Social Structure according to Marx, Murdock, and Other Theorists - Essay Example

MARX, MURDOCK, AND OTHER THEORISTS ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE Introduction Every society has structure that basically responds to both the need of the members and the society as a whole. This structure has long been guiding activities and interactions in the society. Even in the early times, people were able to organize themselves, confront issues concerning them, and initiate activities for their betterment. This suggests that even before, societies have had at least, a simple sense of social structure. What really is social structure? What makes socialization possible in the society? What constitutes it? In what ways does the family serve the economic/social/cultural or other needs of society? This paper aims to address these questions about the formation and movement of family and society by understanding the basic notions of Marx, Murdock, and other theorists. We will also compare and contrast their potions and arrive at a conclusion to these questions. The Social Structure of Murdock For Murdock, a famous social scientist, the general sense of the word social structure refers to entities or groups in definite relation to each other, to relatively enduring patterns of behaviour and relationship within social systems, or to social institutions like families, and norms becoming embedded into social systems in such a way that they shape the behaviour of actors within those social systems. This idea of social structure as defined above stresses the notion that family is grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles, with different functions, meanings or purposes. An example of social structure is the idea of "social stratification," which actually means that society is differentiated into strata or classes, according to social distinctions such as a race, class and gender. Social treatment of persons within various social structures can be understood as related to their placement within the various social strata. Hence, social structure may be seen to underlie important social systems including the economic system, legal system, political system, cultural system, and others. Family, religion, law, economy and class are all social structures. The social system is the parent system of those various systems that are embedded in the social system. The sense of (human) right, for instance, varies from one society to another, as these societies have different social systems, beliefs, and cultural practices. This then shows how social structure becomes an “invisible hand” that strongly influences society and all that is in it. As discussed therefore, social structure has been identified in three parts – as the relationship of definite entities or groups to each other, as enduring patterns of behavior by participants in a social system in relation to each other, and as institutionalized norms or cognitive frameworks that structure the actions of actors in the social system. Social Structure: Marx’s Perspective The notion of social structure has been extensively developed in the twentieth century, with key contributions from structuralist’s perspectives drawing on the structuralism of Levi-Strauss, Feminist or Marxist perspectives, from functionalist perspectives such as those developed by Talcott Parsons and his followers, or from a variety of analytic perspectives. The most famous of these is Karl Mars’s perspective. Marx's philosophy hinges on his view of human nature. Along with the Hegelian dialectic, Marx inherited a disdain for the notion of an underlying invariant human nature. Sometimes Marxists express their views by contrasting “nature” with “history”. Sometimes they use the phrase “existence precedes consciousness”. The point, in either case, is that who a person is, is determined by where and when he is — social context takes precedence over innate behavior; or, in other words, one of the main features of human nature is adaptability. Nevertheless, Marxist thought rests on the fundamental assumption that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation "labour " and the capacity to transform nature labour power. Marx did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that work is a social activity and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means / forces of production, literally those things, such as land, natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the relations of production, in other words, the social and technical relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or classes. As a materialist and claiming to be making a scientific analysis, Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources. For Marx, different classes have divergent interests, which is a source of social disruption and conflict. Marx was especially concerned with how people in the family relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labour power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labour — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behavior merely adapt. This disguises the fact that the exchange and circulation of commodities really are the product and reflection of social relationships among people. Under capitalism, social relationships of production, such as among workers or between workers and capitalists, are mediated through commodities, including labor, that are bought and sold on the market. On these notes, we see how the concept of social structure is extensively developed by in Marx’s perspective. From the primary of role of man to transform and change nature around him, there comes the idea of structure, the way by which people interact amongst themselves. More than being a fundamental notion translated into laws and policies, this has defined every areas of social activities and interactions. Other Theories Social structure can also be divided into microstructure and macrostructure. Microstructure is the pattern of relations between most basic elements of social life, that cannot be further divided and have no social structure of their own (for example, pattern of relations between individuals in a group composed of individuals - where individuals have no social structure, or a structure of organizations as a pattern of relations between social positions or social roles, where those positions and roles have no structure by themselves). Macrostructure is thus a kind of 'second level' structure, a pattern of relations between objects that have their own structure (for example, a political social structure between political parties, as political parties have their own social structure). Some special types of social structures that modern sociologist differentiate are relation structures (in family or larger family-like clan structures), communication structures (how information is passed in organizations) and sociometric structures (structures of sympathy, antipathy and indifference in organizations - this was studied by Jacob L. Moreno). Sociologists also distinguish between types. Normative structure is a pattern of relations in given structure (organisation) between norms and modes of operations of people of varying social positions. Ideal structure is a pattern of relations between beliefs and views of people of varying social positions. Interest structure is a pattern of relations between goals and desires of people of varying social positions. Interaction structure is a form of communications of people of varying social positions. Cross-points of Theories From the discussion above, we see how different thinkers try to explicate the social structure in its general sense and in how it concretely manifests in societies. Murdock provides us with a general concept of social structure, that it is, in a manner of saying is both relationship and behavior of members of the society. When we speak of relationship, we refer to how the members of the society are foundationally connected to each other. Behavior on the other hand includes norms that are being practiced, principles that are being agreed on and are translated to laws and policies, and all externalities that guide society’s interactions. What we have from Marx is a contextualized application of this concept of social structure. For Marx, social structure is defined both by the nature of man as someone who transforms nature by production and by the nature of society from which mechanisms in realizing man’s roles are organized. All of these notions agree at a point of recognizing both individual and the society. These theories struck a balance between individual nature and that of the society in providing basic notions of what social structure really is. Social structure then is not something external to man, or something new to him, for its himself who is being considered and guided by it. Conclusion There is indeed a lot of way in understanding social structure. Some believe that social structure is naturally developed. It may be caused by larger system needs, such as the need for labour, management, professional and military classes, or by conflicts between groups, such as competition among political parties or among elites and masses. Others believe that this structuring is not a result of natural processes, but is socially constructed. It may be created by the power of elites who seek to retain their power, or by economic systems that place emphasis upon competition or cooperation. However, the most thorough account is perhaps provided by structure and agency accounts that allow for a sophisticated analysis of the co-evolution of social structure and human agency, where socialized agents with a degree of autonomy take action in social systems where their action is on the one hand mediated by existing institutional structure and expectations but may, on the other hand, influence or transform that institutional structure. Bibliography Abercrombie, N., S. Hill and B. S. Turner, 'Social structure' in The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, 4th edn., Penguin, London, 2000. pp. 326-327. Smelser, N. J. 'Social structure' in The Handbook of Sociology, ed. N. J. Smelser, Sage, London, 1988. pp. 103-209. Avineri, Shlomo. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge University Press, 1968. 145-149. Murdock, George Peter. Social Structure. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1949. 57-83 Whiting, John W.M. Writings of George Peter Murdock. New York: McMillan Company, 1986. 682-686. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1892/11/marx.htm Read More