitive people would be on an evolutionary lower
scale and if, we would want to learn something about the origins of music as a human
phenomenon we would have to study the music of primitive people.
Interestingly, enough comparative musicology led to the very fail of that idea, they figured
out actually that obviously music of primitive so called primitive people is as complex as
other kinds of music and also the whole idea of a kind of hierarchy of music you can say like
classical, European classical music as the kind of evolutionary top of that has really been very
much has not obviously was not substantiated in that research.
Professor R Santhosh: But, this idea of evolution from the natural world and then into the
human world and to see that human societies across the world are destined to undergo a
process of unilinear evolutionary models, it is something very central to sociology, we have
almost all the early socialists talking about different laws, different stages. Auguste Comte
talking about theological metaphysical positive, similarly spencer who is also talking the
similar things.
So, this has been a major argument, which is why even as a discipline anthropology has this
whole idea of going back to the primitive to see how they are and simultaneously they would
keep the Western Europe as the pinnacle as having reached the pinnacle of human civilization
and these trends came for much criticism later, but the early forms were something very
similar.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Yes, you will also have already in the 19th century if, I look at German
scholars obviously there was always a counter movement. Especially if you think about the
Romantic movement in Germany, which was a kind of very Anti-Newtonianism or this kind
of very linear Newtonianism which looked at kind of more romantic natural philosophy
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movement, which looked rather into the complexity rather than into this very reductionist
idea of how newtonianism at least understood back then and mathematization and similarly
along with this you had a rise of the humanist ideas.
So, you would find a lot of scientists who would would say look there are limits to how much
we could apply the kind of laws of nature and the kind of mechanization issues. Especially in
Germany if, you come the kind of conflict between materialist philosophies and idealist
philosophers who looked at the social world or the human world as fundamentally different
from the natural world. You would have these kind of understandings as well but, at the same
time as I said it is not unilineal like you had a lot of variety. So, you had a lot of rejection of
these kind of ideas already at that time as well.
But, at the same time you are totally right a lot of people really wanted to extend and
specifically wanted to understand an idea of a kind of Unitarian science, like there was this
idea of the unity of science of one scientific method and to extend that to the social realm and
to the social sciences as well and obviously the model for that universal scientific method that
was definitely Physics.
So, the physical sciences and specifically physics and astronomy as the kind of model how
science thought to be done and you also have this move away I talked already about the idea
of science in the field or natural philosophy. you can say in the field ,as a field activity this
idea of collecting and categorizing and creating order as opposed to experimental science and
the experimental method.
But, then you also have this idea of the experimental method, moving into other realms and
you really see that specifically the rise first with chemistry obviously, chemistry and what we
call the chemical revolution with Lavoisier and shaping a kind of chemistry very similar to
physics.
But, then also the pushback against vitalism, specifically vitalism and the idea that there is a
special living force as opposed to kind of the conservation of energy, actually conservation of
energy was very much the first articulations of conservation of energy came very much to
push back ideas of vitalism and of a self-generating living force and then, there was also this
push in.
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Professor R. Santhosh: Was vitalism backed by certain theological foundations or
metaphysical ideas?
Dr Roland Wittje: I would say, rather more I mean, the stream at least also vitalism was not
Hegel, for example, was then also a very strong Protagonist of Darwinism in Germany
vitaminism was still very much alive there in Germany. But, you can say this has been a
controversy that was going on all through the 19th century in Europe and trying to give kind
of mechanical explanation to life phenomena as well and obviously Darwinism does not
really fit into the kind of mechanical.
I mean, it’s a different kind of grand theory, that has been coming up in the 19th century and
today we can even see articulations of evolution within in the physical world. People talk
about the evolution of the universe for example, in these kind of, so extending the reach of
evolutionary theories in science. So, what is the reach of these kind of models?
Professor R Santhosh: So, we will bind up this session and we will continue the discussion
with more focus on industrial revolution in the next session. Thank You.
Keywords: Renaissance, Enlightenment, Reformation, Evolution, Vitalism.
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Discussion with Dr. Roland Part – 2
Lecture No. 10
Professor R. Santhosh: Welcome come back to the session, we have Dr. Roland Wittje with us
to discuss about the scientific revolution which subsequently led to the industrial revolution in
Europe. Roland, we were talking about the emergence of scientific revolution and important
scientists and their impact over Europe especially in terms of providing an alternative,
explanatory paradigm.
Now, can you briefly start with the transformation from this natural philosophy into specific
sciences that led to the emergence of technology and its impact on industry? It is a large
transformation, but could you summarize.
Dr. Roland Wittje: First, if you do not mind, I would actually argue against that.
Professor R. Santhosh: You would say that there is no linear connection?
Dr. Roland Wittje: yes, there is no linear connection. Obviously, in hindsight, we can always
create linear connections.
Professor R. Santhosh: But usually that is how we understand isn’t it? And then technology …
Dr. Roland Wittje: Yes, But if you look really at least in the, as I said in the last class science or
the scientist as a person and as a profession, that has really arisen only in the nineteenth century.
Obviously, we can talk about philosophy, natural philosophy, about experimental philosophy.
Yes, if you go back to somebody like Francis Bacon, you would then not only talk about science
as empirical science, but also sciences, useful science.
You would also have throughout the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, scientific societies
who would kind of reiterate that. So in the last class, I talked about natural philosophers traveling
around and collecting data, quantitative data and trying to have an influence on agriculture for
example. A kind of modernizing what we would call today modernizing agriculture, there is this
idea of progress, a scientific progress and using kind of science to improve the world, like of
improve technology as well. But if you look at the Industrial Revolution, I mean, historians of
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technology have and very much agree on that it was actually not driven by scientific discovery,
even though you had that ideology of useful science and science should be used more
technological progress, you can you can say, but that was actually not the case.
If you look in the history of science, and this is surprising to a lot of people. If you look in the
into the history of science as natural philosophy and the history of technology, we will actually
find out that technology used to be, which is very paradoxical at a place like IIT, I asked my
students and they always say, technology is applied science; full stop. But in its original, it is
actually not at all.
If you would look at Aristotle and Greek philosophy, you would say, first, experimental method
is not part of science, you are forcing the world to do something. Mechanics is not part of
science, but is part of the arts.
Professor R. Santhosh: It is quite interesting.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Mechanics is artificial, we are forcing nature to do something, and it is
actually technology, that would be one of the definitions of technology. So, technology and we
see that if you look at the protagonist all over the world, for example, the Indian caste system,
you would see the separation between the kinds of sections of society like the Brahmin caste.
The artisans which in the Indian system as much lower in in the caste system. Who actually
responsible for technology? So, there was actually in this debate between science and
technology, also in I mean, who expresses this probably best in Europe is really Leonardo Da
Vinci, as an example because we look at Leonardo Da Vinci as obviously a very gifted engineer,
if he would say that with modern words.
And at the same time, a very gifted artist.
Professor R. Santhosh: That is true.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Like and a lot of people describe Leonardo Da Vinci as a scientist, he was
not a scientist and this is really the kind of mechanistic design most of the kind, of anatomical
drawing, he has an all that. So, we really see the kind of link between the Arts and Technology
and we also have this an English language if you talk about artisans, and arts and craft.
So, you can say historically, technology has been much closer to the arts than
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Professor R. Santhosh: Surprising.
Dr. Roland Wittje: to the science. the Industrial Revolution also, if you look at the protagonists
of the Industrial Revolution, it was much more of this traditional trial and error, technical
tinkering, gentle warming, theory kind of thing.
Professor R. Santhosh: Not coming from the high theory thing.
Dr. Roland Wittje: No, not coming from the high theory thing. It is also very interesting. We
have one of the very interesting people to read here would be, Edgar Schisler, who has been
writing a very interesting book already in the 1930s, where he puts up the hypothesis that the
scientific revolution actually did not emerge from abstract thinking but much more from
technological practitioners, and they actually gave inspiration to scientific abstracts.
Scientific extraction actually, empties and also brings up and this is again a very sociological
theory that actually modern science as we know it today is a thesis that did not arise earlier
because earliest societies were slave societies and basically manual labor was given to the slaves
and the ruling classes would never engage in manual labor. Specifically, you could make an
argument, if you look at Holland, for example, there were a lot of these people you have like the
craft skills, actually, their status. I mean, specifically, if you look at arts and crafts in Germany,
and the status of class skills in city societies, we were seen as free societies, if you think the idea
of the citizen.
That they were very much kind of giving inspiration for, for like, creating or transforming a
useful or like using technology as an inspiration for scientific abstraction. So, if you look at the
Industrial Revolution specifically in Britain to the end of the nineteenth century, there was a big
distance between engineering and the practice of engineering and science, it was not really
coming together in the same way as in other countries.
So, in Britain actually a James Watt who invented the steam engine, but even like earlier
versions, the new common engine which has been around before ,if you look at the driving
forces for the Industrial Revolution and we can make out several of them, but science was
actually not one of them.
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We have this saying by historians of technology that science owes more to the steam engine
than the steam engine owes to science because, the steam engine came up, but that motivated
really research in thermodynamics, you can say there is a lot of research in thermodynamics that
was inspired by the steam engine and you can see the complex relationship between science and
technology.
Technology is a driving force for science, as much as science is a driving force for technology.
So, you can say this also happened really, during the time of the, of the enlightenment and the
French Revolution. What we have in here is the Industrial Revolution starting in Britain, where
this kind of ideology of bringing science and technology together was not really that strong.
Whereas in France, you have this very much with the kind of way how we can say Newtonian is
then moving from, from Britain to France, and developing a very different kind of understanding
and also the states playing very different kind of role. So in France you have,
Professor. R Santhosh: During Napoleon period or after that?
Dr. Roland Wittje: Even before with, with absolutism and France where you have a very central
estate. The very central estate takes a very strong role in the organization of science and actually
also the organization on science and technology. So we get a very, very new model of
relationship between science and technology, which I would say at the beginning is not grounded
in empirical evidence, then there is a relationship, but rather as an ideology, how technical
technological shift ought to be made.
We have specifically the foundation of these grand Ecols in France, and specifically the Ecole
Poly technique. We have a number of French military engineers. So a lot of these people, kind of
French mathematical physicists, lot of these people were actually military engineer. So, we have
for example, Coulomb, the Coulomb which is one of the fundamental law of electricity. If you
look at the rise of electricity or electricity and magnetism, where you have the inverse square law
modeled after the gravitational law. The forces between electrical charges and essential forces
and the structure is essentially the same as in gravitation. Coulomb was a military engineer, and
he was concerned with the problems of saving, powder storage against lightning.
So, how do you build a lightning rod? The idea was, if you really want to understand this, you
have to do research of its fundamental scientific principles. I would say the Coulomb law was
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very successful, but it was not necessarily to begin with very successful to build a lightning rod.
So to begin with, you can say this was more of a kind of ideological model but throughout the
nineteenth century obviously the situation or the relationship change, yeah.
So, there is a certain historical development in the relationship between science and technology.
You can see that very well in the nineteenth century specifically as I said, there was no strong
connection between science and technology in Britain. What you have is latest from the mid
nineteenth century, the start of a British declined debate.
Part of that is related to so you have the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, which lasts like
until the 1850s, like and then you have a second phase where other countries then Britain are
much more successful specifically Germany, like and the rise of the chemical industry and
electrical industry.
But then obviously, railways and other things machine making these things and but what was
very specific both about you can say the chemical industry and the electrical industry that there
were very much science driven.
Professor R. Santhosh: From bottom up.
Dr. Roland Wittje: You can say what would be the scientific disciplines metallurgy, for
example, that actually came much later. Yeah, like in chemistry that metallurgy came much later.
So, it was much more trial and error to bring up new melting processes, new steel producing
processes, the steel engine, also the spinning jenny and the mechanization of, of spinning and
then weaving, scientists were not that much involved in it.
But then specifically, if you look at the electrical technology of electrical industry, there was no
traditional arts and crafts and precedents, like was entirely based on new scientific discoveries.
People taking these scientific discoveries not necessarily understanding, that there is still not a
very linear relationship between scientific discovery and industrial, industrial production.
But obviously all these are based specifically on Faraday's experiments, electromagnetic
induction, Volta's discovery of the electric pile and electric battery, Galvani's experiments. So,
there was a lot of scientific experimentation and also scientific theory going along with that
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experimentation. That was very important for the rise of electro of the electrical industry, which
was very different.
Chemical industry we can say obviously, there is predecessors to chemical industries, I mean,
people have been making soaps, making chemicals all the time. But the kind of rise of analytic
chemistry specifically in Germany, and using this kind of analytic chemistry, which came up
after Lavoisier and this kind of chemical revolution in order to synthesize new chemical
compounds and on that base kind of industrial development, I mean specifically if you think
about the tar, coal industry chemical dyes, which again had a huge impact on India like think
about indigo and the decline of natural, natural dyes and the rise of chemical dyes.
Professor R. Santhosh: Now, coming back to the social implications of the Industrial
Revolution, we know that as a student of sociology, we are trying to understand how this larger
transformation, but the very economic fundamentals of society from a feudal agrarian to a
capitalist industrial society. That is something very significant. So what would be your
observations on the social implications of especially people who migrated landscape to the cities
and the rise of urbanism, the slums the kind of chaos that followed?
Dr. Roland Wittje: First, I would say, obviously, industrialization has been a very long process.
It started in the 1750s. We would say in places like India still ongoing. We can still say, certain
sections of society or certain sections of our productive sector if you think about agriculture. I
would say for example, even a Germany, industrialization and increasing industrialization of
agriculture is still ongoing.
I can also make of criticism of industrialization, if you think about meat production, for example,
in in Europe. So, industrialization is still and we talked about the first, second and the third and
most. We talk even about the fourth phase of industrial revolution. Obviously, we have many
social, social transformations and the rise of new of new classes like obviously the rise of the
bourgeoisie on one side and the rise of the proletarian of the workers.
The rise of urbanization of cities, which came along with a very new mode of production. And
obviously also with a very new way of describing economies with capitalism as we know it
today and this has been very much linked also, if we come back to science in the nineteenth
century, if we think about the scientist as a kind of professional idea like both the scientists as or
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the scientific community part or as kind of new rising bourgeoisie and the idea of the scientist as
a profession.
In technology, we should not be understanding that the impact of this of the steam engine, for
example, which was invented already in the mid eighteenth century and became much stronger
in the nineteenth century. It took some time before it will really take on. Also if you see the rise
of cities and city populations, if you go to British cities, it would take on very early on in cities
like London, Manchester, then the spread of this was rather slow or not very even through
Europe as well.
Belgium would be one of the first up in cities but then also France, Germany where in Britain
industrialization would take on right like and then, as I said, would also go over from into new
types of industrialization. I mean one of the biggest impacts if we look for example, on transport,
like, but also on communication.
So, if you think about transport we would then also look at the second phase of the Industrial
Revolution. For example, the railroads and this steamboat as well. If you think of increasing
global trade, for example, a contraction of space. And here I am not talking about Einstein's
theory of relativity, but much rather like how space in a social way got very much contracted and
also time really changed.
I mean, if you think about the Telegraph, for example, as a means of communication, suddenly,
you could actually communicate instantaneously more or less with all parts of the world, like
which then had a big impact on markets, for example, which, which really changed perceptions,
but even reality sometimes and space.
Professor R. Santhosh: That brings us to the very important question about the connection
between industrial revolution and colonialism. Do you think Industrial Revolution would have
taken place in Europe without colonialism?
Dr. Roland Wittje: Certainly not in the same way, because basically the kind of trade, the way
how trade was organized and specifically how the British organized trade in their empire was a v
central element of the Industrial Revolution. But if we really understand this as a system, you
cannot remove one component and think that that would not impact other systems.
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So, if you think about one of the main driving forces of one of the main sectors that really got
mechanized was the textile industry and that was very much depending on colonial trade, on also
slave labor, obviously, in the colonies on cotton production, and also on colonial markets as
markets.
Professor. R. Santhosh: Because colonies provided both the raw materials as well as the
markets for the finished products.
Dr. Roland Wittje: If we specifically know India, where the main exporters of textiles. This has
been known since I mean, you can go back into antiquity, like the market. So, you really have
this kind of very new mode of production here coming in would be very difficult to say. But then
obviously, colonialism has a longer history than the British colonial empire, obviously.
We in India, we usually understand colonialism as kind of the British colonial empire. But
obviously there is a longer history to that. They have been different modes of operation, on how
to run your empire. Obviously, there has been this kind of coming together. I would even say this
kind of relationship between science and technology. As I said, it is not really that easy.
Like if you go back to a Kuhnian ideas, you already have this idea that scientific knowledge
would be useful knowledge and the kind of idea of scientific societies in the nineteenth century.
As I said, the kind of French model of, of bringing science and technology together, which
happened at the same time as the Industrial Revolution unfolded. We should not imagine,
obviously, the French Revolution is a different type of revolution than the Industrial Revolution.
I mean, the Industrial Revolution, like the scientific revolution, if you even want to use these
terms, and a lot of historians have criticized these terms have not been proclaimed revolutions.
Like by actors, having said we topple over the old regime like, and they are rolled out. What is
also typical for these revolutions is that they are rolled out over a much longer time period.
Especially the French Revolution did not really succeed in that sense. So only in hindsight, we
would call for example, the Industrial Revolution, a Revolution. Like where I still very much,
even though a lot of people have questioned the notion of the Industrial Revolution, but I think
the industrial revolution is much more obvious and stronger argument.
I call that a revolution than the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution, you really see has
kind of unfolded over a period of several 100 years. Where is the kind of effects? I mean,
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specifically, if you look right now, one of the biggest indicators of industrial industrialization has
been for the longest time and many ways to live and as part of our problems of battling climate
change, and the paradoxes of what we would call sustainable development.
We talk about growth on one side, and this kind of idea, and this comes really with this kind of
idea of progress. If we really see, when we really start having larger amounts of carbon dioxide
in the industry, we can really point out at the point of the Industrial Revolution, this is really the
starting point where things really change.
Also our kind of impact on environmental factors were very much stark, right like, and when we
look at this kind of increase of a energy production, like that has, for the longest time really been
kind of a direct indicator off of industrial development, and we are struggling to get away from
that like, specifically in India country where we still have large percentages of population not
connected to electricity.
So these kind of transformations and revolutions come together. It is really kind of this idea of
which again, today has been much criticized the idea of modernity. And also, this idea of instead
of having a more static understanding of your, to have an idea of some kind of progress, like
whether that is linear or in any other shape, like, but this idea of progress that is taking shape.
Professor. R. Santhosh: We identify all these revolutions as coming together producing

something called as modernity, it actually promised you better control over the natural resources,
nature and it promised you that human condition would be better it would emancipate. But now,
when you look back those promises, we realized that many of these promises were quite
problematic and we are finding ourselves now in a very difficult situation.
Dr. Roland Wittje: Obviously, we can say yes or no. I mean, one of the things you would really
have after the Industrial Revolution is a very strong population. Obviously we have improved
living conditions, we are able to kind of place many more humans on earth. Also we can say in
many ways conditions have improved if you think about mortality.
Professor R. Santhosh: But quite a lot of the argument is that a lot of unintended consequences,
consequences that we did not really anticipate that they have emerged as major things that we are
learned to deal with them.
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Dr. Roland Wittje: Obviously, we have talked about colonialism as well, like the whole
colonial experience, where a lot of additional populations have been extinct. If you look at the
Americas, and also Africa, genocides that has happened through colonialism and also
specifically I mean, we also talked about the ideas of Darwinism like that the rise of humanism
was something that race.
If you look at the French Revolution, the ideals of fraternity, equality, liberty, that were not in
any way extended to the colonial world. So with the kind of humanization, specifically, if you
look at natural philosophy in throughout the nineteenth century, I mean, and that has been for a
very long time. I mean, if you look at natural history museums until rather recently at the
Smithsonian, in the US, for example, where indigenous populations were placed as part of the
natural history, rather than as part of humanity.
There were lot of exclusion or the kind of the expansion how much was that kind of promise of
equal opportunities for people really extended, we could not only have to look at that we can
look at gender equality, for example. That has obviously been a rather recent phenomenon, like
that women actually were even considered to be eligible to have equal rights as men.
So, there were strong limits to that. If you look at specifically the 20th century, there are two
large blows actually to the whole promise of modernity which are called the First World War and
the Second World War, right? Like where we can say, all our scientific and technological
advantage, the only thing we are using it to is to kill each other more efficiently.
So, obviously these have been rising concerns and yeah, obviously and also criticism of this kind
of ideas of progress and modernity also through industrialization. Like specifically if you look at
Science and Technology obviously, they have made a huge impact on warfare to make wars
more deadly and lethal?
Professor R. Santhosh: So, thank you very much. We are winding up the session. Thank you
Roland for providing very useful insights, especially on this connection between science and
technology because usually it is taken for granted that science led to the emergence of
technology that led to the emergence of industrial revolution and as a historian, you really
problematized and made it more complicated. Thank you.
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Dr. Roland Wittje: The relationship between science and technology is a very complex one and
we also have to historicize it. We really have to understand the kind of changing relationship and
specifically if you look at modern times if you take our time again, you can say the relationship
between science and technology has taken a different term which is usually expressed in the term
techno-science.
Like where we say that science and technology have kind of come together, at least to certain
types of science and technology have come together to kind of seamless web that is very
important for the historiographical debate, a very important book by David Edgerton, ‘The shock
of the old’, on what we should really be thinking about the relationship between science and
technology.
Old modes of production have never really disappeared. We still have craft, craft technology and
a lot of technologies that are with us since the beginning of humanity, for example, we still use
hammer is technology. We have been using hammers as humans and using hammers since Stone
Age and other kinds of technologies. So baskets, for example, like we have been using baskets
since, since Stone Age. Like even though hammers are easier to remains off. That does not mean
hammer we are using today is the same hammer as we were using to Stone Age. But our problem
that we have a lot of times looking at technology, we only understand technology as the kind of
newest technology.
Whereas obviously technology and the interaction of technology with society is rather complex.
We should not only be looking at the kind of high tech, kind of newest technology which can be
very much described by the term techno science. So, technology is a much broader concepts
really and still there is a lot of artisans in the world, a lot of crafts people in the world and we
still have the kind of craft mode of production in the world together with industrialization.
Professor. R. Santhosh: So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Dr. Roland Wittje: You are welcome.
Keywords: Techno science, Mechanization, Progress, Modernity.
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Professor R Santhosh
Lecture 11
Classical Thinkers of Sociology
Welcome back to the class. We are moving to the next chapter, in which we begin to analyze the
contributions of important thinkers. In the previous classes, we had brief discussions about a
number of social, cultural, political and economic factors that leads to the emergence of
sociology and we basically tried to answer the question ‘why that sociology emerged in Europe
during that particular time?’
What were the kind of a social political contexts that necessitated the emergence of a new
discipline? Why that the scholars found it imperative to look for novel methodological
framework and epistemological base to make sense of the society that was evolving around
them. We kind of answered that the kind of time period that we are talking about, 18th and 19th
century, really represented some of the most tumultuous times in the history of Europe.
The world order was changing and great transformation was sweeping across the continent. That
really necessitated quite a lot of new changes and a series of philosophers pondered over those
changes. Ultimately, that resulted in the codification of a new set of ideas, principles, and
methodological orientations and finally you have this discipline called sociology. In this section,
we are going to discuss some of the very important classical thinkers who pioneered the
discipline of sociology.
We will look at a set of thinkers or a series of thinkers who laid the foundation for the discipline,
whose intellectual engagements, whose arguments, whose counterarguments, whose new
propositions really laid the foundation for a new discipline to take shape and to take root and
then eventually get consolidated.
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I have put up a list of scholars and by no means this list exhaustive and not complete. I have
omitted a couple of names because it is a very difficult task to enlist each and every scholar who
would have contributed in this long journey of a particular discipline, especially in its formative
years. For the purpose of this course, we will discuss the contributions of Montesquieu, Saint
Simon, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and GH
Mead.
We will have brief discussions about Montesquieu, Saint Simon, Auguste Comte and Herbert
Spencer because these are the people who are considered to be the very important people who
contributed for the establishment of the discipline and played a very important role in the
germination of the discipline as a kind of a transformation from social philosophy to sociology.
We will go much deeper into these four people who are considered to be the kind of stalwarts,
and to be the pioneers who laid the most rigorous theoretical foundation and methodological
orientation for the discipline. They are Karl Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Mead. These four
thinkers would be dealt with extensively in the coming classes whereas we will not go that detail
about the first four scholars.
You would have identified that most of these people belong to Europe.Montesquieu, Saint
Simon, Auguste Comte and Spencer is from England, Marx and Weber are a Germans,
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Durkheim is a French, and GH Mead is from United States of America. Mostly we have scholars
from Western Europe who played very vital role in the emergence of the discipline.
Let us begin with the Montesquieu. He was born in 1689 and passed away in 1755 and he was a
French philosopher. There is very raging debate about the exact place of Montesquieu in the
history of sociology. Can you call him as a sociologist or not? This is a very difficult question
but almost every observers argue that Montesquieu played a very vital role in laying the
foundations of the emergence of sociology.
Sociology as a distinct discipline did not exist during Montesquieu’s time. Therefore it would be
very difficult to label him as sociologist as the way we are able to label later scholars. However,
he was an extremely influential thinker who laid foundation for the theoretical arguments about
the society.
In one most important books titled ‘The spirit of the laws’, he says that society must be
considered as a thing and its properties could be discovered by observation and analysis. Thus
for Montesquieu morals, manners and customs as well as social structure are amenable to
investigation in the same way as the phenomena in physical, phenomena in physics and
chemistry.
This paragraph is very important because here comes a philosopher who argues that society must
be considered as a thing. We will come back to this word ‘thing’ later when we discuss Emile
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Durkheim because in his definition of social fact, he argues that a social fact is a thing. It has an
objective reality out there. It has its own existence. It is Sui generic.
Emile Durkheim was heavily influenced by thinkers like Montesquieu and Auguste Comte who
preceded him. Here Montesquieu argues that the society must be seen as a separate entity. That is
one part of the story. The other argument that this thing has its own properties and it could be
discovered by observation and analysis and he is bringing in the argument of scientific
methodology.
Thus for Montesquieu morals, manners and customs as well as social structures are amenable to
investigation the same way they are with physics and chemistry. This is a very powerful
argument where he points out that the scientific methods that are in practice to understand the
physical and chemical world can be used to understand the nature of society. For example,
morals, manners and customs and social structures can be studied the same way you study
physical or chemical world.
This is a very important argument. This was a major departure from the traditional conventional
ways in which theoretical explanations or more obscure kind of philosophical or metaphysical
arguments were given were given as the most convincing explanation to understand the society.
Here Montesquieu criticizes the arguments about theological or metaphysical explanation about
social reality and then argues that instead of using these arguments, you can use the methodology
of science.
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He attempted to formulate human laws and social institutions, theorization on government,

conceptions of liberty, political power, religion, climate, and geography and so on. We will see
how extensive his research interests were and he was quite interested to formulate human laws.
This term ‘human laws’ is something very important and this is an extremely important
indication of the fact that these early scholars were very particular about formulating laws.
You will see the same argument in Saint Simon, and in Auguste Comte who believed that just
like the physical laws or laws in biology or laws in chemistry, you will be able to formulate laws
about society. You will be able to formulate overarching laws about society, which will be able
to rule or which will discover the ways in which human society function. This is an argument
that none of the social scientists would agree today.
However, given the understanding that sociology emerged as a science, especially heavily
influenced by natural science, this was a predictable turn. They wanted to formulate human laws
similar to natural laws. Montesquieu had very extensive research interests spanning across
different distinct area, starting from notions of liberty and government to religion, climate and
geography and so on.
One of his major contributions is his typology of different forms of governments, in which he
talked about Republican governments (which can take either democratic or aristocratic forms),
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monarchies and despotism. Montesquieu’s this contribution is widely considered to be very
important one.
He talked about these three distinct forms of government systems with a developmental
sequence. He argued that mostly the societies move from despotism to monarchy and to that of
Republican governments that could take either forms such as democracy or aristocracy.
He had this kind of an evolutionary understanding of governance and it implies that it has a
developmental sequence. He also tried to put forward this typology on the basis of capturing this
schema from the empirical world. Instead of merely proposing a normative structure, you come
across a philosopher who observed different kind of government systems across the world and
then put forward the kind of typology.
Another very important contribution that we consider even now as a foundational rules of
modern democratic system is the separation of powers between executive, legislative and
judiciary to prevent despotism. This particular separation of powers which are considered to be
very sacrosanct and important even today.
know that the kind of a separation between executive, the body that executes the rules and the
legislative body, the body that formulate new rules and the judiciary who works as an arbitrator,
and certifies the legality of these new laws must be separated. You cannot allow an authority that
has a power over all these three distinct forms.
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That is how every efficient democracy functions. They work as counterbalances. They ensure
that no one part either executive or legislative or judiciary gets excessive powers. And this
discussion, as you all know is extremely relevant even now. We talk about necessity for the
independence of the judiciary, we talk about the distinction between executive and legislation
and we argue that for a healthy democracy to thrive, these three spheres must be separated.
You cannot allow one powerful entity to have absolute control over everything. You cannot
allow somebody to be the person who formulates his own rules and who executes it and who also
presides over legality. That leads to what he calls it as the despotism. He argued that liberty is
not without restrictions, liberty is not without boundaries. Liberty has to be limited and it must
recognize the rights of others.
Therefore he developed an argument that the idea of individual freedom must be exercised in
consonance with the rights of the people who are around you. It is a very important liberal
principle. Liberty also requires that the laws concerns only threats to public order and security.
And it should not even concern offenses against God.
Here you come across very interesting argument of Montesquieu, who is very critical of the idea
and institution of God. He argues that liberty also requires that the laws concerns only threats to
public order and security. So anything that can adversely affect the public order or the safety and
security of the people must be kept in mind when you formulate the rules and laws about liberty.
Similarly, anything that does not adversely affect the public order and security must be allowed
because human beings do have the right to profess their liberty. In that sense, laws should not
concern offences against God. This is a very interesting argument, because an act which is
supposedly offensive to God, according to Montesquieu has no problem because this particular
act will not affect public order.
He even argued that a criticism against God should be welcomed and people must be allowed to
do that because by doing that, you are not doing anything to offend or disturb the public order.
Just think about the arguments of this particular theme in different societies where blasphemy
laws are very powerful in a number of countries because any references or any offensive
reference about God is seen as blasphemous and punishable by law.
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The argument here is that you must not insult or abuse or criticize God because that is seen as
blasphemy, not because it is injurious to the public order but it was seen as an offense against the
God itself which is punishable in the societies that are governed by religious rules.
Montesquieu considers religions in relation only to the good they produce in civil society and
not to their truth or falsity. You see it is a major departure from the early theological argument
that the religion tells you the truth and offers you the explanation for everything. Here
Montesquieu argues that religion is important and as a universal institution, it plays important
function but he is not concerned with whether religious explanation is true or false. He only
concerned about what religion does in the public realm and only at the good that it produce in the
civil society and what kind of roles that religions perform in the civil society.
That is the only relevance that he attributed to religion, not as a divine system, not as the epitome
of all the truth or all the divine revelations, nothing of that sort. In a sense, he a kind of
secularized the understanding of religion by specifically saying that he is not interested to see
whether the religion is true or false rather he understands it as an important social institutions.
Only to the extent that it performs certain good things and services to the civil society.
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Another very important French theorist is Saint Simon, who was born in 1760 and passed away
in 1825, and considered to be a very influential scholar. H had a crucial role in the early 19th
century developments of industrial socialism, positivism, sociology, political economics and the
philosophy of history. He was a philosopher who had varied interests and whom we cannot label
as a philosopher or a sociologist or a political theorist. He was a person who had a very extensive
range of interests and one of the first to grasp the revolutionary implications of industrialization.
He was one of the first European thinkers who identified that the kind of changes that are
happening as a result of rapid industrialization is leading to a comprehensive change in the social
structure. He argued that industrial society represents a kind of a rupture from the traditional
agrarian society.
He was rather kind of welcoming to these changes for a traditional institutions and morality and
conceptualized industrial system as the distinctive type. As a philosopher he argued that these
changes are not only having its implications in terms of economy or in terms of science and
technology, but rather they have tremendous implications in the whole of traditional institutions.
We briefly discussed in the previous classes how it adversely affected the traditional joint family
system, and the hold of religion and conventional notions of morality. The Victorian morality in
Europe was severely affected with this rise of industrial society and the rise of the individual as
not somebody who is completely bounded by the rules of tradition.
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Saint Simon envisioned an industrialist state directed by modern science in which universal
association should suppress war. He believed that the men who are successfully able to organize
society for productive labor are entitled to govern it. So he was quite welcoming this new
Industrialist order.
He believed that the people who are taking the lead in this industrial society, who invent new
things, who invest new things, who create more wealth, naturally have the right to govern it
because he was also really concerned with avoiding social conflict. He was also really concerned
with the kind of after effects of French Revolution and the kind of bloodshed that followed.
All these scholars were really concerned about bringing in some kind of social order and
equilibrium, into the society. Saint Simon believed that in an industrial society, it is the industrial
elites who will be able form a state directed by modern science, because modern science, is
supposed to give you the kind of objective knowledge about the society.
That objective knowledge must be utilized to govern it efficiently and more peacefully. It must
be able to suppress the war. He believed that the men who are successfully able to organize
society for productive labor are entitled to government.
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Another very important area of Saint Simon’s contribution is his provisional formulation of what
is often called as the evolutionary organicist theory, whose influence is reflected in social
evolutionary doctrines as diverse as those of Herbert Spencer and others.
We will come back to this term later in more detail when we discuss Herbert Spencer and even
Emile Durkheim to a large extent. This stream of thought that developed during Saint Simon’s
time looked at ‘biological characteristics’ of human society.
This was the tendency to compare a human society with a living organism, and try to understand
the way in which a living organism and human society have specific structures and how each of
these specific structures cater to specific functions and also the whole argument about living
species emerging through an evolutionary process. A host of philosophers, including Saint
Simon, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer more profoundly argued that there are parallels
between the evolution of organisms and evolutions of human society.
This particular argument that there is a an evolutionary organism, that human society can be
studied because they share quite a lot of similarities with animal society, both in terms of
structure and function, and also through this process of evolution was a very prominent strand of
thought during that particular time.
Saint Simon is one of the most important founding fathers of that strand of thought, which kind
of evolved into a very important theoretical foundation known as the structural functionalism.
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We will talk about that theoretical orientations much later in this course because structure
functionalism is widely seen as one of the most important theoretical orientations of modern
sociological theory that focuses on the connection between the structure and its function.
Saint Simon is the scholar who laid foundation for this thinking and Durkheim, through his
organicist conception of social order carried it over into the contemporary functionalism in
anthropology and sociology. Structural functionalism was a very powerful theoretical framework
in anthropology as well.
Many of the early anthropologists subscribed to this structural functional school and Indian
sociology was heavily influenced by structural functionalism. A host of scholars, most
importantly M. N. Srinivas who is considered to be a doyen in the Indian sociological field, was
trained under British anthropologists who were specialists in structural functional school.
We see that the initial influence of Saint Simon in the emergence of this particular school of
thought. He was also among the earliest to advocate a naturalistic science of society as a rational
guide to social reconstruction. This is a point which is quite familiar because we already had
quite a lot of discussion about it. The arguments that the natural science provides a model for
social science to emerge as a distinct discipline because it is based on observable facts, it is based
on verifiability.
It provides you uncontaminated truth. It is not influenced by theology. It is not influenced by

metaphysical or philosophical argument. It is based on empirical data. It is more objective. It is
more verifiable. It is more impartial. It is neutral. So this argument that social sciences can be
modeled after natural sciences also got a major fillip from Saint Simon.
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To conclude, these scholars represent the phase where there is a transformation from social
philosophers to sociologists take place because these people are not strictly sociologists of our
time. They represent fascinating scholarship of philosophers who straddled various fields and
whose area of interest was quite extensive, starting from philosophy to geography to politics to
society to economy, to morals, to ethics.
They were not really confined to a narrower or specialized field called as sociology. And again,
as I mentioned, they were heavily inspired by the idea to formulate general laws that govern
human society. They wanted to decode these general laws which can be applied across the world
just like natural laws just like the law of gravity can be applicable across the world.
They were also critical of theological and metaphysical thinking and paving the way for the later
formulation of sociology. These two people Saint Simon and Montesquieu are widely considered
to be the some of the most influential thinkers who laid foundations, for the emergence of
sociology as a more codified and more structured discipline later. So we will conclude this
session now and continue with Auguste Comte in the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 12
Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857)
Welcome to this session and in this class, we will have a slightly detailed discussion about
Auguste Comte, who is widely considered as the father of sociology. In the previous class, we
discussed the contributions of Montesquieu and Saint Simon as the social philosophers who laid
the foundation or who contributed significantly for the emergence of sociology as a distinct
social science.
By the time we come to Auguste Comte, we see that he has coined the term sociology and then
sociology emerged as a distinct discipline. It is being widely recognized as a new social science
which with a very exclusive focal point and with an exclusive subject matter with a specific
scientific methodology as a way of knowing about the society. In that sense, Auguste Comte is a
very important scholar for the students of sociology, much more than the thinkers whom we
discussed so far.
This is his picture and these are some of his very important works. He was an extensive writer,
published extensively. His major works includes ‘The course on positive philosophy’, which
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appeared in different volumes and ‘Discourse on the positive spirit’ published in 1844, ‘A
general view of positivism’ published in 1848 and ‘Religion of humanity’ in 1856.
He was born on 19th January 1798 and passed away on 5th September 1857. He is widely
considered as the father of sociology, founder of Positivism and one of the early philosophers of
science. This term ‘father of sociology’ is a very problematic and it is a very oversimplified term.
By now, I hope you would have understood that a person simply does not found the discipline or
you cannot really pinpoint a person as the one who gave birth to a discipline. No disciplines
simply take birth that way. You cannot really give the credit for the birth of a discipline to one
single individual.
Even for the birth of a theory, it is very difficult to pinpoint a particular person because none of
these people work or live in vacuum. They synthesize and engage in critical dialogue with their
predecessors. They borrow a lot of ideas from the previous scholars. They revise them. They
would have a very creative engagement with these things. Therefore, to say that, Auguste Comte
is the father of sociology is a very oversimplified statement.
He is the one who coined this term sociology by combining this concepts such as socius and
logos. Even before Comte, there were social thinkers, like Ibn Khaldun who is widely
considered by many people as the father of sociology and who provided very fascinating
sociological analysis and experience as early as say 14th century in Arabia.
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However, Comte was also the founder of positivism. This is a very important aspect of his
thoughts. He is the one who is considered to be the father of positivism, a very powerful
epistemological position and methodological argument that sociology has to follow the path of
the science because it can study society by using scientific methods in an objective and unbiased
manner.
The rise of positivism and the rise of anti-positivism lead to very fascinating methodological
debates and discussions within the trajectory of sociology. Comte was also one of the early
philosophers of science who categorized science into different things and theorized about the
relationship between methodology and theory. In that sense, Auguste Comte is a very, profound
thinker.
He was a very close companion of Saint Simon. He worked as his secretary and at least for six to
seven years, they collaborated very closely. Their ideas shaped each other's thoughts very
closely. Later they fell apart and they fought very bitterly. Their relationship ended in a very,
sour note. Auguste Comte’s personal life also was not very pleasant and peaceful as he suffered
from mental illness and lived alone for most parts of his life.
In the later part of his life, he got divorced from his first wife and didn’t had a very pleasant
personal life. Today, he is kind of considered to be a marginal influence in contemporary
sociology because of the irrelevance of his arguments that society has to be seen as a positive
one. Many of his arguments are not really taken very seriously at present.
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We need to situate every important philosophers in their time and in their context. As I just
mentioned no philosopher thinks simply out of the blue. Nobody gets enlightenment the way we
conventionally understand the term, unlike say figures like Buddha or some other saints who gets
an enlightenment all of a sudden or after so much of penance. That does not really work in the
case of a social scientist.
They do not work in isolation. They have a very intense negotiations and engagement and
conversations with the kind of ideas and scholars who are around them. That ultimately leads to
some kind of an original contribution from these scholars. Therefore, social, economic, cultural
and political context of every social thinker is important.
In the coming classes, we will have to very carefully look at what were the kind of socio-
economic and intellectual context for every scholar. Comte’s sociology emerged from the
economic, political and social conditions of post-revolutionary France. So that particular context,
the immediate context of French Revolution played a very significant role in shaping the
arguments of Auguste Comte.
We can broadly divide Comte’s career into two phases; the early scientific stage where he argued
persuasively for a science of society and was very famous in continental Europe for a brief time
and the latter part of his life where he tried to make science a new religion for the reconstruction
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of society. So these two phases are very evident, especially towards the latter part, where he
began to think about science as a religion for humanity.
By the time second phase, he really suffered a lot of loss of credibility. Many of his followers
discarded him and people felt that he is moving into mysticism and he is kind of talking things
which are not very coherent. You see the kind of a downfall of a very important intellectual who
was kind of celebrated at one point in time in Europe.
As I mentioned, Comte is considered to be the father of positivism, a very important,

methodological and epistemological strand in sociology. Positivism is a philosophical and
epistemological foundation of sociology and must be understood in his larger scheme of things
about the evolution of society through law of three stages. One of the most important
contributions of Comte is his formulation of law of three stages, which we will briefly discuss.
He argued that every society passes through these three distinct stages, from theological to
metaphysical to positive.
His argument about positivism a epistemological orientation has to be understood with his larger
scheme of things in which he argued that societies necessarily pass through these three distinct
stages. Positive in Comte’s sense meant abandoning absolute for relative truth and the search for
the real nature or cause of things in favor of discovering laws defined as predictable regularities
in the behavior of observable phenomena.
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This is exactly a definition about science. You are trying to discard the absolute truth. You
discard any absolutist truth. You look forward for relative truth, which are established at a
particular point in time, and this is the one of the major differences between religion and science.
Religion has an absolute explanation for almost every question.
Religion is an absolute larger theory. Anything and everything that happens in this world can be
explained on the basis of the will of the God, whether it is the whole question about what
happens after death. The whole idea of starting from questions like who created the universe, and
to more philosophical questions, like what is the purpose of life or who am I or what is supposed
to be leading a good life?
Religion is able to provide absolute unambiguous answers to each and every of these questions,
whereas science cannot do so. Comte advocated for that abandoning absolute for relative truth
and the search for real nature or cause of things. He argued that it is very much possible to
establish causal links.
It is very much possible to argue why certain things happen or what are the causal factors behind
certain things. Comte was in favor of discovering laws defined as predictable regularities in the
behavior of observable phenomena. He would argue that positivism or the path of the science is
to look forward for predictable regularities in the behavior of observable phenomena. You
observe things, you collect and analyze these facts, then you will be able to see the kind of
observable or predictable regularities, which in turn gives rise to formulation of specific and
codified laws.
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If it is true that every theory must be based on observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot
be observed without the guidance of some theories. Without such guidance, our facts would be
desultory and fruitless. We could not retain them for the most part and we would not even
perceive them. This is a very interesting point where Comte makes this connection between facts
and theory, whether it is a deductive approach or inductive approach, whether can we have a set
of facts without theory or can we have theories without facts.
He makes this point very clear that you need to have a set of facts, but these facts must be
informed by larger theoretical argument otherwise, they become fruitless. They do not reveal any
meaning on its own. Therefore he talks about the kind of complementarity between theory and
facts. In his book, ‘The course of positive philosophy’, Comte attempted to demonstrate that
each science is necessarily dependent on previous science. That is, science can only be
understood historically as the process of greater perfection. He has this idea of hierarchy of
science, starting with physics, astronomy, biology, and then finally reaching to sociology.
As we mentioned, he is widely considered as one of the earliest philosophers of science. He has

his own argument about the complexity of science and how scientific method can be approached.
A scientific method can be used to understand complicated subject matters. He argued that the
final science which Comte claimed to have discovered at once, which had not yet entered its
positives stage, was sociology.
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He claimed that sociology would give ultimate meaning to all other science. He argued that
sociology is the mother of all sciences. I do not think this claim has any major validity relevance
now. He argued that, mathematics, where scientific principles can be used very easily could be
compared to that of sociology which deals a more complicated, unpredictable system. He argued
that in that sense, sociology really represents the most important feature of science.
Comte proposed the word ‘sociology’ for this new science rather than the current expression
social physics. We know that is one of the reasons why Comte is considered as the father of
sociology. He argued that this term ‘sociology’, as the science of society is better than the term
‘social physics’ which was the term that was currently used during that particular time.
Another very important contribution of Comte, which is very valid even today, is his focus on
two distinct aspects of society. He argued that sociology was divided into two distinct part, one is
‘social statics’ that is the study of socio-political systems related to their existing level of
civilization and secondly, social dynamics which entailed the study of three stages. In this sense,
he argued that sociology is the study of two distinct things.
One is about social statics that looks at how a society exists. What is the kind of a study of socio-
political systems, socio-political systems, socio-political structure of that particular society where
you are able to understand that particular society in relation to their existing level of civilization.
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Through that you are able locate a particular society where it stands in the larger scheme or
larger canvas of things.
Then the second part, the ‘social dynamics’ which tries to understand the social change. In other
words the social order and social change. Social statics looks at how the social structure is
formed and where do you locate the, this particular society in the larger evolutionary scheme of
things. And the social dynamics, the latter part of sociology must look at how societies undergo
change.
This argument about a larger canvas of society is one of the most central arguments of Comte
that every society has to undertake a unilinear evolutionary model, an evolutionary model in a
single direction. Every society must follow this particular path, reaching a kind of a culmination.
For him the Western societies have already reached this particular culmination because they
were the so-called positive societies.
Therefore, the attempt of Comte was to find the true scientific knowledge about the society so
that a balance between order and progress can be made and all conflicts, violence and confusion
can be avoided. As we discussed briefly, Comte was a product of his time. He saw the kind of
confusion, violence and unrest and the social conflict that affected France during the period after
the French revolution.
Comte was deeply committed to bringing a more peaceful solution. He believed that the
scientific knowledge will bring about a kind of balance between order and progress, which are
very important concepts in sociology. On the one hand, you need stability and for stability you
need established institutions. You need a set of moral values. You need a set of practices which
have certain kind of permanence.
You need certain social structure, you need entrenched practices and entrenched value systems.
On the other hand, society also requires progress because French Revolution was seen as a very
important milestone in the human progress. It also opened up the possibility that the society can
march forward to endless possibilities of progress. So on the one hand, you require a certain kind
of an equilibrium because a society without equilibrium and society completely or constantly in
state of chaos could be quite detrimental.
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You need some kind of stability and also you need the kind of a forward march towards what
was generally understood as progress. How do you ensure that? So he believed that the scientific
knowledge provides you the mechanism to strike a balance between the social order and progress
and therefore all conflicts, violence and confusion can be avoided. The tussle between advocates
of reformists and the reactionary counter reformists could be balanced.
We know that, in Europe during that particular time, there was very serious very serious conflict
or arguments between the people who advocated more radical changes and the more reactionary
conservative sections who wanted all these reformists attempts to be stopped and society retain
its balance. In that context, Comte actually represents a very interesting position that tried
reconcile these two.
Now coming to his major contribution about this law of three stages, he claimed that the history
of society could be divided into three different stages the theological, metaphysical and positive
based on the evolution of philosophy and of human mind. It is a very interesting argument he
makes. He argues that the evolution of philosophy, society and human mind, they all follow the
kind of a similar pattern of a transformation from a stage that can be described as theological to
an intermediary and a very short lived face called as metaphysical to that of a current phase that
can be called as positive.
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Comte was very favorable about it. He was very optimistic about it. Comte had very positive
opinion about this argument. He believed in the laws of society. He is as a social scientist, was
trying to imitate the practices of natural science. He was trying to formulate laws of human
society. As you all must be knowing, now no sociologists would dare to talk about formulating
his or her laws that are applicable to every society, irrespective of time and place. Such a
conception of overarching laws are impossible, they do not work.
Sociologists have realized that it is impossible or irrelevant to try and formulate such laws. But
the times of Comte was very different. The intellectual orientation of Comte was very different.
He believed that such laws can be formulated because he modelled sociology after natural
sciences such as physics or chemistry.
He wanted to create a laws of sociology the same way you have laws in physics and chemistry.
So the first stage, the theological stage relies on supernatural or religious explanations of the
phenomena of human behavior. Because the human mind is in search for causes of phenomena
and explains the apparent anomalies in the universe as interventions of supernatural agents,
which is a very important argument.
Even if we do not agree with the argument about law of society,, it is very important because it
also talks about how human society in general began to make sense of the world. Because in this
theological state, as he correctly points out, human beings try to make sense of this world as a
reflection of the actions and desires of a supernatural being, whether you call it as a God or you
believe it as the power of spirits or certain kind of in phenomena like animatism.
You believe that the things that are going around you, or way in which the world works, the way
in which human beings behave, the way in which everything happens around you must be
regulated by a supernatural agent. As human society progressed, your understanding of the
supernatural agent also changed from attributing divine power to a particular object.
You usually understand the evolution as starting from animism where supernatural powers were
perceived to be attached to particular rock or a particular tree or particular animal, to natural
forces like thunder or rain, into different ideas about spirits and notions of God into more refined
and more advanced notions of a of monotheistic religions of a single God. The God which
appears in the nature of human beings or a God which does not have any shape.
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All these explanations were used to make sense of the world around them and to explain the
apparent anomalies in the universe as inventions of supernatural agents. It could be anomaly in
terms of your personal life. You being very pious and leading a very virtuous life, but end up in
facing some of the most difficult tragedies in your life, you do not come to terms with that.
Starting from such kind of questions or agonies to your bewilderment about the way in which the
world function about natural calamities, everything was attributed to a supernatural agent. In this
stage, human focused on discovering absolute knowledge. Comte disapproves this state because
it turns to be simplistic explanation of social phenomenon. In this stage, people perceive that all
phenomena was caused by supernatural agents rather than human reason and experience.
It is a very familiar argument that we have. You tend to believe what you simply thought in your
mind, especially with the emergence of religion as an institutionalized system. There was
mechanism to consolidate these ideas and to transmit these ideas and even to enforce that. So
every story of organized religion tells you the story of its codification, its institutionalization and
its transmission, its socialization and its enforcement through violent as well as through non-
violent means.
Therefore every religious education, religious institutions and in combination with legal system
and brute power, they worked across the ages to establish that religious knowledge is the
absolute one. But Comte believed that is not true because that is a reflection of a simple and
uncritical mind. And rather, you need to employ reason and experience to make sense of the
word.
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According to Comte, the theological stage is broken into three sections, fetishism, polytheism
and monotheism as an evolutionary progress. We just briefly mention that because even in this
theological stage, human beings progress from understanding of attributing these supernatural
spiritual things to set of objects, fetishism into polytheism believe in several gods, several forms
of Gods, and then evolved into monotheism.
Even this is understanding is quite problematic. Because of this evolutionary character, he would
argue that the most refined version of religion is that of monotheism which again a problematic
assumption. In that sense, the second stage of metaphysical stage is merely a modification of the
first, because a supernatural cause is replaced by an abstract entity. People begin to think in
terms of metaphysics, and not proper theology.
It is meant to be a transitional stage where there is the belief that the abstract forces control the
behavior of human beings. Comte does not really elaborate this much as he argues that is a very
brief period. It is a very transitional period. In spite of attributing the reasons to supernatural
being or the supernatural power, you attribute that to abstract forces.
Because theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible and their conceptions are so
radically opposed in character, human intelligence must have a gradual transition. He implies a
very instructive argument that theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible. He argued
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that you cannot have a sudden shift from a theological frame of mind to a scientific frame of
mind.
Because both work very differently and work on completely different premises. Both have
different kind of temperaments, different kind of impact on both psychological and social and
personal spheres. So you need a kind of gradual transition. And he argued metaphysical stage
provided that kind of a space.
Comte argues that it is in the positive stage, when the mind realizes that laws exist to govern
human behavior and that this state can be explained rationally with the use of reason and
observation, both of which are used to study the social world. This stage relies on science,
rational thought and empirical laws.
This is the time when human beings say goodbye to all the theological explanation, all the
knowledge that is supplied to them by the clergy, by the priests, which only requires your
complete obedience and an acceptance. It does not require any critical faculty. You are not
supposed to have a critical dialogue with your clergy or with your priest. You are supposed to
completely accept the knowledge that is supplied to you as divine knowledge.
Even criticizing the provider of this knowledge is seen as equivalent to criticizing the God. So
once knowledge is considered to be divine and the knowledge giver is considered to be divine,
then it becomes very difficult to criticize. So Comte argued that human civilization or human
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mind in the latter stage began to criticize or began to develop this faculty of criticism. They
began to develop the faculty of reason.
They began to believe that, unlike other living organisms; human beings have the ability to use
the critical faculty to understand the world on their own. They are able to make use of
observation. They are able to make use of their intelligence to make sense of the things that are
happening around them. Through the rational thought, they are able to formulate empirical laws.
Comte believed that, this study of sociology he created was the science that came after all others.
As the final science, it must assume the task of coordinating the development of the whole
knowledge because it is organized all of human behavior. It is about the point that we discussed
briefly, he considered sociology as a mother of all social science.
As sociology is the most recent science, it has all the features of all the sciences that were
developed prior to that. It is able to synthesize all the scientific spirit that were developed
previous to that. So he argued that sociology must be able to develop that kind of equality. It
must emerge as the epitome of all the scientific qualities.
As I briefly mentioned, towards the latter part of his writing, he turned towards a kind of
mysticism, leaving behind his preoccupation with scientific inquiry and positivism and leaving
many of his supporters disappointed. He had a very difficult end. A scholar who was once
celebrated, and considered to be very powerful in Europe, lived a very lonely life towards the
end.
As students of sociology, we understand Comte not only as a father of sociology, not in a

technical sense of the term, as he is the one who coined the term. But he is the one who very
profoundly argued for the emergence of sociology as a positive science, a strand of thinking,
which is even now a very powerful strand. In the era of postmodernity or late modernity there are
very powerful strand of epistemological as well as methidological foundations within sociology,
who argues that sociology cannot let go its scientific character.
Of course, there could be arguments and disagreements about what constitutes objectivity and
other things. But there are very powerful schools of thought which argues that sociology must
retain its character of science because the terms such as ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ are not
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simply empty words. They need to be very seriously safeguarded. So we will wind up this class
on Auguste Comte and will discuss Herbert Spencer in the coming class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 13
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Welcome back to the class. In this session we will be discussing about Herbert Spencer, a
very important British philosopher who has tremendously contributed for the formation
sociology as a discipline. Hope you remember in the previous class we discussed the
contribution of Auguste Comte who is widely considered as the father of sociology. Auguste
Comte had a very significant impact in Spencer’s thinking and works.
Hebert Spencer was born in Derby in England in 1820 and it is very interesting thing to note
that he did not receive any formal education. He was educated by his father and his uncle but
he turned out to be one of the very influential and widely popular philosophers of his time.
He has written extensively and his academic interest spread across different area so it is been
widely considered as a surprising fact that a person who did not receive any formal education
or who did not attend any college or university became so influential and became a very
prolific author and thinker.
Spencer viewed himself as a philosopher who can propose a grant project for uniting ethics,
natural science and social science. This great project was termed as Synthetic Philosophy. As
we have seen in the previous classes as well, thinkers like Montesquieu or thinkers like Saint
Simon or even to a large extend Auguste Comte, were all pre-occupied with the possibility of
providing a much larger social law that can be applicable across societies, across the time.
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Because they were heavily influenced by the way in which natural science such as physics,
chemistry and biology were taking shape.
Here Spencer was not different as he proposed to formulate a theory which unites ethics,
natural science and social sciences. You must be by now knowing that this was too much an
ambitious project, which is too grandiose in its nature and he termed it as kind of synthetic
philosophy. It is a very broad and overarching kind of a philosophy that includes almost
every aspects of human as well as natural society.
His ideas became controversial later and lost their popularity after his death. We will come
back to this particular point later because many of his arguments that were made towards the
end of his life, especially related to the whole idea of social Darwinism invited so much
criticism. He was thoroughly criticized by a lot of people for some of his very controversial
and very conservative arguments.
Spencer was very heavily influenced by theorists like Malthus, Von Baer and Charles
Darwin. These theories especially for example, Malthusians theory about Population Growth
and Charles Darwin’s theory about this Natural Selection and Evolution, heavily influenced
Herbert Spencer’s thinking because he always wanted to find a parallel between the human
society and the organic society.
This theme actually runs through his entire scholarship or his entire academic career. Spencer
came to emphasize that evolution is a process of development from an incoherent,
undifferentiated and homogenous mass to a differentiated and coherent pattern in which the
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functions of structure are well coordinated. This is a very important and very interesting
definition of evolution and you will be able to see that this particular characterization of
evolution can be applicable to both a natural society as well as human society and exactly
Herbert Spencer argued like that.
He provided a definition that evolution is a process of development from an incoherent

undifferentiated and homogeneous mass to a differentiated and coherent pattern in which the
functions of structures are well coordinated. So, here you come across these two terms
‘functions’ as well as ‘structures’ and these two terms are extremely important because they
laid foundation for the later development of structural functionalism as a very important
theoretical school.
I have made this remark several times in the previous classes but this is an extremely
important point that the whole preoccupation with the question of the structure of a society
and the kind of a corresponding function. How it is imperative that certain structures are so
important, so significant for performance of certain kind of function, the kind of a connection
between function and structure. This became one of the most important point of theoretical
reflection among the scholars of this particular time.
Herbert Spencer was heavily influenced by this theme of structure and function and he found
that the natural evolution of the species as articulated by Charles Darwin as very fascinating
where he can adopt and borrow these ideas into that of human society.
‘Social Statics’ is one of his book that is considered to be very important contribution of
Herbert Spencer, where he argues that human happiness can be achieved only when
individuals can satisfy their needs and desires without infringing on the rights of others to do
the same.
He has a utilitarian understanding of human needs and how human needs to have certain kind
of boundaries or how everybody has these similar kind of needs and how all of them have to
have certain kind of understanding and restriction so that as a collectivity they will be able to
peruse their needs. This is presented as law of ethics and morality. Later, he has been being
criticized heavily for taking up a very laissez-faire kind of position where he argued that
people has to be completely free.
This forms the basis of a law where he wanted to combine both ethics and morality. And also
I mentioned in the previous class that this terms, ‘a law of ethics’ or ‘a law of morality’ now
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looks quite problematic because no social scientist at present would use the term law to
describe anything that are related to the social sphere. You do not have a social law as a law
similar to a law that is there in physics or chemistry but during Spencer’s time, this was the
norm or most of the philosophers during his time envisaged formulating a set of laws that
would be applicable to society, in the same way natural laws are applicable to the natural
world.
So, in this book Social Statics, he sought to discover invariant laws and principles of social
organization. They believed in that, there are invariant laws, there are very very imputable
laws and principles that govern social organization and secondly, he began to engage in
organismic analogizing, drawing comparison between the structure of individual organism
and that of society. And this is again a very important term that we came across in when we
discussed Auguste Comte and a term which was given so much of attention and so much
theorization by Herbert Spencer.
He has a very detailed analysis of organismic analogy where he makes a comparison between
the structure and function of a living individual organism and that of a society. So, he
believed that there are parallels, similarities as well as there are differences between the way
an individual organism function, as well as a society function. And we will just touch up on
some of these observations later but I am not going into the details.
Those who are interested can read material on that. He makes a list of similarities as well as
differences between a living organism and that of society. But these arguments have kind of
lost its significance, so I am not really spending much time on that, but this particular line of
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thinking that compares human society with that of a living organism, known as Organismic
analogy was very important foundational concept that laid the foundation for the emergence
of structural functionalism.
Structural functionalism, as we have seen that emerged in the writings of Auguste Comte
developed through Herbert Spencer and later developed in a more sophisticated manner by
Emile Durkheim. It had its growth and development in social Anthropology and, later in
American sociology championed by Talcott Parsons and others. By 1960s, this particular
theoretical foundation or theoretical orientation loses its significance.
In his book titled ‘Social Statics’, reveals the beginning of Spencer’s functionalism as we just
mentioned. He viewed societies like individuals as having survival needs with specialised
organs emerging and persisting to meet these needs. So, the basic question that people like
Spencer argued during that particular time was ‘how do society survive?’ or ‘What are the
basic needs of a society?’
For example, how is a particular society finding the economic resources for its survival? How
is a society devising a specific mechanism to govern itself? How is a society evolving very
specific set of morals and ethics so that there is some kind of acceptance among each and
every member of that particular society?
He identified each of these things as certain kind of survival and functional needs and when
you come to Durkheim and later functionalist, this becomes more complicated set of
questions about functional needs about prerequisites. But Spencer was one of the most
important and influential thinker who began elaborating and theorising these things and also
connecting with these survival needs or functional needs with specialised organs emerging
and persisting to meet these needs.
What are the kind of a mechanisms that are at the disposal of a society to meet these kind of a
needs? So, what are the kind of specific organs? What are the kind of specialised social forms
of organisation or parts of social structure that are capable of meeting these needs which are
very important for every society.
In his book ‘Principles of Sociology’, employing the organismic analogy which is a

comparison of organic bodily and superorganic societal organisation, Spencer developed a
perspective for analysing the structure, function and transformation of societal phenomena.
This is the same point that we have discussed so far.
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He talks about the comparison between the organic and the superorganic. He calls the society
as the super organic entity and there are similarities and parallels and he developed a
perspective for analysing the structure, function and transformation of social phenomenon.
So, when you talk about the structure and function, emphasize is on its existence as social
statics as well as social dynamics, which is an important distinction.
On the one hand, you are concerned about how each and every society is structured and how
does it take care of its own needs and necessities and the second major concern is that how do
these societies transforms? How do these societies undergo significant changes?
So, he wanted to develop a perspective that is capable of addressing both these dimensions
simultaneously. And he has a list of similarities and differences and as I mentioned earlier, I
am not going into the details. They look at how there are similarities between individual
organism and the society and as well as differences.
In his another book, ‘The Study of Sociology’, he elaborates his focused thinking about
developing sociology as a distinct social science. He accepted Comte’s argument that this
new discipline must be named as sociology, not as social physics and it has to be recognised
or acknowledged as a science of the modern society. The goal of the sociology must be to
uncover the principles of morphology and physiology of all organic forms including the
superorganic society with due care to its historic specificity.
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Spencer envisaged sociology as a discipline that wants to uncover the principles of
morphology and its physiology of all organic forms including that of superorganic forms. It is
evident how these medical or biological terms influenced Spencer’s thinking.
The only important caveat he added was that they have to be located within its larger
historical specificity because human societies have a history and you need to have that kind
of a historical perspective to make sense of these physiology as well as morphology of
society.
But the thinking was heavily influenced by his preoccupation with this medical and
biological terms. Through employing organismic analogy that is, comparing organic bodily
and superorganic societal organisation, Spencer developed a perspective for analysing the
structure, function and transformation of societal phenomena.
He wanted to analyse the structure, the function of a society or in other words, how a society
is situated and what are its constituent parts? How a particular society is distinct and different
from other society? How different parts of a society are brought together? What is the kind of
a structure and what are the kind of a corresponding function?
It was very specifically argued that you cannot get a function performed on a sustainable
manner without having a particular structure in place. How do we understand the term
structure? Structure is usually defined in sociology as an ordered arrangement of parts. It
consists of different parts but these parts are not put together in a casual manner. These parts
are organised and arranged in a systematic manner. This idea of ordered arrangement of parts
is one of the usual definitions of the term structure.
Spencer and most of the philosophers of his time, as well as later scholars including British
anthropologist, pursued this question of understanding how a society is structured. They
thought about what are the specific ways in which a society is constituted, how its economic,
social and political and moral and religious elements put together and how this particular
structure gives rise to certain kind of function and how there is a kind of a correspondence
between structures and functions, along with looking at the nature of transformation of social
phenomena.
So, he develops a model of restructuring social systems. In this model, the basic processes
are; forces causing growth in a system size, the differentiation of units, the processes whereby
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differentiated units become integrated and the creation of a coherent heterogeneity which
increases the level of adaptation to the environment.
You can see that this is clearly what he means by the term evolution as explained by Charles
Darwin. So, if you go back to the definition that Herbert Spencer provided some time back,
‘from a very incoherent, undifferentiated, simple entity, the society moves into a more
coherent and differentiated one.’
Here he says that in order for this process to happen, there must be growth in system size. If
he is talking about population, the population must increase in its size, it should grow in its
size and then there must be differentiation of units. What does it mean to say ‘the
differentiation of units’? This means that the constituent units will have more division of
labour, we will come back to this point when we discuss Durkheim. Durkheim’s argument
about division of labour is a very insightful argument about how societies become more and
more developed.
You need to have the differentiation of units. In a society you need to have specialised people
or specialised institutions to take care of different things. For example, a traditional tribal
society is the most undifferentiated society. You do not have too many differentiated things.
In undifferentiated society, there is no formal education system, there may not be any formal
religious system, there is no formal law enforcement agency, and no formal agency for
producing things. So, each and everything is handled by the same community.
Whereas, in an industrial society like ours, you have so much of differentiated functions, so
much of differentiated agencies that deals with entertainment, transportation, about law
enforcement, about justice delivery, about governance, about political systems and so on. We
know that how complicated the world that we are living in and the process of creation of a
coherent heterogeneity. So, the most important point is that this heterogeneity is not order
less, or not a very ambiguous on.
This heterogeneity has a very specific coherence. It is ordered, it is systematic, and is a very
complicated process. It is a very complicated heterogeneity, but this heterogeneity has a
coherence, and has an underlying unity which increases the level of adaptation to the
environment. So, when the society become more and more complicated with a kind of a
coherence, it develops its ability to adapt to the environment better. So, that is the argument
that Spencer is putting forward when he talks about the evolution of society.
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Now, what do we mean by this adaptation? He specifically argues that this adaptation into
social change and he talks about the 3 types of society, such as primary, secondary, and
tertiary compounding, by which he meant that a society has undergone a qualitative shift in
the level of differentiation from a simple to a more complex form. Again, a typical uni-linear
evolutionary model from a primary and the secondary and tertiary society is assumed here.
What is happening is that from primary to secondary and to tertiary, the compounding or the
complexity is increasing in unilinear fashion.
We understand complexity in terms of levels of differentiation. A primary society could be

equated with a tribal society. A hunting-gathering society that has not developed or
progressed in the conventional understanding of the term is therefore a primary society. A
hunting and gathering society that is a least differentiated society. And from there you have
secondary compound society and the tertiary compound society.
A tertiary compound society for Spencer could be the society in which he lived where the
differentiation have become too much. And he also contrasted between militant and industrial
structures. Militant structures are geared for aggression, with strong central and coercive
control of the individuals in a society. Industrial structures, however, are geared for peace, so
industrial societies, societies in which industrial structures predominate have been described
as having a spontaneously generated and loosely coupled mode of societal organisation.
As per his classification, the militant societies are more characterized by aggression whereas
industrial societies are characterized by peace. Industrial societies are having a spontaneously
generated and loosely coupled mode of societal organisation. These societal organisation are
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more organic, more differentiated, more complex but something actually holds this societies
together.
Now, coming back to a kind of a critical evaluation of Spencer, he is the one who coined the
term “survival of the fittest” which became heavily influential in the discussions on
evolution. We are all familiar with the terms such as ‘struggle for existence’ and ‘survival of
the fittest’. This presents you with a very brutal character of the nature where different
species fight for each other, they struggle for their existence and through a process of natural
selection, only the fittest remain, all the unfit species disappear.
This is how one of the interpretations of this organic evolution, evolution of species is being
elaborated. Here it is very interesting to see that Spencer adopts the similar argument
regarding society. It can be seen as a very cruel or insensitive argument that human beings
are like different animals or species who are struggling for their existence and only the fittest
will survive. And spencer is the one who coined the term.
This idea that he developed is that certain societies are fitter and thereby they deserve to live
in the society, deserve to flourish whereas, the less fit societies, less capable societies are fit
to disappear. This idea was very much used by many of these conservative philosophers
during his time. You also must remember the context in which he is making these statements.
These statements are made when Europe was at the peak of its colonial expansion.
Colonialism is one of the most violent episodes in human history. You know that the
colonialists, who were from four or five major European military powers travelled across the
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globe and they identified people who were less capable than them in terms of weapons and in
terms of military prowess and then dominated, killed them systematically and even wiped out
entire population in order to conquer several regions. This colonial expansion or outright
form of violent domination was justified on the base of racial and religious superiority
Because for most of these colonial conquers people who do not believe in Christianity were
not even considered as human beings. So, there was nothing sinful and wrong in killing
people because you are not killing the true human beings. A true human being is somebody
who practices Christianity. So, if you see a ‘savage’ who follows some other kind of religion,
there is nothing morally wrong or religiously wrong in killing them. That was the assumption
that justified the brutality of colonialism.
In such a political climate where this form of naked aggression and naked dominance was the
practice, Spencer became a very important scholar whose arguments could be used to justify
this kind of aggression and dominance because he is talking about a societal law where there
is only the fittest survives and the less capable people and their societies must give way for a
more fitter, capable and stronger society.
This idea that is known as ‘Social Darwinism’ became very prominent during his time and
1920s 1930s it became very heated debate. It led to heated debate and became a very
controversial term. The social theory on the basis of the law of survival of the fittest was
integrally related to the nineteenth century rise in scientific racism. So, you must be knowing
that the rise of scientific racism where biology and idea of evolution, physical anthropology
was used to categorise people into several races by using all kind of scientific principles.
By arguing that people can be divided into watertight compartments which people can be
divided into very distinct forms of racial types by looking at the skin colour, by measuring
the texture of the hair, by measuring the skull something called as the cephalic index, by
measuring the nose known as nasal index and a number of other indices, they prepared very
scientifically looking, convincing and very rigorous classificatory schemes where people
across the globe are positioned.
The most important point is that all these scientific racism had a very open and blatant claim
that the Caucasian race such as the whites or the European, were the most superior race to
anybody else. We have seen its consequence in the rise of Nazism in Germany and
Holocaust. Currently you see the coming back of such kind of arguments with the rise of
New Nazis and the racist uprising across the globe.
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Today, science has convincingly proved that there is no pure race any more. Every
population, every individual in this whole world is a product of lot of intermixing of different
races. The racial purity is a myth, it no longer has any scientific, biological, historical or
sociological backing. But during his time, Spencer played a very important role in
propounding this argument that only the fittest need to survive.
When the evolutionary paradigm collapsed and fell into obscurity in the 1930s, so did
Spencer’s Sociology. So, if you look at the larger transformation of Spencer’s theory, there is
a consensus among sociologist that his popularity and influence faced serious challenge
immediately after 1930s.
Even now, he is considered as a sociologist who gave certain kind of legitimacy to this
argument of Social Darwinism and was heavily influenced by the biological influence on
social sciences especially the kind of a mechanical adoption of the logic of evolution into that
of society. So, we will wind up the class now and we will meet in the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 14
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber: Theorists of Modernity
Welcome back to this session. We are beginning a very important section of the course,
where we analyse, slightly elaborate and have lengthy discussion on three people, three
prominent thinkers of classical sociology ; Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.
These three scholars compared to anybody else in the long history of sociology have played
the most prominent role in shaping the discipline and they continue to be relevant even now.
While we discussed about Comte and Spencer in the previous class, I mentioned that most of
their arguments are now not taken so seriously by sociologists because they represented or
they lived in a particular intellectual climate where their ambitions were too broad, there was
no specific or specialist discipline called as sociology, they were all kind of a natural
philosophers, very broad philosophers who were orienting their philosophical thinking to the
field of society. Society as a very distinct area of interest or a society as a very distinct
subject matter had not developed then.
But when we come to these people Marx, Durkheim, and Weber undoubtedly we can say that
they are the most prominent thinkers and especially Durkheim and Weber, why I am not
including Marx is because Marx is not a strict sociologist like the way we understand
Durkheim and Weber. Marx was much broader, Marx was much bigger, and he was a
gigantic intellectual person, intellectual figure in his capacity. We will have a very detailed
discussion about each of these people but let us see what the point of discussing about them
together is.
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I discussing the together because I want to connect these theorists as a theorists of modernity.
A term that have appeared several times, a term that will appear again in the future classes
several times, the term that is extremely important and a fraught one, a term that has given
rise to so much of debate even now, the kind of a theoretically debates about modernity.
Whether a modernity is singular, there can be multiple modernity, there can be alterative
modernities?
What has been the experience of modernity in different places in European colonies? How do
we look back to the imposition of certain ideas of modernity? How do we try to regal out of
this kind of consider theoretical imposition on them? , the arguments about developing
certain paradigms beyond that of colonialism, decolonising attempts. So, this is a very
important term and these three thinkers, sociological thinkers are somebody who are the
thinkers of modernity.
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Now, Anthony Giddens is an important and famous British sociologist. He describes

sociology as a study of modernity, it is a very important definition because sociology has
been defined by different people differently. Durkheim defines it as a study of social facts,
Weber defines it as a study of social action whereas, Giddens defines it as a study of
modernity, a shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization, a very distinct
phase where sociology does not look into the past.
Sociology strictly is not the study of the agrarian society, of course you have agrarian
sociology or rural sociology emerge as a major theme, but the overall orientation of sociology
is the modern society, the industrial society and the society that is evolving in front of us.
Now, we have done this discussion but just a recap; modernity as produced by these three
revolutions, the great transformations that we discussed in the previous classes that swept
across Europe during that particular time from seventeen to eighteenth and nineteenth
century.
One of the first revolutions as indicated by Anthony Giddens is a certain set of attitudes
towards the world including the idea of the world as open to transformation by human
intervention. A kind of a revolution that completely transformed our idea, our intellect, our
intellectual orientation towards our own life as well as that of the world around us.
In other words, this could be identified as enlightenment, as the scientific revolution, the
emergence of reason that you do not have to really depend up on the theological or the
religious explanation and blindly follow that rather, you have the faculty of reason, the ability
to use your reason to make sense of the world and not only to make sense of the world but
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also to transform it by human intervention. You can transform the fate of people, you can
transform the way people live into a far better way, less violent way, less painful way, in a
more emancipatory mode. So, this was one of the most important intellectual movement that
happened in Europe what we understand it as enlightenment. We already discussed that in
previous lectures.
Second one is a certain range of political institutions including the nation-states and mass
democracy as heralded by French revolution. Again we had a slightly detailed discussion
about that. So, here people come to realize that a monarchy or a particular lineage of a king, a
king and his fore fathers, a king, his son and his son and his son.
Here, there is nothing divine about it, they are not divinely ordained, they are all ordinary
people like that and there is nothing divine about a monarchy, despotism and these are just
one among the forms of political governance and far more desirable, far more civilized way
of governing oneself is that of mass democracy where everybody has a say in how they must
be ruled.
We know that this whole idea of democracy why it very glamorous and very glorious, it had
very chequered past, this whole idea of universes suffrage that every person is equal, every
person gets a vote, and you have an age limit beyond that everybody gets to cast a single
vote. And it looks very normal and natural for us, but in order to reach this particular position
most of these European countries and countries like America and Australia, they had to fight
for decades if not for centuries.
Earlier universal suffrage was only limited to the aristocratic, or it did not simply exist.
Voting rights were reserved only the white, for the propertied class. Then only to the men,
white propertied men. So, it took so much of struggle, movements, consistent social struggle
in order to make it a universal one where everybody whether it is a black or white or poor or
rich or man or woman is able to cast their vote, but this was a major turning point.
The third one a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and market
economy, something that we discussed again, brought about by industrial revolution, the rise
of Capitalism, a completely new mode of economic production where the workers are not
bound to their employer in any permanent manner. They are there to sell their thing, the
traditional bondages, traditional influences have simply disappear. We discussed it in a
sufficient manner. So, these are the three important revolution that gave birth to a particular
type of modernity as it unfolded in Europe during that particular time.
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This great transformation, so profound in its implications, gave sociological theory its reason
for existence. It is a very powerful statement. So, why did sociology emerge? Sociology
emerged because these great transformation produced a particular kind of society, the series
of consequences which required a specialist lens to understand without which sociological
theory would not have arisen. A sociology would not have been established if all these things
did not take place.
So, what let to, was the discovery of the idea of the “social” or “society”. Maybe for the first
time in human history, the intellectuals and the thinkers they argue, they realise that there is
something called as social or there is something called as society as a distinct subject matter,
as a distinct area of study.
This is something very important. I am inviting your attention to some of my earlier classes
where we argued that the people who thought about society, the social philosophers must
have been existed right from the start of human civilization, we had in every civilization
thinkers who had spoken so much of things about the social because social is something very
part of their life.
But an institutionalised and systematic emergence of this social as a distinct subject matter
with a set of theories, with a set of methodological orientations and epistemological basis is
something quite unique because this is the time that Europe underwent so much of
transformation thereby, a consensus emerged that you require a new disciplinary perspective
in order to make sense of that, as you cannot reduce these transformations into economic or
political or philosophical or historical things.
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Because the transformation that are taking place, changes that are taking place cannot be
captured by the existing disciplines or existing theoretical framework. So, that realization led
to the emergence of sociology as a new discipline. Intellectuals came to recognize the
existence of society as a supra-individual entity, a distinct phenomenon having its own
specific characteristics, its constraints and variables. Society is thus understood as a supra-
individual entity i.e. something that exists beyond and above the individual. This is a very
interesting term, we will come back to that when we discuss Emile Durkheim.
Society is constituted by individuals. If you take away all individual, there is no society.
Society is composed of individuals, there has to be a group of people, there has to have some
kind of interaction, mutual relation, we discussed that in earlier lectures. But the argument is
that while society is constituted by the individuals, society is beyond them, above them, it has
its own existence and this an interesting argument, we will come back to that in more detail.
A distinct phenomenon having its own specific characteristics, its constraints and its
variables. So, different societies vary, have different characteristics and different forms of
constraints. And you need a specialised discipline to understand that.
Individuals themselves were products of society and sociology was considered as a study of
Modern Society. Thus, it leads to the argument that an individual is a product of society. The
way individual think, the way individuals act, the way individuals identify the world around
them, and the way individuals behave in a particular context. These are heavily influenced by
the society around them.
So, the argument that individuals are the product of a society was a major argument during
that particular time, along with the definition that sociology as a study of this modern society.
This is the context in which it was believed that because you cannot reduce, you cannot have
your philosophical arguments to study the society the way it functions. You need to have
more focused, more empirically grounded arguments and a discipline was required.
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So, that is the reason why we consider Marx Durkheim and Weber as the foremost theorists
of modernity. They are the central pillars of the study of modernity from a sociological point
of view. We have set of philosophers who were different, you have Nietzsche, and you have
other philosophers who are considered to be very important Kant for example, important
philosophers who provided philosophical idea for the understanding of modernity through
understanding of reason.
But from a discipline of sociology, they are the most important theorist of modernity, because
they lived, they experienced and they reflected over the rise of modernity. They were the
people of their times, all this great transformation of Europe happened in front of their eyes,
they experienced it, they lived through this process. And this process is tremendously
influenced their thinking, they wanted to comprehend the kind of changes. For example, a
person like Marx, he was bewildered by the kind of changes that were happening.
They were all personally touched, they were perplexed by the kind of changes that were
happening in front of them. They were the men of their time, they were the scholars of their
time who very creatively engaged and responded to the kind of changes happening in their
life. They applied the principles of science inherited from the enlightenment to examine the
origin, characteristics and dynamics of modern society.
So, we discussed it, I feel sufficiently about the impact of scientific thinking on social
philosophers. They believed that the scientific method or positivism that has been developed
by Comte and others could be used to study the kind of changes that are happening around
them.
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So they asked a series of central questions. And what were these central questions? All the
three scholars or all the three or every socials scientists of that time asked these questions in
one or the other way. What are the origins and defining characteristics of the new capitalist
industrial society? How do they differ from the traditional society of the past? What
processes did the transition from the pre-modern world to the modern world come about?
What are the driving forces and developmental tendencies of the emergent industrial society?
What is the fate of the individual in the modern age? What new problems and dangers does
the era of modernity pose? What does the future hold? How might we best respond to the
radically new circumstances of modern social life? These are very important and fascinating
questions; Questions which have philosophical and utilitarian philosophical as well as very
utilitarian implications, very profound set of questions which helps in understanding the kind
of the characteristics of a capitalist industrial society.
The difference between traditional and modern and you must be knowing that this binary
posing of traditional versus modern, agriculture versus industrial. This has been a very central
feature of sociological thinking. So, they wanted to understand in what way a modern society
is different from traditional society and from a pre-modern to the modern. What were the
driving forces and also the most interesting is the question of the fate of individual? Where
individual emerges as a separate entity.
Individual emerges as an autonomous entity, individual no longer can be subsumed under the
label of the community, he or she is no longer a part of a tribe or a community or a village or
a caste or a religion. He has to be seen as separate and what is the fate of an individual?
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Beautiful, very fascinating discussions follow. And also a new set of problems, new set of
issues, so while modernity promised emancipation, modernity promised the breaking down of
traditional barriers and traditional shackles.
It also engendered a series of problems which we will discuss of course, all the scholars talk
about it elaborately especially Karl Marx talks about it. But these set of questions are very
very important.
They were also defenders of modernity which is an important point to remember. Unlike say
Spencer for example, who had a more conservative kind leaning or Auguste Comte for that
matter. They were the kind of active defenders of modernity, vehemently opposed to the
reactionary currents of the day.
We know that the whole enlightenment and the whole social reformation did not happen
unopposed. It did not happen without any opposition. There were very powerful sections
especially the elite sections, especially the clergy class, the priests, the Aristocrats, the
wealthy sections, they were very much against these arguments of reformations or arguments
of enlightenment.
But these scholars did not joint hands with them, they were very strong defenders of
modernity. They neither regretted the demise of traditional society, nor dreaded the rise of
modern society. Because for the people who were always in the positions of privilege, for
them the laws of the traditional society means the laws of their privilege and the laws of their
comforts. And they did not want that. They did not want to hold on to the kind of a traditional
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privileges that they were enjoying. A priest for example, a Catholic priest for example might
always wanting to enjoy the kind of unquestioned adoration or unquestioned acceptance by
his disciples.
This is a very comfortable way of living, very comfortable state to be in. But the ground is
shifting and they did not dread the rise of modern society. Even Marx acknowledged the
civilizing influence of capitalism. Why this statement is important? Because Marx throughout
his life, throughout his intellectual life, wanted to fight and destroy capitalism. But he even
while doing so welcomed the transition from feudalism to capitalism. That is an important
point. He identified emergence of capitalism as an unavoidable situation, a very welcoming
one, a very positive one.
Because for him it marked the transition from the slavery and feudalism to a far better one.
While he was extremely critical of that, he wanted a more egalitarian society to come into
picture. He was appreciative of that. He talked about the civilizing influence of capitalism.
And similarly, Emile Durkheim applied the sociological method to make an empirically
grounded case in support of industrialization, individualism, intellectualism and
egalitarianism.
So, all these people, Durkheim was deeply committed to some of the important
enlightenment ideas of egalitarianism, of treating every individuals as equal as for
intellectualism, the primacy of your intellectual ability, the spirit of questioning, the spirit of
critical thinking, the spirit of rationality and that of individualism. So, while they wanted to
analyse the kind of changes through every scientific point of view, all of them were
ideologically inclined to this modern world.
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Lecture No. 14
‘Factory scene’ from ‘Modern Times’ (1936)
Welcome back to the session. I hope you remember that in the previous classes we
had a discussion about modernity as a very specific defining historic moment and we
also had a detailed discussion about why these three important scholars that is Karl
Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber are widely considered as the theorists of
modernity.
If you go through the previous discussion, we will see elaborate discussions about
why they were fascinated with the kind of condition known as modernity, why they
were appreciative of that and why they tried their level best to try to make sense of the
kind of rapid changes that happened in Europe during that particular time and why
they understood it as a inevitable process that the whole mankind not only Europe but
the whole mankind need to encounter. And also why that all of them were critical of
the various aspects of modernity. So, that particular session, those discussions are
something important for us to get a better sense or the kind of classes that we are
going to discuss in the coming sessions.
I am starting the session on Karl Marx, one of the most important and towering
intellectual of the modern period. A person whose contribution has significantly
reshaped or significantly shaped the course of social science theory especially
sociological theory.
A discussion on Marxian thought, Marxian social theory is something very fascinating

and it is also challenging given the kind of stature of Karl Marx as a very important
social theorist. So, before setting out to do that in detail, I thought I will share with
you a small clipping, a film clipping of another legend of the modern times, that is
Charlie Chaplin, an actor, a film maker of no comparison. Charlie Chaplin’s this
particular film, The Modern Times, I am using a small clip from that film ‘The
Modern Times’ and it is widely known as ‘The Factory Scene’.
Many of you must have seen this film and almost every films of Charlie Chaplin. But
I thought that I would screen this particular clipping so that it provides you a very
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interesting introduction to discussion on Marx, on capitalism, on modernity and a host
of other related issues and we know that the place of Charlie Chaplin in the history of
World Films is something very unique. He is widely seen as a comedian but
everybody knows that behind his comedy scenes, behind his humour, there are very
stark social realities.
While we laugh at his films and laugh watching his films, we also cry inside.
Because most of the themes that he depicts are something of very significant and
serious nature, whether it is poverty, dictatorship, or a host of other issues.
This particular film title ‘The Modern Times’ and this particular scene around 14-15
minutes long film clip, ‘factory scene’ is something extremely important. So, please
watch that and we will come back for a small discussion after that. I hope you
watched the scene and you really enjoyed this particular scene. I would really urge
you to watch the whole film the Modern Times, not only this particular scene but for
our discussion this is something very important.
Now, let us spend some time trying to understand why that this particular scene, ‘the
factory scene’ as it is widely known is something so instructive of the modern times
or why that a teacher like me find it as an extremely important tool to introduce a
thinker like Karl Marx or to introduce a larger theme like capitalism and modernity to
students.
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What are the features that are characteristics of this particular factory scene as they
are widely considered as the markers of the industrial era, the markers of capitalism,
and that of modernity? There are whole series of themes, issues and observations that
you can come up about this particular scene but we would discuss a couple of them.
One is you must have seen the very fast pace of the films or of the frames.
You would see it as if you have increased the pace of the frame or the pace of the film.
But it is deliberately short and played in a much faster pace. What does this faster
pace indicate? We know that by this enhanced speed of the film whether it is when
Charlie Chaplin is making it or the interaction, everything is set at a much higher
pace.
So, this indicates a much higher pace of the modern world, in comparison with the
traditional society which was supposed to be more relaxed, much more slower, much
more unchanged, the pace of change is seen or it has to be brought to the fore as a
very defining character of the modern times especially within a factory setting an
extremely faster pace is something very important and the filmmaker wants to bring
forth or he wants to foreground that in the very beginning thing.
Another important thing that you would come across is the kind of a working
condition. What kind of working conditions are the workers employed in that
particular setting? What are the kind of features? What are those scenes tell us about
their dressing, the kind of the break they get, the kind of food that they eat, the kind of
working atmosphere, the kind of level of supervision and surveillance.
So, the whole work culture if you want to define the particular term, it provides a very
stark picture, a very dark picture about the kind of situation that the labourers in that
particular scene are supposed to endure or they actually endure in their everyday life.
We know that there is relentless pressure because it shows an assembly line where the
workers’ pace of action is predetermined by the pace of the artefact that comes in
front of him.
He is not the master who can decide at what speed he needs to work and this assembly
line is considered to be a major invention of modern times. It actually has increased
productivity manifold which really produce goods at a much higher pace.
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Once you are in an assembly line you need to work in tandem with the pace of the
articles that comes in front of you. So, the pace of work within a factory floor is
decided. It is streamlined, it is determined by somebody who can increase the speed of
this conveyor belt or decrease it and that is very closely connected with the idea of
productivity. We will come back to this whole idea of productivity and other things
because they are some of the other defined features of a capitalist mode of production.
Another important thing that we come across is the kind of a pervasive surveillance
and there are cameras when Charlie Chaplin goes out or when he works within the
factory floor. There are managers who supervise the activities of every worker and
when he wants to take a break to go to the loo, then again there are cameras installed.
There is a giant screen in which the owner, the man in that suit is supposed to be the
owner. So, he is able to see even what his workers are doing even in the restroom.
That kind of a pervasive sense of surveillance is something very difficult to miss or it
is a very important theme.
You can only imagine the kind of improvements that must have happened or that has
happened in this area of surveillance in the recent times when he was shooting or
when this film was made during early 1930s. The kind of technology for surveillance
was not this advanced. But only that we have mastered the acts of surveillance
through various technological means and other things.
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Another very important, extremely fundamental theme that Chaplin wants to bring
forth is that the natural rhythm of the body is lost. There is a process of
dehumanization. And it is very evident and while it looks very comical that Charlie
Chaplin is not able to walk properly. He is not able to feel as human. Immediately
after the work he request some efforts to feel himself as a human being because his
boldly actions are seen as a continuation of the time when he is working.
So, that is again a very important theme that we will come across later when we
discuss a concept of alienation as elaborated by Karl Marx. Another major theme is
this very distinct, stark class distinction between the people who work on the factory
floor and the people who are supposedly the owners of the factory.
The class distinction is portrayed in a very stark manner because the person who owns
the company his attire is different, his dressing is different, his actions and attitude
everything is different, whereas the people who work on the floor look very different.
You know that class distinction which gets translated through a host of other symbols
like the kind of food, the kind of dress, the kind of confidence on your face, the kind
of way in which you appear.
So, this class distinction between the workers and the owners are again brought forth
in a very stark manner in this particular film. There are some more central themes if
you come across, it appears to the fore when the sales representative come and they
try to persuade the owner of the factory to buy that feeding machine. And just like any
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other sales representative they are trying to impress upon the owner of the factory to
buy that with a single aim to increase productivity.
The sentences that they utter are very important because they are so instructive to
understand the logic of capitalist production. They say that “do not stop for lunch; be
ahead of your competitors”. As you must have seen that hilarious scene when they are
trying to experiment with the feeding machine, when he tries to put food in the mouth
of Charlie Chaplin and the kind of scenes are very hilarious. But behind that hilarious
scenes there is a very dark humour because that dark humour comes from a capitalist
logic that if you can find out certain mechanism to feed the workers during their lunch
time, so that if you can free their hands and mouth, they can work.
They can work without any kind of wastage of time, wastage of production activities
they are able work. So, ‘here do not stop for lunch; be ahead of your competitors’,
that particular sentence really captures the logic of capitalist production “and increase
your production and decrease your overheads”. So, this seems to be the mantra. This
seems to be the innate logic of the every capitalist production and the people who are
there to sell the feeding machine are harping on this particular logic.
The whole idea of a lunch break that the workers need to have their food properly,
these human ideas and human necessities are seen to be irrelevant in the larger logic
of capitalist production. We will come back to that point later when we discuss
Marx’s notion of alienation and workers productivity more in detail.
The scene also talks about a kind of techno-managerial outlook towards efficiency.
When efficiency becomes the catchword, when productivity becomes the catchword,
when the entire scientific thinking is oriented towards the productivity by making a
series of inventions then a whole set of other concerns about the welfare about the
workers, about keeping them in good shape and there are some of the very important
and basic human needs all these things take a backseat and that is having or that will
have very devastating consequences on the social and psychological health of the
worker as an individual and as a working class as a whole.
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Another very interesting way of looking at that film is that you must have seen that
the machine parts are huge in size. They are very gigantic and we would immediately
realize that this is an artificial depiction. If you look at the livers, the various machine
parts, they are huge in size and human beings are seen as much more smaller, much
more insignificant in that and this is again a very interesting and important symbolism
that Charlie Chaplin has used extensively in the particular film.
There is a very iconic scene in which he passes through the film, through the
machine parts and then they were forced to stop the machine and that particular
picture, that particular frame where he is seen as lying inside this machine parts is a
very iconic one. That is actually indicative of this particular argument that the man
has become or the worker has become a ‘cog’ in the machine and this particular term
is used by Karl Marx, when he describes the role of human being instead of playing a
central role in the production of materials and artefacts, the man, the role of the
worker is reduced as a ‘cog’ in the machine. So, instead of human beings using the
machines for their own sake, the contrary is happening. The opposite is happening in
where human beings are being reduced to a machine part. They are seen as an
annexure to the machine part. They are seen as an extension of the machine. So, they
are all very important and stark critic of the logic of capitalism.
He ceases to be a normal human being and that is what exactly happens at the end. He
loses his mental control, he becomes insane and all those scenes look very funny but
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we realize that it is his relentless working pressure and inhuman working condition in
that factory floor that has made him a mental wreck.
This again is a central concern for a scholar like Karl Marx where he used most of his
intellectual energy to describe, explain and to overcome or even over through the kind
of a system that produce that dehumanize the workers into an inhuman kind of a
situation.
So, through this film we can see that some of the very basic principles of modern
capitalism is being analyzed. The logic of the bourgeoisie, the way in which workers
are exploited, the very inherent and fundamental logic of the capitalist system that you
need to increase the productivity, you need to increase the time that the workers are
supposed to spend in the productive activity, the pressure to reduce the intervals or
other kind of known working hours for the worker and to synchronize and to
standardize the working practices, the working actions.
All these aspects are very beautifully captured in this particular film and as I
mentioned earlier the class differences and the working class exploitation, and i do not
think that anyone of us would disagree with the fact that what was happening or what
was depicted in that factory floor was nothing but class exploitation.
Exploitation of workers by the factory owner who understands that every moment that
the worker spends outside this assembly line is a wastage. So, in that process workers
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are dehumanized. The virtue of a worker as a human being is not recognized. It is not
appreciated.
It is all leading to something that Marx elaborated as alienation. We will have a

detailed discussion on alienation later maybe next week or after that because
alienation is an interesting and an important theme that Marx elaborated. He borrowed
this idea from Hegel who identified it as emerging from certain kind of insufficient
mental ideological insufficiencies, but Karl Marx provides a very beautifully very
important materialist explanation for alienation.
So, this particular scene, this factory scene and this film in general ‘Modern times’, it
provides a very scathing critique of the dehumanizing features of modern capitalism
and I thought that this particular introduction would be something very helpful when
we discuss Marx, Marxian intellectual contribution or Marxian theories on class
exploitation, on class struggle and the ideas of surplus value, the kind of revolution
that he romanticized and host of other things. So, we will now move on in the next
class to more focused discussion on Karl Marx and we will see you there. Thank you.
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Classical Sociology Theory
Lecture No. 16
Karl Marx- The Life
Welcome to this session. In this class, we will spend some time trying to have a very broad
overview of the life of Karl Marx. We will not be going into any of the specific discussions
or any specific contributions of Marxian theory. But I thought I will spend some time trying
to provide you a very broad description and overview of the man, the political activist, the
philosopher, the revolutionary and the one of the most profound intellectuals of modern times
and I hope you would agree with me that teaching Karl Marx through a couple of lectures is
almost an impossible task.
It is an extremely difficult exercise to introduce a thinker like Karl Marx in a short span of
time given the breadth of his analysis, the amount of writings, and the amount of
commentaries that have been made on Marxian analysis or Marxian theories. There are
divergent views on Marx and the enormous impact the Marxian thinking and theories had on
the later development of political and social theory. But anyway we would spend some time
to understand the man and his the nature of his intellectual work.
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Here are few pictures, of Marx. The first one is the picture of the young Marx and the last one
is a more familiar picture. In the middle, we have Karl Marx with his wife, Jenny.
Here are some of the documentaries that are easily available on YouTube. ‘Who was Karl
Marx’- DW Documentary that provides a broad overview of Marxian contribution. Then,
‘Masters of money’, the BBC documentary which mostly focuses on Marxian interpretation
of capitalism and that is a very popular and important documentary. Then you have the
‘Marxist thought: Past and present’, a documentary that looks at the relevance of Marxian
theory in the contemporary times.
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I would also suggest you to have a detailed look at marxist.org, a website repository of whole
lot of important Marxian literature. You will find Marx’s original writings and quite a lot of
literature on Marx. So, along with these materials, there are quite a lot of interesting
commentaries and writings and criticisms and other elaborations on Karl Marx. So, finding
materials to understand the contribution of Marx is not difficult at all.
Here are just a couple of slides on his personal life. Karl Marx was born in Germany, he was
a theorist and a revolutionary. He was a Jew, as many of you must might know. He was born
to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx on May fifth, 1818 in the city of Trier in Germany. During
his lifetime, he was exiled from Germany, France and Belgium, eventually settled in London
1849, where he lived until his death in 1883.
Anybody with a cursory understanding of Karl Marx’s life would know that he was a
political activist, he was a revolutionary who believed that the social revolution is only a
matter of time. And who believed that, as a scholar, it is his fundamental obligation, not only
to think and thoerize about the society, but to change it as well. So, in that sense, he was a
political activist, he spent most of his time in writing political propaganda and in actively
organizing workers.
That was exactly the reason why he is expelled from his own motherland, Germany, from
France and Belgium. Eventually, he had to settle down in London, where he ultimately died.
He studied philosophy, history and law at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, received his
doctorate in 1841 and eventually became fluent in 8 languages and this is something telling
about his towering intellectual life. A person who had extremely wide reading habit,
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extremely wide scholarship on a wide variety of topics on philosophy and history and in law,
and he became fluent in 8 languages.
Another very interesting thing that shaped his intellectual and political life was his friendship
with Friedrich Engels, who became his lifelong colleague and his benefactor. We all know
that this famous work, ‘The Communist Manifesto’ was written by Friedrich Engels and Karl
Marx together. And Friedrich played a very important role both in his intellectual as well as
his personal life. Especially towards the end of his life, the economic condition of Marx was
in a very bad shape and he mostly survived on the contribution of money that was sent by
Friedrich Engels and their friendship is very unique and special.
Marx encountered a very difficult personal life. He survived the death of his four children and
many times, was in very acute poverty. Some of his writings on their condition is very
emotional, reading which, you will feel extremely bad about the kind of situation that Marx
had to endure for leading a very active political life. The kind of sacrifices that he had to
make. So, I am not going into details of his personal life because that’s available in the public
domain, those who are interested to know about Marx’s life, there are several biographies that
is written on Marx and these are easily available in the internet or in other libraries. I am not
going into the details.
Now, let us come to the nature of Karl Marx as an intellectual. How do we place him? How
do we describe him? How do we make sense of the man? How do we make sense of his
intellectual life and contribution? Again, it is not an easy task because he was an extremely
complicated person and intellectual. Even now, even after these many years, the kind of
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debates and discussions and controversies about Marxian thought have not completely settled
down.
Marx was primarily a philosopher and a political activist who believed in changing the world.
This is one of the most important thing that distinguishes Karl Marx from the rest of the
social theorists whom we have discussed so far or whom we are going to discuss about,
hereafter. In a way, Karl Marx is incomparable with his peers in social sciences or in
economics because he was primarily somebody, a scholar who was equally a political
activist. One of his famous quotations says “The philosophers have only interpreted the world
in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
It is an extremely important point because he is not discounting the role of philosophers. of

Being a philosopher himself, he is not discounting the role of philosophy or the need to
reflect or theorize the kind of situation. But more importantly, what he argued is that you
need to understand, interpret the world but never leave it there. You need to change it. He
never believed that the role of an academic intellectual is to be an arm chair theorist. He
never believed that.
He always believed that a theorist must work among the people and Marx has a particular
vision about what should be the nature of this work, what should be the nature of a political
activism and what should be the ultimate destiny of mankind, what should be the kind of
changes in which every human society must undergo. Of course you can criticize, you can
disagree with that kind of understanding about the world.
But personally, he committed his entire life for the kind of an activism for which he had to
pay huge price. As we just mentioned, he was expelled from various countries and his
financial condition was very bad never had kind of a settled life. He never had a proper job in
that sense of the world. He worked as a freelance writer, as a journalist. In that sense, he was
somebody who really practiced what he always preached.
He was an economist, a historian, a political theorist, a sociologist, and again, this is

something quite unusual. You will not find many other scholars whom we can describe in this
particular manner. Whether it is Durkheim or Weber or the people whom we discussed in the
previous classes including Herbert Spencer or August Comte or Machevallie. Those were all
people whom we can easily categorize as a philosopher or as a sociologist or as an economist.
But the intellectual interest and magnitude of Marx’s intellectual endeavours, the breadth of
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his knowledge, really surpassed disciplinary boundaries into from philosophy to history to
political science to sociology and host of other disciplines.
It is also extremely important to note that the relevance of Marxian theories or his
contributions were relevant not only during his particular time. They became extremely
influential and powerful even after his death and we have very powerful theoretical
orientations known as Marxian theory and critical theory that were heavily inspired and
influenced by the Marxian thinking.
I that sense, the relevance of Karl Marx, as we will discuss in the coming classes, did not end
with the writing of Marx, rather, it resulted in a proliferation of other ideas theories, as there
were many theorists who were extremely influenced and enchanted by Marx. I would even
use the word enchanted by Marxian thinking and they improved upon Marx, revised Marxian
theory. Most of those endeavours resulted in the emergence of Marxian critical theory as very
decidable theoretical orientations in the later decades.
Marx was primarily a theorist of a capitalist system and studied the account for its origin, its
historical stability and its eventual demise, a prophecy which did not come true, a prophecy
in which Marx very miserably failed. But we will see that in the coming class, how and why
that he understood the capitalist system. He placed the capitalist system at the centre of his
analysis and how incisive that was, how powerful was his critical analysis of capitalism
Marx’s entire intellectual preoccupation was with capitalist system as a defining feature of
the modern society. He was a towering intellectual, and I do not know how to elaborate it
further, given the kind of enormous influence that Karl Marx had on all these disciplines and
in the academic field in almost virtually, every country in the world for past several
generations.
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If look into his amounts of writings, they are voluminous. There is huge body of knowledge
that Marx has written. Making it more difficult is the type of writing that he had. He has had
proper academic writing, especially as you see in his latter writings like The Three Volumes
of Capital. Those are very hard-core economic analysis like any other seasoned academician
would do. But he also was a journalist, so you will come across a host of journalistic writing
and he was also a political activist and he has written various materials which have very
strong polemical political character.
Such writings comprised of arguments or articles which were aimed to criticize other people
very ruthlessly, to defend one’s own position, to humiliate others, to criticize others, to
expose others. So, you will find a combination of all these three extremely different types of
writings in Marxian writings. Starting from very argumentative polemical thing and to more
journalistic writing to more systematic deeper, theoretical, academic writing. A person
combining all these three distinct forms of writings, again is an unusual scenario in the in the
overall scenario of academic life.
Many writings of Marx were published after his death, including the second and third
volumes of Capital as they were recovered from his notes and transcripts. Karl Marx was
very infamous for his very ugly and unreadable handwriting. That in itself proved to be a
very major challenge. And many of his writings were in the form of scribbles, small notes
which were never elaborated. So, there is lot of lack of clarity regarding what he exactly
meant in many of his notes and writings and other things.
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Friedrich Engels played a very important role in in translating many of this material. So, there
is huge amount of controversy, debates and discussions about what exactly he meant and
whether he meant one particular argument or not in those directions. As a result, you will find
quite a few of contradictions, inconsistencies in his writings and it is bound to happen when a
person writes so much, since much younger age and when he even writes at the end of his
life. When somebody writes as an academic, when somebody writes as a as a journalist as a
polemic, as a political activist, you will find that is it very difficult to maintain a sort of
consistency and lack of contradiction.
There are various terms and concepts that are left undefined in his writings. There are lack of
clarity, or there are even seeming contradictions in many of his writings. And the tension
between Karl Marx as a scholar and Marx as a political activist is very profound. As I told
you earlier, these two are entirely different types of engagement. As a scholar, you could be
extremely meticulous and you have to be extremely careful. You need to go deeper into a
given topic whereas that approach will not suit when you are an activist, where you need to
simplify things. You need to make it more conducive for mass appeal, and reshape it for
popular consumption.
Marx was not able to come out of this tension as it is very natural. Another factor which
complicates the legacy of Marx is the huge body of academic and political commentaries on
the writings of Marx. So, it is not only what Marx has written by himself, but as I told you
there is a huge body of literature available by his followers, his disciples, other theorists who
were influenced by Marxian thought. There is a very famous quote from Marx that after
seeing some of the much distorted arguments by his disciples, Marx is supposed to have said
that, “I am not a Marxist”.
Therefore, you will see that there very different shades of Marxism developed later, some
very fundamentalist in its character and very rigid kind of Marxism. I am not going into that,
but this is an extremely important aspect as the latter commentaries on Marx really played an
important role in making many complications and confusions. Another very important part is
that Marxian writing became official ideology and propaganda of communist states, whether
it is China or Russia or host of other countries in the left block and we know that the moment
a particular academic or particular theoretic work becomes a part of a statist agenda, whether
it is communist or capitalist or any other thing, then distortions are bound to happen.
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When an academic contribution or a theory is being channelized into propaganda, then it
loses quite a lot of its nuanced character. Because you cannot have a propaganda with
ambiguity. You cannot have a propaganda with more open ended enquiry. The propaganda
has to be much closed and very unidirectional. The kind of an intricate power relation
between the communist states and the arguments of Karl Marx played a very important role
into a large extent in distorting or giving a unique direction to his writings.
Another very widely prevailed intervention to understand Marxian writings is this distinction
between this ‘young’ Marx and ‘matured’ Marx. A kind of distinction which is widely
accepted by scholars, where the young Marx is supposedly the kind of writings by Marx
comprising of his writings between 1841 and 1848. And the matured Marx is supposed to be
the latter Marx who wrote more rigorous economic analysis of capital. When we talk about
young Marx, you will see he was more philosophical because that was the time he was
fighting with the young Hegelians and Hegelian idealism.
In young Marx, you will see a person who is more politically oriented, more philosophical,
and more romantic and who writes on a host of issues like alienation and other things.
Whereas the matured Marx is more clinical in his approach, more scientific in his approach
and he discusses more substantial issues like capitalism and so on. The young Marx’s
writings includes the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, The Jewish
Question, The Poverty of Philosophy. The Poverty of Philosophy is a major rebuttal to one of
his one of the young Hegelians. And Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The
German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto were also part of young Marxian writings.
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So, all these are the writing which are attributed as the writings of young Marx. Whereas the
three volumes of The Capital and Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy are
considered to be his substantial work which are attributed to the matured Marx.
We can say even without an iota of doubt that Marx continues to be relevant today. Marx
continues to be important today. Of course we know that his prophecy about the demise of
capitalism did not come true, capitalism thrived. Capitalism proved to be the most resilient of
all the economic systems that human society has witnessed so far. So, in that sense there are a
lot of people who believe that Marx no longer has any relevance.
But that is not the case, because his critique of capitalism is extremely important. There is no
other economist or scholar who has dissected and understood the inherent logic of capitalism
like Karl Marx. There is no better scholar on capitalism than Karl Marx. And capitalism
continues to be important and the most dominant form of economic activity, economic frame
work, especially with the collapse of the soviet bloc.
At the same time, we know that capitalism is not free from its contradictions. There are quite
a lot of scholars who are extremely sceptical about the longevity of capitalism as a particular
system because of various reasons. And again, if you look into some of the primary
contributions of Karl Marx, his foregrounding of the material conditions and economy as the
primary focus of analysis is something extremely important. He was the first scholar or the
most profound scholar who vehemently argued to foreground the economic angle, questions
of materiality, questions of production, and the questions of material condition into frame of
analysis of society.
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Therefore the moment you try to understand the contemporary society against a whole set of
later academic trends that valorise and foreground culture, ideologies and other things. Marx
would repeatedly remind you to focus on the conditions of materiality, conditions of
production, conditions of economy, and the way in which different sections of people are
entangled in this process of economic production and that is an extremely important and
invaluable focus which provided you with quite a lot of insights and understanding about the
way in which a society functions.
Marx was a person who was concerned with the questions of class inequality. No other
scholar for that matter can come anywhere near to his genuine concern about the questions of
class inequality. So, we know that class inequality is not only a situation that different classes
are positioned differently, but it has very specific empirical consequences. Inequality
generates its own set of consequences in terms of access to certain resources, in terms of
access to certain life conditions, life chances and a host of other issues.
One of the fundamental engagements of Karl Marx was this whole question of class
inequality. And from there derives his commitments to the ideals of equality, justice and
human emancipation. He was personally extremely concerned with the question of equality,
with justice and an idea of human emancipation. Maybe it looks very vague to us.
Emancipation is very vague and what does one exactly mean by a whole idea of human
emancipation?
It looks very vague, but it is a very enchanting idea that you dream of a more egalitarian
society. You dream about a society where human beings are treated equally. That is an
extremely powerful imagination, that is an extremely powerful dream and in the social
science circle, Karl Marx is the one who really came up with the dream, he was the one who
was the most fierce advocate of that particular imagination and that particular kind of a
dream.
In that sense, Marx was not only a dry academic who could understand and analyse things in
a very impassionate manner. He never claimed to be neutral, he never claimed to be
impassionate or objective in that particular sense. He, very consciously, deliberately took
side. He stood with the people who were less privileged, he stood with the proletariat, he
stood with the workers, he stood with the poor and that was his political commitment.
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So, Karl Marx appears as a person with unique political commitment, unique intellectual
faculties and an extra ordinary intellectual. So, I will end here, we will discuss more specific
contributions of Karl Marx in the coming classes. Thank you!
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Lecture No. 17
Karl Marx: Intellectual Influences
Welcome back to the session. We are starting with most substantive contributions of Karl Marx. We
are beginning with discussion of his intellectual influences on Karl Marx when he began to think
about a host of issues that was affecting in his time and society. So, hope you remember that in
yesterday’s class, we had a very brief overview of the person, his family life, his personal life and
the kind of major features of his intellectual contribution.
Marx as we discussed yesterday, is a very important social thinker who was a political activist,
philosopher, economist, and sociologist. Unlike any other social scientist or social theorist of his
time or even after that, Marx was an as extra ordinary person and intellectual figure. So, that is why
as we are going to see in the coming classes the contributions of Karl Marx as the kind of ideas that
generated by Karl Marx are even now extremely relevant.
In this class we are going to understand the kind of intellectual influences on Karl Marx. What were
the ideas, what were the theories that really shaped Marxian thinking? Or what was the kind of
intellectual atmosphere which Marx really developed his theories? You know that no theorist is able
to or no theorist simply comes up with his own ideas which are completely uninfluenced by others.
Every thinker for that matter reflects over and critically engages with series of ideas present during
his time and then improvise upon them, critically engages with them and then come up with his
own arguments.
In the case of Karl Marx as well there has been a series of major intellectual traditions or major
philosophical arguments that were raging at his time and Marx, very creatively responded to this
debates and that was the reason why Marx was able to come up with his own original contribution.
So, it is extremely important that we get some fair idea about the kind of intellectual background,
intellectual atmosphere of Marxian time.
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Marx had very systematic and intense engagement with vibrant debates in philosophy, history,
politics and political economy in Berlin, France and England. And as we have seen in the previous
classes, the kind of the time that we are discussing, the eighteenth and nineteenth century really
represents a very unique period in the history of Europe. It is a period that has seen quite a lot of
social, economic and political discussions and debates and host of major changes, host of very
extremely supping transformations in the European history.
Marx was very able to creatively engage with and reflect upon the kind of debates that took place in
a series of disciplines including philosophy, history, politics and a host of other disciplines in in
many of the European countries. So, he became interested in the emerging fields of political
economy, the field that looks at the connection between politics and economy and in economics
exclusively in every rather strict sense of the word.
He was influenced and engaged with the economic thinking of the likes of Adam Smith, David
Ricardo and Frederic Engels. Engels, as we discussed in the in the previous class, became his
lifelong companions and intellectual benefactor, intellectual contributor. Frederick Engels played a
very important role in the academic as well as personal life of a Karl Marx. Another one of the most
important influence of on Karl Marx is the philosopher George W Hegel whom we are going to
discuss. Marx was also heavily influenced by Neo-Hegelians and anarchists whom we are going to
see down the line. So, these at least three major intellectual strands that influenced Marxian
thinking during his time.
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Let us look at his engagement with anarchists. Anarchism always rings a very negative sense as we
usually tend to think that anarchism is completely lawlessness the anarchist are the people who are
against any sorts of laws and argues that any person must be able to do whatever he or she wants to
do. But anarchism as a philosophical tradition is much deeper that our common perceptions. It is a
much more radical, and many times you can even call it as a romantic understanding about a
completely emancipated state of being, a completely free a form of existence in the world.
During Marxian time, anarchism was extremely important and powerful as an ideology. So,
anarchism was one of the dominant revolutionarily ideas of Marx’s time that argued against the
domination of state, capitalism, private property and so on. Anarchism imagined a more free and
independent life for human beings. Most of the anarchist whom we are going to discuss whether it
is Bakunin, or Proudhon and host of other people believed that human beings are kept in chains and
host of institutions including modern nation state and capitalism and private property are really
hindering the true spirit and freedom of human beings.
They vehemently argued that these manmade institutions needs to be abolished so that human
beings can live in a much freer and independent world. They were very much against private
property and they identified state as a completely oppressive mechanism. They did not see anything
positive about the state and the economic system of capitalism rather they argued that these
institutions are imposing unnecessary restrictions on the freer life of people as it do not enable them
to live their life as normal or completely independent free human beings.
Marx had very serious discussions with Bakunin. we will discuss in the coming classes that that the
industrial proletariat or the workers are the central category thorough which Marx envisions
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revolutions. Workers occupied the most central role in Marxian scheme of things because they are
the agents who will bring about revolutions. But Bakunin wanted to include agricultural peasants as
the agents of revolution. Apart from this there was serious discussion and disagreements between
Bakunin and Karl Marx about the nature of state. While Bakunin was vehemently against very idea
Marx, Marxian understanding was much more nuanced.
Another very important anarchist and a young-Hegelian was Proudhon with whom Marx had a
series of engagement and very bitter rivalry, bitter forms of engagement through polemics. For
example Marx wrote a book titled ‘Poverty of Philosophy’ as a response to Proudhon’s work titled
‘Philosophy of Poverty’. Marx especially his younger period grew up as a person who very fiercely
engaged with the arguments and theoretical debates that surrounded his Western Europe.
Therefore, the ideas of Proudhon especially on anarchism and Hegelianism played a very important
role in shaping Marx’s independent thinking.
So, Marx shares anarchist criticism of the limitations of representative democracy and the
importance of decentralized participatory democracy as an alternative to a centralized state. As I
told you, the whole idea of representative democracy was one of the major themes of discussion
because this anarchist were extremely critical of the nature of democracy that was emerging at that
point of time. Because they argued that in the name of democracy, it was always the rule of a few
and the vast majority of the people do not really get to represent themselves.
Marx had a series of engagements with them. For Marx and anarchists, the experience of
participation in making social change is central. There were a series of disagreements and then
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debates between Marx and anarchist. They also had a series of issues in which they found
agreement. For example, both anarchist as well as Marx, believed that social change is something
that is prerogative of human beings as human beings are not powerless entities who will simply
flow along with the tide of social change but rather they are the active makers of the social change.
Both believed that by making social changes central, human beings have the ability to define their
destiny. Human beings have the ability to shape their destiny. There was major agreement between
anarchist and Marx in that sense. As both perceived human beings as active agents of social change.
They also had very important consensus about the centrality of labor, labor as an identity and as an
identity forming activity for workers. So, they placed so much of importance to the whole process
of labor. Labor was never seen just as an activity for which you were remunerated to meet your
basic needs.
But rather they identified labor as something more defining human character. And that is why they
play so much of emphasize on labor unions. Liberation cannot be granted to workers, it must be
earned by the proletariat themselves. Both Marx as well as anarchist believed that the workers have
a central role to play as a collectivity. Workers as a group of people who occupy a very specific role
in the society, they have an important role to play in defining the history of its time.
They argued that liberation cannot be granted to workers because it cannot be defined on the terms
set by others rather they must be defined and it must be earned by the proletariat themselves. It is a
very important revolutionary idea that has the potential to unsettle quite a lot of conventional and
conservative understanding about society.
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Another defining influence in Marxian life was the great philosopher George W Hegel. Hegel is one
of the most very complex philosophers of modern period. Marx was extremely influenced by Hegel,
especially during his early period. He identified himself as with a group called young Hegelians, a
group of intellectuals who were influenced by Hegel’s work. But later Marx became one of his most
stringent critics and we will see that the kind of arguments, and revisions that Marx provided to
Hegelian thought.
In his four major works such as the, The Phenomenology of Mind, The Science of Logic, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and The Philosophy of Right, Hegel developed one of the most
original, complex and obscure philosophical doctrines ever devised. That is why Hegel is
considered to be one of the most important philosophers of modern time. It was original at the same
time it was quite obscure to understand. Marx transformed Hegel’s philosophy into an empirically
based social science, decisively rejecting Hegel’s idealism while retaining his reliance on dialectical
analysis and applying it to the material world.
This particular point really captures the central relation between Marx and Hegel. So, as I
mentioned earlier, Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel. He was earlier attracted to his thought
and later became a critic. At the same time he borrowed certain ideas of Hegel and then he
transformed those ideas in order to come up with his own original thesis which is widely known as
historical materialism or dialectical materialism. We need to be really specifically look at what are
the specific points that Marx accepted and what are the specific arguments that Marx rejected.
Marx transformed Hegel’s philosophy into an empirically based social science. Hegel was a
philosopher who presented quite a lot of abstract philosophical arguments whereas Marx converted
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many of those ideas into empirically based social science. Marx was a philosopher, but also as you
might be aware, Marx was a social scientist who was able to transform his philosophical ideas into
the theories of sociology, theories of economics and the kind of a specific narration of history.
While Hegel was a philosopher, Marx was a philosopher as well as social scientist.
Marx’s social science was heavily influenced by the philosophical contributions of Hegel. Marx
decisively rejected Hegel’s idealism. This is a point where we come across the kind of a
fundamental conflict or disagreement between these two people. Marx was the materialist whereas
Hegel was an idealist. We will see what do these terms mean in the coming classes. There is a
fundamental difference. Hegel was an idealist who gave primacy to the realm of ideas and believed
that social change takes place as a result of changes happening in the realm of ideas.
Whereas Marx believed that social change happens mainly because of the changes in the material
condition. They are in the philosophical relations that constitutes a binary or a sort of diametrically
opposite concepts. Marx retained Hegelian reliance on the dialectical analysis and applied it to the
material world. The dialectics is another extremely important methodology or an important
framework that Marx borrows from Hegel. We will discuss about it soon. In sum, Hegel was the
proponent of dialectical idealism whereas Marx was the proponent of dialectical materialism.
Marx borrowed the idea of dialectics but rejected the idea of idealism. Marx combined his
materialistic explanation of society with that of dialectics and presented a fascinating theoretical
explanation about social change, about the evolution of human society. It is a meta-theory in that
sense. It is it is overarching theory that according to Marx has the explanatory capacity to explain
how human beings socially evolved and developed historically and shape the trajectory of human
civilization in the future as well.
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Marx as a young Hegelian was fascinated by Hegel’s idealist philosophy. The ultimate conditions of
human existence and development can be arrived only through an examination of abstract
philosophical categories. This is the central idea of idealism. Marx, in his earlier period belonged to
the young Hegelians, a group of young scholars and intellectuals in Germany who declared
themselves as the disciples of Hegel as they were heavily influenced by Hegel’s philosophy. The
argument is that the ultimate conditions of human existence and development can be arrived only
through an examination of the abstract philosophical categories.
Hegel argued that the change in human civilization from a very primitive to that of the modern
capitalist societies in Europe can be understood only by looking at the changes that happened in the
abstract categories that governed human existence. And categories such as reason, existence and
history were used to understand human existence, especially the closer link between individual and
the society. So, the Hegelian interpretation or Hegelian intellectual exercise revolved around
understanding these categories such as existence, history and reason. How these ideas were
developed. How these ideas were developed in different epochs in human history and how these
ideas provided new worlds view or how these ideas provided new perspective to the to the world
outside.
These ideas includes reason, existence and history. At the same time while Marx was initially
influenced by these ideas, later he became increasingly impatient with the idealist interpretation of
the world. He began to become restless because Hegel and many of young Hegelians gave primacy
to the ideas, almost discounting or almost neglecting the kind of an empirical and material reality
around them. Because for them empirical realities are only a product of this kind of idealist
categories.
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In Hegel’s words, idealism “consist in nothing else than in recognizing that the finite has no
veritable being”. For Hegel, true realities is embodied in that which is discovered through reason.
So, it is almost kind of discounting or refuting the existence of empirical reality out here because
this empirical reality is only a reflection of certain ideas that the finite has no veritable being. And
he argued that the realities embodied in that which is discovered through reason. And this reason
you need to keep in mind that this is something quite different from the kind of rationality and
reason that we discuss while we were talking about this enlightenment.
In the empirical tradition you talk about rationality and reason as you identify certain things through
your empirical approaches. You collect information, use your rationality, use your reason and come
up with certain arguments. But here Hegel is talking about different understanding of reason. From
this point of view the objects perceived by the sense are not real. It is a very interesting and
controversial argument that there is no reality of existing objects out there. This reality is perceived
through only your senses because our senses provide you an illusion of reality out there and the
objects perceived by the senses are not real.
They are merely the phenomenal appearance of an ultimate reality of ideas. Only logical objects or
concepts, constitute ultimate reality. As Hegel wrote, it is only in thought that an object is truly in
and for itself. In intuition of ordinary perception it is only an appearance. As I told you, it is almost
like negating the existence of empirical reality to say that objects exists only in our ideas or to say
that ordinary perception is only an appearance.
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Hegel asserted that if only concepts are real, then the ultimate concept is God, and Hegel’s
philosophy is essentially an attempt at proving the existence of God through the application of
reason. This is again a very interesting point, Hegel was a believer, so ultimately he developed this
philosophical arguments about idealism and then reach the conclusion that the ultimate reality is
God.
Hegel asserted that if only concepts are real then the ultimate concept is god and Hegel’s philosophy
is essentially an attempt of proving that existence of god through the application of reason. He
argues how human beings develop this particular faculty of reason and finally in the most advanced
societies, use the particular faculty of reason to discover the importance of god. And Hegel argued
that there was an inherent dialectical relationship between god, the infinite and people, the finite.
The essence of this dialectic is contradiction.
Each concepts implies its opposite, or in Hegel’s terms each concept implies its negation. So, this is
an extremely important methodological as well as philosophical tool that Hegel employs. This
whole idea of dialectics that an arguments in itself contains its opposites and an arguments is able to
develop further only when these two opposite ideas come together and that gives rise to a
qualitatively different set of ideas. Again which has the kind of a contradictions inherent within that.
The essence of dialectics is contradiction, each concept implies its opposite and or in Hegel terms
each concept implies its negation.
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Marx completely rejected Hegel’s assertion that finite or empirical phenomena are not ultimately
real. We know that Marx, while started as a Hegelian, became a materialist who argued that the
material conditions are the central in understanding in human society and his all other criticism
follow from this basic point. That is that finite or empirical phenomena are the real. And that is the
kind of a diametrically opposite position to that of Hegel. Marx believed that when empirical
phenomena are understood as thoughts, people’s more significant practical problems are ignored.
If you go by a Hegelian understanding, the real problems of people like poverty or exploitation or
discrimination or injustice. So, these actual problems will appear insignificant. Because they can
even be considered as unreal. Because for Hegel, these kind of empirical existence do not have any
basis. The primacy of ideas over matter, as we discussed, is an important matter of contestation.
Hegel’s arguments about the centrality of ideas and shaping social change was unacceptable to
Marx. Marx argued that ideas emerges from the concrete material conditions and has only
secondary stature. It is a very significant and interesting debate about this whole idea of reason and
spirit.
Hegel argued that the philosophers engage in critical reasoning about ideas and they develop new
ideas and that are central in producing society on the basis of its own shape. So, here when Hegel
gives primacy to ideas as the propelling force behind social change. Marx took a completely
diametrically opposite argument. He argued that the ideas are the products of social and material
conditions. So, here you will see a kind of completely contradictory or polar opposite positions
adopted by both Marx as well as Hegel. The debate is about primacy over matter or ideas.
Hegel’s argument about centrality of ideas in shaping social change was unacceptable and it was
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criticized and Marx argued that ideas emerged from concrete material conditions. It is a very
fascinating argument which we will come to appreciate in the coming. While Hegel believed that
freedom from oppression exists when individual change their consciousness, Marx argued that they
arise from class differences and exploitation. And this is again a set of very fascinating discussions
and debates about it.
For example, Hegel believed that the freedom from exploitation, exist only when individual
changes change their consciousness. He argued that the whole idea that human beings are free or
not is a purely a function of your thinking. Is only purely a function of your consciousness, it has
nothing much to do with the kind of true empirical realities which you are embedded in. So, you
decide your consciousness or your consciousness plays a very important role in defining whether
you are free or not.
On the other hand Marx absolutely disagreed with these arguments. Marx argued that whether
somebody is free or not, or whether somebody is kept in subjugated position or not is an empirical
reality. It has nothing to do with his consciousness of being free or not. Your status as a slave or
your status as a serf does not change, if you change your thinking. You must be very familiar with
quite lot of spiritual arguments that that you are able to change your life by changing the kind of
thinking that you have.
Lot of these spiritual Gurus would urge you to make fundamental changes in your thinking with the
promise that, it will bring about positive changes in your life. Whereas Marx had a completely
different argument. Marx argued that until and unless you are empirical situation changes, your
thinking cannot have an impact that will alter your material existence. Therefore, Hegel’s argument
about the slave and master, is extremely important and vey philosophical. It is a deep argument
about the identity formation between the slave and the master.
Hegel discusses how a kind of reciprocal understanding plays a very important role in providing
identity to both the salve as well as the master. I am not going into the details of this discussion
about change of the consciousness.
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This is the quote from Marx, “In a simple example if people are alienated such that they have no
control over their lives or the material things produced by their labor, they cannot end their
alienation by changing their perception of reality or by praying for that matter. Rather, people must
change the social structure in which they live, that is they must make a revolution in this world
rather than wait for the next world”. This particular quotation has also very interesting implications
to Marxian discussion on religion which we will take up in one of the coming sessions.
This is a very fascinating argument. He argues that if people are alienated such that they have no
control over their lives or the material things produced by the labors, they cannot change the reality.
If you think of a proletariat or factory worker in Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Modern Times’, he cannot
change his reality of being an alienated person, simply by changing his thinking. Changing ones
thinking as being completely free does not make any change in one’s lived reality.
A worker’s lived reality is heavily influenced by the kind of a material condition in which he is
implicated. He is a proletariat, who sells his body or labor and who is subjected to extremely
inhuman conditions in the workplace. That pathetic and deplorable situation will not change just
because of the changing his perceptions of reality or by praying for that matter.
Rather people must change the social structure within which they lived and they must make a
revolution in this world rather than wait for the next world. It is a very powerful argument because
there is no heaven or hell waiting for you. The hell as well as heaven is in this world and you need
to change this particular world rather than wait for the next world. Second, according to Marx,
Hegel’s emphasize on the ultimate reality lead him to misperceive some of the essential
characteristic of human beings.
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For example, Marx contended that although Hegel correctly grasps labor as the essence of man, the
only labor which he knows and recognize is abstract mental labor. Yet people have physical needs.
Marx noted such as those for food, clothing and shelter which can be satisfied only by productive
activity in the finite world. Hence, for Marx the most significant labor is productive activity rather
than mental activity. This is yet another very central and extremely important and central theme.
While Hegel understood that labor is important, the primary focus of Hegel was on mental activity.
On how human beings think, how human beings work on the realms of ideas, how human beings
collectively come up with certain new ideas and new philosophical insights and how that shapes the
world.
Whereas, for Marx that was only secondary because human beings, like any other animals have got
their physical needs and these physical needs need to be met first. The centrality of Marxian thought
revolves around the ability of human beings to engage in productive activity. We will have a
detailed discussion about this topic in the coming classes. So, Marx foregrounds that human beings
as a species, how they are differently positioned in comparison with other animals to engage in
productive activities and that not only provides with the physical needs of food, shelter other things
but also provide them with unique sense of being human.
Your sense of being human or your sense of being uniquely different from other animals is derived
from your ability to engage in productive activity. This labor as productive activity was central to
Karl Marx in comparison to Hegel who gave primacy to the mental labor or to the activity of
thinking.
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Marx disagreed with Hegel on his idea of state. It is another point of discussion or debate. For
Hegel, the state was developed out of the forces of spirit in history and actualization of ethical.
Marx criticize this argument that the state represents a theological embodiment of the spirit of
human beings. Marx did not agree with these formulations. For Hegel, the state as a collective
entity that is able to rule over the rest of the people is a manifestation of their ethical
predispositions. That human beings have reached the highest pedestrian or they have traveled so
much from the previous state of affairs so that they are in a position to lead a kind of a collective
life by creating this entity called as state.
Many times Hegel presents state as a kind of a theological embodiment of the spirit of human
beings. As the highest form of human reasons, human reasons has reached that highest position.
And Marx completely rejects all this arguments. Marx has a completely different take on state that
we will discuss later. So, Marx rejected the religious motive that perverts Hegel’s work, as I told
you Marx was an atheist whereas Hegel was a believer.
As noted earlier, Hegel denied actuality to the finite world to prove the existence of god, albeit
Christian God. This was true of not only Hegel, but every philosopher of that particular time. If they
had to conceive of a god, it has to be a Christian God. Christianity really influenced their way of
thinking in its sensibility, its imagery, its theological ideas and all these aspects are fundamentally
shaped the thinking of European philosophers during this particular time.
Nevertheless, Marx believed that through such arguments, people are prevented from recognizing
that they are exploited and they have no interest in changing the status quo in this world. For Marx,
the next world is the religious fantasy and it is not worth worrying about. As we mentioned briefly,
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and that we are going to discuss more elaborately in one of the coming classes, that Marx did not
believe in world hereafter. He did not believe in a life hereafter, or in god, or in any force or spirit
that completely defines or determines the state of affairs.
He believed that the only real is the world in which we live in. Marx very passionately believed that
human beings have the ability to change, unlike that of Hegel who believed that there is a super
natural power or a Christian God who has decided everything for human beings.
On the other hand, Marx accepts Hegel’s dialectical method as we discussed. So while Marx was
critical of this idealist orientation of Hegelian argument, he completely accepted the dialectical
method. Despite his complete rejection of idealism, Marx saw a significant tool in Hegel’s use of
the dialectics. In Hegel’s hand however, the entire analysis is couched in terms of a mystical
theology. Thus, as Marx noted in Capital, Hegel’s dialectics is standing on its head. It must be
turned right side up again, if you want to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
Marx uses this dialectical method which was already developed by Hegel but couched in idealist
language and then argues that if the rational kernel of human society has to be retrieved, it must be
retrieved from its mystical shell. The entire philosophy of Hegel appears as if or it is in a mythical
shell and if you need to retrieve its rational kernel you need to move beyond its mysticism. You
need to move out of the idealism of Hegelian thinking. Marx used this dialectical methods in a
materialist explanation that we will discuss in detail later. We will look at how he used this logic of
dialectics, that is opposite forces coming together to create a qualitatively new one which again has
inherent contradictions as a kind of a continuous process.
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Marx used this dialectical method in a materialistic explanation is known as his argument about
historical materialism or dialectical materialism which we will discuss in the coming class.
Marx also had a very interesting engagement with other young Hegelians, one of them being with
this Ludwig Feuerbach. In his book the Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach criticizes idealist
philosophies such as Hegel’s that equate the progress of humankind with the advance of spirit or
abstract reason. So, there are lot of agreements between Marx and Feuerbach because both of them
were critical of the excessive idealist orientation in Hegelian thought.
Feuerbach argues that the starting point for the study of human beings must be real people living in
the material world. An idea that is very similar to that of Marx. Human beings and the ability to
reason does not emanate from the divine, but from the nature. In fact, people project their real
powers into the idea of a god, creating a fantasy religious world of harmony and beauty, while the
real world is one of the pain and misery.
Feuerbach did not agree with the Hegelian understanding of god rather he argued that human beings
are projecting their positive qualities onto an entity called as god. They think that they are creating
fantasy religious world of harmony and beauty while real world is one of pain and misery. So,
Feuerbach argued that the religion is in a way, is an escape route as human beings are projecting all
their good qualities or unachievable desirable qualities into that into an imagining into an imaginary
entity and call it as a god. But they live in a real world of misery and difficulties.
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Marx adopts much of Feuerbach’s materialism but contends that Feuerbach does not sufficiently
comprehend that material circumstances can be altered through conscious social change. So, Marx
is extremely appreciative of Feuerbach’s argument about the primacy of material but he argues that
he does not really comprehend the innate logic of this material condition. And Feuerbach approach
is ahistorical. Feuerbach posits an abstract human nature that exists outside of society and does not
understand that people change as society changes.
For Marx, Feuerbach presents that the human beings are having a given set of mental
preoccupations or orientation. He is not sensitive to historical transformation. He is not able to
really understand how different epochs in history is able to create different ideas in of human
beings. On the other hand, Marx believed that people can actively change the world and it is this
interaction between humankind and the material world developing through the history that forms
the basis of Marxism.
Therefore, Marx argued that human beings have the ability to change the world. Every historical
epoch or historical time period have created its own specific social structure and human beings are
actively engaged with that. They were the one who changed it to the next level and that agency of
human beings is missing in the arguments of Feuerbach, according to Marx. We will discuss about
their debate on religion later. I just brought it to mention that one of the contentious areas between
these two scholars is the field of religion. So, we will continue with the with Marx’s ideas on
historical materialism in the coming class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 18
Historical Materialism
Welcome back to the today’s session and in this class, we are discussing one of the central
theoretical arguments of Karl Marx, known as Historical Materialism. I hope you remember
that in the previous class, we discussed the intellectual influences on Karl Marx. We spent
some time trying to understand what further dominant theoretical or intellectual streams of
thought or who were the eminent intellectuals or thinkers who influence the development of
Marxian thought.
We discussed about Anarchists, young Hegelians and about Hegel in detail. We found out
that like every other intellectuals, Marx was also heavily influenced by the kind of
intellectual orientation of his time. He very fiercely engaged with some of the intellectual
currents of his time, fought with them, quarrelled with them and then came up with his own
arguments.
One of the most central thesis of Marxian Theory is his argument about Historical
Materialism. As we discussed in the previous class, he borrowed the framework of dialectics
from Hegel, but rejected the framework of Idealism. So, Historical Materialism is also
sometimes called as Dialectical Materialism because he is using the framework of Dialectics
and used that framework to explain the material conditions of the world. Whereas Hegel used
the framework of Dialectics to explain the conditions of Ideas and addressed how ideas
evolve, how ideas evolve from one state to the other through the process of Dialectics.
Whereas Marx was extremely critical of the emphasize Hegel given to ideas and rejected it
and then argued that the matter or the material has primacy over the ideas. Marx then argued
that you need to develop a theory to explain how material conditions underwent
transformation over a period in time by incorporating methodology of dialectics.
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Therefore Marx had both an empirical theory of history and a speculative philosophy of
history. So, what does it mean? Every Historian in the true sense of the word provides you an
empirical account of history. They provide you an account about how human society evolved
or changed over a period in time and pay attention to the actual empirical historical facts? So,
Marx exactly provides such kind of an account. He was a historian who provided you with a
very reliable and empirically enabled factual historical account like any other historian.
At the same time, he also provided a speculative philosophy of history. Like any other
philosopher, who can speculate, theorise and involve in predictive statements, Marx also did
that. Therefore, Marxian history has this dual characters. The former which has come to be
known as historical materialism, is a set of macro sociological generalizations about the cause
of stability and change in societies.
As we will see, Marx has a very fascinating account about how societies transform from that
of primitive communism where human beings lived as hunters and gatherers, to that of
slavery, to feudalism and to capitalism and finally he predicted that human beings will move
to a state of socialism and finally that of communism. So, that is a macro sociological
generalization. The latter, largely of Hegelian inspiration, offers a scheme of interpreting all
historical events in terms of their contribution to realizing end of history in both sense of the
term.
End of history as for Hegel, is when the western civilisation during his time reached the
zenith of human progress because they have identified reason and Hegel believed that the
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people of his time have reached the zenith of progress. They have reached the top and also as
the dead end of the history. But on the contrary, Marx’s materialist conception of human
history is the history of human labour and class struggles. Now, from here onwards we are no
longer discussing Marxian engagement with Hegel, but we will attempt to understand what
the original arguments of Marx about social change are.
Based on materialist conception of the world, human history has to be seen as the history of
human labour and class struggle. It is the fundamental thesis of Marxian thought. You cannot
understand human history without taking into account the central role played by the human
labour and conflicts in the form of class struggle. The hitherto existing history is a history of
class struggle. It is a very famous quote from Karl Marx. So, he understood human history so
far as a relentless continuation of class struggles.
Marx explained history through the framework of dialectics, inspired by Hegel as we

