Sociological Interpretation Research Articles

Max Weber’s Way from Social Economics to Sociology

Abstract One of the most outstanding intellectual achievements in the history of classical thought in social sciences which have remained influential up until today are undoubtedly associated with the name of Max Weber. Through a detailed text analysis and a conceptual mapping of the logic of the argumentation, this paper sets out to offer a profound insight into the classical German sociologist’s approach to science, both “early” (about 1903/4) and “late” (post-1913), in terms of some fundamental matters of epistemology and methodology. The first part of this paper investigates social economics in terms of its theoretical and methodological foundations and applicability, while the second part looks at interpretive sociology from the same perspectives, with an emphasis on the differences between the two approaches. We argue that Weber’s dualist methodological attitude became explicit and dominant in his later writings. In addition, as he brought in focus the theory of social action, he not only became an explicit proponent of methodological individualism, but he also revisited and specified the logic and role of “causal explanation” and “interpretation”. Interpretive sociology no longer seeks a causal explanation for individual historical events by applying nomological knowledge, but instead commits itself to finding “causally adequate” explanation for the course and consequences of different types of social actions. Interpretation, in turn, no longer means an analysis of effects concerning the cultural significance of individual historical events in a special sense, but an interpretive understanding of various types of social actions, rational or “irrational”, directly or in a motivation-like manner. The paper concludes with a summary designed to highlight key legacies of Weber’s oeuvre that have remained valid and valuable for any analytical and empirical research in sociology.

Sourozenectví ve stáří - vztahy "na okraji"?

Older age, especially advanced age, is accompanied by changes in the social relations amongst the elderly and specifically by a decrease in the size of their social networks: peers pass away and contact with other people may be restricted, often due to declining physical and mental strength. Gerontosociology notes the elderly's preferential focus on the family, which is usually defined in terms of intergenerational relationships and a support network in old age. Relationships with siblings lie outside the research interest of gerontosociology because they are considered peer relationships, which is to say that they, too, are subject to the effects of ageing and old age and, consequently, are less reliable as a source of help or care. However, the article shows that the elderly assign meaning to their relationships with their siblings, which go beyond mere instrumental assistance and which challenges the generally accepted view that sibling bonds are of secondary importance compared to relationships between older parents and adult children. The article answers the question of what the essence of siblinghood in old age is, its possible forms, and in what ways (according to what rules) the elderly maintain or develop sibling relationships - how they communicate in interactions with each other and in interactions with other members of their family of procreation and their shared family of origin. The article is based on the results of an analysis of data from a qualitative study carried out by conducting unstructured individual and group interviews as part of the project 'Greying Siblinghood: Sociological Study of Siblinghood in Late Adulthood'. In the theoretical framework of interpretive sociology, in which the article is anchored, both the key concepts of the relationist approach (family configuration, relatedness, belongingness, practices and rules of kinship interaction) and the concept of kinship ambivalence come to the forefront.

Entropical analysis of an opinion formation model presenting a spontaneous third position emergence

Characterization of complexity within the sociological interpretation has resulted in a large number of notions, which are relevant in different situations. From the statistical mechanics point of view, these notions resemble entropy. In a recent work, intriguing non-monotonous properties were observed in an opinion dynamics Sznajd model. These properties were found to be consequences of the hierarchical organization assumed for the system, though their nature remained unexplained. In the present work we bring an unified entropical framework that provides a deeper understanding of those system features. By perfoming numerical simulations, the system track probabilistic dependence on the initial structures is quantified in terms of entropy. Several entropical regimes are unveiled. The myriad of possible system outputs is enhanced within a maximum impredictability regime. A mutual structural weakness of the initial parties could be associated to this regime, fostering the emergence of a third position.

