"Lifestyles are thus the systematic products of habitus, which, perceived in their mutual relations through the schemes of habitus, become sign systems that are socially qualified (as distinguished, vulgar etc.). (Bourdieu, P. 1979/1984 p. )

Foucault introduces the "dispositive" by describing it thus: "a heterogeneous ensemble, which comprises discourse, institutions, architectural establishments, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral or philanthropic dogmas, in short, everything that is said and not said. However, it is not these elements alone which result in the dispositive but rather that it describes the manner in which these elements interact. The "dispositive" is, thus, "the net that can be connected between these elements." (Foucault Dispositive of Power 1978) (source)

The word was coined in Germany by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, who defined its as the study of the relationship of organisms with their environment. By 1900 the word was sufficiently unknown in Britain to be absent from The Concise English Dictionary. Literary, Scientific and Technical and, in 1902, a British magazine specialising in ecology was called The New Phytologist

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica defined oecology, or ecology as "that part of the science of biology which treats of the adaptation of plants or animals to their environment".

A concept of plant ecology that later became important for human ecology is succession. The Chicago botanist, Henry Cowles developed this concept in study of the vegetation of sand dunes.

"Cowles argued that the natural succession of plant forms in time could be traced in physical space as one moved inland from the open lake beach across ancient shorelines through the shifting dunes to the interior forest. Along this route, scrubby beach grass would give way to flowers and more substantial woody plants, cottonwoods and pines would be seen yielding to oaks and hickories, and one would finally encounter the climax forest of beeches and maples" (external source)

Animal ecology was developed by Charles Christopher Adams (1913 USA) and Charles Elton (1927 United Kingdom), amongst others.

The term Human Ecology was used by the Scottish theorist, Patrick Geddes, in his writing on city development on 1904 and 1915 [source].

The Chicago (USA) sociology of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess was centred on ecological concepts. In their 1921 textbook of Sociology they developed concepts of competition - conflict - adaptation - accommodation and assimilation which allowed them to adapt theories used for the analysis of "plant communities" to the analysis of human inter-relations. Of these concepts, conflict accommodation and assimilation are particularly relevant to the human world, whereas competiton was typical of plant communites. They wrote

"It is only in the plant community that we can observe the process of competition in isolation, uncomplicated with other social processes. The members of a plant community live together in a relation of mutual interdependence which we call social" [see example] "probably because, while it is close and vital, it is not biological. It is not biological because the relation is a merely external one and the plants that compose it are not even of the same species. They do not interbreed. The members of a plant community adapt themselves to one another as all living things adapt themselves to their environment, but there is no conflict between them because they are not conscious. Competition takes the form of conflict or rivalry only when it becomes conscious, when competitors identify one another as rivals or as enemies."

In his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association in 1925, Park said:

"The sociologist's interest in human ecology is in man's relation to other men as found in the definite and typical patterns which the population assumes in natural areas. In so far as social structure can be defined in terms of position, and social changes in terms of movement of the population, social phenomena are subject to mathematical measurement."

Park's Chicago web biography says

" Human ecology was a phrase Park coined, borrowing concepts of symbiosis - invasion - succession - dominance - gradients of growth, superordination, and subordination from the science of natural ecology. Such concepts of interaction and dynamic mobility in society were useful in redirecting sociology from reform to scientific analysis without denying the social importance of knowledge."

ecology only part of the story

Park and his Chicago colleagues argued that ecology is one of three fundamental processes shaping the city. The other two are cultural and economic. The ecological forces are the result of competition and are "not the result of the design of anyone"

"Eco" in ecosystem comes from ecology. It means the system of living beings occupying an area with common features (for example, a lake, a field or an area of a city) together with the physical environment they interact with. Living beings includes human beings.

Arthur Tansley introduced the concept of ecosystem to ecology in 1935. His earlier (1920) work on psychology shows the importance of systems to his theoretical understanding of human reality.

" It is in our public schools that the majority of our children are being formed. These schools must be the guardians par excellence of our national character. They are the heart of our general education system."

Emotion

Emotion is central to Mary Wollstonecraft's evolutionary perspective on society and history. She writes:

" For what purpose were the passions implanted? That man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes, whispers Experience. "

Emotion is central to Emile Durkheim's perception of what makes society real. For Durkheim, solidarity and society are the foundation of our feelings.

Crime, Durkheim argues, is defined as "an offense to collective sentiments" that are not superficial, but "emotions and tendencies which are strongly ingrained in us"

Emotion is central to Sigmund Freud's vision of the evolution of society and the individual. In our collective history and personal development we are shaped by the forces of love and sex, betrayal and hatred, murder and guilt, compromise and reconciliation.

Charles Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a starting point for George Herbert Mead's analysis of the evolution of mind, self and society.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment means what its says - a light shines and we see the world. It is the process by which reason and science are supposed to have opened the world up to us.

Although often linked to specific events, such as the French Revolution, there are four periods of intellectual history (with a focus on different countries) often spoken of as periods of enlightenment. The word is also used generally for a process that may still be going on.

Immanuel Kant wrote (1784) that

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another"

So enlightenment is also the process by which human beings take control of our lives and become autonomous - self-directing. It is a description of humanity gaining freedom - See, especially, Rousseau - Hegel - and John Stuart Mill's concepts of freedom.

Has the enlightenment project failed

Critical theorists claim it has, but what do they mean?

Here is my (over) simple answer -

At the beginning of the 20th century liberal and socialist theorists expected society to progress towards greater rationality and greater democracy. The continuation of the enlightenment process.

Then came National Socialism - when German voters "democratically" gave up freedom to a regime that was authoritarian and anti-reason.

This is the "failure of the enlightenment project" that the critical theorists were analysing after the second world war.

By this time, most of them lived in America. America got richer. Americans thought they were free. Perhaps the enlightenment project had not failed after all? Oh no! said the critical theorists. It has failed, because modern advertising and things like that have destroyed our freedom.

But, not everyone agrees that the Enlightenment project has failed. Parsons argues that (despite what critical theorists and others argue) people in America had more freedom (in 1970) in more spheres than at any other time in history - and that the process is still progressive.

John Locke lived in and approved of a hierarchical society but wrote that reason teaches us that:

"being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."

Many social theories take as an axiom that there is a natural equality between human beings. The same social theorists may hold that there is a natural hierarchy to human society. The two concepts are not necessarily contradictions. Consider, for example, a parent and child. The hierarchy is evident. The parent controls the child. Does this mean that the parent has a greater value than the child? Or that the parent and child are not "equal and independent" beings?

We understand the human world by thinking of the other person as ourself. Reading what I write, you understand it by thinking of me as someone like you who is trying to communicate with you. Looking into the face of a baby you do the same without words. This equality of being is an aspect of what social theorists mean by natural equality. It is an equality that exists irrespective of differences of age, rank, race, religion, size, ability, wealth or whatever.

Arguing against equality as a basis of social policy, the conservative theorist Ian Gilmour writes:

"The difficulty is that men are manifestly not equal. In some ways of course the difference between them are less important than the similarities. Most people accept that all men are equal in the sight of God, which takes us back to Coleridge's idea that no man should be treated as merely a means to an end. In this sense the phrase 'all men are equal means all men are men and should be treated as such." (Gilmour, I. 1977/1978 Inside Right pp 175-176)

The way in which the similarities between humans are more important than the differences (in some respects) is the issue that theorists are often highlighting when they make natural equality an axiom of their social theories.

This natural equality is linked to natural freedom. (Notice Locke's phrase "equal and independent"). Rousseau is adopting the axiom of equality when he writes:

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains"

In the sense I have defined it, a belief in equality, can be found in most social theorists to different degrees and with varying emphasis. It appears to be completely absent from Nazi theory.

Locke's idea of equality is explored in Social Science History chapter 2

Balance is measured mechanically by scales and the idea of equilibrium is an important part of the physical science of mechanics, going right back to the ancient Greeks. (See Statics)

Equilibrium has been used in economics, from the late nineteenth century, for the point at which the forces of supply and demand are matched and prices stable. The image here is of a system that balances itself. If prices are high, people do not buy all the goods, sellers lower the prices. If they fall far enough, all the goods are bought and there is a shortage. Prices are raised and this encourages more provision of the goods at the same time as it reduces purchases. In this way, the market moves towards a price that balances supply and demand.

The idea of a system that is self-balancing has since been applied widely in the social sciences, including psychology and sociology. See, for example, Arthur Tansley's interpretation of Freud and Robert Park and others in The City. The concept was also used by Durkheim and Parsons

Some sociologists give everyday life and common sense an important role with respect to sociology. Bauman and May (2000, p.5) say that the kind of questions that define sociology are "part of the practical realities of every day life" and "Thinking sociologically is also distinguished by its relationship with so- called 'common sense'"

In Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, everyday life is something that he compares and contrasts with another life: the life acted on a theatre stage. He argues that we present ourselves in everyday life in ways that can be analysed (to some extent) as if we were acting,

So (perhaps), everyday life is the ordinary life that we all live every day as contrasted with specialist lives, such as actor, sociologist, train driver, company director, or whatever, that some of us live some of the time.

