Views of Weber and Durkheim on Sociological Investigation - Essay Example

?Views of Weber and Durkheim on Sociological Investigation Introduction No one can have a doubt about the genius of Karl Marx whose theories were instrumental in lending social sciences the importance they are attached with today. He was among the first three sociologists (Weber and Durkheim being the other two) to throw light on the dynamic of the relationship between society and economy. Still, the bourgeoisie versus proletariat theme which formed the crux of his argument made the world remember him more as a socialist than a sociologist whereas in the arena of sociological perspectives and methodologies, Max Weber and David Emile Durkheim, though the former seemed to have an inclination to identify himself as an economist rather than a sociologist (Jensen, 2012:2), have come to be acknowledged for their iconic status as foremost sociological comparative analysts since the late nineteenth century and hence an effort to compare and contrast the ideas of these two. Unlike Marx, Weber and Durkheim base their argument on social action and solidarity and not on conflict. They regarded economy among the many components that made up the society and it was not accorded any privileged position in the social structure. These ideas, founded on a strong commitment to democratic and liberal values, have been of immense use to later researchers in social sciences. Background Till the mid-nineteenth century the study of societal structures was not recognized as a science. There was barely any effort to recognize the place of individual in the society and the former’s influence on the latter and vice-versa. There was little enthusiasm to raise questions and pursue answers relating to the society which is the unit of civilization. It was Weber and Durkheim who helped social science take a big leap forward by building elaborate arguments on the characteristics of societies, the factors and forces that hold them together, whether there are certain patterns that can be observed in societal evolution, the possible impact of such patterns, if any, on polity and economy, whether it is possible to codify them and what use this understanding could be of to the human communities. The biggest success of Weber and Durkheim was to draw the attention of the world to these issues and arouse its interest. Weber and Durkheim Weber and Durkheim, considered the founding fathers of sociology, have a great deal in common in terms of their use of empirical procedures to reinforce their propositions, in spite of the fact that their views had fundamental differences. Both of them relied on classification and creation of ideal types as the ground for comparative analysis and interpretation. Both endorsed the profound impact of the Reformation, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, the rise of capitalism and the ensuing division of labor on contemporary society but the conclusions they arrived at were not necessarily the same. For instance, Weber attributes the emergence of the modern Western Civilization to rational calculations (Shils, 2011: 34) and the will of a new generation of people but Durkheim vehemently denies that individuals can ever alter the course of history. Instead, he proposes materialistic advances as the principal factor which shaped the existing social order. The comparison offers a challenge because in defining the DOs and DON’Ts of sociological analysis and with respect to the degree of subtlety of expression, Weber is not as easy or straightforward to follow as Durkheim is. Their writings were, no doubt, instructive; yet, their strategies for comparative analysis did have their shortcomings and though they were aware of it, neither could devise a concrete strategy to overcome the problem even in the methodological statements they produced, in 1904 and 1895 respectively, on the programs for sociology. Moreover, the subjective nature of social science brings with it an element of ambiguity due to which the same question can have several seemingly contradicting, yet valid, answers. The task can be simplified by choosing to dwell more on what the legacies of their theories recommended than on what they accomplished or wanted to accomplish. Causal Factors Causal analysis involves the search for a correlation between data and “the general needs of the social organism” (Mitchell, 2006: 86). The study of social evolution, social processes and their fundamental underlying mechanisms as well as outcomes as derived from such analysis is the domain that interests a sociologist most and we can see this at work in the way Weber and Durkheim, on the basis of statistical studies, looked at the distinguishing features beyond the dimension of religion between the two sects of Christianity namely Protestants and Catholics. The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism Protestantism, being the result of a long and eventful revolution against the control [In the guilds of the middle ages there was frequently a control of the general ethical standard of the members … (Weber, 2009:321)] of the Roman Church, sowed the seeds of the spirit of free enquiry thus paving the way for individualism. This spirit based on a worldly outlook, in due course, on the one hand translated into faster development of economic rationalism among Protestant and Calvinist societies [The ascetic conventicles and sects formed one of the most important historical foundations of modern ‘individualism’. (Weber, 