The Present State of the Study of Politics

The original outline of this article included a general overview and critique of the leading trends in the study of politics over the past 30 to 40 years. It was intended to compare the methods and results of different types of political thought-to consider in turn the historical school, the law school, researchers in the field of comparative analysis of forms of government, philosophers themselves, the approach of economists, the contribution of geographers and ethnologists, the work of statisticians, and finally to turn to psychological, sociological and biological interpretations of the political process. It would be an interesting and perhaps useful task to compare the subject and method of such thinkers as Jellinek, Gierke, Dugi, Dicey and Pound, the philosophies of Sorel and Dewey, Ritchie and Russell, Nietzsche and Tolstoy, to look at the methods of Durkheim and Simmel, Ward, Giddings and Small, Cooley and Ross, and to discuss the innovations found in the works of Wallace and Cole. It might be useful to expand the analysis to include important features of the environment in which these ideas flourished, and the many close connections between them. One could also discuss the impact of social and industrial development, class movements and class struggle or group conflicts in a broader sense, consider the impact of urbanism and industrialism, capitalism, socialism and syndicalism, militarism, pacifism, feminism, nationalism. It would be useful, perhaps, to present a critique of the methods and results described and to specifically assess the significance of logical, psychological, sociological, legal, philosophical and historical methodologies and the contribution of each of them to the study of the political. This task, however, was dropped and postponed for the next time, as it became apparent that no such review could be compressed to reasonable volumes. In order to achieve our common goal, it would seem that a different type of analysis would be more productive, aimed at reconstructing the methods of political research and obtaining more extensive results in both the theoretical and practical fields.

RAFAEL CARILLO, EL PENSADOR CARIBEÑO UNIVERSAL

En la primera obra podemos encontrar 28 ensayos de diferentes autores europeos que dan cuenta de la historia de la filosofía, ya sea a través de la sociología, de la filosofía o la biología. Dentro de los ensayos que tradujo Rafael Carrillo del alemán al español, se encuentra el de Hermann Schmitz sobre La interpretación sociológica de la historia y la historia universal. En este ensayo, Schmitz busca darle una mirada a la historia, a través de la sociología y como esta última disciplina, es importante para la primera. Schmitz toma como base a Hegel para enriquecer la sociología de la historia, tomando como primicia el concepto de evolución, donde se basa en categorías inexpresivas como integración y desintegración.

Educational Failure of Russian Students: A Sociological Interpretation of the Problem

Статья посвящена социологическому видению проблемы образовательной неуспешности российских студентов. На материалах исследований и рассмотрения реальных образовательных практик высшей школы доказывается острота поставленной проблемы. Аргументируется тезис об ограниченности педагогического измерения образовательной неуспешности студентов и необходимости ее социологической интерпретации. Последняя осуществляется в статье на трех уровнях – общностном, организационном, институциональном. В рамках авторского социологического исследования дается характеристика образовательно неуспешного студенчества. Оно рассматривается на организационном уровне в системе внутриуниверситетского взаимодействия научно-педагогического и управленческого персонала. Поставленная проблема трактуется в разрезе институциональных разрывов и противоречий, характеризующих отношения между высшим образованием и институтами общества и детерминирующих образовательную неуспешность. Раскрываются социальные факторы, оказывающие влияние на образовательную неуспешность студентов.

Approaches To The Concept Of Social Mobility

The article discusses the sociological interpretation of the concept of social mobility, its generality with the concept of stratification and features of individuality. The emergence of social mobility with the change of social status and social role of the individual is also emphasized. The article also briefly discusses the classification of social mobility.

1920 - A Caesura in Social Theory?

The centenary of Max Weber's death raises the question of the wider significance of 1920 as marking a break in the history of social theory. This essay focuses on Germany and Austria, where the political break with the past was particularly sharp and the discontinuities in the social and intellectual configuration of the social sciences were most obvious. Three trends are particularly striking: the development of neo-Marxist social theory with GyĂśrgy LukĂĄcs and Karl Korsch and the later emergence of critical theory, the polarisation between neo-positivism and interpretive sociology, and the consolidation of the sociology of knowledge.