Goffman also calls his approach a "sociological perspective from which social life can be studied". Which suggests social life as another term for everyday life. His analysis is particularly relevant to the life we live in "domestic, industrial, or commercial" establishments - In other words, to the life we live at home and at work.

In considering the relationship between everyday life and common sense, one can note Goffman's use of the term everyday sense. If everyday sense is like common sense, it suggests that common sense is the sense (meaning) that we attach to ideas in our everyday lives.

The Evangelical revival in Britain was, according to this theory, a major contributor to the creation of Victorian values.

The history of the evangelical revival conveniently begins with John and Charles Wesley and the pursuit of "methodism" within the Church of England. Methodism (reluctantly) burst out of the established church and became an independent group of denominations. The "Clapham Sect" formed within the Church of England and was associated the teaching of Simeon and others at Cambridge University.

The Evangelical, William Wilberforce, was active in securing A Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue and for preventing and punishing of Vice, Profaneness, and Immorality, issued by George the Third (June 1,1787) and started the Proclamation Society to see it enforced.

A inter-denomination magazine called The Evangelical Magazine was founded in 1793. The Conservative social reformer, Ashley was an evangelical. During the 19th Century, Evangelical causes were closely associated with Exeter Hall

Before we had books, we had scrolls. A book can just be opened at a page and read, a scroll must be unrolled - the message develops as you unroll more. The Latin for unrolling scrolls gave us the word evolution which describes the opening up or unfolding of forms. A flower evolves from bud to blossom, through faded, fertilised, bloom to seed. The idea has long existed that all the forms we find in the world may have evolved. One plant may have evolved from another, one animal from another, one form of society from another. In the mid- 19th century, Charles Darwin and others suggested the mechanism of natural selection as an explanation of how this might have happened.

Some of the words used in the 19th and 20th centuries by theorists of the evolution of human being are have offensive associations and are no longer current in anthropology. Key terms used by earlier evolution theorists (see Engels, for example), with their meaning, were:

civilisation: from the word civis a city. A 1900 dictionary defines it as "the state of being refined in manners from the rudeness of savage life, and improved in arts and learning". A distinction is made between ancient civilisations and modern civilisation.. Culture can be used as an alternative word for civilisation, as in "culture and barbarism"

primitive From Latin primitivus, earliest of its kind, from primus, first.

savagery from silva, a wood. A 1900 dictionary says that savage means belonging to the forest or wilderness, wild... uncivilised... untaught. 19th century anthropologists used savagery as the name for a period of nomadic (wandering) existence, before human beings settled down to cultivation. A horde was a group that wandered.

barbarism from the ancient Greek word for (uncivilised) foreigners who did not speak Greek. [See Aristotle 1252b and 1252b15]. 19th century anthropologists used barbarism as the name for a period of agricultural existence, before towns developed. But, like savagery, it is also used as a pejorative word: "barbarity is extremely cruel behaviour" (Plain English Dictionary). In 1947, Adorno and Horkheimer argued (in Dialectic of Enlightenment) that reason was not necessarily civilising, but could become an instrument of totalitarian control. They described anti-semitism as civilisation reverting to barbarism.

Civil and savage Two photographs taken in different parts of the world between 1906 and 1919. The first (about 1906) is of a working class Lancashire family, in their best clothes, posing for the one family photograph that will be hung in the front room.

The second is of a chief and selected companions, posed for a picture intended for the October 1919 National Geographic Magazine. The chief's headdress is made of the hair of enemies he has eaten. Click on the Lancashire family to read about civilisation in the twentieth century. Click on the chief and his naked ladies to read Freud's theories of the relationship between the dreams of neurotics and myths of savages The small girl on the right in the Lancashire picture is Lily Mckenzie - One of many whose boyfriends won medals in the war for civilisation.

Freud argues that

"civilisation enters on the scene with the first attempt to regulate social relationships which affect a person as a neighbour, as a source of help, as another person's sexual object, as a member of a family..." (Freud, S. 1930 par.3.12)

The pictures above make suggestions in our minds about the relationship between sex and good-neighbourliness (The Lancashire family do not eat their neighbours) and the family (The chief has a group of sexual partners rather than a family with children and responsibities)

"Consider social facts as things"

British empiricist philosophers in the 17th and 18th century argued that the only reality we can rely on is experience. From this developed another idea of fact. Facts are sensory experiences from which we infer knowledge, or facts are data that we collect as the basis on which to build science. Durkheim was not an empiricist. [I am sorry if your text book says he is. Click on the link to read what he says about empiricism.] He criticises empiricism from a Kantian perspective.

History of the word family:

Writing over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said the family arose out of relations between husband and wife and master and slave. This should alert us that there are broader concepts of family than just parents and children.

The origin of the English word is household (Latin familia - from famulus: servant)

Reflecting the family base of tribal societies, the 1611 Bible uses family for much larger groups than we would today:

"Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood.... By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations"

History of family forms: Historically the family has taken different forms. Engels argues that the study of these forms began with a German writer Bachofen in 1861. To gain an broad overview of the forms Engels suggests, see my Summary of Historical Materialism which has links to extracts from Engels.

Family in late Victorian dictionaries: 1870 Dictionary: "household; race, generation; honourable descent" - 1887 Dictionary: - "a household, living in one house and under one head, including parents and children, and primarily, as well as sometimes still, servants" - "those who descend from one common progenitor; a tribe or race" - "kindred" ...

Family today

Speaking of European and North American societies today, Agnes Miles (1981, p.115) says that most people live in "family groups" which are usefully defined as "relatives living in the same household, sharing common table and living room" (a definition used by census takers).

Two other definitions she suggests are: elementary or nuclear family, including "parents and their non-adult children only" and extended family, which also includes "grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins".

Other writers have suggested more diverse categories of family groups in countries such as the present day United Kingdom. In addition to the above:

Lone parent family

Re-constituted family Where individuals separated from one family relationship become part of another. Where children are involved, this creates step-families.

Co-habiting couples

Same sex couples

One of the reasons family is discussed by social theorists is its theoretical implication for social theory generally.

Robert Filmer, in the 17th century, and and Roger Scruton, in the 20th, for example, both construct views of society around the idea of family. Both theorists contrast the idea that "contract" is the foundation of society, with their own view that society is better understood by thinking about the relations that exist in the family, between parents and children. Scruton sees the family model as a "conservative" model and contract as the "liberal" model.

The title of Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract shows that it is in the contractual, liberal camp. However he combines his contractual theory with an analysis of family bonds as the basis of society:

"The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage."

Family relations include those between adult partners as well as those between adults and children. Aristotle conceptualised the difference between these relations, but wives have often been thought of theoretically as similar to children in their relation to the male "head" of the household.

Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, two liberal theorists, argued in an 1848 essay that an authoritarian, hierarchical, paternalist relationship in which women are dependent on men is unsuitable to a modern society based on self determination. Mill elaborated on this in The Subjection of Women (1869), arguing that egalitarian families would educate people for democratic political societies.

Sigmund Freud contrasted his theories of society and human relations, based on an analysis of the unconscious mind, with the consciously rational analysis of Mill (and Taylor). Mill imagined society and family based on freely determined relations been autonomous adults, educating children in a school of freedom. Freud analysed the family as the site of deadly conflicts, conflicts that are paralleled in society and history.

One of the issues in dispute between these theorists is the nature of science. Those who support the family model against a contract model tend to argue that their model is based on analysis of what is real (a "thing" as Durkheim would say) rather than on a philosophic rationalism that relates more to what some people might want society to be then to what it is. (See the positivist distinction between science and philosophy)

Your kin are your family, race or blood relations

Since the mid-nineteenth century, anthropologists (and social theorists generally) have used the word kinship for the pattern of relationships (by descent or marriage) recognised in a culture and the way they form the basis for the social organisation of the society.

What was once the women's emancipation movement became the feminist movement. The words feminism and feminist, in this sense, emerged in the late 19th century. They are not in Blackie's Concise English Dictionary of 1900, but "feminist" is used in the title of a journal in 1911. Freud criticises the "feminist demand for equal rights" in 1924. The Daily Express Encyclopedia of 1934 has quite a long entry:

"Feminism, a movement for bringing about equality both legal and social between the sexes...One of the earliest advocates was Mary Wollstonecraft. John Stuart Mill... put forward very advanced views... The Married Women's Property Act... was the first big step.. The Women's Suffrage campaign... proved with what determination women were fighting for their cause... The Divorce Act of 1923... and the Legitimacy Act of 1926... are fruits of feminist movements... Scandinavian countries and Soviet Russia are very advanced both in feminist legislation and social outlook, while France is one of the most backward countries, Germany and England taking an intermediate position. In many states of the USA, women have a considerable advantage over men, especially in regard to divorce..."

