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Contemporary
Sociological Theory
Edited by

Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis,

James Moody, Steven Pfaff,
and lndermohan Virk

Blackwell
Publishers
({) 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd
a Blackwell Publishing company
except for edicorial matter and organization © 2002 by Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerreis, James Moody,
Steven rfaff, and Indermohan Virk

Editorial Offices:
108 Cowley Road
Oxford OX4 lJF, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 791100
350 Main Street
Malden, Massachusetts 02148-5018, USA
Tel: +1 781 388 8250

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of
the publisher.

First published 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 0-631-21349-X (hbk) 0-631-21350-3 (pbk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10 on 12 pt Saban Roman

by Kolam Information Services Pvt. Ltd. Pondicherry
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padsrow, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper

For further information on

Blackwell Publishers, visit our website:
www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk
Contents

List of Contributors Vlll

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I Micro-Sociological Analysis 23
Introduction to Part I 25
1 The Phenomenology of the Social World
Alfred Schutz 32
2 The Social Construction of Reality
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann 42
3 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Erving Goffman 51
4 Symbolic Interactionism
Herbert Blumer 66
Part II Exchange and Rationality 79
Introduction to Part II 81
5 Social Behavior as Exchange
George C. Homans
{
88
6 Exchange and Power in Social Life
Peter M. Blau 99
7 Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital
]amefS. Coleman 110
8 Foundations for a Theory of Collective Decisions
fames S. Coleman 117
9 The Logic of Collective Action
Mancur Olson 126
Part Ill . Institutional Analysis 131
Introduction to Part III 133
10 Limits of Steering
Niklas Luhmann 139
11 Coercion, Capital, and European States
Charles Tilly 153
12 The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism
and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields
Paul]. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell 167
vi CONTENTS

Part IV The Sociological Theory of Michel Foucault 183

Introduction to Part IV 185
13 The Birth of the Clinic
Michel Foucault 191
14 Truth and Power
Michel Foucault 203
15 Discipline and Punish
Michel Foucault 211

PartV The Sociological Theory of Anthony Giddens 219

Introduction to Part V 221
16 Some New Rules of Sociological Method
Anthony Giddens 226
17 Agency, Structure
Anthony Giddens 232
18 The Consequences of Modernity
Anthony Giddens ______ .,. __ ,,
244

Part VI The Sociological Theory of Pierre Bourdieu 257

Introduction to Part VI 259
19 Social Space and Symbolic Space
Pierre Bourdieu 267
20 Structures, Habitus, Practices
Pierre Bourdieu 276
21 The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic
World Reversed
Pierre Bourdieu 289

Part VII Race, Gender, and Difference 305

Introduction to Part VII 307
22 The Conceptual Practices of Power
Dorothy E. Smith ' 315
23 Black Feminist Epistemology
Patricia Hill Collins 323
24 Black Skin, White Masks
Frantz Fanon 332
25 The Paradoxes of Integration
Orlando Patterson 340

Part VIII The Sociological Theory of Jurgen Habermas

Introduction to Part VIII
---------349
351
26 Civil Society and the Political Public Sphere
Jurgen Habermas 358
 CONTENTS vii

27 The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society

Jurgen Habermas 377
28 Theory and Practice
Jurgen 1-Iabermas 401
-----
Part IX Modernity and Postmodernity 411
Introduction to Part IX 413
29 The Social Constraint towards Self-Constraint
Norbert Elias· 419
30 A Sociological Theory of Postmodernity
Z ygmunt Bauman 429
31 Describing the Future
Nik/as Luhmann 441

Index 448
Contributors

Craig Calhoun is Professor of Sociology and History at New York University and
since 1999 has been President of the Social Science Research Council. He was
previously editor of Sociological Theory. His books include Neither Gods Nor
Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (1995), Critical Social
Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (1995), and Nationalism
(1997). He is also editor-in-chief of the Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences.

Joseph Gerteis is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota,

Twin Cities. His work explores the link between categorical identities and social
action in politics and social movements. His recent work examines southern labor
movements of the late nineteenth century.

James Moody is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University. He studies

informal social organization through social networks, including the distribution of
sexually transmitted diseases, adolescent friendship structure, and relations through
the Internet.