Max Weber como sociólogo da moral: possibilidades analíticas da sociologia compreensiva

Nos estudos contemporâneos da moral, não é comum vermos muita referência às contribuições de Max Weber, apesar do seu estatuto de fundador desse subcampo. Com o intuito de recuperar e atualizar essas possibilidades da sociologia weberiana, propõe-se a leitura de dois conceitos sob a ótica da moral: a liberdade em relação a valores (Wertfreiheit) e a ação racional com relação a valores. Para tanto, somou-se a exposição desses conceitos na obra original do autor com os esforços interpretativos reunidos em torno de Wolfgang Schluchter. Com isso, conclui-se positivamente em relação à contemporaneidade de ambos os conceitos. Por um lado, a discussão em torno da liberdade em relação a valores continua a dividir opiniões dentro do campo da sociologia da moral, sem um consenso definitivo. Por outro, a releitura do conceito da ação com relação a valores permite uma centralidade maior desses elementos ideais, que se mostram constitutivos não só da obra weberiana, mas da própria realidade social. Assim, a partir de conceitos nucleares da sociologia compreensiva, é possível expandir a contribuição weberiana para a sociologia da moral.

A burocracia na sociologia da dominação de Max Weber: contribuições à pesquisa educacional

Dentre a diversidade de temas abordados pelo sociólogo alemão Max Weber (1864-1920) no livro Economia e sociedade: fundamentos da sociologia compreensiva, encontramos a sistematização de estudos sobre a “Sociologia da Dominação”. Com base nesses estudos, delineamos nesse artigo os fundamentos, as particularidades e as implicações da burocracia na esfera administrativa, enquanto tipo ideal, na Sociologia da Dominação de Max Weber, com a finalidade de explicitar as contribuições desse conceito à pesquisa educacional. Para isso, primeiramente, realizamos uma incursão teórica ao contexto histórico e teórico-metodológico da Sociologia da Dominação de Weber para apreender o conceito de burocracia. Num segundo momento, problematizamos as formulações de Weber sobre a burocracia, a fim de explicitar as características da administração burocrática. Posteriormente, indicamos as possíveis contribuições teórico-metodológicas do conceito de burocracia à pesquisa educacional. Por fim, a título conclusivo do artigo, salientamos a importância da apropriação da teoria social crítica de Max Weber para a análise de temas atuais da educação brasileira.

The production of “rhythms of responsibility” for childcare in a post-socialist society

ABSTRACT Drawing on 32 face-to-face interviews with mothers and childcare providers in Latvia, this paper examines the mundane mobilities. We argue that attention to mundane mobilities reveals crucial arrangements of childcare rhythms. Moving to and from childcare places, and around homes with children are central to the provision of childcare. These mobilities are expressed in temporal and personal rhythms, continuities, and disruptions. Mundane mobilities link locations between family and care providers. Childcare mobilities are further shaped by a reduction in the formal supply of childcare in post-socialist Latvia and its replacement by informal arrangements. Through the morally negotiated responsibilities of informal childcare, certain rhythms emerge, including care-time in neighbourhoods, walking and other travel routines, and play activities with children. The paper’s theoretical contribution builds on geographical and sociological interpretations of the mobility literature, here with a focus on rhythm analysis applied to childcare in everyday life. Its applied contribution rests on an understanding of how precarity is experienced, and responsibilities negotiated, with a special focus on a post-socialist society.

Women’s Autonomy in Household Purchasing Decision Making in Sri Lanka: An Application of Multivariate Baseline-Category Logit Model

As many researches on gender and household purchasing decision making are sociological as well as descriptive, this attempt tries to fill the gap with applying of statistical model in to the same context. This is basically an inductive approach that generates data, applies joint modeling and moves forward in sociological interpretation. The data has been generated in an Island-wide survey consisting 28,800 household units in Sri Lanka in 2016. Generalized linear mixed approach was applied to baseline-category logit models to identify the factors associated with women’s autonomy in decision making on daily household purchases and major household purchases. This research comes up to the conclusions that women’s age, education status of the women and spouses, number of children, residence area and economic status in the family emerged as important factors associated with women’s autonomy in decision making. Increased age, well paid employment and having many living children are all positively associated with women’s autonomy in decision making in both daily household purchases and major household purchases. Women from rural and estate areas are less likely be autonomous in decision making than the women from urban areas. Highly educated women are more likely to make decisions jointly while the women who less attended formal education are further likely to make decisions unaccompanied.

