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Social theories are analytical frameworks, orparadigms, that are used to study and interpretsocial phenomena.[1] A tool used bysocial scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of differentmethodologies (e.g.positivism andantipositivism), the primacy of eitherstructure or agency, as well as the relationship betweencontingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formalcultural andliterary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.[1]
Social theory by definition is used to make distinctions and generalizations among different types of societies, and to analyzemodernity as it has emerged in the past few centuries.[2][3] Social theory, as it is recognized today, emerged in the 20th century as a distinct discipline, and was largely equated with an attitude of critical thinking and the desire for knowledge througha posteriori methods of discovery, rather thana priori methods of tradition.
Dynamic social theory is the hypothesis that institutions and patterns of behaviour are the social science equivalent of theories in the natural sciences.[4] Institutions embody a great deal of knowledge about how to achieve specific social outcomes and, like theories in the natural sciences, serve as models for people seeking to achieve similar outcomes. Examples of dynamic social theories include business models like McDonald's.[5] and China's system of political economy, modelled on Singapore.[6] The claim for this hypothesis is that it can increase the impact and relevance of social science.[7]
Social thought provides general theories to explain actions and behavior of society as a whole, encompassingsociological,political, andphilosophical ideas. Classical social theory has generally been presented from a perspective ofWestern philosophy, and often regarded asEurocentric.[by whom?]
Theory construction, according to The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, is instrumental:"Their goal is to promote accurate communication, rigorous testing, high accuracy, and broad applicability. They include the following: absence of contradictions, absence of ambivalence, abstractness, generality, precision, parsimony, and conditionality."[8] Therefore, a social theory consists of well-defined terms, statements, arguments and scope conditions.
Confucius (551–479 BCE) envisaged a just society that went beyond his contemporary society of theWarring States.[9] Later on, also in China,Mozi (circa 470 –circa 390 BCE) recommended a more pragmatic sociology, but ethical at base.
In the West,Saint Augustine (354–430) was concerned exclusively with the idea of thejust society. St. Augustine describes lateAncient Roman society through a lens of hatred and contempt for what he saw as falseGods, and in reaction theorizedCity of God.[citation needed]Ancient Greek philosophers, includingAristotle (384–322 BC) andPlato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC), did not see a distinction between politics and society. The concept of society did not come until theEnlightenment period. The term,société, was probably first used as key concept byRousseau in discussion of social relations.[10] Prior to the enlightenment, social theory took largelynarrative andnormative form. It was expressed as stories and fables, and it may be assumed thepre-Socratic philosophers and religious teachers were the precursors to social theory proper.[citation needed]
There is evidence ofearly Muslim sociology from the 14th century: inIbn Khaldun'sMuqaddimah (later translated asProlegomena inLatin), the introduction to a seven volume analysis ofuniversal history, was the first to advancesocial philosophy andsocial science in formulating theories ofsocial cohesion andsocial conflict.Ibn Khaldun is thus considered by many to be the forerunner of sociology.[11][12]Khaldun's treatise described inMuqaddimah(Introduction to History), published in 1377, two types of societies: (1) the city ortown-dweller and (2) the mobile,nomadic societies.[citation needed]
Modernity arose during the Enlightenment period, with the emergence of theworld economy and exchange among diverse societies, bringing sweeping changes and new challenges for society. ManyFrench andScottish intellectuals andphilosophers embraced the idea of progress and ideas of modernity.[13]
The Enlightenment period was marked by the idea that with newdiscoveries challenging the traditional way of thinking, scientists were required to find new normativity. This process allowedscientific knowledge and society toprogress.[citation needed] French thought during this period focused onmoral critique and criticisms of themonarchy.[2]: 15 These ideas did not draw on ideas of the past from classical thinkers, nor involved followingreligious teachings and authority of themonarch.
A common factor among the classical theories was the agreement that thehistory of humanity is pursuing a fixed path. They differed on where that path would lead:social progress, technological progress, decline or even fall. Social cycle theorists were skeptical of the Western achievements and technological progress, but argued that progress is an illusion of the ups and downs of the historical cycles.[citation needed] The classical approach has been criticized by many modern sociologists and theorists; among themKarl Popper,Robert Nisbet,Charles Tilly andImmanuel Wallerstein.
