university of north texas

Master’s Final Examination

SOCI 5150 – Contemporary Theory

Jenna Denning

3/13/2015

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Jenna Denning

Masters Comprehensive Examination

Theory Question Jenna Denning

Dr. Milan Zafirovski

Contemporary Social Structure & Function

Following the rise of the Industrial Revolution, Western society began a dramatic

shift into the modern era, defined by the harnessing of knowledge and science, distinctly

different from that of the pre-industrial period. Characteristic of the modern period was

full employment, job security, and the creation of the welfare state during the twentieth

century, hallmarks which have garnered much notice from contemporary sociological

theorists. Full-time employment and security of employment which individuals of the

modern period enjoyed is increasingly important because recent shifts in labor

structures are defining what scholars and theorists are now defining as the post-

modernism period. Contemporary theorists of this time period such as Pitirim Sorokin,

Robert Merton, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Neil Smelser, Pierre Bourdieu,

Jürgen Habermas, and Ulrich Beck took notice of social structure and function during

the contemporary period, and made certain points on how social structures and

functions have shifted and changed and effected individuals. In this essay, I will look at

these theorists specifically and how they view social structure as Western societies

passed through modernity, to what is seen by many as a period of post-modernity.

These theorists explain first how society structies change and how this affects

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structures and functions of society on a macro level, and delving even further into how

this affects the individuals of society in the micro level.

Part One: Macro Social Structure Theory

As Smelser proposes, Sociology as a science has been first and foremost a

macro-level field of scientific study, bringing to mind that society as a whole has “long

been and ultimate point of reference in the organization of social life” (Smelser 1997).

For example, political science uses the nation, state, and national government to base

study. For economics, the macroeconomic unit of study has been the national economy,

and cultural and social anthropologists typically primarily focus their study on “culture,”

stressing commonalities in variables such as “values, language, beliefs and sense of

identity.” (Smelser 1997). Lastly, for Sociology, our corresponding unit of study

historically has been the national society, “the seat of social integration and social

institutions” (Smelser 1997). Earlier contemporary theorists, such as Sorokin and

Merton, use macro-level analysis to discuss social structure, but as Smelser points out

in his book, continuing to focus only on the macro-level in Sociology may lead us to

miss key elements of society; i.e. how social structures affect individuals. We will see

how more recent contemporary theorists begin to take a more micro-level look at

Sociology later in this analysis. Although contemporary theorists are recently noticing

changing social structures affecting individuals on the micro-level, it is important first to

understand how social structures change over time on the macro-level of analysis.

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Causes and Explanations of Socio-Structural Change

In his 1957 work, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Sorokin posits through multiple

causes and explanations of socio-structural change which have been given as

examples by which societies learn from each other and change. First, he discusses

“externalistic interpretation” of social change, which is a theory based upon the physics

theory of rest and equilibrium. The fundamental understanding behind this theory is of

an understanding of society that is always in a state of rest and equilibrium, “until some

‘external force’ thrusts it out of its place and keeps it moving and changing” (pg. 632).

Without some sort of external stimulus acting upon the society in question, by this

thought process then the society is therefore assumed to be unable to change and will

remain in equilibrium.

The second theory of social change can be seen as exactly the opposite of the

external theory: the “immanent theory” of sociocultural change, whereby “in regard to

any sociocultural system, it claims that it changes by virtue of its own forces and

properties” (Sorokin 633). Again, fully opposite of the external theory, this theory states

a society cannot help changing even if all external factors outside of the society are held

constant. The social change is intrinsic, and built into the system regardless of external

forces acting upon the society.

There is a third theory of socio-structural change proposed by Sorokin, the

“intermediary or integral” theory of change. This theory “attempts to view a change of

any socio-cultural phenomenon as the result of the combined external and internal

forces” (Sorokin 634). Sorokin’s main critique in this theory of change is that oftentimes

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there is an assumption of equal force coming from both sides of the equation without

any real attempt being made to understand which side plays a more critical role in

causing change.