“First Love Is Exactly Like Revolution”: Intimacy as Political Allegory in Ivan Turgenev's Novella Spring Torrents

This article tackles the allegorical mode of Russian realism using Ivan Turgenev's novella Spring Torrents (1872) and its political implications as a case study. We argue that this deeply intimate story of love and moral fall can be read in the context of the “social imaginary” which, in Turgenev's manner, is wrapped in motives and symbols correlating to “revolutionary” and “reactionary” discourses. The article shows how this projection emerges in the narration without direct political discourse by means of allegory. It is this mode that ties together the intimate and the natural and gives Turgenev's novellas a political dimension, which is obvious in his novels but latent in the novellas, thus opening them up to various sociological interpretations. Employing various theoretical readings of allegory, we explain how allegory is built upon and around the subjectivity of Turgenev's characters, implying concepts such as sexuality and the unconscious that had not yet been coined as such but directly influenced future European fiction.

The Multidimensional Structure of Taste

The notion of cultural legitimacy has had many incarnations and been subject to many criticisms over the years. However, few studies have set out to construct it empirically and quantify it at the national level and over several cultural practices. In spite of the intense theoretical debates, one question remains particularly neglected – given that the scale of cultural legitimacy is defined by the homology between the ordering of tastes and the ordering of social groups, which social space does it actually refer to? Here we propose an empirical approach to statistically account for the intersection of social power relations which many ethnographic studies have observed at the level of individuals and social groups. The goal is to analyse the relations between variables related to social status; education, age, and gender are the ones we look at here. We avoid the unfruitful trap of simply constructing hierarchies of effects, and instead consider the interactions between them. We therefore observe that, at the macro level where our analysis is situated, the scale of cultural legitimacy is simultaneously associated with the three social relations studied, opposing bourgeois (intellectual) culture to popular culture, feminine culture to masculine culture, and established culture to new emerging culture. Ultimately, the scale of cultural legitimacy is made up of three main echelons, associated with three configurations of social characteristics: intellectual, feminine, and established at the “top” of the legitimacy scale, intellectual, masculine, and emerging at the “middle” and, finally, popular, feminine, and established, at the “bottom”. A sociological interpretation allows us to distinguish two variations of legitimate culture that are more or less well established, feminine, and intellectual, and three variations of illegitimate culture depending on gender and age variables (a taste for “outdated” or “sentimental” working class genres, a preference for “mass public” products that are widely available on radio, television, or in magazines, and a taste for emerging “virile” genres [science-fiction, rap, hard rock, etc.], that are sometimes constituted as juvenile subcultures subject to processes of legitimation). Beyond this nascent typology, we seek above all to establish the existence of these interactions, to propose certain statistical tools that are useful for studying them and to demonstrate the benefit of analysing the distribution of cultural practices in intersectional terms.

Ideal Potentials in Action: Schutzian Affinities in Simmel’s View of Life

The View of Life is still under-studied despite its status as capstone to Simmel’s work. Departing from Simmel’s image as an unsystematic flâneur or bricoleur, I assess the affinity of his late theory of life forms with Schutz’s analysis of human action in three steps: First, as a common concern with the clarification of foundational problems that coincide with interpretive sociology’s basic idea of tracing back all cultural objectivations to the dynamics of living processes. Second, as an articulation of life’s self-transcendence concordant with the tension between action as a projected act (modo futuri exacti) and as an ongoing process (modo presenti) uncovered by Schutz for the first time in his posthumously published book Life Forms and Meaning Structures. I follow with a third proposal about how Simmel’s line of thought on freedom as a capacity to break through purposiveness and as a rise of ideal constructs might complement Schutz’s attention to the growth of the acting self through life events, suggesting that The View of Life can be regarded as a precedent to Schutz for linking action projection to the development of aspirations and ideals, and to theorize how the realization of projects supports the development of individual integrity and the ability to appropriate one’s life in the midst of unfamiliar and critical situations. Simmel and Schutz are thus shown to contribute to an approach to creative action in sociology.