The 19th century brought questions involvingsocial order. TheFrench Revolution freed French society of control by the monarchy, with no effective means of maintaining social order untilNapoleon came to power. Three great classical theories of social and historical change emerged: thesocial evolutionism theory (of whichSocial Darwinism forms a part), thesocial cycle theory, and theMarxisthistorical materialism theory.[citation needed]
19th-century classical social theory has been expanded upon to create newer, contemporary social theories such asmultilineal theories of evolution (neoevolutionism,sociobiology,theory of modernization,theory of post-industrial society) and various strains ofNeo-Marxism.[citation needed]
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social theory became closely related to academicsociology, and other related studies such asanthropology,philosophy, andsocial work branched out into their own disciplines. Subjects like "philosophy of history" and other multi-disciplinary subject matter became part of social theory as taught under sociology.[citation needed]
A revival of discussion free of disciplines began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. TheFrankfurt Institute for Social Research is a historical example. TheCommittee on Social Thought at theUniversity of Chicago followed in the 1940s. In the 1970s, programs in Social and Political Thought were established atSussex andYork. Others followed, with emphases and structures, such as Social Theory and History (University of California, Davis).Cultural Studies programs extended the concerns of social theory into the domain ofculture and thusanthropology. A chair and undergraduate program in social theory was established at theUniversity of Melbourne. Social theory at present seems to be gaining acceptance as a classical academic discipline.[citation needed]
Adam Ferguson,Montesquieu, andJohn Millar, among others, were the first to study society as distinct from political institutions and processes. In the nineteenth century, thescientific method was introduced into study of society, which was a significant advance leading to development ofsociology as adiscipline.[14]
In the 18th century, the pre-classical period of social theories developed a new form that provides the basic ideas for social theory, such asevolution,philosophy of history, social life andsocial contract, public andgeneral will, competition in social space, organismic pattern for social description.Montesquieu, inThe Spirit of Laws, which established that social elements influence human nature, was possibly the first to suggest a universal explanation forhistory.[15] Montesquieu included changes inmores and manners as part of his explanation of political and historic events.[2]: 23
Philosophers, includingJean-Jacques Rousseau,Voltaire, andDenis Diderot, developed new social ideas during theEnlightenment period that were based onreason and methods of scientific inquiry.Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this time played a significant role in social theory. He revealed the origin ofinequality, analyzed the social contract (and social compact) that formssocial integration and defined the social sphere orcivil society.Jean-Jacques Rousseau also emphasized that man has the liberty to change his world, an assertion that made it possible to program and change society.[citation needed]
Adam Smith addressed the question of whether vast inequalities of wealth represented progress. He explained that the wealthy often demandconvenience, employing numerous others to carry outlabor to meet their demands.[citation needed] Smith argued that this allows wealth to be redistributed among inhabitants, and for all to share in progress of society. Smith explained that social forces could regulate themarket economy with social objectivity and without need forgovernment intervention. Smith regarded thedivision of labor as an important factor for economic progress.John Millar suggested that improved status ofwomen was important for progress of society. Millar also advocated forabolition ofslavery, suggesting that personalliberty makes people more industrious, ambitious, andproductive.[16]
The first "modern" social theories (known as classical theories) that begin to resemble the analytic social theory of today developed simultaneously with the birth of the science of sociology.Auguste Comte (1798–1857), known as the "father of sociology" and regarded by some as the first philosopher of science,[17] laid the groundwork forpositivism – as well asstructural functionalism andsocial evolutionism.Karl Marx rejected Comtean positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish ascience of society based onhistorical materialism, becoming recognised as a founding figure of sociology posthumously. At the turn of the 20th century, the first of German sociologists, includingMax Weber andGeorg Simmel, developed sociologicalantipositivism. The field may be broadly recognized as an amalgam of three modes of social scientific thought in particular; Durkheimiansociological positivism andstructural functionalism, Marxist historical materialism andconflict theory, and Weberianantipositivism andverstehen critique.[citation needed]
Another early modern theorist,Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), coined the term "survival of the fittest".Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) andPitirim A. Sorokin argued that "history goes in cycles," and presented thesocial cycle theory to illustrate their point.Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) madecommunity andsociety (Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, 1887) the special topics of the new science of "sociology", both of them based on different modes ofwill ofsocial actors.[citation needed]
The 19th century pioneers of social theory and sociology, like Saint-Simon, Comte, Marx,John Stuart Mill or Spencer, never held university posts and they were broadly regarded as philosophers.Emile Durkheim endeavoured to formally established academic sociology, and did so at theUniversity of Bordeaux in 1895, he publishedRules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he established the journalL'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph,Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongstCatholic andProtestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis frompsychology orphilosophy.[citation needed]
The term "postmodernism" was brought into social theory in 1971 by the Arab American TheoristIhab Hassan in his book:The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. In 1979Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short but influential workThe Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge.Jean Baudrillard,Michel Foucault, andRoland Barthes were influential in the 1970s in developing postmodern theory.
