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Welcome

Welcome to the Sociology Post.

This is the place where I will be posting notes, comments, and reports on sociological matters and issues of sociological relevance. It is where I hope to engage with all of those who come to my website or who have read my work.

The post was launched in April 2017 on my website. Software changes have meant a transfer to Blogger, but I will soon reestablish a link to the website. All the old posts will be re-posted here over the next few weeks.

Watch this space!

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Objectivity and Subjectivity

In  Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research , which I wrote with Gayle Letherby and Malcolm Williams (Sage Publications, 2013), we set out an account of objectivity and truth in relation to the necesarilly subjective basis of social knowledge. This posting outlines a summary of the key arguments of the book. Why are so many sociologists concerned with objectivity and the pursuit of ‘truth’ when our knowledge and understanding of the social world is so self-evidently subjective and partial? The conventional view in all the sciences has been that it is only by securing objective knowledge that we can be guaranteed that it is true and that we can therefore avoid the claims of our critics that we are biased in our viewpoint and are merely parading ideology in the guise of science. This is an important justification of the search for objectivity, but many critics, especially in the social sciences, have argued that it is unrealistic: objectivity is seen as impossible and tru...
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Integration and Social Structure

In my previous post I set out a view of the relationship between the interaction order and social structure. I want now to discuss the forms of integration or malintegration that exist at each level. These issues were famously discussed by David Lockwood in an article of 1964 through his distinction between ‘social integration’ and ‘system integration’ (in  Explorations in Social Change , edited by Zollschan and Hirsch). My claim is that social integration should be seen as relating to the interaction order and system integration as relating to the macro-level social structure. A state of social integration exists when interacting individuals and groups establish shared understandings that permit a coordination of their actions. They produce a negotiated order that underpins their joint action. Where there are failures in mutual understanding and a resulting lack of coordination, there is social disorder, rather than social order, and the potential for social disintegration. This...
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Weber on Stratification

It is commonly held that Weber identified three dimensions of stratification: class, status, and party. This has long been the standard view and has been repeated countless times. It is not, in fact, what Weber said, or even what he implied. I have tried to counter this interpretation before, but here goes again. Weber’s explicit remarks on power were left unfinished when he died and were published only posthumously as distinct fragments on power and stratification that are now most familiar as parts of the text known, in its English translation, as  Economy and Society . In these fragments, Weber discussed the conceptualisation of power in relation to issues of social stratification through ‘class’ ( Klasse ) and ‘status’( Stände ), seeing these social phenomena as being closely associated with each other. His earliest and longest set of notes on the distribution of power, most probably written between 1910 and 1914, first appeared in an English language translation with the t...
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