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BSOC-103

INTRODUCTION TO
SOCIOLOGY-II

School of Social Sciences

Indira Gandhi National Open University
EXPERT COMMITTEE
Prof. J.K. Pundir Prof. Savyasachi Dr. Archana Singh
Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Discipline of Sociology
C.C.S. University, Meerut Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. Sharit Bhowmik Dr. Abhijit Kundu Dr. Kiranmayi Bhushi
TISS, Mumbai Sri Venkateswara College Discipline of Sociology
University of Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. S.Roy
NBU, Darjeeling Prof. Debal K. Singharoy Dr. Rabindra Kumar
West Bengal Discipline of Sociology Discipline of Sociology
IGNOU, New Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi
Prof. Roma Chatterjee
Department of Sociology Prof. Nita Mathur Dr. R. Vashum
Delhi School of Economics Discipline of Sociology Discipline of Sociology
University of Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi IGNOU, New Delhi

COURSE PREPARATION TEAM

Block Unit Writer
Block I Perspectives in Sociology-I
Unit 1 Evolutionary Perspective Prof. (Retd) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU,
Delhi
Unit 2 Functionalism Prof. J.K. Pundir, Department of Sociology, C.C.S.
University, Meerut
Unit 3 Structuralism Prof. (Retd) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU
Unit 4 Conflict Perspective Prof. (Retd) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU
Block 2 Perspectives in Sociology-II
Unit 5 Interpretive Sociology U. Soumodip, Research Scholar, JNU
Unit 6 Symbolic Interactionism Prof. (Retd) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU,
Delhi
Block 3 Perspectives in Sociology-III
Unit 7 Feminist Perspective Charu Sawhney, Sociology Department, DU
Unit 8 Dalit Perspective Prof. Vivek Kumar, CSSS, JNU, New Delhi
Block 4 Differences and Debates
Unit 9 Division of Labour: Durkheim Adopted & Edited from ESO 13, Unit-20
and Marx
Unit 10 Religion: Durkheim and Weber Adopted & Edited from ESO 13, Unit-19
Unit 11 Capitalism: Marx and Weber Adopted & Edited from ESO 13, Unit-21
Unit 12 Social Change and Transformation Dr. R. Vashum, Discipline of Sociology, IGNOU,
New Delhi
Course Coordinator: Dr. R. Vashum, Sociology Faculty, IGNOU, New Delhi
General Editors: Prof. (Retd.) Subhadra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Delhi, Delhi & Dr.
R. Vashum, Sociology Faculty, IGNOU, New Delhi
Academic Consultant : Dr. Vinod Kumar Yadav
Cover Design : ADA Graphics
Print Production
Mr. Manjit Singh
Section Officer (Pub.), SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi
October, 2019
© Indira Gandhi National Open University, 2019
ISBN:
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeography or any other means, without
permission in writing from the Indira Gandhi National Open University.
Further information on the Indira Gandhi National Open University courses may be
obtained from the University’s Office at Maidan Garhi, New Delhi-110 068 or visit our website: http://www.ignou.ac.in
Printed and published on behalf of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, by Director, School of Social
Sciences.
Laser Typeset by : Tessa Media & Computers, C-206, A.F.E.-II, Okhla, New Delhi
Printed at :
Course Contents
Page Nos.
BLOCK 1 PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY-I 5
Unit 1 Evolutionary Perspective 7
Unit 2 Functionalism 21
Unit 3 Structuralism 31
Unit 4 Conflict Perspective 43

BLOCK 2 PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY-II 55

Unit 5 Interpretive Sociology 57
Unit 6 Symbolic Interactionism 70

BLOCK 3 PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY-III 83

Unit 7 Feminist Perspectives 85
Unit 8 Dalit Perspective 99

BLOCK 4 DIFFERENCES AND DEBATES 115

Unit 9 Division of Labour: Durkheim and Marx 117
Unit 10 Religion: Durkheim and Weber 134
Unit 11 Capitalism: Marx and Weber 148
Unit 12 Social Change and Transformation 164

*Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 7

Perspectives in Sociology-I perspective. The mind/body duality or the separation of mind from matter, was
the fundamental premise on which scientific objectivity, necessary for the
establishment of factual knowledge was based.

This perspective was in opposition to the dictates of the Church or the theological
perspective that enjoined one to accept what was given unquestioningly, not to
challenge ‘given’ truths and accept the unknowable, namely the existence of a
sacred reality that was beyond knowledge. In other words there was a fundamental
disjoint between facts and faith. Sociology is a new discipline as compared to
the ancient ones like astronomy, medicine, the physical sciences and mathematics,
because for long society was viewed as a divine creation just like the humans.
The possibility of objectifying society had not occurred although the nature of
society and of humans was reflected upon by philosophers.

1.2 THE BEGINNING OF THE CONCEPT OF

SOCIAL EVOLUTION
The concept of social evolution or the possibility that societies change, or can
change was triggered by two major events. The first was the colonisation of the
non-White world by the Europeans which had begun with merchant capitalism
and was well underway in most parts of the world by the seventeenth century.
The Europeans had spread across to many corners of the world in search of land
and resources to accommodate their growing populations and the need to feed
the emerging industries in their own countries. In the process they came across
many different kinds of people and ways of life; a question that became prominent
was, why were humans different? Why did they have different ways of life?
This question had been answered within the racial paradigm by assuming that
they were humans at different levels of ‘being human’ that some were ‘more
human’ than others. But the humanism of the liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment
period were reluctant to accept racial inferiority of some humans as against
others.

The Enlightenment period was marked by significant changes in perspective

about the world. Concepts such as universal humanism (Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity) and theories such as that of the Psychic Unity of Mankind, sought to
bond the human world together. Ironically these values were formed in the back
drop of the genocide and violence that accompanied colonial expansion. But the
major thinkers were liberal and were supportive of common humanism and thus
the question of diversity remained unanswered for them.

The second historical even was that of the two major revolutions that went into
the formation of the world as we know it. The American Revolution and the
French Revolution, and the consequent major social upheavals they caused, led
social thinkers into thinking that perhaps societies were not made as they were
but had changed from some past into the present. If social transformation had
happened through the revolutions, especially the kind of radical transformation
brought about by the French Revolution (1848), then it is possible that societies
must have changed in the past. The second question posed against the first one
about human diversity, was the one about human social transformation. The key
question was about the European Society of the 18th century, the time when
these thoughts matured to form theories, about how the Europeans came to be
8
what they were, and what was their past? Another key question was about the Evolutionary Perspective
process of transformation, how does it take place and why?

As pointed out by Raymond Aaron (1965:233) the period of 1848 to 1851 was
marked by great political upheavals, “the destruction of a constitutional monarchy
in favour of a republic and the destruction of the republic in favour of an imperial,
authoritarian regime”. This was the period when Comte put forward his theory
of social evolution as he could see before his eyes the replacement of the
theological and military society with the industrial and scientific one. Comte
believed in a unified human history of which there was an ideal and final stage;
one that was coming up before him. Thus his conceptualisation of social
transformation was one of progress and he identified three major stages of this
progressive evolution. In the first stage that is ruled by theology or religion, the
humans attribute power and control of society to superhuman beings who
resemble them, the gods and goddesses of the ancient religions. In the second
stage referred by him as metaphysical, when thought becomes more abstract
and transcendental, and the forces become abstract like nature. In the third stage
thinking becomes more factual and systematic and people begin to explain
phenomenon by direct observation and correlations.

These are not inevitable stages and do not occur uniformly across the world. He
explained the transition also in terms of classification of the sciences, from
abstract to positivist. Positivist thinking is what defined sciences and appear in
the simple sciences first like physics, chemistry and mathematics and later in
more complex sciences like biology. He defined sociology as the study of society
by the use of the positivist method marked by objectivity and rationality. He
also believed that the aim of industrial society was the creation of wealth and
thus largely supported the capitalist goals of expansion and accumulation of
wealth as progressive and beneficial for future generations. However Comte’s
predictions about industrial society as being free of war was proved disastrously
wrong as Western Europe became not only the center for the major wars but
also of colonisation. Comte had borrowed the idea of progress from Condorcet,
who had preceded him. His idea of progress had also included the emergence of
spiritual power as the ultimate source of power; something that the word is yet
to see.

Some of the leading proponents of the evolutionary theory that dominated

intellectual thinking of the late nineteenth century were Henry Maine, Herbert
Spencer, Toennies, Bachoven, Lewis Henry Morgan and Emile Durkheim. Unlike
the three stages postulated by Comte, most of them gave a two stage theory
marking some major transition in human social organisation and social
philosophy. Henry Maine, an eminent jurist gave his theory of transition from
status to contract, that according to him also marked the transition from kinship
based societies to state or territorial societies. In the kinship based societies, one
gains membership through a relationship or status while in a state it is based
upon the concept of citizenship that is primarily territorial and legal or contractual
in nature.

The German scholar Tonnies noted that societies pass from being Gemeinschaft
to Gesselschaft, by which he marked the transition from rural to urban and from
simple face to face societies to more complex ones. The Gemeinschaft is
characterised by personalised, emotional relationships and Gesselschaft by
9
Perspectives in Sociology-I impersonal, formal and calculative relationships. In the sense that Tonnies did
not think that the impersonalised complex society was better than the emotionally
coherent and secure face to face community life of simple societies; one may
say that his concept of evolution was not towards becoming better. In this sense
he also did not eulogize the emerging industrial urban societies of Europe.

Bachoven, also an eminent European scholar of the nineteenth century, gave a

schema of development from matriarchy to patriarchy, similar to that of
McLennan. This categorisation was Eurocentric and had a bias against the Eastern
and indigenous societies where matriliny was located. Bachoven’s illustration
of matriarchy was not drawn from any actual societies (of which there are no
known ethnographic examples) but from his own imagined societies. His
characterisation of the Mother-Right Complex indicated that it comprised of
mostly negative and passive traits and that Father Right was progressive and
marked the advent of civilization. He also associated the latter with the western
hemisphere and considered the conquest of the East by the West as the beginning
of civilization.

Emile Durkheim’s sociological construct was based on more structural than moral
or civilisational considerations. He considered that simpler or lower stage
societies were based on mechanical solidarity, while more complex societies
were based on organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity was based on bonding
of likeness that occurred in societies where everyone was like everyone else.
People related to each other like a moral community, like one based on descent
from a common totemic ancestor, and these communities were bound by ties of
cooperation and sharing. As society grew more complex, there occurred
specialisations of skills, crafts and resources. Instead of co-operation, such a
society became organised around exchange, as people were having different
resources that they needed to exchange with each other. The more complex
became the division of labour, the more complex became the social organisation
and stratification occurred to accommodate differentiation of skills and control
over resources. While the mechanical solidarity had a moral basis, the organic
solidarity was rational and instrumental.

Among the classical sociological theories of evolution, the most elaborate and
complete was given by Herbert Spencer. He gave a stage by stage evolution of
political society, beginning from one with no state or no chief , then one that
was a chiefdom, then a compounded society of chiefs ( like ancient feudal
societies), then the emergence of the state and then the modern state. The last
two are complex entities that encompass multiple political forms and levels and
are guided by many levels of power and managerial structures. Spencer has
been mostly criticized for his theory that society should let the powerless and
weak get eliminated. He was against any kind of social support mechanisms for
the weak, saying that only those who had the ability to achieve had the right for
survival. His idea of progress was thus based on a self-development and ability
to endure in competitive situations, implying that ultimately only those who
deserved to survive or were, “fit” should continue. Social welfare was a process
that he did not approve of as he thought that it would make possible the survival
of those that did not deserve to survive. Quite rightly his theory has been criticized
by those who believe in human rights, social justice and humanity. But at the
same time such theories did influence more conservative thinkers who held
racially and class informed prejudices.
10
Evolutionary Perspective
1.3 THE ORGANIC ANALOGY AND BIOLOGICAL
THEORIES OF EVOLUTION
The positivist approach to the study of society also led to what has been known
as an organic analogy for society, comparing society to a biological organism
that follows natural laws. One aspect of the organic analogy was that society as
an organism was compared to an embryo, as the embryo grows by its own law
of development, the society will also evolve by its own law. This premise was
also the basis of the unilineal theory of social evolution, so that society was
comparable to a species that evolves in a single line. The organic analogy also
assumed that the present society were a derivative of the earlier ones and in the
process of evolution, they diversified and branched out; the tree analogy.

The second aspect of the biological analogy was the natural selection paradigm.
In social evolution, the mistaken assumption of “survival of the fittest” was
adapted by Herbert Spencer and those who followed his theory. In biological
evolution the term used was “descent with modification”, and the term, “fittest”
is actually one that means nothing in the context of biological evolution as all
that is required for a species to survive is the ability to reproduce itself. As long
as it produces enough progeny to continue the species, it is considered as ‘fit’.
However all species are connected to each other and to the natural environment,
so survival is not the function of the ability of a single species to survive but of
all others on which it is dependent for its survival, those that provide its food
and resource base, as well the natural conditions that make its survival possible.
Thus unlike what was assumed by scholars like Spencer, survival is more a
relational than an individual matter. Similarly, internal differences and variations
exist in biological species as well as societies, so that survival and ‘fitness’
cannot be generalised over the entire community of both a biological species
and a human society.