Simone De Beauvoir used the words feminism, feminists and anti- feminists in The Second Sex (1949 - Translated into English in 1953) and I suspect this had considerable influence on the use of the words in English.

feminist theories

The early use of feminist was for campaigners for women's rights. Since the 1970s, feminism and feminist have also been applied to a set (or sets) of theoretical perspectives about society. People, therefore, speak of feminist theorists and feminist theories - An example of what Foucault calls a discourse (See Wikipedia article) In 1974, Juliet Mitchell reviewed six theorists as "feminists".

A sociological concept of fields (les champs in French) has been developed by Pierre Bourdieu (See Bourdieu, P. 1993 )

A field (or social field) is an area of social organisation in which roles, positions, and relations are produced. In Bourdieu's theory, society is a collection of overlapping fields, including economic, cultural, artistic, political, religious and sporting fields. A field shapes how individuals and collectives within it are interpellated (asked questions about who they are) and how they can occupy the field. A field does not determine how participants respond to it, and so who they become, but the strength of the field has a powerful influence.

Bourdieu and Passeron's La Reproduction (1970) is about the education system (see reproduction) and its relation to the class system. At one point in this, they say that the "structure of class relations" can be "regarded as a field of forces". This field of forces exerts its influence on "different areas of activities" or "sub- systems" (in this case, the "education system"). However, people's practice within a sub-system "owes its specific form... to the laws proper to each of the subsystems". Which would appear to imply that something like the education system is, itself, a field of forces governed by its own laws. Bourdieu and Passeron compare and contrast this with the social system as described by Talcott Parsons, with its different, inter-related parts. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. 1970/1977 pp 203-204).

The word "feudal" was coined from "feud" in the early 17th century. Feudal tenure was holding an estate in land in return for homage and service to a superior lord who granted the land. The land was held "in feud" or "in fee". The person who held the land was the "vassal" of the "lord" to whom homage and service was owed. In England the highest Lord was the king. Beneath him were superior vassals who were, in turn, lords to inferior vassals, and so on downwards.

Feudal tenures were abolished in England in 1645. By this time, the word "feudal" was used to describe the whole system of administration, jurisdiction and land tenure based on the relationship between vassals and their superiors.

The feudal system, in the wider sense above, was the political, social and economic system of medieval Europe. Nineteenth century social theorists called it "feudalism". Marx analysed it as the mode of production that preceded capitalism.

Homage: Nowadays means a public display of special respect. This comes from the medieval ceremony in which someone (the "man" or the "vassal") pledged allegiance to another (known as the "lord"). As in the picture, the vassal knelt and placed his hands between the hands of the lord.

In July 1789 French peasants revolted against Feudal rights and privileges, which were abolished in August 1789. These "seigneurial rights" (rights of the lord) included requirements to use a mill, bakehouse or wine-press belonging to the "lord", special rents, pigeons and rabbits kept by the lord feeding on the peasants' crops, tolls on roads and rivers, and various local dues. Although claiming origin in the feudal period, these rights had not been fading away. The right were bought and sold as a kind of property and professional "feudistes" searched ancient manuscripts to discover forgotten rights that could be imposed to raise more money.

Feudal Tenure continued in Scotland until abolished by the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc (Scotland) Act in 2000AD

The term Folklore was suggested on 12.8.1846 by William John Thoms (born 16.11.1803, died 15.8.1885) in The Athenaeum under the pseudonym Ambrose Merton. It was a term for the "lore of the people". That is for the learning or knowledge of ordinary people. What, Thoms said, was then usually referred to as popular antiquities or popular literature.

The 1911 Encyclopedia describes it as "the traditional learning of the uncultured classes of civilised nations"

Eve learns about good and evil and Prometheus and Pandora bring hope and industry   Wollstonecraft comments: Man has been held out as independent of His power who made him, or as a lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason

Socrates: These two harmonies I ask you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom

Aristotle: a state is a community of freemen

Filmer: I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents

Hobbes: Liberty, or freedom, signifieth properly the absence of opposition [Corresponding to Berlin's negative freedom]

Locke: men are naturally in... a state of perfect freedom... within the bounds of the law of nature

Rousseau: Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains... What can make it legitimate?

Hegel: ethical life is the concept of freedom developed into the existing world

John Stuart Mill: After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature. [See varieties of freedom]

Durkheim: It would never have been possible to establish the freedom of thought we now enjoy if the regulations prohibiting it had not been violated...

Sartre: I am condemned to be free [existentialist freedom]

liberalism   conservatism

Something's function is it performance and the thing it is supposed to do. A computer has many functions, and any of its basic operations is called a function. To be a function, an act must be more than just an occasional act. It needs to be the regular purpose. My function may be to teach if there is regular interaction between teacher and taught. It is not my function if I and another person simply contract that I will teach on one occasion. That is just something I did then and may never do again. In defining a function, and pointing out the difference between function and contract, Durkheim says:

"if [the division of labour] only brought together individuals who united for some few moments to exchange personal services, it could not give rise to any regulative action. But what it brings face to face are functions, that is to say, ways of definite action, which are identically repeated in given circumstances, since they cling to general, constant conditions of social life."

Functional and Dysfunctional

Functional is a relatively old word (mid 17th century) meaning that something serves its purpose. It also distinguished the purpose of something from its structure or form. In the mid 19th century doctors coined the phrase "functional disorder" for a disease without an organic base.

In the early 20th century (1916) a new word dysfunction or disfunction was seen in some medical writing, meaning a fault in the way some part of the body is working. A limp is a leg dysfunction, a heart attack is a major heart dysfunction. The word spread. A gas fire that will not light is "in a state of dysfunction".

The word dysfunctional was not observed until 1949, when Robert Merton wanted to counter the assumption that everything in society serves its purpose well. He defined functional and dysfunctional thus:

"Functions are those observed consequences which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system, and dysfunctions, those observed consequences which lessen the adaptation or adjustment of the system. There is also the empirical possibility of nonfunctional consequences, which are simply irrelevant to the system under consideration"

In popular language, a family that does not work is a dysfunctional family - which implies you have a theory of what families are supposed to do when performing their functions properly, what can go wrong, and why. I suspect the term became popular in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of family therapies, modelled on those of Virginia Satir (USA 1916-1988), that seek to heal the dysfunctional family.

Functionalism

A functional analysis of society tries to explain the parts of the society in terms of the purpose they serve within the whole society. Marx and Engels, therefore, make a functional analysis of classes when they argue that capitalist and labourer (together) are necessary for the production of capital. The emphasis of their Communist Manifesto, however, is on the conflict generated between the classes, and its role in the development of society.

Functionalism is a term developed in 1930s England to describe theories that emphasise an analysis of parts of the society in terms of their purpose within the whole. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 - 1942) said that "the magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has ben bestowed upon myself, in a way on myself" (quoted Fletcher, 1971). He wrote:

"This type of theory aims at the explanation of anthropological facts at all levels of development by their function, by the part which they play within the integral system of culture, by the manner in which they are related to each other within the system" (1926 Encyclopedia Britannica article, quoted by Robert Merton, 1957, p.22)

The term (or similar) was also adopted by USA sociologists. Robert Merton (1957) spoke of "functional analysis" and compared it to the "dialectical" analysis of Hegel. and then of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Both ways of analysing society, he argued, could be used by conservatives or radicals. They provide value neutral tools

Functionalism is often linked to Structure to give "Structural-Functionalism". The essays of the British anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) were published in 1952 as Structure and Function in Primitive Society. In 1951, USA Sociologist Talcott Parson wrote that the systematisation of theory in the present state of knowledge must be in structural-functional terms - See Wikipedia

The term functionalist has also been applied to earlier theorists, notably Durkheim, who do not have the same emphasis as the theorists who later called themselves functionalists. I think it is unhelpful to call Durkheim a functionalist. It can be helpful to point out that some functionalists saw him as an intellectual predecessor. Robert Merton argues that "Durkheim adopted a functional orientation throughout his work"

Many characteristics often ascribed to functionalist theory do not accurately describe Durkheim's theories. However, they also fail to accurately describe Malinowski or Radcliffe-Brown. Ronald Fletcher (The Making of Sociology, 1971, vol.2, p.674) has attempted a description that does (partly) describe Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. I have altered the tense and added links for terms:

The 'functionalist' approach to the study of society maintains that society is a system of social institutions and attendant patterns of culture. Social institutions are ordered, regulated patterns of social action which are rooted in men's need and interests; which rest upon strongly established sentiments, and - as forms of social regulation - are crucial, organised embodiments of values. Culture is the total material, mental, spiritual apparatus and 'ethos' which is instrumentally related to these institutions. The patterning of 'culture' is concomitant with the pattern of 'institutionalisation'. The total 'social structure' of a 'society' (a 'social system') can be systematically analysed in terms of its institutional 'parts'. However, the whole is a system of interconnected parts. The parts are inter-operative, they work (function) in a process of interdependence with each other. No part can therefore be understood excepting within a knowledge of the whole. The very nature of a part of society lies in its functional interconnections with, and contributions to, other parts in the entire social system. The study of society has, therefore, to rest upon this primary recognition of the social system (of the inter-connectedness of social facts); and could only provide a reliable body of knowledge about its subject-matter if it employed the 'structural-functional' method of analysis.