Upon giving three theories by which societal functions change, Sorokin then

clearly voices his support for the “immanent theory” of sociocultural change. His first

reason for this is simple: we do not know of any social system that does not change “in

the course of its existence or in the course of time” (Sorokin 634). He continues on to

say this fact is incontestable and unquestionable, so to what causes this we must delve

further. By knowing there is no evidence of any known society remaining in equilibrium,

or at rest to say, we can then know change is simply due to the fact that the society

exists. As stated previously, change is built in to the framework of a society’s overall

system, regardless of external forces. Sorokin effectively supports the “immanent

theory” of socio-structural change, stating his evidence is “sufficient in order to make the

principle of immanent change of the sociocultural phenomena valid” (Sorokin 636).

Because a society exists, therefore it is on a path to change simply because of its own

existence regardless of external factors.

Examples and Illustrations of Social Structure Change

More recently than Sorokin, in 2001 Jürgen Habermas discusses macro-level

social structure changes in his book, The Postnational Constellation. He outlines the

long term structural changes in macro-level social processes, building upon Sorokin’s

social change theory by giving actual examples of social structures changing over time

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during the twentieth century. Habermas’s major social processes of the twentieth

century are characterized by being longer rhythms of social change passing through the

century; specifically, demographic changes and structural changes in the nature of

employment.

Demographically, the twentieth century saw an unprecedented explosion in the

world’s population, much more so than in the nineteenth century before. Largely due to

improvements in health and technology, death rates fell while birth rates took a longer

time period to drop, causing populations to rise not only in the “Third World” societies,

but also in affluent societies as well, as Habermas describes. This trend in population

growth during the twentieth century, which even now “expert opinions do not expect a

stabilization of world population” (Habermas 39), began to become “the mass” or “the

masses,” which eventually becomes a social structure or function all of its own, typically

referred to as the “proletariat.” Habermas recognized usage of the social form of “the

masses” in the nineteenth century, however it was not until the twentieth century that

“massive flows of people, mass organizations, and mass actions began to appear

intrusive enough to give rise to the vision of the ‘revolt of the masses’” (Habermas 39).

The plight of the proletariat and the changing structure of the welfare state and work

regime are of unique interest, however, this is of a micro-level analysis and will be

discussed later on in this essay.

Habermas briefly touches upon his astonishment at the speed in which the labor

system changed in the twentieth century, i.e. that “structural changes in the labor

system ignore the thresholds of centuries or millennia” (Habermas 40). Spurned by the

Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, the world labor market flourished in the

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twentieth century by further improvements in technologies, research and innovation.

The labor system made multiple changes during this time period, outlined by Habermas,

first; shifting from the realm of primary agricultural work that had defined humankind for

a millennia “into the secondary sectors of manufacturing industries,” (Habermas 40),

following the introduction of the Industrial Revolution. As industries grew more

specialized in the twentieth century, they again shifted, moving into “the tertiary sectors

of commerce, transportation, and services” (Habermas 40). Lastly, when postindustrial

societies moved from the modern to the postmodern, there was also a shift in work to

the quarternary sector, characterized by “knowledge-based economic activities such as

high-tech industries or the health-care sector, banking or public administration, all of

which depend on the influx of new information and, ultimately, on research and

innovation” (Habermas 40). Habermas made a point to mention the structural changes

of work and the nature of employment during the twentieth century to highlight the

immense changes the function of work undertook in such an incredibly short period of

time. What he refers to as a truly radical break from the past, the work force shifts from

“the masses” mainly tilling the soil in rural lifestyle to moving into the urban cites,

working for factories and then the service industries all within the course of a century.

Both of these sociostructural changes follow the theoretical rules of immanent social

change laid out by Sorokin earlier in that they are of a society’s functions changing

within itself without help of external societal factors. Once the Industrial Revolution

occurred, the modern society was ushered in, and with it many social structure changes

including demographic changes and structural changes in the nature of employment.

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A Final Note on Macro-Level Sociostructural Change: Cycles in Social Processes

While there is similarity between Sorokin and Habermas in their writings on social

change theory and examples of these, they disagree as to the overall rhythms of social

change. Sorokin believes in a cyclical pattern of social process with only limited infinite

possibilities of changes and rhythms in social structure. He uses Aristotle’s argument to

parallel his own here, saying “any change can be thought of only as a passage between

antithetical terms, between two contrary...or contradictory terms” (Sorokin 653). With

social processes, there are usually five to ten types of “classes,” with the classification

of main types being relatively numerically small. Any social structure within a society

only has a finite amount of phases it can change through before it will eventually return

back to its beginning and start the cycle over again. For example, Sorokin gives:

isolation-contact; assimilation-conflict-adaptation; order-disorder; and so on. He admits

that these different stages may have different durations or even skip each other, but

once the cycle of social process reaches the end it will begin back over again.

