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Summary of all the readings of week 1 (2x Weber, Davis & Moore, Collins, Ritzer & Stepnisky)
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Summary of all the readings of week 1 from the second year sociology course 'Sociological Theory 3'.
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Readings ST3 Week 1Weber, M. (1914). The distribution of power within the political
community: Class, status, party.
Economically determined power and the status order
Power = the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even
against the resistance of others who are participating in the action.
Not all power entails social honor: the typical American Boss, as well as the typical big speculator,
deliberately relinquishes social honor.
Status order = the way in which social honor is distributed in a community between typical groups
participating in this distribution.
Classes, status groups and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community.
Determination of class situation by market situation
Class = a number of people have a specific economic situation (possession of commodities, income)
in common. Property and lack of property are the basic categories of all class situations. Within these
categories, class situations are further differentiated: 1) property that is usable for returns and 2)
kind of services that can be offered in the market.
Those who have no property but who offer services are differentiated just as much according to their
kinds of services as according to the way in which they make use of these services, in a continuous or
discontinuous relation to a recipient. Those men whose fate is not determined by the chance of using
goods or services for themselves on the market, e.g. slaves, are not a class but a status group.
Social action flowing from class interest
Economic interest and the existence of the market creates classes. Social action such as an
association or a trade union can grow out of the class interest. Class action is social action by the
members of a class. The most important example is the class situation of the modern proletariat.
Types of class struggle
A class doesn’t in itself constitute a group. To treat ‘class’ conceptually as being equivalent to ‘group’
leads to distortion (vervorming). Class situation can only emerge on the basis of social action.
However, social action that brings forth class situations is not basically action among members of the
identical class; it is an action among members of different classes.
The struggle in which class situations are effective has progressively shifted from consumption credit
toward, first, competitive struggles in the commodity market and then toward wage disputes on the
labor market.
Status honor
In contrast to classes, status groups are normally groups that are determined by a specific social
estimation of honor and with a specific style of life. Class distinctions are linked in the most varied
ways with status distinctions. Status honor need not necessarily be linked with a class situation. On
the contrary, it normally stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of sheer property.
Both propertied and propertyless people can belong to the same status group, and frequently they
do with very tangible consequences.
, Ethnic segregation and caste
Where the consequences have been realized to their full extent, the status group evolved into a
closed caste. Individual castes develop quite distinct cults and gods. In general, however, the status
structure reaches such extreme consequences only where there are underlying differences which are
held to be ‘ethnic’. They live in a diaspora strictly segregated from all personal intercourse. Yet, by
virtue of their economic indispensability (onmisbaarheid), they are tolerated and they live in the
political communities. E.g. Jews.
A status segregation grown into a caste differs in its structure from a mere ethnic segregation: the
caste structure transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated
groups into a vertical social system of super – and subordination. A comprehensive association
integrates the ethnically divided communities into one political unit.
Status privileges
For all practical purposes, stratification by status goes hand in hand with a monopolization of ideal
and material goods or opportunities, in a manner we have come to know as typical. The privilege of
wearing special costumes, of eating special dishes taboo to others, to play certain musical
instruments. Question of intermarriage?
Economic conditions and effects of status stratification
The market and its processes knows no personal distinctions: functional interests dominate it. The
status order means precisely the reverse: stratification in terms of honor and styles of life peculiar to
status groups as such. When the bases of the acquisition and distribution of goods are relatively
stable, stratification by status is favored.
Parties
Parties are oriented towards the acquisition of social power, toward influencing social action no
matter what its content may be. Parties are only possible within groups that have an associational
character, that is, some rational order and a staff of persons available who are ready to enforce it.
Parties need be neither purely class nor purely status parties; they are more likely to be mixed types,
and sometimes they are neither. They differ according to whether or not the community is stratified
by status or by classes. They vary according to the structure of domination. Since a party always
struggles for political control, its organization too is frequently strict and authoritarian.
Weber, M. (1922). Economy and society. Chapter 1.
Social action includes failure to act and passive acquiescence and may be oriented to the past,
present or future. A social action is ‘social’ once the wants of other people are taken into account.
Not every type of contact of human beings has a social character. Social action is not identical either
with the similar actions of many persons or with every action influenced by other persons, because
this can also be ‘action conditioned by crowds’. Some types of reaction are only made possible
because the individual acts as part of a crowd. An action is not ‘social’ when it is a result of the effect
on the individual in a crowd. Also imitation of the action of others, is not social action.
Types of social action:
- Instrumentally rational determined by expectations of objects in the environment and of
other human beings. These expectations are used as conditions or means. The end, the
means and the secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed. Costs-
benefits analysis, goal oriented.
- Value-rational determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some
ethical, aesthetic, religious or other form of behavior. Self-conscious formulation of the
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