Steven Pfaff is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. His

scholarly interests include sociological theory, comparative and historical sociology,
and research on collective action and social movements. His current research focuses
on popular protest in the East German revo"!ution of 1989-90.

lndermohan Virk is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the

University of North Carolina and a Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University. Her
current research addresses the transformation of public space and its impact on the
public sphere in the late twentieth-century United States.
Acknowledgments

The authors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following for permission to
reproduce copyright material:

1 Alfred Schutz, "The Phenomenology of the Social World." From Alfred Schutz,
The Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by George Walsh and
Frederick Lehnert, with an Introduction by George Walsh. Copyright ©
1967, Northwestern University Press, pp. 107, 113-16, 126-36;
2 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, "The Social Construction of Reality."
From Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of
Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Copyright © 1966 by
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Used by permission of Doubleday, a
division of Random House, Inc., pp. 50-62;
3 Erving Goffman, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." From Erving
Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Copyright © 1959 by
Erving Goffman. Reprinted by permission of The Overlook Press, pp. 17-25,
30-6,56-61, 65-6, 70-7;
4 Herbert Blumer, "Symbolic lnteractionism." From Herbert Blumer, Symbolic
Interactionism. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall,
Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, pp. 1, 46-8, 50-52, 78-89;
5 George C. Homans, "Social Behavior as Exchange." American Journal of
Sociology 63, 6. Copyright © 1958 by the University of Chicago Press. Re-
printed by permission of the University of Chicago Press, pp. 598-606;
6 Peter M. Blau, "Exchange and Power in Social Life." From Peter M. Blau,
Exchange and Power in Social Life. Copyright © 1964 by John Wiley and
Sons, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Transaction Publishers, pp. 19-31, 91-5;
7 James S. Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital." Ameri-
can Journal of Sociology 94. Copyright © 1988 by the University of Chicago
Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press, pp. S97-S98,
S100-S108;
8 James S. Coleman, "Foundations for a Theory of Collective Decisions." Ameri-
can Journal of Sociology 71, 6. Copyright© 1966 by the University of Chicago
Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press, pp. 615-23;
9 Mancur Olson, "The Logic of Collective Action." Reprinted by permission of
the publisher from Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public
Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Copyright© 1965, 1971 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, pp.
9-16;
10 Niklas Luhmann, "Limits of Steering." Theory, Culture and Society 14, 1.
Copyright © 1997 by Sage Publications Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Sage
Publications Ltd., pp. 41-57;
X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

11 Charles Tilly, "Coercion, Capital, and European States." From Charles Tilly,
Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. Copyright If) 1990,
1992 by Charles Tilly. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers,
pp. 17-32;
12 Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional
Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." American
Sociological Review 48. Copyright © 1983 by the American Sociological
Association. Reprinted by permission of the American Sociological Associ-
ation, pp. 147-60;
13 Michel Foucault, "The Birth of the Clinic." From Michel Foucault, The Birth of
the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Translated by A. M.
Sheridan-Smith. Translation copyright© 1973 by Tavistock Publications, Ltd.
Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,
and by Taylor & Francis Books, Ltd., pp. 22-36;
14 Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power." From Michel Foucault, Power/Know-
ledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Edited by Colin
Gordon. Copyright© 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977 by Michel Foucault. Reprinted
by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., pp. 113,
115-17, 118-26, 131-3;
15 Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish." From Michel Foucault, Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Originally published in French as Surveil-
ler et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Copyright©
1975 by Les Editions Gallimard. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borch-
ardt, Inc., and by Penguin Books, Ltd., pp. 200-2, 215-16, 218-24;
16 Anthony Giddens, "Some New Rules of Sociological Method." From Anthony
Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive
Sociologies. Copyright© 1976 by Anthony Giddens. Reprinted by permission
of Anthony Giddens, pp. 155-62;
17 Anthony Giddens, "Agency, Structure." From Anthony Giddens, Central Prob-
lems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis.
Copyright © 1979 by Anthony Giddens. Reprinted by permission of the
University of California Press, and by Macmillan Publishers Ltd., pp. 49,
53-9,62, 64-6,68-73, 82-4, 94-5;
18 Anthony Giddens, "The Consequences of Modernity." From Anthony Giddens,
The Consequences of Modernity. Copyright© 1990 by the Board of Trustees
of the Leland Standford Junior University. Reprinted by permission of Stanford
University Press and Blackwell Publishers, pp. 112-14, 120-5, 131-4, 137-50;
19 Pierre Bourdieu, "Social Space and Symbolic Space." From Pierre Bourdieu,
"Social Space and Symbolic Space: Toward a Japanese Reading of Distinction."
Poetics Today 12, 4. Copyright © 1991, Porter Institute for Poetics and Semi-
otics. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press, pp.
627-38;
20 Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures, Habitus, Practices." From Pierre Bourdieu, The
Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Originally published in French
as Le Sens Pratique. Copyright ~) 1980, Les Editions de Minuit. Translation
copyright © 1990, Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Reprinted by permission of Stanford University Press, and by Blackwell