In juxtaposition to Sorokin, Habermas sees social process changing in a linear-

type fashion. For Habermas, social processes are linear, meaning they have a strict

trajectory with a specific direction of change or a destiny, for example, a process that

Sorokin rejected outright in his book. Linear processes of social change may be

possible in truth, according to Sorokin, however only for a short span of time. Any linear

process of change is merely just a part in a long, nonlinear cyclical trend.

Part Two: Micro Social Structure Theory

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In Sociology, the historical approach of theory has been to look at the science at

the macro-level, however Smelser ponders “about the continuing viability of this focus”

(Smelser 50). Which is why, in the later theoretical writings of such authors as Beck

and Bauman, while aspects of the macro-level are analyzed, theorists start to assess

how the macro-level social structures of a society are affecting individuals at the micro-

level. This will be the focus of part two of this analysis. The micro-level sociological

analysis, according to Smelser, simply means “the study of the person as oriented to

the external, especially the social, world” (Smelser 5). Contemporary theorists of the

modern and post-modernities have focused on the welfare state and the change in labor

functions primarily and how these changes are affecting collective individual attitudes

within society, which will be the bulk of analysis in part two.

The Welfare State

As Habermas observed, the booming population during the twentieth century

caused dramatic and radical changes in the system of work, however, these collections

of “the masses” began to give rise to the psychology of the “’revolt of the masses’”

(Habermas 39). During the Great Depression Era came the revolutionary New Deal

policies and thus the welfare state was born. In his 1998 critique of society post-New

Deal policies, Anthony Giddens analyzes macro-level functions, stating the overall

purpose of state functions should be to provide public goods to individuals of society.

Public goods in this sense include peace, security, education, and public benefits that

the state should provide, including the welfare state. Giddens calls for “reform directed

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towards greater transparency and openness, as well as the introduction of new

safeguards against corruption” (Giddens 73), to improve welfare state programs.

Giddens is in full support of the comprehensive welfare system, as he sees

society now structured in forms of inclusion and exclusion. In contemporary societies,

two main forms of exclusion have moved to the forefront, the first is the “exclusion of

those at the bottom, cut off from the mainstream of opportunities society has to offer”

(Giddens 103). The second is the voluntary exclusion, “the ‘revolt of the elites’: a

withdrawal from public institutions on the part of more affluent groups, who chose to live

separately from the rest of society” (Giddens 103). It is because of these exclusions and

inequalities Giddens that supports the theory and ideology of the welfare state, or

‘positive welfare’ as he refers to it. He reflects on the welfare state policy’s critics and

how they have claimed that it can be:

Essentially undemocratic, depending as it does upon a top-down

distribution of benefits. Its motive force is protection and care, but it does

not give enough space to personal liberty. Some forms of welfare

institution are bureaucratic, alienating and inefficient, and welfare benefits

can create perverse consequences that undermine what they were

designed to achieve (Giddens 113).

Giddens however, sees these critiques as potential avenues for the welfare state to be

improved as post-modernism societies further develop.

Zygmunt Bauman analyzed the welfare state around the same time as Giddens,

agreeing with him about the function of the welfare state and the need for it within

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society. He wrote that the functions of the welfare state are to first; increase the overall

wellness and decrease hardship for people and second; to ensure economic survival of

labor and capital. Similar to Giddens’s reasons for continuing the welfare state into the

future despite critique, Bauman gives moral reasons for the continuation of the welfare

state as well. He agrees with critics on the grounds the economic argument for the

welfare state is no longer efficient and claims that in its stead the moral view is now the

main argument for the continuation of the welfare state. As rational human actors, it is

morally right to take care of one another within society and we should use the

humanitarian point of view to “reassert, boldly and explicitly, the ethical reason for the

welfare state—the only reason needed by the welfare state to justify its presence in a

humane and civilized society” (Bauman 78). He asserts in his book that is it the moral

responsibility of governments to take care of its citizens via the welfare state, especially

those who may have fallen on hard times and need the assistant of welfare state

programs.