1.4 THEORIES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Following the lead given by the eighteenth century philosophers like Comte,
Montesquieu, Durkheim and others; the discipline of anthropology, founded
formally in the early twentieth century by Edward B Tylor at the University of
Oxford, also began its theoretical journey with evolutionism, although there
was a parallel stream of diffusion theorists as well. Tylor not only gave the first
formal definition of culture, he also traced the course of cultural evolution in
much the same way as Comte had outlined the evolution of society. To Tylor,
Culture with a capital C (Ingold 1986), was a unitary entity that was common to
all mankind. The problem was to explain the variation of culture across the
globe. By the early twentieth century, because of colonisation, the Western world
was aware of a wide variety of societies and cultures across the world. The
eighteenth century social philosophers were mainly concerned with the evolution
of their own society, but anthropology developed as a study of global cultures
and also focused on non-western societies. Tylor gave his theory of Unilineal
Evolution where he also postulated three major stages of development of Culture,
Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization, each marked, as according to him, by
one great leap made by humankind. Thus the transition from Savagery to
Barbarism came with the advent of agriculture and from Barbarism to
Civilization, with literacy. To him Culture was a product of the human mind and 11
Perspectives in Sociology-I it evolved according to its own rationality irrespective of the context. In this
sense evolutionary theory followed the positivist methodology of being
nomothetic and context independent. It also followed the organic analogy to the
extent that evolution was a natural process with its inherent potential and law of
development.
While he sifted through large amount of data collected from various sources, he
constructed several sequences of evolution pertaining to different strands of
culture. The most well- known of his sequences is that of religion. Apart from
Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan in America was also influenced by the evolutionary
theory of his predecessors and gave his parallel theory of social evolution that
was also informed by his fieldwork among the Native Americans.
Morgan was of the opinion that original ideas come only once and they
subsequently develop according to their inner potential and follow a logical
sequence. The main ideas that form society are the ones pertaining to Subsistence,
Law, Inheritance, Political Organisation and Family. He divided the history of
social evolution into Ethnical Periods, each period marked by a particular level
of development of each of the entities identified by him as the foundational
structures of society. The Ethnical periods according to him are the same as
those identified by Tylor, namely Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization, but he
gave a far more elaborate and integrated description of each period that were
also internally divided into lower, middle and higher levels. Each level is marked
by a particular mode of subsistence and technological development that is
matched by developments in the other spheres of life.

Morgan, recognized as the father of kinship studies also gave a more macro
level two fold evolutionary schema; from Societas to Civitas; that is from societies
based on kinship to those based on territory and state.

1.5 LIMITATION OF CLASSICAL

EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
In summary, classical evolutionary theory had as its major premise, the postulate
of one human society and one culture. The sociological theories that were
foundational, were attempting to understand the past of the European societies
of the nineteenth century and the scholars located in the time zone of the French
and American Revolutions and other significant political upheavals of those
times were trying to understand the process of social transformation and the
possibility of regarding societies as objects of study. There was also the
assumption that society was like a natural system subject to uniform laws like
all natural systems.
The flaw lay in the speculative nature of the stages of evolution that were put
forward especially with reference to the logical future stages to which they
pointed. According to Comte the industrial society of the future would be rational
and peaceful and spirituality of the philosophers and scientists would prevail.
Thus the belief that militarism was to be a thing of the past, was completely
turned around by the two World Wars and Comte’s hope that Western civilization
would rise above brute force was completely shattered.
The anthropological theories of cultural and social evolution on the other hand
12 were trying to explain not just western societies but the ‘Others’. The stage by
stage scheme of progress that they proposed had the additional demerit, apart Evolutionary Perspective
from being speculative, of being Eurocentric as well. Thus progress was measured
simply by the distance or difference that any society had from early twentieth
century Europe that provided the standard for measurement of progress. Thus
for example, in his schema for the evolution of religion, Tylor had put monotheism
at the apex, implying that the Judeo-Christian religions were superior to the
polytheistic or nature worshipping ones. A major flaw in all the schema was that
they compounded technological progress or complexity with moral, social and
cultural evolution. Thus the Australian Aborigines were deemed most ‘primitive’
just because they looked the most different from the Europeans and also because
they had stone tools.

Later scholars used ethnographic and field data to contest most of these
speculations. It was realized that each culture was to be understood only
contextually and that technology was not to be confused with values and moral
systems. Knowledge existed in many forms and most importantly all people
were rational in their own context. Paul Radin, in his excellent work on cross-
cultural beliefs, showed that every culture has its share of all kinds of people,
the believers, the philosophers, the agnostics, the sceptics and non-believers.
There were everywhere people driven by custom, people who just conformed to
given norms and those that were seekers and creators. Malinowski showed how
Primitive Magic, considered as superstition, was actually a functional system
that assisted rational goals to be reached. There was also criticism of the idea
that the non-western people were incapable of higher and esoteric thinking. In
his study of Nuer Religion for example Evans-Pritchard has described their
complex philosophy, capacity for esoteric thought and complex system of
symbols. The ‘primitive’Australian Aborigines had a complex system of marriage
exchange that required expert mathematical abilities to decipher. Even the
technological expertise of the so-called ‘primitives’ was exceptional. There were
many instances of technological expertise that even the best of western people
found difficult to duplicate and understand, like the boomerang and complex
traps used by them.

There were many critiques of the concept of ‘good life’ and of ‘progress’ pointing
to the obviously Eurocentric and capitalist nature of these postulates.

1.6 NEO-EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES

By the forties to the sixties, however there was a rethinking of the concept of
evolution, especially after the World Wars. Some scholars felt that evolution in
the form of a general line of development of societies was real and with the
criticism of Structural-Functional theory as being too static and a historical the
interest in change was revived in the context of the rapid transformations of the
Post-World War world.

The major neo-evolutionary theories for culture were put forward by Julian
Steward, Leslie White and Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service. The common
methodological premise of all the three theories was that they all tried to make
the understanding of evolution as an inductive process rather than a purely
deductive one, as was the methodology of the classical evolutionists who
proceeded on purely logical grounds. They tried to relate evolution of society to
its environmental and historical context, bringing in reference to empirically
13
Perspectives in Sociology-I collected data and factual information. Each of them also had their own
interpretation of the concept of culture that they reconstructed and redefined
according to their theoretical premises.

Julian Steward (1955) has referred to his theory of culture change, also known
as theory of cultural ecology, as both a theory and a method. His view of culture
was layered with a core and a periphery. The core of the culture comprised of
the techno-economic variables that interacted with certain parts of the
environment, depending upon the nature of subsistence activities of that particular
society. This core culture has a dialectical relationship with the environment; in
that as the techno-economic system interacts with the environment, it transforms
the environment, and again to interact with the transformed environment, the
techno-economic system is again transformed, and this process, that is gradual
and spread over a long period of time, brings about an evolution of the social
system.

However since this type of evolution is directly related to the environmental

conditions, and the environments vary over the globe, it is not possible that
there will be one line of evolution. Thus Steward put forward what he calls his
theory of multilinear evolution. He theorized that since there are some typical
ecological zones of the world, it is possible that one could trace the common
lines of development, if one painstakingly traced the line of evolution from
available data in each of these zones. It is to be expected that by and large
similar lines of development would take place under similar environmental
conditions. But Steward was emphatic that such commonalities need to be
demonstrated and not taken for granted. This empiricism was what he called as
his method. For each sequence to be reconstructed, the specific technological
and economic variables that interact with the environmental variables have to
be identified, as well as those aspects of the environment that are interacting
with these variables. One then has to trace the sequences through which these
variables transform.

Each set of technological and economic factors form a type of adaptive mode;
and there are only a selected such modes that exist in the world. Thus according
to Steward, on can identify the core variables that constitute the major adaptive
systems. His theory became the basis of classification of these systems. But his
theory of Multilinear evolution, although logical and probable, became difficult
to reconstruct largely because of the difficulties of actually determining
sequences.

Leslie White (1943) was a follower of Edward B Tylor’s theory of Unilineal

Evolution. He too believed in most of the theory given by Tylor and he thought
that the criticism levelled at Tylor was out of a misunderstanding of the processes
of history and evolution. According to him, evolution is nomothetic and context
independent and has its own generalised laws; while history is context specific
and ideographic. He also believed that evolution is progressive because humans
are always seeking how to better their lives.

According to him, Tylor was right in identifying agriculture as the first step
towards civilization but the growth of civilization cannot be located in writing
but in the next step in the utilisation of energy, that is the invention of the steam
engine. To him the evolution of human civilization is brought about not by any
14
abstract factors but the concrete and material one of utilisation of energy. As Evolutionary Perspective
human technology is able to harness more and more energy, it grows and
progresses. Larger amounts of energy can also be harnessed by a growth of
population, so that even where technology is not progressed a civilization can
grow by having more people to work. He had put forward a simple equation for
measuring evolution, namely E X T = C, that is Energy X Technology= Culture.

His main critic was Marshall Sahlins, according to whom to equate human
progress with growth of technology was a fallacy as technology is a tool that
has both positive and negative potentials. Wars, colonisation and destruction
too were a mark of Western civilization’s control over technology. Again material
progress could not be equated with better quality of life in terms of happiness
and leisure (Sahlins 1972).

Sahlins and Service (1960) proposed a dual scheme of evolution based on the
accepted premise that human society has evolved from simple to more complex
states marked by increased population density and more complex organisational
structures without assuming that any of these transformations are accompanied
by any value judgments such as progress or betterment of human life. Sahlins
also redefined the notion of culture to say that we can have a generalised and
overall view of culture as the larger culture of humankind that has transformed
through major stages of development such as agriculture, urbanisation,
industrialisation, literacy and technology. But cultures in the plural refer to those
specific adaptations to local environments that mark out the functional aspects
of individual cultures and their identity and boundaries.

Sahlins and Serviceuses the imagery of a tree to describe what he calls as General
and Specific Evolution. The main trunk of the tree is analogous to General
Evolution, it grows outwards and upwards and takes only one direction, while
Specific Evolution refers to the specific adaptations of individual cultures to
their environment. For example the advent of agriculture as a global event is
part of General Evolution, but the adaptation of the Eskimo to their local
environment is an example of Specific evolution. While specific evolution is
linked to adaptation or the ability of a culture to survive and continue, general
evolution is linked to the process of adaptability. Adaptability refers to the ability
of a culture to expand to adapt beyond its boundaries to situations other than its
own. In the nineteenth century the Western Europeans developed the ability of
adaptability, to spread across the globe, through their mastery over seafaring
and their use of gun- powder. Such adaptability on the part of one culture may
lead to threat to the survival of other cultures and may not be seen s ‘progressive’.
Adaptability also leads to another process called ‘Adaptive Radiation’; the most
outstanding example of which is the colonisation by the west over large parts of
the globe and the extraordinary spurt in European population in the seventeenth
century when a large part of the world turned white from being black or brown.
Today our stereotype of an American is that of a white person, but just a few
centuries back, this was not the case, there was not even a single white person
on that part of the world.

Adaptive radiation by any species or community leads to the extinction of others

and is not a favourable process that is beneficial or progressive except for those
who are able to master it. Those who manage to spread and establish their
dominance then also declare their culture or way of life as superior and in the
15
Perspectives in Sociology-I process of colonisation not only is there a takeover of land but also the elimination
and marginalisation of cultures, ways of life and systems of knowledge.

Parsons and Lenski

These two sociologists came much later in the late twentieth century (Parsons
1966, Lenski 1966) but gave their versions of social evolution that paralleled
those of the classical evolutionists. Being a sociologist rather than an
anthropologist, Parsons looked at the evolution of western society alone. He
gave a stage by stage evolutionary theory similar to that of Spencer, but he was
more interested in the nature of the societies than in their exact temporal sequence.
He added a stage of Archaic societies, represented by ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia to Spencer’s stage of Historic Intermediate Empires comprising
of China, India, Rome and the Islamic world. Since evolution is meant to depict
a stage of development and not an actual historical time scale, it does not make
much sense as the nature of the two societies designated as Archaic is similar to
the societies designated as Historic Intermediary (Collins 1997:17). Apart from
the sequential stage, Parsons also introduced what he calls as ‘Seed-bed’ Societies
that had shown exceptional creative power, namely ancient Israel and Greece.
Although these societies were not developed as much as their contemporaries in
terms of size and political centralisation, they sowed the seeds of philosophy,
science and religion that led to the development of modern civilization.
Lenski’s stages are based on subsistence patterns and follow a materialistic line
of development rather than making any reference moral and cultural
developments. He refers primarily to technologies and draws out stages similar
to Morgan’s sequence of the ideas of subsistence, and similar also to the modes
of adaptation identified by Julian Steward. Lenski also gave to technologies a
somewhat deterministic role by saying that technology affects the rest of society
so that the level of technology will determine the level of development of the
other parts of society. Thus as also proposed by Steward and as demonstrated by
ethnography, hunting food gathering societies have small populations, no
centralised political system and very little of social inequality and those with
horticulture have different patterns of inheritance, property and political
organisations and so on. His model also does not discount that one mode of
subsistence may not co-exist with another, like hunting with fishing and
horticulture with pastoral activities. However these classification by modes of
subsistence is common in anthropology but it is not necessary that they actually
form any historical sequence in that one stage is necessarily followed by another
or that people may not stay on in one stage forever. However Lenski had given
his sequence only to say that the next step in technology is not possible unless
the first sage occurs, like settled agriculture will only follow incipient agriculture.
However since his theory is very similar to that of Julian Steward’s designation
of the various techno-economic systems that possible exist in the world; the
criticism would be that it would be better to view them only as a typology and
not as a sequence.
Check Your Progress
1) What historical circumstances led to the formulation of the early French
thoughts about evolution of human society?
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16 .....................................................................................................................
2) What were the stages put forward by August Comte? In what way they did Evolutionary Perspective
not stand up to history?
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3) What are the main criticisms of classical evolutionary theory?
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4) Who were some of the well- known proponents of the theories of cultural
evolution? How were their theories both similar and different from each
other?
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5) Was ‘Progress’ a concept common to all theories of evolution? Discuss
those who did not think that all transformations were progressive even
though they led to complexity.
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6) What do you understand by Multilinear Evolution? How does it differ from
Unilinear Evolution?
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17
Perspectives in Sociology-I 7) Discuss the contribution of Parsons to the theory of social evolution.
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8) Is there a link between technological progress and moral evolution?
Critically examine with reference to theory.
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9) Describe the concepts of General and Specific Evolution. Who gave this
theory?
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10) How is evolutionist theory still reflected in social and political life? Critically
discuss.
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1.7 LET US SUM UP

We have seen that evolutionism was the first consequence of an objective of
positivist view of society, yet in its formulation and application, it failed to
conform to the objectivity and rationality expected out of the purely scientific
methodology. In determining the stages of the sequence of development, one
can see the obvious Eurocentric bias. Wherever the author has mentioned
progress, it has been the model of then contemporary Western society that has
been held up as the peak of civilization. To some extent, nineteenth century
evolutionism was also taken as supportive of colonisation as according to the
theories of Spencer, Tylor, Morgan and others justified that western cultures
dominate over other, ‘less developed’, ‘ primitive’ cultures to help them jump to
18
civilization. In many ways contemporary populations were designated as Evolutionary Perspective
‘Primitive’ only because of the evolutionary theory’s postulate of remnants from
the past surviving into the present (Kuper 1958) thereby justifying colonisation.
Rather than destructive, western cultures were actually seen as constructive and
beneficial, even as they destroyed lives and peoples (Hobart 1993). It is only
recently that the government of India has changed the designation, Primitive
Tribal Groups to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, but the term ‘primitive’
is still freely used in the corridors of power, especially while making polices
that favour large corporations and mega projects of dams and mining.