Publishers;
21 Pierre Bourdieu, "The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World
Reversed." Poetics 12. Copyright © 1983, Elsevier Science Publishers, B.V.
Reprinted by permission of Elsevier Science, Ltd., and by Pierre Bourdieu, pp.
312-13, 315-16,319-26,341-6, 349-50, 353-6;
22 Dorothy E. Smith, "The Conceptual Practices of Power." From Dorothy E.
Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Know-
ledge. Copyright© 1990 by Dorothy E. Smith. Reprinted with the permission
of Northeastern University Press, pp. 12-19, 21-7; ·
23 Patricia Hill Collins, "Black Feminist Epistemology." From Patricia Hill Col-
lins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment. Second Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Patricia Hill Collins.
Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis, Inc., http://www.routledge-
ny.com, pp. 251-6, 266-71;
24 Frantz Fanon, "Black Skin, White Masks." From Frantz Fanon, Black Skin,
White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markham. Copyright © 1967 by
Grove Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press, Inc., and by Editions
du Seuil, pp. 17-18, 109-16, 216-22;
25 Orlando Patterson, "The Paradoxes of Integration." From Orlando Patterson,
The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial"
Crisis. Copyright © 1997 by Orlando Patterson. Reprinted by permission of
Counterpoint Press, a division of Perseus Books, L.L.C., pp. 15-16, 64-6,
68-74, 76-7;
26 Jurgen Habermas, "Civil Society and the Political Public Sphere." From Jurgen
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of
Law and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Copyright© 1996 by The
MIT Press. Reprinted by permission of The MIT Press, pp. 359-87;
27 Jurgen Habermas, "The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society." From Jurgen
Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and
System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Translated by Thomas McCarthy.
Originally published as Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Band 2: Zur
Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernuft, copyright© 1981 by Suhrkamp Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main. Translator's preface and translation copyright © 1987 by
Beacon Press. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, pp. 374-403;
28 Ji.irgen Habermas, "Theory and Practice." From Jurgen Habermas, Theory and
Practice. Translated by John Viertel. English translation copyright © 1973 by
Beacon Press. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, pp. 7-16, 19-24.
29 Norbert Elias, "The Social Constraint toward Self-Constraint." From Norbert
Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and
Civilization. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Copyright © 1939, 1968 by
Norbert Elias. Translation copyright© 1978 by Basil Blackwell Ltd. Reprinted
by permission of Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., pp. 443-8, 450-6;
30 Zygmunt Bauman, "A Sociological Theory of Postmodernity." From Zygmunt
Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity. Copyright© 1992 by Zygmunt Bau-
man. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books, Ltd., pp. 187-203;
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

31 Niklas Luhmann, "Describing the Future." From Niklas Luhmann, Observa-

tions on Modernity. Translated by William Whobrey. Originally published in
German as Beobachtungen der Moderne, copyright © 1992 Westdeutcher
Verlag GmbH. Reprinted with the permission of the publishers, Stanford
University Press. This translation copyright © 1998 by the Board of Trustees
of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Stanford University Press, 1998, pp.
63, 64-74.