The Stranger as a Threshold Figure

The Stranger as a Threshold Figure Amos Morris-Reich Given its subject and Georg Simmel's background, one would think that Simmel's excursus "The Stranger" (1908) and Jewish history could easily be brought into sustained conversation. Widely thought to be the most original social thinker of the turn of the twentieth century in Germany, Simmel was of Jewish descent. In "The Stranger," he refers to European Jews as the "classic example" of this social type. The excursus became a landmark in twentieth-century social theory and sociology. In practice, however, "The Stranger" and Jewish history have developed along two separate intellectual trajectories, and attempts to bring them together are frequently met by indifference or resistance by Jewish historians and Simmel scholars alike. While the former have no need for Simmel's short and indirect account to confirm the association between Jews and strangers, anyone minimally versed in Simmel's writings recognizes the impervious border between the social type of the stranger and actual Jews. Any suggestion to the contrary betrays an elementary misunderstanding of Simmel's perspective.1 Even when contextually expected or required—perhaps due to what each side takes as implied—this barrier remains impenetrable. Bringing the two together can nonetheless reveal a "Spinozist moment" with regard to Simmel and "The Stranger" as a subversive threshold figure. Possibly more than any of Simmel's other writings, "The Stranger" can be read as a queering of his own sociological theory, revealing a moment [End Page 314] of liminality in Jewish history. "Queering" is a helpful term here because, while the mental image of the stranger subconsciously fixed in the cultural imagination is generally not gender-neutral, the subversive quality of "The Stranger" stands out prominently in light of contemporary discussions of sex and gender. This liminality is evinced when we read "The Stranger" with the question of Jewish "strangeness" in mind. Of what does the "strangeness" of the stranger consist? Rather than embodying Christian theological supersessionism, racial/antisemitic doctrine, the gaze of the Other and its internalization by Jews, or Zionism's rejection of Jewish exile as an unnatural anomaly, the stranger belongs exclusively to society (in the singular) due to the interaction between individuals. Simmel's epistemology rules out any reduction of Jews as strangers to essentialist, naturalist terms.2 "The Stranger" appears to destabilize this orthodox Simmelian reading, however. Given that Simmel was the first to establish a notion of sociology free from reliance on preexisting collectivities such as nation, race, or ethnicity, Simmel scholars have learned to ignore or explain away moments that contravene this reading. The most famous lines in the excursus, for example, characterize the stranger by contrasting him—and thereby tying him together—with the wanderer: "The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow."3 These playful, poetic, and deeply ironic lines not only suggest a social "in" and "out" but also hint at organic differences between autochthonous members of society and late arrivers, granting the latter a degree of permanency. They also seem to imply that another society, place, and time exist where the stranger was, is, or could be more naturally at home. From an orthodox point of view, this is pure blasphemy. Simmel scholars who have noted these tensions and ambiguities tend to explain them in terms of the essay's history. Forming part of the ninth chapter of the Soziologie (1908), it constitutes a short and hastily written detour [End Page 315] in a chapter dealing with space and the spatial dimensions of social organization.4 For no obvious reason, it was translated into English (and other languages), whereupon it gained a life of its own. Reprinted numerous times, it has become a social-theory classic, serving as the cornerstone of the sociological paradigm known as the "marginal man," developed by scholars at the University of Chicago. The tensions can also be read as puncturing a purified interpretation of Simmel's sociology. Although a social type, organic—racial, biological, genetic—elements irreducible to the formal theory...

Practical Reason

Paul Ricœur’s essay “Practical Reason” was initially published in 1979, and later became part of the book Du texte à l’action: essais d’herméneutique II (1986), marking Ricœur’s transition from the general problems of the justification of hermeneutics as a legitimate philosophical discipline to the problems of practical philosophy in a broad sense. Relying on the analytical theory of action, the interpretative sociology of M. Weber, and the Hegelian critique of Kantian ethics, Ricœur seeks to restore the Aristotelian concept of phronesis or “practical wisdom” in the context of modern philosophizing. This turns out to be unexpectedly relevant where neither Kant’s deontology nor the Hegelian Sittlichkeit can adequately express the entirety of human practical experience in a world where ideology and alienation have become inevitable components of social life.

