Social Anthropology According to Karl Heinrich Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Weber - Essay Example

Introduction The field of sociology was started by August Comte in 1820. The early sociological work was Condorcet’s Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. In this work, Condorcet represents humans as moving from savagery towards civility, social virtue, and happiness. He presented nine epochs of history which provided a naturalistic vision of societal evolution. His tenth epoch of the future stated that inequality between classes and societies will be eliminated. He then reasoned that this will result in the improvement of the intelligence, individual morality, and physical well-being. The main key for the eradication of inequality is education. His views made sociology the discipline of societal and individual progress by means of the spread of knowledge and its cultural dissemination. (Ward, 1994) Sociology Sociology is known as the rigorous and scientific study of individual and community behavior in a given society. Sociology focuses on society. Anthropology focuses on man. However, these two disciplines are inherently intertwined and closely linked. The roots of sociology are entrenched in the soil of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment discussed the natural philosophy of the human condition. The drive to improve the human condition shaped the self-conscious purposes of analyzing society. (Dentler, 2002) Condorcet had an opportunity to witness the suffering of the people. However, their analyses were lacking. The first basic principle of the Enlightenment was toleration of man, irrespective of race, religion and ethnicity. The second one is freedom as opposed to feudal restraints to behavior. The third one is uniformity of human nature. The fourth one is secularism which emphasized that secular knowledge must be free from the constraints of religious orthodoxy. (Ward, 1994). The nineteenth century started the move for a concrete analysis of society. The developments of Darwinian Theory became the main feature of the nineteenth century. It paved the way to the emerging social sciences which focused on the concrete analysis of social, economic, and psychological events. There were efforts to map and describe contemporary societies. The general school curriculum was changed by the analytical depictions of the current civilization. (Marsh and Keating, 2005) Modernity The industrial and democratic revolutions are sometimes seen as the social phenomena constituting modernity. (Wagner, 1994). The notion of modernity affirms, sociologically and historically, that there was a discontinuity in the discourses on human beings and society took place two centuries ago. This discursive rupture led to the establishment of the modern ideas for society and it established social and political views and conflicts. Founding fathers (Marx, Durkheim, Weber) The three pillars of sociology are Karl Heinrich Marx, Emile Durkheim and Weber. Marx was born in 1818. His father Heinrich was a devotee of Voltaire. It was at the University of Berlin that Marx studied Hegelian philosophy. Hegel’s idealism and his evolutionary dialecticism flourished in the same manner that his religious foundation was being gradually eroded. Marx fused his idealism with the radical materialism of the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. Max Weber (1864–1920) extended the thought of Hegel and Marx into new domains of study. His presented an argument against economic materialism. He discussed the structures of political authority, organizational bureaucracy, and value preferences in methodology. Weber was a social policy adviser, an advisor to eminent politicians, and an opponent of German foreign and military policies during World War I. Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) was the precursor of the modern French school of sociology. His work, The Division of Labor in Society, analyzed the social factors that binds the social order. Durkheim’s scholarship centered on anomie, social cohesion, social norms, and the formation and transmission of culture over time. His theories and methods of empirical and social analysis in Suicide constituted an innovative work. He also contributed a special way of categorizing and interpreting ethnological data from cultural anthropology. He fashioned the first intellectual link between sociology and education. He started specific researches on applied criminology and penology. (Marsh and Keating, 2005) Contemporary debate The project of modernity can be viewed as the combination of two major concepts. The first is a technical-instrumental reason whose vision was to render oneself as the master and possessors of nature. The second conception of reason was a moral-practical one which stated that only those norms which are valid and worthy of consent help individuals to freely choose the kind of life they want to live by. The philosophers from Descartes and Kant and from J. Bentham to Saint Simon differed in the argument that moral and political autonomy could be attained by releasing the powers of the scientific and technological use of reason. There was no incompatibility between autonomy and the mastery of nature. (Landry, 2000) Sociology now Anthony Giddens (2005) discussed the relative disappearance of tradition and nature. He stated that things had been fixed in nature but now they are not. It is now a world of possibilities. Look at how the position of women has been transformed. New worlds have opened for them which did not exist before. The old Enlightenment assumption that uncertainties were dissolved by more knowledge paved the way to the realisation that the present production of knowledge produces a degree of uncertainty. He explained that it does not mean that the world is more risky than it used to be: it is that the nature of the risk is harder to calculate now. He also said that globalisation is the way we live. The spread of instantaneous electronic communication established the 24-hour global marketplace. Globalization is more intimately linked to our lives. It is a shift in relationships, where the global intersects with the private. What leads to an intensifying of global markets can also lead to an intensifying of local and regional cultures. Theres an increasing connection between local life and global change. Globalisation is what we are. (Giddens, 2005) Fundamentalism is also a serious for Giddens. He sees fundamentalism as a recasting of the past: a reinvention of a tradition so as to fill the void left by the disappearance of tradition. He states that fundamentalism is a refusal to dialogue. But he states that the world has become more dialogic than ever. Hence, dialogue is necessary. He remarked that the world is more cosmopolitan and open than before. The world has more problems but its more open. (Lloyd, 1997, New Statesman) Postmodernism The critiques of Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber had further emphasized that reason exercised in its instrumental capacity, so as to maximize the manipulation of nature, can indeed reduce human beings as mere subjects of reason. The basic approach is to identify and develop a stand in the postmodernism debates focusing on the ideological factors of the Enlightenment and modernity. A second approach is to dissect this tension in view of its relation to Marxs materialist critique of capitalism and its sustaining ideology. A perusal of all of the works of Marx provides an interpretative vision for the postmodernism debates. Marx works also shares a serious concern with critique and the project of social change which acts as the foundation for the criticisms of the Enlightenment and modernity. Moreover, this tension applies a pragmatic-communication perspective and a preference over one-sided interpretations which present language as a critique of the principles of the Enlightenment. (Giddens, 2005) The account of the Enlightenment project of modernity identified the common background within which the critiques of the postmodernism debates and Marx can be situated. The story of the Enlightenment recounts that modern philosophy dissolved the prevailing systems of religious understandings of the world. The most influential philosophies of the Enlightenment wanted to replace the meaning and the socially integrative function of religion through a rationally unified and secular culture which can impose a direction towards human perfectioning given the processes of change evolving in a dynamic setting. (Giddens, 2005) Sociology is basically the study of the structure and development of human society.  This field identifies, explains, and interprets patterns and processes of human social relations.  This discipline has its share of founding fathers that have stamped their sociological insights in classical, modern and postmodern sociology. Marx, Weber and Durkheim presented the best works of sociology. The major findings of sociology enable one to acquire sociological skills and a sociological imagination. This discipline has a very broad applicability in a range of educational and work settings. References Dentler, Robert, 2002, Practicing Sociology: Selected Fields, Westport, CT: Praeger, pages 34-39 . Giddens, Anthony, 2005, Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 56-57. Landry, Lorraine, 2000, Marx and the Postmodernism Debates: An Agenda for Critical Theory.Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, page 1. Lloyd, John, January 10, 1997, “Interview: Anthony Giddens,” New Statesman, vol 126, issue 4316, page number 18. Marsh, Ian and Mike Keating, 2005, Sociology: Making Sense of Society,New York: Pearson Education Limited, p. 34-35, 68-70. Wagner, Peter, 1994, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline, New York: Routledge, page 5-6. Read More