> > Isn't the exemption of the self of the sociologist himself/herself
>> from the application of social theory also a part of the professional
>> assumptions of sociologists? "Everyone else is socialized (probably
>> in a pathological fashion), but I'm not -- I'm a free-thinking
>> individual," "I know what I'm talking about, but everyone else is in
>> ideology," or so the professional narrative goes. Postmodern
>> consciousness of one's own so-called "complicity" in "discourse"
>> doesn't improve upon the old professional assumption of "being
>> outside the picture" either.
>************
>
>No. Even a non-sociologist dolt like me knows that they're onto reflexivity in
>studying themselves in the process of studying social processes. How
>do you know
>it doesn't improve "the picture"? What's your solution to the
>subject/conject/object triad? What are your criteria for "measuring"
>improvement?
A while ago, we had threads on whether or not racism is in the interest of "white" workers. Those who think that it is either improper or impossible to speak of the objective interests of the working class, since individual "white" workers may not at present think that they have such interests, are likely following Weber rather than Marx:
***** ..."Property" and "lack of property" are...the basic categories of all class situations...Within these categories, however, class situations are further differential: on the one hand, according to the kind of property that is usable for returns: and on the other...the kind of service 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...In contrast to classes, status groups are normally communities. In contrast to the purely economically determined 'class situation' we wish to designate as 'status situation' every typical component of life fate of men...To treat 'class' conceptually as having the same value as 'community' leads to distortion. That men in the same class situation regularly react in mass actions to...tangible situation[s] as economic ones...is an important and after all simple fact for the understanding of historical events. Above all, this fact must not lead to that kind of pseudoscientific operation with the concepts of 'class' and 'class interests' so frequently found these days, and which has found its most classic expression in the statement of a talented author. (Henderson & Parsons translation 1947:)
(Max Weber, _The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation_ [1922], trans. & ed. Henderson & Parsons, Oxford UP, 1947, pp. 181-90) *****
The "talented author" whose concepts of class and class interests that Weber sought to negate is Marx.
Weber analyses class mainly in terms of "monopoly." A class situation indicates a common source of income consisting in power to trade something in a market. "Class situation" is "market situation" for Weber. How exchangeable things are distributed, according to Weber, may itself enhance some people's incomes, & those whose need to exchange is less urgent will make the most profitable deals. The mode of distribution gives the propertied a monopoly "on the possibility of transferring property...to the sphere of 'capital goods'...and all chances to share in returns on capital...." Note the primacy accorded to distribution (as opposed to production) by Weber.
For Weber, what is "economic action" under capitalism is market exchange (buying & selling) & inequality in distribution, *not* the expropriation of surplus value from one class (the proletariat) by another class (capital) in production. In this fundamental sense, Weber doesn't differ ideologically from mainstream economics.
Kelley wrote:
>marx wrote about the same issue in, for ex (among others), his
>studies of the french revolution. i posted on this three years ago,
>and repeatedly, since, whenever you and carrol climbed on the high
>horse about the use of the phrase "middle class".
There is no denying that Marx's & Weber's respective definitions of classes contradict each other. The mention of "upper-middle class" tells the reader which theory frames an analysis in which the term appears. A social theory that asks the reader to sort & rank empirical individuals into "upper class, upper-middle class, middle-middle class, lower-middle class, lower-class" rests on foundations other than Marx's. (BTW, if "upper-middle class," why not "lower-upper class"? You can come up with an infinite number of "classes" -- as many as the number of a given population or more -- on the basis of empirical sorting & ranking.)
***** The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class? -- and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes?
At first glance -- the identity of revenues and sources of revenue [cf. Weber]. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property.
However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords -- the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries.
(Karl Marx, _Capital_, vol. III, Progress Publishers, 1966, p. 886) *****
In other words, Weber's empiricism returns us to commodity fetishism.
>Essentialism and foundationalism ultimately underwrite claims for
>the autonomy of sociology and the possibility of a neutral
>sociological language which directly corresponds to its referent --
>society/the social. Sociology's claim to a superior epistemic
>status resides in the assertion that the sociological project is
>product of modern, industrial capitalist society and yet it is,
>nonetheless, fully capable of providing a scientific, objective
>theory of the whole of society. <...>
You don't want to end a post on the "sociology of knowledge" with a postmodern criticism of "essentialism" & "foundationalism" -- even on a Friday night! :)
Yoshie