One's gender can just mean one's sex in the sense of being either male or female. Most people would agree that this is simply decided by whether one has a penis or a vagina. If you "sex" an animal you just look at its genital organs to decide if it is a boy or a girl.

In its richer sense, gender refers to all the characteristics that attach to being male or female, including one's that are of cultural origin. Wearing lipstick, for example, is something that women in my culture often do, but men only do in plays, if dressing up as women ("drag") or making some political point about "gender roles". Such roles are very real: They force themselves on us. Men who wear lipstick are made to feel very uncomfortable. Men who wear a dress may even be arrested. Even wearing a coat with the buttons on the "wrong side" can be embarrassing.

Judith Butler has argued that even what we regard as our biological sex is shaped by society.

Barbara Risman (2004) argues that gender should be thought of as a social structure, situating it at "the same level of general social significance as the economy and the polity".

Core gender identity

"gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness" (1966)

"Gender identity is a person's inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes." (An internet definition based on the Random House Dictionary 2010.

Judith Butler:

"There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" Butler, J. 1990 p.25)

The scientific study of (biological) hereditary, with special reference to how variation comes about. Genetics, as a name for the subject, dates back to 1905. The origin of the science is usually traced back to 1900 when papers by Gregor Mendel, originally published in 1866, were resurrected by several biologists.

The physical units that carrying the data of what an organism will be are Chromosomes (which are molecules) - Genes (which are relatively small sections of DNA which encode - provide a template for - proteins) and the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) of which the genes are composed. Chromosomes are molecules that consist of a very long strand of DNA coiled many times, and a few proteins called histones which hold the whole structure together.

sex-determination. Most animals (including humans) have their biological sex (gender) determined by the combination of X (female determining factor) and Y (male determining factor) chromosomes in their cells. Females have two X chromosomes (XX) - Males have one of each (XY). The female sex-cell (egg) contains an X chromosome. About 50% of male sperm is X factor and 50% Y factor. If a cell is fertilised by an X factor sperm, it will develop as a female. If fertilised by a Y factor sperm, it will develop as a male.

The following summary of gestalt psychology is taken from The History of Psychiatry, a lecture by Larry Merkel, 18.9.1903

Gestalt psychology began as an attack on Wundtian atomistic psychology. The basic concept was that the combination of sensory elements produced something more than the sum. Kant (1724-1804) in opposition to the British Empiricists felt the mind actively took sensory elements and combined them into a meaningful whole, quite differently than the passive process of association. Early Gestalt psychologists held that the act of perceiving was as important as the content of what was perceived. Experiments in physics and physiology supported this, for example in music a melody evokes a response more than just a series of notes. William James was an early influence on Gestalt psychology. Goethe and the philosophy of phenomenology, the unbiased description of immediate experience, also had an influence. Physics, and the investigation of force fields and wave theory, as opposed to atoms also had an influence. The early German Gestalt psychologists began as Wundtian students [Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Kurt Koffka (1886-1941), and Wolfgang KÇôhler (1887-1967)]. With the rise of Nazis in Germany Gestalt psychology immigrated to the U.S. They developed principles of perceptual organisation and the notion that learning/problem solving required situational evaluation and mental sequencing, rather than simple trial and error as Behaviouralists argued. Furthermore they argued that learning occurred more effectively when the elements of learning were organized into meaningful wholes rather than simple practice and repetition. Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) the originator of Field Theory is probably the best known of Gestalt psychologists. Gestalt psychology recognizes consciousness and urges it's study while recognizing that the methodology can never be as precise as in behaviourism.

Globalisation Compare R.E. Park (1925) on the change from primary to secondary relations when we move from a village to a town

"The globe" is a phrase that has been used for the sphere of the world since the late sixteenth century. In 1944 (according to Webster's dictionary) the verb globalise was coined to mean making something worldwide. Then, in the 1960s, the Canadian theorist Marshal McLuhan (1911-1980) popularised the idea that developments in modern media are creating a global village. Today that term means that all the world is thought of as being closely connected by modern communications and markets and therefore inter-dependent. The media is making real, on a world-wide scale, the claim of the 16th century poet Jonne Donne, that:

"No man one is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent ... if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee"

In 1960, McLuhan and his colleague, Carpenter, wrote:

"postliterate man's electronic media contract the world to a village or tribe where everything happens to everyone at the same time. Everyone knows about, and therefore participates in, everything that happens the minute it happens. Television gives this quality of simultaneity to events in the global village." (Carpenter, E. and McLuhan, M. 1960 Quoted in The Oxford English Dictionary)

In economic terms, globalisation refers to an increasing tendency towards an interconnected worldwide investment and business environment. The strength of this, and the penetration of the media, has made most nationally based "socialist" and "communist" economies unviable. Globalisation has become the victory of capitalism over socialist alternatives and the protests against reducing society to the market are now referred to in the media as "anti-globalisation" rallies.

Goal attainment is one of the four basic needs that Parsons says that all Social Systems have. All societies need to define and sustain certain fundamental objectives. In the social system as a whole, this is done by the political system.

The political meaning is the commonest. "The Government" is the body that rules a society. The word can be used as an alternative to "The State", or it can be used for just the part of the state at the top.

If we talk about "Government and State" we are probably distinguishing between the people who rule the whole (the Prime Minister and his government, for example) and the whole apparatus that carries out their wishes: civil service, army, police etc.

governance: controlling and directing. This can be control of public or private issues. Public governance is the government of society generally. Family governance is the government of the family.

Working in groups

Groups divided by closeness, warmth and sameness
warmest
community	society
family	state
communism	capitalism	Marx & Engels
mechanical solidarity	organic solidarity	Durkheim
gemeinschaft	gesellschaft	Tönnies
vergemeinschaftung communal	vergesellschaftung associative aggregative	Weber see discussion
primary group	secondary group	Cooley

Habit - Habitus

The common word, habit, and the technical term, habitus, both come from a Latin word for the way one holds oneself.

A habit is a way of behaviour that is really ingrained. It is one explanation for regular patterns of human behaviour.

Following Comte, Durkheim argued that society could not arise from individuals choosing to cooperate, but that cooperation could only develop in a pre-existing society. Groups are formed in the first place by

"mechanical causes and impulsive forces, such as affinity of blood, attachment to the same soil, ancestral worship, community of habits etc." (Durkheim 1893 p.278)

These habits are real things (social facts) that resist being altered. They are not just ideas or concepts. The "forms of collective existence" are

"within us ... they are a product of repeated experiences, they derive from repetition and from the habit resulting from it, a sort of dominance and authority. We feel their resistance when we try to shake them off." (Durkheim 1895 p.18)

Many sociologists argue that the origin of society involves behaviour becoming a habit, by habitualisation.

Habitus was used (late 19th century) as a medical term for a habit (disposition) of the body. So if you had a "consumptive habitus" you would have a disposition to the disease consumption (tuberculosis)

Marcel Mauss, and other sociologists, used habitus for the ways we behave that have become second nature to us: techniques that our body has learnt.

Pierre Bourdieu has extended this to include beliefs. Our habitus is the whole body of ways of behaving and thinking that have become second nature to us. The dispositions (inclinations, habits) that make up your habitus are things you have learnt so well that they are natural for you.

Bourdieu argues that people from the same social class develop a similar habitus. This leads to them making similar choices in a wide range of different situations. This is Bourdieu's formal definition of habitus:

[The system of " durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organise practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends of an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively 'regulated' and 'regular' without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organising action of a conductor"

One's habitus is durable in that it is the product of a long process of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, and lasting a lifetime. It is transposable in that it generates practices in different fields of activity. So a working class habitus will lead to behaviour of a similar pattern at school, at work, at play, etc. Structured structures suggests that the patterns of behaviour incorporate the social conditions in which they were learnt (the working class environment, for example), and structuring structures means that they generate practices that shape different situations in a typical way. And all this is a kind of habit, rather than conscious decision.