The influence of classical evolutionism persists in the Eurocentric models of

development pursued by most of the world including those colonised earlier. In
the contemporary world most states are still pursuing blindly the materialistic,
profit driven model of modernity that was proposed by nineteenth century Europe
and which has taken its most regressive form in the shape of the USA. It is now
the American more than the European model that dominates world economy
and society and which again puts forward a highly biased model of development
based on market driven capitalism. Evolutionism like racism has become a part
of the public collective mind and more importantly of the power holders who
make the policy decisions. Development is still seen as progressive and a one
way street where the end product is highly motivated by an America inspired
model of capitalist expansion. Backward is another word for ‘primitive’.

1.8 REFERENCES
Aaron, Raymond. (1965). Main Currents in Sociological Thought. ( Vols 1&2),
Tr. By Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, Great Britain: Pelican Books.
Collins, Randall. (1997).Theoretical Sociology. (Indian Edition), Jaipur: Rawat
Pub.
Durkheim, Emile. (1893/1964). The Division of Labour in Society. New York:
Free Press.
Evans-Pritchard. (1956) Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. (1981). A History of Anthropological Thought. London:
Basic Books.
Hobart, Mark(ed). (1993). The Growth of Ignorance: An Anthropological Critique
of Development. London: Routledge.
Ingold, Tim. (1982). Evolution and Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Kuper, Adam (1958). The Invention of Primitive Society. London: Routledge.
Leaf, Murray J (1979). Man, Mind and Science: A History of Anthropology.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Lenski, Gerhard D. (1966). Power and Privilege: A Theory of Stratification.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
19
Perspectives in Sociology-I Maine, Henry Sumner. (1861/1963). Ancient Law. Boston: Beacon Press.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. (1948). Magic, Science and Religion. New York:
Doubleday.
Naroll, Raoul and Frada Naroll. (1973). Main Currents in Cultural Anthropology.
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Parsons, Talcott. (1966). Societies: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Radin, Paul. (1927). Primitive Man as Philosopher. New York and London: D.
Appleton and Company.
Sahlins, Marshall. (1972). Stone Age Economics., Chicago: Aldine.
Sahlins, Marshall D and Elman E Service. (1960). (reprint 1973). Evolution and
Culture. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Spencer, Herbert. (1874/96). Principles of Sociology. New York: Appleton.
Steward, Julian. (1955). Theory of Culture Change. Illinois: University of Illinois
Press.
Tocqueville, Alex de. (1852/1955). The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
New York; Doubleday.
Toennies, Ferdinand. (1887/1955). Community and Society. New York, Harper
and Row.
White, Leslie A. (1943). “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” American
Anthropologist, 45(3): 333-336.
Wittfogel, K.A. (1962). Oriental Despotism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

20
Evolutionary Perspective
UNIT 2 FUNCTIONALISM*

Structure
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Founders of Functionalism
2.1.1 Herbert Spencer
2.1.2 Emile Durkheim
2.1.3 Bronislaw Malinowski
2.1.4 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
2.3 Later Functionalists
2.3.1 Talcott Parsons
2.3.2 R.K. Merton
2.4 Let Us Sum Up
2.5 References

2.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this Unit, you will be able to know:
The concept of functionalism;
The contributions of various functionalists;
The causal factors of social change;
The rate of social change;
The impact of social change on human society; and
Social change and the future.

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Functionalism refers to the perspective the way the theories in sociology and
social anthropology have explained social institutions or other social phenomena
primarily in terms of the functions they perform. When we speak of some social
institutions, social activity or social phenomenon, we mean its consequences
for the operation of some other institution, activity or society as a whole, such
as, consequences of the punishment of a crime or a reward for an extra ordinary
discovery by some scientists. Some social thinkers in nineteenth century theorised
about society in terms of an ‘organic analogy`. This notion of analogy was derived
from biology, as there is a biological organism likewise. We can consider a
society as on organism, which is a complex whole of several inseparable and
inter-dependent organs. It has its roots in the organicism of early 19th century.
One of the beginners of this idea of ‘organic analogy` was Herbert Spencer.
Other important proponents who clearly theorised functions of social institutions
was French sociologist Emile Durkheim.
The idea of studying social life in terms of social functions was central among
early twentieth century British social Anthropologists, prominent among them
* Contributed by Prof. J.K. Pundir, Sociology Department, CCS University, Meerut 21
Perspectives in Sociology-I are B. Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. Adjoining with social structure,
the idea of structural-functionalism or structural functional perspective dominated
the scene of sociology in various parts of the world. In American sociology, in
the light of the contemporary social processes, some evaluation was undertaken
by two prominent sociologists namely Talcott Parsons and R.K. Merton.
Contributions of these two American sociologists are also considered path
breaking in the functional perspective in addition to others which have not been
so importantly acknowledged. Neo-functionalism is a later and recent
consideration to the theorising of society, retaining some of the basic ideas of
the founders of this perspective. It finds the limitations of existing notion of
functionalism and improves upon the earlier basic considerations of
functionalism.

2.1 FOUNDERS OF FUNCTIONALISM

2.1.1 Herbert Spencer
Hebert Spencer (1820=1903) is a British Sociologist who is generally considered
by some historians of sociology as a continuator of Auguste Comte’s organist
and evolutionary approach. But his general orientation differs significantly from
that of Comte. He himself claims that “Comte tried to give a coherent account
of the ‘progress of human conceptions’ whereas my aim is to give a coherent
account of the progress of the external world …to describe the necessary and
the actual, filiation of things … to interpret the genesis of phenomena which
constituted of nature “ (Coser 1996). Both organic and social aggregates are
characterised by Spencer according to progressive increase in size. Social
aggregates, like organic ones, grow from relatively undifferentiated states in
which parts resemble one another into differentiated states... once parts become
unlike, they become mutually dependent on each other (ibid). Thus, with growing
differentiation comes growing interdependence and hence integration. Largely
sociologists have considered Herbert Spencer as an evolutionary sociologist but
his basic consideration of parts with growing differentiation becoming
interdependent and this working for or resulting into integration indicate the
genesis of the elements of “structural-functional” theorising of society as an
organism, a living whole. On the basis of such writings it is said that the notion
of social function had been formulated in the nineteenth century most explicitly
by Hebert Spencer. This analysis of social structure and social function has been
provided by him in his famous book, Principles of Sociology. This contains the
very first idea of theorising social function in sociology (Bottomore 1975). Later
it has been taken up systematically, rigorously and clearly by other sociologists
and social anthropologists in late nineteenth century and early-mid twentieth
century. The main ideas of Herbert Spencer on functionalism may be summarized
as follows:
1) Society is a system (an organic whole or organism). It is a coherent whole
of connected and interdependent parts.
2) This system can only be understood in terms of the operation of specific
structures each of which has a function for maintaining the social whole.
3) The systems have needs that must be satisfied if the systems have to survive
(i.e. continuity of society). Therefore the function of a structure must be
determined by understanding the needs it satisfies.
22
Though Herbert Spencer is given the credit for formulating explicitly the tenets Functionalism
of functionalism in sociology at first, he has remained controversial about his
ideas regarding functional needs etc. of the social system to which he considered
a social organism similar to a biological organism and also analyses its evolution.
Thereby he is not considered a functionalist per se but an evolutionist. Of his
many publications during his lifetime, the most significant books well known
among sociologists are “The Study of Sociology” and “Principles of Sociology”
(published during 1870-1880s). He enjoyed the esteem of radical thinkers like
John Stuart Mill, Huxley and others.

2.1.2 Emile Durkheim

David Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is a French Sociologist who is generally
regarded as the founder of French sociology as well as Sociology as a distinct
discipline. He developed a rigorous methodology combining empirical research
with Sociological Theory. His work focused on how traditional and modern
societies evolved and function. From his many writings four books are endorsed
as most valuable among sociologists around the world, namely, The Division of
Labour in Society, The Rules of Sociological Method, Le Suicide, and Elementary
Forms of Religious Life. Emile Durkheim, clearly outlined the subject of
Sociology and its methodology. He borrowed some ideas selectively from the
contributions of Herbert Spencer. He clearly advanced the concept of (social)
functions and established functionalism into a coherent, clear and justified
doctrine. He established the clear-cut concept of functions in his famous work,
“The Division of Labor in Society” wherein he studied the functions of division
of labor in society (or for the society as a whole).

Before we briefly describe these functions, let us first look at how he defines
functions. In his book ‘Division of Labor in Society’, he takes up at first the
clear cut formulation of the concept of function. According to him ‘function of
social institution is the correspondence between it (the institution) and the need
of the social organism’ (this analogy of social organism is derived from Spencer).
That means a social institution satisfies a need of society. What then is the vital
need of society? He takes up this issue in this study. The crucial or vital need of
society, according to him, is the maintenance of solidarity in society (in other
words, integration of society). In studying division of labor, as a social institution,
he asks the question, ‘What is the function of division of labor in Society’? He
addresses this issue in terms of the vital need of the society. For Durkheim,
social solidarity is the vital need of society. The division of labor in Industrial
Society (as was Western Europe, during the latter half of the nineteenth century)
provides the basis of this social solidarity. These are rapidly differentiating
societies in comparison to the simpler societies. Durkheim considers solidarity
as the vital need as without maintaining solidarity in society the society may
break up and might not remain a society per se.

In his later work (last book), “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, he
undertakes the task of studying the causes and functions of religion. Durkheim
argues that religion is one of the great sources for regulating the society, thus
fulfilling the function of maintaining solidarity. Religion unites people into a
common system of ideas (collective consciousness) which then regulates the
affairs of the collective. He is of the view that if the vital need, of maintaining
solidarity in society, is not met, then, pathological (abnormal) forms like ‘anomie’
are likely to occur. It is this perspective which distinguishes sociology from 23
Perspectives in Sociology-I other social sciences. He is considered the founding father of functional
perspective or theory in sociology. But some social thinkers consider that his
functionalism has been rooted in the evolutionary theory, and there is no doubt
that it appears to be true to some extent. But establishing sociology as a distinct
discipline with its subject matter and method, the credit would go to him.
Likewise, establishing theorising society by functional perspective remains also
his accomplishment.

2.1.3 Bronislaw Malinowski

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) is a British Social Anthropologist who is
well known for his theory of functionalism. He was said to have been greatly
influenced academically by Emile Durkheim, C.G. Seligman and E. Westermarck.
He influenced many social anthropologists, and under his influence they devoted
themselves to the detailed and meticulous description of actual behavior in
particular societies. His functional approach emphasized on the field work
involving exact observation and recording of social behavior. He studied the
Trobriand Islanders following his approach by mainly using ‘participant
observation’ method. His book, ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ is the outcome
of his field work on the Trobriand Islanders. The publication of this classical
book earned him as a world known Anthropologist. It was from this detailed
and meticulous description of culture of Trobrianders that he came out strongly
against the Evolutionary Theory and the Comparative Method of the earlier
sociologists and anthropologists and his unique functionalism. He made the
conceptual formulation of functional approach in a later writing, ‘A Scientific
Theory of Culture’. He argued that ‘every’ cultural item contributes to the
maintenance of the culture-whole; it thus satisfies some need of this whole. He
further asserts that ‘every cultural item fulfills some vital function’. Malinowski
used the concept of function suggesting that society (for him culture) could be
conceptualised as it is made up of interdependent parts (his term-cultural items)
that operate together to meet different social needs. Malinowski’s functionalism
added two new ideas: (i) a notion of system levels, and (ii) concept of different
and multiple systems needs at each level. According to him, there are three
system levels: the biological, the social structural and the symbolic.