discussed earlier. He explained the past and based on it, predicted the future. And very
interestingly as you know, that prediction did not come true. As I told you, it was a Meta
theory that Marx presented. It was a theory that was supposedly capable of explaining every
society and explaining the transition of human society from the most elementary form to that
of his contemporary times and then he predicted its course in the future.
But that did not come true because Marx predicted the collapse of capitalism and Marx
predicted the emergence of communism as the ultimate state of affairs and we know that did
not really take place. In the course of doing that, Marx provided a host of conceptual tools to
understand the process of labour, social structure, social change and so on. So, you will come
across a host of concepts and terms and terminology that Marx developed. Those are very
powerful terms to describe the process of labour. He talks about labour power, surplus labour
and host of other terms and terminologies in in each of these disciplines. whether it is in
history or political science or in Economics and social structure and social change and so on.
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Now we will discuss Marx’s work, ‘German Ideology’ because it is in this work that he most
systematically brings out his argument about historical materialism. Now, as an alternative to
the Idealistic humbug which he characterizes off in Hegelians, Marx argued that theoretical
analysis should be empirically based. He was kind of fed up with the arguments by young
Hegelians, which completely revolved around the realm of ideas with scant regard to the
empirical reality in which they lived.
Social theory, he said, should be grounded on the existence of living human individuals who
must survive, often in a relatively hostile environment. So, without looking into the reality
that is unfolding in front of you, without looking into the into the real world in which actual
people live and die; any amount of philosophical thinking only becomes an intellectual pass
time. It becomes a pass time of the individuals as per Marx. Marx was fed up and he very
mercilessly discarded, and out rightly critiqued the idealistic orientation of the young
Hegelians.
Marx was asserting that people produced their ideas about the world in the light of social
structure in which they live. It is a beautiful and extremely important argument. Your ideas
about the world are many times a reflection of the social structure, or the society in which
you live. Furthermore, as the social structures change, the content of people’s ideas, their
consciousness changes as well and it is not the other way around. Here you see a kind of a
completely contrary position to that of idealists.
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Idealists argued that it is on the basis of ideas that people create the society. Whereas Marx
argues that, your ideas undergo changes in different social epochs because these ideas are
products of different social settings. These ideas are the products of different social structures
in which people live. So, unless you pay attention to the actual social setting; unless you very
carefully understand and analyse and theorise the empirical reality of human beings, you will
not be able to understand why certain ideas emerged only in certain periods in time. Why
certain ideas are possible in certain periods in time?
For example, he would argue that the idea of individual liberty, idea of capitalism, idea of
justice, idea of democracy could not have been emerged in a period of slavery. It could not
have been emerged in a period of feudalism because the material conditions were not
favourable to that. We will come to such fascinating arguments in the later classes. So, this
was directly opposed to Hegel’s idealism, in which notions of morality, religion and all other
forms of awareness are considered to exist independently of human beings. As something that
we discussed because Hegel argues that these ideas are not created by human beings but
rather they are extremely important.
Marx did not see the human mind as a passive receptacle; rather he saw it as active, both
responding to and changing the material world. So, we know that Marx believed that human
beings are the actual agents of change. Human mind is not a passive receptacle. It is an actual
agent that has the ability to change the world.
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Material factors, especially the production and reproduction of existence through labour are
the driving power in people’s lives. The problems facing any society are inseparable from the
organisation of labour process. Marx states life is not determined by consciousness but
consciousness by Life. This is an extremely important and central argument of Marx. Life is
not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life.
To understand any society, it is necessary to grasp the labour process, the ways in which
people transform nature through work. Labour fundamentally shapes peoples identities, their
sense of who they are. This is an important point you need to keep in mind because this is
something so central and foundational in Marxian argument. Whether, you need to
understand his argument about religion or his argument about capitalism, his argument about
alienation or his argument about any other Marxian theory, this is a central argument. Why
Marx gives so much of importance to human labour?
It is something so central not only in providing him with all the basic necessities but this is
something so central for a human being to define the human character of that person. Human
history is the process of people producing their material lives. Labour produces a definite
mode of life and human nature is dependent on the material conditions of productions. The
labour process is socially organized in distinct ways in different societies.
Marx is inviting our attention to look at a central process of human existence. How do people
produce things that are necessary for them and how do you understand it historically? This is
the simple question that Marx asked. You know that when Marx was talking about his
contemporary time, he is talking about a developed capitalist industrial society; beginning of
early capitalism in Europe. So, here he is asking this question; is it how things were produced
throughout the history?
Then the definite answer is no. You know that if you look at the history, archaeology, theory
of evolution; human beings have evolved over a period of time. They started their life as
hunters and gatherers. They did not know agriculture, did not know the use of fire; later they
started cultivation, they started rearing of animals and later they settled down in certain
places.
Then then the kind of a gradual growth of human societies in different directions and Marx
argued that in order to understand all this transformation, you need to understand how the
process of production was transformed. How the process of production underwent subsequent
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changes without understanding that you will not understand human history. Ideas will give
you only partial explanation because ideas were not the kind of propelling force. The
propelling force was the kind of different modes of production.
We will look at the concept of Mode of production, analyse its definition in sometime down
the line. Marx is arguing that a definite mode of life is with specific material conditions of
production. The labour process is socially organised in distinct ways in different societies. So,
how is this labour is socially organised?
This is a central concern of Marx. How the production is socially organised, how societies
evolve its mechanism to organise production. How do different people fulfil their role in the
process of production? Who decides what? What kind of work is involved by what kinds of
people and that is something important for a Marxian analysis.
Every type of productive system presupposes a set of social relations as well as a particular
approach to mastering nature. Marx classifies history on the basis of different modes of
production. He talks about slavery, he talks about feudalism, he talks about capitalism, he has
not elaborated communism but he thinks about it and he has an elaborate discussion about
Asiatic mode of production as a definitely different set of mode of production.
Every productive system presupposes a set of social relations as well as a particular approach
to mastering nature. The reproduction of a people through labour is not accompanied by
isolated individuals but by members of a society. So, you cannot really decide how you
involve in this process of production. You have very little autonomy in that; rather it is a
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socially defined position. It is a socially defined process and your individual choice is very
little as you have no stake in that.
As the arrangement of labour becomes more complex, a division of labour emerges. The
division of labour distributes the conditions of labour such as the tools and materials into
different, unequal groups. This particular argument about division of labour is again a very
important category in socio-logical theory. We will come across an elaborate discussion on
division of labour, when we discuss Emile Durkheim because his theory of social change is
also centres around this idea of division of labour.
Marx argues that when human beings becomes more and more complex and when they grow
in size; a division of labour emerges and the division of labour distributes the conditions of
labour such as the tools and materials into different, unequal groups. When we talk a
primitive society where the people at their very early stages of their human evolution, their
life was very simple and there was hardly any division of labour.
Everybody does almost every work together because hunting and gathering food is the
fundamental or is the most important job because they have to look for food for every day as
they do not cultivate or do not store any food. Everydays hunger needs to be met, so the every
person irrespective of the gender is involved in the process of finding food. But that situation
changes over a period in time and they become more and more prosperous in terms of
material condition when they have identified agriculture, able to stock food, able to produce
more than what they require for their immediate consumption then the division of labour
reaches the next level.
In the contemporary times, only a very few section of people especially in industrial societies
are involved in the direct production of food and other material. A vast majority of others are
engaged in a host of other specialised activities. You know that how many of us are actually
involved in the process of production of food, very few of us. Lot of other people are engaged
in other specialised activities.
Marx is talking about how this transformation takes place to a situation in which certain
people are engaged in certain activities and what defines their situation is something central
in understanding the history of human society. It promotes a more efficient economic system,
and the division of labour promotes a more efficient economic system that allows a surplus to
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be created beyond the needs of subsistence. When surplus develops one group can live off the
labour of others, akin to the mater’s domination over the slave.
It is a very important argument. As we discussed, in a hunting-gathering society, everybody

needs to work but the moment you discover agriculture, where you can cultivate your food
grains more efficiently and produce more, everybody does not have to work in the field. Then
this division of labour also creates a kind of a surplus so that a group of people can live off
the labour of others.
So, that is the time when human society has evolved into the direction of having
specialisations. For example, teachers as an exclusive category of people or priests as an
exclusive category of people or various artisans, various artists or musicians. So, these people
began to emerge as independent categories because they do not need to really work in the
field. There are other people who are working in the field and these people can engage in
certain other thing and they can live off the labour of another, akin to the master’s domination
over the slave.
Classes arise when the surplus of goods produced by the division of labour can be controlled
by a minority of people; this is an extremely important argument of Marx. In an egalitarian
society, there won’t be any class divisions. There could be a very few instances of status
division maybe the chief or the priest of that tribe might enjoy a higher status or the elderly
person might enjoy higher status but otherwise economic class does not simply exist in
primitive societies.
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Maybe in a very limited sense of somebody who owns more cattle or something like that but
it is no way comparable with the kind of emergence of class divisions that human society has
seen in the subsequent situations. So, class arise when the surplus of goods produced by a
division of labour can be controlled by a minority of people. Any community in which an
elite possesses the surplus is an unequal society. Further, the ways in which the ruling group
extracts the surplus from another class provides insights into type of inequality and
exploitation generated in the society.
Here, Marx is bringing in into the fore, the kind of unequal relationship between different set
of people in different periods in history. For example during slavery, the master owns the
slaves. The slave is a property of the master just like any other physical property; he can be
sold, he can be brought, he can be disposed off, he can be killed. Even the very human
existence of that slave is denied, whereas that situation is completely different in a feudal
society and later in a capital society.
In a capital society, the capitalist only buys the labour whereas the labourer himself or herself
is a free agent. So, now this relation between the group of people who engaged in productive
activities and the people who can live off the surplus of people and the relation between them
is something very different as well as defining according to Marx. This inequality results in
the growth of antagonism which ultimately lead to social conflicts and the whole society will
move to the next level, where again the same dialectical relationship will take place until the
era of communism where the state will wither away and a class less society will take emerge;
this is the argument of Marx.
The entire human history according to Marx is the history of class struggle because from the
system of slavery to feudalism to capitalism and to communism, this transition from one state
to other takes place because of the antagonism between classes. That happens in a dialectical
manner because every historical stage has its own contradictions. Each historical stages such
as slavery or feudalism has opposing ideas or contradictions in itself which leads to a conflict.
The contradictions within feudalism leads to that off capitalism which again has its own seeds
of opposite ideas or contradiction which leads to a kind of completely qualitatively different
one that of communism.
Though Marx argued this, he has not properly elaborated how a communist society will
become class less society and how state will wither away. He even argued for a dictatorship
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of the proletariat, a term which he has not really elaborated and therefore lead to lot of
speculation and formulation by other scholars.
The process of dialectics goes like this, you have contradictory ideas, you have a thesis and
an anti-thesis and their contradiction leads to a qualitatively different state which again has
this opposite ideas or contradiction in built, which again leads to a higher nut qualitatively
different one which again has this opposite ideas. Hegel calls it negation of the negation and
it leads to the other one and in Marxian terms, it is thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis and which
again leads to thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis and finally reaches to the higher stage of
history that Marx called as communism.
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Now, in order to understand how Marx explains this, we need to understand Marxian idea of
social structure. It is an extremely important aspect where Marx talks in detail, and he
presents a very simple yet very powerful argument. Marx conceived the society as
constituting a base and a super structure. This model; the base and super structure model is an
extremely famous model and very central to the Marxian understanding of social structure.
He conceives that every social structure as composed of two elements; one a base, the
foundation on which the other, super structure is built. It is similar to the structure of a house
where there is a foundation and then there is a super structure. What are the elements that
constitute this base and the super structure? For Marx, the base is composed of the economy;
and he is very clear about. It is the realm of production which he also calls as the mode of
production.
As we discussed how, a socially organised productive process emerges and that determines
how different people in the society are engaged in the process of production in a definitive
way. So, that constitutes a base and the super structure is almost everything else, including
politics, law, literature, ethics, ideology or social norms. Everything else that you identify in a
society are put together in this idea of super structure. Because of the very nature of base and
super structure, it is understood that the economy, the base is seen as the most important one.
What is the connection between the base and the super structure? Is it a one sided or does
Marx talks about reciprocal relationship between super structure and base; these are heavily
contested arguments. We will take them up later, when we discuss the session on ideology.
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However, a more conventional Marxian theory would argue as the enormous influence that
the base exerts on the super structure is more important. Whether Marx himself conceived it
in such an economic deterministic way is again a controversial issue.
The moment you use the word determines, it provides kind of an absolutist sense. Whether
Marx meant the term ‘determines’ or the word ‘shapes’ is a matter of debate between
different stands of Marxist thought.
However Marx gives primacy to the economic aspect, which is the core idea of his
materialistic perspective of history and society as we discussed earlier. Because for Marx, the
realm of economy and production is central to human existence. By economy, he specifically
means the organisation of productive activity. How people come together to satisfy their
needs for food, shelter and clothing? Marx calls this economic assemblage as the mode of
production.
How people produced the basic things in different epochs in history? As human beings, we
make our lives and express ourselves through labour. Marx observes that through our
collective interaction with nature, unlike nonhuman beings, we must consciously produce our
means of subsistence. In the study of human history, therefore the process of production is
the appropriate starting point. As we mentioned earlier, one of the most unique things that
distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to produce our means of
subsistence.
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We are not dependent and we know how to produce our own means of subsistence and in fact
we produce much more than our basic needs. That is why we, human beings as a species is
able to make so much of progress in its life in comparison with others.
Now we are beginning to introduce a set of concepts. It is very important that you understand
this conseques because the kind, these terms will come again and again in the discussion of
Marxian terminology. One of the fundamental terms is the mode of production as we
discussed the very definitive arrangement of production; how a society arranges its people
into specific form of production. Socially form of organised production and as per Marxian
argument this is very definitive to the definitive periods in history.
You do not have a single mode of production that start from the beginning of human
civilisation to that of the contemporary times. You have different and specific modes of
production and again this is a hugely debated area; exactly how many modes of production
that Marx identified, it is a hugely debated and contested area; I am not going into those
controversies. Marx identified two primary elements of modes of production; one is the
forces of production and the other one is relations of production. Now, this forces of
production is again sub divided into two; one is the means of production and the second one
is the labour power.
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Now, mode of production generally denotes a discernible economic order, one defined by the
manner in which human beings mobilize the labour necessary to fulfil their basic needs.
Something that we elaborated earlier; how human beings are defined by the manner in which
human beings mobilize the labour that is necessary to fulfil their basic needs. How do they
socially organize, who does what, is determined by the nature of mode of production; so there
are several different modes of production that have appeared throughout history including
slavery, feudalism and capitalism.
Marx speaks about Asiatic mode of production which again created a lot of controversy on
the question saying that whether Asiatic mode of production is something so unique to this
particular region or not. There has been several debates and controversies on how Asiatic
Mode of Production fit into a Marxian schema of history. Mode of production is composed of
two factors; forces of production and relations of production as we showed in that diagram.
Relations of production is a social framework within which economic activity is carried out.
We came across here that the relations of production talk about the social framework within
which the economic activity is carried out. What is the kind of a social relationship between
people who are involved in productive activity? Is everybody, does the same thing or is there
is division of labour? If there is division of labour, who does what kind of work and what is
the kind of a social relationship between the people who actually work and the people who
control them.
What is the relationship between the people who actually work on the field, for example
imagine a slave society where the slaves are the people who actually put in their manual
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work. What is the relation between them and the workers in a capitalist society? In
capitalism, a factory owner who employs workers does not own the labourers, instead he
actually pays them for their labour power. So, what is a kind of a social relationship between
the people who actually work and people who do not use their physical labour?
Now, forces of production which is an important component of a mode of production has two
components; one is means of production and other one is labour power. Means of production
includes almost every material aspects that are necessary for the process of production; which
includes land, tools, machinery and raw materials. This differs from time to time as well. In
an agricultural society, land is the most important means of production.
In earlier mode of productions, ne required mostly physical tools and when you move to that
of a capital society; land is not significant but whereas machinery and factory becomes
important and raw materials are important. When you move to a contemporary society which
is characterized by service economy, you do not really require land or factory where you
work in offices, in computers, on data and that becomes your raw materials.
Every stage has its own set of means of production and the labour power which is another
constituent aspect is indicative of various forms of productivity according to the skills,
expertise and technical know-how of the workforce that is heavily dependent on the
technological advancements. We know that the very term labour does not tell you anything,
as a person who is working in an analytical firm or in a software company uses his labour but
that is completely different from a labourer who works on the field, using his physical labour.
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The quality of labour power is heavily influenced by technological advancements. We hear
about enhanced skilled labour, semi skilled labour, expert labour and all these things are
important here.
Each mode of production creates the entire configuration of a society engendering a definite
mode of life. So, Marxian argument is very interesting, fascinating, and convincing to a large
extent because he argues that each of these mode of production produces a definite mode of
life. Why that is your life and social organisation at the time of slavery is quite different from
the way in which you live in a capitalist society. Is it because the ideas are different? No,
according to Marx. Ideas are of course different, but they are the products of the changes in
the productive forces.
Marx assert that what individuals are depend on the material conditions of production such as
the way in which they produce and how they produce. In transforming the natural world
through labour, individuals also transform themselves, changing their own nature, developing
new powers and ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language. So, Marx
does not have a singular idea of humanity or singular idea of human beings which are
unchanging from the beginning to that of the end, to that of the contemporary times.
Therefore, Marx argues that human beings change, their needs change, their outlook change,
their ideas change, depending upon in which time period they are located in, which
productive process they are implicated in, and that is a powerful argument. That is an
extremely powerful argument. On the basis of this economic structure, partly due to the
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power of the dominant class, there arise a corresponding legal and political superstructure and
the forms of social consciousness. So, we go back to this particular structure again.
Marx argues that politics, law, ideology, social norms and literature, and the sense of what is
good, what is bad, and the sense of your consciousness are all part of this super structure, and
is a product of your mode of production. It is a product of the character of the economic
activity that you are in. In that sense, Marx gives complete autonomy to this particular base
and then argues that this heavily influences or almost determines the kind of ideas and
arguments that we develop.
The modern laws, Marx would argue, could not have emerged at the time of slavery. The idea
of human rights, the idea of individual rights, the idea of democracy, the idea of somebody
choosing his or her own ruler could not have been emerged in the time of slavery.
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The cultural beliefs and social institutions make up the super structure according to the Marx
including the state itself that typically function to stabilize the relations of productions,
promote the interests of the dominant class and lend political and intellectual support to the
existing economic system. This is another powerful argument. It is not that economic base
simply produces the corresponding legal and social super structure but it has a clear bias.
It has a clear bias in favour of the dominant class because within economy the classes are not
equal, the slaves and masters were not equal, the feudal serves and the lords were not equal,
and the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie and proletariat were not equal. So, Marx would argue
that the super structure that is built on each of these specific modes of production is also not
neutral rather they are built to favour the powerful group in the respective economic era.
They promote the interest of the dominant class and lend political and intellectual support to
the existing economic system. This is the point where Marx becomes extremely critical of
each of these stages and more so with that of capitalist system. When we take up his
discussion on state, it becomes very apparent that Marx understands state as really incapable
of protecting the interest of the proletariat. He understands state as an entity that is by default
supports and protects interest of the Bourgeoisie.
Here is a quote again from ‘The German Ideology’, ‘the ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch are the ruling ideas’. It is a very powerful argument, you can just think about it. Why
that we find certain ideas are as very convincing? Marx would argue that, the ideas of the
ruling class are in every epoch are the ruling ideas. It means that the class which is the ruling
material forces of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force as well. The class
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which has the means of material production at its disposal has the control at the same time
over the means of mental production.
Thereby generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are
subjected to subordination. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the
dominant material relationships. The dominant material relationships are grasped as
dominant, which is a very powerful argument. In order to understand why certain ideas
assume dominant character, why certain ideas are considered to be mostly accepted by the
people, Marx argues that these ideas in themselves do not have existence rather these ideas
become powerful ideas only when they are produced by the most powerful sections.
I am ending today’s class with this important quote; ‘It is not the consciousness that
determines life, but life that determines consciousness. It is a major critique of Hegelian
philosophy but this is also central to Marxian scheme of things where he argues that it is not
consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness. So, this life
according to Marx has to be understood by analysing its economic aspects then you will see
how the powerful groups engage in the process of production, produce certain ideas and these
ideas of the powerful become the powerful ideas.
There is a clear connection between the dominant ideas and the dominant group and Marx
calls out our draws attention to understand this particular relationship between the social
dominance of certain class and the dominating ideas and he argues that there is a clear
parallel between them. This is something so central to understand, how social status-quo
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works and how social change can be brought in. That themes we will discuss in the coming
classes so, I am winding up the session today and we will meet you in the next class. Thank
you.
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Professor. R. Santosh
Lecture No. 19
Marxian theory of social change
Welcome back to the session. We are continuing with the discussions on Karl Marx, his theories on
history, his theories on economics, social change and a host other fascinating ideas. I hope you
remember that yesterday we discussed one of his foundational arguments of his whole theory
known as dialectical materialism or historical materialism. It is a theory that he develops in order to
explain the evolution of humankind and to explain social change. It is a theoretical foundation that
he developed in order to understand the basic functioning of human society and in order to provide
an explanation about the social structure of every society.
He developed an explanatory paradigm to explain how societies move from one state to the other
one. We discussed about the way in which he conceived off society through a model of base and
super structure. We discussed about how the economy or forms of economic production constitutes
the base and how that has an overarching influence on various elements that are grouped under the
term super structure which includes almost everything else other than economic sphere. We
discussed about the modes of production, we discussed about its different components.
Today in this class we are going to focus more on his theory of social change. How did Marx
conceive of social change? Or in other words, what is the kind of Marxian explanation for social
change? How did Marx put forward a powerful and extremely influential argument about social
change? We know that ever since this Marxian presented his theories of social change, they have
been taken up by scores of social scientist, philosophers, and scholars and there have been relentless
discussions and debate about Marxian notion of social change.
Many people agreed with that, many people disagreed with that but it is still continued to be one of
the very important explanatory paradigm to understand how societies move from one stage to other.
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Marx advances an economic interpretation of history. As we discussed yesterday, Marx basically

understand society is been driven by its economic features. Similarly he advances an economic
interpretation of history. As history being moving forward by the economic forces. For Marx, the
history of humanity is not a story of a great men or great ideas or spectacular political events or the
unfolding of human consciousness. Instead he declares the true focus and motor of all history is
economic life. And this is a very major departure from many of the conventional understanding or
explanation about social change.
We know that once we study history we will study it through the contribution of some important
figures like kings and emperors or we discuss social change through various other different
frameworks. But Marx is very particular, and he is very clear that a human history must be
understood through the lens of its material production. Or how a society moves from one stage to
another? Or how a society evolves? For him, it needs to be understood by looking at the changes
that is happening in realm of its material production.
Therefore, history is not a story of great men or it is not great ideas transforming society all of a
sudden or it is not even spectacular political events because Marx argued that this political events
are a consequences of much more deeper economic changes. His disagreed with the idea of history
being the unfolding of human consciousness as argued by idealist like say Hegel and others. Instead
he declares that the true focus and theatre of all history is the economic life. A very debatable and
contentious, but a very powerful argument.
‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. It is very extremely
popular quote from Karl Marx. Historyof all hitherto existing society is the history of class
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struggles. It is this is an extremely quote. Marx argues that the history of every hitherto existing
society can’t be understood without looking into these forms of class struggle existed in every
society. How people are classified into different classes, different groups and what are the kind of
antagonist relationships between them and what is the kind of an economic rationale behind this
antagonism. Without looking into these dynamics, one will not understand the true history of any
society as per Karl Marx.
‘Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
sometimes hidden, sometimes open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes’. These quotes are
taken from Marx and Engel’s extremely popular work, The Communist Manifesto.
Marx understands society as the antagonism between two primarily two groups of people who
owned the means of production and who do not own it. All these categories that he has explained
such as freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, or
bourgeoisie and proletariat represent these two antagonist groups in different periods in history.
Marx talks about presenting a larger picture about social change, so how does his explanation of
social change unfold? According to Marx, there is a strong historical tendency, driven by the
requirements of human survival along with advances in science and technology, for the forces of
production to develop, to increase in power over time. He is talking about how our production
technologies and efficiencies of production and overall quality of production for meeting our
material needs improved over a period in time.
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We know that we have developed tremendously over the past so many centuries in terms of
meetings or basic needs in developing novel needs and then our ability to satisfy these needs. So,
with the help of science and technology and host of other aspects human beings have the ability to
continuously expand their realm of production to meet the existing needs as well as to identify and
fulfill the new forms of needs.
This continuous accumulation of productive forces endows human history with a certain coherence
or meaningfulness and paves way for progress. So, it is very clear from this argument that Marx
understands human progress not in terms of the emergence of new ideas. Marx understands human
progress specifically as the progress in terms of expanding new forms of production.
We, human beings as a race is able to expand new forms of production, expanding various process
of production. In contrast to philosophers of French enlightenment, for whom progress meant the
liberation of humanity from false ideas or a passage from ignorance to wisdom, for Marx progress
takes the form of increasing economic productivity and the evolution of modes of production.
It is very clear because he did not subscribe to the idealist argument which looked at human
progress as a progress from one type of ideas to another, given the fact that Marx was a materialist.
He argued that the human progress needs to be understood as a march towards or progress through
development of new material forms and economic productivity and evolution of new modes of
production.
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Secondly, as the introduction of new methods of productions transforms the labor process and
increases productivity, the social relations of production are likewise altered. So, here he is bringing
in the tension between the technical and material aspects of production on the one hand, and the
relations which are involved in the process of production on the other. Advances in technology
cause shifts in the class structure and in the larger social framework of society. In acquiring new
productive forces, men change their mode of production and in changing their mode of production,
in changing the way of earning their life, they change all their social relations.
New forces of production come into picture, when people move from agrarian society where
agriculture is the main stay of economy into a capitalist society where factory and tools and
machinery are the most important forms of production. Marx have used that the relationship
between the classes of people who are involved in the process of production also change because
this changes are not confined themselves within the realm of forces of production but they have the
ability to influence the social relationship.
This is an extremely important point and this is also the crux through which Marx explains how
social change and how revolution takes place. How society moves from one stage to the next one?
Society moves from slavery to feudalism from feudalism to capitalism, from capitalism to
communism, as according to Marxian argument. All these changes are propelled by changes in the
forces of production and these changes definitely influences the social relations.
“The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord, the steam mill, society with the industrial
capitalist”. Because the people who own the means of production, who takeaway the surplus value,
the people who live off the surplus that is produced by others, their designation changes, their
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characteristic changes, their relationships with the people who actually involved in the cost of
production also changes.
Third, as societies productive forces develop, Marx argues that they eventually come into conflict
with the existing relations of production which fetter or inhibit the continued growth and full
utilization of society’s productive capacity. So, he says that this advancements in the forces of
production, technological changes of course we know that these technological innovations are much
faster in pace. They are much faster than social relationship.
These technological changes will become much faster in its pace, it will advance much faster and
that ultimately will become an impediment. Marx uses a term fetter, as it chains or inhibits the
continued growth of full utilization of society’s productive capacity. For example, when Marx
explains development of capitalism in Europe, he argues that the development of technological
innovations like steam engine and host of other technological innovations during the sixteenth and
seventeenth century as very significant.
These changes happened at a much faster pace and these changes kind of necessitated that the
existing feudal system can no longer be a viable mode of production. It actually forced the society
to move into a newer form where the labors supply is free, the laborer is free in the sense, we will
discuss soon. Therefore, the social relations after sometime will become as a fetter, it becomes an
obstacle, it becomes an impediment for the further growth of this technological advancements and
the further movement of society of this mode of production to the next level.
At a certain point, the relations of production are unable to accommodate the potential built up buy
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the forces of production, and this circumstance create pressure for a fundamental change in the
economic structure of society. This particular point captures his explanation about the point of crisis
in a given mode of production, which is composed of both relations of productions as well as forces
of production.
The forces of production advance more rapidly and at the same time, relations of production
remains almost static and then comes a flashpoint where the relations of production becomes a
fetter and it can no longer advance, or improve and thereby bring a much rapid and thereby create a
crisis where whole structure of that mode of production moves and collapses, moving into
qualitatively different realm where the relations of productions are completely redefined.
In another words, the relation of production characteristic of a feudal society becomes an

impediment for the further growth of technological advancements during a feudal era. That reaches
a flashpoint and the entire mode of production moves to the next level, to that of capitalism where
the forces of production is facilitated by further technological advancements but the relations of
productions also take completely different qualitative level.
In a capitalist society, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat and completely
different form the relationship between a serf and a lord or a master and a slave.
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Fourth, once it reaches a crisis point, Marx argues that contradiction between the force and relations
of production inaugurates an era of social revolution. This flashpoint, Marx explains as the point of
social revolution. This is eventually resolved by the destruction of the old economic structure along
with its whole immense superstructure. I hope you remember what constitutes under this super
structure. Marx puts virtually almost everything else within the super structure except the economic
base.
Marx is pointing out at the possibility of the destruction of old economic structure along with a
whole immense super structure. Marx argues that almost everything else other than the economic
relations, which includes law, literature, and notions of morality, social organization, political
system, and character of your state, all that is part of the super structure would have its replacement
by a new mode of production suitable for the continued growth of the forces of production.
Marx understands social change as something that is propelled by a continuous change and
advancements in the forces of the production. The super structure gets replaced because the base
gets completely reformulated. Human history propelled by the accumulation of productive forces is
thus for Marx a story of how one mode of production develops, matures, stagnates and eventually
gives way to another more advanced mode of production.
That is why along with number of other scholars of modernity in Europe, he also conceives of
social changes as something that is taking place through different distinct stages. If you remember
when we discussed August Comte, he talks about three stages of history, theological, metaphysical
and positive. When we discuss Durkheim, we came across similar kind of characterization. So, here
Marx also is somebody who belongs to that category of thinkers who understood social change as
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taking place through definitive periods in a kind of an evolutionary manner.
This is something quite common characteristic of most of the social scientist and thinkers of Europe
during that particular time. And needless to say they all understood Europe as representing that
particular model of historical evolution and argued that almost every other society needs to do this
catching up this business with Europe. They are talking about one mode of production developing,
maturing and then it stagnates because the relations of productions is not able to catch up with the
changes taking place in the mode of production and then eventually that leads to a crisis, a
revolution which takes entire thing into a qualitatively different realm.
The new mode of production again has this kind of an inherent contradiction. Heere you will see
Marx very beautifully implores the method of dialectics, the thesis, anti thesis and the synthesis and
the synthesis again contains the contradictory qualities of opposite tendencies which again used
leads to kind of a higher stage.
His formulation of major modes of productions are slavery, feudalism, capitalism and post
capitalism or communism and Asiatic mode of production. This is again a very controversial and
contentious matter that how many specific modes of productions did Marx formulate. For example,
he talks about slavery, he talks about feudalism, capitalism, and post capitalism. He does not really
call it as communism. He does not really develop it further and he also has a completely different
idea of Asiatic mode of production which really does not fit into this this universal category.
There are quite a lot of interesting discussions and debates about types of modes of productions.
Because as we discussed the other day, Marx presents a Meta- theory of social and historical
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change. A theory which is so broad in its scope that, he is trying to give a theory about the whole
social change the humankind has witness so far. In order to give a very comprehensive theory of
that sort, he is providing a universal explanation which must be applicable to whole world to every
society, to every culture, to every human civilization.
That is not an easy task. That is why this whole lot of debate and discussions about how many
specific modes of production that Marx propounded and the argument whether Marx understood
this Asiatic mode of production, and all comes up. Because there are a lot of argument that whether
Marx really understood the kind of economic character of Asian societies. Because the kind of
material that he received to formulate this Asiatic mode of production as a unique mode of
production was very limited. They were erroneous and there was lot of criticism in that direction.
The dialectical processes inherent in the economic base of each of these modes create crisis
revolution and creates a qualitatively better form which again contains the inherent contradictions.
This movement of thesis, anti thesis and synthesis towards a structurally more complicated mode of
production will come to an end with the post capitalist era where the classes will be obliterated and
the state will wither away. This is another prophecy or prediction that Marx put forward.
We all know that this did not come true and this was an inspiration for whole lot of political activist
who were involved with Marxism and communism and they all believed that the capitalism will
destroy itself. Because as per this Marxian argument, capitalism also has the seeds of its own
destruction. It should lead to a kind of a revolution and Marx argued that it will lead to post
capitalist era whether we call it as a communism or not. It will be a classless society and the state
will wither away. He even argued that it will be characterized by the dictatorship of the proletariat,
which is an extremely problematic, controversial and contentious arguments.
What does it mean to be a state less society? Are we anywhere close to that kind of a situation?
What is there to replace the state? And what does it mean to be a classless society? At least as of
now, we realize that these ideas remain only as wishful thinking imaginations. It has not coming to
reality in anywhere. Even in some of the so called communist society whether it is USSR, or China
these things have not happened. Classes have not withered away, the state have not been obliterated.
On the contrary, they all had extremely powerful and authoritative states.
One of the weakest points in Marxian theory is his prediction about social revolution and era of
communism and the emergence of a class less society, a situation where people live without being
ruled by a state.
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Marx defines classes on the basis of ownership of the means of production. So, unlike other
definition of class which is on the basis of economic position, or the money that you own, Marxian
definition of class is rather simple, it is defined on the basis of the ownership of means of
production. The people who own the means of production and the people who do not own is the
determining factor. For example, in a factory, the workers do not own the means of production
because they do not own the factory, do not own the raw materials, do not own the machinery and
on the other hand factory owner owns the means of production.
The conflict is between these two classes; the haves and have nots, the masters and slaves, feudal
lords and serfs, bourgeoisie and proletariat. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles as we discussed. Marx wants to understands the social change as something that is
unfolding through the conflict between these two classes.
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Marx also discusses about his idea of class struggle. He defines that the movement from slavery to
feudalism, feudalism to capitalism and then from capitalism to communism, all these things
happened through class struggle. So, let us spend a couple of minutes trying to understand the
Marxian notion of class struggle. Marx argues that this class struggle will be preceded by something
what he calls as class polarization.
In a capitalist society, people will become extremely conscious about their class position and the
society will get polarized into two mutually antagonistic group. The one who owns the means of
production, the others who do not own the means of production. As per his account, in a capitalist
society all workers will assume c class consciousness. There is a very important term that he uses,
he says from the ‘class in itself’ people will move towards ‘class for itself’ when workers realize
their historical role.
This is an extremely important point because it talks about how the consciousness of workers play
an extremely important role in the creation of history. Marx would argue that a worker, while
working in an extremely exploitative situation, will realize that he is a part of a larger working class
population and he has historic role to play and his historical role is to over throw this existing
situation. Because, with class consciousness, he realizes that the system of exploitation that he is
experiencing is not something unique to him. Everybody of his class, every other proletariat, and
every other worker is subjected to similar forms of exploitation.
Therefore, the working class has a historic role to over throw this particular system so that is why
Marx says that from a ‘class in itself’, situation where the people are not aware of the class
consciousness to a ‘class for itself’ situation where the members are aware of class consciousness
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and they become aware of the of their important role as a member of a class. And they are aware
that they have to or they are supposed to take part in the historical process of overthrowing this
particular system.
Here it is an extremely important point where Max is bringing in elements of changes in

consciousness, different understanding of subjective position, how different forms of consciousness
inspire people to take a forms of political activism and that leads to what he calls it as a revolution.
A revolution is complete comprehensive change of society which propels a society into a
completely different and higher realm. Marx describe this in his Communist Manifesto with this
extremely popular quote which has inspired millions and millions of people across the globe.
‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to win, workingmen of
all countries unite’. This is a call for all the working class people and as I told you, this has really
inspired millions of people for generations. We are winding up the session today and we will meet
in the next class with discussion on capitalism. Thank you.
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Professor R.Santhosh
Lecture No. 20
Theory of Capitalism-1
Welcome back to the class, we are beginning a discussion on Karl Marx’s arguments and his
theorisations about Capitalism. Marxist formostly was an economist, of course he was also a
historian, a political scientist a sociologist, but the most significant contribution of Karl Marx
as an intellectual lies in his analysis of capitalism,as an economic system.
While this is a course on sociology, we cannot really ignore his arguments about Capitalism
because his analysis of Capitalism is very closely connected with the host of other aspects
and other themes that he wants to discuss about the human society such as the conditions of
working class, the way in which the capitalist class make profit, the questions of
exploitation, the questions of discrimination, social change, and the way in which capitalist
class controlled other aspects of society including ideology, political power, state power, and
the host of other things.
So far we have discussed Marxian understanding about social change, his arguments about
dialectical materialism and now we will have two sessions on Marxian notionof capitalism.
Because it is a elaborate one and we need to spend two sessions for that. So, let us begin.
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Karl Marx is the foremost theorist and critic of capitalism. May be there could be hardly any
other economist who spent his or her intellectual energy to understand the way in which a
particular economic system functions or capitalism functions as the case of Karl Marx. And
his most substantial body of work, The Capital in three volumes are devoted to understand it
through a meticulously economic analysis of capitalism.
Marx wanted to understand the capitalism’s functioning, uniqueness, the nature , the reason
for the its resilience, its weaknesses, the ways in which it exploits people, because Marx very
strongly believed that it is far more complicated system than the previous forms of economic
organisation or economic or modes of production like fuedalism of salvery. And then Marx
also was one of the most stringent critiques of capitalism.
While he was a critique, he wanted to understand how it works. So, the following are some of
the very important economic analysis of Marx, in which he brings in quite a new terms and
termonolgies, new ideas, new perspectives, in light. So, Marx uses the notion of use value
and exchange value as a primary building blocks for his theory on capitalism. Marx use the
notion of the use value, as a value emanating from its use and consumption of any material.
For an example if somebody produces a pair of chappals, these chappals are used by people
and it has a value emerging from the fact that it can used and it can be consumed. A shirt or a
pen, or food or or any economic product has a use value when it is been consumed. On the
other hand exchange value, is when is produced as commodities, goods are destined for a sale
or a exchange, rather than personal consumption and aquires this dual character.
You know when economy develops from a hunting-gathering system to that of a most settled
agricultural life, this entire network of exchange also develops, people produce various things
and they exchange in either formal or informal market, for other forms of goods. So, Marx
argues that, this particular time, most of the goods acquire this duel character. One is that this
material can be consumed, thereby acquiring use value, and secondly they can be exchanged
for certain other goods, thereby acquiring exchange value. Along, either they can be
consumed or they can be exchanged for other goods.
In the pre capitalist circuit of commodity exchange, one commodity that is C is sold for
money which in turn used for purchase of another commodity. Marx refers to this cycle of
exchange as C-M-C as the simple circulation of commodities. So he is making a theory trying
to understand what is something unique about the capitalist system. In the pre capitalist
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circuit of commodity excahnge, one commodity is sold for money, you selll one commodity
in the market and you get money and with that money you buy something else. So, it is a C-
M-C, implying the circuit of commodity money and commodity.
With capitalist commodity production, this simple circuit of exchange is inverted. Money is
used to purchase commodities, which after some refashioning, are subsequently sold for even
more money. So here, you are talking about a captalist system where raw mterials are brought
in, and labor is involved, and it is refashioned in to certain other thing, and then sold for even
more money. So, you use money to buy commodity, you refashion it, you invest your labor
and another thing, and you sell it for more money.
Here that previous equation of C-M-C is inverted into M-C-M, implying money, commodity
and money. With the simple circulation of commodities in precapitalist circulation, money is
spent to satisfy needs. Selling inorder to buy. You could sell certain thing, inorder to buy
certain other things immediately to satisfy your needs. With the capitalist ciculation of
commoditis, money is invested to accumulate more money. It is the, the ultimate objective is
not to consume, but to make more money, but to buy new items.
Money is invested to accumulate more money, meaning buying inorder to sell. The goals of
these two circuits of exchange differ. In the pre capitalist mode of production, it was
consumption and in the first case and profit in the second case. So, the second circuite, you
buy certain thing and you refashion it, you sell it and the ultimate aim is to make more
money. That money is nothing but profit as per Marxian argument.
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The continous exchange of commodities, in the capitalist mode, is not the producton of use
value, Marx insists, nor profit or any single transaction but rather the unease, unceasing
movement of profit making. So, if in the pre capitalist society, this transaction was very
simple and it ended with consumption, in a capitalist situation, Marx argues that making
profit becomes a never ending process. Making profir becomes a never ending process, and
because this transaction does not close in the first transaction itself.
The continous exchange of commodities, in the capitalist mode, is not the production of use
value, Marx insists, nor profit or any single transaction but rather the unceasing, the endless
movement of profit making. What spurs the capitalist into action, Marx says, is not
enjoyment of use value. This is an extremely important point when he develops his argument
about fetishism of commodities. You are making things not for the consumption, but not for
the enjoyment of use value, but for the augmentation of exchange values. Not the fullfillment
of the human needs, but for the accumulation of wealth.
Marx argues that, this feature made capitalism an extremely desirable, extremely profitable,
extremely alluring form of ecoonomic activity. That you have reached the state where, all
your basic needs have met, but humn beings have identified a new system where unending
forms of wealth can be created through this continous exchange of goods.
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Another extremely original argument that Marx brings into this entire discussion is his labor
theory of value. He brings human labor as a central theme in this entire analysis of economic
activity. We will discuss his preoccupation with the labor in coming class as well, when we
discuss his arguments about alienation. And this is a central concern for Marx. The ability of
human beings to work, and to produce certain things, as Marx’s has argued is a unique ability
of human biengs, that is something so special to human species that seperates human beings
from other animals or other species. And that is something unique on various counts.
Marx is extremely disturbed when this particular unique ability of human being is been
distorted under this system of capitalism. In his arguments Marx believes in a romantic ideas
about a class-less society. Marx believes that himan beings will be able to fully enjoy his
labor, will find happiness in his labor. Whereas in this exploitative system of capitalism, a
worker does not find any enjoyment while doing his work.
This idea of labor has very important position in both Marxian phylosophical arguments as
well as his economic analysis. One of the fundamental features of commodities exchange that
make them comparible is that they are produced of abstract human labor. When you produce
certain thing or bring in couple of raw materials and then make new products out of that, this
new product is not mere assemblage of all the raw material, but rather there is labor involved.
It is the labor which is actually gives shape to this new commodity, and they are the products
of abstract human labor. Marx is deliberately using this abstract human labor in order to make
as a blanket term to describe different forms of labor, both skilled and unskilled and others.
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That means labor in general measured in units of time, ignoring the specific operation that
differentiate one kind of work from the other.
Marx is talking about the kind of time invested by worker, inorder to produce a particular
product. This line of thinking leads Marx to adopt a labor theory of value. The relative value
of commodities, he states, are determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labor,
worked up and realized or fixed in them. Marx argues that one of the most important ways of
making sense of a value of a particular object is to understand the amount of human labor that
is invested in, worked up, realized, fixed in them.
Because without human labor a product cannot be produced. The value of the product is not
only the value of its raw material, but the amount of human labor that is been invested in that.
In sum, the Marx’s labor theory of value is this, ‘commodities exchange according to their
average labor time, needed to produce them under normal conditions of production’. So, once
commodities gets exchanged, that happens on the basis of average labor time needed to
produce them under the normal conditions of production.
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Marx uses the concept of premitive accumulation, to explain the emergence of two
fundamental classes. One those who own money, means of production and commodities and
other who own nothing but the labor power. This is an extremely important argument about
the primitive accumulation, how wealth is being created, how this particular class emerges as
a class that owns most of the means of production in different stages in history.
Marx gives a detail analysis of emergence of capitalism in England. Taking the case of
England, he provids a historical account of how a mercantile class and traders transformed
into capitalist bourgeoisie by accumulating private property. Marx, in deatail elaboration
talks about a small class of mercantile class and traders transformed into capitalist
bourgeoisie. He talks about how this small agricultural land was taken over by this group and
then this all agriculture itself transformed into kind of capitalist enterprise.
At the same time, a modern working class also appears on the scene as agriculture workers,
peasants or serfs, are transformed into independent wage laborers. This is the great
transformation that we discussed, in the previous sessions as well. when feudalism breaks
down, and capitalism emerges, the fundamental form of economic activity is transformed
form that of an agriculture, to that of industrial society. When a rural society transforms itself
into Urban society and when industrial production replaces agricultural production along with
a bourgeoisie class, who owns these new factories and and technologies, and tools and other
thing.
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There is also an emergence of a new class of laborers who earlier were the feudal agricultural
workers. Who were affliated to specific masters, now they become more free dependent
laborers. Peasants of serfs are transformed into dependent wage laborers. And this qualities,
this characteristic features of these wage laborers are something very important which we
will discuss now.
Agricultural workers are first forcibly expropriated form the soil, driven from their homes,
turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws
into accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage labour. This is an extremely
important argument because, the idea of primitive accumulation is still used by a host of
scholars to understand what is happening even in the comtemporary times.
When mega development projects are brought in, ordinary peasants are forced to displace and
aggricultral land is taken over. We are familiar with this argument about devopment through
displacement or forced eviction, where large thousands of people are displaced in the name of
development. There are quite lot of scholars who make use of this particular argument about
primitive accumulation to make sense of that.
This is exactly the kind of process that takes place. The they are first forcibly expropriated
from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabond and then whipped, branded,
tortured by grotesquely terrioristic laws. We know that bourgeoisie cannot enact laws by
themselves, they only have wealth. But the Marx argues that the state, the political elite, are
the one who will work for the interest of the bourgeoisie. The state will enact laws which
would immediately support the economic interest of the bourgeoise.
They will never support the law or never formulate a law that would support the interest of
the working class, because the state definition, by its own character, supports the interest of
the bourgeoisie. Workers are only left to fend for themselves. Workers are able to find any
solution only their own organised activity and then collective bargaining into not accepting
the discipline necessary for the system of wage labour.
This is very important term, what a kind of discipline required for the wage labourer? There
are very fascinating arguments about it. You know that the the evryday life organisation in
feudal society was completely different from that of a capitalist era. The setting of factory
and the sound of siren, are extremely important in organising human acitivity in a capitalist
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era. With a sound of a siren you start your work, and with another sound, you pause for your
break, again you resume at the sound of a siren.
Therefore, the siren or decides the rythem of human acitivity. Once the siren begins, you are
supposed to enter into the firm, into the production under strict survailance. Remember the
factories scene in the Charlie Chaplin’s the modern times. That requires discipline, that
requires some level of education and some amount of obedience at a mass level, and the role
of the state is something very important in making that kind of a disciplined and docile
working class.
Hence the birth of a new class of free workers. Free in a double sense. First, unlike either
slavess or serfs, they are not the property of their masters and hence, free to dispose of their
capacity for labor, to however ot whover they wish. This is an extremely important point
again. If you remember the previous session, where we discussed Marx’s notion about the
revolution, he argued that the changes in the forces of production will force changes in the
relations of production
When technological changes takes the modes of production into a particular level, then it will
realise that the existing relation of production is no longer conducive for development. And
then that will be seen as a fetter, as an obstacle and an impediment. That conflict leads to a
revolution where the forces of production are much advanced, and relations of production is
also completely redefined.
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Marx would argue that, you could not had a fuedal type of relationship between workers and
the bourgeoisie. In the era of capitalism, you can not have the workers being owned by the
bourgeoisie. There is no need for it or it will only hinder the further development. The
emergence of a new free class of workers who are free, in comparison with the slaves and,
and the serfs free to dispose the capacity of labor is a very important historical change.
This particular new class of free workers are free to dispose the capacity to labor however
they wish. They can sell their labor to the higest bidder. They are free agents, and can work
in a particular factory, then they can resign and can go to the next one, as they can offer to
sell their labor to anybody who gives them the highest amount of money. Second meaning of
the term, is that the workers owns niether land nor tools, they are free of all posessions in any
means of production.
That is another interesting ways in which Marx calls them as free workers. Because they are
free of all possesions, as they do not own land, they do not own any tools and they are free.
These free workers as Marx ironically puts it, are compelled to sell themselves voluntarily.
Again, you see the play of words, these ‘free workers are compelled to sell themselves
voluntarily’. They are compelled to sell themselves voluntarily, because they have only their
labor to sell to meet their daily needs.
They are free in so far as they do not belong to this or that capitalist. They are not affliated to
one permanentely, they are not owned by this capitalist X or Y, Marx says, but since they
must hire themselves out, to someone or starve, they do belong to one or the another
capitalist. It is a very very interesting formulation. Therefore, they have two options, one
option is to be free, but being free does not fetch you food, so the other option is of selling
yourself is to avoid starvation. Because you do not have anything to eat, do not own any
means of production, do not have any land, do not have any tools, and you only have one
option, that is to sell yourself, sell your labor.
Since they must hire themselves out to someone or starve, they do belong to one or another
capitalist. So, either they belong to particular capitalist, x or y.
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He further elaborates the uniquenes of labour power. There are four or five important points
to understand. First the deremination of the value of labour power differs from that of other
commodities because it depends on society’s level of development and cultural standards. So
we know that, the quality of labour power, is quite different in different epochs in history. So,
the value of labour power is dependend on the society’s level of deveopment and the cultral
standards, how much you value the labour power.
Second, though it is bought and sold in the market, capitalists do not produce labor power and
therefore do not control its supply in the same manner, as they do for other commodities. This
is very unique way in which the relationship between the capitalist and the workers are
defined. Capitalist cannot produce labor power in the same way they produce raw material. It
becomes an independent variable.
Third, capitalists consume labor power by extracting as much labor power as possible from
often resistant workers, and this process entailed with conflict, unlike that entailed by the
consumption of other goods. Again, the relationship between the capitalist and the workers is
quite different, because here capitalists is dealing with the workers and here the old saying,
‘time is money’ is relevent.
Again remember how Charlie Chaplin depicts the worker who is constantly forced to ramp up
his activity. The pace of his work is so frantic, that he hardly gets time for everything. So, in
a factory, the workers is under relantless survailance to maintain a specific speed which is
often decided by somebody else. So, he becomes a cog in the largest scheme of things. So,
unlike anyother commodity, the capitalist always have a very problematic relationship with
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that of the workers. Reistant workers, and this process, rife with conflict is unlike that
entailed by consumption of other goods.
Fourth, labor power is a particularly special commodity that is uniquely vluable from the
standpoint of the capitalist class, because it is capable of the producing surplus value. This is
the key of Marxian analysis of capitalism. Marxian analysis of capitalism as we will see in
the coming slides, is completely revolves arround the idea of surplus value. And according to
Marxian economics, the surplus value emerges not from the the raw material, not from the
technology, but from the labor.
Finally, labor power is a peculiar commodity also because it is an inherent ability of human
beings. The labor power is uncomparable with any other raw material or anyother technology
because it is an inherent quality of human beings. Which involves their creativity, involves
their sense of aesthetics, their boundless forms of imaginations, so you cannot really compare
the labor power with that of anyother commodity.
Though we usually have a very gloomy picture about human labor, when we look at it only in
a crude physical form, Marx had a much larger understanding about the potentials of human
labor, which includes a human beings ability to imagine, to be creative, to work with ethics,
to work with a politically consience manner. With this ability, human biengs are somebody
who are unique. Marx understood the ability of lobor as very significant, extremely
important, which is incomparible with anyother forms of say raw material or technology or
other aspects.
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So, the value of labor power, as with anyother commodity, is dertemined by the quantity of
socially necessary labor, required for its production, that is for maintenance of the worker in a
healthy, so for has to ensure a steady supply of replacement workers. So, here this is again a
very important point, so Marx argues that, the value of the labor power has to be something it
is not only that seen as a compensation of the, of, of ,of the time that worker spends in, in, in
the factory. Rather, you need to keep that worker in good condition, you need to ensure that
the worker is able to function as a, as a, as a normal, as a function member of the society.
You need to have a socially necessary labor time required for its production, that is for the
maintainance of the worker in healthy, socially productive in a more, humane manner, in a
more civilised manner and to ensure a steady supply of replacement workers. So, you also
require a steady flow of replacement workers, meaning the numeration of workers should not
be seen simply as the exact numeration of work that he is producing at the time of work.
Rather, numeration of the value of the labor probably is much more, much more higher,
because a person is only able to work if his social life, or his family life, or his other
existence as a healthy human being is taken care. And he is also supposed to give birth to
new children and to find out replacement of workers. The value to maintain this vary as per
the historic specifications. When society moves from one stage to the another, when society
improve, the needs also expand, and the quality of people change, aspirations of people
change, the requirements of people change.
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So, the value of wage to maintain this power is also vary as per the historical specifications.
Since the law of supply and demand does not apply to labours in the usual manner, what
mechanism ensures that the price of labor power, remains roughly equal to its value? Why are
workers typically unable to obtain more than a social subsistence wage? The answer to this
question is found in what Marx refers to as the industrial reserve army, or the surplus group
of unemployed.
So, on the one hand, Marx argues very vehementally that the labor power cannot be
compared with other forms of raw material as it is innately, qualititavely different. It is
something very important and the worker needs to be compensated not only for meeting his
immediate needs such as hunger but it has a much larger value. But in reality, Marx argues,
given the conditions of factories and industries scenarioworkers are paid the minimum.
The workers are paid the bare the minimum to meet their subsistence. If you look into the
history of labor struggles and working conditions, across Europe, or across the world, what
we see is nothing but the stories of exploitation. Whether it is in coal mines, or in agricultural
fields or in a anyother field, the workers were barely kept as healthy people. They were given
food and given bare minimum clothing so that they are able to work.
Marx understood that the workers are never honored or appreciated or their potentials
realised in the actual setting. Marx is asking why that the workers are not compensated the
way they should have been and why the workers typically unable to obtain anything more
than a social subsistence wage. The answer to this question is that there is an industrial
reserve army of workers or there is a surplus group of unemployed people at all the time.
There is an excessive supply of people.
Why? The the industrialists are not able to control the supply and demand as they can do with
other rawmeterials. For example, if they can reduce or increase the prodcution of oil or any
other raw materials, but in the case of labor power, the bourgeoisie has hardly any control
over the availability of that. So if time industrial reserve army already exist, there is a surplus
group of unemployed people who are always, already waiting there to be employed. And that
plays a very important role, in keeping their wages much lower than what they actually
deserve.
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Therefore the substantial supply of unemployed workers, potentially in competition for the
jobs of the employed, keeps wages from rising above their values. So, there is always a
reserved army of unemployed or people waiting to be employed and who are ready to sell
their labour at much lower rate than what they actually deserve, so that the bourgeoisie’s are
able to keep the real wages always lower.
So the idea of reserve army of labour implies existence of a large pool of jobless workers
desperate for employment. This situation Inhibit workers from demanding better wages and
forces them to remain employed from demanding higher wages. Therefore the moment you
ask for higher wages, they could be terminated and another group of people who are
desperate to get employed can be employed at much lower wage.
If there is a phase of sudden economic expansion, then you might find the scarcity of
labourers and then the rate of the labour might go up. In that situation capitalists will respond
by cutting back investment or substituting machinery for labour.
Because this is something which will badly affect, the prospect of profit for the bourgeoisie
so they would cut down either, investment or substitute machinery for labour. In either case,
replenishing the surplus population, resulting in a renewed downward pressure on wages and
restoring conditions for profitable growth. So, Marx has an elaborate discussion on the basis
specific experiences in Europe about how this cycles of upward and downward growth occur.
On the basis of experience of England and other western societies, Marx has very elaborate
explanations about this upward and downward growth of industries. How those were
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monitored, they were mastered and the wages were always kept at a low and the profit was
ensured.
The uniqueness of capitalist production, Marx says, is that it constantly reproduces the wage
labourer as a wage labourer, but also always produces a relative surplus population of wage
labourers in proportion to the accumulation of capital. So this, he argues, is the crux of
capitalist mode of production, is that it constantly reduces the wage labourer as wage
labourer.
The wage labourer never gets the possibility to change their class into something else. But
they always produces a relative surplus population of wage labourers in proportion to the
accumulated capital. So, this constant supply of unemployed wage labourers outside there,
who can be employed at will, at the expense of the existing people, who might be demanding
more wage, is the key according to Marx, which makes this capitalist enterprise extremely
profitable.
The classes of workers, one unable to work enough and the other forced to work too much
and this circumstance keeps wages low enough to maintain profitability for the capitalists.
So, this is a central key argument of Marx, because, it shows the dilemma of being a worker.
Once you enter in the factory, then you completely loose independence and control over your
ability, your creativity, your opinion and you become a kind of dehumanised entity, you work
like a machine, as long as you are there.
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If you do not take this option of selling your labour, then you join a large group of people
who are desperately waiting to be employed. So, Marx argues that, the worker of a
capitalist’s era either have to content with these two unenviable situations. Either you remain
as an unemployed, staring at starvation, looking at a very miserable life or the moment you
get into a factory, then you are under another extremely oppressive system of exploitation,
This situation keeps wages low enough to maintain profitability for the capital. This is how
Marx argues that the capitalists are able to maintain the maximum amount of profitability, or
only through exploiting the workers. And this of course provides a very pessimistic view
about industrialism and that was specially influenced by the kind of industrial atmosphere
during Marxian time.
We will continue this theme in the next class because it requires more lengthy discussion.
So, I am winding up here, and we will continue the same theme on Marxian analysis of
capitalism in the next class. So, thank you.
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Professor R. Santosh
Indian Institutes of Technology Madras
Lecture 21
Theory of capitalism
Welcome back to the class. We are continuing with the discussion of Marxian theory on
capitalism. As we discussed in the previous classes, the contribution of Karl Marx on
different aspects of social theory is quite enormous. He was a sociologist, he was a
philosopher, he was a political scientist but Karl Marx is widely known for his very original
and very influential contribution to the science of economics and especially his analysis about
capitalism was quite revolutionary, influential as well as controversial.
We have started this discussion on Marxian argument about capitalism in the previous
session and today’s class is a continuation of it. So, we discussed in the previous class that
Marxian analysis of capitalism where he understands capitalism as a necessary a stage or as
even as a welcoming stage in the mode of production from that of a pre-capitalist or feudal
era into a new mode, and while he welcomes that he also understands this is an extremely
exploitative phase which would eventually die out.
Marx understands capitalism as a transient phase, as an intermediary stage, which would

eventually leads to socialism and after that that situation of communism, where a classless
society would emerge. We saw in the previous class, how he looks at the labour power of the
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working class as central on the production in capitalist factories. So, we are continuing with
that discussion.
Marx’s analysis of capitalism shift the primary focus from the sphere of exchange to the
sphere of production, from the market dynamics to that of the labour process. So, this is a
very important point because unlike quite a lot of a later economics, he identified the site in
which the profit is realized is not that of the market, but it is within the factory or the sphere
of production and that was his argument.
Where does profit come from? In the previous section, we discussed how Marx explains this
industrial form of production and the centrality of labourers and how the labourers is
something quite unique as it cannot be compared with the other aspects of means of
production like your technology or raw materials.
In the current class, we will discuss his arguments about how profit is a realized and how
capitalism has its own set of contradictions which Marx believed lead to a complete system
of its collapse leading to that of a new mode of production. So, while the purchase of labour
power takes place in the market, its consumption and the real appropriation of someone else’s
living labour takes place in the actual production process. So, this is what he emphasizes
again and again, the actual site in which a profit is produced is the actual production process.
In return for their promise to pay a wage, capitalists acquire ownership of a workers labour
power for a stipulated period of time. This, Marx emphasizes, confers invaluable prerogative
the right of property. Workers pay heavy price when they hire themselves out to capitalists.
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So, here he is explaining why that the workers in an industrial setting or in a capitalist system
is inherently exploited.
Marx argues that when they pay a heavy price or when they hire themselves out to capitalists,
they are compelled to cede control over both their labour power and the products of the
labour. So, this particular point he analyses it in multiple dimensions and he understands it as
a very essential feature of the exploitative nature of capitalism. He analyses it in a much more
philosophical point of view where he understands this particular aspect whether the workers
lose control over both their labour power and the products of the labour.
Marx identifies this as a very important aspect of their alienation and he rejects the view that
profits arise from the capitalists selling commodities at a price higher than their value. This is
again is very much against the conventional understanding in economics where the capitalists
sell things at a much higher price and then they create a profit, but he said that this has a limit
and it cannot go beyond the point. Therefore Marx has a different explanation.
According to Marx, the exchange of commodities does not in itself create value. Profit is only
realized through the sale of commodities in the market. It is produced in the process of
production. You realize you actually get that profit when you sell a particular commodity in
the market but the profit is produced at the time of production.
In order to understand that, you have to really understand the dynamics of the production per
se. The Capitalists purchase two sorts of commodities within original investment. The means
of production that including the machinery and raw materials and the labour power. These
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two things really form the means of production and similar means of productions exist in the
in the previous means of production like that of slavery or feudalism and similar means of
production.
So, Marx's key point here is that the while machinery imparts value equivalent to its
depreciation, it does not create value because the value of this part of capital remains the
same throughout the process of production and Marx refers this to us a constant capital.
While this raw material and machinery are important, he calls them as constant capital. They
do not create value other than what they depreciate. So, he calls them it as a constant capital.
While the more significant type of capital involved in the force of production is that of the
labour power, is a massive argument. So, labour power on the other hand both produces the
equivalent of its own value and produce an excess. This is his key point where he brings in
his argument on surplus value. So, only the labour power has the ability to reproduce its
equivalent of its own value and also produce an excess.
The human labour expanded in the production of the final product thus takes two distinct
forms. First the past or dead labour congealed in the means of production and passed on to
the new commodity and second living labour. The labour power in action which preserves the
existing value of the original capital outlay and add new value as well. So, he understands
this labour power has this two dimensions one has a regenerative capacity the other one is
capable of producing the existing value.
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Marx argues workers are paid according to their value but there is a difference between the
value of labour power that is the cost required for the reproduction of the worker both in his
physical sense as well as in his social sense. Remember the discussion that we had in the
previous class about what does it mean to be the reproduction of the worker. So, the worker
needs to be replenished he is a social being.
So, that person must be able to reproduce himself both in social as well as physical as well as
economic sense and the value labour power creates. So, the cost required for the reproduction
of the worker is much lower than the actual value that a labourer creates and this excess value
that the labour creates during this process of production is appropriated by the capitalist
argues Karl Marx.
The wealth of workers produce in other words is greater than the wealth needed to sustain,
this is the secret of profit making. So, he would argue that the wealth that the workers
produce is much more than what is required to sustain them and this excess work is actually
taken by the capitalist and that is what the secret of profit making is. Workers are paid the full
value of their labour power but they are not paid full value of their labour because it is much
more than what is being paid to them in the form of wage, they are not paid the equivalent of
what they produce.
The reality is that by purchasing labour power they gain command of the workers capacity to
labour for a period of time in excess of what is necessary for the worker to produce the
equivalent of their social subsistence wage. The same point what the more you compel the
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workers to work more the amount of work that they produce the value of the labour power is
much more than what they are actually compensated for.
The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the workers alive during 24 hours does
not in any way prevent them from working all day. Marx calls the second portion of the
working day as surplus labour time. This is from the surplus or unpaid labour that capitalists
derive their profit. Yeah, so ultimately he argues that the capitalist class appropriates surplus
value through the exploitation of the working class.
This is the central thesis of Marxian argument because his intellectual project is to show that
capitalism is nothing but the exploitation of the working class. The driving motive and
determining purpose of the capitalist system, Marx states is the greatest possible production
of surplus value hence the greatest possible exploitation of labour power.
The rate of exploitation is a rate of surplus labour to necessary labour. So, this is the central
argument of Marx that in capitalism, profit is created by exploiting the workforce. Because in
the typical capitalist form the worker is not adequately compensated.
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Workers compelled to sell their labour power in the marketplace are then drafted into the
army of wage labourers under the capitalist command and subjected to barrack-like discipline
of the workplace. And this is something you know has produced quite a lot of very interesting
a work a how did this emergence of capitalism really regimented the lives of a people. I have
mentioned it in one of the previous sessions about the factory system the sound of the siren.
The very specific regimented production schedules determined the specific forms of
production. So, everything is regimented, everything is disciplined and there is a major
surveillance system that looks at each and every action of the individual. So, this was
something quite unusual and unprecedented in the history of human a life.
This creates a barrack-like discipline of the work. Capitalists are at war against time. It is its
insatiable appetite for surplus labour Marx says capital usurps the time for growth,
development and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the
consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It haggles over the meal times where possible
incorporating them into production process itself.
Marx says the capitals are at war against time and it has an insatiable appetite for surplus
labour and Marx says capital usurps the time for growth development and healthy
maintenance of the body and here, I again invite your attention to the film a by Charlie
Chaplin to think how it steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight.
It haggles over the meal time where possible a incorporating them into the production process
itself.
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We know that the kind of achievement of labour class such as eight hours of work was an
achievement in every sense of the world. Because the workers across the globe had really
fought very hard battles to get this granted from say 12 hours of working period or even more
than that. So, Marx argues that capitalism has an inherent tendency to extend the working
hours because only through that they are able to realize profit. Capitalism, Marx concludes
surpasses all other systems of production in its energy and quality unbounded and ruthless
activity.
Now what are the contradictions and the crisis tendencies? We know that Marx argued that
capitalism is only a transient phase between feudalism and that of communism and he
understood that it is far better compared to that of the previous phases. But he argued that
capitalism has its own seeds of destruction and it will end up in crisis, ultimately into other
revolutions.
Let us examine how Marx argues about this kind of capitalist form of contradictions and
crisis tendencies even as it reproduces itself. Capitalism never stays the same and it is always
changing and expanding and even as it persists, capitalism is inherently crisis prone
susceptible to periodic breakdowns. So, capitalism, in response to the coercive laws of
competition are constantly pressured to increase efficiency and productivity.
As one capitalist cheapens the cost of production by introducing labour saving technologies
others are compelled to follow suit. We know about the kind of ruthless competition that
exists among the capitalists. So, they are competing with each other in order to bring down
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the cost of production and mostly this is done by introducing labour saving technologies and
others are compelled to follow the suit. But that results in an overall decline of production.
You know that it’s not always easy to do that being excessively competitive because it
actually brings down the profit.
So, as machinery is increasingly substituted for labour in the process of production, as

technology is called upon to do more and more of the work, the amount of living labour time
embodied in commodities shrinks. But since living labour or the variable capital is the source
of profit the inner logic of the capitals development engages a progressive tendency for the
general rate of profit to fall.
So, Marx is actually explaining how there are stages of growth and then fall, growth and
decline in the in the capitalist economy. How this is an inherent inbuilt system in that.
Because once you enter into phase of fierce competition with others, then your profit is bound
to fall. Now when the decline of the rate of profit becomes as sufficiently serious and
economic crisis erupts. Less profitable industries are forced out of business investments and
productions are contained, unemployment increases and the size of industrial reserve army
grows.
And this is another very important term that we discussed in the previous class how this
industrial reserve army emerges. The eventual effect of such regularly occurring catastrophes
by causing the destruction of less productive enterprises and the decline of wages is to restore
at least temporarily the condition for the profitable investment. Stagnation in production,
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Marx states prepare for the ground for it later expansion of production. So, he is talking about
the situation of increased competition and the profit making and the stagnation and the
decline and which again actually a goes up.
Now as this boom and burst cycle continues, he explains that crisis becomes progressively
more frequent and severe not only hindering capitalisms ability to recover but also
threatening its violent overthrow the emergence of class consciousness, class polarization and
ultimately the revolution. Marx argues that capitalism will have to face this frequent crisis
and then development followed by another crisis.
This developments will finally lead to the points that we discussed in the previous class , such
as the emergence of class consciousness and the workers realizing that they have a historical
obligation to uphold the politics of the working class and they have this historical agency to
overthrow the system of capitalism. Class polarization leading to the formation of a class in
itself, will ultimately leads to the overthrow of capitalism through a revolution.
Marx argues that capitalism is susceptible to crisis because of its unlimited ambition and its
need for unceasing expansion and endless profit. We discussed how profit making is a
creation of capital for the sake of creating further capital is something quite unique to
capitalism. The imperative to accumulate inevitably comes into conflict with the limits
imposed by the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses.
This is yet another prophecy of Marx which did not come true while the masses remain poor
the capitalism really invented ways of expanding the needs of human being as we know how
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the kind of overconsumption or excessive consumption has become a norm in the world. So,
capitalism hasn’t break down because of its intrinsically contradictory nature. It has its own
seeds of destruction as we discussed and again goes back to the Marxian dialectics where he
applies the Hegelian dialects into the material condition.
Marx viewed capitalism as playing a historically progressive role. Unwittingly preparing the
way for the socialist society and future. So, here we will spend some time trying to
understand the Marxian take on capitalism. What were the important contributions of Marx
on capitalism and what are the points that he was right and what are the points in which he
was kind of wrong.
Marx viewed capitalism as playing a historically progressive role unwittingly preparing the
way for the socialist society of the future. It is a point that we have repeatedly revisited. For
Marx, capitalism was a modernizing force that would usher in modern nation state,
bourgeoisie middle class, civil society, technological advancements liberalism and so on. So,
definitely he understood capitalism as something far more favourable, acceptable and even
desirable compared to that of feudalism and enslavement.
Because here, at least you are able to talk about individual, about a nation state, you are able
to talk about a bourgeoisie middle class, a civil society, technological advancements and
liberal ideas, the rights of human beings such as individual rights or human rights, all such
advances ideas of existence is possible only in a capitalist period.
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In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels assert that what distinguishes capitalist epoch
from all others is the constant revolutionizing of production. The uninterrupted disturbance of
all social conditions and the experience of everlasting uncertainty and alienation. The modern
capitalist world is one of permanent change where all that is solid melts into air. So, in the
communist manifesto he and Engels assert that what distinguishes capitalist epoch from all
others is the constant revolutionizing of production.
Because this is the most dynamic phase in the human history, we never had this much of
innovations coming to picture, this much of discoveries coming into picture, this kind of
rapid social transformation taking place. The uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions and the experience of everlasting uncertainty and agitation.
Everything that is stagnant is being hostage, every strong convictions have been hostages.
The modern capitalist world is one of permanent change where all that is solid melts into air,
this is again is a very important quotation by a quote by Karl Marx.
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Now Marx says that capitalism in just a single century has created more massive and more
corrosive productive forces than all preceding generations together and hence a great
transformative force the same point that we a discussed why that he considers it as a very
defining moment in the human history. It has created more massive and more corrosive
productive forces than having all preceding generations together.
Marx predicted an uprising of a revolution and the ultimate overflow of the system of
capitalism which we know that did not come true. No major socialist revolutions took place
in any of the capitalist nations and capitalism appeared as most enduring economic system.
At least till the fall of USSR in 1991, there was some kind of a debate whether are we seeing
two competing types of economic system the socialism and the communism and campaigns.
But with the fall of berlin war and the disintegration of USSR, the world has moved into a
unipolar world system and capitalism has been widely heralded and accepted as the only
thriving economic mode. Even the namesake communist countries like China have embraced
capitalism and there is a very vibrant debate about what means to be a communism in its
economic sense in China.
The Marxian arguments about the fall of capitalism as an economic system did not come true
and there are quite a lot of a arguments about the shortcomings in Marxian analysis of
capitalism. We need to understand that capitalism as an economic system was very nascent
stage during Marxian time and the capitalism evolved over a significantly since Marxian
time.
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Marx presents a very a simplistic picture of bourgeoisie and proletariat and he identified
proletariat as the actual ages of social change by even neglecting other people like peasantry,
middle class or artisans and other sections. So, the very character of capitalism has changed
and Marx does not really talk much about the kind of intermediary managerial class which
actually act as a buffer zone between the bourgeoisie and the labours.
Then of course the very character of private ownership changes as you have share market
comes into picture where the public can buy the shares. So, you do not have this old classical
idea of a bourgeoisie as the single owner of the factory who has all the money, who
monopolises over this money that character of capitalism has completely changed and of
course more recently now there are quite a lot of companies who dole out their shares to their
own employees.
So, making more profit is now become the interest of the workers. So, here the Marxian
model of capitalism no longer works. You can still point out at existing forms of exploitation,
but the whole dynamics is completely changed.
So, the appearance of a gigantic multinational corporations which did not exist during
Marxian time the rise of welfare state and extension of citizenship rights have all made
important changes. Especially in western Europe, the welfare state has brought important
labour laws and labour union became important and the kind of extreme form of exploitation
at least in the in the developed societies is much lesser workers are more organized they are
paid well compared to many other places.
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The appearance of a pervasive mass media industry and a culture of consumerism is another
important development. New needs are invented every time as there is no connection between
the needs and a kind of a consumer society that we have. The shift from manufacturing
industries to service industries where this entire process of production undergoes change is
very crucial as it no longer takes place on the factory floors. It is mostly in air-conditioned
rooms the idea of work has underwent significant changes as it is no longer the blue collar
workers , but dominated by the new category of professional workers in service sectors.
The emergence of new social movements focused on issues of gender, race, nationality,
sexual identity and environment has also offered new critiques to Marxism. Since 1970s, new
kinds of social movements have emerged and a host of other identity related issues have
come to the fore even pushing back the conventional class oriented concerns to the back seat.
Now we know that there is a realization that this term ‘proletariat’ does not represent
everybody. The workers of the world do not really share common set of issues but other than
their working class identity that are host of other issues related to identities which are even
more important and a we know that, for example in India caste is an extremely important
non-class identity.
And which typical Marxism explanation will not be able to understand and explain gender
where Marxism analysis is very much limited. So, it is the case with sexual identity for
environmental issues racism. So, there were a plethora of identity related issues and
mobilization took place for 1960s and 70s which actually came to the fore by pushing back
this class based mobilization to back.
And ultimately what we see is that the resilience of the capitalist system due its ability to
fight over every a crisis. Its ability to survive, its ability to adapt itself to the changing
situations has led to its resilience. Though we say that capitalism might face challenges there
is absolutely no idea about whether it will lead to its collapse and a completely new system of
or new mode production will come into picture.
There is no dependable evidence to expect such a transformation. The revolution at best

remains a wishful thinking of some diehard communists who think of a revolutionary of the
workplace. It equally remains a kind of wishful thinking because the world has moved on
forward and became for complex. We will stop the discussion here and we'll continue with
the discussion on Marx in the coming class with a different set of questions. Thank you.
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Department of humanities and Social Sciences
Lecture 22
Karl Marx and Alienation
Welcome back to the class. In the previous sessions we concluded some discussions on Marxian
critic on capitalism which is a very important theory and considered to be the central
contribution of Karl Marx. And today we are going to discuss yet another very important and
influential intervention of Karl Marx through his analysis of alienation.
This concept has really attracted the attention of a wide spectrum of scholars starting from
political scientist, philosophers, sociologists and the host of other people. This is very important
intervention of Karl Marx as his attempt to understand the human condition in the modern times.
This term alienation is still important because even in the contemporary era of late modernity,
discussions about human beings feeling, and how they feel kind of estranged from their own
society and feels worthless in this particular society is very important.
Human beings are not able to find meanings in their existence. These concerns are discussed and
debated heavily even in the contemporary times. Of course this is not a term invented or
discovered by Karl Marx, it is not his original contribution rather he improvised upon the
Hegelian understanding of alienation. But the kind of a material take that Karl Marx provided to
this particular understanding is quite interesting.
We will see that how Marx borrowed this particular idea. He was heavily influenced by Hegel
especially during his youthful period and most of his writings of especially on alienation with its
philosophical moorings are appear in the early career of Karl Marx. So it is a very fascinating
theme.
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Marx derived the concept from Hegel transforming it from an essentially idealist to a materialist
and critical concept. So this is one of the most important points that we need to keep it in mind.
This is not an original concern developed by Karl Marx in his youthful period. There were quite
a lot of discussions and debates about this concept of alienation. But most of these discussions
and debates were philosophical in its character, especially influenced by the arguments of Hegel,
George Hegel whom we have discussed earlier.
Hegel understood alienation basically as an idealist concept, typically as what we have seen in
the previous class, Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel but Marx provides a completely
materialistic interpretation to that this particular term. So this kind of a subversion from an
idealist understanding, Marx provides a very strong materialist explanation to this particular
concept.
For Marx alienation is described as a process by which man is progressively turned into a
stranger in the world that his labor has created, a theme similar to Hegel's phenomenology. Hegel
explains it in his work phenomenology but for Marx what is the crucial aspect the life of human
being is that human being is progressively turned into a stranger in the world in which he himself
has created.
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You must be by now familiar that Marx gives profound importance to human labor. He
understands that the uniqueness of human beings lies in their ability to engage in labor. The
world that we have seen today is the product of human life. But ironically in this world which is
a creation of their own labor, human beings have become stranger.
Human beings do not feel comfortable in that. Human beings are not able to identify themselves
with their own product and this according to Marx is a very difficult situation. So it is also the
theme of Feuerbach’s essence of Christianity which exercised a profound impact on Marx's
earlier works, helping him to translate Hegel’s idealist structures into materialist ones.
These two are the major influences on Marx. We will discuss Feuerbach’s work on Christianity
when we discuss Marxian critique of religion and of course the Hegelian understanding of
alienation as elaborated in his work phenomenology.
For Hegel, alienation is a manifestation of unhappy consciousness. This is a very important

argument as in the case of any idealist. Hegel understood that lot of people human beings in this
contemporary society feel estranged and feel distanced from their own world. But Hegel found
the root cause as something lies in the consciousness of human being like that lies in the realm of
ideas. So he understood alienation as a manifestation of an unhappy consciousness.
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It refers to the finite individual's self-consciousness which mistakenly consists of its own
spiritual essence as being outside it and opposed to it. It regards itself as inessential, empty,
worthless devoid of true reality or significance. So here Hegel understands that the human beings
are experiencing alienation because of the incapacity of the human being itself in order to
understand the true essence.
So attaining this true essence is what Hegel understands as the epitome of human problems
because for him the understanding human progress lies in the ability of human beings to reach
some of the highest forms of consciousness. So it refers to the finite individual's self-
consciousness which mistakenly consists of its own spiritual essence as being outside it
understands it wrongly.
It is not able to realize its actual essence is a part of this finite’s individual self-consciousness
itself. It regards itself as inessential, empty, worthless, devoid of true reality or significance. So
Hegel understands alienation as resulting from some kind of a faulty and incomplete
understanding.
For Hegel unhappy consciousness is an important step in human history because for the first time
in the unhappy consciousness, spirit's particularity in the form of an individual human person
first becomes an object of awareness. So as we discussed in the previous class human, Hegel
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understands this transformations of human society as a transformation realized through the
advancements in the ability of human beings to think the kind of the better the development of
various ideas that human beings are able to understand and then nurture it.
So Hegel understands this kind of development is an essential development. It is a necessary

development because this is for the first time that the unhappy consciousness that is the spirit's
particularity in the form of an individual proven person first becomes an object of awareness. So
human beings try to reflect about this whole situation and then it becomes an object of
awareness.
The alienation of the unhappy consciousness is just a matter of finite spirits imperfect knowledge
of its own infinite essence. So ideally Hegel would argue that human beings is a part of the
infinite essence or the higher spirit that he understands but the human beings are not able to
really understand that. They are in kind of a false consciousness, as they are really not able to
understand the true situation as per Hegelian understanding.
The only remedy for alienation is the attainment of a highest stage of self-knowledge where god
and humanity are seen to be fundamentally in harmony. We discussed in the previous session
that Hegel was a believer and his Hegel philosophy was heavily influenced by Christianity. So
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for Hegel, a person will be able to come out of alienation only when he or she realizes the
oneness of human being with that of the god.
The only remedy for alienation is attainment of a highest state of self-knowledge where god and
humanity are seen to be fundamentally in harmony. So it is again that human beings are suffering
and feeling a deep sense of entrenchment because they are not able to understand that in reality
they and the god are essentially in harmony and they share the similar kind of spirit. So Hegel
understands the root cause of alienation as residing in the inability of human beings to
understand certain things again at the realm of ideas.
Hegelian idea is that human beings are unable to realize their self-actualization due to a series of
negations in their existence as in the case of his dialectical idealism. So this self-actualization is
not yet realized and it is basically due to a series of negations in their existence. And of course
this idea was original to Hegel and at the same time Marx also has a very interesting engagement
with the Feuerbach, who was a very important scholar whom we mentioned when we discussed
intellectual influences in Marxian life. So Feuerbach theory of religious alienation also heavily
influenced by Hegel but Feuerbach also was not a believer he was critical of religion but there is
a very interesting difference between Feuerbach’s critique of religion and Marxian critique of
religion which we will discuss in the coming session.
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So Feuerbach criticizes Hegel's notion of an abstract spiritual world as it is similar to religion,
and he established the anthropological explanation of religion. So Feuerbach did not believe in
anything divine about the religion rather he used some kind of anthropological explanation on
understanding why religion is a universal institution.
Why that every society you will find some or the other sort of religions. So he tried to provide an
anthropological explanation of religion and did not agree with that of Hegelian understanding of
religion.
According to Feuerbach, humans unwittingly project essence to god, assign non-human qualities
that makes human beings look imperfect in comparison and lead a life in accordance to the
regulations imposed by the god.
It is a very interesting explanation. So Feuerbach argues that human beings unwittingly project
human essence to god. Assign non-human qualities, makes human beings look imperfect in
comparison and live a life in accordance to the regulations imposed by the god. so Feuerbach
argues that the human beings project human essence to both and also assign non-human qualities
and all set of qualities that are beyond the purview of human beings are attributed to god.
God is omnipresent and he can decide people's life, he can completely define and then decide the
destiny of each and every individual, he can control the nature. So a host of non-human qualities
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and abilities are attributed to the God and then in comparison with the god you realize that you
are very insignificant.
This idea make human beings look imperfect in comparison and lead a life in accordance to the
regulations imposed by the world. In essence, this is a kind of an anthropological explanation on
why that human beings require the figure of a god. Essentially Feuerbach is arguing that the
human beings attribute these kind of non-human or super human abilities to god and then look
down upon themselves and then lead a more regulated life imposed by the god.
Religion is the disuniting of human beings from themselves. So Feuerbach also is critical of
religion, but the explanation is quite different. While Marx agrees with Feuerbach to a large
extent because Marx does not agree with Hegelian's idealist argument and argues that religion
does not have anything divine about it. Marx agrees with Feuerbach that it is a social
phenomenon. But Marx also has his fair bit of criticism against Feuerbach.
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Marx agrees with Hegel and Feuerbach that alienation is closely associated with certain kinds of
false consciousness about one's essence. Both Hegel and Feuerbach argues that people do not
really understand the true reality. For Hegel, it is because they are not able to realize that they
share the essence with the supreme spirit.
Whereas in the case of Feuerbach, human beings do not realize that the God is a creation of
themselves. So Marx criticizes Feuerbach for not looking at the development of religion in a
historical sense. Of course, this kind of what Feuerbach provides also is a kind of materialistic it
is an anthropological explanation but it is not really rooted in a historicity.
So alienated consciousness laments that natural human life is alienated and it can be overcome if
we place on the right supernatural interpretation. For Marx unhappy consciousness tells the truth
and laments it, not in its consolations. It is a very interesting argument. Marx argues that
alienated consciousness laments, which means it cries that the natural human life is alienated and
it can be overcome only if we place it in the right supernatural interpretation.
We know that many human beings lead a very miserable life and especially the alienated people
do not find any meaning or happiness in their life. They all the time lament about the lack of
importance, lack of being able to find certain higher meanings in their life. So this alienated
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consciousness lament that natural human life is alienated and it can be overcome if you place on
it the right supernatural elaboration.
But for Marx, this unhappy consciousness which laments of about its own elimination, about its
own sense of estrangement ,its own sense of not being important, its own sense of not being able
to identify with the world. So Marx argues that there is a truth and the feel of alienation is not a
false consciousness or an illusion, rather real.
But the consolation that it tries to look for or the kind of consolation that it tries to achieve by
falling in the feet of a god or its consolation by trying to appeal to the religion is not what is
correct or that is a fundamentally wrong step as per Marx.
And in this work ‘The economic and philosophical of manuscripts’ of 1844, Marx criticizes
Hegel for locating the oppositions and negations that cause the estrangement of man in abstract
philosophical concepts and argues that they be located in the material world especially the
economic realities.
Marx brings forth the his sharp materialistic argument that if a society in general are
experiencing a sense of estrangement, if they experience a sense of not being worthy, then its
root cause has to be analyzed in the in the material world especially in the economic realities and
not in certain kind of realms of ideas or in beliefs.
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Marx strongly argues that the reason for this sense of alienation must be sought in the material
world, especially the economic realm and as we know that this goes along with the larger
Marxian argument that the economic base is the one which actually provides the fundamental
basis on which all other aspects of human society.
Now here Marx resorts to a kind of a larger philosophical explanation about human nature. So
one of the most important aspects that Marx argues here is a discussion about what he
understands as very essential nature of human beings. I have mentioned it several times what is
that something demarcates human beings from other animals or other species what is something
so unique about human beings.
And as per Marxian explanation it is their ability to labor, it is their ability their laboring activity
that actually distinguishes human beings from other animals or other species in the world.
Because human beings are not the fastest, they are not the strongest, and in terms of physical
ability human beings are absolutely vulnerable.
There are hosts of other animals in the world who are much faster, much stronger but why that
human beings are able to control the whole world? It is because their laboring activity and their
ability to combine their intellect with that of the tools and ability to produce. So it helps to exert
control over nature.
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It is a source of human existence and it is also a very important source of human self-definition.
So this laboring activity or the ability of human beings to produce certain things, according to
Marx is something so fundamental to their self-definition. How a human being defines himself of
herself is something so closely connected with the way in which he or she engage in this engages
in this kind of a laboring act.
A typical Marxian explanation of the way in which the human beings work ,human beings
engage in productive activities is something so central not only for meeting their basic
requirements, but even to have a definitive sense of themselves definitely definition of
themselves.
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So Marx defines alienation as a process whereby exchange value comes to dominate use value in
which the worker increasingly defines historically specific capitalist social relations as natural
and inescapable. I hope you remember the discussion we had about exchange value and use
value and he discusses that in the pre-capitalist economic transaction it was the use value which
had more prominence whereas in the in the capitalist era it is the exchange value which continues
to be the dominant one.
So Marx argues that if exchange value comes to dominate use value this is where he also
develops his theory about the fetishism of commodities in which the worker increasingly defines
historically specific capital social relations as natural and inescapable. So Marx argues that
human beings define this particular period of capitalistic one as per Marxian argument that it is
only a transient and temporary one.
It is not a permanent situation because Marx believed that capitalism will crumble under its own
weight or due to its own contradictions and a new classless society will emerge, but the workers
or the ordinary human beings do not consider it in that way. They consider it as natural and
inescapable.
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Marx delineates couple of more specific ways in which human beings experience this alienation.
Marx talks about alienation from the product. So one of the important points that we discuss so
far is about especially about a capitalist system is that workers do not own the means of
production. The means of production are owned completely by the bourgeoisie and workers are
forced to sell their labor.
So in a capitalist system the workers do not own the means of production and the product enters
into a system of exchange creates no use value. So you know this is something quite familiar to
us and Marx gives example of a potter who owns the soil, who owns the potter's wheel, who is
involved in the in the production of a pot by himself and he sells it to somebody and he is able to
see how his product is being made use of the person.
That provides a deep sense of gratification, deep sense of satisfaction with the person who
created it whereas in a capitalist era, a worker does not even know what he is producing because
most of the time the worker must be producing a very a small fraction of a large product and his
individual contribution in a large assembly right could be very minuscule. It will be extremely
limited. So human beings are not able to identify themselves with the kind of product that they
are producing.
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The other is the alienation from the productive activity. Marx argues that human beings lose
control over the capacity of laboring activity to affirm their being and define their self-existence.
This activity of producing certain thing is so central to Marxian argument. It is not a mechanical
thing that you do just to get some money but Marx argues that human beings really identify
themselves with the product of their labour. Human beings really discover themselves, define
themselves in the process of this production.
But in a capitalist era human beings lose control over the capacity of laboring activity to affirm
their being and define their self-experience. They are always their working condition is always
decided by somebody else and alienation with respect to the social relations of the worker to
himself in the form of material satisfaction and to the outer world but to the history and society.
So there is an alienation with respect to the social relation of the worker to himself in the form of
a material satisfaction and the outer world to the history and society.
Therefore, worker is not even able to do justice to himself. He is not able to do justice to his
fellow society and to the history at large.
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‘Workers feel at home when they are not working and when they are working they are not at
home’. It is a very interesting very powerful statement. Workers feel at home when they are not
working. We know that this is true for quite a lot of people around. They do not really enjoy the
work the work becomes a burden on them.
They really are frightened about the scenery of having to go to the work, spending a moment in
the work is considered to be kind of punishment. So Marx says that this is the tragedy of human
beings. Human beings should not be facing this great tragedy because by definition human being
must be able to find a lot of enjoyment during their work.
If it is not happening there is something fundamentally wrong about our system. Workers feel at
home when they are not working and when they are working they are not at home, the reversal of
human and animal functions because the activities which human beings share with animals
appeal more human than those activities which mark them off as human beings, again the
extension of this argument he makes a comparison between human beings and animals.
When human beings do the kind of animal activities like sleeping or having food then human
beings feel happier while human beings do certainly human acting such as productive activities
they no longer feel human.
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That is why there is a reversal of human and animal functions because the activities which
human beings share with animals appeal more human than those activities which mark them off
as human beings.
Then Marx also brings in a very interesting discussion about alienation from the species
saturation. This is a very interesting take. Marx brings in this idea of the species being to indicate
the individual human being and the common essence of humankind. Here Marx develops a kind
of a philosophical argument that human beings as a species with a certain kind of an essence that
demarcates human beings from other animals. So a species being, to indicate individual human
being and the common essence of humankind. Humans not only belong to the same species but
being aware of it is distinctly unique to the species.
We make our species of objects and behave towards is conscious of or relate to himself as to the
present living species okay. So our existence in this world is not something mechanical. He
argues that we identify ourselves as a member of the society and because of our unique ability.
we are able to object this human society in a very objective manner and we make our species our
objects and behave towards it because but we are being aware of its distinctly unique but being
aware of it.
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So it is not that we simply exist as human beings but we understand that we belong to this
particular species and this particular species has a particular destiny. Destiny is not something
given by the God but as per the Marxian argument that they are supposed to reach a much more
better state of affairs, a state where there is nobody experience alienation, a state where there is
no exploitation.
So we are able to identify ourselves and also able to look at the species as if they are the objects
of our understanding.
Now, the argument about species consciousness and alienation. So species consciousness means
that so every human being has a consciousness about himself or herself and also about the
consciousness as a humanity as a whole. So Marx argues that human beings needs to confirm
and actualize one's human species essence. This is based on an individual satisfaction of a
natural vocation. It is the extent to which the human beings as species being has become himself
and grasped himself. Alienation is thus the separation and estrangement of individuals from the
human essence.
So if human beings feel estranged from the product, from the for the activity and here Marx
argues that human beings are even estranged from their species consciousness because of this
very abject and miserable condition. Human being is not able even to realize their species
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consciousness that he is able to identify himself with the larger society and then understand its
historical role.
This is based on individual satisfaction of a natural location and this natural location is very hard
to come by in a capitalist society. It is the extent to which the human being as a species being has
become himself and grasp himself.
Alienation is the failure or inability to actualize one's human essential powers and this essential
power has been seen as the power of labor. So every laboring activity becomes a painful activity.
The workers do not enjoy their work, rather they are exploited miserably and that prevents them
from developing this kind of a species consciousness. The alienation of the working class is the
alienation of the whole society. The exploitative relations between capital and labor seeps
through their social structure and an inhuman power rules everywhere. So this alienation of the
working class is the alienation of the poor society.
That is what Marx argues repeatedly. You cannot understand the plight of workers as their own
problem because, as per Marx, workers, really represent the essence of humanity. And the
alienation of working class is the alienation of the whole society. The exploitative relation
between capital and labor seeps through the entire social structure and civil society
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Marx imagines a time when a worker works for eight hours, sleeps for eight hours and then the
other remaining eight hours he spends in very important intellectual activity activities, he reads,
he goes for fishing and so on. In such a state of affairs, he is able to develop as a full human
being and not somebody who feels estranged and exploited.
The promise of the revolution is for Marx is a promise of escape from the perpetual situation of
alienation. So this particular take of Marx towards alienation has been extremely influential. And
you know when capitalism assumes different character we understand that the working
condition, the situation of the workers it no longer better when you look at the way in which
people work in some of the some of the late capitalist societies.
The work has been seen as highly alienating. You work only because you need to feel yourself
and need to take care of some of your very basic activities. You no longer enjoy it. You do not
even know what you are doing, even this all examples calls in the workplace is often seen as an
extreme example of that.
Take the call centre employees as an example, they have to work in the night schedules and they
have to pretend a couple of different accents and to speak to people whom they do not even see.
So these are our highly alienating experience as per the Marxian argument. So this materialist
turn that Marx provided has been extremely influential in the whole concept of alienation,
something developed by Hegel and then further developed by Feuerbach. So we will conclude
this session and then we will continue next. Thank you.
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Department of humanities and Social Sciences
Lecture 23
Karl Marx and Religion
Welcome back to another on Karl Marx and in this class we are going to discuss one of the most
fascinating topics that is Marxian take on religion and arguably this could be one of the most
controversial positions of Karl Marx. Marx’s characterization of religion has sparked
controversies over these so many decades.
I hope all of you know about Marx’s use of the term religion as the opium of masses. This has
become an extremely popular characterization or an extremely popular statement of Marx both
celebrated as well as despised, criticized by different sections depending upon people's
orientation towards religion.
This is also the statement where Marx as well as his idea of communism has been subjected to so
much of criticism that inherently communism is against religion of course you have had quite a
lot of historical reasons to support these arguments because most of the communist countries
including China and Russia they were opposed to religion in a very explicit manner.
What do we mean by or how do we understand Marxian position on religion. This is a very

interesting argument. What does Marx mean when he say that religion is opium of masses. Did
he equate religion with a drug? Did he say that once somebody consumed relegion they lose their
mind, what did he mean by that?
Much beyond the easy characterization of Marx, as somebody who equated religion with opium
or equated religion with drug, the position is much more nuanced. The Marxian take on religion
is more nuanced and very fascinating take and personally I found that explanation extremely
important.
Marx provides a very powerful materialistic explanation of the way in which human beings find
happiness, human beings find a sense of satisfaction, sense of importance, a sense of self-worth
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in their own life. And his arguments about religion is very closely connected with his argument
about alienation.
That is why I decided to have these sessions one after the another because the arguments are very
close.
We know that religion was never a central concern for Marx unlike the later sociologist whom
we are going to discuss including Max Weber or Emile Durkheim. For both these people the
study of religion was something so central to their intellectual exercise.
They all had written books on religion but for Marx, religion was not a central concern and you
will find Marxian references on religion scattered across many of his writings. He did not write
anything very systematically with focusing on religion per se. So you will find most of his
important writings on religion in his critique of Hegel's philosophy of right in 1844, concerning
Feuerbach 1845, social principles of Christianity 1847 and all these things as you know are
considered to be the writings of the Young Marx.
The Marx in his youthful time who was heavily influenced by larger philosophical and ethical
questions or heavily influenced by Hegelian idea before the emergence of this so-called matured
Marx who went into some of the most rigorous and systematic economic analysis of capitalism
that he explained through his three volume works called Das Capital.
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Marx began his discussion on religion with a very intense theoretical engagement or theoretical
debate with both right and left young Hegelians regarding the highest form of human
consciousness. We discussed that the entire Hegelian philosophy revolves around the whole idea
of human consciousness. He argued that the European society during that his time has reached
this highest form of consciousness.
For Hegel that was the evidence for the human process and he was also influenced by Bruno
Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach while the former pondered over the question of existence of God
the latter wanted to understand religion as it is the human essence. We know that that was a time
when the division between philosophy and social sciences was not very clear.
The thinking of social scientists also were very much influenced by the kind of philosophical
orientations and that quite a lot of social scientists were very significantly influenced by religious
beliefs. Being a believer, Hegel’s influence on social science was something very profound so
Bruno Bauer was a believer whereas Ludwig Feuerbach he was not a believer.
And in the previous class when we discussed Feuerbach’s take on alienation, we found that he
adopts a kind of an anthropological approach trying to understand why that the idea of god or the
idea of religion is omnipresent in every society. Feuerbach tried to understand that why human
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beings project a host of human essence and human qualities to God and then feel inferior to of
about oneself.
So Marx criticizes Feuerbach for presenting and asocial idea of human essence which does not
exist in isolation. So while Marx agrees with the Feuerbach that the reason for the emergence of
society must be understood through a materialist explanation and there is no divine origin to
religion.
Religion is not something handed over by any god because there is no god exists but on the other
hand you need to look at the material conditions which generated or which gave birth to this
ideas of religion and God. So Marx criticizes Feuerbach for presenting an asocial idea as a
human essence does not exist in isolation. God exist or not is a theoretical concern and not
social.
It is a very important argument and we know that the distinction between theology and
sociology. Sociology does not ask the question whether god exists or not because that is a
question which sociology cannot answer and to a large extent sociologists are not interested in
answering because what is more important is the consequences of certain beliefs that God exists
or conversely the consequences of the belief that God does not exist.’
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Because whatever be the truth the beliefs in God or that the lack of belief in God have very
specific consequences on the society and that is what sociology studies. So most of the
sociologists might take a position about the existence of God in their personal realm but as a
discipline, sociology cannot answer the question whether God exists or not. That is the realm of
theology and you know that is an unending system of interpretations arguments and counter-
arguments and controversies.
It is a mind field which sociology does not want to get into but sociology is interested in the
consequences of certain belief or the lack of belief. Because each of these types of beliefs are
extremely consequential. These beliefs have very specific consequences on the society and that is
what sociology is interested.
And he argued Feuerbach’s arguments are idealist though his argument was not idealist in the
sense of the way in which we understand the Hegel’s argument. So Marx the fundamental
question was the true nature of human existence. This is dear to Marxian scheme of things. You
know that Marx identified that the human beings are not living the way they ought to be living.
Human beings are being given a very raw deal by the capitalist system. So he wants to
understand that system and he wants to understand religion as a manifestation of that kind of
system. So he wants to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken,
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despicable being and that is a powerful idea. You will see how idealist Marx is or how Marx is
politically charged.
He is hoping for a utopian society, society which may never come into existence. But he was
very strongly persuaded by that idea. He was very strongly motivated by the idea to overthrow
all systems in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being is overthrown and a
far better society is realized.
I am going to use a couple of passages from Marxian writing and his contribution the critique of
Hegel's philosophy. And these passages are something so revealing, there is something so
important because it not only explain Marxian position or religion but they are beautifully
written. They are extremely beautiful, the structure, the idea of the arguments are extremely
beautiful. So we will spend some time trying to understand that. So Marx argues what is the
foundation of irreligious criticism or what is the foundation of irreligious criticism of religion.
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. It is a very clear statement. It is a religion is a
man-made belief system. The whole institution of religion is purely created by human being
there is nothing divine about it. It is not divine revelation, God did not want religion since there
is no God. Even if God wants or not, there is no God. The religion, just like any other human
institutions is purely created by human beings.
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Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won
through to himself or has already lost himself again okay. Beautiful argument or a very beautiful
statement. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who either not yet
won through to himself or has already lost himself, implying that it is the state and society
produce religion which is an inverted consciousness of the world because they are an inverted
world.
So Marx argues that religion emerges in such situation where human beings are either yet to
realize their true self-consciousness or true self-esteem or they have already lost it. Please keep
in mind here that he is talking about self-consciousness. He is not talking about self-
consciousness the way Hegel talks about it as Marx’s idea of self-consciousness cannot be
attained by modifying your way of thinking.
Marx is talking about a completely different set of things. The state and this society produce
religion in a completely alienated and completely unjust world, a world which is characterized
by exploitation and oppression. And this is the world that is creating religion and because this is
an inverted consciousness of the world because they are in an inverted world. So for Marx, the
system of capitalism is not the true state of affairs where human beings must find themselves, it
is an inverted world.
In this inverted world, you will find religion as a reality because it is an inverted consciousness
of the world. The struggle against the religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that
world whose spiritual aroma is religion. So the struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the
struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
It is a very interesting argument because Marx says that the religion provides a kind of spiritual
aroma to an extremely oppressive world. And here you can think about the typical Marxian
criticism against Christianity. Christianity many times glorifies poverty, and offers heaven to the
people who toil.
There are several such quotation from bible. The oppressed and the poor are the people who are
dearer to the god and who are more close to the heaven. For Marx, religion is the spiritual aroma
of a very cruel world.
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Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and they protest
against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world
and the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium. So here we come across that particular
statement, but keep in mind that this sentence alone could be misleading. This sentence alone
could be misleading because it gives you an impression that Marx equates religion with opium
and something that is bad and something should not be kept giving.
But he is saying something more substantial than that. So religious suffering is at one at the same
time the expression of real suffering and the protest against the real suffering. So Marx is not
dismissing religion as something insignificant. Marx says that religion is something so important
and very real.
Religion is something so real and important because religious suffering is at the same time, the
expression of real suffering because the real suffering exists and the world in which we live is a
world of suffering. And in such a world religion is bound to be there. Religion is bound to exist
and it is also a protest against the real suffering.
‘Religion is a sigh of oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world and the soul of soulless
condition’, these are beautiful statements. Religion is a sigh of the oppressed creature. When we
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see religious fervor across the globe in every religious denominations, we feel that people are
becoming spiritually enthralled but for Marx it is a sigh of oppressed creatures.
They are looking for certain remedies of their oppression. Religion is the heart of a heartless
world and the soul of the soulless condition and it is the opium of the people. So Marx
specifically say that religion is a false consciousness. Religion is a false consciousness because
this false consciousness is necessitated by the economic condition and Marx also believed that
the moment you address the root cause, the moment you address the economic exploitation and
then bring in equality, religion will disappear.
It is a very provocative and important argument which has given rise to so much of criticism and
debate especially in the larger argument of you know secularization thesis. We will discuss that
in detail when we discuss Max Weber, whether the world is moving towards a secular world
when the economic status improves.
Imagine the society where there is very less inequality and economic standard is very high, what
would be the condition of religion there. But there are very interesting research which shows the
significant systematic decline of religion in some of the most developed societies especially like
Norway, Sweden, Switzerland many of these Nordic societies.
The number of people who claim to be irreligious or non-religious status is steadily increasing.
Now the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real
happiness. So the criticism against the region is not a criticism directed against religion per se
but the abortion of religion as an illusionary happiness of the people is the demand for their real
happiness.
But to call on them to give up their illusion about their condition is to call on them to give up a
condition that requires illusion. There are some interesting debate about social services or charity
activities of religion for example take the case of mother Teresa. She is white, she is a Nobel
Prize winner and widely celebrated as a symbol of saintness and spent her time her entire life
taking care of the poor.
But a Marxist would argue that she did not ask the question why poverty exists, and as long as
people do not ask that question, the system will only create more and more poor people and then
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taking care of them will not really resolve the issue unless you radically address the question of
why poverty exist in the first place. Why that we are creating more and more poor people. Why
we creating more and more destitute people.
Can we have a different set of social structure where poverty can be eliminated and that takes
away the discussion from compassion from charity from benevolence into a whole set of
politically loaded questions about the distribution, social justice, about the income
egalitarianism, a host of politically loaded questions.
Marx says that to call them on to give up the illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusion. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the
criticism of that veil of tears of which religion is a halo. So the criticism of religion is not
directed against this is a per say but it is a criticism against a social scenario which makes
religion more glorified or which present religion as a solution or which presents religion as
something more important.
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Marx continues, ‘Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man
shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation but so that he shall throw off the
chain and pluck the living flower’. So the criticism has plucked the Marxian criticism of religion
has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear the
change without fantasy or consolation.
But so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower and one’s the living flower,
living flower is the progress of an egalitarian society where people no longer require the
consolation of religion. It is therefore the task of history once the other world of truth has
vanished to establish the truth of this world. So he argues therefore it is a task of the history once
the other world of truth has vanished what is the other world of truth?
The truth that is being told to humanity by all the priests of all religion that your misery in this
world is temporary. The real existence is after your death and maybe except Buddhism, every
other religion has this very strong belief in life after death and every religion has very vibrant
description about the hell and the heaven about reaching nirvana about reaching a moksha in
Hindu methodology or reaching salvation in Christianity and so on.
Being an atheist himself, Marx completely rejects that kind of an idea. For him, there is only one
life and that life is what you live in this earth. There is nothing beyond the death, a person's life
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comes to an end with the death, there is no soul, there is no atma, there is no heaven, there is no
hell, there is no salvation, there is no punishment after somebody's death, there is no previous
birth, there is no birth after one thing.
All these are completely unfounded arguments as per Marxian logic. So therefore the task of
history once the other world of truth has vanished to establish the truth of this world and what is
the truth of this world? The truth of this world is to lead a non-exploitative equal life where the
labor is appreciated, labor is celebrated people are not seen as commodities. The products are not
seen as commodities.
According to Marx, It is the immediate task of philosophy which is in the service of history to
unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms. Once the unholy forms of human self-
estrangement has been unmasked. He is calling out philosophy to reveal the true nature of human
beings and again in his true materialist spirit Marx says that this true form can be broken only
when you change the world, the material aspect of the world, not some kind of changes in your
mind.
Thinking positively or spiritually is not going to help, rather change must be brought into the
material condition. Thus, the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth. The criticism of
the heaven, the criticism of the God turns into the criticism of earth because the Marxian
criticism of God is not aimed at criticizing the God because God or the religion is only a
reflection of the kind of sad affairs of this particular earth.
So the criticism of heaven turns into criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism
of law, the criticism of religion turns into the criticism of law, law Marx makes it in the into a
more broader term the kind of arrangement that we ourselves have made. The kind of social
system the kind of social arrangement that we ourselves has made which perpetuates the system
of inequality.
Marx says the criticism of law is essentially the criticism of religion. He understand the criticism
of law the criticism of theology into criticism of politics. So criticism of theology is basically a
criticism of politics. So he makes it very clear that he has no time to discuss about the nuances of
theological explanation because this whole theological explanation is unwanted .
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When you sum up Marxian criticism of religion by only looking at the metaphor of opium is
problematic. Because Marx is not dismissive, Marx is not condemning religion but Marx is more
sympathetic to religion. Marx is sympathetic to religion because Marx knows that as long as the
social exploitation exists, religious belief is bound to happen because it provides certain kind of
solace to the people.
A temporary solace to the people, an illusion of solace to the people and Marx also is very clear
that religion is not giving you any true sense of solution. It is only the kind of an illusion that you
think all your worries are being taken care. You think that you are assured a place in the heaven
or you are assured that you will not be punished and after your death you get peace of mind.
But for Marx it is only illusion. You only get an illusionary like a drug like opium might give
you. But any drug, as you know does not really change the reality. It is only your personal
perception of reality that changes for some time and after some time you come back to the
reality.
So for Marx religion offers you some kind of solution but these solutions are illusionary because
after some time you are back to the material condition which would be as harsh as the previous
one and very close connection with the religion and alienation and the religion as an ideology in
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the superstructure. Again we know that Marx understands a religion as something very firmly
placed in the superstructure and not something a part of the base.
He believed that in a classless society in a post-capitalist society, religion will have no