The Welfare State Divide: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the welfare state on the micro-level by discussing how

much differently members of the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the proletariat (working

class) view the policies. The bourgeoisie will favor the welfare state only as long as

they see a gain for them and in his example the gain was purely economic. As he puts

it, the ruling class will support the welfare state as long as its policies “’create[s] the

conditions favourable to lasting growth, and the confidence of the investors’” (Bourdieu

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46). By provides some sort of economic benefit for the individuals of the ruling class will

they support the welfare state. Unfortunately, this undermines Bauman’s argument in

favor of support for the welfare state because it is simply moral and just. It is true the

economic arguments for the welfare state are no longer efficient, but by Bourdieu’s logic

it is in the bourgeoisie’s best interest to essentially “bury the welfare state” in order to

safeguard their own economic entitlements. Because of the nature of the ruling class,

Bourdieu gives example of how they will only support the welfare state if they see

benefit for themselves, showing a possible complication to Bauman’s morality

argument.

The Change in Work Structure moving from Modernism to Post-Modernism

As society moves from modernism into a period of post-modernism, the way

individuals view and define “work” has begun to shift and change. Specifically in

Western societies, modernism was defined by a fixed and stable work society.

Revolutionized by the ideals of Henry Ford and his “Fordism” process, workers in the

modernism era could enjoy the stability of their careers and could stay at their careers

for possibly a lifetime up until retirement. According to Bauman, Fordism was based

simply on Ford’s desire to make his employees “dependent on employment in his

factory as he himself depended for his wealth and power on employing them” (Bauman

21). The modern era was characterized by the Fordism beliefs such as this where

workers could expect that once they began their career, they could feel a relative

amount of job stability and not have the need to worry about their job security.

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As Western societies move from modernism to post-modernism, the work

structure has begun to take a different shape. Ulrich Beck provides an interesting

account of how work society has broken down in recent years in his book, Brave New

World of Work, saying essentially the structure of work has begun to devolve back to

that of the East, or as he terms it, the “Brazilianization” of the West. He begins his book

by stating “the unintended consequence of the neoliberal free-market utopia is the

Brazilianization of the West” (Beck 1). The rapid increase in scientific technology and

our increasing dependence on this technology could be seen as a potential cause of the

destructive force on the work structure, bringing about feelings of insecurity and unease

for individuals who are either working or attempting to work, in the post-modern era.

Beck uses Brazil as an example to show how Western work structures are beginning to

unintentionally model work structures of places such as Brazil to show how the Western

work society is devolving in the post-modern era. He believes there is a crisis of full

employment that was the hallmark of the work structure of the modernity period. Moving

forward, as the West continues on in this path, he predicts “in another ten years only a

half of employees will hold a full-time job for a long period of their lives, and the other

half will, so to speak, work à la bréslienne” (Beck 2). Overall, the general overlay of the

work structure moving into the post-modernism period is that the West has begun to

move away from secure full employment for most workers. A quintessential feature of

the post-modern period, the West has begun to devolve in this regard and “Brazilianize”

back to a work structure like the East.

How Post-Modern Work Structures affect Individuals

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Looking at social structures within a micro-level analysis, this post-modern shift in

the work structure has affected how working-aged individuals construct meaning as they

react to losing confidence in having a stable career. Most workers were comfortable

with seeing their parents having stable and secure jobs for the duration of their working

lives and then retiring happily into the arms of social security benefits. Now, post-

modern workers are either working multiple full-time jobs during their career, or unable

to find full-time employment and having to juggle multiple part-time occupations to stay

out of the welfare state. Beck and Bauman both refer to this as the post-modern “risk

regime,” where individuals are now having accept and live with more inherent risk,

insecurity and uncertainty in their work lives. Economic insecurity is now the norm for

many in the Brazilianization of the West, and the insecurity workers feel leads to

unintended consequences, or a latent function, which was theoretically posed by Robert

Merton nearly thirty years earlier. In his book, Beck outlines how, through the entire

course of human history, individuals were defined by the work they did. Traditionally,

those who worked were lower class than the ruling class who did not have to work, and

as the modern period was ushered in, individuals began to own the work they did and

take pride in their careers. In post-modernism times, as full-time employment becomes

harder to find and individuals become more insecure about work, they must find a new

way to define themselves. When Beck and Bauman were writing their books, the main

feelings of the time were of insecurity and “unfreedom” (the dependence on welfare

state polices) . When the masses feel insecure about their careers and work futures,

their feeling lead to a theoretical “unfreedom” of sorts; a “iron cage of welfare-state

dependence” (Beck 96).