Malinowski emphasises on the study of culture as a whole (or the totality) with
its functions and patterns. He examined, explained and analysed as to why and
how culture functions, how different elements of culture are related into an entire
cultural pattern. For him, functionalism attempts to explain the parts institutions
play within the integrated whole of culture. Institutions operate to satisfy the
needs of the individuals and that of the society as a whole. Malinowski considers
that every aspect (element) of culture has a function and they are all
interdependent and interrelated. Therefore, a functional unity can be observed
among them in maintaining the existence of human beings.

Malinowski’s basic argument is based on the premise that every aspect of culture
has a function, i.e. satisfaction of a need. He identifies three levels of needs: (i)
Primary (ii) Institutional and (iii) Integrative. Primary needs are largely biological
needs such as sex, food and shelter. Institutional needs are the institutions
(economic, legal, etc.) which help in satisfying primary needs. Integrative needs
refer to those needs that help the society maintain coherence such as religion.
Some sociologists consider that Malinowski’s functionalism was individualistic-
24
functionalism as it focused on fundamental biological needs of the individuals. Functionalism
Some others would also consider his functional approach as ‘pure functionalism’.
It is also said that his functional approach involved a strong assertion of the
functional integration of every society.

2.1.4 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) is a British Social Anthropologist
whose theories of functionalism (structural-functionalism) somewhat differs from
that of Malinowski. He is said to have been greatly influenced by the
functionalism of Emile Durkheim. He clarifies how some of the problems of
organic analogizing might be overcome in functionalism. He recognizes that
“the concept of function is based on an analogy between social life and organic
life”. He considers that the serious problem with functionalism was the tendency
for analysis to appear teleological. Taking into account Durkheim’s definition
of function ‘the way in which a part (a social institution) fulfills a system’s
needs’, Radcliffe-Brown emphasized that it would be necessary to substitute
for the term ‘needs’, by ‘necessary conditions of existence’. It was his effort to
avoid teleological implications of functionalism. Thus, he replaces the term
‘needs’ given by Durkheim by ‘necessary conditions of existence’. For him the
question is which conditions are necessary for survival and that issue would be
an empirical one. It would have to be discovered for each given social system.
He considers that there is a diversity of conditions necessary for the survival of
different systems. He avoids the assertion that every item of culture (as considered
by Malinowski) must have a function and that items in different cultures must
have the same function.

Radcliffe-Brown views that it is not a singular functional analysis but structural

functional analysis which has several important assumptions — (1) One necessary
condition for survival of a society is that it has minimal integration of its parts,
(2) the term function refers to those processes that maintain this necessary
integration or solidarity; (3) Thus, in each society structural features can be
shown to contribute to the maintenance of the necessary solidarity. In this
approach, according to Radcliffe-Brown, the social structure and the conditions
necessary for its survival are irreducible.

In this whole analysis and understanding, like Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown saw

society as a reality in and of itself. For this reason he used to visualize cultural
items, such as kinship rules and religious rituals, as explicable in terms of social
structure, particularly its need for solidarity and integration. Radcliffe-Brown
assumes some minimal degree of solidarity that must exist in the system. He
studied lineage systems in terms of their consequences for maintaining this
solidarity. In his study ‘The Andaman Islanders’, he analyses the function of
weeping and dancing ceremonies. These ceremonies, which are repetitive,
adjudicate conflicts, and thus re-establish the solidarity of the system (of the
community, which fell apart for the time being due to tiny conflicts).

Radcliffe-Brown considers that ‘functional unity (integration or solidarity) of a

social system is of course, a hypothesis’. He finally considers that function is
the contribution which a partial activity makes to the total activity (a whole) of
which it is a part. All partial activities (parts) contribute to the maintenance of
the whole and bring about a kind of unity which is said to be a social unity of the
organism. He is known as functionalist but his functionalist view is strictly related 25
Perspectives in Sociology-I to structure. His specific writings on the concept of function are available in his
well-known work ‘Structure and Function in Primitive Society’.

2.2 LATER FUNCTIONALISTS

2.3.1 Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) is a prominent American Sociologist who is probably
the most dominant theorist of the twentieth century. Parsons’ functionalism has
attempted to incorporate the suggestiveness of early functional analysis,
especially the conception of social system as consisted of interrelated parts. The
current forms of functional theorizing have tried to cope with the analytical
problems of teleology and tautology, which Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown
unsuccessfully tried to avoid. In borrowing the 19th century organicism and
exploiting conceptually the unity of viewing system parts as having implications
for the operation of the systematic whole, this modern functionalism of Parsons
and others provided early sociological theorizing with a unified conceptual
perspective.

From the 1950s to 1970s Parsonian functionalism was clearly a focal point around
which the critical controversy raged. Even later, Parsonian functionalism remains
a subject of intense controversy. In 1937, his major work ‘The Structure of Social
Action’ was published, and for the next four decades, his ideas dominated. His
basic idea was rooted in a sequence of the action of the actors. Following certain
norms, values and other ideas (as available in the system) an actor is oriented
towards achieving goals (social goals, inclusive of individual goals) by operating
in situational conditions. These give rise to action systems. This ‘system’ of
social action or ‘social system’ is the key word to his functional analysis. The
social system is comprised of statuses, roles and norms. According to him, actors
are oriented to situations in terms of motives (needs). The motives (or needs)
are mainly of three types: (1) Cognitive (need for information or knowledge),
(2) Cathetic (need for emotional attachment) and (3) Evaluative (need for
assessment). Further, Parsons gives the notion of functional prerequisites.
Following Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown’s lead, he views integration (within
and among action systems) as a basic survival requite (i.e. need of the social
system, or in simpler terms, the need of society). He is concerned with the
integration within the social system itself and between the social system and the
cultural system on the one hand and between the social system and personality
system on the other. These three systems, namely, Social System, Cultural System
and Personality system are crucial in his analysis. His conceptual scheme reflects
the systematic interconnectedness of social systems. Later he returns to the
integrative problems of culture and personality.

Another related concept, to his concept of social systems is the concept of

institutionalisation. As interactions became institutionalized, a social system can
be said to exist. According to him, institutionalisation is the process through
which social structure is built up and maintained. Institutional cluster of roles,
that is, stabilized patterns of interaction comprise a social system.

For understanding social system he considered its structural elements and

functional prerequisites. The structural elements are goals, roles, norms and
values. For fulfilling the needs of the social system, every social system has
26
necessarily functional prerequisites, i.e., to say the institutionalised organs (or Functionalism
sub systems) within the sphere or perimeters of the social system. This he presents
in a paradigm known as ‘AGIL’ paradigm. A stands for adaptation, G stands for
goal attainment, I for integration and L for Latency (i.e. pattern maintenance
and tension management). Adaptation is a system in society for fulfilling basic
needs – food, shelter, etc. According to him, Economy or Economic sub system
fulfills these needs. This subsystem is always available in all societies. Goal
attainment is a system that concerns with how to determine these goals. He
distinguishes individual and collective goals and his emphasis remains largely
on collective goals. The polity or Political sub system (as a sub system of social
system) fulfills the need of goal attainment within the context. Integration is
another vital need of the social system. This is undertaken by institutionalised
arrangement like (and most importantly) religion. Thus, in his consideration,
religion corresponds to this need of maintaining integration in society. No system
can be continued and maintained if there are no controls. If there are deviations
or conflicts, then the social system must have the capacity to contain all these.
In Parsons` paradigm latency is maintained by institution of law – law courts,
police, and administrative system. Thus, legal system (as a subsystem) fulfills
the need of latency.

When a given social system is large and comprises of many interrelated

institutions, these are typically viewed as subsystems. The above mentioned
AGIL is thus, an example of interrelated subsystems. According to Parsons it is
necessary to remember that a social system is circumscribed by cultural patterns
and infused with personality systems. Thus, Parsons goes much ahead of the
formulations of functionalism by Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown. According to
Jonathan Turner the development of four functional requisites – A, G, I and L –
is not a radical departure from the earlier works. It is true that structures are
viewed explicitly in terms of their functional consequences for meeting the four
requisites. This leads to the survival capacity of the social system and Parsonian
scheme begins to look like an elaborate mapping operation. Of course, much
criticism has been inflicted on the Parsonian functionalism but most theoretical
desirable alternatives take some threads from his theory, whether reject all or in
parts. Thus, his functionalism remains a well-known theoretical formulation of
the twentieth century.

2.3.2 R.K. Merton

Robert King Merton (1911-2003) is a well-known American sociologist who
attempted to overcome the shortcomings of functionalism advanced by its
founders namely Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski. He is one of the
two great American Sociologists who dominated the scenario of functionalist
theory during the middle period of the twentieth century along with Talcott
Parsons. He began with the very etymological meanings of ‘function’ and
separated out of those the relevant and contextual meaning of the term being
adopted by early sociologists. In this sense function refers to the ‘vital or organic
process considered in respects in which they contribute to the maintenance of
the organism`. This meaning conveys the way in which it has been used in biology.
He states that it is this usage, with modifications appropriate to the study of
human society (as an organism), that early sociologists Durkheim and Radcliffe-
Brown have adopted and thus clarified the key concept, ‘function’. According
to Merton, Radcliffe-Brown has been most explicit in tracing the working
27
Perspectives in Sociology-I conception of social function to the analogical model found in biological sciences.
Durkheim also referred to ‘vital organic processes and the need of the organism’.
Of course, Radcliffe-Brown moved on to state ‘function of any recurrent activity,
the part it plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it makes to the
maintenance of structural continuity’. But all that was based on analogy between
social organism (a society) and parts (activity or institution in society). The
allegation was also made against the functionalism of the earlier theorists that
functionalism only takes note of maintenance, i.e., stability, and there was no
scope of understanding change, and that concept was applied only to the simpler
societies.

Merton addressed to these limitations in his reformulation or modification of

the concept of function. He clarifies the concept of function as ‘those observed
consequences which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system’.

Merton was of the view that there was problem with the earlier definition of
function which states that ‘functions are those observed consequences which
make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system’. According to him,
there has been a tendency in the definition to observe only the positive
contribution of an item to the social or cultural system in which it is implicated.
But he asserts that there are some contributions of at least some social or cultural
items, which, over a period result otherwise, i.e., they become an obstacle or
hindrance to the adaptation or adjustment. Considering this possibility (which
is at times empirically verifiable), he introduced the counter notion of
‘dysfunction’. He defines dysfunctions as “those observed consequences which
lessen the adaptation or adjustment of a given system”. There is also an empirical
possibility of non-functional consequences which are simply irrelevant for the
system under consideration. He further elaborates the concept of function to
‘consequences which are apparent and those which are hidden’ by using the
terms ‘manifest functions’ and ‘latent functions’. It is not only a logical possibility
or utopia but it is also found to be true in empirical situations. Merton was very
well convinced of this reality and verified the role (function/contribution) of
some social institutions, norms and traditions. This initial formulation serves as
a starting point for examining the concept of function as propounded by earlier
functionalists. He was an observer to the changes of his times that were occurring
in the western societies in general and American Society in particular.

The earlier notion of function, as advanced by Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski

assumed that there was no stress or conflict in society (as the case might be in
simpler societies) but in complex societies of his (Merton‘s) time stress or conflict
was an important factor in social life. The stress indicates changes of some or
the other kind, let alone the changes in functions of social institutions or social
items. With these considerations he has examined the earlier formulation which
he labeled as ‘Prevailing Postulates of Functional Analysis (in Sociology)’. While
formulating and using the concept of function Radcliffe-Brown states that
“function of a particular usage is the contribution it makes to the total social life
as the functioning of the total social system”. Merton argues that this view implies
that the social system has a certain kind of unity which may be called as functional
unity. He considers functional unity as a condition where all parts of the social
system work together with harmony and internal consistency (without producing
any persistent conflicts). This view may be true when we look at small, highly
integrated aboriginal tribes but when we look at highly differentiated complex
28
societies which have large realm, it is not so. Thereby Merton examines this Functionalism
‘postulate of functional unity’ (codified from the notion given by Radcliffe-
Brown) by tracing several illustrations. This unity of total society cannot be
posited in advance of observation. The functional analysis requires that there
should be specification of units for which the item is functional. The given item
may have some functional consequences and some others as dysfunctional, thus,
we may not assume full integration of all societies all the times.
Merton examines the second postulate of ‘Universal Functionalism’ extracted
or codified from the views of Malinowski. Malinowski states that ‘functional
view of culture insists that in every type of civilization, every custom, material
object, idea or belief fulfills some vital function’. According to Merton this may
be true of small non-literate societies. Functionalists overreacted on the concept
of survival and function of every cultural item. Because there are functions and
dysfunctions of social items, what remains is the ‘net balance of consequences
(difference of positive and negative consequences)’. Thus, for complex societies
he argues that the assertion must be on ‘the net balance of consequences’.
He again takes up the third formulation, i.e., the third postulate codifying the
earlier statement of Malinowski emphasizing the gravity of the word vital.
Following the assertion, he takes the example of religion (a social institution)
which is indispensable in society. To this view of Malinowski, i.e., ‘Functional
Indispensability’, he argues that ‘maintaining integration’ is the indispensable
need of the society but not the institution because same need can be satisfied by
other social institutions in complex differentiated societies. Thus, Merton comes
out with the concept of functional alternatives, equivalents or substitutes over
the postulate of functional indispensability.
To all these considerations, examinations and reformations, Merton codified
and summarized in the set of points/issues, what he calls it ‘Paradigm for
Functional Analysis in Sociology’. His paradigm contains all these terms,
concepts, possibility of their usage in empirical research in complex societies.
This paradigm consists of eleven points from the concepts of function to the
application and understanding change in the system elements. His theories are
particularly presented in his classic book ‘Social Theory and Social Structure’.