significance because people did not require religion. Religion will disappear not because of the
criticism against religion or not because of the systematic assault of religion but people
themselves will leave religion because they will find it longer necessary.
But of course later Marxian tradition emphasizes only religion as an expression of an interest and
not of suffering and protest so that is why there are quite a lot of discussion of Marx as being
insensitive to religion. Later Marxian analysis of course revolved around this particular idea that
religion is seen as a class interest and social control and along with the bourgeoisie class how
religion really appropriates people.
Marxian take on religion is something very important because he fiercely places the critique
against religion in the material world, where he argues that the philosophical, epistemological
foundation of social analysis must be firmly rooted on the material world of office of times. So
let us conclude this session and we will move to the next one in the next class. So thank you.
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Lecture 24
Marx on Democracy, and Colonialism
Welcome back to the class. Today, we are going to discuss Marx on Democracy and
Colonialism. And we know that given the breadth of Marxian writings and the depth of his
scholarship, there is hardly anything where we cannot have a really Marxian interpretation or
a Marxist perspective on. But because of the very reason that Marx has written so extensively
on a wide variety of topics, the list of topics could be endless, where we can talk about
Marxian approach, or the Marxian perspective on so and so issues. But the two of the most
important issues that are widely discussed are Marx’s position on some of the crucial issues
like democracy and colonialism, because the subsequent theoretical debates about democracy
and colonialism has evolved over the last century.
Many of these debates are very critically analysed such as Marx’s position the democratic
institution of principle of democracy and the historical episode of colonialism. What was
Marxian position on these issues, and to what extent, we can critically analyse Marxian
position, democracy, colonialism? Those were extremely controversial position, there have
been voluminous writings on these topics, but it is important that we have some idea about
that.
Let us discuss Marx on Democracy first. The common sensical understanding is that Marx
never favoured democracy because he was a communist and communism and democracy do
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not go together. Communism is always associated with some sort of dictatorship and that has
been the experience of the world for the past several decades. The communist countries,
where the ideology of communism has become a state ideology, in those societies,
democracy does not have any value and it is mostly run in an extremely dictatorial manner.
The case of Soviet Union or the case of Cuba, China, or a host of other communist countries
really stand testimony to that. Whether you say it is just an aberration or it is not how
communism is supposed to function, these arguments do not hold water, because what is
more important for us is to understand how they empirically get it realized.
One of the most important position that is often attributed to Marx is his very controversial
remark that a post capitalist society will be characterized by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
He did not present it as democratic thing, but it was as a dictatorship of the proletariat. And
his term dictatorship is an extremely problematic term. And we know that dictatorship by
anybody can be problematic.
Dictatorship, even given by the most benevolent person, or the most benevolent of the social
groups can be extremely problematic, because it fundamentally goes against some of the
ideals of democracy. It goes against the idea of division of power, it goes against some of the
important central ideas of democracy. But the point here is that Marxian position is much
more complicated or much more nuanced than this easy characterization that is often
assumed on the basis of this argument that he characterized the post capitalist society as the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Let us have a look at Marxian analysis of politics and democracy. Marx, by placing them in
the context of class struggle, understood the state is the executive committee of the
bourgeoisie. It rules with the economic interests of the bourgeoisie in mind. And when you
look at Marxian critic of democracy, you come across some of the most powerful criticisms
against the idea as well as practice of democracy. Because most of the justifications for
democracy, most of the celebrations of democracy comes from a liberal understanding that
every individual is an equal ad independent individual bestowed with a set of rights and
democracy is a perfect system where each of these individual is able to make use of his or her
rights.
Here comes the Marxian criticism. So Marxian criticism is extremely critical of the argument
that in a moral system, everybody is equal. The argument that the political equality does not
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make every person equal. Political equality is only one dimension, but far more important is
the question of economic equality. So, there is a fundamental tension between Marxian
understanding of equality and the liberal understanding of equality.
That is the main reason why Marxism is able to provide the most powerful critic of the way
in which democracies is celebrated or liberalism is celebrated. Marxian analysis of politics
and democracy is something very important, because he is extremely sceptical of this whole
idea of democracy without achieving economic equality, and he is extremely critical of the
state, because it always protects the economic interests of the ruling class
Marx firmly believed and then argued that the state by default, by design, by its structure will
be bound to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie. Marx establishes it with historical
evidences, and also through his analysis that the state cannot act in favour of the proletariat.
Marx uses this interesting term, to denote the state such as the “executive committee of
bourgeoisie”. I do not think that you can use a more demeaning term than that.
It is an executive committee of the bourgeoisie. It rules with the economic interests of the
bourgeoisie in mind. So, Marx argues in theory, you cannot have a modern nation state,
which is expected to do justice to the course of the proletariat and the poor. Marx writes that
the so-called rights of man are simply the rights of a member of civil society that is egoistic
man, a man separated from other men and from other community.
This is a most profound criticism of the liberal perception of equality, where everybody is
seen as individual, disconnected from the society, guided by self-interest, egoistic person, a
person who has no commitment the larger society. Such a person as per Marxian discourse is
not aware about the historical role supposed to be played by him as he is only bothered about
one's own life. Marx is extremely critical of that idea of a man as in right bearing individual
in the civil society.
Civil society is essentially and Marx says “the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in the
political economy”. So, this whole theoretical debate about civil society is really fascinating.
That itself different topic to understand the way in which the liberal idea of civil society
emerged as a space between the individual and the state. And of course, with the later
theorization of scholars like Habermas, this idea of public sphere comes into picture. So,
public sphere and civil society are seen as some of the most important stepping stone for the
flowering or the flourishing of democracy.
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Later Marx almost dismisses the role of civil society. Later Gramsci almost reinterprets or
provides a far nuanced analysis of civil society. He recuperates, rescues and reinvents civil
society as an important space for building this class consciousness. So that is an extremely
interesting analysis in itself. But for Marx, civil society cannot be made sense of by only
looking at its political realm.
Essentially, it has to be understood at its economical realm, the anatomy of civil societies
besought in the political economy, what is the structure of a civil society, what is its
economic composition, how are different sections of people are structurally incorporated in
it? Who gets to own, who do not own and what is the kind of the relationship between this.
This particular analysis is at the central of Marxian architecture.
The real democracy is not based on constitutions or representative institutions for these can
be discarded at any time. Marx argues that true democracy needs true sense, cannot be
reduced to constitutional or representative institution because it can be dismissed or discarded
at any time by a powerful coup.
Rather, democracy means overcoming the dichotomy public power embodied in the
government and social power embodied in the civil society. So, he talks about overcoming
the dichotomy of public power embodied in the government that is on the one hand, you have
the state, which have all the political power, and in the civil society, you have the social
power, which is defined by the kind of an economic inequality.
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In the Marxian conception of a socialist society, you will not have this kind of inequality in
the realm of the government as well as that of the civil society. It is a state where class
inequality is completely obliterated. And that leads to a real sense of democracy, where
everybody has equal status, both at the level of the state as well as that of the civil society.
Marx praised the short lived Paris Commune of 1871, where direct rule of people was
established for the “true democratic character.” So, Marx was not in principle against the idea
of democracy, but his understanding of democracy was much more radical and he was not
ready to accept democracy only within the realm of political right, without bringing in the
question of economic inequality. And that is an extremely important point that we need to
keep in mind.
Marx believed in democracy as the rule of the people, by the people in the truest sense, in the
most radical sense. Marx thus advocated a decentralized form of participatory democracy that
has many affinities with the anarchist rivals and the republican traditions of Aristotle through
Rousseau. He supports a public sphere, where workers can develop qualities necessary to
government, or to govern the society. So, he talks about a much more radical character of
democracy, where the state is actually run by the people.
The practical difficulty to have such a radical conception of democracy is a completely

different question, how does one do that? Can we live in a society where everybody can
equally participate in the form of government? So, these kind of practical questions are not
immediate concerns of Marx, but he is concerned about the kind of a larger idea of having a
system, where everybody, especially the proletariat is able to take part in the process of
democracy.
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The true socialist democracy depends on social equality and collective participation rather
than constitutional guarantees and representative institutions. So, he is arguing that when
socialist democracy is established after socialist revolution has taken place and a classless
society is established, it will be the most conducive society for the true sense of democracy.
Drawing on the republican tradition, Marx argues that the freedom and community are
interdependent, and freedom can only be realized in conditions where people control their
activity.
Marx recognizes the limits of purely political change that only alters laws without changing
the social conditions of particular groups. People have to transform the social world
themselves if change is to be effective and lasting. So, this is his, the fundamental point,
unless you bring in fundamental or substantial changes in the social structure, where you
make a more egalitarian society, where you do not have a system of haves and have nots,
where you do not have a system of a powerful group of few people controlling or amassing
the mass amount, the vast amount of wealth and the vast majority of the people are made to
suffer, that society for Marx does not represent the spirit of democracy.
It is an extremely powerful criticism. Whenever we can talk about crony capitalism, when we
talk about how democratic institutions in capitalist system have been distorted Marx comes to
mind, because he is the one who very profoundly critiques the problem of inequality in liberal
democracy.
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Now, let us have a brief look at Marxian take on colonialism. This is also something
extremely controversial, because Marx lived during the time of colonialism, and Marx had
written quite lot of things about colonies, about the course of colonization. He has written
extensively on India where he had made a thesis for the Asiatic Mode of Production as a
separate mode of production. He had a very low opinion on the intellectual role of Indians.
He thinks that the British invasion as a necessary shock for Indians, he considered it as
positive.
At the same time, he is also extremely critical of the exploitative aspects of colonialism. So, it
is a more complicated thing that whether Marx was for colonialism or against as Marxian
position is much more nuanced. But it is very clear that his Eurocentric orientation is clearly
evident in the discussion on colonialism. And this Eurocentrism is a common character of in
the realm of every thinker Europe during that time.
Even today, taking social theory beyond the realm of Eurocentrism, only partially successful.
It said that the Eurocentrism is something so inherently engraved in the thinking and Marx
was no free from that. For Marx, Europe represented the model, Europe represented the true
essence of humanity and all other societies were seen as backward and Europe as leading the
world.
So, this depiction of Asiatic mode of production as static, unchanging, characterised by lack
of private property has received lot of criticism. Marx argued that why that the Asian
societies are not able to make progress is because of their mode of production, where he
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argued that it is very static, it is unchanging with lack of private property, as it is all ruled by
kings.
This particular economic structure, Marx argues is not conducive for a larger change, unlike
Europe, it has seen a kind of a larger transformation through capitalist revolution and the
ultimately, like I said a socialist revolution. So, his analysis of Asiatic mode of production is
quite controversial as well as very interesting. So, according to Marx, non-Western people
lack history. In his words, “Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history.
What we call it history, is for the history of the successive intruders who founded their
empires on the passive basis that unresisting and unchanging society.” We will find the
statement as extremely offensive, isn't it? Because it actually presents a much distorted idea
of what history means. Marx wrote this idea because he had a very peculiar, distorted idea
regarding what constitutes history of India.
Otherwise, no person who is sensitive today about Eurocentrism or about racism, won’t write
this kind of much blackened arguments that Indian society has no history at all. And whatever
history Indian society has is only the history of intruders, who are coming and conquering all
these people, unresisting and unchanging society. Which in a sense, is blatantly incorrect.
It is historically incorrect, because if you look at the type of engagement that India had with
the rest of the societies through trade, and through philosophical engagements, it is very
immense. It was quite uncharitable for Marx to write this. He wrote ‘they cannot represent
themselves, they must be represented’ which is another colonial troop, that every colonies, do
not know how to represent and they must be represented by a higher authority, a politically
superior position. This is a very problematic understanding.
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Marx’s endorsement of European colonial expansion as a necessary step in the progress of
the world and its advance towards socialism. So now, once we realize that Marx was
Eurocentric, he was very uncharitable with the civilization of such societies outside the
European realm, but his position towards colonialism is something more interesting. He says
that European colonial expansion as a necessary step in the progress of the world and its
advance towards socialism.
Marx argued that European colonialism, though it was exploitative, it was violent, it was
something necessary for India, it was a welcome sign because it was a necessary in the
progress of the world, and its advancement towards socialism. Because Marx argued that this
transition from feudalism to capitalism is taking place only in Europe, and that will ultimately
happen transform into a socialist society.
As Europe has already done that, and the rest of the societies are lagging behind, they are not
able to do this transformation from feudalism to capitalism. Marx believed that this process
of colonialization will push every colonies into this process into the system of capitalism,
which ultimately lead to that of socialism.
Marx was dreaming that kind of a situation. The oppressive Asiatic mode of production needs
an external agent to overthrow it, which appeared with the European colonialism. And this is
an extremely important point. And for Marx, the political unity of India and its modern
means of transportation are the results of British actions. So, as I told you, Marx looked at
India as a static society, which did not have a history, which did not transform itself for a
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long time, was so lethargic. He even characterized Indian state as a vegetative state in some
of his writings which I have not quoted here.
At the same time, Marx recognizes that the British imperialism destroyed Indian culture
separating India from all its ancient traditions and from the whole of its past history. He
recognizes that, that British imperialism destroyed Indian culture, separated India from all its
ancient traditions and from the core of its past history. And we do not exactly know what he
meant by Indian culture, what kind of position that he had towards it. However, it is an
extremely important point for contemporary debate, what did British colonialism do to India.
Of course, you know that they completely destroyed Indian craft business, tradition economic
industries and they looted India in the plain sense of the word. But there are also other
arguments that, a host of new ideas were brought to India through the course of colonialism.
Indian society was never known for the whole celebration of idea of equality, given it is a
caste bound society, ideas of justice, ideas of equality was never practiced in India.
For on other words, there was religious legitimacy or cultural legitimacy to look at Indian or
the different sections of Indians as unequal. So, a host of institutions including modern
judiciary, modern legal system, and ideas of rights, bureaucracy, and a host of other ideas
around this modern sense of emancipation, modern enlightenment ideas were brought in
India through the process of colonialism.
Colonialism had a completely different impact on the traditionally underdeveloped,

underprivileged sections of society in India. So, a host of scholars who belonged to the
underprivileged sections of India would argue that colonialism was a positive phenomenon,
because without colonial intervention, the lower castes could not have been able to enjoy the
fruits of freedom, they would have not be able to realize a kind of happiness or even the
token form of representation they have now.
The debate is more complicated and I am not going into that. Marx writes that “Whatever
may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing
about that revolution.” Several scholars have also argued that the kind of material or data that
Marx received about India was also very limited.
This is very much reflected in Marxian writing on India as Marx has never visited India, for
that matter, many of the European thinkers never visited India, but they have written
extensively on the basis of a very limited amount of material received which was biased
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about Indians. That must have really influenced their understanding about India. But he is
very clear when he wrote that, “Whatever may have been the crimes of England, she has the
unconscious tool of history in bringing about the revolution.”
At the same time, Marx criticized European imperialists for their brutal treatment of native
people, sometimes coming close to advocating wars of national liberation against
colonialism, especially in the case of Ireland. So, Marx, while he understood this as a historic
intervention, he was also extremely critical of the violent and exploitative nature of the
colonial. He never justified the crimes of colonialism.
Sitting in London, he was one of the most vocal critic of British imperialism, the way in
which they looted wealth from Africa, from Asia, from India. And he never condoned that.
Marx indicts British colonialism in India, stating that it was based on plunder and murder as
hideous as the slave trade. So, this is also something important. While Marx celebrated the
colonial intervention of India, he was also extremely critical of the brutality and exploitation
associated with the colonial time, and he even equated it with slave trade, though the British
did not engage in the kind of slavery in India that they have done with the different countries.
The British exploited the Indians, both financially and physically, as Marx states, the British
taxed India so that it crushed “the mass of the Indian people to the dust, and... its exaction
necessitated a resort to such infamies as torture.” So, Marx is very direct and vocal in his
condemnation of the British exploitation and British decimation of Indian craft and Indian
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culture, local industries, everything and the kind of an exploitation that it inflicted on Indian
society.
He was extremely critical of British trade of opium in China and the exploitative trade
relations with India. And you know the, the British trade of opium in China had very
devastating effect on the Chinese population, especially with the kind of absolutely immoral
and unethical ways in which the British went ahead opium trade, and also the kind of
exploitation, taking away all the raw materials from India and making them into finished
products and then bringing them back and then selling at much higher prices, which
prompted the Gandhiji to start the famous Swadesi movement. In sum, Marx was quite
conscious about the economic rationale of British colonialism.
Marx, states that India had been “the great workshop of cotton manufacturers, since
immemorial times.” but that Britain demolished it in parts through imports. So, Marx
identifies the way in which the Britishers crushed the India's indigenous craft, indigenous
industries, indigenous economy, and he writes about it in detail. In such a context, Marx
states, that “dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps led to ask whether people are not
justified in attempting to expel foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects.” So,
sometimes even goes to the extend of supporting the kind of armed revolution against
colonialism.
Indians will not enjoy the fruits of their own labour unless a socialist revolution occurs in
Britain or “the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English
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yoke altogether.” So, it is very interesting that Marx sees the liberation of India through the
liberation of British themselves. Marx wished that if a working class revolution takes place in
Britain, and that could automatically lead to a similar revolution in India and would end the
kind of colonial or imperial domination over India and resultant exploitation, or the Hindoos
themselves shall kind of grow strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.
These are some of the observations or some of the interesting snippets about Marxian
opposition on democracy and colonialism. Because his positions have been always
controversy, as they aren’t very simple. In each of his positions, Marx was preoccupied with
a very Eurocentric understanding of history and he had a foolhardy conviction about the
revolution as a social law or about the inevitability of revolution.
It was not nuanced enough to accept other possible course of human history. So, these
thoughts become more and more evident, when you discuss Marxian analysis of colonialism
and colonialism. We will end the class here and we will have one more session of Marx
where we will have critical appraisal of Karl Marx as a sociologist. So, see you there and
thank you.
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Department of Humanities and social Sciences
Lecture 25
Marx – An Appraisal
Welcome back to this session. And this is the final session in our discussion on Marx. We are
planning for a short session on critical appraisal of Karl Marx as a sociologist. You know that
in order to evaluate Karl Marx as a thinker, it is a very daunting task. It is not an easy task,
because he is one of the most profound social thinkers that humanity has ever witnessed. A
person whose academic scholarship, political life and personal life has very few parallels in
the human history in terms of the breadth of scholarship, the kind of profound impact that
Karl Marx was able to exert on human history, because he was not only a theorist, he was a
political activist.
Many of his ideas were incorporated into the communist regimes later. And we can agree or
disagree, we can argue whether they were currently understood or correctly interpreted, but
for a long time, till the demise of Soviet Union, until the disintegration of Soviet Union in
1990s, till the fall of the Berlin Wall, Marx really represented the ideological face of a every
important political ideology.
He represented the face of a political movement, he represented the face of a very important
analytical school, the Marxist school and his impact, his profound impact on a, on a wide
variety of social relevance, a wide variety of facets of society is something unparallel, both as
an activist, as a scholar, as a historian, as an economist, as a sociologist. So, it is very difficult
for us to do some kind of an evaluation as a corporate, of Karl Marx as a socialist. So, I will
be, you will find quite a lot of evaluations, quite lot of assessment on Marx.
And quite lot of this assessments are heavily influenced by the political ideology, the
scholars, who describe themselves as Marxist or scholars who have an ideological leanings
towards Marxist methodology are more sensitive to Marx or they are more accommodative of
Marx. They try to justify the Marxian positions. Whereas those who oppose to his political
ideology will be extremely vehement in their criticism of Marx.
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Here I have borrowed 2 paragraphs from a book by Jonathan H Turner on social theory,
which kind of summarizes the contributions as well as the critical points of Karl Marx, and
why should sociologists still read Marx? The Marxian contribution influenced all the realm of
social sciences such as economics, history, sociology, political science, but since I am talking
to students of sociology, I will be limiting myself to Marxist criticism from the perspective of
sociologists. So, it is Jonathan Turner.
Why should sociologists still read Marx? After all, have not most of his predictions about
revolutions and spread of communism fail to materialise. Of course, if you look into the
Marxian theory of social change, we know that he was quite categorical, and absolute about
the course of world history. He saw it as different stages, and he analysed the capitalist state
and economic system.
He was completely convinced that this capitalism has its own seeds of its destruction, it will
collapse under the weight of its own, its own convictions, and it will eventually move to a
post capitalist era, which could be termed as socialist and finally communism. But we know
that nothing of that sort happened. The kind of revolution that Marx predicted did not come
true in most of the places.
And in places where communism was the state ideology, the kind of socialist economy that
was persisting for a long time finally had to crumble down and the economy gave way to a
capitalist mode of production. Capitalism seemed to be the most resilient economic system
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which is able to reinvent itself. So, quite a lot of predictions of Karl Marx have not come true.
The communist revolution by the proletariat never really occurred.
The class structure of capital system did not polarize. The famous argument of Marx that
there will be class polarization taking place, due to the transition from ‘class in itself’ to
‘class for itself’, did not take place. The, we could even now introspectively argue that
Marxian understanding of class was rather oversimplified. He could not foresee the kind of
tremendous transformations that would have taken place in the capitalist society.
The state did not wither away in communist countries. They rather turned capitalist, the state
became more powerful, and the state became more absolutist. The state never kind of
represented the wishes of the people. In most of these communist societies, the state turned
out to be dictatorial. There was nothing envying in the situations of ordinary people, the
peasants and the working class.
And the world has become more capitalist rather than communist. Some contemporary
sociologists continue to hold that as the capitalism goes completely global, the contradictions
in the systems will finally emerge and usher in communist revolution. I would personally
consider it only as a wishful thinking, because we know that we have been talking about a
crisis of capitalism, especially since the 2008 financial crisis.
This idea of deglobalization is again being spoken of as, as something representing the crisis
of capitalism. But to say that these crises will pan out in the way Marx predicted almost a
century back would be really a wishful thinking, because things have significantly changed.
Others have sustained an interest in exploitation and value theory of labour, reworking these
ideas to fit more of contemporary conditions.
So, sociologists who identify themselves as Marxist, have real difficulty in using the Marxian
framework exactly the way it is understood by the most, so called fundamentalist Marxists.
Yet, it must be said that much of the Marxian system of thinking, especially its more
ideologically loaded portraits of the future, has not held up. And I personally tend to agree
with Jonathan Turner. That is why I thought of using this passage from Turner, The Political
Prophecy of Marxian thinking has not really come into effect.
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At the same time, we have come to a points where Marx is still relevant, and then we need a
more nuanced understanding of why Marx is somebody who is still exerting considerable
amount of influence and interest some of the contemporary sociologists and political thinkers.
It is correct to say that Marx anticipated and framed many of the issues that occupied
discussions of economy and society.
It would be very difficult to imagine without the invention of Marx, how we would have
discussed the capitalist society, and made sense of the contemporary society. It is very
difficult to imagine because the central arguments of Marx, kind of concepts and categories
that he put forward, the analytical framework that he presented to us has become so common
place and influential that it has permeated across the schools of those who agree with Marx
and those who do not agree with Marx.
A host of issues that Marx anticipated and framed occupy central position in the discussions
of economy and society today. Marx saw more than any other scholar of the last century, that
economy is the driving force of society. And he predicted that capitalism would spread or in
today’s vocabulary become a global force. And no sociologist was able to bring forth the
centrality of economy, in the way Marx did.
I hope that you would have by now got some idea about that the transition of this discipline
of sociology from a philosophical engagement from that of a social sciences. So, in this
transition, the more scientific analysis of economy is central and that has to be the central
pillar around which this analysis is mostly placed. This is the argument which is now kind of
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taken for granted, and now one of the foundational ideas of social science analysis, which
definitely one of the major contributions of Karl Marx. He predicted that capitalism would
spread or in today's world become a global force. We discussed Marxian analysis of
capitalism and we discussed how he is one of the sharpest analyst of capitalism.
He indeed put forward a theory of capitalism. He welcomed it as a necessary stage. At the

same time, he was extremely critical of it. He understood capitalism as the most exploitative
system which dehumanizes people. Just recall his discussions on the surplus value. So, he
criticized it, yet he welcomed it as a historic necessity.
Marx predicted that capitalism will become a global force, and that has become so. With the
fall of USSR, what we are witnessing is a unipolar world, a world economic system where
capitalism ruled the roost. So, in such a situation, the Marxian intervention is extremely
important. He understood that economic power and political power are highly correlated.
Those with economic power put disproportionately influence the formation of ideologies and
other elements of culture. Another extremely important point is the connection between
economic power and political power that we tend to differentiate in our conventional sanity.
We tend to look at each of them, the social, economic, political, and legal as separate things.
We tend to look at each of them as completely independent, separate entities, but Marx would
not agree. Marx would argue that you cannot understand society by separating the economic
sphere from that of the social sphere or economic sphere of that of the political sphere.
So, Marx did not agree with any political analysis that focuses exclusively on the realm of
politics. He wants an analysis of political economy. He wants analysis about how this politics
is shaped by the economy, and look at who are the politically powerful class and what is their
class position, who are the politically powerless groups and what is their class position, and
how is this political arrangement directly or indirectly affects the people economically, and
how do the interests of the economically backward group get reflected in the scheme of
affairs in this particular political system.
So, this interconnectedness is a very important argument of Karl Marx. He explained that
incredible wealth generating capacities of free markets, but this dynamism is tempered by the
inequalities, exploitation and alienation generated by such a system, as well as by the inherent
tendencies of the system to cycle in and out of ever deeper recessions and depressions.
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It is another very important point, he explained how there is an incessant process of wealth
creation takes place, because since the objective of capitalism is to increase more and more
surplus value, not the use value, how the capital has to be produced in a new, or in an endless
manner, and the realization of profit has become the most fundamental objective of capitalist
system. So, this dynamism tempered by the inequalities, exploitation and alienation generated
by the system.
No other sociologist for that matter is so profoundly concerned with the question of
inequality, no other great sociologist is so profoundly concerned with the plight of the
powerless and the poor. This is extremely important. Why is that Marxian framework is being
very sensitive to the plight of the poor is something extremely important, because that
framework has a built-in sensitivity to look at the questions of the marginalized.
In a contemporary society like ours, where inequality has only increased and the gulf between
the rich and the poor has substantially increased, Marx is an important reminder, Marx is an
important reminder, whether you want to look at it as an ethical question, as a moral question
or a political question. He is an important reminder of the kind of inequalities and
exploitations and alienation that comes as a part of this economic system. He also rightly
identified the the inherent tendency of the system to cycle in and out of ever-deeper
recessions and depressions.
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Moreover, he even anticipated the power of big capitalists to standardize activities, to

impoverish small business and artisans, and to destroy old cultures in the relentless drive to
make production more efficient and to penetrate all markets. So the study of capitalism is a
very interesting subject in itself. We need to understand why that capitalism is able to thrive,
able even to co-opt people who really oppose that, how is the capitalism is able to generate
more and more demands for consumption, how is that capital is able to thrive on the, on the
endless conception of human beings.
And why that we create more and more artificial needs. And what is the kind of a social
psychological aspects associated with that. So, Marx was extremely critical of that. At the
same time, when we are critical of capitalism, it is also important to look at how the way in
which capitalism underwent change from the time of Marx. Capitalism was at its very
beginning when Marx have written his criticism of capitalism. But later capitalism has
undergone change.
And it is not very easy to make sense of capitalism, especially what we call currently as the
neo liberal capitalism. It is extremely difficult to understand. It goes much beyond than what
Marx described as the problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. That is simple
binary, no longer folds. It has reinvented itself, it has invented a major managerial class, it
has fragmented this division of workers into different sections.
The whole stock market scenario has completely deconstructed this whole idea of ownership.
With the new era of start-ups and new information economy coming into picture, the workers
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are given the shares, so that the workers themselves own the company partially. So, the whole
classical model of somebody being the owner and somebody else being the workers, it is only
a partial truth about capitalism.
However, of course, you come across that classical kind of effect of capitalism even today in
some of the developing or underdeveloped society. You will find there extremely exploitative
systems. . You see how it destroys old cultures in the relentless drive to make production
more efficient and to penetrate all markets. Thus, Marx had a very good sense of many of
outcomes of capitalism that unleashed.
Why, then, did his more specific predictions about the revolution of the proletariat go so
wrong? So, I do not think that there could be any other sociologists or economists who
understood, who spent their entire life trying to make sense of this economic system. But if
we go back to the earlier question that we started, why did he go wrong? The answer must
reside in Marxist ideological fervour. Marx was blinded by his convictions and, hence, could
not see that the state, bourgeoisie and the workers could change the capitalist system in ways
that make it more benign.
This is an extremely important question. Remember, when we discuss Marx, when we began
the discussion on Marx, a point that I highlighted was that Marx had a political position, as
well as an intellectual position. As an academic, he believed that the fundamental obligation
of a scholar is not to do intellectual exercise by sitting in his armchair, but rather to change.
He was completely convinced about the political imperative of an, of an intellectual.
So, his ideological fervour, his commitment to overthrow the capitalist system, his
commitment to see a world which is more egalitarian, as people like Jonathan Turner argues,
prevented him from having a more objective understanding about the society, and more open
understanding about the society that he sees. So, Marx was blinded by convictions and,
hence, could not see that the state, bourgeoisie and the workers could change the capitalist
system in ways that make it more benign or at least look as if it is more benign.
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A we have discussed during Marxian analysis of capitalism, a host of subsequent changes, a
host of new type of social movements, new concerned and preoccupations with the identities,
came into picture and are slowly pushing the class based politics to the background after
1960s. And a new wave of social movements, concerning gender questions, race, with
various sorts of identities push back the typical class based politics of the Marxian framework
out of the forefront of academic discussions.
But at the same time, we realize that the foundation for the Marxist School of Thought is, an
important contribution of Karl Marx because he is one person after whose name, an entire
framework of theoretical orientation has been established. What we generally referred in
sociology as the conflict school or the Marxian school is established after the theoretical
foundations of Marx. And it is something quite significant, because the other schools like
Structural Functionalism and symbolic interactionism and all are founded upon the
contributions of a number of schools.
Marxian perspective, though founded by Marx, was later contributed and developed and
made more improved upon by other subsequent scholars. The foundation of a Marxian school
of thought influenced every discipline, whether it is in history or in sociology or in economics
or in political science, it is specifically founded on historic contributions on socialism. Every
branches of social sciences from Feminism to Philosophy, has a Marxian school.
Anybody who wants to engage with the contemporary social reality or social theory cannot
avoid it or cannot neglect the contributions of Marx. And he has predicted an inspiration to
Conflict theory within Sociology, Critical theory and a host of theorizations on power
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dominance and hegemony. And you will see that the later development of sociology, when
there was this Conflict theory created by Coser, Dahrendorf and others, and the critical theory
of Frankfurt School, and of course, later Antonio Gramsci’s theorization on power, on
dominance and hegemony.
Each these are some of the most important preoccupations of contemporary society,
important terms, important discourses, ideas about dominance and hegemony. But a Marxian
perspective of political power, dominance and hegemony are extremely important. Even
while we think that the idea of power has been redefined. It is always important to go back
and to the conventional definition of power because in many of our current discourses, we are
excessively carried away by the kind of a postmodern analysis of power.
Power being constructive, power being fully, power being everywhere. But in that process,
many times, we forget more institutional, more structural, more old-fashioned kind of power
as something that process our arbitrary from a Marxian perspective. And the continued
relevance of Marx in the era of late-capitalism, where questions of sustainability, inequality
and environmental crisis are debated.
Now, whenever we think about the future of the globe, how are we going to sustain this
growth of economic activity, is it sustainable? Or, can we continue with this kind of
production consumption? Do we have sufficient resources in order to support us? Or why that
we are becoming more and more greedy? Why that is our demands are becoming endless?
Why that our consumption is going up again and again? Why that we are becoming least
concerned about at equitable distribution of wealth?
Why that we are becoming increasingly insensitive to the plight of the vast majority of the
people? In all these discussions, Marx will emerge as an important field when we discuss
about inequality, when we discuss about the future of capitalism, when we discuss about the
sustainability, about the environment crisis. In all these discussions, Marx will emerge as an
extremely important reminder, before you can disagree with it.
Of course, nobody is expected to agree with Marx on every point and become its blind
believer. Academics is not supposed to be blind belief, you are supposed to leaving aside
your ideological inclination, you are supposed to have a very brutally honest assessment of a
scholar, and the political apprehension comes from the lay man. And once you, once you do
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that, you will realise the central role played by Karl Marx in some of the most substantive
areas of human concern.
He was the person who had extremely serious concern for the poor, for the questions of
equality, questions of exploitation, questions of poverty, and a person who lived his life to
explore these kinds of very unsettling kind of questions. So, we will conclude the class here.
And studying Marx has been a fascinating experience for me. I hope many of you will also
find the discussion on Marx interesting, because irrespective of the ideological position, the
life of Marx was inspirational.
The life of Marx as an academic is inspirational. The life of Marx as a political activist is
inspirational. His commitment, his hard work, his love for humanity is very important. So, I
would urge you to read more on Marx. Read some of his original works. Read his other
published books. It is going to be an extremely rewarding exercise. So, we are winding up the
discussion on Marx. We will proceed with Durkheim in the next class in our discussion on
the Classical Sociological Theories. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 26
Emile Durkheim: Life and Intellectual Influences
Welcome back to the class, we are beginning the discussion on Emile Durkheim a very
important sociological thinker who we can say undoubtedly laid the foundation for the
emergence of the discipline. These are the three people; Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and
Max Weber, three intellectuals or trinities are considered to be the most significant
scholars who shaped sociology in very distinct way.
Emile Durkheim as when we discuss the subsequent sections you will realize why that
Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist is considered to be such an important figure and
why that many of his arguments, substantive contributions are considered to be
something so pivotal in the foundation as well as subsequent growth of the discipline.
In this class, an introductory session, we are trying to understand Emile Durkheim, his
life, and most importantly the kind of intellectual influences of Emile Durkheim, who
were the people who influenced his thinking, what was the kind of socio-economic and
intellectual atmosphere during his time because these influences are something very
important in shaping the contours of the theoretical as well as methodological orientation
of every scholar.
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So, these are two photographs, very popular photographs of Emile Durkheim.
He is a central figure in classical sociological theory. Durkheim’s contribution is

something quite immense and if you compare with Marx, you know that Marx was not a
typical sociologist and it must have been clear by now for you that the stature of Marx
cannot be reduced or cannot be understood within this label of a sociology, he was much
more than that. I am not going into the detail but in comparison almost every other
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sociologist whom we are going to discuss whether it is Max Weber or Emile Durkheim or
Mead.
They were all kind of more of a typical sociologist in the confined sense of the meaning,
they were academics, they were professors in some of the most famous universities, so
they limited their sphere of interest within that of academics and like Marx who had a
much larger life and much larger engagement with the life and so in that sense Durkheim
was a sociologist, his intellectual influence, his intellectual inquiries were confined
within the boundaries of this particular discipline and he is a central figure in classical
sociological theories and he is somebody who laid foundations for the epistemological as
well as methodological foundations of sociology.
Epistemology in the sense it is about the knowledge and methodology, how we carry on
with a particular study. So, his contribution in defining what sort of a discipline or what
sort of a knowledge system in sociology is something very important and we will see that
when we discuss maybe in the next session or after that when we discuss his book very
important book, ‘The Root Sociological Method’ we can see that he was actually trying
to define sociology, he was trying to give shape to a new particular discipline, he was
trying to establish a new particular discipline with very specific focus, with very specific
definition that these are the purviews of this particular discipline.
This is its subject matter, it looks as these are its areas of interest and this is the way it is
different from psychology, this is the way it is different from the philosophy, this is the
way it is different from other disciplines. So, he played a very important role in
establishing the epistemological uniqueness of sociology and also he played a very
important role in defining a particular methodology for sociology and he was a positivist,
he believed in positivism, he believed that sociology has to be treated as a science and he
also believed in the overall argument that you can study society using scientific method
the way scientists use science to understand the physical or natural world.
Along with these two aspects he shaped the discipline in very distinct ways. Also that his
contribution to the substantive themes within sociology is also something quite
phenomenal. He has, if you look into some of this themes like as he has written
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extensively on religion, on social facts, on education, on law, on suicide division of labor,
ethics, social change and host of substantive themes within sociology has been benefited
by his theorization of his intellectual enterprise. So, in that sense his contribution is
something quite immense.
Now, a very brief biographical sketch. He was born in Epinal in France and he was born
into a Jewish family, he his father wanted him to become a Rabbi but soon he lost all the
interest in the religion, he was influenced by quite a lot of philosophical arguments that
took a very critical position on religion and he later became a kind of an agnostic,
completely moved away from the conventional religious settings of a Jewish family and
then became very radical in his argument and later admitted to Ecole normale superieure,
one of the most prestigious graduate schools in Paris, considered to be very elite place in
Paris.
Later he joined university of Bordeaux where he wrote the Division of Labor in Society,
The Rules of Sociological Method and Suicide. So, exactly in the university of Bordeaux,
he establishes the kind of the discipline of sociology as a unique discipline, as a distinct
discipline and this ‘division of labor’, the book is his doctoral research where he
establishes a very unique argument and understanding about a very unique approach
towards studying society and social change.
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The Rules of Sociological Method is a canonical text for sociology which lays down the
foundation of how one should methodologically understand the discipline or what should
be the kind of methodological protocols of the discipline and of course, is very famous
study on suicide.
He could revitalize the dream of Auguste Comte of a scientific study of society with a
moral basis. So, this is something extremely important in the kind of connection between
Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, we will discuss in a couple of down the slides, but
if Auguste Comte had a dream of making sociology as a science of society especially
with the kind of particular moral basis we could say that he could revitalize and he could
even establish it to a large extent, he succeeded in establishing the discipline as a distinct
one. So, he got even the name of this university, the department of Sorbonne changed
into that of a department of Sociology as well.
He became a professor of sociology at University of Sorbonne in 1913, one of the first

full professorships in sociology and his writings became extremely important, he was
able to influence quite a lot of students and then he was the editor of this very extremely
influential journal L’Annee and became extremely influential academic especially in the
school of education and he was able to create a set of scholars and students and then
became a very predominant figure in the French intellectual circles.
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He passed away in 1917 at a relatively young age of 59 and it seems that this World War
1 had took a toll on him, many of his promising students were killed in the battle and his
own son who was also emerging as a very important sociologist was also killed. So,
Emile Durkheim became quite dejected and he lost interest in his academic endeavors
and then passed away prematurely at the age of 59.
So, let us move on to the intellectual influences, who were the people who influenced
Durkheim and what were the kind of very specific set of ideas that he borrowed from
these people and what were the aspects that he was critical of these people and as I have
mentioned several times no scholar creates a set of ideas without any influence, it does
not really happen that way, every scholar who creatively and critically engages with the
kind of current important academic or intellectual currents of his time, in the intellectual
thoughts of his time and that engagement, that critical or reflexive engagement gives rise
to new arguments, new theories, new refinements and kind of different arguments.
So, Durkheim also was able to put forward all lot of new ideas because he very
successfully, very critically engaged with the host of the people who have contributed to
the discipline of sociology and social philosophy before him. So, Durkheim’s work
represents the culmination of the French intellectual tradition that began with the
enlightenment. We had a brief discussion in the beginning of the course, where we
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discuss the role of French revolution and people like Montesquieu and host of others who
played very important role in bringing a much revitalized philosophical discussion about
the role of society, individual, state and a host of other things.
He was also heavily influenced by French thinkers, English and German scholars. Being
a scholar of his caliber it is quite natural that he very critically engages with the people
around him.
So, one of the important scholars who we need to identify is Montesquieu. Montesquieu
being a French sociologist, we had a brief discussion on Montesquieu earlier in the initial
classes of this course. Montesquieu marked the beginning of the French intellectual line
that came to a climax with Durkheim. So, there are quite a lot of observers who identify
this as a particular intellectual tradition starting with Montesquieu and then ending with
Durkheim, because he was an empiricist concerned with the actual data rather than the
speculation about the essence of humans and the ultimate origins of their society.
We saw that when we discussed the Montesquieu, he really represents a very important
transition from philosophy to that of sociology. A philosophical enquiry, a philosophical
engagement, preoccupation with things about or which think about abstract ideas, about
philosophical ideas into that of a more empirically based scientific orientations.
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Durkheim was heavily influenced by that argument that you can deal with the data, actual
historical epochs, you can you can look at the society as an empirical entity and you do
not need always think about abstract ideas like essence of humans or ultimate origin of
the society.
You need to make a transition from a philosophical metaphysical understanding into that
of a sociological analysis. Montesquieu was also the first to recognize Durkheim who
believe that the morals, manners and customs and the spirit of a nation are subjected to
scientific investigations. This is something quite interesting because these questions
about morals or manners or customs and the spirit of a nation are subjected to scientific
investigation. For example, what does somebody mean by the argument of the spirit of a
nation, what do we mean by the term spirit?
So, we will see in the subsequent discussion, in a couple of lectures down the line that
Emile Durkheim was heavily intrigued by the question of social solidarity or in the
contemporary parallel social reined in social integrates, what holds society together, why
that the people are having a sense of attachment or a sense of belonging to this particular
society? So, the questions about the kind of spirit of nation and he also believed that the
kind of morals and manners and customs which are not tangible which are non-material
aspects of culture can be studied in a scientific manner, they can be treated on par with a
host of material culture. So, this is something very important influenced by Montesquieu.
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And so in a kind of a summary, Durkheim gave Montesquieu to credit for many insights
that became part of his sociology. The social world can be studied as a theme, we will
come back to this term because this is how Durkheim defines sociology. Social fact
Durkheim argues that social fact can be seen as a thing and it is best to develop
typologies you will see how you have already seen how Montesquieu develops different
ideas about different types of society from a tribal society to military society. So,
Durkheim was also heavily influenced by that and you will see that when he discusses
about societies characterized by organic solidarity and society characterized by
mechanical solidarity.
It is necessary to examine the number, arrangement and relation among parts in

developing these typologies. So, how do we characterizes these typologies, how do we
distinguish a tribal society from that of an industrial society? Montesquieu had a protocol
and that was something which had a significant influence on Durkheim’s scheme of
things as well. It is important to view law as an indicate of broader social and cultural
forces, very fascinating argument which we will come across when we discuss this
argument about division of labor, that the kind of law that exists in a society it tells you a
lot more things about that society.
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It tells us a lot more things about the kind of division of labor, about the role of religion
in that, about the kind of social integration in that, it is just a beautiful argument when
Durkheim talks about the transition from a retributive low to that of restitutive law and it
is wise to employ both causal and functional analysis. I will come back to this point later
when we discuss division of labor and the rules of sociological method.
I will come back to this point but to make it very clear, both Montesquieu as well as
Durkheim makes a distinction between the cause and the function. So, what is the cause
of a particular social phenomenon and could be of course has to be seen as different from
what it does or in other words you cannot explain or you must not explain a particular
phenomenon on the base of what it does otherwise it could lead to what is known as
teleological issues.
Now, another important scholar is Rousseau and Durkheim gave Rousseau credit for the
insight that society comprises a moral reality, it is a sui generis that could be
distinguished from an individual morality and this is an extremely important argument.
Durkheim argued that society influenced by Rousseau is a separate entity, it has to be
seen in its own right, and it is not a derivative. Society is not something that comes into
picture when a group of people come together and it has to be distinguished from an
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individual morality, it has its own morality, it is sui generis, and it comes into being of its
own.
We will discuss these things later when we discuss his idea of social fact but Durkheim
was heavily influenced by this argument that society constitutes an entity in itself which
needs to be studied on its own words, it is not a derivative of something else. And
Durkheim viewed Rousseau’s discussion of the natural state as a methodological device
that could be used to highlight the pathologies of contemporary society and to provide
guidelines for the remaking of society.
Here we come across a very interesting position that Durkheim takes something similar
to Comte. Durkheim believed that a completely neutral sociology which does not tell
what is good and what is bad is of no use that is what Durkheim believe. Durkheim
believed that by studying society in a scientific manner you must be able to distinguish
the good from the bad, that is why he is able to use this term pathology and this term
pathology I do not think that anybody or any sociologist would in the current times use
this particular term.
Because it means that society has a natural setting, and a particular state of the society
can be seen as pathological because this pathology is heavily influenced from medicine,
you know pathological labs, when a virus attacks and you consider it as a pathological
situation because that is not normal. So, this idea of pathology it presupposes that
something else is normal and Durkheim stood by that argument, Durkheim argued that
certain state of society must be seen as normal and certain other aspects of society or
transformations of society must be seen as pathology.
For example, he argues if the crime rates of a particular society is too high, then it is a
pathological situation which needs to be addressed. So, he had this very strong moral take
on that, he did not claim to be very dispassionate analysis of that, he believed that
sociology helps to establish a moral, a kind of a righteous position, righteous
understanding about how a society should be and most of the sociological theories later
will not do that and the question of social order, how is the society bound together and
this is another very fascinating question, how is a society possible?
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A society comprising of hundreds or thousands of people, it works more or less fine so
what holds this society together, what is the kind of binding factor, why that people have
a sense of belonging to that, why the people are many times even ready to lay down their
lives, why that people are ready to sacrifice with their lives for that. So, what is the kind
of mechanism which cements this kind of sentiments and how does society achieve that?
And these are some of the very fascinating ideas of Durkheim we will discuss later.
So, in a nutshell, Durkheim borrowed many ideas from Rousseau, some of his central
concepts about social pathologies anomie, egoism and the forced division of labor owed
much to Rousseau work. Durkheim vision of society as integrated by a strong state and
by a set of common values and beliefs reflected Rousseau’s vision to eliminate these
pathologies. So, just like Rousseau, Durkheim also believed that there is a state of nature
and Rousseau also inspired Durkheim’s desire to use schools to provide moral education
for the young and to rekindle the spirit of commitment to secular society that people once
had towards the sacred.
So, now they shared part of this similar ideas, commitment to secularism, secular ideals
and not been influenced by religion the importance of schools and all these points. At the
same time he did not share Rousseau complete trust on the state. Rousseau had placed so
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much of importance to the state because he believed that the state is capable of
establishing some kind of order and Durkheim did not agree with that.
Coming to the connection or the influence of Auguste Comte, of course, the idea of
positivism which we discussed elaborately when we discuss Auguste Comte, the
argument that you can use scientific methodology to understand society with its different
protocols and the idea of organic analogy, the kind of argument that you can make a
comparison between a human society and the living organism and that tells you a lot of
similarities between the way a living organism and the human society are structured, the
idea of a structure and function are from there and then the argument of statics and the
dynamics, for Comte the most fundamental object or the fundamental objective of
sociology is to study these two things, social statistics and social dynamics.
How the society is able to maintain itself, the social order of equilibrium, at the same
time how is society able to change? So, a combination of these two important focal points
of sociology proposed by Comte which Durkheim also agrees with i.e. an idea of social
progress and role of sociology in it. So, Comte believed that sociology is a science of
society so, once you study the science, you will be able to make a better society, make it
as again progressive one and Durkheim also believe in that.
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Durkheim was actually more critical of Herbert Spencer, though he was influenced by
Spencer's argument about the organic analogy and evolution, he was critical of Spencer's
extreme utilitarian view that highlighted competition, contract, and vehemently criticized
the idea of survival of the fittest, we discussed about it, I hope you remember, we
discussed about it when we discussed the Herbert Spencer he looked at the social
evolution and then argued that human beings act on the basis of their self-interest and
only the fittest will survive as there is a struggle for existence and Durkheim was heavily
critical of that.
Spencer was arguing this towards the end of his life and that brought him quite a lot of
criticism and he was extremely critical of looking at social change, the social evolution
through this kind of a lens of the biological evolution which looked at the successful
animals as the most suitable animals who survived by defeating the others. So, that
utilitarian ideas were not acceptable to Durkheim, but Durkheim was heavily influenced
by Spencer's idea of social progress and evolution.
That becomes very evident when Spencer talks about this transition from simple societies
to compound societies, Durkheim also speaks the similar language that he talks about a
transition from society is characterized by mechanical solidarity, to society is
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characterized by organic similarities, though the argument is very different and of course,
with the idea of evolution.
Karl Marx, of course, Durkheim was critical of Marx’s over emphasize on the role of
working class. He was never unlike Max Weber who whom quite a lot of observers say
that who had a dialogue with the ghost of Marx. Durkheim’s engagement with Marx was
very minimal and he did not, he was not a follower, he was not very much impressed
with the Marxian argument and he was critical of Marx who over emphasized on the role
of working class and the celebration of social conflict and revolution by Karl Marx was
something not acceptable to Durkheim because Durkheim looked at these conflicts as
pathology.
For Durkheim, a society that is more peaceful was something more normal and a society
that sees violence, upheavals, conflict was something pathological as per Durkheim and
here you will see the kind of fundamental conflict between the structural functional
school of thought and the critical or the Marxian school or conflict school of thought and
these are the fundamentally different perceptions about that while, structural
functionalism over emphasizes the whole question of stability and equilibrium Marxian
school or critical school or conflict school it privileges or it understands this social
conflict as something quite natural, they even welcome that.
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He felt that the problems of alienation, exploitation and class antagonism were relevant
to all sectors of society and that revolution caused more pathology than it resolved. A
very important argument that while he agreed that issues of alienation, exploitation, class
antagonism were relevant because this whole point of alienation even identifies alienation
as the prime reason for one particular type of suicide, so it is not that he was not aware of
these issues that were raised by Karl Marx, but he did not or he was not ready to accept
the argument that these issues emerged from the economic base or economic structure.
And he also did not believe or he was also not ready to accept that all these issues will be
resolved if a revolution takes place. He believe very strongly that these revolutions will
bring more pathology than whatever it can resolve. So, these are couple of scholars who I
just thought I just flag it so that you get some idea about what were the ideas that
Durkheim was influenced by and how he had a very productive critical engagement with
the arguments of the important scholars of his time and these dialogues, reflections and
engagements really shaped his intellectual career which of course, laid foundation to the
discipline of sociology.
So, we are stopping here and next class we will begin with more substantive
contributions of that Durkheim, thank you.
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Lecture No. 27
The Rules of the Sociological Method (1897)
Welcome back to the class, we are continuing with our discussion on Emile Durkheim
and I hope that you remember our previous class in which we had a brief discussion
about the life of Emile Durkheim and the major intellectual influences during his time.
Durkheim was born into a Jewish family in France and became one of the most important
scholars who laid the foundations of this particular discipline.
In today's class, we are dealing with one of his very important works, titled ‘The Rules
of Sociological Methods’, written in 1897. In fact, this is not his first major work, his first
major work is ‘Division of Labor’, which we will be discussing in the next two sessions,
immediately after this, but the reason why I decided to begin with this work is
specifically because this lays down the basic philosophical as well as sociological
arguments about a new discipline.
This particular book, the rules of sociological method, really explains the epistemological
as well as methodological orientations of the discipline and you must be knowing that
this book was something so influential because of the arguments that Emile Durkheim
came up with and he was quite successful in establishing these arguments to a large
extent. It played a very important role in establishing sociology as a discipline or in other
words, this led to the institutionalization of a new discipline.
We know that in the previous class, we mentioned that he founded a journal and he was
one of the first professors of sociology for treating it as an independent discipline, as a
new discipline, which is distinct from other disciplines like psychology or philosophy or
economics. So, that is the kind of significance of this particular work titled ‘The Rules of
Sociological Method’ written in 1897.
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The rules of sociological method is both a philosophical treatise and a set of guidelines
for conducting sociological inquiry because, if you read the book, you will see that
Durkheim has certain philosophical arguments and orientations about the nature of this
whole society or he has a philosophy on what constitutes this ‘social’ and why and how
that society emerges when people come together. Thus, it has a philosophical angle to
that, he has a philosophy about what constitutes society and what are its features.
On the other hand, he sets out a series of guidelines for conducting sociological inquiry,
and as we will see that as we discuss this 6 or 7 hours, 5 or 6 chapters, in this book, he
very specifically lays out what are the important methodological stipulations that one
needs to keep in mind while conducting a sociological inquiry. So, in that sense, it talks
about methodology, particular approach towards reality, how to conduct your research,
what constitutes the kind of social reality, data and how a sociologist is supposed to
approach his or her social reality and what are the methods of data collection.
In that sense, this is a very important work which talks about the connection between
epistemology, methodology and research methods. The whole fundamental aim for
Durkheim was to establish the independent status or independent stature of this new
discipline. So, these are the 6 chapters, the names of the chapters in this work, what is a
social fact? And second chapter is Rules for the Observation of Social Facts. Rules for
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Distinguishing Between the Normal and the Pathological. Rules for the Classification of
Social Types. Rules for the Explanation of Social Facts. Rules Relative to Establishing
Sociological Proofs.
This work is something extremely important, it is a canonical one in the sociological

literature because it lays down the very specific rules and regulations about conducting
sociological inquiry. Quite a lot of criticisms, disagreements, alternative use about society
and alternative views about methodology have emerged later, but Durkheim played a
fundamental role in establishing a kind of a positivistic empirical, empiricist orientation
to this discipline and it is something very important.
In his previous work, the Division of Labor, which we are going to discuss in the next
session, he proclaimed that moral facts to be the subject of sociology, but later in his
work, the rules of sociological method, he changed his terminology to that employed
earlier by Comte and argued that social facts were the distinctly subject of sociology. So,
you will see the kind of transition in Durkheim’s work with the kind of preoccupation
from the kind of moral facts to social facts when he comes from this Division of Labor to
that of Rules of Sociological Method, and we will come back to this question of his
preoccupation with the issues of morality.
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He had a very fascinating arguments about why moral positions are important, we will
discuss it when we discuss his arguments about education. He did not believe in a host of
other sociologists who did not take any particular position with respect to moral positions
or morality, he argued that sociologists need to take a particular position because these
particular positions, especially moral positions are something so important for the well
being and health of a society. These terms are problematic, but we will come back to that
later, but his argument is fundamental about sociology i.e. sociology is the study of social
facts.
In today's class as well as throughout this lecture, we will come across this term ‘social
facts’, quite often and this term constitutes the central engagement of Emile Durkheim.
For him society is comprising, it comprises of social facts and the duty of sociologist is to
understand the social facts and then study them in a in a scientific manner. So, how does
he define social facts? Durkheim define social facts as it consists of ways of acting,
thinking and feeling external to the individual and endowed with the power of coercion
by which they control him or her. It is very broad and vague definition, we will take up
certain examples and look into the specific characteristics features of social facts.
Durkheim describes or defines social fact as it is consisting of ways of acting which is a

broad definition. Ways of acting, we act in certain much specified manner in different
contexts, look at the way we act in a temple or in a church is quite different from the way
we act in a place of recreation. Is it not the way we act in a place where somebody has
died is very different from the place where we act when somebody gets married? So, the
way we act, think and feel external to the individual and endowed with the power of
coercion by which they control.
Here he is talking about social fact as it is something external to the individual. And it is
endowed with the power of coercion and through this coercive power, the social facts are
able to control human beings, we will come to each of these terms, we will elaborate
them later.
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So, to say phenomena as social, that they compose a definitive collective reality.
Durkheim here comes up with the most crucial aspects about defining what constitutes
the social. We discussed from the beginning that the emergence of sociology really
depicts the emergence of the social, it does not mean that there was no social before or
prior to the emergence of sociology, ever since human beings began to exist in the world,
the social existed, but a more systematic institutionalized way of looking at this social
emerged with the emergence of sociology.
I am not going into the final debates, but this is a very important argument that has been
widely accepted. So, what constitute the social? To say such phenomenon are social
means they compose a definitive collective reality, they originate from and are
characteristic of the group rather than the individual, this quality requires that social facts
be studied sociologically.
Durkheim argues that you need to look at the social or you need to look at the social fact
in the realm of the social and while it is you know that the society or socially is
constituted by the individual, there is a tension between the individual and the social, we
know that the social is composed of or it consists of the individuals, a society is
impossible without individuals, but when individuals simply come together it does not
really makes a society but they need to interact and when they interact, the particular
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forms or particular patterns of social interaction takes place, and that is the focal point of
Durkheim.
He says that the society is always much more than a mere collective of individuals and
more than the mere sum total of all the individuals together. He argues that something
else happens when people come together and interact and what is this something else?
Durkheim argues that it is the social facts, and why it is created or it is constituted by the
individual, it is much more than the individual, because individual has very limited
control over the social, over the social fact, whereas the social fact or the social has
enormous control over the individual.
Durkheim argues that the ‘social’ compose a definitive collective reality. So, this reality
is a collective one, it comes into existence because of the collectivity and it also has an
impact on the collective life of people. So, once human beings come together, a
collectivity forms and this collectivity is formed by the people, but once this collectivity
is formed, this has an enormous influence on the lives of each and every individual, they
originate from and are characteristic of the group rather than the individual.
It emerges from the group and not from an individual, an individual alone cannot, an
individual alone cannot create that, a particular way of acting, or a particular way of
explaining certain things. For example, the way you are supposed to worship, when you
go to a temple or the way in which you are supposed to express your sorrow in
somebody's house, or express your happiness. There are very specific social conventions,
what you are supposed to do, what you are not supposed to do, for the very act of say,
you need to get married with somebody and what are the kind of rituals that are socially
accepted rituals? How is it? Is there other example? How is a dead body cremated? How
do you dispose of a dead body?
If you put it that the starkly, you cannot really dispose off, you cannot get rid of this dead
body the way you want and I am not here talking about the legal implications. But in
every community, there is a particular way of properly dealing with the dead body, and y
an individual cannot change that. So, this quality requires that social facts be studied
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sociologically. So, he very strongly argued that since the social facts have this collective
character, it needs to be studied sociologically.
There is no other discipline, which can study this social fact the way sociology can
study, because this belongs, this specifically belongs to the subject matter of sociology.
No other discipline studies that and sociology emerges only specifically, exclusively to
study this social facts. To say that they are factual, so what does it mean to be a fact?
Why that he is using this term social fact? To say that they are factual means they have an
objective reality outside the mind of an individual. And this is a very important point,
because you can just look at how it is very different from a kind of an idealist
understanding which completely negates the existence of individual existence outside
people's mind.
Durkheim argues that these social facts, these particular way of doing certain things,
particular way of thinking about certain things, social institutions, social norms, and all
this very definition of social fact is very broad. How do you educate a child? How do you
worship? How do we raise a family? All these have an objective reality outside the mind
of an individual, this quality requires that social facts be studied scientifically.
So, here we can see that how the positivistic argument of Durkheim is very evident, he
wanted to study following Auguste Comte’s argument. He wanted to fashion sociology as
a scientific discipline and he very strongly believed that sociology has to be treated as a
science and it has all the ability to look at social facts and then study them scientifically,
the way a biologist or a physicist uses a laboratory equipments to study their facts and
their facts in a laboratory could be what they see or what they see under microscope or
the kind of experiments that they do, or the kind of data that they read as a result of
certain experimentations.
Here, Durkheim is arguing that the social facts need to be seen as factual as the kind of
data that are being used by other scientists. So, three defining characteristics of social
facts, one is externality, second one is constraint and third one is generality. Each of these
three terms is mentioned in his definition that we discussed.
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Now, let us examine them one by one. Externality, so Durkheim argues that social facts
are ways of thinking and acting that exist prior to an outside the consciousness of the
individual, this is something that we just mentioned. Why that is external? Because it is
external since it exists outside an individual, when a child is born, there is nothing
biological inscribed or there is nothing genetically inscribed in that child's body about
how he or she should behave in certain kind of social situations.
It has nothing biologically inscribed, there is no genes at play here, it is purely a social
phenomenon, a child understands the social facts only through the process of
socialization i.e. how to behave in certain ways, how to conduct their activities in society,
each of these things are understood through the process of socialization. So, it exists a
prior to an outside the consciousness of the individual. We are born into a world
consisting of already formed and often long standing social institutions, cultural ideals
and customary practices.
Now, each one of us, if you, by now, you are familiar with this whole idea of sociological
imagination and if you take a step back, and then try to understand what are the kind of
social institutions, cultural ideals and customary practices that govern our life, whether it
is about food habits, what are the things that we are supposed to eat, we are not supposed
to eat, how we are supposed to eat, or about our religious practices or our family
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practices, customs associated with marriage, the practices associated with the education,
practices associated with the delinquency or deviance or low.
If you take each of these examples, each one of them are outside the individual and they
are already formed and often long standing social institution and that a number of
examples, this example of marriage, how you want to get married to somebody, how do
you ensure that or how do you get married to somebody else? You eloping with
somebody simply does not work. There are also communities and societies where
marriage by elopement is an accepted one. But if you are not living in those societies, if
you marry, if you elope with somebody, then it can land you in trouble.
You are actually socialized into these institutions, cultural ideas, into these customary
practices, examples of institutions, religion, marriage, expressions of anger, hunger,
authority, everything, you know that expressions of anger or hunger, how are we expect
expected to control our hunger. Even if you are really hungry, there are situations where I
have to say that I am really hungry and eating food may not look good, it may not be
welcome or we are we are trained to deal with our emotions, whatever fear for example,
or sadness, for example, especially with the men, men are not supposed to cry, isn't it?
Men are supposed to control their emotions far efficiently than that of women.
So, I am talking about the kind of social constructs which put enormous pressure on the
individual, these are social facts, collective realities. They exist external to us as
individuals, products of our historical heritage and social milieu. This brings in the most
fascinating aspects they are of historical heritage, many of the things that we consider as
the most authentic, essential aspects of our culture. And if you look at them with a
historical lens, you know that many of them could be new additions, they are not as old
as our civilization or they are not that they do not exist from the very time immemorial.
These things could be very recent, and they are products of our social milieu, they are the
products of this particular socio cultural context, the kind of milieu and the moment you
move out, if you travel back in history, you will see a completely different society, if you
travel across the place, if you move to another society, you will see a completely different
set of ideas, about how to live in a society. So, this relativity in terms of places and time
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makes the study of sociology really fascinating, especially with a comparative
perspective, we can understand neither the nature nor their causes by searching them
within ourselves.
This is an important point that Durkheim highlights, you cannot really understand neither
the nature nor their causes by searching within ourselves, why that we are doing it, why
are we conducting our prayer in this particular manner? How are you disposing of the
dead body of our relative in this particular manner an individually is unable to answer
this.
The second one is Constraint, social facts not only they are outside you, but they have the
ability to put enormous constraints on you, they can influence you, they can control you.
Social facts, in addition to being external to the individual possesses a compelling and
coercive power, they impose themselves on the individual from outside like moulds into
which we are forced to cast our action. These are extremely powerful words.
So, he says that the social facts are so powerful, they act as very powerful constraints that
we feel that they they act like moulds into which we are forced to cast our action. If we
want to do certain things, we have to do it as per the dictates of the society and n number
of example, maybe a country like India is the best example and it could be inter-caste
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marriage or inter-religious marriage and you will know what does Durkheim mean by
constraint the moment you talk about that, in most of the contexts inter caste or inter
religious marriages are not welcome. Whem people go ahead with that, it can bring in
quite a lot of negative consequences.
These negative consequences can vary from disapproval from the family and
estrangement from the family to even to that of murder, what we very famously call us
honor killing. So, the social facts are so powerful, that you are forced to act as per the
dictates of the society, whether it is to be with example the way you are, you pray when
you go to a place of worship, when you eat, when we sit together with others when we
eat, what other kind of things that you need to be careful about it, the kind of decorum,
the kind of practices, that kind of rituals. Each of these things are something very
important that you need to look into that.
But though we are continuously pushed and pulled by the power of social forces, we
typically fail to recognize their coercive influence and falsely imagine ourselves to be
perfectly free agent. This is yet another very important argument, of course, the
continuation Durkheim constantly reminds you that human beings are not free, you are
not free, you cannot live in this world the way you want, he would argue that we all have
a false consciousness or a false sense of freedom that we are free individuals we can do
whatever we want, and we will come across quite a lot of people who think that I can
lead the way I want.
But Durkheim reminded them that you are only following the rules of the society, there is
nothing that you have created as new, maybe barring a very few exceptions. So, we
realize it only when we break a norm or a law. We will realize that there is a law exist or
a norm exist, as long as we obey them, we never realize it, you only flow along with the
tide, you never realize that you are even flowing, but the moment you stop it, the moment
you do something against that, then you will realize, the moment you try to do something
which is against the taken for granted assumption of the society. Then you will see the
kind of constraint that which is imposed by the society, you will see that the coercive
power of society.
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So, that is whether it is a norm whether you disobey a particular norm or you disobey a
law you will realize it, whether it is the case of marriage or dressing habit or the way you,
the kind of occupations that you are doing in whatever you consider even as your
personal actions are will come under scrutiny, the moment you break this norms or a law.
The third feature is generality, which is again very interesting. Social facts also have the
characteristic of being general within a group. Social facts is as we have seen, it is not the
product of an individual, an individual cannot bring in a social fact neither she or he can
change it, most of the time they only go along with that so, they are being general within
the group. But he makes a very interesting point here, he says that social facts are not
collective phenomena, because they are widespread whereas they are widespread because
they are collective phenomena.
They become collective phenomena, not because they are widespread, but the logic is the
reverse, it is so important, it is a collective phenomena, so that it has to be seen among
almost everybody. It is not that you identify certain things looking into whether that
particular practice is followed by everybody and then you decide, that it is a collective
phenomena, that is not the way Durkheim goes about it, Durkheim will look into whether
it is something so important, then if it is so important as a collective phenomenon, then it
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must be general for everybody, you can have so many different things for people who
belong to a particular society.
It is general because it is a collective phenomena and not the other way around. A
common way of doing and behaving in a certain group, even punishment in a particular
society, how are punishment delivered or how do you distinguish between good and bad?
What are the accepted and non-accepted ways of behaving in certain different contexts?
Whom can you get married to for example, whom can you get married to? In every
society there are certain groups of people whom you can get married, certain other groups
who you are not supposed to get married.
And each of them Durkheim would say that they are collective phenomenon, and that is
why they are found in every society. There's something so crucial. Durkheim proposes a
conception of society not only as a reality but a reality of sui generis, a reality of its own
and a distinct object of knowledge, but as something superior to an even dominating the
individual. He explicitly challenges the common sense view that individuals are the
complete autonomous authors of their own lives.
Rather now you realize that Durkheim has a rather pessimistic view about human beings,
he is not somebody who will grant that you are free agents, you can leave the way you
want, you can mould the world according to your ideas and aspirations but Durkheim
takes a rather negative and pessimistic view, he would say that the social structure is
something so rigid that you are supposed to live in that, it is something like a cage. In a
cage that you are put, you can behave the way you want only, but only within that
particular cage.
This particular pessimistic idea about human freedom, how human agency have come
under a lot of criticism by a lot of other scholars, we will take them up late. But the
argument as a completely autonomous people who order their own lives, as per Durkheim
is only fallacy, it does not exist, nobody is the master of their own lives, there is a major
overarching force known as the society is watching, it is controlling and even Durkheim
would say that even our choices about alternatives are specific and they have a social
origin.
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There is very few thing that you can really credit to yourself as your own idea, your own
way of living, in a very distinct manner. So, Durkheim would say that even your
possibilities of choices, your spectrum of choices are limited by the very existence of
society, I found it as an interesting argument. It is of course a very depressing argument,
but it is interesting when you look at experiments, you look at alternative forms of living.
When you look at some people who say that they are very free, they are very
independent, they are exceptional, then this question comes into picture.
Now, society for Durkheim is more than the sum of the individual who make it up and
the qualities of societies are likewise different from the qualities of its constituent
members. So, this point I mentioned earlier, society is something more than the sum total
of the individuals who make it up. So, if you put a group of people together, what
emerges as a society is much complicated and is much more than that the total number of
these people and the qualities of society are likewise different from the qualities of its
constituent members.
The system formed by the individual relationship, he says, represents a specific reality,
which has its own characteristics. So, Durkheim says that, when you come together,
when people come together, it forms a society, but that society has its own forms. So, you
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give birth to certain thing, and that thing that you have given birth becomes much bigger,
it assumes its own feature, and then it begins to control.
This distinctly social reality, an outgrowth of human interaction is the particular subject
matter of sociology. It is the most dominant theme in his entire narrative, that there is a
particular domain called a ‘social’ and he uses the term social facts and it has to be
studied exclusively in order to understand how a society works. He argues, that is the job
of sociology and no other discipline can study that. His explanation is meant to legitimate
the independent status of sociology to show that it is not simply a corollary of individual
psychology.
Durkheim takes major issue with the psychological explanation, and we will see that
when he discusses the whole idea of suicide, a classic study, the best example to
distinguish the perspective between sociology and psychology. He is very categorical that
sociology cannot be or society cannot be seen as a corollary of individual psychology,
rather, it has its own independent existence.
Now, collective consciousness is fundamentally different from the states of the individual
consciousness. This is a term which we will come across in detail when we study
Division of Labor in the next class, but he argues that this collective consciousness is
fundamentally different from the state of individual consciousness. This also has been
many times used as conscience and not only as consciousness. So just like an individual
has a consciousness, an individual has a conscience about what is right and what is
wrong, what is good for something, what is bad for something. Durkheim would argue
that even society also has something a kind of a collective consciousness and that is quite
different from the state of the individual.
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Now, let us very briefly go into some of this important chapters in his work. The first
one, the Rules of Observation of Social Facts. Durkheim argues that or Durkheim suggest
what are the rules when you observe the social facts, the first one he says that the
personal biases and preconceptions must be eliminated. A very important argument and
this is where you will be forced to critically look at your own subjective biases in terms
of your opinion, in terms of your ideology, in terms of your religious belief, in terms of
your caste outlook, in terms of your gender outlook, you are supposed to keep away all
your personal biases claimed that they are able to do that.
But we know that it is impossible for a researcher to completely move away from all their
identity markers, their ideas, but a person can be quite reflexive to be sensitive to their
own biases and try their level best not to influence their biases or not to get influenced by
their biases when they study something. So, here Durkheim is making a distinction
between this subjectivity and then objectivity and pre conception must be eliminated. The
phenomenon under study must be clearly defined. So, what exactly are you going to
study? What are its boundaries? What are its conceptual categories? How do you define
that?
So, this phenomena that you want to study must be very clearly defined and cannot have
very vague terminology and vague understanding about the stuff that you want to study,
that has to be very specifically delineated. An empirical indicator of the phenomenon
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under study must be found as was in the case of law in the Division of Labor. So, this is
something that distinguishes sociology from philosophy for that matter. You need to have
an empirical indicator of the phenomenon and a kind of a concrete example.
He gives the example of law when he talks about the Division of Labor, we will discuss it
in the coming class. For example, he says that the kind of law that exists in simpler
societies, in tribal societies is very different from the kind of law that exists in modern
complex societies or industrial societies. So here, law is an empirical indicator, whether it
is a written law or an oral law or if you broaden the definition of law to include social
norms, but irrespective whether it is written or oral, it is an empirical reality.
Durkheim argues that for a sociological exploration, a sociological study and analysis,
you need to have an empirical indicator, whether it could be law, it could be marriage, it
could be a crime, it could be suicide rate, it could be it anything, but it has to have an
empirical foundation and social facts must be considered as things because they have
their own existence, they are outside of an individual and individual cannot change it, in
spite of an individual's like, like or dislike. So, it must be seen as thing it is sui generis.
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Then the other chapter, Rules for Distinguishing between the Normal and the
Pathological and this is again a very interesting take. Here, Durkheim distinguishes
between what he defines as normal and what he defines as pathological. And, as I
mentioned in the previous class, quite a lot of sociologists have later found issue with this
particular usage, because as per Durkheim society moves from the normal to pathological
he considers it as something very negative, because pathology is a term that you quite
often come across in medicine. When some pathogens enter into your body, you feel sick
and you take some medicine to get rid of this pathogens, is not it when you are attacked
by a virus or a bacteria, your whole system collapses.
So, that particular type of condition is what you consider yourself as a sick or doctors
would declare you as ill and Durkheim takes a similar kind of categories. For example, if
he says that if crime rates are very high in a particular society, he would consider it as a
pathology and a society which has a reasonable amount of crimes, Durkheim would
consider it as normal. This is essentially a position adopted by almost every scholar who
belong to this structural functionalist school.
I am not going into the details, but structural functionalism really is based on these
assumptions that there is a kind of an equilibrium, there is a kind of a balance and this
balance is what Durkheim calls it as normal. Anything which disturbs that balance would
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be seen as unwelcome. It would be seen as pathological. He was heavily influenced by
the moral aspect of sociological knowledge, so as to distinguish the normal between
pathological. So, what is good for the society?
Now, an example, are divorce rates good for society or not? If higher divorce rates, is it
good for society or is it bad for society? And Durkheim will not hesitate, he would say
that beyond the point, increasing number of divorce is always bad for society because he
takes a very particular moral position. But whole lot of other sociologists may not take
that, they may not take that they would argue that the increasing number of divorce rates
are also indicative of another type of society, where women experience more freedom,
women are more economically independent, or they have more agency they have better
agency they are able to walk out or men or women for that matter, are able to walk out of
a marital relationship and then continue with their life.
But Durkheim was different, he had a very specific moral position, and argued that a
society must have a certain kind of moral foundation and the societies which fulfill these
moral foundations he would call them as normal, others he would call them as pathology,
which came under heavy criticism of course. Now, particular rate of deviance or crime as
normal, and exceeding that as pathological. Durkheim has very interesting analysis about
the crime, he says that there is no society without any crime, every society there is crime.
You cannot have a society without the notion of crime, because crime is what he calls it
as functional. Durkheim says that crime is functional because the crime helps you to
understand the boundaries of the accepted behavior. The crime helps you to get a more
rigid understanding about what is accepted and what is not accepted. People who take up
crime are punished and this punishment sends out a warning to others that such and such
actions are not permitted. So, Durkheim say that a specific amount or proportional fine is
welcome or specific rate of deviance is welcome or it is essential. But not beyond a point,
exceeding that is pathological.
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Then, for Rules of Classification of Social Types. Now, Durkheim was a very important
believer of classifying society into different sections, and specifically based on empirical
positions? So, Durkheim’s evolutionary perspective coupled with his strategy for
diagnosing normalcy, normality and pathology in social systems, made inevitable a
concerned with social classification.
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Durkheim following this evolutionary perspective had to come up with this scheme of
evolution, moving from one state to the other and to the other in a qualitatively better
manner in terms of increasing complexity, as we have seen in the case of Auguste Comte
and Herbert Spencer. So, all those specific systems revealed considerable variability, it is
possible to group them into general types on the basis of the nature and the number of
their parts, and the modes of combination of parts, and he is here, is talking about system.
So, this will become more evident when we discuss this Division of Labor, where he
talks about society’s transitioning from simple society to complex societies characterized
by a mechanical solidarity to societies characterized by organic solidarity. This
evolutionary schema that a singular, unilinear evolutionary schema, or something so
important for almost every modern social sociologist as we have discussed, you will see
this in Marx, you will see it in Comte, in Spencer, in Durkheim. They all believed that
every society supposed to undertake this particular trajectory and Western Europe has
already reached there and all other societies are supposed to do this, catching up business.
But this has to be based on the nature, the number of their parts. For example, a primitive
society here in this area would be very simple. When I say complex society as per
Durkheim’s argument in Western Europe would be much complicated, and most of
combination of parts will be much extensive here than in a simple society.
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In Rules for the Explanation of Social Facts, he comes to the question how do you really
explain the social part? Durkheim emphasized again the point he had made in the
Division of Labor. When the explanation of social phenomena is undertaken, we must
seek separately the efficient cause which produces it and the function it fulfills. So, it is a
very important distinction that he brings in between the causal explanation and the
functional explanation, a causal analysis something what gave birth to that as other thing,
something that actually gave birth to certain things and which caused a certain thing.
A causal analysis involves searching for an antecedent condition that produce a given
effect. Why that A has given birth to B? That is a kind of a causal analysis, A give birth
to B whereas, a functional analysis is concerned with the determining the consequences
of a social fact. Now, functional analysis will be bothering about what B does, what are
the features of this particular B? So, he makes a distinction between the causal analysis
and the functional analysis.
Now, the causal analysis is about the antecedent conditions that produce a given effect. If
B is the effect A is the antecedent condition, A is the causal effect. And what is a
functional analysis? Functional analysis is concerned with determining the consequences
of a social fact. So, what are the consequences of B? And there is often, there is a
misunderstanding between or there is a confusion between the causal analysis and a
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functional analysis. Often, there is a possibility that this functional analysis could be
explained on the basis of causality.
These functions, thus, are there because of a particular cause. So, there is no automatic
correspondence between the cause and the function, and these two needs to be seen as
separate forms of inquiry, what gave birth to a particular condition, and what are the own
sequences of the particular condition, or what are the specific functions that this
particular condition fulfils. These two cannot be clubbed together, they cannot be taken
for granted, or they cannot be seen as a kind of very closely connected rather they need to
be seen as two separate analysis.
Functional analysis is concerned with determining the consequences of a social fact,

regardless of its cause. So, we do not analyze this particular functions that B carries out
and then, reducing it to that of this particular cause could be always problematic, for the
social whole regardless of its cause or larger context in which it is located. Complete
sociological explanation involves both the causal and functional explanation, as
Durkheim has sought to illustrate in the Division of Labor.
So, he argues that when you analyze the social fact, you need to be really clear about the
context of the reasons, why it came into existence, and also what it actually does. And
sociology as a science superior to conventional wisdom about society. This is another
very important point. I remember, I hope that you remember when we discussed about
common sense. When we discussed about common sense, when we discussed in one of
the first classes, we talk about how sociology is different from common sense.
So, Durkheim very strongly argued that the kind of perspective that sociology offers
about social reality is definitely superior to the conventional wisdom about society, the
kind of popular understanding about society and the commonsensical understanding
about the society. That is why he argued that a sociological method or a sociological
theory must be given its due credit. This is his fundamental argument and you need to
understand the context in which he was making it.
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He was talking it in the formative periods of the establishment of sociology as a
distinctive discipline, and probably not compared to any other sociologist, he was the one
who very strongly argued for the independent status of this particular discipline. It has to
be seen as distinct and separate from psychology from philosophy, because it has a
unique subject matter and this unique subject matter is what he calls it as social reality or
as social fact.
So, once if you are winding up, once we try to wrap up this session, this book, this Rules
of Sociological Method is considered to be canonical work in sociology especially in
classical sociology because Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology explains
what, why and how you must look at sociology in a methodological manner, in a
methodical manner and what are the kind of underlying methodological and
epistemological assumptions.
This is the reason why I began this class by saying that it has both a philosophical angle,
as well as a sociological methodological angle. So, he has a particular philosophical
argument about the nature of society and the relation between society and the individual
and also very specific elaboration about the sociological, the sociological methodological
protocol, and a protocol that you need to undertake when you carry out sociological
analysis.
So, the book, Rules of Sociological Method, really cemented the position of sociology as
an independent discipline, and even now it is widely referred to, it is considered to be one
of the most important classical works. It is a methodology work, it really defines the
discipline in a particular way, and it defines the discipline as an empirical positivist
scientific discipline, by arguing for an exclusive character for this discipline.
So, let us stop here and we will take up his work, his magnum opus Division of Labor in
the next class. Indeed, we will have two classes, two sessions on Division of Labor
because it is a lengthy discussion. So, see you then and I am winding up. Thank you.
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Division of Labour (1893)
Welcome back to the class. We are continuing with the discussion on Emile Durkheim. In
the previous class, we had an elaborate discussion on his methodological arguments from his
book, The Roots of Sociological Method, which he wrote basically to reinforce his claim that
sociology really represents a new discipline. The book really played a significant role in the
institutionalization of the discipline or even the professionalization of the discipline. We
discussed that book in detail its preoccupation with the idea of the social, the way he argued
that sociology studies social facts, and the features of social facts and all the related topics.
So, in today's class as well as in the next class, we will be discussing his one of the most
important works of Emile Durkheim, that is the “Division of Labour”. In fact, it was his
doctoral research, which was published in 1893. So, this is considered to be one of the most
important works of Emile Durkheim, because this work contains quite a lot of important
concepts, important theoretical arguments about the nature of society, his understanding
about the society, transition, about the transformation of societies, the larger question of
social change.
A host of other very-very important theoretical conceptions of Emile Durkheim, about

morality, about collective conscience, about a host of punishment, about law, about
education, and a host of other things. So, this book is something very important.
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So his first major work, which was published version of his French doctoral thesis, ‘The
Division of Labour in Society’. In this work, he actually looks, looking into the past to
interpret the present. That is what the claim he actually does in his work, he makes a
distinction between societies characterized, a kind of a new society and old society, and he
does not use this term, rather he uses a very fascinating concept called as the Question of
Social Solidarity. We will discuss that in this particular lecture.
On the basis of this social solidarity, he distinguishes between two types of society. One is
the kind of a modern society as that was existing during Durkheim’s time, a modern
European industrialized society, and the other one is the more primitive, the older forms of
society.
He wanted to compare or he wanted to contrast these two types of societies and then try to
understand the fundamental differences between these two types of societies. So, Durkheim
examines the unique features of the modern society by comparing it to the pre-modern world
of a distant era. Then, he examines the shifting basis of social solidarity, as societies evolved
from an undifferentiated and simple profile to a complex and differentiated one.
We have seen that the whole question of social change was a major theoretical preoccupation
for almost every social scientist or every historian or sociologist or even philosophers of this
particular time. Most of them adhere to a conception of a unilinear evolutionary model, where
societies from a very simple and undifferentiated state of being transforms into a more
complicated and differentiated set of existence. They called the previous form as primitive
and the present society as modern.
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So, Durkheim also has something similar to that, a similar kind of a schema about social
change. But he brings in a very important concept, a very important which is what we
understand as a social solidarity, as societies evolved from an undifferentiated and simple
one.
An undifferentiated, we understand it as something simple, something similar, so

homogeneity becomes the character of that particular society where everybody is similar.
There are a lot of similarity within that particular society in terms of what people do, what
people work, what kind of belief system, occupation, ideologies that people have.
A major form of similarity or homogeneity will exist when you talk about this
undifferentiated and simple societies to a more complex and differentiated society. So, he
brings in a number of important concepts, which we will discuss one by one in this particular
class. He talks about social solidarity, about collective conscience, and I have used this term,
collective conscience here, but I have also used the term, collective consciousness in the
previous class when we discussed about roots of sociological method, and these two terms
are used interchangeably.
The collective conscience, social morphology, mechanical and organic solidarity, social
change, social functions, and social pathology are the major themes that he discusses in this
particular work.
What does the idea of social solidarity mean? Now, what do we mean by this term,
solidarity? A sense of feeling together, a sense of identification. When you study in a
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particular class, you feel a sense of solidarity with that particular class, especially when there
is inner class competition, whether it is sports or games or cultural activities, there is
enormous amount of competition between different classes. Every student of the class usually
feels a sense of we feeling, a sense of belongingness, and a sense of loyalty to that particular
class.
Durkheim uses this term, solidarity, almost in the similar sense. So, he is asking this very-
very profound question, “How are individuals made to feel a part of larger social collective?”
This question is pertinent for both the simple societies, very-very small societies like that of a
primitive tribal societies and compare that with that of a much larger society, where you have
millions of people, millions of people becoming members of the society. You may, you can
ask this fundamental question, “How are individuals made to feel a part of this larger social
collective?”
What are the mechanisms through which each and every individual feels that they are part of
this larger society? Because he asked this question, because “How are their desires and wants,
constraints in ways that allow them to participate in the collective?” Because we know that
every individuals, their needs are limitless, their desires are limitless, and they are quite
different in terms of their orientation, their ideas, and their wants.
But somehow there is some mechanism through which we have been trained to have a check
on our desires and our needs, and we are kind of trained to live in a more or less amicable
kind of a situation. So, we have, I have mentioned in the previous class that Durkheim was
heavily preoccupied with the whole course of Social Equilibrium or Social Order or Social
Stability. So, how is that this society is able to function without so much of conflict or so
much violence? And Durkheim’s focus was always on the question of this equilibrium or
social order or social stability.
He understood social conflict as something abnormal, as something unwelcomed, something

that needs to be resolved at the earliest thing. So, this was one of his fundamental question,
“How is that human beings are able to participate in the collective? How are the activities of
individuals and other social units coordinated and adjusted to one another?”
In complicated societies like in modern societies, you have so many different types of
activities are being carried out, and how are they coordinated, how are they adjusted to one
another? And in order to explain that, he brings in this collective conscience to elaborate that,
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collective conscience or collective consciousness. He was concerned, so before elaborating
this, he was concerned with the system of symbols, particularly the norms, values and beliefs
that human beings create and use to organize their activity.
We discussed in the previous class that Durkheim was very particular that he wants to
understand society as an empirical reality as a thing. It is Sui generis. So, he argued that
sociology as a distinct social science has this distinct or exclusive subject matter, the social as
its realm of enquiry.
He believed that the system of symbols which becomes a part of our culture constitutes a
very important realm of inquiry, and he believed very strongly that scientific studies are
required to understand the role of these symbols, this system of symbols, particularly norms,
values and beliefs and to understand the way in which this belief system influence
individuals, both personally as well as collectively. This is something very important, both
collectively as well as personally.
The, he comes to this whole question of moral facts. Moral facts are phenomena like others,
they consist of rules of action, recognizable by certain distinctive characteristics. It must then
be possible to observe them, describe them, classify them and look for laws explaining them.
This is a very powerful argument.
Just like you have material things, a very concrete data available outside or just like for a
physical scientist, or a natural scientist, there is data available for him to explore, he argued
that for a sociologist as well, these symbolic systems constitute data, which, consist of rules
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of action recognizable by certain distinct characteristics, and they are moral facts, this
cultural domain about norms, values, and other things, they are phenomena like others.
If they are phenomena like others, and if they are something extremely important,
consequential and have so much of ability to influence the individual as well as the collective
life of individuals, then it, you must be able to observe them, describe them, classify them
and look for laws explaining them. And I hope, you understand that by these four categories,
observe, describe, classify and look for laws, he is talking about the scientific methodology.
He is arguing that you are able to study the value systems in a scientific manner. So, he then
goes on to define collective conscience as “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to
average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system, which has its own life, one
may call it as the collective or common conscience.”
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of a same society forms a
determinate system, which has its own life. So here, I bring your attention back to our
discussion on social fact yesterday. We discussed that, social fact is general. It has coercive
ability and it is external to an individual.
Similarly, when he talks about collective conscience, he is saying that the sum total of beliefs
and sentiments, which are held together by the members of the particular society and this
particular conscience, it has a determinate character, determinate system, which in turn has its
own life.
It needs to be studied on its own right. And one may call it a collective or common
conscience. So, it is a sum total of all the beliefs, systems held together by all the people, but
it is definitely more than an individual conscience. So, that is a kind of very interesting
argument that Durkheim brings in, why it is constituted, why it is created by each and every
individual, once it gets formed, it is much more than that. It is an extremely important
example of a social fact. So, it has an independent reality of its own. People born into a
culture internalize it more or less uniformly.
Whether if you remember our discussion about social fact, whether it is about religion, or
about how to get married, or how to conduct the death ceremony of a dead person, or how to
celebrate, how to express anger, how to express joy, or a host of other systems of practices
and beliefs are already there in a society, and the person is born into that and a person
gradually understands this process through the process of socialization. This particular aspect
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of culture, the system of values, beliefs, and norms constrain the thoughts and actions of
individuals. We have discussed it sufficiently in the previous class.
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There are four important variables of collective conscience according to Durkheim, and they
are extremely important. One is he calls it as the “volume”, the degree to which the values,
beliefs and rules of the collective conscience are shaped by members of a society.
What is the overall amount of these common values or beliefs and rules which are shared by
people? Can we very categorically say that everybody of the particular society believes in
that or that volume of this collective conscience is too high, that it is not leave out anybody,
there is virtually no person who is not a part of collective conscience?
Or can we say that this volume is not very high, it is very thin, it is very less, and there are lot
of other people in the society who do not believe in that? So, this is one of the questions. And
the second one is its intensity, the extent to which collective conscience has the ability to
guide and influence the actions of people. The mere existence of collective conscience is not
sufficient, we need to understand to what extent they are powerful.
Are they really powerful enough to shape the thinking and actions of individuals? Are they
really powerful, so, that everybody abides by that, everybody abides by this collective
conscience? And third one is “determinateness”. It denotes a degree of clarity in the
components of collective conscience.
Whether there is any confusion about what does a particular norm mean, or what does the
particular value means, or is there any ambiguity about it. And the fourth one is the religious
versus secular conduct, extremely important one.
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What is the ratio of religious to purely secular symbolism in the collective conscience? What
is the influence of religion in these value systems, norms, and cultural practices? Are these
cultural values heavily influenced by religious component? Are they theologically loaded or
are they secular? For example, a host of question, so for example, the question of getting
married, is marriage seen as a mere contract between two adults, willing adults or is marriage
seen as a sacrament? Or what about abortion?
How is abortion seen in a society? Is it seen as a sin or is abortion seen as an unwelcomed

one, or is it seen as a purely medical procedure bereft of any religious ideals? So, a host of
similar kind of questions, i.e. to what extent they are of this religious or secular conduct in
these value systems, in these cultural domains is something very important. So, one is the
volume. The degree to which they are, in which they exist. Second one is intensity, how
powerful they are.
Can people get away without observing this collective conscience or is it such a scenario that
people cannot think of disobeying them or what is the kind of determinateness? And fourth
one is the religious or secular content.
Then Durkheim moves on to other, maybe the best example though to understand these
things would be to take two crude examples of one, a very primitive society, a tribal society
and then second one that of an industrial or advanced urban society. Here you will see that
each of these four variables are very different in each of these societies.
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Thus, Durkheim introduces this idea of social morphology. So, Durkheim saw social
structure and he calls it as morphology, as involving an assessment of the nature, the number,
arrangements and interrelations among parts, whether these parts are individuals or corporate
units such as groups and organizations.
Durkheim belongs to this theoretical group called as Structural Functionalism. And they have
a particular preoccupation with this whole idea of structure. So, he understands social
structure as an assessment involving an assessment of the nature, number, arrangement and
interrelationship of parts, and whether these parts are individuals of corporate units, such as
groups and organizations.
He attempted to demonstrate the connection between social morphology and collective

conscience in different societies. Here, he is making a connection between the social
conscience on one side, and the kind of social structure on the other. He is trying to bring it
here and trying to argue up with a theory, that there is a connection between this collective
conscience and the social structure or social morphology or social structure. He argues that
the collective conscience of primitive societies and collective conscience of advanced
societies are quite different, because there is a particular relation between the social structure
and the collective conscience.
In order to bring in the connection between collective conscience and social morphology or
social structure, he introduces two terms that is Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity.
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The basic aim of Durkheim is to explain the kind of social change by bringing in the
connection between collective conscience and the social morphology.
He is talking about two types of solidarity, the sense of ‘we’ feeling or the sense of feeling
attached to a collective set of ideals. He talks about mechanical solidarity and organic
solidarity i.e. typology of societies based on their modes of integration or solidarity. So, it is a
typology based on their modes of integration, and what kind of integration that they have,
what are the kind of mechanisms of this integration for an individual with that of a society.
This distinction is both a descriptive typology of traditional and modern societies and the
theoretical statement about the changing forms of social integration that emerged with
increasing differentiation of social structure.
It is a descriptive typology, because he describes what the features of societies characterized

by mechanical solidarity are and he also describes what the features of societies characterized
by organic solidarity are. And also, it is a theoretical statement about the changing forms of
social integration.
So, as I told you that his fundamental objective is to explain social change, so it is a typology
on one hand and it is also a theoretical explanation about social change that takes place when
society moves from a mechanical solidarity to that of an organic solidarity.
He defines mechanical solidarity or Societies characterized by mechanical solidarity as

“segmentary”, “unorganized”, or “amorphous” exhibits only rudimentary differentiation,
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meaning very little specialization of roles and functions. People occupy similar social
positions, participate in similar social activities, perform similar economic tasks and live
similar lives. So, essentially he is talking about societies characterized by mechanical
solidarity as simple societies.
The best example would be that of a tribal society, a primitive society or a very basic agrarian
society. Agrarian society may not be a good example, but primitive tribal society would be a
more acceptable example because it is seen as segmentary, unorganized, and amorphous and
exhibits only rudimentary differentiation, in that there is not so much of differentiation in
terms of what people do, very little specialization of roles and function.
We know that in tribal societies, almost everybody does the similar kind of works and that
could be very vague kind of division of labour, based on maybe on age or gender, but
otherwise everybody does almost a similar kind of work. People occupy similar positions and
social stratification would be very less. People participate in similar social activities, for
example, the worship pattern of a religiosity, expression of a religiosity of a tribal society
would be same. Everybody does it in the same way, you will not have different arguments
about it, you do not have different worshipping patterns, different theology and perform
similar economic tasks and live a similar lives, almost everybody lives a similar kind of life.
This social type is formed through replication, yielding a collection of largely identical and
interchangeable individuals, each capable of subsisting independent of the other. Many of
these tribal societies have been characterized as unchanging, because they continued the
similar kind of lifestyle for the past several centuries.
So, they reproduce through replication without bringing in so much of changes, especially if
these tribal societies are cut off from the other civilizations or if they are isolated. And they
yield a collection of largely identical and interchangeable individuals, each capable of
subsisting independent of the other. Everybody knows hunting, cooking, everybody can lead
or everybody does lead a similar kind of life. In its most elementary form, a secondary
society consist of an absolutely homogeneous mass of indistinguishable parts. This is how he
characterizes a simple society characterized by mechanical solidarity, an absolutely
homogeneous mass or similar kind of people, often indistinguishable parts, the social
structure of such a society would be extremely less because you do not have so much of
division of labour, you do not have too many parts of that particular society and social system
would be very simple. In that sense, it is a very homogeneous society.
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When you look at the four features of collective conscience, with the prevalence of a strong
sense of collective conscience. In such societies, collective conscience is the sum total of all
these beliefs and values since that shared by people will be very strong. All four variables of
collective conscience are very strong here.
The cultural system is very high in volume that the group members of that particular society,
if we are taking an example of a tribal society, they will adhere by the given collective
conscience, the rules and regulations will be, that will govern their thinking, actions,
everyday life, outlook, tastes, opinion, everything will be kind of completely even
determined, influenced by the collective conscience, its intensity. Everybody obeys that,
nobody can even think of going against that. Of course, people might try but then they will
have to pay huge price for that. So, this intensity is very high. Determinateness, to what
extent it has clarity in terms of the rules? Can you move away from that, or can you amend
that?
Can you dilute that? These possibilities are very less, and it would be very high in terms of
religious content, the way in which it is explained, they would evoke or kind of theological or
magical or supernatural ideas, and these ideas will legitimize this particular social systems.
Then, what happens when people move away or people violates this collective conscience?
Deviation from the dictates of this collective conscience is viewed as a crime against all
members of the society and Gods. So, any violation will be seen as a crime against all
members of the society and also of the god because it is very high in terms of the religious
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content. If they do something that is not acceptable to that particular group, it will not be
tolerated.
In that sense, the idea of individual freedom, choice and autonomy are low in mechanical
societies. So, in such societies, the idea of individual freedom, the argument that I am an
independent individual, I can do whatever I want, and this argument simply does not exist.
Ideas about choice, agency, autonomy are low in mechanical societies. You know that it is
creating an ideal type, a kind of an ideal typical description, but it is important.
In contrast, organically structured societies themselves, societies which are grown much
larger, which has more differentiated parts, which are more complicated and the ideal typical
example would be that of an industrial urban society. They are typified by enlarged
populations, distributed in specialized roles in many diverse structural units.
In an advanced society, you will find that the division of labour is much higher. There are
people working in different designated roles, different extremely specialized areas are there.
And organic societies reveal high degree of interdependence among individuals and corporate
units, which exceeds legal contracts and norms regulating these interrelations and you know
that in modern societies, not everybody is involved in production of food. Very few people
engage in the production of food or agriculture.
Another set of people, they educate, they specialize as lawyers or that of medical practitioners
or accountants or computer analysts. They specialized to have a very high degree and are also
dependent upon others. This is in a stark contrast with that of a primitive society where the
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division of labour is very low, that people are more independent, the realm of your possible
activities are very less, so that you can do whatever you want or you can do almost every
important, very basic necessary functions for your survival.
Whereas in advanced societies, you are highly specialized, and the more you specialize, the
more dependent you are on others. This dependency create a system of interdependence
among others, which is ruled by exchange legal contracts and norms regulating these
interrelations. In modern industrial societies, where individuals are dispersed throughout a
highly diversified occupation systems, differences in people stand out more than their
resemblance.
In such industrial advanced societies, people are very different. These differences of the
people in terms of their thinking, ideas, orientations, ideological leanings, personal
preferences, they would be enormously diverse. You will see a plethora of opinion. For
example, the whole question of “Whether God exists or whether do you believe in God?”
This question simply does not exist in many of the tribal societies. They will not even ask this
question.
Whereas in a modern society, you have so much of, there is a spectrum of positions that you
can adopt from that of a committed believer to that of a completely committed atheist to
people who have different shades of spirituality, agnostics, and host of other ideas, and even
this whole idea of sexuality. This idea of sexuality is completely different in modern societies
compared to that of a primitive society, or how to lead a family life. Whether you can live
together, this whole idea of living together is something unheard of in a primitive society. So,
each and every aspect of human activity becomes more complicated in a modern society, and
average individual is exposed to so many different ways of doing the same thing.
He or she is bombarded with options. That level of exposure is something mind blowing,
which does not exist in a traditional society. Now, collective conscience becomes low in its
volume, intensity, determinateness and more in secular content than that of religion.
So, this is something very important because here, Durkheim also is indirectly hinting at
Weber when he talks about secularization as a process, where society gradually moves out of
its religious influence. So, most of these activities that human beings do in a modern society
are mostly bereft of its religious content.
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They do not attribute anything to the supernatural, they do not attribute anything to kind of
theological propositions, and rather they argue it on the basis of secular ideas, more rational
modern ideas. Again, I must caution you that these are ideal-typical representations. Where
the empirical analysis might be different.
So, this collective conscience becomes enfeebled and more abstract providing highly general
and secular value premises for the exchanges, contracts and norms regulating the
interdependencies among specialized social units.
Since, there is so much of diversity in these modern societies, this collective consciousness
becomes feebler. It becomes less powerful, it becomes enfeebled and more abstract. It loses
its concrete character. It becomes weighed, it becomes less powerful and providing highly
general and secular value premises for the exchange contracts and norms regulating the
interdependencies among the specialized social units.
In such societies, individual freedom is great. And Durkheim is a champion of individualism.

He says that individualism is the new God, he declared demise of God, and he argued that
individual is a new God. Modern societies, in modern societies, individualism is a sacred
thing.
It is a very fascinating argument, we will discuss when we come to this Durkheim’s argument
about religion. A secular and highly abstract collective conscience became dominated by
values stressing respect for personal dignity of the individual. So, the person becomes, the
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idea of human rights, individual rights, right to life, right to dignity, these becomes important
catch word, these becomes important slogans in a modern society.
Considerably divergent views, here are influenced by different ideologies and moral positions
almost for everything. That is what I just explained. Everything, how to rear your children,
how to give them education, whether you need to send them to the school or you can give
education to them through home-schooling, or and everything that we otherwise would have
taken for granted, that we would have done mechanically, now becomes a problematic
proposition of who does what in your house. As a male or as a female, what are the things
that you are supposed to do?
The gendered division of labour was not a major concern in traditional societies. There were
more or less clear-cut gender roles assigned. Women would cook. Men would go out or do
agricultural labour. But here in a modern society, these expectations or these normative
propositions have become more and more complicated.
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So, a fundamental relationship in the social world among the “structural differentiation,”
“values generalization,” and “normative specification” takes place. These structural
differences becomes more and more acute, then values become more and more general and
the normative specification becomes more and more weak.
As societies differentiate structurally, in sense as societies developed, societies increases in

terms of its specialization, values become more abstract. The collective conscience changes
its nature as societies become more voluminous. When society becomes too big, too broad,
the intensity of their shared set of values becomes much-much lower that intensity decreases.
Because these societies are spread over vast surface, the common conscience or culture rise
above local diversities and consequently becomes more abstract. And this is very different
when you compare a large society spread across huge geographic area with that of a more
localized community, traditional community where this commitment to these feelings,
commitment to their identity, and commitment to their folk beliefs will be much stronger.
This, he argues, has enormous implication or host of other institutions, including that of
religion, including law, education and a host of others, which we will discuss in the coming
class. So, in today's class, we began discussing his major work, the Division of Labour,
where he tries to answer this whole question, how does a society is possible, how is a society
possible? How does a society work? What is the connection between an individual and the
society? And you also wants to bring in a theorization about the society, the transformation of
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society or social change from a traditional society to that of a modern society. And that he
explains by bringing in two important aspects.
One is that of collective conscience and the other one is that of social structure. He argues
that when the social structure becomes more and more differentiated, then there is a
corresponding change that happens in the social consciousness. And that he explains on the
basis of this transition from societies characterized by mechanical solidarity to that of
societies characterized by collective societies characterized by organic solidarity. So, we are
winding up this class and the next class also will be a continuation of the same discussion of
the Division of Labour, because it is an extensive work. Thank you.
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Division of Labour (conti...)
Welcome back to the class. We are continuing our discussion with Emil Durkheim’s work,
Division of Labour. This is the second class or second session on his work Division of
Labour. In the previous class, we discussed some of the very important concepts that
Durkheim used in order to build his argument about a host of very interesting aspects starting
with this fundamental question that what holds the society together and how are societies
becoming more and more complicated.
In other words, Durkheim was trying to ask the question how and why are societies
undergoing social change or social transformation and what happens to a host of important
concerns or processes and dynamics when the societies move from one stage or one type of
societies to that of other. We discussed that he introduced this concept of collective
conscience as a sum total of beliefs and value systems that almost every member of that
particular society upholds.
We discussed its four important features and that on the basis of this understanding of
collective consciousness, collective conscious in other words, he distinguished societies into
two groups. One is a set of societies characterized by mechanical solidarity and the other one
as society is characterized by organic solidarity. So, we are continuing that discussion on his
magnum opus, the Division of Labour.
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In this class we are looking at some of his larger arguments with which follow the same logic
of this distinction between societies characterised by mechanical solidarity and that of
organic solidarity. So here, he brings in a very important analysis on the questions of law and
punishment, especially questions of legal system i.e. questions of that the whole idea of social
norms, enforcement of social norms and how this enforcement of social norms differ in
primitive societies and in modern societies and it is an extremely important argument.
For any student of sociology of law or even the law student, the discussions and arguments
and observations of Durkheim are something very important and canonical because he gives
some very fascinating arguments and accounts about this transforming the genesis and the
characteristics and evolution of laws in different types of societies. So, he argues that there is
a very close connection between the legal systems and the collective consciousness that we
discussed other day.
Collective consciousness does not exist in isolation or it does not exist in vacuum, it gets
reflected in a host of social institutions. So, we discussed that in societies which are
characterized by extremely rigid form of collective consciousness. There would not be much
of a flexibility, the idea of individual freedom would be very rudimental, and also would be
almost non-existent.
The idea of multiple forms of faith or multiple forms of political authority, marital
arrangement, multiple forms of living in different forms of family, all these ideas do not
exists because in societies characterised by strong collective consciousness, things would be
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more regimented, simple, similar, and homogenised. So, he argues that on the basis of this
collective consciousness, he brings in two very important types of legal system.
One is a repressive law, the other one is a restitutive law. Again, I am emphasising the
argument that he present this two as a kind of a idea with typical categories not as something
that has to be, that can be empirically verifiable at every place. So, one is the repressive law
and the second one is this restitutive law. So, in pre-modern era or in primitive societies as
we discussed, the first example could be that of a tribal society with its strong collective
consciousness, the legal code insists mainly of “penal” laws with “repressive” sanction.
His argument is that in the primitive societies, the primary aim or the fundamental objective
of the law is to punish. It is to punish, it is to teach a lesson, it is to repress the people who
violate the laws. So, that is why he uses the term it is repressive. This legal system do not
talk about reformation, this legal system do not talk about giving an opportunity for that
person to reform and come back and then get reintegrated, no.
These societies mostly function with an aim of penalising that person, punishing that person,
that is why he uses the term penal law or with repressive sanctions. It operates through the
informal agency of society as a whole rather than through the authority of specialized
institutions. And in most of the societies you will not have specialized institutions like a court
system or a legal system rather it works as a collective agency of the society because the
Division of Labour would be at a very rudimentary level in these societies.
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Thus, he argues that violations fall under the jurisdiction of penal law, they are considered as
crimes and they are subjected to repressive sanctions ranging from banishment to
dismemberment to execution. If you look into the kind of punishment that existed in pre-
modern world, it is a very interesting area of investigation, you will see that there were quite
a lot of mechanisms and machines and equipments were developed by these societies to
inflict maximum pain on the accused.
If there somebody was ordered to be killed, that killing process would be quite ruthless, it is
not that that person could be killed immediately but the a host of civilizations across the
world sophisticated equipments to inflict maximum pain and to ensure that the person suffers
the maximum before he breaths his last.
He talks about that there are different forms of punishment ranging from banishment, from
the community, especially what you in other words you understand it as this ex-
communication, a person is banished from the community, the community no longer has any
association with that.
You know that this was a very powerful form of punishment in India where members were
expelled from the caste, they were ex-communicated from the caste or from the village if they
have violated some of these caste rules and to that of dismemberment or to that of execution
and we know that each of these punishments are not reversible. Once they are done, they are
done and it cannot be a remedy and that is why there is quite a lot of discussions and debates
even now ranging about the acceptability of capital punishment because capital punishment is
an ultimate punishment which you cannot reverse it, you cannot undo that, once it is done,
the person’s life is taken permanently.
And so that is why there exists a host of discussion along with its moral and ethical standard
and who lot of discussions about the accepted variety of capital punishment in the modern
world. So, the punishment of, the function of punishment in such cases, Durkheim argues, is
less to exact vengeance on the guiltily rather than to reaffirm authority of the tradition and
secure the continued compliance of the innocent. It is an extremely important argument.
Here, he argues that the, you know that we usually ask this question, what is the fundamental
aim of punishment?
You know that once in a class when the teachers punish the children. Most of the time it also
has the intention of teaching a lesson to others, it is not only to punish the person, punish the
child who has done some mischief but rather it also is used by the teacher to send out a larger
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message to others that this particular child or this particular boy or girl has done something
wrong and I am punishing and this is the message for all of you to comply. You are not
supposed to violate the rules that I have set out or the school has set out and that is how
discipline was instilled or discipline was enforced.
Durkheim argues that in the pre-modern societies, in societies where this penal or repressive
laws existed the fundamental idea was to secure the continued compliance of the innocent.
So, the punishment becomes a performance, it becomes a symbol and a symbol which sends
out message to others who are yet to commit a crime. That is why in most of these places
punishments were performed in public, executions were performed in public.
Even now in Saudi Arabia, public execution is a public spectacle, public execution is a public
spectacle, beheading is a public spectacle. So, in quite a lot of traditional societies, pre-
modern societies and execution taking away person’s life was then in full public view. And
also if you enquire into these modalities, there were quite a number of very interesting cases
about how people’s lives were taken in a prolonged way. People were executed, people were
hung from tree branches, from a host of public things and the others could see these people
struggling for their life.
So, this whole idea of sending out message as a lesson is something very important. Legal
intervention serves the purpose of bolstering the collective consciousness, thereby
contributing to the continued cohesion of the society. Here Durkheim has this very interesting
argument that the punishment is something extremely necessary for a society. So, it is an
extremely necessary component for the society because the deviance as well as punishment
play very important role in reinforcing the boundaries of what is accepted and what is not
accepted.
Durkheim argues that you cannot imagine a society where there are no crimes, or there are no
forms of punishment and such a society simply do not exist. You cannot have a society of all
very good people, excellent people who does not commit any crime or who does not violate
any norms. That is impossible because a society requires a concrete understanding about what
is permitted and what is not permitted.
And this understanding is reinforced only when somebody tries to violate it and that person is
punished. And he is only talking about how this particular process undergoes change from
that of a pre-modern to that of a modern society.
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On the other hand, in modern societies with its advanced division of labour, the legal code
consists mainly of “cooperative” laws with “restitutive” sanctions. So, in a modern society as
the society is becoming more differentiated, society is becoming more complicated, there are
exclusive institutions such as a legal system and courts and advocates and then constitution
and law enforcement agencies. Such established division of institutions ensure that it mainly
revolves around a kind of a co-operative laws with a restitutive function.
Restitutive is to restore the damage that is already done. Its primary aim is not to annihilate
the person who has done a crime or the primary aim is also not to teach a lesson to the
innocent people, not to send out a message but rather to ensure that a collective coexistence is
possible. That is why he is emphasizing this whole argument of cooperative and restitutive
sanction and you know that the fundamental motive of modern legal system or especially that
punishment is to reform the culprit, reintegration of the offender even extremely important
objective of any modern system of punishment.
Every systems of imprisonment, the jail systems in across the modern societies are
increasingly getting oriented towards this whole question. What do you do? How do you
ensure that this person who has committed an offense is brought back to the mainstream
society? How is he reintegrated into the society, how can we reform? So, even a jail sentence
is consider to be an opportunity for this particular person to get reformed.
So, jail punishment is not seen as a system of inflicting more and more agony on this person
but it is seen as a opportunity for this person to get reformed and then to become a completely
functional integrated person once he or she is out of this imprisonment. So, cooperative laws
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such as civil laws, property laws, business laws, etc become the dominant form with the penal
law reduced to a proportionately small fraction of legal code, a very important observation
made by Durkheim.
In modern societies of course you have a criminal system of law that exists or to look into all
kind of criminal activities but an increasingly more number of legal domains emerge which
look into the civil cases in case of property laws, business laws, patenting laws and cooperate
laws, a host of laws which simply did not exist in the pre-modern societies. So, this modern
legal system is designed less to quash evidence than to achieve restitution, less to punish
criminals than to restore the orderly functioning of the social life.
The fundamental aim is to restore the orderly functioning of the social life. Restitutive law in
contract to repressive law, Durkheim argues, serves the purpose of managing cooperative
relations and enabling individuals and institutions to work together in a regular fashion. And
this is the most important argument. The legal system it changes its character once it moves
from societies characterized by mechanical solidarity to societies characterized by organic
solidarity.
From a repressive character, it moves into a restitutive character. The aim of the law in a
modern society is to encourage, enable people to work together, live together amicably and
then function the society in a more regular manner.
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And from here we will spend some time trying to understand how does Durkheim brings an
element of social change. Now, so far from the discussion we must have understood that he is
talking about two scenarios, one is a set of societies characterized by mechanical solidarity,
another set of societies characterized by organic solidarity. Now, he is trying to explain how
this change happens? How societies do from a mechanical solidarity moves into that of an
organic solidarity?
Durkheim’s view of social change revolves around an analysis of the causes and
consequences of increases in division of labour with respect to the volume and the density.
So, his analysis of social change revolves around the whole process of division of labour
which becomes the parameter for Durkheim to understand social change. This is a very
important argument and he talks about this argument in terms of the volume of division of
labour and the density of the division of labour.
The volume refers to the population size and the concentration. You know that division of
labour becomes imperative once the population of a society exceeds a particular limit. You
cannot have no division of labour with a huge society, division of labour is bound to that.
And the density, it pertains to the increased interaction arising from the escalated volume. So,
this density of division of labour, he talks about if he is again a necessity that emerges out
when because of this increased interaction arising from the escalated volume of a population.
So, when a population grows in size, it becomes more complicated, the interaction gets more
complicated because there will be division of labour and historically it is you will see quite
lot of evidence which connects the kind of between the increasing population size and the
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type of a prosperity that human society had very limited number when they were living a very
nomadic, hunting, gathering kind of a life because the material availability was very less
whereas, this invention of agriculture, the production of surplus food, it played a very
important role in increasing the number of people who are available.
This really led to increase in division of labour, people could devote more time into other
activities because everybody does not need to spend their time on cultivation for agriculture
and that is why societies became more and more complicated. He says that “the division of
labour varies in direct ratio with the volume and density of societies and if it progresses in a
continuous manner in the course of social development, it is because societies become
regularly denser and generally more voluminous”.
He is talking about how societies move from a small, simple, less populated society into a
more voluminous one. So, this volume, it is not only the number increases but when the
number increases the intensity of their interaction also increases.
Durkheim saw migration, population growth and ecological concentration as causing

increased material density which in turn caused increased moral or dynamic density that is,
escalated social contact and interaction. So, all these aspects, the migration of people from
other areas to one area, population growth and ecological concentration because if there are
natural barriers or natural boundaries, then you get to see that large number of people are
concentrated in a particular geographic area.
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This ecological concentration as causing increased material density which in turn also causes
what Durkheim calls it as a moral or dynamic density that is a escalated social contact and
interaction. The increase rate of interaction characteristic of large population within a
confined ecological space cause increased competition, or “struggle” among individuals.
Now, Durkheim is explaining this actual mechanisms that leads to the increased division of
labour. So, when there are more number of people and what they are congregated in a given
space he argues that it leads to increase in competition or struggle among the individuals and
in such a scenario talents and resources play important role in differentiation among the
people into different division of labour.
Now, Durkheim provides an impression that it is an automatic process that takes place people
with better character, people with better abilities and better knowledge and better talents they
tend to occupy more specialized fields compared to others who do not have that. People with
certain skills they might become artisans, people with better intellectual abilities might
become the kind of scholars or priest or others. So, people with better physical ability, people
who are good at martial arts might become a group of people who can be called as a soldiers
or martial art experts.
So, he is presenting this argument as something rising out of the increased concentration. The
function of the division of labour is to promote social solidarity or societal integration. So,
once this increased number of specialization emerge that leads to organic solidarity because
one group requires the other groups, the group of soldiers require the group of cultivators, the
group of artisans, the group intellectuals, the group of priest, the group of religious scholars
and then others in order to protect and it is said marked difference from that of a pre-modern
era where everything, everybody that that one person was almost doing all these functions.
So, here he brings in that kind of a transformation.
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The concept of function allowed Durkheim to judge whether a structure, such as the division
of labour, was functioning normally for a particular type. So, now from here Durkheim
comes into this whole question of evaluating a particular society and here he brings in his
whole idea what is normal and what is pathological and we discussed that in the previous
class as well this has been a major concern for Durkheim throughout his career of what is
normal and what is pathological. And he took a very moral position he argued that societies
in a pathological state cannot be allowed to continue or it should be rectified and he believed
that sociology as a discipline has the ability to make those kind of corrections in a scientific
manner.
So, he argued that the concept of function allowed Durkheim to judge whether a structure,
such as a division of labour was functioning normally for a particular type of society. So, if
there is a particular level of division of labour Durkheim argued he can look at and then say
whether it is normal or pathological by looking into the kind of functions that this particular
structure puts out of it. So, he was pre-occupied with the question of normal and pathological
with a strong moral position as we discussed. These considerations led him to analyze
abnormal forms of the division of labour.
He argues that division of labour while it emerges in a very natural manner also can assume
certain abnormal characteristics and this is extremely important argument because he was
really puzzled by or he was really worried by a host of issues that he saw in many of his of
modern societies especially that of France and many other European societies he was really
troubled by what he saw as a set of abnormal or pathological conditions.
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He discusses a couple of types of his abnormal or pathological forms of division of labour

and one is this anomic division of labour a very important aspect which directly has a kind of
concerns with that of Karl Marx because we discussed in the previous class that Marx is
somebody who really theorized alienation, he transformed that concept from a very idealist
position to that of a very materialist argument that alienation is a product of capitalism and
you cannot have a society free of alienation within the capitalistic system. So, Durkheim also
speaks about alienation but markedly different from a Marxian analysis.
He argues that the challenge of maintaining individual’s commitment to common set of

values and believes while allowing them to pursue their specialised interest. He argued that
there could be always conflicts between a person’s actual passion, a person's actual interest in
in pursuing his own interest and his commitment to and compulsion to the kind of larger
collective, larger collectivity. If a person is quite passionate about singing, but at the same
time he might be forced to do a kind of a manual work because that is what is demanded from
the society. So, that he argues it could lead to a situation something similar to alienation.
When transformations of society from a mechanical to an organic basis of social solidarity is

rapid, it causes the generalizations or enfeeblement of values. With generalization,
individual’s attachment to, and regulation by, values are lessened. So, when this
transformation happens, people usually lose their kind of the very strong sense of attachment
to certain values and people get alienated.
Alienation is a result at the individual level that because of various reason they are not able to
point themselves as being a part of a larger collectivity. But markedly, he did not agree it as
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something inevitable unlike Marx who argued that you cannot eliminate alienation without
eliminating capitalism. Because capitalism has this structural ability to alienate workers, as
per Marxian argument which we discussed in the previous class.
Then second one is what a second type of abnormal or pathological division of labour that
Durkheim talks about is the forced division of labour. Division of labour does not emerge
spontaneously, rather it is being forced upon people. Durkheim saw inequalities based on
ascription and inheritance ‘abnormal’ as it works against the natural division of labour based
on qualities and abilities. It looks like Durkheim was rather naive in understanding the power
of this ascription and inheritance.
If somebody inherited a huge amount of wealth or somebody is born into a feudal family,
upper caste, upper class elite family, the kind of privileges that person is endowed with is
something monumental and that cannot be and that person is already on a much privileged
position in terms of his or kind of capitals or kind of cultural, social and economic capital
which is incomparable with a person who does not have any of these capitals or does not
have any of these things.
But Durkheim argued that this one, this particular path, this particular division of people who
already have this ascribed qualities, somebody is being born at a particular race, particular
family, and particular caste and then inherited lot of wealth, and cultural capital. This he
argued as abnormal because it works against the natural division of labour based on qualities
and abilities. For him, the division of labour must be a natural, it has to be based on a
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person’s own ability. A person's own orientation and ability must really decide what should
be the kind of specific occasion that he or she wants to specialise.
But Durkheim identified that is not how the society works. He frames that as a kind of a
pathological situation. He analyses exploitation and class domination, but believed that with
the transition into an organic society, these social ills will disappear. So, that is why I
mention that we had rather a very naive understanding about social inequalities.
While he was critical of Marx, he also did not pay attention into the actual functioning of
power relations, how powerful could be different forms of domination and how domination
uses various resources including derived forces, including cultural domains and a host of
other things to maintain the kind of a domain which was the favourite area of enquiry of Karl
Marx.
Then, the inadequacy, the third type of problem that Durkheim identifies is the inadequately
coordinated division of labour. Division of labour exists but it is inadequately coordinated.
Durkheim noted that specialization of tasks is not accompanied by sufficient coordination,
creating a situation where energy is wasted and individuals feel poorly integrated into
collective flow of life. In his view, specialization must be continuous with functions highly
coordinated and individuals laced together through their mutual interdependence.
Such a state, he argued, will be achieved as the natural and normal processes creating organic
solidarity become dominant in the modern society. So, he had an understanding of a very
natural process of social change and an organic society which always tries to reach a kind of
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an optimal or complete integration which is realised through a very natural coordinated
division of labour.
If that does not happen, it leads to quite a lot of problem. If division of labour is entrusted, if
division of labour is imposed that creates quite a lot of issues. So, if individuals are poorly
integrated into collective flow of life that according to Durkheim can lead to lot of issues.
So, in order to, we if summarise this work combined in this class as well as the previous
class, as I told you this is considered to be his magnum opus. Durkheim’s most important
work. Of course, he has written work on suicide, on Rules of sociological method, but his
doctoral work and his book the Division of Labour turns out his most important work. And
because it presents a very ambitious original work of Durkheim by that helped him to
theoretically and empirically analyse inner dynamics of society as well as social change.
If you look into the objective of his work and into the theoretically purview of this work, it is
a very ambitious one. On one hand, he is explaining social change, on the other hand he is
characterising societies into two different types; modern and pre-modern through a very
innovative argument about this all argument about collective consciousness and then
characterising societies into organic and then mechanical solidarity through this analysis of
division of labour.
So, in that sense, it is a very ambitious one and this work laid foundation to insightful
sociological analysis of law, morality, functional analysis and a host of other issues. So, as I
told you anybody who needs to study the relation between society and law cannot do that
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without studying Durkheim, the kind of a relation between law and society, an extremely
important and a fascinating area of enquiry. How are laws getting formulated, what is its
connection with society, the kind of a reciprocal relationship between law and society?
You know that laws are the products of society, at the same time laws also change society
and every nation, especially a country like India is a fascinating example, especially with
imposition of colonial legal system, what did his colonial legal system do to Indian traditional
forms of living? You can have different opinion about it but structurally how did it alter
Indian society? How did it alter the cultural systems and social institutions of Indian society?
Fascinating analysis. Any such analysis or law or on functional analysis or on morality this
Durkheim’s work is a foundational one. So, I am ending the class here and we will resume
the discussion on Durkheim with his discussion on Suicide in the next class. So, thank you.
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Suicide (1897)
Welcome back to the class. Let us get into yet another very important contribution of Emile
Durkheim, an extremely popular and famous work of Emile Durkheim. It is his study on
‘Suicide’ which has attracted worldwide attention over these years and it has been widely
seen as one of the foundational studies on sociological studies on suicide. A study that could
fundamentally change the scholarly understanding or scholarly perspective on this particular
phenomenon of people ending their own lives.
As a scholar of sociology, Durkheim was able to establish a very important an argument that
even while suicide is an intentionally personal act, it needs to be studied sociologically or
sociology as a discipline has a unique ability to offer a very distinct perspective to explain
why large number of people commit suicide in different parts of the world.
So, in that sense a study is extremely important and it remains as one of the best illustration
of his use of sociological methods to understand the society. This work was published in
1897.
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As per Durkheim in the study of suicide he wants to demonstrate his sociological

methodology as outlined in the rules of sociological methods. One of the most important prim
reasons why Durkheim wrote this book was to establish or to illustrate that a scholar of
sociology can actually use sociological methods to study an extremely important social
phenomenon.
I hope you remember that we had an extensive discussion on his book. So, in this work, rules
of sociological method we have discussed that Durkheim elaborates the very specific
processes or the very specific steps that a scholar needs to adopt in order to understand a
particular social phenomenon. So, he wanted to demonstrate how his book, this ‘Rules of
Sociological Method’ can be used in the real life.
How somebody can actually employ the rules of sociological method to study a particular
facet of social phenomenon and second, was of course to study this very enigmatic
phenomenon that every year a certain number of people commit suicide and Durkheim
observed that this number of suicides in many of his European societies are increasing and of
course he was quite troubled with that.
These are the two prime motives why he wrote this monumental work. The most important
point that he identifies is that suicide, especially the rate of suicide is a social fact which is an
extremely important insight for us. As I just mentioned earlier, suicide is considered to be one
of the most intense personal act somebody deciding to take one’s own life and it is an
extremely intense personal decision.
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Especially if it is not under duress or if it is not under compulsion in most of the cases the
person takes the decision to end his or her life and it has been widely studied across the
history by reducing it to the mental activities of that person because most of the explanations
and even during Durkheim’s times the most prevalent explanations to understand suicide was
that of psychological explanation.
Even now we attribute depression or mental agony or host of other psychological reasons
behind this act of committing suicide, but while Durkheim agree that when an individual
commits suicide it is a personal act. His focus was not on the individual act, but on the rate of
suicide in a large population. This is an extremely brilliant entry point to understand this
phenomenon of suicide as a sociological phenomenon.
The rate of suicide in comparison with the different population or the rate of suicide in
comparison with the same population in different periods in history and there are variations in
it. According to Durkheim it is a very important entry point for the discipline of sociology
because if you say 10,000 people committed suicide in this year in a given population and
next year also you will have more or less 10,000 people or the year after again you will have
more or less 10,000 people. So, we do not know who the people who will be committing
suicide are, but out of this huge population 10,000 people more or less are destined. Destined
in the sense not because of some divine entity, but this 10,000 people are bound to commit
suicide and this is a disturbing statistic.
Durkheim argued that it has to be related with the problems of social solidarity and the
relationship between the individual and the society. So, unlike psychological explanation or
there were quite lot of other explanation that during his time which connected for example
climatic changes, climatic changes with that of suicide rates or there were quite lot of
psychological explanations connecting with mental health and individual psychological
composition of people.
But Durkheim rejected all these arguments and then put forward very persuasive argument to
it in the form of social solidarity and the relationship between the individual and the society
that holds the crux of this whole question. Why that a certain number of people in a given
society are bound to commit suicide and I hope you remember this definition of this word
social solidarity i.e. the degree of affinity that a person experiences with his or her own
group. So, he wants or he believed that the study would shed light on the causes of general
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contemporary maladjustment being undergone by European societies and suggest remedies
which may relate. So, as we discussed earlier, Durkheim very strongly believed that his
sociological analysis must be able to do some kind of a good to the society.
It is not simply for the fact of understanding more about the society that he was studying
sociology, but sociology must be able to remedy certain or it must be able to rectify certain
maladjustments, it must be able to rectify certain kind of pathological conditions. We
discussed about his idea of normal and pathology in the previous class. So, he also had this
agenda in his mind to study why suicide takes place. Especially why certain abnormal levels
of suicide takes place and he believed that his sociological inquiry might be able to rectify
that.
He defines it is a very interesting definition. He defines suicide as all causes of deaths

resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of a victim himself which he
knows will produce this result. It is an interesting definition. He argues that it has to be an
intended one the person who commits suicide must know its result, it should not be an
accidental one and it has to be either direct or indirect or it should be a positive or negative
act.
Positive in the sense you do something deliberately to kill yourself or negative for example if
you deliberately do not take food for an extended period of life to commit to end your life
then it is a negative act you are not doing which you are supposed to do. So, this is the way in
which Durkheim defines suicide. He did not study individual suicide, but rather the general
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pervasiveness of suicide in a population which is a society’s aggregate tendency towards
suicide. Suicide as a social fact as a thing. This is what we just mentioned. He is not
interested in why x or y committed suicide because of various personal reasons, but he was
interested in the kind of a general pervasiveness of a suicide in a population or to what extent
people of a given population are inclined to commit suicide or what is the proclivity of a
particular population to commit suicide. This is society’s aggregate tendency towards suicide.
In that sense, Durkheim argues that suicide in a social fact. Just like your population growth
or death rate, you know that every year a certain number of new members are supposed to
come into the society, certain number of people are supposed to die. So, seamless and these
things you can say that they are biological factors which are most decided by biological
conditions on biological factors, but suicide is not something similar to that.
Suicide is a decision taken by an individual, but interestingly the suicide rate also is almost
stable like birth rate or death rate and this was something really puzzled Durkheim. So, that is
why he call that it is a thing it has its own existence, it is a Sui generis, it is outside even
while individual takes the decision. There are whole lot of factors which are outside him
which really pushes that person to commit this extreme act.
Why a single case constitute psychological fact, the rate of suicide, and the proportion of
voluntary deaths for a particular population during a specified time period is uniquely a social
phenomena. Hence the sociology as a discipline comes up exactly the same point that we
discussed. While a single case constitutes a psychological fact the rate of suicide when you
have hundreds of thousands of people committing suicide.
The psychological explanation really becomes insufficient you need to look at why that these
10,000 people experienced a kind of psychological breakdown or psychological problem at a
given period in time and then in that respect psychology as a discipline has very serious
limitations. So, as a particular population during a specified time period is uniquely a social
phenomenon and hence the discipline of sociology.
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As we discussed Durkheim was one of the early sociologist who very systematically used
data, statistical data. He used it, he classified it, and he did statistical analysis with that. So, in
that sense it is extremely empirically rooted study. So, his data on the history of suicides in
European countries from 1841 to 1872 showed two tendencies. The incidence of suicide
though rising in some cases in later years remained fairly constant over a time for any
particular country.
This is quite interesting why that a certain number of people decide to commit suicide over a
period in time. Why that there is not so much of drastic difference, how is that a society is
able to push a limited number of people to this extreme steps or why that a specified number
of people decide to commit suicide every year without much of a variation and this is an
extremely important question.
Second, the rate of suicide varies substantially from one country to another with some
exhibiting consistently higher rates and others consistently low over rates and also when you
compare different countries, when you compare different populations there is huge variations
between the rate of suicide or between say for example France or Germany and Italy there is
so much of variation and these variations seems to be kind of permanent without much of a
disturbance.
Why that in certain countries people are more prone to commit suicide while in certain
countries they are not. So, each country the statistical level appears to have its own particular
disposition towards suicide and this is the kind of a very pertinent question, what is the kind
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of a particular disposition towards suicide in a certain countries. The propensity for suicide
also varies according to the characteristics of groups within a society.
Also, within a group Durkheim used other socioeconomic or cultural profiles of the
population, their age group, their religion, their marital status, their income and a host of the
usual socioeconomic and other data that you compile differing by gender, religion, family
status and occupational positions. This is the reason why I mentioned that this is a classic
sociological study where he brings in this very concrete categories.
Concrete labels or concrete concepts of frameworks within a group to differentiate and then
try to understand how each of these categories have a bearing or how they act as variables.
For example, gender or religion or family status they act as variables which has a kind of
bearing on the output of suicide numbers. So, the rate of suicides are higher among men,
higher among married men and higher among Protestants in comparison with Catholics and
so on.
The rate of suicide, Durkheim concluded is a product of social forces external to the
individual. It is external to the individual, it can only be explained by the collective
characteristics of moral constitution of people’s immediate social environment. So, this is the
crux of his argument even while an individual commit suicide purely on the basis of his or
her own intentions, individual psychological intentions.
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There is a host of social forces which are external to the individual that these forces are very
powerful and this can be explained by the collective characteristics of a moral constitution of
people’s immediate social environment. He explains and he elaborates what it means the kind
of an idea of a moral constitution, how people are morally connected with the larger group in
which they inhabit.
Individual factors are not irrelevant. Durkheim is not completely making psychological
factors as irrelevant, but Durkheim acknowledges, that their influence is always conditioned,
suppressed under some circumstances, heightened under some others by the properties of the
social environment. He would argue that the psychological factors that might drive the person
into this extreme act is or the psychological factors are heavily conditioned by larger
sociological or social processes.
Without understanding this larger culture or structural social factors you cannot really
understand why a particular given population exhibit a particular rate of suicide every year.
That is why it is considered to be an eminently sociological analysis. After very forcefully
arguing that the rate of suicide is a social fact and it must be studied through the perspective
of sociology, Durkheim proceeds to classify or categorize suicides into four types.
Four types of suicide; one is altruistic, fatalistic, egoistic and anomic and these are social
types. These are the four broad categories on the basis of his formulation that the suicide rate,
differing suicide rates must be understood on the basis of relationship between the individual
and the society. The moral relationship between individual and society so each type refers to
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a social milieu where there is an imbalance in the relationship between the individual and the
group.
We are going to discuss what exactly this imbalance is. Each of these four categories he
argues it refers to, emerge from particular social context or particular social milieu where
there is an imbalance in the relationship between the individual and the group. The
relationship between the individual and the group is unhealthy according to Durkheim
whenever the presence of the group in the life of individual is felt either too strongly or too
weakly and this is an extremely important point.
To what extent is the presence of the group or presence of the society is felt in the lives of the
individual. What is the kind of a connection between the individual life and the society in
which that individual lives and he argue that if that link is too strong or if it is too weak.
These two extreme conditions are not really healthy for the individual as well as that of the
society.
It is a very fascinating argument. It should not be too strong or if it is too strong or if it is too
weak then both these conditions will produce unpleasant consequences like the higher degree
of suicides. How do we categorize this relation between the individual and the group? So, he
talks about it in two dimensions, one is the degree of integration and the question of
regulation.
While integration depends on the people being attached to social groups, regulation depends
on people being subjected to social control. In other words integration refers to attachment
and regulation refers to social control and these two axes, they are very important for us to
understand.
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First one; the altruistic suicide. Altruistic suicide, Durkheim argues it emerges when there is
an excessive integration, the kind of a connect between the individual and the society is too
strong if that there is an intensely strong connection between the individual and the group
then that society is supposed or that society has higher chance of producing more altruistic
suicide.
Altruistic suicide is characteristic of social environment mainly found among primitive

people. He mostly say that this is a characteristic of a primitive tribal society where this
group’s solidarity is very strong and inferior societies where the life of the individual is
subordinated to the life of the group. People derive their sense of worth entirely from their
membership and participation in the group and this is an extremely important point.
An individual finds the meaning of his or her own life on the basis of the group that he or she
belongs. So, what happens to the group would be the ultimate yardstick to evaluate the worth
of that particular group and host of examples and he gives examples of Samurais in Japan and
host of people especially that of the primitive societies who commit suicide if their side faces
a kind of a defeat or a host of new examples that we can talk about from these modern
societies. Almost every case of this suicide bombers is a perfect example of this altruistic
suicide because the person commit suicide, the person blows up himself or herself for the
sake of the group that she or he belongs.
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A person who volunteers to become a suicide bomber knows that he is committing suicide, of
course by inflicting larger distinction on the enemy, but that person thinks that his or her life
is worthless for a greater glory of their own group.
On the other hand, the opposite group or the opposite type is this egoistic suicide, is
diametrically opposite to that of altruistic suicide. Egoistic suicide as the word ego refers to is
the opposite of altruistic suicide arises from a social environment characterized by
insufficient integration or exaggerated individuation. Here the link between the individual
and the society is too weak.
There is an exaggerated individuation, an individual is something as inward looking.