The publishers apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be
grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in the next
edition or reprint of this book.
 Introduction

Contemporary Sociological Theory is the sister volume to Classical Sociological

Theory. It is common to distinguish between "classical" and "contemporary"
work, but the demarcation is vague. The dividing line continually shifts, in large
part because of the dynamic nature of the relationship between "classical" and
"contemporary" work. In the 1930s, for example, the great American sociological
theorist Talcott Parsons set out to synthesize what he regarded as crucial in the
"classical" tradition. In his view, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim were among the
most important classics. Each wrote during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Parsons saw himself as continuing work they had started. Part of what
made them classical was precisely this continuing importance their work had for
later analyses. But Parsons also saw himself as the new kid on the block, an
innovator in his contemporary scene. He continued to produce influential original
work through the 1960s and remained active until his death in 1979. Today,
however, his work seems "classical." This has four meanings:
First, calling work "classical" means partly just that it has stood the test of time
and we are still interested in it. It is the opposite of "best forgotten." In this sense,
Parsons surely aspired to have his work become classical.
Second, work we call classical tends to define broad orientations in the field of
sociology that resonate for contemporary work. Reference to classical sociological
theory is used to signal analytic approaches; it offers signposts to guide readers in
seeing the intellectual heritage on which new theorists are drawing. In this way, not
every old work gets called "classical," since a classic is something that still orients
contemporary work. Reference to Parsons signals, for example, a concern for
"functionalist" approaches to questions of social integration, that is for understand-
ing different social institutions and practices in terms of how they contribute to the
successful workings of the whole. Moreover, some work falls from the classical
canon when it no longer speaks to us.
Third, we term work "classical" when we acknowledge that there have been
major new developments since it was written. This doesn't mean that the "classical"
work has been superseded. What it means is that new perspectives and debates have
been introduced to which the classical social theorist has not been able to respond. In
Parsons' case, a variety of innovations began to come to the fore in the 1960s. Some
of these were direct criticisms of or challenges to Parsons' functionalism. He did
respond to many, defending his perspective most of the time but also modifying it
where he saw potential for improvement. Other parts of the new work, however,
represented approaches that Parsons didn't consider. Jurgen Habermas, for example,
combined some of Parsons' concerns with Marxism and critical theory in a way that
2 INTRODUCTION

Parsons had never anticipated. I Jeffrey Alexander led the way in developing a
"neofunctionalism" that not only built on Parsons and Durkheim, but shifted the
emphases of their theories in much more cultural directions, away from the sides of
their work that emphasized economic organization and social institutions, and away
from strong presumptions of value consensus. 2 Thus, classical theory still matters,
but we see it in new ways based on new ideas and interests. This is also the reason
why new theorists are occasionally added to the "classics."
Fourth, in order to understand classical social theory we make a special effort to
understand its distinctive historical context. In fact all theory needs to be understood
in historical context, but part of what we mean when we identify certain theories as
"contemporary" is that we share the same broad historical situation with their
authors. For this reason, it is important to examine the historical context that has
shaped contemporary work as well.

Mid-Twentieth-Century Transformations in Sociological Theory's Historical

Context

When Parsons started writing his great synthetic work, The Structure of Social
Action, in the 1930s, the First World War was the biggest historical watershed
separating the classical theories from the contemporary. Soon, though, the Great
Depression of the 1930s - which was contemporary to Parsons - loomed larger as a
divide. This was not just because of its historical importance but because of its
theoretical importance. It led to work like that of the economist John Maynard
Keynes and the sociologist Thomas Marshall. Keynes' theory played a central role in
changing the way both social scientists and policy-makers thought about the rela-
tionship of the state to the economy. Keynes held that states could use their financial
clout as major purchasers of goods and services to help to stimulate the economy
and smooth out the tendency Marx had noted for capitalism to suffer recurrent
crises of overproduction. 3 His theories influenced the New Deal in the United States
and the rise of the welfare state in Europe - both projects that shaped social life and
changed the issues with which social theory had to deal. Marshall's theory of
citizenship also responded to the Great Depression (and to the new sorts of state
responses), suggesting that citizenship needed to be reconceptualized as referring not
merely to political rights, but to social and economic rights as well. 4
In addition to the Great Depression - and recovery from it- the rise of fascism, the
Second World War, and the Cold War between the Communist East and the Capit-
alist West were shaping influences on social theory during the course of Talcott
Parsons' career. There is debate about how they influenced his writing - for example,
about the extent to which he was an advocate for what he saw as American values in
a specifically Cold War framework- but there is no doubt that the historical context
shaped his work.
These factors also shaped the work of most social theorists writing between the
1930s and 1960s. They posed big questions - like, what enabled some societies to
develop democratic institutions while others were prone to dictatorship? As the
American sociologist Barrington Moore famously argued, this was a matter of
different paths to modernization and of some very old historical conditions - like
 INTRODUCTION 3

