The four classical theorists of modernity are as follows: 1. Karl Marx: It is commodification 2. Max Weber: It is rationality 3. Emile Durkheim: It is differentiation 4. Georg Simmel: City and economy make modernity.
The classical theorists are those who are foundational theorists – they are the pioneer thinkers. Among them are included Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. Though these thinkers have not taken the concept of modernity in a formal way, their works indicate that they are concerned with the processes of modernization. In their own way, they have comprehended it. Here, we take up their approach to modernity.
1. Karl Marx: It is commodification: Marx’s concern with modernity was in terms of production relations. It was the objective
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Durkheim was a product of 19th century. Like any other sociologist, he was also an evolutionist of his times. He traced the origin of society. In its evolutionary stage, the society had mechanical solidarity. Conscience collective, collective representations and repressive laws held the mechanical society together.
In course of evolution, the mechanical society attains the stage of organic solidarity. In this society, there is differentiation – multiple of occupations, plural ethnicities and varying people. This functional- organic structure of society is held together by social density and contractual relations.
Durkheim defines modernity in the context of social solidarity. His thesis is: more there is differentiation, more there is modernity”. Modernity creates functional dependence. In a modern society, the people depend on one another and this keeps the society in a state of solidarity. Differentiation does not create disorganization; it creates dependence. And, therefore, for Durkheim, modernity is differentiation, it is stratification. More is a society stratified; greater is the level of modernity.
4. Georg Simmel: City and economy make
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Simmel: City life and money economy.
The concept of modernity has been defined by all the founding fathers of sociology. The definitions are diverse and varying. Despite diversity in their comprehension and perception, the fact remains that they have touched upon all the major formations or manifestations of modernity. It can therefore be safely concluded that these classical theorists have done very well in doing sociology of modernity.
By 1920 all four of above classical sociological theorists were dead. As we have now entered the 21st century, it is obvious that the world would be very different than it was in 1920. While there is great disagreement over when the postmodern age began (assuming for the moment that it did), no one puts that data before 1920.
The issue is whether the changes in the world since that time are modest and continuous with those associated with modernity, or are so dramatic and discontinuous that the contemporary world is better described by a new term – postmodern. Our guess is that in most of the parts of world, modernity is still a continuing process. Habermas, the German modernist, argues that the project of modernity, which started after enlightenment, is still an incomplete
Durkheim was concerned with what maintained the cohesion of social structures. He was a functionalist, he believed each aspect of society contributes to society 's stability and functioning as a whole. He theorised that society stayed united for two reasons “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity.” Premodern societies were held together by mechanical solidarity, a type of social order maintained through a minimal division of labour and a common collective consciousness. Such societies permitted a low degree of individual autonomy, Social life was fixed and there was no sense of self. They had retributive legal systems so no individual action or deviance from the common conscience was tolerated. In industrialised modern societies Durkheim says Mechanical solidarity is replaced with organic solidarity. In organic solidarity capitalist societies their is a high division of labour which requires the specialisation of jobs people do, this allows for individual autonomy
This theory views history of human beings as a succession of modes of production to meet human material needs. This mode of production determines the social relation that would exist among a society. According to the theory, when a change in mode of production takes place, there will be a conflict “between the forces of production and the social relations of production” ("Marx And Historical Materialism")
Society, in simplest terms, is defined as a group of people who share a defined territory and a culture. In sociology, we take that definition a little further by arguing that society is also the social structure and interactions of that group of people. Social structure is the relatively enduring patterns of behavior and relationships within a society, not only between its members, but also with social institutions. According to those definitions, society seems a fairly concrete concept to comprehend. However, there are sociologists whom have their own theories about society in the aspects of the relationship between social classes, and class conflict. The German philosopher, economist and theorist Karl Marx has a fragmented and rather disconsolate view on society; while French functionalist and theorist Emile Durkheim looks at society more scientifically and wholesomely. Despite these profound differences of outlook, however, Marx and Durkheim were both centrally concerned with the emergence of modern capitalism, and in particular with the rise of the modern system of the division ...