Scholars most commonly holdpostmodernism to be a movement of ideas arising from, but also critical of elements ofmodernism.[citation needed] The wide range of uses of this term resulted in different elements of modernity are chosen as being continuous. Each of the different uses is rooted in some argument about the nature of knowledge, known in philosophy asepistemology.[18] Individuals who use the term are arguing that either there is something fundamentally different about the transmission of meaning, or that modernism has fundamental flaws in its system of knowledge.[citation needed]
The argument for the necessity of the term states that economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society.[citation needed] These ideas aresimulacra, and only inter-referential representations and copies of each other, with no real original, stable or objective source forcommunication and meaning.Globalization, brought on by innovations in communication,manufacturing andtransportation,[19] is cited as one force which has decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society, lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication, or intellectual production. The postmodern view is that inter-subjective knowledge, and not objective knowledge, is the dominant form ofdiscourse. The ubiquity of copies and dissemination alters the relationship between reader and what is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce.[citation needed]
Not all people who use the term postmodern or postmodernism see these developments as positive.[20] Users of the term argue that their ideals have arisen as the result of particular economic and social conditions, including "late capitalism", the growth ofbroadcast media, and that such conditions have pushed society into a newhistorical period.
In the past few decades, in response to postmodern critiques,[citation needed] social theory has begun to stress free will, individual choice, subjective reasoning, and the importance of unpredictable events in place ofdeterministic necessity.Rational choice theory,symbolic interactionism,false necessity are examples of more recent developments. A view among contemporary sociologists is that there are no great unifying 'laws of history', but rather smaller, more specific, and more complex laws that govern society.[citation needed]
Philosopher and politicianRoberto Mangabeira Unger recently attempted to revise classical social theory by exploring how things fit together, rather than to provide an all encompassing single explanation of a universal reality. He begins by recognizing the key insight of classical social theory of society as an artifact, and then by discarding the law-like characteristics forcibly attached to it. Unger argues that classical social theory was born proclaiming that society is made and imagined, and not the expression of an underlying natural order, but at the same time its capacity was checked by the equally prevalent ambition to create law-like explanations of history and social development. Thehuman sciences that developed claimed to identify a small number of possible types of social organization that coexisted or succeeded one another through inescapable developmental tendencies or deep-seated economic organization or psychological constraints.Marxism is the star example.[21]: 1
Unger, calling his efforts "super-theory", has thus sought to develop a comprehensive view of history and society. Unger does so without subsuming deep structure analysis under an indivisible and repeatable type of social organization or with recourse to law-like constraints and tendencies.[21]: 165 His articulation of such a theory is inFalse Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, where he uses deep-logic practice to theorize human social activity through anti-necessitarian analysis.