Individual finds no sense of belongingness to the group, individual is kind of isolated all the
time, individual does not feel any sense of belongingness, he or she is not able to identify
herself with the group. There is an insufficient integration. Individuals are only loosely
affiliated with the groups.
Disengage from social activities and detach from collective ideals. They would be mostly
loners, people who are not able to identify themselves with the larger group, they do not share
the ideals of the group, they do not find much meanings in their own life, they are not able to
participate in the larger processes of society, and they are detached from the collective ideals.
They believe that they do not really fit into the larger group, they do not really feel a part of
that. Give priority to individual goals or communal purpose and that is why he talks about, it
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as egoistic suicide their individual sense, their self, their ego is on the forefront and abide by
their own consciousness as opposed to that of social norms and primary cause of high rate of
suicide in modern societies.
This has been a usual cultural trope as people are becoming modern and once they become
modern they lack all the kind of connections with the society, they later become
disenchanted, they become dissolution and then finally commit suicide.
Durkheim finds this the rate of suicide is higher among Protestants than either Catholics or
Jews. As I told you he also undertakes, he also takes up a kind of analysis of the socio
cultural characteristics of each of these groups and while doing that he found out that the
suicide rate among the protestants is much higher than that of the Catholics and the Jews and
we had a very interesting and important observation, a very important one.
He argued that Protestantism is more individualistic religion allowing a greater freedom of

inquiry and it includes fewer common beliefs and practices leaving ample room for the
individual to be the author of his own or her own belief and it is an extremely important
argument and you must know the kind of difference between the Protestantism and
Catholicism.
Catholicism is considered to be more traditional, it is more traditionally bound. It has this

Church and the Priest as this ecclesiastical authority. It gives so much of importance to
freedom and this figure of priest undertakes all the responsibilities to explain the theology for
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the Laity. The relation between the Laity, the ordinary believer and the God is mediated
through the priest. In that sense the Laity or then ordinary believer is only supposed to
mechanically adhere to that.
Whereas in the case of Protestantism you simply do not have this much of important role
given to clergy. A person is supposed to establish his or her terms of reference with the kind
of a relationship with him and the almighty, God because Protestantism also emerged as a
result of a kind of a rationalist explanation of the scriptures. It is a kind of a rationalist
understanding of the scriptures.
Protestantism is definitely a more rationalist explanation or rationalist attempt to make sense

of rather than the traditional one and that puts more emphasize, more pressure on the
individual to chart out his or her own spiritual cause which would inevitably will ask more
and more questions which and you do not have any final authority like a clergy or a priest
who will give a full stop to all these kind of different interpretations and questions.
In other words the degree of individual freedom, the space of individuality in Protestantism
is much higher than that of Catholicism. So, that is why there is ample room for the
individual to be the author of his own belief and while on the one hand we think that being
the author of one’s own belief is a sense of empowerment.
But on the other side there is also a tremendous pressure because a believer needs to be
always sure that he or she is on the right path and that puts enormous pressure on a true
believer whereas in the case of a traditional society, a traditional worship pattern this believer
can completely handover this responsibility to the clergy, to the priest and he or she is only
supposed to obey what is commanded by the priest.
Because Priest are holy people they are the kind of intermediate between the God almighty
and this ordinary mortals. So, suicide rate is lower among people with children and larger the
family, the stronger the effect as compared to the childless parents have tighter social bonds,
close and highly affective ties to others and more active social life. The role of family
Durkheim explains on the basis of the quality of ties among the people and it declines during
“major political upheavals”, this rate of suicide comes down during major political upheavals,
“electoral crises” and national wars. These events sharpen collective feelings and concentrate
people’s activities towards a single end. Thus, fostering heightened levels of social
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integration. We know that at the time of a social or a natural calamity or a war between
different countries.
There is an increased sense of national consciousness, there is an increased sense of national

unity and integration and Durkheim argued that during these times the rate of suicide comes
down because even this egoistic person who otherwise does not identify herself with the
society does identify during this particular time in comparison with the earlier period.
The third one according to Durkheim is a fatalistic suicide. Fatalistic suicide is characteristic
of a social environment where a people’s future is pitilessly confined and their passions
violently constrained by an oppressive discipline. So, in the case of fatalistic suicide people,
you know the fatalistic this comes from this whole idea of fate, once you think that this is
your fate what does it mean, something is we always and we have heard people saying that
we cannot do anything that is the fate.
Fate has a sense of helplessness once you believe or you accept certain things as your fate.
You think that there is nothing much can be done. You only will have to accept the fact,
accept the fate, but you cannot change that. So, Durkheim talks about increasing number of
suicide committing during this particular time when people feel that their life is pitilessly
confined, they cannot do anything.
Their life is sealed and the examples, he gives the example of suicides of slaves. A slave he
has very little to aspire for or even examples in military that the number of murders and
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suicides taking place in military is very high because there is an absolute sense of authority
which controls each and every aspect of a person’s life and many of these suicides are
explained on the basis of fatalistic suicide.
Because the soldier believes that he cannot escape this kind of very oppressive system. So, in
such circumstances marked by excessive regulation, the individual is subjected to an
intolerable physical or moral despotism lives the life bereft to possibilities. So, this emerges
from the excessive regulation, that is so much of regulation on an individual’s society,
individual’s life and he or she thinks that there is absolutely no possibility of altering it.
The person feels so powerless, a slave feels so powerless, and it is destined to end like that. A
solider feels that he is too powerless to question the authorities and Durkheim also gives the
examples of men who marry too young, the married women without children those who have
very less opportunities or less options to alter seriously alter their life.
And the fourth one Durkheim argues which is again diametrically opposite that of fatalistic
argument suicide in the anomic suicide. Anomic suicide, the opposite of fatalistic suicide
prevails in a social environment where individuals are subjected to insufficient regulation
where there is no moderating force restraining their desires and ambitions. So, here the
individual is on a free ride, individual is on a ride by himself.
There is no regulations about their desires, the kind of means that they adopt to achieve these
goals and so in that sense there is lack of control, there is lack of regulation. Individuals are
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kind of completely free flowing and that is why it is considered to be anomic suicide and
Durkheim makes it very clear that anomie is not normlessness in that sense of the word. It is
the not complete lack of norms, but there is lack of clarity on the norm.
Because you cannot have a society where there is no norms, but by using the term Anomie
Durkheim is talking about the lack of clarity on the social norms. For example, what are the
things that we can aspire for, what should be our legitimate goals, what should be our
objectives and what are the socially accepted institutionally sanctioned ways of achieving
these goals?
Durkheim believes that every society needs to have these words very well defined otherwise
individuals will be on their own. To achieve happy and healthy existence humans needs well
defined limit to rein in their otherwise infinite appetite. So, this infinite appetite it could be in
terms of all kind of pleasures. It could be for more wealth or sexual pleasures or any kind of
such kind of desires.
In the absence of an authoritative moral framework specifying the kind of life they can
reasonably hope for, the ends they can realistically pursue and the needs they can legitimately
expect to satisfy people will never be “content with their lot.” So, here in this absence of this
institutionalized framework which tells you what the legitimate goals that you can aspire for
are. What are the specific routes or specific means that you can accept, you can look forward
to people fall into thing of anomic suicide.
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So, this is the kind of a graphic representation of these two axes in which Durkheim
elaborates his position. On this vertical axis you have altruistic suicide and then egoistic
suicide which talks about the whole question of social integration and on this vertical axis
you have fatalistic suicide and the anomic suicide. When you have extreme form of
regulation you have fatalistic suicide when the regulation comes down you have anomic.
When you have integration comes down you have egoistic, when you have extreme form of
integration you have altruistic. So, this represents Durkheim’s larger scheme of things.
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So, let us conclude what looking into his major arguments and why that this study of suicide
assume so much of significance or why that it attracted so much of attention from scholars of
all these years. So, he argues that humans can potentially reveal unlimited desires and
passions which must be regulated and at held in check. Human beings and each individual is
capable of desiring or having ambitions without any kind of limit.
If left to their own imaginations and ambitions they can come up with very wild or extremely
dangerous or extremely diverse kind of imaginations and goals. So, Durkheim believed that it
needs to be contained, it needs to be shaped, it needs to be given a kind of a direction and
total regulation of passions and desires create a situation where life loses all meaning.
On the one side if you cannot really let people live the way they want on the other hand you
cannot really confine everybody, you cannot really control everybody to live the way some
more powerful agency wants and that kind of a society where people will feel that they lose
the meaning of life, they will not find anything meaningful. So, human needs in the personal
attachment.
These attachments connect them to the collective purpose the whole lot of social solidarity
and again Durkheim argues it should not be too much, it should not be too weak as well. So,
excessive attachment can undermine personal autonomy to the point where life loses meaning
of the individual. So, here again this is the whole host of striking a balance, you cannot have
too much of excessive attachment. And you cannot have too less attachment as well.
So, these are the larger arguments that he put forward in his sociological analysis suicide, but
as I mentioned earlier the significance to his work lies in its methodology as well. He was
successfully able to use how to put his methodological argument into practice.
Defining certain things or identifying a social fact, collecting information and then studying
them objectively and then coming up with certain hypothesis and doing analysis to verify the
kind of a conclusion that you reach with that. So, that is why the study of suicide still
continued to be one of the most fascinating initial classical works of Emile Durkheim which
really help us to understand the kind of a sociological perspective on certain things.
Why that a sociological perspective should not limit to the individual phenomenon rather it
must look at the collectivity. It must ask larger questions and to understand that even the most
acute, most intensive personal actions can be or are influenced by the larger social processes.
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So, let us stop here and we will come back with maybe two more lectures on Durkheim in the
coming classes. Thank you.
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Elementary forms of Religious Life (1912)
Welcome back to the class. Today we are discussing a very interesting work by Émile
Durkheim, maybe one of the earliest sociological work on religion especially theoretical
work on religion. His book titled “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” was published in
1912.
The book is widely considered as one of the foundational works on anybody who wants to
understand the sociological explanation on one of the most important social phenomenon,
namely religion. Even today, it continues to be a classic. There are quite a lot of critical
reflections on Durkheim and his work for everybody who wants to understand the
sociological explanation on religion.
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Durkheim was deeply interested in the nature of symbols and their reciprocal effects on
patterns of social organization. You must have understood that this particular point is very
pertinent in case of Durkheim because for him society constitutes a reality in itself and the
task of sociology is to make sense of that.
For him social fact is a very broad category which includes both the material and symbolic
systems, social institutions and other forms of social organizations. As a sociologist,
Durkheim had very deep interest into this whole question of the nature of symbols and their
reciprocal effects on the patterns of social organizations.
You know that this whole idea of values and symbols, they constitute a very important part
of our culture, especially the non-material aspect of our culture and the kind of reciprocal
relationship between the non-material aspects of the culture and the material aspects of the
culture is something very important.
This is something very unique to that of the human beings as a species that we have
enormously advanced systems of symbols, values, virtues and ethics and other things and
they vary in a significant manner. They shape the material aspect of our society. Durkheim as
a sociologist was deeply interested in this.
So, he saw in religion a chance to study how interaction among our individuals leads to the
creation of symbolic systems that will lead to a series of functions. But his interest in religion
emerges as a reflection of his interest in much larger questions.
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Religion definitely represents one of the very important and interesting systems of symbols.
In religion he saw a chance to study how interactions among individuals lead to the creation
of symbolic systems that has a series of important consequences on the society. So, for him
religion is a symbolic system which has the ability to lace together individual actions into
collective units.
We already saw that one of the most important concerns of Émile Durkheim is to see that
how is that human beings who are quite unpredictable in terms of their desires, actions,
orientations, and motivations are able to work or are able to act in more or less predictable
ways; more or less institutionalized ways; more or less uniform ways.
How the symbolic systems are able to lace together individual actions into collective units
and regulate and control individual desires. We have discussed I think sufficiently in the
previous discussions especially when he talks about anomie that the social systems that are
capable of moulding individual desires are something very important.
You cannot allow or you cannot have a society where individuals are completely free to
pursue their own wild dreams with the scant regard to the overall ethical, social and moral
fabric of the society. A society cannot work in that way because many things what you
consider are something very important and very defining of your personality, defining of your
essence, might be violating somebody's freedom or it could be inimical to the entire for the
overall benefit of the society.
In that sense that came; again, taking a very conservative view argued that the symbolic
systems are extremely important or capable in regulating and controlling individual desires
and attach individuals to both the cultural, symbolic and structural morphological facets of
the social world.
How these symbolic systems play a very important role in defining and attaching individuals
to the symbolic systems as well as that of the structural aspect of the society? So, Durkheim
uses this term morphology when he talks about social structure. Both this how individuals are
attached to both the symbolic as well as the structural or morphological aspects of society
was a major concern for Durkheim.
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Even before he writes this book on ‘Elementary Forms of Religious Life’, Durkheim has
written in his work on ‘Suicide’ about the importance of religion: “Religion is in a word the
system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the
characteristic way of thinking of the collective existence.”
You know, it is a very instinctive argument and these ideas are there in Durkheim’s mind
even when he writes “Suicide”. But he develops these arguments more forcefully in his work
of this “Elementary Forms of Religious Life”. For him, religion is in a word the system of
symbols by means which society becomes conscious of itself. It is a very important definition
of religion which he elaborates in this book.
Religion in a way is a society itself. It is in the way in which society becomes conscious of
itself. It is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence and this is a very
radically different explanation in comparison with a host of other definitions given by social
scientists. We will elaborate that. Because he does not invoke the idea of God, idea of a
transcendental power and a particular theology. Rather he has something very radical to say
when he talks about religion. He has a definition which we will come to that.
To understand the essence of religious phenomena without the distracting complexities some
sociocultural overlays of modern systems. With the very title ‘The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life’, Durkheim really wanted to understand the most elementary, the most
primary forms of religion. That is why he studied one of the most primitive societies. He
studies this Aranda aborigines of Australia. He studied their totem system and it is from this
system of totemism that he developed the study.
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He did not want to study the articulations or religiosities of modern societies because it could
be quite complicated. So, he believed that some of the most elementary societies, some of the
most primitive societies exhibits the most elementary forms of religion. This is the reason
why he wanted to study religion without getting distracted by the complexities of this modern
society.
Here we come to the very interesting definition of religion. It is an extremely interesting and
important definition. He defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative
to sacred things”, I have highlighted this word sacred in red colour, “that is to say, things set
apart and forbidden- beliefs and practices which unite into a single moral community called
Church, all those who adhere to them.” and it is something very important.
Religion is a system of a unified system of beliefs and practices and this is one of the first
component. He understands the religion not as an incoherent system of beliefs. He
understands religion as a very coherent, unified system of beliefs and practices because it
appears as a complete whole.
The moral system, the theology, the practices, the belief system, the rituals, everything appear
or everything is presented to a believer as a coherent uniform system. So, that one justifies
the other. One interprets the other. One legitimizes the other. So, you will not find much of a
contradiction in religious explanations.
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He argues that it is a system of beliefs and practices related to sacred thing. This is the crux of
his argument. The opposition between sacred and its opposite that is the profane. He defines
sacred not as something connected with God.
He is not defining sacred as something related to God, Almighty or something transcendental

or supernatural. He is defining sacred as that is to say things that are set apart and forbidden.
Things that are of course a part of your life but things which are not part of everyday life.
Things which you do not use it for as a kind of an instrumental manner. Things which are
kept aside. Things that are forbidden. Things that always comes with a kind of an aura. And,
a set of beliefs and practices which unite it into a single moral community called as Church,
all those which who adhere to them.
He understands it as a moral community, as a group of people who are united by a unified

system of beliefs and practices related to a particular notion of sacredness. Even the plethora
of material things that are available, he makes a distinction between a sacred and the profane.
Profane is the thing that which we do not attach anything special; any special characteristic
towards that, things which we use without much of a thinking, things which we use in our
everyday life whereas sacred is things that are set apart; things that are forbidden.
This distinctive character of religion is that the world is divided into sacred and profane
realms which are opposed to one another. The sacred is surrounded by myriad rituals and
prohibitions which allow it to maintain a distance from the profane life. This is a very
important argument put forward by Durkheim.
He argued that in every society, whether it is the modern capitalist society like the kind of
society the Paris, for example in which Durkheim lived or the most primitive tribe that he
wanted to study. In every society Durkheim argued that you will be able to find these two
distinct domains.
One is the domain of profane where things are usual. You use everything without much of,
you do not really you use them instrumentally. They are part of your utilitarian existence.
You use them as tools. It is a part of your everyday life.
On the other hand, there are certain things, there are certain things which are kept aside. They
are forbidden. You approach them with lot more caution. You approach them with a lot more
respect. There is something attached to that and what is that something is what Durkheim is
trying to explain.
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So, sacred and profane realms are opposed to one another and you cannot really mix them
together. You cannot, make the sacred into profane. It is not entertained in any society. It is
not tolerated in any society: the profanation of the sacred. On the other hand, you can make
certain profane things into sacred. There is a social process into that. But these two realms are
considered to be separate.
The sacred is surrounded by myriad rituals and prohibitions which allowed it to maintain a
distance from the profane life. So, there are a quite a lot of rituals and procedures and myths
and ideas that give a kind of a unique stature or unique position to that of the things that are
defined as sacred.
Again, I am repeating, he is not talking about the sacred as anything to do with God or
anything to do with the idea of a supernatural force or a transcendental force. He is not
defining it. So, any object can become sacred. Religion brings together believers into the
ceremonial organization of the church and this is another very important argument.
Anything can become a sacred. It could be a stone or an idol or it could be book or it could be
pen, it could be a relic, it could be piece of bone, it could be a tree, it could be a river.
Anything can become a sacred and why that certain things become sacred and why that
certain things remain as profane is a very interesting question.
In order to understand that you will have to look dwell into the deep historical and cultural
domains of those societies. So, religion brings together believers into the ceremonial
organization of the church. A church, here he is using the church as a group of a moral
community who are brought together; who have a kind of a social organization; something
that is binding them together.
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So, he argues this the earliest form of religions were found in the totemism of the aboriginal
natives of Australia. This is why he identifies this totemism as the most elementary form of
religious life and hence the title. Totemism, you attach certain kind of sacred qualities to
quite a lot of objects around you. It could be an animal, rock or a mountain.
But these totems they occupy a very distinct position in the life of every tribe and you do not
kill a totemic animal. While you can hunt every other animal, you do not kill it. Killing a
totemic animal is considered to be a major sin. This totem is a particular object which is
declared by the community and hence it assumes a kind of a particular special status.
Individual members share in the sacredness of the totem attached to their clan, which imparts
a kind of pan-spiritualism to the entire culture. This whole set of ideas, beliefs and notions of
sacredness associated with a particular type of a totem. A totem could be an eagle. Or it could
be a bear. It could be a dear. Or it could be a particular rock. Or it could be particular tree, but
the point Durkheim highlights is this cultural orientation and the argument that this particular
object is divine, it is totem is shared by everybody. Nobody violates that. This particular
belief system of this exceptional quality or exceptional orientation towards this particular
totem has been very strongly, internalized, and it is transmitted from one generation to
another and that is why there is a pan-spiritualism of this entire culture. There is nobody who
does not believe in that.
Here again I invite your attention to Durkheim this fundamental difference between organic
and mechanical solidarity where in societies characterized by mechanical solidarity,
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everybody adheres to the similar kind of belief in comparison with modern societies
characterized by organic solidarity.
So, the totem symbolizes the clan and the spirits associated with it. If the clan and the spirits
have the same symbol, that is because the spirit is in reality society; the spirit, or God and the
society are one and the same. So, it is here that Durkheim extends the argument and to say
that the totem really represents the society. The totem really represents the clan. The clan
really represent the society.
So, by worshipping the totem, these people are actually worshiping the society and it is a very
radically and a very provocative argument. It is a very, non-religious argument, it is a very
secular explanation of a religion. So, that is why for Durkheim, like Marx, the secret of
religion is found in society.
You come across a very interesting parallel between the arguments of Durkheim and Marx.
But both of them have different orientations. While Marx is extremely critical of religion and
believes that it is a false consciousness. Marx believes that people fall prey to the institution
of religion because they live in a very inhuman and exploitative world.
Once Marx believes that human beings will be able to tide over this false consciousness.
They will be able to overcome this false consciousness when the revolution comes; when the
final socialist or communist society comes into being.
Durkheim does not have any such kind of hopes. He does not believe that religion is false
consciousness. He understands that religion is an extremely important institution which is not
going to fade away. Whichever society that you have, you will have this idea of religion. You
will have to have this idea of sacred.
This is an extremely important argument that every society will have certain things which
will be considered as sacred. He is not saying it is God. Keep it in mind. He is not saying that
every society will have idea of God. No, he is not saying that.
But he is saying that every society will have something understood as sacred by a set of
people. So, Durkheim like Marx, the secret of religion is found in society but their opinion
differs very significant.
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Durkheim investigates the ways in which the sacred is maintained and communicated to
people in everyday life, even in non-religious communities. According to Durkheim, religion
is society worshipping itself; religion expresses community. So, in the latter part of his book
he brings forth this argument very forcefully.
He investigates the ways in which the sacred is maintained and communicated to the people
in everyday life, even in non-religious communities because you require a system, you
require a mechanism to maintain and communicate to the next generation about the
sacredness of this particular object. It cannot be left alone.
Of course, it takes a very unconscious character; a kind of a mechanical continuation after

sometime. But there has to be much calibrated process of maintaining its sacredness and this
maintenance of the sacredness that significantly depends in maintaining kind of an exclusive
esteem for this particular sacred thing; and in communicating, in educating the new
generation, in spreading its importance across the group.
So, they are very important conscious institutionalized activities, even in non-religious
communities. According to Durkheim, religion is society worshipping itself; religion
expresses community and this is an important argument. Of course, quite a lot of later
sociologists of religion have disagreed with it. They have criticized Durkheim for that.
Durkheim understands religion as created by human beings. There is nothing divine about it,
it has nothing to do with a God. It is not the God has created, given certain ideals and human
beings followed that and then created a particular religion. He completely negates those
arguments; he completely refutes those argument.
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For him, religion is nothing but society worshipping itself. Religion is nothing but a
particular form or particular manifestation of community. He argues that individuals need to
affirm their sense of community, their collective vitality, their shared ideals through rituals
and ceremonies whose prototype is religion. Every society requires certain mechanism
through which the people re-affirm their commitment to this sense of community.
Every society requires certain ceremonies, rituals, procedures, spectacles, occasions through
which they are able to revitalize. They are able to revitalize the very essence of their
belongingness and this is what Durkheim argues as the inherent quality of religion.
Celebrations and reunions are regenerators of moral force in which the individual gains a
sense of strength from the participation in rituals and actually feels the power of collective
experience. This is something he was significantly influenced by whole lot of social
psychologists who pointed out that when you are part of a large group or for example, when
you walk along with a procession or when you take part in a huge celebration, you experience
something different.
You act differently and the mob psychologies many times explained in this particular manner.
Or huge processions, when you take part in a procession; when you raise slogans. When you
raise slogan, your individuality is at a much lower level and something takes over you. You
experience a kind of a different life. You are able to identify with the group with the much
higher sense of strength.
So, celebrations and reunions are regenerators of moral force and this is the kind of a
connection between the individual and the community in which the individual gains a sense
of strength from the participation in rituals and actually feel the power of collective
experience.
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So, by participating in shared ceremonies, whether religious or secular, the individual finds
himself in moral harmony with his comrades and develop more confidence, courage and
boldness. A whole lot of explanations about communal riot or communal violence is usually
explained in the similar line.
Why that people can become so cruel? Or why that people can act so boldly at a time of
communal violence? Or ordinary people, very innocent people they can unleash some of the
most severe forms of violence and something takes over them in a mob fury.
It could be looting; it could be arson; it could be murder; it could be rape. The people get
transformed and Durkheim argued that whether in the form of a religious congregation or a
congregation of people during a national celebration of the Independence Day or a cultural
day, people experience that. When they come together in a large group, when they have
similar kind of ideas, then something takes over them.
Their individuality goes down at a much lower level and collectivity emerges. And in that
sense, this moral connection, the moral force, the kind of a quality of relationship, the
intensity of relationship between the individual and the society and the community assumes
so much of power. It becomes extremely powerful.
So, by participating in shared ceremonies, whether religious or secular, the individuals finds
himself in moral harmony with his comrade. It is a very strong sense of friendship; a very
strong sense of relationship and develops more confidence, courage and boldness.
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Durkheim states that ceremonies and rituals perpetually gives back the great ideas, a little of
the strength that the egoistic passions and daily personal preoccupations tend to take away
from them. This replenishment is the function of public festivals, ceremonies and rites of all
kinds.
So, when an individual leads a solitary life, he is all alone or she is all alone and this solitary
individual the person who leads a very egoistic life. Once they come together, they participate
in these rituals and other things, he says that this replenishes the function of public festival,
ceremonies and rites of all kinds.
Society consecrates certain ideas as sacred even if they are not religious. This is an
extremely important point which I mentioned several times. Society has the power to
consecrate certain things. It has the ability to make certain things sacred from the profane.
So, here the point I am emphasizing again and again that he is not talking about anything
other worldly. He is not talking about anything divine. He is talking about the process
through which certain things are transformed into divine i.e. how this divinity is created, is
constructed.
It has nothing to do with a God coming from above and making certain things sacred. It is the
social processes itself make certain things sacred. These things do not need to have anything
to connect with transcendental or superhuman or supernatural or divine, nothing of that sort.
Even some of the most mundane and ordinary things can be consecrated. Thus for example,
nationalism in many countries is sacred idea with its own symbols, beliefs, prohibitions, etc,
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which people feel is a part of their very identity. The best example is of a non-religious
sacred thing that your idea of nationalism and its symbols and its rituals.
You know with so much of respect that we are supposed to deal with our national flag.
National flag is not a piece of cloth. Even legally if you use it just like any other piece of
cloth, you will be punished under law of the land. Even in other countries where these laws
are not very stringent, national symbols assume a kind of a sacred position.
National flags are respected, they were revered. National anthems even you know that even in
India when national anthem is played, you are supposed to stand still. You are supposed to
maintain silence or the kind of ceremonies associated with your Republic Day Parade for
example.
Durkheim would argue that that Republic Day parade is just like a religious ritual. There is so
much of parallel, so much of similarities between a religious ritual festival and the Republic
Day Parade that takes place in front of, in New Delhi on every year. So, Durkheim would
argue that it is exactly like a religious rituals’ sans the kind of divinity or divine elements
associated with that.
Every aspect of religious belief where certain things are prohibited, certain things are seen as
something very important and Durkheim argues all these things really represent the quality of
the sacred.
For Durkheim believers communing together create a collective effervescence, a kind of

collective fusion and ecstasy which is recreated through ritual and celebration. So, this is a
very important argument that he says when people come together, when believers come
together, something happens among them.
He uses the word, this collective effervescence i.e. some kind of a releasing of energy taking
place. Some kind of effervescence taking place when people come together. A kind of a
collective fusion and ecstasy which is recreated through the ritual and celebration.
These rituals and celebrations according to Durkheim have the ability to create this collective
effervescence when people come together, share the similar feeling, share the similar type of
extent of religiosity whether it is related with sacred or with the divine aspects or even with
the so called secular aspects.
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Collective effervescence is the source of new social ideas and beliefs like that of Russian and
French Revolution. It is very interesting. Durkheim says that when these huge revolutions
take place, that leads to a new set of ideals; that gives birth to new set of practices; new set of
worldviews and that they have the ability to completely transform the society.
So, Durkheim sees religion’s influence everywhere. That is why I mentioned that for
Durkheim a society without religion is impossible. He sees religious influence everywhere.
The fundamental categories of thought originated in the division of human nature into sacred
and profane.
He understands it even as a kind of a structural prerequisite as something unavoidable;

something so intrinsic; something so essential that human society have these two division
called as the sacred and the profane. This dualism has social origin, though it is expressed in
religious terms. It has a social origin. It originated through social processes but it expresses as
a kind of a religious terms.
So, notions of causality, Durkheim argued could emerge only after people perceived that the
sacred forces determined events in the secular world. Notions of time and space could exist
only after the organization of clans and their totemic cults.
Durkheim argues that even when you look at this evolutionary trajectory of every society, he
makes a very important argument that a most of taken for granted no dimensions in your life;
for example, the idea of time, space, community, all these things must have come into
existence only after this divide is realized.
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This divide between the sacred and the profane because people must have perceived that the
sacred forces determine the events in the secular world. So, host of theories about emergence
of religion almost argues this line. They believe that quite a lot of natural forces like thunder,
or a lightning, or a wind; they have the ability to control the human life or the spirit of dead
people. They have the ability to control the human life.
So, this must have, Durkheim argued, must have created this distinction between the sacred
and the profane. Because you do not have any society which does not have the idea of sacred
in its myriad forms. So, notions of time and space could exist only after the organization of
clans and their totemic cults.
Time again, in the form of whether it is a linear time or a cyclical time? Or the kind of space.
How do they understand the idea of the space? What is the boundary? What is the kind of in-
space? What is kind of an out-space? So, all these categories which we now take for granted,
have come into existence only after this division of society into sacred and profane.
The most essential, it is a quotation from Durkheim, “The most essential notions of human
mind, the notions of time of space, of genus and species, of force and causality, of
personality, those in a word, which the philosophers have labelled categories and which
dominate the whole logical thought, have been elaborated in very womb of religion. It is from
religion that the science has taken them.”
It is a very evocative argument that he believes that each of these categories have taken place
in the womb of religion. In the womb of religion, it is from region that the science has taken
them.
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He argues in a very persuasive manner, that the functions of religion are to regulate human
needs and actions through beliefs about the sacred. So, religion has this fundamental function
of regulating human life and to attach people through ritual activities and rites in cults, to the
collective.
As long as these necessary requirements are there that a human being cannot live a lonely
life. They have to come together and something should bind them together. He also argued
that religion will exist in every society and only this character of his binding force might
differ.
In a traditional primitive society, it could be the totemism. In a more highly advanced

societies, it could be the notion of God or it could be polytheistic religion or it could be in
other societies, it could be a monotheistic religion. In Muslim societies, in Christian societies,
it could be monotheistic religion.
In a more advanced societies, late modern societies where you do not simply have any notion
of God, it could be certain values that actually hold you together. Notions of rights could be
something holding together. The notion of human rights, liberty could be something that
assumes the character of sacred. The whole idea of, the expression, the freedom, the freedom
of expression. For many people, it is a sacred thing.
Human right is a sacred thing for many people. Individual liberty is sacred thing for many
people. And many modern societies attach a kind of a sacred character to the secular ideals
and this is an extremely important insight given by Durkheim; a fascinating insight.
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With that categorization, he is able to provide a theoretical lens with which you can
understand the most modern contemporary society and as well as the some of the most
primitive societies.
As people participate in rituals, they affirm these internalized beliefs and hence reinforce
their regulation by, and attachment to the dictates of clan. Moreover, the moulding of basic
mental categories such as cause, time and space by religious beliefs and cults function to give
people a common view of the world, thus facilitating their interaction and organization.
It provides them with a common view of the world because that is something very important.
What guides this particular society? What are the things that are accepted? What are the
things not accepted? How a person is supposed to behave? What are the accepted practices of
doing certain things? What is moral and immoral?
So, Durkheim would argue that without an agreement, without a consensus on these basic
premises, no society will function. For him, religion plays a significant role in providing
these kinds of explanations.
So, now, once we try to, evaluate or kind of summarize his argument. This ‘Elementary
Forms became the foundational book for the emergence of sociology of religion. As I told
you in the very beginning, no student of sociology of religion, or no student of sociology is
able to pursue anything further without resorting to this argument of religion by Durkheim.
Because it is so fundamental, especially this division between the sacred and the profane.
Because so far, so till then all almost every explanation of religion revolved around the whole
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question of supernatural, about the whole idea of God, about the idea of a transcendental
God, about a supernatural power.
But here Durkheim comes with a very provocative argument, that by religion you are actually
worshiping the society. It is a society that gets, refashioned or re-appeared as religion and that
is why this social origin of religion and this division between secular and the sacred, and the
profane and the sacred or the secular and the sacred.
They have the fundamental distinction between this secular and the sacred and has given rise
to a whole lot of very interesting theoretical debates about secularity, about the emergence of
secularism, the process of secularization and a host of very fascinating theoretical or debates
in the latter decades and in that century.
So, let me stop here. We will have only one more class on Durkheim. It is a short evaluative
session on the Durkheim’s argument and with that, we will end this session. Thank you.
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Durkheim on Education, Colonialism and Democracy
Welcome back to another class on Durkheim and in this class we will discuss the
Durkheim’s positions on some of the important themes like on education, on colonialism
and democracy. Education is important because he has written extensively on education.
His engagement with the question of morality is very specifically connected with the
theme of education and Durkheim is widely considered as one of the earliest sociologist
who had very significant theoretical arguments about the nature of education, the purpose
of education, the philosophy of education, and a host of other aspects.
Personally as well, Durkheim had initiated lot of reforms in education. During his
lifetime, he played a very active role in initiating a series of reforms in education during
his time and colonialism is an important theme, because Durkheim really belonged to the
period when European colonialist expansion was at its peak. It is important to know, as
an intellectual, how far he was sensitive to this particular process, and to what extent he
was able to come out or was he ever, was he at all able to come out of the influence of
Euro-centrism, and then democracy is another important aspect.
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It is just like the case we looked at Karl Marx and his argument about colonialism and
democracy. It is also important to look at how Emile Durkheim looked at or Emile
Durkheim analyzed this whole idea of democracy.
Now, Durkheim has written extensively on themes related to education, specifically on its
moral and especially on its moral considerations. Writing in the republican tradition of
Aristotle, Rousseau and Kant, Durkheim argues that Liberty entails the conscious
creation of the laws which govern one self and by extension, the society.
So, he very strongly believed that the Liberty entails the conscious creation of the laws
which govern oneself and by extension society, as people become more free, people
become more, people enjoy more form of liberty, that Liberty comes with responsibility,
that Liberty comes with higher state of social and individual responsibility, a kind of a
more a higher form of responsibility about regulating one’s own life and that of society.
So, in that sense, Liberty is not the freedom to be left alone to what one wishes.
It is one of the fundamental arguments that the Liberty is not without any control, or you
cannot have any idea of liberty without any control or without any kind of checks, your
freedom is always confined. So to follow one’s own self-interest, rather, it means
autonomy, the rational control of one’s own life.
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A modern individual and citizen, whole republican tradition emphasized on the fact that
while we enjoy certain liberties and freedom, that also comes at a cost that we are
supposed to be seen as responsible, we are supposed to regulate our own action, we must
collectively come to certain conclusion about how do we regulate, how do we control the
kind of a society in which we live.
A modern society is not a place where everybody can do whatever they want. Your ideas,
your goals, your desires are well defined, and what is accepted and what is not accepted
is very specifically drafted and you cannot go beyond that. So, Durkheim very strongly
believed in this particular position about the freedom coming with whole lot of
responsibility. So only in the artificial realm of laws and institutions created by people
are justice and freedom possible.
It might look a kind of contradictory but he argued that this notion of justice and freedom
is possible only in the kind of institutions and realms like laws which are aimed to put
more and more control over that. Second, finding balance between the freedom and the
regulation is something very important and they are not available in the natural world.
It is quite obvious that when we talk about this natural and social world, Durkheim is
very clear that an Animal Society, an animal kingdom which does not have any rule of its
own, is quite different from that of a human society where both written as well as
unwritten rules govern the common activity of a society.
Most of these rules emerge on the basis of a host of ethical considerations, of course,
mostly from religious, and also from the non-religious considerations. So, education
involves learning of social rules and morality. This is a point where he connects his
whole question of education with that of morality. At the same time, it is also important
to note that he is not talking about morality in a rather conventional sense regarding what
is good and what is bad on the basis of certain theological propositions. But on the other
hand, he is talking about morality in a much higher sense where education involves
learning social rules and morality. A moral education is an indispensable prerequisite for
a good society. It then becomes very interesting to know what exactly he means by this
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moral education as you know, that in many of the education institutions, especially those
run by religious institutions, this moral class is something very important.
But Durkheim is not talking about that, Durkheim is not talking about how there are
certain notions of what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, or from
certain theological positions, he is talking about something much higher and different.
He argues that autonomy based on the rational understanding of one's action, and belief is
an important ingredient of moral education. So an individual must be able to take
decision on himself, or an individual must be able to take decision for herself or for
himself. And this ability to take such decisions must be the product of a quality
education.
So, autonomy based on rational understanding of one's own action, and he believes is an
important ingredient in moral education. It is a kind of a rational ability of an individual
to take a decision, appropriate and matured decision. These decisions must be based on
certain ethical considerations. So rationally, understanding a belief, or social practice can
make us assent to it without feeling constrained or coerced.
Here, he brings in this whole possibility of rationality, that how an individual is able to
make use of her own rationality to come to the conclusion that I need to go by these rules,
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I cannot act recklessly, I need to control my desires, I need to control my way of
behavior, because I have certain responsibility to the society. And if a society as a whole
needs to exist properly, then everybody must have these rules as well as obligations.
Thus he argues emphatically, that educational system must enable a pupil, a child to
develop this kind of rationality, that about so that somebody accepts the rule as their own,
they have a faith in the rule, they will not think that the rule is being imposed on them
unreasonably.
They will not feel that these rules are created by somebody else, and it has been imposed
on them, and they will not feel victimized rather, they will feel that they are part of these
rules are made for them which have a positive contribution.
In that sense, he argued that they can assent to it without feeling constrained or coerced.
This feeling of constrained or coercion, Durkheim would argue that it can have very
disastrous consequences in the form of leading to suicide, we discussed about
normlessness, we discussed about different kind of fatalistic suicide. Durkheim always
believed that a kind of a more civilized, more humane exchange is required to bring out
this kind of an ethical element of these rules.
Educators must be able to explain the reason for the social rules and look at how
important is this argument, education must be able to explain the reason for social rules.
Here, he wants the intellectual involvement of both the child as well as that of the
educator, they are supposed to have a kind of a very healthy interaction between these
two sections of people. This rational dimension is what distinguishes secular from
religious morality.
Thus education invariably has a critical dimension in which rationality can be used to
criticize existing social norms and practices. This is an extremely important point that he
talks about when he distinguishes between the religious society and a secular society. In a
religious society, this whole idea of what is good, what is bad, what is accepted, what is
non-accepted, these are all supplied to you or they are imposed on you, they are
transferred to you from a higher pedestal of religious authority.
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Is not it? A religious scholar or religious priest, especially in the case of Catholicism
which Durkheim is very familiar with. A Catholic priests or for that matter a Pope, Pope
is also the spiritual authority, and Pope also was the political authority. So this
combination of both spiritual as well as authority provides him extraordinary power to
influence and inflict the kind of rules, ethics and morality that they want on the
population.
There is hardly any dialogue. There is hardly any questioning. It is all willful acceptance,
it is all you are supposed to accept, because you cannot question the Pope, you cannot
question the religious authority. Durkheim is not talking about that kind of morality.
Rather, Durkheim is talking about a morality, a kind of an acceptance of morality that

comes as a result of intellectual engagement as a result of dialogue. That is why he
believes that the educators must be able to convince the people about why that they are
supposed to believe in that.
This rational dimension is what distinguishes secular from religious morality. Thus,
education invariably has a critical dimension in which a nationality can be used to
criticize existing social norms and practice. Durkheim really encourages this ability or
this quality of the children to rationally criticize, reflect over, criticize the kind of
political system that exist in different societies or the kind of an authority structure that
exist.
In other words, Durkheim believed that even the children have active stakes in this whole
process of education, they should not be seen as the passive recipients, as if they are kind
of a blank state on which the educator can write whatever they want, but education must
be a kind of a completely democratic process, where the learner also has equal stakes, an
important idea that has been incorporated into host of educational theories.
Education must encourage a free spirited and civic minded individual. This is the kind of
ultimate objective of education according to Durkheim, it must create a free spirited and
civic minded individual, individual who is kind of responsible, who has the kind of a
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civic mindedness and who is free spirited, who is not somebody who would become
easily convinced by existing power structures.
The moral rules never can be understood and implemented mechanically, but require
intelligence in their application. He is talking about a kind of a morally higher form of
existence, where the rules are accepted, they are widely practiced, shared, because the
population also understand that these rules are important.
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He writes that human nature is multiple and diverse, not singular, and education should
reflect this diversity. This again is a very interesting debate within sociology, to what
extent this modern education imposes a kind of singularity or impose a kind of a
uniformity on the student population and thereby obliterating a host of alternative or
other forms of ideas, lives and other things.
He argues that it has to have the ability to incorporate multiplicity and diversity. Students
must understand different cultures and historical eras to appreciate the complexity of
human life.
It is a very lofty ideal that while students do live in a particular context and find that
particular context extremely natural, convenient and the best, they also must be exposed
to alternative forms of existence, either in the past or in other parts of this world, because
that exposure would really help them to understand their own situation in a far better
manner.
Education must move beyond the examples of a Eurocentric focus on Greece and Rome,
when looking at history, because there are others which are again different commonly
regarded as being less advanced, but which nevertheless are worthy of investigation
because they too constitute manifestations of the human spirit. So it is interesting to note
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that Durkheim was aware of this whole Eurocentric idea, Eurocentric nature of
knowledge system or intellectual life during his particular time.
He sincerely argued that the education system must come out of this Eurocentric
character, and must be able to understand and encourage students to explore lives outside
the European region, because they also are manifestations of human spirit. He also very
strongly believed that Europe really represented the epitome of human advancement or
human history.
But the same time, he believed that while being standing at this top of human civilization,
students must understand how other forms of lives existed, because that also teach them
about how human spirit manifest in different conditions. So students should learn that
different cultural attitudes and practices are not bizarre, but are grounded in a particular
social order which is an important argument. He is talking about cultural relativism here,
cultural relativism is an argument that you must evaluate a culture on the basis of its own
moral and ethical rules, instead of jumping into value judgment, saying that what they are
doing is right, food could be an excellent example. We all have very strong preferences
towards food and we tend to judge other countries or other societies who eat certain kinds
of so called weird kind of food or strange kind of food.
People who eat dog, people who eat snake, or people who eat insects are often made fun
of, but Durkheim or an host of anthropologists would argue that this is what we
understand as ethnocentrism, you evaluate other’s culture on the basis of your own value
judgement, rather, you more acceptable or more important perspective is what is known
as cultural relativism, you understand the practices of a particular culture on the basis of
their own ethical and moral positions.
But again these are not very conclusive debates because a completely uncritical cultural
relativism will really raise a lot of questions, whether cannot we be critical of some other
particular culture being extremely cruel or extremely exploitative, extremely hierarchical
or other things. It raises a lot of questions.
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Durkheim sees humankind “as an infinitely flexible, protean force capable of appearing
in innumerable guises, according to the perennially changing demands of his
circumstances.” A very beautiful depiction of human life bringing in the kind of possible
complexities, it is an infinitely flexible, protean force capable of appearing in
innumerable guises, according to the perennially changing demands of his circumstances.
You know how different societies evolved differently and how their ideas, articulations,
predispositions are very different.
As per Durkheim, education should not be primarily vocational or instrumental, an

important argument even now you know that how powerful these debates are, there are
very powerful arguments coming up, not now these arguments have been here that the
primary objective of education is to impart skills, to enable a person a good worker, a
good engineer or a good doctor and Durkheim was very much against such
instrumentalist understanding of education.
He believed that these skills or abilities are of course important, but the primary aim of
education is not to make a person skilled. Rather, at a much higher level, education has a
much higher and lofty objectives. So, education should not be primarily vocational or
instrumental. For example, Durkheim states that there are two types of nationalism, he
gives this beautiful example of nationalism, which is extremely relevant in our times.
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So, one nation aggressively compete with one another for control of resources and
territory, and this is how most of, in most of the times nationalism is understood and
articulated. Nationalism is often, people usually understand in opposition to somebody
else. People usually show their love towards the nation by attacking or by criticizing or
despising the other, the enemy. And that is the story of the whole world and Durkheim
argues that this is a very restricted, this is a very narrow understanding of nationalism.
And Rather, he argues that the nation, on the other hand, attempts to increase its internal
level of justice to benefit its citizen, it is an extremely important point. What prevents us
from seeing nationalism as an extremely important value where we attribute more justice
and benefits to our own citizen. Why can’t we understand nationalism, as not only as
allowed to our own country, or our own nation, but to love to our own people, our own
citizen?
This is an extremely important question, how do we really understand, how do we

articulate our love towards the nation. Is it the love towards the kind of geographic
boundary? Is it the love towards the kind of certain symbols of nation or is it the love
towards certain national song or national symbol or Independence Day or Republic Day?
Can it be expanded to a more larger understanding of love towards your own people, love
towards your own citizen, can nationalism being seen as an attempt to bring in a more
Justice Society, a society with less amount of social inequality, less amount of social
exploitation, less amount of suffering, and then obviously, it will become apparent, it will
become very visible that, once you adopt that definition of nationalism, you will not be
able to stop that definition from going beyond the boundaries of your nation.
If you really love or if you think that showing you the love towards your countries, by
showing the love towards your own people, then the national boundaries should not stop
you and you will naturally develop abilities or sensitivity to understand the difficulties
and the tragedies of people beyond your border, then you might even think that the
national boundaries are not that significant, or they are kind of many times they are
obstructions, towards a far better society. So, Durkheim argued that this the kind of
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education must really develop, help people develop this kind of a rational understanding
with for a far better society.
Moral education involves teaching students an appreciation of the latter dimension of

nationalism. So, this morality here, according to Durkheim is not as I mentioned earlier,
not the very narrow sense of morality regarding what is good, what is bad, what is sin,
what is accepted kind of thing. It is not to frighten children, saying that, if you are not
supposed to do and if you do this, you will be punished in the hell, it is not, that is a very
narrow understanding of the life, and rather Durkheim wanted to have a much broader
understanding about the life.
According to Durkheim, science is human reasoning in action, a very beautiful sentence,

and other disciplines should try to emulate the exemplary rationality of natural scientific
methodology.
This again is a very powerful statement and also a problematic one, because Durkheim
like many other very powerful section of people believe that the scientists or science has
this innate ability of rationality and others need to emulate, or everybody who practice
science also practice rationality both of which are problematic statements. There are very
interesting discussions and debates about it. But what do we mean by scientific
rationality?
Do scientists constitute the most rational people or is rationality absent outside the realm
of science? These are all very fascinating questions and have generated lot of interesting
discussions and debates. So in sum for Durkheim, drawing on the republican tradition,
education transforms the person into a social being who can appreciate other cultures and
his or her society and govern it adequately.
This is the ultimate function that Durkheim talks about when he discusses education, so
in that sense, his understanding of education was much broader. His arguments are
important even now.
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Another question is about his position on colonialism. Because as I told you this, it is
very important for us to now critically examine these scholars, especially the founding
fathers of sociology, on the basis of some of these recent concerns, because they were the
products of colonialism. They were the beneficiaries of colonialism, knowingly or
unknowingly, they benefited a lot from colonial expansion and colonial domination.
So, it is quite important that we critically analyze to what extent their works, and then
intellectual contributions really recognize this form of society that existed then. So
Durkheim had a little insight into the colonial social conditions influencing his thought. It
is very natural or I do not know whether to call it is natural. But, of course, it is a
limitation, but Durkheim, sadly belong to that section of scholars who did not realize, or
did not acknowledge it very actively, he equated progress with the rise of the nation state
of Europe, and did not add this colonialism in any depth.
So, unlike Marx, which we discussed in detail, Marx had a very ambivalent position
towards colonialism, but Durkheim did not address this theme in a frontal manner, in a
very open manner.
He tends to see modernity as free, rational and progressive, compared to the beliefs of
other cultures. Definitely it almost every scholar of the Enlightenment era believe that
they had very strong conviction in that the modern European society is the epicenter of
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all radical liberal ideas, free, rational, progressive, and all other societies are lagging
behind.
For example, the aborigines do not understand what they are doing, and why they believe
what they do, when it comes to religion, their ideas must be placed in the rational
framework of the European to make sense. And it is very evident when we discuss
Durkheim’s argument about religion, it becomes very evident that he believed that the
Aboriginals do not understand their life, and it needs to be interpreted.
This is a position that was shared by host of anthropologists and sociologists during this
particular time. With Marx, you remember his very famous statement, they do not have
history. Indians do not have history. So anthropologists believed that the Aboriginal
people only live, they do not know how to conceptualize, they do not know how to
theorize it, they do not know how to place it in the larger canvas of social history, and
this larger understanding of history, that there are certain origins of societies, and it
moves in a particular uni-linear fashion and then reaches at Pinnacle, and that pinnacle is
presently occupied by the Europe.
It is the kind of a larger picture that the Europeans have in mind. So that they argued,
even Durkheim believed, it is only the prerogative of the Europeans, others simply do not
understand that, and a host of inconsistent positions about his colonialism.
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Also interesting to look at his ideas on democracy, because Durkheim was a modernist,
and he was a liberal, unlike Marx, who believed, believed that democracy is a transient
stage which will lead to a kind of a communism, where a true democracy will come into
picture, but Durkheim was a more conventional believer in the potentials of democracy.
As we discussed a kind of the connection between the moral individuals and the vibrant
democracy, it is an important point that comes up again and again, Durkheim very
strongly believed that a morally rooted, a morally enlightened citizenry is an extremely
important component of a vibrant democracy. You cannot have a democracy without a
morally enlightened or morally rooted citizens, you must have convictions about why that
you adopt particular positions.
Why that you adopt certain rules, and it must be an informed consent, and only through
that a democracy can actually take shape. Durkheim contended that the collective
conscience of modern societies based on the cult of the individual, the modern world is
becoming more rational and individualistic. So, Durkheim argued that the collective
conscience of modern society is based on the cult of the individual.
Durkheim argued that the God in the conventional sense was seen as manifestation in the
unity of the societies, rather the God in the modern societies is the individual, individual
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has become the modern God. Modernity is marked by the celebration of the individual,
individual is the new sacred, that is his argument, exact argument, when he talks about
this elementary forms of religious life, individualism is the new sacred in the modern era.
This modern world is becoming more rational and individualistic. So, people are still
constrained by moral rules, but modern morality allows them to have more choices and
freedom and demands prudential judgement. This new sensibility has to be created
through democratic interaction for the common good which is not a static object, existing
outside of social interactions. But emerges out of the deliberations and criticisms
characteristic of modern democracy, such a typical liberal understanding of democracy,
of a civil society, a society where the individuals engage, interact, debate with each other,
and through this debate, new rules emerge, and every citizen abide by that and then and
that new rules take the society into a far superior better position.
These rules are not seen as imposed on them and are not the ideas or the whims and
fancies of a dictator, or the most powerful person or institution, rather, these rules are
framed by informed citizenry. They are framed by people who understand why these
rules are important. And so he believes that can affect a vibrant democratic spirit is
something important.
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In Durkheim’s democratic vision, moral individualism has to be grounded on social

groups, which informs his image of a rich, democratic civil society composed of a great
number of voluntary association.
This brings us to this whole theorization or conceptualization about civil society and
public sphere. You must have heard about this public sphere, very important term.
Habermas as a theoretician of public sphere, and also this term of civil society. So, civil
society is understood as a space between the state and the family, the kind of an
intermediary space between your private sphere, and that of the state.
The space of civil society is composed of a whole set of voluntary organizations like
parties and other set of organization who actively engage in the process of dialogue and
criticisms. He argues that this informs an image of a rich, democratic civil society
composed of a great number of voluntary organizations. The moral individualism of the
democratic state guarantees individual rights while facilitating rational dialogue between
its citizens.
So, this moral individualism of the democratic state, as we discussed, a very rational
enterprise that every individual uses her rationality to understand the relevance of certain
rules and this facilitates a rational dialogue between its citizens and democracy works by
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making the peoples will, the laws of the state. So the collective will of the people
becomes the laws. It is not the other way around. It is not the law is framed on the basis
of certain theological predispositions or certain ideas of the ruler, ideas of the dictator and
then it is not imposed on the people.
It is the rules actually represent the collective ambitions of the people, which is why
democracy has a moral superiority over other forms of government, obviously that how,
why that we globally consider democracy as the most important, most valued form of
governance, while there could be quite a lot of criticism against that, against it being
inefficient. It is being corrupt. It is being so slow to take decisions.
Democracy is widely considered to be extremely important because it is definitely

superior to other forms of political organization, whether it is dictatorship or despotism,
or whatever different forms.
Deliberations and discussions in the public sphere makes the state more conscious of its
moral and democratic responsibilities. So, he has a vision, a liberal understanding of
society, where the society governs itself through an educated well informed citizenry.
These citizens take active role in deciding their own political affairs, and it is helped and
aided by a very vibrant civic society, which helps in the kind of a discussions with each
other and the kind of a collective consensus emerges which gets translated as laws and
that those laws have enormous legitimacy among the people.
While Durkheim does not address issues of state surveillance, and sometimes advocate
strong forms of community. He also recognizes that modern society requires increasing
democratic and popular reflexivity.
We can argue that the typical Marxian criticism against these kinds of arguments is that
Durkheim is too naive. Durkheim’s arguments are too simplistic, that he believes that in a
society, modern society like ours, you can have a perfect democratic society by people
coming together, and especially Marxist would criticize Durkheim’s lack of focus on the
economic sphere.
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And remember the very famous criticism of Marx on democracy, Marx believed that
unless you bring in economic equality, political equality has no meaning, you got the
political equality which means very little for the people who are suffering under
economic exploitation.
Durkheim is not a Marxist, he did not believe in Marxian beliefs. Durkheim was a liberal
in that sense, a person who believed that a host of new things can be brought in, society
can be taken into a higher level, when people come together, interact with each other, use
their rationality and govern their own fate. So, let us stop here, wind up this session, and
we will come back with the next class. Thank you.
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Durkheim an Assessment
Welcome back to the class, and we are towards the end of the discussion on Émile Durkheim.
So, in today's class we will have a critical evaluation or an assessment of Émile Durkheim as
a classical sociologist. I think we spent some close to six to seven sessions discussing various
aspects of Émile Durkheim. We try to discuss why that Émile Durkheim is considered to be
one of the most important classical thinkers of sociology.
We spent time trying to understand his intellectual context and his basic arguments about the
exclusivity of sociology as a discipline, and the phenomenal role that he played laying out the
methodological and epistemological basis for this new discipline. His preoccupation with
objectivity, positivism and his magnum opus, The division of labour, which he brought in the
peculiarity of the social as he understood in a very forceful manner.
We had two sessions indeed discussing this division of labour, then we also discussed his
work on suicide considered to be an extremely important work, which very beautifully
elaborated how this rules of sociological method can be put into practice. Actually, that was
one of his major intentions to demonstrate how the methodological protocol that he
elaborated can be put into use to analyse a particular social phenomenon.
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Another very important aspect regarding this whole discussion on suicide as we discussed in
the previous class is also because he was able to very successfully demonstrate that a
sociological method is something so important to understand suicide as a social phenomenon.
The distinction between suicide as an individual phenomenon and suicide rate as a social
phenomenon is something so striking, it is so stark and he must very successfully able to
show that you cannot use a psychological perspective or a perspective in psychology or any
other discipline to understand that why there are certain predispositions among populations
running into thousands of, hundreds of thousands of people and why that certain number of
people are destined to commit suicide and why suicide rates continue to be constant across
populations or times or in comparison with other population.
We also discussed his very important work on elementary forms of religious life, which is
considered to be one of the most important and classic works for anybody who is interested in
sociology of religion. We also had another session, in which we looked into Durkheim’s
ideas, Durkheim’s approach, and Durkheim’s position regarding morality, education,
democracy and colonialism. So, we are coming to the fag end of the discussion on Émile
Durkheim, and today it is an assessment.
Émile Durkheim is along with Karl Marx and Max Weber, one of the “holy trinity” of
sociology’s early masters. I do not think that I need to elaborate this point further, because in
this course as well, we will be spending maximum time to discuss these three important
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scholars, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber because they are known as the Holy
Trinity.
They are known as the most influential thinkers or the classical thinkers, the Stalwarts, the
early masters, the founding fathers of the discipline, and especially unlike Marx who was not
a sociologist per se. Durkheim is credited with establishing the discipline through his
professional activities and also through his intellectual contributions of laying down the
foundation, charting out a methodological protocol and very vociferously arguing that
sociology is indeed a distinct discipline and it cannot be conflated with other disciplines.
This is a discipline which wants to explore certain very definitely phenomenon, exclusive
phenomenon of what he calls it as the social. In that sense definitely, undoubtedly, Durkheim
belongs to this one among this “Holy Trinity”.
In the division of labour, some of the key mechanisms by which complex systems sustained
integration, structural interdependence, abstract and general values and beliefs, more specific
beliefs and norms to regulate relations within and between differentiated groups and
organizations, and networks of sub groups forming larger coalitions and confederations with
common interests.
Each of these aspects have become so predominant in the latter sociological discourses and
theories especially, for the theoretical tradition known as structural functionalism, which we
will discuss towards the end of the course. Among some of the important themes that are
discussed in his work, his division of labour assumes great significance, because he discusses
some of the key mechanisms by which complex systems sustain integration.
We discussed that in the previous class, Durkheim was really preoccupied with the whole
process of social integration i.e. what holds the society together, what are the mechanisms
through which an individual feels connected, loyal and bound with the society in which he or
she lives.
So, that was his perennial preoccupation throughout his academic or intellectual concern
Durkheim struggled with. In this particular work, we are trying to understand the set of
mechanisms by which complex system sustains integration. He speaks about a series of
important issues especially of structural interdependence i.e. how and why that there are
different sub structures or subsystems within a social system are interconnected, in what way
for example, is economic subsystem of a society is very closely connected with the political
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subsystem or how a kinship system is connected with the political subsystem. So, this kind of
a structural explanation is something very important element that he had pre-occupations
with.
Then the role of abstract and general values and beliefs, another very important aspect, the
kind of a part of this nonmaterial culture, which includes your morals, beliefs, cultural
systems and religion. We discussed that why Durkheim was so preoccupied with this whole
question of religion, because it is not only that he was interested in understanding how and
why religion functions, but this was also a part of his larger interest in this whole question of
general values and beliefs because his general values and beliefs have very specific concrete
consequences on the social structure.
When we talk about this distinction between material and non-material aspect of culture, they
are not completely separate realms, they are extremely interconnected, interlinked and
influences each other and the most specific beliefs and norms to regulate relations within and
between differentiated groups and organizations. We discuss that how he is explaining that
specific beliefs give certain sense of solidarity, certain sense of ‘we’ feeling and sense of
integration to different society.
In his study on suicide, he very elaborately argues that Protestants have more tendency to
commit suicide in comparison with the Catholics because the theology of Protestantism
allows room for more individualism in comparison with that of Catholicism, which
emphasize more tradition and kind of a community feeling.
A host of networks of subgroups forms larger coalitions and confederations with common
interests. This structural relationship with how smaller groups come together or smaller
systems contribute for the existence of a larger social system was one of the major theoretical
preoccupations of Émile Durkheim. And moreover, his analysis of the pathologies such as
anomie that arise from the failure to achieve integration are some of the sociology’s most
enduring concepts and we discussed that I think, several times that he uses this term normal
and pathologically.
A term a kind of approach, which most of the sociologists do not do that, for example, Max
Weber, who came immediately after Émile Durkheim is not fond of using this term
pathology, because it preoccupies, presupposes an assumption that certain kind of social
systems are more desirable than the others, and Weber takes a completely different position.
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A host of sociologists now they do not use the term pathology, because it smacks of a kind of
a comparison with human body, with a living organism and social science with the modern
medicine and his analysis of the pathologies such as anomie. But this whole idea about
anomie is something very important, the significance that a society needs to have a specific
set of values and in the absence of these values, society will not work, and which arise from
the failure to achieve integration, and some of the sociologist’s most enduring concepts.
So, this whole concept of anomie, the argument that every society needs to have a stipulated
set of norms and values that regulate people's aspirations and their activities. It is an
extremely important topic. It is not about this complete lack of norms, because there is no
society where there is complete lack of norms, but the kind of a social understanding that
these norms have to be rather well defined, you need to have a set of well-defined norms is an
extremely important topic and its connection with the whole question of integration, they
have been some of the sociologists most enduring concepts.
In his analysis of suicide, as we just discussed, emphasizing individuals integration into

social structures and cultures have been widely used in the sociological studies of deviance,
crime and other social “pathologies’’ because we discussed that, we saw that how
foundational was his work on suicide. Because in a very innovative argument a very
provocative argument, he could demonstrate or he rather successfully demonstrated that why
the large number of people tend to commit suicide, it has very specific connection with the
degree of integration that these people experience and extent of control that they experience
in a given society.
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This has laid foundation to a host of sociological theories and discussions on the questions of
deviance, on crime, on law and a host of other social pathologies, especially on delinquency
or deviance or crime and why certain actions are defined as crime. Why that there are higher
degree of crime, proclivity to commit crime among certain groups, especially in the context
of race discrimination in US and Europe. These discussions have been very important.
Perhaps more significant is the case Durkheim’ recognition in his last major work, ‘The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life’, that rituals directed at symbolic representations of
group constitutes the basis of integration at the micro level of social organization.
We discussed that, an extremely important argument, the kind of a very close connection
between the symbolic system and its enactment, its performance as a kind of a ritual, and how
that contributes for an enhanced sense of integration between or for an individual with that of
the society. For Durkheim, religion is nothing but society worshipping itself. It is nothing but
a community worshipping itself. He argues that these rituals are so important because they
reinforce, they reiterate, or they cement the kind of attachment, belongingness that an
individual feels towards his own community.
It is a kind of a beautiful sociological explanation that Durkheim provides to the wide forms
of religiosity, including that of belief systems, including rituals, customs, festivities,
congregations and a host of other things. Each of these arguments really laid foundation for
normal forms of explanation for the sociologist who came after Durkheim, who are interested
in understanding different forms of society. His insistence on analysing one of the social facts
by another, Durkheim made a very strong case for sociology as a distinctive kind of
enterprise.
Here we come across this point specifically his enormous contribution in terms of
methodology and theory because that if a discipline has to take shape and if a discipline needs
to establish itself, then it requires its founding fathers to very clearly delineate the kind of an
exclusive methodological as well as epistemological foundation positivism, a discipline
assumes its credentials only when its practitioners are able to tell explicitly that this discipline
is unique in terms of its epistemology, in terms of its methodology, in what way it is different
from other disciplines and what are the kind of a theoretical possibilities, what are its unique
possibilities offered by it and he succeeded to a large extent in doing that.
In that sense Durkheim very forcefully argued to see sociology as a positive science and we
discussed it sufficiently because he was of the opinion that sociology can be seen as a science
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that looks at the social phenomenon, just like any other physical science that looks at the
nature or physical phenomena of the world.
Durkheim was a positivist and he used this positivist methodology when he studied suicide
or when he studied other phenomenon, because he believed that one set of social facts can be
analysed by another set of social facts by using all possibilities offered by science.
Now, what are the kind of critical evaluations being discussed so far about the enormous
contributions offered by Durkheim, but then what are the kinds of criticisms been levelled
against Durkheim by other sociologist or how do we evaluate Durkheim as a scholar now,
when we look back almost 100 years back or more than 100 years back.
Durkheim has been accused as a social conservative, someone preoccupied with the
questions of integration by ignoring constraints and coercion behind it. Durkheim does not
investigate the extent to which shared culture upheld and reinforced values of a ruling class.
If you just keep Karl Marx in mind, this particular point of criticism becomes more evident.
Durkheim was a kind of a social conservative, he entire understanding, his entire articulation
of sociology as a discipline was aimed to understand this whole question of social integration.
He was not a person who celebrated social change, he was very sceptical about social change,
especially the more dramatic or drastic form of social change something like a revolution.
Durkheim was extremely sceptical and doubtful about the positive aspects of these
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revolution, he did not even believe in the kind of an emancipatory revolution, emancipatory
possibilities of revolution as in the case of Karl Marx.
He has been accused as a social conservative, who was always preoccupied with the question
of identifying the conditions that will ensure the continuation of a social status quo or a social
order or a social stability and someone preoccupied with the question of integration by
ignoring constraints and coercion behind it. You know that the whole question of integration
is a very problematic one but of course Durkheim presented it as a very positive one, but you
also need to keep in mind that integration can be achieved through a whole set of coercive
mechanisms.
For example, a slave society, a society in which slavery is being institutionalized, will have
its own set of integration or a feudal society which will have its own quality of integration,
but what extent can we celebrate that kind of integration is a very problematic question, to
what extent you can say that this is a very acceptable form of integration, it is a very
problematic statement.
Durkheim did not really pay sufficient attention to the kind of constraints and coercion
behind it, he did not really look into, Durkheim does not investigate the extent to which
shared culture upheld and reinforced the values of a ruling class. So, who is holding power in
a society, and how is this power getting translated into both material aspect as well as non-
material aspects of power relations.
How is this power relation gets translated into different modes of cultural symbols, shared
cultural values, and how that a large section of population are directly or indirectly forced to
believe in this particular cultural value is a very important question that Durkheim did not
ask.
So, he did not pay sufficient attention to the role played by shared culture, and how it was
reinforced by the values of a ruling class, values which were enforced, imposed on others by
the sheer power of the ruling class. Marx comes as a complete stark contrast and very
emphatically argues that the dominant values of every society are the values of the dominant
class, i.e. extremely incisive argument.
The dominant values of every societies are the values of the dominant class, whereas
Durkheim does not look into the whole question of who is dominant and why certain other
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people are not dominant and whether is there any connection between the set of values
upheld by the dominant class over others, he does not really look into that.
Durkheim does not see people as skilled reflexive persons who knowledgeably and actively
create the world in which they live. This is yet another very interesting point of debate.
Durkheim is extremely sceptical about the whole question of people's autonomy. He believes
that people behave in a kind of a mechanical manner because they are completely constrained
by social facts, a person is born into a world of social facts and he or she is socialized into
that and then she acts as per the dictates of the society. You remember, the discussion we had
about social fact where Durkheim very beautifully argues that social facts are coercive, the
moment you try to deviate from a social fact, society will pounce upon you, society will act
aggressively on you, society will teach you a lesson.
In that sense, we get a very rather pessimistic view about the possibility of an individual.
Durkheim is very clear that society is like a cage and once you are into that cage, you cannot
really move out of that. And this position has been criticized by a whole lot of other people,
they have argued that Durkheim has a very negative image about the autonomy or freedom of
individual.
Durkheim does not see people as skilled reflexive persons who knowledgeably and actively
create the world in which they live. The extent to which human beings are capable of creating
a life for themselves, a society for themselves is very little according to Durkheim.
This point has come up again and again as a major point of criticism. For Durkheim, people
are rule following creatures, he does not see them as rule creating creatures, a very important
argument. Durkheim really downplays the role of human agency. He does not give sufficient
attention to the ability of human beings to actively create a society, and ignores the role of
power as something that we discussed here. The question of unequal situation of a society,
unequal structuring of a society, who holds power, who does not hold power and how this
inequality in power is shaping society in a particular manner has not been the major focus of
Durkheim.
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Jennifer Lehmann contends that Durkheim’s reflections on women in suicide are indicative of
a patriarchal viewpoint, which characterizes Durkheim’s entire social theory. Of course, we
know that and we discussed that. He was not really able to move beyond the kind of a
patriarchal sentiments or patriarchal ideology that was raining during this particular time. He
shared quite a lot of such patriarchal viewpoints, which characterize Durkheim’s entire social
theory.
Then, a rational public man is implicitly contracted with passive, emotional women. There is
a gender division, as public, social, rational life represents male, and private sphere of the
family, which is passionate, irrational and biological represent the female. Durkheim sees this
division as beneficial, universal and moral but even in reality it reflects a patriarchal power of
men over women.
The kind of characterization that we are making in this point, it is typical of the kind of a
binary that are presented by social theorists and also presented in the common sensical realm
of every society, where you look at public man, rational public man is implicitly contrasted
with passive and emotional woman.
Rationality, the ability to think scientifically, the ability to detach from emotion is seen as a
unique ability of the man, whereas woman is seen as passive and is seen as emotional, is seen
as vulnerable. This gender division, as a public man, as a social man and the rational life of
human beings. Rational life of man is contrasted with the private sphere of woman, that of the
family and which is passionate, irrational and biological represents the female, and this is an
extremely important argument.
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If you are familiar with the theories of feminism, these contrasts are brought into the fore and
they are critiqued very systematically, the conventional way in which men are associated with
the public sphere and the women are associated with the private sphere. Men are associated
with the public society, whereas women are associated the private domestic sphere. And the
men are rational, scientific, courageous, not emotional, whereas women are more passionate,
they are emotional, they are illogical, they are irrational.
This particular depiction of men and women as binaries, this was something very
predominant during Durkheim’s time and Durkheim did not question that rather, he went by
that, and he even argued that this was something beneficent, it was something beneficial
because the domestic sphere is taken care by more appropriate women, because they are more
emotional, and the private and the public sphere is taken care by men who are scientifically
oriented, who are rationally oriented.
He argued that it is universal, and not only that it is moral, it is something desirable, it is how
society must work. It is a very problematic position, now no sociologist would agree with
that, we all know that how gender roles are defined and reinforced in that there is nothing
natural that a woman takes care of the household and man goes out work. We have n number
of examples, a whole lot of societies where these, gender roles or gender division of labour is
completely dismantled, but Durkheim believed that, and where in reality it reflects the
patriarchal power of men over women.
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Durkheim also believed that racial problems like class issues would be solved by the
increased rational division of labour, where people naturally reach their ability level and he
does not analyse the power of racism, and issues of privilege associated with that.
This is again is a point we came across when we discussed his argument about or his
viewpoints on education and on morality. Durkheim is rather naive in believing that the
people will be able to overcome all these issues of racism and other things, they are able to
think rationally. But we know that those things do not happen, especially the people who
occupy positions of privilege, it would be very hard for them to let that go, it never happens
automatically.
We have been seeing over this so many decades that the people who always have these
privileges, they try to safeguard that, they try to lay a monopolistic claim over that, and hence
this distinction within society, the discrimination within the society continues. But Durkheim
believed that when people becoming more and more rational, these privileges will come
down, the kind of ascribed status, your higher status, your wealth and your higher ritual
position, all these things will come down, but that did not happen.
So, he does not analyse the power of racism and issues of privilege associated with that. Race
was not a major concern for Durkheim, he did not look at race as a socially constructed one,
and a construct that has enormous significance, enormous implication, and consequence on
everyday lives of people.
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On the one hand, when it privileges a certain group of people, because of that very privilege,
it has enormous negative consequences on the vast majority of the rest of the people, he did
not really bother to look into that. He often argued that the need for social integration brought
about the cultural and structural arrangement that the world meet this need for integration, a
problem of teleology.
So, he often argued that the need for social integration brought about the cultural and
structural arrangement that would meet this need for integration. Another major point of
criticism about Durkheim is that his theories especially on structural functionalism is nothing
but a kind of a teleological argument. Teleology is the belief that certain things are in place
because of its intended functions. So, you make a kind of a confusion between the causality
and its functionality and Durkheim was not free from that.
He argued that the need for social integration brought about the cultural and structural
arrangement that would meet this need for integration. This integration was seen as an
ultimate requirement and for achieving that requirement he believed that societies went into
different forms of differentiation and different forms of structural arrangement which led to
an inescapable situation of teleology. This has been widely pointed out by host of people who
were extremely critical of Durkheim’s position on structural functionalism.
We need to end here now and let me reiterate the point that Durkheim definitely is one of the
most important scholars of sociology who provided a kind of very distinctive character, who
played one of the most important role in establishing sociology as a distinctive discipline, as a
distinct modern discipline with a unique, exclusive, epistemological, methodological
orientation, which studies a unique phenomenon in the society, the social in the society.
You will see that how these arguments are criticized by later scholars. When Max Weber
comes into picture he criticizes his positivistic orientation, he provides a very beautiful
counter argument against the kind of a positivistic orientation of Durkheim’s argument. So,
these discussions continue. So, let us end here and we will meet in the next class for our
discussion on Max Weber. Thank you.
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Max Weber: Life and Intellectual Influences
Welcome back to the class, we are starting the discussion on Max Weber, an extremely
important thinker, a founding father of sociology and a German Sociologist. So, in this class
we will be having a very brief discussion about his life and on the intellectual context and
intellectual influences that shaped his theorizations, arguments and articulations about
sociology.
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Here is the picture of Max Weber considered to be one of the most important trinities of
classical sociological theories along with Durkheim and Marx and as we discussed in the
previous classes. Germany have produced some of the most outstanding thinkers and
intellectuals and Max Weber is definitely one among them.
He was born on April 21st 1864 in the city of Erfurt in Germany in a Protestant family and
later they moved to Berlin as his father became active in politics in the city and Weber later
joined University of Heidelberg and studied law and he completed a PhD dissertation titled
“The History of Trading Companies in the Middle Ages” and a postdoctoral thesis titled
“Roman Agrarian History,” from the University of Berlin.
He got married to his cousin Marianne Schnitger in 1892 and move to Freiburg. If you read
the biographies of Weber, you would see that he had a very uneasy or a stressful relationship
with his father and though his father was a protestant, he was the religious preacher belonging
to protestant faith. His relationship in the family was quite stressful and tensed and Weber
had quite a lot of very bad encounter with him throughout his life.
These incidents must have as had said to have influenced Weber in a very negative manner.
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He had a mental breakdown in 1897 and it seems that he had a very bitter fight, verbal fight
with his father and then soon after that his father passed away and then Weber was put under
so much of emotional stress about this whole thing and he had this mental breakdown and
which incapacitated him for five years. He was unable to read or he was unable to think
properly. He was completely out of his mind and in 1900, university of Heidelberg retired
Weber and he did not teach again for nearly two decades and this is a very important piece of
information. If you look into his life and career, we all know that two decades are extremely
precious is it not, twenty years are extremely lengthy period in the academic career of any
scholar.
Weber did not go back to active academic life for nearly two decades because of this mental
turbulences and then emotional trauma and he continued his intellectual activities as a private
scholar without officially admitting himself to affiliating himself to any college or
universities. In 1918, Weber accepted an academic position at the University of Vienna and
offered a course for the first time in last 20 years.
He passed away on June 14, 1920 due to pneumonia. We get to see this life of Weber as a
person who was really traumatized by quite a lot of personal tragedies and emotional
instabilities and turmoils. This is the personal side of the scholar and if you want to get more
information, you must read up and then look up to his biography or to more information that
is available on the internet.
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Now, let us look at the intellectual context and the kind of influences. As in the case of
previous Scholars like Durkheim and Marx, it is extremely important to understand the
intellectual contexts or what are the intellectual influences that shaped the thinking of a
particular scholar. We saw it in the case of Durkheim and Marx. For example Marx’s
thoughts were heavily influenced by Hegelian idea of dialectical idealism.
Similarly Weber also was the product of a particular time, his thinking and arguments were
directly responding to the then existed socio-political as well as intellectual context of
Germany. Every scholar engages in a very dialogical manner, in a dialectical manner with the
kind of existing intellectual atmosphere and then tries to make sense of that.
So is the case with the Weber. He attempted to grasp the distinctiveness of German
capitalism and the modern state in the context of the peculiarities of the 19th century German
political, economic and social development. As I mentioned he was somebody true to any
intellectuals who are extremely sensitive to the kind of larger transformations happening
around them, Weber too also was a very keen observer of the kind of things that are
happening.
He was specifically interested in the question of the distinctiveness of capitalism that was
emerging or that had kind of emerged as a nascent form in Germany and the modern state in
the context of the peculiarities of 19th century German political, economic and social
development. He was concerned with the questions of Democracy and the ideology of the
Socialist parties in Germany.
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Because these were the important political projects that were going on, political dynamics
that were unfolding in his country and he must be stuck by the spread of bureaucracy into all
realms of life. We will come back to this particular topic of bureaucracy because Weber is
maybe the most important theorization on bureaucracy is provided by Weber. Weber has a
full set of theories or very profound set of arguments about bureaucracy from the government
to the workers movement, to the capitalist enterprises and the analysis of bureaucracy became
a major theme in his work.
We will see that in the coming classes, for Weber bureaucracy reflects some of the very
fundamental dynamics of the modern time or fundamental values of the modern time. Weber
understands bureaucracy as a system of getting things done as a mechanism of organization
in which rationality is at its best.
So, Weber understands bureaucracy as a system in which rationality takes the most concrete
kind of form.
Also importantly, Weber had a lifelong debate with Marx and Weber did not agree with quite
a lot of arguments made by Marx on capitalism, on religion, on alienation and a host of other
issues.
This debate between Marx and Weber is something very important which we will discuss
again as and when we proceed, about the nature of social stratification which is an important
debate between Marx and Weber. Though Weber would not have put it as direct debate with
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Marx, but these ideas, this difference of opinion in their ideas or their conflicting approach
towards some of these fundamental domains were very important because Weber looked at
the capitalism with far more sympathy and he was not somebody like Marx as he was not
ready to dismiss capitalism as out rightly negative.
Similarly, Weber did not agree with the Marxian arguments that class is the only form of
social stratification, or dividing society into different strata. He has a far more nuanced
argument. So, this dialogue with the ghost of Marx is a term that is quite often used to
explain Weberin engagement with the writings of Marx, because Marx had died by then. And
then it was not a kind of direct engagement or dialogue with Marx.
Again, like Kant, Weber is interested in the question of morality and science. He accepts the
Kantian division between the human world of values and the natural and social world of
facts. So, Immanuel Kant was somebody who very significantly influenced Max Weber and
he agreed with the Kantian ideas about values, about morality and he accepted the Kantian
division between human world of values and the natural and social world of facts.
So, here it becomes important for you because till the time of Weber sociology was modeled
after a natural science as we discussed in several of the previous classes. Durkheim wanted to
craft a sociology which is modeled after that of any social science. Auguste Comte wanted to
call it as social physics.
But here Weber took a different turn and then he argued that the human world is completely
or heavily influenced by values and values cannot be treated as natural fact or social fact and
you cannot reduce human life or human world into that of the natural or social world.
Weber argues that reason is limited in its understanding and that the social scientist’s
subjective world invariably structured what she studied. These ideas inform Weber’s ideal
type social science methodology. Weber was extremely concerned about the fact that a
human being can never be, a social scientist can never be completely free of or can never
transcend completely the kind of value orientations in which he or she is brought up and to
declare that somebody's research is completely objective is would be too much of a claim as
per Weber.
Weber argues that the reason is limited in its understanding and that the social scientist’s
subjective world invariably structured what she studied. These ideas inform Weber's ideal
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type social science methodology. Weber was interested in Nietzsche’s claim that modern
people have experienced the death of God; this theme frames much of his sociology. This is
again a very controversial, very influential argument that need Nietzsche’s declared that God
is dead.
The old world in which the theology was at the center stage and theological arguments about
the omnipresent, omnipotent God controlling individual lives of human beings and Nietzsche
declared that God is dead. Now it is an individual sub emerged and we saw that in the case of
the Durkheim as well. Durkheim declared that individualism is the new God. Individuals
have emerged who are kind of unconnected with the society. This Nietzscheian argument
evolved the decline of religion, the death of God is a very prominent theme that you will find
in Weberian thesis as well.
Weber’s ideas about rationalization owe much to Nietzsche’s notion that modernity has “de-
deified” nature, making the idea of God unbelievable in the scientific world. This is again
something that you are familiar with. Weber’s ideas about rationalization owe much to
Nietzsche’s notion that Modernity has “de-deified” nature. Modernity has taken away all the
spiritual aspects or theological aspects of the nature.
Modernity has taught you that, you do not really depend upon the religion to understand how
this world has come to being. You do not need to look into the theological explanation to
understand how did human life evolved? Or how did this particular universe evolved? Or
how did you know Earth as a planet evolved? So, it became very clear that modernity through
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its discourse of science and rationality provided an alternative explanatory framework to
understandable things. So, that in a way “de-deified” the nature. Nature is now kind of
opened bear, nature was demystified. It was be demystified it was argued that there is nothing
divine about it. It is not the God has created this nature with some extra human powers,
nature was seen as a natural process because of some scientific reasons which “de-deified”
the nature, making the idea of God unbelievable in the scientific world.
Because we know that now no serious scientists would believe that this world is created by
God or human beings are created by God or no scientist would believe in the theory of
creation. Though you have some exceptions people might still be scientists themselves, might
be still thinking about the theory of creation, but that is a complicated matter how some of the
scientists are able to have this kind of this cognitive dissonance which is the term that are
quite often used. They have this ability to keep this cognitive dissonance even while there is
something with which strikes you on the face with all evidences, you want to, you do not
want to believe that rather you want to believe in what you have been believing and they
seems to be quite comfortable in that kind of a life. It is a complicated story that I am not
going into that.
But he also realized the lingering influence of old patterns of morality and this is something
extremely important. So, what is it’s the significance? Does modernity mean that people
have said, goodbye to everything of their tradition and they have completely become modern.
No, that is not happened even in the European societies where we see as the birthplace of
modernity.
So, tradition still exist, especially some of the traditional patterns of morality still exist.
Certain traditional practices exists, certain ethical practices and ethical ideas remain. It is
extremely important to recognize that as well. Modernity is not a completed project, even in
the Europe, modernity is not a completed fulfilled finished product. It is always seen as a
project in the making, project in progress, not as a completed kind of a project.
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Another set of intellectual influences on Weber are from Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich
Rickert. Dilthey argued that human behavior and nature could be studied scientifically but
they studied different subjects and produced different kinds of knowledge. This is something
extremely important, the whole question is that can human society be studied scientifically.
If not scientifically what else, what other paradigm can be used to study human society and
Dilthey argued that they can be studied scientifically. The human behavior and the nature
could be studied scientifically, but what does the scientific approach means or it differs when
you study Human Society on one hand and the nature on the other hand where they study
different subjects and produce different kinds of knowledge.
The knowledge that was produced, scientific knowledge that is produced about the nature is
very different from the scientific knowledge that is produced about human society because
the epistemological base and the methodological orientations of science as used to study the
nature is not something that you can simply adopt to study human Society.
So, the epistemological as well as methodological orientations of science must be different.

The Natural Sciences are oriented towards the explanation of physical or natural events
whereas social sciences are oriented towards the explanation of Human Action. This is an
extremely important Point. What do a physicist tell you, or what do astronomers tell you,
what do the natural scientists tried to explain?
They tried to explain the kind of natural events whether it is a big bang or whether it is
Higging-boson particles or whether it is some supernova or some kind of a micro reaction
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that is taking place or is it about nanotechnology, they are all trying to explain physical or
natural events of processes when you will be able to observe certain things either directly or
indirectly and you will have statistical models.
You will have theories and you try to collect the data and to prove your argument whereas
social sciences are oriented towards the explanation of human action. Hence, researchers in
each field obtain quite divergent forms of data. In the case of studying a society what we are
trying to do is to explain why human beings behave in a particular manner.
We are trying to explain human action and this is very different even more complicated from
the natural event that you are trying to explain. For example, a particular festival taking place
or the voting behavior of a particular caste people or a particular communal violence or a
religious violence taking place in certain areas. It is very difficult to explain the kind of
human action. Because as we will elaborate human beings simply do not behave, they are not
of course there is, the genetics plays a very important role but equally important is this whole
argument of culture, how we try to deal with our biological instincts and how the culturally
we are trying to fashion and how culturally we try to deal with our biological instincts and
then try to appear more civilized.
Dilthey was correct in noting that the social science could obtain a quite different form of
knowledge than the natural sciences. So, Dilthey very forcefully argued that the scientific
knowledge that you derive from social sciences must be different from that of the natural
sciences. Social scientific statements are different from science and Weber added must be
kept separate from value judgment of any sort.
So, value judgment of the researcher, as a researcher is born and brought up in a particular
family atmosphere, in a particular culture and as a social scientist you go and study somebody
else culture or you study your own culture. And then you try to understand why certain
people behave in certain manner, and there is every possibility that your value orientations
influence when you trying to understanding other, we tend to judge them, we tend to speak in
either in approving tone or disapproving tone. We carry our own value judgment on our back
and it is very difficult to completely take it out and then appear as if a person you are
completely uninfluenced by any of this ideological baggage’s. The key to social scientific
knowledge is to Verstehen, the subjective meaning that people attached to their actions.
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We will come back to this term, Verstehen again. It is an extremely important point as it
talks about a kind of an objective understanding of the subjective meaning. If you try to
objectively understand why people behave in certain manner that is how and what kind of
subjective meanings that people attached to their action and you try to understand those
subjective meanings in an objective manner.
I hope you follow, because if I do certain thing I am acting as a subjective manner, I do

certain things in a particular manner because I like the way of doing it or I have my personal
preferences. I have my reasons for doing that. This is what is understood as the subjective
way of doing my action. And for a sociologist who is observing me, his duty is to objectively
study my intentions, my values and why am I doing this.
He has no business to reinterpret or to pass opinion about why, what I am doing, why I am
doing, what kind of ideas that I have. He has no business to comment on that. He is supposed
to objectively study this subjective meanings that the actors attached to their actions.
Verstehen is the objective study of subjective values of actors. Because unlike natural
sciences, these values are extremely important and you need to study these values of actors
because behind every action there are certain kinds of values and Weber will elaborate in the
subsequent discussions and we will deal it with them, we will discuss them very elaborately.
Then he was also influenced by Heinrich Rickert. Firstly, Weber accepted Rickert’s argument
that reality is infinite and human beings can only know about reality through the selection of
concepts to denote key properties of social World.
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Secondly, why a scholar chooses one topic over another is less important than assuring for
the study that the research process is objective. Third, it is necessary in the social sciences to
develop a set of concepts that capture the distinctiveness of historical processes. So, this is
something extremely important. It is something like a, something like a providing a kind of
proper framework to understand or to undertake the social science.
So, Weber accepted Rickert’s argument that reality is infinite and human beings can only
know about reality through the selection of concepts to denote key properties of the social
world. Now, what is social reality has been one of the most profound questions. What is the
reality? In Indian philosophical tradition there is huge discussion about it. What is the reality?
Is it Maya? Is it real? Is it an illusion? Or is it only, does it only exists among our minds or is
there a reality beyond what we see all these things? This whole debate about what is reality is
a philosophically very profound question. Can you believe your eyes? Is what your eyes see?
Is it the true picture of reality? Can you believe your ears? What you hear? Is it the true
picture of reality?
So, what do you perceive through your senses, what you perceive through your five senses
are they really represent the true nature of reality and we know that in through scientific
experiments and other things that are host of particles, processes, dynamics which are not
amenable to our senses. You cannot see them, you cannot see lot of things. You cannot see
Electron, Proton Neutron. You cannot see a host of things.
Science knows that your sensory perceptions have limitations and if you move from the
sensory perceptions into the kind of categories the concepts, the conceptual tools that you use
to capture a particular phenomenon again, they are very limited. They are very limited
because you have to have a concept, a concept is something which tries to help you to define
a particular phenomenon.
You have this concept and with the help of this particular concept you try to capture a
particular social phenomenon. Again this concept is your own construct, the concept is your
own creation. And with this your own creation, you try to capture a reality. So, it is infinite
and human beings can only know about reality through the selection of concepts to denote
key properties of the social world.
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Even social sciences, look at the case of social sciences. We have discipline for economics,
political science, sociology, psychology and it gives you an impression that like human
beings live in this kind of compartments, do we live like this, do we have a very specific
economic side? Do we have a very specific social and political and psychological life?
No, these terms, terminologies and these disciplines were invented by human beings to
emphasize, to give projection to certain discernible areas, certain desirable properties for
human lives. Otherwise, nobody leaves as per this watertight compartments. These are the
concepts that we created and these concepts play a very important role in providing a specific
kind understanding to ourselves.
Second, why a scholar chooses one topic over another is less important than assuring for the
study that the research process is objective. He again emphasizes the arguments that your
approach must be objective. You must ensure that you adopt an objective mechanism to
evaluate that.
For example, whether a man can study, topics related to women's issues or an upper caste
person can study social issues related to lower caste or a white man can study issues
associated with the black people. Now, the answer is definitely yes, but after that, after
providing this emphatic, yes, then there is quite a lot of other questions about whether you are
being open-minded, you being sensitive, you being quite be aware of your own position of
privileges. You try to understand how knowledge and power relations work. A host of points
that have to make you really introspect what you are, what one is doing. And third, it is
necessary in the social sciences to develop a set of concepts that capture the distinctiveness of
historical process. Rickert was extremely particular, he was highly particular about the whole
significance of historical process.
Because the history in a very unique way has fashioned the contemporary societies. Why
different societies are so different is not only that they are different now, they are also the
product of very distinct different unique historical processes. So, this unique historical
processes produce different kind of unique social situations and one must pay key attention to
these historical processes.
That is why I repeatedly tell the class or tell you that you cannot really distinguish between
sociology and history without understanding history your understanding of sociology
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becomes extremely limited or partial. So, the fundamental contribution of Weber is his
argument about the studying values in an objective manner.
You must objectively study the realm of values and scholars like Durkheim or Auguste
Comte and others they did not pay as much as attention to this whole process of values rather,
they believed that the outward behavior or things that can be observed, things that can be
counted can be collected, studied and then analyzed by scientist, by social scientist akin to or
similar to what the physicist or chemistry, a scientist or other science do with respect to
Natural Sciences.
So, this is the first session about the intellectual background as well as even the personal life
of Max Weber. Let us end the class and we will meet for the next class. Thank you.
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Weber’s Methodology of the Social sciences
Welcome back to the next class. In this class we will focus on Weber’s methodology of social
sciences. I must have mentioned in the previous class, that weber is credited with making a very
important intervention in the development of methodology for social sciences especially that of
sociology along with his substantive contributions to other fields.
Weber’s intervention to methodological debate, his very forceful argument that sociology cannot
be seen as a science like physics or chemistry became extremely influential and so he is rightly
credited as a person who change the very positivist orientation of sociology and as a very
important champion of this anti positivist turn that sociology undertook in the early 20th century.
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Weber is credited with to have rescued sociology from the positivist orientation. We have
discussed it several times earlier, sociology was conceived of as a science which Auguste Comte
called sociology as social physics. Durkheim wanted to construct a sociology exactly modeled
after science.
From that kind of an orientation of sociology wanting to be seen and known as science, Weber
argued that sociology need not be seen as a science. He did not consider it as a weakness of the
discipline rather he argued that the social reality that you are dealing with is more complex than
the natural reality or natural phenomena. It requires more diverse kind of approach and not
strictly a scientific approach.
He foregrounded the distinction of human action as being different from mere behavior where
the intention of the actor is vital. He argued that, you cannot really study, for example, when two
molecules interact something happens, and we never bothered about. We do not really care
about, under what circumstances? Of course you talk about the physical circumstances.
But you never think about the intentions of these molecules when they interact with each other or
a major natural phenomenon, like a volcanic eruption or explosion of a supernova takes place. A
scientist does not have to really worry about what this supernova was thinking about when it was
about to explode, or about a black hole or about any of such kind of natural phenomenon that
you think about.
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A scientist does not have to really think about the motive behind a particular action or an
incident, they are mere incidences, mere processes that are happening on the basis of natural
laws. But in the case of human society, it is much more extremely complicated. Animal society
itself is complicated, but human society is much more complicated because we simply do not
behave as per certain pre-programmed genetic codes.
These genetics is important and that is why there are very specific genetic predisposition to
people's behaviors and actions and everything. We have our natural instincts, our biological
instincts. We have our idea, our emotions of freedom, of fear, of happiness, hunger, sexual urge
everything is there. But we human being’s life is more complicated because we have trained
ourselves, we are trained to deal with these emotions. These emotions are important. These ideas
are important, because these intensions are important. They simply do not behave like some of
the lower order animals behave, on the basis of certain stimulus and behavior. Anyway there are
quite lot of animal psychology which clinical psychology which tries to explain behavior of
animals on this particular basis, people or animals behave on the basis of certain stimulus.
It becomes predictable that if you give this particular stimulus, the animal will come up with this
particular stimulus. Stimulus and response kind of scenario, but we cannot apply that to human
society. You know that because we human beings respond very differently to different kind of
stimuli. We do not do it in a same manner. Hence mere observation and data collection will not
be sufficient unless the researcher enters into the realms of meanings attached by the actor to
their actions.
This is the point that are have been repeatedly labeling about. Unless you enter into the realm of
the meanings of the actors and try to understand why he or she does it, it does not make any
sense to the observer. One of the usual examples that I used to give is that if you go to a temple,
you will see the priest dropping the offerings to the hands of the devotees from a distance.
He will not place it in the hands of a devotee and he will not touch the devotee. He will ensure
that or even the devotees will ensure that they do not want to touch the priest. In most of the
temples, of course there are exceptions where devotees are allowed even to touch the idol. But in
most of the temples the priest stay at a distance and simply throw these offerings to the hands of
the devotees.
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For somebody who does not understand the cultural underpinnings of this particular action, it is
very difficult to interpret this whole scenario or they might interpret it in very differently. But
unless you get into the realms of meanings a shared set of meanings, a shared both by the priest
as well as by the devotees, by everybody who is present, that the priest is supposedly at a much
higher state of ritual purity because he is touching the idol. Idol is nothing but the place where
the god resides.
The priest is supposed to be at the highest state of ritual purity and devotees are at much lower
state of ritual purity and through touch pollution can pass from the devotee to that of the priest.
So, that should not happen and that’s why this physical distance is maintained. This means you
are getting into the realms of ideas. You are getting into the realms of meanings.
Here, what Weber argues is something extremely important. In another example, you see a
husband beating up his wife. So, unless you try to understand why does this husband do that?
Why does he think that it is right on his part? Under what kind of cultural context that he tries to
derive the legitimacy for his action. You will not be able to see why that kind of a scenario exist.
This leads to what is became later known as the phenomenological theories on sociology greatly
indebted to Weber. It emerged as an extremely important branch of knowledge, branch of social
theory or philosophical theory known as phenomenology that you are getting into the realm of
meanings, you are getting into the realm of meanings which are important for social sciences.
Now, relevance of values, humans as active players in the social unlike the depiction of
Durkheim. Weber quite disagreed with Durkheim in terms of the ideas about how active human
beings are in the construction of social reality. I mentioned in the previous class that Durkheim
had a very negative or had a very pessimistic understanding about the agency of human beings.
He believed that human beings cannot really do much about changing the society rather they
have to simply obey the society in which they live. Because he argued that the social facts are so
overbearing they are so overarching that human beings will have to simply accept that but Weber
does not agree with that. Weber and a host of other scholars who follow these phenomenological
theories.
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They believed that human beings are capable of fashioning. They are able to create the kind of
society in which they live. The social is actively created and human beings actively take part in
the creation of the social around them. This is a very important different direction that Weber
provides to the discipline of sociology.
In 1904, Weber posed a fundamental question: “In what sense are there ‘objectively valid truths’
in those disciplines concerned with social and cultural phenomena?” This is a fundamental
question, and on what basis, what sense are there objectively valid truths in disciplines that are
concerned with social and cultural phenomena. How can you say that this is the truth about
society? This is the truth about economy or this is the truth about the political phenomena.
This is the truth because its very term truth, objectively valid truth is a very difficult claim. It is
very difficult claim, it is very difficult to establish the proof for that claim, that it is objective, it
is truth. For a religious leader, this hardly matters, because they only need to claim that, nobody
will ask him question and even if somebody asked them the evidence, they will revert back to
their theology to explain, to provide evidences it becomes kind of a circuitry kind of an
argument.
First this depiction of the problem of values in sociological research is shown. This was the
central methodological issue for Weber, if sociology were to be a true science of society, he
believed it has to be objective. He brought in this whole idea of values in society and he agreed
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that sociology has to be an objective science but this objectivity must be in terms of keeping the
research objective, not that it is not concerned with the subjective values. It has to be objectively
concerned with the subjective values of the actors.
Second, he thought that every science requires a conceptual map, an inventory of the key
concepts are describing the phenomenon being studied and he began to develop such a system of
concepts labeling them as ideal types. Ideal type is a very important methodological tool
popularized by Weber. Weber argued that when you try to study a particular social phenomenon,
you must have a kind of conceptual category, you must have a conceptual construct to study
about it.
Ideal type is, we are discussing that, I think we will discuss it later. Ideal type is a kind of a
concept, which we think that is kind of a perfect concept about a social phenomenon, and you
know that this ideal type never exist. This perfect scenario never exist, but that helps you to
compare a kind of an empirical example with that. Maybe for example, an ideal type of student.
What is an ideal type of student?
You know different people will come with different ideas that he or she has to be studious and
then has to be frugal, they have to be highly disciplined, motivated, hardworking etc. If we put
all these qualities into one entity that becomes the ideal type. But you know that in reality, it is
very difficult to find a student who fulfills all such kind of characters. So, this ideal type helps
you to compare an existing example with that of this construct and then see what the kind of a
difference is.
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Weber argued that sociological inquiry should be objective, or, to use his term, value-free, that
researchers’ personal values and economic interests should not affect the process of social
scientific analysis. This I mentioned even in the previous class. So, a social scientist is a product
of a society, he or she is a product of a particular cultural context, a particular political and
economic context.
A person when he or she grows up as an individual, he or she also imbibes lot of values, ideas,
ideological possessions like anybody else. From such a position, he or she tries to go and study
another society. He or she should try their maximum level best now to get influenced by their
own personal values. So, the personal values and economic interests should not affect the process
of social scientific analysis.
In Weber’s eyes, sociology should not be a moral science. It is not possible to state scientifically
which norm, values or patterns of action are correct or best, but rather it is only possible to
describe them objectively. This is yet another very important point. He is very clear that you
have to keep away from the world of morality and especially you need to keep in mind that he
was talking in the context of the European context there, where, the influence of Catholic Church
was so much influential in every discipline and its pedagogy.
You need to keep this moral aspect away, it is not possible to state scientifically which norms or
values or patterns of action are correct or best. It is very difficult to say that and remember
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Durkheim has a different position, he has no issue in describing certain thing as pathological. We
saw that in the previous classes. Durkheim calls, labels certain things as good, certain things as
bad, certain things as pathological, where Weber does not do that.
So, increasing divorce rates, is it good or bad? It is very difficult question. For a person from a
religious background it’s is easy to say that increasing divorce rates are really bad, society has
become corrupt, everybody has become so selfish and its everything is gone that kind of a
lamentation we can be seen from a religious leader. But for a social scientist it is a much more
complicated scenario.
Increased divorce rate is an illustration of a host of other very positive formations, very positive
dynamics on various ways. What ought to be the sphere of values and what is the sphere of
science normative and positive. What ought to be is the sphere of values, how should you lead,
what should be the position of women in society? What should people do? This normative and
positive is very different.
What ought to be is the sphere of values and what is this sphere of science. So, sociology as a
science Weber argues must be concerned with the whole question of, the whole question of what
is the question of positive. The first and foremost objective of a sociologist is to analyze the kind
of existing scenario, not to a prescribe solutions or policies out of hand.
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The new science reflects an ongoing historical process in which magic and other forms of
inherited wisdom becomes less acceptable as means of explaining events. Weber referred to this
change as the process of rationalization. In a “rationalized discipline,” values should not affect
the research process, but they remain relevant. The new science reflects an ongoing historical
process in which magic and other forms of inherited wisdom become less acceptable as means of
explaining events.
I mentioned that in several of the previous classes. We do not really look forward to supernatural
explanations. We are not convinced about the say wishes of god, god wanted to create that is
why it is created or we do not believe in supernatural forces, we do not believe in magic being a
force that can alter our life or that of the world. We know that all these stories are stories created
when people were ignorant about the exact functioning of the universe. All these are the products
of human imagination.
This realization Weber calls it as the process of rationalization you try to reason it out. You do
not attribute the reason to some other higher entities and then think that this world or any
supernatural force must have decided to think in a particular manner and then let us accept it.
Now, we realize that human rationality, human intellect can be used to make sense of your own
society.
You can make a sense of, you can use your senses to understand the society around you, the
world around you, the solar system around you, and the universe around you. You can use your
rationality and intellect to understand the history. You can reshape the present and you can
refashion the past and this process he calls it as the process of rationalization. In a rationalized
discipline values should not affect research process but they remain relevant.
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Weber rejected the search for general laws in favor of historical theories that provide an
“interpretive understanding of social action and a causal explanation of its course and
consequences.” A search for universal law necessarily excludes from consideration important
and unique historical events. This is another important point, we know that earlier social scientist
they were so preoccupied in formulating larger laws.
So, that is why we have Comte talking about law of three stages, that every society must pass
through from theological to meta physical to positive, he presented as if it is something similar to
a law of gravity or law of relativity or any such kind of laws that you will find in Natural
Sciences. Weber argues against it and categorically argued that you cannot have any social laws.
You cannot have any laws in social science as accurate as they are in the Natural Sciences. Why
it is? Because the, but rather he wanted to favor the historical theories that provide interpretive
understandings of social action and a causal explanation for its courses are consequences and so
mentioned the history plays an extremely important role in defining, in shaping certain societies
in different manner.
This historical context is extremely important when we talk about historical phenomenon. It is
also about the social history, economic history, political history, and geography and what not.
So, if you want to create a larger theory at all-encompassing theory and overarching theory then
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you lose out all these peculiarities, we will lose out all this specificities and that becomes a futile
exercise according to Weber. I am quoting a very important passage from Weber.
“For the knowledge of historical phenomena in their concreteness, the most general laws,
because they are most devoid of content are also the least valuable.” The more you make the
laws appear as general, they are most devoid of content, because you know that the history of
Indian subcontinent is entirely different from the history of Europe, which is entirely different
from the history of America or that of Africa. So, if you want to create a law that encompasses
all these different continents then you finally end up in creating a very huge theory, but which
becomes very hollow.
“The more comprehensive the validity for scope of a term, the more it leads us away from their
richness of reality, since in order to include the common elements of the largest possible number
of phenomenon, it must necessarily be an abstract as possible and hence devoid of content. In the
social sciences, the knowledge of the universal or general is never valuable in itself.”
This is an extremely important point, and a fundamental difference between natural sciences and
social sciences, a fundamental point of difference which makes this social science more complex
and complicated than that of the natural science.
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He comes back to this idea of ideal type, we just briefly mentioned earlier. So, to study social
phenomenon Weber argued that it is necessary to have a description of the key element of a
phenomena. The goal is to describe, forms of actions and patterns of social organizations while
seeking to identify the historical causes of these forms and patterns.
If you want to study a particular phenomenon, you need to necessarily have a description of the
key elements of the phenomenon. You need to identify what are its most important prominent
features and you need to describe them, for example, you know Weber’s ideal type of
bureaucracy is very famous and popular which we will discuss it in the next week.
In Weberian ideal type, you get a complete picture of a perfect form of bureaucracy, you will
see how bureaucracy must be in its ideal type. I hope that you are familiar with this term, I gave
you the example of an ideal type of a student or ideal type of a teacher, ideal type of a politician,
ideal type of a school, and ideal type of a university.
So, these are all conceptual constructs where you want to over emphasize on certain features,
what you think as something extremely important. An ideal type or pure type summarizes the
basic properties of social phenomena, which in turn can help the search for its historical causes.
These constructs are not historical processes, but rather they are historical constructs. So, this
ideal type will help you to trace out the historical evolution of these concepts.
This is the definition of ideal type, I just thought I will mention it here for your benefit. An ideal
type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis
of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less, present and occasionally absent, concrete
individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized
viewpoints into a unified analytical construct.
It is a conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found anywhere in reality. So, as I give
you this example of an ideal type of a student, such a perfect student never exist in reality, you
will never find such a perfect student, or complete student who will not have any negative things
about it, which is, he or she is not lacking in anything, that perfection is something impossible to
find anywhere. But such a mental construct as Weber says, is something very important in social
science analysis
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He talks about two, three types of ideal type. One is this historical ideal type, historical event can
be described by analytically accentuating their key components for example in Weber’s famous
analysis of the spirit of capitalism, he drew up a list of features of this belief system, once the
essence or pure form of this belief system is highlighted then it becomes possible to seek the
causes of the emergence of this distinctive historical event.
He says that you can create an ideal type for a historical development trying to understand,
trying to identify the most important feature or quality of that particular time and then try to
understand how it evolved over a period of time and he uses this example, of the script of
capitalism. We will discuss this in more detail, I think we will spend at least one or two sessions
to try to understand this, his argument about this very popular book, “The Spirit of Capitalism”
to understand the ethics and the spirit of capitalism. So, there he analyzes the reason for the
emergence of capitalism, which he talks about as the spirit of capitalism, where he has employed
this use of historical ideal type.
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(Refer Slide Type: 26:47)
Second one, he talks about this general ideal type, where he wanted to make generalizations
about generic social phenomena, this desire led him to formulate ideal types of phenomena that
are always present in human action. These ideal types do not describe historic events, but rather
they accentuate certain key properties of actors, actions, and social organizations in general. So,
it is not about the historical things, it is about contemporary society.
His ideal types of social actions, we will see that again, in the coming classes, he talks about
three major types of social actions, actions which are informed by certain kind of values. So,
they are all, you know ideal types. We know that people simply do not, for example when he
talks about traditional social action, he is talking about how the loyalty towards tradition or
commitment towards tradition becomes the most important force behind people's actions.
But we know that to segregate that, or to de-limit a particular action and then to say that it is
purely from a traditional point of view, is very difficult. These types of actions classify behavior
by visualizing its four pure forms. Although, Weber knew that these actual situations would not
perfectly reflect these concepts, they provided a common reference points of comparison.
That is, a variety of empirical cases can be systematically compared with one another and with
the ideal type, in this case, the type of social action. So, he talks about charismatic, he talks about
value, different kind of value orientations, he talks about, traditional action. He talks about value
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or rational action. He talks about instrumental rational action. So, we will discuss it in the
coming class more detail.
But keep it in mind that each of these constructs are examples of this ideal type constructs and he
knows that these pure forms do not exist. But more or less, you will be able to categorize all
forms of human actions into these three or four categories, so that you will be able to compare.
For example, you will be able to compare actions which are motivated by instrumental rational
action with that of value rational action.
Why do some people do certain things in a very stupid manner, seemingly stupid manner, why
do people sacrifice their own life for a particular cause and that action is very different from why
certain people do things in a very calculative manner trying to maximize the benefit and pleasure
for them. Human actions, the way in which people act, why do people act in different ways, what
kind of reasons people attribute to their own action.
They are all, very different, very diverse but Weber argued that we will be able to classify, we
will be able to come up with larger classifications based on these ideal, typical constructs, so that
you will be able to classify human actions into different categories. Let us stop here. And we will
continue with this discussion on Weber in the upcoming classes. Thank you.
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Indian Institute of Technology – Madras
Weber on Rationalization and Social Action
Welcome to the next session.
Today, we are discussing the central theme of Weberian sociology that is his concept of
rationalization and we are discussing rationalization along with his arguments about social
action, which is another very important theme of sociological analysis. So, in the previous
classes, we had two sessions on Weber. In one we looked at his personal life in a very brief
manner.
And then we also looked at the intellectual climate or intellectual influences of Max Weber
during his time which really shaped his thinking and which really prompted him to look at the
sociology in a very unique manner and in the second class, discussed the very specific
contributions of Weber in terms of his methodological arguments as well as his overall
arguments about the distinctive character of sociology.
So I hope you remember that he played a very significant role in the development of anti-
positivistic framework on research methodology which proved to be extremely important. We
had elaborated the discussion on that. So today we are going to discuss his central theme of
rationalization and his idea of social action.
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So, these three themes such as rationality, rationalism and rationalization, appear very
prominently in his argument and as we can say that this theme of rationalization occupies the
central position in Weberian sociology. If somebody asks you what is the most dominant or
central concern or the overarching theme of Weberian sociology?
Most often this is given as one of the import reasons or important themes because he is using
this framework of rationalization to explore question on social action, on economy, on
religion and on almost every aspect of modern social life. Therefore, it really occupies the
central place and it is extremely for us to understand what does Weber mean by this term
rationalization. So for Weber, all cultures exhibit rationality as all people can give reasons
which make sense for the behavior.
But only in the West does a particular type of rationality based on bureaucracy, calculation
and like became dominant, and this is a very crucial and controversial point because he is
saying that rationality is usually understood as way in which you give reason to certain
things. We say that human beings are rational animals, because we always think about the
consequences of our actions.
We involves in a rational thinking. Weber says that there is nothing unique about this ability
to reason as every human society has this ability to reason and everyone attach some amount
of reason to their action. If somebody ask you, why you behave like that, they will have
certain reasons, they will have certain rationality and this rationality could be based on magic,
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It could be based on tradition, it could be based on religion or it could be based on some other
kind of justificatory systems. But what Weber saying is extremely interesting, extremely
problematic, as well as extremely controversy. So for him, all cultures exhibit rationality in
that all people can give reasons which make sense of their behavior, but only in the West
does a particular type of rationality based on bureaucracy, calculation and the like becomes
dominant.
So Weber is saying something very, very different. Weber is saying that a particular kind of
rationality emerged in Europe during a particular time and he connects it with emergence of
modernity which say 17, 18 and 19th century and he says that this kind of rationality is
qualitatively different from other kind of rationalities that are existing across the globe and
particularly in Europe before this particular time.
That is an extremely important point and one of the major criticism against Weber is that his
sociology, just like that of Durkheim and almost all major western classical sociologist, was
heavily Euro-centric. They assumed that the Europe is the central place of all intellectual
activities and on the basis of European yardstick they evaluated other cultures.
This rationalization is for Weber the master process of modernity. So Weber defines
modernity through this process of rationalization, which is the employment of a particular
kind of rationality. We will examine that particular kind of rationality? A particular kind of
rationalization where a particular type of reasons are attributed to our actions and human
behavior is shaped on the basis of that certain type of rationality.
This process, weber says, is the master process of modernity, but at the same time, we also
need to know that he does not give any kind of a particular definition for this, whereas he has
given definition for ideal type, he has given definition for a number of other central themes.
But here, he leaves it rather ambiguous, but it is important for us to understand what does he
mean by that.
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The idea is that rationalization is the master process of modernity and it results in less
magical, increasingly disenchanted world in which science becomes dominant as tradition
and religion lose their power. So here, he is bringing in some more familiar themes that are
connected with the rise of modernity. So he says that his master process of modernity results
in a less magical and increasingly disenchanted world.
We already had some discussion about that and we will come back to this term
disenchantment later when we discuss Weberian discussion on religion, but what is important
in Weberian argument is that the modern world is less magical. We are increasingly able to
understand the functioning of modern world without the help of magical or religious or
theological or metaphysical explanations.
We do not require those kind of explanations anymore and there is a process of

disenchantment of the world. Even modern humans are no longer enchanted by the natural
phenomenon or social phenomenon when the lightning strikes, when there is a thunder or
there is some natural phenomena takes place, we are no longer enchanted or nor do we
believe that these things are taking place on the basis of certain or powerful almighty God.
We have moved away from those kind of enchanted world. Modern human beings are no
longer enchanted, we are living in a disenchanted world. So human beings are moving out of
this enchanted world and science becomes the dominant tradition and religion is losing its
power. So this is the theme that we are familiar with as we have discussed it again and again.
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The process through which how science was seen as replacing the kind of an explanatory
potentials of religion and magic at other things is very important.
More than the arrival of science or along with that, Weber argues that this kind of new
peculiar rationality involves a systematic ordering of social life. A completely novel type of
ordering is taking place in the modern society and we have discussed this theme already
when we discussed Karl Marx and the rise of industrialization.
When we discussed the establishment of factories and siren, we talked about a kind of
particular order, but Weber is taking it into a much higher level. So why the social order of
traditional society rest on an organically prescribed cycle of natural life bolstered by habit
and custom. The social order of modern society reflects the increasing power of human
beings to control the social and natural forces of the world is an extremely important one.
He is talking about how in the modern world, human beings are able to create kind of orders
which they really want. They are no longer following the kind of an organically prescribed
cycle of natural life. When we are talking about a primitive tribal society, their understanding
of social order, and their understanding of society is completely dependent upon the nature.
What are the things that are available for them and how should they carry on with their life
every day, how should they procure their food, how to survive these things completely
dependent on the nature and when human beings started agriculture, we can say that we
gained more higher degree of mastery over the nature, but still every agrarian society, every
agricultural society depend upon the cycle of the nature on the monsoons, on summers, on the
winter because they simply depend on that.
On the other hand, when it comes to the modern times, Weber argues that we are able to
create our own social order and it does not mean that we are no longer dependent on nature,
but increasingly human social life is being divorced of its dependency over the nature. So,
this modern society reflects the increasing power of human beings to control the social and
natural forces of the world.
This is seen as the implication or as the consequences of modernity after all modernity
promised an increased control over the nature, increased mastery over the nature. Modern
social order is a distinctly rational order a product of deliberate calculation, willful planning,
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scientific management, and the exploitation of expert knowledge and the applications of
advance technologies.
And this in a way we can say that this kind of summarizes what is Weberian argument of
rationalization. Weber argues human life is increasingly being deliberated based on deliberate
calculation and this calculation follows willful planning, scientific management.
Here scientific management means the micro-managing of each and every aspect human life.
You look into the questions of efficiency, questions of safety, into the ways of getting things
done at the easiest way, the exploitation of expert knowledge, highly specialized people are
available or highly specialized bodies of knowledge is available and this knowledge is being
used make the things highly efficient and application of advanced technologies.
Weber argues that this peculiar kind of rationality is something so central to modernity and
this kind of rationality was not available to European before modernity and he would say that
even during his time it was not the dominant kind of rationality available to non-European
which is a very controversial claim.
Weber distinguishes between two types of rationality; one is a formal rationality and the other
is substantive rationalism. Substantive rationalism is directed towards values resulting in
utilitarian and social ethical blessings granted by a prince or other authority. This differs from
former rationalism based on calculation and pragmatism.
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So in substantial rationalism you will this rationalism is supposed to uphold certain important
values and it is not for the sake of doing certain things, for the sake of instrumentality or
efficiency rather this efficiency upholds certain kind of values. So, he argues that he is
directed towards values resulting in utilitarian, social ethical blessings granted by a prince or
other authority.
So in its enactment, in its very meaning, in its very purpose of this particular action you will
be able to see this kind of upholding of certain values and they had not used simply for the
case pragmatism or an instrumental manner. Formal rationality is often irrational when
viewed from a substantive point of view. George Ritzer’s argument about Macdonaldization
that undermines values of democracy and individualism in the name of efficiency.
For example, one of the examples of formal rationality is that you try to make things very
formal, very efficient, but that many times undermines the substantial values behind that and
this idea about Macdonaldization he George Ritzer’s develops this concept to explain the
process of globalization. He argues that in whichever Macdonald outlet that you walk into
anywhere in the world the experience will be same.
The production will be same, the taste will be same, the ambience will be same, but on the
other side this standardization in the name of efficiency has a huge flipside. It has quite lot of
negative consequences in the sense that it really is against the values of democracy, it is
against the values of difference, it is against the value of creativity or individualism and host
of other things.
A chef in a Macdonald outlet will not be able to use any of his own ideas because everything
is standardized. So, Weber brings in these two types of rationalism. The rise of rationalism
and the West is tied to the emergence of capitalism, the protestant ethic, bureaucracy and
science. So, this is the larger set of combinations that Weber brings in. We will have
elaborate discussion on that as well as on bureaucracy and science.
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So Weber comes to this cost of a rationalization and differentiation, and asks what the kind of
relation between rationalization and differentiation is. Weber views societies as becoming
increasingly differentiated as different life spheres such as art, science and ethical reasoning
become separated from one another especially from religion. Each sphere develops its own
particular inner logic and standards of evaluation and this is an extremely important point.
When a society becomes more and more heterogeneous, it becomes more and more complex,
more and more diverse. Weber argues that there is a process of differentiation taking place.
For example look at the cases of education, health, governance or politics or family
relationship, entertainment, each of these fields are increasingly became differentiated.
Each of these things were very closely connected with each other in the early traditional
societies and more importantly all of them were very specifically connected with religion.
Your system of education was very closely connected with religion. Most of the time what
was conducted or communicated through education was nothing, but religious.
Medicine was heavily influenced by religion, then all other aspects that we discuss about
family, about governance, about politics, about entertainment, about sports, about education,
each and every of this life spheres were entangled with each other and mostly connected with
religion. And as societies progressed and became more and more modern, these life spheres
becomes more and more independent.
They become more and more autonomous and they develop their own particular inner logic
and standards of evaluation and they are increasingly getting divorced from religion. We
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know about secular education, we know that modern medicine is increasingly getting
divorced from religion, education or family matters or politics each and every of these
important life spheres are becoming more and more autonomous.
They are getting divorced from the influence of religion. So, modern world as increasingly
fragmented, devoid of a cohesive bond of morality emerging from religion and this is exactly
the point that Weber talks about secularization as well. He is arguing that society is becoming
more and more secular and the process of secularization and process of differentiation are
extremely interconnected.
Secularization without differentiation is not possible. The very fact that religion becomes
your private sphere involves this process of differentiation. So he extends this argument of
rationalization to explain social action or economy and authority and so on.
So, Weber argues that in a modern society exemplified by places like Western Europe is
characterized by increasing rationality where human beings use calculation, modern
knowledge and science and expert knowledge and technologies to attain the most efficient
way of getting things done.
He extends it to the analysis of social action and social action is one of his central themes. So,
sociology, Weber states, is a science concerning itself with the interpretative understanding of
social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences. It is the
definition of sociology as per Weber.
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Durkheim’s definition of sociology was sociology as a study of social facts. So here Weber
says it is a science concerning itself with the interpretative understanding of social action. So
here the most important aspect is social action and it is seen as interpretative and not a mere
fact out there to go and collect, we need to interpret.
You need to interpret, you need to objectively understand the subjective meaning attached by
actors or towards their action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and
consequences. So this is how Weber perceives the subject matter of sociology as a science
that studies the social action, through the interpretative understanding.
So social action is present wherever individual attaches a subjective meaning to the behavior,
a motive, the purpose or an intention and you know that this covers almost every aspect of
human action, may be except some reflexive action where we do not really think, and
happens unintended actions.
Because otherwise human action is completely intended, we attach motive, we attach

