Werber's and Durkheim's Approach to Sociology - Essay Example

Both Weber and Durkheim are theoretically committed to similar liberal values: the concern for the free individual and the belief that individuals should participate actively in social life. Each embrace democracy as the political form best suited to promote the realm of individual freedom Their common ideological commitments give away to two different analytic theories of democracy because of their different empirical assessments of the possibilities for individual freedom in modern society. Webers pessimism promotes a formal theory of democracy; political inclusion is the central feature of modern democratic orders. Durkheims faith in modern society leads to a substantive theory of democracy characterized by moral integration. Max Weber is rightfully considered the father of political sociology. His writings on politics and society have provided, in large measure, the conceptual apparatus by which contemporary political sociologists, of diverse theoretical persuasions, have sought to comprehend varying political realities. His definition of the state as the institution possessing a monopoly of the legitimate use of force over a specifically bounded territory, his typology of traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal patterns of domination, and his concern for the relation between power and legitimacy (Weber, 1968) have all been indispensable in our efforts to gain an understanding of the sociological sources of order and disorder in the modern world. If Weber occupies the theoretical center of political sociology, Emile Durkheim remains only at the fields periphery. Despite the high regard, which Durkheim enjoys as a sociologist, few see him as having made an important contribution to political sociology. As a result, his writings, as they bear on politics, have been far less studied and certainly less integrated into the corpus of theoretical understanding within this field. According to Weber: The term “sociology” is open to many different interpretations. In the context used here it shall mean that science which aims at the interpretative understanding of social behavior in order to gain an explanation of its causes, its course, and its effects. It will be called human “behavior” only insofar as the person or persons involved engage in some subjectively meaningful action. Such behavior may be mental or external; it may consist in action or the omission to act. The term “social behavior” will be reserved for an activity whose intent is related by the individuals involved to the conduct of others and is oriented accordingly (Weber, 1962/1980, p. 29) While Durkheim says, “Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality, which has its own characteristics…. Individual minds, forming groups by mingling and fusing, give birth to a being, psychological if you will, but constituting a psychic individuality of a new sort. It is, then, in the nature of this collective individuality, not in that of the associated units, that we must seek the immediate and determining causes of the facts appearing therein” (Durkheim, 1938/1964, p103-4) Max Weber is especially well known for his massive historical analyses that properly belong to the Social Facts Paradigm. However, his central constraint, that sociology must study the subjective meaning of social phenomena, places him at the center and the root of the Social Definitions Paradigm. Durkheim was an early pioneer whose efforts to define the field as distinct from both psychology and philosophy helped to provide sociology with its distinctive character. Borrowing from mechanical and biological models current in his day, he sought to bring a certain scientific rigor to the field of sociology, which till then had been lacking (Aron, 1970; Ritzer, 1980; Catlin 1938/1964). Weber and Durkheim disagree in their assessment of the possibilities for democracy ultimately to succeed in modern society in realizing the goal of individual autonomy. Simply put, Weber believes that democracy cannot successfully compete with those modern social structures, which inhibit individual liberty. Democracy can only impede individual subordination to the collective and coercive structures of modern life; it cannot successfully counteract these ascendant forms of domination. Durkheim, in contrast, asserts that democracy, as a political form, can promote the flourishing of the individual personality. He sees in democracy a dynamic political force that can produce a society of free individuals morally regulated through the state; the political relationship, which promotes the individual serves to strengthen his ability to exert his influence throughout the society. Where Durkheim sees democracy influencing all social spheres, Weber identifies democracy as a narrow enclave of social life. For him, only within the political order, as citizens, individuals can survive as autonomous agents. In all other spheres, society increasingly tends to overwhelm the person. It is a result of their different empirical appraisals of modern society, then, that has produced two different theories of democracy. Durkheim holds what we will refer to as a substantive theory of democracy. Democracy here depends on the creation of a particular moral relationship between the individual and the state. It is a political system embedded with specific individualist values. We call this a substantive theory for three reasons. First, it represents an understanding of democracy where the political system is embedded with a specific normative orientation; democracy is not a formal shell but a system of political organization, which promotes certain specific individualist goals for the society. Second, it understands democratic order as a consequence of the successful establishment of a moral relationship between the political elite, the structures of rule, and the population. Order is secured through an understanding of the moral and transcendent purposes of the political order that is shared commonly