Unger begins by formulating the theory of false necessity, which claims that social worlds are the artifact of human endeavors. There is no pre-set institutional arrangement that societies must adhere to, and there is no necessary historical mold of development that they will follow. We are free to choose and to create the forms and the paths that our societies will take. However, this does not give license to absolute contingency. Unger finds that there are groups of institutional arrangements that work together to bring about certain institutional forms—liberal democracy, for example. These forms are the basis of a social structure, which Unger callsformative context. In order to explain how we move from one formative context to another without the conventional social theory constraints of historical necessity (e.g. feudalism to capitalism), and to do so while remaining true to the key insight of individual human empowerment andanti-necessitarian social thought, Unger recognized that there are an infinite number of ways of resisting social and institutional constraints, which can lead to an infinite number of outcomes. This variety of forms of resistance andempowerment make change possible. Unger calls this empowermentnegative capability. However, Unger adds that these outcomes are always reliant on the forms from which they spring. The new world is built upon the existing one.[22]
TheChicago school developed in the 1920s, through the work ofAlbion Woodbury Small,W. I. Thomas,Ernest W. Burgess,Robert E. Park,Ellsworth Faris,George Herbert Mead, and other sociologists at theUniversity of Chicago. The Chicago school focused on patterns and arrangement of social phenomenon acrosstime andplace, and within context of other social variables.[23]
Critical theorists focus on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challengepower structures and their relations and influences on social groups.
Karl Marx wrote and theorized about the importance ofpolitical economy on society, and focused on the "material conditions" of life.[2]: 4 His theories centered around capitalism and its effect on class-struggle between theproletariat andbourgeoisie.[24]
Postmodernism was defined byJean-François Lyotard as "incredulity towardsmetanarratives" and contrasted that withmodern which he described as "any science that legitimates itself with reference to ametadiscourse... making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth."[25]
Other theories include:
Some knownFrench social thinkers areClaude Henri Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte,Émile Durkheim, andMichel Foucault.
British social thought, with thinkers such asHerbert Spencer, addressed questions and ideas relating topolitical economy andsocial evolution. The political ideals ofJohn Ruskin were a precursor ofsocial economy (Unto This Last had a very important impact onGandhi's philosophy).
ImportantGerman philosophers and social thinkers includedImmanuel Kant,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,Karl Marx,Max Weber,Georg Simmel,Theodor W. Adorno,Max Horkheimer,Herbert Marcuse andNiklas Luhmann.
ImportantChinese philosophers and social thinkers includedShang Yang,Lao Zi,Confucius,Mencius, Wang Chong,Wang Yangming,Li Zhi,Zhu Xi,Gu Yanwu,Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan,Kang Youwei, Lu Xun,Mao Zedong, Zhu Ming.
Important Italian social scientists includeAntonio Gramsci,Gaetano Mosca,Vilfredo Pareto, Franco Ferrarotti.
Important Thai social theorists includeJit Phumisak,Kukrit Pramoj, andPrawase Wasi
Social theory seeks to question why humans inhabit the world the way they do, and how that came to be by looking at power relations, social structures, and social norms,[26] while also examining how humans relate to each other and the society they find themselves in, how this has changed over time and in different cultures,[27] and the tools used to measure those things. Social theory looks tointerdisciplinarity, combining knowledge from multiple academic disciplines in order to enlighten these complex issues,[26] and can draw on ideas from fields as diverse asanthropology andmedia studies.
Social theory guides scientific inquiry by promoting scientists to think about which topics are suitable for investigation and how they should measure them. Selecting or creating appropriate theory for use in examining an issue is an important skill for any researcher. Important distinctions: atheoretical orientation (orparadigm) is a worldview, the lens through which one organizes experience (i.e. thinking of human interaction in terms of power or exchange). Atheory is an attempt to explain and predict behavior in particular contexts. A theoretical orientation cannot be proven or disproven; a theory can.
Having a theoretical orientation that sees the world in terms of power and control, one could create a theory about violent human behavior which includes specific causal statements (e.g. being the victim of physical abuse leads to psychological problems). This could lead to ahypothesis (prediction) about what one expects to see in a particular sample, e.g. "a battered child will grow up to be shy or violent". One can then test the hypothesis by looking to see if it is consistent withdata. One might, for instance, review hospital records to find children who were abused, then track them down and administer a personality test to see if they show signs of being violent or shy. The selection of an appropriate (i.e. useful) theoretical orientation within which to develop a potentially helpful theory is the bedrock of social science.
Philosophical questions addressed by social thinkers often centered aroundmodernity, including:
Other issues relating to modernity that were addressed by social thinkers includesocial atomization,alienation,loneliness,social disorganization, andsecularization.
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