Listening to Everyone’s Voice: The Contested Rights of Muslim Marriage Practices in Eastern Indonesia

This ethnographic study investigates the dialectics of Islamic law and sociocultural aspects of how Bimanese Muslim in eastern Indonesia interpret and apply rights to force (ijbar) of male guardians to marry their daughters to prospective grooms of their choice. Such rights to force, granted by Islamic doctrines (fiqh) to patrilineal lines, are continuously negotiated by its sociological interpretations of Bimanese Muslims. While Islamic doctrines represent Islamic jurists’ reasoning on ijbar, local practices uncover public argumentation of such rules and this article aimed at discussing the contestation further. It also amplifies the narrative of the Indonesian Muslim community from small ethnic groups, such as Bima, which are still under-studied. Therefore, in the framework of Indonesian Islam, known as ‘Islam Nusantara,’ as it is being developed in Indonesia today, results of this study are far-reaching, that is, to provide more nuances of Islamic law and practices in Indonesia. Furthermore, this study rectifies the general view of ijbar rights that are merely connoted with the rights of the father and grandfather to enforce marriage on women. It is also argued that ijbar rights are peculiarly defined and dynamically practised, being shaped by social development, marriage traditions and cultural values ​​in particular societies.

ANALYSE SOCIOLOGIQUE DES PERCEPTIONS DES JEUNES BENINOIS SUR LA MODERNITE POLITIQUE DES ELITES

Political modernity is a negotiated reality, which requires adaptation, innovation. The representations or perceptions of young Beninese constitute variables of recognition of political modernity, even of the modernity of political figures or elites. These are criteria for the recognition and validation of political leadership. How do young Beninese build their criteria of political modernity? In addition, how do they state their perceptions of the modernity of elites or political figures in Benin? Essentially qualitative and based on comprehensive interviews carried out in Benin from a survey integrating about thirty (30) people, this research appropriates the dynamics of interpretative sociology and adopts the model of analysis based on the social construction of reality, with an opening on interactionism and strategic analysis. By postulating that the perceptions of young people on political modernity structure the relationships between their expectations and the behavior of elites or political figures in society, this work has made it possible to elucidate the social representations which guide the modernity of political elites in Benin. It revealed the over-intellectualization of the political arena, the pervasiveness of the bó or gris-gris, the emergence of a new relationship to way of life, to technology, then the modernization of public action and marginalization of the opposition.

At the Confluence of Social and Moral: Study on Society as a Science According to Yevhen Spektorskyi’s Interpretation

This article concerns the evolution of philosopher and lawyer Yevhen Spektorskyi’s (1875–1951) views on social science in the context of social thought of that time. At the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century in Russian philosophy appeared a strong need for a search for an alternative to positivism and Marxism interpretation of sociology, which would enable it to deal with pressing social and ethical issues. Neo-Kantian philosophy became one of those alternatives, and it had a profound influence on Spektorskyi at the beginning of his academic career when he justified the importance of social sciences on the basis of the human ability to set goals. Having been disappointed in a study of oughtness, Spektorskyi turned on genealogical research into social science whose key phenomenon he believed to be the social physics of the 17th century. Spektorskyi reached a conclusion that a mechanical view on the individual and society, which was typical for the modern era thought, could not grasp all the aspects of both a person and a society, therefore, oriented towards natural sciences, social physics had failed. In his own philosophical research, Spektorskyi struggled to cohere the ideal of rational science and a possibility to examine the human as a moral being by developing his classification of sciences and critically rethinking the very basis of the social science. Spektorskyi’s works written in emigration were focused on cultural and religious issues that offered a fresh perspective on social science. He considered Christian philosophy to be an idealistic one and used it as a basis for his own version of Christian sociology that understood society in regard to the Christian ideal of an individual and community.Manuscript received 04.09.2020