2.4 LET US SUM UP

Theoretical perspective of functionalism aims to understand society by the
functioning of various parts (items, institutions, activities etc.) which contribute
to the satisfaction of the vital needs of social system (society as a whole). The
founding authors focused on the needs or necessary conditions of existence of
society to which social institutions correspond. The parts or institutions are
considered interrelated and interdependent. Society is perceived, like an organism
of functionally interrelated component parts. These parts perform functions which
are essential for the survival and continuity of society. Each element contributes
positively to this maintenance. Later sociologists perceived, particularly in
complex-differentiated societies, that there are some negative consequences of
some institutions over a period of time as well. Parsons maintains that social
system has in itself to contain these deviations (latency). Lastly Merton is of the
view that the functions of institutions are substituted by other alternatives and
thus stresses are overcome, some of which may always occur in the system.
This may well be understood within functional analysis propounded by him. 29
Perspectives in Sociology-I
2.5 REFERENCES
Crothers, Charles (1987). Robert K. Merton. Chichester, England: Ellis Horwood.
Durkheim, Emile. (1997) [1893]. The Division of Labour in Society. Trans. W.
D. Halls, Intro. Lewis A. Coser. New York: Free Press.
Durkheim, Emile. (1982) [1895]. The Rules of Sociological Method. Tr. by W.D.
Halls. New York: The Free Press.
Durkheim, Emile. (1995) [1912]. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Trans.
Karen E. Fields. New York et al: Free Press.
Malinowski, Brownislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account
of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New
Guinea. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1969) [1944]. A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other
Essays. London; Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Merton, R.K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York et al: The
Free Press.
Parsons, Talcott. (1951). The Social System. New York: The Free Press.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1922. The Andaman Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Radcliffe-Brown. A.R. (1951). Structure and Function in Primitive Society:
Essays and Addresses. London: Cohen & West.
Spencer, Herbert. 1873. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton.
Turner, Jonathan (1995). The Structure of Sociological Theory. Jaipur: Rawat.

30
Structuralism
UNIT 3 STRUCTURALISM*

Structure
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Claude Levi-Strauss and Structuralism
3.3 The Concept of Culture as Understood by Levi-Strauss
3.4 The Structural Analysis of Myths
3.5 Ethnography and Structural Analysis
3.6 Critical Points of View
3.7 Let Us Sum Up
3.8 References

3.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit; the student will learn about:
The concept of structuralism and about its author;
The theoretical perspectives that have gone into its formulation;
The application of structuralism to analysis especially of myths and social
institutions;
The wider applications of structural approach; and
Criticisms of the Structural Approach.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Structuralism sounds like social structure and there is a relationship between
them, but as a theory structuralism differs greatly from structure and function
theory because of the methodology and the philosophical assumptions underlying
it as well as the differences in the basic premises that guide them. While the
concept of social structure basically observes and analyses the relationships
between social persons, the concept of structuralism analyses the relationships
between concepts or the names that cultures give to concepts. Structuralism
operates at a much higher level of abstraction than does the concept of social
structure. In other words while social structure as in the sociology of Durkheim
and his follower A.R. Radcliffe-Brown refers to behavior and processes of social
relationships, structuralism refers to the logical structures of the human mind.
Since the mind is common to all humans, structural analysis is ideally context
free. This is quite different from structural- functional analysis that is specifically
contextualised to the society and culture of which the data is being analysed.
Levi-Strauss thus said that the structural analysis of any myth is completely free
of the context of the culture in which it is found. Thus while structural-
functionalism believes in holistic methods and the analysis of whole culture,
Structuralism proceeds by the analysis of isolated bits of culture and are more
generalised and comparative in their approach. As we proceed you will be referred

*Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 31

Perspectives in Sociology-I to some more of the specific differences and contrasts between the concepts of
social structure and of structuralism.

3.2 CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS AND

STRUCTURALISM
Claude Levi-Strauss the French philosopher and anthropologists is singularly
credited with the concept and method of structuralism. He conceptualised society
not as a network of relationship like most sociologists but as composed of a
system of exchange between groups, of which marriage or the exchange of
women is the primary component. Structuralism however refers to the theory of
the structures of the human mind and its application to society is mainly concerned
with how the members of a society use a binary system of symbols to make
sense of their world. When Levi-Strauss is referring to structure, he is not referring
to the overt structures that are visible on the surface, like the dyad of kinship
relationships referred to by A.R. Radcliffe Brown, but the deeper and unconscious
logical structures that lie under the overt structures. These structures are
conceptual and highly abstract and very significantly not accessible to the actors
of the society. They can only be accessed by the analyst.

Thus Structuralism is a purely positivist approach. It looks upon society as a

system of logical structures. It draws upon both psychology and linguistics; but
in terms of psychology, it is referring to the universal mind, not the cross- cultural
psychology we are familiar with today, but the classical positivist psychology
that refers to the unconscious. In terms of linguistics, he is not concerned with
the subjective content of what is understood as speech but the formal properties
of langue, or the grammatical structure of language. Here Levi-Strauss was
directly influenced by the Linguistic Structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure,
who actually coined the term Structuralism in his publications that date from
the late 1920’s to the early 1930s. According to Saussure, language is constructed
out of invisible rules that the speakers know but are unable to articulate. Thus
all native speakers of a language can speak it perfectly and will also know the
right way to speak it. They will also be able to point out if someone makes a
mistake but they may still not know the basic rules of grammar and they certainly
will not know the structures of the language that is known only to a specialist
linguist. So the speaking of the language is internalized at the level of the
unconscious without explicit knowledge. Thus with culture too, practitioners
know the rules and the right ways, but they do not know the reasons, that are
buried deep below the surface. Thus the aim of the anthropologist would be to
look deep underneath to understand what the basic rules on which the culture
operates are.

Levi-Strauss also drew inspiration from his predecessors in French sociology,

Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss (1963 Tr.) and also the Russian structural
linguist, Roman Jacobson, who was his colleague in the New School in New
York where Strauss taught after World War II. Jacobson belonged to the Prague
School of and Levi-Strauss derived his concept of binary contrasts from his
work. The paradigm of binary contrasts postulates that the human mind primarily
understands any phenomenon by contrasts, thus light is understood only in
contrast to dark, life in contrast to death, fast in contrast to slow and so on.
There are hardly any concepts that are stand alone. In philosophy his strongest
32
influence is Hegel from whom he borrowed his dialectical process of Structuralism
understanding and explanation that we see so clearly in his analysis of myth and
stories. Thus to understand a cultural element like a myth it should be broken
down into its constituent parts and then these need to be arranged into opposed
binaries. In the next section of this essay we will learn more about the analysis
of myth. The most important aspect to emphasize here is the assertion made by
Levi-Strauss that the analysis of myths or any other aspect of a culture is possible
without referring to the whole. In this aspect he is directly opposed to the
empirical, holistic approach of the structural-functionalists. In his opinion the
function of any element of culture is not to produce social solidarity or to
contribute to the functioning of the whole; but to transmit a message. These
meanings too are not culture specific but belong to the universal realm of the
human mind. They are generated to aid the human mind to understand the world
around them in the only way possible to any human that is by creating oppositions.

Thus structuralism also makes claim to be what may be called a generalised

theory that has universal application. In this way structuralism has been used by
its followers to analyse disparate bits of culture and also to use it in a comparative
way. Thus the scientific method of comparison and of assuming an objective
outsider stand is one of the principle paradigms of the structuralism of Levi-
Strauss.
Check Your Progress
1) Discuss the principle and salient aspects of Structuralism as given by Levi-
Strauss.
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2) What were the major intellectual influences upon Levi-Strauss in his
formulation of Structuralism.
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3) In what ways is structuralism different from the structural-functional theory?
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33
Perspectives in Sociology-I
3.3 THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE AS
UNDERSTOOD BY LEVI-STRAUSS
To Levi-Strauss, culture was only a means of communication, a system of
transmission of meanings that held society together as a system of exchange.
All myths, folklore, stories and even ritual practices and beliefs which make up
the essential fabric of what we understand as culture, were like vehicles for the
transmission of meaning (Burridge 1963:98). Levi-Strauss counter posed
relational structure and psychology, the structure of the human mind. To him the
structure of the mind is reflected and used in the cultural artifacts that also
facilitate the maintenance of society that is nothing to him but a system exchange.
Levi-Strauss (1963a) looked for the origin of culture, especially the reason for
the transition from nature to culture and found the reason in the incest taboo that
converted biological mating (nature) into marriage (culture) in human societies.

According to Levi-Strauss, the most primary form of exchange is marriage, or

the circulation of women to cement the bond of exchange between groups. But
how are human groups created? In the simplest societies, the most elementary
form of exchange takes place because of the universal rule of incest that prevents
access of some social groups to their own women and they have to look to other
groups to give them women and the relations of alliance are formed. Negating
the psychological and natural theories of incest prohibition, Levi-Strauss
understands it as a cultural strategy that makes society possible. Cultural practices,
beliefs and other aspects.

He extends this argument to say that the most disparate appearing beliefs and
practices in the most disparate of cultures can be explained on the basis of
identical logic, that of primary oppositions. In his well- known essay, “The Bear
and the Barber”( 1963b), he shows how one can explain Totemism among the
Australian Aborigines who are a simple, undifferentiated society of hunters and
food gatherers, with the caste system of the complex society of the agricultural
and urban economy of Hindus of India. But if one goes to the basic logic of
operation of the two systems one will be able to see them as similar in their
basic structure.

In both cases the primary requirement of any society is to create groups that
should be able to engage in exchange relationships. Since humans, if not mediated
by culture are identical, there is no need for any exchange unless the conditions
are created to mark out groups as different from each other. Totemism is a form
of belief that attributes qualities of nature to human groups by stipulating a
kinship between them and some natural being or phenomenon, like animals,
birds or even natural phenomenon like water, wind or thunder. Although
Totemism has been explained in functional terms by Durkheim and A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown as contributing to what Durkheim had called as “collective
consciousness” and an internalized moral order, Levi-Strauss has taken a
completely different stand. In accordance with his basic theoretical premise that
culture is a mode of communication, Levi-Strauss made his statement that
“Totems are good to think” to counter Radcliffe-Brown’s assertion that “Totems
are good to eat”. According to Radcliffe-Brown, the totems stood for those natural
elements that were of social value. But according to Levi-Strauss, the totems
were classificatory signifiers that separated one group from another. In the
34
Australian Aborigine society, the kinship or linages are the primary units of Structuralism
society and are bound to each other by the principle of lineage exogamy. It is
believed that all members of a lineage are descended from a common ancestor,
therefore they are related to each other by blood and cannot marry. In a
homogenous society like the Australian Aborigines, there is actually nothing to
distinguish one person from another except for the universal differences of age
and sex. Thus the different lineage groups are distinguished by the totems with
which they are associated as they are also believed to be akin in quality to their
totemic ancestor. Thus the differences of nature provide the codes by which
human groups can be identified and also opposed or compared to each other.
Thus the bird people can be contrasted with the land people, carnivores with the
herbivores, and water people with the fire people and so on. Thus cultural
differences are drawn from nature but the women are considered as naturally
equivalent so that they can rotate between groups to create and maintain social
bonds.

In the caste society, there is a complex relationship between the groups that are
marked by a cultural division of labour; each group specialising in some task
that makes the others dependent on it. The natural similarity between the women
is now done away with the cultural differences imposed by caste divisions. So
the caste groups are endogamous and the differences are drawn from culture
and not from nature. Thus the caste groups use culture to justify differences so
that instead of the natural similarity of women and their exchange to maintain
social bonds the cultural differences created by a strict division of labour bonds
society together.

Thus to Levi-Strauss both totemism and caste system have the same purpose; to
mark differences and contrasts between groups so that they can exchange, women
in the first case and services in the second. In both cases the non-existence of
differences is created by cultural coding that provides contrasts and differences
where none actually exist. Thus culture is viewed as a coding system, something
that sends messages to the mind and is not ‘a way of life’ or compounding of
behaviour patterns. The most important conclusion of this way of understanding
cultures is that it takes away the unique ethnographic content of culture and
focuses only on its structure that is the same across all cultures.

3.4 THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MYTHS

According to Levi-Strauss (1963c) the purpose of a myth is to provide a logical
model capable of overcoming a (real) contradiction. To understand a myth it
must be broken down into its constituent elements and understood as binary
opposites. This breakdown is the structure, as the constituent elements are always
organised in a particular way (the underlying structure) that needs to be analysed.
The structure is the form and the details of the story are the content. Similarly
there is a category of behaviour and the actual behavior. Thus for example,
‘sacrifice’ is a category of behaviour and the actual content is the ethnographic
details (Who? What? Where, Why? Etc.; But when analysing the structure of
the myth, it is the form and not the content that is taken into account. Thus to
analyse a myth, ‘sacrifice’ would be an element, irrespective of the details of the
ritual. When whittled down to their most basic forms, the variety of myths begin
to look similar. Thus the most basic pattern of a story is the formula (its structure)
situation-complication-resolution-rider or twist- and the last term is the precursor 35
Perspectives in Sociology-I of another situation where it is resolved and followed by another rider. The
story can end when there is no need for further resolution. This follows a more
Hegelian than Marxian mode of thinking, where the thesis produces its antithesis
that leads to a third situation or the synthesis.

