1. Social Process and social systems How do individuals create society?

2. Classical and Contemporary theorists all stress that I S  Marx  Durkheim  Weber  Parsons  Mills  Ch. 13 discusses: Parsons (Sculli), Coleman, Habermas, Wallerstein and Tilly

3. Habermas:  The most widely read social theorist in Europe  Combines sociology and philosophy  Calls himself a Marxist  Combines Marx with Parsons  Main center of “Critical theory,” aka “Frankfurt school theory,” aka critical Marxism.  Supporters currently trying to chance the name of the Marxist section of the ASA.

4. The ideal speech situation  Critical theorists are, in general, democratic socialists, but they are not simply democrats because Nazi’s and fascists may have a majority.  The ideal speech situation says that the truth is what people would agree too in an unconstrained situation of open discussion and access.  They argue that issues of right and beauty are similar.  “Communicative ethics” involves a complex development of these ideas.

5. Who said, “Human beings have the ability to dream better futures than we have yet succeeded in dreaming. We have the ability to create much better societies than we have yet succeeded in creating.”  Joe Feagin’s Presidential ASA address 2001

6. How is society different from the solar system?  In general, the solar system is a closed system that merely repeats a set of dynamic motions, indefinitely.  From the knowledge of planets position and trajectory at any instant, positions can be predicted indefinitely into the past or future.  Although even the solar system is subject to chaos and to external effects.

7. Chaos  Lorentz showed that weather systems are not like this.  A mathematical replication consisting of three simple equations never repeats,  And, when entered into the computer again, produces a different trajectory,  Due to “deterministic chaos”  The “butterfly effect.”

8. The butterfly effect  If a system contains many amplifiers, then a force as weak as the wave of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil may generate a force as strong as a hurricane in the North Atlantic a month later.  Systems containing amplifiers (positive feedbacks) and dampers (negative feedbacks) will usually be chaotic.

9. Positive feedbacks  It is positive feedbacks that tend especially to amplify the effects of individual action, and therefore to make outcomes open.  Positive feedbacks often generate systems governed by the Matthew Principle that operate like a game of Monopoly, generating inequality and discontinuities.  This is one of the insights of conflict theory.

10. Negative Feedbacks  Negative feedbacks tend to act as controls and thermostats, fastening the system or parts of it into temporarily stable configurations.  The pervasiveness of negative feedbacks is one of the insights of functional theory.

11. Positive feedbacks in Myrdal’s An American Dilemma  “cumulative causation:” Minority deprivation ++ Majority racism + +

12. Negative feedback in Myrdal  Myrdal believed that the conflict of the dynamics of cumulative causation with normative, moral development towards an open, universalistic society creates a dilemma Institutionalized, systemic racism Violation of the American Creed of equal opportunity, etc + -

13. Interpretations of Myrdal  In a complex system of feedbacks, one can get very different dynamics by emphasizing different causal influences.  Feagin believes Myrdal overestimated the openness of the American Creed and underestimated the importance of struggles.  I.e. it was the ghetto rebellions, not white liberals that generated Civil Rights.

14. Positive Feedbacks in Feagin Unjust enrichment Unjust impoverishment + + Institutionalized racism and sexism + +

15. Negative feedbacks in Feagin The dialectical process by which such structures of oppression generate their own opposition and nemesis Institutionalized inequality Struggle and opposition + -

16. Braithwaite and Wilson  Both theories are represented as a causal model without significant feedbacks.  Try to figure out in what ways they reflect the concerns of classical sociological theory  and in what ways their actual dynamic is a feedback dynamic,  leading to partially chaotic social process.

17. The Durkheimian core of Braithwaite  The effects of being male, adolescent, unmarried, unemployed, or not hooked into a career are what Durkheim called “egoism” a lack of social bonds.  The effects of urbanism and mobility are what Durkheim called “anomie,” or weakening of social norms.  Social bonds and social norms reinforce each other.

18. The central positive feedbacks Association with other criminals Stigmatization and labeling Crime (and punishment) + + + +

19. The central negative feedbacks crime Strict punishment Stronger norms + + -

20. Net effects  The funny box in the lower left is Braithwaite’s attempt to get the best of both worlds.  He believes that strict punishment is needed to re- establish norms (reducing crime) but at the same time it reinforces labeling and stigmatized identity.  He thinks the Japanese criminal justice system is particularly good at punishing and then re- integrating, and that we need to learn from them.

21. The Marxian core of Wilson  “Its jobs, stupid!”  The “underclass” is generated by class.  He believes that the structure of institutionalized, cumulative inequality has lead to job flight, which then generated a deviant subculture of broken families and social isolation from job skills.

22. Some positive feedbacks Concentrated poverty and powerlessness Unemployment and job flight Creation of weak labor force attachment and underclass culture. ++ + +

23. Some negative feedbacks in A Bridge over the Racial Divide Structures of class and race inequality Opportunity to build an alliance around full employment policies + +