by members of the political community. The presence of a moral order unifies members of the community irrespective of rank or status. Third, Durkheims theory of democracy is substantive in that it predicts certain normative outcomes. A properly functioning democracy successfully promotes an active and reflective citizenry; it serves to transform citizens into increasingly more autonomous individuals responsibly participating as individuals in their political and social life. While Weber identifies modern society as the setting in which the individual, for the first time, could be free, he sees countervailing forces preventing the realization of freedom. It is the process of rationalization, from which no institution in the West is immune, that prevents the emergence of "individualist" freedoms For Weber, there is continual "progress" towards the rationalized order, where all social activity is regulated according to rationally established laws and regulations, and where a logic of pure instrumentality and calculation increasingly prevails. Both bureaucratic and capitalist institutions, the two most significant modern manifestations of rationalization, squelch personal initiative, suppress the expression of the individual, circumvent formal equality, and deny the realm of value or idealism in the contemporary world. In Webers eyes, the ideal of the "open society" is being prevented by these powerful systems of social organization that close opportunity, limit innovation, and deny freedom. Webers view of modern society is indeed an image of the iron cage. Durkheims theory of modern society does not possess a central unifying concept as powerful as Webers concept of rationalization. Yet, the process of secularization, in some measure, is Durkheims counterpoint to Webers process of rationalization. The decline of traditional religious thought; the decline of the visible symbol of the sacred in organizing social life and orienting individual activity presents significant problems for both individuals and organizations in modern life. Durkheim saw it as his purpose, on the one hand, to assert that, despite its transformation, the "sacred" is not dead in modern society; much of his work on modernity focuses on refuting both utilitarian and socialist claims to the contrary. Durkheim argues two points. First, given his understanding of modernity, there is no reason why modern society could not promote and protect the "sacred" individual. In fact, collective representations still operate to a degree even in abnormal social forms. In addition, he argues that where modern society has attempted to function absent of moral or social regulation it cannot survive. A stable social order, for Durkheim, depends on the securing of a moral order where individuals, while promoting their own interests, are regulated in their activity so that the collective and cooperative nature of society is not undermined. Durkheim provides the modern individual a moral status that Weber denies; for Durkheim, the individual embodies beliefs, sentiments, and values of the society. The collective conscience of the society becomes internalized within the individual. The individual is "sacred" for within him resides the essential qualities of the collectivity. This conscience, for Durkheim, therefore serves to justify the individuals own independence and, further, makes imperative the construction of a social order, which embodies the collective sentiments of all individuals in the society. For Durkheim, the modern individual is a moral actor and the institutional forms of society should reflect, and protect, the sacred quality of the individual. Forms of social organization, which fail to conform to this imperative, are, therefore, pathological forms; where a given social order fails to simultaneously promote a moral order, that society is, for Durkheim, abnormal. The presence of the egoistic, anomic, or alienated individual is an expression of an abnormal society, preventing the full expression of the moral individual. Weber, in contrast, places no similar claim on the individual. The individual is "sacred" only in that he has emerged historically as formally free from previously ascriptive institutional contexts. Given that occurrence, it is essential to promote organizational forms that promote and protect formal equality. Where Durkheims is above all a cultural and moral problem, Webers is a sociological and organizational one. Both share a concern for the equality of individuals, but for Weber it is equality only in the formal sense. For him, the challenge of modernity centers on the construction of a social order protecting the formal equality of all individuals. Both Durkheim and Weber share the sociological claim that individual freedom, both cognitive and normative, can only be achieved within a given institutional context; individual freedom is not an attribute of personality but of society. But for Weber, freedom in the context of rationalized institutions is incapable of full expression. References Aron, Raymond (1970). Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 3 vols (Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, trans.). New York: Doubleday Catlin, George E.. (1938/ 1964), Introduction to the Translation. In Emile Durkheim, The Rules of the Sociological Method (pp. ii-xxxvi). New York: The Free Press Durkheim, Emile (1938/ 1964), The Rules of the Sociological Method (S. A. Solovay and J. H. Mueller, trans.). New York: The Free Press Jeffrey, Prager (1981), Moral Integration and Political Inclusion: a Comparison of Durkheims and Webers Theories of Democracy, Social Forces, Vol. 59 Gray, Richard M. (1996), Archetypal Explorations: An Integrative Approach to Human Behavior, Routledge: New York Ritzer, George (1980), Sociology: A Multiple Paradigm Science, Boston: Allyn and Bacon Weber, Max (1968), Economy and Society. New York: Bedminster. Weber, Max (1962/1980), Basic Concepts in Sociology (H. P. Secher, trans.). Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. Read More