Levi-Strauss analysed large number of myths, of which his analysis of the myth
of Asdiwal is very well known. At every instance the myth is broken down into
opposed categories and these are then subjected to transformations to see their
similarity to other myths. Thus the core of Levi-Strauss’s analysis is pivoted
around the proposition that the human mind is capable of recognizing only limited
number of structural patterns, because of its innate limitation to cognition. Thus
opposition is a key process of comprehension and homology is another. So we
can understand something either by likeness or by contrast. The patterns of these
limited sets are related to each other by a series of, what he refers to as
‘transformation rules’. Thus in his large corpus of work on myths he attempts to
justify his structural rules by taking the examples from many myths, only to
show how any myth from one set of myths, can be transformed to some other
member of a set.

Caroll (1977) has simplified the more complex rules of transformation given by
Levi-Strauss, into the following two rules.
Transformation Rule One: is that starting with two roles, X and Y which are
related to each other in a particular way
1 (a) Negate the outcome associated with each role
1(b) Move the actor originally in one of the roles, say X into the role Y and
move a new actor in role X.
Transformation Rule Two
Given a sequence of events, negate the outcome of each event and reverse the
ordering of the events.
Many scholars including Caroll have applied these rules to the Biblical myths
of Genesis.
The most famous analysis of Biblical myths (myths from the Christian Bible)
has been done by Edmund Leach, Levi-Strauss in the Garden of Eden (1961)
and Genesis as Myth (1962). Leach used the terms ‘opposition’ and ‘mediation’
for the analysis of myths in the same sense as Levi-Strauss (1963c). The term
opposition is used to refer to a pair of categories, so that there is an obvious
conceptual difference between two things that are put in two different categories.
A mediating category is one that has something in common with the two opposed
categories. These mediating categories serve to resolve the opposition, by
psychologically linking the two opposed categories in the human mind.

Let us understand this by reference to his analysis of the Book of Genesis, in the
Bible where the creation of the universe has been described. According to
Christian beliefs, God created entire universe in six days and then rested on the
seventh. It is in accordance to Christian beliefs, Sunday is a no working day. In
the Bible it is called the day of the Sabbath. On each of the other six days, that
we now call a week, God created some things and also assigned them a purpose
or a meaning.
36
First Day: Heaven was distinguished from Earth, Light from Darkness, Day Structuralism
from Night and Evening from Morning.

Thus according to Leach, on the first day, oppositions are created that are
immutable and static. Thus heaven and earth, light and dark and morning and
evening remain opposed to this day, with no change possible and provide static
oppositions for the mind.

On the Fourth Day, God created the Moon and the Sun are created that move on
a fixed firmament. And because the movements of the Sun cause alternate dark
and light, they appear as oppositional. Thus according to Leach, the static
opposition introduced on the first day turn into a dynamic opposition on the
fourth day. He then extrapolates the opposition of Light and Dark into an
opposition between Life and Death and these are then shown as the oppositions
that exist between Eve and Adam as that between fertility and non-fertility. God
also creates water above the firmament in the form of rain and below the
firmament in the form of oceans, which again according to Leach are opposed
as the water above or the rains are associated with fertility as they help to raise
the crops and the water below, the oceans are not fertile, they are often associated
with darkness and death. In Greek mythology, Hades (the place where the dead
go) lies under the ocean. In keeping with his model Leach identifies the firmament
as the mediator between light and dark, life and death as represented by the
waters above and the waters below.

Similarly Leach says that while creating living things, God created the cattle
and the wild animals and he also created the creeping animals. Thus to Leach,
the opposition between the domestic and the wild is mediated by the creeping
creatures, who occupy an in between position.

The most interesting of Leach’s structural analysis is his analysis of Time. In the
structural analysis of time Leach treats time, neither as a linear (western view)
entity where each moment is gone and never comes back. Neither does he quite
take the view that time is circular. According to him Time is best understood as
structured intervals that mark out one moment from another or as reversals or
oppositions that mark such intervals. Thus a stream of water is not continuous
but the interval between one drop and the next by which time can be marked.

He applied his analysis to the structural analysis of the myth of Cronus (the
Greek god of time) and the analysis of rituals, both life cycle and the annual
cycle rituals whose main function is to mark intervals so that people are aware
of the passing of time, either in the form of transformation of status in an
individuals’ life or the passing of and coming again of a particular time of the
annual cycle, to tell us that a year ( or an interval of time ) has passed. Thus
every ritual is a symbolic reversal of the society, like reversal of roles in a carnival
and the shedding of social control in certain rituals like the Hindu festival of
Holi. According to Leach, the rituals mark the interval or liminal time between
the then and the now, between the past and the present. Liminality is marked by
either suspension or reversal of ordinary status and role. During festivals people
take a break from ordinary activities and do things that they do not do normally.
These breaks are the mediators and are the symbolic markers by which people
comprehend the passage of time in the absence of any other technological means
of knowing.
37
Perspectives in Sociology-I Thus structural analysis was proposed by Levi-Strauss in the context of social
analysis and among his most original and well known followers who developed
the method of structural analysis to a very large extent was Edmund Leach. But
there were others too. During the 70’s and 80’s structural analysis was very
popular but it lost its luster in the subsequent years with the rise of another kind
of anthropology, namely the subjective and reflexive methods of post-modern
anthropology.

Check Your Progress

1) How did Lev-Strauss apply structural analysis to myths? Discuss with some
examples.
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2) What are the rules of transformation that can be applied to myths to link
one myth with another?
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3) How did Leach apply structural analysis to Genesis myths? Describe with
examples.
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4) How has Leach applied structural analysis to understand Time?
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5) What is the concept of liminal in structural analysis of rituals?
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38
Structuralism
3.5 ETHNOGRAPHY AND STRUCTURAL
ANALYSIS
One aspect of structural analysis has remained rather ambiguous, namely how
much does ethnography feed into the analysis. Levi-Strauss at some points has
emphasized the role of field data, especially when he puts forward his concept
of social structure. Unlike the concept of social structure put forward by Radcliffe-
Brown, Levi-Strauss defines social structure as a model (1953). However he
has also said that there are two kinds of models, mechanical models and statistical
models. These models differ in term of their scale and comparison to actual
data. According to Levi-Strauss, if the model is at the same scale as the field
data we may say that it is a mechanical model and if the scale is different, it is a
statistical model. For example if in a society we have a rule of marriage that is
prescribed and every one adheres to it. Then we can say that this society has a
mechanical social structure. For example in South India there is a rule that a girl
marries her mother’s brother’s daughter. If a majority of people marry according
to this rule then the social structure is of the mechanical kind. If however, due to
some conditions of social change, like education and market economy, people
may not always follow the rule of prescription but start to apply other criteria
for looking for a groom for their daughter, like education, good job etc., then the
rule for marrying one’s mother’s brother daughter is no longer applied
mechanically. One has to then examine the data statistically to find out exactly
how many marriages are taking place according to prescriptive rules and how
many according to other criteria. Then the society has a statistical model. In
another example, we may consider a society where there is no prescriptive rule
of marriage like in the USA. Yet if a statistical analysis of actual marriages is
done for USA, one may find some preferential rules emerging, like marriage
within the same race or same class. Thus, even if there is not prescriptive rule,
yet some unwritten or statistical rules are thrown up by the data. Thus,
ethnography is also important in determining social structure as it is understood
in structural analysis.

In the structural analysis of myths, the myths and stories are taken from the field
but their analysis does not include the interpretation that the informants or the
people to whom they belong place on it. In fact Levi-Strauss advises that the
analyst should completely ignore the interpretations that he or she gets from the
field and not use them for his own analysis as they may cloud the analyst’s
interpretation that need to be based on pure logic and not on subjective
interpretations. In this way structuralism tends towards a deductive rather than
an inductive analysis.
Check Your Progress
1) Is ethnography important in structural analysis? Discuss.
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39
Perspectives in Sociology-I 2) What do you understand by mechanical and statistical models? Discuss
with examples.
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3.6 CRITICAL POINTS OF VIEW

Structuralism was popular for some time but there were many criticisms most of
which pertained to the role played by the analyst in the interpretations and
explanations. According to Lett ( 1987{ 103) , since structural analysis depended
so much on the point of view of the person doing the analysis, it was quite
improbable that two people will come to the exactly same conclusions. Let us as
an example take the critical appraisal of Leach’s analysis of the Genesis by
Michael Caroll. Referring to the claim made by Leach that light and day stand
for life and death; Caroll says that careful reading of the Book of Genesis does
not tell us that anywhere such an analogy has been drawn. The problem with
structural analysis has been that the analysts have become attracted to what
appeared to them to be oppositions, contradictions and analogies. Thus pursuing
his criticism further based again on a careful reading of the Bible, he also differs
from Leach to say that there is nothing again to say that the crawling animals are
mediators between the domestic and wild animals, for according to Leach, a
mediator should have something in common with both the opposing categories,
but crawling animals are simply a third kind of animals that have nothing in
common with either cattle or animals in the forest. Thus according to Caroll, the
Genesis tells us God created three kinds of animals that can neither be opposed
to each other nor is there any category that can be called as a mediator. “Leach
is thus imposing binary category on things that were not meant to be opposed”.
In the same way, the opposition between fertile rain above the firmament and
sterile water below it is nowhere justified in the text. There is enough in the
verses to say that the waters below are also fertile and aid in the growth of
vegetation. If the waters are not opposed then the firmament cannot be a mediator.
Similarly the opposition of Adam and Eve as representing infertility and fertility
is unjustified as in the text of Genesis, Adam and Eve are described as similar
(one flesh) and the role of Adam in procreation is recognized.

Thus the thoughts although apparently logical tend to impose an outsider’s logic
upon the data. Materialists like Marvin Harris have also criticized structuralism
for ignoring the obvious and going for some kind of exotic explanations. Thus
Levi-Strauss had analysed the representation of the coyote ( a kind of wild dog
common in the prairies of USA) as a trickster in many Native American myths,
as an in between animal. A trickster is one that plays tricks and mystifies people,
often making fools out of them. The coyote is an animal that preys on both
herbivores and carnivores and is associated with both agriculture and hunting.
Thus according to Levi-Strauss it is an in between animal as it is associated with
both life (agriculture) and death ( hunting). As a trickster is symbolizes it’s
neither this not that status, as it is not fixed to one identity. It is thus a deviation
from the natural order, an abnormal category of animal. According to Harris, a
more obvious explanation would have been the coyote enjoys a special status
40
because it is an intelligent and opportunistic animal. Many scholars thus viewed Structuralism
structural analysis as deviating.

Maurice Godelier incorporated a dynamic aspect into his structural analysis of

Australian Aborigine marriage class systems and their relationship to
demographic factors. He did this by incorporating a Marxist methodology into
his analysis where transformation is traced to contradictions of the structure.

The major criticism of the structural analysis was it’s a historical character. It
did not take into account either history or transformation. Most of the analysis
thus confined itself to age old myths and primordial institutions that were taken
as unchanging. Take for example Levi-Strauss’ analysis of caste is only about
the division of labour and caste endogamy; but there are all the various cultural,
social, historical and political aspects of caste that have not been covered in his
analysis.

The feminists have been specifically critical of Levi-Strauss treating the women
only as objects of exchange. In his theory of how society is structured, Levi-
Strauss has emphasized that the circulation of women among various groups is
the binding force of society and is brought about by the universal principle of
incest.
Check Your Progress
1) What are the main criticisms of the Structural Analysis? Give some
examples.
.....................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................
2) What alternate ways of application of structural analysis were evolved by
other scholars?
.....................................................................................................................
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.....................................................................................................................

3.7 LET US SUM UP

In this unit, we have discussed in detail what is structuralism and the various
debates that exists within structuralism or that it has initiated in the discussion
of folklore, society and culture. It will be evident to you that structuralism
emerged as one of the most important theoretical approach in social sciences
and folklore studies. The unit also discusses critique of structuralism, viz. the
drawbacks of assuming that social existence can be primarily studied in terms
of systems.

We have principally focused on the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, illustrating it

with the example of totemism, since he is regarded as the main exponent of this
method. As was stated earlier, Levi-Strauss worked on kinship, totemism, and
myths, and was interested in discovering the underlying structures, which he
thought were universal. He was interested in knowing how human mind worked.
41
Perspectives in Sociology-I That was where his contemporaries and scholars sympathetic to his approach
differed with him. They thought that Levi-Strauss was too ambitious in his
approach. The structures he was looking for were more his creation than those
that emerged from the facts of actual existence. These scholars applied
structuralism to the understanding of local, regional systems.
The British anthropologist Edmund Leach was certainly critical of the structural-
functional ideas, but one thing he learnt from this was researching people’s actual
ideas, rather than discovering the so-called universal mental structures.
Structuralism is a historical, which means that the structures it discovers cut
across the time dimension. These are applicable to all societies at all points of
time. This is one proposition of structuralism that has invited a number of
criticisms. A good method is one which takes care of both the dimensions of
time and space.