This paper is an attempt to do something that is probably not a good idea. I am going to try and take the ideas of some of the most prominent postmodern Sociological thinkers and mesh them together in some sort of coherent format. The purpose of this paper is to provide a starting place for people interested in postmodern Sociological thought. There really is no one all-encompassing postmodern theory, or a group of like-minded postmodern theorists. In fact this notion is antithetical to much of what postmodern literature maintains. At the same time, there has to be similar themes that run through postmodern theories, or it wouldn’t have the label it does. So, lets take a look at some of the similarities as a starting point. One of the most startling similarities of some of the most prominent postmodern Sociological theorists is their reliance on modern Sociological theorists, specifically, Karl Marx. At first this may seem strange, after all Marx is the ultimate modern theorist. How can theory that is often so radically opposed to modernity rely on Marx? One of the problems that has haunted Sociology in recent years is its theories feel like they have grown stale, much of today’s Sociological theory is really a cover of another theory. Regurgitations of Marx, Max Weber, or Emile Durkheim. Theorists we label postmodern have formulated their ideas in this type of environment. Therefore, they have a modern base, they have rejected this modern base to give us something new, and often insightful, for most. Others consider it a waste of time. Post modernity relies heavily on theory, largely because most of the Sociological postmodern thinkers were schooled in this traditi...
Marx’s perspective was not based on the conflict of ideas, but rather on the conflict of classes. This conflict is the results of a new mode of production. According to Marx, history would consist of epochs of modes of production. He states that these modes of production are: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and then socialism and communism.
Durkheim was concerned with studying and observing the ways in which society functioned. His work began with the idea of the collective conscious, which are the general emotions and opinions that are shared by a society and which shape likeminded ideas as to how the society will operate (Desfor Edles and Appelrouth 2010:100-01). Durkheim thus suggested that the collective ideas shared by a community are what keeps injustices from continuing or what allows them to remain.
Emile Durkheim is another sociologist who used Herbert Spencer’s theory to explain the change in society. He believed that society is a very intricate system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability (Durkheim 1893). This ensures that the social world is held together by shared values and languages. He wrote the Division of Labor.
The definition of modern is relative to the time and space in which a historian might describe a society, situation, or technology, or as the Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “Of or relation to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past.” The problem with this, however, is that it is often difficult to look back on an historical event and differentiate between what was actually modern about that time and how historians impose a sense of modernity on an event that was the opposite. In Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, Latour explores the origins of modernity and how it “is always being thrown into the middle of a fight,” somehow “defining, by contrast, an archaic and stable past.” Only one removed from the historical event can look at it as an outsider, and even then it is difficult to remove ties that relate current history to that of the past. The readers of history cannot help but see it with a lens that is tinted with the problems of today.
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
The social conditions that people lived in, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were of the greatest significance of the production of sociology, the different problems and social disorder that resulted from the series of political revolutions escorted in by the French Revolution in 1789 distressed many early social theorists, when they eventually came to the conclusion that it was impossible to return to the old order , they wanted to find new sources of order in societies that had been disturbed by the different dramatic political changes.
Bertens, J. W., and Bertens, H. 1995. The idea of the post-modern: a history. London, Routledge.
During our studies on the classical sociological theorist there has been a heavy focus on three key figures inspired the enlightenment period. Karl Marx was one of the first enlighten thinkers of his time, he saw the usefulness of observing the world with empirical data to obtain information about the world. He view the mode of production and the source of materialism the source for all things. He viewed the interaction between people and the material they worked with influence each other. He also believed that capitalism created a sort of alienation between all things in the world: Alienation from work, from people and from the world itself. He also focused on the bourgeoisies and their interaction with the proletariat class. Following Marx
Most contemporary historians define the European early modern period from around the beginning of the sixteenth century, up until the commencements of the French Revolution of 1789. The ambiguity inherent in this apparent catch-all period is problematic, and invokes much debate and disagreement among historians. For the purpose of expediency, this paper will have its modernizing genesis in the thoughts of Mitchell Greenberg writing in the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Greenberg states there was a common modernizing compulsion right across Europe during this time period ‘…marked by both a gen...
Talcott Parsons have some of the same views of sociology as Durkheim, he believed that social life is categorized by social cooperation. Parsons also believed that commitment to common values maintains or...
To begin with, modernity is a term that “signals a particular kind of society that only came into existence over the past 200 years or so, first in Western Europe, then elsewhere. Modernization refers to a society that is moving toward modernity.” (Veeser, p. 3) There is a close association between modernization and westernization because “earlier ideas assumed that modernization was in fact Westernization.” (Veeser, p. 3) Western Europe was the first to act in the process of modernization which included urbanization, widespread literacy, usage of inanimate power, rising per capita income, and the widespread participation of populate in political affairs along with the West’s rational and scientific orientations toward the world. When this