purpose, and we attach intention. So, Weber’s argument about social action is behavior plus
implying the subjective meaning to the behavior. It is not a behavior alone; it is not that
people act on the basis of certain stimulus, something that we discussed in the previous class.
So he identifies four types of social action.
Each constructed as a pure or ideal type. In reality, he acknowledges any particular instance
of behavior typically consist of some combination of these fewer types. So then he proceeds
to develop ideal types of social action, he says that these are just ideal types, they are kind of
a mental constructs useful for the sociological analysis.
Weber argues that ideal types do not exist in reality, but it is a concept of construct for us to
contrast with certain kind of concrete experience or concrete examples. I gave you the
example of an ideal student and you know that this ideal student does not exist, but this ideal
typical picture of an ideal student is always helpful to compare student with this person who
has all the qualities of an ideal student.
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So this four types of actions, the first one is affectual action is determined by emotions or
feeling states. Emotional influence has become a dominating factor in deciding the nature of
most reflexive, unintended action. So the first one is about how many times we end up doing
things when we are heavily influenced by emotion and this because human beings are
emotional animals and in a large part of our social action, how much of we say that we are
rational, but we know that we are not completely rational in the Weberian sense.
We are heavily emotional animals. So when we are angry, when we are frightened, when we
are in certain kind of emotions of grief, revenge, sexual urge or a host of other kind of
emotions, we act in very different ways. So Weber argues that this constitutes one of the most
important type of action and the second one is this traditional action.
Traditional action is determined by ingrained habituation along with other customary and
unpremeditated daily behaviors this might include for example the ritual greetings, we
unthinkingly give our colleagues when we arrive at work each morning. So this traditional
action is because they are traditional we act in certain way because that is how it has been or
we are quite accustomed and used to that.
If you look at our day-to-day activities, starting from the moment we get up, how we interact
with others, what are the words that we use, what kind of food that we eat. A host of things
can be analyzed or understood on the basis of this traditional action, because of this ingrained
habituation. We are so habituated and ingrained in our behavior without our own knowledge.
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Along with other customary and premeditated daily behavior this might include for example
a host of examples and we know that especially when we talk about tradition. Tradition is
considered to be something important because we think this has been how thing are since the
time immemorial. We use this term immemorial quite often as if there is no end to any social
practice or things have been the same for the past so many centuries.
The third kind of action is value rational action which is determined by a conscious belief in
the value for its own sake for some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other form of behavior.
Such action carried out regardless of consequences is governed by a commitment to certain
higher duty or moral ideal example non-violence. The most important motivation for this type
of human action according to Weber is commitment to certain values.
We behave seen classifications of human actions on the basis of emotions, on the basis of
certain tradition, our actions are also heavily influenced by certain commitment to certain
ideals and this ideal could be commitment to your own religion, caste, ideology and other
ideals. The suicide bombers or the terrorist who are getting ready to be killed by opponents or
look at a host of other examples and the example that Weber gives is that of non violence.
Gandhiji, for example, person who tried his level best not to compromise on this whole ideal
of nonviolence, that really governed Gandhi’s tactics and his strategies about fighting with
the British. He did not want to compromise on that. So in every society, Weber argues that
there would be certain ideals that would really shape the kind of social action.
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The fourth one is the most important one as per Weberian sociology, which is the
instrumentally rational action. It is the instrumental rational action that is determined by the
means-end calculations, something that we discussed bit earlier about the use of science,
calculation, use of expert knowledge because here, calculations are the most efficient way of
getting things done.
In this kind of rationality, you will think about reaching from point A to point B in the
shortest way. So the efficiency becomes the central concern and that determined by means
ends calculations. Action is a rational in the sense when end and the means and the secondary
results are all rationally taken into account and weighed. So, here they are devoid of every
other concern, they are not concerned about tradition and emotion.
They are not concerned about value, their only concern is to get things done in the most
efficient manner in the shortest of the time and that is ruthless and heavily technologically
driven way of getting things done. Weber argues that this is a modern phenomenon and says
it is the hallmark of modernity.
According to Weber, affectual action and traditional action are more or less unconscious or
unthinking and on the borderline between truly meaningful action and merely reactive
behavior. Because these two actions especially, affective action and traditional action are
more or less unconscious or unthinking especially when we are overwhelmed with emotions.
We do not really reflect over things and we tend to act impulsively. So, on the borderline
between truly meaningful action and merely reactive behavior the thoughtfulness
characteristic of instrumentally rational action takes the form of calculation. The conscious
and deliberate appraisal of competing lines of conduct, evaluated according to the probable
cost, consequences and the likelihood of success.
Weber argues that the meaning of the term social action in its truest sense or in its fullest
sense will be in the case of instrumental rational action because the person or the group of
people will think about the probable cost and consequences. They will think about to what
extent it is supposed to be a successful one or what the possibility of failure is, all these
aspects would be evaluated.
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Weber argues that this thoughtful characteristics of value rational action takes the form of
conviction, the conscious and the deliberate adoption of certain values or ideals seen as a
ultimate commitment to certain values and when it comes to value rational action the kind of
a thoughtfulness characteristic of value rational action takes the form of conviction when it
comes to value rational action.
You know that you may have to take a price for your stand against corruption, against the
government or when you stand against the state atrocities or the police violence or the
corruption in judiciary. You will have to pay the price, but on the other hand, your conviction
really pushes and drives you to take up a kind of a value based particular position.
This conscious and deliberate adoption of certain values or ideals are seen ultimate
commitment to certain values. Then rationalization of action involves the displacement of
unreflective emotional behavior, affectual action and the unthinking acceptance of ancient
customs, traditional action in favor of the deliberate adaptation to situations in terms of self
interest.
Weber is not saying these are the four characteristics, but Weber is also saying that there is a
gradual, but a decisive shift from the emotional and the traditional action to more value
oriented as well as instrumentally rational action.
So rationalization of action involves the displacement of unreflective and emotional behavior

and unthinking acceptance of ancient customs in faith. So these two things are being slowly
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and gradually displaced in favor of the deliberate adaptation to situations in terms of self
interest, the rational action and deliberate formulation of ultimate value.
So, increasing domination of instrumental rational action in the modern world, is the most
important characteristics feature of modern world. This happens by displacing emotional and
traditional action, and in effect, the instrumental rational action is emerging as the dominant
one of course along with the value oriented action.
Weber gives example of capitalism as the manifestation of increasing instrumentality of

rational action. The rational behavior of the individual in the modern world is increasingly
characterized by calculations rather than conviction by the self interested adaptation of
circumstances rather than the principled commitment to ideal in the modern world and
capitalism where we will discuss that in the coming class.
Weber argues that capitalism is a perfect example of the instrumental rational action. When
you want to increase, when you are investing money, when you want to reach profit, when
you want to earn more money out of your investment, you act in a completely rational action.
In instrumental rational action, you do not think about emotions, tradition, or about certain
huge lofty values rather you act in a most instrumental manner.
Your only concern is to maximize your profit, how to get back your investment along with
the profit. We will come back to this point later. The economic activities in general are
supposed to fall under this category of instrument of rational action, but Weber says that
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capitalism in particular has quite lot of such features. So as I told you earlier, Weber argues
this rational behavior of individual in the modern world is increasingly characterized by
calculation rather than conviction.
These are highly problematic arguments and Weber suggests that you shouldn’t see this kind
of things in pure forms. Many times the ideas are you will find mixture of different kind of
actions it will be very difficult for you to pinpoint and say that okay this particular action is
only emotional action or traditional action or instrumental action. Most often you will find
elements of different types of action in a given scenario, but Weber’s point is very clear.
When a society modernizes ,the instrumental rational action becomes the most dominant one
by replacing the emotional, traditional and value oriented action because the calculations
becomes the most dominant one rather than conviction the values lose their weight. By the
self interested adaptation to circumstances rather than the principled commitment to ideals in
the modern world.
So this is one of his first set of arguments about social action and here what we saw today is
his application of the process of rationalization to explain his concept of social action. So
here we discussed his definition of social action, we discussed his definition of rationalism
and rationalization and we also discussed his characterization of four different types of
actions.
We have also discussed his most important argument about modern society, which is that the
instrumental rational action is gradually, but decidedly displacing other forms of actions such
as value oriented, traditional and affective actions. So this is his larger argument and we will
see the parallel kind of argument when he discusses his works on authority, economy,
religion and host of other things.
This is the central theme as I told you, this rationalization is Weber’s central theme and he
applies this theme to understand and to explain each of this concepts. So, I am winding up
today we will discuss the remaining section in the coming class. Thank you.
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Rationalization and Authority
Welcome back to yet another discussion on Max Weber; the central figure in classical
sociological theory. So in the previous class, we had a discussion about Weber on social action
and rationalization and how he proposes ideal typical categories of social action into four broad
categories. We have also discussed larger arguments that when a society becomes modern, there
is a gradual shift in this types of actions of this larger orientations of actions from emotional to
traditional to value oriented towards this instrumental rational action and that is his central thesis.
In today’s class, we are trying to examine his argument about rationalization and authority. So I
also mentioned in the previous class that this preoccupation with the course of rationalization is a
central theme for Weber and it is the central preoccupation for Weberian sociology. So he uses
this similar frame work trying to understand how host of modern social institutions and socio
process are increasingly getting rationalized.
We already discussed his analysis of social action and today we are going to discuss his analysis
on authority and coming classes we will discuss his argument about how economic activity,
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especially capitalism is also undergoing this process of rationalization in the modern Europe. So
let us begin the session.
For Weber power was a major category and a central concern especially as a stabilizing force in
the form of authority and domination. Now this is an extremely important for students of
sociology, especially those who study political sociology who always try to understand how that
various forms of power are exerted in a society and how they manifest, what are the
consequences of such manifestations?
We know that power is a central concern for Karl Marx and he argues that most of the political
power derives from the economic power, so that is why he argued that political power as an
independent sphere does not have much of a meaning because this political power is mostly
derived from the propertied class, from the Bourgeoisie class.
We also discussed Durkheim in the previous sessions and one of the main criticisms against
Emile Durkheim is that he has not paid adequate attention to the play of power in a society. So
this preoccupation with power is something very important for every sociologist or every
political scientist because in every society you will find the manifestation of this power in its
political form. The simple question - how is that a particular society is governed?
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How is that rules and regulations are imposed in a particular society? How is that every member
of the society forced to accept certain way of leaving; how is authority is established? How that
everybody is trained or coerced or cajoled or encouraged to respect and support the person or the
group of people who enjoy the power relation. So the idea of power is a central concern for
Weber especially as a stabilizing force in the form of authority and domination.
So Weber was extremely sensitive to this all question of authority and domination and we will
come to the very specific connection between power and the authority just down the line. So how
the different societies are different form of domination and different forms of authority and how
these distinct forms provide kind of stabilizing force for every society, all these things were the
major concerns of Max Weber.
We generally understand power as the ability to influence others actions in spite of their
resistance and this is a very usual sociological definition. Power is understood as the power over
somebody, power is exerted from A to B, so power is seen as something that has been exerted
over somebody and this is a more traditional Weberian understanding of power where you exert
the force either direct physical force or even the threat of force.
If you have a gun with you, you did not need to really shoot, the very fact that you have a gun
would be sufficient for the other person to comply with your directions. So it is an ability to
influence others action in spite of their resistance. So what do they think whether they agree with
that or not hardly matters because you are either not sensitive to that or not concerned about it
because you have enough wherewithal to influence their actions.
And this is a very usual argument and by the way let me also point out that this conventional
understanding of power has been thoroughly revised especially with the arguments of Michel
Foucault where he radically redefined power. In Foucauldian discourses, power is not seen as
something originating from A and then exerting over B, rather power is understood as more
fluid, power is something that is existing everywhere, power in the form of knowledge, power in
the form of science, power in the form of institutions.
It is a very fascinating set of arguments which I am not going into that. So for Weber the real
important question was, how does power able to justify itself or seen to be approved by those
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who are subjected to power relation? In other words, how is power legitimize and this is an
extremely important point because we know that in many societies even those who are at the
receiving end of very unequal power relation, and at the receiving end of very brutal exploitative
and oppressive system.
Many times they may not even revolt or resent and they tend to accept that and in many places
this situation is realized not through very brutal force, but the people who are at the receiving end
of the power also think that it is their faith the people who are oppressing have every right to
govern us. And this was a major concern for Weber.
How do people get to believe that? What are the mechanisms through which substantial section
of people are consenting to be governed or dominated? For example; you know there are women
who think that husbands have the right to beat them up even though getting beaten up is not a
very nice experience for anybody.
But there could be substantial number of women who think that their husbands have the right to
beat them. How do we understand that? So Weber has the concern what are the mechanisms
through which power justifies itself and how it is seen to be approved by those who are subjected
to power relation. So it is easier for us to understand that the position of those who possess
power as they will always try to justify their position and nobody would like to giveaway power
easily.
But more interestingly, as I told you many times the people who are at the receiving end of the
power relation they also seems to be accepting that fact that okay the other group has the right to
dominate us. And this is a very intriguing situation. In other words how is power legitimized? If
you check dictionary you will see that legitimacy means process where acceptance is governed,
acceptance is secured.
Weber defines authority as the legitimate form of power, the power that is been exerted is
considered to be legitimate; and is legitimate and legal one and the same? No, they are not
because you can have other form of legitimacy, you can have forms of legitimacy other than the
legal, that is what Weber is trying to explain in this particular session.
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Of course legality is an important source or legitimacy but there are extra-legal forms of
authority which are equally legitimate. So Weber’s preoccupation was trying to understand how
there are different forms of power exists in every society and there seems to be different and
sources of agreement and different mechanisms so that everybody including the people who
exert power and the people who are subjected to power seemed to be in agreement.
They may not say it is good but accept as legitimate. The legitimate authority is obtained when
the power to command is deemed valid, that is when person subjected to authority, voluntarily
offer their obedience. So, exactly the same point that I mentioned so far, when the people are at
the receiving end when they voluntarily offer their obedience.
When they see that the kind of a restrictions which are placed over them as correct. They may
not say it is good, but they say that they are fine and correct and how this correctness is derived,
how is this legitimacy derived is the kind of a question that Weber ask repeatedly.
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Weber talks about three types of legitimate authority. One is the legitimacy of a traditional
authority derives from the sanctity of custom, the legitimacy of a charismatic authority rests on
the extraordinary qualities of the leader, and the legitimacy of rational-legal authority follows
from the observance or formally established rules and procedures.
And this is a very fascinating discussion. Weber is talking about three sources and types of
legitimate authority. So one is the traditional authority derives from the sanctity of custom, so
this again we discuss this importance of tradition when we discussed his arguments about action.
Because certain actions have been in practice for a long time they attains certain kind of sanctity.
When certain practices become a custom, it is very difficult to change that and quite often people
react violently when you try to change their customs all on a sudden, and if you look into how
legal interventions were made, for example how a host of customs in India including say child
marriage or Sati or other similar kind of various practices of untouchability.
When the authority, especially colonial regime tried to prohibit these customs one by one they
have to really face very fierce kind of opposition because these customs were considered to be
very important, and extremely divine and cannot be changed as lot of sanctity was attached to
these customs. So that is why it is very difficult for the secular state to intervene and to change
the religious customs.
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Because people tend to attach so much of meaning and importance to these customs and they
sincerely believe that, that is how these things were practiced since time immemorial. And the
second one is a kind of a charismatic authority that arrest on the extraordinary qualities of the
leader, which we will come back later. And third one is the legitimacy of the rational legal
authority that follows from the observance of formally established rules and procedures.
All the rules and laws that we are subjected to today, for example; if you want to drive a car, a
vehicle in India you need to pass through various legally established procedures. You must be
above a certain age, you must have a valid driving license and you must have learned license
from an approved driving school and you must process certain amount of knowledge as well as
skills about driving.
So for each and everything there are set of formally established rules and procedures. And these
rules and procedures are extremely important, that is why Weber called them as rational-legal
authority. Now let us take them one by one.
‘Traditional authority; traditional authority is a form of power exercised by the patriarch, the
lord, the prince or the king this type of authority is grounded in the vulnerability of the eternal
yesterday, the sanctity of everyday routines, the sacred quality of age-old rules and powers’ these
are his own words, so that is why I have put them in inverted comma. So traditional authority is a
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form of power exercised by the patriarch. The head of the family, mostly a male or the lord or
the prince or the king because these are the important manifestations of traditions.
This type of authorities grounded in the vulnerability of the eternal yesterday. So this yesterday
the past is supposedly extremely important because you are seen as a continuation of the past and
the past is to be venerated, it needs to be worshiped because in many, among many religious
traditions the past really represents the best of the times most often they look at the contemporary
time as a stage of deterioration.
So they would argue that we have loss of faith and we are not being true to our religion, we have
lost our morals that is why we are really suffering. Whereas we had a golden past, we had a
golden yesterday, so this idea of this eternal yesterday and you know that this are extremely
historical planes they, the people who talk in language are not academics, they are not
intellectuals they are ordinary people who have a very mythological understanding of the past.
They may not know the specific historical trajectory of their community but they have an
important construction of an eternal yesterday. The sanctity of everyday routine is another thing
because certain things are done every day and we are habituated to that and once they are
habituated it is very difficult to change.
The sacred quality of age-old rules and powers, the argument that just because certain things
have been following for a long time, they continue to be important. We do not really ask them
what is the relevance of continuing to do that, we do not really ask those questions because
certain practices such as, you can look into your own family as soon as a child is born what is
been done or when somebody dies what is been done, or during the time of marriage what is
been done.
So in each and every aspect of our personal life or social life things are done or how a festival is
conducted in the church or in the temple or in the mosque near to a place and how do they
personally hark back tradition, the validity of which always has been as natural. So they too are
bounded by tradition. They risk their legitimacy and may even provoke it traditionalists revolt, if
their commands fail to respect the time-honored ways of the past.
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Who are these people who seeks to protect the tradition? They are the people who hold the
traditional authority. So these traditionalist leaders are also bound by tradition. These leaders are
carriers of the tradition and they cannot simply break the tradition because their entire source of
their legitimacy lies on the fact that they simply represented tradition.
They risk their legitimacy and may even provoke it. Traditionalists revolt when the sanctity of a
tradition is challenged. An example of a traditional authority is a Sanyasi Guru, a head of mutt or
take the example of pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
The pope is an extremely important position and the actions of the pope could be constantly
monitored by the believers across the world because he is supposed to uphold the tradition of the
church. So if a pope wants to modernize something like what is been currently done, he has to be
extremely careful to be seen as continuing with the tradition by also undertaking efforts of
modernization.
And if their commands fail to respect the time-honored ways of the past, there could be revolts.
A traditional leader is supposed to be the custodian of the tradition and the moment he is seen as
breaking away or moving away from the tradition he could face revolt.
So those in subordinate position occupy the status of subjects in such a situation, the people who
are below are always a subjects, you are the king and the subject, you have the priest and the
believer, you have the feudal lord and the subject. So subjects are always governed, they do not
have rights, they are always the recipients of the magnanimity of the lord, their language is not
the language of right, they cannot ask anything back.
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Traditional authority, Weber says is predisposed towards keeping things the way they are,
traditional authority is an inherently conservative force rooted in a reinforcing traditional
attitude. And this is something extremely important especially when we try to understand social
change and tradition, tradition seems to be extremely a resistant to change as it is very difficult
for people to change their ways especially the social habits. The social customs, their deep rooted
believes in certain things. Therefore, the traditional authority is inherently conservative force,
rooted in a reinforcing traditional attitudes.
It also is irrational in meaning; in this context not governed by established rules fixed procedures
or legal precedents because many of these things could be seen as irrational though this tradition
has its own logic. For example take Sati for that matter, Sati has a logic in itself. If a society
thinks that the wife needs to immolate herself when her husband dies, it has a rationality of its
own. Whether you agree with the rationality or not is a different question but that act has a
rationality.
The wife is committing suicide not simply for the sake of something else but it has very specific
purposes and that whole community who encourage her to do that share that rationale. But here
Weber is not talking about such kind of rationality, rather about the modern understanding of
rationality, they are not governed by established rules or fixed procedures or legal precedents,
Within the limits set by sacred traditions leaders are free to command according to their own
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personal inclinations introducing an element of arbitrariness and unpredictability into the
exercise of power. So every traditionalists power centre has some flexibility every such leader
can bring in certain elements but this freedom is something very limited unlike the
charismatically we are going to discuss down the line.
Second important type of authority that Weber talks about is charismatic authority. Weber uses
this term in purely value free sense, so he is not saying whether charismatic authority is good or
bad, whether some charismatic leaders should be or should not be accepted, or celebrated, they
should not be accepted, they should be celebrated he is purely not getting into the realm of
judgment.
He is not getting into the normative realm and he is only scientifically analyzing this type of
authority. This kind of authority derives from the extra ordinary qualities of the exceptional
individual and these two terms are extremely important, a charismatic leader will be an
exceptional individual and this exceptional individual will have extra ordinary qualities. So who
could be the examples?
One can think of both good as well as bad charismatic leaders, of almost all important religious
figures, all the prophets are supposedly having charismatic authority powers, Jesus Christ is
supposedly having charismatic authority and the best example could be Mahatma Gandhi.
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Mahatma Gandhi was an exceptional individual, looking at the way he dresses, his behaviour, his
character, his very obstinate position with certain values, the way he ruled over the India
Freedom Movement.
He was an exceptional individual with certain extra ordinary qualities. So this extra ordinary
qualities are the ones which actually provided people like Gandhi and host of others, the kind of
charismatic authority. You have quite a lot of religious leaders as serious charismatic authorities,
the people who claimed to be divine, people who say that they are incarcerations of the God, so
they are all seen as exceptional individuals.
The authority of charismatic leaders and their ability to inspire people to abandon their normal
lives and take up a historic course rest entirely on their own personal gifts or deeds. The force of
their example, the potency of their message and the righteousness of their mission are important.
So these charismatic authorities or charismatic leaders have the unique ability to inspire people,
they can inspire people to join them by abandoning everything that is seem to be a kind of
normal life.
They can do so because they are the living embodiment of these values the potency of their
message. Another example which is seen as a negative example is that if Adolf Hitler; Hitler had
that charisma, he was a charismatic leader. You know he was not very tall or well built, he was a
very short person but his speeches were extra ordinary.
They were electrifying, if you have seen the way Hitler gives speeches to the people, the people
would be enthralled and enchanted by his speech. So charismatic figure like him were able to
derive so much of confidence and trust and faith from the ordinary people because of their
potency of their message. The message of Mahatma Gandhi for example or the message of Adolf
Hitler for example they were extremely powerful.
Though they could be qualitatively diametrically opposite, Hitler wanted the supremacy of
Aryan race, he wanted to be the Fuhrer of the world, whereas Gandhiji wanted independence, he
wanted a peaceful life for his fellow citizenship and the righteousness of their mission and a
charismatic leader would be unequivocal in terms of the righteousness of his mission.
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He would be absolutely clear and certain that what he or she is doing is the right and that
confidence provides him enormous energy to go ahead with that. And the validity of charismatic
authority is contingent on leaders continuing their success in demonstrating the heroism proving
themselves through victories at obtaining benefit for their followers.
We know that this charismatic authority also comes with its own risks, a charismatic authority is
not something that is granted to you permanently. A leader has to really prove time and again to
be worthy of the followers support. So they have to be continuously successful in demonstrating
the heroism and proving they need to really reenergize people constantly, continuously. And
proving themselves to be through victories and obtaining benefits for their followers.
And so in terms of charismatic authority it is the leader the charismatic leader is the leader and
the people who follow are the disciples or the followers. So they are not subjects because they
are not ruled over in the sense of a traditional authority but they are the disciples, the disciples
who always look forward to, the message or the followers.
It is not only foreign to all rules but because it is inherently unstructured and short lived,
antagonistic to normal routine. Charismatic authorities also are direct antithesis to of all every
day forms of domination whether traditional or rational-legal. So one of the central teams of
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charismatic authorities that it is exceptional, you do not get charismatic leaders quite often,
charisma is a very rare quality and it happens only once in a while.
Therefore it is foreign to all rules, charismatic authority by definition is established by breaking

all the rules. You cannot have a charismatic leader by following the same older tradition,
charisma is generated only when something exceptional is established. Because it is inherently
unstructured and short lived, it is something like a glimpse that comes in the historical canvas
and then suddenly goes out and short lived, antagonistic to normal routine.
Charismatic authorities are also the direct antithesis of almost everything that is established,
almost every day forms of domination whether traditional or legal rational. While traditional
authority is a conservative force rooted in the past and committed to the ways things are
charismatic authority is a revolutionary force. So charismatic authority wants large scale
changes, they are not happy with the way things have been.
They want revolutions, they want complete changes, they want complete reordering of the
existing systems, it is intrinsically unstable and transitory, so they are short lived you cannot
have a charismatic authority or charismatic leader for centuries, it is impossible. Charismatic
leaders come they completely disrupt the society and then mostly what happens it becomes
routinized and it becomes institutionalized.
And once things become institutionalized they will begin to establish the all set rules and
procedures, institutions everything. It goes back to more traditional or rational legal kind of
authority. So qualitatively you can have both consequences with the charismatic leader, you can
have a charismatic leader who can be Martin Luther King for example.
He was an extremely charismatic leader, he could really inspire millions of blacks as well as
whites, Nelson Mandela for example; they were all extremely charismatic, Mahatma Gandhi we
mentioned about that. But Adolf Hitler also is an example of charismatic leader, he who could
give an extremely dangerous vision about humanity, who always romanticized and idea of a
world ruled or dominated by this Aryans. And world where ‘lesser’ creatures have no place or
people who are consider to be lower are eliminated completely, which is extremely dangerous
world view.
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And the third one, the most important one according to Weber again is the rational-legal
authority. Rational-legal authority typically associated with the bureaucratic organization is
specifically modern form of legitimate domination. This type of authority rests on legality, or a
system of consciously made rational rules, the rule of law rather than the person. So the best
example or a series of example are the way in which will live as a modern democratic state, as I
gave examples each and every act of our lives are decided and regulated by laws.
For example if you need to buy a house, if you need to get married, if you need to dispose a dead
body of a person or if you need to organize a program, if you need to start a company, each and
every of these acts is governed by a set rules. And who makes these rules? In a democracy it is
the people who make the rules, who will do it indirectly because the people whom we elect as
our representatives do this work in the parliament.
And once a bill is introduced, it is discussed and it is approved and becomes a law. Once it is
notified, it becomes a law and we are supposed to rule by that. So this law is not the brain child
of a single individual. It is not the base of the whims and the fancies of the person, so that is why
every representatives, every ruler, administrative of a democratic society or a modern nation is
bound by the laws which they shall not violate.
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So the obedience is ought to the legally established impersonal order. A prime minister cannot
change the rules arbitrarily because there is a watchdog; there is a judicial system that is
overseeing the maintenance of the law. And if a law is violated, the Supreme Court can overrule
that particular decision, it can even say that what was done was injustice, because it was against
the law which might costs the government its position.
So not to the individual lord or master, rather the persons in command either elected or appointed
are the servants of the state. They occupy the status of superiors and those in a subordinate
position occupy the status of citizens or members, this is another important set of difference. So
if somebody is a prime minister today, tomorrow somebody else will come, yesterday it was
somebody else.
So they come into occupy because there is a legally and constitutionally established position and
they are either elected or appointed as the servants of the state. And they occupy the status of the
superior and those in the subordinate position are the citizens or the members. And you know
citizen is an extremely important term because a citizen is bestowed with rights, so that is why
there we have so much of discussions and debates about citizenship bill because the moment you
lose your citizenship, you lose a host of rights, you lose the right to property, to political right,
host of rights are taken away the moment you lose the citizenship status of the particular country.
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Along with the rules of law, the presence of bureaucratic administration is a primary source of
the distinct rationality, characteristic of legal authority and we know that you cannot have a
modern system of governance without that of bureaucratic administration. It is the bureaucracy
that helps in establishing these rules and ensuring that these rules are followed thoroughly they
are not violated.
The three types of legitimate authority Weber insist cannot be placed into a simple evolutionary
line, this is extremely important. Just like what we discussed about social action, here also we
cannot say that they are on an evolutionary mode as earlier it was charismatic then it was
traditional then it was modern legal-rational, he is not arguing that way, which is an extremely
important point.
They cannot be placed into a simple evolutionary line, nor this typology meant to be the
foundation of any philosophy of history. And here you must compare his emphatic argument that
he is not presenting a philosophy history. And if you remember, for example Comte who argued
that there is a transition from theological to metaphysical to positive.
And here also we can see that it also almost fits into that kind of argument well but Weber is
extremely careful. Weber says that this is not the case, he is not presenting it as a case of
evolution rather he is arguing that even in the modern society, you will find reminiscence of
charismatic or traditional authority or even in earlier times you will find more, may not be the
legal-rational to this extent but you will have something similar to that.
So just as traditional societies is the preeminent form of domination throughout most pre-modern
history, The rational-legal authority a uniquely modern phenomenon, alongside the
rationalization of actions discussed above, we also observe the modern western world, a
corresponding rationalization of legitimate authority.
Weber would argue that, in the modern contemporary western society, the most important type
of authority in existence is the modern legal-rational authority, it does not mean that western
societies do not have any charismatic leaders, it does not mean that they have completely become
modern by abandoning everything that was traditional, that is not the argument.
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But the argument is that the modern western world is corresponding rationalization or the
legitimate authority is the modern legal and rational authority. So Weber is not presenting a
philosophy history, he is not presenting it as a continuum or as an evolutionary mode rather he
simply argues that in the modern society it is a legal-rational authority that is important.
Weber argues, it signifies a transition from the allegiance to the sacred traditions to allegiance to
abstract norms from the rule of persons to the rule of laws and from the power relations of a
more personal nature to power relations of a more impersonal nature. This is exactly what he
says when societies become modern, especially the case of Western Europe these are the kind of
transitions happening form allegiance to sacred traditions to allegiance to abstract norms.
As you know that this legal-rational authority systems are very little to do with religion, they do
not invoke God, the do not come into existence because it is not been built by the god, they do
not use such kind of language but they are based on certain abstract principles. Like principles of
human rights or liberty or equality, from their personal rule to rule of law, from power relation of
a personal nature to power relations of an impersonal nature.
Unlike traditional and rational-legal authority, charismatic authorities are not specific to any
particular social context, it has emerged in all places and historically epochs, Weber admits.
However , unlike the rational-legal order charismatic of modern society is less conducive to an
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eruption of charisma that in the traditional social order, extremely important point, Weber argues
that in a modern society you will see less and less of charismatic leaders.
Why is that? What could be the reason for that argument? You would say that a traditional
society was more conducive for the emergence of charismatic leaders compare to that of a
modern society. In a modern society ofcourse charismatic leaders emerge but it is not that easy
can you think of the reasons, why it would be easier for it would be difficult for charismatic
leaders to emerge in modern society just think about it.
And hence the modern society has increasingly characterized by legal rational authority. So this
is final point something similar to what we discussed in the previous class about social action. So
in order to just to summarize, to warp up, Weber is talking about authority because he was
preoccupied with the question of legitimate forms of authority and domination in a society, how
is that?
The best example is that when you sit in a classroom and if you do something in the class and the
teacher ask you to go out, you walk out of the class. You go out of the class, you understand the
punishment because you think that the teacher has the ability and the legitimate authority to ask
you to go out or when you drive a bike without a helmet, when the police stop you and then ask
you to pay fine you do so because you think that there is a law in existence and you are supposed
to follow that is the notion of legitimacy.
So weber looks at three ideal typical characteristics of authority and then argues that while even
in the modern societies all the three forms of authorities do exists, the rational legal authority is
the most dominant one. The charismatic authority is less likely to emerge in modern societies
compared to traditional society. So we will wind up the class today and will meet for the next
class. Thank you.
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The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism
Welcome back to the class, we are starting our discussion on one of the most important and
popular works of Max Weber, which can be called as his magnum opus, titled “The Protestant
Ethic and he Spirit of Capitalism”, an extremely important, controversial, popular as well as
influential work.
This work actually follows the discussions that we had in the previous classes, where we
discussed Weberian argument about the emergence of modern capitalism. I hope you remember
the class, where we discussed about the factors that Weber argued as a kind of a pre-
requirements for the emergence of modern sense of capitalism in Europe.
We ended that discussion with the very important point that Weber put forward, that along with
all the structural factors that required like the emergence of a free market and a free labor force
and a number of other factors, a very important point that Weber puts forward is the emergence
of a particular kind of spirit, attitude, personal orientation and orientation of a collective nature.
Weber discusses a kind of a particular capitalist spirit, which he argues, was something very,
very peculiar to Europe, European society and it was very peculiar to a particular time period.
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And that really opened up a set of a series of fascinating discussions and, and debates about the
role of religious ideas, the role of cultural ideas in the emergence of capitalism. So we are going
to discuss that work, The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of capitalism.
So, The Protestant Ethic was originally published as a two-part article in our 1905, and then
republished us a revised edition in 1020. This book touches on a number of themes centered to
Weber's work as a whole. And that is why many observers have identified this book as the
magnum opus, or the most significant work of Weber.
The transition from traditional to modern society, the origins of modern capitalism, the unique
qualities of western rationalism, the role of ideas in history, the influence of religious ethic on
ethics on economic conduct, the characteristics and fate of the modern individual, and the
prospects of individual freedom in the modern rationalist world.
And, each of these themes are so profound and quite important and very significant in its own
right, whether it is about the argument on the transition from traditional society to modern
society, or the unique qualities of western rationalism, and the role of ideas in history, and this
follows much larger debates in history.
If you look into the debates between idealists and materialists, between Hegel and Marx, all
these debates revolve around this whole idea of trying to understand what are the roles of ideas
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in history, and the influence of religious ethics on economic conduct and whole. So, each of
these themes is so profound for an academic engagement.
So Weber's aim was to show the relationship between higher socio economic successes of
Protestant believers in Europe in comparison with others. So, for Weber, there was an important
empirical question as well, an empirical reality as well, where he could argue convincingly that
the socio economic mobility or socio economic status of Protestants are much higher than that of
Jews or Catholics or other people.
And so he wanted to build on this particular empirical reality and then theorize it trying to
establish a connection between the rise of modern capitalism in Europe and the emergence of a
kind of a particular or a peculiar spirit that Weber argues was part of the Protestantism, so that is
what we are going to discuss.
The central argument of the Protestant ethic that sometimes is referred to as the Weber thesis, or
Weberian thesis, is that the spirit of capitalism, as well as the type of person embodying the spirit
can be traced back to certain religious influences originated from the Reformation. He thus posits
a congruence or affinity between two worldviews; Protestantism on the one hand and the culture
of modern capitalism on the other.
So this is his basic argument, or hypothesis that he wants to prove. He wants to convince that
there is a kind of a congruence, a kind of connection between the Protestantism on the one hand
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and the culture of modern capitalism on the other. The spirit of capitalism, as well as the type of
person embodying the spirit, can be traced back to certain religious influence originated from the
Reformation.
I am inviting your attention to the previous class, where he talks about the necessity for having a
peculiar spirit, a peculiar orientation, for the people to engage in model capitalism, and this
particular spirit, which we will elaborate down the line is closely connected with the rise of
Protestant movement within Christianity.
I hope you are familiar with this story about this reformation movement, which really challenged
the influence of Roman Catholic Church and completely altered the way in which Christianity
was understood, propagated, and challenged the role of the clergy role of clergy. It is an
important development that happened in Europe during the particular time.
Weber’s ultimate purpose is to demonstrate that the modern vocational culture with its
affirmation on the ideal of diligent labor in a specialized calling is in some way a religiously
based. So, his ultimate argument is to demonstrate that the modern vocational culture with its
affirmation on the ideal of diligent labor in a specialized calling is in some way a religiously
biased.
So, he argues that the kind of a particular attitude particular preoccupation that we have towards
certain vocational opportunities, which we consider it as a kind of a calling, as a heightened form
of interest and dedication and work. He is pointing at the ways in which religious ideals
influences economy and secular life. And this is yet another important theme that we discuss
here.
This point assumes even more significance, because, we have already discussed this theme, in a
completely different argument. I hope you remember when we discussed the Marxian thesis on
the base and superstructure. Marx was very categorical that the influence happens in a particular
direction, it happens from the economy to that of the superstructure, from the base to that of the
superstructure, and he placed religion, values, ethic, and culture, everything in the superstructure.
For Marxian analysis, why that certain religion takes place in certain shape has to be analyzed on
the basis of the economic structure of society, whereas Weber is arguing the opposite. Weber is
arguing that how the influence of religious values can change the nature of economic activity. So
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he is talking about a reverse kind of influence from the capitalism, from the culture to that of the
economy.
What is the spirit of capitalism that Weber is talking about? We have discussed about modern
capitalism, we are familiar with that. Now, we want to know what does he mean by this term
spirit, a kind of peculiar individual or collective orientation, certain kind of an attitude, certain
kind of a worldview, certain kinds of predisposition, that Weber argues was something so
instrumental in the emergence of capitalism.
So, the first point is that work is valued as an end in itself. Weber was fascinated by the fact that
a person's duty in a calling or occupation is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of
capitalist culture. And it is in a sense, that the fundamental basis of it. So, work is valued as an
extremely important vocation, it is seen as a calling, it is seen as a person's duty, maybe you can
even say that a person is destined to do that, a person is supposed to devote his entire life for that
particular work, a person is supposed to have utmost dedication and commitment to that kind of
a particular work.
The work is not seen as a mere way of getting some salary or some other benefit, but a person is
supposedly completely dedicated to that particular work. Weber was fascinated by the fact that
usually this term a calling we associated with couple of professions like, medicine, a doctor’s
work is considered as a calling or a teacher’s or a priest’s.
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These are the people who are traditionally or generally identified as people who are take up
certain job, certain professional with so much of dedication, so much of commitment, because
they see a lot of value in that. So it is not necessarily the salary that somebody gets when he
becomes a priest or a doctor or a teacher that somebody is attracted towards that it, on the other
hand, the person finds that job is something so important, something so divine in certain word.
So the second point is the trade and profits are taken not only as evidence of occupational
success, but also indicators of personal virtue. In Weber's words, the earnings of money within
the modern economic order as long as it is done legally, seen as the result and the expression of
virtue and proficiency in a calling.
So this has a very interesting, this Protestantism or this spirit of capitalism has a very interesting
take on the concept of wealth and profit and in a marked distinction from Catholicism, which
really, exalted or which really glorified poverty. Protestantism, Weber argues as a completely
different take on profit.
And we know that Catholicism really celebrates or it romanticize poor people, because it argues
that the poor people are chosen by the God, poor are the people who are closer to God. And there
is a very important thing in the Bible that it is very difficult for a person to enter into the heaven
than a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
Weber or a host of other scholars have argued that within Catholicism, amassing more wealth
and profit is seen as not something favorable nor good, rather, in Protestantism, Weber argues
that trade and profit are taken not only as evidence of occupational success, but also as indicators
of personal virtues.
The earning of money within modern economic order, so as long as it is done legally is seen as
the result and expression of virtues and proficiency in a calling. So, you as a trader or as a
businessman, and of you are amassing more and more money and profit through legitimate
means, then it is widely seen as a virtue of your commitment to that particular vocation.
So, a hardworking businessman is somebody who must be respected and he is expected to make
more money, more profit, provided he does it through all kinds of, legal and legitimate avenues.
So this is another very important feature that Weber calls as the spirit of capitalism.
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A methodically organized life governed by reason is valued not only as a means to a long term
goal, economic success, but also as an inherently proper and even righteous state of being. A
more organized life, not a chaotic or a completely reckless life, a methodically organized life
governed by reason, a more systematic, organized life is valued not only as a means to a long
term economic success. Of course, it is an important one, but also an inherently proper and even
righteous state of being. So a person who is well-disciplined in his life, who uses rationality, who
is not kind of swayed by magic or blind beliefs and other thing is also seen as an extremely
important and successful person.
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Fourth point, embodied in the rightest pursuit of economic success is a belief that immediate
happiness and pressure should be foregone in favor of future satisfaction. Strict control on
worldly pleasures and emphasize on an ethical living. This is another very important point. So
Weber argues that the spirit of capitalism, especially from the Protestant ethics, on the one hand,
it encourage people to create more and more wealth, more and more profit, but on the other hand,
it lay down strict protocols on the people about how to spend that.
You are supposed to create more wealth, but you are not supposed to indulge in a lot of luxury
and other things. You are not supposed to spend the money that you create in a reckless manner
rather you are supposed to postpone it, keep it away for a future and you are supposed to have
strict control on the worldly pleasures.
The very fact that you are creating more money, does not provide you the entitlement to spend it
at the way you want. So, here there is a major ethical constraint imposed on a person's life and
here I hope you understand is an extremely important point. It actually tells you that the very fact
that you are able to create all this money does not give you the freedom to spend the money,
what the way you want.
You are not supposed to indulge in luxuries, you cannot be a spendthrift, you cannot be spend
money on all kinds of worldly vises or luxuries, may not be even vices you cannot spend money
on worldly luxury, you are supposed to have a very austere life, you must be very careful when
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you spend money for your personal needs. You, so there is a major disciplining orientation is
brought in along with these all arguments.
And these values, the goodness of work, success as personal rectitude, the use of reason to
guides one life and delayed gratification, through though widely prevalent in Europe was
historically unique and was of recent origin. So this is Weber's argument, why each of these are
things were widely, practice, widely available in Europe during Weber's time, Weber argues that
it was historically unique and was of the recent origin.
And then he so he creates this ideal type of this spirit of capitalism by attributing all these
features, and then undertakes a historical analysis, trying to see how and why it emerged in
Europe. And so the difference between the modern rational capitalism and other forms of
capitalism, which we discussed in the previous class. Please refer to the previous class we had an
elaborate discussion about how the previous forms of capitalism existed, for example, through
expansionism, through slave trade, pillages and plunders and they are different from the modern
capitalism.
So the significance of the rise of the spirit of capitalism, along with other structural reasons, that
we discussed in the previous class, Weber believe that the Puritanism and other Protestant sects
destroyed the cultural values of traditional society and gave way to modern capitalism.
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Weber was of the very strong opinion that the Reformation moment that happened, that
originated in Germany, but then swept across the Europe was of profound significance, started
by Martin Luther and then, propounded by host of other people, really challenged the authority
of the church.
They were extremely critical of the church and argued that the church has really degenerated, it
has deteriorated, it has lost all its moral values, and it is indulging in all kind of vices. They
called for a direct engagement with the God or direct engagement with the God Almighty,
without the mediation of the clergy. That is an extremely important one.
That is very closely connected with your rationalist or your rational engagement with the Bible,
your rational engagement with the whole question for religion, you do not really require the
priest as intermediaries, you do not need to route your prayers through the priest, you can
directly reach the God, you can directly read the Bible and then understand that, which was not
encouraged or permitted within Christianity within Catholicism.
This emergence of reformism, whether it is Calvinism or others or Puritans is very significant

So, Weber was interested in ascertaining those psychological sanctions, which originating in the
religious belief and the practices of religion gave a direction to practical conduct and held the
individual to that.
Weber’s idea was to delineate, and to separate a set of religious ideals, that had an ethical
orientation, and that directly or indirectly reoriented individual attitudes and individual
proclivities in a particular direction. And that is a very fascinating exercise, you try to understand
how certain religious ideas certain religious principles, act on your individual psyche, act on your
individual mind and then orient your actions in a particular way. And that was his overall
exercise.
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Weber comes up with four important consequences of Protestant belief system. The first one is
because the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which is an extremely important one.
Predestination led people to believe that God for some incomprehensible reasons, had divided
the human population into two groups, the saved and the damned, a key problem for all
individuals was to determine the group to which they belong.
So, one of the important sects within reformism, thee Calvinists had a very particular worldview
or theological understanding about the God and the relationship between God and human beings.
So, in marked difference from Catholicism, where you think that you are blessed and you
undergo this ritual of initiation then because of you know human fault you can get lapsed in your
actions and you can commit sins.
And then once you commit sin, then you have this priest, you can go and confess in front of the
priest and the priest can forgive you and can take away all the sins on you and then you will be
declared as pure, as all the sins can be washed away. And finally, once you die, because you do a
lot of prayers and you go to church and you do this confession and you receive this Holy
Sacrament during every mass, you die as a very divine person and then your position or your
entry into the heaven is ensured.
This is the kind of a concept within Catholicism, but whereas in Protestantism, especially in
Calvinism, it has a very fascinating kind of an argument. So, Calvin argued that God has divided
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all the people even before their birth into two groups; the one who is saved, the one who is
damned. So, the people who are saved are assured, and they are the one who will be selected, and
will have their entry or their permanent life in the heaven till the end of the world or
permanently.
On the other hand, the people who are not selected are the people who are damned and they will
be sent to the hell. And this obvious distinction without analyzing a person's life in this earth is a
very different proposition compared to that of Catholicism or even compared to that of religion
like Hinduism. Because here, the God is not evaluating somebody on the basis of his or her
conduct on the earth, it is already decided, that is why it is called us predestination, your
destination is already decided.
The moment you are born, it is already decided that you will be sent to heaven or hell. And this
is a very tricky situation. The key problem for all individuals was to determine the group to
which they belonged, because people could not know whether they are saved or damned that
inevitably caused great inner loneliness and isolation.
And you can easily understand the kind of tension, the kind of anxiety that this particular
uncertainty causes in the mind of a strong believer. For a true believer, this particular argument
about predestination is a major point of concern. It is a major point of anxiety and Weber argues
that that led to a lot of a great inner loneliness and isolation.
Because it puts you into so much of insecurity feeling, because even if you want to do certain
thing, you are told that whatever you do in this world, God is not going to help because it is
already decided, and there is absolutely no way for you to know which group that you belong to.
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So, the third point, Weber argues that although a change in one's relative status of grace was seen
as impossible, people inevitably began to look for signs that they were among the elect. So, one
is that you have no way of understanding whether you are the saved one or the damned one or
the selected one or the rejected one, but Weber argues that, in the height of this insecurity, people
started looking for signs to get an assurance, to get a solace whether they belong to the group of
the elected one.
In general Calvinists believed that two clues should be used as evidence, one is faith for all is an
absolute duty to consider themselves chosen and to combat all doubts as temptations of the devil
and involve in intense worldly activity, for this self-confidence is necessarily to alleviate
religious doubts could be generated.
So, the first one is to have a complete faith that you belong to the selected one, you think that
you are the saved one and any negative thought or any doubt is seen as the work of the devil. In a
situation of uncertainty you have to think that you are selected and you live accordingly. I hope
you follow the argument.
If you think that you are the selected one, then you cannot behave the way you want because you
are part of the selected few. And the rest of the people around you could be the damned one, they
are not going into the heaven, but you are one among the chosen few. And if you are a chosen
one, then you should behave accordingly in a way to justify God's decision. For that, the self-
confidence is necessary to alleviate religious doubts.
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So you work very hard, thinking that you are one among the selected one, so that all unnecessary
doubts can be eliminated. Fourth, all believers were expected to lead methodical and ascetic life
unencumbered by irrational emotions, superstitions or desires of the flesh.
So all believers are expected to lead an ethical and methodical ascetic life. Here we have already
discussed this point that whether you are an extremely rich person or not does not matter, but
your personal life must be that of a very minimalist life and ascetic life. You are not supposed to
indulge in luxuries, nor have unnecessary desires in this worldly luxuries and worldly pleasures,
desires of the flesh or superstitions or emotions or irrational emotions, this is another very
important point.
Catholicism was very closely connected with a lot of magical powers, lot of superstitions, beliefs
in the powers of Saints, Mother Mary, believes in the powers of lot of chosen people. So,
Protestantism completely, rejects all these claims and then want people to be scientifically
oriented, want people's life to be completely free from the influence of magic superstitions,
irrational emotions, or desires of the flesh.
As Weber puts it, the good Calvinist was expected to methodically supervise his own state of
grace in his own conduct and this to penetrate it with asceticism, with the result that each person
is engaged in a rational planning of one's own life in accordance with God's will. So, this is a
connection that Weber is making, that you think that you are a chosen one, because you cannot
go by the argument of priest whether you are chosen or you are a damned one.
So, you consider yourself as the chosen one. And once you are considered as the chosen one, you
have the obligation to lead the life in a befitting manner; you should not have put down the God
because God has selected you. You should lead such a life worthy of chosen person, and then
you are supposed to lead a rational planning of the whole life of one's life in accordance with the
God's will.
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Worldly asceticism was not restricted to monks and other religious virtuosi. So this worldly
asceticism is not an asceticism that is completely cut off from the worldly life, it is not that you
become a monk and then you leave all the worldly affairs and then you go and then do
meditation in some remote places or you live in a monastery, it is not the case.
So Calvinism understands asceticism as something which is very closely connected with this
world. It does not demand that you be cut off from the ordinary life, it does not prohibit you from
getting married, and it does not prohibit you from having children or having a normal family life.
It does not prohibit you from many worldly affairs unlike Catholicism, in which that the priests
are supposed to lead a very celibate life and supposed to have woes of poverty, woes of
obedience and so on. Whereas Calvinism or a whole host of other Protestant denominations do
not believe in that.
So, worldly asceticism was not restricted to monks and other religious virtuosi, to use Weber’s
phrase, but required that all should conduct their everyday lives according to their callings. So
this ascetic life is a life with principles, a life with a lot of dedication and discipline that can be
done in your ordinary life where you have to devote your hundred percent commitment to your
own calling.
Martin Luther’s idea of calling is understood as the sense of a life task, a definite field in which
to work. The calling brings the mundane affairs of everyday life within an all embracing
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religious influence. Along with this Calvinist idea of predestination, Martin Luther’s argument
about this calling is extremely important point in Weberian argument.
So, you consider your work as your calling and you are completely dedicated to that, which is
the Calvinist idea. We have come across quite a lot of figures, important models like that, some
of the very popular doctors, very extremely popular teachers, very important health workers or
social workers, like Mother Teresa who is committed to their work and calling.
It was not seen as a profession, or just job, or mere duty. You do not see it as a burden that is
imposed on you. Rather, you think that your entire life is dedicated for that, you are born to do
that kind of work. So, Martin Luther’s idea of calling in the sense of a life task, a definite field in
which to work, the calling brings the mundane affairs of everyday life, within an all embracing
religious influence.
Calvinism creates an unprecedented inner loneliness, where each person cannot rely on a priest
to intervene regarding sin and salvation. We discussed this point earlier. You cannot simply go to
a priest and then do a confession where he will lift you from all your sins and declare you as
pure. This is impossible within Protestantism, especially within Calvinism where you do not
have this idea of confession and then your sins being washed away, such concepts simply do not
exist.
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So Calvinist had two responses. First, the individual should never question whether or not he is
the one of the elect, or show doubts that one is not among the saved. We discussed that earlier.
So you think that should think that you are saved and never allow the doubts to emerge in your
mind because these doubts is a sign of lack of faith, or weak form of faith.
If you are completely convinced that you are the select one, then you will not even have an iota
of doubt, all temptations from the devil and individuals have to attain supreme self-confidence
that they are saved. So all the temptations come from devil whether you are select one, or you
should do this or should do that, they all come from devil and you must have the inner moral
strength to reject all these temptations.
Second, intense worldly activity is necessary to maintain this self-confidence; the world exists
for the glorification of God. And this must be manifested in people's everyday act. So the world
exists for the glorification of God. So looking at your action, people must understand that your
action is an example or it is a glorification of God. They must be able to see the glorification of
God in your action.
It is a very daunting task. It is a huge challenge to make people think that through your action,
through your work you are actually doing is the glorification God. Weber states, the performance
of good work becomes regarded as a sign of election, not in any way a method of attaining
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salvation, but rather eliminating doubts of salvation. So you must approach your work as a way
of exalting the glorification of God.
So Weber states that the most important result of this ascetic Protestantism was a systematic,
rational ordering of the moral life as a whole. So Weber says that these were the intellectual
influences, these were the spiritual influences of Calvinism, or that of different sects of
Protestantism, which is an enormous pressure on the individual to think that they are the select,
and if they are the select, then that must get reflected in the work.
So everybody is forced, everybody is pressurized, to work more sincerely, put in more hard work
and put in and to consider their job as their vocation or as their calling. Calvinism helps to create
psychological conditions conducive to the rise of capitalism. The calling is a command from the
God for the individual to work for the divine glory.
So these two things, this psychological condition of predestination and this calling Weber argues
are extremely important to the rise of capitalism. The accumulation of wealth came to be seen as
willed by God. So as I mentioned earlier, creating more wealth or creating more profit is not in,
is not a sin in itself. It is seen as willed by God.
If you consider your occupation, your job with so much of passion, the God will reward you and
the God will give you more money, the God will shower his blessings on you by making you
wealthier, but then this wealth puts enormous moral responsibility on you to use this wealth
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responsibly. They enacted a prohibition only against enjoyment of wealth; the accumulation of
wealth is not a problem; only if wealth is consumed in an immoral manner is affluence
questionable.
So you create more wealth and with that wealth you create further wealth, you employ more
people, you expand your, your business, empire that is all seen as a glorification, as a
manifestation of the glory of God. But the moment you try to indulge in your personal luxury,
your personal indulgence, when you begin to immerse yourself in say, for drugs or alcohol or
sex, then that is seen as your down turn.
So that is seen as, as something that is absolutely unacceptable in the eyes of a true Protestant
believer. And this worldview, as I mentioned is considerably different from that of a Catholic
world, where Catholicism has been telling the poor people that if you are poor, then think that
you are more closer to the God because once you die, the God will take you directly to the
heaven.
The Protestant ethic legitimated profit making, but also provided ideological support to
capitalism by justifying inequality, poverty and low wages. Here, you are directly concerned
only with the cost of creating profit, expanding your empire, business empire, but it is also
justified inequality because it does not address inequality, it does not address poverty, in a way
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Catholicism addresses, but we have discussed when we discuss Karl Marx, what is the problem
in a Catholic understanding of poverty.
Karl Marx argued that Christianity or Catholicism in particular, did not enquire why that there
are poor people or it did not enquire about the reasons of poverty, it did not enquire into the
structural reasons that either generate or perpetuate poverty, it only tried to salvage the poor, it
only try to rescue the poor through the works of charity.
But it did not ask larger questions about the root cause or did not ask larger questions about the
system that creates poorer people. Because the moment you ask that question, Marx argued you
that you are asking some of the centrally important questions, then you get into the realm of
material conditions, realm of ownership of means of production and you get into a complete
different realm of explanation and low wages.
Weber argues that the civic strata such as merchants and businessmen found this religious
worldview appealing. The existence of these groups is based on economic calculation and the
mastery of economic conditions. So he argues this that a particular, maybe the middle class or
the civic strata such as the merchants and businessmen found this religious worldview appealing.
The existence of these groups is based on economic calculation and the mastery of economic
conditions.
It was the rising stratum of this, of the lower industrial middle class with the self, with their ideal
of the self-made man who embodied the capitalist spirit. So Weber now connects this spirit of
capitalism with the rise of a particular class of people, the merchants and the businessmen, who
belong to the lower middle class or the lower industrial middle class who imbibed this particular
spirit and then began on an expansion spirit of capitalist production, which really gave so much
of impetuous, speed and energy through that of the capitalist expansion.
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Now let us see the larger implication of this argument. By demonstrating the influence of ascetic
Protestantism on the formation and the vocational culture of modern capitalism, Weber
challenges what he takes to be the economic determinism of Marx’s historical materialism. So
this is the story of Protestant ethics, so Weber takes a particular spirit of capitalism as an idea
and then he traces back its origin in the emergence of Calvinism or emergence of Reformism.
And then he says that this Reformist movement is the one which actually gave rise to this
particular spirit along with a number of structural reasons as we saw which include the
availability of free market, availability of free labor, the science and technology specialized
knowledge, established rules and regulations, along with all these structural reasons, this
particular spirit gave an impetuous for the emergence of capitalism as a dominant economic
system.
And this particular argument as we already mentioned is directly opposite to a Marxian argument
about the economic determinism, where the economic strata influences or it determines the
values. So Weber’s work is in a way widely identified and discussed and debated by scholars as
a very important critic of Marxian argument about the role of economy and role of religious
values.
So that is why this, this particular book Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism by Weber is
seen as an extremely important critic of Marxian explanation on economic determinism because
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Weber through his wonderful analysis is able to put forward a thesis and use historical material,
an empirical analysis to argue that there was a definitive ideological influence for the emergence
of capitalism as a distinct economic system.
So Weber insists that the course of history is determined not only by economic forces but by
ideal or cultural forces as well by life shaping belief systems. So this is the most important
argument Weber brings fourth the significance of belief system, Weber brings fourth the
significance of cultural ideas, the importance of values, important of ethical dispositions as
extremely important life shaping forces.
So he is not ready to relegate them unlike Karl Marx who see these things as epiphenomena.
Marx understood these belief systems as a consequence or a corollary of an economic system,
Weber is not ready to do that, Weber is not ready to accept that argument rather Weber argues
that in the history of human life, these values and belief systems and cultural values are as
important as the material conditions.
So in that sense, Weber’s thesis is widely seen as an efficient correction, as an efficient antidote
to a very hard line Marxian argument that tend to discount the importance of values and beliefs
and realms of ideas and cultures and other things. So let us wind up the class, today we had a
discussion about this his magnum opus The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism and we will
continue with Weber’s discussion in the coming classes as well. So see you, thank you.
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Professor. R Santhosh
Lecture No. 39
Modern Rational Capitalism
So, welcome back to the class, let us begin another session on Weber. And in this class we are
looking at a very important analysis of Weber on a modern capitalism. And we know that
capitalism is a unique economic system that is characteristic of the modern era. And this
particular economic system has been subjected to a lot of scholarly analysis, not only from
economists but also from other social scientists.
We did spend a lot of time trying to understand the Marxian analysis as well as critic of
capitalism. And here, as a sociologist, Weber also is extremely interested in understanding
capitalism. But unlike Karl Marx, he is not trying to understand the economic logic or the
questions of exploitation associated with capitalism, but he is trying to understand the connection
between capitalism and rationalism or the process rationalization.
This takes you back to a theme that I have repeatedly mentioned in the previous classes that the
central concern of Max Weber is a question of rationalization. We have already discussed about
his analysis about rationalization and social action and authority.
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In this class, we are trying to understand how Weber puts forward an argument about how there
is an intricately close relationship between rationalization and this capitalist mode of economy.
Let us see how he proceeds in that. So, for Weber, capitalism is a consequence of extensive
rationalization in Europe. The modern world is a capitalist world, but more fundamentally, it is
the product of a multifarious and far reaching process of rationalization. So, for Weber, the entry
point into the analysis of capitalism is his theory of rationalization.
We discussed that in a very controversial manner, Weber argued that, while different forms of
rationality exist in other civilizations, a unique kind of rationality is quite exclusive to that of
Europe, where you calculate everything and you extensively use specialized knowledge and
science and technological facilities. So, that kind of a rationality, Weber argues is quite unique to
Europe and did not exist before the time of modernity.
Weber is connecting his argument about rationalization with the emergence of this new
economic system called as capitalism. The modern world is a capitalist world and more
fundamentally, it is a product of a multifarious and far reaching process of rationalization. By
referring to capitalism as a rational, Weber but does not mean to imply moral approval, his usage
is intended to be descriptive, not evaluative. I think, by now, you are rather clear about it when
we talked about neutral, value free analysis of capitalism, because Weber is not taking any
position, unlike Marx who was extremely critical of capitalism.
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Weber is not getting into the argument of whether capitalism is good or bad, whether it is
exploitative of workers or whether it should collapse and something else should take its place.
Weber is not getting into such kind of debates, rather, he is trying to maintain the status of a
neutral observer, who is capable of analyzing things objectively and trying to describe things as
they appear, without allowing their own subjective values to influence their findings or their
descriptions.
His usage is intended to be descriptive and not evaluative, or in other words, he is trying to be
positive rather than normative, a point that we discussed in the previous class. So, modern
capitalism is rational in the formal sense. And here again, I hope you remember, Weber makes
this distinction between substantive rationalism and formal rationalism. This is Weber's key
point, to the extent that business operations are conducted according to systematic planning
based on economic calculation and monetary accounting.
The modern capitalism according to Weber, does not have anything much to offer in terms of
certain lofty ideals or values, rather it is more preoccupied with a kind of a formal form of
rationality. It is, this business operations are conducted according to systematic planning based
on economic calculation and monetary accounting.
Extremely rational instrumental mechanisms are brought in to conduct the business in the era of
capitalism where it is devoid of all other calculations. If you remember this typology of actions,
where emotions are kept away, traditions are kept away or ideals and certain values systems are
kept away. So, here Weber argues that modern capitalism is executed in an extremely rational
manner based on economic calculation and monetary accounting.
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Weber argues that the capitalist enterprises as profit seeking organizations are formally rational
insofar as their managing decisions are consistently guided by the impersonal and quantitative
assessment of cost and revenues. So the people who engage in that are not swayed or they are not
influenced by any other considerations. No personal commitments or no value orientations, no
emotional issues are allowed to mark, they are not allowed to influence their economic
calculations, which is carried out purely on the basis of cost and revenues.
It is a cold, calculative and instrumental way of getting things done in a very precise and clinical
manner. You carry on with your economic activities only with the purpose of increasing your
profit and then making more money. So, they are formally rational as they are managing
decisions are consistently guided by impersonal and quantitative assessments of constant
revenues. While capitalism is neither new nor western, according to Weber, what he calls
rational capitalism is both uniquely modern and uniquely western.
Weber the argument that the capitalism as a form of economic activity is not something quite
new, or it is not something quite unique to Western idea. You have different types of capitalism
exist in in different part of the world. But this rational capitalism, as he explains, is uniquely
modern, and it is uniquely western. Again he is highlighting this unique character of Europe, the
way he talked about the rationality. He understand these rationalization as a unique example of
that of the Europe.
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Early forms of capitalism, Weber observes, have an irrational and speculative character, with
profits derived less from ongoing market operations than from opportunistic investments, and
forcible acquisition of booty. So, he is talking about major trades and explorations and other
expeditions carried out by trading communities in Europe and in other places. And he says that,
while these activities also aimed at amassing more wealth and increasing more profit, it is very
different from modern capitalism. The process of amassing wealth started since fifteenth century
through trade expeditions and later through colonial expansion.
Weber argues that they were irrational in the modern sense, not that they were completely but
they were irrational and speculative in character. In earlier forms of capitalism, profits derived
less from ongoing market operations than from the opportunistic investment and the forcible
acquisition of booty. During colonial trade plundering was a major way of acquiring more and
more wealth, the trading vessels were plundered and attacked and the booty was taken.
So in earlier forms of economic activities, amassing wealth happened in the absence of an

ongoing market operation whereas in the modern era, market assumes a central figure.
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Then he comes to the question of modern capitalism. Modern rational capitalism cannot be
equated with the acquisitive drive or the unlimited greed for gain or the pursuit of selfish interest
by making of money. So, he says that this modern rational capitalism as he, as you have seen
contemporary world or at the time of Weber, it is qualitatively different in terms of its operation.
And it is also qualitatively different in terms of its intent or its purpose.
Weber says that it cannot be equated with the acquisitive drive of the earlier period, where you
want to create wealth, in without any boundary or the unlimited greed for gain, personal greed or
the pursuit of selfish interest by making of money. So, he says that, capitalist expansion is taking
place, it cannot be reduced to the individual greed. Of course, in the motivation to create more
wealth is of course there, but that is something qualitatively different from the earlier ways in
which people want to amass more wealth for their personal gratification.
So, modern capitalism, tempered by the businesslike pursuit of profit is, if anything characterized
by a more restrained accusative impulse than the compulsive, irrational unbridled lust for rich
commonly found prior to and outside the modern capitalist world. So, this is again, re-
emphasizing the argument that this modern capitalism which is tempered by businesslike
pursuits of profit, if it is anything characterized by more than restrained accusative impulse than
the compulsive era, he uses all these terms to characterize the pre-modern capitalism that was
characteristic of the middle ages or even before that.
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Now, in contrast, according to Weber, modern capitalism is an economic system, where the
provision of human needs is satisfied through the continuous operation of privately owned and
profit minded business firms. So here, he brings in the central role of business firms as the
primary institution and also the kind of is need is satisfied through the continuous operation of
privately owned and profit minded business firms.
So, what are the kind of changes that take place when you bring in this role of business firms,
these capitalist enterprises are distinguished by their reliance on a legally free labor force, their
resolute orientation towards market opportunities, and a mode of operation governed by
monetary calculation, these are extremely important points.
We know that we had some discussion about how there was a transition from feudal era to that of
capitalist era where we discussed a number of important factors, especially about the emergence
of free labor, emergence of market, emergence of institutionalized laws and regulations, so that
the people who enter into the business activity, they have some amount of certainty, some
amount of guarantee about the existing laws, taxes and other things. So, he is reiterating the kind
of similar points.
So, these capitalist enterprises are distinguished by their reliance on a legally free labor, we
discuss I hope, you remember, we discussed extensively on this because during the period of
slavery as well as during the period of feudalism, the labour were not free, they were not free
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because they were completely owned by the masters and during the feudal period, they were
permanently attached with their kind of land.
So, they were not free moving, they were not able to sell their labor, as per their wishes. So, there
is a legally free labor force, they resolute orientation towards market opportunities. It is not on
the basis of the whims and fancies of a trader or of a particular master or a feudal lord, but there
is an establish market system and a mode of operation governed by monetary calculation. So
here, the money assumes significant presence and not the kind of an old systems of barter or
exchange and other things.
Now what distinguishes modern economic system accordingly, Weber asserts, is the rational
pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit by means of rigorous calculation directed with
foresight and caution towards long run economic success. So here, he is bringing that point of
modern rationality to the fore. So, he argues that there is a rational pursuit of profit.
Again, a profit making continues to be the main objective, but this profit making is not realized
either through plunder or pillage or through exchange or excavations or other thing expeditions,
but rather, it is through a rational pursuit of profit. And it is forever renewed profit by means of a
rigorous calculation, directed with foresight and caution toward long term economic success. So,
the long run economic success of this activities very thoroughly analyzed, and everything is
taken into account, enough caution is used and only after such kind of exercises, Weber argues a
modern capitalism emerges.
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So, there were several major preconditions for the emergence of capitalism, Weber asks this
question why capitalism did not emerge in Europe before the era of modernity and he has very
specific answers. So, he listed out a series of reasons and the first one is private ownership.
Modern capitalism presupposes private ownership of the means of production with entrepreneurs
firmly in charge.
Ownership gives capitalists or their representatives the authority to manage the production
process, direct the labor force, and make investment decisions, all guided by monetary
calculations and oriented towards goal of profit maximization. So Weber is very certain that the
ownership of private property such as factory, land or other means of production, played a
fundamental role in in motivating groups of people to increase and amass more and more wealth.
Weber certain that this would not have happened if a system similar to communism or socialism
existed, where there is no private ownership, and means of production is collectively owned. So,
ownership gives capitalists or their representatives the authority to manage the production
process, we know how a class of managers emerged off late who were specialized only in
micromanaging as well as providing a larger managerial directions to the process of production
and direct the labor force and make investment decisions, very prudent investment decisions, all
guided by monetary calculations are oriented towards goal of profit maximization.
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Second one is free labor, which we already discussed, the rationality of modern capitalism also
presupposes a labor force that is legally free, but compelled by the whip of hunger to offer its
services on the labor market. I want you to recollect Karl Marx here. His arguments about this
reserve army of labor, and how and why that the capitalists are able to exploit the workers and
how there are upward growth and recessions and how there are cycles of business. I want you to
remember that.
So, there is a legally free labor force, who in theory can sell their labor to the highest bidder. But
you know that as Max very elaborately argued, there is always already existing group of reserve
army of laborers who are forced to sell their labor, even when real wages are very inadequate.
According to Marxian argument, the capitalist or the bourgeoisie will find ways to reduce the
wages compared to what they really deserved, compelled by the whip of hunger to offer its
services on the labor market, free labor, where workers can be hired, deployed and fired at will,
is an important precondition for the capitalist rationality for two reasons.
First, where workers sell their labor on the market for a wage, employees can reliably estimate
the cost of production in advance. Second, free labor along with private control over the means
of production facilitates workplace discipline, very important things because you can appoint
workers, you can train them, and you can fire them at will. The wages can be determined
according to the will of the capitalists. So this provided quite a lot of flexibility to the capitalist,
according to Weber.
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Then the third one, according to Weber is a Free Market. The efficient operation of the capitalist
business and the price and the reliable determination of expected profits are possible only with
the elimination of all market restrictions and other irrational limitations of trading. This requires
that market transactions be purely impersonal, free from the influence of any sentimental,
religious or ethical infringements. This is related to arguments of Adam Smith and others about
the invisible hand of the free market.
Whether there an invisible hand available or is a free market is something you know, good for
the humanity all these are entirely different set of debates, but what Weber is arguing that, in the
absence of a free market, a market which runs only on the basis of its own rationalities, a market
that is unhindered by excessive political, religious or personal influences is something so
paramount for the emergence of modern rational capitalism.
Then the fourth one is Capital Accounting which is a rational capitalist enterprise, Weber states,
is one that determines the merit of investment opportunities by means of modern bookkeeping
methods, the modern accounting, Weber argues where you have standardized procedures for
entering the income, the expenditure, the other components. So, this modern bookkeeping or
accounting provides a kind of an institutionalized mechanism to keep track of your way of
conducting business.
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Another point is Technology and Mechanization, which is very important. Modern capitalism
presupposes rational technology and the mechanization of production and distribution,
technology enhances efficiency, but more importantly for Weber, it permits accurate estimation
of output and facilitates rational accounting and precise calculation.
Here again, Weber brings this role of technology not only for increasing efficiency, but also it
contributes to their predictability. Technology can very clearly give you an idea about what is the
what is the output, how much raw materials is required, how much time is required, what would
be the output of a given a particular period in time. So, this factor Weber, argues is something
extremely important.
Another point, Weber argues is this calculable legal and administrative system. Modern
capitalism presupposes calculable laws and dependable legal and political environment, which is
extremely important. You cannot think of capitalism to survive or any economic activity to
survive in a place where there is no law and order, the economy will simply crumble in such kind
of places. In order for a free market to thrive, Weber argues that you need to have a calculable
legal and administrative system.
Of course, there could be changes, new laws and new taxes can be imposed, but then they are all
within the kind of an expected limits. These are not decided on the basis of the whims and
fancies of a particular ruler who can act at will. The systems are well entrenched, there are laws,
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both national as well as international laws, there are various conventions and various protocols,
various treaties that are established and they are respected. So, that gives certain sense of
certainty and security to the people who are involved in this whole process.
Then the next one is a commercialization, modern capitalism presupposes the commercialization
of economic life. By commercialization, Weber means the appearance of paper representing
shares in enterprise and rights to income typified by the emergence of the stock company, this
development, he argues, has taken place only in the modern Western world which is an extreme
form of commercialization where you can own the shares of a company.
You can own the shares of a company and this public issue of shares as that happens through the
modern stock exchange. These are some of the extremely important enabling conditions and then
the separation of household and business which is another interesting point. We need to be
critical of this point because even now there are huge business conglomerates both within the
country as well as outside, which is yet to make this kind of distinction.
Finally, modern capitalism also presupposes as a requisite for rational bookkeeping, the
separation of business from the household. This entails both the spatial separation between
residence and work and more importantly, a legal separation between the personal wealth of the
business owner or his or her private assets and the corporate wealth of the business enterprise,
the capital invested in or available for to the firm.
One is that there is a physical separation, the earlier or even now that in many houses, production
takes place within houses, very small domestic level of houses, but when you look into the
modern capitalist system, the place of work is completely different from the place of living, they
are completely physically separate. And more than that, even though the private families could
be owning a company or a corporate firm, they might be the owners in the traditional sense, there
is a separation of the personal wealth as well as the wealth of the company.
And again this is a very complicated scenario, we come across quite a lot of stories where this
line is broken. There is hardly any, distinction exists between the corporate money and the
personal money. If you look into some of the recent controversies involving some of the
billionaires who had to flee the country, who had committed a lot of frauds and other crimes this
particular point becomes very clear.
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However Weber argues that these constellation of conditions enabled capitalist business
enterprise to achieve a maximum of formal rationality, rational organization, and calculability
and that makes capitalism such a formidable economic system. All these aspects that we
discussed came into existence, with its full force only in the modern period and that too only in
Europe, which is what Weber agues.
Weber was also criticized heavily for his very strong, Eurocentric position. He is very categorical
in arguing that this entailed a maximum of formal rationality and nothing to do with substantive
rationality, nothing to do with values or lofty ideals or ideals or nothing of that sort. It is all about
how do you do certain things, how instrumentally you do certain things, what are the procedural
mechanisms, the emphasize is completely on the procedure, not on the inner meaning not on the
ideal, not on any of the principles. So, this is precisely what makes capitalism such a formidable
economic system.
Other factors are also necessary such as a rational spirit, the rationalization of the conduct of life
in general and the rationalistic economic ethic, this is very interesting. So far, all the points that
we discussed, including free market, legal system, free labor, separation of household, were all
about the kind of structural conditions, about the social factors and economic arrangements.
He says that, there has to be some kind of an attitudinal change, a certain kind of a qualitative
change in the way people think and there has to be a rational spirit, the rationalization of the
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conduct of life in general and their rationalistic economic ethic. He is talking about how ethics or
how a certain kind of a spirit or attitude is very important for the emergence of capitalism.
Thus the formal rationality of capitalism has yet another presupposition, it requires the presence
of a new type of person, the carrier or bearers of a rational ethic, and a new and specifically
methodical way of life. Weber takes up this side of the story in his very famous book, ‘The
Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism’. And this is going to be very fascinating argument.
He is saying that along with all these structural requirements, you require a kind of orientation,
you require a kind of your attitude, you require a kind of certain kind of proclivity which are
certain set of ethos, certain set of ideals that provide some kind of a guidance to your everyday
life, your both your personal as well as your collective life.
In the absence of this set of ethos, or this particular spirit, capitalism would not have emerged.
And that is a very provocative argument. It is provocative because it is in direct conflict with a
Marxian argument about economic change. Marx absolutely gave no importance to any of such
kind of attitudinal changes, or changes in values. He argued that all these things happen as a
result of economic ethic.
Here, Weber is bringing this importance of this spirit or a set of ideas or set of ethos as
something so important for the emergence of capitalism. And this argument he brings forth in its
complete majesty or complete beauty in his extremely popular work, his magnum opus, ‘The
Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism’. And this book will be the subject matter of our
next class and extremely important work by Weber.
Let us have a very short recap. He is talking about the emergence of modern capitalism. He does
not say that capitalism as an economic system was something quite unique to Europe it emerged
only during the modern times, but he says that it existed earlier, but he would very vehemently
argue that the modern rational capitalism, is something quite unique to Western Europe. Because
that required a set of other structural conditions for its emergence, including all the points that
we discussed, including a private property, free labor, then existing legal systems and a host of
other science and technology and host of other points that we discussed.
Weber, towards the end of this discussion is saying that, it is not only that the structural factors
are important, but also the change in the spirit, change in the ethic, change in the moral aspects
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that govern not only the individual, but also the collective, is also important. That is what we are
going to discuss in the coming class in his work on this Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.
So, let us stop here and see you for the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 40
Bureaucracy
Welcome back to the class, let us continue with the discussion on Max Weber, we are almost
halfway through with the discussion on Max Weber. In the previous class, we discussed his the
most famous work of Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, a book
widely considered as one of the most important contribution of Max Weber, in which he try to
explore a host of theoretical issues through a very fascinating empirical as well as historical
analysis.
I hope that you followed the class, you understood the argument and how he makes a connection,
between the rise of modern capitalism in Europe and a particular religious outlook or religious
influence that he called as Protestant ethic, a particular worldview, a particular theoretical
influence emerges from the Protestant groups, especially Calvinism and influenced by others. So,
as I mentioned in the class, this book is also widely seen as a dialogue between Karl Marx and
Max Weber. In today's class, we are moving to analyze, yet another very important concept of
Max Weber, known as Bureaucracy. And we know that this term is a very familiar, we use this
term in our everyday parlance as we come across bureaucracy in our mundane life.
The institution of bureaucracy is very important in our political as well as professional, socio
economic life. We experience bureaucracy, in our everyday life and we are sometimes critical of
that. But yet we know that we cannot do without a bureaucratic setup. So, Weber has very
interesting theorization on bureaucracy, especially on its historically unique character, it’s very
specific forms of rationality, its efficiency, the way in which it is organized and of course, he was
also critical of that. So, let us spend time, some time trying to understand Max Weber’s
exposition on bureaucracy.
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Weber was interested in bureaucracy as it is the purest type of exercise of legal authority in the
modern world. And his interest in this setup or this arrangement of bureaucracy was not only
emerging from his keen interest to understand this particular arrangement per say, but he argued
that this really epitomizes so this really represents the purest type of exercise of legal authority.
And here, we need to go back to the previous classes, where we discussed about at least 3 major
types of authority that Weber mentions about; one is the traditional authority, second one is the
charismatic authority and the third one is legal rational authority.
I hope you remember the classes, if not, please, go back and refer to those classes because they
are extremely important. Weber talks about 3 major ideal types of authorities, from where the
legitimacy, the power derives its legitimacy, the one is from the traditional authority, where the
tradition itself provides legitimacy to certain forms of behavior, certain authority, certain power.
Second one is charismatic authority, emerging from the exceptional person which breaks almost
every existing rules on power and authority and other things.
And the third one, the most important one for Weber was the legal rational authority, where he
elaborates its features, they are impersonal, it uninfluenced or uncontaminated by the elements of
emotion or tradition and other things. So for Weber, bureaucracy really represents the purest
form of exercise of legal authority.
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The process of modernization for Weber is a process of bureaucratization. Modern society is
fundamentally and inevitably a bureaucratic society. And this is an extremely important
argument, because he is connecting modernization, of course with a number of other themes. But
for him, the most important feature of modernization is the process of bureaucratization. And
Weber provides a much expansive understanding of bureaucratization taking it from a very
limited understanding about how state apparatus is bureaucratic, and that is how we understand it
in our common parlance.
But for Weber this bureaucratization has permeated into each and every spheres of modern
human society, that is why for him, the process of modernization is nothing but a process of
bureaucratization. Modern society is fundamentally and inevitably bureaucratic society. And he
would say that modern societies is incompatible with traditional values like tradition or
charismatic authority, because there are quite a lot of inherent contradictions within the value
orientations themselves.
The state in particular, Weber emphasizes is absolutely dependent upon a bureaucratic basis, and
which we know that for sure how it exists, every modern nation state is built on an elaborate a
gigantic system of bureaucracy, starting with the, maybe the chief secretary at the state level, to
the representative of the state at the grassroots level at the lowest level, the state, in the price is a
mammoth bureaucratic enterprise.
The growth of bureaucratic officialdom, he observes, has been the unambiguous yardstick of the
modernization of the state. So, this bureaucratic officialdom, where the, a particular set of an
exclusive set of officials in the Indian context, we know, the IAS officers are the epitome of
Indian bureaucracy, given the amount of competition involved, the extent of competition to clear
civil service examinations and the kind of prestige and power associated with the position of IAS
because, they are considered to be the most important components of this bureaucratic system.
So, the growth of bureaucratic officialdom, he observes, has been the unambiguous yardstick of
modernization of the state. So, he would analyze or evaluate the extent of modernization of a
state on the basis of the extent of its bureaucratization. Weber's concept of bureaucracy is an
ideal type and abstraction constructed to underline the rational properties of bureaucratic
administration and highlight the contrast between bureaucratic rule and traditional rule.
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And I hope you remember our discussion on ideal type, Weber gives a definition of ideal type
and he presents it as a methodological tool, he talks about historical ideal type and general ideal
type. So, in order to just have a very quick recap, he argues that you must be able to create an
ideal type of a social phenomenon either a historical event or a historical trait or a general ideal
type. And this ideal type helps you as a perfect example, against which you can compare the kind
of examples that you have with you and in the previous class, I gave you the example of a perfect
student.
So we may not be able to point out somebody as a perfect student or the perfect student, but we
all know that these are all examples of an ideal type, where it helps us to evaluate an ordinary
doctor or student whom we meet in our everyday life and then to compare it and then to contrast
it. And to see to what extent this particular person embodies the kind of qualities and features of
this ideal type. And Weber is very clear that it is only purely an ideological or an ideal
construction. It never exists, you will never find an ideal typical situation or category in
anywhere in reality.
So, Weber concept of bureaucracy is an ideal type, an abstraction constructed to underline the
rational properties of bureaucratic administration and highlight the contrast between bureaucratic
rule and traditional rule. So, if you contrast the functioning of bureaucratic rule or an ideal type
of bureaucratic administration, and then ideal type of traditional administration, you will see
what the kind of contrasting differences are and that is the purpose of Weber in creating or
constructing this ideal type.
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So, what are the important features? The first one is a Formalism. Bureaucracy exhibits a high
level of formalism, insofar as official business is conducted on the basis of written rules,
administrative regulations and fixed procedures. The rational formalism of bureaucracy requires
that the administrative actions be handled in a uniform fashion by the book, not on an individual
case by case basis, and not according to the personal predilections of bureaucratic officials.
And this is something extremely important. And we know that when we talk about the
bureaucracy, we often attribute quite a lot of rigidity with that, we know that we have often heard
that bureaucrats are supposed to follow the rules in a very strict manner, they are not supposed to
deviate from that. They cannot really take decisions on the basis of their own discretion, the
discretionary powers of bureaucrats are very limited, it does not mean that they are completely or
absolutely not permitted, but the range of their discretion is very limited.
The important argument of Weber is that bureaucracy is characterized by formalism, everything

is well documented, there is no informality available and you are supposed to strictly follow the
written down rules and those who are familiar with the governance services or a private
corporation and the other things, know that when once you take a particular job, our rules and
our service conditions, for example, are strictly governed by very specific rules. So, each and
every action is actually rule bound.
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So, Weber argues that this formalism is a very important feature of bureaucracy, it exhibits a
high level of formalism, insofar as official business is conducted on the basis of written rules,
administrative regulations, and fixed procedures. And n number of example, if you want to buy
something, if it is, say if it is below some 50,000 Rupee, a particular officer can go ahead with
that. But if it is between 50,000 and then 5 lakh, then that order must get ratified by his, his
super, his superior. And if the order is beyond 5 lakh then it must go to a purchase committee.
So, there are very specifically well laid out rules for each and every aspect. So, that is why the
rational formalism of bureaucracy requires that administrative actions be handled in a uniform
fashion by the book, not on an individual case by case basis, and not according to the personal
predilections of bureaucratic officials. And this is an extremely important point, because it is a
chair of the bureaucrat, which actually decides what are the rules and rules and other things that
this particular officer is bound to follow.
Therefore, the freedom provided to a particular officer per say is very limited. And keep in mind,
these are all ideal typical arguments. We know that, that is not how it happens, you will come
across officials who are more forthcoming, who flout the rules, who have a much larger
understanding of the freedom associated, but for Weber, this is how he characterizes the essential
features of bureaucracy.
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Then the second one is impersonality. Bureaucratic officials, Weber argues in adherence to their
vocational demands, perform their function in a purely objective and matter of fact manner, in
accordance with the “calculable rules” and “without regard to personal considerations”!. And
this is another very important one, one, the first one we discuss, already discussed, it is
formulism.
Second one is impersonality. So, the person who occupies a particular chair, a chair of a chief
secretary or chair of a district collector does not matter. Because the chair or that position
requires a person to behave in a certain manner. A person cannot bring in his or her personal
ideas, their proclivities, their ideological inclinations, their personal opinions, their biases, they
are not supposed to bring that. They are supposed to purely follow the rules and regulations in a
purely objective and matter of fact, manner in accordance with the calculable rules, and without
regard to personal considerations.
Weber argues that the more fully developed the bureaucracy, the more it is dehumanized. The
more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business, business love, hatred, and all
purely personal irrational and emotional elements, which escaped calculation. The impersonality
of the market economy has its counterpart in the impersonality of bureaucratic administration.
So, here Weber is elaborating the idea of impersonal character of bureaucracy, he says that the
more it is bureaucratized, it is the more it is dehumanized. It is supposed to have been free from
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all human character, because when you are sitting on a chair and a file comes to you are about a
particular person's plight, and you are really convinced about the situation of that particular
person, you really want to help, but then there could be some technical glitch, there could be
some technical problem which prevents you from doing that. And then you are supposed to
follow the technical rule.
So, Weber argues or host of other scholars have argued that a completely absolute bureaucratic
system is a completely dehumanized one, you will not find any human qualities, you will not
find any space for any human qualities of love, compassion or generosity, or adjustment or these
qualities do not have any place in a bureaucratic setup. So, the more it completely succeeds in
eliminating from official business, love, hatred and all purely personal, irrational and emotional
elements, which escape calculation.
The impersonality of the market economy has its counterpart in the impersonality of bureaucratic
administration. So he argues that when capitalism emerges, it assumes the character of a
completely impersonal market economy, because market or economy, according to Weber, is yet
another form of completely or complete absolute rational behavior.
Then the third one is predictability. Bureaucracy, Weber states, permits a high degree of
calculability of results, both for those heading the organization, and for those who are acting in
relation to that. You know how bureaucratic organizations work, so it actually gives you a sense
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of certainty and predictability over the organization. For example, if a chief secretary issues an
order, the chief secretary exactly knows that how that it has to be circulated, when will it reach
the top, the lower bottom person and how it will be implemented, because he knows how this
this system of bureaucracy functions.
So, there is an important element of calculability in that, because the rules are well laid out, the
hierarchy is well laid out, the flow of information is clearly well established. So all these things
actually produce a kind of calculability and predictability, a ‘high degree of calculability of
results’, both of these heading the organization, and ‘for those who are acting in relation to it’.
The capitalist market economy depends on the existence of a stable and predictable governing
system, and this is precisely what bureaucratic administration offers. So, the capitalist market
economy depends on the existence of a stable and predictable governing system. I hope you
remember this point, when Weber talks about the structural conditions for the emergence of
capitalism, we came across this point that every business, every capitalist would require a stable
set of rules.
There could be some changes here and there, but everybody wants a stable political atmosphere,
no investor will be willing to invest their money, if he or she knows that the political climate is
going to be chaotic, they want complete stability, at least clarity in terms of the legal and
political provisions of that particular place.
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The fourth important feature that Weber talks about is knowledge. Rationality of bureaucracy
derives also from its reliance on a staff consisting of knowledgeable professionals and technical
specialists. And this division of labor, on the basis of the knowledge and we know that usually
we say that people are appointed on the basis of their efficiency. In a modern, industrial
advanced society, we know that we have extreme form of division of labor people who have
specialized in some of the narrowest or fields of specialization.
So bureaucracy, Weber argues is based on highly specialized forms of knowledge. The

rationality of bureaucracy derives also from its reliance on a staff consisting of knowledgeable
professionals. So, an ordinary layperson is not entrusted with the the task of bureaucracy, but it is
for knowledgeable professionals and technical specialists. The process bureaucratization gives
rise to social order characterized by “the ever increasing importance of experts and specialized
knowledge” and by an “absolute and complete dependence on a specially trained organization of
officials”.
So, it is a group of people who have expertized in a given area, and this organization is
hierarchically arranged, the flow of communication is well decided, well defined. And all these
characteristics really shape what it means to a system of bureaucracy, gives rise to social order,
characterized by the ever increasing importance of experts and specialized knowledge. And by
an absolute and complete dependence on a specially trained organization of officials.
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Bureaucratic administration, Weber states “means fundamentally domination through
knowledge”. We know that in modern state, this knowledge gets manifested through technical
knowledge, through data that you collect about the people, the kind of legal and political
components of the rules that are already framed, and then a host of forms of knowledge about the
administrative system, its various components, its various dynamics and a lot of other stuff.
So, the fifth point that Weber brings forward is that of efficiency. An office hierarchy consisting
of well-defined channels of authority and lines of supervision, and the presence of a trained staff
of career officials with a specialized areas of competence. So, bureaucracy presents you with
utmost clarity in terms of the organization structure, there will not be two officials having the
same position, and therefore any kind of conflict of interest is never allowed.
The authority structure who is superior to whom, and who is subordinate to whom, these rules
are very clearly laid out. So, the flow of communication, who has to issue a notice and how it has
to be routed, we know that a letter is routed through somebody. When a principal writes a letter
to a faculty member, so it has to be routed to the head of the department. Even if that letter is
directly addressed to a faculty member, it has to be routed through the head of the department
because head of the department is seen as superior to that of the faculty and seen as somebody
who is in between the faculty and the principal.
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So, an official hierarchy consisting of well-defined channels of authority and the lines of
supervision and also lines of communication, and by the presence of a trained staff of career
officials with specialized areas of competence. So they insist, they ensure continuity, stability,
reliability and consistency. Human becomes a kind of a “human machine”. It is a machine
composed of human beings, it is a well-oiled machinery, it is supposed to be very efficient, it is
supposed to be very continuous, a stable, reliable and consistent.
And I do not think that I need to remind you that when it comes to this point, we increasingly
know that it is an ideal type. Because bureaucracy, at least in India is also quite often associated
with lack of efficiency. We say that our bureaucratic enterprise is completely inefficient. It is
corrupt, it is full of nepotism, it is full of lazy officers, and who often gets things delayed.
If you give a complaint or a petition to the government officials, it will be kept somewhere, it
will accumulate dust for years. But we know that Weber is not talking about the exact empirical
condition, rather, he is talking about the ideal typical condition.
The next important feature is indispensability. Bureaucracy, the purest embodiment of formal
rationality is an indispensable feature of modern society. It is a uniquely efficient mechanism for
administering collective affairs of society. So, Weber would even argue that you do not have
anything to replace bureaucracy. Do we have anything to replace the system of bureaucracy?
Have you thought about anything? Can you think of anything that can replace bureaucracy?
We say that it is very corrupt. It is very inefficient. It is full of favoritism and then red tapism.
But do we have any other alternative forms of organization that can be used to replace
bureaucracy? it is impossible, we have not found anything so far, we can make the bureaucracy
less cluttered, less rigid and more flexible, that is all fine. But this overall logic of this
organization and arrangement is very hard to replace.
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Bureaucracy, Weber argues, is escape proof and practically indestructible. So, Weber is
extremely clear about it. He is very clear that you cannot really do away or wish away
bureaucracy because it epitomizes some of the essential features of modern society. You cannot
replace bureaucracy with something else, he says that it is impossible in a modern era, because
this modernity is characterized by some of the important values that are inherent in a
bureaucratic system, all these values that we discussed.
So in a traditional society, in a tribal society, or in a feudal society, you can think of other forms
organization, but in a modern society, where rationality is the most important form of value, you
cannot have any other system of governance other than bureaucracy. While Weber is ambivalent
about the social and personal effects of bureaucracy, he has no alternative for it.
So, while Weber is ambivalent about its social and personal effects, he sees that the professional
bureaucrat chained by his apparatus, as once established, bureaucrats are difficult to abolish. So
Weber, while understands that it is an inescapable situation, he is also of familiar with the
negative aspects of bureaucracy.
Because I do not think that any system of bureaucracies are free of criticism. When you have
such an inhuman mechanism in place, when people are appointed to very important positions,
and when they wield so much of power, then the system is bound to become lethargic and
corrupt.
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Weber is ambivalent about the social and personal effects, he sees the professional bureaucrat
chained by his apparatus, as once established bureaucracies are very difficult to abolish. And you
also must be knowing quite a lot of stuff about say many bureaucrats feeling in a fed up with the
whole system and they coming out of the old system and feeling and thinking that they can do far
better if they are outside of this bureaucratic setup.
Moreover, the bureaucracy can work for anyone in control of it, whether it may be
democratically elected leader or a dictator, this is another very important point. So, we cannot
assume that bureaucracy, because of its all efficiency and will always have positive effects. You
can have an extremely ruthless bureaucratic system, who will silently obey its most ruthless
leader and the German Holocaust, the way in which the Nazis executed the final solution stands
a testimony to that even now researchers are really wondering how that ordinary human beings,
you must have heard about this argument of this ‘banality of evil’, by Hannah Arendt implying
the capacity of ordinary people to involve in violence in most mundane and banal ways.
Arendt talks about how an ordinary police person can become so ruthless in killing ordinary
people. So, why didn’t a policeman in the German Nazi group think critically? How didnt not
think critically and acted in a mechanical manner to execute, kill, put people into gas chambers
and then kill thousands of people per day. So, this bureaucratic system, while it can be quite
efficient, it can be quite efficient in the negative sense as well. That is why Weber acknowledges
this whole criticism as a “red tapism” and “dehumanizing nature” when talking about
bureaucracy.
It is an inhuman system and you have heard quite a lot of stories about that even in critical
situations which requires urgent intervention, a bureaucratic system need not work. It has to pass
through the very specific stages, it has to go through from one officer to the other and finally by
the time the order comes, the needy person might have died. Speedy decision making with
compassion, with discretion are not the hallmark of bureaucracy.
This whole issue of nepotism, red tapism, favoritism, corruption, are all part of bureaucracy. But
once again Weber's concern is that bureaucracy epitomizes all the important values and features
of a modern society and you cannot really help. As long as you have modern legal rational
authority in place, its system of execution has to be bureaucracy and nothing else. So, let us stop
here, and we will meet for the next class.
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Lecture – 41
Social Stratification: Class, Status Group, and Party
Welcome back to the class. We are going to discuss a very important set of observations made by
Max Weber, regarding the phenomenon of social stratification. For students of sociology, this
term is very important, because it talks about how a society is stratified or how there are different
divisions within the society and usually, we understand these divisions as hierarchically arranged
or stratification. In other words, it is understood as the division of society into different strata,
different strata with an understanding that some of this strata are considered to be superior, while
others are considered to be inferior.
We know that there are different groups in every society, whether it is ethnic groups or linguistic
groups or caste groups or religious groups and we understand these groups as manifestations of
diversity. We call it as pluralism, as diversity, as multiculturalism in different sense of the words,
depending upon the political and cultural context.
But when we talk about stratification, usually the examples given for stratification are say, caste
system in India or racism in America and in European societies or gender also is considered to be
a example of stratification, where there are very distinguishable strata, there are different layers
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of people who are arranged in a vertical manner with the notion of superiority and inferiority.
You know that, when we talk about racism, racial discrimination is a manifestation of this racial
stratification.
Similarly, caste discrimination is a manifestation of the stratification based on caste system.

Some of the castes are considered to be superior and while others are considered to be inferior,
that has been the traditional way in which you visualize this ritual hierarchy or a vertical
hierarchy, the hierarchical ritual scale on which certain caste are considered to be lower, certain
castes are considered to be higher.
Now, Weber has a set of very important observations on this phenomenon of social stratification
and that this theme of stratification has been one of the most central themes in sociology.
Sociology is preoccupied with analyzing how different sections of societies are arranged and
what are the consequences of this arrangement, because sociology has a discipline understands
that no society is perfectly equal or there is no complete absolute egalitarianism in every society.
Sociology is really interested to know the arrangements of a particular society, how that it
arranges different groups into different strata or different realms and what are the consequences
of that. So, this whole debate or discussions about stratification is something very central to the
debates of sociology.
We have discussed it when we discussed Karl Marx, how Marx has a very powerful argument
about seeing stratification through the lens of the classes. So, the Marxian framework of
stratification, offers you a class based understanding, where according to his definition of class,
the people who own the means of production, according to this particular definition, he divides
society into two categories the bourgeois and proletariat.
Weber enters into this debate, and he complicates the whole discussion. He, disagrees with Marx,
saying that a stratification of societies cannot be reduced to or cannot be seen only through the
lens of class, rather number of other important categories or other important frameworks also
need to be brought in. We are going to discuss this important conversation between Marx and
Weber on Social certification, class, status groups and party. Weber is talking about stratification
based on class, status groups and party.
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This is an important contribution to study of the social structure and debate with Marxian
explanation of social stratification. So, as I mentioned, the study of social stratification is also the
study of social structure.
I do not think that I need to elaborate it further. Any society, whether it is a say tribal society or
an agrarian society, or a society in the rural setting, or a feudal society or a modern society, the
moment you talk about social stratification, what are the important groups of people and how
people are divided in a particular society, we are actually talking about social structure. So, in
that sense, this constitutes, one of the central themes of sociological analysis and the debate with
Marxian explanation of social stratification, as I just discussed.
Now, Weber provides a more expansive explanation to social stratification and offers critique of
an economic deterministic model. We know that we discussed in the previous class as well,
about the debate whether Marx actually puts forward an economist, an economic deterministic
model.
When we discussed the section on Marx, I made it a point to elaborate that, there is very
important debate whether Marx actually use the term deterministic or he used the German term
to indicate influence because, the moment you say something, determined something else, it is an
absolutist argument, you do not give any leeway, you do not give any freedom or any space for
the other thing to have its own agency or its own independence.
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There is quite a lot of discussions and debate within Marxist about, to what extent Marx was
convinced of this deterministic quality, whereas a lot of other Marxists argued that this kind of
vulgar Marxism or kind of a fundamentalist Marxism is the one which actually talk about a
deterministic model, rather, Marx was extremely aware of a kind of a reciprocal influence from
the superstructure to the base as well.
But this particular intervention of Weber when in his elaboration of social stratification really
helps to complicate Marxian notion of social stratification, which is based on his schema of
class. Now, it is extremely useful to study societies like India, where ritual position offered by
caste is important in deciding social position.
Now, there has been very fascinating discussions about the usefulness and the lack of usefulness
of a Marxian framework to understand society like India, because for a typical Marxian
framework, the existence of caste will not be something very important and traditionally, a lot of
Marxian sociologists have tried to reduce the relevance of caste into the question of class.
They also very, rather innocently or superficially believed that if you bring-in a classless
society, if you address the question of class, the question of caste also will be resolved or they
were heavily influenced by the Marxian framework that they refuse to or they did not really
provide sufficient importance to the existence of caste.
Now, we realize that, that was a very mistaken approach, that is an erroneous approach, because
caste has been a central concern of Indian society and it has been kind of been so salient, at least
for the past 2000 years, defining and influencing even the present day, manifestations of Indian
society.
For societies like India, where the ritual position is important when we talk about the caste
hierarchy, the conventional, the traditional caste hierarchy. Certain groups like Brahmins are
considered to be at the topmost position, because they are considered to be ritually superior.
Now, in a Marxian scheme, you have no way of understanding this ritual superiority, because
this ritual superiority emerges from a religious understanding, not from the economic
understanding.
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Even a poor Brahmin will be considered as superior to a rich lower caste person and Marxism
has no way of understanding that or Marxism has no way of explaining that. So, in a society like
India, where these ritual positions or religious markers, identity markers influence your position
in a hierarchy, this is something extremely important.
He talks about stratification based on class, status group and party and this also is something
very important. Party of Marx Weber talks about using this term, Weber talks about power, it is
political power.
Now, let us see the Weberian discussion on class and in what extent, to what extent his definition
of class differs from that of Marx, it is an interesting discussion. So, for Weber, a class consists
of those persons who have a similar ability to obtain positions in a society, procure goods and
services for themselves, and enjoy them via an appropriate lifestyle. It should be recognized
immediately that a class is defined in part by status considerations, the lifestyle of the stratum to
which one belongs.
Now, this is an important observation. So, for Weber, class is a group of people who belong to a
similar economic condition and this economic condition is not solely defined, like Marx on the
base of this means of or on the ownership of the means of production, rather they have a similar
ability to obtain position society, procure goods and services for themselves and enjoy via an
appropriate lifestyle.
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So, a group of people who have almost identical kind of lifestyles, lifestyles in the sense, the
kind of services and goods that they can use for their consumption, that when you look into
society, you have this extremely rich group, the upper class in a very general sense, then you
have this middle class, you have this lower middle class, then you have the extremely poor
people.
This distinction is not only on the basis of amount of money that they generate, that they make in
every month or every day, it is also in terms of, the kind of expenditure, the kind of consumption
that they have. For example, in terms of leisure, how do they consume their time for leisure or in
terms of education or in terms of say health, which are the hospitals that they go for their health
issues.
When you look into these consumptions, going out for food or leisure, vacations, or the kind of
quality of education, the kind of the dress that they wear, the kind of gadgets that they use, if you
analyze this kind of questions of consumption, then you will see that there is a marked difference
from the poorest of the poor to that of the richest of the rich, that is a huge difference.
This difference is based on all these things, the ability to obtain positions in society, procure
goods and services for themselves and enjoy them by an appropriate lifestyle. It should be
recognized immediately that a class is defined in part by status conservation. So, this lower caste,
lower class, the poorest of the poor, definitely have lower social status, and the elites, the richest
of the rich or the people belonging to the upper class, they are bestowed with very high degree
of social status.
A Weberian definition of class is not on the basis of the ownership of means of production,
your membership in a group is defined by your lifestyle, consumption and membership in a
group of people who have similar kind of expenditure, lifestyle and consumption patterns. So,
people's membership in a class can be determined objectively based on their power to dispose of
goods and services.
You can objectively decide the class, in which you belong to, or somebody belongs to, by trying
to understand based on their power to dispose of goods and services. So, to what extent
somebody can buy the goods and services, how much money that they can dispose to buy the
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services and goods is an important objective indication to understand the people's membership in
a class.
For this reason, Weber believes that one's class situation is in this sense ultimately a market
situation. So, the class in which you belong is definitely decided or determined by the market
situation. For example, take the case of education, one family needs to send their children to the
school, so what kind of education is affordable to them? Can they send their children to a school,
a private school, which collects huge amount of money as capitation fee and also huge amount of
money as tuition fees every year?
If they are not able to afford that, then what are the options for them, and if they are coming from
extremely poor background, the only option for them is to send their children to the government
schools, where either education is completely free, or education cost very less amount of money.
Now, this is purely a kind of market decision, or the kind of goods that you can buy, the kind of
gadgets that you can buy, the kind of furniture that you can buy, the kind of workers that you can
buy, or the kind of apparatus that you can buy, or the kind of tourist destinations where you can
go during your vacation. So, each of these things Max Weber argues is defined by a market
situation and is indicative of your class position.
A person's class situation is also objectively determined, with the result that people can be
ranked by their common economic characteristics and life chances. It is also objectively
determined with the result that people can be ranked by their common economic characteristics,
as I told you, the amount of money that they generate, their income, either it could be in the form
of salary or it could be the kind of profit that they make and life chances and life chances means
the examples that I mentioned earlier.
What, for example, if somebody falls sick in your family, where do you take the sick person to?
Do you take the sick person to a government hospital, a private hospital, a corporate hospital, all
these things depend upon usually your ability and willingness to spend money.
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He talks about two broad kind of classes, especially during Weber's time, one is the rentiers,
Rentiers are those who live primarily off fixed incomes from the investment or trust funds, as a
result of their possession of capital and values that they had acquired over time, the landowners
chose to lead a less overtly accusative lifestyle and Weber called them rentiers, because they did
not work to increase their assets, but simply lived off them using their time for purposes other
than earning a living.
Maybe Weber talks about it because that is a time when Weber see a lot of people, the erstwhile
feudal lords, they are finding it difficult to adapt and adjust to the modern times and these
extremely rich feudal lords have huge money as ancestor property. They might have huge
agricultural land or they must have sold off the land and then have huge fixed income from
investment or trust funds, and they are considered to be the continuation or they belong to the
lineage of extremely high status family groups.
As a result of their possession and capital and values that they have acquired over time, the land
owners chose to lead a less overtly acquisitive lifestyle, they are not interested in or they do not
generally try to create more wealth, Weber called them as rentiers because they did not work to
increase their assets, but simply lived off them.
Imagine a family who have sold off their land and that money or big fortune is invested in some
bank or invested in some mutual fund or some other thing and they live off that particular
interest or they have bought some huge commercial business and then on the basis of
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commercial building, and they are living off the rent that they get from that, using their time for
purposes other than earning a living.
The second group, according to Weber, are the entrepreneurs such as merchants, ship owners,
and bankers who own and operate business, Weber called them a commercial or entrepreneurial
class because they actually work their property for the economic gain, that it produces, with the
result that in absolute terms the members of the entrepreneur class often have more economic
power, but less social honor or prestige than do rentiers.
So, the second one, second group of entrepreneurs are the people who may not be the
traditionally rich people, but who have entered into business or commerce, like say, a ship
ownership or bankers or merchants or business and who have amassed, lot more money, but
those who do not have a family tradition.
With less social honor or prestige, they do not belong to some very well-known families, they
do not have the kind of pedigree if we can use that particular term, and they are not associated
with some very honorable or honored family line. They are this newly rich people, the novice
rich, who became rich very shortly, and they are usually looked down upon by the typical
aristocratic rentiers as per the Weberian argument.
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To differentiate between those who work as an avocation and those who work because they
want to increase their asset, that is, this distinction reflects a fundamental difference in values.
So, whether you are comfortable in living off the money that you have, you are not really keen in
increasing money and because you have huge amount of money at your disposal, and you belong
to a very reputable family or you do not have much to boast about your reputation, but you are
really working hard and then you are increasing the wealth day by day.
So these two things Weber argues, there is a distinction, this distinction reflects fundamental
difference in values. Both, rentiers and entrepreneurs can monopolize the purchase of expensive
consumer items. Both pursue monopolistic sales and pricing policies, whether legally or not, to
some extent, both control opportunities for others to acquire wealth and property. Finally, both
rentiers and entrepreneurs monopolize costly status privileges, such as education, that provide
young people with future contacts and skills.
So, these two groups, these rentiers as well as entrepreneurs, according to Weber, belongs to the
almost similar kind of class, because they have quite a lot of similarities, even while their value
systems differ significantly. Both pursue monopolistic sales and pricing policies, whether legally
or not, because they always try to protect their business interests, and their way of making money
and to some extent control opportunities for others to acquire wealth and property.
When they work as kind of a monopolistic group and finally, both rentiers and entrepreneurs
monopolize costly status privilege, because they are the one who represent the creed. They are
the ones who represent the elite groups, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of taste, in terms of
attitudes, this very important sociologist Bourdieu, Bourdieu has this very important argument
about cultural capital.
How certain abilities are considered to be highly valued, certain traits, certain qualities are
considered to be highly valued, and these values are kind of a monopolistic values of the upper
classes, certain tastes, certain exposure, certain kind of orientations towards certain ideas and
other things, such as and costly status privileges, such as education, that provide young people
with future contacts and scales.
You can easily understand that some of the very elite schools across the globe, including India,
this elite schools are the place where children from the extremely rich family go and they study
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together and once they grow up, these people, their relationship itself, that they developed during
the school will be extremely useful for them to network together and then take their contacts and
then business forward.
Next is the middle class, so, this first one, the rentiers and the entrepreneurs belong to the first
group, the higher caste or higher class and then comes the middle class according to Weber,
comprises those individuals who today would be called the white collar workers, because the
skill that they sell, do not involve manual labor, public officials, such as politicians and
administrators, managers of business and so on.
Weber talks about the middle class as the people, they are employed somewhere, but they are
not the people who sell the manual workers. This distinction between, white collar workers and
blue collar workers where the blue collar workers are the people whom we consider as the
laborers or the people whom we consider as the proletariat.
Whereas, the middle class or the white collar workers, they are at say, they are the managers,
they are the supervisors, they are the bureaucrats, they are the teachers, doctors, so these people
who use their certain skills and their intellectual ability rather than their physical ability, are
considered to be this middle class or the white collar workers.
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Worth of their services and their levels or their skills, both factors are important indicators of
people's ability to obtain positions, purchase goods and enjoy them. So, what is something so
distinctive of this white collar worker or this middle class is there the worth of their services and
the levels of their skills, they are educated a lot and they are able to attain this white collar status
only through education, because they have mastered certain skills, they are able to offer some
very valuable services.
These factors are important indicators of people's ability to obtain position, purchase goods and
enjoy them. We know that how, when the skill of a doctor or a skill of an engineer or a skill of a
say a teacher is highly valued and how that becomes important in a society, because their skills
are relatively high demand and in industrial societies these people generally have more economic
and political power than those who work with their hands do.
In comparison with the blue collar workers, who have to really toil in the field or in the mines or
in the factories or in the shop floor or a company, in comparison with these people, this group of
people who belong to the white collar workers, because of their skills are in relatively high
demand and in industrial societies, they generally have more economic and political power than
the people who are considered to be the blue collar worker or the manual workers or the
proletariat.
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Then finally, the less privileged group, property less classes comprises of people who today
would be called the blue collar workers, because their skills primarily involve manual. Weber
said that such people could be divided into three levels, skilled, semiskilled and unskilled
workers. So, here it is, are the group of people whom you are familiar with, or the group of
people whom Marx describes as the proletariat.
The people who have nothing with them or nothing else with them, other than their ability to sell
their labor power, they have no other resources, they have no other capital, they do not own
anything, their only ability is to sell their work, to the highest bidder, their abilities to sell their
body. Now, so this is something very important point when it comes to, as a debate with Marx,
because Marx maybe the most important scholar who talks about classes, who talks about
different types of people with different set of skills.
There is a very interesting debate between Marx and Weber about this distinction of or this
division of people into different classes based on these qualities.
Now, as I told you, this Weber's understanding of class is quite different from a Marxian
understanding and they personally feel that it is a broader, encompassing and more interesting
division compared to that of a Marxian analysis, which was very reductive in his times. The
second group is the status group according to Weber. So, status groups comprises those
individuals, who share a specific positive or negative social estimations of honor.
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Weber, thus used the concept of status and status group, to distinguish the spheres of privilege
evaluation, expressed by people's lifestyle from that of monetary calculation expressed by their
economic behavior. So, if this economic behavior is something that is the basis of the class
analysis, Weber argues that the sphere of prestige evaluation, how certain families, how certain
groups certain individuals are respected in a society on the basis of certain virtues.
What could be these virtues, a very, a noble family line to know that somebody belongs to this
particular family, a family considered to be an aristocratic family, a family considered to be a
noble family, so that gives so much of importance and prestige and honor to that and the best
example is caste in India, we know that, the kind of respect or the kind of prestige associated
with upper castes.
Whether it is justifiable or unjustifiable, it is a completely different question. But, the very fact
that somebody belongs to Brahmin is always a fact of higher prestige and higher respect in
comparison with somebody who is traditionally associated, somebody who is seen from a caste
that is seen as a lower caste or a polluting caste. So, status groups are comprised of those
individuals who share a specific positive or negative social estimation or honor. Weber thus uses
this concept of status and status group to distinguish the sphere of prestige evaluation from that
of monetary calculation.
Status and honor are based on the judgment that people make about another’s background,
breeding character, morals, and community standing, and so a person's membership in a status
group is always subjectively determined. This is interesting because, the status group you can't
really define or decide your status group. It has to be accepted, reciprocated, and acknowledged
by the others.
This is a very interesting thing, see in the case of economic position, or economic class, you can
increase your wealth, you can create more wealth and you can go up in the ladder, but in the case
of status group, your status is always accepted, it must be accepted and acknowledged by others,
only then you consider or they consider you belonging to a particular high status group.
This is an extremely important point again, when you analyze the caste system in India, because
lower castes were discriminated they were humiliated, throughout at least for the past 2000
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years, because of the fact that they were seen as people who belong to this lower caste and
mainly because they are or they do work with some of these polluting jobs.
So, an individual irrespective of how good or bad he or she is, is often given a very low status or
a very high status, on the basis of this perceived qualities and these qualities could be that of a
breeding character morals and community standing.
Weber says that, status “always rests on distance and exclusiveness,” by people extend
hospitality only to social equals, people restrict potential marriage partners to social equals
through various mechanisms, people practice unique social conventions and activities, thus, they
tend to join organizations such as churches and clubs, and spend their leisure time with others
who share similar beliefs and lifestyles. People try to monopolize privileged mode of acquisition,
such as their property or occupation.
Now, he is talking about an extremely important mechanism through which the status groups
perpetuate themselves or status groups are able to hold on to their privilege, you must be
knowing that, there is a very close connection between the status group and privileges, historical
privileges, or social privileges that certain groups enjoy.
He argues that the status group always rests on distance and exclusiveness, this high status
group is always seen as an important commodity, it is an important virtue which has to be very
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fiercely protected and it rests on the exclusiveness. You do not open that membership to others, it
is something like some very elite clubs in India, especially those started in British period, where
getting a membership is very difficult, even if you are ready to pay lakhs of rupees, it will not be
given.
But it is always limited to some of the most elite groups or some elite member will have to
recommend you and if that has to happen, you have to have a kind of connection with that or you
will be evaluated on the basis of your social standing, your income and your prestige and a host
of other things. So, this maintenance of exclusion, or maintenance of exclusivity is something
very important for each of these status groups.
Unlike class, where nobody tries to make that kind of an exclusivity, if you have the
wherewithal, if you have the ability to create more money, you can get into that group of
millionaires or billionaires or the richest people, but a status group is quite different. So, people
extend hospitality only to social equals and I do not think that I need to explain that further.
The clubs, or your friendship circles and other things, they always try to maintain this
exclusivity, then people rustic potential marriage partners to social equals, through various
mechanisms and in the case of India, we have a well-entrenched institutionalized system, where
any other marriages, other than our same caste marriage would be very seriously dealt with.
We know that even in contemporary times we hear about honor killings where the son or
daughter would be murdered if they dare to fall in love with somebody, especially that person is
coming from a lower caste background, but even in European countries, even in western world,
this is ensured, not on the basis of caste, but through a number of other mechanisms.
So, this restriction of potential marriage is an extremely important one, when you talk about the
issue of compatibility, you say that, always family’s needs to be compatible with each other,
when alliances are sought. This compatibility is nothing but, this kind of an exclusiveness the
kind of a compatibility in terms of status and then people practice unique social conventions and
activities.
Thus, they tend to join organizations such as churches, clubs, and spend their leisure time with
others, who share similar beliefs and lifestyles. You can imagine, for example, a golf course, and
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the people who come there to play golf, there would be a group of extremely elite rich people. It
is not that easy for an ordinary person coming from a blue collar background or a white collar
background to break through into that place and then very comfortably start playing golf.
It is impossible, I am giving golf because golf is always considered as a game of the elite. So, a
club, which has a golf club and facilities would be definitely a place of the rich, of the elite, and
it has a strong exclusive character. Then people try to monopolize privileged modes of
acquisition, such as their property or occupation. So, these are the people who are highly
specialists in certain things, they have a huge amount of property, so they have this highly
privileged forms of resources.
Then the third one, the third important feature that, Weber talks about is party. And this is
another point where, Marx argued a party is nothing but it is the political, it is a political power.
Marx, kind of included political power within that of economy, I hope you remember that. So,
for Marx, the ruling class, is always the class who belonged to the bourgeoisie, but here Weber
differs with Marx.
Party denotes the house of power, or the way in which power is organized and used to control
members in a society, it is nothing but the political power, how the society organizes itself so
that there is a, its members are governed efficiently. In contrast to Marx, who tended to view
power and status as mere reflections of who own the means of production, Weber argued that
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class, status groups and party constitute separate basis of stratification, although they often
highly correlate with each other.
This is the central difference between Marx and Weber, something that I have been mentioning
all throughout. So, for Marx, the central concern is that of economy, and he tend to subsume the
status and power under economy, I hope you remember, we talked about this base and
superstructure, for Marx this economy is the base and everything else is a reflection of that,
which Weber does not agree with that.
Weber argues that both ritual status, as well as political power are independent spheres, they
cannot be reduced to that of economy. Weber's analysis of stratification emphasize that when
there is a high correlation among class, status groups and party, that is those high or low on one,
are also high and low on the other two, we are talking about the consolidation of power, the
people who are ritually superior, politically powerful, are most often they are the economically
well off as well.
In the case of India, this is extremely accurate statement. There is a very specific correspondence
between the caste structure and the class structure, the people are considered to be the traditional
upper caste, are by definition upper class as well, I am talking on the basis of this evidence
collected from various surveys including NSS various, this National Sample Survey reports vary
undoubtedly state that.
People who belong to the lower caste, the traditional, groups traditionally considered to be the
lower, the OBCs and, Dalits and tribals, they occupy the lowest strata, not only in terms of the
ritual position, but also in terms of their economic position and monopolization of resources and
resentment of others.
So, this particular consolidation of all these forms of privilege, whether it is money or power, or
status, this leads to monopolization of resources, and the resentment of the vast majority of
others, and Weber thinks that, that will lead to kind of social change, but unlike Marx, who
always looked at the social conflicts as something welcoming, something positive, Weber does
not take up that particular position.
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Weber also does not look at that, he does not have that kind of an activist zeal of Karl Marx, as
we are familiar with that. So, he is not an activist, he was not a political activist, he was not a
political party member, rather he was a sociologist, he was a social scientist, who wanted to
objectively analyze the reality.
So, the point that we discuss or the theme that we discuss today is about stratification, a very
important theme, and especially for students of sociology, the dialogue between Marx and Weber
becomes very important through his analysis of social stratification as well as his analysis of
religion and society. So, let us stop today's class, and we will meet for the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture – 42
Comparative Religion and Disenchantment
Welcome back to the next class. In today's class, we are discussing Weber's take on comparative
religions, and his very important concept of disenchantment, and by this time, I hope you would
have got some idea about Max weber's overall approach, towards the study of religion and his
seminal contributions to the development of this particular field, for any student of sociology of
religion, who is approaching the subject matter of sociology and religion from the perspective of
anthropology or sociology or political science or even psychology.
Max Weber and his theory of secularization, really assumes paramount space. Even now his
work on secularization, his argument about secularization are considered to be some of the
important arguments with which you are supposed to have very important and interesting
reflections. We discussed in one of the previous lectures on his take on protestant ethic and the
spirit of capitalism.
I am not going to repeat that lecture, I am not going to sum up the lecture, but just to highlight
the fact that he was interested in the influence of religion in every society, be it modern society
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or traditional society, and he very firmly believed that these religious rituals and belief systems
do have significant impact on the lives of the people.
In that sense, he did not agree with my Marxian position, which subsumed religion under that of
the economy, he was not ready to accept such a position, rather, he argued that religion is an
important institution and it is capable of molding people's orientations, people's, inclinations to
certain things and sociologist must be able to study that in its complete sense.
Weber studied particular religious traditions in depth, writing on the religions of India, China,
ancient Judaism and Islam, in addition to that of Protestant ethic in Western Europe. Unlike
Marx and to a large extent like Durkheim, Weber was a student of sociology of religion, we can
say that Durkheim and Weber both of them can be really considered as the sociologists of
religion or they have, though they had identified religion, as a prime subject matter of their point
of inquiry.
While the objective as well as the methodology as well as the analytical lens of both, Durkheim
and Weber buried significantly, I hope you remember our discussion about Durkheim’s
arguments or Durkheim’s thesis on the elementary forms of religious life, Weber has a
completely different intention. Weber has a completely different take on religion, but both of
them were non believers, they did not believe in God and they looked at religion purely as
human construction.
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But Weber studied particular religious traditions in depth. So, that is why we are looking at
Weber as a scholar of comparative religion. He looked at the traditions of religions in India,
Hinduism, China, ancient Judaism and Islam, in addition to that of the Protestant ethic in
Western Europe, that we already discussed, where he talks about the Protestant ethic as a
peculiar kind of worldview, a particular kind of disposition that played significant role in the
emergence of the spirit of capitalism.
Now, Weber is interested in the social implications of religion, the interactions of religious ideas,
rituals and organizations with economic, cultural and political life, in particular capitalism. This
is a point I do not think that, it is very hard for you to understand, because we have mentioned
several times that a sociologist of religion, a sociologist who is interested in the study of religion
is inevitably interested in the question of the social implication of religion.
As I told you, sociologists do not really get into the question of whether a particular religious
faith or ritual is right or wrong, or a particular conception of God is right or wrong. These
questions are strictly beyond the purview of sociology, first of all sociologists are not capable of
addressing these questions.
Secondly, the ultimate aim of sociological analysis, does not lie in asking these questions rather,
sociologists, focus is always on the consequences or the implications of a particular type of
belief, what are the implications of a particular type of belief, what are the implications of a
particular type of non belief, what are the consequences of a particular kind of arrangement,
different forms of religiosity.
These are some of the central concerns of sociologists. He was interested in the social
implications of religion, the interaction of religious ideas, rituals and organizations with
economic, cultural and political life, in particular capitalism and his work on Protestant ethic is
the testimony to this particular way of looking at the implications of religion.
As any sociologist for that matter, he would be interested to understand how a particular
religiosity, a particular religious worldview, religious ideals and religious values affect the
social, economic and political realms of the society. Weber examines religion in the context of
his theory of rationalization based on two criteria. So, again, at the risk of repeating, I am saying
it again that, this thesis of rationalization is the central dominant theme of Weber.
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His analysis of religion revolves around his intellectual quest to understand the forms of
rationalization that is taking place in different religious traditions. There are two criteria, first
concerns the elimination of magic from the religious beliefs and rituals and he was interested to
understand how far religious traditions in each of these places are we able to move away from
the world of the magic.
Because he specifically connected magic with that of a pre modern or a traditional society. He
argued that as society become more progress, as society become more modern, people undergo a
process of disenchantment, which we are going to discuss towards the end of this session, where
the ideas of, or the relevance for Magic or metaphysical ideas and abstract ideas, superstitions,
these things will not have any place in a modern rationalist understanding.
Still religion can be rationalized, religion undergoes the process of rationalization, and religion
assumes a kind of a rational character. But he was arguing that this rationalization of religion
happens on two criteria. One is to what extent a religious tradition is able to eliminate the
influence of magic and superstitions and such kind of arguments.
Second one is the development of an internally consistent and universally applicable theodicy.
Theodicy is a system that tries to explain and justify the existence of God as well as the existence
of the evil. Here, he would argue that this development of an internally consistent and
universally applicable theodicy. These two elements, how you have a more consistent and
elaborate theological explanation for the existence of God as well as that of the enemy of God
that is the evil, because many times it is seen as inherently contradictory and also to what extent
you have been able to come out of the influence of magic.
Ascetic Protestantism is the highest religious tradition on both counts, and therefore the most
rationalized. Thus, Weber is of the very firm opinion and he has taught treating all or every
religion on the equal scale, and he wants to look at the kind of transformations that have
happened in each of these religious traditions.
Then he argues that, the ascetic Protestantism, the Protestantism that we discussed earlier, that of
Calvinism and the divisions within Protestant Christianity, they represent some of the most
advanced forms of religion because as they fulfill these two criteria.
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Now, let us see how he expands his analysis to other religions. So every religion contributes to
the rationalization of the world, by systematically explaining suffering, fortune and the cosmos
and by positing their path to salvation as universal. Because a religious worldview makes the
cosmos meaningful and characterizes reality according to religious criteria. It promotes
rationalization. It advances methodical systematic conduct in everyday life.
Religious rationalization is also furthered by the hierarchy of intellectuals in churches who cure
souls through acting as intermediaries of God, providing counsel to sinners and allowing such
acts of confession of sins. So, in this section, Weber is arguing that there is a kind of rationality
for every religion, or every religion there is a kind of an internal consistent form of rationality.
This rationality is something different from the rationality that Weber talks about as the modern
rationality, or rationality that he attributes to that of the Protestant Christianity. Here, he is saying
that, irrespective of the religion that you take, whether it could be the most elementary form of
religion like a totemism, or an animism or an animatism, or a tribal religion, or that of old
traditions like Hinduism, or Christianity or Islam, in each of these religions, they have their own
consistent and very stable set of ideas, a stable set of rationality.
Because without this set of rationality, a religion simply cannot survive. He argues that every
religion contributes to the rationalization of the world by systematically explaining suffering,
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fortune and the cosmos and by positing their path to salvation as universal. Every religion offers
you explanation for everything.
You must be knowing that if you speak to religious priests or gurus, asking their opinion on
everything, or opinion on anything, they would be very confident, or they would give you very
categorical answers to every kind of questions. Each and every of your doubts will be clarified
with utmost confidence by these religious leaders, because religion has this capacity to explain
everything and anything.
Whether it is questions about the universe or whether it is the questions about the purpose of life,
or the question of what happens to your soul? Or what happens or what is the process of death?
Or what is the process of birth? Or what is the purpose of the human life? Starting from
philosophical questions, to theological questions to questions about the universe, questions on
the largest scheme of affairs, religion does not shy away from answering any question.
Religion also can provide explanation for your own fortune, your own suffering, because many
times these sufferings are quite inexplicable to us, you see that even some of the most pious
people, look at the people who are extremely devout, extremely pious people, they come across
some of the most serious painful tragedies in their life and it goes completely against a kind of a
common sensical argument, but religion will have explanation for that.
If somebody dies, somebody very close to you dies unexpectedly, then the immediate words of
solace, he or she is somebody who is very close to God, so that God has called him, God has
taken him to his presence. So, very, seemingly contradictory argument, seemingly contradictory
explanations can be given but religion has an explanation for everything. So, such explanations
and also path to salvation are considered as universal.
Because the religious worldview makes the cosmos meaningful and characterizes reality
according to religious criteria. It promotes a kind of a rationalization, because religion helps an
ordinary person to make sense of this whole world. It helps an ordinary person to make sense of
his or her own life.
In that sense it has an ability to rationalize, it advances methodical systematic conduct in