3.8 REFERENCES
Burridge, K.O.L. (1967). “Levi-Strauss and Myth.” In Edmund Leach (ed), The
Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London: Routledge, pp 91-118
Caroll, Michael P. (1977). “Leach, Genesis and Structural Analysis: A Critical
evaluation.” American Ethnologist, pp 663-677.
Clarke, Simon. (1981). The Foundations of Structuralism. Sussex: The Harvester
Press.
Durkheim, Emile and Marcel Mauss. (1963). Primitive Classification. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Leach, Edmund (ed.). (1967). The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London
and New York: Routledge.
Leach, Edmund. (1970). “Levi-Strauss in the Garden of Eden: An examination
of some recent developments in the analysis of Myth.” In E. Nelson Hayes and
Tana Hayes (eds.), Claude Levi-Strauss: the anthropologist as hero. Cambridge,
Mass.: M.I.T. Press.
Lett, James William. (1987). The Human Enterprise: A Critical Introduction to
Anthropological Theory. Boulders: West View Press.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1953). “Social Structure.” In A.L. Kroeber (ed),
Anthropology Today. Chicago: Chicago University Press (pp.524-553).
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1955). “The Structural Study of Myths.” The Journal of
American Folklore,Vol68, No.270, pp 428-444.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1963a). The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1963b). “The Bear and the Barber.” Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 93: 1-11.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1963c). Structural Anthropology. Vol.1. New York: Basic
Book.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1966). The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. (1976). Structural Anthropology. Vol. 11. New York: Basic
42 Book.
Structuralism
UNIT 4 CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE*

Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Classical Theorists
4.3 Modern Conflict Schools
4.4 Elite Theory
4.5 Recent Trends in Conflict Theory
4.6 Let Us Sum Up
4.7 References

4.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you will be able to understand:
Introduction to the concept of Conflict in Sociology;
The Classical Approach to the sociology of conflict;
The contribution of major scholars; and
The way conflict theory has adapted to modern society;

4.1 INTRODUCTION
Early in sociological theory there was a digression from conventional structural
theory of social solidarity. The most fundamental distinction between
functionalism and conflict theory is not that the notion of either structure or of
change is absent from either of them but which of these holds center stage.
Although conflict theory became accepted into sociological theory only in the
twentieth century and obtained a specific label as a sub-branch with the work of
Ralph Dahrendorf and Coser; it has been implicit in historiography from the
time of ancient Greek thinkers like Thucydides. Conflict theory and functional
theory consider both structure and change, for both are necessary aspect of all
societies. Conflict and social change can only happen to existing structures and
if we are looking at change, there is a need to begin with an entity, a social
structure that changes. However unlike functionalists, conflict theorists consider
conflict to be central to social structure, pushing it towards inevitable change.
Conflict is seen as both contributive to positive stability as well as to anomic
change. Thus concepts of social solidarity and stability appear in conflict theory
as they appear in functional theory, but it only remains a matter of how these
concepts are viewed and used in explanations of formation, maintenance and
change in social organisations and relationships.

For a sociological perspective it is imperative to consider social groups as basic

units and not individuals. In other words, conflict between individuals is not of
scholarly interests but only that between groups. The identification and

* Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 43

Perspectives in Sociology-I classification of such groups that can have a potential or actual conflicting
relationship is central to conflict theory.

At the very basic level conflict theory assumes the existence of stratification,
inequality and domination as integral aspects of all societies. Thus most social
action is informed by the needs of either maintenance of inequality or to contest
domination. Unequal distribution of social resources is both cause and effect of
inequality and hierarchy and remains a moot cause of conflict. Escalation of
conflict to a critical level may lead to social change leading to a new set of
organisational principles that ensures that social resources are redistributed. For
example the Russian revolution led to an overthrow of monarchy and its
replacement by a communist/socialist regime. The conflict between the aristocrats
and the common people had escalated to the extent that it led to the killing of the
entire family of the Romanovs and complete turnaround of the power structures.

Inequality is both caused by and is itself causative of an uneven distribution of

power. Thus inequality and the dynamic aspects of hierarchy remains a central
concern of conflict theorists. The later generation of conflict theorists used power
in more innovative ways to suit modern societies with different structures of
control and domination. While discussing conflict theory the student needs to
be careful in the choice of terminology as words that apparently look similar
may have different meanings; for example differentiation and stratification and
also contradiction and conflict. Thus differentiation does not necessarily involve
stratification unless there is inequality and contradiction does not necessarily
lead to conflict unless it precipitates a consolidation and confrontation of power
leading to action. Potentialities for conflict does not mean that actual conflict
will take place and even if conflict does occur it may not have the intensity for
large scale social transformation.

4.2 THE CLASSICAL THEORISTS

The earliest theories of conflict were macro-historical in that they were concerned
with the larger transformations that could take place in the structure of society
due to conflict between its major social groups that are also interest groups
often opposed in their goals. Sustained characters of the system that were naturally
opposed were seen as historical conditions for evolution or transformation. The
foremost among the early macro-sociologist who gave a comprehensive theory
of social transformation through the operation of conflict between different
segments of society was Karl Marx, in the nineteenth century. His theory of
historical materialism paved the way for the formation of a conflict theory of
social transformation based upon the essential contradiction that exists between
classed based upon unequal economic distribution in society. According to him
property (or capital) ownership gives rise to the bourgeoisie and the proletariats
are the workers whose labour is exploited to keep the bourgeoisie in power. In
political terms this was translated into a conflict between the haves and the
have-nots, as put forward in the Communist Manifesto. But as a theorist and
historiographer, Marx recognized a far more complex and nuanced reality as he
chronicled the various historical epochs. His theory of social evolution was also
predictive as he had visualized that feudalism will give way to capitalism (a
process that was already underway) and then it will be followed by socialism
(an obliteration of the concept of private property) where society would reach
44 stability as all class contradictions would disappear. History tells us that this did
not happen so his theory was proved politically incorrect although the method Conflict Perspective
of dialectics, of contradictory forces clashing to produce a third stage of stability
or of new oppositions as the driving force of history was accepted and is the
basic premise of conflict theory in sociology. But the sociological theory of
conflict is essentially non-political; it neither favours communism nor capitalism
or any other political ideology. The aim is to identify the various social groups
and social forces that produce change and to produce a general theory of social
structures and their organisation from a dynamic perspective.

The next major classical theorists can be identified as Max Weber. His major
improvement upon Marxian theory was to show that the economy was not alone
responsible for stratification and in addition to economic classes there are the
status groups and power groups based on non-economic sources that were also
responsible for social stratification. Weber also focused on forms of social
organizations as it is through its various organisations that major weapons of
conflict and revolt are developed and it is through organisations that society
asserts its weapons of domination and control. Thus Weber had identified three
ideal types of organisational structures, ideal-typical, bureaucratic and
patrimonial which exist within any form of domination, a state a church or the
economy. By introducing the concept of legitimacy into power, Weber was able
to show how certain forms of domination become acceptable and may continue
even if they are exploitative and discriminatory. There are social mechanisms
such as socialisation that ensure that people at large accept institutions such as
church and state, at least up to a point and alternate organisations, that challenge
them must develop their own legitimacy and structure in order to be effective.
Thus resisting forces need to organise too and develop internal bureaucracy in
order to be effective. Organisations such a new political parties that originate in
charismatic leadership also settle down to rational-legal and even traditional
forms of leadership. Thus they may follow an election process for next generation
of leadership (bureaucratic) or follow dynastic rule (traditional). A particular
religious reform such as the Protestant reform (called Protestant because it
protested against the existing edicts of the Catholic Church) came into existence
because of the charismatic leadership of an individual Martin Luther, but later it
acquired an organisation and now has an internal bureaucracy and status hierarchy
like any other organisation. The present leaders of the protestant church are
often not charismatic but only rational-legal (passing exams and getting training)
and may only occasionally combine charisma with the more formal requirements.
Thus although major transformations took place with this protest movement
and initially there was and sometimes there still is violent conflict (as in Ireland)
over the division of the Christian church, yet the new forms have become
routinized and form a status based hierarchy. Weber had a lasting influence over
the later development of sociology although all the scholars who came later did
not build up on his contribution but followed their own path.

A major contributor to the classical conflict theory was Lewis Coser. Born in
Berlin in 1913, he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and was arrested during the
WWII for being German and interned by the French government. He got asylum
in the USA and did his Ph. D from Columbia University, New York, under Robert
K Merton. Coser deviated from Weber and followed instead Simmel. He was of
the opinion that conflict in inherent not just in society but in the human person;
it is a part of our instinctual behaviour as humans. He put forward the concepts
of absolute and relative deprivation. Absolute deprivation occurs when a human
45
Perspectives in Sociology-I group is subject to utter lack of resources to the extent that people are barely
able to survive. They lack the most basic amenities like food, drinking water,
health care, housing etc. The concept relative deprivation is used for those who
are better off but having some level of survival resources are able to think and
compare themselves with others who are much better off. Relative deprivation
is more likely to occur when society as a whole is not too badly equipped but
there are very stark disparities between the rich and the ordinary people. As
observed, people living in absolute poverty rarely engage in violence as they
simply do not have the capacity to do so. For example we hear about people in
remote rural areas suffering from starvation, yet we never hear about such people
engaging in conflict. However, as Coser points out, when people make the
transition from absolute to relative deprivation, the chances of conflict increase.
For example, the Dalit movement began, not from the rural areas where the
untouchables lived a life of bare survival and utter misery. It began from the
urban industrial areas, where the rural poor had migrated as wage labour.
Although they were poor and exploited, yet they had some cash income and
because as industrial labour, they worked in larger groups, they were able to
come together and organise under the charismatic leadership of B.R. Ambedkar.
Only when they came to urban cities and became exposed to urban life, were
they able to comprehend their exploitation and reflect on their life conditions in
a comparative perspective.

Coser also identified levels of conflict as arising from different social situations
and conditions of development of conflict. When people have clearly defined
goals which are both pragmatic and rational, the escalation and persistence of
violence can be less likely. Since goals are clearly defined and achievable, such
as say, higher salary for workers or better living conditions for urban poor; conflict
will fizzle out once the demands are met. For example workers on strike may
call off the strike. More violent and persistent levels of conflict arise if the goals
are emotionally charged and transcendental. One may take as example the
prolonged conflicts over religion, ethnic identities and sub-nationalisms. Such
emotionally charged and esoteric goals are unresolvable, like the persistent
violence in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants that is
unresolvable but often erupts into great violence.

Following the functional school of his times, Coser also identified the functional
aspects of conflict by classifying conflict into two types, namely, external and
internal to the group. Conflict that is internal to the groups is mostly of the low
intensity but frequent type. When two ( or more) potentially hostile groups live
in close proximity to each other, like Whites and Blacks in the USA or Hindus
and Muslims in India, Protestants and Catholics in Great Britain; there is
likelihood of small scale and frequent skirmishes between them. However for
most of the time, such low intensity violence can be brought under control by
the internal law and order maintenance mechanisms and tensions tend to diffuse
out, leading to relatively long periods of peace. The positive aspect of such
small scale conflict is that it leads to better organisation of administrative
machinery and also to have more evolved norms of conduct. For example frequent
flare ups between workers and management, potentially damaging to the economy
is controlled by improved labour laws. External conflict likewise tends to increase
internal cohesion of the group and also draw more clearly defined boundaries.

46
Conflict Perspective
4.3 MODERN CONFLICT SCHOOLS
The nomenclature of a Conflict perspective in sociology, in more recent times is
attributed to Ralph Dahrendorf, who, also coming from Germany was the director
of the London School of Economics for many years and from where he built up
a recognized school of sociology of conflict. With reference to the existing
sociological theories of his time, Dahrendorf was of the opinion that neither
Marxism nor structural-functionalism was adequate to explain modern, industrial
capitalist societies. The failure of Marxism lay in its inability to recognize the
power of consensus and integration in contemporary democracies. Further,
Parson’s structural functionalism does recognize change and Marxism cannot
describe its theory of contradiction without presupposing an existing structure.
Thus, no society least of all modern democracies are without both integrative
and conflictual forces appearing side by side. What is most apparent is the far
greater complexity of social structures than the dialectical model used in
Marxism. In modern society there are many more varied forms of class than the
bourgeoisie and proletariat visualized by Marx as the primary contradictions of
society. Social inequality is no longer a matter of one strata having power and
another being exploited. In modern industrial society, the workers are supported
by trade unions, collective bargaining and legislative measures. Other agencies
like International Labour Unions and Human Rights Commissions also intervene
under many conditions.

The individual ownership of private property has been largely mitigated by the
appearance of Joint Stock Companies, where as much as the capitalist owners,
the managers and share- holders also have key roles to play. Thus Dahrendorf,
in his classic work, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1959:238)
has given his own definition of class as follows,“By social class shall be
understood such organized or unorganised collectivities of individuals as share
manifest or latent interests arising from and related to the authority structure of
imperatively coordinated associations. It follows from the definitions of latent
and manifest interests that social classes are always conflict groups”. At a more
generalized level and to account for the variations in interest holding groups
and the complex nature of property and authority, Dahrendorf makes a broad
division between the ‘’command class’ and ‘obey class’ and class conflict would
then refer to the conflict between those with authority and those without. But
the drawback of this proposition is that social classes would exist in particular
situations only as some people may be in authority in some place and may not
be in another. Moreover social classes will be present all though society and
cease to have any structural relevance. Thus for the structural and static notion
of hierarchy Dahrendorf preferred to use the term strata and regarded class as a
dynamic phenomenon of real society.

Another significant scholar of conflict theory is Gerhard Lenski. By the twentieth

century, sociologists were more concerned with power as it was distributed in
society and the manner in which it was applied, than simply in the concept of
class as an economic category or static stratification. Lenski (1966:75) defined
class as an “aggregate of persons in society who stand in a similar position with
respect to some form of power, privilege and prestige”. More recent sociologists
had to understand the play of power in society that was more dynamic, diverse
and where there were many more positions to be filled and many sources from
47
Perspectives in Sociology-I which power could be drawn. The main question was to explain the basis on
which power was distributed, who got what and why? Thus the concept of class
was replaced by the concept of power classes.