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The issue Beck and Bauman theorized with masses of workers feeling these

insecure and “unfree” feelings is that they eventually lead to the crumbling of democracy

and the whittling away of the political sphere. The freedom loss of the proletariat leads

to what is defined as “anomie,” a term used by Merton in his 1968 book and exemplified

here in this sense. Anomie, here, is to mean “the society becomes unstable and

therefore develops what Durkheim called ‘anomie’ (or normlessness)” (Merton 189).

Overall, societal goals are understood for individuals in each society and if an individual

finds he cannot meet these ascribed goals, he experiences anomie; the breakdown of

social bonds between an individual and the community (Merton). When workers cannot

achieve employment and experience anomie, the problem Bauman and Beck notice is

that the feelings of unfreedom leads to a passive proletariat who are pliable and

malleable to the ruling class. The ruling class will notice this and claim dominion over

the vast masses of insecure workers, using the passive masses for ruling classes’ own

gains to perpetuate their own successes. Bauman writes about the reproduction of fear

leading to an overwhelming ambivalent society united in indifference due to the

breakdown of labor. He writes of the proletariat, it is “their own lack of power that

crystallizes in their eyes as the awesome might of the strangers. The weak meets and

confronts the weak; but both feel like Davids fighting Goliaths” (Bauman 91). In

Bauman’s analysis, the safety nets have either weakened or fallen apart altogether as

the numbers of people who need them grow, so people have begun to become

ambivalently fearful of their futures and the society that they belong to.

Conclusion

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As Western societies move from modern to post-modern, theorists have begun to

look at social structures with much more interest than they did before. By giving us

definitions of macro and micro-level analyses from Smelser, we are able to understand

social structures at the macro-level and how they affect individuals within the micro-

level. At the macro-level, there is an interesting debate on how social structures change.

This is highlighted by Sorokin in his 1957 book and Habermas gives further examples of

this. The welfare state is a particularly interesting social structure that arose in the

twentieth century due to the Great Depression and overwhelming numbers of “the

masses” who were in need of assistance. Giddens gives thorough argument for why

the welfare state should exist in his book. Furthermore, although Bauman and Bourdieu

wrote in very close time frames, they hold opposite views on the future of the welfare

state, as apparent in their analysis and opinions. Analyzing social structure at the

micro-level, as we move into the post-modern era, work structures change and work

becomes less secure for individuals, which has led to Merton’s anomie, or unintended

consequences of fear and ambivalence. Beck and Bauman are both in agreement of

this, yet multiple futures are possible for the work society, according to Beck. Some

potential futures are positive, some not so positive, yet he attempts to predict the work

structure future for Western individuals. For all of these potential futures there is both a

hopeful stance and a pessimistic stance, but overall, future work societies should aim

no longer to regain full employment in the classical sense, in which

freedom, political action and democracy were at once facilitated,

dominated and circumscribed by paid labour...[rather] here the political

goal will be defined as something that is (also) possible: namely, to open

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up and secure new spaces in which a variety of activities—family work

and public-civil labour—are able to develop (Beck 15).

Perhaps, in this way Western societies can reverse the Brazilianization of the work

structures which have been occurring, or at least shift the way individuals view work to

alleviate the fear and ambivalence the masses of proletariat are feeling.

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Works Cited

I. Bauman, Z. (2001). The Individualized Society. Polity Press in association with

Blackwell Publishers, Inc: Malden, MA.

II. Beck, U. (2000). The Brave New World of Work. Polity Press, Blackwell

Publishers Ltd: Malden, MA.

III. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Acts of Resistance; Against the Tyranny of the Market. New

York Press, New York, NY.

IV. Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Polity

Press; Malden, MA. Press Malden, MA.

V. Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation. (First MIT Press Edition);

Polity Press.

VI. Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure (1968 Enlarged

Edition). New York, NY: The Free Press, New York.

VII. Smelser, N. J. (1997). Problematics of Sociology. Los Angeles, CA: University of

California Press.

VIII. Sorokin, P. (1957). Social and Cultural Dynamics (One-Volume Ed.). Boston,

MA: Porter Sargent Publisher.