This word habitualisation, used by Berger and Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality, means making a habit of something. In a section on the Origins of Institutionalisation, they say

"All human activity is subject to habitualisation. Any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be reproduced with an economy of effort" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, pp 70-71)

They then say

" Institutionalisation occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualised action by types of actors. Put differently, any such typification is an institution" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, pp 70-71)

In law, an heir is someone who succedes someone else in the possession of property or rank. The eldest son, for example, might be the father's heir.

Hereditary means descended from an ancestor to an heir. The term used in relation to property and rank was soon used also for anything transmitted from one generation to another - including biological features.

Hierarchy is the vertical organisation of society. By vertical is meant that people are ranked above and below one another according to their authority. Some societies are more hierarchical than others. All human groups, however, have some hierarchy. Some theorists argue that this is a product of a social contract between equals to adopt a hierarchy for the sake of the benefits it can bring. Others argue that hierarchy is the natural order of society, modelled on the family where children are born into an authority structure, without any choice. Looked at this way, it becomes evident that without hierarchy there can be no culture and no society, because adults are necessary to socialise children and introduce them to culture.

In the original Greek, a hierarch is a sacred ruler. Durkheimian theorists argue that it is through religion that society first perceives itself. The rational, secular, analysis of society that social science engages in is a product of society, not its origin. State of nature and social contract theories, therefore, are not an account of how society actually formed, but an attempt to analyse society.

Hierarchy and Power

Power is the ability to do something. Individually we are weak compared to our power in organised society. The early sociologist, Montesquieu, in fact imagined human beings in a state of nature as so weak that they would be frightened at a leaf trembling. In society, however, this sense of weakness vanishes. (read Montesquieu). However, whereas we all draw strength from society, the strength is unequally distributed and those high in the hierarchy of society have power over those lower down - which they may use for the collective or for personal advantage. (read Montesquieu).

Durkheim, following distinctions made earlier by John Stuart Mill, used the idea of forced versus natural division of labour to illustrate an aspect of social power. The hierarchy of society is natural if individuals tend towards occupying the positions that they are best suited to. It is forced if there are barriers to people entering positions other than their abilities.

Words such as domination and subjection are used for forcefully putting people low in the hierarchy. They are medieval Latin words, relating to feudal society where all were bound to one another obligations of allegiance, owing service or paying tribute. The force in this is echoed in the Latin origin. Subject means to "throw under", dominate means to make oneself lord, ruler or master.

Although subjection and domination are political words, applying to government, they can also be applied to other aspects of society. Thus John Stuart Mill writes about The Subjection of Women when he argues that the division of labour between men and women is forced.

From hierarchy and force to equality and law?

John Stuart Mill argued that history is moving from a society of brute force to a society of justice. Hierarchy is the political theme of the society of brute force. Equality is the political theme of the society of justice. Brute force was the dominant theme in bygone society because of the importance to survival of protection, but it is not the natural condition of society:

"command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life; society in equality is its normal state".

But we also talk of history as being that part of the story since writing - so we have prehistory (before writing) and history (the story that has been written down)

In a story the events follow one another meaningfully, they unfold or evolve - Hence evolution

Different theories of society combine history and structure (or system) in different ways. Comte expressed this need to explain both how a society is organised at any one time and how it changes over time as the need for statics and dynamics - where the dynamics is the way that history happens.

In relation to humans, identity is a concept similar to self. We can talk about the identity of something that is not conscious, as when we identify a particular plant, but the plant has no awareness of its identity. It is not self-conscious. (See Ecological Community)

The first part (three chapters) of Bauman and May's Thinking Sociologically (2000) is about how we identify ourselves. From this you may infer that for many sociologists today, the individuals idea of who he or she thinks s/he is is an important issue.

Part two of Fulcher and Scott's Sociology is about "Social Identities". Theories about how we acquire are identities they discuss are symbolic interaction, in which they include George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman. They also discuss Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. Both of these theories are most relevant to primary socialisation within the family. In connection with secondary socialisation, at school, you could consider Emile Durkheim's book on Moral Education

The French philosopher Destutt de Tracy (See Wikipedia) coined the word idéologie in 1795 for a general science of ideas. His text book of this science, Eléments d'idéologie was published in 1817-1818.

Today we might call the science of ideas the "sociology of knowledge". Ideology came to be used for a system of ideas that one might study.

Discourse, when it means a system of thought that constrains what can be thought, may be equivalent to ideology. A related concept is Weltanschauung (world view)

The word image is related to imitate. Its first meaning was for representation of the external form of a person or thing in sculpture, painting, etc; especially a statue, of a saint for example, used as an object of veneration. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Hobbesian individuals are a stream of impressions that imagine using or destroying other people. Locke's individuals imagine what it is like to be the other person, and so discover the collective reason which Rousseau develops as the general will. In Durkheim, the imagination becomes collective, and it is society that thinks. Imagination is also relevant to science, either in distorting observations, as Locke fears, or as the motive of investigation and source of theory, as Wollstonecraft sees it.

Infantilise means to treat as children. It is a mid-20th century word, but it could be used to describe the legal process that Mill and Taylor identify (1848) by which women are classed with children and protected as if they (women) are not able to make their own decisions.

To inscribe is to write or engrave. So to say that the body is socially inscribed is to say that society has written its characteristics onto it.

Institution is used about parts of society, not the whole. An association of women calls itself the "Women's Institute", an association for working class education called itself a "Mechanic's Institute". Law, marriage, the family, property, royalty, religion, even prostitution, can all be spoken of as institutions.

From the early 18th century, institutions has been used for organisations set up to serve a special purpose in a special building. In a sermon to raise money for hospitals in 1707, the preacher spoke of

"such Wise, such Rational, such Beneficial Institutions"

This has given rise to a distinct use of the term for hospitals, asylums, orphanages, old people's homes and prisons. When we are told that our grandfather is in an institution, it does not mean that he is a member of the royal family or an Oxford college.

Talking about a large building for the care or custody of old, sick or insane people as an institution is probably the commonest use of the term. Erving Goffman broadens this. He argues that the "everyday sense" is a place, like a building, in which activity of a particular kind regularly goes on. He uses the term Total Institution for somewhere that embraces everything that its inhabitants do - where they live, work, play, sleep, day in day out.

"A total institution may be defined as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws" (Goffman E. 1961A Introduction)

Institutions as I have described them are rather solid things. Royalty is most resistant to republican sentiment and the family continues to survive speculation about its death. Marriages that break can cause their broken parts enormous pain. The organic school of sociology would expect this, as it treats the social bond as real (solid).

Theorists, like Talcott Parsons, who believe society is created by the interaction of individuals, need a way of explaining how the solid bits of society come about. Parsons calls this institutionalisation. He says we start with individuals interacting, they establish ways of interacting that are acceptable or unacceptable. When a way of behaviour is both emotionally satisfying and leads to rewards from others, it is institutionalised. We might say that partners who establish a kind but plain speaking relationship with one another, and make it rewarding, "institutionalise honesty" in their personal relations. In this way, patterns of behaviour are established, and the pattern we come to expect from another person is his or her "role". The role we expect a police officer to perform, for example, contains lots of expected behaviour patterns that have been established by social interaction in the past, are rewarding if kept to, and punished if broken.

The use of institution for hospitals, prisons, etc, gives rise to a completely different meaning for institutionalisation than the one Parsons makes. When we speak of a patients being "institutionalised" we can mean put into an institution, or we can mean that his or her behaviour has adapted so much to living in an institution that the skills needed to live outside have been lost.

Institutions and Mind

We could distinguish between

• institutions - the solid parts of a society (state, family, legal institutions, hospitals, religious organisations, schools, whatever) and

• society's mind - its common conscience and the collective representations that are part of it. The collective mind might be described at the culture.

From a Durkheimian point of view, the institutions of a society and the state of consciousness of the society's members are related in an intimate dialogue. Durkheim says that

"political society as a whole or some one of the partial groups it includes such as religious denominations, political, literary and occupational associations etc"

are the "substratum" of social "facts"

"A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint"

Social facts impose their constraint on individuals by providing, maintaining and enforcing the collective representations (ideas) within us with which we order and structure our individual experiences.

In Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim shows how an institution (a religious cult or church - the regular collective practice of rituals) is the basis or substratum of our energy and shapes our thought. We may think that the institution is just an expression of our ideas, but in reality our ideas get their energy and shape from our participation in the institution.

What Durkheim argues about the cult or church applies, in different ways, to other institutions. The family is the obvious example, but it applies to our participation in the whole of society, and its part (institutions). Mind is generated and shaped within institutions, and the mind of any place and time needs to be related to the institutions of that time and place.