2009: 321) according to Weber. Protestantism and Suicide The very spirit that induced what may be called ‘self-discipline’ was eventually responsible for greater suicide rate among the members of the same group according to Durkheim (Jensen, 2012:9). He further observes that the rate is even lower among Jews where dogma is the strongest. Traditionally, suicidal tendencies were explained almost always in terms of abnormal psychological positions and it was for the first time in history that a social scientist offered a convincing explanation in a different light – on the basis of ethnicity, rejecting conventional thought outright. He maintained this stance of disapproving the intersection of social and psychological phenomena throughout [Every time that a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we may be sure the explanation is false”. (Lukes, 1985:306)]. He insisted that the two were exclusive domains. Suicide and Integration Though Durkheim also mentions several other factors as being capable of affecting suicide rate such as marital status, number of children and the political atmosphere at the time, it may be observed that all of them have a common operational sphere namely the level of an individual’s perceived integration – be it with the family or the community or the society or the country. A suicide, as such, may be an incident that pertains to an individual, but almost always its causes are rooted in social conditions. Durkheim distinguishes anomic, egoistic, obligatory and optional suicides (Giddens, 1971:85) and in all of them the role of integration is evident. Chaos versus Cosmos In the aforementioned observation, though it appears that the two sociologists were trying to drive home two completely different aspects of the impact of the Protestant Ethic, it is to be noted that it is actually a pointer to the position they had taken with regard to what they intended to interpret. Weber saw an inevitable conflict between individual desires and social order. In what has come to be called the theory of symbolic interaction, the concern of the sociologist is to examine how the motives of individuals get accommodated within the larger framework of social regularity. It lays down that each of us has evolved a unique belief system and it dictates how we respond in various situations of interpersonal interaction. Every one of us agrees in principle (as the context warrants) that we must always speak the truth and that honesty is the best policy. We agree, we quote and we profess it to the youngsters. To say that is one thing and to stand for it is quite another. Whether we really believe it will be known only by the degree of our adherence to such things. Weber’s interest was to demonstrate how the thought processes of individuals and the manifestation of individual identity influenced social, political and economic events thereby determining the course of history. Unlike this differential approach, Durkheim’s theory, which later gave rise to the idea of functionalism, takes an integrational viewpoint according to which society is made up of a number of mutually interdependent units and each of them makes a contribution to the end of social harmony. Any lapse in working on the part of one of the institutions reflects on the entire system just as touching a thread in a spider’s web sends ripples through the whole web. In this school of thought, institution is the unit of society. Individuals are mere flotsam and jetsam in the stream of social order. The expression ‘social facts’, as distinguished from biological facts, geographical facts and psychological facts (Zlatev, 2008: 360), which readily conjures up Durkheim’s image actually refers to the external forces which, in his view, are too much for an individual to vanquish. The Within – Without Debate Durkheim’s emphasis lies on collective consciousness in which social regulation invariably has the upper hand over the uncertainty of individual desires with the implication that the actions of individuals being oriented in the society’s course is not a probability but a certainty. For Weber, society is no more than an idea that rests inside an individual’s mind. In this sense, the idea of socio-psychological node, to which Durkheim was strongly opposed, was incorporated right in the fundamental premise on which Weber’s theory of sociological analysis was built. The difference in the perceptions may be traced, to some extent, to their geographic and cultural backgrounds – leading Weber to draw on his intellectual position from the German rationalistic tradition shaped by such philosophies as Kant’s that border on metaphysics. Durkheim’s idealistic position, on the other hand owed to the milieu of the French school of thought, the high point of which was the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century. The Individual and the Community It is amusing to note how the two fathers of social science take two diametrically opposite extremes on sociological methodology. Weber states in clear terms that “the real empirical sociological investigation begins with the question: What motives determine and lead the individual members and participants in this socialistic community to behave in such a way that the community came into being in the first place and that it continues to exist?” (Weber, 1978: 18). The term ‘motive’ was used by Weber in a broad sense which may be a complex combination and of which the individual may or may not be conscious [… “investigation