everyday life. This methodical and systematic conduct could be of varied nature, it could be
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involving of rituals consisting of sacrifice, or it could be involving of rituals as we see in a
modern society through, maybe through online poojas or online darshan and other things.
But whatever be that, there are a set of methodical, systematic methodical procedures in the life
which actually provides with a kind of a systematic form of life. Religious rationalization is also
furthered by the hierarchy of intellectuals in churches, who cure souls through acting as
intermediaries of Gods, providing counsel to sinners and allowing such acts as the confession of
the sins.
Here he is basically talking about the Christianity, the Catholicism, because religion also
provides you this hierarchy of intellectuals, especially the priests, priests who are considered as
the intermediates between you and the God. So, in Hinduism you have the Brahmin priests, who
conduct various religious sacrifices, various religious rituals for the king or for everybody.
You invite a Brahmin because you think that Brahmin is best endowed to conduct the ritual, a
priest in a temple is highly respected, or a priest in a catholic Church alone has the power to
atone your sins, even if you commit some of the most heinous types of sins, a thorough and
sincere confession in front of a priest can wash away all the sins, it can atone you, it can give you
a rebirth.
Because the church according to Roman Catholic Church, or the priest according to the Roman
Catholic Church are divinely ordained, they are divinely ordained and they have this special
ability, special privilege to atone to wash away the sinners of their sins and make them pure as
early.
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Weber views this kind of rationalism as something very evident in every religion. But Weber is
talking about a different kind of rationality, a kind of a modern rationality, Weber views Islam as
a religion with elements of aesthetic and mystical tradition, but he did not produce necessary
condition for the emergence of capitalism.
Now, I hope you remember his discussion on Protestant ethic where he talks about this aesthetic
orientation as something very important for the emergence of capitalism and which do not
indulge in so much of extravaganza, you do not conduct your personal life in an extremely
luxurious manner. You do not consume too much of whatever you produce.
You maintain a kind of an aesthetic quality, aesthetic outlook and Weber argues that Islam has
both this mystical as well as aesthetic character, but it did not give rise to the emergence of
capitalism. I am not going into the details of his analysis, because he has written voluminously
on each of these traditions.
In China, science and western style modernity did not develop either. Despite extensive Chinese
technological capacity in the early modern era, the Chinese state remained a traditional
bureaucracy, ruled by an emperor and a cultural elite, the mandarins, who base their authority on
literary rather than scientific knowledge. So, this is his argument or verdict or conclusion about
the Chinese society.
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They had quite a lot of technological knowhow, we are familiar with the technological
advancements of Chinese civilization. But he argues that, that was not translated into scientific
thinking, rather, it was, it remained as a traditional bureaucracy ruled by an emperor and
democracy did not emerge in China. And even now, you know that it is not there, and a cultural
elite, the mandarins who based their authority on literary rather than scientific knowledge.
Then Confucianism revolved around the idea that social and individual worlds had to exist in an
ordered harmony. Its social ethic, emphasized devotion to family and ancestors, literary studies
and service for the community. It was not appropriate for Confucian intellectuals to practice
economic activity. Weber’s yardstick is to what extent, a religion underwent the process of
disenchantment, and provided an atmosphere for the emergence of radical changes including that
of capitalism.
Weber argues that Confucianism revolved around the idea that the social and individual worlds
have to exist in an ordered harmony, and if social ethic emphasized devotion to family and
ancestors, the commitment to tradition was something very strong, and literary study and service
to the community. It was not appropriate for Confucian intellectuals to practice economic
activity,
The ascetic orientation, that mystic orientation turned, evade Confucianism from engaging more
directly with the worldly aspects of society, or the material conditions of society was not seen as
the active field of their engagement, rather, they turn their attention to more mystical as well as
ascetic fields of life. In some Confucianism, combined with the patrimonial bureaucratic rule of
the emperor and traditional village life inhibited social change, as it occurred in the West and
China remained a static society.
This is his conclusion that Confucianism combined with the patrimonial bureaucratic rule of the
Emperor, because the traditional political system of China was never disturbed in that sense until
more recently, and traditional village life inhibited social change, as it occurred in the West and
China remained a static society. And now, it must be clear for you that he is comparing every
other traditions based on the experience of the Europe and then he is also about to give you the
kind of verdict.
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Similar kind of analysis is evident, when it comes to Hinduism as well. Indeed Hinduism, too,
was a contemplative religion that inhibited the formation of the Western ideas. Hinduism is
based on the transmigration of souls and karma, the idea of compensation in the next life. Weber
ties Hinduism to the Indian caste system, which prevents people from moving from one social
category to another.
This is extremely important observation, you can agree with it, you can disagree with it. This
again follows a larger portrayal of Hinduism as a religion of the otherworldly in nature,
Hinduism as more concerned with the other world. Weber uses this term other worldly religion,
when he talks about Chinese religion, and he talks about Hinduism as other world religion,
because they were more concerned with the other world and it was based on the transmigration
of souls and karma.
You know that according to the Brahminical Hinduism, you take a particular birth as human
being, because of your past karma and you are supposed to follow your dharma. There are cycles
of rebirth and finally, somebody attains Moksha, this Moksha is an eternal phase, the world in
which you are living is momentary.
Such ideas Weber argues, is something not conducive to look into this particular world and when
try to change it, you are seeped in fatalism and you do not change and as I told you, this also
goes along with the larger depiction of Hinduism or Indians as more spiritual rather than the
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material people. But that these are extremely problematic statement, we had Hindu tradition
Hindu, traditionally so complicated, so complex and rich, that such a portrayal becomes very
problematic.
Especially, it is a portrayal of this Brahminical Hinduism, we, India is a land where you had
KamaSutra, India is a land where you had an established tradition of people who did not believe
in God. India is a land of so much of contradictions and so much of diversity, but Weber as a
theoretician, he is trying to make certain kind of a larger observations about that.
Another very important point, which is even more valid is that he connected Hinduism with caste
system and caste system we know, did not allow people to move beyond their traditionally
ordained occupation. Every caste was supposed to be having such an occupation, and moving
away from the caste, especially, trying to do the job of more privileged caste was never
encouraged, it was actively prevented. This a host of historians and sociologists have argued that,
really prevented the kind of mobility that otherwise would have happened.
Now, only through successive incarnations can members of the lower caste aspire to reach the
divine and ideas of progress are not possible in such a social order. Again, how, even a lower
caste person, who is experiencing everyday humiliations and everyday discrimination, cannot
complain or cannot try to change it, because they are told time and again that your suffering is
because of your karma.
In the previous karma, you must have done something very terrible, that is why you are born into
a lower caste and you are supposed to tolerate that, you are supposed to suffer that. So, this
suffering was made normal, suffering was made acceptable according to Weber. The caste
system also prevents the rationalization of the economic realm, as it emphasize traditional skills
and the making of beautiful objects rather than profit.
He is talking about the kind of very specific contributions of, or the advancements of Indian
craftsmen about how, that we made crafts, but did not try to develop it as a profit. But I must
remind you that, like almost every other Western scholar, Weber also is not talking about the
enormous damage, made by the colonial expansion in India, the way in which they completely
destroyed Indian traditional artisan system, Indian traditional economic system and completely
crumbled which resulted in the complete destruction of Indian economic system.
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Ancient Judaism, Weber argues, on the other hand, is a prophetic religion arising on the
outskirts of great empires. The Jewish prophets urged believers to follow the moral law against
earthly powers. This law can be understood rationally, rather than mystically. Thus, Judaic
religion is free of magical and irrationality in its quest for salvation, and it is oriented to action in
this world.
So, he is talking about Judaism as a religion, which is a prophetic religion, and which has an
orientation towards this world. It is not oriented towards the other worldly affairs as in the case
of Hinduism and Confucianism. Jewish prophets urged believers to follow the moral law against
earthly powers. This law can be understood rationally, rather than mystically. Thus, Judaic
religion is free of magic and irrationality in its quest for salvation, and it is oriented to action in
this world.
Now, this Judaic religion, especially Weber argues is a precursor to Christianity. Within
Christianity, as we discussed in the previous class, we are talking about the disenchantment, we
are talking about the emergence of rationality, which really encourages people to use and apply
rationality to make sense of the religion, so that is what he argued that people were able to come
out of the influence of magic, and come out of the influence of blind beliefs, irrational beliefs
and then understand religion in a more rational manner.
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The process that Protestantism underwent in Europe, or in Christianity, in general, Weber argues
can be understood by understanding this part or exploring this process of the disenchantment.
The term of disenchantment, it is an extremely important one. This has become extremely
popular among sociologists, who try to explain the process of secularization in Weberian scheme
of affairs.
The pre-modern world views it as consisting of a multitude of magical, spiritual and supernatural
powers, both good and evil. The Enchanted world is a meaningful world filled with purpose,
significance and mystery. He is talking about the pre-modern religion or the traditional religion,
which is completely inhabited by all kind of spirits.
We know that, when we talk about totemism, when we talk about say a primitive religion, they
identify quite a lot of potent powers in their surrounding and these powers could be the natural
forces, these powers could be the people who are already dead, their ancestors, this powers could
be some unknown forces, it could be a thunder, it could be lightning, it could be an animal, it
could be their forefathers who have died and gone.
But these supernatural powers are extremely influential in their everyday life. There is a system
of belief which comprises of elements of magic, elements of spiritual importance and a host of
other things, supernatural powers, both good and evil. The enchanted world is a meaningful
world, filled with purpose, significance and mystery. So, something, anything that happens to
that particular society is always seen as the handiwork of this particular supernatural power.
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So, that is why, they try their level best or they try everything in their capacity to propitiate the
God, if a pandemic comes, you know that in Indian tradition as well, you had Goddesses for
smallpox, you had Goddesses for different kind of element, ailments, you had, so you try to
propitiate the God, you try to make the God happy, so that this pandemic is not unleashed into
your society.
So, such a society, whatever happens is a happening as per the whims and decisions of the
supernatural power. On the other hand, Weber argues, science construes the world differently,
perceiving it simply as an object of knowledge, nothing more than a causal mechanism. So, on
the other hand, the scientific explanation of the world is completely different.
When lightning happens you know why it happens, when thunder happens you know why it
happens, when some pestilence, some pandemic takes place, there is scientific explanation to
that, no scientists would say that the COVID-19, the pandemic that is sweeping across the world
is a handiwork of a particular God as there are scientific explanations.
These explanations, Weber argues takes away all these mystical elements, it takes away all the
magical elements, and it takes away all the motives that is otherwise attached to these kind of
elements. So, nothing is more than a causal mechanisms and everything is explained on the basis
of certain kind of causes, the causal mechanism, the cause and effect situation is been
established.
In the passage from the pre modern to the modern era, the world processes become disenchanted.
This is an extremely important argument. When society moves from a traditional society to a
modern society, the world becomes more disenchanted, Weber observes, that they lose their
magical significance, and henceforth simply are and happen, but no longer signify anything.
When you watch a magician practicing, we are all enchanted, we do not know why it is
happening.
We see all kinds of crazy things going on the screen or on the stage, and we do not know what is
happening, we are completely enchanted, we are mesmerized, but Weber argues that in a modern
world, you are no longer mesmerized, we know why it is happening. All the other kind of
explanation that used to provide explanation for our sense of ‘awe’ have been eliminated.
Whether it is natural calamities, or medical issues or some kind of accidents or your personal
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loss, or whatever is happening, you have kind of convincing scientific variable explanation for
that.
This has taken away all the mystical and magical elements from our life. In a sense, we can say
that the life has become more boring, life as low stole, it is all, it is kind of, other kinds of ideas,
and it is become very dry, they lost their magical significance, and henceforth, simply they are
and they happen, but no longer signify anything.
The disenchantment of the world means, “there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come
into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation.” Disenchantment
tells you that, there are no more mystical elements, there are no more mystical forces that are
controlling the world. There is no divine purpose.
There is no divine intention, which you do not understand or you can influence or you cannot
influence, you are no longer at the mercy of this unknown divine intent. On the other hand, you
can understand, you can calculate and you can master things, and science and technology is
supposed to have help you to master this particular ability. This particular process, Weber
argues, is this process of disenchantment.
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Now, he elaborates further, the process of intellectualization and disenchantment relegates

religion to the realm of subjective and irrational and by transforming the world into a neutral
object of empirical science, it divests it of any cosmic significance. But why science dethrones
religion? it cannot perform the same function of the later once served, it cannot give meaning to
the world or to people's lives nor can scientist legitimately adopt the role of secular prophets or
priests.
So, what happens and now this is exactly the process what Weber calls it as secularization, the
process whereby religion losing its significance, religion becoming a part of your personal life,
and religion is becoming insignificant in the public affairs. The process of intellectualization and
disenchantment relegates religion to the realm of the subjective, religion becomes meaningful
only to your own personal life.
Remember, we also discussed about the process of differentiation, where more and more distinct
fields of social life are becoming independent of the influence of religion, of the subjective and
the irrational. We are transforming the world into a neutral object of empirical science, it divests
it of any cosmic significance. What is happening to the world is something that can be explained
by science, there is nothing more than that.
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But why science dethrones religion, it cannot perform the same function, the latter one served.
Now, we know that science can replace religion, it can provide explanation, but it cannot give
meaning to the world or to people's lives. I found it is extremely important point.
Especially in modern world, why that religion has made a comeback, why that, there is a
religious revivalism across the globe in maybe, after 1970s. I think, this answer is something
extremely important. Science cannot give meanings to people. It cannot give meanings to
people's lives. It is a very dry, plain and clinical explanation of certain things.
It does not really offer any solace to individuals, it does not really comfort the individual. It does
not try to address individual’s agonies, it tries to pretend as if it can at least understand, nor can
scientists legitimately adopt the role of secular prophets and priests. In the modern era, as a
consequence, individuals in search of meaning are thrown back to their own resources. This is
the existential predicament of the modern individual, those who aspire to a meaningful life must
somehow create it by themselves.
You do not have anybody to turn to, as people who can give certain kind of meaning to your own
life, as people who can offer you some sort of explanation, especially for somebody who met
with a major tragedy in their personal life, you know that this happened because of that, you give
that kind of explanation, but they are very dry insensitive information.
This information will not be sufficient for somebody, whereas, people require certain kind of
assurance, certain kind of explanation that is sensitive to their psychological trauma. Weber
argues that in such a situation, people have no other source, but to create their own resources.
This is an existential predicament of the modern world, modern individual, those who aspire to a
meaningful life must somehow create it for themselves.
If you want to find some meaning or larger logic in this world, you must create that, there is no
religion out there which actually provides you that and that is why there are a lot of individual
figures, new forms of spirituality emerging across the globe, which really looks into that.
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If you try to evaluate Weberian argument, this point of Weber’s theory of secularization is one
of the most central themes of discussion even now, almost 120 years after Weber’s arguments
about religion and secularization, this theme, this phrase, even now reverberates in the academic
circles of sociology of reach.
Now, there was a period at least, 1960s and 70s there was kind of a consensus among
sociologists that, the world is going through a process of secularization, that every society will
become like the European societies, people will be free for religion, but from 1970s onwards,
you see a religious revivalism taking place across, sweeping across Muslim societies, sweeping
across what is happening in India, there is a revival of Hindu religious nationalism.
Similar process is happening across the globe. Increasing rationalization of religion is taking on
one side, but religion is coming back. That is what I have mentioned here, there is a re-
enchantment of religion. So, followed by increasing disenchantment that relegates religion into
the less dominant sphere of society. When he elaborates secularization process, it is an increase
in the rationalization of religion, you tend to provide rational explanation of religion.
This is followed by increasing disenchantment that relegates religion into the less dominant
spheres of society, it becomes private and religion is pushed back to the private realm, education,
law, sports, judiciary, then political system, economic activity, all these important spheres of
society are kept isolated, they are kept detached from the influence of religion. This has created
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major debates about secularism, secularity, secularization and those who are interested in
sociology of religion will find these terms extremely important. Secularism is a principle, it is a
state principle, about how to deal with religion, when India says that we are a secular state, this
meaning of secularism is completely different from a French understanding of secularism, or
earlier Turkish understanding of seculars.
Secularism has a political principle, about how do you deal with religion, it is not the separation
between the church and state as in the classical understanding in the European context. In India,
secularism is understood as a kind of an equidistance, maintaining same distance from every
religion and secularity, whether what are the specific spheres of life that we can say as separate
from the spheres of religion.
Because you do not have religion without a notion of secularity, or there is a, they are mutually
constitutive very important arguments of (())(41:36) and a host of others. This process of
secularization, what is happening in the world, is the world moving towards the direction of
secularization.
There are very interesting arguments about how some of this Nordic, how many of the world,
many countries are increasingly undergoing this process of secularization, especially the Nordic
countries, the Western European countries, including even Japan, and USA, where increasing
number of people are declaring themselves to be either atheist, or irreligious people, or people
who simply do not care about religion.
The field of religion is something very interesting and this whole debate about re enchantment of
religion, increasing influence of religion, and its impact on the political atmosphere, citizenship
is being increasingly defined on the basis of religious affiliation, and a host of other situations.
So, I will end the class now, but let me just reiterate that this field of sociology of religion is
personally, my field of interest, I specialize in sociology of religion and is a very fascinating
field, extremely fascinating field. Weber is one of the founding fathers of that field, through his
analysis of, his comparative analysis of religion, and also through his work on protestant ethic
and the spirit of capitalism. Let us stop here and we will meet in the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 43
Weber on Democracy and Colonialism
Welcome to the class, let us discuss Weber's position on democracy and colonialism. Because as
you must be remembering, we have been discussing these two topics in detail, especially
colonialism and democracy at least with respect to Karl Marx and Emil Durkheim in detail,
because these two are extremely important theoretical concerns for all of us even today, in the,
even the contemporary world.
It is extremely important for us to understand, how these founding fathers of sociology,

understood these two core themes of democracy and colonialism and especially colonialism
assumes a significant, you know, position because all these scholars, whom we are discussing,
they really lived during the height of colonialism, and they were the beneficiaries of colonialism,
and they lived in a place that had colonized the rest of the world.
It is extremely important for us to understand how did these people, how did these stalwart, look
at the process of, say of colonization, and whether they were critical of that or whether they took
it for granted, were they sympathetic to that or they did not really look at it, to critically see all
these points are extremely important. So, let us begin with the Weberian understanding or
Weberian position on democracy.
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We can say that, Weber is a theorist of democracy, of course, he looked into a number of other
aspects, but he had quite a lot of substantive things, to talk about democracy, he was not like say,
Karl Marx, who was extremely skeptical of a political democracy without the emergence of a
social democracy. Weber has a lot of interesting things to say about democracy.
For Weber, the nation state is tied to bureaucratic domination and control, this is something that
we already discuss, for Weber, bureaucratization is nothing but it is a rationalization of the
modern times, and then Weber is very emphatic in arguing that you cannot have a modern
society without rationalization. When you understand the processes that are taking place across
various spheres of modern society, whether it is a state or political system or church or education
system or every important sphere, we will see that this bureaucratization has taken place. Weber
argues that it is an unavoidable process.
Weber very emphatically argues that this process of bureaucratization is very closely connected
with the emergence and functioning of nation state. For Weber, the nation state is tied to the
bureaucratic domination and control. The state uses a bureaucratic apparatus for domination and
control. This is extremely important, because we are coming to some very important definition of
Max Weber on nation state. He identifies or he characterizes nation state, as the state is based on
the legitimate use of force over a delimited territory, for governments are ultimately founded on
the control and use of violence and this is an extremely important one.
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Usually we understand, nation state as the powerful entity, which has a sovereignty over a given
territory that is how we understand the sovereignty of a nation state, when you say that a
particular nation state for example, India is a sovereign republic, and it means that India has
absolute authority over its territory. We know that this claim is not many times accepted by
others and there could be a quite lot of contestations regarding what, where exactly is the
boundary.
But generally, we understand that a nation state has complete authority, complete sovereignty
over its territory. But more interestingly, more importantly, Weber argues that, nation state has
the ability to use legitimate use of force over a delimited territory, for governments are ultimately
founded on the control and use of violence. State alone has the ability to use legitimate form of
violence. That is why every state has specialized agencies for unleashing violence, we can think
about it as all kinds of armed forces, including police to that of military, all specialized
commander forces, all these are groups who are trained to kill or trained to inflict violence on
somebody.
Inflicting violence on whom is a very interesting question. Military is trained to unleash

violence on the external enemy, whereas the police is trained to unleash violence or, or use
violence on its own subjects, on its own citizens. By the very definition that a particular political
system is, as you know is a nation state, it means that it has the ability to unleash violence. We
know that nation state alone has the right to legitimately take out somebody's life.
That is why capital punishment, if you know, is a legitimate thing. Even suicides in many
countries, is punishable or attempt to suicide is punishable and you do not have the right to take
away your own life, you are not the owner of your own life, you cannot take away your life, the
state is the owner of that. So, that is why, the capital punishment, killing somebody by hanging
or shooting is accepted as a legitimate form of providing punishment in many societies.
All politicians must be willing to use state sanctioned violence in order to responsibly carry out
their duties. Weber is very clear that the responsibility of nation state, is basically to control and
use of violence over its delimited, in its delimited territory over the subjects, over its own people,
and without that initial state cannot exist. So, democracy and bureaucracy are inseparable, as
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democratic political representation and equality demand administrative and judicial provisions to
prevent privilege.
Democracy and bureaucracy are inseparable, as democratic political representations and equality,
demand administrative and judicial provisions to prevent privilege. So, it is an extremely again,
an ideal, typical argument that in a modern democratic system, you need to have the democracy
and bureaucracy in its complete ethical sense. Because he says that, in order to prevent privilege,
because in every society, there would be sections of people who are traditionally privileged, and
this privilege can come from various sources. I hope you discuss, our discussion about Weber
and Marx, in fact, a kind of a debate between Weber and Marx about, what are the sources of
stratification. So, please keep those discussions in mind when we come about.
In order to prevent privilege and to ensure that a traditionally powerful or a newly powerful
group does not, you know give any regards to existing other forms of authority does not really
bring in personal elements, it does not bring in traditional elements, it is supposed to be
extremely, it is supposed to be solely focused on the rational things. So, that is why, Weber
argues that a very impersonal, extremely powerful, impartial, impersonal, bureaucratic system is
very much important for a vibrant democratic, democracy to thrive.
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Weber views modern politics as invariably tied to rationalization, in democracies the

bureaucratization of political parties is the rule. Now, he has a very interesting analysis about
political parties and he argues that there is a bureaucratization across bureaucratization of the
political parties as well. Often politicians offer patronage to their supporters which encourage a
party machinery. Parties demand a party organization, to attain and maintain power. Weber
views politics as giving leaders a feeling of power over others, and of influencing historically
significant events, and he develops a characteristically cynical view of the political life.
Weber has very extensive analysis about the political parties and we also know that, how
political parties are supposed to function, whether parties with say, a very strong ideological core
or parties with a very strong say, appeal to certain say, primordial affinities, especially in India,
you know, that certain parties appeal on the basis of religious affiliation, certain parties appeal on
the basis of linguistic affiliation, certain other parties appeal on the basis of caste affiliation,
certain other parties appeal on abstract ideas like equality or other ideas or socialism or more
other ideas.
But whatever be the ideas, politicians offer patronage to their supporters. And that is how this
everyday democracy works. Everyday democracy works because, the politicians are supposed to
do offer patronage to the supporters, which encourage a party machinery. The parties demand a
party organization to attain and maintain power. We know the kind of very interesting dynamics
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between the ruling party and the government itself. The Prime Minister or the Chief Minister of
every country will also be a face of the party. His or her government is, in fact supposed to
reflect the, the policies of her party.
There is a very thin line that separates the party and the government, once the party leader
assumes, he or she takes the oath and assumes the office of a Prime Minister or Chief Minister,
he or she is supposed to be completely devoid, completely devoid from the party agenda, and
supposed to look at everybody equally, without favor and fear that is the important, you know, a
word or important sentence in the oath. But in general or in our everyday practices, we
understand that most of these people who assume power, will be also partial to their own
political parties, they will be committed to implement the ideologies of their parties.
Weber views politics as giving leaders a feeling of power over others, and of influencing
historically significant events. He develops a characteristically cynical view of political life.
Because why a cynical view thinks that a completely typical bureaucratize, the process is not
happening in the current democracy, because a host of other considerations including favoritism,
you know, certain, tradition, giving privilege to certain groups, all these things seep in.
For Weber, a good politician passionately believes in her cause, yet a good politician must
balance this passion with a strong sense of responsibility, and an understanding of proportion.
This is what I was talking about, they have to have a kind of a passionate belief in her cause, and
this cause is mostly, defined or influenced by a very strong ideological possession. This has to,
so this, will put enormous, pressure on the leader to strike a balance between the commitment to
this particular cause, and a host of other, people, other causes, maybe contradictory causes, or
other people who may not be a part of this cause. It is very important that the leader develops
sensitivity to understand these situations.
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An irresponsible politician appeals to voters emotions, and often become vain in her search for
power. It is, she lacks objectivity, becoming more concerned with the impressions and effects of
her actions than with causes. A very important argument on irresponsible politician and we have
a lot of such figures in history. Even now, there are a lot of interesting discussions and debates,
talking about the emergence of populist leaders, a new trend maybe for the last 10 or 15 years
across the globe.
A new crop of populist leaders are supposedly emerging across the globe, including U.S. and
Brazil and you know, Turkey and, and a host of other places where, they are seen as appealing to
the voters emotions, rather than upholding more lofty ideals and other things. She lacks
objectivity and such leaders who can ignite very strong passions of the people, because we know
that, igniting passion is something important, but also can be counterproductive as you are
igniting the passion of the people.
Most of the time, these passions will be always, you know, directed against another and if the
passions are built around questions of identity, identities are always built against the other.
Without another, you do not have an identity. If you think that a particular nation is for a
particular group of people, and if you want to communicate that with the people, or if you want
to make use of or encash, if you want to make use of or exploit, that kind of sentiment which is
already dormant among the people, then what you are doing, you are igniting the kind of passion
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of the people and that can lead to quite a lot of violence. It can lead to quite a lot of turmoil and
other things.
She lacks objectivity, becoming more concerned with the impressions that, effects often actions
rather than with the causes, though he believes that democracies tend to promote demagogues, he
views parliament as a way to control the political leaders power by establishing legal safeguards
and determining peaceful means of political success. Here, he reposes enormous faith on the
ability of parliament because we know that parliament is a conglomeration of so many different
people representing different constituencies.
The constituency, I am not talking about the mere physical constituencies, or geographical
constituencies, these people and parliamentarians, they represent different sections of people,
they represent different, you know, group of people with diverse experiences, diverse historical
background, diverse agendas, diverse, you know, opinion. So, this parliament is supposedly, is
supposed to be a place where these people coming from so many different backgrounds engage
in discussions and debates and then reach a kind of consensus. This consensus is what is
supposed to emerge as a law from a particular parliament.
Weber had enormous faith on the ability of the parliament to, to reflect these diversities of
society, and also the ability to checkmate a leader, a demagogue who wants to overrule
everything and means of political. Parliament is a training ground for leaders, who learn the
politics of compromise and responsibility. But again, we know that a host of contemporary
examples, paint a rather different picture. We have a lot of examples of how leaders really make
parliament really ineffective, leaders can simply overrule the parliament, especially if they have
huge majority.
There are arguments that in many countries which were once respected for the vibrancy of their
democracy have been made hollow from inside, you have all the structures of democracy, look,
impact, but it has been hollowed out, it has been jeopardized from within, the very spirit of
democracy has been very seriously undermined from within by these political parties and
leaders. So, we have to say that the, the excessive optimism that Weber places on, parliament
could be problematic.
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Then he states that the democracy and freedom are in fact, only possible if they are supported by
the permanent, determined will, of a nation not to be governed like a flock of sheep, a strong
democratic nation is based on informed popular sovereignty, a very important point, that
democracy and freedom are in fact only possible if they are supported by the permanent,
determined will of a nation.
The will of a nation; what does the nation want? And who knows that? Who really represents the
nation? Who really represent the people? Do our representatives, the elected representatives
actually represent the people? Or do they represent some more vested interest? These are some
of the very profound questions, starting from Aristotle, a host of people, and being again, Karl
Marx asked some of the very pertinent questions.
So, Weber argues that people must become capable of making good rational, informed decisions,
if any form of popular sovereignty is to succeed, so he would argue that, democracy will thrive
or democracy, in its actual sense of the meaning will survive, will exist only if the people are
able to act rational choices. But again, we know that it is not an easy task. The candidates who
are fielded by political parties, there are a host of reports and news reports and studies, which
talk about a very shady background of many of our own candidates or the people who stand in
elections in India. People who have been charge sheeted, people have been accused of criminal
cases, or for, or for all kind of violence and others.
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There is a huge disparity between, what is expected of a democracy and what really happens.
Weber ties the capacity to act in a political mature manner to ethics, for he sees the importance
of leaders as well as citizens developing qualities of judgment and capacity to appraise historical
events and political problems. So, he centers on this whole issue of ethics and believing that
human beings, ordinary citizens and their representatives will be able to make use of the ethics
so that the whims and fancies of a particular leader will not come into play.
The major achievement of democracy, such as constitution and a belief in human rights depend
on cultivating a common capacity to rule, their political and social institutions must teach a
democratic people how to exercise sober judgment. Weber was a very important advocate of
liberalism, he was an important advocate of rights of the people, individualism. So, he argued
very vehemently that you need to have a set of ideas and ethics that are oriented towards these
liberal ideas, ideas to have a constitution and belief in human rights, depend on cultivating a
common capacity to rule their political and social institutions must teach a democratic people,
how to exercise “sober judgment”.
Now to get, in not how to give in for passion, not how to give in for popular sentiment, but to
uphold some of the important ideals and important values and then govern accordingly. For
Weber, social sciences, such as economics or sociology should be concerned above all else with
the quality of the human being, reared under those economic and social conditions of existence. I
personally found it as a very fascinating argument, he says that social sciences especially must be
concerned above all else with the quality of human beings reared under those economic and
social conditions of existence.
For Weber, the prime subject matter of these two disciplines at least, is to be constantly vigilant
about the quality of human beings who are reared in those particular contexts. Weber is, as far as
I understand, is completely against a utilitarian use or utilitarian understanding of this discipline.
He believes that these disciplines, or by teaching these disciplines, or by learning this discipline,
you are simply imparting certain skills, so that the person can be employed and then he can get,
he or she can get away with their life.
No, he is not talking about that, he is talking about teaching these subjects or the ability of the
subjects is to develop very important critical facilities, to encourage critical thinking, always be
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sensitive, always be critical of the current situation, and on the basis of certain ethical positions,
on the basis certain theoretical positions. This ability to have a critical engagement, with an
ethical position is what Weber expects from these two important disciplines.
It is something very important that we need to keep in mind, especially in this kind of very
difficult situations, where social sciences are always looked down upon or social sciences are
seen as unwanted or unnecessary, people like Weber or, or almost any, you know, philosophers
worth the salt will always say that, these disciplines are extremely important for a critical,
consciousness for a, for the emergence of a population, who is quite sensitive to their own living
situations.
Next theme, let us see how Weber, looked at colonialism, what was his position on colonialism,
because Weber lived, you know, through the peaks of colonialism. He was a German and
Germany was a colonial country. Unlike Karl Marx, who wrote significantly about colonial
societies, Weber had access to far better type of material, better resources to evaluate
colonialism. Weber was sometimes guilty of an orientalist perspective, as he sometimes
evaluated non Western societies in terms of the Western model.
I hope you are familiar with this term, orientalism or orientalist position, a term that was used to
indicate the study of the East, the occident was considered to be the West. The entire forms of
knowledge, the study of history, study of philosophy, study of philology, study of language,
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study of ethics, study of archaeology, the whole body of knowledge that was developed in the
West, which studied the East is understood by Easter Orientalism or study of the East, it is a very
broad category which included sinology, which included Indology. Indology is the study of
India.
The huge body of knowledge that was created in the West but about the study of the East was
the conventional understanding of this term, Orientalism. But this particular term was given a
very interesting twist or interesting makeover by this very important scholar Edward Said,
through his book called as Orientalism, in which he explains why this knowledge production is a
construct by the rest in order to get a kind of a specific image for himself. He very beautifully
very and elegantly explains the kind of connection between knowledge and power.
No knowledge is innocent, no knowledge is neutral, that there is a very strong connection

between and interplay between power and knowledge. He argues that the Westerners were in a
position to create such a knowledge because of colonialism and other things. Most of the
knowledge that was created by the West, about the East was also the creation of a particular kind
of a power equation. These scholars would argue that Weber also was one among them, Weber
also was guilty of an orientalist bias, as he sometimes evaluated non- Western societies in terms
of Western model.
For all these people, West is the place of modernity, it is a place of progress, it is a place of
secularism, it is a place of empowerment, it is a place of rationality, and the rest of the West, the
rest of the world is a place which has as all the negative meanings of all these qualities, that we
mentioned, the rest of the world, especially the Orient, it is religious, it is not secular, it is
primitive, it is superstitious, it is ignorant, it is irrational. You see a set of binaries, on the one
hand, a host of binaries, are used to indicate the West. And on the other hand, its opposites are
used to indicate the East and Weber also fell into the same trend because that was the time, that
was a time when, looking at the world, through these eyes was seen as the most normal and
ordinary thing to do.
Weber sometimes collapsed irrationality and non modern people into one category. There is no
wonder, we always, we made that reference many times for him, this Western rationality, that
kind of a peculiar rationality, he said, just, it is so peculiar, that it emerged only in the West, only
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during this particular time, and it did not emerge anywhere else in the world, it did not emerge
even in Europe before the emergence of modernity which is an extremely problematic claim.
He has a strong sense of the ways that, irrationality could influence seemingly rational process,
as in his studies of religious asceticism, and the importance of guilt in religious belief system.
He also mentioned I hope, you remember when, when he talks about Islam and he talks about
Hinduism, when he talks about Confucianism, he elaborates why that none of these religions
actually gave birth to a spirit of capitalist.
His argument is very clear, because these societies were always otherworldly. They were
preoccupied with the question of the other world, they were you know, always seeped into a lot
of our unfounded irrational superstitious beliefs, like say karma, dharma, fate and a host of other
things, he did not have the drive to look into the present world and to actively change it. He said
that only Judaism and especially in, in reformist Christianity, that it had that particular kind of a
spark.
The very first sentence of Protestant Ethics reads a product of modern European civilization,
studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of
circumstances that the fact should be attributed, that in Western civilization and in Western
civilization only, cultural phenomenon, have appeared, which as we like to think, lie in a line of
development having universal significance and values.
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This is very first sentence in Protestant Ethics. He is asking, and why that in Western
civilization and why Western civilization only, the kind of cultural phenomenon have appeared,
lie in a line of development having universal significance and value? So, why that only West was
able to generate, come up with cultural phenomena and values of universal significance. Why
that, they were able to come up with these kind of ideas of rationality, human rights, and a host
of other things, why that the rest of the world did not do that?
It is a very important question that Weber asked just like any other, you know, Eurocentric
European scholars must have asked during that particular time, that Marx shares the similar idea.
Marx thinks that the non-westerners cannot write history, that history must be written. The
similar idea is shared by Weber as well. This kind of thinking that really dominated the academic
sphere for several decades is now being very actively questioned through a series of studies,
which usually come under the category of de-colonial and postcolonial studies.
De-colonial studies, where we try to understand how these claims have really given birth to
certain conceptual as well as theoretical categories, which really give you a very distorted picture
about society. Just think about it even Weber does not have anything to talk about the influence
of colonial exploitation. He does not say anything much about why that this whole colonial
enterprise has really pauperized. It has really decimated a vast number of societies across the
world, including Latin America, including Africa, including Asia, the devastating effects of
colonization, is never addressed or never even acknowledged by most of these people.
They think that there was some essentially cultural elements emerge in Europe, because of some
reasons and the rest of the world did not produce that very problematic, extremely problematic a
position which again, did not allow them to look at this process of colonial imperialism, the slave
trade, the kind of exploit, economic exploitation in an objective manner. He says, the East lacks
history, beliefs, and the likes which allow Western capitalism to flourish. Despite Weber's
critical comments about rationalization, he largely understands non-western cultures through its
categories and they have little capacity for agency.
Weber talks about rationality. He also says that there are other kinds of rationality, but when it
comes to his evaluation, he uses only the kind of rationality that he is familiar with the Western
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rationality and on the basis of that, he evaluates and, and scales up other civilizations and even
pronounces a kind of a judgment.
While Weber ties religious traditions to political and economic factors, he does not discuss
colonialism in any depth, as I mentioned. He has studied all these Eastern religions in detail
Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, but he hardly discusses colonialism as a very important
functional process. Indeed, Weber supported an expansionist imperialist German state
throughout his life. We know that, what does it mean to be expansionist, what does it mean to be
imperialist.
Imperialism, either it could be through direct dominance, or through dominance through trade, or
through political patronage. But it is always about dominance. It is always about having scant
interest about the people who are below you. It is an assumption that you have the inherent right
to rule over somebody. Weber did not have any issue with that rather than positioning
rationalization as some inevitable universal process sometimes, Weber seems to argue that
rationalization has no singular logic, that it is bound up with a particular groups, social forces
and social relations that are local and historically specific.
Sometimes he brings in more nuances in his argument about rationalization, thus rationalization
means different thing to different cultures, and it may be able to be reversed or stopped in some
instances. Rationalization means different things in different cultures, and it may be able to be
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reversed or stopped in some instances. He brings in some certain nuances about rationalization,
he thinks that it, it can appear in different forms in different society, but he is not free from that
overall, you know, Eurocentric position.
Weber shows that Western capitalism and its associated religious traditions are one form of
civilization, among many others. Further, Weber sees Western rationality as infused with
irrational and destructive elements, culminating in a bureaucratized world without meaning. He
developed this argument especially when he develops the kind of critical position of bureaucracy
that it can be dehumanizing, it can be insensitive, it can be corrupt, and it can lead to nepotism, a
host of others.
But generally, he understands this rationalism, as a unique product of European historical context
and which he very clearly says that, it is absent in the rest of the societies. This is our brief
discussion on Weber’s possession on democracy and colonialism. I hope that you will find these
discussions important and interesting, because it provides us with some opportunity to
understand how a person like Weber, with so much of high stature really looked at these very
key themes.
So, let us stop here and we will conclude this session, this discussion on Weber with the next
class, where we have a critical analysis of Weber's contributions. So, thank you.
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Lecture - 44
Critical Assessment
Welcome back to the class. This is the last class on Weber. We are having a critical assessment
or a critical evaluation of Max Weber and his overall contributions to the discipline of sociology.
We have had several sessions, I think, nine classes including this. We could spend some time in
discussing Weber in a rather elaborate manner, trying to understand his overall contribution for
the methodological as well as the substantive theoretical contributions of Weber, and let us have
a look at Weber.
Let us have a critical evaluation at Weber, a critical assessment at Weber, trying to position
Weber among the different sociologists and try to understand to what extent Weberian arguments
and Weberian theories have stood the time, and to what extent they have influenced the course of
the discipline and its trajectory over these decades.
One of the very important points is about the nature of theorization of Weber. Weber did not
believe that timeless universal laws could ever be developed because so much that had occurred
in history was the result of chance events. You know, this is something very fascinating, maybe
for the first time that you are listening to a scholar who very explicitly states that he does not
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want to or he does not believe in creating huge theories or very all-encompassing theories, a kind
of a timeless theories or laws for that matter, which can be applicable to every society.
Because you know that this has been the trend ever since the time of Montesquieu or Auguste
Comte to Spencer, even Durkheim, and Karl Marx, all of them exhibited this urge to develop
meta-theories, theories that can explain almost everything according to them.
But here comes Weber and makes them much humbler, much important at the same time,
important invention saying that a timeless universal law could ever be developed because so
much had occurred in history was the result of chance events. A host of things which had
happened in different societies with chance events. They were not really created by conscious
human events; they were not really created by a set of people who wanted to achieve certain
things. On the other hand, they were simply chance events.
You cannot have a theory that cannot really look into each of the specificities. On the other
hand, what Weber says is that the trajectories of different societies are so different, the historical,
social, political, cultural, background or cultural contexts of different societies are so different
that it is almost impossible to create a law that can include, that can incorporate all these
diversities and all these complexities.
Without the ability to conduct inquiry into the same ways as in the natural sciences, Weber still
wanted to be scientific and objective. His argument is that you cannot really replicate social
science or you cannot really mold or fashion social science after a natural science. You cannot
have a social physics, you cannot have a sociology which looks exactly like a physics. It is not a
weakness, rather, it is a strength; that is a point Weber argues.
You cannot have a law. You cannot have sociological laws like the laws in chemistry or in
physics or in biology or in astronomy. You cannot have that because there are so much of
different complexities, there are there are so many different contingencies and chance events and
complexities, and you cannot have that.
Even without the ability to conduct inquiry in the same way as the natural sciences, Weber still
wanted to be scientific and objective. So this is the point. We mentioned already in the previous
class that Weber brings in a very strong anti-positivistic streak. He brings in a very strong anti-
positivistic orientation to social sciences, and especially that of sociology. But at the same time,
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he wants it to be scientific as well as objective. I hope you remember we had some elaborate
discussion on what it means to be objective and what it means to be scientific.
Moreover, he sought to do more than write historical descriptions. He also wanted to provide a
methodology for more abstract and analytical statements. So it was not only a sociologist trying
to do a historical analysis of certain things, but he went into more nuances and one of the best
examples is his study on capitalism, as we have discussed elaborately.
Weber, was not merely tracing the origin of capitalism. It was not the study of the emergence of
capitalism. I hope you understand that, there are quite a lot of economic historians have done that
and how and where did you know capitalism emerged, what were the major play, who were the
major players, what happened, what were the policies that comes in the in the realm of economic
history, whereas Weber was interested in a sociological analysis, trying to understand how
certain religious beliefs, certain cultural elements, certain ethics really gave a kind of impetus for
emergence of capitalism.
He also provide a methodology for the more abstract and analytical statements about the
historical changes. That is why this concept of ideal type becomes important. He presents the
story, he presents the image of the spirit of capitalism in its ideal-typical formulations.
Then he argues, and tries to understand what is the ideal-typical characterization of a protestant
ethic and he could make a connection between that. The result was a strange compromise, the
study of historical causes through the vehicle of ideal types. Exactly what we discussed now.
He tried to understand the historical causes of different subjects, but different phenomena, but
through the vehicle of ideal types. And you can have a lot of discussions and debates about the
positive as well as negative effects of using this ideal type. But Weber personally found it as
extremely important.
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Now, Jurgen Habermas, maybe one of the most important leading intellectuals of our times, the
German philosopher. Habermas thinks that Weber's discussion of the paradoxes of
rationalization is still the best key to a philosophically and scientifically informed diagnosis of
our culture. It is Habermas’s argument that Weber's explanation or Weber's theory, on the
paradox of rationalization.
What is the paradox of rationalization that we discussed the other day? I hope you remember
that. Weber argued that in the modern times, things are becoming more and more rationalized,
we are aiming for more and more efficiency. But in this pursuit for more and more efficiency,
there lot of substantive values are lost in between. You cannot have a highly value-oriented as
well as a highly rationalized goal-oriented means at the same time. They may not go together.
Remember, Weberian discussion on social action, he distinguishes value-oriented action from

that of goal-oriented action. Goal-oriented action is the typical instrumental rationalist action
where your only goal is to achieve your destination, your end in the most efficient manner.
Whereas when it becomes the kind of goal-oriented manner, your means are not that important.
Your ultimate aim, your upholding of the values, your commitment to the values becomes
important and they are not compatible all the time. I am not saying they are completely
incompatible but they are not compatible all the time. So Weber sees distinctive, ethical dilemma
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of contemporary individuals exemplified in the tension between an ethics of responsibility and
an ethics of conviction.
So this is a kind of a conflict that Habermas talks about, the kind of a paradox which is, which
according to him is a philosophically and scientifically informed diagnosis of our time. What is
this ethical dilemma of the contemporary individuals exemplified in the tension between ethics
of responsibility and an ethics of conviction?
A conviction, it talks about your conviction towards a certain value. It is a substantive

rationalization. I hope you remember this distinction between substantive and form and it is very
difficult to have both these things together. You are in your everyday practices, you are
ideologically committed to that, at the same time, formally as well.
This dilemma between the ethics of responsibility that you need to do certain things in the most
efficient way, but at the same time, your convictions might be different. And this dilemma,
Weber argues, is something very important.
He is also a cultural relativist, for he thinks that science cannot decide what values people
should follow, that our belief systems cannot be based on any ultimate truth. A very important
argument that which many of his predecessors failed to understand that you cannot really
explain, of course, you can explain a lot of things with science but you cannot really explain
larger questions, you can’t explain philosophical questions through science.
For example, the whole question about the purpose of life, what is an ethical way of life? How
should you behave? Should you behave this way or should you behave that way? What are the
kind of values that you need to uphold? Science does not have answers to any of these things.
What are the kind of a moral and ethical positions that you need to uphold, both at your
individual as well as at your collective life? Science does not have any answer to that.
So science gives you a lot of information, it gives a lot of knowledge but when human life is not
only on the base of knowledge, but it is also on the base of values. Weber recognized and
realized it.
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So what values people should follow that our belief system cannot be based on the ultimate truth.
You cannot again, we know that science does not have or science does not give you an ultimate
truth. Science keeps on revising its truths. Maybe today's truth could be tomorrow's false.
Science does not give you that sense of certitude. Science does not give you that sense of
permanence. Whereas for a strong believer, if he keeps away his doubt, whether the basis of his
belief is right or not but then he gets complete satisfaction of conviction of holding on to
something that he thinks is absolutely correct.
At the psychological level, that conviction provides him with quite a lot of solace. It provides
him with quite a lot of comfort, rather than, on the other hand, for a scientist, for somebody who
believes in science, these truths are not permanent. Today's truth could become tomorrow’s
known-truth or could be a false.
Assertions of cultural or religious fundamentalism, the idea that an authentic culture is being
undermined by Western modernity and rationalization occur throughout the world. This conflict
between fundamentalism and rationalization may be the most potent and enduring problem of the
21st century.
Here, the attention is now being brought into a very important process that we see all throughout,
which makes a lot of sense if you analyze it through Weberian argument. I hope you remember,
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we mentioned about re-enchantment of the world, where the argument that there is an increased
relevance of religion or religion has made a comeback.
In fact, it has made a comeback with vengeance since 1970s at least. Because contrary to quite a
lot of sociologist’s argument or political scientists’ argument that the whole world is going
through a process of secularization, where religion will lose its significance and it will become a
part of your private life, what has happened after 1970s is religion has come back into the public
sphere usually through its core, its combination with religion and political power.
We saw that phenomenon in India, we saw it in several Muslim countries of several Islamic
societies, and we saw the resurgence of religious revivalism. So the point is many of these
revivalist tendencies has a long history because they are and there has been very interesting
argument that most of these revivalism or most of these, they emerged from a kind of a
contestations with the Western rationality. If you look into quite lot of religious reformist
movements, in within Islam or within Hinduism, all of them emerged as a reaction to the
influence of colonial modernity.
On one hand, what has happened is it has assumed the character of a fundamentalism. And here,
you need to keep in mind that we are not talking about fundamentalism in a negative sense.
What is the meaning of fundamentalism? We often attribute this term fundamentalism in a very
rather negative way but fundamentalism, especially religious fundamentalism needs to be seen as
an urge to go back to the fundamentals of any religion. There is a newly found call or a renewed
call to from a religion to its members you have to go back to the fundamentals, to cling on to the
fundamentals more vigorously.
And this comes when the elites or the priests think that the community has degenerated, both
politically, socially, and economically. The prime reason for this degeneration is that the
community has moved away from the, from its core values and core principles. So that is a time
when the clergy exhort its members, or the priest exhort its members or the elites exhort their
members to get back to the fundamentals. That is how every fundamentalist movements emerge.
But the tragedy or the kind of an irony is that they will be forced to identify or forced to create a
set of fundamentals in a completely different context because many of these fundamentals of
every religion that were identified, they will have to be there in the text that is written or in their
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holy book that is written several centuries ago, and they might be quite vague, they might be
quite abstract, they might be quite contradictory. Now, they have to reinvent all these things and
make them suitable for the contemporary times and that creates quite a lot of tension.
This conflict between fundamentalism and rationalization, maybe the most potent and enduring
problem of the 21st century. Rationalization is indeed paradoxical, it promotes principle
reasoning so that people can discuss and debate issues in terms of rational principles which apply
to everyone regardless of race, social position, or gender.
This is our understanding; it very closely comes to Habermasian understanding of public sphere.
You use your rationality, so you evaluate certain things only on the basis of this rationality, you
have emerged as a modern man or a woman, as a modern citizen who is kind of freed themselves
from all the shackles of all the influences of tradition. Their thinking is very straight, they are no
longer influenced by tradition, nor are they influenced by religion or blind beliefs or magic, they
purely think plainly on the basis of rationality.
Again, we know that it hardly happens but, so that is supposed to create a kind of a space of
principled reasoning. But it is clear that rationalization also contributed to the disciplinary
society. Knowledge becomes tied to power, resulting in rules and regulations which discipline
and control people destroying capacities for autonomy and creativity.
This is a tragedy of modernity. Modernity promised you a lot of unfettered freedom. Modernity
believed in human potential and individualism, but if you look, if you analyze the trajectory of
modern societies over the past several decades, we know that we are living in a disciplinary
society. A theory heavily contributed or heavily influenced by Michel Foucault, where he talks
about each of these connections, the whole connection between knowledge becomes tied to
power and resulting in rules and regulations which discipline and control people.
I am not going into that field but it is a very fascinating area, Foucault’s argument about
disciplinary society, how we are disciplined, how we are made docile bodies, how education,
health, medical knowledge, legal knowledge, and various mechanisms of controlling the
population; how all these things have made human beings very docile; very tamed, very easy to
control, easy to manipulate.
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So there is a contradiction here. Weber argues that the more and the more you become modern,
the more free you are because you are using rationality. On the other hand, we are increasingly
becoming a disciplinary society, both at the hands of the state as well as by the hands of these
multinational corporations. We know that the whole debate about how our privacy in the 21st
century has really become a joke, is not it? Your most important personal data must already,
must have been shared or collected by whomever they want in the in this era.
While he supported another interesting question is about women's case. While he supported
aspects of women's emancipation in Germany, he did not analyze the ideal women's domesticity
as an ideal of women's domesticity that arose during his era. Despite his sensitivity to cultural
values, he seemed to have taken masculinity and femininity for granted.
This is again a very important feminist critique of Weber because feminism offers very powerful
critique of scholars, especially of this particular era because they have had, they had not
developed a feminist perspective during that particular time. They did not think through that,
they did not think about that because he did not analyze the ideal of women's domesticity.
They had taken for granted arguments that men are supposed to go out and then engage in public
sphere and then work and then bring back money, whereas women are supposed to take care of
the domestic affairs. Why? Because women are naturally inclined to be at home, they are more
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homely, they are more kind, they are more loving they are the nurturing people, they give birth to
children.
Women need to be stay in back at home and men need to go out. And this was the kind of a well-
accepted cultural trope in every society, including India, including Europe, most of societies.
Weber also passively accepted that he did not question or he did not deem it necessary even to
discuss that.
Weber’s sober rationalism and his theory of rationalization still have element of a moral tale, a
story that reflected many taken for granted European assumptions of the time, rather than a
scientific treatise on society; ideas of progress, the superior to the West over the East, and the
good middle class versus the irresponsible workers sometimes creep into his analysis.
Again, very interesting thing because Weber, very steadfastly, he tries to keep away from the
moral positions, unlike Durkheim. We know Durkheim had a very specific moral position, he
believed that a discipline like sociology must take moral and ethical positions, whereas Weber
did not do that.
Weber, he did not take any particular moral position, but the same time, as we discussed in the
previous class, he had that kind of an orientalist outlook. He believed in this idea of progress as
distributed, generated, and distributed by the Europeans, and the superiority of the West over the
east, the good middle class versus the irresponsible workers. Because middle class, they have the
ability to think rationally, whereas the working class the poor people, they do not have this
faculty and sometimes they creep into his analysis.
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Weber, more than Marx or Durkheim, sees history as a contingent process and focuses on
concrete histories and cultures in his historical sociology. He does not advocate a simple
evolutionary model, though his ideas about rationalization seem to suggest such a logic. This is
something that we discussed in the previous class.
Weber is not fond of formulating all-encompassing meta-theories. He does not want to provide a
theory and say that, okay, you can use this theory to explain social change so far in every society.
They are very two tall claims and he does not believe in that.
He sees history as a contingent process, lot of chances take place, and lot of chance events take
place. And focuses on concrete histories and cultures in his historical sociology, and this is the
most important one. While Karl Marx also attempted that, he had, he analyzed the history of
working-class in Britain very elaborately. But then he extrapolated that with the rest of the
society, whereas Weber will not do that.
Weber argues that every society has undergone very specific and contingent historical events and
you cannot gloss over them, you cannot build a theory without addressing them specifically,
without analyzing them specifically, and such a theory will not have any importance.
He does not advocate a simple evolutionary model, though his ideas about rationalization seem
to suggest such a logic. He does not talk about different stages. He does not say that every other
society will become like human society. But still when you think about rationalization, and when
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he connects it with the story of modernization, I think it is pretty clear that he also falls under
that trap.
Weber is a more postmodern thinker than either Marx or Durkheim. He ties knowledge to power,
he recognize the link between rationality and social control, and he is suspicious of the claims
that conflict between social groups can be eradicated in a morally integrated community.
Because many of the widest, most hotly debated topics of contemporary times, the connection
between knowledge and power, the relationship between freedom and disciplinary society; all
these things get reflected in Weberian analysis. His ties of knowledge to power, he has
recognized the link between rationality and social control. Increasingly, in a modern society, we
are subjected to increasing forms of surveillance and control.
His suspicion of the claim that conflicts between social groups can be eradicated in a morally-
integrated community as in the case of the Durkheim. Durkheim believed in that, he does not
believe in that. So these discussions really revealed that the Weber was somebody who think
beyond his time, and he was quite sharp to understand the kind of a possible trajectory of his
theorization.
Yet Weber does not recognize the possibility that societies might be able to develop non-
religious ethical positions in a secular world. For Weber, rationality disenchants, it undermines
strong moral beliefs. That is another very important point. He believed that rationality will
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undermine strong moral beliefs and replacing religion with nothing. That seems to be a
problematic position because no society can live without moral positions. And these moral
positions can be quite different. For example, there are very interesting studies, which suggest
that quite a lot of developed societies, especially the Nordic societies, including Sweden,
Denmark, and these societies, they are increasingly becoming irreligious. They are increasingly
becoming either atheistic societies or where people do not really care about religion. Religion is
not a matter of interest for them.
These are the places which has the lowest amount of crime, lowest amount of human rights
abuses, and the highest human development indices. So what does it explain? Scholars have
argued that these societies where religion has been made disappear, alternative value systems
have taken over. Sense of equality, sense of human rights, and sense of individual right have
provided a kind of an important basis for your ethical standing.
Weber did not believe in a non-religious ethical position. For Weber, rationality disenchants and
undermines strong moral beliefs. But of course, these societies are disenchanted societies but
they have something to replace the religion. And it is not that they are enchanted by these ideas
of freedom or equality or human rights, but rather, they have taken it as an ingrained value in
their everyday life.
In addition, Weber does not discuss the complexity of cultural identity, the psyche, and the social
interaction with such sophistication as he might have. So he does not look into cultural identity,
he does not look into the questions of races or gender or ethnicity or such kind of things, and the
psyche and social interaction with much sophistication as he might have done.
Weber does not explore exactly how bureaucratic rules are followed, how a shared sense of what
rules mean is developed. Of course, we know that he developed only an ideal-typical construct of
bureaucracy. While he was absolutely clear that you are not going to see such a completely
perfect bureaucracy anywhere in the world, but he did not examine it by himself. He left it for
others, he left it for maybe his students or the future generation sociologists to sociologically,
empirically analyze how bureaucracies actually work.
These rules were created and sustained in a cultural context, not by isolated individuals who
were, who have no connection with one another. So how bureaucracy function in different
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societies is a very interesting study. How the functions of bureaucracies heavily influenced by
certain cultural underpinnings. It is a very fascinating area of study, Weber did not venture into
that but that would have been really interesting.
While Weber calls for the methodological practice of Verstehen, the sympathetic understanding
of others as central part of sociological analysis, he does not sufficiently explore the fluid,
creative, and contingent aspects of social interaction which escaped scientific categories.
Now, because he was very particular that every scientist must be able to objectively analyze the
subjective dispositions of anchors. But there are host of areas where this objective analysis
becomes difficult or rather impossible, we discussed that in the previous class. You will not be
able to completely execute this objectivity because of your position, your identities, your belief
systems, and the impossibility that you cannot extricate yourself from your cultural milieu. It is
impossible how much ever professionally trained you are, you can only try your maximum.
Weber does not look into that there are quite a lot of, he does not certainly explore the fluid,
creative, and contingent aspects of social interaction, which escape scientific categories. There
are a lot of terms, categories which you cannot study scientifically at all.
You cannot study suffering, for example. How do you scientifically study suffering? How do we
scientifically study pain? How do we sufficiently study the whole cause of memories; daunting;
haunting memories, how do we scientifically study? How do we scientifically study trauma,
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trauma experienced by a community, or because of some, say, religious violence or some natural
calamity or something? How do we scientifically study that?
Is there any point in trying to scientifically study that? Why should somebody study it
scientifically? Why should somebody study and then quantify pain experienced by a group of
people or violence experienced by people? Can we quantify violence on the basis of number of
people who are killed, number of people who are seriously injured, does it make that study in
anything better?
So later, sociologists have identified that or argued that there are a host of very important central
features of human society, human existence, which cannot be or which need not be studied
scientifically. You do not need to make even this claim that you need to love. You cannot study
it scientifically. Compassion, you cannot study scientifically. A sense of serving somebody, you
cannot study it scientifically. There is no need for that. Science is not that important that every
scholar must use its framework to understand that.
It is hard to extract a general theory of Weber. Another very common observation on Weber is
that it is very hard to extract a general theory from Weber rather, what emerges are rich
descriptions, ideal types of empirical cases, and complex causal statements on many topics
without a general model to guide us.
We can say it as a critic but that is how a scholar Weber was. We know that we discussed about
his personal biography, he had a lot of personal difficulties, he had a mental breakdown, and he
was out of academia for two decades. So all these things must have influenced, must have
prevented from him from coming out with something more methodical. But so, and his writings
are also kind of highly disorganized, unconnected, disconnected with each other. So it is very
difficult to get a kind of complete grasp of Weber.
But if you try to summarize, if you try to evaluate Weber, I do not think that I need to reiterate
the importance of Weber; you must have already understood that. He is a person of eminent
standing, who is always seen as one of the trinities of modern sociology; the trinities of modern
sociology, along with Durkheim and Marx. Somebody who could definitely provided a shift in
the preoccupation with the positivistic science.
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He initiated an anti-positivistic methodological orientation for sociology and his dialogue with
the Marx, his contribution to the study of religion, his central theme of rationality, his arguments
about action, his arguments about authority, all are very fascinating theories. And that is why
Weber still continues to be one of the most influential classical thinkers ever in the field of
bureaucracy, action, authority, religion, modernity; Weber is still a central figure.
I hope you have followed the classes. I would strongly urge you to read more on Weber. He is a
very fascinating scholar and follow the discussion that we had closely. Thank you for listening.
Let us close the class today. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 45
Ferdinand Tonnies (1885-1936)
Welcome back to the class. I hope you remember the previous sessions, where we had very
elaborate discussions on Max Weber. This scholar is considered to be one of the most
important persons, who laid foundation to the further development of Sociology. A person,
who very significantly, contributed for the methodological advancement of the
discipline. A person who contributed substantially for the development of very important
themes within the discipline. So, we discussed Max Weber elaborately. I think, we must have
had more than 7 or 8 sessions on Max Weber, and we are moving forward.
We discussed these 3 people, Durkheim, Weber and Marx elaborately, and we will also
discuss another person George Simmel, in detail from the next class onwards. And after that,
we will have a look at a couple of thinkers in short. That means, we will not spend as much
time that we as we dedicated for the discussion on Marx, Durkheim and Weber, because they
are considered to be the central figures in classical Sociology. But we will touch up on these
scholars, in a rather brief matter, in comparison with the time that we spent in analyzing these
three people.
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Before the next class, we will be starting with Georg Simmel, another very important
German sociologists whom we might take maybe three classes and three sessions
to understand Simmel's arguments, Simmel's contributions and his overall arguments both
social conflict, his arguments about the form and content of Sociology, his arguments about
Pure Sociology and more importantly his study about the economy and the circulation of
money.
But before that let me take this opportunity, take this particular session to
discuss Ferdinand Tonnies, another very important scholar. Though Tonnies has written
on various other aspects, but he is still remembered, or is considered to be a very important
sociologist. And he is often remembered for his very important contribution, but he makes a
distinction between the community and society. This particular distinction, the community
and society, Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, is something so central even to the contemporary
sociology thinkers.
Because that is something important, so that is why I thought that, I will have one session
discussing the core argument of Ferdinand Tonnies, again a German sociologist, born
in 1885 and passed away in 1936.
So, we not discussing his other arguments, many are kind of controversial and many have lost
its relevance, many are no longer discussed in the contemporary Sociology. But this
particular work, which was published in 1887, titled, "Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft", it is
titled, it is written in Germany, in German language. It is roughly translated as community
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and society. It is an important work, and I think that students of who are studying
Sociology, need to be familiar with that. That is why, I am dedicating or I am
devoting one session for studying Ferdinand Tonnies.
So, let us see what his arguments and major contributions are. Why Tonnies is still invoked
among the contemporary sociologist? Why that he is still remembered? Why and what is his
significance of this particular work? So, the former, that is this Gemeinschaft, refers to the
natural organic forms of group existence, the latter to the artificial group which is held
together by some common conscious purpose. And is a very extremely important division.
It is two broad category. He is dividing this whole societies that were existing during his time
into two broad categories, or he is arguing that, almost every existing societies, can be
divided into these two major types of societies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Or he argues
that are two fundamental types of societies. One is our first, natural, organic forms of group
existence; while the latter is an artificial group which is held together by
some common conscious purpose.
The first is seen as natural, it is seen as unconscious. Something that, we do not really have
to labour, in order to identify ourself with. We are born into certain identities. We know that,
we are born into certain caste, we are born into certain language, we are born into certain
religion, and we are born into certain tribe. So, we are born into that by accident, and our
belonging to that particular group is quite natural. First of all, it is not out of our volition, it is
not out of our choice, but it just happened. So, that kind of society, that kind of membership,
or that kind of society, he says, it is quite natural, it is organic. It is an organic process, it is
something so natural, and it is something so organic, a form of group existence.
Whereas, the second one that, Gesellschaft is more artificial and which is held together
by some conscious, by some common conscious purpose. For, the second type of
membership, second type of society requires that, you hold together to that particular
community on the basis of certain conscious thinking; that means it is not a reflexive process,
it is not an unconscious process. It is rather, a result of a conscious action. You think about
certain things, you use your rationality, and then you think that you need to become a part of
this particular group and then you identify with that. And the group also identifies themselves
with you and then you become a part of that.
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Whereas, the other one the first one is, that you do not have to do anything, you are naturally
a part of that. He argues that is what he makes this distinction between community and
society. Society, he argues, is that the result of some common conscious purpose; society.
Whereas community is more natural, it is something more organic, it is something more
spontaneous, you are born into certain thing and you feel quite at home. So, Tonnies further
elaborates that, the community grows out of the organic relationship of man and to his
environment and those natural involuntary bonds that inevitably grow up
between human beings and between groups.
The society, on the other hand, is an artifact, which arises out of those voluntary and
teleological bonds that are the products of conscious choices and purposes. So, it is exactly
the same thing that I have explained. The community grows out of the organic relationship to
a man, and to his environment and the usual examples; that are given by Tonnies, or even
other sociologist, is the kind of a distinction between a tribal society or a agrarian society, a
less advanced society.
And that is what usually, we know that, is the picture of a tribal society, always tell, gives
you this impression of a very natural society; as a group of people who are living amidst the
nature. A group of people who are not corrupted by the vices of modernity, by that of
technology, by that of advancement; people who are more natural, that is the kind of our
common understanding.
Tonnies more or less invokes a kind of a similar idea and argues that it emerges out of an
organic relationship. It is a very spontaneous one, it is an organic relationship of man at to his
environment and those natural involuntary bonds that inevitably grow between human beings
and between groups. When people are born into such a kind of community, when they grow
up, the kind of relationship that binds them together, will be very strong. I hope, you
remember a parallel in Durkheim. When he discusses this distinction between societies
characterized by organic solidarity and societies characterized by mechanical solidarity.
He is referring something similar to the societies characterized by mechanical solidarity.

Where again Durkheim was indicating this primitive societies, tribal societies, simple
societies; where, there is hardly any division of labour. So here, as well while Durkheim
emphasized on division of labour, here Tonnies is talking about the kind of relationship. He
says, it is quite natural that somebody is born into particular family, develops a kind of very
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spontaneous, very thick, very strong relationship with the immediate family, the clan, the
tribe, the immediate relationship, and is not it? So, that the tribal identity becomes very strong
and thick.
On the other hand society is an artifact, which arises out of the voluntary and teleological
bonds that are the product of conscious choice of purpose. What is this teleological bond?
Teleological bond is used to understand, that many of these arrangements, many of these
groups are formed in order to serve a particular purpose. This very existence of this particular
group is justified, is explained on the basis of the purpose, is supposed to fulfill after
sometime.
That is the kind of a teleological argument, and quite a lot of functionalist, structural
functionalist argument, is having a teleological problem. Because they tend to explain the
functions of a group, or the structure of a group, on the basis of the function that it is
supposed to have fulfilled. So, on the basis of an effect, you try to explain the cause of its
existence that is a kind of a teleological explanation.
A society Tonnies argues that it is an artifact, it is an artificial creation, it is not something

natural, and it is not something spontaneous. It is an artifact, which arises out of the voluntary
and teleological bond. You voluntarily do certain thing, you consciously do certain things. It
is not very unconscious, it is not very natural, it is not very organic, it is not very
spontaneous, rather you consciously think about it, you rationally think about it,
you voluntarily think about it, and produce a kind of a group, or a membership, or a group of
people with a certain purposes. And people come together because they employ their
conscious choice.
These are the two maybe, if you borrow Weberian term, these are the two major ideal types
that Tonnies creates in order to differentiate; Gemeinschaft from Gesellschaft.
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The community arises out of what Tonnies calls a common Wesenwille, or those life-forces
associated with the instincts, emotions, and habits. Society rests on common Kiirwille, which,
unlike the former, is characterized by the predominance of deliberation and conscious choice
over the striving roots, are strivings rooted in man's nature. Another very interesting set of
topics and concepts are brought here.
He talks about Gesellschaft, Gemeinschaft and he says that this Gemeinschaft, the
community arises out of what Tonnies calls a common Wesenwille or those life-forces
associated with the instincts, emotions and habits. Something connected with the human
body, something connected with the world of emotions. And this is something very
important, because he argues, this community is connected with the world of emotions,
whereas, the society is connected with other world of reason, or rationality
And, this is a fascinating theme, and even in today's contemporary sociological discussion
these themes are being brought back. These themes are being brought back, about how far we
have been using this world of emotions in our everyday life, to what extent the kind of
modernization theory, or a host of classical sociological theory which argued that, we are
living in a society, which is characterized by rationality, is true. What is a place of emotion in
today's world?
That are very fascinating theories about, especially some of the most recent theorizations
about hate speech. They use the term extreme speeches, that you come across in Facebook, or
in Twitter, or in propaganda, in a host of trolling in the Internet and Facebook. So, there are
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very interesting theorizations, why that there is this extreme speech becoming quite evident,
or become quite commonplace in contemporary society. And there are very fascinating
theorizations, by invoking this word, or all of the emotions, which we believed that; when we
progress over a period of time, we would be able to master these emotions and we would be
able to speak from the platform of rationality.
When it is assumed that when we invoke rationality, we have mastered emotions, we do not
invoke emotions. We keep emotions away because emotions are something supposed to be
used only in your private personal realm. Whereas when you talk in public, when you engage
in public, you are supposed to be a perfectly rational organism, which uses only a rational,
you know rational means. And it is been widely assumed that emotion does not have any role
in the world of rationality.
Now we realize that, especially some of this very recent theorizations will tell you that, how
you know, how baseless or how problematic these assumptions were; but Tonnies brings
forth this argument, that those life-forces associated with their instincts. You know the term
instinct is usually associated with that of animal. We talk about animal instinct, the kind of
bodily drives, like that of hunger, sexual urge, fear, anger, is not it? So, these are the kinds of
bodily instincts, which we attribute to every animal. Then we realize that human beings are
also animals, but we know how to contain this instincts; we know how to regulate that, and
emotions, and habits.
On the other hand, society rests on a common Kiirwille, again a German term; which, unlike
the former is characterized by the predominance of deliberation and conscious choice over
the strivings rooted in man's nature. Society is a product of rationality, society is a product of
deliberation. When you deliberate, you use your rational faculty, you think from various
perspectives, you analyze a particular situation from various vantage points and then you
adopt the most appropriate way. Just remember Weber; Weber talks about the legal rational
action, instead of the traditional or the emotional action.
So, former is a more highly integrated and organismic behavior than the latter, which is
segmental. So, in a community, you see more integrated and organismic behavior. It behaves
like an organism, there is an organismic character. There is a complementarity between each
other. It is a more integrated one and I hope you can easily understand because we have
already discussed this when we discussed Durkheim. A traditional simple society, a tribal
society. It is, very simple in its character, they are all integrated, everybody does every kind
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of work, nobody specializes in anything, and division of labor is very minimum. There is a
very strong sense of integration and of unity.
The ideas about what is right, and what is wrong, those ideas are very clear. Anybody who
violates these roles, these rules, will be punished very violently. Because these rules are
supposed to be very stringent. On the other hand, the correspondence between means and
ends is; in the former, the correspondence between the means and end is direct and close.
You have to get certain things, then and these are the means which are very clear. In the later,
means and ends may be far removed from each other, and the one may not necessarily grow
out of, and lead to the other.
In a society you may not have any particular end which is stated. On the other hand, there
could be quite a lot of values, there could be quite a lot of means, which are associated, which
are being seen a part of that, which are not seen as directly connected with that to the goals.
The latter is the more mechanical and rational behaviour; something that we discussed so far.
Society is understood as more mechanical, it is seen as more rational. The community is a
product of a nature, while the society is an artifact. That is, why he reemphasizes that. It is a
product, community, society is a product, product of a very rational action.
Tonnies asserted that, pre-modern society was dominated by Gemeinschaft ties; while
modern industrial capitalist society featured more Gesellschaft ties. And, this is, I think, we
expected this argument. Is not it? Why a sociologist who lives in the late twentieth century,
talks about, or early, late nineteenth century and early twentieth century talk about
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Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, basically is to make this kind of a distinction between, what
demarcates a modern society from that of a pre-modern society. And he says that, in pre-
modern societies including that of Europe, before the emergence of modernity, these societies
were characterized by Gemeinschaft ties. They were communities, they were not kind of off-
grown into societies.
Whereas, in the modern era, maybe in the time, when Tonnies lived, the major European
societies, they have become more societies. They have lost their characters of community.
This is a very important claim. And why it is an important claim? Because it is an important
claim, and this claim has been some of the most fundamental claims of our understanding
about social change. These claims are some of the fundamental claims of this modernization
theory. And these claims are important because when we analyze the way in which we live in
our contemporary world, in the twenty first century, in 2020.
If you adopt this particular framework, is it the way we live? Have we lost in cities, or in
urban centers, in a globalised society, have we completely lost our sense of community? Is it
so, or are we trying to create different forms of community? Are we all living in a very
rational deliberately, you know, a society which is completely driven by deliberations and
rational exchanges and other things? This Gemeinschaft relations were maintained in the
context of private sentiments and loyalty, rather than simply productivity in the marketplace.
This Gemeinschaft relationship were maintained in the context of private sentiment and
loyalty.
We know that, how in feudal societies for example, or in agrarian societies how various
social institutions function. They worked on the basis of sentiments, on the basis of notions of
tradition, on the basis of loyalty, on the basis of personal bonds, on the basis of the kind of
Kinship ties, blood relationship, caste relationship, rather than the simple productivity in the
market place; which is often argued by Weber and others in a market, is supposedly blind to
all these primordial affiliations and primordial relationships. Market is supposed to be
ruthlessly rational. It is ruthlessly impersonal, it is supposed to be; but we know that it is not.
In contrast, in modern, Gesellschaft societies, interactions were more rational, and reflected
impersonal relationship mediated by money. And in particular cash wages, or what Tonnies
calls the rational will. We know that, it is something, nothing of course, quite new for us. We
have already discussed that, when in compared to if you adopt a kind of a Marxian stages of
development; in the era of primitive communism, or to that of a slavery or to that of a
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feudalism. In each of these three modes of production of these three stages, people came to
visit people, engaged in productive activities not on the base of wage labour, but on the base
of number of other kind of ties.
But in a modern market society, market situation, it is mediated by money and in particular
cash wages. Salary, cash wages, or what Tonnies calls as a rational will. We know, that why
the workers make themselves available for the work, they are able to bargain with others, and
the employers are able to hire people looking at the profits. There is so much of rational
exchange taking place.
In other words, Gemeinschaft-based relationships tend to be affectual, while Gesellschaft

relationships tend to be instrumental; something which summarizes all of whatever we have
being saying. So, this whole question of affectual relationship and instrumental relationship.
This again, is a very powerful tool to examine the kind of types of relationships. Is it
affectual? And if it is affectual; it is supposed to be older forms, old-fashioned, less efficient,
less effective. Whereas, if it is instrumental, it is supposed to be very rational, it is s supposed
be more efficient, it is supposed to be more techno-savvy, or technologically oriented.
So, that has been the argument that we are moving away from a world, dominated by
affectual society into that of a society, which is more of an instrumental. We know that usual
lament, the usual complaint by people that the world has lost all its values; that people are
treating each other as commodities, the life has become very instrumental, and the world has
become very instrumental. So, that is a kind of an argument that Tonnies also reflects.
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Tonnies thought of the development, of the modern world as being an evolutionary one, in
which European societies emerged from the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century
and became more rational and Gesellschaft-like, overwhelming older forms of just
Gemeinschaft society. Again something very common for us now, because every scholar or
almost every major scholar whom we encountered so far; starting with Tocqueville, to
Comte, to Montesquieu, to Spencer, to Durkheim, they all believed that, this is a kind of a
natural law, this is a kind of a social law. That, it is an evolutionary one.
We discussed that, how this notion of evolution was heavily influenced by Darwinian notion
of evolution and others. So, there is a gradual displacement of Gemeinschaft society by that
of Gesellschaft societies. So, revolution of the nineteenth century, and became more rational
and Gesellschaft-like, overwhelming older forms of Gemeinschaft society. Tonnies is talking
about the change in a quality of social ties; change in the nature of social ties.
Tonnies' formulation assumed that, the new Gesellschaft societies was superior because the
material advantages of modern life would eventually overwhelm the older forms of
Gemeinschaft, with all its sentimentality, family-based favoritism, and tribal organization
economic inefficiencies. Exactly the same that we discussed. They all believed that, we will
become extremely very efficient people who will dump all these unnecessary emotions and
affects; the kind of a baggage that comes with your membership and primordial identities.
We will become more science like or scientific, we will become more rational people; who
will be able to think and behave in a more efficient manner. And that was the hope, and but
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we know, how flawed that analysis was; how the affect is something so important even in
contemporary society. How the whole question of sentimentality and other things are
something so central even in today's life. Whether, it is what, in every form of social life.
So Tonnies' formulation assumed that the new Gesellschaft society, was superior because of
the material advantages of modern world, would eventually overwhelm the older forms of
Gemeinschaft, with all its sentimentality, family-based favoritism. So, they believed that
family-based one will have lot of baggage of sentimentality, nepotism, favoritism and other
things, and modern bureaucracy based society will have none of this. And again, we know
how faulty that assumption is; tribal organization and economic inefficiencies.
And these two terms, this Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft became extremely powerful,
extremely popular in Europe and in American Sociology. So that is why they are quite often
invoked in sociological analysis; this Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Because they in a very
crisp manner, they are able to capture some of the very essential differences in terms of the
quality of relationship between a community and a society. One which we discussed.
In particular, Tonnies framework meshed well with the modernization theorists, who viewed
economic development as a process of gradual modernization, in which old-fashioned
Gemenischaft-style society was displaced by rationalized efficient forms; especially market
capitalism and democracy. So, I do not know whether, we discussed about modernization
theorists, but this is an extremely powerful, extremely powerful theoretical orientation,
heavily influenced both by economic as well as sociological theories, especially the
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sociological theories of modernization were heavily influenced by all these people, starting
with Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Marx and Tonnies.
All these people, they all believed that the process of modernization is unstoppable, and in
the process of modernization you will bulldoze all the older forms of existence from a
traditional society to a modern society. There are arguments about the leap, the jump, the
sudden jump from traditional society to the modern society. So, all that is traditional would
be withered away, it will be withered away. All that is traditional, all that is old will simply
disappear and a new modern world will emerge.
They believed that the western societies, especially the western European countries;
Germany, France, UK, Italy, Netherlands, these countries were undergoing the process of
modernization and the rest of the countries are supposed to follow the suit. They believed that
is an inescapable process. So, they believed that from a plethora of different forms of
existence, different forms of a social organization, every society supposed to lead to this
particular mode of development. So that is why, our understanding of development was
heavily influenced by this modernization theory.
What constitutes development, how can we imagine development? Development is very

important term, extremely important term. And till maybe 1970s, the term development was
never problematized. So, what do you mean by problematized? Till 1970s, there was no
debate about development. Development was seen as something unproblematic, it was seen
as if that everybody understood it. It was never seen that could be different or this could be a
contested terrain. It was never understood so.
Development was seen as that, that there is a consensus about everybody among everybody
about how to develop, that you increase your consumption, you increase your per capita
income, you increase in GDP, you become more industrialized, you bring in more science
and technology, you consume more natural resources. So, this was seen as development. And
after 1970s, by 80s, by 90s, this term became extremely contested on various grounds. I am
not going into the details.
Now later, we realized that this term development is very problematic term. It is a little
problematic term, that people can leave differently, people can have different ideas about
living peacefully, living with their sense of fulfillment. And we do not know, there is no
singular mode of development. But, if you look at the policy formulations, if you look at the
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power of this particular concept, the influence of this particular concept, it is something so
gigantic, something so powerful. It is so hygienic, this western notion of development. And
that has heavily influenced the trajectory of the West, it has influence the trajectory of
coronial societies, it has invoked, in fact, influence the trajectory of almost every society.
So, in that theorization, this modernization theory played a very significant role. Because,
modernization theory, just like that of arguments by Tonnies, provided sociological
explanation or sociological justification for the notion of development. That, whatever is
there in the tradition, everything is bad, everything is inefficient, everything is so sentimental,
everything is so obscurantist. And you need to dump all of them, you need to move into a
modern society.
And now, we realize that particular assumptions were very flawed. We are now supposed to
be in a post development stage, where we realize that many of the things that we initiated in
the name of development were extremely problematic. Or they did not provide you the kind
of results, that they promised or they also brought in quite a lot of other consequences, which
we never were aware of. And there are very fascinating theorizations about late-modernity,
about post-modernity, about liquid-modernity, about risk-society. That, this modernization
has brought in, its own set of risks which we never anticipated and which were never kind of
ready to face.
Now let us see, how Weber, looked at it. Weber, Max Weber accepted Tonnies basic
distinction, but he emphasized that both types of societies actually coexisted, albeit
uncomfortably. Weber saw this coexistence in pre-modern societies, where the Gesellschaft
was small and Gemeinschaft was all-encompassing. But most particularly Weber saw
coexistence in modern society, where the Gesellschaft seemingly overwhelmed underlying
Gemeinschaft values.
So, Weber is far more sensitive than many of these people who, very mechanically, who
produced their version of a mechanical kind of a social change; where one type of society is
completely obliterated and then completely new society come into the picture. Even in
Weberian argument about power or authority. He does not say that, the traditional forms of
power completely disappears. He only says that, the modern legal rational kind of power
becomes more dominant.
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So, here as well, Weber says that, in a modern society, it does not mean that, all the
characteristics of a Gemeinschaft society disappear. It does not do, rather the more dominant
form of society becomes that of Gesellschaft. So that is why, he says, but most particularly
Weber saw coexistence in modern society, where the Gesellschaft seemingly overwhelmed
underlying the Gemeinschaft values.
Another is the central theme of Ferdinand Tonnies, his distinction between Gesellschaft and
Gemeinschaft, or distinction between community and society. Now, let us move to his
another kind of more, minor interventions. He thought about three major divisions of
sociological themes, three broader divisions within Sociology. One is Pure, Applied
Sociology and Empirical Sociology.
So, the Pure Sociology includes, the fundamental concepts of community and society, as we
discussed so far and that is its central thesis. The study of social interactions or structures.
Again by the time of Tonnies and Simmel, at least or by the time of Weber, for that matter,
we know that Sociology had become more established. Scholars across the spectrum came to
a different consensus, that there is a new discipline and this new discipline has its own
subject matter, exclusive subject matter. And that subject matter is nothing, but social
interactions, and social structures.
The study of the social norms are forming the content of the structural forms which are the
social realities. So here, you come across this term, form; the social norms forming the
content. So, this whole distinction between the form and content which we will come across
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again when we discuss Ferdinand Tonnies; George Simmel in the coming class. So, he is
talking about, what is the content of the structural form which are all the social realities. The
study of the social values inhering in the social realities or structural forms. So, it is not only
the kind of a form, or the structure, but also the content, the kind of a values.
You know that how values was brought in, into the ambit of sociological exploration,
basically through Weber. The study of the constellations of the relations arising out of the
interaction between the various social realities or structural forms and this is nothing but the
kind of social change. What are the kind of a new relations for the kind of major changes that
are happening as a result of the interaction between various social realities of social structural
forms? So, in other words, the major profound thematic areas of Sociology calls it as Pure
Sociology.
And Applied Sociology is for Weber; is economics, politics, and mental life, which includes
art, morals, and science, constitute the field of Applied Sociology in the sense that here the
fundamental concepts of Sociology are illustrated and find application to concrete materials.
So here, he talks about how, other disciplines make use of sociological concepts for the kind
of into concrete situations. For example, how one of the very important discipline, which has
not formed during Tonnies time, is social work.
So, social work is supposedly a kind of an applied sociological kind of a discipline. Social
work aims at intervention. Social work aims at policy intervention as well as intervention in
their community, intervention in a kind of a concrete setting. So, Empirical, Applied
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Sociology is, you use, you apply the sociological principles into the concrete reality. For
example, your sociological understandings about crime and law. And, how can you use this
social understandings, in a prison, for an example.
Or, how can you use this understanding in order to reframe the existing laws about the child
delinquency in a particular place, or sociological understanding about divorce? How can you
use sociological understandings about family and marriage? How can you use these
understandings in formulating better laws regarding sexual harassment, or domestic violence
or divorce and other things? So here, the sociological knowledge, which is supposedly at the
theoretical level, is brought in with a possibility of application.
And the third one is, Comparative Sociology. The observations and comparison, and of
course, the measurement of the actual social phenomena as they appear in real life constitute
the realm of Empirical Sociology, or the Comparative Sociology. You look into the different
forms of Comparative Sociology; you try to compare different societies into different things.
And then you use this empirical framework, in order to do this kind of a comparison.
So, the final component is the Comparative Sociology. So, it is about the observation,
comparison, and of course the measurement, of the actual social phenomena, as they appear
in real life constitute the realm of Empirical Sociology. So, these are the three categories, or
three divisions, that Tonnies envisages as comprising the subject matter of Sociology. So but,
as I told, host of other writings of Tonnies are not, are no longer kind of referred to or no
longer seen as something very important.
But his fundamental contribution of this Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, are still debated
upon their, still used by sociologists. Because, they offer very important entry points into the
discussions, not only about the transition from traditional society to modern society, but also
to critically look at about the kind of a contemporary society, that we are living in. What is
the role of affection? What is the role of affect? What is the role of emotion in the
contemporary society?
To what extent have we become rational, or what has become the term rational? Or what has
happened to this term rational or how there can be multiple rationalities? So, Tonnies still
informs many of this discussions. So, let us wind up the topic. So, this is only one session on
Tonnies, because I just wanted to introduce you to his, this fundamental distinction between
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Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. We will continue with another thinker, and that is George
Simmel in the next class. So, see you then and thank you.
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Lecture 46
George Simmel (1858 - 1918)
Welcome back to the class. In this class and in coming two more sessions we will be
discussing yet another important classical sociologist, sociologist George Simmel. Simmel is
again a French sociologist. In fact, the three, sorry a German sociologist the three or four
major sociologists whom we have discussed in the previous classes are from Germany,
including Tonnies, Karl Marx and Max Weber and today George Simmel, and he was born in
1858 and passed away in 1918.
And you would have noticed that in terms of his period of his life he lived along with Max
Weber, in fact, they were great friends, they admired each other's work and Weber was a
great influence in Simmel’s development of sociology and they kind of exchanged ideas and
so they lived in almost the same time period.
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And let us have a very brief overview of his life and intellectual influence. He was born in
Berlin, in a Jewish family. Soon after his birth his father converted into Christianity, but this
whole stigma of being a Jew that really haunted Simmel throughout his career. So that is why
quite a lot of his biographers have mentioned that Simmel led a kind of a marginal life with
respect to the family and German academy. Even he was not very connected with his mother;
he was not connected with his father.
So kind of a marginal existence is something that quite a lot of biographers attribute to

George Simmel’s both personal as well as academic existence. Marginal in the sense he was
not given any, in spite of his reputation and the extent of his scholarship and he was a
voracious writer, he has written extensively. But in spite of his very proven scholarship he
was not given any professional position, he was not given any permanent professorial
position in any of the major Berlin universities, mainly because he belonged to a Jewish
family.
And you know, that this is the time when the anti-Jewish sentiments were brewing in
Germany, which later led to the emergence of Adolf Hitler and others. So he had a PhD in
philosophy from University of Berlin. And in even after that none of the universities accepted
him as a permanent faculty and he led his life as a private lecturer. In the sense he takes
classes and he, students pay him directly or many times he was given a kind of an adhoc
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position in the university faculty. So that was, he was always on the margins of mainstream
academia in Berlin or in Germany during that particular time.
So he failed to secure permanent academic position in Germany in spite of his stellar

reputation and scholarship. And many scholars also say that his way of academic engagement
was also something not very accepted by many people. He was not very meticulous in writing
his scholarship in a very academic manner with endnotes, with footnotes with references and
he used to write a lot for periodicals and newspapers.
So, he was not in that sense a very conventional academic, and he passed away in 1918. But
Simmel along with these scholars whom we discussed so far is an important figure. So we
will devote three sessions, including this to understand his major contribution, especially his
contributions on the circulation of money, his argument about the overall nature of sociology,
his argument about social conflict, all these things are something important. And even today,
his writings are continued to be discussed and debated among the contemporary sociologists.
So Simmel was a philosopher and a sociologist, sociologist influenced by Immanuel Kant,

Marx and Weber. And here we are seeing a very interesting scenario, I hope you understand.
He was a philosopher and as well as a sociologist, and this combination of philosophy and
sociology we came across quite early. I do not think that anybody would call Emile
Durkheim as a philosopher, not Max Weber. They were not philosophers even Karl Marx, of
course, he we can say that he was a philosopher, but if you go beyond Montesquieu was a
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philosopher, so there were there were quite a lot of Saint Simon was a philosopher. So this
blurring of boundaries between philosophy and sociology it was very evident in the very
beginning of the emergence of the discipline.
After that, with the time of Durkheim and Weber and even Spencer and Auguste Comte could
be somebody again can be called as a philosopher in a very different sense, but Weber was
never a philosopher, he was a sociologist. So he was very clear that in what way is a
philosophical exploration is different from a sociological exploration. But here, we come
back to Simmel who was both a philosopher as well as a sociologist.
So this is something quite interesting, because he had very interesting engagement with larger
philosophical questions. About the reality, about what constitutes the social, about his attempt
to frame laws or frame larger laws that could be applicable to across the societies, a kind of
attempt that Weber never ventured into or an attempt that Weber was extremely critical of.
And like every other scholar, he was also the product of his time, he was heavily influenced
by the political and economic transformations of German, of Germany during that particular
time, that there was a decisive increase emergence of a middle class, but the political system
was with still with that of the feudal load. So lots of, all these factors the political climate
really influenced Simmel’s thinking.
And similarly, a host of philosophical writings, especially Immanuel Kant, his argument
about the pure reason and the argument that human mind try to create a particular picture
about or tries to make an ordered picture of the reality out there. So Kant in a significant way
influenced Simmel’s philosophical understandings about what constitutes the social out there,
what constitutes the social out there.
Is it that we simply make out of something or is there were a reality out there? So Simmel
was heavily influenced by quite a lot of philosophical arguments of Kant and of course,
similarly with Karl Marx. And you must be knowing that Marx was a very, very predominant
figure, intellectual figure during that particular time and, but Simmel had a very critical
approach towards Karl Marx.
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He argued that, he agreed with Karl Marx that alienation is a, is an inescapable situation in
the era of capitalism. But he argued that it is not to do with the exploitative character of
capitalism, but in every society when there is extreme form of differentiation when there is
extreme form of division of labor then alienation is bound to happen. And Simmel also
disagreed with Marx in terms of the value, with whole argument about circulation of money,
circulation of money and the exchange value, we will come back to that later.
And of course, he was heavily influenced by Weber and Weber they were, as I told you, they
were contemporariers, they were, they lived the same time, they influenced each other's
thinking and Weber disagreed with quite a lot of positions of Simmel, but they influence each
other very well.
So unlike Weber, Simmel held that sociologists should focus on the development of
timelessly valid laws of social organization. This is something extremely important. I hope
you remember that this urge to prepare a set of laws, the urge to come up with a set of laws
which are timeless and which are valid across the globe these are two ambitious claim, these
are two ambitious, two ambitious desires and which you know that quite a lot of early
scholars, including Comte and Spencer, they wanted to create that.
Comte talks about this law of three stages, he is also using the word law. But by the time
Weber's, Weber comes in, Weber was extremely against this particular kind of understanding
of sociology. He argued that you cannot frame sociological laws at the cost of the
specificities. If you frame very broad laws then what you are actually formulating would be
too broad that it will not be able to take into account the historical and political peculiarities
of different contexts, and such a law hardly serves any purpose.
But Simmel was against that, Simmel’s his entire intellectual trajectory in terms of defining
sociology in a particular manner revolved around this idea of formulating, timelessly valid
laws of social organization. He failed to develop a coherent body of work unlike other
stalwarts. He maintained a foot in both, philosophy and sociology while sustaining a
commitment to both, formal analytical analysis and social commentary on events and topical
questions.
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So this is what I mentioned earlier. He was not very methodical or he did not produce very
systematic books or other thing, his writings were kind of scattered across topics on a wide
variety of topics, and many of his works are actually verbatim translations of his own classes
the lectures that he has, he delivered in different places or kind of reproduced from his
manuscripts or what he had written for this weeklies and other publications.
Now, let us try to understand Simmel’s methodological approach towards the study of
society. And again, I do not think that I need to remind you that these are the formative years
of the discipline, there is still quite a lot of discussion and debate about the trajectory of this
discipline, the direction in which the discipline is supposed to traverse and the
methodological character of the discipline, whether it is science or not science, Weber brings
in the idea of Verstehen, Weber brings in a much larger complexity in terms of values.
So it is a very fraught situation in which Simmel tries to formulate his own understanding
about the discipline. So he was concerned with the question of subject matter and
independent stature of sociology, just like any other sociologist, especially like Weber during
that particular time. He strived for the independent stature of sociology, he did not want it to
be a derivative of any other discipline, and he very strongly believed that sociology deserves
to be an independent separate discipline.
So he argued that, basic and generic forms of interaction must be seen as the subject matter of
the discipline, and this is something very important. He comes to the whole, this fundamental
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question of interaction, the basic and generic form of interaction. I think, I hope you would
remember that we have come across this discussion several times. Many people use different
terminologies, but the fundamental, the core of sociological inquiry is that the, it is the
question of forms of interaction.
How and when, why people interact with each other. When people interact what happens?
What are the major types of interaction? What are the kind of qualities of this interaction?
What happens when people interact together? What are the different types of interaction,
different forms of interaction? What are the values and cultural norms and other things that
influence this kind of interaction? What are the structural aspects that influence this
interaction? So these are some of the important concerns. And Simmel very strongly believed
that the human interaction must be the subject matter of sociology.
So he has three broader questions. What is sociology? How should sociology study society?
What are the problem areas of sociology? So as I, somebody like Weber, also somebody like
Durkheim who wanted to establish their take on the discipline Simmel also devoted lot of
attention trying to delineate the academic or intellectual character of the discipline.
Now, let us come to this first question, what is society? Now, does it sound a very simple
question, what is society? You would say that society happens when people come together.
But then that is not a correct or that is not a very convincing answer. And also, if you look
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into some of the deeper philosophical questions regarding the nature, Immanuel Kant not
only talks about the society, but he talks about the nature itself.
So what is reality? Is there a reality outside there? And how is that we as human beings
understand the reality through our senses? So what is the relative position of our senses with
respect to giving a kind of a particular understanding of that reality out there? What is the
function of mind? How, what is the connection between mind and the senses? So these are
some of very deeper philosophical questions.
So Simmel tries to answer that, society exists when interaction among human beings occur
with enough frequency and intensity so that people mutually affect one another and organize
themselves into groups or other social units. So this is a very important definition, he defines
society as it exists when interaction among human being occurs, a group of people who just
come to watch a show, a film or a circus and then they disperse nothing is happening there,
they come, they sit there and then they go back.
But if you consider a group of people more than one person or more than two people or a
group of people they come together, there is a meaningful, there is a systematic frequent
interaction in a frequency and intensity. Frequency denotes the time period, it has to be
frequent and it has to be intense enough. It cannot be merely superficial and it has to be
intense enough, so that the people mutually affect one another, this is the most important
point?
It is not that in a group people simply behave the way they want, their action definitely
influences the other, and their influence in turn affect or influence these people’s actions. So
there is a reciprocal relationship, there is a reciprocal influence between the people who are
engaged in a web of relationship or people who are engaged in a kind of a series of
interaction and that is something extremely important.
And this thick network of relationship, this thick forms of mutual influence the reciprocal
influence that lead to the emergence of certain groups and certain social units, which we need
to really come to understand that. And in a sense, I think, while Durkheim defines sociology
as the study of social fact, Weber defines it as study of social action, but I consider this as one
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of the very, very important, very convincing definition of society as well as that of sociology,
sociology study, social interaction.
So the patterns of social organization are constructed from basic processes of interaction.
Now, what do we mean by these patterns of social organization? How do we organize our
social activities? For example, how do we ensure that our children they are educated? One
concern. How do we ensure, that our members in a particular society there is some system of
governance so that everybody is governed with some sense of duties and obligations and
control.
How is marriage has to be as an institution marriage be regulated or how is family to be

maintained? What are the mechanisms through, which people from different gender or from
the same gender constitute a basic unit called as family and then rear children if they want?
How do you ensure that? We do not really think about these questions because they are, we
have been so habituated to these organizations.
We are born into these organizations, we are, so they are quite used to that unless you
challenge you never realize the influence or the coercive influence like what Durkheim says
into these things. But Simmel says that, when you need to really understand how these social
organizations, they attain very specific patterns are constructed from the basic process of
interaction.
So whether you are talking about competition, whether you are talking about conflict,
whether you are talking about say cooperation, you are talking about conciliation, you are
talking about whatever be the various forms of social interaction or social organization the
underlying fact or underlying process is nothing, but social interaction.
So this is how he defines, his own quotation is on writing. Sociology asks what happens to
men and by what rules do they behave in so far as they unfold their understandable individual
existence in their totalities, but in so far as they form groups and are determined by their
group existence because of interaction.
So sociology ask what happens to men and by what rules do they behave. Not in so far as,
they unfold their understandable individual existence. So I hope you remember our earlier
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maybe the discussions during the very first week, the kind of a distinction between a
sociological understanding and a, and an individual commonsensical understand.
And Simmel is saying exactly the same, you cannot understand the world around you, your
own existence solely on the basis of your own perspective, your own experience, rather you
need to take a step away and then locate yourself as somebody who is representing your time,
somebody who is representing your place and then that understanding gives you much more
important and interesting insights.
So, but in so far as, they form groups and are determined by their group existence are because
of interaction. So how the group existence influences the individual? How the very fact that
you live in a group and the group influences you? Or how the very fact that you are expected
to interact in a group and how that particular compulsion influences your individual
existence? That is the subject matter of or that is one society according to Simmel.
Now second question, what, how should sociology study society? And again, this is a very,
very debatable question. We know that sociology emerged as a very positive science
somebody who believe that it has to be a social physics, it has to be just like any other hard
natural sciences, but later there was an anti-positive turn, especially from Weber’s time, we
have discussed all these things. So let us see what Simmel tries to explain.
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So sociologists should begin their study of society by distinguishing between form and
content, this is an extremely important distinction that Simmel brings in, the distinction
between form and content. How sociology could investigate social processes independently
of their content?
So he argued that in different societies you will be able to observe kind of similar kind of
forms, but the similar kind of form might have different kind of contents, and this contents
could be influenced by say the cultural values or value systems or norms or the very specific
historical incidences that happened, but you should not confuse it to with the rather, you,
sociologists must be able to make this distinction between the form and the content.
The distinction between the forms and content of interaction offers the only possibility for a
special science of society because it is a means of focusing on the generic basic processes by
which people establish social relations and social structures, while ignoring or for analytical
purposes the content goals and purposes of social relations.
So this is he very emphatically argues that you must look at the kind of a forms of social
organization without really trying to understand the kind of a very specific goals and very
specific purposes. Because if you go into that, then you might lose your focus and you might,
you may not get the kind of a clarity in terms of your exploration.
So he would argue that this, if sociology has to emerge as a generic science as a science, as a
discipline that has the ability to look at society in a very broad sense it has to develop an
ability to look at the form of a social organization from its content. Simmel argued that
attention to the social form let sociology to goals that were fundamentally different from
those of other social scientific disciplines, especially in the Germany of his times.
So he argued that it is because sociology is concerned with the form of society, and that is
why you are able to clearly establish the distinctive character of sociology in comparison with
other disciplines. So that is why he argues the timelessly valid laws about social interaction
can be framed. So he is very clear in his argument that if you do that, as just like a science,
which looks at the character of various dynamics or various processes that take place without
going into the content, you will be able to formulate timelessly valid laws.
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And that is a very tall claim, very extremely problematic claim, but Simmel believed in that.
Timelessly valid laws about social interaction can be framed. And that was his fundamental
argument.
And now, what are the problem areas of sociology? So if you, he discusses what does he
mean by the term society, he discusses what should be the, how should sociology study
society? Now he tries to understand what should be, what are the kind of problem areas of
sociology? And this came up in his work, in his book Fundamental Problems, which was
published in 1918.
So first is the sociological study of historical life and development, which he called the
gender sociology. Concerned with the study of the whole of historical life in so far as it is
form society that is through interaction. So he was somebody who very strongly believed that
a deeper historical exploration of social institutions of the contemporary society something
very, very important.
It is, sociology should not limit its focus only to the study of the contemporary society, but
you should look at the historical life under development. For example, when if Weber talks
about the protestant ethic as a particular thing Weber, Simmel would argue that it is not really
important to develop an ideal type of protestant ethic, but you should go for a full fledge
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historical analysis about how it actually came about in that. So, that is something what
Simmel is extremely emphatic about.
So first is the sociological study of historical life and development, which he called the
gender sociology, concerned with the study of the whole of historical life, in so far as it is
formed societally, so a kind of a social history. And through the analysis of social history you
try to understand how society evolved or society transformed over a period in time that is
through interaction.
Studies of the contents of interaction can yield valid theoretical insights only when attention
is paid to the more generic properties of the social structures in which people participate. So
he argues that unless you look into the very specific social structures of different periods in
time and then try to understand how specific were these structures during this particular time,
unless you pay attention to the specificities of social structures during different epochs in
time your sociological insight is not going to give you anything interesting.
Second, is the sociological study of the forms of interaction independent of history, which he
calls as pure or formal sociology. Society is conceived as interaction among individuals, the
description of his interaction is the task of the science of society in its strictest and most
essential sense.
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So he talks about general sociology, now he talks about the pure or formal sociology. And
this formal sociology he says is, where society is conceived as in its present time it is not, it
has to be understood independent of history you try to understand in this present time how the
societies or various social interaction take place in different societies and what are the
specificities of the contemporary time.
So society is conceived as an interaction among individuals, the description of this interaction

is a task of the science of society in its strictest and the most essentialist sense. So focus only
on the interaction, derive or devote your attention only to the realm of social interaction and
try to understand what happens when people come together, how their interaction influences
each other and how that in turn influences various social or political or economic activities of
human being.
So the first one he talks about how you need to develop sociology has the task of
understanding the historical development. Second one is keeping history aside you try to get
a snapshot, you try to get a snapshot of the contemporary society. So basically the aim is to
isolate and identify the fundamentals of social interaction. So when you take a snapshot of a
particular process you give the account of how things are in this particular time, in this
particular period in time. You get a more clearer picture regarding the situation, how things
influence each other. Of course, it has a historical baggage, definitely, but he says that in this
aspect when you talk about pure or formal sociology, it has to preoccupy itself with the
present situation.
The third is the sociological study of the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of society,
which he calls a philosophical sociology dealt with the larger philosophical questions
concerning relationship between man and society. As I told you, Simmel was a philosopher,
so he was preoccupied with quite a lot of philosophical questions, so he very strongly argued
that sociology cannot escape from larger philosophical questions.
For example, the relationship between man and society, it is not something resolved, it is not
something very easily resolved or there is no kind of complete consensus among scholars
regarding what is the relationship between man and society. Is it man, is it man who or man,
human beings do they actively create society or are they mere puppets at the hands of
society? These are two extreme positions.
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And about how do we conceive of society? How do we understand society? How do we make
sense of society? How we use our senses to get an image of society? How do we create a
sense of order in society? So these are all extremely philosophically profound questions. And
Simmel very strongly believed that sociology must develop a sense of specialization to make
sense of that.
And also, he talks about two important themes. The first one, he was concerned, as were all
social theorists of his early sociology with the process of differentiation and its effects on
individual. And this point, we will discuss later, his argument about differentiation, what
happens when people, when a society become more and more complex, when differentiation
takes place, I hope, we already discussed it in several sociologists.
We discussed it in Durkheim, we discussed in the previous class when we talked about