To give an example from mental health history, this mean that we need to relate the way people think about sanity and madness in any particular period, to the social institutions of the time. The institutions (state, madhouses, lunatic asylums, mental hospitals, community care, whatever) of the time provide the substratum of social facts on which the society and the individual's ideas are based, and ideas in their turn, are the basis on which the institutions are maintained and developed (changed).

To integrate is to make whole. With respect to society one can think of this as putting together parts and combining them into the whole (State of Nature Theory) or as maintaning, restoring and creatively developing the natural solidarity. (Durkheimian Theory).

Integration is one of the four basic needs that Parsons says that all Social Systems have. All societies need to maintain internal order. All societies need to ensure that their values are maintained and symbolised. In the social system as a whole, this is done by religion.

Integration achieves and maintains the appropriate emotional and social relations between the people cooperating in goal-attainment and in a system of action looked at as a continuing entity.

Integration is needed because societies need to create and maintain solidarity despite the emotional strains of individuals cooperating over goal seeking and the strains of sharing the fruits of cooperation.

Interaction is the action or influence of persons or things on each other

The German theorist, Georg Simmel attempted to create a sociology that is based on forms of interaction between people. He was influential on the development of American social theory through his student, Robert Park (below) and the translations of Albion Small. His theories also influenced the development of symbolic interactionism. (below)

Interactionist theorists, such as Park and Burgess in Chicago, analyse society in terms of the interaction of individuals. In this they derive indirectly from State of Nature Theory. More directly, Chicago sociology built itself on the problems raised by Darwinian concepts of the struggle for survival. Park and Burgess argued that competition and conflict are the basic forms of interaction. Competition is common to all forms of life, whether plant communities or human communities. Conflict emerges from competition when it becomes conscious. It takes place only in human societies.

George Herbert Mead (also in Chicago) developed what became known as symbolic interactionism. Mead's theory provided an explanation of how self-consciousness, the human mind, and society, developed from the natural (animal) world. [See Student Reviews]

Knowledge is what we know and the theory of knowledge (epistemology) tries to establish the grounds on which we can say we know something. One school of thought says that we only know something if it derives from or can be tested by experience. Another school of thought says that there are essential categories of thought that we cannot derive from experience. These categories include time and space. Mentally we organise everything in time and space. We need these categories of thought to organise our empirical experience - They do not come from the empirical experience.

Durkheim argued that the categories derive from religion and that religion is a reflection of society. "All the men [people] of a single civilisation represent space in the same way". But different societies have different ways of organising experience:

"There are societies in Australia and North America where space is conceived in the form of an immense circle, because the camp has a circular form; and this spatial circle is divided up exactly like the tribal circle, and is in its image"

We could, therefore, speak of societies as having different knowledges: The way one society organises its experience being different from the way another society organises it.

In his description of "regimes of truth", Foucault appears to describe similar systems of social knowledge to Durkheim.

Relativism The argument that there is no way to say what is true, or to seek what is true (in the way Socrates did, for example), but only to seek what is true within a given thought system. See external link to Emrys Westacott , who says "Cognitive relativists do not simply assert that different cultures or communities have different views about which beliefs are true; no-one disputes that. Nor do they merely claim that different communities operate with different epistemic norms--i.e. criteria of truth and standards of rationality. That, too, seems to be obvious. The controversial claim at the heart of cognitive relativism is that no one set of epistemic norms is metaphysically privileged over any other".

"A knowledge society, whose economic basis is the creation and exchange of immaterial goods and services" can be contrasted with an industrial society based on material goods. See Memorandum 2000: "Europe has indisputably moved into the Knowledge Age"

When social theorists use the word latent, you can often replace it with hidden with no loss of meaning. For example, manifest functions are functions that are not hidden and latent functions are ones that are hidden. (See Function)

Freud thought that dreams have a manifest aspect that we remember and a hidden part. Nightmares are frightening but underneath them (he argued) is a hidden desire:

"our doctrine is not based upon the.. obvious dream-content, but relates to the thought-content, which, in the course of interpretation, is found to lie behind the dream. Let us compare and contrast the manifest and the latent dream-content. It is true that there are dreams the manifest content of which is of the most painful nature. But has anyone ever tried to interpret these dreams - to discover their latent thought-content? ... there is always the possibility that even our painful and terrifying dreams may, upon interpretation, prove to be wish fulfilments." (Freud, S. 1900 par.4.4)

Latency is a period when things are hidden. Freud called the period of childhood between (about) five and puberty latency, because it was a period of a lull in sexual activity. Physiologists speak of a latent period when there is a delay between a muscle being stimulated and responding. This may both be origins of Parsons' use of the word (below). Latency may be a period of recharging one's batteries before getting on with the business of life.

Latency

Pattern Maintenance

See Pattern and Pattern Variables

Pattern Maintenancen is one of the four basic needs that Parsons says that all Social Systems have. All societies need to motivate people to perform their roles. In the social system as a whole, this is done by the family and by socialisation.

Latency is an interlude between goal-attainment processes in a particular system, which restores, maintains or creates the energies, motives and values of the cooperating units. Latency is a break from goal seeking in the system it is latent towards, but may be goal seeking in its sub-system. For example, cooperating in planting a garden is goal seeking from the family's point of view, but latent from the point of view of society. The latency problem is to make sure that units have the time and facilities, within a suitable conditioning environment, to constitute or reconstitute the capacities needed by the system.

See also: Rules and Norms

Law

Law is a fixed rule. But who is it fixed by? There is an ages old distinction between natural law and positive law.

• Natural law is held to be common to everyone - whatever society they belong to.

• Positive law is laid down by human beings. It is the law of particular societies.

Laws that are laid down by human beings, whether international, laws of nations, or laws of other associations, statute law or common law, or whatever, are all Positive laws. See weblinks for such laws.

At the time that social science began to develop in Europe, the dominant theories of natural law were theological. Natural law was held to be the law of God, that we could discover through reason or by God's direct revelation to us (in the ten commandments, for example). Positive law is the law that humans make.

Many writers use the term natural law for two ideas:

1. the idea that God has laid down laws that govern creation

2. the idea that the world is governed by laws intrinsic to its nature (whether made by God or not)

It can avoid confusion if we call the first, natural law, and the second laws of nature. The ideas are not, however, worlds apart. The idea that God has laid down laws can develop easily into the idea that nature is governed by laws whose author (if there is one) we do not know. In this way, theological theories of nature and society, developed into philosophical or scientific theories that did not require God as part of their explanation.

Sometimes people speak of "natural law" in contrast to "supernatural intervention". Here the idea is of "laws of nature" that can be discovered by reason and/or observation and experiment, and such divine acts (if there are such) as are pure acts of will, unguided by law. If creation is the result of a "big bang" that can be explained by scientific laws, this would classify as "natural", but if the big bang is an act of God beyond explanation by scientific laws, this is supernatural.

Natural law should not be confused with state of nature Here is how Camiele Watson explains the difference: Robert Filmer was a theological and natural law theorist. The meaning of theology is "the study of religious beliefs and systems of thinking about God (or gods)" (Scott, J. 2005). A natural law theory has a close relationship with theology. I would say that they both go hand in hand with each other. "Natural law refers to the principles of law and morality, supposedly universal and binding on human conduct. Natural law was held to be a God given system." (Scott, J. 2005) John Locke, on the other hand, was a state of nature and social contract theorist. "State of Nature theorists work out what society and politics are about by imagining human beings stripped of social characteristics. They try to show how the needs of those individuals explain their need for society and politics (This dictionary). As theology and natural law theories have a link, so do state of nature and social contract theories. A social contract is "an unwritten agreement between the state and its citizens" (Scott, J. 2005). The way I understand this is that a social contract is like the quote says an unwritten agreement that moves human beings from a state of nature into a civilised society.

Chapter 17 of Ed Stephan's The Division of Territory in Society is a discussion of Sociological Laws that begins with David Hume, focuses on Auguste Comte, and discusses Robert Merton and many other sociologists.

There are different kinds of law

Legitimacy

See also authority

The original meaning of legitimate is lawful. (See Social Science History)

Political philosophy and sociology have extended and altered the use of the term. Different theorists argue that legitimacy is conferred by different things. Rousseau, for example, thought that legitimacy is conferred by a government seeking the general will of the people. This is not the same as the will of the people or the consent of the people. For example, if the majority of people want to exterminate a minority because they do not like them, that is not the general will but a widespread and illegitimate passion. The general will is found by seeking to find what is in the interest of all of us if we are to live together successfully. (The interest of the whole society). This relates to the old meaning of legitimate as lawful in that Rousseau (and Kant, who followed him) believed that the legitimacy of law lay in its seeking the general interest of all. A law that says tall skinny people should be exterminated because they (we) are tall and skinny would be illegitimate.