of motives” is “secondary” for history …. (Shils, 2011: 122)]. Durkheim is of the conviction that “to understand the way in which a society thinks of itself and of its environment one must consider the nature of the society and not that of the individuals”. The Center of Gravity of Interpretative Sociology: Social Fact and Social Action As can be seen from the quotes above, what forms the center of each argument is quite clear. For Weber, the individual and his actions are the foundation on which we build the causal and consequential explanation of social action. Action can be social or reactive though the line of distinction between the two is extremely thin. It is "social" insofar as "its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course" (Weber, 1978: 4). The action only assumes its significance because of the individual’s perception of the usefulness of the action for him [The distinction that the “inward aspect of the action which is to be analyzed is directly given to her in her own memory, whereas we must interpret the action of a third party from the “outside”… (Shils, 2011: 179)]. Individualistic ambiguity being a fact and having chosen the individual as the instrument of sociological analysis, Weber makes no attempt to draw the big picture of the society by drawing generalizations or evolve any universally applicable laws since each social reality is unique in its own right and it would be a futile effort to try to see either a connection or a pattern among them. Instead, he confines himself to what he considers more important – identifying relationships as they exist and analyzing their WHYs and HOWs. These relationships can be helpful at a micro-level subject to specific conditions [The evaluations are unambiguous only when the economic end and the social context are definitely given. (Shils, 2011: 37)] but they cannot be expected to present a lucid and comprehensive picture of the society as a whole. For instance, he did not believe that class antagonism would last forever, as Marx claimed when he defined all history as a record of class struggle. That is not to say that he entirely ruled out the value of sociological methods and observations. He was convinced of their utility subject to the degree of the social scientist’s awareness of his experiences. This ‘Ideal Type’ concept of Weber which exposed the multi-dimensional nature of the so-called reality may be described as one of his greatest contributions to the field of social science because it resolved a confusion, caused by the interpretations of terms by different sociologists in different ways, that prevailed thitherto. An ideal type has nothing to do with descriptions or assumptions. It is more of a synthesis of a large number of individual phenomena. In Weber’s words, an ideal type is "formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct” (Weber, 1999: 248). Moreover, he does not condemn bureaucracy entirely as an evil and inaccessible institution but throws light on its merits as well as demerits. He did not think socialist revolutions could further the cause of man’s liberation; instead, he was apprehensive that bureaucracy under proletariat dictatorship could be even more oppressive. Durkheim, however, holds the opposite view in this regard. He states that dealing with individuals is the function of psychology and not of sociology, for, in the latter, the facts of the society, independent of individuals’ ideas, must be the starting point of all study, observation and investigations. He believes in the universal nature of social facts – either normal or pathological for a given species depending on the societal context – which means that the understanding of one fact can be helpful in understanding others just as they do in the case of physical and natural sciences. This audacious faith makes him attempt the formulation of a set of general laws useful in developing an understanding of the realities of human societies. Hope and Despair Despite the changing nature of solidarity in the modern Western communities, Durkheim firmly believes that the post-Industrial Revolution developments carry the certain prospect of culminating in “a much higher degree of culture” because the pace of growth of civilization is in direct proportion with the “volume and density of societies” (Durkheim, 1973: 121), which in turn promises greater freedom and happiness for individuals. But the increase in freedom is not something that can have an adverse effect on social order. He does not subscribe to the view that modernization has anything to do with loss of morality. On the contrary, Weber regards civilization, with its bureaucracy and prescription of high degree of formality, as oppressive which gradually drains humans of their aesthetic faculties and makes life lifeless. He feels there can be nothing noble about a world in which rational-legal institutions become the masters of humans and argues that utilitarianism is incompatible with human freedom and values. To him, conformity to morals in modern societies is a result of legitimization of domination. It may be noted here that legitimacy and fairness are not one and the same thing and history provides us with numerous instances of legitimization of domination such as the Enclosure Movement in Europe and the Westward Expansion of the US. However, Weber does not view legitimization of domination as necessarily exploitative that eventually needs to be settled by means of a violent conflict. The perceived undertone