whether the premodern agriculture of a country involved serfs who were tied to the
land in near slavery, or was based on more or less independent peasants. 5 The
Cold War influenced the ways in which American sociologists looked at other soci-
eties in the world. This was a matter not just of theoretical orientation but of financial
support. Much new research was made possible by the fact that the US government
gave grants for "foreign area studies," including help to social scientists to learn non-
Western languages and engage in detailed studies of other ways of life. The govern-
ment was concerned that in order to compete effectively with the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, America needed experts on other societies. This provided the basis for great
expansion in social knowledge. At the same time, this knowledge was often guided by
theories that asked whether other societies were likely to become "modern" in the
European and American way- that is, as capitalist democracies - or in the problem-
atic communist way. It took some time before people began to consider that there
might be other ways of becoming modern that didn't fit either of those models - or
that the economic and political power of the US and Europe might stand in the way of
development in other countries as often as it helped it.
Especially from the 1960s forward, the historical context started to change in
important ways. Not least of all, young sociologists began their careers who had
been born after the Second World War and never experienced the Great Depression.
This doesn't mean that there was a sharp break. Many of the sociologists who
became important leaders of the field in the 1960s and '70s were old enough to
remember the war (if not very much the Depression). New historical perspectives
were important, though, both in leading to new theoretical ideas and in encouraging
different uses of resources offered by classical theory. Immanuel Wallerstein, for
example, emerged as one of the most important revitalizers of the Marxist tradition,
and moved it forward in new and distinctive ways with his "world systems theory." 6
One of Wallerstein's central points was that in a world dominated by capitalist trade,
poorer countries could not grow wealthy simply by following the example of those
that had done so earlier. Because European and American countries already domin-
ated the core of the capitalist world economy, the fate of other countries was not
simply based on how "modern" they were, but on whether and how they could
compete in capitalist trade. Countries with less advanced technology and industry
were always at a disadvantage in this. The likelihood that they would suffer under
dictatorships rather than democracies was also explicable not just by internal
factors, but by the influence of more powerful countries - including the US and
the USSR.
To draw a dividing line in the 1960s is partly symbolic but not arbitrary. It reflects
the importance of the baby boom generation born after the Second World War, the
renewed attention to internationalism and globalization that flourished in that
decade after relative isolationism in the 1950s, the emergence of important new
voices from the global South or Third World, the beginnings of the greatest phase so
far of the modern women's movement, a variety of other social movements from
environment to gay rights, and the impact of the American war in Vietnam. The
events of the 1960s reshaped what social theorists saw as most significant in
the social world - even if they did not always see these things in the same way. The
1960s pushed sociological theorists to focus more on processes of social change (and
resistance to change), on social inequality and on processes of marginalization and
4 INTRODUCTION

exploitation that shape it, on power relations and social movements that contest
them, and on cultural and other differences among individuals and groups. These
themes animate the work of many of the authors included in this volume.

