“That institution in society that helps people adjust to those things that are both undesirable and inescapable.”

 Emile Durkheim ◦ Religion is:  “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things...  which unites into one single moral community called a church all those who adhere to them“ ◦ Symbols  Signs to which we attach generalized meaning  A vehicle for the conception of meanings

◦ Binary Opposition  Normal/Deviant  Good/Evil ◦ Sacred and Profane  Sacred  Things set apart, forbidden  Awe & Reverence  Profane  All that is not sacred  The mundane, every day aspects of life

◦ Ritual  Required Practices  Forbidden Acts ◦ Shared Beliefs  Purpose & Meaning of Existence  Commonly-held moral code

 Emile Durkheim ◦ Solidarity  Social Integration  Moral Regulation ◦ The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)  Totemic Society & Religion  When a society worships its god, it is worshipping itself

 Karl Marx ◦ Mode of Production  Relations of Production  Superstructure  Family, Religion, the State, Education, Culture  Reproduce  Legitimate ◦ “Religion is the Opiate of the Masses”

 Max Weber ◦ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism  Life as a “calling” in service to God  Asceticism  Calvinism & Predestination  Search for signs of election ◦ Culture/Religion  Capitalism  Habits of thought & action  Formal rationality; hard work, self-denial  Accumulation of wealth

 Organizations as “Cultural Carriers” ◦ Formal Rationality as key cultural development of modern age  Calculability  Efficiency  Predictability  Maximum Control ◦ Rise of Bureaucracy

 Break down all tasks into a series of specialized tasks (aka “offices”) ◦ Power resides in the office, not the person  Hierarchy of command ◦ Power flows downward  Officials pursue a career in the organization ◦ Are full-time employees ◦ Universalistic v. Particularistic Criteria

 Work is organized by documents, stored in files  Impersonal conduct of work  Exhaustive rules

 Efficient, predictable organization of tasks  Effective means to an end  Clear delineation of authority & responsibility  Equality of opportunity  All “ideally”

 Impersonality ◦ Can trump humanity  Can protect incompetence  Goal displacement  Misplaced authority ◦ Challenger ◦ BART

 Frederick W. Taylor ◦ Attempt to apply principles of formal rationality to all industrial production ◦ Time & Motion Studies ◦ Piece-Rate Payment System ◦ Managers/Supervisors to  Coordinate & monitor production ◦ Worker criticisms

 Testing Taylorism (scientific management) ◦ The Human Factor ◦ The Hawthorne studies  Elton Mayo, Frederick Roethlisberger, William Dixon  The lighting experiment  The bank-wiring experiment ◦ Humans control the production process