Ferdinand Tonnies and for Simmel also differentiation is an extremely important social
process. So when a society grows, when a society develops, when a society advances in terms
of various things there is a process of differentiation. And what are the implications of this
differentiation on human beings and its effects on the individual.
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Second, the methodological unity in his work revolves around trying to extract underlying
essence and the form of the particular empirical topic. So he was quite preoccupied with the
whole question of underlying essence on form of particular empirical topics. So it was his
methodological concern. He always sought to discover the underlying structure of social
interaction and organization that linked diverse substantive areas.
So that was, it will become evident when we discuss later what were his major
preoccupations, he always sought to discover the underlying structure of social interaction
and organization that linked diverse substantive areas. We will see that when we will discuss
his works in the coming classes.
So as I mentioned earlier, we will have two more sessions on Simmel, because Simmel is an
important scholar. So we will meet in the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 47
Social Differentiation and Conflict
Welcome back to the class, and welcome back to the discussion on George Simmel. We had a
class in the, we had a session in the previous class where we discussed some introductory ideas
about George Simmel, as a very important sociologist, German sociologist who had a very
marginal academic life, but whose writings were quite influential. He is still discussed and his
works are debated, his works are often quoted.
So in the previous class we looked at some of his ideas, his overall orientation towards the
discipline of sociology. His insistence that sociology must deal with larger philosophical
questions and his belief that sociology will be able to formulate certain timeless laws, the laws
that can be applicable to any time to any societies, a claim we discussed, we mentioned several
times are, which is extremely problematic, highly problematic.
So in this class, in this session we are going to discuss two important themes of George Simmel.
One is Social Differentiation the other one is Social Conflict. And these two themes are
extremely important because social differentiation when we discuss, you will realize that why it
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is such a powerful argument that Simmel builds in order to talk about social change. And the
conflict is a very important theme, again, because if you look at the subsequent development of
sociological theory later, you have a conflict school of sociological theory, something similar to
structural functionalism and interactions to school.
So there are scholars like say Lewis Coser, and Dahrendorf and people who shared a kind of a
theoretical argument based on this idea of social conflict. And Simmel was one of the
forerunners, one of the early scholars who theorized the social conflict. In a very distinct and
different way in which a conflict was understood by host of other scholars, including that of
Durkheim and Weber. So these concepts are important, not only to understand Simmel, but also
to understand their relative importance in the sociological theory.
So Simmel believed that the number of groups a person belongs to and the basis on which they
are formed influence interactions apart from the interest that the groups are intended to satisfy.
So Simmel was very curious about the question that how many types of groups in which a person
can become member? And why that in modern societies you will see a person becoming
voluntarily or involuntarily becoming member of a number of groups, whereas in more
traditional societies the number of groups in which a person can take membership or a person
belongs to are very, very less. And what are the implications of that? What does it do?
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The very fact that, you are a part of different groups in one scenario and the other scenario is that
you are part of very few number of groups. And what are the implications of that? Or what are
the influences that the very fact that one person is simultaneously member of different groups in
one scenario, and the other scenario that the person is a member of a very limited number of
groups.
So Simmel argued that the degree of social differentiation or the number of different activities or
structures organized to these activities. So Durkheim argued that, rather than a person's
willingness to become a part of groups. It is not that somebody suddenly realizes that I want to
become a part of more number of groups. It does not work that way, but the very fact that in
modern industrial societies, in modern complex societies we find ourself in a, as a member of so
many different groups. And this is a product of social differentiation.
It is a product of social differentiation as the number of different activities or structures

organizing these activities. Once these activities become numerous, once these activities become
so complex it becomes important that a person or it becomes evident that a person is forced to
become a member of different kind of social groups. It is not his or her choice. A person cannot
decide to stay aloof from these groups.
So Durkheim argued that the kind of activities, the kind of specialization, the kind of differences
that you confront in your social life is an extremely important indicator of the kind of society that
you live. And that has very lasting implication on the idea of individuality, the idea of
subjecthood, the idea of your rationality, the idea of the emergence of a person and an individual
who is able to think independently.
So all these are factors, which we think many times as product of their own psyche or products
of their own mind Simmel would argue that they are specifically products of certain sociological
arrangement. So he makes this again, this usual distinction between the hunting-gathering and
industrial society a theme, a constant theme that we have come across in so many earlier
theorists. Starting with Comte and almost every sociologist who have attempted to talk about
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social change have invariably spoken about these two major types of societies, which are very,
very different.
I am not repeating the previous references like Durkheim or Tonnies or other thing you are quite
familiar with that I believe. So the process of social differentiation produced two fundamental
changes in patterns of interaction. And for a, just for a very quick recap, this is a term that is very
closely connected with division of labour as elaborated by Durkheim. So I hope you remember
that Durkheim talks about the conditions under which division of labour increases in a society
when the population size increases, when their population is not able to expand, when their
resources increase then division of labour is expected to increase.
So similarly here as well, Weber, sorry Simmel as well bring in as kind of a similar argument. So
he argues that, when the process of social differentiation produced two fundamental changes in
the patterns of interaction. First, the principle underlying group formation change in his words
from organic to rational criteria. And this is something very similar to what we discussed in the
previous class by Tonnies, when Ferdinand Tonnies talks about the differentiation between
community and the society from Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. This is exact, almost similar
what they are talking about.
So there is one form is organic, which is quite spontaneous, which is quite natural. You belong to
a group in which you are born into. If you are born into a tribal group you naturally become a
group, a member of that. If you are a woman, you become a member of that woman's group. If
you belong to a particular cast, naturally you belong to a particular, that particular group. If you
are born into the house of a Porter, for example or a blacksmith for example then naturally you
tend to take up that occupation and then you become a member of that particular guild. These are
seen as organic. These are seen as spontaneous unconscious process.
Whereas the other, when differentiation increases in something like a industrial society, it
becomes no longer, it is no longer natural. It is no longer a spontaneous rather it becomes a
rational criteria. A person will be forced to choose maybe successfully as well as unsuccessfully
to become a member of distinct kind of groups. And these groups could be certain clubs, it could
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begroups on the basis of certain ideas, certain sexual orientations, certain ideological
orientations, certain hobbies, certain professions, certain jobs, certain, so many other similar
kinds of interests that person uses his rationality.
As Simmel uses it the term organic is a biological metaphor suggesting that a family or village is
like a living organism in which parts are inherently connected. And we know that we have
discussed organismic analogical for Herbert Spencer. So and in Durkheim also we come across
this particular term. So Simmel also uses the term organic in order to it is a biological metaphor.
It gives an impression that when you are talking about the human body so just like an organ
functions along with, in tandem with the other organs of a body and individual also functions
like that.
So on the other hand, the term rational suggest the use of reason and logic. It is a very important
long-lasting debates about reason and logic. Thus, as Simmel uses the term when groups have a
rational basis people belong by choice and examples are trade unions and clubs. So it is no
longer, you have to maybe for some of the prestigious clubs you will have to wait four years to
get into that. It is seen as some very elite and exclusive kind of clubs or trade unions or as I told
you earlier maybe groups based on hobbies, groups based on ideologies, groups based on certain
kind of professions. So in each of these things you use your rationality.
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Now, social differentiation also leads to an increase in the number of groups that people can join.
Obviously, it is quite evident in primitive in simple societies you simply do not have that many
groups. Whereas, in a modern society you have innumerable number of, there are numerous
social groups that are awaiting for you. Only thing is that you realize that you have, you do not
have time.
And in the current globalized world you have different groups. You have WhatsApp groups for
different subjects. You have online groups of different subjects, different interests. So our
understanding of group is completely different. Our understanding of community is quite
different. So when groups have an organic basis people can only belong to a few primary groups.
As which is very evident they can become member of their family, their client, their cast, their
maybe guild, their occupational group, their village. That is all, nothing much more than that.
Whereas in contrast, when groups have a rational basis people can join a greater number and
variety of them based on skill, mutual interest, money and other types of commonality. I think it
is pretty clear, they are not very difficult concepts for you.
Now group affiliations in differentiated societies are characterized by a superstructure of

secondary groups that develops beyond primary group membership. So he is talking about how
structurally when you look at it in more advanced societies there are superstructures of secondary
groups. The secondary groups are groups, which go beyond that of the primary groups. Primary
groups, as we discussed groups in which you are born into, which are, which you are very
familiar with you will realize people by face, personal relationship, whereas secondary group, for
example, a political party. A political party is an example of a secondary group, it is no longer a
primary group.
Whereas a primary group is somebody whom you know everybody, you know the relationship is
face-to-face relationship. So in more differentiated societies there are always larger secondary
groups as political party, trade unions, clubs, citizen groups and civil society organizations. They
work beyond the confines of smaller primary groups.
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When groups are formed by choice and people belong to large number of them, the possibility of
role conflict arises because the membership in diverse groups places competing demands on
people. And here so it is interesting to see that Simmel not only talks about these groups and then
leave it at that, he has something more interesting to say.
So he says that when people becoming, people become members of so many different groups
then there is quite a lot of possibility of a role conflict to emerge. What does role conflict mean?
A role conflict means when simultaneously opposite kind of roles are expected what do you do?
So you expect at various times, you expect it in almost every day, we always try to balance this
kind of a role expectation. The expectation as a student, the expectation as a child, the
expectations as a parent, the expectation as a citizen or expectation as a passenger, expectation as
a professional.
And all these, for example, the expectation as a son and expectation as a husband or expectation
as a wife and expectation as a daughter there are, all these roles have the potential to become
contradictory, quite opposite, and then conflict can arise.
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But Simmel says that, if one has become a member of more and more number of groups, the
people in diverse groups will be placed on competing demands in situations. And this is
something very important that he says, because a person who is born into primary groups with
certain set of values, expectations, ideas and ideologies once they grow up and then become a
part of another group many times this conflicts these values could be quite contradictory.
For example, imagine a situation a person belonging to a particular caste, he becomes a police
officer. And then once he discharges his duty as a police officer, he no longer is expected to
work as a member of a particular caste, he is supposed to go beyond that. So or even if he is,
there is some crime or some incident happens and his own brother is an accused, he is not
expected to show any such kind of familial connections or affinity or sentiment to that person
rather, he is supposed to act as a firm officer who follows the rule of the law, rule of the land.
So in such situations you will see role conflicts emerge. And external and internal conflicts arise
through the multiplicity of group’s affiliations, which threatened the individual with
psychological tension or even a Schizophrenic break and this is something extremely important.
But how do we manage that or what is the, what are the consequences of this particular kind of
conflict? Is it something good or is it something bad?
And you know that for certain in society people who belong to more simpler societies, people
who are living in for example in tribal societies they do not have so much of role conflicts.
Because their sense of commitment to their own group will be very strong and they could be
quite happy with that.
Whereas in modern societies, you are, for example, you are a member of a particular group with
a particular type of sexual orientation. You identify yourself as a person belonging to sexual
minority, as a lesbian or as a gay, whereas it is quite that roles or that particular group the ideas
and ideologies of that particular group is quite different from that of your primary group that is
your family. So how do you deal with that?
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So Simmel’s theory implies that the changes produced by social stratification leads to greater
individuality that he calls a core inner unity that makes each person discrete. In Simmel’s words
the objective structure of society provides a framework within which an individual’s non-
interchangeable and singular characteristic may develop and find expression. And this is an
extremely important point, a very, very important point.
Remember Durkheim talking about the emergence of the individual from the, from a community
oriented society, from a traditional oriented society, an individual emerges in a, during the
modern times. And here Simmel offers a kind of a different interpretation for the same
phenomenon. So he says that when an individual is faced with so much of conflicts in terms of
roles, in terms of what somebody is supposed to do, what happens it leads to greater
individuality.
What he calls a core inner unit. A person gets a kind of a more crystallized sense of self. A
person identifies and understands that he or she, of course I have, I come from this background, I
have such and such affiliations, but I have to keep a balance I am also so-and-so. I am also a
police officer, I am also a member of a particular club, I am also a member of a political group, I
am also a member of a particular group who works for a particular sexual orientation.
So this enormous exposure into different kinds of expectations and roles will create a kind of a
more singular self, that is what Durkheim talks about. The objective structure of society provides
a framework within which an individual's non-interchangeable and singular characteristic may
develop and find expression. So people become more and more individually rigid. They derive
more kind of a crystallized sense of self, become more complete in terms of their individuality.
The ideology of personal freedom, as an inalienable right of every adult arose during the past
two centuries. Its structural basis, Simmel said, lies in social differentiation. So if you think that
the idea of personal freedom has become one of the most sacred things in the modern times, if
you use to, if you were to use a Durkheim language, the idea of personal freedom is a sacred
thing. It has become a sacred thing. I hope you remember our discussion on sacred and profane.
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So if it is the situation, if that is a situation Simmel would argue that, that is the structural result,
that is the result of a structural change that happened because of that increased social
differentiation.
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The increasing complexity of modern societies provides a structural basis for an important
personality characteristics. Now two, note two implications of this argument. First, role conflicts
now appear to be a positive feature of modern societies. Because usually we say thatrole
conflicts are not something good, but Simmel says that role conflict as something very important.
You need to deal with it, you need to strike a kind of a balance. You need to be exposed to
different kinds of pulls and pushes and that will only embolden you that will only make you
more capable of dealing with that.
It is not that broken you crumble under this expectations of role conflict. Any examples, any
example for that matter, an activist and a government employee or an activist and a homemaker,
an active political activist and a wife. A political activist and a doctor or a student and a political
activist. So each of these roles, it only enables the individual to emerge stronger and stronger.
Second, the distribution of psychological characteristic in a population. People's sense of
individuality and empathy does not happen by chance, they reflect the social structure very, very
important.
That is people's sense of individuality how they identify their own individuality, their taste, their
positions, their ideas how fiercely they argue for their independence. Each of these things
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Simmel argues does not emerge from their own psychological processes rather they come from a
larger structural arrangements.
Although, role conflicts burden individuals, it also forces them to make choices and thereby
encourages creativity, very important point. That is why we, you constantly inquire, you
constantly recreate, you constantly negotiate. New arrangements are made, new institutions are
brought in, new forms of engagements are identified and it opens up quite a lot of creativity.
Modernity results from, and at the same time produces a spiral effect that such that the societies
become more differentiated, more people become creative. And as more people become creative
societies become more and more complex very, very interesting argument. He says that when a
society become more complex, differentiated it produces more creative people. And when you
talk about creativity, creativity always pushes the boundary to the limits.
Only when something new happens you call it as a creative idea. And the more creative it
becomes, the more differentiated it will. So in modern societies, as and when this differentiation
increases Simmel argues that more creative people will come, people with strong sense of
individuality. And that is why in modern societies you will find people who are so much
dissimilar. People who are so different from each other in terms of everything, in terms of their
ideas, in terms of their taste, in terms of their attitude, in terms of their positions. It is a very
fascinating thing.
If for example the kind of students who I meet in my everyday class in a class of 45 students,
students come from different parts of the country and each one of them though they share the
same age they are so different. Their ideas about life is so different, they are exposed to so much
of different ideas, so much of different ideologies and they are actually undergoing a process of
churning, which really influences them very, very deeply.
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Now let us very briefly move to his ideas of conflict, because social conflict is an important
theme that Simmel spends considerable time on. And as I mentioned earlier, the subsequent
developing the sociological theory, which I will talk towards the end of this classes, this
development of a conflict theory is one of the three important traditional theoretical orientations
of sociology, along with structural functionalism and symbolic interactions.
So Simmel argued that while conventional scholarship understood conflict as avoidable and as a
negative social process, conflict often serves as a means of maintaining or increasing integration
within the group. So we know that sociology emerged as a reaction, or to as a reaction to so
much of drastic social changes and violence and then disruption, sociology was preoccupied with
the question of order, sociology was preoccupied with the question of social stability and conflict
is seen as something contrary to that of stability.
So most of the scholars who we discussed earlier starting with Montesquieu to Saint Simon to
Comte, Spencer and Durkheim and even Weber to certain extent all took the position, they
looked at conflict as something avoidable, something that is not good for the society. Whereas,
Simmel takes a very, very different stand. He argues that conflict often serves as a means of
maintaining or increasing integration within the group.
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The group’s integration increases. The kind of we feeling of the group, the kind of a solidarity of
the group increases when the group confronts in a, another group in a social conflict. Humans are
distinguished from other species because in general conflicts are means to goals rather than
merely instinctual reactions to external stimuli. Hence conflict has a social character very, very
interesting argument.
He is using the instance of social conflict to provide a very interesting insight about the
differentiation between human beings and other animals. Use of violence is there in animal
kingdom or even in plants. Among the plants you will, you know that, but these animals they
unleash violence or they resort to conflict on the basis of their bodily instincts. Maybe, for food
or for sexual satisfaction or to protect one's own territory animals resort to violence.
Whereas, for social, for human beings they use conflicts either direct violence or threat of
violence it has a social character. Many times it is not only, or not at all for the bodily instincts, it
is something much more than that. It could be some time for more property, it could be
something more for political control, it could be something for a kind of a maintaining a kind of
a superiority domination over the other group. So none of these things can be derived to your
bodily instincts rather, they have very, very solid social character.
Why that certain group resorts to conflict and why that certain group resort to violence is an
extremely important point because it is social. It is definitely social, social violence is a very,
very interesting topic.
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So he talks about two or three major types of conflicts. I am not going into too much detail, but it
is important that we have some idea about that. He talks about conflict within group. What
happens when there is, when conflict emerges within the group. Conflicts two types within that,
conflicts in which the opposite parties possess common personal qualities. When a conflict arises
within a group maybe between siblings in a family or between two factions of a same caste
group, people who possess the similar kind of character.
And that kind of conflict Simmel says could be quite lethal, it could be quite violent and it could
be quite intense. Conflicts between intimate people spouses, siblings, close friends, etc people
are involved with one another as a whole person and even more antagonism between them can be
highly inflammatory regardless of the content of the disagreement, and that we come across quite
a lot. Is not it?
Look around the news that are coming every day about violence in families, violence in
friendship circle, violence in gangs, in friendship groups because they think that they were all
one and if something is done by the other person then it is seen as a major treachery, as a reason
and then it becomes extremely inflammatory.
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And then, second type is conflicts in which opposite parties perceive each other as a threat to the
existence of the group. Here, the whole question is some group is trying to take over the whole
group. So when a group is divided into conflicting elements, the antagonistic parties hate each
other, normally on the concrete ground, which produce the conflict, but also on the sociological
ground of hatred for the enemy of the group itself. So here, the argument is about when there are
two factions within the group and that conflict also can lead to very, very serious consequences.
Third one is conflicts in which the opposing parties recognize and accept each other as legitimate
opponents. The conflicts in which opposite parties recognize and accept each other as legitimate
opponents, when conflict is direct, the opposing parties act squarely against each other to obtain
their goals. When you have a well-defined enemy for example, when two countries go for war or
two factions when they encounter each other, the enemy is defined very clearly.
When a conflict is indirect the opponents interact only with the third-party to obtain their goals.
Simmel referred to this latter form of conflict as competition. When there are, this conflict is not
very direct. For example, when there are scarce resources. When there are scarce resources,
scares resources could be as a common property rights, it could be common grazing land.
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It could be common forest, common water and there are different sections of people competing
with each other. Many times it may not lead to direct conflict, but it actually takes the form of a
competition and involves a third-party because you interact indirectly, you do not have any kind
of major antagonism against the other group, but basically you want to protect the interest of
your group because the resources are very scarce. So the sociological consequences of these
types of conflicts.
Now these conflicts have very, very significant sociological consequences. What, whether a
conflict happens within the group or is it between two factions or is it between a well-defined
other who wants to take over that each of these, or whether conflict is has taken the form of a
competition each of these forms have enormous sociological consequences.
And that is why Simmel argued that the study of conflict is something extremely important from
a sociological perspective. Then he talks about conflict between groups when you have two
groups who are well defined. There are three consequences. One is, it increases the degree of
centralization of authority within each group, an extremely important argument. We have seen it
in several places. So when there is a unity all the internal divisions are supposed to die out.
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For example, if there is a war between two groups, two countries, then all internal criticisms and
internal factions and internal divisive forces will go down and the country will stand together. At
least, momentarily the country will stand together. So there is a centralization of authority the
power structure will become very, very strong.
There will not be much of a, they might even declare an emergency. For example, if a country
like India goes for a war against another country then the immediate thing would be to declare a
political emergency so that there is a very strong centralized authority. And it increases the
degree of social solidarity within each group and at the same time, decreases the level of
tolerance for deviance and dissent. We have seen this or we are witnessing it every time.
When there is a threat, we tend to forget all the differences. All the political parties will come
together, all the political parties will declare their support to the prime minister and anybody who
criticizes to that particular, for example, nobody will criticize the army. The military cannot be
criticized, even if a military is defeated it will not be directly criticize.
So any criticism will not be tolerated or the level of tolerance for deviance and dissent will go
down. People will be very strongly supporting the, there will be a singular, there is a sense of
panic, there is a sense of the major sense of insecurity. There is a sense of siege and that creates a
kind of strong sense of solidarity.
And it increases likelihood of coalition among groups having similar opponents. And we have
seen that there could be so much of different tactical moves. People will sometimes forget their
differences and then forge new allies because this time of conflict is a type of exceptional time, it
is an exceptional time, it is not the normal time. So during exceptional times, they go for
exceptional kind of procedures, exceptional allies, exceptional kind of social behaviour.
So these are the main themes Simmel discusses when he talks about social conflict. And with
Simmel’s argument about social conflict, sociologists began to increasingly look at social
conflict as an extremely important social phenomenon. It is not something that has to be brushed
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aside, it is not something which has to be seen as negative as something avoidable, something
bad for society, it is not. It is an extremely important.
First of all, it is inevitable. Every society will have social conflict. Secondly, it has enormous
social character and sociology as a discipline offers very, very fascinating insights to understand
the social character of conflict. So that is what the Simmel argues in his work.
So let us stop here. And we will come back with another session on Simmel in the next class.
Thank you.
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Lecture 48
Simmel on Philosophy of Money
Welcome back to the class. This is the third and final session on George Simmel. In the previous
class we discussed this theorization on social conflict and differentiation to substantive teams
which, in which Simmel provided very, very interesting set of insights and he very strongly
argued why social differentiation and social conflicts need very careful analysis from social
scientists and the sociologists.
And as I mentioned in the previous class, social conflict with Simmel’s writings emerged as a
very important site of sociological exploration as something which was seen as negative,
something which was seen as undesirable, disruptive and subversive. From that kind of an
understanding, social conflict was seen as something extremely important, reflective of deeper
social processes. So similarly that sense is a very important corner of scholars of sociological
violence, social conflict.
And in today’s class, let us have a very brief look at his very important work on the philosophy
of money. And with the very title it becomes clear that it is rather a philosophical take on money,
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not a very strict sociological analysis. And this is typical of Simmel. As we discussed in the
previous classes, Simmel is also was a philosopher unlike many other previous strict sociologists
in that sense, Simmel was a philosopher. He was a sociologist. He wanted to ask some
philosophical profound sociological questions. He wanted to ask deeper philosophical questions
through the discipline of sociology. So here we will come across what was his take on money
and what kind of philosophy he identified in the form of money, its circuits, its exchange and
other things.
So Simmel believes the study of money by looking at study of the social consequences of
exchange relationships among human beings, with special emphasize on those forms of
exchange in which money is used as an abstract measure of value.
You know that this exchange among human being is a very, very fascinating subject. When do
we exchange, means what do we exchange? We exchange lot of things, we exchange money, we
exchange ideas, we exchange artifacts, we exchange art objects, we exchange lot of things both
cultural, both tangible as well as non-tangible objects we exchange. And this exchange has been
a very, very interesting area for anthropology for a long time. Anthropologists are, especially
anthropologists who have studied in the societies they have studied various practices of
exchange.
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So there it could be exchange of woman, for example, exchange of various artifacts, exchange of
spices, exchange of wealth, gold. So why some people give away certain thing and what happens
to that, and whether that comes back, these are some of the very profound questions for
anthropology and sociology.
For example, gift, talking fabulous, fascinating studies on gift. What constitutes a gift and what
is the connection between gift and reciprocity? Why that they, these two are very closely
connected. Can you think of a gift which is not returned, is something is not returned, what
happens to that. Usually, if you look into our everyday life, for somebody’s marriage we give
something and after some time it is returned. So there is something is given with a understanding
that it will be returned. So there is a kind of a social consensus, social acceptance that things will
be returned. So what happens if it is not returned or what is the role of this understanding that
things are giving, given only to be return later, will be an addition, increased value.
So just to give you an idea that this whole idea of exchange which we know in the earlier times
as barter system. You exchange certain thing for some other commodity. But anthropology has
developed for serious focus to understand whole process of exchange. So certain social
consequence of exchange relationship around human being with special emphasize on those
forms of exchange in which money is used in an abstract measure of value. And here these two
terms are important. Value is important and there is an abstract measure of value. You
understand certain thing and you think you got a price the other person does not agree he quotes
a lower price, and then you reach a kind of a consensus, you reach an agreement, and then you
hand over the money and the other person gives you the object.
So here there is an abstract measure of value. The money stands for certain thing. Every currency
note in India, the Reserve Bank Governor he promises you, he promises the value of that
particular denomination. It is a promise from the Governor of the Reserve Bank. So it is an
abstract entity. The note per se it is only a piece of paper with a lot of technology emerged with
that, but actually it is something more than that.
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So not all interaction is exchange, but exchange is universal form of interaction. You know that
all interaction is not exchange because exchange means reciprocity you give certain thing and is
something you get back and every interaction is not that. But exchange is a universal form of
interaction. Money is a central form of exchange emerged as a result of differentiation. Why
differentiation? We know that.
In simple societies, you would exchange things. You, maybe you exchange some amount of
paddy for some meat or some fish. But when societies became more and more complicated, you
introduced money, and the introduction of money, introduction of precious stones, coins, these
are very, very important milestones in the development of human beings. Those who have
studied this know that why it is important starting with copper and then gold and then silver
coins and then later paper currencies, very, very important milestones in the development of
human beings.
So money is a central form of exchange emerged as a result of differentiation. So he sought to

link certain philosophical views about humans and the social universe to understand the
properties of a particular social form. So for Simmel, for him, money is only an important
medium. It allows him to enter into the world of human beings and that to the society in which
exchange is something very important. You know that Simmel is not an economist. He is not an
economist. So his focal point on money is quite different from that of an economist. But he
identify, he argues, so he understands that money is an important medium of exchange, which
that is something very interesting about the nature of human beings and nature of society.
So Simmel argues that people are teleological beings that is, they act on their environment in the
pursuit of anticipated goals. People use subtle, symbolic tools, such as language and money to
achieve their goals. So your actions are always condition that oriented on the basis of the, of a
particular outcome. You do not simply debate on the basis of our instincts you know that. We are
so trained, well trained to contain, to regulate our instincts. But this regulation of these instincts
also could be for the better realization of a particular goal.
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When you see something very precious, you do not go and grab it. You know that going and
grabbing will have a lot of repurcussions, but you wait and you see what are the appropriate
ways of getting it. So, Weber, sorry, Simmel argues that human beings are teleological beings.
We know that how our actions have to be oriented on the base of a forthcoming or unfolding
goal. So this perverted goal or the goals in our imagination is supposed to be the reason why we
behave in a particular line.
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So money, Simmel asserted, is the ultimate social tool because it is generalized. So he argued
that human beings use lot of symbolic things, including language, including money, including lot
of other tools in order to reach this particular goal. And for Simmel, money is the most ultimate,
the best example of the social tool, because it is generalized. What does it mean to be generalized
or do we say, why does he say that it is generalized, that is people can use it in many ways to
manipulate the environment to obtain their goals.
Money is just a form, is not it. Money, you can use money for so many things. You can satisfy so
many different kind of people with money. People, some people might be interested in that is
because they are able to convert this money into whatever they want. So that is why it is so
gentle. It has this ability to get converted into their desired object, whether it is ornaments or
property or car or a mission, or a technological thing whatever be that. So here it becomes so
generalized. It becomes a universal medium of exchange.
You do not try to entice people by showing certain objects rather you offer them money, an
equivalent amount of money, which really attracts them. So in contrast with Marx here comes
very interesting rebuttal to Marxian theory on value and on money.
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In contrast with Marx, Simmel stressed that values of an object existed not in the labor power
required to produce it, but in the extent to which it was both desired and unattainable. It is a
completely different argument. I hope you remember our discussion about Marxian notion about
labor power, the cost on the labor to produce a particular kind of work. So Simmel does not
agree with that. He does not understand the value of an object. He argues that it does not existed
in the labor power, rather it is the extent to which it was both desired and unattainable.
Something you decide certain thing and if it is freely available, it does not have any value.
Whereas if you decipher certain thing and if it is scarce in its supply, then its value increases, that
is reverse take for that, that is value resides in the process of seeking objects that are scares and
distant. You know that, we know that. It is, I do not think I need to elaborate that, a stone on the
road or pebbles on a river bank. These are available in abundance which you do not want or
whether you want or not, it is available in abundance. It has no value. Whereas things you want,
but it is so distant, it is very limited in its supply, then it increases its value. Value is thus tied to
humans’ basic capacity to distinguish a subjective from an objective world
and in the relative difficulty to securing options.
So here it is a very important point he says, it is tied to humans’ basic capacity to distinguish a
subjective from an objective world and in the relative difficulty in securing objects. Why that
certain art pieces are considered to be invaluable. Why that, say some of the very famous
auctioning firms, they do this auctioning of very rare pieces and quite often some extremely rich
people or some people who do not want to reveal their identity, they pay millions of dollars to
get that.
So here, they, so he, so why that we think that a particular diamond or a particular artifact or a
particular painting command some EUR5 million or USD5 million. Even the person who buys
knows that there is nothing called as an objective value for that painting, but it is a subjective
value. The person is so attracted with that or maybe it is a purely, a pure business mind. The
paint that could be very, very famous painter or it could be very rare painting and he must be
thinking that he can sell it after some time at much higher price or maybe that person is a real,
person who really finds that to be so valuable that he wants to keep it in his private collection. He
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is an art publisher. So you see it is quite distinct kind of arguments from subjective form of an
objective world.
Money, as Simmel showed, greatly increases the creation and acceleration of value because it
provides a common yardstick for a quick calculation of values, how much a commodity or
service is worth. The most common word that you ask how much, whether it is a price of an
object or a service or what will be that. Whether even if somebody helps you, you need
somebody gives you a particular, this question how much helps you to understand or this
question how much an answer helps you to really comprehend the value of that particular service
of product in the most easiest way.
So in sum, then, Simmel believes that the development of money is an expression and the
extension of human nature. That is his philosophical take on that. So money is an expression as
well as an extension of basic human nature. Money is a kind of tool in teleological acts, it is a
way to express the value inherent in humans’ capacity for subject, object division and it is a
means for attaining stability and order in people’s worldview.
So this actually really summarizes Simmel’s argument about the social character of money. It is
an expression, the expression of basic human nature because human beings have in it desire to
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take possession of things that are limited in supply at that attachment, depending upon your taste,
some, it could be weapons, it would be wealth, it could be food items, it could be artifacts, but if
they are not in abundance, if it is in short supply, and if you feel attracted to that, you think that it
is something very valuable, it could be beauty.
Money is a kind of tool in teleological acts. You manipulate your actions in order to achieve
certain goals. It is a way to express the value inherent in humans’ capacity to subject object
division. I just explained it earlier. It is not that the price is fixed. Of course, we buy quite a lot of
things where the price is fixed. They are particularly used to this MRP, maximum retail price.
But for host of our everyday life we know that there is no MRP attached to or fixed to certain
objects or certain other things services.
It is a means of attaining stability and order in people’s worldview. There is a generalizability,

there is a uniformity you can immediately converge a particular value into very, very profit terms
as quantifiable amount.
So for Simmel, social exchange involves the following elements. Now, he has this very
interesting take on philosophical and sociological take on money. Then what is he talking about,
social exchange. Why that he finds the social exchange of money as something important. So
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Simmel says that, the social exchange involves the following elements. One is the desire for a
valued object that one does not have, agreed. You do not have certain thing and you have a
desire for that.
Second, the possession of the valued object by an identifiable other. You identify a supply who
has that object could be anything. The offer of an object of value to secure from another the
desired object. You make an offer earlier times it was a barter system, but now no longer it is the
case now we offer money. The acceptance of the offer by the possessor of the valued objects.
These are the simple steps that are involved in everything, everyday life.
When money becomes the predominant means for establishing value in social relationships, the
properties and dynamics of social relations are transformed. The process of displacing other
criteria of value, such as logic, ethics and aesthetics, with a monetary criterion is precisely long-
term historical trend in societies.
So, Weber, sorry, Simmel argues that when in a modern capitalist society or in the modern times,
when you can buy anything with money, a host of other things such as logic, ethics and
aesthetics are kind of replaced. The process of displacing other criteria of value, such as logic,
ethics and aesthetics with a monetary criterion is precisely the long-term historical trend in
societies.
So you know that extremely rich people they can buy anything at their, on their goods and
transits. So this is something quite different from the way in which people value certain things.
So he says that this is a precisely the long-term historical, is the result of a long-term historical
trend in society because it is not come all of a sudden, rather it is a sort of a long process because
money has assumed that it is a generalized trend.
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Now what are the consequences of money on social relationships, money and its consequences
for social relations? Simmel asked two related questions in tracing the consequences of money
on social patterns. What are the consequences of money for the structure of a society as a whole?
What are the consequences of money for the individuals?
So, these two very simple questions are very profound questions. What are the implications of or
what are the consequences of money for the structure of society as a whole, then what are the
consequences of money for the individual? How does money influence the larger social structure
of a society?
Now I know that it becomes almost impossible for us to imagine a society, because we can only
imagine it that to very, very fleeting. We cannot be really sure about how such a society will, it is
just because we have never lived so have only read about society like that or we have only seen
some documentary or read about or imagined a societies where money simply does not exist.
Money, I am not talking about hard currency, money in every form, in electronic form in your
Paytm, in your Google Pay, or in your credit card, debit card or whatever. And what does it do to
social structures? And there are very interesting arguments, for example, Giddens talks about
abstract systems and symbolic pockets in modern societies. In his analysis about modern
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societies, he talks about abstract systems are symbolic tokens. And he talks about this money as
an excellent example of this symbolic pocket, almost similar way in which Simmel talks about it.
So you use this symbolic token in order to get things done. And he uses this category, he uses
them when he talks about this process of dis-embedding as a productive modernization. You are
dis-embedded from the local economies. We will give the details, but it is very important
theoretical intervention by Giddens.
Money represents the ultimate objective of symbolization of social relations, unlike material
entities, money has no intrinsic value. Money has the, money represent the ultimate objective of
symbolization of social relations. You put a value to certain thing. And with that value you fix its
importance, you symbolize it. Money has no intrinsic value. Money merely represent values and
it is used to express the value of one object in relation to another.
So these arguments are very profound when you look at how we are so accustomed to living like
that. We put some value to certain thing and it is understood we know that money in itself does
not have any intrinsic value. If you have so much of money, but you do not, you cannot buy
anything with that money then you know that it is useless. Money becomes valuable only when
you are able to convert it into other artifacts and it is always related.
The use of money enables actors to make quick calculations of respective values. We know that.
When you go to a market, when you see things online and how much it costs and looking into its
color, its aesthetics, its quality, its stubborn then you reach, you calculate in your mind and you
think whether it is worthwhile to spend that much money. So it actually helps you to make quick
calculations on a respective values.
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And the use of money as a liquid and non-specific resource allows for much greater continuity in
social relations. Use of money as a liquid and non-specific resource, when you travel abroad, you
no longer use hard cash, you do not have to many times change Indian rupee into say dollar or
pound. You can use your credit card if it has international validity. So such benefits so you can
use a Google Pay or you can use, you can scan the thing and then get it done. So such liquid and
non-specific resource allows for much greater continuity social relations.
Money also allows exchanges among human beings located at great distance. I do not need to
elaborate that, is not it. When we buy things online, like Amazon or in Flipkart, the seller must
be maybe sitting in the other part of the country, but you immediately enter into an agreement
and then you pay the money upfront most of the time or he sends the material and then you pay it
once you get the delivery, cash on delivery program. So it is possible even though you have
never seen, never met, you do not the person and that is because there is a medium called money
and of course it is medium to through the Internet and this platform.
Money also promotes social solidarity in the sense that it represents a trust that is people take
money for goods or services, they believe that it can be used at a future date to buy other goods
or services. It is a guarantee. And you know that in India when we had this episode of
demonetization, is not it. This is precisely what happened. Many people who had money in their
hand found that it no longer has any value and thus they exchanged it. And after that particular
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deadline people who did not know about it or people who did not care about it, this huge bundles
of notes then became kind of priceless papers.
So money increases the power of central authority for the use of money requires that there be
social stability and that a central authority guarantees the worth of money, very important. When
you think of a modern society where there are multiple types of money available with no
legitimacy on that can we have why that every country is so much worried about counterfeit
notes or why no country allows different forms of currencies used by different private people
without any kind of arrangement simply it will not work. So that is why in every society, every
country that piece of currency is authenticated by the highest political authority. In India, it is the
Governor of Reserve Bank of India. He guarantees, he or she guarantees the bearer the sum
assuring that particular denomination.
The money releases people from the constraints of tradition and moral authority, money creates a
system in which it is difficult to restrain individual aspirations and desires. Deviance and
pathology are, therefore, more likely in systems where money becomes the prevalent medium of
interaction. Very, very important arguments, is not it.
When you have money as a sole criterion for lot of things and money can be earned when the
opportunities are endless, then people have the drive for that using one form of, one means of
making money or other means of making money only becomes individual choices. So the
pathology deviates only since happen. Money releases people from the constraints of tradition
and moral authority. Anybody can become rich.
And this was something very, very, it was something extremely impossible. Sometimes back
when you are supposed to continue to work in your own craft, your own tradition. You are not
supposed to do something else. When there was no open kind of trade or jobs were allowed.
Money creates a system in which it is difficult to restrain individual aspirations and desires.
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Now what are the implications on money and the, on the individual. Most of the consequences
reflect the inherent tension between individual freedom from constraint, on the one hand, and
alienation and detachment from social groups, on the other. Money gives people new choices and
options, but also depersonalizes their social milieu. We know that it is very, very fascinating
discussions here, Simmel brings in.
Whether money can provide you with happiness? We have heard a lot of stories of the sorrows
of extremely rich people. People who realize that money is not the ultimate thing. People who
really realize that money cannot buy them happiness. We know that lot of people are extremely
unhappy even they are so rich. So there is some disconnect in that. So he says that, most of the
consequences reflect the inherent tension between individual freedom from constraint on the one
hand you have more money, you are free, on the one hand, the alienation and detachment from
social groups on the other. Money gives people new choices and options, but it also
depersonalizes their social milieu.
If people begin to value money more than personal relationship, then they are definitely for
trouble. It was, maybe you have seen it in movies, we have read it in novels, we know that, those
kind of arguments.
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Individuals in a society that uses money as its principal medium of exchange enjoy considerable
freedom of choice than is possible in a society that does not use money. Obviously the money
that imagine if you build a society where there is no cash, you do not look at the wage, you get
only maybe one basket full of rice as your wage. And such a society, the possibilities with that
bag of rice is so limited, whereas you are getting INR100 or INR500 after one full days of work.
You can do lot of things with that money.
Money gives people many options for self-expression. Money also creates a distance between
one’s sense of self and the objects of self-expression. With money, objects are easily acquired
and discarded. And hence, long-term attachments to objects do not develop. Very, very
interesting arguments. I hope you know about this movement called as minimalism. Minimalism
is a particular kind of a lifestyle, a very deliberate choice where people try to live with bear, with
very bear minimum things. It is, they live, they extremely over simplified, over simplistic life,
not because they do not have money, but they realize that they have money, but they do not need
to buy a lot of stuff.
So there are very extreme cases of minimalism where people live with only one pair of dress or
with a very bear minimum amount of utensils and dress and shoes, footwear, furniture in their
houses. So why do people do that, because they need that. Money can buy you lot of stuff, but
money cannot bring you satisfaction. So with money objects are easily acquired and discarded,
and hence long-term attachment to objects to do develop.
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Then money encourages a multiplicity of social relationships and group membership. At the
same time, however, money discourages intimate attachments, something very similar to that. It
atomizes and compartmentalizes their activities that often keep them from emotional
involvement in each others, in each of their segregated activities.
So you, when you buy something with your money, then money becomes the rationale on which
you think further. Everything is decided on the base of the logic of money. And that many times
prevent intimate attachments. I do not think I need to elaborate. You know that you cannot buy
love with money. You cannot get somebody’s love with money. You need to buy somebody’s
love it will be shocking. We have seen it in movies and it is cliche I do not need even to explain
that.
Increases in social exchange mediated by money feedback on differentiation, encouraging further

differentiation, which in turn increases the volume, rate, velocity and scope of social ties
mediated by money. So here again he is talking about the kind of a spiraling relationship
between social exchange and differentiation. So increases in social exchanges mediated by
money feedback on differentiation.
In a society where there is money, it creates more differentiation and this differentiation creates
demand for money and it complement to each other, encouraging for the differentiation, which in
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turn increase the volume, rate, velocity and scope of social ties mediated by money. Such
processes cause ever more individualization of people that is increased involvement of only
small parts of one’s personality in groups, increased group affiliations and greater potential
alienation from society.
So that allows people to participate in so many different groups. And you know that when you
are member of so many different groups, you are only partially a member from that. You are not
able to devote completely into do that or that is not even required unlike your primary groups. So
that leads to potential alienation, that leads to increased group affiliation at the same time greater
potential alienation from society.
So I found it extremely fascinating analysis of Simmel is, as I told you, his focal point is not
economics, it is rather philosophy. And it is again, not your philosophies rather it is a
sociologically informed philosophy. So he tries to understand that why or what are the role of
money in providing a particular kind of social structure, how it influences society at large, how it
influences individual and what is the kind of a connection between this differentiation and
utilization, very, very important arguments.
So, let us stop here. I hope you found this discussion of Simmel interesting, because as I told you
this whole question of exchange has been a major theme among sociologists and anthropologists.
So let us stop here and we will meet for the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 49
Mind, Self and Society
Welcome back to the class, we are beginning to discuss some of the substantive ideas of G.H.
Mead. We had a previous class on him, trying to look at his intellectual context and the kind of
theorizing that G.H. Mead has become quite famous for. And we saw that unlike many other
sociologists like Marx, Durkheim or Weber, Mead did not or his focus of analysis was not larger
social processes or social structures, but rather he focuses attention to understand the micro
social processes, specifically the field of study that is known as social interaction. Because when
others talk about sociology as a study of social interaction, a series of scholars starting with G.H.
Mead and C.H. Cooley and a host of others try to understand how this social interaction takes
place. What are the dynamics of this social interaction?
So we are, in this particular class and in the coming couple of classes as well, we are trying to
understand Mead's arguments about three very important and interrelated topics that is mind, self
and society. It is a very, very fascinating story. And you will see that how this theorization is
something quite different from what you have already seen in the previous classes.
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So in contrast to the influential psychological theories, Mead argued that for mind and self as the
two most distinctive aspects of human personality and for society as maintained by mind and self
to be viewed as a part of ongoing social process. So, one of the most important things that
distinguishes Mead from other psychologists who use the framework of psychology to
understand mind and self is that he argues that there is a very close connection between the
development and existence of mind and self, but to that effect that of with the society and the
process of interaction.
So this is a very, very important and very significant point of departure between psychologist and
sociologist. While psychologist try to understand mind as a kind of a process of or as a kind of an
entity that is within the brain, within the human entity and then they try to explain a host of other
things. Whereas sociologists were looking at social interaction, they aim to theorize the
development of mind as well as the notion of self as a result of interaction with other people who
are living in this particular society.
So that is an extremely important point and it will become more clear when we analyze his
arguments about what constitutes mind, what constitutes self and what constitutes society. So as
the two most distinctive aspects of human personality and for society as maintained by mind and
self to be viewed as a part of an ongoing social process.
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So, interestingly, Mead also argues that the society is an integral part of this interplay between
self and mind and you cannot really keep that away. It is not an, it is not that an individual with a
fully formed mind and self coming and then interacting with the society. On the other hand,
society plays a very pivotal role in shaping the condos or giving kind of specific shape and
content to what is understood as the self and mind.
The unique attributes of humans, such as their capacity to use language, their ability to view
themselves as objects and their facility to reason, must all be viewed as emerging from the life
processes of adaptation and adjustment. And we know that these are some of the very important
features that distinguish us from the other animals, other living organisms in varying degrees,
especially their capacity to use language, a host of other animals also use language, but at a very
much lower level and it is no way comparable with the kind of complex form of language that
human beings use.
And their ability to view themselves as objects that is, we are able to look at ourself from a
distance. You can put yourself in somebody else shoe and then try to understand. For example, if
we shouted at somebody. If we shouted at somebody and after some time we, when we think we
might feel repentant. We will feel that, we will, we might feel sorry for that person. And how
does we feel sorry for that person, we are able to imagine ourselves in that person's position, and
then look at how we behaved, and then you develop, you can have, you might feel proud of
yourself, you might feel bad at yourself, you might feel angry at yourself.
So this whole ability to look at ourself as an object as if you are able to take a step or two behind
and then look at you from a distance is a unique ability of human being and their facility to
reason must all be viewed as emerging from life processes of adaptation and adjustment which
we discuss that how various arguments about behaviorism, utilitarianism and other things are,
have influenced this argument.
Mind and self cannot be ignored as behaviorists often sought to do, nor can they be seen as a
kind of mystical and spiritual force that elevates humans out of the basic life processes
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influencing all species. So here it is, there are two extremes, on the one extreme, the behaviorists
want to treat human beings as just like any other animal, who respond to certain kind of stimulus.
So they would argue that human beings, since human beings are also animals, we also behave in
a very more or less deterministic manner, where we respond to certain kinds of stimulus.
On the other hand, the psychologists would argue that they tend to look at the mind as a kind of a
spiritual or as a kind of an enigmatic entity that makes human beings quite special from other
animals. And sociologists, including Mead and others, they want to reconcile these two opposing
arguments.
So social behaviorism, social behaviorism stresses the process by which individuals acquire a
certain behavioral repertoire by virtue of their adjustment to ongoing patterns of social
organization. I hope you remember our discussion about social behaviorism by that Russian
behaviorist. And so here we, social behaviorist trust the process by which individuals acquire a
certain behavioral repertoire, a possibility was compendium of behavioral possibilities by virtue
of their adjustment to ongoing patterns of social organization.
The behavior of individuals, not just their observable actions, but also their internal behaviors of
thinking, assessing and evaluating must be analyzed with a social context. So, Mead argues that
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when you look at from a perspective of a behaviorist, you tend to analyze a person's behavior
from the external aspects from what does he do or how does a particular animal behave.
Whereas, on the other hand, sociologists, including Mead argues that and this is a very important
theme that all of you must have understood that we not only simply behave, we act, and there are
very important emotional value oriented ideas that actually shape our actions.
So you need, it is not really that observable actions, but also their internal behaviors of thinking
and assessing and evaluating must be analyzed within a social context. For example, why that I,
if I am hungry, what are the options in front of me? So is stealing allowed or is begging allowed
or is requesting somebody allowed. So, why, what are the things that I can adopt. And these
options are heavily influenced by the social setting. I hope you understand that.
You all go for a movie and it is a very tragic movie. You feel very bad, you want to cry. But
whether you can cry or whether are you supposed to cry or can you be seen as crying by others in
a cinema hall will depend upon a host of issues. If you are a girl, mostly society would say that
okay there is nothing wrong in being emotional and then crying. They are not put to so much fun.
Whereas if it is a elderly man with a mustache and a very well-built man, if he starts weeping in
a cinema hall watching a movie, definitely he will be ridiculed.
So the kind of options, so that person also must be having quite a lot of in a struggle within
himself whether to cry or try to contain or try to control the feeling to cry, to control his tears. So
human beings adopt and adapt to, on the basis of the kind of a social settings in which they are.
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So now we are coming to the three, the first of the important thematic areas of Mead that is his
argument about mind. So, we will discuss his arguments about self and society in the coming
classes. So let us see what Mead talks about the idea of mind. For Mead, mind is a type of
behavioral response that emerges from interaction with others in a social context. Without
interaction, mind could not exist. And this is a very, very important argument.
And for Mead and a host of other sociologists, you cannot think of human beings having a mind
if without interaction or without being able to live in a society. And this has really given a whole
lot of criticisms and debates, especially there were a couple of incidents where scientists, there
were children who were reared by taken care or reared by wolfs. You must have heard those
stories.
So those children, they were human beings, but they were somehow lost in the forest and they
were reared by wolfs. But these children, even after they have grown up, they did not show any
other mental faculties of a human being. And that almost justifies the argument of Mead that in
order to have a proper usual mind, you need to be able to interact with others and you must be
emits the people in a given society. So this is his own quotation, very important one, that is why I
quoted at length.
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Mead says, we must regard mind, then arising and developing within the social process within
the empirical matrix of social interactions. We must, that is, get an inner individual experience
from the standpoint of social acts which include the experience of separate individuals in a social
context, wherein these individuals interact. The processes of experience which the human brain
makes possible are made possible only for a group of interacting individuals, only for individual
organisms which are members of a society, not for the organism in isolation from other
individual organisms.
It is a very powerful argument. You think of a group of individuals. And when you talk about
mind, a mind is a purely an individualistic one. I have my own mind. I do not share my mind
with anybody else. I might share ideas, I might share arguments, but my mind is my own.
So when you are talking about a group of people, each of these people develops their own mind
and each of this mind is their own entity, their own possession. But Mead argues that, if they
have to develop their own minds, it is possible only when they co-exist. It is possible only when
they interact with each other, only then this individual ability that is there in our body, in our
mind begin to develop. And that is an extremely important argument as put forward by Mead.
So only for individual organisms which are members of a society, not for the organism in
isolation from other individual organisms. So if you are alone as a child, for example, if you are
stranded in a deserted island some shipwreck or something and then you have everything food
and water, everything to grow up, and you grew up into an adult without interacting with
anybody, you have not seen another human being, and then the kind of mind that you have,
where we do not even know whether to, whether we can call it as a mind, that will be something
quite different from our understanding of mind.
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Now, Mead comes to this very important concept called us gestures, gestures and mind. Why
that, these gestures are something very important. In contrast with Charles Darwin, who had
viewed gestures as expressions of emotions, Wilhelm Wundt recognized gestures as that part of
the ongoing behavior of one organism that stimulate the behavior of another organism. Mead
took it, took this basic idea and extended it in ways that became the basis not only for the
emergence of mind and self, but also for the creation, maintenance and change of society.
So in contrast with Charles Darwin, who viewed gestures are expressions of emotions. That is
what we usually understand. When we get angry, we shout at people or we show our face or we
are so pleased, we smile, is not it. So every other animals show that kind of gestures, but
Wilhelm Wundt would argue that gestures as that part of the ongoing behavior of one organism
that stimulates the behavior of another organism.
So it is not only to express certain thing, it is not really the aim of the gesture, it is not only self-
expression, but the aim of the gesture is that it must be understood by the other random stimulus
and then stimulate a response. I hope you understand that, if you use a gesture which is not
understood and then reciprocated by other, it no longer is a gesture as per Wilhelm Wundt. It
does not make sense as a gesture.
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And here this understanding is that your gesture must be able to develop a response from the
other person. It, you must be able, so here, the core idea of communication comes into picture,
the ability to influence others thinking and to elicit a response. So, a part of ongoing behavior of
one organism that stimulates the behavior of another organism. Mead took this basic idea and
extended it to the analysis of mind, analysis of self and even to the creation and maintenance and
change of society. It is a very fascinating argument, is not it.
The whole question, how is that society came into picture, how is that society came into being,
and right from the beginning of the course, you must have heard me telling that society simply
does not come into existence. It comes only through interaction. If you put some thousand people
together, it does not become a society. Or there are very fundamental processes which happen
when people come together on a prolonged period of time in an institutionalized manner, in a
predictable manner and that gives rise to this notion of society.
So conversation of gestures, one organism emits gestures that stimulate a response from a second
organism. In turn, the second organism emits gestures that stimulate an adjusted response from
the first organism, then interactions continues. And you know that it is not something confined
only within human beings even when two dogs bark at each other and they are able to, and when
there is a standoff between two dogs or when there is a standoff between two tigers or lions, you
see that there is this, they try to threaten the other animal and the other animal is threatened
sufficiently, it will leave or if it is not threatened or if it has more courage and then there will be
a standoff and then it might lead to open aggression attack and then the end could be anything.
This form of interaction, Mead felt, typifies lower animals and human infants. You emit certain
gestures that is understood by other and then he also, there is a kind of a, some kind of a
communication takes place, some kind of exchange of ideas take place. But Mead would say that
this happens only in the lower animals and the human infants. Such gestural conversations limit
the capacity of organism to organize themselves and to cooperate.
So we know that the possibility of our gestures are very less. You can communicate very limited
ideas through these gestures, is not it. You can communicate the idea of anger, happiness, love
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towards each other through these gestures that is what every animals and birds do, but you
cannot communicate something more complex than that. You cannot talk philosophy through
gestures. You cannot talk about history through gestures. You cannot even show empathy
through gestures. So more complicated ideas, more complicated emotions, messages cannot be
conveyed through these gestures.
So that is why Mead brings in this idea of significant symbols. When organisms become capable
of using gestures that evoke the same response in each other, then they are employing what he
term as significant or conventional gestures. Such gestures he felt are unique to humans and
make possible the capacities of mind, self and society. So what is the distinction here? What is
the important point here?
When organisms become capable of using gestures that evoke the same response in each other,
then they are employing, what he terms as a significant or conventional gestures. Such gestures,
he felt, are unique to humans and make possible their capacities of mind, self and society. So
when you are able to create gestures that evoke the same response in every member, then that is
quite different than the cases what we saw earlier when two individuals come and then they
interact and then the ideas get exchanged that is what Mead consider as happening among the
lower kind of animals or among infants.
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But here human beings are able to use significant symbols which are able to convey the similar
ideas to everybody. And the most important example that comes to us is the most sophisticated
form of language. So development of the capacity to use significant symbol distinguished
humans from other species. Mind arises in a maturing human infant as the capacity to use
significant symbols increases as other capacity to use significant symbols increases. Significant
symbols are, as Mead emphasized, the basis of language.
So you are able to develop certain sounds and these sounds are understood by others and by
others, in the sense, not only your mother or father, but even your neighbor, even other people,
even your relatives who have not seen you for a long time, and gradually you, human beings are
able to learn and articulate through this complex phenomenon called us language. And you know
that through languages you can communicate even the most complex ideas, so this significant
symbol. Why it is significant, because it has the ability to communicate the same meaning to
people across the society, to at least to a substantial section of the people, as long as the cultural
and linguistic barriers do not come into picture.
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So in what ways, then, does language make mind possible? So here Mead is talking about, Mead
is bringing this idea of language as the most significant tool that plays a major important role in
creating human mind.
Mind is a behavior, not a substance or entity. And this is an extremely important argument for
Mead, because we had quite a lot of debate whether mind is a structure of brain or is it a process,
is it something hidden inside the brain. So Mead would argue that mind is a behavior, not a
substance or entity. It is a behavior that involves using significant symbol to stimulate responses,
but at the same time to incubate or delay overt behavior so that potential responses can be
covertly rehearsed and assessed. Mind is thus an internal conversation of gestures using
significant symbols because an individual with mind talks to oneself.
So he is talking about the ability of mind as a behavior. It is a, it uses symbol. It uses the
significant symbol to stimulate a response. At the same time, to inhibit or delay overt behavior so
that potential responses can be covertly rehearsed and assessed. When we, for example, when
you sit in an interview, when you exchange, when you are answering to the questions, your mind
is at work, or when you sit in a shop and then bargaining with a shop owner, your mind is at
work or for that matter, your mind is at work all the time. And what does mind do?
Mind is trying to communicate with the other person, trying to convince the other person. At the
same time, mind inhibits our human body, not to react too early. Mind, you might want to argue
with the, bargain with the shop owner and then say that, okay, you want to, you do not want to
take it because the price that he is quoting is too high and then you want to walk out. But before
walking out, actually so that is what your body does. Mind calculates, whether is it the time to
walk out, but still then you might have in your mind that when you walk out the person might
call you back and then give you the item that you want at much lower price or he might not even
call you back.
So when you walk out, there is a risk that something which you really wanted, you may not get
it, or the other possibility is that, the shop owner, if he is so desperate to sell, he might call you
back and then give you at a discount.
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So there are quite a lot of rehearsals taking place, quite a lot of, we imagine so many other
alternatives within the mind, and this mind actually control our action from taking a kind of very
reflexive actions. We do not really behave. And Mead would argue that the kind of a complexity
with which human beings are able to behave is uncomparable with any other living organism in
the world. We can put up a very, very different face. And then you can give a lecture for two
hours on completely on different set of ideals, even while you practice completely different set of
things in your life.
So mind is thus an internal conversation of gestures using significant symbols, because an

individual with mind talks to oneself, is not it. You, we always do that. We always do that. This
capacity of mind Mead’s trust is not inborn. That is the point. So this ability to look at various
possibilities, because the ability to realize or the ability to understand that walking out of a shop
is a strategy with, of course, potential possibility of you never being able to get that item or else
you go out, the shopkeeper does not call you back and then after some time you go and then buy
the same thing, then you lose your pride, is not it.
You lose your pride because he would know that you really wanted and then you go there and
then buy it at a higher price, the price that he quoted. Then you lose your pride. You shamelessly,
you have to go and then do that. But this happens in our everyday life, whether in fish market or
in every other place, other than this big shopping malls or big shops where everything is MRP is
fixed, where we do not, we are not allowed to bargain. In these places, it is not allowed or other
places we experience in our everyday life. So how are we doing that?
And Mead would argue that this possibility of conversing within the mind, of talking about
various possibilities is possible only if you have ever lived in a society without that you do not
even know what are the kind of options available, the very option of giving a slap to that shop
owner and then taking that particular item. It is completely not possible. It is absolutely not
possible because you know that it is a violation of a law. You will be penalized, it is a crime.
Assault is a crime. Then you will be handed over to police and you can end up in jail.
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So all these things get reflected on, these are being thought about in the mind. So it is not inborn.
So this ability to look at various options and then control your body, control your action is not
inborn. It depends on interactions with others and the acquisition of the ability to interpret and
use a significant symbol as well as biological maturation.
What is the biological maturation here? You know that when you become more older, you
become more mature. Children or teenagers are supposed to be more, they might act more
instantaneously. They might act more on the basis of certain stimulus. But when you get more
maturity, you realize that you have had such an experience early, so you better do not do that. So
Mead is very emphatic in his argument that this ability is possible only if you have ever lived in
a society.
So now another very fascinating area is the role-taking and mind. What does role taking? This
role is a very important term that you come across in this, their arguments not only in Mead, but
also most of other symbolic interactions. A critical processes in using and interpreting significant
gestures is what Mead termed taking the role of the other or role-taking. An ability to use
significant symbol means that the gestures emitted by others in the environment allow a person
to read or interpret the dispositions of these others.
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So when you use the significant symbols, you are actually it is not only that you are expressing
your emotions, but other person is able to understand that you are, what are the things that you
are actually experiencing. It is not that the other person is threatened by your facial expressions
when you are able to fight, but even in other situations, when you narrate your story, when you
narrate your very tragic story or a some sad incident that happened to you through language,
through by using significant other or a significant symbols, what happens is other person is able
to take your role.
Other person is able to imagine himself or herself in your position, is able to put himself or
herself into your shoes, a particular, very, very tragic experience that you went through or a very,
very occasion of extreme happiness. That person is able to share your happiness because that
person is able to take your role, taking the role of the other. And this Mead would argue is a
very, very important and unique capacity of human beings and mostly enabled by our ability to
use these complicated complex set of gestures, especially that of language. Gestures emitted by
others in the environment allow a person to read or interpret the disposition of others.
Role taking is critical to the emergence of mind, for unless, the gestures of others and the
dispositions to act that these gestures reveal can become a part of the stimuli used to covertly
rehearse alternative lines of conduct, overt behavior will often produce maladjustment to the
environment.
So what does it mean? This particular ability to think about others, especially when you are
conversing, when you are having a discussion, when you are discussing with each other, when
you are bargaining with each other or when you are trying to convince somebody about a certain
thing, two lovers trying to convince each other for some particular argument or a person who is
attracted to another person is trying to convince that person, in all these complicated exchanges,
what happens, you use these symbolic gestures, significant gestures and you are able to imagine
how that person might be, what that person must be experiencing now. How that person might be
thinking, whether using these strategies would or the other strategies would or to what extent that
person is genuinely feeling sympathy for you. Is that person is having a genuine sense of
empathy with you or is he not believing you.
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That is also you will try to assess when you try to convince somebody. Whether that person is
impressed or whether that person is only acting to be impressed. So you evaluate that person on
the basis of your previous experiences as well. Is it a very crooked person or is he a very simple
term or is he a very nice person. So a host of other things can become a part of stimulus used to
covertly rehearse alternative lines of conduct as overt behavior will often produce maladjustment
to the environment.
So without these so much of rehearsals and then active role-taking, you cannot really act all on a
sudden. Very, very, acting very reflexively without any thinking will have quite a lot of serious
maladjustmet to the enrollment
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So then Mead also has something very interesting thing to say about the genesis of mind, the
creation of mind. How that mind gets developed. Mead saw mind as developing as a sequence of
phases. It is not that when a child is born, the child already has a mind in itself. And then it
simply develops. It is not, Mead says that it develops in sequence of phases.
Because an infant depends on others and, in turn, these others depend on society for their
survival, mind develops from the forced dependency of an infant on society. The mind develops
from the forced dependency of an infant on society. So his analysis about the mind, development
of the mind is look by, is generated by looking at the development of an infant. Why that infant
is important, because you know that among all other living organisms in the world, a human
infant requires the maximum time to become independent.
Have you ever thought about it? Any other animals whom you see whether even mammals or
primates who are very close to us orangutan or gorillas or chimpanzees, even their infants
become independent much, much faster than a human child. A human child is completely
dependent on their parents for an extended period in time, being absolutely unable to move for
maybe the, till the one year to, when does a child become independent. A child becomes
independent after a prolonged period of time.
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So that Mead would argue is also a reflection of the time, of the argument that the mind develops
very slowly because the child is dependent on the society. The parents are dependent on the
society. It is not like an animal who is born and within a few hours it is able to walk and then run
and then fly and escape its predators, and then it only needs to hunt for its food or to escape from
their enemies. Human beings do not live like that.
So through conscious coaching by others and through simple trial and error, the infant comes to
use significant symbols to denote objects relevant to satisfying its needs. And you must have
closely observed how the child grows up or what are the kind of training that the child
undergoes. Even starting with infants, when a child smiles, we also upload that, we also
reciprocate, we show our happiness or we make the child to do, to smile again or to laugh again,
the child enjoys that.
So the child understands a host of gestures that are good, that are useful, other gestures that are
not useful, what is accepted, what is not accepted. So this learning process of child is something
very, very important. Through conscious coaching by others and through simple trial and error,
the infant comes to use significant symbols to denote objects relevant to satisfying its needs.
So whether it is mother’s milk or food or mother's presence or whatever be that. Even the child
takes quite a lot of time even to recognize its most important people. Father is absolutely a non-
essential entity for a child, for a human child. And there is no biological attraction to the father.
It is only to the mother that to only a certain extent.
The development of the abilities of language, role-taking and mind are selected as the infant
seeks to consummate impulses in society. If the infant is to adjust and adapt to society, it must
acquire the ability for minded behavior. So child develops this ability for language. It takes the
ability for role-taking and mind are selected as the infant seeks to consummate impulses in a
society.
So the child understands what are the, see, for example, if a child does something the parents
pretend to be angry or parents pretend to behave that they do not approve of that particular
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action. When the child grows up, the child understands that. The child understands that and the
child will learn to act accordingly in the future.
So this whole idea of punishment and reward, punishment not in the sense of physical
punishment, of course, that is still a very important part for many people, but this reward and
punishment, a kiss, an appreciation or some food or a hug, these are the kind of the positive
things for comforting the child, or whereas very stern scolding or a small pinch or a small slap or
a strong shout, these are the things which will make the child understand that what he or she has
done is not correct. And the child gradually develops the ability to understand that.
So mind is a behavioral capacity acquired in stages, with each stage setting the condition for the
next. As mind emerges, so does self awareness. So Mead strongly places the development of
mind in the process of socialization. And whatever we discussed so far you know that the
sociological term for that is socialization, is the process through which a newborn child
understands the social norms, cultures and everything.
So for Mead, mind is something which cannot be disconnected from the process of socialization.
It is something so closely connected with the process of socialization and socialization begins the
moment a child is born. And for anybody socialization ends only with their death. Do not think
that socialization ends when people become matured. No, it does not happen, especially in our
modern society which are so chaotic, which are so dynamic, even elderly people are supposed to
learn a lot of things. You know that in this world of online world elderly people cannot say that
we know everything that is happened. They need to learn, they need to learn new etiquettes.
They need to understand how the world move.
So, socialization does not end till a person's death. So as mind emerges, so does self-awareness.
So this is, again, a very fascinating area of what constitutes self according to Mead and that we
will discuss in the coming class.
So let us stop here and we will meet you for the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture 50
George Herbert Mead
Welcome back to the class and today we are going to discuss yet another important sociologist
George Herbert Mead otherwise known as G H Mead, a person who is extremely important
figure in sociology not only because of his, the usual contributions about sociological theory and
then arguments, but, he is one among the very few sociologist or one among the very few
important sociologists who provided a completely different orientation to other sociological
enterprise both in terms of its theoretical engagement as well as the kind of a methodological
orientation.
So, Mead is significantly different in his sociological analysis, in his understanding about what
constitutes social in his ambition, in his scope about the discipline, he is very-very different. So,
G H Mead is one of the very important sociologists who laid foundation for the development of
sociology in a peculiar way, in a particular direction. And that stand of theorization is widely
known as the interactionism.
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There are different sections which we will discuss maybe towards the end of the course, this will
give you some broad overview, but that particular way of sociological analysis which focuses on
interaction is something quite different from the other theoretical perspectives that are known as
functionalism or conflict theory because, these two broad theoretical orientations look at the
macro picture, the larger structural aspects of society whereas interactionism looks at the micro
processes and with the very term indicates interactionism it looks at the dynamics involved in
human interaction.
So, it has a very strong belief that human beings are unlike other animals, and they are able to
create a sense of society through their interaction and human beings are able to create society,
human beings are able to change the society according to their, according to the meanings that
they attribute to that, and this is very different from the, a kind of a positivistic understanding of
society as we have seen in the case of Auguste Comte and even up to Emile Durkheim.
I think, I hope you remember and you followed the discussion, when we had a brief discussion
about positivism. Positivism understands that there is an outside reality out there and the task of
the sociologist is to go, collect those information and analyze them and maybe to do kind of
experimentation and other analysis and then come up with a kind of a conclusion. Whereas,
interactionists they take a completely different path, they would argue that there is no social
reality out there, a perception of reality is created through human interaction.
So, in that one the it is very closely connected with psychology, it is very closely connected with
social psychology. So, these arguments about the roads about mind, roads about the senses, roads
about self, these are some of the very-very important concerns in interactions theory. And we
will see that, for example, George Herbert Mead his theory about mind self and society or CH
Cooley’s, his arguments about looking glass self-theory.
Or Blumer’s argument about symbolic interactionism or Garfinkel or Goffman, all these thinkers
from which we will just touch upon towards the end of the course, will give you a very clear
picture about this particular distinct focus or distinct approach of sociology, an approach which
looks at, which can be described as this micro sociological perspective, they are not talking about
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the larger historical transformation, they are not talking about the larger structure of society,
rather, they are looking at them very specific, very micro level interaction.
Interaction between two people, interaction in a small group, how people construct meanings and
how other people understand the same meaning that we want them to understand through
gestures and symbols and other things. How do we engage in different role games and how a
particular role is understood by the other person?
For example, in a classroom setting, how there are very clear expectations about how a student is
supposed to behave? How a teacher is supposed to behave? So the moment we enter into a
classroom, we all, both the teacher as well as the students are, they are performing their roles.
They are performing the roles by adhering to certain established protocols. And these protocols
are in terms of your gestures, in terms of your appearance, in terms of the way you sit, the way
you look up to the teacher, the way in which the so called decorum is supposed to be, maintained
in the class here, host of other things.
So these scholars would argue that a classroom space is created through these carefully
choreographed actions. And this is something quite different from the perspective from, in
functional theory, or in conflict perspective. So George Herbert Mead is one of the most
important, maybe we can say one of the important founding fathers of interactionist perspective.
So we will discuss Mead in detail, maybe 3 or 4 classes on Mead, because he is an extremely
important figure as somebody who is responsible for the establishment of this interactionist
school.
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So there is another interesting thing about Mead is that he is an American. He was born in South
Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1863. And he was he is not somebody from Europe. And so far, that
we were discussing about scholars only from the European continent. Whereas, maybe, except
Ibn Khaldun whom we discussed in the very first class, or others scholars who we have
discussed so far, or from the, from Europe, from Italy, from Germany, and, then France, and then
England, nobody else I think.
So now, we are coming across a scholar from the US, an American scholar, George Herbert
Mead. But interestingly, he also spent a lot of time in Germany in Leipzig which we will see. So
in 1883, Mead graduated from Oberlin with a major in philosophy. And in autumn 1887, Mead
enrolled at Harvard University, where his main interest was philosophy and psychology. So you
know that he was, he is not so far, he is not kind of trained in sociology, he got a degree, a BA
degree in philosophy and psychology at Harvard University.
And 1888, he left Harvard after receiving only BA, and moved to Leipzig, Germany, to study
with psychologist William Wundt, and William Wundt is the father of psychology, you know
that a very, very important figure. So unlike, say, the other scholars who Mead found so far,
unlike Weber, or Marx, or Durkheim who were in the realm of political economy, philosophy
and political theory.
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Here, Mead, a spent lot of his time among psychologists, psychologists and philosophers, so that
is why he is able to look at this society or he is able to look at the interaction between society and
individual through a completely different kind of a perspective. And he joined, he went back
from Leipzig, to the US and joined University of Chicago and taught there until his death on
1931.
And he was an extremely important figure. And it seems quite a lot of his, writings are the
verbatim translations or transcripts of his lectures that used to give at the University of Chicago,
he emerged as an extremely important figure, a person who could promise a very-very
worthwhile examination of sociological analysis from a very distinct for.
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So now, let us try to understand the intellectual background of G H Mead. What were the kind of
intellectual strands or what were the philosophical and theoretical arguments that shaped G H
Mead’s thinking? And, first and foremost, Mead was influenced by utilitarianism, and this we
have discussed, what does utilitarianism mean; especially all the important people in in
economics, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, then in political theory, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy
Bentham.
So what is utilitarianism say? And why that or how that Mead was influenced by utilitarianism?
Utilitarians saw human action as being carried out by self-interested actors seeking to maximize
their utility, or benefit in free and openly competitive marketplace. So, the logic questions, how
do people act, what prompts people to act, what prompt people to act in particular manner.
And utilitarians had very concrete answer for that they argued that it is a self-interest. So, it the
utilitarians looked at human beings as motivated solely by self-interest to achieve certain goals.
And they understood it as this open up competitive market often tended to emphasize indeed, and
to overemphasize the rationality of self-seeking actors. So they looked at human beings as
selfish, as very people with very clear ideas and motivations. And people use rationality to
achieve their goals.
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That is why quite a lot of economists use this particular theory to explain economic behavior.
Because we know that usually, economic behavior is seen as the most irrational behavior, is not
it? You do not bring in other elements like your affection or your emotions and tradition and
other things in the economic activity, where it is seen as on the basis of very precise, specific
rational thinking.
The utilitarian position partially inspired Mead’s view on the human mind as a process of
reflective thought in which alternatives are covertly designated, weighed and rehearsed. So,
while utilitarianism explained human behavior, what was interesting for Mead was the
applicability of this theory to understand this entity called as mind. And you know that these
theoretical arguments; philosophical as well as psychological arguments about what constitutes
mind is very, very fascinating.
We use this term mind very loosely in our conversation, we say that he lost his mind and are you
out of your mind? So, what do we mean by this term mind? Is it, we know that it is not an entity
that exists anyway. So is it a same thing as brain? Is it, has it got a particular structure? Or is it a
kind of a process that that happens? Or what is the connection between the development of mind
and that of society, these are all extremely important questions that are have really fascinated the
scholars from ancient times.
And why utilitarianism became an interesting theoretical platform for Mead because it provide
him with the opportunity to look at the mind as capable of reflection through alternatives. So that
we have the ability to assess or evaluate different options in front of us, is not it? For any, we
take, 1000s of 100s of decisions in our everyday life. Not maybe very major decisions, but every
decision, what kind of dress we are supposed to wear? What do we cook today? Or which hotel
do we go for food today? Or whom do we invite for a party at home?
Starting from this kind of very mundane, everyday examples, our mind actively takes 100s of
1000s of decisions every day. And Mead argued that this ability to use, the ability of the mind to
weigh in different options, to evaluate different options and then finally reach the most suitable
one. And whether the most suitable one is it the most rational one is a different question.
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We know that human beings, we do not really go by all the typical rational explanation, even if
something is appears rationally correct, we might not opt for that, because there could be more
important emotional or cultural reasons for certain things. But for Mead, this was something very
important, he understood mind as capable of looking at various options, evaluating their pros and
cons and then take something and then choose something as their final option.
And then second, important stand of influence or stand of theory, intellectual engagement that
influenced Mead was Darwinism. We have discussed it when we discussed Herbert Spencer.
Mead use the theory of evolution as a broad metaphor to understand, for understanding the
process by which the unique capacities of humans emerge. This theory of evolution was
something so influential for every scholars of that particular time and more so in the case with G
H Mead.
Mead believed all animals including humans must seek to adapt and adjust to an environment
okay, because evolution we understand is not only things that happened in your body, in your in
your physical body, because of some mutations in the genes, but it is also heavily influenced by
our adaptation with the changing environment. And that is a scientific theory which has been
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proven that organisms both animals and plants and human beings, we adapt our body transforms
on by trying to constantly adapt with the kind of environment.
Hence, many of the attributes that organisms reveal are the products of efforts to adapt a
particular environment. Mead borrowed from Darwinian theory, the metaphor of adaptation or
adjustment as the key force shaping, sorry, there is a gap here, shaping the nature of humans. So,
he understood human beings as extremely capable of evolving depending upon the situation, it is
not that human beings are produced in a particular way, they are always designed and then
crafted according to certain laws and which they do not change.
So, interactionism has a very, very fluid understanding of society, unlike many of the
philosophers for example, like Simmel or Comte, who wanted to create social laws, which are
timeless. Interactions do not believe in any of such kind of stuff. So, they understood human
beings as capable of evolving, capable of adapting with the environment and then changing the
situation.
The third important intellectual orientation was pragmatism. Pragmatism was primarily
concerned with the process of thinking and how it influences the action of individuals and vice
versa. Pragmatists became concerned with symbols, language and rational thinking, as well as
with the way humans mental capacities influence actions of the world. Mead accepted the
metaphor that thought and action involve efforts to adjust and adapt to the environment.
He embraced the notion of such adaptation is a continuous process of experimental verification

of thought and action. So, he understand, he accepts these arguments of pragmatists who argued
that human beings use their faculties, use their rationality, use their culture, use various kinds of
resources at their disposal of for adapting themselves with the society. So, so, this provides you
with the picture of human beings are being extremely creative, human beings are being
extremely imaginative, creative, in terms of adjusting with the society and then moving behind.
So, that these observations offer very important insights about the capabilities of human beings
as a particular species, a particular species endowed with the high amount of intelligence and
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endowed with this ability to interact with others and develop highly sophisticated mind and a
highly sophisticated sense of collectivity. And, that sense of collectivity enable them to adapt
with very challenging circumstances and then evolve successfully.
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And the third one, sorry, the fourth one, I think number would be wrong. The fourth point is
behaviorism, especially experiments of Russian psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov that this as
well really influenced behaviors. So, what does behaviorism? Behaviorism is basically used by
this psychologist to explain why we also behave just like animals on the basis of stimulus and
response.
We know you have learned a lot, you have heard a lot of stories about how we treat animals,
especially dogs, they have done a lot of experiments for example, when you, at the time of
feeding a dog, you make a particular sound and so that the dog gets to listen to the sound
whenever he is fed. And after some time, even without the food, when he listens to that sound, he
immediately, the dog immediately thinks about the food at that begins to salivate.
So, these experiments try to understand how human thinking is linked with certain kind of
stimulus. So, how different animals or different species respond to the stimulus and then produce
different kind of response, a kind of a stimulus response paradigm. And, but the problem with
behaviorism is that it tends to be very restrictive, it does not give of so much of possibility, so
much of space for the, in the animals or the individual to behave differently, it is a cause and
effect kind of a relationship.
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So, Mead rejected extreme behaviorism, but accepted its general principle. Behaviors are learned
as a result of gratification as associated with them, a gratification associated with them. This is
an extremely important, lesson, while Mead disagreed with extreme form of, because if you
think that human beings are just like animals who behave to a given stimulus, then it really fails
to explain why there is so much of diversity in the way in which people react to certain stimulus.
If you are afraid, then we the way in which we behave are very different, or to a situation of
threat or to love or to certain sexual stimulus. So, people behave very differently to different
situations. So, but for Mead, what was important was that behaviors are learned as the result of
gratification associated with them.
So, you, the possibility of gratification, the possibility of satisfying your needs is an extremely
important factor which influence your behavior. Most important, some of the most distinctive
behaviors of humans are covert, involving thinking, reflection and self awareness. So unlike
animals who, who do not really think too much before acting, many of our behaviors are, they
are covert, they are hidden, they are not expressed openly, we know that in our everyday life, is
not it?
The kind of thinking that come through our mind when we sit in front of somebody, and
sometimes we conceal that we never open up, we never we many times we put up an artificial
face, many times we openly blatantly lie in front of the people. So, even when we state
something to the people, we might be thinking of the exactly opposite thing. So, we are able to
think covertly involve thinking reflection and self-affair awareness.
Mead postulated what some have called as a social behaviorism. From this perspective, both
covert and overt behaviors are to be understood through their capacity to produce adjustment to
society. Because, see, for a typical animal behaviorist like Petrovich Pavlov, they conducted
experiments on the animals, and then they observed the way in which animal, behave.
And you because you cannot communicate with the animal, you cannot really think what is
going through this animal's mind. Whereas Mead wanted to create a kind of a social
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behaviorism, which involves both the covert thinking as well as the overt actions, because we
generally do that, we think, and then, on the basis of this thinking, we act overtly.
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Then the most important influence was from William Wundt, the father of psychology, who
really, who was under whose influence Mead spent time at University of Leipzig, his views on
gestures. So how gestures are important, how gestures represent a kind of a symbolic meaning
and how this is understood why gestures have the ability to communicate with a large section of
people, and those arguments were extremely influential.
And then William James and pragmatism, the mind as a process and not as an entity. It is
something very, very important, whether mind is an entity, is it a structure? Or is it a process? It
is something very, very important question. Is mind a structure or is it a process? Or is it both?
What do you think? Is mind a process? Or is mind a structure? Or is it a combination of both?
Now, the only thing with psychology has a right to postulate at the outset, is the fact of thinking
in itself, thinking itself and that must be taken up and then analyzed. So what is this process of
thinking? So when you say that the thinking is a psychological process, it is an activity that
happens within your brain. What does it mean? What does it mean? What are the kind of various
other factors involved in it? What do we mean by when we say that it is thinking and how do
mind think by taking by interacting with the ideas from the outside world?
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Yet another important influence on G H Mead is Charles Horton Cooley yet another American
sociologist, sociologist as well a psychologist, whose key ideas include a number of very, very
important arguments and especially his argument about this looking Glass self-theory has been
extremely important. So, Cooley's arguments include one; society is constructed from a
reciprocal interaction, society is not an entity out there but it is a constructed through reciprocal
interaction and here you will see some kind of a of a resonance with the Durkheimian argument
about society when people come together, when they interact and that interaction itself goes to a
next level, goes to a much higher level and it is constructed through a reciprocal interaction. An
interaction occurs through the exchange of gestures.
So, now, what does interaction mean that is the focal point of this scholars who belong to this
interactionist school, you know that almost every scholars including Tony’s and Weber and
Durkheim argued that societies made possible through interaction, but these people they focus on
the question, what is the meaning of interaction, how is interaction made possible? Or what
transpires when we say that people interact with each other? And what are the different forms of
interaction.
Especially when human beings have the language, a highly developed sophisticated medium of
communication at their disposal. What is the role played by verbal communication? What is the
role played by a written communication? And more importantly, what is the role played by
gestures; hand gestures, face gestures? And more broadly or more theoretically, what is the role
of the symbols? Because each of these things, whether it is a written communication or oral or
gestures, these are all symbols, symbol that it stands for something else.
A symbol stands for something else, it only conveys a particular meaning, a traffic signal, a red
light; a red light only emits light in red color, but it conveys a meaning, it conveys at least in a
modern society it conveys a universal meaning of danger or stop, whereas, this particular red
light does not, will not convey any meaning to people who are not exposed to this modern world,
it does not convey anything to a isolated tribe people, they only look at it as something very, very
interesting a different color which they may not have seen.
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So, the whole question of a particular symbol having a particular meaning and the fact that it is
understood evenly, it is understood equally by everybody, including the person who intended as
well as the person who is supposed to be the recipient, these are extremely important point. And
so, interaction occurs through the exchange of gestures and self is created from and allows the
maintenance of patterned of, pattern social organization.
So, this is an extremely important point, what constitutes self? What constitutes self, what is the
meaning of a self? And Mead has very fascinating analysis, which we will discuss, he makes a
distinction between I and me, very, very fascinating discussion. But when we say that, I do not
want something, you say that you are talking about you as a person, is not it? There is a very
concrete, a crystallized idea of you as a particular person.
And how did this particular entity come into being, how was that shaped, how was that
constructed, what is the process involved in it? And we know that a child does not have a sense
of self, a small child, a toddler he never sense of self, and it actually grows, as a person grows
this sense of self gets formulated, and that is an extremely interesting process that these people
were interested in.
So, self is created from and allow the maintenance of patterns of social organization and fourth
point social organization is possible by virtue of people's attachment to groups that link them to
the larger institutions of society. So, social organization is possible by virtue of people's
attachment to groups that lead them to the larger institutions of society. So the connection
between an individual, his immediate groups and with that of the larger institutions of society,
and how that helps that shape the mind, that shapes the concept of self.
These are extremely important arguments by put forward by C H Cooley. And these arguments
definitely shaped Mead's thinking as well. And one of the very interesting theory about have C H
Cooley's Looking Glass Self Theory, which argues that you, without other you simply have no
concept of yourself, without other you simply have no concept of yourself. Is it very difficult to
understand? Because we think, whenever we think about we, we believe that we are only looking
invert.
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But Cooley will not agree with that, just like you, when you stand in front of a mirror and by
looking at the mirror, you get an impression about how you look, how handsome you are or how
smart you are, Cooley argued that the similar thing happens in your formulation of the self, but
here instead of the mirror or instead of the glass, it is the others, the others reflect you, you look
at the others in order to create a impression about yourself; Looking Glass Self Theory.
So you gauge others interpretation, others action towards you and then on the basis of others
action, others response, others attitude towards you, you create a kind of an image about that,
Looking Glass Self Theory, very, very interesting argument. And I am not going into the details,
but those who are interested you can look into that it is a very, very fascinating theoretical
argument.
John Dewy and arguments about pragmatism, pragmatism is guided by the metaphor of the
creative solution of problems by an experimenting intelligence, rather than the idea that people's
conduct and beliefs are determined by static, objective criteria, such as their class position or the
collective conscience.
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And here you will come the kind of a, you will come to know the kind of difference between
arguments of C H Mead and that of a person like Emile Durkin. So pragmatism is guided by the
metaphor of the creative solution of problems by an experimenting intelligence. This
interactionism has enormous faith on the creativity and potential of people. It thinks that human
beings have the unique ability to find solutions somehow, they are very creative, they are very
creative, they are very, very capable of overcoming hurdles, they are not the puppets who act on
the basis of certain larger social structures.
Whereas Durkheim would argue that, Durkheim would argue that human beings have very little
freedom or agency or onto themselves, they are entities who simply act as the basis of social
facts. That is, I hope you remember, that is what when he talks about collective conscience, when
he talks about social facts as having coercive impact on people.
But here, pragmatism would argue that, rather than the idea that people's conduct and beliefs are
determined by static, objective criteria, such as their class position or the collective conscience,
they are able to move differently, they are able to actively construct and create their own life. So,
humans are unique by virtue of their behavioral capacities for mind and self.
Conversely, mind and self emerged from the gestural interaction in society, once they emerge,
however, mind and still make it distinctive form of digital gestural interaction and an entirely
revolutionary creation, symbolically regulated patterns of social organization. So on the basis of
all these influences, now we are coming to the core of Mead’s argument, Mead proposes that
humans are unique by virtue of their behavioral capacities of mind and self.
Conversely, mind and self-emerged from the gestural interaction in society. So, unlike a typical
sociologist Mead wants to identify, wants to argue that mind and self are the products of social
interaction. So by using all these arguments or being influenced by all these intellectual
traditions or intellectual arguments, Mead formulates his own arguments about the relation
between mind, self and society.
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So he argues, so he postulates that humans are unique by virtue of their behavioral capacities of
mind, and self. Conversely, mind and self, emerge from gestural interaction in society. So this is
his very important argument, it is not that you have a mind and then not the basis of this mind
you get into this gestural action. It is not that from the understanding that you begin to act in
certain ways, it is the other way around.
Once they emerge, however mind and self, make a distinctive form of gestural interaction and an
entirely revolutionary creation. So this mind and self is the one which actually it leads to
symbolically regulated patterns of social organization. So, it is a very interesting argument that
from the mind and the self, it leads to a kind of a patterned forms of symbolically regulated
pattern of social organization or otherwise society. So Mead has a very important connection
between mind, self and society, and that is what we are going to discuss in the coming classes.
Thank you.
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Lecture 51
Mead on Self
Welcome back to the class. Let us continue our discussion on Mead. In the previous class, we
discussed Mead’s arguments about mind and we saw that in complete disagreement with both,
behaviorists as well as with psychologists. Mead argues for an understanding of a mind, which is
seen as a process, which is seen as a, as emerging from social interaction. So, for Mead,
emergence of a mind in the absence of society is impossible. So that is an extremely important
argument that we discussed in the previous class.
For Mead, these concepts of self as well as mind, they do not, they are not kind of completely cut
off from the rest of the society, rather they emerge as a product of human interaction. And we
had a discussion about his conception about mind. Mind, he understands it as a process, not as an
entity. And he argues that when a child is born, the mind is not developed and the development
of the mind takes place in different phases. And he has something more exciting to say about a
self and in this class, we are going to discuss, we are going to look at what are Mead’s arguments
about the concept of self.
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Again, you know that this term, self is used very, very we use it quite casually all the time; we
talk about ourselves, yourself, your self-consciousness; your, a host of occasions we use the term
self. But what is the sociological understanding or what is an understanding of self that emerges
from an interactionist perspective?
So Mead again, emphasizes on the social nature of self. I repeated it several times that for Mead,
both, self as well as mind are the products of social interaction. As a social behaviorist, Mead
emphasized that the capacity to view oneself as an object in the field of experience is a type of
learned behavior. This behavior is learned through interaction with others.
So, the capacity to view oneself as an object; we, I mentioned it in the previous class that
sometimes we congratulate ourselves, is not it? Sometimes we feel so angry at ourselves,
sometimes we feel so pity about ourselves, is not it? So, when you talk about yourself to a third
person, to somebody else, so you are actually evaluating yourself, you are, you are speaking as if
you are able to see yourself as an another person and then you are describing that.
When you say that okay, I felt so sorry then; you are describing a person as if you are not the
person whom you are talking about, just you are able to describe yourself, the way you describe
any other object. And that is why he says that you can, oneself as an object in the field of
experience, and it is a type of a learned behavior, it does not come automatically.
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In the case of this wolf, children whom we discussed the other day; that the children who are
reared by a pack of wolves, these children do not have the ability to or talk about themselves,
because, for that wolf child, the immediate members around its society are wolves, who do not
interact with it in a given sense.
So you talk about this field of experience as a type of learned behavior. This behavior is learned
through interaction with others. So this is again a quotation from, quote from Mead, let us read it.
“The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there at birth, but arises in the
process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as the result of
his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process”.
So it is as is emphatically arguing that this notion of self does not arise automatically, rather it
emerges only through the process of social interaction. And self emerges from the capacity to use
language and to take the role of the other. We discussed that this point yesterday, in the previous
class, when we discussed about the ability of human beings to use significant symbols, and
especially language is the most important one and the ability to take the role of the other.
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Mead viewed the social self as emerging from a process in which individuals read the gestures of
others or take their attitudes and derive an image of pictures of themselves as a certain type of
object in a situation. This image of oneself then acts as a behavioral stimulus, calling out certain
responses in the individual.
So Mead views, viewed the social self as emerging from a process in which individuals read the
gestures of others, or take their attitude, and derive an image or pictures of themselves as certain
type of object in a situation. And this is the most crucial argument that he talks about. We
mentioned C. H. Cooley's Looking-Glass Self theory, and Mead is saying almost something
similar to that.
So he is saying that when you develop an idea about self; who are you, if you were to answer this
question; who are you, what kind of person are you? And we tend to answer this question not
solely by looking at ourselves, rather we look at others and then try to understand how they
perceive us. Or in other words, we see our own reflection in others, and then we try to
understand that.
So he view self as emerging from a process in which individuals read the gestures of others or
take their attitude. You look at the other person, the other person could be your partner, it could
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be a teacher, it could be your friends, it could be your neighbors, it could be your colleagues, and
these are the people who really matter to you in your everyday interaction.
You look at them, and then on the basis of their reaction, you tend to create an image for yourself
and derive an image or picture of themselves as a certain type of object in a situation. This image
of oneself then acts as a behavioral stimulus, calling out certain responses in the individual. So
you get a crystallized idea about who you are. And again, I repeat, this crystallized idea of who
you are is derived from the response of the others. So let us read again Mead, it is Mead’s own
writing.
“The individual experiences himself, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular
standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized
standpoint of the social groups as a whole to which he belongs. And he becomes an object to
himself only by taking the attitudes of other individuals towards him within a social environment
or the context of experience and behavior in which both he and they are involved.
So, you are tend to create a sense of yourself by evaluating the response of others towards you,
and who are these people? It could be your classmates, it could be your neighbors, it could be
your family members, it could be your teachers, it could be your parents, people whom you,
people who, really matter to you; the significant other. Not anybody, not somebody who just who
is a stranger to you that hardly matters.
But for an individual, especially when the child grows up, there is a very interesting concept
called as this significant other. Who are the significant other? Significant other are the people
whom we consider as simply as significant, as important. And these people play a very important
role in we formulating an idea about ourselves. So this, their significance is not only because
they are significant, but we derive an impression about ourselves, we derive an understanding
about ourselves by looking at their reaction towards us.
So that is why when as a teacher, you get an impression that okay, you are you are a popular
teacher, or you are not a popular teacher. As a child, as a son, how does your family takes, looks
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at you, you derive that kind of a sense. So, and this is possible only when you as well as your
immediate others, your significant others share the same social environment.
They must share the same social environment, their ideas must be similar, their social milieu
must be same, their cultural and social value systems must be same, must be at least similar, only
then or in other words, there must be some kind of a compatibility in terms of the roles and
expectations, only then, you are able to derive that.
Now, Mead gets into this whole notion of structures of self. Mead appeared to us the notion of
self in two different ways. One usage involves viewing self as a transitory image of oneself as an
object of a particular situation. Self, he uses two very interesting, in two different interesting
ways. One as an object, as something which has a kind of an essence as a trans, though it is
transitory image, as a kind of an image.
Second one, in contrast with this conceptualization, Mead also viewed self as a structure or a
configuration of typical habitual meaning towards self that people carry to all situations. So one
is a kind of a transitory image, it is an image in transition, it is nothing concrete about it; nothing,
essentialistic about it. It is a kind of a, you evolve, it is an image, which is always in flux; it is
always in transition, it is a transitory image.
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And the second understanding is more like a structure or a reconfiguration of typical habitual
means toward self that people carry in all situations. For after a self has arisen, it is a certain
sense provides for itself, its social experience. So he talks about after a self has arisen, it in a
certain sense provides for itself a social experience.
So it is also important for us to know that you cannot have a very, very loose and very fluid kind
of self, it is very difficult to live like that, rather you because then, it leads to whole kind of
uncertainty, whole kind of anxiety, you do not know who you are, you do not know what are
your positions, you do not know what are your priorities, your taste, your ideas; you do not know
what to expect from others. So that is impossible for a person to live.
So Mead argues that, after a self has arisen, it is a certain sense in a sense, provides for itself a
social experience. So you create a kind of a crystallized idea about who you are and that provides
a kind of a experience in itself to understand how you would behave, why that you behave in
such a manner, and all these arguments.
The process of deriving self-images in situation leads over time to the crystallization of a more
permanent trans-institutional set of attitude towards oneself as a certain type of object. So this is
what I mentioned as this crystallized self; this term is very important, a some kind of a solidified
self, some kind of crystallized self. So when you say that somebody is very arrogant, he has an
attitude, so that person has a very strong understanding of self which he is not really ready to
adjust with, or change with.
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Although elementary selves are unified by a complete selves, people who experience a highly
contradictory social environment with disunity in the social process, with disunity in the social
process will also experience difficulty in developing a complete self or a relatively stable and
consistent set of attitudes towards themselves as a certain type of object.
So, people, you know that we have elementary selves, different types of selves, and they evolved
into a kind of a complete self. But for people who experience a highly contradictory social
environment with disunity in the social process will also experience difficulty in developing a
complete self.
And this is something, maybe you can come up with this notion of Anomie of Durkheim, where
there are no clear-cut norms and rules about how one should behave because you do not know
how to behave; there are very, very different kinds of, you are exposed to completely different
kind of social environment; very, very different kinds of social expectations.
You are, at the same time you are a member of a family, then you are a member of a criminal
gang, you are also a student who was supposed to study in a very disciplined place. And the
values that are celebrated in a classroom that your obedience, your silence, your intelligence is
not something that is celebrated in among your, among in a criminal gang; in the family it is
different.
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So in such a situation, this kind of contradictory expectations from different section of people
will also lead to the difficulty in developing a complete self or a relatively stable and consistent
set of attitude towards themselves as a type of object. Some you will have very complicated
personality. You must have seen that people with very complicated set of personality, people
with who are not kind of settled sense of self.
People who are extremely complicated, people who are extremely contradictory in many of their
ideas. So that is why Mead argues that this this kind of a self emerges when somebody is
expected to, is exposed to a social system where there is more or less, a kind of consensus or
stability in terms of what the social norms are.
Meads conceptualization is behavioristic. In that, he viewed seeing oneself as an object as a

behavior unique to humans; we discuss that. Moreover, like other objects in one's environment,
the self is a stimulus to behavior, thus as people develop a consistent view of themselves as a
type of object, that is, as the self reveals a structure, their response to this stable stimulus take on
a consistency.
So once you assume a kind of a more crystallized notion of self, and then that provides you some
kind of an anchoring, what kind of a person; are you a person who will get angry very fast, or are
you a person who has a larger understanding of things so that you do not get angry? When you
drive on the highway, if somebody does something, some other motorists does something, so are
you a person who gets angry very soon, are you a person who is susceptible to this road rages
which can lead to quite a lot of very bad consequence?
Or no, you are a person with a lot of patience, other people have kind of complimented your
personal quality like patience and maturity, then you tend to look at that, you will maybe neglect
that person who is trying to challenge you on the road. You will ignore him, and then you know
that I am not such a person who will fall for your, temptations or your provocations and I know
who I am. So that, it actually leads, it provides a kind of orientation for your own understanding
about yourself.
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Now, a very, very important, a central theme of Mead’s argument about self is his ideas about
the I and the me; extremely important, extremely popular. This is a very important lesson or very
important session, section in the analysis of Mead’s sociology. So although a unified self-
conception lends considerable stability and predictability to overt behaviors, there is always an
element of spontaneity and unpredictably to action. This is inherent in the faces of self which
Mead conceptualizes in terms of the I and the Me.
We know that if we go by the Mead’s argument that everybody has a self and then the self is
very, it is a crystallized self so that you always reflect over other thing, but is it how we behave
or is it how ordinary people behave all the time? If that were the case, then this kind of an animal
instincts or our instinctual behavior that, our extreme emotions like getting anger, getting so
happy at some time, getting so sad at sometimes. So we must have been able to overcome all
these very strong emotions. The animal instinct, sexual emotions, for example, sexual instincts,
for example; sometimes.
But that is not, that is not how it works. So sometimes, even when we say that we are all
civilized, we know how to behave in our own personal lives, we know that there are occasions
where we have acted in a unreflexive one. We did not really think about it, we acted and later we
thought about it. Later, we must have repented that okay, we should not have done that. You lose
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your cool, you lose your temper, or you do something completely unacceptable in other
situations.
You would not have done it and you repent a lot. You realize that why did I do that? You curse
yourself, you get mad at yourself. So that he says is because there is something called as an I in
the self. He makes a very interesting distinction between the I and the me. And the I is the faces
of self which Mead conceptualizes in terms of the I and the me. So let us see what is this I and
the me.
The image that a person derives from his or her behavior in a situation is what Mead terms as
me. The image that a person derives from his or her behavior in a situation is what means Mead
terms the me. As such the me represents the attitudes of others and the broader community as
this influences an individual's retrospective interpretation of his or her behavior.
So whatever we discussed so far as this nature of self is what actually me means. The me is our
generalized impression that we derive from others about us. That is, we look at ourselves as an
object; that we evaluate what others think about us, and then we kind of reconciled with that
image. Whereas the I is the actual emission of behavior. I can only be known in experience
because we must wait for the me imagine to, me images to know just what the I did. People
cannot know until after they have acted I, just how the expectations of me are actually carried
out. So what is this I and me?
I is the unreflective action that we do, it is a kind of a reflexive action. I am using these two
terms reflexive and reflective. Reflexive, I am using as if the kind of reflexes. When somebody
hits you here, the body kind of shudders, that is kind of a reflexive action. The reflective, you
reflect over certain thing. You think about certain things again and again. So the I is that
spontaneous reflexive action. When somebody, you are in a heated argument and then you
suddenly gives a punch to somebody, you lose your cool or you behave in a rather unconscious
way, not a very well thought out action. So that is why the I part of your self becomes evident
only after that it is done.
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And what is being done is evaluated by the me, and then it takes a position, whether it is good to
appreciate or to criticize, to curse, or to rebuke; whatever be that me does it later but the I is the
kind of this animalistic instinct, the kind of unreflexive things that we do. It need not to be
negative all the time. It need not be negative all the time. It could be positive as well but it is
kind of a very the actual emission of behavior without much of a reflection.
People act, they view themselves as objects. They assess the consequences of their action. They
interpret others reactions to their action, and they resolve how to act next. Then they act again
calling forth how self-image of their actions. This is what exactly what we do, is it not? We,
when we sit with somebody else, we talk something, we very carefully assess their both verbal as
well as nonverbal communication. There are very interesting theories that people mostly go over
your nonverbal communication rather than your verbal, which I do not know whether it is correct
or not.
So but we constantly evaluate the other person, especially if that person is whom you do not
know much. If you are meeting for the first time or if you are not, if you do not know him for a
long time, then you are even more conscious, you are even more cautious to understand how the
other person thinks, what he must be thinking, his or her facial expressions, the gestures, the kind
of words that they use, and then that actually further stimulates your own actions.
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So people act, they view themselves as objects, they assess the consequences of their action, they
interpret other’s reaction to their action, and they resort how to act next. Then they act again
calling forth new self-images of their action. So Mead left room for spontaneity in human action.
So that is what I mentioned earlier, if this I, the component of I, were missing human action then
we all would have been extremely matured, extremely some people like who are programmed
people, who would, people always think after, people who would behave after so much of
thinking, but it did not take place. Mead left room for spontaneity in human action.
If the I can be known only in experience or through the me, one’s action are never completely
circumscribed, or nor are actions wholly predictable, that is, that is the most important point. So
there is always a tussle between the me and I. The I acts on the basis of instincts, I is highly
unpredictable, it is something like it is uncircumscribed, it is something which is not completely
contained, it is not a process of your reflection. Whereas the me is more settled, it is evaluative,
other thing.
So that is why there is some kind of a spontaneity. That is why a human being, there is some
amount of spontaneity in our life. We sometimes, we do certain kind of out of impulses, it could
be violent, it could be nonviolent, anything whatever be that. But that element of unpredictable
impulse is something what is important according to Mead.
It gave Mead a way of visualizing the process of self-control; how does one control oneself. So
the I and the me phases of self gave me the way to re-conceptualize variations in the extent to
which the expectations of others and the broader community constrain action. So you know that
the me is always trying to evaluate your actions on the basis of what is expected from the others.
And you know these expectations could vary significantly in a community where violence is
very much appreciated, where violence is very much appreciated, and encouraged. Then the
mean will be always ask you, push you to engage in violence, I am not saying that me is always
peaceful. This me could be extremely violent, if you are living in a society, community where
violence is encouraged and appreciated then the me would always want you to be violent.
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Then not engaging in violence could be an act of I, you are afraid, you are so scared. Then the
me would ask you to be courageous and then unleash violence. So this idea that the I and me face
of self gave Mead a way to conceptualize variations in the extent to which the expectations of
others and the broader community constrained action.
So what are the things that we do in our every day? We know that in most of the time 90 percent
or 99 percent of the time, we do things that are expected of us by others. We know what are the
things that we are supposed to do in the classroom, at your house, in the marketplace, in a bus, in
a train, in a public rally; we know, what are the things that are expected of you, and the me is
there always as somebody who is owns, who is trying to take control over you, somebody who is
trying to observe you.
So, Mead then comes to this interesting question about the genesis of self, something similar to
the genesis of mind, Mead also is talking about the genesis of self. For the self to develop, a
human infant must acquire the capacity to use significant symbols, we discussed this in the
previous class.
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When a child is born, it only cries or it is only able to, it only knows how to cry. It does not know
whether, when it cries whether it will get milk, nothing is known, it only cries. And after some
time, the child realizes that when it cries, it is taken care of or when somebody, when there is
nobody around the child, the child will begin to cry.
Maybe initially, without any understanding but later, the child understands that when it cries,
other people will come. So without, and later, this significant symbols reaches much more
complexity and it uses a lot of gestures, it uses a lot of language; maybe small words initially and
then sentences, and of course, as the child grows up, it uses quite a lot of complex languages.
So without this ability, it is not possible to role-take with others and thereby develop an image of
oneself by interpreting the gestures of others. This already be repeated, we discuss this a
repetition. So we use complicated language and this complicated language is able to send out a
common meaning, set of meaning that is understood uniformly by others. It is not only to one
single person but uniformly understood by everybody.
The use of significant symbols, the ability to role-take, and the behavioral capacities of mind are
all preconditions for the development of self, particularly a more stable self-conception or
unified self. So this ability to use significant symbols or language, then ability to role-take, and
the behavioral capacity of mind are, they are all precondition. Unless, until you have all these
things in place, you cannot have a self.
Mead visualized self as developing in three stages, each marked by an increased capacity to role-
take with a wider audience of others. So this again, a very important contribution of Mead, he
talks about play, the game, and then this a significant others. So he says that in there are three
stages, and these three stages, the complexity increases, and along with the growth of the child,
and these complex stages are very important phases through which a child develops a concrete
sense of self.
So the first stage is play, which is marked by a very limited capacity to role-take. A child can
assume the perspective of one, only one, or two others at a time. Very simple kind of play that
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we can play with infants or we can play with toddlers. You push, you throw a ball, the child also
throws the ball back, and the child knows that he or she supposed to throw the ball back at you.
Or it does a particular activity, it also might expect you to do the same. So the child understands
what he or she supposed to do, the child also understands you also supposed to do that.
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And the second stage is what Mead refers to as the game in which individuals can role-take with
multiple others at the same time. So when it comes to a game, you are supposed to, at the same
time, you will be able to occupy the roles of different people, you will be able to play the roles of
people in different positions.
For example, the example that Mead gave us about something like a football game. A player, a
good player must be able to play at different positions in a game. If a goalkeeper or a central
forward, or a defender, or a winger. So, on depending upon the requirements, a person must be
able to take different positions and then play according. So here the ability is not only to
understand what you are supposed to do, but then what you are not supposed to do when you
assume another's role or another person's role. You must be able to identify what are roles played
by others and then act accordingly.
And children begin to see themselves as objects in an organized field and they begin to control
and regulate others people's responses to themselves, and to others in order to facilitate the
coordination of activities. So this is what when you talk about the game, children begin to see
themselves as objects in an organized field. And they begin to control and regulate other people's
response to themselves, and to others in order to facilitate a coordination of the activity.
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In both, play and game situations, individuals view themselves in relation to specific others. In a,
in the time of game as well as in the time of play, they are talking about the specific others;
whose role are you taking? By role-taking with specific others lodged in particular roles,
individuals derive images of themselves from the viewpoint of these others.
So when, for example, when a child takes the role of a mother, the child understands that what is
the role of a mother; what that particular mother, his, the child's mother is expected to do. Or
what does that particular mother does, the child tries to imitate that. That is a time when you see
a child is imitating a father or imitating a mother. And here, but this imitation is only restricted to
that particular role.
And the third stage is, according to Mead, third stage is the role-taking with the generalized
other. He saw the generalized other as a community of attitudes among members of an ongoing
social collective. When individuals can view themselves in relation to this community of
attitudes and then adjust their conduct in accordance with the expectations of these attitudes, they
have reached the third stage in the development of self. They can now role-take with the
generalized other.
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So this is the most important aspect when he talks about a generalized other. So generalized
other is not one particular person or the other particular person but a people in general, and it is a
community of attitudes towards you. How should you dress up? For a boy or for a girl, what
constitutes this decent dressing? What constitutes this decent dressing? It is a very interesting
example.
You know, this decent dressing has very different connotations in different places, very different
connotations. Or very, people with a lot of discipline, how do you display discipline in a public
place? How do you display obedience in a public place? How do you appear to be a well-
behaved boy, a well-behaved girl? How are you supposed to appear like a well-behaved girl?
Are you expected to laugh out loudly? Are you expected to sit in different positions with cross-
legged? Is it a symbol of a disciplined girl or a disciplined boy? What kind of dresses are we
supposed to wear? Can we wear too revealing dresses and then in a place where you are
supposed to be seen as a well-mannered, disciplined, and traditional in that sense?
So we know that we are responding to, in such situations we behave in particular expected way.
We know that we are behaving not towards a particular person, we are not really afraid of, say,
one elderly man who might ask you why are you wearing such short dress; we are not
responding to that particular person, but we assume that there is a general attitude in that
particular situation, that particular context which expects you to dress up in a particular manner
or behave in a particular manner.
Not to laugh out, not talk very loudly or to show certain kinds of gestures of respect, and other
thing. So this is the most important face what Mead argues is that when person understands what
is expected of these generalized others and that he says is that is the pinnacle, it is the complete
form of behavior.
So it is not what one understands what one is supposed to do, it is not that what one understands,
what one or two other people supposed to do, but you understand how there is a general attitude,
a community of attitude and how you are supposed to respond to that. So they can now role-take
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with the generalized other. Without the capacity to view oneself as an object in relation to
generalized other, behavior could only be situation-specific.
And children will find it very difficult to adapt and adjust with different situations, especially
when fast-changing scenarios. Children without this ability will be able to behave “properly” in
their own family, but once they are taken out in a different setting, they will be completely
perplexed. So the capacity to take the role of multiple and diverse generalized others from the
perspective of a small group or to that of an entire society, enables individuals to engage in the
process of self-evaluation, self-criticism, and self-control from the perspective of what Mead
termed the society.
So we are, from the mind, through the self we have reached the concept of society. So the
capacity to take the role of multiple and diverse generalized others, when you go out for a picnic
or when you go out for a just to go to the to the town, go to the market, how do you dress up?
How do you dress up?
This you know is you, every day we do it very unconsciously. But we do it unconsciously, but by
then, it has already crystallized. We know that we are supposed to be seen in certain manner, we
are supposed to be seen in certain manner. And in whole lot of example, I do not think that I
need to give you examples. So we are supposed to be seen in certain manner and that ability
something extremely important.
From the perspective of a small group of people to that of an entire society, enables individuals
to engage in the process of self-evaluation, self-criticism, and self-control from the perspective
of what Mead terms as the society. So this society is the larger generalized other. And so, by
now, I think it is clear for you that Mead is arguing vehemently that without this generalized
other, without this community of attitude, you cannot really form a self. And without a clear self,
you cannot form a clear mind.
So that is the beauty of his argument about his mind, self, and society, which all revolve around
this idea of social interaction. How the individual mind interact with others and with the larger
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society and how they mutually constitute? So this argument, Mead’s argument about society, we
will take up in the coming class. So see you for the next class. Thank you.
.
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Lecture - 52
Mead on Society
Welcome back to the class, and today is the concluding session on Mead, G.H. Mead. And in the
previous classes, we discussed Mead’s argument about mind and self. And in today's class, we
will discuss this argument about society. So, one of the most prominent points about Mead that
we discussed throughout the previous classes is that he understands the self and the mind as the
products of social interaction. So, for Mead, there is no possibility of the development of a mind
or a self in the absence of a society.
So unlike quite a lot of other sociologists who took this social interaction for granted and then
went on to understand social structure, social change, and other things, a host of sociologists
including see it for G.H Mead and C.H. Cooley and others are focused on the micro spaces, on
the micro spaces, microsites of sociological analysis and then try to understand how human
beings evolved as a species, as an individual.
Both this ability to communicate with each other and then develop a complicated entity or
process called us mind and something called as a self. We had elaborate discussion on that in the
previous class. So, he understands self as comprising of both the I and the me. And the I is the
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impulsive act, which can only be seen after the action is being commissioned. Or the me is the
kind of a you know, reflective self which try to evaluate the action.
So that provided me with the possibility to bring in spontaneity to human action. Human beings
do not really behave in a well-programmed, in a well-programmed manner. They could be quite
unpredictable many times, they could be quite you know, spontaneous many times.
So, Mead was able to bring in this element of spontaneity by bringing in this element of I in his
understanding of self. Now, let us understand how he defines his concept of society. Because I
hope you remember in the previous class, he argued that the development of self takes place in
stages through the play and the game and through the generalized other.
So, when and these three stages are in hierarchical manner in terms of its increasing complexity.
So. in the third stage when we talk about the generalized other, an individual is able to
understand a picture of a generalized other. I gave you a few of example, quite a few examples in
the previous class. So that process, Mead argues, without the ability to understand, envision that
generalized other, without that process, a person cannot simply have this idea of a self.
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So now, let us come to this point. Now, Mead emphasizes this behavioral basis of society; why
that, how is that society has a very strong behavioral basis Mead saw several ways in which self
provides the, for the integration of behavior into society. So here, it is very important when you
are trying to understand how human behavior constitutes the basis of society.
When you talk about social society as nothing but it is a set of interaction or it is a set of action,
Mead very strongly believe that this action needs to be understood as a set of behaviors. But
again, not a behavior as in the case of a pack of animals, a pack of wild dogs, or a pack of lions;
it is not like that, but rather human beings have been able to create society as an extremely
complicated set of behavior.
So, it is an provides for the integration of behavior into society. First, the capacity to see oneself
as an object in a field of objects, allow individuals to see themselves in relation to other
individual. So, this we discussed earlier. We are able to identify, we are able to look at ourselves
from a distance; the way we look at your friend A, B, or C, we are able to look at ourselves.
And we can actually visualize our self may be sitting in a meeting and then participating in a
discussion and how we perform, how we act, how we speak, what did we speak, how did we
react. Or in a particular situation of friction or how did we shout at somebody or in a scene of
violence, how did we involve in violence or how did we try other people not involved in
violence. So, we can visualize ourselves as well as we can visualize others simultaneously. And
this is an extremely important point. So, objects allow individuals to see themselves in relation to
other individuals.
Second, the emergence of a unified and complete self or a stable self-conception means that the
individuals consistently placed on to their perpetual field a view of themselves as a certain type
of object with more consistency. And this is extremely important.
When a group of people come into picture into a particular context with a particular place, and if
all these people have a sense of a crystallized sense, a crystallized self that they know what kind
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of people they are, how they are supposed to behave, what are their positions, what are their level
of understanding, their maturity, how are they supposed to behave.
And then, when a group of such kind of people come into a place, then that place gets certain
kind of a consistency. So, it gets certain kind of consistency because nobody behaves in a
completely unpredictable way, especially if, more so, if all these people are coming from a
similar socio-cultural milieu.
Why am I saying that all these people are coming from a similar socio-cultural milieu? Because
this socio-cultural milieu is the one which actually provide them with the reference points, which
actually tell them that how to expect, what to expect, how to behave, and how not to behave,
what not to expect.
So, these people who come from a similar socio-cultural milieu would have internalized these
norms, they would have developed this sense of a generalized other, they would have developed
a more crystallized sense of self and once they come into a particular situation, it gets, it
becomes more solid, it becomes more consistent. There is a sense of consistency and people will
not people, we will note or people do not need to behave in completely erratic or completely
unexpected manner, things are more ordered.
The consequence for society for these self-related processes is that as people's action take on
consistency from situation to situation or from time to time in the same situation, their behaviors
become predictable, thereby making it easier for individuals to adjust to and cooperate with one
another.
So when, because we know that this expect is, want to expect. When you move to a particular
place, you need to have some idea about what to expect, how to behave, otherwise, you will be
completely nervous. You know, this happens, especially when you travel to some unknown
place. When you travel alone to a completely different culture, you do not know how to behave;
a completely alien culture. You are completely in a very difficult situation.
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On the other hand, you go to a courtroom, you know how to behave; you go to a classroom, you
know how to behave; you walk into hospital, you know how to behave; you walk into a public
transport system, you know how to behave. And you know how to behave is also an expectations
about how others will behave.
How? So that is all, you know it is all the complicated stories about the role-taking; what is
expected, what is not expected. So that provides a sense of consistency, it offers like a sense of
predictability. And in the absence of this predictability, everyday life can become extremely
difficult.
You know, you are suddenly, one fine morning, you wake up and you do not know how to
behave in a class. If that memory is completely gone. You walk into a class, when everybody
else sits, you do not know how to behave. You do not know what is expected of a student. You
do not know what are you supposed to do, what constitutes, what becomes a good student, or an
ideal student, or a typical student, you have absolutely no clue about.
So, this idea that you can predict other’s actions and you also know how you are supposed to
behave are some of the most important points. So, the behaviors become predictable, thereby
making it easier for individuals to adjust to and cooperate with one another. Especially in terms
of cooperation, when you are striving for a common goal, it becomes extremely important.
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Now, third point is the process of role-taking allows individuals to see themselves not only in
relation to specific others in particular situations but also in relation to various varieties of
generalized others. We discussed the same point; there are varieties of generalized others. So,
when I am walking into a classroom or when I am walking into my place of work, I myself is
more attuned to the generalized other of my student community, the students whom I meet.
Whereas, when I go back to my native place, my generalized other will be more focused towards
my neighbors, my family friends, and my childhood friends, who will have a completely
different understanding about me, I have a completely different set of understanding from them.
So how do you, so every person is expected to play a variety of such kind of things, such kind of
roads. So that is what Mead said that, in this third level, when we talk about the generalized
other, you know that how to behave not only with respect to one person but with respect to a
generalized group of people. We talk about category, so we talk about places. Places of study,
places of leisure place.
You go to a resort and you know, how to behave; you go to a beach site, you know how to
behave; you go to a public swimming pool, you know what to behave, how to behave. To the
degree that all participants are to an interaction, through interaction role-take with the same
generalized other, they will approach and perceive situations within the common meanings, and
they will be prepared to act in terms of the same perspective.
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So, there is a common meaning emerges. Later, we will discuss a notion of intersubjectivity
emerges. When you sit in the classroom, when the class teacher stands there and when the class
goes on, there is a shared understanding among you, your teacher, and your classmates regarding
what exactly is going on there.
What is going on there? It is supposed to be learning-teaching process. You can have different
opinion about that, how far it is effective, whether it is boring, whether it is an exciting class
about pedagogy, you can have difference of opinion but all of you are on the same plane that this
is supposed to be a space of learning and teaching. And the person who is standing in front of
you on that higher, on that elevated platform is supposed to be the person who is supposed to
impart knowledge and you are supposed to be the recipients.
So, there is a common meaning, you share a common meaning. You share a common meaning,
you share a common set of etiquettes, you share a common set of practices. When even if there is
very, a very heated discussions in the class, you do not use certain words, you do not use abusive
words in a classroom. There is certain kind of decorum; there is certain kind of you know, ethics;
certain kind of practices are expected.
So forth, in addition to providing behavioral consistency and individual integration into extended
networks of interaction, self also serves as a vehicle for social change. So, this will be interesting
because unless Mead addresses this personal social change, otherwise it gives an impression that
everybody does the same thing every day so there is no possibility for social change.
The face of self, the I and the me, as Mead termed them, ensure that individual behaviors will, to
some degree, alter the flow of social process. So, if all of us are you know, completely are
integrated with the society, we are all having a self which is in tune with the generalized idea,
then you know that the society will be the same.
But Mead argues that that is not the case, because people are different and this is I, this
uncontrollable impulse, the very unique character of individuals that comes into picture. That
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comes into picture, then that alters the action of somebody. Others react to that, there could be
different people who you know, interpret the whole thing differently. So, that leads to a kind of a
flexibility that leads to some kind of a dynamism and that brings in better change.
So, Mead reaffirmed that patterns of social organization, whatever their form and profile, are
mediated by human behavioral capacities for language, role-taking, mind, and self. So, his
understanding, his argument about the social organization is that whatever be their form and
profile, they are all influenced by behavioral capacities, your ability to use language, your ability
for a role-taking, mind, and self.
Now, society; his third you know, how does Mead explain society? Again, it is a very interesting
argument whether is society an entity out there, or is society a process, or is society both, or a
society in between. These are very, very important questions. Very deeply philosophical
questions, questions that have been discussed and debated from a long time.
So, for Mead, the term society is simply a way of denoting that interactive process can reveal a
stability; no sorry. For Mead, the term society is simply a way of denoting that interactive
processes can reveal stability and that humans act within a framework imposed by stabilizing
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social occasions. The key to understanding society lies in the use of language and the practice of
role-taking by the individual with mind and self.
So, Mead understand society as a process not as a given entity, unlike say, Durkheim. Unlike
Durkheim, who looked at it as a given entity, Mead argues that the term society is simply a way
of denoting that interactive process, denoting that interacting, interactive process can reveal
stability and that humans act within a framework imposed by stabilized social relations.
So, there are stabilized forms, there are kind of broader frameworks under which you are
supposed to you know behave, and I give you several examples. For example, you want to have a
companion, you want to live with a woman or a man and how do you do that in a society? You
want to fulfill your sexual urge, how do you fulfill that?
Because fulfilling a sexual urge is a biological, it is a biological need, how do you do that?
Different cultures have different arrangements for that, either through marriage or through sex
work or through casual sex or through so many different possibilities; different societies have
different forms of fulfilling this particular social need.
And in every society, each of these options are being regulated, they are stabilized, they act
within a framework. There are rules and regulations in every society about sexual mores or about
you know, control; social control. Or about education, or about rearing of the children. So, each
of these fundamental you know, obligations of human, fundamental needs of human beings have
been regulated in a specific manner. So, the key to understanding society lies in the use of
language and the practice of role-taking by individuals with mind that self.
Mead implicitly argue that society as presented to any given individual represents a series of
perspectives or attitudes, which the individual assumes in regulating the behavior. Different set
of others. A very important one, because for an individual, there is no single society there. There
are different set of others with competing ideas, with competing demands.
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When you go to college, your college mates, your gang, your very close set of friends, they
would want you to join them and then you know, miss the class and then go for a movie.
Whereas, that is not what exactly is expected from you by your teachers and by your parents.
Or your political party in which you are a member, they want you to come out on the road and
then participate in the procession, but that is not what is expected from by your parents. Or your
girlfriend or boyfriend who want you to behave in a particular way, but others expect you to
behave different. Or son-in-law and father-in-law. You know, all these, well, starting with family
into office space into every organizations, into bureaucracy and everywhere, you see that there
are multitude of attitudes, generalized attitudes.
There are different set of others and you have always tried to make a, strike a balance between
that. And you know, you do not succeed all the time, nobody succeeds all the time. That is why
people have very difficult life sometimes; very, very, extremely problematic, very you know,
extremely difficult life sometimes. So, an individual learns to live with this different set of
others.
Unlike Durkheim, who so structural unit such as occupational groups as necessary mediators
between the collective conscience and the individual, Mead’s formulation of mind and self
implicitly argues that through the capacity of role-take with multiple and remote others, diversely
located individuals can become integrated into a common social fabric.
So here, you see how the question of social solidarity is brought in, how the question of social
cohesion is brought in. So, Weber talks about how there are structural units like occupational
groups and classes and other things were, which has very strong sense of social solidarity so that
everybody thinks the same way. You bring in a sense of you know, commonality, or sense of a
social cohesion.
But Mead does not think that. Mead says that even if you do not belong to a particular group,
you have the ability, the unique ability to take the role of others, you have the ability to you
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know, to connect with others through the significant symbols and that will lead to a kind of a
integration at a common social fabric.
So unlike Durkheim, who saw structural units such as occupational groups as necessary
mediators between the collective conscience and the individual, Mead formulated the mind and
self implicitly argues that Mead’s formulation, yeah, argues that through the capacity of role-take
with the multiple and remote others, diversely located individuals can become integrated into a
common social fabric.
So, even if you are located differently, your social experiences are different, your cultural
experiences are different, if you have are exposed enough into a complex society, you have the
ability to develop this multiple self and then that ability to move into that.
So, it is a kind of summary. Mead’s view of society is dominated by a concern with the social-
psychological mechanisms by which social structures are integrated. This is an extremely
important point. You know, I have been telling you that this singular question, how is that
society possible? How is that you know, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people are
able to leave more or less peacefully in a society?
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This is a fundamentally interesting question. A very, very extremely central question for
sociologists. And different people have you know, argued is different. So, but Weber argues that,
sorry, Mead’s concern is that the view of society is dominated by a concern with social-
psychological mechanisms by which social structures are integrated. So, Mead was heavily
influenced by psychology, especially social psychology and a host of other things; behaviorism,
you know, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and a host of other things.
So here, he looks at how these mechanisms have an important implication as well as they are
products of social psychological processes, not a mere psychological process. Not something that
originates and then ends within your own mind. Things that are shaped by interaction but it
definitely has a psychological angle as well.
For Mead, society is just a term for the process of role-taking with varieties of specific and
generalized others and the consequent coordination of action made possible by the behavioral
capacities of mind and self. This is the definition of society; very, very interesting society. Sorry,
very interesting definition.
Society is just a term for the process of role-taking with varieties of specific and generalized
others and the consequent coordination of action made possible by the behavioral capacities of
mind and self. By emphasizing the processes underlying social structures, Mead presented a
highly dynamic view of society.
So, for Mead society is made possible only because human beings are able to do this role-taking
with a set of generalized others and that really leads to a coordinated action made possible by the
behavioral capacities of mind and self. So, mind these important, self is important, but they have
developed or they do exist in every day only in tandem with this interaction with others.
So, these others and the ability to interact with them in a consistent intense manner, these two
terms are important; we I hope, you remember, intensity and consistency. Your kind of
interaction must be consistent, it must be regular, it also must be intense. In a very shallow
interaction, you meet only some few people in a life that does not really help. So, he brings in
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this element of consistency and intensity as some important factor for the development of mind
and self. So that is what he kind of describes the society as; this ability, this this particular
feature.
So this, as I told you, this is a very refreshing, a completely different way of understanding
society and the relationship of individual. And this completely goes against the larger you know,
conflict perspective or functional perspective, which do not really focus on the individual. They
talk about the social structure, they talk about the functions, they talk about classes, they talk
about you know, different organizations, but the individual was very, very badly missing. Or the
focus did not you know, play sufficient attention to the whole course; now, what is happening to
the individual. And that is where Mead comes in as an important scholar.
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So, let us have some time, maybe one or two slides to have a critical assessment of Mead. How
do we assess Mead as a sociologist, how do we evaluate him? The strength of Mead’s analysis
resides in his understanding of the relationship is an ongoing pattern of social organization or
society and the behavioral capacities that arise from human needs to adapt to these patterns and
that as a result sustain society.
So, this is the same point that we discussed just before this particular slide, how is society
possible and why is that human beings are able to interact in a society more or less without much
of it difficulty. Most of the time, we think that interaction in a society is easy. People who
otherwise not have any serious issues, they find this interaction quite easy, but Mead argues that
this is made possible only through these complicated processes and especially the behavioral
capacities that arise from human need to adapt to these patterns. And that as a result sustained
society.
So, society is sustained by that, by that set of expectations, that set of regulations, that set of you
know, uniformity, that set of predictability. So, society always stands above the individual in the
sense that it exists before a person is born. And consequently, it is the environment to which
individuals must adjust and adapt.
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This is something which very familiar with. You know, Durkheim says exactly this. You are
born into society, there are social facts how to behave, what to believe, what not to believe, what
to eat; a quite a lot of social are there. And these social are already there when you are born into
society, and that Mead also agrees.
But the second part, without learning conventional gestures and role-taking and without
acquiring the ability to engage minded deliberations or self-reflections and appraisal from the
perspective of society and it is various generalized others, society would not be possible.
So, we know that we are quite familiar with the argument that okay society is there, but how is
that society there? And how does an individual experience that society is the central question, the
central theme that really Mead engages with very beautifully. So, when you say that a person is
born into society, society is coercive, it is outside, it is external, everything is agreed.
But Mead brings in a more interesting question, a more substantial question about how this
society is made possible; how an individual, a child begins to experience that. And this
experience, which is otherwise can be termed as interaction, how this interaction helps in the
development of mind as well as self, and at the same time, how it in an opposite way, how it also
contributes for the development of society.
So, the individual and the society they are not you know, mutually separate entities. They co-
constitute each other, they co-produce each other. And that is an extremely important; that
dynamism is something that is extremely important in Mead’s case. I do not think that Durkheim
would have explained that how individuals contribute to the emergence of society.
Rather, his focus was the other way around, how individuals are kind of a pawns, or they are the
puppets or the hands of society. Whereas Mead and a host of other scholars whom we call as
interactionists, they talk about the people who actively create society, how society is constructed,
how shared meanings are constructed, how inter-subjective planes that can be constructed, how
social fields are constructed. So that way, Mead and his fellow interactions were extremely you
know, important; they are extremely relevant.
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And one of the criticisms is that Mead never deployed a very clear conceptual society or culture.
He saw institutions as ongoing patterns of cooperative behavior and he viewed culture in terms
of various generalized others. So, one of the criticisms is that he did not formulate a clear
conception of what constitutes society or culture. Because, you know, later, theorists or other
theorists have really defined it more significantly. Whereas, Mead’s argument about society,
rather than saying that it is a process, he has not really gone into that. And he viewed culture in
terms of various generalized others.
And his lack of focus on the emotions, one of the most critical aspects of interaction is the
emotional content, and when individuals are role-take engage in minded deliberation or make
self-appraisals, they are being emotional. And yeah, this is something which he does not really
focus on emotion.
Again, which is very closely connected with the very animal you know, characteristic, Need not
be animal, yeah, I think need not be animal. You can have emotions of various kinds which are
not directly connected with your sense of fear or love or lust or other; you can empathize with
others, is not it. Is not by looking at some unknown people's tragedy, you feel so bad about it. Or
you feel very strong sense of commitment for certain cause. There are all extremely emotionally
charged; you feel so highly emotionally charged for the sake of certain ideals, yeah.
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So, when he brings in this institution here, there is another thing. See, most of the scholars who,
including this interactionist, they do not really adequately deal with the question of power.
Unlike, say, Marx or Weber or somebody, they do not really look into how the structures of
power; how the structures of power makes certain people behave in certain way.
And then, without that larger picture, if you keep on looking into these microsites, then you
know, it does not give you the complete picture. The foremost scholar who brought in the micro-
sociology and interactions perspective to the fore.
Yeah. That is the underlying or the most important point of description of Mead, the person who
laid foundation or the person who significantly contributed for the emergence of a particular
school of thought, what we call it as an interactionist school.
I will have, maybe one session about each of these schools in the next class or next week.
Symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict theory; a very brief overview so that those
who are interested can read up further.
But Mead is credited with the, as a scholar who laid foundation for the emergence of this
interactionist perspective, where it is a micro-sociological analysis, it looks at how individuals
engage with each other, and how meaning is produced, the kind of a connection between
individual psychology, social psychology, behaviorism, and the construction of society.
So with this, we are winding up Mead. And we will meet you in the next class with a couple of
more lectures. I think we are in the 11th week now; one more week to go. So, we will have two
more classes in this week, and then we are left with one week of class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 53
Perkins Gilman and the Gender Question
Welcome back to the class, and you know that we have discussed a series of social scientists or
thinkers when we consider as people who contributed for the emergence of classical social
theory. We starter from Saint-Simon to Tocqueville, to Auguste Comte, I do not need to recount
the names. But we are discussed at least some 10 or 8 to 10 important people. Some of them
Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and G. H. Mead we discussed at length, and several others, we did not
spend much time. And so, we, I can maybe confidently say that we have more or less covered
some of the imp or most of the important theorists of classical sociology that any student of
sociology will be studying across the globe.
Now, when I say that these are the people whom we usually discussing any of the undergraduate
classrooms across the globe, this also we must know that, why that we have selected these 8 to
10 people and are only these people who are really responsible for the growth of the discipline,
have we avoided some people, have you failed to include some people, or do these people really
represent all that has been written about sociology or about a scientific way of studying society
during this particular time, what we understand as a time of classical social theory.
These are very, very difficult questions. These are very difficult questions, then you enter into
the realm of the relationship between power and knowledge production. We know that the very
reason why some of these scholars are so prominent is not only because you know, they came up
with some of the very fascinating theories, there were a host of other issues, which actually made
them more popular, made them very, very, extremely powerful, extremely popular, extremely
influential.
And this is so in the case with the natural sciences, this is so case with historians, everywhere.
There are a people who are the kind of unsung heroes, there are a lot of people whose stories
have not been recorded properly. Or they are a lot of people who were very systematically kept
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aside by the powerful sections of society. And the very character of sociology that it is
understood as a discipline that emerged in you, its inherent Eurocentric character itself. That
itself prevents us from looking at other the kind of sociological arguments that must have
emerged elsewhere in the world. And we began this class by discuss, this course by discussing
about Evan Cauldron, is not it; a very, very important figure.
But even Evan Cauldron has been recognized, he has been credited with this position sociologist.
He has been credited with this much of importance only very recently. So, the very aspect, the
very process of colonialism, and the kind of power structure, it plays a very important role in
deciding who are the most important people and who are the people who are not so important.
And these factors are sometimes quite important along with their actual contributions, their
arguments, and the quality of their scholarship, and so on.
And also, there are others during these particular times in Europe itself, because of their social
identity, because of their position, they being a woman, they being a, belonging to the black, who
were never given the kind of respect that typical white male scholar must have to commanded.
And we have discussed, I think you must be remember that we discussed about Cronus, that he
had this Jewish background. And his Jewish background really haunted him. So, we talk about a
series of such kind of factors that really make certain people very visible when you look at the
history of a particular discipline and some people kind of absolutely marginal.
And another important point that I want to bring in here before going ahead with the discussion
of two people is that you must have noticed that when we discuss classical sociological theory,
especially when we take a kind of a critical approach, a critical evaluation of these important
scholars, like Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Mead, or Cooley. So, we often say that we often try
to look at what have they spoken about colonialism, or what have they spoken about gender. And
we realize that they have spoken nothing much about that.
Further, it is the case of Marx or Weber or Durkheim, of course, they were aware about it, they
have written about it but they were really writing, they were engaging in the kind of scholarly
activities at the peak of colonial expansion, the peak of colonials. And they have seen the
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aftermath of slavery. The question of race was not a major theme for them, the question of
gender was a main theme for them.
Most of these people assume social science as the science by the men, for the men and of the
men. So, that is very evident, even in their writing; their examples that they give, the kind of
attention that they give to women, it is very less or they really refrain from looking at these
courses of society from the perspective of identities. And they believe that these identities, the
social identities like that of your color, your ethnicity, your gender, these things will become
irrelevant once you become kind of modern. And that could be one reason why they really
thought what to look in that.
Or they believe that is a less important factor. And especially from a typical Marxian
perspective, you do not give so much of importance to the social identities, you think that they
all will lose their significance when you establish an egalitarian society. But the history has
taught us that that has simply has not happened. And especially after 1960s and 70s, these
identities have come to the form. Especially with the rise of theories, what we call it as
postmodern theories, the kind of feminist upheaval, and a host of other Identitarian movements
from 70s and 80s onwards.
We are talking about the social identities coming to the form. Especially the questions of gender,
the questions of race. So, these are the two theme, the question of gender, and the question of
race, the two themes that are not adequately addressed by the classical sociologist we have
discussed so far. It does not mean that there were no scientists or no scholars who address these
issues then, there were, but they were, they are hardly included in any conventional sociology
textbooks almost anywhere in the world.
Maybe now, when you look at, when you try to create an alternative history of it as were the
early feminists thinking, think of feminist scholars or sociology, then you will have to dugout,
you will have to identify these people and they come but they are never, they never assumed the
kind of a mainstream position. They are always seen as the in the margin. So, is the case in the
question of color, the question of race.
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So, these kind of a blind spots, this kind of blind spot, either intentional or unintentional blind
spots are something very important that a sociologist student needs to be really sensitive. So,
what I have decided, I decided to discuss two important people. One is Perkin Gilsman, Perkins
Gilman; a important feminist writer from USA, and Dubois, another important sociologist who
belong African-American group.
And these two people have you know, they lived along with the, with some of the greatest
sociologists of all time, whether it is G. H. Mead or Marx Weber, they also understood, they also
witnessed the growth of sociology, But they had something more interesting to say about gender
and the race. And now, sitting in 2020, we realize that how important their arguments were, even
though the mainstream sociology did not identify gender and race as important subjects of
analysis. These people throughout their writings, they actually made an argument that gender and
race are important areas of because of self.
And because of their social marginality, one because of she was a woman, Perkins Gilman was a
woman, and Dubois was a black, he was an African-American; because of these two reasons,
they were not given the kind of respect or importance that he actually deserved. And we will
discuss the case of Dubois in more detail that we will see despite of being the first person to hold
a Doctorate from Harvard University, he was never given a permanent academic position
anywhere, in USA and he had to go to Ghana and then live there until his death.
So, these bitter lessons are something important that a sociology student must be really careful
about the, must be sensitive about. So, let us very quickly look at Perkins Gilman and the gender
question. We do not need to go deeper into that but I just wanted to tell you about story of this
woman who lived in the early twentieth century, who very forcefully argued for a women-centric
understanding of society and family and society and culture.
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So, Perkins Gilman, she view society through the lens of gender. And you know that the very
discipline of feminism, it has a single agenda of looking at a social phenomenon through the lens
of gender. And her major themes include the dominance of a male culture over female culture.
And it is very interesting to see that she really believed that these two kind of cultures are quite
different. She believed in that.
And she believed that both the male culture and the female culture are incompatible, they are
mutually opposite, they are exclusive, a position which quite a lot of contemporary feminists
would find it extremely problematic, especially with the recent arguments about performativity,
and others. These kind of arguments were very controversial, but you need to keep in mind her
time, a lady born in 1860, and who wrote through 1910s, 20s, and 30s. Female culture, the
economic subordination of women, the necessity of transforming the family in an egalitarian
direction, a belief in social evolution, and a conviction that rationality can guide social change in
a progressive direction.
You would have by now recognized that even the contemporary feminist scholarship or feminist
activism still revolves around these, many of these issues; about the family, about the economy
or the question of economic dimensions of gender exploitation, and gender discrimination. But
they may not believe in the whole question of social evolution. And I do not think that feminist
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theory any longer believes that a kind of a rational, a rational orientation can bring in a gender-
neutral society or a progressive direction.
Perkins Gilman is heavily influenced by the Darwinian, Darwinism prevalent in her time. Like
Mead, her work demonstrated that Darwinism could be used in many ways, not just as
justification for laissez-faire kind of a society. So, she was a product of her time, a time when
Darwinism was extremely popular, almost every social scientist where the salt, were influenced
by that. So, they all believe that human beings are trying to are competing with each other and
they are evolving, they are responding, they are adapting to the kind of situations and then
emerging as better suited.
818
So, she argues that men and women live in different cultural universes, which are grounded in
childhood and evolutionary development. So, this is a very important point that I just mentioned
earlier. She believed that both men and women, they occupy completely different kind of culture.
And that is mainly because of this questions of upbringing and the kind of evolutionary
development. Girls and boys learn gender differences as children, notions that boys are
aggressive and rational, and girls are emotional and caring, which they replicate in later life.
And we know that every basic lesson of gender studies will tell you that how these gender roles
or gender stereotypes are perpetuated, and how we very efficiently teach smaller children about
what is the most appropriate gender role or gender action that they need to follow. We know that
starting from the color preferences, the kind of toys that they get to play with, and the kind of
games that they are supposed to play, the kind of films that they are supposed to enjoy.
There is a very clear demarcation between the taste of the boys and the tastes of the girls and it is
nothing but a socially constructed ideas, which helps only to reinforce the kind of gender
stereotypes and the resulting gender segregation, and the gender discrimination. In her word
words, the main avenues of life are marked ‘male’. Women are effectively prevented from
participation in science, literature, and other fields because of their lack of exposure to these
819
areas and because men have shut them out of these institutions. An extremely important theme
even relevant now.
Even relevant now, we still talk about 33 percentage of reservation for women in the Parliament,
still not yet, become a reality. We talk about the abysmal representation of women in the higher
education institutions, especially in IITs and in science and STEM disciplines; science,
technology, mathematics and science you know, disciplines; in engineering, in space science. So,
these are some of the fields which are occupied by men. And you can then imagine the situation
of this 1900s when Gilman is talking about it.
So, it is, main avenues of life are marked by ‘male’, and it is all you know, made as kind of a
monopoly by woman and these, and other fields because their lack of exposure to these areas,
and because men have shut them out of their institutions. We talk about glass ceilings, I hope
you have heard this term. In a tall building, which only has floors made of glass. From the
bottom, when you look up, you see it as a canoe without any kind of hindrance but the moment
you try to go up, you are hit by the kind of a glass ceiling; un-seeable kind of hindrances. And
this term is very popular to know to explain the kind of experiences that women face in their
professions, in their professional life.
So, the basic, a female orientation is to construct and build culture and relationship qualities
which are neglected in the modern world. The constructive tendencies essentially feminine;
destructive, is masculine. So, that is the point that I mentioned earlier. She believes in that kind
of a very you know, binary kind of qualities. And feminists of our times, contemporary times,
will not agree with this kind of characterization.
This is some kind of an essentialist tic attribution that women are nurturing in character, they are
more emotional, they are more creative, whereas men are more destructive. Feminism has gone
beyond these you know, oversimplified arguments, but she has a very important point to make
there.
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Men have created coercive governments, a competitive capitalist economy, and an education
system, which divided the world into the winners and losers. Which we very specifically, very
beautifully argues that the men have created coercive governments, governments that use
coercive apparatus, government that use violence, and a competitive capitalist economy with the
kind of results that we see about a smaller group of rich people and the vast majority of
impoverished population.
Men and women must come to value female traits of endurance, adaptability, giving, and social
service, rather than the male characteristic of war and competition. For Perkins Gilman, the truth
of life is growth, not combat and rival. So, she takes a very pass, she makes a very passionate
plea or a passionate request that the more peaceful, more important, more valuable traits or
cultural traits belong to women and men need to understand that because they make this world
unnecessarily cruel. They make this world unnecessarily competitive and violent.
She calls for a more feminine public world of cooperation and a private world, especially the
family that is specialized and efficient. Women need to participate in politics, for men tend to see
the nation as a fighting organization in conflict with other nation-states for regional or even
world dominance. And this becomes these arguments becomes extremely problematic because
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she is kind of reducing everything into the kind of a male psyche, why nations go for wars with
each other. She is reducing into that, but she has, but that is how so she constructs her argument.
From a male androcentric point of view, it is hard to imagine other nations living together
peacefully and difficult to envision societies organized along lines other than competition in
combat. And she argues that the quality of cooperation is the most or women embody that
quality of cooperation, whereas men embody the traits of competition and conflict, which again
is highly problematic as per many of the contemporary sociologist. But she believed that the
involvement and participation of more women can bring in a more tolerant and more just society.
She criticized idyllic fantasies about the home as camouflaging the oppression of women. She
argues that the home and family are shrouded in romantic myths, but should be understood as an
institution like any other, such as the workplace or the state. As an institution, the family is
characterized by power differentials and conflicts with a dominant father, subservient mother,
and dependent children. The wife is “a private servant”.
And this is an extremely important feminist critique, especially a radical feminist critique against
family as an institution. There are a lot of feminists, especially from this radical feminist
standpoint, they believe that the family is the most important hindrance against, in the way of
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realizing a gender-equal world. Because family perpetuates gender inequality, family teaches the
values of patriarchy, it prevents women from attaining greater freedom and greater mobility and
greater sense of agency.
And many feminists have argued that family need to be broken. And these are some of the
important you know, slogans of feminist movements in the Western society, at least in the US
and in Europe. So he argues that there is no point in glorifying family or family has traditionally
been glorified and that romanticized as a place of love, and affection, and commitment, and then
sacrifice.
But you need to have a more clinical understanding, you need to have a more dispassionate
understanding of the working of family, then you will see that the very basic rules of family are
made in such a way that it always protects the male head; the father or the male members are
always given the privileges, whether it is in terms of gender roles, or resources, or all other kind
of activities, or the freedom, or agency, or a host of other things. And that is why she called for a
very shrewd analysis of the power relation within family. And that was something quite
important that Gilman talking about in the early 1900.
The woman's work carried out in the home is demeaning and destructive, performed in isolation.
The family and the workplace outside of the home must be transformed to eliminate male
dominance and male subordination. So, she argues that the very fact that women are not able to
go out and they are, they do the work that their work is mostly limited to the domestic sphere is
destructive to the self understanding and then self-image of the woman. And for her own
subjectivities, it is something very destructive. The family and the workplace outside the home
must be transformed to eliminate male dominance and male subordination.
And this is an extremely important point. Even now, we know the scores of women who have
sacrificed their professional life for the sake of family, because there is a heavily romanticized
idea of a sacrificial woman, sacrificial mother, who sacrifices everything for her husband and for
her children. But feminists have a very serious issue with such kind of romanticization. They
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would argue that this, through this romanticization women are kept always on the leashes. She
argues that most women have no training of for raising children and are not good mothers.
Children require the care of many others, besides the mother and hence, community care for
children. This, I found it a very interesting argument. So, she argues that an ordinary woman is
really incapable of rearing the child. And the child also gets to interact only with a single mother.
And that is you know, highly limiting in various aspects. And she has a very radical idea about
raising the children and taking care of them.
So in general, she argues that; Perkins Gilman, argues that the family should be increasingly
socialized. She even talks about a kind of a community ownership of children. Children must be
taken care by the whole community, and that that is a very interesting argument. And that also
talks about how we can create a different kind of a society where parents are not so selfish,
parents are not so competitive about their children. Children are no longer seen as the means
through which the parents can realize their own desires and their own ideas.
So, in Perkins Gilman’s view, feminism will transform the world. She writes that the women's
movement should be hailed by every right-thinking farseeing woman and women as the best
birth of our century. As women attain economic freedom and equality, democracy will improve.
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Encouraging people to think outside the small circle of their family can allow freer social
interaction, a prerequisite for democracy.
So, she also argues that the larger participation of women or the equal participation of women, it
would improve the quality of public life, it would improve the quality of democracy, it will
improve the quality of politics, because women according to her, you know, they have certain
inbuilt qualities that cannot be achieved by men. And these qualities are very creative, they are
very positive attributes; they are not violent, they are not destructive.
So, she advocates specific women's rights, such as a woman's right to her own body and to the
decision as to when she should become a mother. A very, very; even now, these are some of the
most important slogans of feminism or women's movement; a woman's right over her body, right
over sexuality, right over childbirth, because for a large number of women in the world, these are
beyond their imagination. They have right over the body, they have right of their sexuality, the
right of their childbirth. So, she was one of the early scholars who, novelist, she was a writer,
basically a novelist was written and, so she talks about that in that particular time.
So, she forces men and women to see that masculinity and femininity are social constructions
and that there is no necessarily natural way to organize the family and the economy. A very, very
important argument. We, why that we are always the slaves of both the you know, images or
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imagery constructed as masculinity and femininity? Why that every man is you know, burdened
to follow a certain kind of rigid models of being seen as masculine or feminity, for that matter?
Why that there is enormous pressure on women to behave in a befitting manner to be that of a
woman?
So, she argues that these are all extremely important, very powerful social constructs. And
people must be able to move beyond that. And she recognizes the intersection of economic
power and culture, for the two cannot be separated. But her evolutionary theory leads to racism
and she has no reflexivity about her racial privilege. She is fearful of swarming immigrants who
come to the US for free education, free hospitals, free health care, and better jobs than they can
procure in their own home nations. So, this is the other side of the story.
While she is able to understand a particular kind of social oppression, that is the gender
oppression, at the same time, she is blind to, either she is consciously blind or she is
unconsciously blind to the other; the question of racism. In many of her later writings, you will
see the kind of she is taking very racial position. She think that America belongs to the white
people and she is quite uncomfortable with the swarming immigrants that is the time when
America was accepting immigrants from across the globe. And people from across the place
from Africa, from Asia, from Latin America, people thronged America and that is what made the
America of today.
But she was quite you know, apprehensive of that because she felt that all kind of people are
coming and then they are taking away the facilities. So, while she was open, she was quite vocal
in terms of gender discrimination, she that kind of ability did not allow her or it prevented her
somehow to look at and take a position regarding you know, racial segregation with equal vigor
and courage.
So, this is just a, I just wanted to introduce you to this lady because she really represent some of
the questions about gender during this particular time, and no major sociologist dealt with the
question of gender very directly. And that is what I was mentioning in the beginning of the class,
that why and how a discipline evolve, when you look at the history, when you look at the
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trajectory of a discipline, you will see why that certain figures are seen as very prominent and
why that certain figures are not to be seen, or why they are certain figures are insignificant.
So, these relative appearance and disappearance of figures, it is nothing, not only to do with their
intellectual contribution but also a host of other things. And their social positions or their social
identities like their race or their gender, they really matter a lot. And Gilman, in that sense, really
represent a woman scholar during the early twentieth century, who wrote a great deal about
society from a feminist point of view. Though a feminism as an organized disciplinary
perspective emerged much, much later.
So, she was one of the early forerunners of feminism in the US and it is important that as
sociology students, we are familiar with her at least. So, let us stop the class here and then I will
continue with the discussion on Dubois in the next class. Thank you.
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Lecture No. 54
Du Bois and Question of Race
Welcome back to the class. In today's class we are discussing Du Bois and the Question of
Race. Now you, in the previous class, I briefly mentioned the reason why I decided to include
Du Bois and Perkins Gilman in our discussion on gender and race, because these questions
were not integral to the concerns of sociologists of that particular time. And when we
critically looked at quite a lot of scholars, we argued that they either overlooked or they did
not give sufficient or they did not sufficiently and rigorously analyse the question of gender
and race in their arguments.
So, it is important that we get a decent familiarity with some of the scholars of the same time
period, early, late nineteenth, and early twentieth century scholars who, what they have to say
about these two very important teams. So, in the previous class we discussed about the early
feminist, Perkins Gilman and in today's class, let us see, what was the arguments of Du Bois
and his contribution to the problemerization of race.
So, he was a, an African American sociologist, W E B Du Bois, 1868 and he passed away in
1963. Issues of race and cultural identity were his major focus areas.
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He also addresses the relationship between economic and cultural power, a very important
theme, especially quite a lot of, very Marxian theme, which tries to connect, or make a
connection between the influence of economic power and cultural power. The relation
between economic and cultural relationship and Du Bois formulated the idea of a black
public sphere and its relationship to the American, African-American, culture.
And, you know this public sphere as a major theoretical argument comes much later,
basically by, Habermas, but, he was able to talk about the relevance for a American black
public sphere and it's a role in the Genesis of American, African-American culture. Two very
important books, one is this The Philadelphia Negro and The Souls of Black Folk. These two
books are really are very famous and really popular, which really tells us what are the central
themes of Du Bois. The first ethnographic and statistical account of the black community in
the U.S.
Du Bois reconstructs modernity from the slave's point of view, drawing on images and ideas
that are often outside the purview of theorists, such as Marx Durkheim and Weber. So, this is
exactly what we have been seen. While these scholars and a host of others whom we
discussed so far, they were clearly living at the peak of colonial, or colonialism. They were
leaving at the peak of debates about slavery and you know the need to do away with slavery,
but they did not really deem it worthwhile to explain, or to explore social phenomena from
the point of view of a slave or for them, the racial difference was not the major central
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concern. And the very fact that all these people, Marx Durkheim and Weber and whomever
we discussed so far, they were the white males, look at this hardly any female sociologists,
classical socialists of our time. And they were all, you know, European males. And that
played a very important role in shaping their areas of interest and shaping their blind spots.
So race and gender were important blind spots for these people.
He was the first American, African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
You know how prestigious, Harvard University is, but he faced the racism in his entire life,
never teaching any white majority university. Du Bois eventually became disillusioned with
the U.S. and migrated to Ghana near the end of his life. Now, this is the tragedy of the whole
story, a person who comes from such a difficult background, such a marginalized community,
and he becomes the first Ph.D. holder from the American, African-American group, from the
prestigious Harvard University, but failed to secure a permanent job in the white majority
university.
And, nobody would have told him directly that because you are a black, we are not appointed
him, nobody would say that, rather they would enforce it. They would ensure that he is not
selected. That is how power operates. That is how the dominance operates. That is the
hegemony operates. So, he lived in an era where racial segregation and discrimination were
legally sanctioned. And we know the stories of apartheid. We know that how in public
transport seats were allotted for whites and blacks, how voting rights were not given to the
blacks, how certain restaurants are earmarked only for the whites.
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So, once there is a legal legitimacy for that, when there is a formal form of racism exist, it is
very difficult for people from that particular community to thrive. So, social Darwinism, and
again, I can refer context that kind of way a role of the signs in legitimizing this kind of a
perception was a misinterpretation of Darwin and scholars like Herbert Spencer really have
contributed to that when he used this term a struggle for existence and survival of the fittest,
he was importing, he was translating the Darwinian idea into the society and extremely
problematic one.
So, social Darwinism, that is a survival of the fittest justified the privileges of white and the
poor treatment of American and other minorities. They would simply argue that if you have
enough wherewithal, if you have enough resources within you, you will survive. Otherwise
you will perish. We are able to, the whites are able to survive. We are able to able to
dominate you because we are mentally occupied, or equipped. We are culturally more
progressive. We have physically stronger, we are educationally forward. We are more
intelligent than you. So, we, there is, and that is the law of the nature. We are there to survive.
And if you lose out, you lose out.
And much of, much U.S. social science was explicitly racist drawing on dubious biology to
scientifically demonstrated the alleged superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. And we also
know that the science is like physical anthropology, physical anthropology, that scientifically
categorized people into different races by measuring their body parts. By talking about a
nasal index, by talking about cephalic index, by talking about the texture or the structure of
the lip of the breast, of the hair. They categorized people into different groups with the
implicit assumption that the Anglo-Saxon race or the Caucasoid, they are the most superior
race.
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So, Du Bois was influenced by Marx, Hegle and American pragmatist tradition. Like Marx,
he sees that ownership of wealth often translates into social power. So, he was a Marxist to a
large extent because he argued that the white dominance is built up on the monopoly over
there or off of their ownership of the wealth. And if you look at the America then, and if you
look at the American now as well, you see this kind of a very disproportionate distribution of
wealth among the whites and the blacks and the blacks are predominantly represented in the
poorer section.
And that kind of a segregation, even the places where they live are very clearly demarcated.
And that was the situation even then. So, in his The Philadelphia Negro and in Souls of Black
Folks, Du Bois often views immorality manifested in alcoholism, prosecution and crime
among a large section of African American population as contributing to their problems and
poverty. He traces this moral deficit to the legacy of slavery and racism.
And the kind of a the white discourse which are reflected in popular novels and movies and
the thing as this, a black ghetto as the place of anarchy, place of sexual anarchy, place of
drugs, place of poverty, crime, where no educated or no cultured white man or woman would
venture into. And he argued that all these things, all these moral decadence, which are seen in
quite a lot of alcoholism, prostitution that need to be seen in their larger background of
slavery and races, because these people who are at the lowest sections of the society they
have nothing much to expect. They do not have any easy opportunity to break from the
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shackles and then lead a more dignified life.
So, Du Bois argues that the world has become divided, was becoming divided into master
capitalists, primarily white, who control most wealth, the national middle class of many
countries, European, Hispanic, and Asian who share bones of common interests and history.
And finally, the oppressed workers of all nations, primarily black, Asian, and Hispanic,
according to Du Bois, racism is the major hindrance to a fair distribution of wealth, white
benefit economically from racism and the profit of colonialism accruing to West prevents
social change.
An extremely powerful argument because we have, we know that are theories in