Many sociologists, following Weber use legitimacy to mean being supported by the beliefs of the people. This should not suggest that democracy is necessarily legitimate or that other forms of government are illegitimate. Different belief systems support different forms of government. Two types of belief system he outlined are the traditonal and the rational/legal. These, and charisma can confer legitimacy of a ruler and reduce the need to use force

We tend to say that a government has authority if is legitimate. We also tend to relate legitimacy and authority to the power of ideas (especially positive ideas about a ruler) rather than the power of force or fear.

Magic

In "Magic, mentality, and city life", Robert Park distinguishes between magic as a form of thought and logical reason.

"It depends upon the consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a king, or consul, or other magistrates; and if there be lawful cause, the multitude may change the kingdom into an aristocracy or democracy..."

Magistrate is from a Latin word whose meanings include master, chief, president, tutor or teacher. In general political theory it meant a public official with power, and could include the king himself. David Hume wrote "The king was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary powers". This general meaning is preserved in the United States of America when the President is spoken of as the "first magistrate" or "chief magistrate"

In England and Wales, magistrates are now people who act as judges in courts that try minor offenses. Most of them are unpaid (honorary). These magistrates are also called Justices of the Peace (JPs for short). They are appointed by the crown from local people. In the 18th and early 19th century the Justices of the Peace had much more power. They were the local government for most of England and Wales. Justices met in Quarter Sessions to administer their counties, as well as running a court. During the nineteenth century, however, most of these administrative functions were taken away and passed over (usually) to elected local governments. (See, for eaxmple, the 1888 Local Government Act)

"it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state". (Aristotle 1253a7)

"Man" here is being contrasted with other "animals". Elsewhere, however, the same translation uses "man" for "male".

"Out of these two relationships between man and woman, master and slave, the first thing to arise is the family..." (Aristotle 1252b9)

Originally the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Now refers to quite a diverse range of theories based, more or less loosely, on some aspect of Marx and/or Engels' writings.

Marx and Engels conceptualised their theories as "scientific socialism" and/or "historical materialism"

Advice about academic meetings

It is a contentious issue. In Summer 1977, the journal Daedalus (issue 54) wrote

"The quest for science has led to a.. battle of methodologies, in answer to a ... question: Whatever it is we want to study, how should we do it?".

The methods we use in scientific (or other) research should be related to the theories we have about what knowledge is and how we acquire it. That is, methodology should be related to epistemology (the theory of knowledge)

See, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 12.83

Catriona Woolner writes:

"the family may have been seen as a microcosm of political society insofar as the many roles required within the one had their counterpart in the other. For example, both need to concern themselves with shelter, finance, health, education, external relations, future planning, defence (or order), and the most efficient application of available resources." (Woolner, C. 1997)

Others have argued that lunatic asylums should be a microcosm of the ideal society.

"Mass media represents the most economical way of getting the story over the new and wider market in the least time" G. Snow wrote for advertisers in 1923. Artists work in media such as paints and pastels, advertisers would use such "advertising media" as "newspapers, journals, magazines and such-like printed publications" (E. O. Hughes 1929). .

At the end of the second world war, UNESCO was formed to advance "the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples, through all means of mass communication". Its Director General, Julian Huxley, said this "somewhat cumbrous title" was "commonly abbreviated to Mass Media", including "the radio, the cinema and the popular press, which are capable of the mass dissemination of word or image".

James Fulcher and John Scott's Glossary defines "Media (plural of medium" as "means of communication that mediate between those who provide information between those who provide information and those who receive it" and Mass media as "media which can reach large numbers of people".

Writing in German, in 1944, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that the media had taken over from religion the role of providing cultural order.

"culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part." (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944/1977 "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception").

Adorno and Horkheimer described the media industry as an "iron system" which imposes a view on the audience without giving them the opportunity to think for themselves.

Their attention was particularly directed to the cinema:

"The stunting of the mass-media consumer's powers of imagination and spontaneity..." [must be ascribed] to the objective nature of the products themselves, especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound film." (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944/1977 "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception").

Stuart Hall has developed an analysis of media effects which breaks away from the "iron system" idea and recognises that mass media messages are not simply accepted in the way they were intended, but that audiences have to 'decode' or reinterpret them in their own way.

Media effects

See Young, J. 1.2003 Constructing the Paradigm of Violence: Mass Media, Violence and Youth

mass society

James Fulcher and John Scott's Glossary defines mass society

"the atomised society of isolated individual which, according to some theorists, such as William Kornhauser, resulted from the decline of community after industrialisation and urbanisation. Atomisation made it easy for political leaders to manipulate people"

Mind is perceiving, thinking, reasoning, feeling, imagining, desiring, remembering. If body is the flesh as distinct from the spirit, then mind is spirit. It is the world of ideas, of thoughts, passions and imaginings.

According to Mary Wollstonecraft, humanity differs from other of parts of the animal world in the inter-relationship of reason, morality, emotion, lawful society and meaningful history. (See Wollstonecraft 1792, 1.2 to 1.5). It is this whole felt and thought self-conscious world (of individuals and society) that we speak of as mind - as distinct from body.

In his last work, Sigmund Freud wrote

"We know two kinds of things about what we call our psyche (or mental life): firstly, its bodily organ and scene of action, the brain (or nervous system) and, on the other hand, our acts of consciousness, which are immediate data and cannot be further explained by any sort of description."

He is writing of what we are aware of. The brain is a body organ, we think the mind operates there, but what we experience as mind is consciousness. They are two distinct worlds which we believe are related - the physical brain, which is part of our body and which can be examined in post-mortems on dead people - and the conscious mind, the experiencing of things that takes place, for example, when we examine our bodies.

The different types of organisation of societies in order to produce the things they need are called modes of production. A society that produces its wealth by slave labour has a different mode of production to one that does so by employing free labour.

The social science that analyses a society's mode of production is called political economy. It is one of the major ways of tracing shape and structure in the totality of society. Well known political economists include Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Hayek.

Karl Marx argued that understanding a society's mode of production is a key to understanding everything about its social, political and intellectual life:

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." (Marx K. 1859 Preface)

Production and Reproduction

Engels, in 1884, wrote (my emphasis)

"According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of the immediate essentials of life. This, again, is of a twofold character. On the one side, the production of the means of existence, of articles of food and clothing, dwellings, and of the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social organisation under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour on the one hand and of the family on the other.""

Since then, the word production has often been applied to creating the means of existence (the economy) and the the word reproduction to re-creating the human beings who make the society. This re-creation is not simply biological, it includes the whole process of education (socialisation) through the family and the education system.

The idea of modern civilisation belongs to a theory of the development of society from the uncivilsed to the civilised. The period of civilisation is divided into the classical period (ancient Greece and Rome), the medieval, or middle period, and the modern period. Some (very) recent theorists think we may have entered a post-modern period. The next few hundred years may tell.

The Modern State Weber (1918) wrote about the modern state and the modern servant of the state. The modern state monopolises the use of legitimate force, so (in Europe) the modern state is created when the private armies of the feudal lords are suppressed and the king (queen)'s army becomes the only legitimate army within a given territory.

Moderrnity and capitalism are not the same. But their inter-relationship is illustrated by how often the following description from The Communist Manifesto is qoated as a description of modernity

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. 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 in air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind."

Postmodern After the modern - See 1989/1990 avalanche

Other terms for (very) recent periods of history include

Late modern

Digital Age

Information Age

Networked Society

Liquid Modernity - in the "liquid phase of modernity" "social forms (structures that limit individual choices, institutions that guard repetitions of routines, patterns of acceptable behaviour) can no longer (and are not expected) to keep their shape for long". (Bauman, Z, 2007 p.1)

Movements have moments - See Stuart Hall.

Sergey Mamay (1991) separates the following main approaches to sociological theorising about social movements.

Collective behaviour theory - Key example: Neil Smelser 1962 Theory of Collective Behavior. Smelser argues that six things are necessary for a social movement to emerge:

• Structural conduciveness - things that make or allow certain behaviours possible (e.g. spatial proximity)

• Structural strain - something (inequality, injustice) must strain society

• Generalised belief - explanation; participants have to come to an understanding of what the problem is

• Precipitating factors - spark to ignite the flame

• Mobilisation for action - people need to become organised

• Failure of social control - how the authorities react or do not react

The action-identity approach - Key example: Alain Touraine 1978/1981 La voix et le regard - The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements. Touraine says a social movement is

"the organised collective behaviour of a class actor struggling against its class adversary for the social control of its historicity". (Touraine 1981: p.77)

Resource mobilisation theory - Key examples: Mayer N. Zald and John David McCarthy (Editors) 1979 The Dynamics of Social Movements: Resource Mobilisation, Social Control and Tactics. Social movements arise because rational actors, seeking their own ends, form and join organisations to get resources and mobilise others. Individuals join social movements as rational means to an end, and social movement organisations act rationally to secure their ends, and preserve themselves. The model is an economic analogy and speaks of an organisation "marketing its products". (See Stu Crawford)

New Social Movements interpretations - Key examples: Jürgen Habermas 1981 "New Social Movements" and Claus Offe 1985 "New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics". Habermas says that new conflicts:

"no longer arise in the areas of material reproduction; they are no longer channeled through parties and organisations...Rather, the new conflicts arise in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialisation." (Habermas 1981, p.34)

Based on Mythologiae, a fifth century Christian collection of stories (in Latin) about Greek Gods, the word mythology became the English word for such stories. Sometimes people spoke of a mythical age that went before history.