In modern society there are layers of authority and control and like in a corporate
structure, a large number of persons may be involved at various levels. It is
possible that mangers who have administrative authority do not get to use the
profit that they help to make. The workers can put pressure and get their share of
the profit through collective action. Thus authority and control may not always
mean that the same people are enjoying all the profit thus generated. Wright
(1979:18) thus modified the concept of class to bring the definition closer to the
Marxian concept of appropriation. “Classes are defined by relations of
appropriation of surplus product and secondarily defined by the relations of
control over technical division of labour and relations of authority”. Thus
managers are separated from the owners.

However conflict often remains latent and not manifest as long as the principle
of legitimacy is applicable to those in power. Thus in modern societies also,
some people, by virtue of their education and expertise may be seen to be naturally
fit for a position of authority and others will obey without question. Thus proper
basis for legitimation of authority will lead to a stable state of society and conflict
may emerge when such legitimate reasons are challenged or questioned.

4.4 ELITE THEORY

Scholars like Lenski and Dahrendorf also brought in the concept of elites to
explain social class and consequent conflict in society. The genesis of Elite theory
is attributed to Vilfredo Pareto, an economist and political scientist (born of an
Italian father and French mother in 1848) whose academic life flourished in
Florence was also a classical theorist who believed in societies and social systems
whose natural state was one of equilibrium. He followed Adam Smith in
advocating for a liberal doctrine and free exchange with an aversion for state
control. He saw power as the manifestation of corruption and malice and all
these manifested in the state. However he attributed all differentiation and
stratification to natural causes such a unequal capabilities, age, sex, physical
strength and health as well as to demographic variables like fertility and fecundity.
Therefore the resultant conflicts, contradictions and struggles were inevitable
and natural. Even if sociologists could understand them, they could do nothing
to eliminate them. While he acknowledged that society was in a constant state
of change, he did not believe in linear progression, but believed that change was
better represented as fluctuation and curves. In this respect as in all others, his
theory of conflict is almost diametrically opposed to that of Marx.

He did not attribute any causation to economic or organisational factors but

attributed everything to natural causes, blaming the nature of human beings
instead. He defined elites as those who from within a group or class try to
dominate others. The only was elites can continue to be in power, is spite of
struggles to over throw them is either by using force to eliminate the opposition
or by absorbing them within their fold. This process which he calls endosmosis
is process of social circulation by which social mobility takes place for individuals
but the class structure of society remains unaffected.
48
Lenski had defined four types of elites, but they had already been identified by Conflict Perspective
Pareto in terms of their innate nature. Coercive elites (lions in Pareto’s
terminology), Inducing elites (foxes), Expert elites (owls) and Commanding
elites (bears). These are ideal types (Weber) and may overlap in actual situations.
Thus a person who is an expert can also be commanding and coercive. One who
is inducing, that is makes use of strategy, can at the same time be commanding,
and so on. Dahrendorf’s postulation of command class and obey class also follow
the same formula of an elite and a governed class.

According to John Scott (2001), the classical elite theory is meaningless in terms
of being too inclusive. Thus when we are talking of broad categories like
Dahrendorf and Pareto, the definition of power being too inclusive loses its
meaning. He postulated that positional studies should be replaced by more
dynamic categories. Also that power should only be defined according to the
effect that it has. Thus real social power can be defined in terms of the power
wielder’s conscious effort to affect the conduct of those who are subordinated.
Thus, a real elite cannot be defined in terms of ability or status but should be
confined to those who can actually exercise power, or have the potential to
exercise it. Since power cannot be exercised in a vacuum, elite theory or the
concept of social power can only be visualized in terms of two parties to it; the
one exercising and the other on whom it is being exercised.

Thus power relations are intrinsically asymmetrical and therefore involve at

least two parties with conflicting interests and goals. Elite theory with its emphasis
on hierarchy and exercise of social power thus is essentially a conflict theory.

4.5 RECENT TRENDS IN CONFLICT THEORY

In the more recent times, there has been a trend towards cultural construction of
institutional structures more than on relational structures. One of the most
influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault brought about a
paradigm shift in the understanding of power. Unlike all conventional
understandings of power, Foucault was of the opinion that power is not
concentrated in specific agents or strata but is diffused in all aspects of society.
Power need not be always destructive but can be as aspect of collective effort
towards improvement and production. Foucault used the concept of capillary
power to describe power that is diffuse and can be used in any situation and by
anyone. Even in a group of friends, a certain person can take control in a particular
situation, like sudden crises; someone takes ill at a picnic or a school bus goes
into an accident and so on. According to Foucault, conflict, negotiation and
contradictions are part of every relationship.

John Scott explains that power can be broadly understood as having two kinds
of influence. Corrective influence that operates through punishments and rewards
and persuasive influence that operates through arguments, appeals and reasoning.
The former can be divided into two types, use of force and manipulations and
the second type also has two forms, signification and legitimation. The latter
becomes effective by a collective belief and operates through shared cognitive
meanings and value commitments. This does not mean that the latter is less
exploitative or does not actually support hierarchy, but that it makes people
believe otherwise. The latter process is able to contain conflict and prevent any
kind of dissent because it manages to hide the reality of the situation.
49
Perspectives in Sociology-I Foucault had throughout his works shown how the most effective modes of
control are those that are least obvious. Randall Collins (1975) added a micro-
level to the macro-level of conflict theory. Like Foucault, he too located conflict
in the processes of day to day life. All relationships are based on some antagonism,
domination and conflict on the one hand and there are also patterns of solidarity
on the other. Unlike the sweeping generalized metatheories of the classical
conflict theorists, the more recent scholars like Collins, depended more on
empirical data and more grounded theorisation. Collins made use of Goffman’s
model of interaction rituals, using the concepts of front stage and back stage
performance. These refer to the play acting people resort to when putting up a
front stage performance. Goffman had likened all social interaction to stage
performances for most of us pretend and say and do things that we may not
always mean. Thus those who receive orders to obey may do so, overtly but
keep resentment in their own minds. The back stage performance refers to those
situations where we letdown our guard and talk and perform freely. Thus a man
may take orders from his boss and be deferential to him overtly, even praise him
to his face. But when at home with his wife, he may let out steam and abuse the
boss, and even call him an idiot. Thus performance rituals hide real feelings and
antagonisms. At the same time solidarity among equals is sustained by solidarity
rituals like sharing meals or helping the other in performance of tasks.

Thus the complexities of organisational structures are conditioned by the struggle

for power that may remain subversive but yet spill over occasionally. Thus
antagonisms in an office may escalate to an overt defiance of the authority of
the boss, or a strike may take place in a factory. The contemporary scholars are
more interested in identifying the micro-processes of struggle and management
in real life situations. Rather than grouping people into larger classes the micro-
process theorists are more interested in more complex and detailed analysis of
status groups and people occupying different roles in the competition for
resources and power.
Check Your Progress
1) What is the most salient difference between a functional and a conflict
approach to study society?
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2) Explain classical conflict theory as a theory of macro-historical process of
social transformation.
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50 .....................................................................................................................
3) What is Elite theory? How does it explain conflict? Conflict Perspective

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4) Discuss the contribution of Ralph Dahrendorf to Conflict theory.
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5) Where is power located in society? Discuss.
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6) What do you understand by the micro-processes of social power? Discuss
with suitable examples.
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4.6 LET US SUM UP

In this unit the student has learnt about the theories that focus on organisation of
society, upon the allocation of resources and division of power. In all human
societies, except may be the very simplest ones, everyone is never equal and
while in a small society, people are usually allocated according to given norms,
in most other societies, the control and distribution of resources; questions
regarding who gets what, and how, are determined by the structure of organisation
of the society, that is inevitably stratified. Some scholars are of the opinion that
inequality is an inevitable condition of being human while others think that we
can overcome it and come to a more equitable and just order. While Pareto
belongs to the first kind, Karl Marx, may be cited as an example of the latter.
51
Perspectives in Sociology-I As we have seen, genesis of conflict theory is usually attributed to the class
theory of Karl Marx. But later scholars, while accepting in principle the
dialectically opposed forces of contesting groups, debated on the nature of these
groups. A reliance on the sole criteria of economy or ownership of property was
discarded to recognize many other sources of power in society, such as those
based on expertise, knowledge, political maneuvering and other criteria like
gender, race and ethnicity.

With the coming in of new age capitalist society, one that differs significantly
from what Marx had conceptualised, we have come to the age of the corporate,
of public sector enterprises, and of joint stock holding companies where
ownership, authority and control may vest in different locations of the
organisation. Scholars have varied in their approach to giving primacy to certain
kinds of power. While some see it in authority and legitimacy, others are more
inclined to view power as the sole property of coercion and ability to make
others do as one wishes them to do.

While the classical conflict theories are macro-historical looking towards larger
evolutionary kind of social transformations and their causative factors, the more
recent trends are towards looking at conflict in terms of its every day appearances.
The more recent theoreticians are inclined towards empirical research and
identifying the micro-processes of contradiction, conflict and its outcomes in
specific locations.

Conflict theorists are not engaged only in the study of conflict but also in its
resolution and in the study of social solidarity and the maintenance of social
equilibrium. The only difference from functionalists is that they study how
equilibrium and continuity are maintained, given the conditions of potential
conflict, generated by the inevitable hierarchy, inequality and exploitation that
are the normal conditions of all societies, differing only in degree. Thus conflict
theorists take conflict as a normal and inherent condition of social relationships
as well as organisations. Thus society passes from one state of maintenance of
stability to another state by making changes in its organisation. These
organizations aim towards minimization or masking of the real conditions of
conflict, always present but not necessarily always manifest.

Conflict theory is thus a study of social organisation overall and of social behavior
and only differs methodologically in whether the scholars take a macro-historical
perspective or a situational empirical one. Conflict theory has been especially
useful in study of inequality, stratification and hierarchy, both in their
understanding and in the location of their cause. Overall thus conflict theory is
applicable to the removal or redressal of such inequalities but the theories are
not in themselves political.

4.7 REFERENCES
Collins, Randal. (ed). (1994). Four Sociological Traditions. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Collins, Randall. (2004). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Coser, Lewis. (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. Routledge.
52
Dahrendorf, Ralph. (1959). Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Conflict Perspective
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. (1975). Discipline and Punish. London: Allen Lane.
Giddens, Anthony. (1976). New Rules of Sociological Method. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Giddens, Anthony. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory, London:
MacMillan.
Lenski, Gerhard. (1966) (Reprint 1984). Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social
Stratification. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
Mills, C Wright. (1956). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pareto, Vilfred. (1916) (Reprint 1963). A Treatise on General Sociology. New
York: Dover.
Poulantzas. (1975). Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. London: New Left
Books.
Ritzer, George (ed.). (1990). Frontiers of Social Theory: The New Synthesis.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Scott, John. (2001). Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Block 1

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COURSE PREPARATION TEAM

BLOCK 2 PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY-II 55

BLOCK 3 PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY-III 83

BLOCK 4 DIFFERENCES AND DEBATES 115

FURTHER READING 176

*Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 7

1.2 THE BEGINNING OF THE CONCEPT OF

The Enlightenment period was marked by significant changes in perspective

Some of the leading proponents of the evolutionary theory that dominated

Bachoven, also an eminent European scholar of the nineteenth century, gave a

1.4 THEORIES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION

1.5 LIMITATION OF CLASSICAL

1.6 NEO-EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES

However since this type of evolution is directly related to the environmental

Leslie White (1943) was a follower of Edward B Tylor’s theory of Unilineal

Adaptive radiation by any species or community leads to the extinction of others

Parsons and Lenski

1.7 LET US SUM UP

The influence of classical evolutionism persists in the Eurocentric models of

2.1 FOUNDERS OF FUNCTIONALISM

2.1.2 Emile Durkheim

2.1.3 Bronislaw Malinowski

2.1.4 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

Radcliffe-Brown views that it is not a singular functional analysis but structural

In this whole analysis and understanding, like Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown saw

Radcliffe-Brown considers that ‘functional unity (integration or solidarity) of a

2.2 LATER FUNCTIONALISTS

Another related concept, to his concept of social systems is the concept of

For understanding social system he considered its structural elements and

When a given social system is large and comprises of many interrelated

2.3.2 R.K. Merton

Merton addressed to these limitations in his reformulation or modification of

The earlier notion of function, as advanced by Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski

2.4 LET US SUM UP

*Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 31

3.2 CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS AND

Thus Structuralism is a purely positivist approach. It looks upon society as a

Levi-Strauss also drew inspiration from his predecessors in French sociology,

Thus structuralism also makes claim to be what may be called a generalised

According to Levi-Strauss, the most primary form of exchange is marriage, or

3.4 THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MYTHS

Check Your Progress

3.6 CRITICAL POINTS OF VIEW

Maurice Godelier incorporated a dynamic aspect into his structural analysis of

3.7 LET US SUM UP

We have principally focused on the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, illustrating it

For a sociological perspective it is imperative to consider social groups as basic

* Contributed by Prof. (Retd.) Subhdra Channa, Dept. of Anthropology, DU, Delhi 43

Inequality is both caused by and is itself causative of an uneven distribution of

4.2 THE CLASSICAL THEORISTS

Another significant scholar of conflict theory is Gerhard Lenski. By the twentieth

4.4 ELITE THEORY

He did not attribute any causation to economic or organisational factors but

Thus power relations are intrinsically asymmetrical and therefore involve at

4.5 RECENT TRENDS IN CONFLICT THEORY

Thus the complexities of organisational structures are conditioned by the struggle

4.6 LET US SUM UP

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