PPE Notes Sociological Theory Notes
Notes on ideology, class, and methodology. Including summaries of Bourdieu, Durkheim, Weber, Zizek, Marx and Giddens....
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Alfred Schutz - The Phenomenology of the Social World
Chapter One - The Statement of Our Problem: Max Weber’s Basic Methodological Concepts
1. Preliminary Survey of the Problem
Debate between social scientists who treat social phenomena as if they were natural phenomena (causally determined) and those who see social phenomena as belonging to a world of ‘objective mind’, intelligible but not under scientific laws (interpretive sociology)
in the latter, social scientists’ attitudes are determined by their own presuppositions
but simply interpreting the social world according to our presuppositions (subjective biases) runs contrary to good research, which should be unbiased
Weber thought that the social sciences should abstain from value judgements
importantly, he reduced all social relationships/structures/cultural objectifications/realms of objective mind to elementary forms of individual behaviour (as did Simmel)
sociology is to study social behaviour by interpreting the subjective meaning of the intentions of individuals
this is to be done through constructing ‘ideal types’
Weber had good theory, but didn’t explore its presuppositions
he makes no distinction between:
action and act
meaning of the producer and meaning of the produced
meaning of my own action and meaning of someone else’s
self understanding and other-understanding
doesn’t show how meaning is constituted
in order to understand the way the other self is grasped as an ideal type, we need to recognise the way acts are interpreted as a part of the whole social world
Weber took for granted the meaningful phenomena of the social world as a matter of intersubjective agreement, without examining what constitutes meaning
Hence we can see the complicated relation between the social sciences and their subject matter - the structure of the social world is meaningful for its actors and also for its scientific interpreters
in experiencing others as others we understand their behaviour, and assume they understand ours
it is through these acts of interpretive meaning that the structure of the social world is constructed
the social scientist interprets the world of already constituted meanings - the meaningful acts of people in their everyday experience
there is a stratification of meaning-interpretation, and these are two types: the meaning-understanding of everyday life, and the sophisticated meaning understanding of the ideal types in interpretive sociology
macro sociology can always be reduced into processes of interpretation/meaning establishment in individuals
So, the project is: we need to understand meaning in order to analyse the meaning-structure of the social world
2. Max Weber’s Concept of Meaningful Action
Weber: the task of interpretive sociology is to understand/interpret social action
social action is action in which its subjective meaning takes into account the behaviour of others, and interprets this behaviour
action is human behaviour in for which the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning
Weber distinguishes between affectual behaviour and action, where affectual behaviour consists in physical response to stimulus. Here no meaning is attached
there is also habit, traditional behaviour, where meaning was once attached, but the act is now carried out by automatic reaction
Weber sees meaningful behaviour as rational behaviour; behaviour oriented towards particular ends
this presupposes that the meaning of an action is identical with its motive - noob
in fact the behaviour/action distinction breaks down, because it is possible for us to interpret any behaviour, if we concentrate on it, as meaningful in some respect
hence the problem moves to the difference between the meaning of behaviour and the meaning of action
Weber also presupposes the meaningful existence of the other self, without exploring how it is meaningfully given to us
3. The Pregivenness of the Alter Ego and the Postulate of the Understanding of Subjective Meaning
An investigation of the subjectively intended meaning of others presupposes a theory of the knowability of the other self
in interpreting, we assume that a person does mean something and that we can find out what it is
clearly, the subjective meaning of someone’s behaviour isn’t the same as the meaning which his external behaviour has for me as an observer
physical objectifications of meaning are merely indications of the intended meaning of the actor
to say that the activities of the other are a field of expression does not imply that we are only interested in consciously intended acts
Interpreting subjective meaning is more than simply viewing external behaviour and attributing an attitude - joy, sorrow, pain etc - to them
if we must denote why the person exhibits the attitude he does, then subjective meaning is not directly revealed
(is subjective meaning directly revealed if we witness someone crying and attribute an emotion to them? what about mistakes?)
Weber distinguishes between direct observational understanding and understanding in terms of motive (explanatory understanding)
direct observational understanding includes the rational understanding of ideas (e.g. 2x2=4, or understanding rage in terms of facial expression)
explanatory understanding uncovers why the individual expresses himself thus; the meaning an actor attaches to a particular expression; what makes him do it in a particular circumstance
the subjective meaning is this intended meaning; the place of the action in an intelligible sequence of motivation
(though presumably the subjective/intended meaning is not just any intelligible sequence of motivation, but that of the actor)
4. Critique of Max Weber’s Concepts of “Observational” and “Motivational” Understanding
Weber is using ‘intended meaning’ in two (perhaps contradictory)...
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Notes on ideology, class, and methodology. Including summaries of Bourdieu, Durkheim, Weber, Zizek, Marx and Giddens....
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