Individual and Society

Among the themes that came to the fore, none was more important than the
relationship between the individual and society. This was obviously not all new,
but it became newly unsettled and demanded attention. Erving Goffman, an Ameri-
can sociologist who changed forever the way in which people understood inter-
personal relations, was only a few years younger than Parsons and began to publish
important work in the 1950s, but his analyses did not become widely influential
until the 1960s. By then they were pivotal, however, in calling attention to the way
that ritual and strategy intertwined in everyday phenomena like dating. 7 A dare is
like theater, in that each person has a role to play, and can play it better or worse. To
some extent everyone knows that they are playing roles, not simply expressing
themselves openly. At the same time, a date - like all social interaction - calls for
improvisation. Participants seek to manage the impressions others form of them. But
in order to do this successfully, they have to accept the social roles at least to some
extent. Among other things, the popularity of Goffman's work reflected a new
critical perspective on the social conformity of the 1950s.
One feature in the changed context was a widespread sense that people had more
choice about their lives and the social roles they would assume. This reflected the
new opportunities opening up in a society that was rapidly growing wealthier. The
percentage of the population going to college more than tripled, for example,
reflecting not only growing wealth but the growing shift from an industrial to an
information society. As the American sociologist Daniel Bell wrote in one of the first
books to analyze this change, to an ever-greater extent society was being organized
around the production of knowledge, not only material goods. 8 Renewed attention
to individuals and how they might fit into society was also shaped by what another
American social theorist, Philip Rieff, called "the triumph of the therapeutic." 9 By
this, Rieff meant the prominent place that both introspection and attempts at
reformation of the self had assumed in modern culture. People not only went to
therapists, they expected therapeutic work from ministers, teachers, and even televi-
sion. This encouraged sociologists not only to analyze therapy, but to ask what was
behind the change in culture.
The critical theorist Herbert Marcuse noted that capitalism had long seemed to
require a certain repression of impulses. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, for example, Weber had described the importance of saving and re-
investment, both dependent on resisting impulses to enjoy luxuries. Equally, it was
important for workers and managers alike to be committed to hard work, discip-
lined, and rationalistic. This extended from strictly economic realms, Marcuse
suggested, to sexuality and artistic creativity. (This is one reason why the Bohemian
artist had long seemed such an affront to capitalism and to businessmen's under-
standing of rationalism.) The more consumer-oriented capitalism of the late 1950s
and 1960s, however, brought with it a loosening of repression. 10 Not least, Marcuse
 INTRODUCTION 5

argued, disciplining workers was no longer the main issue for capitalists; it was
increasingly supplanted by motivating consumers. This could be a matter of ir-
rational eroticism, for example selling cars by showing them with sexy models
draped over the hood. Tolerance for new levels of aesthetic and erotic expression
not only encouraged consumption, it muted tendencies to challenge the established
order. In the era of the Keynesian welfare state, the established system of power and
wealth was better able to manage the resistance and rebellions of ordinary people.
This very idea is an indication of why we see this period as "contemporary" in regard
to society and social theory, even though there have obviously been significant
changes.
There were many different ways in which sociologists explored the relationship
between individual and society. These drew on different roots in earlier, "classical"
social theory. What the new theorists shared was a sense that there was a tension in
this relationship. Although most agreed that there was no such thing as "pure
individuality" outside of society, and that human beings developed personhood
only as parties to social relationships, they did not take this to mean that the
relationship between individuals and actually existing forms of society was always
harmonious or fulfilling. On the contrary, in various ways these theorists pointed to
how people found themselves limited by their social conditions. This was a matter
not just of blockages, of course, but often also of the absence of support systems. At
the same time, people's aspirations did not simply come from within them; they were
socially produced. Whether it was a matter of wanting faster cars, bigger TVs, or
more fashionable clothes, this could not be understood simply from looking inside
individuals, it had to be understood at a sociological level. Likewise, the means
people chose to pursue their goals were not automatic. Some would drop out of
school to enjoy consumer goods immediately, even though this hurt their long-term
prospects. Others would study hard in order to get into competitive colleges and
graduate schools. Some would stick completely to legal means, while others would
turn to crime. Who did what was based on an interaction between personal charac-
teristics and social organization.
One important approach to these questions focused on the ways in which people
developed identities for themselves and for others. "Labeling theory" was rooted
in the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead and his followers. 11 It
started with the commonplace observation that many children steal but few become
professional thieves (and conversely, most do homework but few become real
scholars). Labeling theorists acknowledged that differences in talent and opportun-
ity were and are important. For example, having parents wealthy enough to be able
to send their children to college is a big predictor of whether those children become
well-educated. But they added that what happens is also shaped by the labels that
others come to apply (and individuals sometimes accept for themselves). Thus a
youth who is caught and punished repeatedly for theft may come to be known as a
thief (while one who gets away does not). Having the identity "thief" may close
some doors, making it harder for example to get an honest job. Accepting the
label for oneself may reduce inhibitions against stealing in the future. In short,
the identity of the person and the social role ("thief," in this example) are both
socially constructed. They do not exist "objectively," separate from social life and
culture.
6 INTRODUCTION