development, including dependency theory and world system theory, which talks about how
the colonial countries have been systematically able to able to extract profit through an equal
trade from the countries in the periphery and in the semi-periphery, and through Trans-
Atlantic slave trade.
But the Du Bois argues that you cannot only say talk, you cannot only speak about that the
beneficiaries are the European countries, but you need to look at what kind of people are
getting benefited. And he is very clear that this enterprise of colonialism and the whole
Trans-Atlantic slave trade primarily basically benefited only the white class. It only really
benefited the white class at the expense of the blacks. The situation of the blacks, it
deteriorated and the situation of the whites improved systematically.
833
In the opening line of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois writes that whites view him as a
problem. This is typical of the stereotyping of blacks as a problem, but other than the people
with problems, blacks are viewed as abstractions rather than individuals. It is a very, very
powerful observation. You can even think about in the contemporary India scenario, an
untouchable, a person from a lower cast is seen as a problem, okay, you, you do not want to
look at what kind of a person he is. He could be a nice person. He could be a very intelligent
person.
He could be an extremely studious person, but in the commercial understanding, you don't
really ask this question. What kind of a person is that? The very fact that he belongs to this
particular cast is sufficient to brush him aside. Or that is sufficient to assume that person is
good for nothing, or to assume that person cannot come up in life, or he cannot, he will not be
able to do well in education, or he should not come and then have any kind of relationship
with him.
So in that sense, it becomes almost impossible for any lower caste person or in the case of Du
Bois, any black person to break free from that perception and to prove himself how much
ever different he is, here a person is evaluated, not on the basis of his personal qualities. A
person is evaluated on the basis of something, which he cannot do anything about it. It is a
stereotypical impression. It is a kind of stereotyping a whole population.
834
You do not really go into how different people are. So, that is a very, very terrible lesson,
terrible experience, and only people who really suffer that will realize that. So, Du Bois also
develops the idea of a double consciousness and the metaphor of the veil. The black and
white worlds are divided by a veil that requests role-playing on the part of the blacks, rather
than real interaction.
The blacks are always supposed to keep in the back. The blacks are always supposed to hide
behind the veil because legally it is a sanctioned and popularly culturally as well, and African
American double consciousness that of being black and American is often conflicted. And
blacks must suppress their rage at their oppression in order to assuage white anxiety. So, the
moment you question the white supremacy, you will be seen as questioning the integrity of
America.
So, there is a kind of double consciousness. You are supposed to, supposed to work together
with the white psyche in order to protect the American pride, but at the same time in your
everyday life, you are facing the discrimination on your personal and your art social life. But
the moment you talk about that, you will be easily branded as somebody who is sabotaging,
the idea of a American greatness.
And that is a kind of a trap that the blacks are brought in. And, you know, the kind of, very
recent upheaval that have, swapped across America, the white, sorry the, the black lives
matter argument. And, even after these many years, these many decades that America is not,
is being able to resolve the issue of black issue or issues of racism.
835
So for Du Bois, the density of African Americans is not to be absorbed by the white majority,
the destiny of African American is not to be absorbed by the white majority, but to have their
particular contributions recognized and cultivated, black colleges, newspaper, and other
organs of education are necessary for such a culture. So, he was very clear that the white, the
blacks are being able to make their own progress.
They have their own culture, they have their own arguments, and they must be able to
empower. And it is not that they are given some kind of peanuts. They are given some kind of
reservation. They are given some kind of a token forms, but he very strongly argued that
blacks have to take their destiny into their own hands. And they cannot be at the mercy of the
white. So, the power of a dominant culture to repress difference is demonstrated in the taken
for granted beliefs of whiteness.
And he questions how this whiteness is constructed whiteness as equivalent to that of

efficiency, whiteness as equivalent to beauty, whiteness as equivalence to naturalness,
whiteness as equivalent to say orderliness, whiteness as equivalent to integrity, these are all
kind of a cultural construct that Du Bois very systematically demolishes and deconstructs and
Du Bois analysis of whiteness has a contemporary resonance as it has become a popular topic
in culture studies and critical race perspectives.
So they, a host of new academic endeavours, especially from culture studies point of view, or
media studies point of view, try to understand how this white, whiteness was equated with all
these positive qualities or positive traits. And thereby by implication, black represents all that
836
is negative. Du Bois argues that more insidious form of prevention of democracy is the
practice of benevolent guardianship of those ostensibly unable to act for themselves. Du Bois
contends that African Americans and women have both been treated as weak minded subjects
by white men who supposedly knew better.
But this is simply the old cry of privilege, which must be abolished. The argument that okay
we are talking for them. We are benefiting. They are not able to talk about themselves
because they are educated. They are less intelligent. We are here to represent them. And this
is an extremely problematic, dangerous trend that Du Bois identifies. And even now, these
debates are extremely relevant in the contemporary discussions about caste, about feminism,
about gender, about race, that who can speak for whom?
How can somebody from a privileged position claim to represent the less privileged, how do
we understand, how do the less privileged represent themselves? What are their resources and
why it is so paramount, how it is so important that the less privilege learn to represent
themselves with whatever flaws and inadequacies there might be. So, some of these very
current debates Du Bois is able to raise even during that particular time.
And African-Americans, while they are subjected to racism, must develop their own sense of
dignity and worth. African-Americans must be educated to be actionable as Nietzsche might
say. Thus Du Bois argues that the leadership of the African-American community must come
from blacks, themselves, a very, very important point, that they must empower something
837
similar to what Ambedkar has argued. You must educate, empower, and agitate. You must
education and then self-empowerment is the only way through which the lower class or lower
caste will be able to come up.
No privileged group is going to give away their privileges without struggle. That is a history
of mankind, no privileged section, whether it is male or whites or upper caste or feudal lords,
nobody is going to simply give away their privileges upon mere request. It is only through
sustained efforts, sustain movements, sustained agitation that the powerful were forced to
devolve some amount of power. It does not happen the other way around. Nothing has
happened out of benevolence. Nothing has happened out of a sudden change of heart. That is
a history.
So, Du Bois thought the future of the world will rest, ultimately in the hands of the darker
nation, he became an advocate of Pan-Africanism and developed a strong critic of the
oppression of women. So he, that is why he focused more in forming it a Pan-African, kind of
a friendship, alliance, friendship and alliance, a sense of brotherhood. He believed that the
destiny of the world ultimately lies with them.
For Du Bois, one of the mightiest revolts of the century is against the devilish decree that no
woman is a woman who is not by present standards a beautiful woman. And Du Bois brings
in the focus of gender in his analysis, and then looks at how a notion of beauty is created in a
white centric world. Culture determines identities. It is the type of power that extends even to
838
the consumption of the body and such forms of cultural authority must be challenged. The
very, you should practice to equate whiteness with beauty.
And I do not need to explain you that is not it. Our heroines are always been fair. We have
been using Fair and Lovely cream all through, dark woman, a dark heroine is never accepted
and dark woman is never seen, celebrated as a symbol of beauty. We have seen stories of a
whole lot of such kind of stories. So, Du Bois criticizes that very vehemently. He says that it
is a kind of a culturally constructed notion of beauty, much of Du Bois taught can be
interpreted as elitist. Why? Because he believed that elites will be able to transform the
society. He believed that a group of elites need to emerge and these elites will be able to
change society.
He tends to believe that a cultural elite must arise to lead people in a rational direction. And
these, again, look, might look a contradictory the person who speak for the sake of the
subordinated people still want a class of elite from there. Du Bois sociological account of
race culture and the individual provides a complex socially and historically informed
understanding of suffering, the relationship between power and knowledge and the
tribulations of a divided self.
So, he, as a person who was born and brought up as a African-American, who belongs to this
black community, who witnessed first-hand discrimination and subjugation from the whites,
who studied social science, who studied society in a scientific manner. So he was in a far
better position to make sense of all these issues.
839
So, his focuses on colonialism and the intersections of race and class domination in a more
powerful manner than other theorists of his time. So, this is what makes Du Bois an
extremely important sociologist even before many other people began to speak about the
relationship between economy and race. He implicitly raises the question of the black
diaspora of the problem of transnational notions of black identity in the context of racism and
oppression. Such ideas must develop within an outside of the conditional accounts of
modernity taking racism and imperialism to be the central components of black experience
and modernity itself. And this is an extremely important point.
A kind of prophetic terms are prophetic themes. Because now if you look into the kind of rise
of post-colonial studies or the decolonizing attempts, the they always want this racism and
imperialism and colonialism to be to the fore. So, Du Bois as a black scholar was really
prophetic in his argument that unless you address the question of imperialism and identity,
the racial question of identity, the black identity, your, this entire discourse about modernity
would become incomplete. It will be only, it would only remain incomplete because any
amount of talk about class, any amount of talk about social structures will be insufficient, it
will be incomplete without paying adequate attention to these questions. So, that is the
relevance of Du Bois.
840
So, I hope by now why that we spent two sessions, one, discussing on Du Bois, the other one
discussing on the scholar on gender. So, these are the themes that are generally you know,
neglected by the mainstream sociologist. These are the themes that either they deliberately or
unconsciously neglected or avoided, but now looking back now, we realize that they even
then, during the times of the all the stalwarts, these themes were extremely relevant and that
is why they continue to be relevant even now informing and infuriating some of the most
intense debates of our times. So, so let us stop here and we will meet for the next class. Thank
you.
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Lecture 55
Classical Sociological Theory and Modernity _ A Recap
Welcome back to the class. And, with this class, we are entering into the final session of the
11th week and there is only one more week of classes are left. And today also marks the end
of our discussions on specific scholars. I hope if you remember, from the beginning, from the
very beginning, we have been discussing classical sociological theory through the
perspectives or through the contributions of important thinkers.
I think the first one or two weeks we spent trying to understand what is the sociological
perspective, we discussed about C. Wright Mills. We discussed about you know Sigmond
Bowman and we also discussed about Peter Berger. Okay, then for a week or so, we
discussed the very specific context in which sociology emerged, a series of factors, both,
social economic, political, and historical factors, which really generated a discipline, like
sociology.
And then after that, we looked at a series of important social philosophers starting with the
Saint-Simon, Tocqueville, Auguste Comte and then, we have elaborately discussed some of
the most important stalwarts of sociology. And in the past couple of, yesterday and day
before yesterday, I have also discussed the two people who generally do not find their places
in the conventional sociological textbooks on classical sociology.
They are not really included in most of the textbooks, nor are they taught in many of the, in
most of the places. But I felt that it is important that we look at these people who occupy the
marginal positions the scholars who spoke about race, the scholar, who spoke about women's
issues, gender issues, as early as the early 20th century.
So now and this class, I want a, kind of a brief recap about this whole idea of modernity.
Okay. The whole idea of modernity and the connection between classical sociological theory
and modernity. So, when you talk about classical sociological theory, we say that a very
rough time period is usually between, say, or theoretical arguments till 1930s. Maybe till the
time of Max Weber, 1920s, 1930s. So that's a time mostly scholars identify as a time of the
time of classical sociological theory.
842
After that there are, you know, very interesting development of sociological theories. There
are development of theories from a functionalist perspective, from a conflict perspective,
from an interaction perspective. And I will be maybe discussing each of these traditions by
taking one session each in the coming week, because the next week is our last week.
So, I want to give some introduction to the development, the further development of
sociology in these, through these disciplinary perspectives or through these theoretical
perspectives. But, in today's class, I want to dwell more on this whole cost of modernity. And
what do we mean by modernity? Why that, or how influential has been the construct of this
particular idea and how powerful has been the, this particular construct of this idea of
modernity.
And it's combination with colonialism and how did it affect the rest of the countries? How
did it affect the lives of people like you and me, and are there, you know, are they critical
thinking about the kind of theoretical perspective about modernity and what is a kind of a
contemporary, social scientific understanding or arguments about the time of modernity, how
we pass in the face of modernity?
So there are quite a lot of theorists who argue that we are in postmodern era. Okay. There are
a lot of others who do not agree that we are in a post-modern, they would use other
categories, like they would use a late modernity. They would use liquid modernity, they will
use a high modernity.
So, but this category of modernity is at the core of all the theorization, and it is extremely
important. It's extremely important, not only to understand the discipline of sociology, but
also understand yours and mine life, the way in which we live, the kind of predicaments that
we come across, the kind of situations that we find ourself in. And this is extremely important
for us to understand our own society, the kind of institutions that are surround us, the kind of,
you know, social processes that are happening around us.
So that is a beauty, or that is a promise of sociology, try to offer you, it actually makes you
highly informed individuals by making you familiar with these kind of theoretical
843
formulations from the disciplinary perspective of sociology, so that you know how to
understand our history. We know the whole conquest of, conquest by the British, it was not
only about political conquest, or it was not only about economic conquest, but it actually
meant a lot more.
It actually, fundamentally changed the way Indians lived. The fundamentally changed the
ways Indians lived for the past, so many centuries. Okay. A whole set of ideas and practices
were brought in. And that's what we understand it as the product of modernization,
modernization of Indian tradition, a very, very, important process.
So, I want to connect this the classical sociological theory and modernity, because without
the help of classical social theorists, you cannot understand this whole process of modernity.
And I hope that by now, it must have been clear for you that why that all these scholars
whom we discussed so far, have been identified as the theorists of modernity, because they
lived at the time of modernity. They thought about the process of modernity, because a host
of processes of modernity were unfolding in front of them. They were witnessing the kind of
sweeping changes in front of their own eyes.
So, they saw the crumbling of old social order. They saw the emergence of new social order
and they saw the vanishing of extremely cherished long cherished value systems influence of
religion, they saw the emergence of alternative epistemological basis. They saw the
emergence of alternative explanatory platforms, explanatory frameworks.
So, these are the scholars whom we discussed so far. They tried their level best to make sense
of each of all these things and that their arguments, their consensus, their agreements, their
disagreements, their different ways of looking at it. All these things really produced a huge
body of sociological knowledge about modernity, about society. And once we place these
scholars, in that particular context, we realize that they are the scholars of modernity. They
are the scholars who really try to formulate the initial impressions about modernity.
Of course, the later sociologist and thinkers, even now, we are trying to theorize modernity,
even now we are trying to theorize modernity. So, modernity is not something that is being
analysed and done with, okay, even now we try to understand how we made sense of
modernity or how we constructed an image about a situation called us modernity.
844
So, I want to highlight, or I want to emphasize the point that as sociology students, you need
to be really familiar with this whole idea or at least some of the important debates revolving
around this concept of modernity. What does it mean to be modern and is it opposite to
something else or modern and traditional are they completely incompatible? Are they
completely binary because they are always presented as binary? Like when you say that
somebody is modern, you mean you think in your mind that he's for sure is not traditional.
So, we are living in a society when these two things are presented to us as binary, modern and
tradition, but in a society like India, it's very interesting to see what constitutes modern, what
constitutes modern does our appearance make us modern. Does our profession make us
modern? If you are professionals, okay, wearing a three piece suit, and then speaking English,
does it make us modern, okay, what is the meaning of modern and have we completely said
goodbye to tradition?
And especially in a contemporary society where you see that religion and caste and ethnic
identities, they're all coming back with more and more power. So how do we reconcile that?
So each of these questions assume significance once you try to understand this whole concept
of modernity and its connection with the classical sociological theory.
845
So, I have mentioned a couple of points, which we have already discussed. So we discussed
sociology as a product of modernity. Okay. I hope you remember that because I argued that,
or I explained that every discipline emerges as a product of a particular time, every discipline
emerges as a particular time, because one, when the existing explanatory platforms are
insufficient to understand the kind of scenario scholars look for alternative methods.
So, every discipline is a product of a particular time when the thinkers realized that you
know, the existing frameworks are not sufficient, they look for alternative framework. And
then, when there is more and more people are convinced about this new alternative
framework, it gets a kind of a, it gets solidified. It gets a kind of crystallized and the scholars,
try to build up a kind of epistemological, methodological basis for this particular discipline.
And this particular discipline offers completely novel completely new, fresh insights to make
sense of the society. And that's how every discipline has come into picture. That is how even,
even recent disciplines, like say environment studies, cultural studies, or media studies, or a
host of other studies, women's studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, they are all, they
have all come up, mainly because the existing scholars felt that the new phenomena that are
emerging in front of you cannot be explained on the base of this existing disciplines.
So, that is why we understand sociology as a product of modernity. That is why it claimed to
be a science. Okay, so along with other disciplines sociology is identified as a discipline of
modernity. And that is why sociology is under tremendous pressure, maybe at a
contemporary time, because a host of other disciplines that have emerged in the post-modern
era are challenging the epistemological as well as methodological basis of sociology.
So, I am not getting into that debate, whether you need to have a scientific orientation or
though I am not getting into that debate, but we need to really understand the historical and
intellectual context in which this discipline emerges. And of course, we know that it emerged
as a product of a unique context, Western Europe, it's a combination of factors as we
discussed so far.
It was scientific revolution, new technologies and colonialism and industrial revolution, a
host of factors came together. A host of factors came together, and that produced a kind of a
846
particular kind of society, a particular kind of philosophical thinking in that, during the
particular time, one or two centuries.
So that is the, undoubtedly that is the kind of very unique, you know, period in human history
where so much of change happened and the old orders crumbled very fast, and we can be
critical. We can say that, Europe went through all those processes through violence, through
exploitation.
It is all true, because the European prosperity during those times, or the European story of
industrial revolution, the story was built on the blood and sweat of people from third world
countries, people from Africa, people from Asia, there's no doubt about it. Without
colonialism, the European countries would not have been able to see the kind of progress that
they had.
They are all important historical factors. And what did colonialism do to entire humanity.
How did we nurtured and then, you know, facilitated at then encouraged a scientific racism
for a long time, which is who's remnants even now exist in the society. So, all these questions
are important, but we understand modernity as a unique product as, as a unique process that
happened in Europe and a host of socio economic, political, and technological changes that
happened during the particular time.
And some of the most important aspects is the emergence of the nation, state and modern
institutions. We, the idea of a nation state, the idea of a nation state and its globalization of
that particular idea, that a host, a whole lot of kingdoms, which were empires and kingdoms
and principalities who were ruled by different kings and feudal Lords, they were all crumbled
and they became, and the most accepted or the most dominant form of governance, it became
the nation stage, whether it is democratic or whether it's autocratic, that's a different thing.
But nation state emerged as a new social order in the place of kingdoms. And this is a very,
very decisive shift and a host of modern institutions, including the judiciary, including police,
including law, including education institutions, modern educational institutions, where open
admissions that are possible, secular topics are dealt with.
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So, these ideas. These, these are extremely powerful, important changes that happen. And we
only need to while on the one hand we can be critical of the colonial conquest of India
because they completely broke the backbone of Indian economy. They completely
impoverished India. But on the other side, a post of important institutions that we cherish
today, including that of democracy, including that of election, including your parliamentary
system, your judicial system, your police system, your legal system, they are all your modern
education system. They are all the product of a Western model of education.
And, these Western model of education, without a doubt, we can say that they had more
egalitarian outlook. You had a law, you had a universal law, you had a law legal system,
which does not discriminate people on the base of their birth, on the base of their caste. Your
punishment for a same crime did not vary on the base of your caste or your religion.
And that egalitarian values, that the modernity upheld the enlightenment values, the European
enlightenment values, the values of fraternity, value of Liberty, value of equality, and the
institutions of democracy. The whole argument about rights, women's rights, ethnic rights.
And these concepts have become so commonplace in our contemporary society. We can not
even think of a time when these terms or these slogans are unheard of, but that was a time.
Those who are familiar with Indian history, those were familiar with the history of Indian
caste system, understand how segmented and segregated society we were, how a substantial
section of Indian population were not even treated as human beings. Their existence was
worse than that of animals.
So, from such a scenario, if at least nominally, everybody can claim the equal, right. And
definitely we awe our thanks to this particular process. Of course, we can be critical, even
they were hypocritical, many of those who, many of these some of the most celebrated of
philosophers of European enlightenment, they were blatantly racists. They were blatantly
racist.
But you know that is a part of the story that does not really discredit this whole idea of
European enlightenment values, certain important values. So, they play a very important role
and the emergence of rationalism and individualism. The ability that you use your rationality,
848
you be more open to different ideas and the idea of individuals.
You do not have to follow the dictates and the rules and traditions of your family, of your
community. You can get married to somebody, to anybody whom you want and as simple as
that, okay, whether do I have the right to choose my partner? It's a very, very basic right,
because every other animal does that, listen, I don't know whether you have observed this.
Every other animal has the, even the animal who are supposed to be at a much lower level.
Every animal does that. They do this at least as a part of their natural instinct, they choose
their own partner.
But when it comes to human beings, when it comes to especially traditional societies like
ours, that is not done, isn't it, the selection is done by somebody for us. And I host, a whole
lot of other considerations are brought in, isn't it, age, and then job and caste, class, religion,
even height, you know, color, a host of a socially constructed ideas are brought in, in
deciding whether who can get married to whom.
So, this idea of individual right, human right, is specifically a product of European modernity.
And if we are, if you can talk whether these institutions of human rights have been weakened,
or that's a different story, the very fact that every individual, every human being, just because
of the fact that they are, human beings have certain kinds of alienable rights.
That is a, that's a terrific argument. That is a very important argument. And that argument
emerged in the context of modernity and it is across the globe. And in spite of the fact,
whether it's been followed rigorously or not that legal frame, that discourse has made
tremendous changes in the lives of everybody.
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And, yeah, modernity also brought in this overarching framework of progress and evolution,
as we must have discussed several times that modernity as all the scholars who were heavily
influenced by Darvin and every scholar, thus all whom we discussed so far, they all had a
grand scheme. Okay. They had a grand scheme of our talking about a story from how simple
societies develop and become more and more progressed.
So, this term called as progress as if, you know, we are destined to improve our own situation
and then reach a kind of a particular destination. And that particular narrative became
extremely influential. It became extremely important. It kind of percolated into, through the
official government, it percolated through educational institutions. It percolated through
social theory, it percolated through policy, policy implementations, policies circles, policy
people who formulate policies and the combination of progress and the evolution put forward
a particular vision of development, a particular vision of development.
The whole question of how do we leave in a far better way. How do we live in a far better
way? And that resulted in the division of this whole world into, you know, developed and
developing and under developed, we know that we declared ourself as a developing nation,
and we know that who are the developed nations. And we know that there are more
unfortunate nations who can't even claim the status of developing societies because they are
underdeveloped.
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So, what are the basis on which these categorizations are being made? How can we
categorize, you know, millions of people or huge country or several countries, and put them
together and say that you are only developing, whereas we are already developed. And then
you get into a host of other very, very problematic criteria that are used including human
development indices, nature of per capita income. You know, your GDP, your rate of
industrial growth, your nutrition level, a host of other factors that brought into statistically
divide people.
And there was a sociological theoretical justification for that the Europe, especially the
Western Europe, they represent the model and everybody else is supposed to follow the suit.
And especially when you discuss structural functionalism, especially theories of Talcott
Parsons, we will see that how Parsons provides a very, very cumbersome, very difficult, yet
very effective sociological theorization for the development narrative.
He argues very convincingly that why Western civilization, Western societies far capable.
They have inherent qualities which make them capable of moving ahead compared to other
societies. Okay. So, sociology also is his party to this whole project of dividing societies into
do different things. Okay. And that really gave quite a lot of discussions and debates about
this whole idea of development.
I must have mentioned in some of the previous classes that the Western model of
development, Mark Dubois increased, industrial production increased, the personal
consumption democracy, and other things were seen as the model and all other countries, all
other countries in the world, including countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, they were
seen as countries who are lacking and countries who are lagging behind, and they were
supposed to do the catching up business.
Okay. And without really considering the historical reasons why that these countries are
being impoverished. So, that leads to some of the very interesting theoretical debates within a
development theory by, especially by, people like Immanuel Wallerstein, Gunder Frank and
host of others, and modernity also really gave birth to capitalism.
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And, as one of the most resilient and efficient, economic system, and, you had the whole
world divided into two sections, one set of countries which follow the capitalist form of
economy, the other subset of countries, which follow the communist you know, line of
economy led by USSR and China. And, a host of other countries, Poland, Cuba, Venezuela, a
lot of other countries.
But later we know that after 1990s with the disintegration of Soviet Union with the fall of
Berlin wall, communism is no longer is offered even as a resistance, even as an alternative to
capitalism and capitalism really thrives.
So, modernity we understand that as a time, as a context that gave birth to this extremely
influential element extremely influential aspect of capitalism, then modernity also provide
you with the promise of science and the confidence of mastering the nature. Modernity also
gave you a kind of a completely new narrative about the capabilities of human beings.
Modernity reaffirmed that you are capable of mastering the whole world.
You are seen as the most important creature of God, a kind of a medieval understanding,
which was given more kind of theoretical argument here, theoretical justification here.
Human beings are seen as having endless ability to make use of the nature. Nature was seen
as a resource natural resources, whether it is your water or timber or soil, or what would it be
that, and we believe that we are in a position to master the nature.
We are able to secure our life more and more, but now when we look back, whether is our
life more secured, the answer is an emphatic, no, And it is not because we have less control
over the nature, but mostly we, the consequences of our own inventions, consequences of our
own discoveries and our own efforts, have become so complicated that we have no way of
controlling them.
The consequences of first modernity and in that consequence of first modernity. There are
very interesting theorization about it, especially by scholars like Anthony Giddens and,
Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist who speak about the risk society. Why that our own
creations are now turning out to be the Frankenstein who would, you know, would attack us.
And the elation and deletion of thinkers, role of gender, ethnicity, and so on.
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So, in this whole narration of modernity and the people who contributed for that, we know
that there are a number of people who are being ignored. Number of people who have been
deleted, there is major elation, there’s major deletion, there is major people have been
ignored and the role of gender ethnicity. And so on.
We had a discussion about two such people, okay, who spoke about in a very, very different
way through the language of lens, through the lens of gender and race, but who are never
seen as important, figures in classical sociology. So every place and every phase, you see the
connection between power and knowledge. So what we are you know, what we are given as a
body of, as a trajectory of a particular discipline as a history of a particular discipline is
always a contested history.
We may have people who have either been forgotten or very will fully, made to be forgotten.
So that is true in the case of science as well, that is true in the case of science that's true in the
case of every discipline. But the story of modernity is also the story of such people.
And then we have this globalizing effect of modernity through earlier through you know,
colonization and then through the kind of international trade and international institutions
like, United Nations and WHO and then UNESCO and the host of UNSCR and a host of
other international institutions by 1950s -60s, these whole ideas of European modernity it is
spread across the globe.
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And, they all believed that the European model of an increasing rationalization, increasing
secularization will become the model elsewhere that will become the models through the
globe. So, there was a major globalizing effect of modernity. And then what happened to that
the questions of modernity elsewhere, how did modernity had influence, how did modernity
articulate itself in different parts? Think of what has been the experience of India? What has
been the experience of Japan or China or Africa?
So, that really gives rise to a lot of interesting arguments about multiple modernity, alternate
modernity and so on, whether can we think of not, moderately as a singular form, or can we
think of modernity as having different forms? For example, in India to give you an example,
the electoral process, the electoral process is what we follow is democracy and democracy is
based on your singular vote. Every universal adult franchise, every adult is entitled for one
vote. And how are you supposed to vote? You are supposed to vote for the candidate on the
base of ideas.
The candidates are supposed to campaign on the basis of certain ideas, political ideas about
how, what is the kind of political imagination that they have. Okay. But when, and that is
again, an ideal system, it doesn't happen anywhere, but that's how it, the ideal system, but
when democracy was implemented in India. And we had already existing forms of
mobilization, for example, cost was an extremely important form of mobilization in India. It
was already an existing, very, very powerful, very effective social institutions, which gives a
kind of identity for the people.
And when you introduce democracy to a country like India, people naturally broke in caste
because there is, caste is the already existing way of mobilizing people. And you integrated
caste with politics and caste became an extremely important player in this whole world in this
whole scenario.
Ideally, we say that castism in politics is something bad. Interference of region is something
bad, but we are seeing it today. And ideally all these things are against the spirit of
modernity. But then do we call it as multiple modernity? Do we call it as alternate
modernity? Those debates are really endless and the Indian experience of modernity.
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Whether what have to the, another very interesting debatable topic is about secularism. How
did India adopt this particular idea of secularism? Is it something same as what the European
secularism mean? What does that secularism mean in a country like India, which has multi-
religious society, a country, which has so many religions in the world. And how do we make
sense of that, that relevance of classical sociological theory to Indian context, another very
important point that we hardly discuss about, or even our curriculum or classes we hardly
think about.
For example, the, classification of social stratification Marxian framework, to what extent, if
Marxian framework is suitable to understand in India, how do we understand caste through
the lens of classical social culture? Do we, accept Max Weber or do we accept Marks. Is
Weber in understanding of caste system.
And he gives some, some space for status, Ritual status. Does it explain cast system
effectively, or the Indian caste system? Is it devoid of its material background? Is it devoid of
its economic and political power structures? Can Marxism, why cannot we use Marxism to
understand out agrarian relations, the questions of landless people, the questions of feudal
Lords. And is the caste and class are completely different in India, or are they, are they
coterminous? Are they, are they parallel in India? And, and quite a lot of in the same social
media studies show that, they are coterminous, they are parallel.
The upper class tend to be upper class and lower costs tend to be lower class. So, in a host of
also any student who studies Indian society from a social point of view will have to be,
extremely critical about using the classical sociological theory, classical sociological
framework to understand Indian, society.
(Refer Slide Time: 34.32)
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And the continuing relevance of classical thinkers, even in the contemporary times. So those
who read the most recent, academic literature in sociology would realize that how often these
scholars invoke the classical thinkers, it is not that they have laid the foundation and then that
is the, and social media was built over that and they are forgotten and then gone. It is not
even now some of the most important scholars of today. They revisit these people. They
reinterpret these people, they rediscover their arguments.
So, Marxists read repeatedly that Durkheim and Weber are read repeatedly and new
interpretations, new insights are brought in, and there are some of the important and original
observations are so valid even now, whether you take Marks or Weber or Durkheim in the
analysis of education or democracy or economy, we always go back to these corridors.
So, in the typical social ethical tradition, you never read a scholar and then forget about it. It
is not like that you go back and you do this, you know, for you, you do this exercise of
visiting them again and again, and then coming back and then, and then trying to make a
better sense of, okay. So the relevance of classical social ethical theory for that matter, any
theorist, any theorist of any discipline, because they are the one who laid foundation, they
were the ones who, defined the trajectory of the discipline. They were the ones who
demarcated the methodological and epistemological foundation of a discipline, and they
continue to be relevant.
856
So, my simple advice for you is to those who are genuinely interested is to, is to read these
scholars more seriously, possibly read their own original words, because they, can never be
outdated. They are never outdated. They are as valid as, as any time, even like the time in
which they lived. So, let us stop here. And we have one more week of class.
That means we have five more session and I will discuss three important traditions within a
theoretical tradition within sociology, after the period of classical sociology. And then maybe
a one class on the relation between methodology theory and epidemiology, and a final
concluding session with that, we will be completing this course on classical social orders.
Okay. So for today, let us windup and thank you.
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Subsequent Development of Sociological Theory: Structural Functionalism
Lecture 56
Welcome back to the class and we are in the last week of this course. I think only two or three
sessions are left. In the previous class we had a recap and looked back at most of the theories and
the themes that we discussed and we tried to understand the kind of a connection between
classical sociological theory and the concept of modernity.
I emphasized again and again that this framework of modernity is something very important
because it is a conceptual category and a historical episode that you cannot wish away with a as a
conceptual category, as well as an a kind of a historic moment or historic phase, which have been
so significant in the development of world societies over the last three-four centuries.
A particular time frame, a particular category particular kind of orientations, values and
mechanisms which completely redefined the way in which world was functioning. So, we
discussed that there are the kind of discussions and debates and controversies around the
question of modernity is unending, even now there are, the discussions, the debates are raging
about the meaning, its scope and how the kind of a Eurocentric nature of characterizing
modernity is very problematic.
Questions such as how that really prevented alternative forms of knowledge making to emerge
from a non-western region and the connection between colonialism and modernity and how far
and is it possible for the post-colonial societies which were once under the colonial rule to
reclaim their lost tradition and is it possible for them to look back into their own culture, their
own tradition and then to retrieve categories and frameworks and theories that would be more
sensitive to their own lived realities.
There were more questions like whether can you develop social science categories without being
influenced by dominant understanding of modernity. There are very different arguments and
counter arguments for as well as against this particular position. One group of scholars would say
that we don't want to do anything with the western understanding of society, we just want to
completely abandon that on the other hand, scholars would argue that, because of the fact that
they emerged in the west does not make them useless or does not make it worthless.
858
But rather you need to critically adopt that and develop a theoretical formulations and other
original ideas rooted in your own cultural specificity and then very actively engage in the process
of a creation of social theory from the south, usually that is what it is says from the south. So, the
current academic scenario is quite reverberating with the kind of discussions and debates.
Since we are in the final week of the class I thought I will spend three sessions just to point at
subsequent developments of sociological theory, because usually in conventional sense we
understand three important schools of sociological theory that developed following the classical
sociological period. So, if you identify the period of classical sociological theory till 1930s and
what we are going to discuss.
The subsequent development it follows after that from 1930s, and the later decades, it took a
completely different turn with the emergence of post structuralism and postmodern theories and
a host of new theories, completely changing the kind of theorization within sociology and the
host of other disciplines.
But from 1930s to 70s, we can be very clear that these were the three major theoretical
orientations that kind of shaped the emergence and subsequent development as well as
institutionalization of sociology. You must be knowing that a discipline that as young as
sociology became a well-established discipline across the globe in a short periode.
Sociology departments begun to be opened in most of the prestigious universities and sociology
was begun to be seen as an established science, as an established discipline of society. So
development of these theoretical traditions, these theoretical frameworks really played a very
important role in the establishment as well as institutionalization of the discipline. And again by
the term institutionalization I hope you understand that there are different parameters for that.
You need to have a substantial section of scholars who work in that particular field of sociology
and it must be an accepted program in different universities, you must be having a
syllabusmasters as well as PhD program, you must be having your professional body, you must
be having your own publication, your own journals, so that is how a discipline assumes the
character of a professional discipline, a well-established discipline.
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Sociology was undergoing that particular process from 1920s, 30s, 40s and by 60s sociology was
kind of well-established in the major universities across the globe. So, we are going to discuss
these three major theoretical traditions. The first one is structural functionalism and you must be
knowing that we have come across this term several times.
We are not going into the details, but I would try to give a rather broad overview of this
particular theoretical framework what does it stand for, what is it primary focus and who were
the people who really contributed for the establishment of structural functionalism and people
from different countries, and what were the kind of major problems against structural
functionalism.
We will see that structural functionalism as a theoretical school, more or less lost its esteem by
1960s because it could not really confront or it could not really address the kind of criticisms that
were levelled against this. So, by 1960s it almost died out, it almost kind of become a non-
dominant theoretical perspective, but after 1980s there is a couple of scholars who have emerged
claiming to be kind of neo functionalist.
Here you see this kind of various digressions and diverse trajectories of a theoretical discipline
within the broader discipline of sociology itself, but structural functionalism has been one of the
earliest as well as one of the most influential theoretical framework.
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The most influential and long-standing theoretical perspective because especially for a country
like India, you will realize that the most significant and influential sociological theoretical
tradition in India has been undoubtedly structural functionalism, it is not interactionism, it is not
a conflict theory though we had few sociologists who had used Marxian perspective or a conflict
perspective.
But vast majority of the sociologists in India consciously or unconsciously followed a structural
functionalist perspective and so is the case with the UK, France and majority of the European
societies as well as that of the US. So basically, structural functionalism, tries to analyse the
relationship between the structures of a society with its function. So, these two terms we have
come across several times.
I do not think that we need to elaborate that point further. From the very period of its inception,
the founding fathers of sociology, especially people like Comte, Durkheim and Weber, and
spencer they wanted, they compared, especially Spencer, compared a human society with that of
a living organism.
Just like an organism has different parts these scholars also argue that human society also has
different parts or different components and these different components are not simply put
861
together but they are arranged in very-very specific manner just like a living organism is
structured and each part is committed to fulfil certain important function.
And when every part comes together, when each and every part comes together and follow the
functions properly, meticulously, then that particular system or that particular animal actually
behaves or it lives, it sustains properly or it is a state of being healthy. So now you understand
structure as an ordered arrangement of parts and this is an extremely important definition.
A structure is not a mere agglomeration of parts and that holds true for any particular entity, even
for a cycle or a motorcycle or a car or a house, you cannot simply put all the parts together and
then that only will become a heap of its parts, it will not become a structure. So there has to be an
ordered arrangement of parts and these scholars try to understand what were the specific parts
and how that each part is arranged in specific relationship with other.
How does they contribute to the overall functioning of a society? So this was a vvery influential,
extremely foundational line of thinking, right from the beginning of among the founders of
sociological theorizing. So what were their major concerns? The general interrelatedness of the
systems where you see this two terms many times interchangeably structure and system.
But usually system is understood as a step lower to that of a structure and you understand
structure as having different systems in place and that is how when we understand anatomy. You
have physiology for that matter, you have different systems, you have reproductive system,
digestive system, central nervous system and all these system put together you get the complete
morphology of human beings.
Similarly, they focused on the general interrelatedness of the system part, for example, in a
primitive society how that production takes place and how this production takes place along with
the kind of political governance or socialization or maintenance of family and marriage and
kinship system. What is the relationship between kinship system and the system of governance?
A sociologist who studies a tribal society who try to make sense of the inter-relationship between
these different kind of systems and then try to understand that how they come together and how
they act together and then take the society forward, the existence of a normal state of being or
equilibrium comparable to that of a healthy individual.
862
The assumption was that in a society when all these parts come together and function properly,
the society reaches a kind of an equilibrium, there is no major chaos, there is no major change,
and there is no major violence. The society is in order as it reaches a kind of an equilibrium,
there is a kind of a status quo on which most of the scholars were heavily preoccupied.
They were really preoccupied with the question of seeing the kind of stability and what brings
equilibrium to a society, how can you maintain the status quo of a society, so they argued that,
just like a human society, when do we call a human body a healthy body, we call a human body a
healthy body when you are able to live in a proper way without any kind of disturbances, without
any kind of sickness or deformities and other things.
When you are able to fulfil your day-to-day activities in the most appropriate manner, you call it
as a healthy state of being. So, remember the term used by Durkheim, he uses the pathological
and this term pathological is used against the concept of healthy, when a pathogen attacks a
healthy being and succeeds in attacking, in its attack then this this organism loses its state of
being in a healthy situation and it becomes pathological.
Similarly, these biological imageries were very powerful especially in the initial period of a
functional analysis, so essence of a normal state of being or equilibrium comparable to that of a
healthy individual, the way that all party tries to contribute to the maintenance of its equilibrium.
So again it was taken for granted that every part is supposed to contribute for the maintenance of
the security.
That was seen as the concept of function. Function is, structural functionalism is understood not
as what something does, so for example, what is the function of a switch, the function of a switch
is to switch on a lamp or an electrical equipment or something, that is what it does, but here in
structural functionalism, the term function was understood as a very specific contribution, it has
a positive contribution.
A positive contribution for the maintenance of its equilibrium, so these scholars were heavily
preoccupied with the question of understanding how that each and every part of these societies,
how each of these part is contributing for the maintenance of its overall equilibrium.
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Though formulated from the writings of Comte, Spencer and Durkheim, structural functionalism
developed more clearly through the works of British Anthropologists Radcliff Brown and
Bronislow Malinowski. So, we have seen that, we have not discussed this anthropologist Radcliff
Brown and Malinowski, we have not done that, because they are not strictly sociologists. They
were anthropologists, though the relation between these two are very close.
If you look at the emergence of structural functionalism as a school of thought, it definitely

understands its beginning with Comte and then especially with the Spencer because of his
argument about this organismic analogy. Durkheim has very important functionalist orientation
as he talks about the needs which is a very problematic ter. He focused on the needs that every
subsystem or every structure needs to fulfil.
That really created quite a lot of discussions and debates later, when you say that something is
fulfilling in need, it assumes that these needs are something so original from the beginning and
then you develop a social part in order to fulfil that. It leads to lot of questions about the
teleology and also to tautology for some example. So this became very powerful in the early
sociological writings of Durkheim, and Spencer and Comte.
Later it was heavily influenced by the anthropologists Radcliff Brown and Bronislaw
Malinowski and they used it in the studies of the tribal societies. Because they believed that these
tribal societies are the most elementary and basic so it is much easier for them to understand that.
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For example, they would try to see how sexual taboos function in a society and the connection
between sexual taboos and then kinship system, governing system and so on. So, that was the
kind of major influence of structural functionalism during 1940s and 50s especially with this
working of anthropologists Radcliff brown and Bronislow Malinowski.
Later it went to US and it became extremely dominant theory in US through the works of Talcott
Parsons and Robert K Merton. Talcott Parsons was understood as the most important scholar
belonging to structural functionalism. And I am not going into the details because Parson’s
theory is very complicated, but let me reiterate that he became extremely popular and influential
sociologist in the US by putting forward his structural functionalist school.
Parsons has a theory of different system levels such as cultural or symbolic systems, social
system, personality system and the individual organism as a system. So, he has multiple layers of
system level starting with cultural or symbolic system and then social system, then personality
system and the individual organism as a system.
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So, in these three or four major systems he tries to understand a number of other concepts about
his ideas about social action, his idea about pattern variables. He talks about how social action
takes place at the realm of individual on the basis of various value orientations and various forms
of rationality and how that can get escalated into a social system and his ideas about pattern
variables that certain different kind of goal orientations.
He talks about different types of pattern variables, different kind of requirements for different
types of societies. I am not going into the details but the point why that he resorts into such a
complicated analysis was to explain how different societies acquire social equilibrium by certain
permutations between these systems levels and associated pattern variables. So, let me just
summarize it like that.
Going in detail into the Parsonian theory is extremely complicated and it is not required for us
now, but the ultimate aim of parsons was that he wanted to explain how different societies
acquire social equilibrium by certain permutations between these systems levels and associated
pattern variables. Therefore he has this elaborate schema in which he would categorize societies
into traditional societies and modern societies.
He then argued that traditional societies have such and such system levels and it has a
corresponding kind of pattern variables, whereas modern societies have different types of social
866
systems with corresponding kind of pattern variables. So, you essentially argue that traditional
societies are like that and modern societies are like that. So, it provides a very interesting
influential sociological explanation to explain why that certain societies have become developed
so fast while other societies stagnated.
This is a very problematic explanation when you try to look at society's internal dynamics and
say that by nature a traditional society or a society in Africa are like that because, their value
orientation, their system levels, their personality social and cultural systems are like that which
do not allow them or which do not encourage them to develop whereas on the contrary societies
like Europe are more different.
Their cultural, social and personal systems are different, their pattern variables are different and
they are more inclined originally, naturally they are more inclined to become developed is quite
natural, so this is what he explains. So this becomes a very important justification for the
modernization theory. This becomes a very important justification for modernization theory as
well as development theory.
Because modernization theory explains why that certain societies have become modern while
others are lagging behind, so at the same time Parsons was heavily criticized for not addressing
the question of social change sufficiently. Now, like every structural functionalist Parsons also is
preoccupied with the question of analysing the phenomenon of social equilibrium or social
stability or the order.
Once you have a theory that preoccupied with explaining why that order is constructed and
maintained, then it becomes very difficult for you to explain how social change happens. So,
there were serious criticism against Parsons and towards the end of his life Parsons also brought
out a structural functionalist theory to explain social change. But that was not very effective and
moreover he was criticized for accusing the third world nations for their lack by being oblivious
to the process of colonialism and slavery.
This is something extremely important. As I told you that this structural functionalism as
propounded by Parsons, it became a sociologically sophisticated theoretical justification to
modernization theory as modernization theory argues that there is only one path towards
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development and that path is being shown by countries of western Europe, all others are
supposed to follow.
It also explained why that certain countries are continue to be lagging behind, why that certain
countries continue to be underdeveloped, while certain countries have become developed. If you
use Parsons’ argument you can provide a sociological explanation arguing that these traditional
societies have value systems, they have social systems, they have personality systems which are
resistant to change.
They are more traditional, inward-looking, whereas modern societies, European societies in
essence are more flexible, dynamic, open-minded, and more rational whereas traditional cities
are irrational. He brings in quite a lot of these binaries. Now the point is this argument was very
powerful in the US as well as in the development circles at least till 1960s.
And later very interesting theoretical arguments came from world system theory by Immanuel
Wallerstine and dependency theory up by a series of Latin American scholars such as Andre
Gunder Frank and others, who very vehemently criticize this position saying that the supporters
of structural functionalism are not really bringing in history to explain and to understand why
that certain countries have become poorer and why that certain countries have become rich.
Where is the place for colonialism and slavery in your theory of social change? How do you
account for that? That was a devastating criticism. They could not answer that because if you are
not able to bring in a very specific concrete historical episodes into your sociological theory and
then try to explain why that we developed and you did not develop, then it is a very baseless
argument and a useless exercise. It only becomes a kind of intellectual exercise in vain so that
was the kind of criticisms that were raised by this scholars like Wallerstine and A G Frank were
very important
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Another important scholar belong to this school was Robert K Merton, who was a very important
sociologist who made this theories of middle range. His arguments about science and society are
very important because he did not believe in making very grand theorizations like Parsons, but
he emphasized on doing more empirically based theories of the middle range.
Merton arguments about dysfunctions and manifest and latent functions and dysfunctions
became important, because every part was seen as supposed to be giving only positive
contributions for the existence of a society, nothing was seen as negative. So, that had led to
quite a lot of teleological explanation. It looks as if every part understood what the kind of a need
it is supposed to perform and then developed for that, that is a kind of a teleological
technological explanation.
Merton brings in the whole question of dysfunction. Dysfunction is the kind of a contribution by
the part of a society which you know disturb this kind of an equilibrium and that he argued, it
could be both manifest and latent. Manifest is something that is obvious and something that is
intended, whereas latent is something that is not seen and also unintended.
Many of the social parts or many of the social structure, it generates a lot of very obvious
whatever we wanted and it also creates lot of unwanted unintended consequences which will
disturb the equilibrium of society. So that was a very influential idea and this whole idea of latent
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and manifest function is something very central even to the modern theorization because a host
of our own inventions and ideas.
We wanted certain positive outcomes, those were the intended outcomes that we wanted, but
while we created that we also created lot of unintended, negative consequences which we do not
know how to deal with it. And so by mounting criticism against functionalism by 1960s as I
mentioned and by 1960s it more or less, it failed as a theoretical tradition. It could not really
withstand the kind of criticisms levelled against that by other scholars.
A host of alternative theoretical paradigms were emerging in US as well as in the UK

interactionism, exchange theory, then social or conflict theory, a feminist theory, a host of other
things were emerged and now from 1980s onwards you see a group of scholars who call
themselves as a neo-functionalist such as Geffrey Alexander and Niklas Luhmann. Geffrey
Alexander is from US and then Niklas Luhmann is from Germany.
They try to recreate the functions to school and calling it as a neo-functionalism and arguing that
there is much possibility still left in the kind of a functional theorization and they do not want to
look at it as a very conservative theoretical tradition, but they argue that this whole idea of
different differentiation and how the whole question of different social structure, it is something
very important.
I am again not going into the details. But these people they something like a neo-Marxism that
emerged during the same time Luhmann and Geffrey Alexander, they represent the rise of neo-
functionalism in the academics that we related to structural functions. This is a very broad
overview of structural functionalism as I mentioned to tell you to give you an indication about
what were the kinds of trajectories of sociological theorization after the period of classical
sociological theory. So, we will stop here and then we will meet for the next class and we will
discuss conflict theory as well as symbolic interactions, thank you.
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Lecture 57
Conflict Theory
Welcome back to the class and in this class, we will have some discussion about conflict theory.
And again, it is aone among the three theoretical orientation of modern sociological theories. As
we discussed in the previous class, structural functionalism, conflict theory and interactionism
are widely considered as the three major streams of sociological theorizations of modern
sociological theory.
The kinds of theories emerged after 1930s and that was relevant up to 1980s and though we say
that these theoretical traditions are relevant, after 80s you will see a kind of a splintering of these
theoretical traditions and addition of lot more traditions and lot of orientations, theoretical
arguments coming into picture.
Why I decided to devote three sessions to each of these traditions is basically to give you a very
broad overview and I know it is a very extremely superficial and sketchy elaboration, I am not
able to go into any of the thinkers in a detailed manner, I am not able to discuss anything more
substantive, but I only would be able to give you a very broad overview of the transformation of
the trajectory of these theoretical traditions and to introduce you these scholars. So, once you
want to study modern sociological theories it might be helpful for you.
That is the only intention otherwise these discussions what we had yesterday about the structure
functionalism and today’s discussion on conflict theory and the next class is discussion on
interactions theory are all going to be extremely sketchy and very superficial.
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Conflict theory emerges as an alternative as a functional theorization and it became more

influential in sociological theorization. We know that we discussed Karl Marx in details and it
becomes very evident that the very theoretical as well as intellectual as well as political motives
of Karl Marx are very different from that of the other sociologists. That is a very important thing,
what were the factors that really motivated the intellectual journey of Karl Marx.
Intellectual motif is a common thing for any intellectual, any scholar for that matter, but what the
kind of peculiar motivations were and inspiration for Karl Marx and which were not shared by
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lot of other equally important sociologists. And Marx was an unusual person. Marx had a very
strong political project at hand.
One of the important things that really inspired Marx was this whole question of equality, the
dream or the image of a more egalitarian society and his unending quest to understand why there
are people living in completely different kind of situations, why that there is so much of power,
inequality and why there is so much of exploitation, why there is so much of discrimination.
Why that handful people, a minority is able to rule over the vast majority of the people. And
especially we discuss that his, and their answer revolve around the question of economy, the role
of money, role of labor, I am not going into that. But that particular preoccupation to critically
analyses the social structure and with that urge to bring about change was something quite
radically opposite to that of the theorist who propounded function theory.
The social change and social order do not go together and cannot go hand in hand, one is seen as
their opposite of the other in a society which is full of social change, you cannot really talk about
social equality, social equilibrium or social stability, while we know that societies have both
these elements, certain peculiar time periods would represent a face of rapid social changes or a
face of prolonged equilibrium or prolonged status.
Marx was interested in the question of change, and struggle and conflict and again Marx was not
the first scholar who were interested in the question of conflict, previously philosophers
including Hegel really wanted to understand how social change happened. But on the other hand
in terms of orientation, in terms of their political position, these two schools of thought, the
conflict theory as well as the structural functionalism are seen as kind of antithetical.
They are seen as kind of opposite because structural functionalist understand conflict as
something negative, when we discussed Georg Simmel. We saw that Simmel is one among the
very first conflict theorists who spoke about the positive aspect of conflict. He spoke about how
social conflict provides for increase in social solidarity, an increase in social control, a sense of
belongingness to a society.
But otherwise in the conventional narrations of all the structure functionalist or all the functional
school, you will see conflict is seen as something unwanted, as something that is negative,
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something that is disruptive, something has everything to sabotage, their existing system, so
traditional, even within sociological circle functionalism is seen as a more conservative kind of
theorization whereas conflict theory is seen as a kind of a more radical social theory.
A theory which imagines radical outcome and that imagines alternative, more radical social order
that is something extremely important and for theorists of conflict theory. Within that there are
so many different strands such as people who believe in the political project of Marx, people
who did not believe in the political project of Marx but still were interested in the question of
understanding social conflict and social change.
It is a very broad, extremely rich area of intellectual engagement. So conflict theory in that sense
is an extremely diverse and extremely rich set of theorizations starting with Marxist and then
orthodox Marxist and neo-Marxist and a host of different labels and it would be very difficult, it
would be very challenging for us to get some idea about the overall conflict theory in very short
periodic time.
We will try and to summarize some of the key people, some of the interesting people and
important people. So, it is better equipped to exchange social change and transformation in
comparison with functionalism as we discussed so far because conflict theory looks at how rapid
social changes happen, why there could be kind of much faster transformation take place in
society, so since unlike structural functionalism that is pre-occupied with some order.
Conflict theory look such kind of power relation, the kind of disagreements, competition,
violence and change of order, the introduction of new social orders, so change is the focal point
of conflict theory. So, there are some of these important central assumptions of conflict theory.
People have several interests; many of them are in conflict with others, most importantly
emerging from material conditions.
So, conflict theory does not understand society as a very nice, peaceful setting where everybody
lives happily, and everybody helps each other, that is a very positive picture is not something
shared by people of conflict theory. They argue that there are very distinct social groups in
society, it could be power, it could be prestige, it could be wealth, it could be something else,
mostly revolving around the material condition.
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They do not talk about other non-material condition, but non-material conditions become a part
of the story related theorizations. So, they understand, for them conflict theory, for Marx and
others, conflict theory, even with Hegel, conflict theory, society is a place where differently
positioned people, differently positioned people into specific interest groups are constantly
negotiating with each other, constantly studying with each other in order to protect their material
interest.
What constitutes this material interest is the major center of discussion and debate, we know that
for Marx this entire material condition we reduce it to economy whereas Weber did not agree
that. Weber argued that along with material condition which is described using the class, the
status and power are important. And a host of other sociologists have really tried to make very-
very interesting insights about this whole thing.
But fundamentally they would share the argument that this society is not a very peaceful one.
Secondly this talks about power as a core of social relationship and power as coercive as well.
And second important element of conflict theory is that they are really preoccupied with the
question of power.
If structural functionalist were preoccupied with the question of social order, conflict theorists
are preoccupied with the question of power. When structure functionalists argue that there is an
order in society, there is an equilibrium in a society, there is peace in society, there is some kind
of tranquility or this status quo society, conflict theory should agree that, of course, there is a
tranquility, there is peace and there is a status quo.
But they would want to ask the question how is this peace or how is this order made possible
because we know that any amount of order, any amount of equilibrium require some kind of a
balance, some kind of a power play, the absence of change or equilibrium does not mean that
there is no power. So, power plays an extremely important role in giving us the impression that a
particular society is completely in the state of equilibrium or there is social order in society.
We can talk about feudal society or slave society which is completely peaceful because slaves do
not try to resist, they do not try to revolt, they simply do the work that is asked by their masters
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and if there is no revolt, if there is no agitation then we can call it as a place with lot of order but
is it what the sociologists really want to understand.
So, then the Marxist or the conflict theorists should ask the question how is this order
maintained, how is this order broken, what is the kind of a power relation that established and
perpetuates this kind of order and that is a very uncomfortable question, you must be knowing
that. That question has lot of potential to disrupt this all. That question has lot of potential to
subvert this particular social order.
And that is a very uncomfortable question that many people refuse to ask and the scholars who
belong to this particular group they did not hesitate to ask the question and they also think that
power is as coercive as well. So, it is not only that power exist but this power has a coercive, an
important Weberian and Marxian understand, when there is an order, because you cannot have a
society where there is completely equal distribution of power.
In most of the society if there is a semblance of order is because there is very absolute kind of
power is implode and the power has a coercive character. Power can be used to influence others.
We can use to make people obey, to fall in line, it has this coercive element, it has the ability to
inflict pain, and punishments can follow the power. So, they really want to understand how that
power in its diverse form are understood, are implode and distributed.
How this monopolize, how this executed? Whether it is resisted or whether it is accepted without
in the absence of any other option? So, these were the important pre-occupations, so important
points of analysis of conflict theorists. Then ideas and values as weapons used by groups to
advance its interests, debates on ideology and legitimacy.
This is yet another very-very important point because everybody knows, we know that human
beings are ruled, we are governed not always on the basis of trait of whiles, is not it. We quote
history, of course, there could be different periods in history where extreme form of violence was
used to elicit obedience but that is not true for all time and it is also not something very durable.
It is not something enduring.
You cannot force in order to keep a section of people under control rather everybody agree
including Hegel and Marx and later scholars, especially Gramsci, is a very important Marxian
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scholar, Gramsci realizes, Frankfurt School scholars realize that, this ideology and ideas, the real
of ideas play an extremely important role in making people obeying in spite of their knowledge
or without the knowledge that these things are not to the best of their interest.
These are not the best arrangements for them, so how is it possible? There are certain ideologies,
very powerful ideologies, they have been designed and then executed and then perpetuated in
such a manner that it always it supports the more powerful people and the expense of the
sufferings of the vast majority people.
And how does it possible, why that is vast majority of the people who are at the receiving end do
not realizes, what are the mechanisms through which these ideologies and then ideas are
perpetuated without the people who are at the receiving end revolting against series. So, these
were some of the important questions, these were some of the important rallying points of
scholars who belong to conflict theorization.
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They also argued that, they also think that a completely value neutral position, analysis is not
possible or rather it is not required in social sciences. So, they do not really believe in argument
or the position of these arm-chair theorists, something that we have discussed about Karl Marx.
Marx was not an arm-chair theorist. He did not believe in getting very cozy or comfortable
professorship in some university and then live his life as a renowned economist or philosopher.
Rather he deliberately chose a very troublesome, very extremely difficult personal life, he has to
flee from countries after countries and finally settle down in London and we will see when we
discuss critical school, the scholars who started this critical school in Frankfurt in 1923, they all
had to flee Germany when Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology came into power because these
intellectuals and their arguments were completely against the ideology of Hitler.
These people were extremely critically of fascism and that is the time when Adolf Hitler was
targeting the intellectuals, so they have to leave their home, and most of other schools. So, they
did not in their personal life, they did not believe that a completely value neutral analysis, neither
it is possible nor it is required. They argued that such a position, where you are providing a very
completely neutral analysis is simply not possible.
If you do not take sides and you think that neutrality is a very important virtue, but these people
do not agree with that, they would say that in an extremely exploitative situation, in an extremely
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violent society are taking no sides, means that you are siding with a perpetrator, you are siding
with a powerful and they did not agree that.
In a society of fascism, in a society of capitalistic exploitation, in a society of casteist

exploitation there are scholars who think that you can always take a very neutral position and
then analyze things in a very objective manner and present it as it is. But there are other scholars
who believe that activist scholars also need to take positions, very strong positions, mostly some
of the important values of humanity.
Hence we come back to the foundational influence of Karl Marx, without any doubt Karl Marx
has been the most inspirational figure, he has been the most important figure even today. Even
today, even in 2020 we are discussing about Karl Marx, Marx in relevance today about this critic
of religion analysis of capitalism, his ideas about alienation for example. So, I do not need to go
into arguments of Marx again.
But Marx is the central figure and extremely influential, charismatic scholar who had a huge fan
following, huge set of followers and intellectual scholars who followed his ideas, again in a
completely different sector, somebody following a very orthodox Marxism, somebody
reinterpreting Marxism, somebody arguing for a much more liberal understanding of Marxism,
but Marx remains the central figure.
And some of his important ideas like materialist conception of society, we have discussed it
sufficiently, economic determinism, and again there are arguments, especially Gramshi and a
host of others would argue that Marx never spoke about this economic determinism. His whole
ideal of economic determinism is a very orthodox Marx, it is a mechanical understanding of
Marxim, as Marx never spoke about that.
And the role of ideology whether his ideology can be seen only as the super structure, is it only a
byproduct of the economic structure and these are some of the very interesting discussion which
emerge later with the works of critical school, with the works of Gramsci and a host of others.
And the revolutionary spirit, of course, Marx was somebody who strongly believed in the
intending revolution, which he very strongly believed that will alter, will overthrow the capitalist
system and a far better egalitarian social system will come into picture.
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Marx was personally committed to question of working class, and with sympathy slide with
them, he looked at the bourgeoisie as and exploited the class. So, Marx remains the core
ideological inspiration or the political inspiration of a host of leaders who belong to this category
of conflict theory.
Then we have Max Weber again who dealt with questions of social stratification, who dealt with
question of social differentiation who argued that stratification is something very important but it
cannot be reduced to that of class alone and Weberian intervention is something extremely
important and a host of conflict sociologist are heavily influenced by Weber, his insistence that
you need to take into account the status quo question, we need to take into account the political
question, political power and they cannot be reduced to that of class.
Class has to be seen as an independent part of manifestation of stratification. So, these two along
with Hegel of course, Hegel becomes extremely important with the latter theorizations. So, these
people, especially Marx and Weber and Hegel represent some of the important scholars.
So, there are lot of scholars who belong to this particular conflict theory, there are scholars who
worked with the elites, there is Veblin who worked on elite class theory, looked at how there are
very specific set of people who always occupy this elite position in the context of America, not a
typical Marxist, Weblin was into the question of class and industrialization
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But one of the most important and interesting groups of scholars, I just want to introduce to you
is this School of Critical Sociologist. Critical sociologist is again a broad term and one of the
important section in this is Frankfurt school which I just mentioned earlier. They establish this
institute of social research at the University of Frankfurt in 1923 and they argued that the
primary responsibility of the scholars is to be critical of the power elite or the establishment and
so on.
This whole idea of critical sociology, the argument that the primary responsibility of social
science is to critic, is to be critical of the society or of the power relation, of the power elite, of
the establishment of the dominant class, this is an extremely important argument of the Frankfurt
School. So, they would argue that when we live in a particular periodic time, you cannot escape
the most dominant ideology and this particular dominant ideology provides with certain
interpretation of the world.
Unless you develop critical fact is to understand, for example, there is a critic of mass culture,
there the critic of popular culture, it talks about that, so unless you are critical of the dominant
ideologies then you will never be able to see through these processes. Every important quality of
sociological imagination, so they had taken it up among themselves as this ability to develop
critic.
They were extremely fascinated by this concept of critic that includes Max Horkheimer, Theodor
Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. And Erich Fromm was heavily influenced by
psychoanalysis and they brought in psychoanalysis as a very important element of analyzing this
whole question of power and domination and they also believed that there is a deep moral
commitment to egalitarian society.
They very strongly believed that a scholar has a moral responsibility to strive for a more
egalitarian society. They started this institute in 1923, they came under enormous pressure from
Hitler and they had to close down the department and they left for different places, some went to
USA, some stayed back there, two of them came back, Horkheimer and Adorno came back.
This critical school is very influential, extremely popular, very celebrated in the sociological
circles. And they criticize a host of Marxian notions as well and another important scholar who
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comes much later if Jurgen Habermas, a German sociologist, a philosopher rather who became
extremely one of the most important influential in intellectuals of all times. Habermas arguments
about public fear, arguments about communicative rationality and a host of others.
This critical school were quite critical of the orthodox Marxian economic determinism. They did
not agree with the orthodox Marxian view that the ideologies or ideas are nearly a byproduct of
economy they also believed that this space of ideology is something extremely important for you
to fight, it cannot be simply left as a epiphenomenon of your economic substance.
They analyzed the concept of culture, ideology et cetera and use of psychoanalysis extensively
and they could argue that many of this popular culture, many of the soft culture that you see,
what function do they do to the ordinary people, why that, one of the main concerns for them
was that why that vast majority of the people in spite of living under harsh realities do not they
protest.
Why are they not really seeing the enemy clearly and then organize themselves, why that a
political movement is not taking place in the most challenging times in Germany for that matter,
Europe for that matter during 1920s and 30s, instead of a popular liberation movement, fascism
was on the rise Europe. They dealt with these question and Habermas is an important scholar in
this tradition
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C W Mills, an American sociologist we started with this course, we discussed C Wright Mills
and arguments about sociology and his work on elites is important, and the very important name
is Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, extremely important and influential sociologist. His
major concern was with the question of reproduction of class or this class distinction is
reproduced. Why that the upper class is always able to maintain that superiority and why is that
so difficult for the lower class to come up.
And what are the mechanisms which really ensure the stability of this class hierarchy and his
concept of Habitus, his concept of different forms of capital, especial cultural capital, these are
extremely important concepts, extremely important theorizations which are very efficiently,
effectively being used even in the contemporary times, extremely important people.
Then we have all set of other scholars including Lewis Coser and Randall Collins and then
Dahrendorf and a host of others who do not really share the kind of a political stand or what you
call it as a left political position unlike the critical scholars and others. These people were
influenced by Marxian thinking but they do not really take the political position unlike that of the
previous scholars.
For example Lewis Coser talked about this functional conflict theory, he talks about what are the
functions of conflict theory, you remember Simmel spoke about it, but he elaborates that further,
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he talks about the manifest functions of conflict and Latin functions of conflict, manifest
functions as well as manifest dysfunctions, Latin functions and Latin dysfunctions.
And Randall Collins who argued for micro-level analysis of power relations rather than talking
about large structures of class exploitation, large structures of working class and bourgeois who
broader once. Then you have Ralf Dahrendorf who presented a dialectical conflict perspective,
which still represent once of the best efforts to incorporate the insights of Marx and to a lesser
extent Weber and Simmel into a coherent and non-evaluative set of theoretical propositions.
So, we spoke, as I mentioned earlier this tradition of conflict theory is something very-very rich
in terms of the number of scholars involved, the number of theoretical arguments involved and
they are especially after 80s, with the discovery of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian scholar, who
then did the discovery of his work, his written works, especially Prison note and that brought in
quite a lot of new energy into the academic works of conflict theorists.
His arguments of hegemony, his arguments against consent and these are some of the very
fascinating theoretical arguments about how this power relations work in society. So, the kind of
inspiration that is provided by Marx, the focus that you have to, you cannot escape the question
of power, you cannot really escape the question of power, power in different forms and that is
the central question along with a commitment for a more egalitarian society have been the
central concern of conflict theory. So, let us stop here and we will meet for the next class, thank
you.
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Interactionist Perspective
Lecture No. 58
Welcome back to the class and in the previous two session, we discussed functionalism and
conflict theory, now we are discussing interactionist perspective. So, I mentioned in the
previous class that I am spending three sessions in order to introduce you to the later
developments of sociology and interactionism is one of the important schools of thought,
extremely influencial schools off thought that emerged by 1930s, 1940s onwards and by and
by 1980s, it became one of the very influencial schools, especially so in the US more than in
the UK.
And unlike the conflict theory and structural functionalism looks at society rather differently,
the methodical orientations are different, the way in which it understand society is different,
the way in which it understands human beings is different. So, it is a very interesting theory.
You are already familiar with it because we spent lot of time on discussing G H Mead.
Mead is one of the founder of interactions perspective because most of the subsequent
scholars have been heavily indebted to the arguments of G H Mead and others. This approach
focuses on this micro-social setting and why that we are saying that this interaction’s
perspective focuses on micro-social settings? Because unlike a conflict theory or unlike a
structural functionalism which talk about macro sociological processes, large historical
changes.
You just imagine the theorization of Emil Durkheim or Max Weber or even Karl Max or
August Comte, they were all talking about meta theories that spanned the entire human
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history, theories that can be applied anywhere for that matter. Parsonian functionalism is a
grand theory.
In contrast to such theorizations, interactionist scholars really focused on the micro-social

settings, they focused on the whole question of interaction, they try to make sense of these all
process of interaction, they wanted to understand what are the dynamics of this interaction?
What is the chemistry of this interaction? What are the processes involved in interaction
when hundreds or thousands or millions of people come together and if they share the similar
culture or even if they do not share the similar culture, how is that there is a kind of a
normalcy is made possible?
How that is there is a kind of equilibrium is made possible and what are the processes
through which they understand the same thing? How that is somebody is made
comprehensible to the other? How that is somebody is made intelligible to the other? And
how is this intelligibility is shared, created, shared and constrain and sustained among
different people? How do people come with a kind of shared sense of identity, shared sense
of purpose, shared sense of ideas, shared sense of the social existence? These are some of the
extremely important questions.
It was the centrality of interaction and the idea that human beings as meaning making agents
who construct society actively. So, this is the most important element and this is in sharp
contrast to people like Durkheim who did not give so much of an agency or empowerment for
individuals to create society. Rather, Durkheim looked at human beings as some kind of a
prisoners of society, people who are forced to behave, act in ways that are determined by
society.
I hope you remember discussion on social facts, it talks about its cohesive capacity and in
that place, in complete opposition to a typical Durkheimian understanding of society, here
interactionist would argue that human beings are meaning-making agents, they do not simply
behave, they do not simple behave on the basis of certain stimulus. They behave of course,
there could be, they would react to stimulus, but more complicated processes takes place in
their mind and even more complicated process take place when they are combined together,
or when they share their space with others.
They actively construct society, it is not that they are forced into a society and then they lead
a very limited life. They actively create society and that was that is one of the most important
decisive theoretical orientation of interactionists theorist, they all share this idea that the focus
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must be on to understand how there is a shared subjective understanding is created about the
society.
This understanding was certainly influenced by Max Weber. I hope you remember, Max
Weber was one of the most important sociologist who provided an anti-positivist turn to the
methodological and epistemological debates within sociology. He brought in the idea of
Verstehen and argued that human beings simply do not behave, but rather they act. His
theorization on action, his typologies of action, his arguments about objectively
understanding the subjective meanings attached by the actors on their action were extremely
influencial for these scholars whom we consider as people belong to interactionist school.
Then we discussed George Simmel and then C H Cooley who came up with this very
interesting arguments about looking glass, a self-theory. You just like a mirror that you look
at and then look at your own image, you look at the general public, you look at your
immediate significant other and then you derive your image about you. We also discussed
John Dewey and G H Mead in detail. Mead’s argument about mind, self and society and
about the development of the mind and the self.
Most importantly, Mead's argument about the centrality of social interaction, centrality of
society in creating a healthy mind and self in every individual and his argument that a
constant reciprocation between the generalised other is what constitutes the society. So, these
were extremely important founding fathers of interactionist perspective and their significance
is extremely important.
And another important scholar Herbert Bloomer, an American sociologist who are a, who
was a student of G H Mead and who thought in University of Chicago. He is yet another
important scholar who focus more on this symbolic aspect of this communication, symbolic
aspect of interaction. You, Mead spoke about the significance symbols, the important
symbols especially that of language and Bloomer advances that argument.
Bloomer, Bloomer develops on that argument and then brings in the whole dimension of the
use of symbols. And how the symbols play important role do and how do we collectively use
symbols in order to reciprocate, in order to understand and he plays na extremely important
role. He played a very important role.
Then you have Erwin Goffman who coined this term ‘dramaturgical approach’ and it is
almost says as what Shakespeare says, “All the world’s a stage” and everybody is an actor. In
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a sense Goffman would suggest that you and me or everybody, we are acting on a stage, our
everyday life is nothing but acting. It sounds weird, but if you think from a different
perspective, it is true. We are we could be acting very sincerely, is not it? Even the most
sincere of the moments in front of your parents, in front of your loved ones, in front of your
close friends, you are, you might be the most sincere person, but still you are acting. We
cannot help but acting.
This acting is done when we adopt certain specific roles, when we know that what is
expected at a particular time is different from what is expected in front of some other group.
So, Goffman argued that our everyday experience, everyday existence is a set of
dramaturgical processes, we interact with each other as if we are playing a drama, we are
performing in front of an audience, we are performing on a stage and he uses this very
interesting term called as this front stage and back stage.
Front stage is what we put up in front of others, what we want others to see in us, this is what
we project in front of others, including are verbal, non-verbal, bodily aspects, how others
want us to be seen and this includes your dress, the way you dress up, the kind of things that
you use, the appearance that you make, the kind of tone, tenure, you’re the kind of gestures
that you think and the kind of voices, the modulation and of course, the intention. And here,
he would argue that we are very consciously performing, very discrete roles at different
times, as a student, as a lover, as a teacher, as a citizen, as a consumer you we, we are
extremely adapt in changing from one troll to the other.
That is mainly possible because we are performing, we are there is a front stage in our
everyday life. All our gender, our religion, our profession, all these things are on display. We
know how to or how to make ourself visible. We know how to present ourself in a variety of
ways. And he talks about the back stage where we are the more, the real self where we do not
have to pretend, where we could be completely different from the people whom we, whom as
we project. It could be completely different us, it could be people with all kind of weird
thinking, it could be people with all kind of very perverted kind of thinking. Or it could be
people who are completely different from what they present.
He says that he his argument, Goffman’s argument is that a human interaction is never ending
process of this acting between this front stage and the back stage. That really brought in
interesting dimension, interesting discussing into this whole argument about how we discus
with each other, how we create sense of intelligibility and how we live our everyday life.
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All these theorizations including dramaturgical approach and others, they all owe to a much
larger philosophical foundation of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl, very important
philosopher. And phenomenology is all about the whole cost of meaning-making. It does not
believe that there is already a meaningful society exist out there and you only go and need to
get that meaning. It does not believe that it does not believe that there is already a social
reality constructed out there for you to go and then capture it, unlike what Durkheim would
argue there are no social facts as already readymade stuff out there.
Phenomenologist would argue that human beings are constantly engaged in the process of
meaning creation. They create a world which in which everybody who participates equally
understand the contours, equally understands the grammar of that particular word and of that
particular context and only then society is possible. So, how do people constitute there
subjective world of meaning? How do I read a situation? And how is mind reading of a
situation he has to be similar to that of the reading of a situation of the other and how do they
make it intelligible to others?
How do I communicate? How do I how do I express? Or how a group of people share, how
everybody is in same plane? That could be another way of putting it. How an intersubjectivity
is created so that effective communication is possible? How is that and intersubjectivity is
create that everybody who is at same time they are on the same plane, just thing about a
ritual, a ritual in a temple or ritual in a in a in a house or a death ceremony or a or a birth
ceremony or some housewarming or any other kind of ritual and that ritual has a particular
context and everybody who comes to participate in that they are on the same plane.
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They understand what is to be done, what to say what not to say, how to behave, how not to
behave and that they are able to communicate with that, they are able to they are they able to
be on the same plane and how is that possible? They actively create that because there is no
fast and fast rule about how you should behave. But socially condition you know firms,
socially condition ways so behaviour tell us that this are the gestures that you are supposed to
demonstrate, these are the words that you are supposed to use, these are the actions that we
are supposed to enact and that we will create this particular kind of context in which a kind of
an intersubjectivity is possible.
You think of a classroom where 50 or 60 students are sitting and the teacher comes and
teacher walks in and that particular moment crates shapes that the space for an academic
exchange, everybody is on the same plane, they know what is supposed to go on or in a or in
a temple or in a church when a priest gives the ceremony, it is perfectly clear what is
supposed, what is expected and what is not expected. So, starting from this such kind of very
context specifying incidence or context specifying episodes phenomenology tries to
understand how large process of meaning making is possible.
Alfred Schutz another sociologist again American, he elaborated on this concept and then he
concentrated on this everyday life and stock knowledge. He concentrated on the on the
everyday life of an ordinary person. And how do how one negotiates this everydayness of his
life or her life and the importance of a stock knowledge. And stock knowledge may be can be
roughly translated into the common sense that we discussed in the in the very first week.
In that class we discussed how sociological thinking must be different from common sense
but Schutz, people like Schutz would say that this common sensical thinking it constitutes the
stock knowledge, the enormous amount of knowledge that we carry in our head that
facilitates our everyday interaction, the knowledge about food, the knowledge about etiquette,
the knowledge about manners, the knowledge about role of others, role of us, the rules and
regulations and in absence of this huge amount of knowledge it is extremely difficult for us to
behave naturally.
That is why we are absolutely comfortable and our own cultural context because that is where
we are extremely habituated with, that is our place. Whereas, if you are put into another
context, another location, another place among another, among a set of strange people whose
customs, regulations, food habits, you are not familiar with any of them and then you really
recognize how difficult it is to live. Even you become so embarrassed, you become so
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bevelled, you your action becomes extremely conscious, is not it? You do not know what to
do? You do not know whether what you do would be seen as correct or wrong.
If a person is continuously put into such kind of a situation, it becomes extremely difficult for
that person to survive, because you need to be in that sense of relaxed your own homely
atmosphere. Why that, why we say that? When we go back to our home, we feel more
relaxed because home is the most intimate place where your stock knowledge is at the highest
form. It is the most intimate place or your close friends with whom you share all kind of
secrets, they represent your innermost close group, your primary group.
Another sociologist is Harold Garfinkel, again American sociologist who coined this term
‘ethnomethodology’ and conducted a lot of experiments, ‘breaching experiments’, and
interesting argument. So, Garfinkel focused on the question of ethnomethodology can be seen
as understood as the methods of the ethnos, ethnos means human. What are the usual ways in
which human beings conduct themselves? What are the strategies and what are the
mechanisms through which they conduct their everyday life?
He conducted a series of breaching experiments. Breaching experiments recently, he would

conduct experiments that are that would deliberately break the routine of a particular social
context. For example, he conducted an experiment in a classroom where the where instead of
going and then teaching, the professor entered into the class and then he did some wired
thing. For example, he distributed papers on the floor and then he started collecting it back
and then arranging it properly, he started adjusting the windows and that left students to
completely different kind of answers.
When the students were interviewed, you got completely different kind of responses because
they could not make sense of what was going on. So, Garfinkel would argue that we are all,
we have all adopted certain kind of methods to live in a lie a kind of a normal life in the
society. One of the usual example that I often give to the class is that when somebody ask
you: how are you? We say that: hi, I am fine or we say we ask the same question back, how
are you? And sometimes you say that you are fine.
On one occasion when somebody ask you; how are you? You stop that person and then ask
him, what exactly really you wanted to know about me? Do you really want to know about
my personal life, personal wellbeing or financial wellbeing or social wellbeing, what exactly
you want to know about me? For, as an answer to this question of how are you? And you are
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sure that the other person who just asked in a very casual manner, how are you, would be
really surprised, and is not it?
He would be really bevelled because he would have asked you, how are you just as a gesture
of acknowledging your presence or establishing that okay you are familiar faces or to say hi
instead of saying hi, he would ask you how are you? And you say I am fine. When you say I
am fine, it does not convey anything, you do not say that I am not fine, you nobody says that.
Even if you are really not fine, you do not say that you are fine.
When you breach that agreement that when somebody ask you, how are you? You say I am
fine, and you ask, how are you? So, both of you know that the other person knows the
answer, the other person knows that this is only a gesture and the how are you question does
not have any content. It is only a hollow question. So, but we do not pretend to be like that,
we do not pretend to be like that. We pretend as if we are serious about it and ones you get
this answer that I am fine, you walk away.
He conducted a series of such kind of experiments and you will find a host of similar
experiments in the YouTube in host of websites especially people conduct lot of social
experiments, try to understand the attitude of people towards race, caste, religion, gender and
where they bring in certain kind of unexpected twist to this all episode where people’s usual
surrounding, usual situation is very deliberately breached, very deliberately subverted that
brings in quite a lot of unexpected kind of results and scenario.
These are some of the important scholars, again I have given only a very sketchy account,
and it is not a very detail account at any manner. And as I told you my intention is only to
flag the kind of a direction in which social theory or sociological theory developed after
1940s and these three schools are conventionally taught in Indian Universities as well as
Universities abroad as three major theoretical orientations; the structural functionalism,
conflict theory and interactionism and of course there are so many sub divisions within that,
there are so many theorist who had difference of opinion among themselves, but the this
orientations are more or less clear, there are three broad categories.
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After that let me end this section by just introducing a couple of later developments of
theories which again not in order, not an exhaustive list because it is impossible to list even
list out the major theoretical arguments. So, you will see feminist theory becoming very
popular after 1960s, extremely popular after 1960s and by 70s and 80s feminist theory
assuming serious significance and feminist theory is nothing but it is sociological theory.
We know that the question of gender, the question of women were hardly addressed by most
of the major classical sociologists, but later this women question came back to the centre
stage and now no sociological theory can really develop without addressing the question of
gender and when I am saying gender, it is not only women, it is about muscularity studies, it
is about gender studies, queer studies, sexuality studies, so it is really there has been an
explosion of gender related or identity related theories in the post 80s.
Then you have this rational choice theory where scholars looked at how the way in which
individuals make use of their own rational choices, they look at individual rational choices
bases. And then you have this structuralist theory which was heavily influenced by sources,
linguistic theorization and later Levi-Strauss brought in to anthropology and you had host of
important theoreticians in sociology who argued very much against the existing theorizations
who argued that there are deeper grammar in every society and the new whatever you see on
the periphery are the reflections of this deeper structural conditions.
Also keep it in mind that this structuralist theory is quite different from the structural
functionalism. Structuralist theory is quite different from the structural functionalism and
though, both of them use structure but they use structure in very different terms, different
meaning and then you have a distinct strand post structuralism theories and post-modern
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theories and we know that it is again a group of theories or theorist including Foucault and
other who say that they came after structuralism and they claim to represent theories that are
beyond the period of modern.
But it is very difficult to name them because there is no given singular orientation. We, it is
very difficult to put all of them together because they are so diverse and they only claim that
these are the theories that came after the phase of structuralism. And again, that is not a
settled issue, that is not a settled debate between sociologists because there are lot of scholars
who argue that this argument about postmodernism is too far-fetched, what we are seeing is
an extended, is a radicalised form of modernity.
People like Anthony Giddens or Ulrich Beck, they talk about reflective modernity, late
modernity and so on. They are not really happy with these all celebration of postmodernity.
Especially in culture studies and then other things. Then you have postcolonial theory
theories that emerge from countries that experience coloniality and who wanted to come out
of it and following that decolonial theories which try to develop a new conceptual
frameworks, new theoretical frameworks, new sensibilities that are devoid of Eurocentric
assumptions.
All these attempts are quite fraught with lot of problems because different cultural groups try
to claim that what they represent is the true authentic decolonial or anti-colonial
epistemological positions. Irrespective of all these diverse claims, the point that I want to
drive home is that the scenario of sociological theories is a very fascinating filed. It is an
extremely fascinating field, you see the complexity of arguments, you see the philosophical
background of new theories, you see that the political leanings of different theoretical
orientation.
Once you are sensitive to these questions, why, what is the purpose of theorization? What
kind of a political possibility that such theorizations open up? And what are the pitfalls of
that? And once you are sensitive to that, then understanding social theory and then
appreciating its diversity, its complexity, its contradictions becomes very fascinating venture.
Let me conclude here and in tomorrow’s class that is the class just before the last class, we
will have a discussion about the relation between theory and methodology and methods.
Because there is a very close connection between the theory, methodology and method. And
many times we do not and really realise that, but it is extremely important that you
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understand the connection between the ontology, the epistemology, the methodology and the
method. We will discuss that tomorrow. Thank you.
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Professor. R Santhosh
Lecture No. 59
Theoretical orientations and methodologies
Welcome back to the class and in today’s class, and you must be knowing that today is the
penultimate class, we will have the concluding class tomorrow, which means that I will be giving
you very broad overview as well as some concluding remarks. So, before that I thought it would
be useful to have at least one session dedicated to understand the relationship between theoretical
perspective and methodology.
This class is specifically within the framework of sociology but what the content of the class or
the message of the class or the prime point that I am going to emphasize is applicable to every
discipline, applicable to every subjects. The kind of a connect between theory, methodology and
method is something that is I am going to talk about in this class and there is something
extremely important for every discipline, not only that of sociology.
In the previous three classes we looked at three important theoretical traditions functionalism,
conflict theory and interactionism, and we also had some very brief mentions about the later
theoretical developments from the post structural, postmodern theoretical traditions. So, at
present we will not be able to talk about the current 3 or 4 important traditions, because there are
numerous theoretical traditions.
What is important is to understand a very direct connect between a particular theoretical

orientation and its corresponding methodology, because methodology does not stand in isolation
and every theoretical orientation has a methodological orientation in itself. There must be a
congruence between the kind of methodology that you use and the kind of theoretical orientation
or theoretical perspective that you adopt while you conduct research.
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So, let us begin with this fundamental question; sociology as the study of society and the
question of how to study the society? And more importantly what is to be studied? And now
once you study sociology, once you begin to carry out research, you may not have time to look at
these fundamental questions. You might think that okay you have a well-defined problem at
hand and there is an issue, you have a field, you have a say you need to collect data from 100
people or 200 people, or you have to do interview from some 50 people that constitute a data.
Before reaching into these conclusions, it is extremely important that you really ask or at least
you be very, be familiar with much deeper philosophically informed debates about these
questions. How to study the society? And more what is to be studied? And what is a society?
What is that you want to study? And how do you make an assumption that what you want to
study is directly connected with the data that you are going to collect. You have a particular
research question in your mind and you think that there are certain social phenomena that reflect
these research questions.
But you have to be extremely careful when you jump into such kind of conclusion thinking that
there is a direct empirical phenomenon that really reflects a kind of research questions that you
have in mind, because these questions; what is to be studied? And how do you capture the
reality, what constitutes social reality, this question is a deeply philosophical question.
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A question that has been discussed and debated and there have been numerous discussions and
debates about this simple question; what constitutes social reality? And how do we capture that?
Is it already there? Is it independent of our senses? Or is it that we create an image of an ordered
social reality out there? So how do we, do we believe our senses? Do we have any other way of
understanding this particular reality without the help of the senses? There are series, those who
are familiar with philosophy would realize that these are some of the very, very fundamental
questions.
Here I am just introducing you to some of the philosophical debates because this is not the time
to go deeper into these questions, but those are going for higher studies in sociology, those who
want to have a deeper understanding about society must be familiar with at least with these broad
concerns, so that they have better idea about the complexity of this whole enterprise called as
social research.
Why I am repeating is that because many a times we hardly give a think of, we hardly give a
thought about why we are approaching or why we are adopting a particular method? We think
that it is, it automatically comes and many times we do not pay adequate attention to establish a
congruence between a theoretical perspective that we adopt, a theoretical framework that we
adopt and its corresponding methodology.
Because there has to be some kind of a consonance, there has to some kind of a congruence
between the methodology that you adopt, the method that you adopt and the kind of theoretical
questions that you ask or the kind of framework where you place your study in. And if they are
completely, there is absolutely no, it is full of mismatch, then that raise serious issues. So, this
relationship between ontology, epistemology, methodology and research methods.
So, I want to invite your attention to these two three terms, we must have come across
epistemology and methodology in the previous classes but this ontology, epistemology,
methodology and research methods; there is a kind of a connection between each of these terms,
each of these processes or each of these aspects. And it is extremely important that we need to
understand that. And if you look into the trajectory of sociology as a discipline, how did
sociology emerged, we know that we have, you are familiar back to that story by now.
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Sociology emerged as social physics, sociology wanted to ape modern sciences like physics, it
wanted to do study in a scientific manner. But later you know that kind of positivist orientation
was challenged later. And as we say in interactionism, the phenomenological approach came to
the fore, they do not believe, they do not want to be called as scientists. They argued that
sociology or society cannot be studied through scientific method or there is no need to study it
scientifically. Because scientific method will not reveal lot of stuff.
Sociology, if you look into the trajectory, the historical trajectory of discipline it has had, so
many dittos, so many different directions, its debates about methodology and epistemology, it
developed into so many different directions and it is extremely important that a student of the
discipline becomes aware of this transformations.
Now what is ontology? Ontology is usually when I used in philosophy, ontology is the study of
existence, and it is the question of being what is there. It is the question of the whole issue
concerned about the thing out there. Ontology is also the study of how we determine if things
exist or not. It is the question about reality as well as the classification of existence. It attempts to
take things that are abstract and establish that they are, in fact, real.
How do we understand the whole question of, for example when you say that there is reality or
there is violence for example; how do we categorize violence? What constitutes violence? What
constitute an act of violence? It is not a simple question. What constitute an act of violence?
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Does violence always needs to be a particular act that kills somebody, harm somebody or the
person is incapacitated? What constitute violence?
And this is an ontological question, because if you at the some of the interesting discussions and
debates on violence, scholars talk about different types of violence, scholars talk about symbolic
violence for example, scholars talk about social violence for example, they talk about cultural
violence for example. So, what constitutes violence? You want to study a research; you want to
conduct a research on violence or certain group of people. So, how do you study violence?
Usually you maybe, you know that a particular community has been targeted, and then you need
to go and see how many people are stabbed, how many people are murdered, how many people
are wounded and that constitutes the violence for you. But for philosophy, for philosophers, for
social scientists, in order to understand what constitutes violence, how do we make sense of that,
is a question that related to ontology.
Therefore ontology is the philosophical study of being, more broadly it studies concepts that are
directly related to being, in particular becoming, existence, reality, as well as the basic categories
of being and their relations. The questions of reality, how do we capture that, how do we
understand this question of reality. And they are, there are very, very deeper philosophical
debates on the question of being.
Is it a real? Is there a reality, objective reality out there? Irrespective of in spite of our experience
and irrespective of our thinking and other things. So, there are questions whether is there a reality
out there in spite of our existence, in spite of our senses is there a reality out there, can we think
of a reality in our absence? Is it possible? Or is it a kind of a mental construct that we create
certain some kind of an order for a completely disorder kind of a phenomenon out there.
And a very fact that we can or we are able to experience a reality only our senses, what is the
implication of that and how do we communicate with each other, the kind of reality that we
construct through our senses. And this is, these are some of the extremely important and
complicated philosophical questions. Because we know that whether, is it the social world or the
physical world? It is so chaotic, it is completely without any order, it is completely confusing, it
is completely arbitrary.
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But are we making some order out of that arbitrariness? Or are we imputing certain kind of order
for that chaotic society, that kind of a chaotic situation? So, these questions, there is no
consensus among philosophers among that, but these are some of the initial thinking about the
study of any object for that matter, whether it is physical object or social object or whatever be
that.
So, here as well, be sociology especially philosophy of social sciences, it begins with this kind of
a question; what is a kind of a reality that you want to study? What is that you want to study?
The questions of being, its categories, labels that we attribute to that, how do we look into that.
Second important concept is epistemology. Epistemology is the philosophical study of the

nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. So, if ontology is the question about the reality, if
it is the question of what is it, what is its existence? Now epistemology is the whole question
about the human knowledge, what kind of human knowledge we use to make sense of that. So, it
studies the nature of knowledge, epistemic justifications, the rationality of belief, and various
related issues.
So, it tries to understand how we construct certain kind of knowledge forms. How do we say
priorities our certain kind of understanding as the authentic knowledge over others? And how do
we say that this form of particular knowledge is greater than or better than the other kind of
knowledge? How do we make sense of that? How do we make, how do we interpret the kind of
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reality in a particular way? How do we say that scientific rationality is better than say a kind of a
knowledge that you derive from magic or knowledge that you derive from religion? Or
knowledge that you derive from black magic? How do you say that?
So, epistemology is about, it is also about the construction of concepts, the nature of conditions
and the validity of the senses. How do we distinguish truth from falsehood? What are the kind of
technology, what are the kind of techniques that we use in order to distinguish between falsehood
and truth? How do we say that, when we say that something is truth? What does it mean? What
does it mean for a theologian? What does it mean for a scientist when he say, when he or she
says that it is a truth, what does it mean for a scientist? What does it mean for a theologian?
What does it mean for a priest? Or when you, somebody says that it is a beautiful scenery, it is a
beautiful truth, what does it mean? So, what constitute social reality? What is a data for social
inquiry? How do we segregate data and collect it? Because these questions; these
epistemological arguments or epistemological positions will tell you what constitutes that reality
and how do we collect data for that? And on what standpoint do we stand? What theoretical
framework do we stand and then assert that okay this is the data for me.
This is how I understand, this is how I understand the social reality, and this is what constitutes,
this is what the if I am coming from such and such epistemological foundation, such and such
epistemological basis and this epistemology offers me this explanation to understand reality as
so. So, there are, there could be competing epistemological basis, but you understand, for
example, from a feminist epistemology you will take a completely different position about a
household situation, a very happy home for that matter, an ordinary family.
If you take a feminist epistemology you would try to problematize that particular happy home
into a very problematic arrangement of sexual, of gender roles. So, how do you conceive of
certain things, how do we use the human knowledge in order to make sense of a social reality in
a particular manner. So, that is something the epistemology talks about.
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Third one is research methodology. It is the theoretically informed, it is a theoretically systematic

way of conceiving and implementing research protocol and procedures. When you write a
research proposal, you usually have to have a section on research methodology. So, what does it
mean? Research methodology is not something that you talk about the method, there is
difference between research methods and research methodology.
Research methodology is a science of doing research, it is complete conceptual scheme. It is a

kind of complete conceptual scheme that explains why you do, why you adopt a particular
research method. What is you theoretical understanding about the data? How do conceive of
social reality in a particular manner? What are its theoretical and philosophical justifications?
If you are adopting interview, if you are, for example you need to understand violence, you want
to understand domestic violence and you are using a feminist framework and you are, you want
to conduct an interview, you want to conduct a an interview, you want to conduct a unstructured
interview. So, in an unstructured interview, you do not go to the person with a set of questions,
you make it as kind of open ended questions, you encourage the person to speak and you only try
to guide the conversation into certain thing.
So, you need to really explain, why that you adopt an unstructured interview to understand the
situation of a domestic violence, especially from a perspective of a woman, a victim of domestic
violence. And so you will explain that I would listen to that person, I would encourage, I would
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let her recount the experience. So, this experience that person recounts, it could be the slap on the
face of that woman must have experienced, but how she felt about it, was it only a kind of
physical pain that really hurt her or how did it really provided, how did it really, how did she feel
it, what, how did she, how does she explain or experienced the kind of pain and shame emerging
out of such a situation.
And this is what you understand as violence and this particular unstructured interview, this kind
of a narration or explanation of this victim would constitute your data and for that you require a
particular method. So, it goes to, so there is a very specific connection between research method,
methodology, epistemology and ontology. So, is then it is the theoretically informed, systematic
way of conceiving and implementing research protocols and procedures.
Every, once you do higher forms of research into for your doctoral studies or other things, you
know that there are very specific protocols starting with your identification of your field,
identification of sample, your respondence, your data collection techniques, your data analysis
tools and other kind of interpretation that you adopt. So, all these things are important. And it
must start with a question of reality and knowledge to capture this.
Fourth one is the research method, which I think more of, more or less all of you are familiar
with. And when you talk about research methods, we talk about specific tools and techniques
used to collect specific forms of data as defined by methodology, informed by deeper
understanding of epistemology and ontology. And you know, so every social science research is
intricately connected with the question of ontology and epistemology.
But in reality, in our everyday practice we hardly think about it, we think that, we assume that
these are much simpler terms and simpler procedures, so we straightaway we go into the field
and collect data and then come back and say that this is a scientific research procedure. But if
you dig deeper into that, if you think deeper into that these questions are much more
complicated.
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Now research methodology in sociology, so whatever I explained so far, this is true in the case of
natural sciences and physical sciences and social sciences, whether it is in economics or physics
or psychology, it is applicable to every form of human discipline, not only about sciences, any
discipline that wants to conduct research, whether even if you are doing study on philosophy.
But now let us spend some time trying to understand the kind of a specific implication of these
things in research methodology in sociology.
So, evolution of research methodology is in methodologies in sociology since its inception. I do

not think I need to summarize it again, we have mentioned it several times, sociology emerged,
as a social physics, as a science, as a positive science and then with the coming of Weber you
have this anti-positivist stand emerging. And then with coming of interactionists, it takes a
completely phenomenological turn, it does not believe in facts or things, it tries to understand
how meaning is produced in among different people.
So, it has a very, very long trajectory starting with positivist, anti-positivist or phenomenological
approaches and a host of perspectives that emerged later. We do not, I do not have the time to go
through all these things, because that does not come under the purview of this course. And also
more important is an influx of ideological as well as political positions in deciding theoretical as
well as methodological frameworks.
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It is not that okay there are only academic debates and concerns about what is the most
appropriate theoretical or methodological framework. A host of ideological as well as political
positions have come and they have made the realm of sociology extremely complicated. Not
only sociology but almost every social science is extremely complicated. For example, with the
emergence of orientalism, with the emergence of orientalism, a completely different set of
political concerns and ideological concerns were brought into picture with Marxist scholarship.
Marxist scholarship has its own ideological and then political positions. Feminist scholarship has
its own scholarship Dalit argument has its own point, gender studies has its own ideological as
well as political positions. So, a host of other study, host of other disciplines and arguments have
really made it much messier. So, now nobody vouches by the, it is the character of its objectivity
of the study. I do not think any scientist, any social scientist, any scholar of contemporary time
would say that, what we are putting forward is the most authentic study, the most objective study
or this is the truth, nobody would say that. We know that all such claims are quite problematic.
So, there were critique of positivist positions, impossibility of finding out the objective truth.
Because now we have established it beyond doubt that there is no singular truth, even to an
incident that has happened just maybe yesterday or day before yesterday. It is almost impossible
for you to reach what is objective truth, this is a very problematic truth, and the unadulterated
complete truth is a very difficult preposition. What at best we can able to is the most reliable
interpretation of that, there are arguments that there is no truth but only interpretations.
Especially in this world, we are living in the era of post truth scenario, an extremely dangerous,
extremely dangerous scenario, we say that we are living in the post truth era or post truth stage.
So, but even otherwise, to say that this is the objective reality becomes a very, very problematic
argument. So, no social scientist, no scholar would say that, it would only try to present the most
convincing argument on the basis of available evidences.
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You have a host of research methods and I am sure that you are familiar with quite a few. When
you talk about survey, you know there is something called as a census, census is another type of
method where you enumerate every member of a particular research universe. For example, you
are conducting a survey among school children of a particular school and if you are asking each
and every child about your research question, maybe about the classroom experience, about the
attitude of the teachers and if you are counting every child then the survey becomes the census.
We know that does not have census that we undertake every once in 10 years.
Otherwise it is a survey, survey is you go by the idea of the probability. You take a sample and
there are statistically proven method, how, what does it mean to be a presentative sample. So,
you instead of asking everybody, you take a small section of people on the assumption that these
people represent the larger universe. Then there is something called as a questionnaire, a printed
set of questions, either you hand it over to the people to fill it or must have come across it in
google form, google online surveys and other things.
Or if you are conducting a survey among people, you ask these questions and then you yourself,
you fill it. And mostly it includes the kind of a quantitative questions. And then interview
schedules. Interview schedules are a set of series of questions that are arranged in a particular
order so that there is kind of a thematic continuity, and then you ask and then you record the
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response. Then there are focused group interviews; you have a particular theme, and you ask a
several of the respondents about that particular theme.
For example, you have some five or six housewives and then you conduct a focused group
interview on domestic violence. So, you record the response from all of them and their
discussions and their cross information, all these becomes extremely important insights. Then
participant observation; a very important participant observation and ethnography considered to
be together.
A very powerful tool of anthropology and sociology, where the researcher lives in the
community or with the community and try to become a part of the community, observe the
dynamics very closely. A method started with anthropology but still continued to be extremely
powerful, because here you are not worried about numbers, you do not do statistical analysis,
rather you come up with very, very insightful, very detailed analysis about the social processes.
Let’s talk about content analysis; most of the literary study students use that, historians use that,
sociologists use that, you try to understand what is a content of a particular text, a song, a story,
an interview or a public debate. And discourse analysis; another important method that is
connected with content analysis, you try to understand your material as two distinct discourses or
as a single discourse and then you try to understand how that discourse is formed. What are the
underlying assumptions behind that discourse?
And then there is network analysis, both digital as well as physical; what are the kind of the
character of network, what are the kind of relationship that people are involved in. And
especially in this digital era, network analysis is assuming very, very important place. And then
netnography and so on. Netnography is the term used to do ethnographic work in digital world,
how do you, because these digital resources are very, very powerful, useful resources, your
Facebook account, your Twitter account, the blogs, the videos, interviews.
So you, sociologists or every social scientist have used very effective methods to make use of
these enormous amount of news that, enormous amount of information that is available in the
digital world. So, now why and how each of these methods is used is of paramount importance?
So, that is a point that I am emphasizing again and again. And why should you use say interview
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schedule instead of ethnography or why should you use a questionnaire instead of a network
analysis?
And these, if you were to answer these questions, you need to understand that kind of a
connection that I mentioned earlier from ontology to epistemology to methodology to method.
Otherwise it becomes a very mechanical one, otherwise if somebody asks you why, what is your
understanding of reality, why do you use these particular methods to capture this, what is your
epistemological understanding that, you will not have any kind of particular answer, convincing
answer for that.
So, then along with these methods, the more recent advancements maybe after 80s, there is post-
colonial studies, then there is influence of Michael Foucault and Edward Said’s orientalism.
These are all important ideological movements which actually provided also very interesting
methodological take on that. And the kind of a connection, the kind of relationship between
power and knowledge, both Foucault and Gramsci and Edward Said speak about that.
The intricate connection between knowledge and power. No knowledge is free of power. And
how the power, in a positive sense creates knowledge or how knowledge is very closely
connected with power. Or how certain kind of knowledge produce certain kind of subjectivities,
certain kind of people. And debates, debates on positionality and standpoint theory. Again is
extremely important when you talk about this question of objectivity.
909
The whole question of representation, who can represent whom? When you look at the story of a
Dalit, who can tell the story of a Dalit in a most convincing manner? Can an upper caste person
represent the Dalit experience? There are very fascinating discussions and debates about this
experience. And this positionality, even in the Indian context, the debate in which philosophers
Sundar Sarukkai and his political scientist Gopal Guru involved and it came out as a book, titled
“The Cracked Mirror”.
This book is a very fascinating account on this all kind of questions. What does participation
mean? What does experience mean? When you say that you have an experience what does it
mean? So, does it mean that others who do not share your experience cannot talk about it, cannot
write about it? They are all very, very fraud questions. So similarly, feminist epistemology, racial
theories, Dalit arguments and so on.
Each of these arguments make this realm of methodology more and more complicated, at the
same time more and more fascinating. That is why we understand that the studying a society is
not that simple, studying a society is not as simple as somebody doing a research work in a
laboratory. It is a much fraud, complicated domain, it is a much messier world, where a host of
ideological, political factors have made it much messier, much more complicated.
So, that is why we realize that by conducting a research you are not going to tell the truth,
because what the truth, in that sense it is a problematic one, but at the same time you also much
know that this is not a license for pushing or peddling half bit truth or utter lies or other things.
Because that is also what we are witnessing today.
But the important aspect is that students or scholars must be really well trained in the
methodology, they must be able to use very rigorous methodological protocols. They must be
very, they must be able to use very rigorous methodological protocols and practices. So, this
rigor methodology that itself will really ensure the kind of quality and reliability of the kind of a
research that they, that people do.
So, I am winding up the class today and tomorrow we will have the final class of the entire
course, we will have the concluding session. But today I just thought that I will spend some time
trying to make some observations about social, conducting or doing social science research. So,
thank you.
910
Lecture 60
Conclusion
Welcome back to the last class of our course. I have just kept a PPT with a title conclusion, there
are no more slides. I just want to share some concluding thoughts with you. We know, we started
these classes quite some time back, and this was a very unique experience that I am talking to a
group of people whom I have not seen, I have no idea about who they are, their background, it
includes obviously students, teachers and then people who prepare for competitive examinations
and it could also others who really want to listen to some of these courses.
This has been a very challenging as well as interesting journey for me to introduce a classical
sociological theory, right from its very formative period to its concluding time, and discussing
and array of important theorists and their arguments, their contributions and critically evaluating
quite a lot of them and towards to the end of the course we had also spend time some time trying
to understand the later developments of sociological theory applying to look at three major
theoretical orientations, the connection between methodology and the theory and so on.
I genuinely hope that you would have benefited from these classes, because sociology as a
discipline is an extremely fascinating subject for me and as I remarked in the very introductory
911
video for this course that studying sociology is not only for say clearing a subject or getting or
clearing a course or getting or succeeding in a particular competitive examination, but it offers
very interesting, fascinating insights about your own personal life.
I have found that extremely fascinating and enriching, and I am sure that you must have
experienced the same. If you look into the context in which sociology emerged, if you look into
divergent or diverse theoretical arguments and possessions adopted by different people. They are
very aim of sociology to develop a sense of critical thinking and to keep ourselves, I am inviting
your attention to the very first class or the very first section about sociological imagination, the
difference between common sense and sociology.
It actually offers you a very interesting understanding about one’s own life, it helps you to locate
oneself in a particular historical episode, in a historical scale. You will be able to position
yourself and then make sense of things that are going around you. That is a very revealing and
significant insightful experience.
All the scholars whom we discussed so far, starting from Saint Simon, Montesquieu, I am not
counting the names, all these scholars in one way or the other help you to appreciate this
question; how are we living in a society and what are the ways in which we are constrained?
What are the ways in which we are constrained? What are the alternative ways in which we can
live?
There are multiple answers within the sociology about the whole question of freedom and
unfreedom. But somebody who understands sociology properly, somebody who has ability to
appreciate sociology properly. I am sure that you would have found out the answer that the
possibilities of freedom for a person to live in a society is endless, the possibility to live freely in
alternative ways is endless because only our imagination is something limiting us.
And without breaking any laws, without going against the whole lot of other things you will be
able to live very interesting and fruitful life. And sociological theory starting from Marx or then
came on Weber or Mead, they offers very interesting insights about societies that existed then
and societies that existed now. So now you realize why that certain ideologies are important.
You understand why certain theorizations were important, how we as a society that was
colonized, how we began the process of studying ourselves. So in that sense, understanding
912
about sociology, and especially classical sociology is something very important because classical
sociology is the body of knowledge that lays foundation to the subsequent development for the
theory as well as methodology of the discipline.
Anybody who takes sociology seriously for your undergraduate studies or your postgraduate
studies or your higher education today will find that classical sociological theorists are extremely
important and relevant. It does not matter that they have lived died about a century back and it
does not matter because they were the people who laid foundation. And even now their writings
are extremely important for us.
You realize how subsequent theorization emerged and which were built on the foundational
stones of these people, how different sociological methodologies evolved and how, they again
reflect back how these foundational stones laid by these scholars. So you cannot really be a
student of sociologies without understanding and appreciating the classical sociology theory.
You cannot be a practicing sociologist just by looking into the current literature of sociology,
then that you are completely mistaken.
If you know there are certain disciplines which are moving in the direction but without
understanding the historical trajectory, without understanding the historical and political and
intellectual trajectory of a discipline, you will not be able to appreciate its current affairs, you
will not be able to understand its current status, current scenario. So that is why I could honestly
advice you or request you to develop deeper interest in studying sociological theory.
It might look abstract, it might look dry, it might look confusing, but essentially they were all
talking about our own society, they were all talking about very concrete realities, maybe through
slightly difficult terminologies. But then it is only a particular way of theorization and once you
master that language, once you understand that approach, then field the theory is something very,
very interesting, it is extremely rewarding.
You will realize that how a solid theoretical grounding is important. And that is an extremely
important resource that you need to develop. But a very fact that somebody studies a discipline is
it enables a person to develop a kind of a particular perspective. And let me assure you that this
perspective is quite different from the knowledge that you amass through various other means.
913
You are living in the era of information revolution. Just on the click of at the computer, any kind
of information is available for you. But the crucial question is what do you do with the
information? How do you make the sense of the information? How do you develop certain kind
of perspectives on that? And in such scenarios a discipline like sociology comes as an extremely
important resource, because sociology has a very unique perspective, theoretical perspective.
It offers a particular way of looking at society and in understanding how things are so
interconnected, how history plays an important role in deciding the contemporary relevance of
certain things. And once you acquire that particular mastery of looking at things through a
perspective of sociology, that is extremely important for you, whether you are listening to this
course as a part of your regular class or through, for some competitive examination, or I do not
know what are your purposes are.
But if you develop that kind of sociological imagination, that I referred to end the very first
week, or sociological consciousness, then that is an extremely important resource for anybody
and that provides extremely valuable insights to your own personal life, your own personal life,
the understanding about society around you, and that offers you quite a lot of flexibility in order
to live in the society, much more clearer understanding of the kind things that are unfolding
around you.
I also genuinely believe that it will also make you better human beings, you get far better clarity
on society, you get better clarity on how different kind of power structures fashion society in
different way and there is nothing inevitable or there is nothing original, or there is nothing
divine about all these things, things can be changed. And you develop a kind of a critical
perspective to make sense of all these things.
I genuinely hope that it makes you better people along with your knowledge about the discipline.
So I do not have anything more to say, I hope you found the classes useful, I hope you appreciate
the class, I hope you found the classes interesting. I could not incorporate some more different
pedagogical methods because of various other reasons, most of the time it was, we had only one
discussion with one of the professors, we had planned some more but we could not do that.
Otherwise I have tried to incorporate most of the important themes that are usually covered
under the title classical sociological theory, and hope you would have done your assessments
914
properly. I hope you would have, you have understood and then make sense of the subject
matter. I genuinely believe that you would have developed some liking and fascination for the
subject and that is my ultimate goal.
Of course your marks do matter, your scores do matter for me as well as for you. But more
importantly, I would be extremely happy, it will be very rewarding for me if I understand that
you begin to develop a likeness or you begin to develop a fascination for the subject and that will
encourage you to read further, read independently, look for more material, develop or identify
certain scholars or things which are more interesting.
This sociological imagination will really help your future growth as a student or as an academic
or as a better teacher, I hope that there could be some teachers in this group, so you will find that
teaching will be more rewarding the moment you begin to love the subject and develop a real
interest in the whole theme. So I also hope that as I mentioned it makes all of us better human
beings in this very difficult times. So I do not have anything more to say, I wish you all the very
best of luck, I wish you all the very best and see you later. Thank you.
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Classical Sociological Theroy: Prof. R. Santhosh

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CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL

S.NO TOPICS PAGE.NO

3 C Wrigh Mill's Socioloigcal Imagination 27

4 Thinking Sociologically: Zygmunt Bauman 38

Emergence of Sociology: The, socio-political, economic and

7 Emegernce of nation-state and French Revolution 73

8 Industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism 84

9 Discussion with Dr. Roland Part - 1 97

10 Discussion with Dr. Roland Part - 2 108

11 Clasical Thinkers of Sociology 119

12 Auguste Comte 132

13 Herbert Spencer 148

14 Marx Durkheim and Weber 160

15 Factory scene from Modern Times 170

16 Karl Marx Life 179

17 Intellectual Influence 191

18 Historical Materialism 209

19 Marxian theory of social Change 230

20 Theory of Capitalism-1 243

21 Theory of Capitalism-2 260

22 Karl Marx and Alienation 275

23 Karl Marx and Religion 295

24 Marx on Democracy, and Colonialism 310

25 Marx- An Appraisal 323

26 Emile Durkheim; Life and Intellectual Influences 334

27 The Rules of the Sociological Method 350

28 Division of Labour (1893) 374

29 Division of Labour (conti…) 393

30 Suicide (1897) 409

31 Elementary forms of Religious Life (1912) 428

32 Durkheim on Education, Colonialism and Democracy 447

33 Durkheim An Assessment 466

35 Weber’s Methodology of the Social Sciences 493

36 Rationalization and social action 508

37 Rationalization and Authority 524

38 The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism 543

39 MODERN RATIONAL CAPITALISM 565

41 Social Stratification: Calss, Status Group, and Party 595

42 Comparative Religion and Disenchantment 614

43 Weber on democracy and colonialism 633

44 Critical Assessment 650

45 Ferdinand Tonnies ( 1885-1936 ) 666

46 George Simmel ( 1858 - 1918 ) 684

47 Social Differentiation and Conflict 700

48 Simmel on Philosophy of Money 719

49 Mind, Self and Society 737

50 George Herbert Mead 756

51 Mead on Self 775

52 Mead on Society 796

54 Dubois and question of race 828

55 Classical Sociological Theory and Modernity : A Recap 842

Subsequent Development of Sociological Theory : Structural

57 Conflict Theory 871

58 Interactionist Perspective 885

59 Theoretical orientations and methodologies 896

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