Myth was used from the early 19th century for such stories. This is its definition in The Concise English Dictionary. Literary, Scientific and Technical of 1900:

"[Greek mythos, a word, a fable, a legend] A fable or legend of natural upgrowth, embodying the conviction of a people as to their gods or other divine personages, their own origin and early history and the heroes connected with it, the origin of the world etc - in a loser sense, an invented story..."

Claude Lévi Strauss

1988 Penguin Dictionary of Sociology under Myth:

"Nineteenth century anthropology sought to discover the origin of myths, treating them as unscientific explanations of social institutions and practices. For B. Malinowski, myths provided legitimation of social arrangements.

Contemporary perspectives have been profoundly influenced by C. Lévi Strauss, who treats myths as a series of signs from the perspective of structural linguistics. For Lévi Strauss, myths are not legitimating charters of institutions and they do not attempt to explain social arrangements. The function of myth is essentially cognitive, namely to account for the fundamental conceptual categories of the mind. These categories are constituted by contradictory series of binary oppositions - nature and society, raw and cooked, man and woman, left and right". (Abercrombie 1988, p.161)

A narrative is a story. Cultures contain different stories that explain the same thing. If you have sexual intercourse, for example, you might explain it as a result of falling into sin, or as an expression of love, or as rape, or as satisfying desire, or as part of a date, or as a mistake, or as a commercial transaction, or as an act to conceive a child. These (and more) are all stories that you could tell to explain the same event, and each of them puts you and what happens in a different light.

The 1611 Bible describes how the sons of Noah divided the world in their "lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations". Nation in the Bible appears to be a general word for the groups into which humanity is divided.

Many historians link the emergence of the modern nation state to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 - So it should not surprise us that the 1611 Bible does not use the word nation in this way.

The meaning of nation varies. For example the "Five Nations" are five confederations of native American tribes that are collectively called the Iroquois. They have a clan structure. The Iroquois were hunting tribes, and did not have a fixed territory. Each member, however, could state his family relationship to the group. By contrast, the United States of America, has a fixed territory and a state, but its citizens come from all over the world. It is one of the few countries in the world whose children regularly pledge an oath of the allegiance. The words of which include "one Nation indivisible".

"the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best. Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal." (Aristotle's Politics par. 1252b28)

Although nature makes humans social, nature can also be contrasted with the social. The state of nature theorists contrast nature with convention. Convention being that which comes about because of people meeting together and agreeing, or contracting, matters. But, even with this distinction, there is not separation. Rousseau, a state of nature theorist, says that, to be secure, convention must be rooted in nature:

"Will the bonds of convention hold firm without some foundation in nature? Can devotion to the state exist apart from love of those near and dear to us?" (Rousseau, 1762, Emile)

Implicit in this is the idea that the family and nurture are closer to nature than the state and legislation, even though society and the state are the nature of humanity. As it is women who have the potential to conceive and suckle, women are the centre of the family and so closer to nature than men. Men, however, are better equipped to fulfil the nature of humanity, which is political. Between the two natures - the biological and the conventional - Rousseau imagines a dialogue in which women and family inspire men to be social, and socialised men structure the lives of women who are the emotional heart of any society.

The development of speech, through society, brings reason into being. Rousseau believed that men are stronger in reason and women in nature. Before an ungrateful France cut off her head, Olympe de Gouges argued that the "laws of nature and reason" were now combining. Only education is needed to allow us all, men and women, black and white, legitimate and illegitimate, to take hold of our common humanity in the family that is society.

"The alarm bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the universe ... The powerful empire of nature is no longer beset by prejudices, fanaticism, superstition and lies." ... "The laws of nature and reason forbid all actions that are harmful to society" ... "Law must be the expression of the general will ... men and women ... must ... concur in its formation ... being equal before it." (Olympe de Gouges, 1791, The Rights of Women, paragraph m and items 5 and 6)

Natural and supernatural

When natural is contrasted with supernatural (example) the contrast is between earthly things that obey laws of nature and unearthly things that may not. Supernatural means above or beyond nature. In this context, nature would include society. The supernatural (unearthly) may be God, gods, spirits, angels, the devil, devils, demons, spirits of one's ancestors, fairies, evil forces, witchcraft, magic, visitations - Anything that is not constrained by the laws of nature.

State of Nature

Social Contract

Do not confuse with natural law

This is the entry for State of Nature in Rune's Dictionary of Philosophy

"The state of man as it would be if there were no political organisation or government. The concept was used by many philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a criterion of what man's natural condition might be and as to what extent the condition has been spoilt or corrupted by civilisation. It was used as an argument for man's original rights to liberty and equality ( Hooker, Locke, Rousseau) , but occasionally also as an argument for the necessity of the state and its right to control all social relations ( Hobbes)." (Walter Eckstein in Runes, D.D. 1960)

State of Nature theorists work out what society and politics are about by imagining human beings stripped of social characteristics. They try to show how the needs of those individuals explain their need for society and politics.

According to state of nature theorists, the movement from the state of nature to civilisation is based on some kind of agreement. This was called a contract. So we get social contract for the agreement that forms society. The idea of contract is linked to that of exchange. A great deal of social theory is based on the idea that society can be explained as a series of exchanges between people. Adam Smith, in particular, presents exchange as a foundation of society. It leads to a complex division of labour between people from which civilisation is constructed. (See Social Science History)

In his book on The Division of Labour, Emile Durkheim, by contrast, says that

"The hypothesis of a social contract is irreconcilable with the notion of the division of labour"

He is arguing that an intellectually successful theory of society cannot be built on the idea of a social contract.

Networks

The idea of a network starts with the concept of a net (like a fishing net), where horizontal and vertical lines intersect. That is very geometrical.

A railway network's lines are not geometrical, they wind and curve all over the place, linking people and places together, and new lines can be laid, or lines removed, when the needs of the people change.

Network is used to describe a group of people who exchange information, contacts and experience for professional or social purposes. Students, for example, set up networks for the exchange and development of their ideas.

Web is a word that is often used instead of network, because a spider's web is a network of strands. The sociologist, George Simmel, understands society as a web or network of interactions between people.

Network also describes interconnected computers , which can exchange information. The internet is a world wide linking of computers that is growing rapidly.

Networks have been contrasted with communities. Bob Saunders argues that community is changing to become networks and some theorists of modernity have spoken of a networked society.

Objectivism - Subjectivism

A dichotomy in social theory, suggested by Pierre Bourdieu, between theories focused, or starting from, the inner, meaningful "subjective" life of human beings (Weber's, for example) and theories focused of the "objective" social realities that impose themselves on the inner life. (Durkheim's, for example)

spontaneous order and constructed order

Friedrich Hayek makes a distinction between constructed order and spontaneous order.

The distinction is similar to that made by Park (etc) between forces that are unconscious (creating what Hayek calls a spontaneous order) and those that are conscious efforts of human beings (creating what Hayek calls a constructed order)

Organism and organisation are related words and concepts originating (in ancient Greece) in the idea of a machine or tool (see organ) whose separate parts work together to perform an action. The way that the parts of a pair of scissors interrelate in cutting cloth could be an example.

Any living animal or plant can be referred to as an organism. The body is an organism as long as it is alive.

Any whole with interdependent parts can be referred to as an organism.

Organism. - Biological

A living being. The material structure of an animal or plant, or small microrganism such as a bacterium. An organised living body. By extension, organism can mean any whole made up interdependent parts in the way a living being does.

Society as organism and/or system

Durkheim (at least in English translation) uses organism sometimes for the biological organism as distinct from other systems, at other times for the social organism. (See index) His idea that society is analogous to a biological system includes having material substance, or something very similar to it, in a way that justifies calling it an organism.

Parsons, however, does not believe in the material substance of society in this way. He follows Weber in attempting to create a sociology based on social action, and not on an image of society as real. Parsons, therefore, reserves the concept of organism for the biological organism (See Parsons1966 p.7, only considering there to be an analogy between this and the social system (See Parsons, T. 1942), but not one that justifies calling the social system an organism.