Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
opposed to “objective.” As Herbert Marcuse put it in One Dimensional Man (1964),
critical sociology involves two value judgments:
1. The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather that it can be and ought
to be made worth living
2. The judgment that, in a given society, specific possibilities exist for the
amelioration of human life and specific ways and means of realizing these
possibilities
Critical sociology therefore rejects the notion of a value-free social science, but does
not thereby become a moral exercise or an individual “subjective” value preference
as a result. Being critical in the context of sociology is about using objective,
empirical knowledge to assess the possibilities and barriers to improving or
“ameliorating” human life.
Historical Materialism
The tradition of historical materialism that developed from Karl Marx’s work is
one of the central frameworks of critical sociology. As we noted in the discussion of
Marx above, historical materialism concentrates on the study of how our everyday
lives are structured by the connection between relations of power and economic
processes. The basis of this approach begins with the macro-level question of how
specific relations of power and specific economic formations have developed
historically. These form the context in which the institutions, practices, beliefs, and
social rules (norms) of everyday life are situated. The elements that make up a
culture—a society’s shared practices, values, beliefs, and artifacts—are structured
by the society’s economic mode of production: the way human societies act upon
their environment and its resources in order to use them to meet their needs. Hunter-
gatherer, agrarian, feudal, and capitalist modes of production have been the
economic basis for very different types of society throughout world history.
It is not as if this relationship is always clear to the people living in these different
periods of history, however. Often the mechanisms and structures of social life are
obscure. For example, it might not have been clear to the Scots who were expelled
from their ancestral lands in Scotland during the Highland clearances of the 18th and
19th centuries and who emigrated to the Red River settlements in Rupert’s Land
(now Manitoba) that they were living through the epochal transformation from
feudalism to capitalism. This transition was nevertheless the context for the
decisions individuals and families made to emigrate from Scotland and attempt to
found the Red River Colony. It might also not have been clear to them that they were
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