The Social and Cultural Construction of Knowledge

Many of the new explorations of the individual/society relationship were guided by

attention to the capacities that individuals have for constructing the social world in
new ways. For example, as Alfred Schutz emphasized, the process of people sharing
understanding of their social world - what he called intersubjectivity - helps to
shape both the social world itself and people's identities as individuals within it.12
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann drew on Schutz's work to explore the ways in
which the very construction of social knowledge was itself analyzable not simply as
a matter of externally verifiable discovery but as a reflection of social relations and
everyday life concerns. 13 These theorists drew on phenomenology, a theoretical
approach that had developed largely outside of sociology as a form of attention to
individual consciousness, to develop a new sociology of knowledge and intersubjec-
tive understanding. Durkheim had been interested in phenomenology and some
sociologists - like Goffman and Garfinkel - combined Durkheimian attention to
social structure with phenomenological concern for the ways in which individuals
construct their social lives and their knowledge of the everday social world.
The classical social theory of George Herbert Mead addressed similar questions
and provided an alternative approach for many of the new generation of thinkers.
Mead's theory was rooted in pragmatism, an American approach to philosophy that
emphasized the extent to which all knowledge was grounded in practical experience
and communication - not based simply on holding up a mirror to objective reality. 14
There are many different ways to understand any specific object in the world, the
pragmatists suggested; which ones become important to people will depend on the
tasks they are engaged in and the ways others they care about grasp the same objects.
What this implied is that there is no way that anyone simply and directly gets reality
right. Different cultures and even different scientific theories can with equal validity
understand similar phenomena differently.
Questions about the social construction of knowledge - whether everday or
scientific - have become one of the major themes of the post-1960s period. Here
the work of theorists reflects both struggles to come to terms with history and new
awareness of cross-cultural diversity. For example, a number of social theorists have
addressed the transformations in Western culture. Some of their work was shaped by
a concern to understand how what had seemed in the nineteenth century to be a
straightforward march of reason and progress could issue in the twentieth century in
Nazism - odor that matter Stalinism. Their explorations involved not just research
on fascism or communism as special cases, but inquired into how there might be
potential for such disasters built into Western culture more generally. 15
Michel Foucault, for example, sought to uncover the different characteristic
approaches to knowledge of different epochs and emphasized the dramatic differ-
ences between them. 16 He saw the modern period as shaped by the rise of the
individual, both as the basis of epistemology - the source of knowledge understood
as empirical observation and philosophical reflection - and as a basic value - the
independent actor. But instead of presenting this simply as progress, looking at it
from within an individualistic point of view, he presented this as opening up a new
set of problems. Individualism was a way of seeing the world and living in it,
 INTRODUCTION 7