of pessimism in Weberian thought is in fact a result of his effort to be non-judgmental. On Scientific Knowledge His aggressive positivism is impressive indeed and his vision of objectivizing sociology on par with pure sciences like physics and chemistry is commendable even if utopian. To be able to do this, he suggested that the pre-conceived notions and impressions in the mind be shaken off first. But all this is easier said than done in the realm of social science. “No can view the world with complete impartially and if anyone did, he would hardly be alive”, says Russell in his essay Knowledge and Wisdom. Also, the fact remains that in analyzing data, multiple options are possible and that makes it inherently impossible to concur on a single set of conclusions, thereby casting a shadow on Durkheim’s insistence on objectivity. Weber is of the view that the human mind, because of its limitations, can perceive only a finite portion of the infinite reality and without the selection of that finite, order cannot be restored out of chaos. He suggests that one’s personal notions and values – which Durkheim frowned at – can prove valuable in giving direction to his work. He appreciates that the kind of problems that come under the purview of social sciences are quite different from those covered by natural sciences and hence the approach that is suitable for the latter cannot produce accurate results if duplicated in social sciences. Instead, it would be necessary to take into consideration related psychological and intellectual elements along with an empathetic understanding of the problem in question. On the Limits of Sociology as a Science As has been pointed out, Weber did not believe in the possibility of establishing a set of universal values. It is up to each scientist to define his own. Having done that, a sociologist, at best, may succeed in interpreting convincingly the realities as they exist in the society but it would be too ambitious and beyond his purview to try to define the way society should be or to endeavor suggesting ways to make it better. He preferred value-neutrality to judgment. Durkheim’s method was more value-based than case-specific and he did not mind being ambitious in that sense. He held the view that the very purpose of the processes of scientific observation and the acquisition of knowledge is to be able to apply it constructively so as to improve the quality of life and make the world a better place. He envisaged social science as a handy tool to cure the society of its ills. Conclusion If sociology has firmly established itself as an academic and scientific discipline today, the credit is largely due to Weber and Durkheim. This paper compares the methods of these two towering figures. The methods behind Weber’s Verstehen, a German term to mean ‘understanding’, and Durkheim’s idea of social fact are strikingly similar, yet the interpretations, on most issues, are radically different. This coexistence of convergence and divergence of ideas is what makes their study not only interesting but also enlightening. Weber’s approach is based on the individualistic consciousness as the basis for social action whereas Durkheim regards the social action to be having the dominating influence on individuals, thus setting apart social and psychological levels as two independent planes. With regard to the Protestant-Ethic, Weber notes how it gave rise to a capitalist society whereas Durkheim establishes a connection between the Protestant free spirit and high suicide rate in this social group. Weber does not believe in generalizations based on empirical data; nor does he think its conclusions can be applied for social reconstruction. Durkheim not only believes in the objective dimension of social science but also advocates the use of sociological principles to find effective solutions for moral problems that afflict the society. In the end it may be said that Weber’s ideas are found to be mostly down-to-earth, low-profile and a bit pessimistic whereas Durkheim’s ideas sound very positive on the one hand and quite idealistic on the other. Still, the two theories based on methodological individualism and methodological collectivism are complementary in that the differences between them are reconcilable. They present two perspectives that are diametrically opposite and can be effectively integrated for acquiring additional insights in other disciplines such as religion, history, politics, economics and law. References Durkheim, Emile (1973). Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Giddens, Anthony (1971). Capitalism & Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jensen, Henrik (2012). Weber and Durkheim: A Methodological Comparison. Oxon: Routledge. Lukes, Steven (1985). Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work – A Historical and Critical Study. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mitchell, G Duncan (2006). A New Dictionary of the Social Sciences. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Shils, Edward A and Henry A Finch eds. (2011). Methodology of Social Sciences – Max Weber. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Weber, Max (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. California: University of California Press. Weber, Max (1999). Essays in Economic Sociology. Chichester: Princeton University Press. Weber, Max (2009). Essays in Sociology. Oxon: Routledge. Zlatev, Jordan (2008). The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Read More