Foucault argued, and as such it was not a starting point for analysis but an effect to
be explained. What produced this effect, he suggested, was more than anything else
a set of disciplinary practices. The modern individual was ideologically understood
as the fount of freedom - a self craving free expression - but in fact was produced by
demanding of people that they take on the task of self-discipline. The new individual
was a person constantly aware of the gaze of others, including especially the gaze of
authority. This was produced by the development of medical examinations, of
schooling, of government statistics. It was reflected in an approach to law and
morality that emphasized not just what people did - the external manifestations of
wrongdoing - but also their inner intentions. Even sexuality, Foucault suggested,
was not simply a natural self-expression but a social phenomenon. It was shaped by
ideas about "normality" and "performance" that were reflected not just in hostility
towards homosexuals or other "deviants" but in anxieties to conform to expect-
ations, the proliferation of "self-help" and "how-to" books and comparisons of each
individual's own experience to that in movies or literature. 17
Foucault was one of the most important social theorists to emerge in an initially
French intellectual movement commonly called "structuralism" and later "post-
structuralism." 18 Structuralism shared some of its classical roots with the sociology
of Emile Durkheim, especially in its examination of the social sources of knowledge
and intellectual categories. 19 Influenced by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,
structuralism stressed the extent to which systems of meaning (language or culture)
were based on the reference of terms to each other. Thus words get their meaning
from relations to other words, not simply by pointing to things, nor from historical
origins. The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein developed similar notions in
his later work. 20 Both structuralism and Wittgenstein influenced social theory in and
after the 1960s. They challenged not only ideas about language but underlying
theories of knowledge that approached it as a more or less transparent mental
representation of external reality. Some structuralists, like the French anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss, endeavored to decode universal patterns of meaning, possibly
rooted in the brain itself. 21 Others, including Foucault, focused increasingly on the
ways power and historical change shaped knowledge; this was what led to the label
of "post-structuralism." Post-structuralists emphasized the difficulties of transcend-
ing specific cultures or systems of meaning without the· dominance of one over
another. They also urged attention to the ways in which each system of knowledge
blocked attention to some kinds of understanding, imposing silences as weU as
enabling speech. Together these influences led to a new concern with culture not
as a source of values that unite a society (as Parsons had thought of it), but as an
arena of contestation and difference.
Another post-structuralist sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu emphasized "symbolic vio-
lence" and the "struggle over classification." 22 Even within one society, he argued,
culture was used not only to unite but to dominate. Widespread ideology claimed
that culture was simply a matter of meaning, thought, or aesthetic taste. This
suggested that it was somehow the opposite of power and economic determination.
But clearly, claims to have highly cultivated taste could be used to exclude those with
"baser" tastes. Moreover, ideas like "art for art's sake" might seem to represent the
reversal of the economic world but in fact they revealed economies of their own in
which participants struggled over "cultural capital" rather than material, monetary
8 INTRODUCTION

capital. The logic of the competition was different, but it was still a competition.
Indeed, to gain prestige as an artist, for example, it was necessary to demonstrate
that one put creativity ahead of material gain, to show individual "genius" required
not producing art that found too easy and widespread a popular acceptance. To be
seen as a literary artist and not just a writer, thus, a novelist had to differentiate
himself from a journalist. 23 Outside the specialized field of art, the state and other
powerful actors used cultural goods - like diplomas and public honors - to supple-
ment the direct workings of the monetary economy. The operation of schemes of
classification by race, gender, class, sexual orientation, artistic taste or other criteria
offered a way to uphold social hierarchies that granted privilege to those on top.

Inequality, Power, and Difference

One of the big issues that changed sociological theory in and after the 1960s was a
new level of attention to class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Of
course these had been noticed by earlier generations. Class was a central theme for
both Marx and Weber. The Chicago School that helped to pioneer American
sociology had studied ethnicity both as a feature of urban life and as one of the
issues resulting from immigration to the United States. 24 Chicago sociologists had
also addressed race, though the most important classic work was that of America's
first great Black sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois. 25 Despite the fact that sociologists had
always been attentive to issues of social inequality and difference, though, during the
period of functionalist dominance after the Second World War the theoretical
emphasis had fallen overwhelmingly on social integration, consensus, and factors
that held society together. The development of new social movements and conflicts
during the 1960s and '70s brought inequality, difference, and struggle to center stage.
One symptom of this was that when Talcott Parsons produced his account of
classical social theory, Marx was not an important figure. Each new generation has
the opportunity to redefine what it finds useful in the classics, however, and during
the 1960s and '70s Marx was reclaimed, as were the later Marxists like the Italian
Antonio Gramsci, and the German critical theorists. They had always been better
known in Europe than in the US (and indeed, functionalism was more dominant in
the US). Younger sociologists were looking for different classics largely in order to
analyze better the inequalities and conflicts they saw in contemporary society.
Influenced by Marx and by actual social conflicts, they presented a model of society
in which tensions and struggles were basic and unity was largely maintained by
power. Parsons, by contrast, had paid little attention to the ways in which some
people wielded power over others and controlled aspects of social organization.
When he used the word "power" his emphasis was on the overall capacity of a
society, not on the dominance of some members by others. 26
Parsons and other functionalists emphasized the "systemic" character of social
life, the extent to which social organization fitted together so that every feature was
necessary to the whole. The new generation of theorists criticized the implicit
conservatism in this. They asked more frequently how society could change, how
individuals could have an impact on the whole, and whether the functionalist model
of the system masked real differences among members of a society. When functional-
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